Sex Ed with John Oliver

Here is a little hint at what I have been doing in academia lately.

Slut Shaming and Mental Health Project

This post is about one of my very recent projects in graduate school. For my Research Methods in Social Work class, my partner and I were particularly interested in the effects of slut shaming on young women’s mental health. We created a professional survey by which to collect data concerning experienced and perceived slut shaming as well as information regarding mental health status and history from young women at the multiple colleges and universities in Columbia, Missouri. The possibility of publication is being thrown around so I will not divulge any direct quotes from our final draft (although, feel free to request more information privately…I am happy to share more!).

We presented our research to our class at the end of the semester. It seems odd that we are smiling in this picture when “Sexually Depressed” is so easily read on our poster. Yet we were truly excited to share the knowledge we gained from our study as very little research on this topic currently exists.

On Rape, Consent, and Women’s Sexual Liberation

Last week I attended a panel on sexual assault sponsored by Louisiana Tech’s chapter of AAUW. In light of recent discussions on feminism and women’s liberation in my History 467 class, I found myself wondering what rape statistics might look like before and after the sexual revolution or each wave of feminism.

I expected to find an increase in sexual assault during/after women’s liberation and the sexual revolution. I am struggling to find these statistics. I should have expected this. So few rapes are reported now we can only get a vague idea of estimates. I found no records from the early 20th century. The charts and statistics I found only dated as far back as the mid-1960s, which was not very helpful since I needed information before and after the 60s in particular. (If you happen to find any such information, please let me know!)

So I considered another problem. Consent was an issue discussed. The people speaking on the panel were imperative about being extremely clear in agreeing or refusing to have sex with someone.  “Yes means yes” should not be an unfamiliar phrase on college campuses. The “Yes Means Yes” campaign has been promoting awareness of sexual assault and consent issues and advocating for legislature to be written to define sexual consent. The campaign has been growing and last year California was the first state to enact a “yes means yes” law.

But what are we really being taught about consent? Media of all types seem to be counteracting the message of “Yes Means Yes.” The one most obvious cases to me is in the first trailer to the film Pitch Perfect 2. In this trailer our favorite comic character, Fat Amy, verbally refuses to have sex with Bumper but winks at him after saying “no.” Her wink confuses Bumper and he is not sure if she really means no since her wink would seem to imply “yes.” This scene is at the 2:10 mark.

A Century Long “Sexual Revolution”

Beth Bailey’s article “Sexual Revolution(s)” featured in A History of Our Time makes an intriguing argument that the sexual revolution of the 1960s was not a revolution at all but rather an evolution of sexual understanding and practice over many decades. Bailey mentions that the sexualization of American culture “pick[ed] up speed in the 1920s, the 1940s, and the 1960s” as if sexualizing American culture had been a slow process beginning much earlier than the 1960s, particularly with using sex in the marketplace. “Sex sells” is still a phrase and practice used by marketing professionals today. It worked throughout the 20^th century just as it continues to work in the 21^st. According to Bailey, selling sex through marketing gradually wore down the traditional understanding of sex (so slowly that red flags were not raised among most Americans until the 1960s).

Proof of sexual evolution: It is 2015…and society is still concerned about the sexual practices of the youth, particularly the “virtue” of young women

Bailey even claims it was the grandparents and parents of the sixties generation that “chipped away the system of sexual controls” or the socially acceptable sexual practices of unmarried youth. The so-called “sexual revolution” in the sixties could not be a revolution then if the previous generations were participating in the same sexual activities. The public rejection of fundamental or traditional sexual morality is the true controversial issue of the sexual evolution occurring in the 1960s.

Proof of sexual evolution over revolution: It is 2015, nearly a century from the first period of rapid sexualization of America according to Bailey, and society is still concerned about the sexual practices of the youth, particularly the “virtue” of young women. “Easy” or “loose” women are still judged as sluts, whores, and any other of the many terms for such women. In 2015 it isn’t that you should remain a virgin until marriage, unless you are in certain religious circles, but more that you shouldn’t have sex with every single person you are attracted to. There’s a lot of emphasis on your “number” lately. The 2011 film What’s Your Number? is not about getting someone’s phone number but about the number of sexual partners you have had. BuzzFeed also did a recent study of sorts (I mean it’s not like BuzzFeed is a reputable source of academic research) about this too. They asked several couples to share their “numbers” with their now-monogamous respective partners. A double standard can be seen with both of these films. Both films address and challenge the popular idea that it is more acceptable for men to have had 20+ sexual partners while a woman whose number is even close to 20 is considered to have loose morals (see What’s Your Number?).

It seems the current sexual movement has a goal of destroying of the whorish stigma of women with high “numbers.” Both videos imply this is the goal of the ongoing sexual movement and proves the so-called “sexual revolution” of the 1960s is truly sexual evolution in society. BuzzFeed’s couples remark that they “don’t care about the number.” The insignificance of number is essentially the lesson learned in BuzzFeed’s study and in What’s Your Number? Watch BuzzFeed’s video for yourself.

The trailer for What’s Your Number?: 

Flames of Feminism in the Triangle Fire

The Triangle fire was the dramatic event the feminist and labor movements needed to bring about reform

Throughout his book Triangle: The Fire that Changed America, David Von Drehle uses personal stories from notable female activists as well as victims and survivors of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City to explain that multiple events worked collectively to bring about women’s suffrage and workers’ safety reform. As suggested by Von Drehle, the fire, workers’ strikes preceding it, and the involvement of young progressive politicians and women activists in the investigation and ensuing trial were together the catalyst for the “rethinking of the place of women in society” and “a new model for worker safety in American mills and workshops” (Von Drehle 267). Workers’ strikes and women’s protests gained participants quickly for the late nineteenth and early twentieth century labor and feminist movements respectively, however both movements were slow to be effective in bringing about social and political reform. The Triangle fire was the dramatic event the feminist and labor movements needed to bring about reform. Von Drehle uses Alva Belmont, an activist in one of his strike stories, to question the effectiveness of both social movements.

Suffrage propaganda / Alva Belmont reported in newspaper

If women stressed the goals of the feminist movement more than those of the labor movement both movements could have gained success more quickly

After giving up her house to pay the bail of several young women strikers who were arrested for their strike activities, Alva Belmont once claimed to a reporter, “There will be a different order of things when we have women judges on the bench. Let me assure you, too, that the time is not far away when we will have women judges” (Von Drehle 77) Perhaps if women stressed the goals of the feminist movement more than those of the labor movement both movements could have gained success more quickly. The feminist movement’s primary goal being women’s political representation through suffrage was more important to middle-class women than the working-class women who were dually concerned with labor rights. Still, as Von Drehle makes clear with his extensive use of personal accounts from women, women’s involvement in the labor movement was essential for its success since women made up a significant portion of the workforce in early twentieth century New York City. The presence of women’s labor unions, such as the WTUL and ILGWU, and women activists, such as Alva Belmont, in protests and strikes “brought gender visually into the communal response.” Both movements were ultimately successful because the two social movements had similar goals (ultimately the protection of women and all citizens whether it be political protection through representation in voting or physical protection in workplace safety). Women involved in the labor movement would acknowledge women’s particular vulnerability but specifically “stressed the need to protect all workers from the potentially hazardous environment of the shops.”
Though the initial aftermath of the Triangle fire focused more on labor issues rather than gender issues, women were still the central focus as they made up the majority of witnesses in the trial of factory owners Blanck and Harris. Women gained equally as much political recognition as labor activists as women’s labor and feminist organizations began flourishing and growing in numbers in the aftermath of the fire and trial.

The Triangle Factory fire became a significant event in women’s history as women were the primary actors in the events surrounding the fire. Modern women have recognized the fire’s significance in women’s history and continue to be the primary sponsors of public remembrance of the event. Recent poetry published concerning the Triangle fire recognizes the importance the fire had on women’s history. The modern poets writing about the fire have very little in common with the ethnic women garment workers of New York who experienced the historic fire except that they are working women. Perhaps it is women’s experiences from second-wave feminism in the 1960s-80s and the current third-wave feminism that make them sympathetic toward the women affected by the Triangle fire and its preceding strikes. The collective memory of injustice and oppression of women workers surrounding the events of the Triangle fire is a testament to the strength of feminist identity.

Education as Entertainment

“That reminds me of a song!” is a frequently used phrase in my family. Sometimes the phrase becomes “that reminds me of a movie.” We enjoy relating everyday things and life events to pop culture. Since everyday life for me is school, school, and more school, I will often think of such little things as they relate to my studies.

For example: The early chapters of Von Drehle’s Triangle were significantly focused on feminism as it affected the labor movement. As middle-class women (primarily focused on women’s suffrage) became involved in the labor movement in Triangle, I kept thinking of Disney’s Mary Poppins with Mrs. Banks chanting “Votes for women!” and her song “Sister Suffragette”. I did go to YouTube and listen to the song.

However, another suffrage video that automatically played after it was far more amusing to me as it combines a little education and a little pop culture (even though it wasn’t a “that reminds me of a song!” moment). Maybe the video is really an example of entertainment prompting education and learning (I suggest this because I actually want to learn more about women’s suffrage after watching the video). But I think it shows that education can be entertaining (which may have been a tiny debate in my early 20th century America class this week). Anyway, I hope you find it equally as brilliant and hilarious as I find it.

Entertainment can be educational. Education can be entertaining.

Two Classes, One Subject / Early Thoughts

We are nearing the end of the first full week of the quarter. I’m currently reading David Von Drehle’s Triangle: The Fire that Changed America for History 465 (Early 20th century America). Apart from the prologue, there’s been no real mention of the infamous fire at the Triangle Waist Company in 1911 New York City until I had finished chapter four. It seems much more focused on the labor movement, but the first thing I really noticed in the book was the significant amount of feminist activities in the NYC at the time. So far, it appears to me that first-wave feminism fanned the flames of the labor movement in the early 20th century. I suppose it’s not necessarily a surprising fact, but I did find it interesting in comparison to the material read in History 467 (Vietnam, Watergate, and after…or just 1960s-80s). For Hist 467 I read two reviews/articles on Daniel Rodgers’ Age of Fracture and found feminism addressed in conjunction with another social movement, this time second-wave feminism and the Civil Rights movement. The book is not all about feminism. From my interpretation, Age of Fracture focuses on the current splintered nature of society and the blurriness of power, individuality, etc. that followed as a result of significant changes in politics and economics affecting society and vice versa from the 1960s or 70s to present day. But I considered the real focus of the book and attempted to apply some of the ideas.

The macroeconomics found earlier in the 20th century, being focused more on the welfare of the population, seem to have been a catalyst for the initial ideas spurning first-wave feminism (of which my basic interpretation is that women were not legally represented well enough to meet their needs as a significant portion of the population). The focal shift from macro to micro, or all of society to the individual (in both economics and politics) makes the difference between first-wave and second-wave feminism. Second-wave feminism addressed more personal issues concerning social equality, such as sexuality, reproductive rights, and treatment at the workplace. Like first-wave feminism encouraging the labor movement, second-wave feminism also appears to have encouraged or emboldened the Civil Rights movement as the two movements often had similar equality goals whether it be gender or racially based.

It may just be a coincidence that my assigned readings in both classes involved the feminism and I suspect it is unlikely to be a true theme in either class. However, with the correlation between the feminist movements and other major social movements, feminism easily appears to be a defining feature of the 20th century. But my question from these early readings: What makes feminism so powerful?