Michael Kimmel - The Gendered Society-Oxford University Press (2016)

The Gendered Society
SIXTH EDITION
MICHAEL KIMMEL
the Gendered Society
the Gendered Society
SIXTH EDITION
MICHAEL KIMMEL
Stony Brook University, State University of New York
New York Oxford

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Kimmel, Michael S., author.

Title: The gendered society/ Michael Kimmel, Stony Brook University, State
University of New York.
Description: Sixth edition. I New York: xford University Press, [2017] I
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 20160165011 ISBN 9780190260316 (pbk.: alk. paper) I ISBN
9780190260323 (instructor edition: alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Sex role. I Sex differences (Psychology) I Gender identity. I
Sex discrimination. I Equality.
Classification: LCC HQ1075 .K547 2017 I DDC 305.3-dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016016501
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America

Printed by R.R. Donnelley, United States of America
Contents
Preface vii
CHAPTER I Introduction: Human Beings: An Engendered Species
Part 1 Explanations of Gender 17

CHAPTER 2 Ordained by Nature: Biology Constructs the Sexes /9
CHAPTER 3 Spanning the World: Culture Constructs Gender Difference 58
CHAPTER 4 "So, That Explains It": Psychoanalytic and Developmental
Perspectives on Gender 87
CHAPTER s The Social Construction of Gender Relations 114
Part 2 Gendered Identities, Gendered Institutions 149

CHAPTER 6 The Gendered Family /5/
CHAPTER 7 The Gendered Classroom 204
CHAPTER 8 Gender and Religion 234
CHAPTER 9 Separate and Unequal: The Gendered World of Work 260
CHAPTER 10 The Gender of Politics and the Politics of Gender 311
CHAPTER 11 The Gendered Media 343
Part 3 Gendered Interactions 371

CHAPTER 12 Gendered Intimacies: Friendship and Love 373
CHAPTER 13 The Gendered Body 396
CHAPTER 14 The Gender of Violence 448
Epilogue: "A Degendered Society"? 483

Notes 489
Sources for Chapter Opening Art 53/
Index 533
V
Preface
s this book enters its sixth edition, it's been adopted widely around the
A country and translated into several languages. It's personally gratifying, of
course, but more gratifying is the embrace of the book's vision of a world in
which gender inequality is but a distant anachronism, and a serious intellectual
confrontation with gender inequality, and the differences that such inequality
produces, is a central part of the struggle to bring such a world about. I'm proud
to contribute to that struggle.
In this sixth edition, I've tried to incorporate the suggestions and to respond
to the criticisms various reviewers and readers have offered. I've continued to
expand and update the book, trying to take account of new material, new argu-
ments, new data. In the last edition, I added a chapter on gender and politics and
paid more and closer attention to issues surrounding bisexuality and transgen-
derism. This edition features a new section on transgender individuals. I also
added box features throughout the book. "Oh Really?" dispels some myths about
what I call the "interplanetary theory of gender"-that men are from Mars and
women from Venus-with some critical questions about some often silly specu-
lation. "Compared to What?" offers a wider context for some empirical phenom-
ena that we observe in the United States, on the premise that seeing how we stack
up compared to other nations will show the side variations in gendered experi-
ences and, in so doing, underline further the "binary" opposition of Martians
and Venusians. A new box feature called "Read All About It" directly links the
text with the corresponding chapter in The Gendered Society Reader. Thus, read-
ers can still use the text and the Reader separately, but those who want to adopt
both have some connective tissue between them spelled out in the text.
This background suggests some of the ways that this book is a work in prog-
ress. Not a week goes by that I don't hear from a colleague or a student who is
using the book and has a question, a comment, a suggestion, or a criticism. I
wish I could have incorporated everyone's suggestions (well, not everyone's!); all
engage me in the never-ending conversation about gender and gender inequality
of which this book is but a small part.
vii
viii PREFACE
It's ironic that as each edition comes close to completion, my identities as a writer
and father are brought into sharper relief. As I completed the second edition, I re-
marked that people were constantly asking if having a son has forced me to change my
views about biological difference. (It hasn't; if anything, watching the daily bombard-
ment of messages about gender to which my son is constantly subjected, my construc-
tionist ideas have grown stronger. Anything that was so biologically "natural" wouldn't
need such relentless-and relentlessly frantic-reassertion.)
Let me share one experience to illustrate. As my son Zachary's eighth birthday
approached, his mother and I asked what sort of theme he wanted for his party.
For the previous two years, we'd had a skating party at the local rink-the rink
where his hockey team skated early on Saturday mornings. He rejected that idea.
"Been there and done that, Dad" was the end of that. "And besides, I skate there all
the time."
Other themes that other boys in his class had recently had-indoor sports activi-
ties, a Red Bulls soccer game, secret agent treasure hunt-were also summarily re-
jected. What could he possibly want? "A dancing party," he said finally. "One with a
disco ball."
His mother and I looked at each other. "A dancing party?" we asked. "But Zachary,
you're only eight."
"Oh, no, not like a 'dancing' party like that," he said, making air quotation marks.
"I mean like Cotton Eye Joe and the Virginia Reel and Cha-Cha Slide and like dance
games."
So a dancing party it was-for twenty-four of his closest friends (his school en-
courages inviting everyone to the party). An even split of boys and girls. All twelve
girls danced their heads off. "This is the best party ever!" shouted Grace. The other
girls squealed with delight. Four of the boys, including Zachary, danced right along
with the girls. They had a blast.
Four other boys walked in, checked out the scene, and immediately walked over
to a wall, where they folded their arms across their chests and leaned back. "I don't
dance," said one. "Yuck," said another. They watched, periodically tried to disrupt the
dancing, seemed to make fun of the dancers, stuffed themselves with snacks, and had
a lousy time.
Four other boys began the afternoon by dancing happily, with not a hint of self-
consciousness. But then they saw the leaners, the boys propped up against the wall.
One by one these dancers stopped, went over to the wall, and watched.
But they couldn't stay for long. They kept looking at the kids dancing their hilari-
ous line dances, or the freeze dance, and they inched their way back, dancing like
fiends, only to stop, notice the passive leaners again, and drift back to the wall.
Back and forth they went all afternoon, alternatingly exhilarated and exasperated,
joyously dancing and joylessly watching. My heart ached for them as I watched them
pulled between being children and being "guys."
Or is it between being people and being guys? People capable of a full range of
pleasures-from smashing an opposing skater into the boards and that down-on-the-
knee fist-pump after scoring a goal, to do-si-doing your partner or that truly inane
faux lassoing in Cotton Eye Joe. Or guys, for whom pleasure now becomes defined as
making fun of other people's joy.
CHAPTER
INTRODUCTION
1
Human Beings: An Engendered Species
In no country has such constant care been taken as in America to

trace two clearly distinct lines of action for the two sexes, and to
make them keep pace with the other, but in two pathways which
are always different.
-ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE, DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA (1835)
aily, we hear how men and women are different. We hear that we come from
D different planets. They say we have different brain chemistries, different
brain organization, different hormones. They say our different anatomies lead to
different destinies. They say we have different ways of knowing, listen to different
moral voices, have different ways of speaking and hearing each other.
You'd think we were different species, like, say, lobsters and giraffes, or
Martians and Venusians. In his best-selling book, pop psychologist John Gray
informs us that not only do women and men communicate differently, but also
they "think, feel, perceive, react, respond, love, need, and appreciate differently.'"
It's a miracle of cosmic proportions that we ever understand one another!
Yet, despite these alleged interplanetary differences, we're all together in the
same workplaces, where we are evaluated by the same criteria for raises, promo-
tions, bonuses, and tenure. We sit in the same classrooms, eat in the same dining
1
2 CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION
halls, read the same books, and are subject to the same criteria for grading. We live in
the same houses, prepare and eat the same meals, read the same newspapers, and tune
in to the same television programs.
What I have come to call this "interplanetary" theory of complete and universal
gender difference is also typically the way we explain another universal phenomenon:
gender inequality. Gender is not simply a system of classification, by which biological
males and biological females are sorted, separated, and socialized into equivalent sex
roles. Gender also expresses the universal inequality between women and men. When
we speak about gender we also speak about hierarchy, power, and inequality, not
simply difference.
So the two tasks of any study of gender, it seems to me, are to explain both differ-
ence and inequality or, to be alliterative, difference and dominance. Every general ex-
planation of gender must address two central questions and their ancillary derivative
questions.
First: Why is it that virtually every single society differentiates people on the basis of
gender? Why are women and men perceived as different in every known society? What
are the differences that are perceived? Why is gender at least one-if not the central-
basis for the division of labor?
Second: Why is it that virtually every known society is also based on male domi-
nance? Why does virtually every society divide social, political, and economic re-
sources unequally between the genders? And why is it that men always get more? Why
is a gendered division of labor also an unequal division of labor? Why are women's
tasks and men's tasks valued differently?
It is clear, as we shall see, that there are dramatic differences among societies
regarding the type of gender differences, the levels of gender inequality, and the
amount of violence (implied or real) that are necessary to maintain both systems of
difference and domination. But the basic facts remain: Virtually every society known
to us is founded upon assumptions of gender difference and the politics of gender
inequality.
On these axiomatic questions, two basic schools of thought prevail: biological
determinism and differential socialization. We know them as "nature" and "nurture,"
and the question of which is dominant has been debated for a century in classrooms,
at dinner parties, by political adversaries, and among friends and families. Are men
and women different because they are "hardwired" to be different, or are they different
because they've been taught to be? Is biology destiny, or is it that human beings are
more flexible and thus subject to change?
Most of the arguments about gender difference begin, as will this book, with
biology (in chapter 2). Women and men are biologically different, after all. Our repro-
ductive anatomies are different, and so are our reproductive destinies. Our brain
structures differ, our brain chemistries differ. Our musculature is different. Different
levels of different hormones circulate through our different bodies. Surely, these add
up to fundamental, intractable, and universal differences, and these differences pro-
vide the foundation for male domination, don't they?
The answer is an unequivocal maybe. Or, perhaps more accurately, yes and no.
There are very few people who would suggest that there are no differences between
males and females. At least, I wouldn't suggest it. What social scientists call sex
Chapter 1: Introduction 3
differences refers precisely to that catalog of anatomical, hormonal, chemical, and
physical differences between women and men. But even here, as we shall see, there are
enormous ranges of femaleness and maleness. Though our musculature differs, plenty
of women are physically stronger than plenty of men. Though on average our chemis-
tries are different, it's not an all-or-nothing proposition-women do have varying
levels of androgens, and men have varying levels of estrogen in their systems. And
though our brain structure may be differently lateralized, males and females both do
tend to use both sides of their brain. And it is far from clear that these biological dif-
ferences automatically and inevitably lead men to dominate women. Could we not
imagine, as some writers already have, a culture in which women's biological abilities
to bear and nurse children might be seen as the expression of such ineffable power-
the ability to create life-that strong men wilt in impotent envy?
In fact, in order to underscore this issue, most social and behavioral scientists now
use the term "gender" in a different way than we use the term "sex." "Sex" refers to the
biological apparatus, the male and the female-our chromosomal, chemical, anatomical
organization. "Gender" refers to the meanings that are attached to those differences
within a culture. "Sex" is male and female; "gender" is masculinity and femininity-
what it means to be a man or a woman. Even the Supreme Court understands this
distinction. In a 1994 case, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote:
The word "gender" has acquired the new and useful connotation of cultural or
attitudinal characteristics (as opposed to physical characteristics) distinctive to
the sexes. That is to say, gender is to sex as feminine is to female and masculine
is to male.
2
And whereas biological sex varies very little, gender varies enormously. What it means
to possess the anatomical configuration of male or female means very different things
depending on where you are, who you are, and when you are living.
It fell to anthropologists to detail some of those differences in the meanings of
masculinity and femininity. What they documented is that gender means different
things to different people-that it varies cross-culturally. (I discuss and review the
anthropological evidence in chapter 3.) Some cultures, like our own, encourage men
to be stoic and to prove their masculinity. Men in other cultures seem even more pre-
occupied with demonstrating sexual prowess than American men. Other cultures
prescribe a more relaxed definition of masculinity, based on civic participation,
emotional responsiveness, and the collective provision for the community's needs.
And some cultures encourage women to be decisive and competitive, whereas others
insist that women are naturally passive, helpless, and dependent. What it meant to
be a man or a woman in seventeenth-century France and what it means among
Aboriginal peoples in the Australian outback at the turn of the twenty-first century
are so far apart that comparison is difficult, if not impossible. The differences be-
tween two cultures are often greater than the differences between the two genders.
If the meanings of gender vary from culture to culture and vary within any one cul-
ture over historical time, then to understand gender we must employ the tools of the
social and behavioral sciences and history.
The other reigning school of thought that explains both gender difference and
gender domination is differential socialization-the "nurture" side of the equation.
Men and women are different because we are taught to be different. From the
moment of birth, males and females are treated differently. Gradually we acquire the
traits, behaviors, and attitudes that our culture defines as "masculine" or "femi-
nine." We are not necessarily born different: We become different through this pro-
cess of socialization.
Nor are we born biologically predisposed toward gender inequality. Domination
is not a trait carried on the Y chromosome; it is the outcome of the different cultural
valuing of men's and women's experiences. Thus, the adoption of masculinity and
femininity implies the adoption of "political" ideas that what women do is not as
culturally important as what men do.
Developmental psychologists have also examined the ways in which the meanings
of masculinity and femininity change over the course of a person's life. The issues
confronting a man about proving himself and feeling successful will change, as will
the social institutions in which he will attempt to enact those experiences. The mean-
ings of femininity are subject to parallel changes, for example, among prepubescent
women, women in childbearing years, and postmenopausal women, as they are differ-
ent for women entering the labor market and those retiring from it.
Although we typically cast the debate in terms of either biological determin-
ism or differential socialization-nature versus nurture-it may be useful to pause
for a moment to observe what characteristics they have in common. Both schools
of thought share two fundamental assumptions. First, both "nature lovers" and
"nurturers" see women and men as markedly different from each other-truly,
deeply, and irreversibly different. (Nurture does allow for some possibility of
change, but it still argues that the process of socialization is a process of making
males and females different from each other-differences that are normative, cul-
turally necessary, and "natural.") And both schools of thought assume that the
differences between women and men are far greater and more decisive (and worthy
of analysis) than the differences that might be observed among men or among
women. Thus, both nature lovers and nurturers subscribe to some version of the
interplanetary theory of gender difference.
Second, both schools of thought assume that gender domination is the inevitable
outcome of gender difference, that difference causes domination. To the biologists, it
may be because pregnancy and lactation make women more vulnerable and in need
of protection, or because male musculature makes men more adept hunters, or be-
cause testosterone makes them more aggressive with other men and with women, too.
Or it may be that men have to dominate women in order to maximize their chances
to pass on their genes. Psychologists of "gender roles" tell us that, among other things,
men and women are taught to devalue women's experiences, perceptions, and abilities
and to overvalue men's.
I argue in this book that both of these propositions are inadequate. First, I hope
to show that the differences between women and men are not nearly as great as are
the differences among women or among men. Many perceived differences turn out
to be differences based less on gender than on the social positions people occupy.
Second, I will argue that gender difference is the product of gender inequality and
not the other way around. In fact, gender difference is the chief outcome of gender
inequality, because it is through the idea of difference that inequality is legitimated.
As one sociologist recently put it, "the very creation of difference is the foundation
on which inequality rests."3
Using what social scientists have come to call a "social constructionist"
approach-I explain this in chapter 5-I will make the case that neither gender differ-
ence nor gender inequality is inevitable in the nature of things or, more specifically, in
the nature of our bodies. Nor is difference-and domination-explainable solely by
reference to differential socialization of boys and girls into sex roles typical of men and
women.
When proponents of both nature and nurture positions assert that gender in-
equality is the inevitable outcome of gender difference, they take, perhaps inadver-
tently, a political position that assumes that inequality may be lessened or that its most
negative effects may be ameliorated, but that it cannot be eliminated-precisely be-
cause it is based upon intractable differences. On the other hand, to assert, as I do, that
the exaggerated gender differences that we see are not as great as they appear and that
they are the result of inequality allows a far greater political latitude. By eliminating
gender inequality, we will remove the foundation upon which the entire edifice of
gender difference is built.
What will remain, I believe, is not some nongendered androgynous gruel, in
which differences between women and men are blended and everyone acts and thinks
in exactly the same way. Quite the contrary. I believe that as gender inequality de-
creases, the differences among people-differences grounded in race, class, ethnicity,
age, sexuality, as well as gender-will emerge in a context in which all of us can be
appreciated for our individual uniqueness as well as our commonality.
MAKING GENDER VISIBLE FOR BOTH WOMEN AND MEN

To make my case, I shall rely upon a dramatic transformation in thinking about
gender that has occurred over the past thirty years. In particular, three decades of pio-
neering work by feminist scholars, both in traditional disciplines and in women's
studies, have made us aware of the centrality of gender in shaping social life. We now
know that gender is one of the central organizing principles around which social life
revolves. Until the 1970s, social scientists would have listed only class and race as the
master statuses that define and proscribe social life. If you wanted to study gender in
the 1960s in social science, for example, you would have found but one course de-
signed to address your needs-Marriage and the Family-which was sort of the
"Ladies Auxiliary" of the social sciences. There were no courses on gender. But today,
gender has joined race and class in our understanding of the foundations of an indi-
vidual's identity. Gender, we now know, is one of the axes around which social life is
organized and through which we understand our own experiences.
In the past thirty years, feminist scholars properly focused most of their attention
on women-on what Catharine Stimpson has called the "omissions, distortions, and
trivializations" of women's experiences-and the spheres to which women have his-
torically been consigned, like private life and the family.4 Women's history sought to
rescue from obscurity the lives of significant women who had been ignored or whose
work had been minimized by traditional androcentric scholarship and to examine the
everyday lives of women in the past-the efforts, for example, of laundresses, factory
workers, pioneer homesteaders, or housewives to carve out lives of meaning and
dignity in a world controlled by men. Whether the focus has been on the exemplary or
the ordinary, though, feminist scholarship has made it clear that gender is a central
axis in women's lives.
But when we think of the word "gender," what gender comes to mind? It is not
unusual to find, in courses on history of gender, psychology of gender, or sociology of
gender, that the classroom is populated almost entirely by women. It's as if only women
had gender and were therefore interested in studying it. Occasionally, of course, some
brave young man will enroll in a women's studies class. You'll usually find him cring-
ing in the corner, in anticipation of feeling blamed for all the sins of millennia of
patriarchal oppression.
It's my intention in this book to build upon the feminist approaches to gender by
also making masculinity visible. We need, I think, to integrate men into our curricu-
lum. Because it is men-or rather masculinity-who are invisible.
"What?!" I can hear you saying. "Did he just say 'integrate men into our curricu-
lum'? Men are invisible? What's he talking about?! Men aren't invisible. They're
everywhere."
And, of course, that's true. Men are ubiquitous in universities and professional
schools and in the public sphere in general. And it's true that if you look at the college
curriculum, every course that doesn't have the word "women" in the title is about men.
Every course that isn't in "women's studies" is de facto a course in "men's studies"-
except we usually call it "history," "political science," "literature," "chemistry."
But when we study men, we study them as political leaders, military heroes, scien-
tists, writers, artists. Men, themselves, are invisible as men. Rarely, if ever, do we see
a course that examines the lives of men as men. What is the impact of gender on
the lives of these famous men? How does masculinity play a part in the lives of great
artists, writers, presidents, and so on? How does masculinity play out in the lives of
"ordinary" men-in factories and on farms, in union halls and large corporations?
On this score, the traditional curriculum suddenly draws a big blank. Everywhere one
turns there are courses about men, but virtually no information on masculinity.
Several years ago, this yawning gap inspired me to undertake a cultural history of
the idea of masculinity in America, to trace the development and shifts in what it has
meant to be a man over the course of our history.5 What I found is that American men
have been very articulate in describing what it means to be a man and in seeing what-
ever they have done as a way to prove their manhood, but that we hadn't known how
to hear them.
Integrating gender into our courses is a way to fulfill the promise of women's
studies-by understanding men as gendered as well. In my university, for example,
the course on nineteenth-century British literature includes a deeply "gendered"
reading of the Brontes that discusses their feelings about femininity, marriage, and
relations between the sexes. Yet not a word is spoken about Dickens and masculinity,
especially about his feelings about fatherhood and the family. Dickens is understood
as a "social problem" novelist, and his issue was class relations-this despite the fact
that so many of Dickens's most celebrated characters are young boys who have no
fathers and who are searching for authentic families. And there's not a word about
Thomas Hardy's ambivalent ideas about masculinity and marriage in, say, Jude the
Obscure. Hardy's grappling with premodernist conceptions of an apathetic universe
is what we discuss. And my wife tells me that in her nineteenth-century American
literature class at Princeton, gender was the main topic of conversation when the
subject was Edith Wharton, but the word was never spoken when they discussed
Henry James, in whose work gendered anxiety erupts variously as chivalric con-
tempt, misogynist rage, and sexual ambivalence. James, we're told, is "about" the
form of the novel, narrative technique, the stylistic powers of description and charac-
terization. Certainly not about gender.
So we continue to act as if gender applied only to women. Surely the time has
come to make gender visible to men. As the Chinese proverb has it, the fish are the last
to discover the ocean.
This was made clear to me in a seminar on feminism I attended in the early 198os.6
In that seminar, in a discussion between two women, I first confronted this invisibility
of gender to men. During one meeting, a white woman and a black woman were dis-
cussing whether all women are, by definition, "sisters," because they all have essen-
tially the same experiences and because all women face a common oppression by men.
The white woman asserted that the fact that they are both women bonds them, in spite
of racial differences. The black woman disagreed.
"When you wake up in the morning and look in the mirror, what do you see?" she
asked.
"I see a woman," replied the white woman.
"That's precisely the problem," responded the black woman. "I see a black woman.
To me, race is visible every day, because race is how I am not privileged in our culture.
Race is invisible to you, because it's how you are privileged. It's why there will always
be differences in our experience."
At this point in the conversation, I groaned-more audibly, perhaps, than I had
intended. Because I was the only man in the room, someone asked what my response
had meant.
"Well," I said, "when I look in the mirror, I see a human being. I'm universally
generalizable. As a middle-class white man, I have no class, no race, no gender. I'm the
generic person!"
Sometimes, I like to think that it was on that day that I became a middle-class
white man. Sure, I had been all those before, but they had not meant much to me. Until
then, I had thought myself generic, universally generalizable. Since then, I've begun to
understand that race, class, and gender don't refer only to other people, who are mar-
ginalized by race, class, or gender privilege. Those terms also describe me. I enjoyed
the privilege of invisibility. The very processes that confer privilege to one group and
not another group are often invisible to those upon whom that privilege is conferred.
What make us marginal or powerless are the processes we see. Invisibility is a privi-
lege in another sense- as a luxury. Only white people in our society have the luxury
not to think about race every minute of their lives. And only men have the luxury to
pretend that gender does not matter.
Consider another example of how power is so often invisible to those who have it.
Many of you have e-mail addresses, and you send e-mail messages to people all over
the world. You've probably noticed that there is one big difference between e-mail
addresses in the United States and e-mail addresses of people in other countries:
Their addresses end with a "country code." So, for example, if you were writing to
someone in South Africa, you'd put "za" at the end or "jp" for Japan or "uk" for England
(United Kingdom) or "de" for Germany (Deutschland). But when you write to
people in the United States, the e-mail address ends with "edu" for an educational
institution, "org" for an organization, "gov" for a federal government office, and "com"
or "net" for commercial Internet providers. Why is it that the United States doesn't
have a country code?
It is because when you are the dominant power in the world, everyone else needs
to be named. When you are "in power," you needn't draw attention to yourself as a
specific entity, but, rather, you can pretend to be the generic, the universal, the gener-
alizable. From the point of view of the United States, all other countries are "other"
and thus need to be named, marked, noted. Once again, privilege is invisible. In the
world of the Internet, as Michael Jackson sang, "We are the world."
There are consequences to this invisibility: Privilege, as well as gender, remains
invisible. And it is hard to generate a politics of inclusion from invisibility. The invis-
ibility of privilege means that many men, like many white people, become defensive
and angry when confronted with the statistical realities or the human consequences of
racism or sexism. Because our privilege is invisible, we may become defensive. Hey, we
may even feel like victims ourselves. Invisibility "creates a neurotic oscillation between
a sense of entitlement and a sense of unearned privilege," as journalist Edward Ball put
it, having recently explored his own family's history as one of the largest slave-owning
families in South Carolina.7
The continued invisibility of masculinity also means that the gendered standards
that are held up as the norm appear to us to be gender-neutral. The illusion of gender
neutrality has serious consequences for both women and men. It means that men can
maintain the fiction that they are being measured by "objective" standards; for women,
it means that they are being judged by someone else's yardstick. At the turn of the
twentieth century, the great sociologist Georg Simmel underscored this issue when
he wrote:
We measure the achievements and the commitments ... of males and females in
terms of specific norms and values; but these norms are not neutral, standing
above the contrasts of the sexes; they have themselves a male character ... The
standards of art and the demands of patriotism, the general mores and the
specific social ideas, the equity of practical judgments and the objectivity of theo-
retical knowledge ... all these categories are formally generically human, but are
in fact masculine in terms of their actual historical formation. If we call ideas that
claim absolute validity objectivity binding, then it is a fact that in the historical life
of our species there operates the equation: objective = male. 8
Simmel's theoretical formulation echoes in our daily interactions. Recently, I was

invited to be a guest lecturer in a course on sociology of gender taught by one of
my female colleagues. As I entered the lecture hall, one student looked up from her
notes and exclaimed, "Finally, an objective opinion." Now, I'm neither more nor less
"objective" than my colleagues, but, in this student's eyes, I was seen as objective-the
disconnected, disembodied, deracinated, degendered voice of scientific and rational
objectivity. I am what objectivity looks like! (One ironic result is that I could prob-
ably say more outlandish things in a classroom than my female colleagues could.
If a female, or African American, professor were to make a statement such as, "White
men are privileged in American society," our students might respond by saying, "Of
course, you'd say that. You're biased." They'd see such a normative statement as reveal-
ing the inherent biases of gender or race, a case of special pleading. But when I say it?
As objective fact, transmitted by an objective professor, they'll probably take notes.)
Such an equation that "objective = male" has enormous practical consequences in
every arena of our lives, from the elementary school classroom to professional and
graduate schools and in every workplace we enter. As Simmel writes, "Man's position
of power does not only assure his relative superiority over the woman but it assures
that his standards become generalized as generically human standards that are to
govern the behavior of men and women alike.''9
THE CURRENT DEBATE

I believe that we are, at this moment, having a national debate about masculinity in
this country-but that we don't know it. For example, what gender comes to mind
when I invoke the following current American problems: "teen violence," "gang vio-
lence," "suburban violence," "drug violence," "violence in the schools"? And what
gender comes to mind when I say the words "suicide bomber" or "terrorist hijacker"?
Of course, you've imagined men. And not just any men-but younger men, in
their teens and twenties, and relatively poorer men, from the working class or lower
middle class.
But how do our social commentators discuss these problems? Do they note that
the problems of youth and violence are really problems of young men and violence?
Do they ever mention that everywhere ethnic nationalism sets up shop, it is young
men who are the shopkeepers? Do they ever mention masculinity at all?
Now, imagine that these were all women-all the ethnic nationalists, the militias,
the gay-bashers. Would that not be the story, the only story? Would not a gender analy-
sis be at the center of every single story? Would we not hear from experts on female
socialization, frustration, anger, premenstrual syndrome, and everything else under
the sun? But the fact that these are men earns nary a word.
Take one final example. What if it had been young girls who opened fire on their
classmates in West Paducah, Kentucky; in Pearl, Mississippi; in Jonesboro, Arkansas;
or in Springfield, Oregon? And what if nearly all the children who died were boys?
Do you think that the social outcry would demand that we investigate the "inherent
violence" of southern culture? Or simply express dismay that young "people" have too
much access to guns? And yet no one seemed to mention that the young boys who
actually committed those crimes were simply doing-albeit in dramatic form at a
younger age-what American men have been taught to do for centuries when they
are upset and angry. Men don't get mad; they get even. (I explore the gender of vio-
lence in chapter 14.)
I believe that until we make gender visible for both women and men we will not, as
a culture, adequately know how to address these issues. That's not to say that all we have
to do is address masculinity. These issues are complex, requiring analyses of the politi-
cal economy of global economic integration, of the transformation of social classes, of
urban poverty and hopelessness, of racism. But if we ignore masculinity-if we let it
remain invisible-we will never completely understand them, let alone resolve them.
THE PLURAL AND THE POWERFUL

When I use the term "gender," then, it is with the explicit intention of discussing both
masculinity and femininity. But even these terms are inaccurate because they imply
that there is one simple definition of masculinity and one definition of femininity.
One of the important elements of a social constructionist approach-especially if we
intend to dislodge the notion that gender differences alone are decisive-is to explore
the differences among men and among women, because, as it turns out, these are often
more decisive than the differences between women and men.
Within any one society at any one moment, several meanings of masculinity and
femininity coexist. Simply put, not all American men and women are the same. Our
experiences are also structured by class, race, ethnicity, age, sexuality, region. Each of
these axes modifies the others. Just because we make gender visible doesn't mean that
we make these other organizing principles of social life invisible. Imagine, for exam-
ple, an older, black, gay man in Chicago and a young, white, heterosexual farm boy
in Iowa. Wouldn't they have different definitions of masculinity? Or imagine a twenty-
two-year-old wealthy, Asian-American, heterosexual woman in San Francisco and a
poor, white, Irish Catholic lesbian in Boston. Wouldn't their ideas about what it means
to be a woman be somewhat different?
If gender varies across cultures, over historical time, among men and women
within any one culture, and over the life course, can we really speak of masculinity or
femininity as though they were constant, universal essences, common to all women
and to all men? If not, gender must be seen as an ever-changing fluid assemblage of
meanings and behaviors. In that sense, we must speak of masculinities and feminini-
ties and thus recognize the different definitions of masculinity and femininity that we
construct. By pluralizing the terms, we acknowledge that masculinity and femininity
mean different things to different groups of people at different times.
At the same time, we can't forget that all masculinities and femininities are not
created equal. American men and women must also contend with a particular defi-
nition that is held up as the model against which we are expected to measure our-
selves. We thus come to know what it means to be a man or a woman in our culture
by setting our definitions in opposition to a set of"others"-racial minorities, sexual
minorities. For men, the classic "other" is, of course, women. It feels imperative to
most men that they make it clear-eternally, compulsively, decidedly-that they are
unlike women.
For most men, this is the "hegemonic" definition-the one that is held up as the
model for all of us. The hegemonic definition of masculinity is "constructed in relation
to various subordinated masculinities as well as in relation to women," writes sociolo-
gist R. W. Connell. The sociologist Erving Goffman once described this hegemonic
definition of masculinity like this:
In an important sense there is only one complete unblushing male in America:
a young, married, white, urban, northern, heterosexual, Protestant, father, of
college education, fully employed, of good complexion, weight, and height, and
a recent record in sports ... Any male who fails to qualify in any one of these ways
is likely to view himself-during moments at least-as unworthy, incomplete, and
inferior.10
Women contend with an equally exaggerated ideal of femininity, which Connell
calls "emphasized femininity." Emphasized femininity is organized around compli-
ance with gender inequality and is "oriented to accommodating the interests and de-
sires of men." One sees emphasized femininity in "the display of sociability rather
than technical competence, fragility in mating scenes, compliance with men's desire
for titillation and ego-stroking in office relationships, acceptance of marriage and
childcare as a response to labor-market discrimination against women.'"' Emphasized
femininity exaggerates gender difference as a strategy of "adaptation to men's power"
stressing empathy and nurturance; "real" womanhood is described as "fascinating,"
and women are advised that they can wrap men around their fingers by knowing and
playing by the "rules.'' In one research study, an eight-year-old boy captured this em-
phasized femininity eloquently in a poem he wrote:
If I were a girl, I'd have to attract a guy
wear makeup; sometimes.
Wear the latest style of clothes and try to be likable.
I probably wouldn't play any physical sports like football or soccer.
I don't think I would enjoy myself around men
in fear ofrejection
or under the pressure of attracting them. 12
GENDER DIFFERENCES AS "DECEPTIVE DISTINCTIONS"

The existence of multiple masculinities and femininities dramatically undercuts the
idea that the gender differences we observe are due solely to differently gendered
people occupying gender-neutral positions. Moreover, that these masculinities and
femininities are arrayed along a hierarchy, and measured against one another, but-
tresses the argument that domination creates and exaggerates difference.
The interplanetary theory of gender assumes, whether through biology or socializa-
tion, that women act like women, no matter where they are, and that men act like men,
no matter where they are. Psychologist Carol Tavris argues that such binary thinking
leads to what philosophers call the "law of the excluded middle," which, as she reminds
us, "is where most men and women fall in terms of their psychological qualities, beliefs,
abilities, traits and values.'"3 It turns out that many of the differences between women
and men that we observe in our everyday lives are actually not gender differences at all,
but rather differences that are the result of being in different positions or in different
arenas. It's not that gendered individuals occupy these ungendered positions, but rather
that the positions themselves elicit the behaviors we see as gendered. The sociologist
Cynthia Fuchs Epstein calls these "deceptive distinctions" because, although they
appear to be based on gender, they are actually based on something else.1 4
Here's a good example. Take math. Aggregate differences in girls' and boys' scores
on standardized math tests have led people to speculate that whereas males have a
natural propensity for arithmetic figures, females have a "fear of math.'' Couple this
with their "fear of success" in the workplace and you might find that women manage
money less effectively-with less foresight, less calculation, less care. The popular
writer Colette Dowling, author of the best-selling 1981 book The Cinderella Complex
(a book that claimed that underneath their apparent ambition, competence, and
achievement, women "really" are waiting for Prince Charming to rescue them and
carry them off into a romantic sunset, a future in which they can be as passive
and helpless as they secretly want to be), interviewed sixty-five women in their late
fifties about money matters and found that only two had any investment plans for
their retirements. Broke and bankrupt after several best-sellers and single again her-
self, Dowling argues that this relates to "conflicts with dependency. Money savvy is
connected with masculinity in our culture," she told an interviewer. "That leaves
women with the feeling that if they want to take care of themselves and are good at it,
the quid pro quo is they'll never hook up with a relationship." Because of ingrained
femininity, women end up shooting themselves in the foot.1 5
But such assertions fly in the face of all available research, argues the financial
expert Jane Bryant Quinn, herself the author of a best-seller about women and money.
"It is more socially acceptable for women not to manage their money," she told the same
interviewer. "But the Y chromosome is not a money management chromosome. In all
the studies, if you control for earnings, age and experience, women are the same as
men. At twenty-three, out in the working world staring at a 401(k) plan, they are equally
confused. But if those women quit working, they will know less and less about finance,
while the man, who keeps working, will know more and more."16 So it is our experience,
not our gender, that predicts how we'll handle our retirement investments.
What about those enormous gender differences that some observers have found in
the workplace (the subject of chapter 9)? Men, we hear, are competitive social climbers
who seek advancement at every opportunity; women are cooperative team-builders
who shun competition and may even suffer from a "fear of success." But the pioneer-
ing study by Rosabeth Moss Kanter, reported in Men and Women of the Corporation,
indicated that gender mattered far less than opportunity. When women had the same
opportunities, networks, mentors, and possibilities for advancement, they behaved
just as the men did. Women were not successful because they lacked opportunities,
nor because they feared success; when men lacked opportunities, they behaved in
stereotypically "feminine" ways. 17
Finally, take our experiences in the family, which I examine in chapter 6. Here,
again, we assume that women are socialized to be nurturing and maternal, men to be
strong and silent, relatively emotionally inexpressive arbiters of justice-that is, we
assume that women do the work of "mothering" because they are socialized to do so.
And again, sociological research suggests that our behavior in the family has some-
what less to do with gender socialization than with the family situations in which we
find ourselves.
Research by sociologist Kathleen Gerson, for example, found that gender social-
ization was not very helpful in predicting women's family experiences. Only slightly
more than half the women who were primarily interested in full-time motherhood
were, in fact, full-time mothers; and only slightly more than half the women who were
primarily interested in full-time careers had them. It turned out that marital stability,
husbands' income, women's workplace experiences, and support networks were far
more important than gender socialization in determining which women ended up
full-time mothers and which did not.1 8
On the other side of the ledger, research by sociologist Barbara Risman found
that despite a gender socialization that downplays emotional responsiveness and
nurturing, most single fathers are perfectly capable of "mothering." Single fathers do
not hire female workers to do the typically female tasks around the house: They do
those tasks themselves. In fact, Risman found few differences between single fathers
and mothers (single or married) when it came to what they did around the house, how
they acted with their children, or even their children's emotional and intellectual de-
velopment. Men's parenting styles were virtually indistinguishable from women's, a
finding that led Risman to argue that "men can mother and that children are not nec-
essarily better nurtured by women than by men."19
These findings also shed a very different light on other research. For example,
some recent researchers found significant differences in the amount of stress that
women and men experience on an everyday basis. According to the researchers,
women reported higher levels of stress and lower numbers of "stress-free" days than
did men. David Almeida and Ronald Kessler sensibly concluded that this was not a
biologically based difference, a signal of women's inferiority in handling stress, but
rather an indication that women had more stress in their lives, because they had to
juggle more family and work issues than did men.2°
Almeida and Kessler's findings were reported with some fanfare in newspapers,
which with few exceptions recounted new significant gender differences. But what
Almeida and Kessler actually found was that women, as Kessler noted, "tend to the home,
the plumber, their husband's career, their jobs, and oh yes, the kids." By contrast, for
men, it's "How are things at work? The end."21 And they found this by asking married
couples, both husbands and wives, about their reactions to such "stressors." What do you
think their findings would have been had they asked single mothers and single fathers
the same questions? Do you think they would have found any significant gender differ-
ences at all? More likely, they would have found that trying to juggle the many demands
of a working parent is likely to generate enormous stress both for men and for women.
Again, it's the structure, not the gender, that generates the statistical difference.
Based on all this research, you might conclude, as does Risman, that "if women
and men were to experience identical structural conditions and role expectations, em-
pirically observable gender differences would dissipate." I am not fully convinced.
22
There are some differences between women and men, after all. Perhaps, as this re-
search suggests, those differences are not as great, decisive, or impervious to social
change as we once thought. But there are some differences. It will be my task in this
book to explore both those areas where there appear to be gender differences but where
there are, in fact, few or no differences, and those areas where gender differences are
significant and decisive.
THE MEANING OF MEAN DIFFERENCES

Few of the differences between women and men are "hardwired" into all males to the
exclusion of all females or vice versa. Although we can readily observe differences
between women and men in rates of aggression, physical strength, math or verbal
achievement, caring and nurturing, or emotional expressiveness, it is not true that all
males and no females are aggressive, physically strong, and adept at math and science
and that all females and no males are caring and nurturing, verbally adept, or emo-
tionally expressive. What we mean when we speak of gender differences are mean
differences, differences in the average scores obtained by women and men.
L similarity
difference
Figure 1.1. Schematic rendering of the overlapping distributions of traits, attitudes, and behaviors by
gender. Although mean differences might be evident on many characteristics, these distributions sug-
gest far greater similarity between women and men and far greater variability among men and among
women.
These mean scores tell us something about the differences between the two groups,
but they tell us nothing about the distributions themselves, the differences among men or
amongwomen. Sometimes these distributions can be enormous: There are large numbers
of caring or emotionally expressive men and of aggressive and physically strong women.
(See figure 1.1.) In fact, in virtually all the research that has been done on the attributes
associated with masculinity or femininity, the differences among women and among
men are far greater than the mean differences between women and men. We tend to focus
on the mean differences, but they may tell us far less than we think they do.
What we think they tell us, of course, is that women and men are different,
from different planets. This is what I will call the "interplanetary theory of gender
difference"-that the observed mean differences between women and men are deci-
sive and that they come from the fact that women and men are biologically so physi-
cally different.
For example, even the idea that we are from different planets, that our differences
are deep and intractable, has a political dimension: To call the "other" sex the "op-
posite" sex obscures the many ways we are alike. As the anthropologist Gayle Rubin
points out:
Men and women are, of course, different. But they are not as different as day and
night, earth and sky, yin and yang, life and death. In fact from the standpoint of
nature, men and women are closer to each other than either is to anything else-
for instance mountains, kangaroos, or coconut palms ... Far from being an expres-
sion of natural differences, exclusive gender identity is the suppression of natural
similarities.23
The interplanetary theory of gender difference is important not because it's

right-in fact, it is wrong far more often than it is right-but because, as a culture, we
seem desperately to want it to be true. That is, the real sociological question about
gender is not the sociology of gender differences-explaining the physiological origins
of gender difference-but rather the sociology of knowledge question that explores
why gender difference is so important to us, why we cling to the idea of gender
difference so tenaciously, why, I suppose, we shell out millions of dollars for books that
"reveal" the deep differences between women and men but will probably never buy a
book that says, "Hey, we're all Earthlings!"
That, however, is the message of this book. Virtually all available research from the
social and behavioral sciences suggests that women and men are not from Venus and
Mars, but rather are both from planet Earth. We're not opposite sexes, but neighboring
sexes-we have far more in common with each other than we have differences. We
pretty much have the same abilities and pretty much want the same things in our lives.
THE POLITICS OF DIFFERENCE AND DOMINATION

Whether we believe that gender difference is biologically determined or is a cultural
formation, the interplanetary theory of gender difference assumes that gender is a
property of individuals, that is, that gender is a component of one's identity. But this is
only half the story. I believe that individual boys and girls become gendered-that is,
we learn the "appropriate" behaviors and traits that are associated with hegemonic
masculinity and exaggerated femininity, and then we each, individually, negotiate our
own path in a way that feels right to us. In a sense, we each "cut our own deal" with the
dominant definitions of masculinity and femininity. That's why we are so keenly at-
tuned to, and so vigorously resist, gender stereotypes-because we believe that they do
not actually encompass our experiences.
But we do not cut our own deal by ourselves in gender-neutral institutions and
arenas. The social institutions of our world-workplace, family, school, politics-are
also gendered institutions, sites where the dominant definitions are reinforced and
reproduced and where "deviants" are disciplined. We become gendered selves in a
gendered society.
Speaking of a gendered society is not the same thing as pointing out that rocket
ships and skyscrapers bear symbolic relationships to a certain part of the male anat-
omy. Sometimes function takes precedence over symbolic form. (Do you really think
women would explore outer space in a machine shaped like a bagel?) It is also only
partially related to the way we use metaphors of gender to speak of other spheres of
activity-the way, for example, the worlds of sports, sex, war, and work each appropri-
ate the language of the other spheres.
When we say that we live in a gendered society we imply that the organizations of
our society have evolved in ways that reproduce both the differences between women
and men and the domination of men over women. Institutionally, we can see how the
structure of the workplace is organized around demonstrating and reproducing
masculinity: The temporal organization and the spatial organization of work both
depend upon the separation of spheres (distance between work and home and the fact
that women are the primary child-care providers).
As it did with respect to the invisibility of gendered identity, assuming institu-
tional gender neutrality actually serves to maintain the gender politics of those insti-
tutions. And it underscores the way we often assume that if you allow individuals to
express a wider range of gender behaviors, they'll be able to succeed in those gender-
neutral institutions. So we assume that the best way to eliminate gender inequality in
higher education or in the workplace is to promote sameness-in other words, we're
unequal only because we're different.
This, however, creates a political and personal dilemma for women in gendered
institutions. It's a no-win proposition for women when they enter the workplace, the
military, politics, or sports-arenas that are already established to reproduce and sus-
tain masculinity. To the extent that they become "like men" in order to succeed, they
are seen as having sacrificed their femininity. Yet to the extent to which they refuse to
sacrifice their femininity, they are seen as different, and thus gender discrimination is
legitimate as the sorting of different people into different slots.2 4 Women who succeed
are punished for abandoning their femininity-rejected as potential partners, labeled
as "dykes," left off the invitation lists. The first women who entered the military or
military colleges or even Princeton and Yale when these institutions went coeduca-
tional in the late 1960s were seen as being "less" feminine, as being unsuccessful as
women. Yet had they been more "successful" as women, they would have been seen as
less capable soldiers or students.' 5 Thus gender inequality creates a double bind for
women-a double bind that is based on the assumption of gender difference and the
assumption of institutional gender neutrality.
There's a more personal side to this double bind. Often, men are perplexed by the
way their wives have closets filled with clothes, yet constantly complain that they have
"nothing to wear." Men often find this behavior strange, probably the behavior of
someone who must have come from another planet. After all, we men typically alter-
nate among only three or four different colors of shirts and suits, which we match with
perhaps five or six different ties. Navy blue, charcoal gray, black-what could be so
difficult about getting dressed?
But women who work enter a gendered institution in which everything they wear
"signifies" something. So they look at one business-like dress and tell themselves, "No,
this is too frumpy. They'll never take me seriously as a woman in this dress!" So they
hold up a slinkier and tighter outfit and think, "In this little number, all they'll see
in me is a woman, and they'll never take me seriously as an employee." Either way-
corporate frump or sexy babe-women lose, because the workplace is, itself, gendered,
and standards of success, including dressing for success, are tailored to the other sex.
Both difference and domination are produced and reproduced in our social inter-
actions, in the institutions in which we live and work. Though the differences between
us are not as great as we often assume, they become important in our expectations and
observations. It will be my task in this book to examine those differences-those that are
real and important-as well as to reveal those that are neither real nor important. I will
explore the ways in which gender inequality provides the foundation for assumptions of
gender difference. And, finally, I will endeavor to show the impact of gender on our
lives-how we become gendered people living gendered lives in a gendered society.
KEY TERMS
Biological Determinism Gender Difference Invisibility of Privilege
Deceptive Distinctions Gender Inequality Masculinities
Differential Socialization Interplanetary Theory
Emphasized Femininity of Gender Difference
Femininities
PART
Explanations
of Gender
CHAPTER
ORDAINED by NATURE
2
Biology Constructs the Sexes
A devil, a born devil, on whose nature

Nurture can never stick! On whom my pains,
Humanely taken, all, all lost, quite lost!
-SHAKESPEARE, THE TEMPEST (ACT IV, SCENE 1)
Oprah: "Do you think society will change if it were proven beyond a shadow of a
doubt that you were born that way?"
Gay twin: "It would be easier ... the acceptance, but you understand that people
still don't accept Blacks and Hispanics and handicapped ... Gays are right in there
with them ... people don't accept obese people."
Oprah (chagrined): "I forgot about that. Let's take a break."
A side from his exasperated cry of "women-what do they want?" Sigmund

Freud's most famous line is probably the axiom "Anatomy is destiny."
Though it's not clear that Freud ever intended that it be taken literally, a large
number of people believe that the differences in male and female anatomy are
decisive and provide the basis for the differences in men's and women's experi-
ences. One recent researcher proclaimed his belief that "the differences between
the males and females of our species will ultimately be found in the cell
19
20 PART I: EXPLANATIONS OF GENDER
arrangements and anatomy of the human.'" To biologists, the source of human behav-
ior lies neither in our stars nor in ourselves, as Caesar had suggested to Brutus-but
rather in our cells.
Biological explanations hold a place of prominence in our explanations of both
gender difference and gender inequality. First, biological explanations have the ring of
"true" science to them: Because their theories are based on "objective scientific facts,"
the arguments of natural scientists are extraordinarily persuasive. Second, biological
explanations seem to accord with our own observations: Women and men seem so
different to us most of the time-so different, in fact, that we often appear to be from
different planets.
There's also a certain conceptual tidiness to biological explanations, because the
social arrangements between women and men (gender inequality) seem to stem di-
rectly and inevitably from the differences between us. Biological arguments reassure
us that what is is what should be, that the social is natural. Finally, such reassurances
tell us that these existing inequalities are not our fault, that no one is to blame, really.
We cannot be held responsible for the way we act-hey, it's biological! (Such claims are
made by conservatives and liberals, by feminists and misogynists, and by homophobes
and gay activists.) What's more, if these explanations are true, no amount of political
initiative, no amount of social spending, no great policy upheavals will change the
relationships between women and men.
This chapter will explore some of the biological evidence that is presented to dem-
onstrate the natural, biologically based differences between the sexes and the ways in
which social and political arrangements (inequality) directly flow from those differ-
ences. Biological differences can tell us much about the ways in which men and women
behave. The search for such differences can also tell us a lot about our culture-about
what we want so desperately to believe and why we want to believe it.
BIOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES, THEN AND NOW

The search for the biological origins of the differences between women and men is not
new. What is new, at least for the past few centuries, is that scientists have come to play
the central role in exploring the natural differences between males and females.
Prior to the nineteenth century, most explanations of gender difference had been
the province of theologians. God had created man and woman for different purposes,
and those reproductive differences were decisive. Thus, for example, did the Reverend
John Todd warn against woman suffrage, which would "reverse the very laws of God,"
and its supporters, who tried to convince woman that she would "find independence,
wealth and renown in man's sphere, when your only safety and happiness is patiently,
lovingly, and faithfully performing the duties and enacting the relations of your own
sphere.'"
By the late nineteenth century, under the influence of Darwin and the emerging
science of evolutionary biology, scientists jumped into the debate, wielding their latest
discoveries. Some argued that woman's normal biological processes made her unfit for
the public world of work and school. For example, in his book A Physician's Counsels
to Woman in Health and Disease (1871), Dr. W. C. Taylor cautioned women to stay home
and rest for at least five or six days a month:
Chapter 2: Ordained by Nature 21
We cannot too emphatically urge the importance of regarding these monthly
returns as periods of ill health, as days when the ordinary occupations are to be
suspended or modified ... Long walks, dancing, shopping, riding and parties should
be avoided at this time of month invariably and under all circumstances.3
In his pathbreaking work On the Origin of Species (1859), Darwin had posed sev-
eral questions. How do certain species come to be the way they are? Why is there such
astonishing variety among those species? Why do some species differ from others in
some ways and remain similar in other ways? He answered these questions with the
law of natural selection. Species adapt to their changing environments. Those species
that adapt well to their environments are reproductively successful, that is, their adap-
tive characteristics are passed on to the next generation, whereas those species that are
less adaptive do not pass on their characteristics. Within any one species, a similar
process occurs, and those individuals who are best suited to their environment pass
on their genes to the next generation. Species are always changing, always adapting.
Such an idea was theologically heretical to those who believed that God had cre-
ated all species, including human beings, intact and unchanging. And Darwin did
believe that just as the species of the lower animal world evidence differences between
males and females, so, too, do human beings. "Woman seems to differ from man in
mental disposition, chiefly in her greater tenderness and lesser selfishness," he wrote
in The Descent of Man. Men's competitiveness, ambition, and selfishness "seem to be
his natural and unfortunate birthright. The chief distinction in the intellectual powers
of the two sexes is shown by man's attaining to a higher eminence, in whatever he
takes up, than can woman-whether requiring deep thought, reason, or imagination,
or merely the uses of the senses and the hands.'ll
No sooner had the biological differences between women and men been estab-
lished as scientific fact than writers and critics declared all efforts to challenge social
inequality and discrimination against women to be in violation of the "laws of nature.''
Many writers argued that women's efforts to enter the public sphere-to seek employ-
ment, to vote, to enter colleges-were misguided because they placed women's social
and political aspirations over the purposes for which their bodies had been designed.
Women were not to be excluded from voting, from the labor force, or from higher edu-
cation as much as they were, as the Reverend Todd put it, "to be exempted from certain
things which men must endure.''5 This position was best summed up by a participant
in a debate about woman suffrage in Sacramento, California, in 1880:
I am opposed to woman's sufferage [sic] on account of the burden it will place

upon her. Her delicate nature has already enough to drag it down. Her slender
frame, naturally weakened by the constant strain attendant upon her nature is
too often racked [sic] by diseases that are caused by a too severe tax upon her
mind. The presence of passion, love, ambition, is all too potent for her enfeebled
condition, and wrecked health and early death are all too common. 6
Social scientists quickly jumped on the biological bandwagon-especially social

Darwinists, who shortened the time span necessary for evolution from millennia to
one or two generations and who causally extended Darwin's range from ornithology to
human beings. In their effort to legitimate social science by allying it with natural law,
social Darwinists applied Darwin's theory in ways its originator had never imagined,
distorting his ideas about natural selection to claim decisive biological differences
among races, nations, families, and, of course, between women and men. For example,
the eminent French sociologist Gustav LeBon, who would later become famous for his
theory of the collective mind and the irrationality of the crowd, believed that the
differences between women and men could be explained by their different brain
structure. He wrote in 1879:
In the most intelligent races, as among the Parisians, there are a large number of
women whose brains are closer in size to those of gorillas than to the most
developed of male brains ... All psychologists who have studied the intelligence
of women ... recognize today that they represent the most inferior forms of
human evolution and that they are closer to children and savages than to an adult
civilized man. They excel in fickleness, inconstancy, absence of thought and logic,
and incapacity to reason. Without doubt, there exist some distinguished women,
very superior to the average man, but they are as exceptional as the birth of any
monstrosity, as, for example, of a gorilla with two heads .. .7
Much of the debate centered on whether or not women could be educated, espe-
cially in colleges and universities. One writer suggested that a woman "of average
brain" could attain the same standards as a man with an average brain "only at the
cost of her health, of her emotions, or of her morale." Another prophesized that women
would grow bigger and heavier brains and that their uteruses would shrink if they
went to college. Perhaps the most famous social scientist to join this discussion was
Edward C. Clarke, Harvard's eminent professor of education. In his best-selling book
Sex in Education: or; A Fair Chance for the Girls (1873), Clarke argued that women
should be exempted from higher education because of the tremendous demands made
upon their bodies by reproduction. If women went to college, Clarke predicted, they
would fail to reproduce, and it would require "no prophet to foretell that the wives who
are to be mothers in our republic must be drawn from transatlantic homes." 8 (Clarke's
invocation of the threat to civilization posed by immigrants reproducing faster than
native-born whites is common to the conflation of racism and sexism of the era.)
The evidence for such preposterous biological claims? Simple. It turned out that
college-educated women were marrying less often and bearing fewer children than
were non-college-educated women. It must have been those shriveled wombs and
heavier brains. And it also appeared that 42 percent of all women admitted to mental
institutions were college-educated, compared with only 16 percent of the men. Obvi-
ously, college education was driving women crazy. Today, of course, we might attri-
bute this difference in fertility or in mental illness among college-educated women to
enlarged opportunities or frustrated ambitions, respectively, but not to shrinking
wombs. Clarke's assertions remain a striking example of the use of correlational ag-
gregate social science data for decidedly political purposes.
The implicit conservatism of such arguments was as evident at the beginning of
the twentieth century as it is now. "How did woman first become subject to man as she
is now all over the world?" asked James Long. "By her nature, her sex, just as the negro
is and always will be, to the end of time, inferior to the white race, and therefore,
doomed to subjection; but happier than she would be in any other condition, just be-
cause it is the law of her nature.''9 Such sentiments echo back across the centuries when
political leaders invoke biological differences as the basis for sex discrimination.
When Newt Gingrich became Speaker of the House of Representatives in 1995, he
argued against women's participation in the military because "females have biological
problems staying in a ditch for 30 days because they get infections and don't have
upper body strength," whereas males "are basically little piglets, you drop them in the
ditch, they roll around in it, doesn't matter ... Males are biologically driven to go out
and hunt giraffes.'' 10
IiJ '' ,,, 111 :n)Q I Ia

Nature and Nurture: Not an Either/Or, but a Both/And ...
We tend to think that it's "nature" versus "nurture"-either that we're entirely born this way
or that we're entirely the product of socialization and upbringing. In her brief essay "Where
Does Gender Come From?" the eminent biologist Anne Fausto-Sterling makes clear that
from the earliest moments of life, nature and nurture interact to produce the conditions in
which we create and express our gendered selves.
Today, serious biological arguments generally draw their evidence from three areas
of research: (1) evolutionary theory, from sociobiology to "evolutionary psychology,"
(2) brain research, and (3) endocrinological research on sex hormones, before birth
and again at puberty. The latter two areas of research are also used to describe the bio-
logically based differences between heterosexuals and homosexuals, differences that
are, as we shall see, often expressed in gender terms. 11
Why are boys and girls color-coded? Why pink for girls and blue for boys? Did
OH? you know it was biological? After asking 171 British adult men and women to
REALLY• choose in a forced-choice experiment, two biologists proposed this grander
evolutionary explanation: that women, as gatherers, developed a preference
for red hues, like pink, because they needed to identify ripe berries and fruit. Further, women
"needed to discriminate subtle changes in skin color due to emotional states and social-sexual
signals" in "their roles as care-givers and 'empathizers'" (p. R625).
Not only is this dreadful history-for centuries, boys and girls were dressed identically, and
when they were first gender-coded, in the 1870s and 1880s, in the United States, the preference
was pink and red for boys and blue for girls-but it's also incredibly bad evolutionary science.
What sorts of "subtle changes in skin color" were we likely to find on the African savannah, where
the original humans hunted and gathered? Do these biologists think that those early humans were
white Englishmen and women, who blushed when embarrassed?
Source: Anya Hurlbert and Yazhu Ling, "Biological Components of Sex Differences in Color Preference" in Current
Biology, 17( 16), August 21, 2007.
THE EVOLUTIONARY IMPERATIVE: FROM SOCIAL DARWINISM

TO SOCIOBIOLOGY AND EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY
Evolutionary biologists since Darwin have abandoned the more obviously political
intentions of the social Darwinists, but the development of a new field of sociobiology
in the 1970s revived evolutionary arguments. Edward Wilson, a professor of entomol-
ogy at Harvard, helped to found this school of thought, expanding his original field
of expertise to include human behavior as well as bugs. All creatures, Wilson argued,
"obey" the "biological principle," and all temperamental differences (personalities,
cultures) derive from the biological development of creatures undergoing the pres-
sure of evolutionary selection. The natural differences that result are the source of
the social and political arrangements we observe today. Eventually, he confidently
predicted, the social sciences and humanities would "shrink to specialized branches
ofbiology.'"2
One major area that sociobiologists have stressed is the differences in male and
female sexuality, which they believe to be the natural outgrowth of centuries of evolu-
tionary development. Evolutionary success requires that all members of a species
consciously or unconsciously desire to pass on their genes. Thus males and females
develop reproductive "strategies" to ensure that our own genetic code passes on to the
next generation. Sociobiologists often use a language of intention and choice, referring
to "strategies" that make it sound as if our genes were endowed with instrumental
rationality and that each of our cells acted in a feminine or masculine way. Thus they
seem to suggest that the differences we observe between women and men today have
come from centuries of advantageous evolutionary choices. As Wilson and fellow
sociobiologist Richard Dawkins put it, "Female exploitation begins here." Culture has
little to do with it, as Wilson argues, because "the genes hold culture on a leash.'"-3
Take, for example, the size and the number of the reproductive cells themselves.
Add to that the relative cost to male and female in producing a healthy offspring,
and-presto!-you have the differences between male and female sexual behavior at a
typical college mixer this weekend. "He" produces billions of tiny sperm; "she" pro-
duces one gigantic ovum. For the male, reproductive success depends upon his ability
to fertilize a large number of eggs. Toward this end, he tries to fertilize as many eggs
as he can. Thus males have a "natural" propensity toward promiscuity. By contrast,
females require only one successful mating before their egg can be fertilized, and
therefore they tend to be extremely choosy about which male will be the lucky fellow.
What's more, females must invest a far greater amount of energy in gestation and lac-
tation and have a much higher reproductive "cost," which their reproductive strategies
would reflect. Females, therefore, tend to be monogamous, choosing the male who will
make the best parent. "A woman seeks marriage to monopolize not a man's sexuality,
but, rather, his political and economic resources, to ensure that her children (her
genes) will be well provided for," writes journalist Anthony Layng. As sociobiologist
Donald Symons puts it, women and men have different "sexual psychologies":
Since human females, like those of most animal species, make a relatively large
investment in the production and survival of each offspring-and males can get away
with a relatively small one-they'll approach sex and reproduction, as animals do,
in rather different ways from males ... Women should be more choosy and more
hesitant, because they're more at risk from the consequences of a bad choice.
And men should be less discriminating, more aggressive and have a greater taste
for variety of partners because they're less at risk.
Not surprisingly, Symons notes, this is "what we find":
Selection favored the basic male tendency to be aroused sexually by the sight of
females. A human female, on the other hand, incurred an immense risk, in terms of
time and energy, by becoming pregnant, hence selection favored the basic female
tendency to discriminate with respect both to sexual partners and to the circum-
stances in which copulation occurred."14
The dilemma for these monogamous females, then, is how to extract parental
commitment from these recalcitrant rogue males, who would much prefer to be out
fertilizing other females than home with the wife and kids. Women's strategy is to
"hold out" for emotional, and therefore parental, commitment before engaging in
sexual relations. Thus not only are women predetermined to be monogamous, but also
they link sexual behavior to emotional commitment, extracting from those promiscu-
ous males all manner of promises of love and devotion before they will finally "put
out." Thus males are hardwired genetically to be promiscuous sexual predators, ever
on the prowl for new potential sexual conquests, whereas females have a built-in bio-
logical tendency toward monogamy, fantasies of romantic love and commitment cou-
pled with sexual behavior, and a certain sexual reticence that can be overcome only by
chivalric male promises of fealty and fidelity.
• ,1 ,, ,,, , ,, =n1u1, a
Millennia of Evolution Created the Gender Differences We See Today
After millennia, we think it's hardwired that men be aggressive and competitive, and women
nurturing and demure. In her essay "Caveman Masculinity," sociologist Martha McCaughey
argues that such assertions really read history backward, taking contemporary observations
and reading them back into evolutionary history. In so doing, they make contemporary ar-
rangements seem inevitable-which ignores all the myriad historical twists and turns, as well
as the range of contemporary variations on the issue. But actually, it also disrespects our cave-
dwelling ancestors, pigeonholing them into crass stereotypes and disregarding any information
that doesn't fit our pat theories. Turns out Fred and Wilma had a more complex social struc-
ture than we give them credit for having.
Other evolutionary arguments examine other aspects of reproductive biology to

spell out the differences between men and women and thereby explain the social in-
equality between them. For example, the separation of spheres seems to have a basis
far back in evolutionary time. "In hunter-gatherer societies, men hunt and women stay
at home. This strong bias persists in most agricultural and industrial societies, and, on
that ground alone, appears to have a genetic origin," writes Edward Wilson. "My own
guess is that the genetic bias is intense enough to cause a substantial division of labor
in the most free and most egalitarian of future societies."15 Lionel Tiger and Robin Fox
emphasize the social requirements for the evolutionary transition to a hunting-and-
gathering society. First, the hunting band must have solidarity and cooperation, which
require bonding among the hunters. Women's biology-especially their menstrual
cycle-puts them at a significant disadvantage for such consistent cooperation, and
the presence of women would disrupt the cooperation necessary among the men and
insinuate competition and aggression. They also are possessed of a "maternal instinct."
Thus it would make sense for men to hunt and for women to remain back home raising
the children.16
From such different reproductive strategies and evolutionary imperatives come
different temperaments, the different personalities we observe in women and men. The
newest incarnation of sociobiology is called "evolutionary psychology," which declares
an ability to explain psychological differences between women and men through their
evolutionary trajectories. Men are understood to be more aggressive, controlling, and
managing-skills that were honed over centuries of evolution as hunters and fighters.
After an equal amount of time raising children and performing domestic tasks, women
are said to be more reactive, more emotional, "programmed to be passive."17
These differences lead us to completely different contemporary mating strategies
as well. Psychologist David Buss surveyed more than ten thousand people from
thirty-seven different cultures around the world and found strikingly similar things
about what women and men want in a mate. It can't be culturally specific if they all
agree, can it? In every society, females placed a high premium on signs of economic
prosperity, whereas men placed their highest premium on youth and beauty, whose
signal traits were large breasts and ample hips-in other words, signs of fertility. Sexual
selection maximizes reproductive success, right? Well, maybe. Actually, Indian men
ranked being a good financial provider higher than women did in Finland, Great Britain,
Norway, Spain, and Australia (which are, incidentally, among the most "gender equal"
OH?
REALLY•
We all know that women are choosier than men.
And for evidence, just look at the world of "speed-dating"-sessions where
you have about a dozen "dates" lasting about five minutes each. At these ses-
sions, the women sit at tables, waiting to be approached, and the men circulate
(or "rotate"), looking for a potential partner. Men are far less choosy, listing far more women on
their potential date list than women list men. Men on the prowl, women being choosy.
Except it has nothing to do with gender at all. When psychologists Eli Finkel and Paul Eastwick
reversed the roles, so that men stayed seated and women rotated, the results were exactly the
opposite. Women were far less selective, and the men were far more selective.
It turns out, Finkel and Eastwick argued, that the mere fact of physically approaching someone
as a potential date will make you less choosy and more likely to have a favorable impression of the
person you approach.
Source: E. J. Finkel and P. W . Eastwick, "Arbitrary Social Norms and Sex Differences in Romantic Selectivity," Psy-
chological Science, 20, 2009, pp. 1290-1295.
countries in the world). Does it interest you that although these traits were important,
the single trait most highly valued by both women and men was love and kindness?
Could it be that love, harmony, and kindness are even more important to our reproduc-
tive success than his sexual conquest and her monogamous reticence-that, in essence,
evolutionary success depends more on our similarities than our differences?18
Finally, these differences also enable scientists to try to explain such behaviors as
interspecies violence and aggression. In their book A Natural History of Rape, Thornhill
and Craig Palmer amplify these arguments and make wildly unfounded assertions
in the process. Rape, they write, is "a natural, biological phenomenon that is a product
of human evolutionary heritage."19 Males' biological predisposition is to reproduce,
and their reproductive success comes from spreading their seed as far and wide as
possible; women are actually the ones with the power because they get to choose which
males will be successful. "But getting chosen is not the only way to gain sexual access
to females," they write. "In rape, the male circumvents the females' choice." Rape is
20
the evolutionary mating strategy of losers, males who cannot otherwise get a date.
Rape is an alternative to romance; if you can't always have what you want, you take
what you need.
Don't blame the men, though-or even their genetic imperatives. It's really
women's fault. "As females evolved to deny males the opportunity to compete at ovula-
tion time, copulation with unwilling females became a feasible strategy for achieving
copulation," write Richard Alexander and K. M. Noonan. Women, then, are biologi-
cally programmed to "hold out"-but they better not do it too long. If women were
only a little bit more compliant, men wouldn't be forced to resort to rape as a repro-
ductive tactic.21
EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY-A JUST-SO STORY

Do these evolutionary arguments make sense? Does their evidence add up to basic,
irreconcilable differences between women and men, made necessary by the demands
of evolutionary adaptation? Although there is a certain intuitive appeal to these
arguments-because they give our contemporary experiences the weight of history
and science-there are simply too many convenient lapses in reasoning for us to be
convinced.
The theory may tidily describe the intricate mating rituals of fruit flies or brown
birds or seem applicable to an urban singles bar or the dating dynamics of high school
and college students, but it is based on an interpretation of evidence that is selective
and conforms to preconceived ideas. It is as if these sociobiologists observe what is
normative-that men are more likely than women to separate love and sex, that men
feel entitled to sexual contact with women, that men are more likely to be promiscuous-
and read it back into our genetic coding. Such explanations always fall into teleological
traps, reasoning backward to fill existing theoretical holes. It is so because it is sup-
posed to be so. Besides, the time span is too short. Can we explain each single sexual
encounter by such grand evolutionary designs? I would bet that most of our conscious
"strategies" at college mixers have more immediate goals than to ensure our reproduc-
tive success.
Some arguments go far beyond what the data might explain and into areas
that are empirically untestable. Biologist Richard Lewontin, a passionate critic of
sociobiology, argues that "no evidence at all is presented for a genetic basis of these
characteristics [religion, warfare, cooperation] and the arguments for their establish-
ment by natural selection cannot be tested, since such arguments postulate hypotheti-
cal situations in human prehistory that are uncheckable." And fellow evolutionary
biologist Stephen Jay Gould denies that there is "any direct evidence for genetic con-
trol of specific human social behavior." "Genes don't cause behaviors," writes the
22
neuroprimatologist Robert Sapolsky. "Sometimes, they influence them."23

Some sociobiological arguments seem to assume that only one interpretation is
possible from the evidence. But there could be others. Psychologists Carol Tavris and
Carole Wade, for example, ask why parents-women or men-would "invest" so much
time and energy in their children when they could be out having a good time. Al-
though sociobiologists argue that we are "hardwired" for such altruistic behavior, be-
cause our children are the repository of our genetic material, Tavris and Wade suggest
that it may be simple economic calculation: In return for taking care of our offspring
when they are young and dependent, we expect them to take care of us when we are
old and dependent-a far more compact and tidy explanation.2 4
Some sociobiological arguments are based on selective use of data, ignoring those
data that might be inconvenient. Which species should we use as the standard of
measurement? Among chimpanzees and gorillas, for example, females usually leave
home and transfer to new tribes, leaving the males at home with their mothers; among
baboons, macaques, and langurs, however, it's the males who leave home to seek their
fortune elsewhere. So which sex has the wanderlust, the natural predisposition to leave
home? Sociobiologists tend to favor male-dominant species to demonstrate the ubiq-
uity of male dominance. But there are other species. For example, baboons seem to be
female-dominant, with females determining the stability of the group and deciding
which males are trustworthy enough to be their "friends." Then there is the female
chimpanzee. She has sex with lots of different males, often up to fifty times a day
during peak estrus. She flirts, seduces, and does everything she can to attract males-
whom she then abandons and moves on to the next customer. Would we say that such
evidence demonstrates that females are genetically programmed toward promiscuity
and males toward monogamy? Bonobos, our closest primate relatives, are remarkably
communal, generous, and egalitarian-and very sexy.25 And sociobiologists tend to
ignore other behavior among primates. For example, sexual contact with same-sex
others is "part of the normal sexual repertoire of all animals, expressed variously over
the lifetime of an individual."26 In fact, same-sex sexual contact is ubiquitous in the
animal kingdom-ranging from bighorn sheep and giraffes, both of which have what
can be described only as gay orgies, to dolphins, whales, manatees, and Japanese ma-
caques and bonobos, which bond through "lesbian" sexual choices.27 But few posit a
natural predisposition toward homosexuality. "Simple minded analogies between
human behavior and animal behavior are risky at best, irresponsibly goofy at worst,"
writes neurobiologist Simon LeVay, himself the author of some rather risky, at best,
studies on gay brains (discussed later).2 8
Speaking of baboons, consider this. We all "know" that the so-called alpha male
is the head of the pack, the guy who gets deference from the other males and sexual
access to the choicest females. This is assumed to be the best evolutionary strategy: beat
all the males and cavort with the most reproductively capable females. But actually, it's
OH?
REALLY•
Sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists use a most gendered anthropo-
morphic language of motivation, cognition, and activity itself to describe our
tiniest of cells. You've probably imagined sperm as hardy warriors swimming
purposively upstream, against the current, on a suicide mission to fertilize that
egg, or die. Here's what it actually looks like:
A wastefully huge swarm of sperm weakly flops along, its members bumping into walls and
flailing aimlessly through thick strands of mucus. Eventually, through sheer odds of pinball-like
bouncing ... a few sperm end up close to an egg. As they mill around, the egg selects one and
reels it in, pinning it down in spite of its efforts to escape. It's no contest, really. The gigantic
hardy egg yanks the tiny sperm inside, distills out the chromosomes, and sets out to become
an embryo.
Source: David Freedman, "The Aggressive Egg" in Discover, June I, 1992.
also a recipe for high stress and the danger of an early death. Evolutionary biologist
Laurence Gesquiere and his collegues studied so-called beta-male baboons, the guys
who are a bit lower on the totem pole. They don't challenge the alphas (that would be
suicidal), but they also have some status. As a result, they have far less stress. They
don't fight much; they don't spend time guarding potential sexual mates. And they do
get to mate with females, though not as much as the alphas. After all, as a journalist
wrote, "When the alpha gets into another baboon bar fight, who's going to take the girl
home?'' As a result, they live longer and healthier lives-they do "pretty well for a long
time," rather than "very well for a short time." Maybe the old Avis Rent-a-Car ad-that
as the #2 car rental company "we try harder"-wasn't necessary. Maybe being #2 offers
a longer and less stressful life. 29
Some arguments are just plain wrong in light of empirical evidence. Take the
argument about how women's menstrual cycle debilitates them so that they were in-
evitably and correctly left behind in the transition to hunting and gathering. Katherine
Dalton's research on English schoolgirls showed that 27 percent got poorer test
scores just before menstruation than at ovulation. (She does not say how much worse
they did.) But 56 percent showed no change in test grades, and 17 percent actually per-
formed better at premenstruation. And what about that "maternal instinct"? How do
we explain the enormous popularity of infanticide as a method of birth control
throughout Western history and the fact that it was women who did most of the baby
killing? Infanticide has probably been the most commonly practiced method of birth
control throughout the world. One historian reported that infanticide was common
in ancient Greece and Rome and that "every river, dung heap and cesspool used to be
littered with dead infants." In 1527, a priest commented that "the latrines resound with
the cries of children who have been plunged into them.''3°
And finally, what is one to make of the argument that rape is simply sex by other
means for reproductively unsuccessful males? Such arguments ignore the fact that
most rapists are not interested in sex but rather in humiliation and violence, motivated
more by rage than by lust. Most rapists have regular sex partners, quite a few are
married. Many women well outside of reproductive age, either too young or too old,
are raped. And why would some rapists hurt and even murder their victims, thus
preventing the survival of the very genetic material that they are supposed to be raping
in order to pass on? And why would some rapists be homosexual rapists, passing on
their genetic material to those who could not possibly reproduce? And what about
rape in prison? Using theories of selfish genes or evolutionary imperatives to explain
human behavior cannot take us very far.
"Selection favored males who mated frequently," argue Thornhill and Palmer;
therefore, "rape increased reproductive success."31 But why should this be true? Might
it not also be the case that being hardwired to be good lovers and devoted fathers en-
abled us to be reproductively successful? One might argue that selection favored males
who mated well, because successful mating is more than spreading of seed. After all,
human males are the only primates for whom skillful lovemaking, enhancing women's
pleasure, is normative, at least in many societies. Being an involved father probably
ensured reproductive success far better than did rape. After all, babies are so precious,
so fragile that they need extraordinary-and extraordinarily long!-care and devo-
tion. Infants conceived during rape would have a far lower chance of survival, which
is probably one reason we invented love. Infants conceived in rape might well have
been subject to infanticide-historically the most common form of birth control before
the modern era.
The preposterous idea that rape is an evolutionary mating strategy for losers in the
sexual marketplace is belied by the most common form of rape in the United States.
Did you know that the majority of rapes in America have nothing whatever to do with
reproduction? You know why? The victims are male. In January 2012, the U.S. Depart-
ment ofJustice released an estimate of the prevalence of sexual abuse in penitentiaries:
216,000. That's 216,000 victims, not incidences. These victims are often assaulted mul-
tiple times over the course of a year, meaning the number of actual rapes is signifi-
cantly higher. Such rates make the United States the first country in the history of the
world to count more men as rape victims than women. And Thornhill and Palmer's
facile evolutionism is exposed as mere ideology.
But we can add an element to the equation that enables us to better explain why
the United States has the highest rates of rape for both women and men. Psychologist
Roy Baumeister and his colleagues suggest that a simplistic frustration-aggression
model (he wants, can't have, and therefore takes) is inadequate to explain rape rates.
There must be cultural permission-a sense of entitlement-that enables rape to take
place. Their study of sexually coercive men showed that an inflated sense of entitle-
ment, low empathy, and a view of heterosexuality as exploitive and competitive en-
abled the aggression. Men who may have been equally frustrated, but did not feel that
sense of entitlement, were unlikely to rape. That sense of entitlement is not found in
nature. It is carefully "nurtured" in culture. Thus nature and nurture must interact to
produce the conditions and the motivation for sexual aggression.32
Is rape "natural"? Of course it is. As is any behavior or trait found among human
primates. If it exists in nature, it's natural. Some "natural" beverages contain artificial-
"social"-additives that give them their color, their texture, their taste, their "meaning"
or "significance." This is equally true of rape. Telling us that it is natural tells us nothing
about it except that it is found in nature.
Sociobiology and evolutionary psychology provide us with what Rudyard Kipling
called a "just-so story"-an account that uses some evidence to tell us how, for example,
an elephant got its trunk, or a tiger its stripes. Just-so stories are children's fables, under-
stood by the reader to be fictions, but convenient, pleasant, and, ultimately, useful fictions.
Could we not use the same evidence and construct a rather different just-so story?
Try this little thought experiment. Let's take the same evidence about sperm and eggs,
about reproductive strategies, about different levels of parental investment that the
sociobiologists use, and add a few others. Let's also remember that human females are
the only primate females who do not have specified periods of estrus, that is, they are
potentially sexually receptive at any time of their reproductive cycle, including when they
are incapable of conception. What could be the evolutionary reproductive "strategy" of
this? And let's also remember that the human clitoris plays no part whatsoever in
human reproduction but is solely oriented toward sexual pleasure. And don't forget
that in reality most women do not experience peaks of sexual desire during ovulation
(which is what evolutionary biologists would predict, because women must ensure
reproductive success) but actually just before and just after menstruation (when
women are almost invariably infertile, though the ratio of female to male hormones is
lowest).33 And finally, let's not forget that when a baby is born, the identity of the
mother is obvious, though that of the father is not. Until very recently, with the advent
of DNA tests, fathers could never be entirely certain that the baby was theirs; after all,
how do they know their partner had not had sexual contact with another male?
From this evidence one might adduce that human females are uniquely equipped
biologically-indeed, that it is their sexual strategy-to enjoy sex simply for its physi-
cal pleasure and not for its reproductive potential. And if the reproductive goal of the
female is to ensure the survival of her offspring, then it would make sense for her to
deceive as many males as possible into thinking that the offspring was theirs. That
way, she could be sure that all of them would protect and provide for the baby because
none of them could risk the possibility of his offspring's death and the obliteration of
his genetic material. So might not women's evolutionary "strategy" be promiscuity?34
One more bit of evidence is the difference between male and female orgasm.
Whereas male orgasm is clearly linked to reproductive success, female orgasm seems
to have been designed solely for pleasure; it serves no reproductive function at all. Ac-
cording to Elisabeth Lloyd, a philosopher of science at Indiana University, the capacity
for female orgasm may be a holdover from parallel fetal development in the first eight
or nine weeks oflife. But its persistence may be that orgasm is a reproductive strategy
for promiscuous females. Sexual pleasure and orgasm may encourage females to mate
frequently and with multiple partners until they have an orgasm. The males, on the
other hand, couldn't be sure the offspring was not theirs, so they would struggle to
protect and provide. Thus, female orgasm might be part of women's evolutionary
strategy-and making sure females do not enjoy sex too much might be males' evolu-
tionary response! 3s
Some of these issues seem to be present among the Bari people of Venezuela, where
female promiscuity ensures that a woman's offspring stand a better chance of survival.
Among the Bari, the man who impregnates the female is considered the primary
father, but other men with whom the mother also has sex during her pregnancy con-
sider themselves secondary fathers and spend a good deal of time making sure the child
has enough fish or meat to eat.36 And it may be not that far off from what we do as well.
One recent study found that women reported that their partners increased their atten-
tiveness and "monopolization" behavior-calling them often to check on their where-
abouts, for example-just as they began to ovulate. But the women found that they
fantasized far more about cheating on their partners at the same time. (They reported
no increase whatever in sexual thoughts about their partners-so much for their evo-
lutionary predisposition toward fidelity.) Although this suggests that the men had
good reason to be more guarding and jealous, it also suggests that women "instinc-
tively want to have sex with as many men as possible to ensure the genetic quality of
their offspring, whereas men want to ensure that their own genes get reproduced,"
according to a journalist reporting on the story. Equally selfish genes and equally a
"war between the sexes"-but one with a completely different interpretation.37
Another biological fact about women might make life even more confusing for
males seeking to determine paternity. Martha McClintock's research about women's
menstrual cycles indicated that in close quarters, women's cycles tend to become in-
creasingly synchronous; that is, over time, women's cycles will tend to converge with
those of their neighbors and friends. (McClintock noticed this among her roommates
and friends while an undergraduate at Wellesley in the late 196os.38 ) What's more, in
cultures where artificial light is not used, all the women will tend to ovulate at the full
moon and menstruate at the new moon. Although this might be an effective method
of birth control in nonliterate societies (to prevent pregnancy, you must refrain from
sex when the moon approaches fullness), it also suggests that unless women are con-
trolled, paternity cannot be established definitively.39
If males were as promiscuous as females they would end up rather exhausted and
haggard from running around hunting and gathering for all those babies who might
or might not be their own. How were they to know, after all? In order to ensure that
they did not die from exhaustion, males might "naturally" tend toward monogamy,
extracting from women promises of fidelity before offering up a lifetime of support
and protection to the potential offspring from those unions. Such males might invent
ideals of female chastity, refuse to marry (sexually commit to) women who were not
virgins, and develop ideologies of domesticity that would keep women tied to the
household and children to prevent them from indulging in their "natural" disposition
toward promiscuity.
In fact, there is some persuasive evidence on this front. Because getting pregnant
is often difficult (it takes the average couple three or four months of regular inter-
course to become pregnant), being a faithful and consistent partner would be a far
better reproductive strategy for a male. "Mate guarding" would enable him to maxi-
mize his chances of impregnating the woman and minimize the opportunities for
other potential sperm bearers. 40
Of course, I'm not suggesting that this interpretation supplant the one offered
by evolutionary psychologists. But the fact that one can so easily use the exact
same biological evidence to construct an entirely antithetical narrative suggests
that we should be very careful when the experts tell us there is only one interpreta-
tion possible from these facts . "Genes do not shout commands to us about our
behavior," writes the celebrated ecologist Paul Ehrlich. "At the very most, they
whisper suggestions."41
OH?
REALLY •
Why do men want women to have an orgasm when they have sex? Here's a
good example of how reliance on evolutionary theory leads to a rather circui-
tous argument. Psychologist William McKibbin and his colleagues found that
the risk of "sper m competition"-when different men's sperm "compete" inside
the woman to fe r tilize her egg-leads men who are happy in their relationships to be more con-
cerned with their partner's orgasm (since female orgasm "may facilitate selective uptake"-that
is, her orgasmic contractions may increase the possibility of conception). So let's get this straight:
Since her orgasm may facilitat e selective uptake, and since he may fear sperm competition
(because, let's face it, sperm themselves do not experience anxiety or competition or any other
emotion, because they are cells, for heaven's sake!), then, if he is emotionally invested in the rela-
tionship, he is more concerned with her sexual pleasure than had he just picked her up at a bar.
In science, we search fo r the most parsimonious explanation of some empirical phenomenon;
that is, the simplest and least convoluted explanation. Evolutionary pseudoscience may lead us on
a circuitous path, but I think we all know that a man is more likely to be concerned with his female
partner's orgasm if he actually likes her, not if he's worried about some fantasized competitive
sperm sprint.
Source: William F. McKibbin , Vincent M. Bates, Todd Shackelford, Christopher A. Hafen, and Craig W . LaMunyon,
"Risk of Sperm Competition Moderates the Relationship Between Men's Satisfaction with Their Partner and Men's
Interest in Their Partner's Copulatory Orgasm" in Personality and Individual Differences, 49, 20 I0, pp. 961 - 966.
"HIS" BRAIN AND "HER" BRAIN

Biologists have also focused on the brain to explain the differences between women
and men. This approach, too, has a long history. In the eighteenth century, experts mea-
sured women's brains and men's brains and argued that because women's brains were
smaller and lighter, they were inferior. Of course, it later turned out that women's
brains were not smaller and lighter relative to body size and weight and thus were not
predictive of any cognitive differences. The late nineteenth century was the first heyday
of brain research, as researchers explored that spongy and gelatinous three-pound
blob in order to discover the differences between whites and blacks, Jews and non-Jews,
immigrants and "normal" or "real" Americans, criminals and law-abiding citizens.
For example, the great sociologist Emile Durkheim succumbed to such notions when
he wrote, "With the advance of civilization the brain of the two sexes has increasingly
developed differently .. . This progressive gap between the two may be due both to
the considerable development of the male skull and to a cessation and even a regres-
sion in the growth of the female skull." And another researcher argued that the brain
of the average "grown-up Negro partakes, as regards his intellectual faculties, of the
nature of the child, the female, and the senile White." (One can only speculate where
this put older black women.) But despite the fact that none of these hypothesized dif-
ferences turned out to have any scientific merit, they all satisfied political and racist
assumptions.42
Brain research remains a particularly fertile field of study, and scientists continue
their search for differences between women and men in their brains. One writes that
"many of the differences in brain function between the sexes are innate, biologically
determined, and relatively resistant to change through the influences of culture."
Popular books proclaim just how decisive these differences are. The male brain is "not
so easily distracted by superfluous information"; it is a "tidier affair" than the female
brain, which appears "less able to separate emotion from reason.'¾3 (Notice that these
statements did not say-though they easily might have, based on the same evidence-
that the female brain is capable of integrating more diverse sources of information and
better able to synthesize feelings and thought.)
That brain research fits neatly into preconceived ideas about men's and women's
roles is hardly a coincidence. In most cases, brain researchers (like many other re-
searchers) find exactly what they are looking for, and what they are looking for are the
brain-based differences that explain the observable behavioral differences between
adult women and men. One or two historical examples should suffice. The "science" of
craniology was developed in the late nineteenth century to record and measure the
effect of brain differences among different groups. But the scientists could never agree
on exactly which measures of the brain to use. They knew that men's brains had to be
shown to be superior, but different tests yielded different results. For example, if one
used the ratio of brain surface to body surface, then men's brains would "win"; but if
one used the ratio of brain weight to body weight, then women's brains would appear
superior. No scientist could rely on such ambiguity: More decisive methods had to be
found to demonstrate that men's brains are superior.44
Test scores were no better as indicators. At the turn of the twentieth century,
women were found to be scoring higher on comprehensive examinations at New York
University. Because scientists "knew" that women are not as smart as men, some other
explanation had to be sought. "After all, men are more intellectual than women, ex-
amination papers or no examination papers," commented the dean of the college,
R. Turner. "Women have better memories and study harder, that's all. In tasks requiring
patience and industry women win out. But when a man is both patient and industrious
he beats a woman any day." (It is interesting to see that women's drive, ambition, and
industriousness were used against them but that men were not faulted for impulsive-
ness, impatience, and laziness.) In the 1920s, when IQ tests were invented, women
scored higher on those tests as well. So the experimenters changed the questions.45
Contemporary brain research has focused on three areas: (1) the differences be-
tween right hemisphere and left hemisphere, (2) the differences in the tissue that con-
nects those hemispheres, and (3) the ways in which males and females use different
parts of their brains for similar functions.4 6
Some scientists have noticed that the right and left hemispheres of the brain seem
to be associated with different cognitive functions and abilities. Right-hemisphere
dominance is associated with visual and spatial abilities, such as the ability to conceive
of objects in space. Left-hemisphere dominance is associated with more practical
functions, such as language and reading. Norman Geschwind and Peter Behan, for
example, observed that sex differences begin in the womb when the male fetus begins
to secrete testosterone that washes over the brain, selectively attacking parts of the left
hemisphere and slowing its development. Thus, according to Geschwind, males tend
to develop "superior right hemisphere talents, such as artistic, musical, or mathemati-
cal talent.'' Geschwind believes that men's brains are more lateralized, with one half
dominating over the other, whereas women's brains are less lateralized, with both
parts interacting more than in men's.47
One minor problem with this research, though, is that scientists can't seem to
agree on which it is "better" to have and, not so coincidentally, which side of the brain
dominates for which sex. In fact, they keep changing their minds about which hemi-
sphere is superior and then, of course, assigning that superior one to men. Originally,
it was the left hemisphere that was supposed to be the repository of reason and intel-
lect, whereas the right hemisphere was the locus of mental illness, passion, and in-
stinct. So males were thought to be overwhelmingly more left-brained than
right-brained. By the 1970s, though, scientists had determined that the truth lay else-
where and that the right hemisphere was the source of genius, talent, creativity, and
inspiration, whereas the left hemisphere was the site of ordinary reasoning, calcula-
tion, and basic cognitive function. Suddenly males were hailed as singularly predis-
posed toward right-brainedness. One neuroscientist, Ruth Bleier, reanalyzed
Geschwind and Behan's data and found that in over five hundred fetal brains from ten
to forty-four weeks of gestation, the authors had found no significant sex differences-
this despite the much-trumpeted testosterone bath. 48
IiJ '' ,,, 111 :n)Q I Ia

Male and female brains are wired so differently that there really are "his" and "her" brains. In
"The Truth About Boys and Girls," neuroscientist Lise Eliot shows that tiny differences in the
brain can become greater or lesser, depending on how different societies decide to treat
boys and girls. Echoing the work of Fausto-Sterling, Eliot shows how some of these tiny differ-
ences are exaggerated, and some minimized, in contemporary society.
Perhaps it wasn't which half of the brain dominates, but rather the degree to which
the brain was lateralized-that is, had a higher level of differentiation between the two
hemispheres-that determined sex differences. Buffery and Gray found that female
brains were more lateralized than male brains, which, they argued, interfered with
spatial functioning and made women less capable at spatial tasks. That same year,
Levy found that female brains were less lateralized than male brains, and so he argued
that less lateralization interferes with spatial functioning. (There is virtually no cur-
rent evidence for either of these positions, but that has not stopped most writers from
believing Levy's argument.)49 One recent experiment shows how the desperate drive to
demonstrate difference actually leads scientists to misinterpret their own findings. In
1997, a French researcher, Jean Christophe Labarthe, tried to demonstrate sex differ-
ences in visual and spatial abilities. Two-year-old boys and girls were asked to build a
tower and a bridge. For those of average birth weight or better (greater than 2,500
grams), there was no difference whatever in ability to build a tower, although 21 percent
of the boys and only 8 percent of the girls could build a bridge. For children whose
birth weight was less than 2,500 grams, though, there were no differences for either
skill. From this skimpy data, Labarthe concludes that boys are better at bridge-building
than girls-instead of the far more convincing (if less mediagenic) finding that birth
weight affects visual and spatial functioning! 50
Some research suggests that males use only half their brains while performing
some verbal tasks, such as reading or rhyming, whereas females draw on both sides of
their brains. A recent experiment reveals as much about our desire for difference as
about difference itself. Researchers from the Indiana University School of Medicine
measured brain activity of ten men and ten women as they listened to someone read
aloud a John Grisham thriller. A majority of the men showed exclusive activity on the
left side of their brains, whereas the majority of the women showed activity on both
sides of the brain. Although some might suggest that this provides evidence to women
who complain that their husbands are only "half-listening" to them, the study mentions
little about what the minority of males or females were doing-especially when the
total number was only ten to begin with. Besides, what if they were listening instead
to a Jane Austen novel? Might the males have "needed" both sides of their brain to
figure out a plot that was a bit less action-packed? Would the females have been better
able to relax that side of their brain that has to process criminal intrigue and murder?51
If these tacks weren't convincing, perhaps both males and females use both halves
of their brains but use them differently. In their popular book detailing these brain
differences, Jo Durden-Smith and Diane deSimone suggest that in the female left
hemisphere, language tends to serve as a vehicle for communication, whereas for
males that hemisphere is a tool for more visual-spatial tasks, like analytical reasoning.
Similarly, they argue, in the right hemisphere males assign more neural space to visual-
spatial tasks, whereas females have more room left over for other types of nonverbal
communication skills, such as emotional sensitivity and intuition.52
But don't the differences in mathematical ability and reading comprehension
provide evidence of different sides of the brain being more dominant among females
and males? Although few would dispute that different sides of the brain account for dif-
ferent abilities, virtually all humans, both men and women, use both sides of their brains
to reasonably good effect. If so, argues the neuropsychiatrist Jerre Levy, "then males may
be at a double disadvantage in their emotional life. They may be emotionally less sophis-
ticated. And because of the difficulty they may have in communicating between their
two hemispheres, they may have restricted verbal access to their emotional world."53
It is true that males widely outnumber females at the genius end of the mathemat-
ical spectrum. But does that mean that males are, on average, more mathematically
capable and females more verbally capable? Janet Hyde, a psychologist at the University
of Wisconsin, has conducted a massive amount of research on this question. She re-
viewed 165 studies of verbal ability that included information about over 1.4 million
people and included writing, vocabulary, and reading comprehension. She found no
gender differences in verbal ability. But when she analyzed one hundred studies of
mathematical ability, representing the testing of nearly four million students, she did
find some modest gender differences. In the general studies, females outperformed
males in mathematics, except in those studies designed only for the most precocious
individuals.54 What Hyde and her colleagues- and virtually every other researcher-
found is that there is a far greater range of differences among males and among females
than there is between males and females. That is to say that the variance within the
group far outweighs the variance between groups, despite the possible differences be-
tween the mean scores of the two groups.
But what if it's not the differences between the hemispheres or even that males and
females use the same hemispheres differently? Perhaps it's the connections between
the hemispheres. Some researchers have explored the bundle of fibers known as the
"corpus callosum" that connects the two hemispheres and carries information be-
tween them. A subregion of this connecting network, known as the "splenium," was
found by one researcher to be significantly larger and more bulbous in shape in fe-
males. This study of fourteen brains at autopsy suggested that this size difference re-
flected less hemispheric lateralization in females than in males and that this affected
visual and spatial functioning. But subsequent research failed to confirm this finding.
One researcher found no differences in the size of the corpus callosum between males
and females. What's more, in magnetic resonance imaging tests on living men and
women, no differences were found between women and men.55
But that doesn't stop some popular writers from dramatic and facile extrapola-
tion. Here's Robert Pool, from his popular work Eve's Rib: "Women have better verbal
skills than men on average; the splenium seems to be different in women and men, in
shape if not in size; and the size of the splenium is related to verbal ability, at least in
women." And a recent popular book by psychologist Michael Gurian claims that only
females with "boys' brains" can grow up to be architects because girls' brains are or-
ganized to promote nurturing, the love and caring for children. Not only is such a
statement insulting to women-as if mathematical reasoning and spatial ability were
somehow "beyond" them-but also it's insulting to men, especially to fathers who
seem to be fully capable of nurturing children.56
But that's more or less typical. These sorts of apparent differences make for
some pretty strange claims, especially about brain chemistry. For example, because
boys' brains secrete slightly less serotonin, on average, than girls' brains, Michael
Gurian claims that boys are "more impulsive" and "not as calm" as girls are in large
classrooms. Although the variation among boys and among girls is significantly
larger than any small difference between males and females, Gurian has no prob-
lem recommending educational policies that would "honor" that impulsivity. Even
more astonishing is his claim, often echoed by John Gray, that during sex, males
have a rush of oxytocin, a chemical that is linked to feelings of pleasure. In the
throes of that "bonding hormone," a man is likely to blurt out "I love you," but it is
only the effect of the chemical. If you're wondering why he doesn't call the next day,
it's because the hormone's effect has worn off, not because, having scored, he's look-
ing for the exit.57
The scientific evidence actually points in the other direction. In males, the amyg-
dala, an almond-shaped part of the brain that responds to emotionally arousing
information, is somewhat larger than it is in females. The neurons in this region,
associated with emotions, make more numerous connections in males than in fe-
males, which produce some differences in the ways males and females react to stress.
In one experiment, German researchers removed the newborn pups of degus, South
American rodents akin to North American prairie dogs- an experience that is quite
unsettling. The researchers measured the amount of serotonin in the pups. (Serotonin,
a neurotransmitter, is a key chemical in mediating emotional behavior. Prozac and
other selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors antidepressants increase serotonin func-
tioning by inhibiting its reabsorption.) When the researchers allowed the pups to hear
their mothers' calls during the separation, the males' serotonin levels rose, whereas
the females' levels declined-that is, the females felt more anxiety, and their behavior
was less calm and orderly during such a period of separation.58
Although this experiment might be interpreted to suggest why females are more
often diagnosed with depression than are males-less serotonin to begin with and
more reabsorbed into the brain-it also pays no attention to the different ways our
cultures prescribe for males and females to express anxiety and cope with stress. If you
tell one group, from day 1, that the way to handle stress and anxiety is to withdraw
quietly, and you tell the other group that the only way to handle stress is to be loud and
rambunctiously aggressive, it's a good guess that they will, by and large, follow orders.
This may explain why depression is more likely to be diagnosed among girls and anxi-
ety and aggression disorders more likely among boys.
Besides, the scientists themselves still don't agree. For example, one recent brain
study at UC Irvine found differences in gray matter (which represents information
processing centers) and white matter (which represents the connections between these
centers) in males and females. Males had about 6.5 times more gray matter than fe-
males, and females had about 10 times more white matter than males. On the other
hand, Simon Baron-Cohen, a British brain researcher, notes that the 9 percent differ-
ence in cerebrum size is due to the "larger total volume of white matter in men." Yet
no one makes any claims that these differences lead to differences in general intelli-
gence; indeed, the Irvine scientists insist there are none. Gray and white matter may
be different, but the difference doesn't really make much of a difference.59 Even neuro-
psychologist Doreen Kimura understands that "in the larger comparative context, the
similarities between human males and females far outweigh the differences." And
Jonathan Beckwith, professor of microbiology and molecular genetics at Harvard
Medical School, argues that "even if they found differences, there is absolutely no way
at this point that they can make a connection between any differences in brain struc-
ture and any particular behavior pattern or any particular aptitude."60
In her excellent dismantling of this brain pseudoscience, Lise Eliot, who actually
is a neuroscientist, points to an even more "insidious" way that the real neuroscience
of the brain is misused. Every credible researcher knows that brains change over a
person's life, responding to social stimuli to actually change their neural pathways. So,
over time, males, and females, brains diverge because of the activities that our societies
ask them to do. But the research that posits these large innate differences are done on
adults' brains, even old adults (postmortem), when the socially produced differences
would be at their greatest-and then they are casually and uncritically "read" back
onto the brains of infants, "ignoring the fundamental plasticity by which the brain
learns anything."61
If there is no evidence for these arguments, why do they persist? One brain re-
searcher, Marcel Kinsbourne, suggests that it is "because the study of sex differences is
not like the rest of psychology. Under pressure from the gathering momentum of fem-
inism, and perhaps in backlash to it, many investigators seem determined to discover
that men and women 'really' are different. It seems that if sex differences do not exist,
then they have to be invented."62
THE GAY BRAIN

One of the most interesting and controversial efforts by scientists who study the bio-
logical origins of behavior has been the search for origins of sexual orientation.
Recent research on brain structure and endocrinological research on hormones have
suggested a distinctly homosexual "essence," which will emerge regardless of the cul-
tural conditions that shape its opportunities and experiences. This research on the ori-
gins of sexual orientation is related to research on the basis of sex differences between
women and men because, culturally, we tend to understand sexuality in terms of
gender. Gender stereotypes dominate the discussion of sexual orientation; we may
assume, for example, that gay men are not "real" men, in other words, are not suffi-
ciently masculine, identify with women, and even adopt feminine affects and traits.
Similarly, we may assume that lesbians are insufficiently feminine, identify with and
imitate men's behaviors, and so on. Homosexuality, our stereotypes tell us, is a gender
"disorder."63
We have a century-long legacy from which we draw such stereotypic ideas. Ho-
mosexuality emerged as a distinct identity in the late nineteenth century, when it was
regarded as an "inborn, and therefore irrepressible drive," according to one Hungar-
ian physician. Earlier, there were homosexual behaviors, of course, but identity did not
emerge from nor inhere in those behaviors. By the turn of the twentieth century,
though, "the homosexual" was characterized by a form of"interior androgyny, a her-
maphroditism of the soul," writes Foucault. "The sodomite had been a temporary ab-
erration; the homosexual was now a species." Since Freud's era, we have assumed that
male homosexuality, manifested by effeminacy, and lesbianism, manifested by mas-
culine affect, might not be innate but are, nonetheless, intractable products of early
childhood socialization and that differences between gays and straights, once estab-
lished, prove the most telling in their lives' trajectories. 64
In recent decades, biological research has emerged as central in the demonstra-
tion of the fundamental and irreducible differences between homosexuals and hetero-
sexuals. And it should not surprise us that researchers have found what they hoped to
find-that homosexual men's brains and hormone levels more closely resemble those
of females than those of heterosexual males. Science, again, has attempted to prove
that the stereotypes of gay men and lesbians are based not in cultural fears and preju-
dices, but in biological fact. For example, in the 1970s, Dorner and his associates found
that homosexual men possess a "predominantly female-differentiated brain," which is
caused by a "deficiency" of androgen during the hypothalamic organizational phase
in prenatal life and which may be activated to homosexual behavior by normal or
about-normal androgen levels in adulthood. 65
More recently, Simon LeVay focused on the structure of the brain in an effort to
uncover the etiology of homosexuality. Hoping that science can demonstrate "the
origins of sexual orientation at a cellular level," LeVay gives no credence to environ-
mental determination of sexuality. "If there are environmental influences, they oper-
ate very early in life, at the fetal or early-infancy stages, when the brain is still putting
itself together," he argues. 'Tm very much skeptical of the idea that sexual orientation
is a cultural thing." LeVay noticed that, among primates, experimental lesions in the
medial zone of the hypothalamus of monkeys did not impair sexual functioning but
did suppress mounting attempts by the male monkeys on female monkeys. He also
noticed that the size of this region of the brain is different in men and women. In his
experiment, LeVay examined the brain tissues of forty-one deceased people. Nineteen
of these had died of AIDS and were identified as part of the risk group "homosexual
and bisexual men"; sixteen other men were presumed to be heterosexual because there
was no evidence to the contrary (six had died of AIDS and the other ten from other
causes); and six were women who were presumed heterosexual (one had died of AIDS).
These brains were treated and compared. Three of the four sections revealed no differ-
ences, but a fourth section, the anterior hypothalamus, a region about the size of a
grain of sand, was found to be different among the groups. LeVay found that the size
of this area among the presumably heterosexual men was approximately twice the size
of that area for the women and the presumably gay men.66
But several problems in his experiments give us pause. LeVay and his colleagues
failed to measure the cell number or density because "of the difficulty in precisely de-
fining the neurons belonging to INAH 3," the area of the brain involved. A number of
the "homosexual" men (five of the nineteen) and of the women (two of the six) ap-
peared to have areas of the brain as large as those of the presumed heterosexual men.
And in three of the presumed heterosexual men, this area of the brain was actually
very small. What's more, the sources of his data were widely varied. All the gay men in
his sample died of AIDS, a disease known to affect the brain. (Reduced testosterone
occurs among AIDS patients, and this alone may account for the different sizes.) And
all the brains of the gay men were preserved in a formaldehyde solution that was of a
different strength than the solution in which the brains of the heterosexual men were
preserved, because of the fears of HIV transmission, although there was no effort to
control for the effect of the formaldehyde on the organs. It is possible that what LeVay
may have been measuring was the combined effect of HIV infection and preservation
in high densities of formaldehyde solution on postmortem brain structure, rather
than differences in brain structure between living heterosexuals and homosexuals. A
recent effort to replicate LeVay's findings failed, and one researcher went further, sug-
gesting that "INAH-3 is not necessary for sexual behavior in men, whether they chose
men or women as their partners.''67
More recently, researchers have found that the brains of male transsexuals more
closely resembled the brains of women than those of heterosexual, "normal" men.
Dutch scientists at the Netherlands Institute for Brain Research examined the hypo-
thalamus sections of forty-two men and women, six of whom were known to be trans-
sexuals and nine of whom were gay men, whereas the rest were presumed to be
heterosexual. Again they found that the hypothalamus in the transsexual men and
women was smaller than those in the heterosexual or homosexual men. Although
they were careful not to interpret their findings in terms of sexual orientation because
the heterosexual and homosexual men's brains were similar, they did take their re-
search to signal sex differences because the male transsexuals were men who felt
themselves to be women. However, it may also be a result of transsexual surgery and
the massive amounts of female hormones that the male transsexuals took, which
might have had the effect of shrinking the hypothalamus, just as the surgery and hor-
mones also resulted in other anatomical changes (loss of facial and body hair, breast
growth, etc.). 68
Another recent study suggests that gay men are different from heterosexual men
and more like heterosexual women. A group of Swedish researchers exposed hetero-
sexual men and women and gay men to chemicals derived from male and female sex
hormones (extracted from sweat glands in the armpit for males and urine for females)
and recorded which parts of the brain were most visibly stimulated on a positron
emission tomography scan. The brains of all three groups reacted similarly to various
normal scents, like lavender or cedar: They recorded the information in the part of the
brain that responds to olfactory sensations only. But when they were presented with
testosterone, the part of the brain most closely associated with sexual activity (the
hypothalamus) was triggered, but it remained quiescent among the heterosexual men;
they responded only in the olfactory region. When presented with estrogen, by con-
trast, the females and gay men registered only in the olfactory area, whereas the het-
erosexual men responded strongly in the hypothalamus. 69 Although the response
among journalists was a collective "Eureka! The gay brain," the researchers themselves
were far more circumspect about the meaning of the results. The different pattern of
activity could be a cause of sexual orientation-or a consequence, Dr. Savic told a re-
porter. "We cannot tell if the different pattern is cause or effect. The study does not
give any answer to these crucial questions."7° For another thing, the research did not
measure anything about lesbians, so we don't know what sorts of armpit scents would
drive their hypothalamus wild with desire.
Another recent study did examine lesbians' brain chemistry and found that the
sounds emitted by the inner ears of lesbians fall in between the sounds emitted by
the inner ears of men and heterosexual women, forming a sort of "intermediate"
zone between the two groups. (Lesbian emissions were stronger than men's but
weaker than heterosexual women's.) Before we get carried away, though, I should
mention that the research found no differences whatever between gay men and het-
erosexual men on such emissions.71 "You can't assume that because you find a struc-
tural difference in the brain that it was caused by genes," says researcher Marc
Breedlove. "You don't know how the difference got there." Another adds that we "are
still unsure whether these signs are causes or effects."72 Personally, I'm more con-
cerned about the sounds of bias and false difference that flow into our ears than the
sounds that flow out of them.
THE SEARCH FOR THE GAY GENE

Other biological research has attempted to isolate a gay gene and thus show that sexual
orientation has its basis in biology. For example, research on pairs of monozygotic
twins (twins born from a single fertilized egg that splits in utero) suggests that identi-
cal twins have a statistically far higher likelihood of having similar sexualities (either
both gay or both straight) than do dizygotic twins (twins born from two separate fer-
tilized eggs). One genetic study involved eighty-five pairs of twins in the 1940s and
1950s. All forty pairs of monozygotic twins studied shared the same sexual orienta-
tion; if one twin was heterosexual, the other was also; if one twin was homosexual, so,
too, was the other twin. Such data were so perfect that subsequent scientists have
doubted their validity.73
More recently, Eckert and his colleagues found that in fifty-five pairs of twins,
five had at least one gay member and that in a sixth pair, one twin was bisexual.
Bailey and Pillard collected data on gay men who were twins, as well as on gay men
who had adoptive brothers who lived in the same home before age two. The 161 re-
spondents were drawn from responses to ads placed in gay periodicals and included
56 monozygotic twins, 54 dizygotic twins, and 57 adoptive brothers. Respondents
were asked about their brother's sexuality and were asked for permission to contact
those brothers. About three-fourths of the brothers participated in the study. Bailey
and Pillard found that in 52 percent of the monozygotic pairs, in 22 percent of the
dizygotic pairs, and in 11 percent of the adoptive pairs, both brothers were homo-
sexual or bisexual.74
Such findings were widely interpreted to mean that there is some biological foun-
dation for men's sexual contact with other men. But several problems remain. The
study was generated from self-identified homosexuals, not from a sample of twins.75
What's more, there was no independent measure of the environment in which these
boys grew up, so that what Bailey and Pillard might have measured is the predisposi-
tion of the environments to produce similar outcomes among twins. After all, biologi-
cal predisposition should be more compelling than one-half. And the fact that fraternal
twins of homosexual men were twice as likely as other biological brothers would mean
that environmental factors must be present, because dizygotic twins share no more
genetic material than other biological brothers. The increase in concordance could be
just as convincingly explained by a continuum of similarity of treatment of brothers-
from adoptive to biological to dizygotic to monozygotic-without any genetic compo-
nent whatever.
Actually, what is most interesting in the twin studies is how little concordance
there actually is. After all, having identical genetic material and the same family and
environmental conditions should produce a greater concordance than, at best, half.
There is, however, some evidence that homosexual orientations tend to occur more
frequently in family constellations. Psychiatrist Richard Pillard and psychologist
James Weinrich questioned fifty heterosexual and fifty-one homosexual men and
their siblings. Only 4 percent of the heterosexual men had brothers who were homo-
sexual (the same percentage that had been found by Kinsey's studies in the 1940s),
whereas about 22 percent of the gay men had gay or bisexual brothers. "This is rather
strong evidence that male homosexuality clumps in families," said Weinrich, although
there was no indication of the biological or genetic origin of this relationship. And the
correlation, incidentally, did not hold true for women, as about the same percentage of
the sisters of both groups said they had sisters who were lesbian. None said his or her
parents were gay. This gender disparity might suggest that more than biology is at
work here and that gender identity may have more to do with inequality than with
genetics.76
Recently, sociologists Peter Bearman and Hannah Bruckner examined all the
studies that purported that opposite-sex twins are more likely to be gay than twins
who are not. They concluded that there are no hormonal connections whatever and
that the level of sex stereotyping in early childhood socialization is a far better predic-
tor of behavioral outcome than whether or not one has a twin of the opposite sex.77
ESTROGEN AND TESTOSTERONE: HORMONAL BASES

FOR GENDER DIFFERENCES
Sex differentiation faces its most critical events at two different phases of life: (1) fetal
development, when primary sex characteristics are determined by a combination of
genetic inheritance and the biological development of the embryo that will become a
boy or a girl; and (2) puberty, when the bodies of boys and girls are transformed by a
flood of sex hormones that causes the development of all the secondary sex character-
istics. Breast development for girls, lowering of voices for boys, the development of
facial hair for boys, and the growth of pubic hair for both are among puberty's most
obvious signs.
A significant amount of biological research has examined each of these two phases
in an attempt to chart the hormonal bases for sex differentiation. Much of this re-
search has focused on the links between sex hormones and aggression in adolescent
boys and women and on problems of normal hormonal development and the out-
comes for gender identity development. Summarizing his reading of this evidence,
sociologist Steven Goldberg writes that because "men and women differ in their hor-
monal systems" and "every society demonstrates patriarchy, male dominance and
male attainment," it is logical to conclude that "the hormonal renders the social
inevitable."78
Earlier, we saw how Geschwind and Behan found that during fetal development it
is the "testosterone bath" secreted by slightly more than half of all fetuses that begins
sex differentiation in utero. (All embryos, remember, begin as "female.") Geschwind
and Behan found that this testosterone bath selectively attacks the left hemisphere,
which is why males favor the right hemisphere. But the implication of fetal hormonal
research is that the secretion of sex hormones has a decisive effect on the development
of gender identity and on the expressions of masculinity and femininity. We've all
heard the arguments about how testosterone, the male sex hormone, is not only the
driving force in the development of masculinity in males, but also the biological basis
of human aggression, which is why males are more prone to violence than women. We
should remember that women and men have both testosterone and estrogen, although
typically in dramatically different amounts. On average, men do have about ten times
the testosterone level that women have, but the level among men varies greatly, and
some women have levels higher than some men.
In recent years, research has suggested some correlations between levels of testos-
terone and body mass, baldness, self-confidence, and even the ability and willingness
to smile. But a recent survey found no correlations between testosterone levels and
competitiveness.79 In fact, it might go the other way. After administering a dose of
testosterone to women, Christoph Eisenegger and his colleagues in Zurich found that
it increased their levels of cooperation, not competition. But-and this is really
interesting-those women who believed they had been given testosterone became
more competitive than those who believed they'd received a placebo. Eisenegger and
his colleagues conclude that the effect of testosterone on competition is a deeply in-
grained folk wisdom that it increases competition-despite the evidence that it actu-
ally has the opposite effect! 80 Some wildly inflated claims about the effects of testosterone
have led to both popular misconceptions and a variety of medical interventions to
provide remedies. In one recent book, for example, psychologist James Dabbs pro-
claims that "testosterone increases masculinity," which was translated by a journalist
into the equation that "lust is a chemical" as he looked forward to his "biweekly en-
counter with a syringe full of manhood." 81 And, of course, today men can purchase
testosterone patches to boost their daily testosterone level or AndroGel, a product that
seems to promise masculinity in a tube.82
44
I'',,,I''
PART I: EXPLANATIONS OF GENDER
iJ :n)Q IIa
We all know that testosterone causes aggression, right? And since males have such higher
levels of testosterone, males tend to be far more aggressive. Not exactly. In "Testosterone
Rules," neuroprimatologist Robert Sapolsky recounts his experiments with monkey hierar-
chies, finding that the missing ingredient in testosterone studies is social permission: In order
to use that testosterone-fueled aggression, you have to believe that the target of your aggres-
sion is a legitimate target. No matter how juiced on testosterone you might be, you probably
won't attack your instructor. (Note: This is not a matter to be empirically tested!)
Although the claims made for testosterone are often ridiculous, ministering less
to science and more to men's fears of declining potency, there are some experiments
on the relationship between testosterone and aggression that appear convincing.
Males have higher levels of testosterone and higher rates of aggressive behavior than
females do. What's more, if you increase the level of testosterone in a normal male,
his level of aggression will increase. Castrate him-or at least a rodent proxy ofhim-
and his aggressive behavior will cease entirely. Though this might lead one to think
that testosterone is the cause of the aggression, Stanford neuroprimatologist Robert
Sapolsky warns against such leaps of logic. He explains that if you take a group of five
male monkeys arranged in a dominance hierarchy from 1 to 5, then you can pretty
much predict how everyone will behave toward everyone else. (The top monkey's
testosterone level will be higher than that of the monkeys below him, and levels will
decrease down the line.) Number 3, for example, will pick fights with numbers 4 and 5,
but will avoid and run away from number 1 and number 2 . If you give number 3 a mas-
sive infusion of testosterone, he will likely become more aggressive-but only toward
number 4 and number 5, with whom he has now become an absolute violent torment.
He will still avoid number 1 and number 2, demonstrating that the "testosterone isn't
causing aggression, it's exaggerating the aggression that's already there."83
It turns out that testosterone has what scientists call a "permissive effect" on ag-
gression: It doesn't cause it, but it does facilitate and enable the aggression that is
already there. What's more, testosterone is produced by aggression, so that the correla-
tion between the two may, in fact, have the opposite direction than previously thought.
In his thoughtful book Testosterone and Social Structure, Theodore Kemper notes
several studies in which testosterone levels were linked to men's experiences. In studies
of tennis players, medical students, wrestlers, nautical competitors, parachutists, and
officer candidates, winning and losing determined levels of testosterone, so that the
levels of the winners rose dramatically, whereas those of the losers dropped or re-
mained the same. Kemper suggests that testosterone levels vary depending upon men's
experience of either dominance, "elevated social rank that is achieved by overcoming
others in a competitive confrontation," or eminence, where elevated rank "is earned
through socially valued and approved accomplishment." Significantly, men's testosterone
levels prior to either dominance or eminence could not predict the outcome; it was the
experience of rising status due to success that led to the elevation of the testosterone
level. (These same experiences lead to increases in women's testosterone levels as well.) 84
Several recent studies have made the earlier facile correlation quite a bit more in-
teresting. A Finnish study found no difference in testosterone levels between violent
and nonviolent men. But among the violent men, levels of testosterone did correlate
with levels of hostility: The violent men with higher levels of testosterone were diag-
nosed with antisocial personality disorder. This supports the notion that testosterone
has a permissive effect on aggression, because it correlates with hostility only among
the violent men. And a UCLA researcher found that men with low testosterone were
more likely to be angry, irritable, and aggressive than men with normal or high levels
of testosterone. Although Sapolsky's statement that "testosterone is probably a vastly
overrated hormone" may be an understatement, these last studies raise some troubling
concerns, especially when compared with the questions about sexual orientation and
hormone levels (see later). 85
Some recent research approaches the relationship between testosterone and ag-
gression from the other side. It turns out that marriage and fatherhood tend to depress
the amount of testosterone in a man's body. In one study of fifty-eight Boston-area
men (nearly all of whom were Harvard graduate or professional students), unmarried
men had higher levels than did married men, and that difference increased only
slightly when the married man had a child. Those married men with children who
spent a lot of time doing child care had even lower levels. Actually, the testosterone
levels differed only slightly, and only in the evening; samples taken in the morning,
when one had rested, showed no differences at all. Yet from these results, massive leaps
of logic followed. Because testosterone facilitates competition and aggression, fathers
with children were opting out of this typically masculine activity. "Maybe it's very
adaptive for men to suppress irritability," commented Peter Ellison, one of the study's
authors. "Maybe the failure to do that places the child at risk." Maybe. Or maybe Har-
vard graduate students have lower testosterone levels than other men in Boston. Or
maybe by the end of the day, trying to balance work and family life, an involved father
is simply depleted. (Stress reduces levels of testosterone.) From such tiny and inconsis-
tent differences, one should leap to no conclusions whatever. 86
Some therapists, though, go much further and prescribe testosterone for men as a
sort of chemical tonic, designed to provide the same sort of pep and "vim and vigor"
that tonics and cure-alls promised at the turn of the twentieth century. Happy con-
sumers swear by the results, and some therapists have even diagnosed a medically
treatable malady (which should enable it to be covered by insurance) called "andro-
pause" or "male menopause," treatable by hormone-replacement therapy for men.87
Much of the research on hormones and gender identity has been done by
inference-that is, by examining cases where hormones did not work properly or
where one biological sex got too much of the "wrong" hormone.88 In some of the more
celebrated research on fetal hormone development, Money and Ehrhardt reported on
girls who had androgenital syndrome (AGS)-a preponderance of male hormones
(androgens) in their systems at birth-and on another set of girls whose mothers had
taken progestins during pregnancy. All twenty-five girls had masculine-appearing
genitalia and had operations to "correct" their genitals. The AGS girls also were given
constant cortisone treatments to enable their adrenal glands to function properly.89
Money and Ehrhardt's findings were interesting. The girls and their mothers re-
ported a higher frequency of tomboy behavior in these girls. They enjoyed vigorous
Can Food Make Us Gay?

That might not be as crazy as it sounds, at least one fascinating implication of this assertion for a
according to evangelical preacher Jim Rutz. He argues student of gender. Notice that soy is to be avoided
that homosexuality is caused by insufficient amounts because it contains female hormones, which will turn
of the appropriate sex hormone and that therefore you gay. Well, who is the "you" in that sentence? A
gay men are more "feminine" than straight men. male! If homosexuality is a gender disorder (males
And, he claims, soy products, like tofu, contain large who are feminized, females who are masculinized),
amounts of estrogen, so "when you feed a baby soy why does the earnest Reverend Rutz not prescribe soy
formula, you're giving him or her the equivalent of five products for girls, to make sure they don't become
birth control pills a day." Eating tofu can turn you gay. lesbians? Are there only gay men?
"Soy is feminizing," he claims, "and commonly leads This concern about homosexuality turns out to be
to a decrease in the size of the penis, sexual confusion another moment of gender inequality. And although
and homosexuality." This idea was recently translated all of us should watch what we eat for health reasons,
into a commercial for Hummers, the ultimate com- it's unlikely that there is any food that can make you
pensation for insecure gender identity. gay-or straight.
Despite the fact that these assertions are bio-
logically preposterous (and, in the case of penis size, Source: Jim Rutz, "Soy Is Making Kids 'Gay"' in World Net Daily,
simply untrue, as you'll see in a few pages), there is December 12, 2006.
outdoor games and sports, preferred toy cars and guns to dolls, and attached more
importance to career plans than to marriage. However, they showed no more aggres-
sion or fighting than other girls. Later research seemed to confirm the notion that
"prenatal androgen is one of the factors contributing to the development of tempera-
mental differences between and within the sexes.''9°
Appearances, however, can be deceiving. Medical researcher Anne Fausto-Sterling
argues that several problems make Ehrhardt and her colleagues' research less con-
vincing than it at first may seem. The research suffered from "insufficient and inap-
propriate" controls: Cortisone is a powerful drug, and the AGS girls underwent
calamitous surgery (including clitoridectomy), and there were no independent mea-
sures of the effects. Further, the "method of data collection is inadequate" because it
was based entirely on interviews with parents and children, with no impartial direct
observation of these reported behaviors. Finally, "the authors do not properly explore
alternative explanations of their results," such as parental expectations and differen-
tial treatment of their very "different" children.91
Another set of experiments examined the other side of the equation-boys who
received higher-than-average doses of prenatal estrogen from mothers who were
treated with estrogen during their pregnancies. Yalom, Green, and Fisk found that
boys who received "female" hormones in utero were less active and less athletic than
other boys. However, all the boys' mothers were chronically and seriously ill during
their infancy and childhood (which was not true for the control sample of normal
boys). Perhaps the boys had simply been admonished against loud and boisterous play
in the house so as not to disturb their mothers and had simply learned to be content
while playing quietly or reading.92
"As Nature Made Him"?

One of the most famous cases that purports to prove disastrous. The case "provides stark evidence that a
how biological sex is the sole foundation for gender person's brain predetermines sexual identity-not
identity concerned a Canadian boy, Bruce Reimer. one's anatomy or social environment," was how a
In 1966, Bruce and his identical twin Brian underwent writer in the Los Angeles Times put it. 94
routine circumcisions in a hospital. Brian's circumci- But is the case that simple, that no matter how
sion went smoothly, but Bruce's went terribly wrong, much tinkering one does, nature always trumps nur-
and his penis was severed. His distraught parents ture? Any scientist should be wary of generalizing
brought him to Johns Hopkins University Medical from a single case-especially a case with so many
Center, where, under the aegis of Dr. John Money, other factors that might have influenced the outcome.
he was surgically "transformed" into a girl. Over the How would you feel about yourself, and your gender
next decades "Brenda" was faced with several more identity, if you were constantly being dragged to some
surgical procedures, annual visits to Dr. Money's clinic, hospital every few months throughout your early
and massive doses of female sex hormones, while her childhood, had your genitals poked and prodded and
parents struggled to raise Brenda as a girl. And not just surgically "repaired," and if everyone paid what would
"a" girl-but a very frilly, feminine, and dainty girl at no doubt feel like an inordinate amount of attention
that. (Even though she described herself as a tomboy to your genitalia? Would it change your opinion, for
as a child, Brenda's mother was determined that her example, if I also told you that David's father became
"daughter" be "polite and quiet" and "ladylike.") an uncommunicative alcoholic, that his mother
Despite their becoming poster children for attempted suicide and was clinically depressed, and
Money's claims that gender identity is more mal- that his twin brother, Brian, became a drug addict
leable than originally thought and, indeed, that it and a criminal and eventually committed suicide him-
can be changed, both twins grew up depressed and self? Or that even David killed himself as well, in part
unhappy on the Canadian prairie, with parents who because, despite his hopes, he never fully felt com-
were both naive and uncommunicative and deeply fortable as a male either? Confused and depressed,
ashamed of what had happened. Eventually, Brenda's who wouldn't want a magical explanation for all of
situation was revealed to a sexologist, Dr. Milton one's pain and suffering, that single "A-ha! That's the
Diamond at the University of Hawaii, a longtime foe reason I feel so weird!"
of John Money's unorthodox ideas and practices. It's not so simple. For one thing, the case's assertions
Under Diamond's supervision, Brenda reclaimed rest on the dubious premise that a child without a
his male gender identity, renamed himself "David," penis could not possibly be a boy and that a girl must
and became the man he said he felt he always was. be feminine-demure, restrained, and dressed in
"Suddenly it all made sense why I felt the way I did," frilly clothes. Were our gender roles more elastic, we
he told a journalist who eventually wrote a best-selling wouldn't try so obsessively to coerce such behaviors
book about his life. "I wasn't some sort of weirdo. from our children, who express far more variability
I wasn't crazy." David eventually married and adopted than our norms about proper gender behavior. Surely
three children. 93 our gender identity is the result of a complex inter-
His story, passionately told by journalist John action of genetics, brain chemistry, hormones, and
Colapinto, became a book, As Nature Made Him: The our immediate familial environment, nestled within a
Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl, and a TV documentary. more general social and cultural milieu. No one cause
Colapinto argues forcefully that David's case demon- of something so complex and variable as gender iden-
strates that nature trumps nurture, that biology is des- tity could possibly be extracted, especially from one
tiny, and that meddling with Mother Nature is always such troubling case. 95
About the relationship between women's hormones and behaviors, we have the
research on premenstrual syndrome (PMS). During the days just before menstruation,
some women seem to exhibit symptoms of dramatic and wildly unpredictable mood
changes, outbursts of violence, anger, and fits of crying. Alec Coppen and Neil Kessel
studied 465 women and observed that they were more irritable and depressed during
the premenstrual phase than during midcycle. Such behaviors have led physicians to
label this time "premenstrual syndrome." In fact, PMS has been listed as a disease in
the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) of the American
Psychiatric Association, which guides physicians (and insurance companies) in treat-
ing illnesses. And PMS has even been successfully used as a criminal defense strategy
for a woman accused of violent outbursts. Two British women, arguing that PMS is a
form of temporary insanity, have used PMS as a successful defense in their trials for
the murder of their male partners.
The politics of PMS parallels the politics of testosterone. "If you had an investment
in a bank, you wouldn't want the president of your bank making a loan under those
raging hormonal influences at that particular period," one physician noted. "There are
just physical and psychological inhabitants that limit a female's potential." Happily,
PMS occurs for only a few days a month, whereas unpredictably high levels of testos-
terone in men may last all month. Perhaps these presumed bank investors might want
to rethink their investment strategies. Or consider this observation by feminist writer
Gloria Steinem: During those days immediately preceding her menstrual period (the
PMS days), a woman's estrogen level drops to its lowest point in the monthly cycle.
Thus, just before menstruation, women, at least hormonally, more closely resemble
men than at any other point in their cycle! 96 Perhaps, then, the only sensible purely
biological solution would be to have every corporation, government office, and-
especially-military operation run by gay men, whose levels of testosterone would
presumably be low enough to offset the hormone's propulsion toward aggression, while
they would also be immune to the "raging hormonal influences" of PMS.
HORMONES AND HOMOSEXUALITY

The research on the relationship between hormones and homosexuality might lead
us in that direction, were we politically disposed to go there. However, most research
on the relationship between prenatal hormones and sexual orientation has had ex-
actly the opposite political agenda. At the turn of the twentieth century, many theo-
rists held that homosexuals were "inverts," creatures of one sex (their "true" sex)
trapped in the body of the other. Some argued that homosexuality was "caused" by
hormonal imbalances in utero that left males effeminate and therefore desiring men
and left women masculine and therefore desiring women. In the 1970s, the German
researcher Gunter Dorner, director of the Institute for Experimental Endocrinology
at Humboldt University in Berlin, and his associates argued that low levels of testos-
terone during fetal development, a rather tepid hormonal bath, would predispose
males toward homosexuality. If rats did not receive enough of their appropriate sex
hormone during fetal development, "then something would go wrong with the forma-
tion of the centers and with later sexual behavior," reported two journalists. "Adult
rats would behave in ways like members of the opposite sex. They would become, in a
sense, 'homosexual.'''97
Such research fit neatly with the era's antigay political agenda, suggesting as it did
that male homosexuality was the result of insufficient prenatal masculine hormones
or inadequate masculinity. Treatment of homosexuality-indeed, perhaps its cure-
might be effected simply by injecting higher doses of testosterone into these men,
whose recharged virility would transform them into heterosexuals with higher sex
drives. When such an experiment was attempted, researchers found that the men's sex
drive did indeed increase as a result of the testosterone injections. However, the object
of their lusts did not change: They simply desired more sex with men! Hormone levels
may affect sexual urges, and especially the intensity or frequency of sexual activity, but
they are empirically and logically irrelevant to studies of sexual object choice.
Could prenatal stress account for a disposition toward homosexuality? In another
series of studies, Dorner and his colleagues argued that more homosexual men are born
during wartime than during peacetime. Their evidence for this claim was that a high pro-
portion of the 865 men treated for "venereal disease" in six regions of the German Demo-
cratic Republic were born between 1941 and 1947. They theorized that because prenatal
stress leads to a "significant decrease in plasma testosterone levels" among rat fetuses,
which also leads to increased bisexual or homosexual behaviors among the adult rats, why
not among humans? Dorner theorized that war leads to stress, which leads to a lowering of
androgens in the male fetuses, which encourages the development of a homosexual orien-
tation. Based on this trajectory, Dorner concluded that the prevention of war "may render
a partial prevention of the development of sexual deviation.''9 8 (Well, perhaps-but only
because wartime tends to place men together in foxholes without women, where they may
engage in homosexual activity more frequently than during peacetime.99 )
Even if these data were convincing, a purely endocrinological account fails to sat-
isfy. For example, one could just as easily construct a purely psychodynamic theory.
For example: In wartime, children tend to grow up more often without a father or to
be separated from other members of the family. If homosexuality really occurs more
frequently during wartime, it would be just as reasonable to take this as "proof" of
certain psycho dynamic theories of homosexuality, for example, the lack of a father or
a particularly close bond between mother and son.
Another just-so story? Perhaps. But, then, so are explanations about aggregate
levels of testosterone during wartime. Although these arguments may not be convinc-
ing, they continue to exert significant influence over our commonsense explanations
of gender difference.
Another body of research on prenatal hormones examines hormonal anomalies
as a clue to normal development. Take, for example, congenital adrenal hyperplasia
(CAH), a genetic defect that causes female fetuses to be exposed to extremely high
levels of testosterone in utero. Girls with CAH really enjoy playing with boys' toys and
show decidedly masculine affective styles. But does that mean that there is "something
in them that's innately male," as television celebrity and advocate of biological deter-
minism John Stossel thinks?10 0 Hardly.
The most interesting recent research on the relationship between prenatal hor-
mones and sexual orientation has been carried out by psychologist Marc Breedlove
and his students. Breedlove is a far more careful researcher than most, and he is also
far more cautious in the claims he makes. Breedlove measured the lengths of the index
and ring fingers (second and fourth digits) and calculated the ratios between them for
both heterosexual women and lesbians and for gay and heterosexual men. It's well
known that for average women, the two fingers are usually the same length, whereas
among average men, the index finger is more often significantly shorter than the
fourth. This is assumed to be an effect of prenatal androgens on male fetuses. Breed-
love found that the ratio between the two fingers was more "masculine" among the
lesbians than the heterosexual women; that is, that lesbians' index fingers were signifi-
cantly shorter than their ring fingers. He found no differences between gay and
straight men (both were equally "masculine"), although another study did find signifi-
cant differences between the two, with gay men's finger ratios being somewhat more
"masculine" than those of heterosexual men.101
Breedlove believed that the difference between lesbians and heterosexual women
was due to the effect of increased prenatal androgens among the lesbians-thus render-
ing them more "masculine." Now this accords with traditional stereotypes that suggest
that homosexuality is related to gender nonconformity. But one must be careful about
overstating these stereotypes, because Breedlove found the exact opposite among men.
Breedlove also found a relationship between birth order and sexual orientation for
men. The greater the number of older brothers a man had, the higher the likelihood
that he would be homosexual. In fact, subsequent researchers have suggested that each
additional elder brother that a man has increases the likelihood that he will be gay by
about 30 percent. Breedlove hypothesized that this also was the result of prenatal
androgenization of subsequent children. Although this might not appear controversial,
it accords with other studies that find that gay men's levels of testosterone are signifi-
cantly higher than those of heterosexual men. That is, gay men are more "real men"
than are straight men. (Other research that supports the argument that gay men are
"hypermasculine" includes studies that find that gay men's penis size is greater than
that of straight men, despite the fact that gay men undergo puberty a bit earlier and are
therefore slightly shorter than straight men and that gay men report significantly
higher amounts of sexual behavior.) "This calls into question all of our cultural as-
sumptions that gay men are feminine," said Breedlove in an interview-a thought that
biological determinists and their political allies will not find especially comforting. 102
This sort of research does give us pause. Anthony Bogaert did a similar study in
which he found that there was no effect on sexual orientation by unrelated siblings in
the same household (they had to be biological) but that older brothers who did not live
with a person did influence the chances of that person being gay. This seems to rule
out socialization effects (older nonrelated brothers "recruiting" the youngest through
sexual coercion) or the outcome of seemingly harmless sexual play. Bogaert offers no
speculation about why this might be the case or even about exactly what sorts of physi-
ological mechanisms cause it. It might be nature's way of reducing the number of
males competing for increasingly scarce (with large broods of males) females. If so, it
not only signals some biological elements to the origins of sexual orientation, but also
makes a strong case for the naturalness of homosexuality.1°3 At least male homosexu-
ality. No birth order phenomena have been posited as predictors of lesbianism.
THE RESEARCH ON INTERSEXUALITY

One of the most intriguing tests of hormonal research has been carried out on intersex
people. Here, at the boundaries of biological sex, we can observe more clearly the pro-
cesses that are often too difficult to see in "normal" biological development. Intersex
people are organisms that have both male and female characteristics. True intersex
people have either one ovary and one testicle or else a single organ with both types of
reproductive tissue. They are exceedingly rare. Less rare, however, are those whose
biological sex is ambiguous.104
Take the most celebrated case: Two relatively isolated villages in the Dominican
Republic seemed to produce a larger-than-expected set of cases of genetically male
intersex for at least three generations. These were babies born with internal male
structures but with sex organs that resembled a clitoris more than they did a penis.
Moreover, the testes had not descended at all, leaving what appeared to be a scrotum
that resembled labia, as well as an apparently closed vaginal cavity. Their condition
was the result of an extremely rare deficiency in a steroid, 5-alpha reductase. Eighteen
of these babies were raised as girls and studied by a team of researchers from Cornell
University.105
After these children had relatively uneventful childhoods, during which they
played and acted like other little girls, their adolescence became somewhat more trau-
matic. They failed to develop breasts and noticed a mass of tissue in their groins that
turned out to be testicles beginning a descent. At puberty, their bodies began to pro-
duce a significant amount of testosterone, which made their voices deepen, their mus-
cles develop, and facial hair appear. Suddenly, these youngsters were no longer like the
other girls! And so all but one of them switched and became males. One remained a
female, determined to marry and have a sex change operation. (Another decided he
was a male but continued to wear dresses and act as a female.) All the others were suc-
cessful in making the transition; they became men, found typically masculine jobs
(woodchoppers, farmers, miners), and married women.
Imperato-McGinley and her colleagues interpreted these events as a demonstra-
tion of the effect of prenatal and pubertal sex hormones. They argued that a prenatal
dose of testosterone had created "male" brains, which had remained dormant within
ambiguous and female-appearing physiological bodies. At puberty, a second secretion
of testosterone activated these genetically masculine brains, and the youngsters made
the transition without too much psychological trauma.
They didn't, however, do it alone. The other villagers had made fun of them, call-
ing them guevadoches ("eggs [testicles] at twelve") or machihembra ("first woman,
then man"). But after they had made the move to become males, their neighbors were
more encouraging and offered advice and gifts to ease the transition. Moreover, one
might argue that these children had a less fixed relationship between early gender
development and adolescent gender patterns precisely because of their ambiguous
genital development. After three generations, they might have come to assume that a
girl does not always develop into a woman. Anthropologist Gilbert Herdt argues that
such "gender polymorphic" cultures have the ability to deal with radical gender
changes across the life cycle far more easily than do "gender dimorphic" cultures, such
as the United States, where we expect everyone to be either male or female for his or
her entire life.10 6 One might also ask what would have happened had these been little
boys who, it turned out, had actually been female and were therefore invited to make
a transition to being adult women. Who would choose to stay a girl if she could end up
becoming a boy, especially in a culture in which the sexes are highly differentiated and
males enjoy privileges that females do not? Would boys find a transition to becoming
girls as easy?
THE POLITICS OF BIOLOGICAL ESSENTIALISM

Biological arguments for sex differences have historically tended to be politically
conservative, suggesting that the social arrangements between women and men-
including social, economic, and political discrimination based on sex-are actually
the inevitable outcome of nature working in its mysterious ways. Political attempts to
legislate changes in the gender order or efforts to gain civil rights for women or for gay
men and lesbians have always been met with biological essentialism: Don't fool with
Mother Nature! James Dobson, a former professor of pediatrics and founder of Focus
on the Family, a right-wing advocacy group, puts the case starkly:
I feel it is a mistake to tamper with the time-honed relationship of husband as loving
protector and wife as recipient of that protection ... Because two captains sink the
ship and two cooks spoil the broth, I feel that a family must have a leader whose
decisions prevail in times of differing opinions ... That role has been assigned to
the man of the house.10 1
Social scientists have also jumped onto the biological bandwagon. For example, soci-
ologist Steven Goldberg, in his book The Inevitability of Patriarchy, argues that because
male domination is ubiquitous, eternal, it simply has to be based on biological origins.
There is simply too much coincidence for it to be social. Feminism, Goldberg argues,
is therefore a war with nature:
Women follow their own physiological imperatives ... In this, and every other
society [men] look to women for gentleness, kindness, and love, for refuge from a
world of pain and force ... In every society basic male motivation is the feeling that
the women and children must be protected ... The feminist cannot have it both
ways: if she wishes to sacrifice all this, all that she will get in return is the right to
meet men on male terms. She will lose.108
Politically, unequal social arrangements are, in the end, ordained by nature.10 9

But the evidence-occasionally impressive, often uneven-is far from convincing.
If male domination is natural, based on biological imperatives, why, asks sociologist
Cynthia Fuchs Epstein, must it be coercive, held in place by laws, traditions, customs,
and the constant threat of violence for any woman who dares step out of line? Why
would women want to enter male spheres, like colleges and universities, politics and the
labor force, the professions, and the military, for which they are clearly biologically
ill-suited?
Ironically, in the past decade, conservatives who argue that biological bases ac-
count for both sex differences and sexuality differences have been joined by some
women and some gay men and lesbians who have adopted an essentialism of their
own. Some feminists, for example, argue that women should be pleased to claim "the
intuitive and emotional strengths given by their right-hemisphere, in opposition to
the over-cognitive, left-hemisphere-dominated, masculine nature."110 Often a feminist
essentialism uses women's experiences as mothers to describe the fundamental and
irreducible differences between the sexes, rather than evolution, brain organization,
or chemistry. Sociologist Alice Rossi argues that, because of their bodies, "women
have a head start in easier reading of an infant's facial expressions, smoothness of
body motions, greater ease in handling a tiny creature with tactile gentleness."m
Similarly, research on the biological bases of homosexuality suggests some un-
likely new political allies and a dramatic shifting of positions. Gay brain research
may have shed little light on the etiology of sexual orientation, but it has certainly
generated significant political heat. In a way, the promotion of gay essentialism is a po-
litical strategy to normalize gayness. "It points out that gay people are made this way
by nature," observes Robert Bray, the director of public information of the National
Gay and Lesbian Task Force. "It strikes at the heart of people who oppose gay rights
and who think we don't deserve our rights because we're choosing to be the way we
are." Michael Bailey and Richard Pillard, the authors of the gay twin study, opined in
a New York Times op-ed essay that a "biological explanation is good news for homo-
sexuals and their advocates." "If it turns out, indeed, that homosexuals are born that
way, it could undercut the animosity gays have had to contend with for centuries,"
added a cover story in Newsweek. Such an understanding would "reduce being gay to
something like being left handed, which is in fact all that it is," commented gay jour-
nalist and author Randy Shilts in the magazine. And Simon LeVay, whose research
sparked the recent debate, hoped that homophobia would dissipate as the result of this
research, because its basis in prejudice about the unnaturalness of homosexual acts
would vanish. Gays would become "just another minority," just another ethnic group,
with an identity based on primordial characteristics. 112
This political implication is not lost on conservatives, who are now taking up the
social constructionist "nurture" theory of sexual orientation as firmly as they argue
for intractable biologically based differences between women and men. More than a
decade ago, then-vice president Dan Quayle argued that homosexuality is a matter of
choice-"the wrong choice," he added quickly. Former attorney general John Ashcroft
agreed that it is "a choice which can be made and unmade." Such thinking leads to the
politically volatile though scientifically dubious "conversion" movement that holds
that, through intensive therapy, gay men and lesbians can become happy and "healthy"
heterosexuals.113
Others are less convinced. Gay historian John D'Emilio wondered if "we really
expect to bid for real power from a position of 'I can't help it.' "114 Even if we are, as
Lady Gaga sings, "born this way," such naturalization efforts are vulnerable to po-
litical subversion by the very forces they are intended to counteract. Antigay forces
could point to a brain defect and suggest possible prenatal interventions for preven-
tion and postnatal "cures.'' The headline in the Washington Times heralding LeVay's
research shouted: "Scientists Link Brain Abnormality, Homosexuality." LeVay him-
self acknowledges this danger, commenting that "the negative side of it is that with
talk of an immutable characteristic, you then can be interpreted as meaning a defect
or a congenital disorder. You could say that being gay is like having cystic fibrosis or
something, which should be aborted or corrected in utero." And no sooner did he say
that than James Watson, Nobel laureate for his discovery of the double helix in genetics,
suggested that women who are found to be carrying the gene for homosexuality
ought to be allowed to abort the child. "If you could find the gene which determines
sexuality and a woman decides she doesn't want a homosexual child, well, let her,"
he said in an interview.
What this debate ignores is what we might call the sociology of gay essentialism:
the ways in which gender remains the organizing principle of the homosexual essence.
Notice how essentialist research links homosexuality with gender inversion, as if

women were the reference point against which gay and straight men were to be mea-
sured. Gay men, it turns out, have "female" brain structures, thus making gay men
into hermaphrodites-women's brains in men's bodies-a kind of neurological third
sex. But if gay men and women had similar brain structures, then the headline in the
Washington Times cited earlier might have more accurately problemized heterosexual
men, the numerical minority, as the deviant group with the brain abnormalities.
More significantly, though, these studies miss the social organization of gay sex-
the ways in which the who, what, where, when, how, and how many are governed by
gender norms. In their sexual activities, rates of sexual encounters, and variations, gay
men and lesbians are far greater gender conformists than they are nonconformists.
Gay men's sexuality looks strikingly like straight men's sexuality-except for the not
completely incidental detail of the gender of their object choice. Regardless of sexual
orientation, virtually all sex research points to one conclusion: Gender, not sexual ori-
entation, is the organizing principle of sexual behavior. Gay men and straight men
seek masculine sex; sex is confirmation of masculinity. Straight women and lesbians
experience feminine sex; sex is confirmation of femininity.115
The gender organization of sexuality also explains who believes it. Recent surveys
have shown that, overwhelmingly, it is gay men who believe that their homosexuality
is natural, biological, and inborn. Lesbians are more likely to believe that their homo-
sexuality is socially constructed.116 Gay men lean toward essentialist explanations,
Vera Whisman argues, because gender privilege gives them the possibility of access to
higher-status positions; if their homosexuality is biological, it can be overlooked and
they can claim their "rightful" (read: masculine) status. Lesbian sexuality is seen by
lesbians as more socially and historically contingent because lesbians are doubly
marginalized, and their sexuality and gender identity are often, but not always,
conditioned by an ideological connection to feminism. As lesbian-feminist writer
Charlotte Bunch argues:
Woman identified Lesbianism is, then, more than a sexual preference, it is a political
choice. It is political because relationships between men and women are essentially
political, they involve power and dominance. Since the Lesbian actively rejects that
relationship and chooses women, she defies the established political system.117
For lesbians, sexual behavior implies a political statement about living outside
the mainstream; gay men see it as an accident of birth to be overcome by being
overlooked.
CONCLUSION
Biological research holds significant sway over our thinking about the two fundamen-
tal questions in the study of gender: the differences between women and men and the
gendered inequalities that are evident in our social lives. But from the perspective of a
social scientist, the biologists may have it backward. Innate gender differences do not
automatically produce the obvious social, political, and economic inequalities we ob-
serve in contemporary society. In fact, the reverse seems to be true: Gender inequality,
over time, ossifies into observable differences in behaviors, attitudes, and traits. If one
were to raise a person in a dark room and then suddenly turn the lights on, and the
person had a difficult time adjusting to the light, would you conclude that the person
had genetic eye problems compared with the population that had been living in the
light all that time?
There are many problems with the research on biological bases for gender differ-
ence and more and greater problems with the extrapolation of those differences to
the social world of gender inequality. Consider the problem of what we might call
"anthropomorphic hyperbole." Neurobiologist Simon LeVay writes that "genes
demand instant gratification."118 What are we to make of such an obviously false
statement? Genes do not "demand" anything. And which genes is he talking about
anyway? Some genes simply control such seemingly unimportant and uninteresting
things as eye color or the capacity to differentiate between sweet and sour tastes.
Others wait patiently for decades until they can instruct a man's hair to begin to fall
out. Still others are so undemanding that they may wait patiently for several genera-
tions, until another recessive mate is found after multiple attempts at reproduction.
Genes may play a role in the sexual decision making of a species or even of individual
members of any particular species; they do so only through an individual's interaction
with his or her environment. They cannot possibly control any particular decision
made by any particular individual at any particular time. With whom you decide to
have sex this weekend-or even if you do have sex-is not determined by your genes,
but rather by you.
Another problem in biological research has been the casual assumption that cau-
sation always moves from physiology to psychology. Just because one finds a correla-
tion between two variables doesn't permit one to speculate about the causal direction.
As biologist Ruth Hubbard argues:
If a society put[s] half its children into short skirts and warns them not to move in
ways that reveal their panties, while putting the other half into jeans and overalls
and encouraging them to climb trees, play ball, and participate in other vigorous
outdoor games; if later, during adolescence, the children who have been wearing
trousers are urged to "eat like growing boys" while the children in skirts are warned
to watch their weight and not get fat; if the half in jeans runs around in sneakers or
boots, while the half in skirts totters about on spike heels, then these two groups
of people will be biologically as well as socially different.119
We know, then, what we cannot say about the biological bases for gender differ-
ence and gender inequality. But what can we say? We can say that biological differ-
ences provide the raw materials from which we begin to create our identities within
culture, within society. "Biological sexuality is the necessary precondition for human
sexuality," writes historian Robert Padgug. "But biological sexuality is only a precon-
dition, a set of potentialities, which is never unmediated by human reality, and which
becomes transformed in qualitatively new ways in human society."12 0
At the conclusion to his powerful indictment of social Darwinism, first published
in 1944, the eminent historian Richard Hofstadter pointed out that biological ideas
such as survival of the fittest,
whatever their doubtful value in natural science, are utterly useless in attempting
to understand society; that the life of man in society, while it is incidentally a
biological fact, has characteristics that are not reducible to biology and must be
explained in the distinctive terms of a cultural analysis; that the physical well-
being of men is a result of thei r social organization and not vice versa; that social
improvement is a product of advances in technology and social organization, not of
breeding or selective elimination; that judgments as to the value of competition
between men or enterprises or nations must be based upon social and not alleg-
edly biological consequences ...121
In his presidential address to the American Sociological Association, Troy Duster

warned of the "increasing authority of reductionist science" informing public conver-
sations. A recent article by psychologist Deena Skolnick Weisberg and her colleagues
suggest just how prescient is Duster's comment. Weisberg and her colleagues gave
three groups-regular adults, students in a neuroscience course, and neuroscience
experts-a set of descriptions of psychological phenomena, followed by different types
of explanations for those phenomena. These explanations were either good or bad
explanations, though one of each type also had utterly irrelevant neuroscientific infor-
mation randomly thrown in.
Everyone thought the good explanations were better than the bad ones. But the
nonexpert groups also found the explanations-good and bad-with the trumped up
neuroscience information more satisfying than those without the information-even
though the information was utterly useless. It was especially helpful in making bad
explanations sound more reasonable. (I suppose that sly students might have deter-
122
mined that adding a dollop of irrelevant scientific jargon to an answer on an exam

might obscure the fact that they don't really know what they are talking about, but that
would work only in a class that wasn't using this book. Sorry.)
" ... so you see, women think with their brain,

whereas men think with their penis."
Figure 2.1. © Mike Shapiro Cartoons.
Scientists have yet to discover the gene that carries the belief in nature over
nurture; it is not yet clear which half of the brain blots out evidence of cultural or
individual variation from evolutionary imperatives. Is human gullibility for pseudo-
scientific explanations carried on a particular chromosome? Scientists-social, be-
havioral, natural, biological-will continue to disagree as they hunt for the origins of
human behavior. What they must all recognize is that people behave differently in
different cultures and that even similar behaviors may mean different things in differ-
ent contexts.
Americans seem to want desperately to believe that the differences between women
and men are significant and that those differences can be traced to biological origins. A
cover story in Newsweek promised to explain "Why Men and Women Think Differently,"
although the story revealed problems with every bit of evidence and concluded that
"the research will show that our identities as men and women are creations of both
nature and nurture. And that no matter what nature deals us, it is we-our choices,
our sense of identity, our experiences in life-who make ourselves what we are."123
How we do that, how we create identities out of our experiences, how we under-
stand those experiences, and the choices we make-these are the province of social
science, which tries to explore the remarkable diversity of human experience. Although
biological studies can suggest to us the basic building blocks of experience and iden-
tity, it is within our cultures, our societies, and our families that those building blocks
are assembled into the astonishingly diverse architecture that constitutes our lives.
KEY TERMS
Andropause Evolutionary Success Natural Selection
Anthropomorphic Evolutionary Theory Reproductive Strategies
Hyperbole Gender Identity Reproductive Success
Biological Essentialism Gender Inversion Sex Discrimination
Biological Principle Hermaphrodites Sexual Orientation
Brain Research Infanticide Sexual Psychologies
Craniology Laws of Nature Social Darwinism
Endocrinological Research Male Menopause Sociobiology
Evolutionary Psychology Maternal Instinct
CHAPTER
3 SPANNING the WORLD

Culture Constructs Gender Difference
If a test of a civilization be sought, none can be so sure as the

condition of that half of society over which the other half has power.
-HARRIET MARTINEAU, SOCIETY IN AMERICA (1837)
iological models assume that biological sex determines gender, that innate
B biological differences lead to behavioral differences, which in turn lead to
social arrangements. By this account, social inequalities are encoded into our
physiological composition. Biological anomalies alone should account for varia-
tion. But the evidence suggests otherwise. When children like the Dominican
pseudohermaphrodites are raised as the other gender they can easily make the
transition to the other sex. And how do we account for the dramatic differences
in the definitions of masculinity and femininity around the world? And how
come some societies have much wider ranges of gender inequality than others?
On these questions, the biological record is mute.
What's more, biology is not without its own biases, though these have been
hard to detect. Some anthropologists argue that biological models projected
contemporary Western values onto other cultures. These projections led evolu-
tionists like Steven Goldberg to ignore the role of women and the role of colo-
nialism in establishing gender differences in traditional cultures. Anthropologists
like Karen Brodkin suggest that biological researchers always assumed that
58
Chapter 3: Spanning the World 59
gender difference implied gender inequality, because Western notions of difference do
usually lead to and justify inequality. In other words, gender difference is the result of
gender inequality-not the other way around. 1
Anthropological research on cultural variations in the development of gender
definitions arose, in part, in response to such casual biological determinism. The more
we found out about other cultures, the more certain patterns emerged. The evolution-
ary world and ethnographic world offer a fascinating diversity of cultural construc-
tions of gender. Yet some themes do remain constant. Virtually all societies manifest
some amount of difference between women and men, and virtually all cultures exhibit
some form of male domination, despite variations in gender definition. So anthro-
pologists have also tried to explore the link between the near-universals of gender
difference and gender inequality. Some search for those few societies in which women
hold positions of power; others examine those rituals, beliefs, customs, and practices
that tend to increase inequality and those that tend to decrease it.
THE VARIATIONS IN GENDER DEFINITIONS

When anthropologists began to explore the cultural landscape, one of the first things
they found was far more variability in the definitions of masculinity and femininity than
any biologist would have predicted. Men possessed of relatively similar levels of testos-
terone, with similar brain structure and lateralization, seemed to exhibit dramatically
different levels of aggression, violence, and, especially, aggression toward women.
Women with similar brains, hormones, and ostensibly similar evolutionary imperatives
had widely varying experiences of passivity, PMS, and spatial coordination. One of
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the most celebrated anthropologists to explore these differences was Margaret Mead,
whose research in the South Seas (Samoa, Polynesia, Indonesia) remains, despite some
significant criticism, an example of engaged scholarship, clear writing, and important
ideas. Mead was clear that sex differences are "not something deeply biological," but
rather are learned and, once learned, become part of the ideology that continues to
perpetuate them. Here's how she put it:
I have suggested that certain human traits have been socially specialized as the
appropriate attitudes and behavior of only one sex, while other human traits have
been specialized for the opposite sex. This social specialization is then rationalized
into a theory that the socially decreed behavior is natural for one sex and unnatural
for the other, and that the deviant is a deviant because of glandular defect, or
developmental accident.2
In Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935), Mead explored the dif-
ferences in those definitions, whereas in several other books, such as Male and Female
(1949) and Coming of Age in Samoa (1928), she explored the processes by which males
and females become the men and women their cultures prescribe. No matter what she
seemed to be writing about, though, Mead always had one eye trained on the United
States. In generating implicit comparisons between our own and other cultures, Mead
defied us to maintain the fiction that because it is so here, it must be right and cannot
be changed.
In Sex and Temperament, Mead directly took on the claims of biological inevita-
bility. By examining three very different cultures in New Guinea, she hoped to show
the enormous cultural variation possible in definitions of masculinity and femininity
and, in so doing, to enable Americans better to understand both the cultural origins
and the malleability of their own ideas. The first two cultures exhibited remarkable
similarities between women and men. Masculinity and femininity were not the lines
along which personality differences seemed to be organized. Women and men were
not the "opposite" sex. For example, all members of the Arapesh culture appeared
gentle, passive, and emotionally warm. Males and females were equally "happy, trust-
ful, confident," and individualism was relatively absent. Men and women shared child
rearing; both were "maternal," and both discouraged aggressiveness among boys and
girls. Both men and women were thought to be relatively equally sexual, though their
sexual relationships tended to be "domestic" and not "romantic" or apparently what
we might call passionate. Although female infanticide and male polygamy were not
unknown, marriage was "even and contented." Indeed, Mead pronounced the politi-
cal arrangements "utopian." Here's how she summed up Arapesh life:
quiet and uneventful co-operation, singing in the cold dawn, and singing and laugh-
ter in the evening, men who sit happily playing to themselves on hand-drums,
women holding suckling children to their breasts, young girls walking easily down
the centre of the village, with the walk of those who are cherished by all about
them. 3
By contrast, Mead describes the Mundugumor, a tribe of headhunters and cannibals

who also viewed women and men as similar but expected both sexes to be equally ag-
gressive and violent. Women showed little "maternal instinct"; they detested pregnancy
and nursing and could hardly wait to return to the serious business of work and war.
"Mundugumor women actively dislike child-bearing, and they dislike children," Mead
writes. "Children are carried in harsh opaque baskets that scratch their skins, later, high
on their mother's shoulders, well away from the breast." Among the Mundugumor, there
was a violent rivalry between fathers and sons (there was more infanticide of boys than of
girls), and all people experienced a fear that they were being wronged by others. Quite
wealthy (partly as a result of their methods of population control), the Mundugumor
were, as Mead concludes, "violent, competitive, aggressively sexual, jealous, ready to see
and avenge insult, delighting in display, in action, in fighting.'¾
Here, then, were two tribes that saw gender differences as virtually nonexistent.
The third culture Mead described was the Tchambuli, where, as in the United States,
women and men were seen as extremely different. This was a patrilineal culture in
which polygyny was accepted. Here, one sex was composed primarily of nurturing and
gossipy consumers who spent their days dressing up and going shopping. They wore
curls and lots of jewelry, and Mead describes them as "charming, graceful, coquettish."
These, incidentally, were the men, and they liked nothing better than to "go off resplen-
dent in feathers and shell ornaments to spend a delightful few days" shopping. The
women were dominant, energetic, economic providers. It was they who fished, an ac-
tivity upon which the entire culture depended, and it was they "who have the real posi-
tions of power in the society." Completely unadorned, they were efficient, business-like,
controlled all the commerce and diplomacy of the culture, and were the initiators of
sexual relations. Mead notes that the Tchambuli were the only culture she had ever seen
"where little girls of ten and eleven were more alertly intelligent and more enterprising
than little boys." She writes that "what the women will think, what the women will say,
what the women will do lies at the back of each man's mind as he weaves his tenuous
and uncertain web of insubstantial relations with other men." By contrast, "the women
are a solid group, confused by no rivalries, brisk, patronizing, and jovial."5
What Mead found, then, were two cultures in which women and men were seen
as similar to each other and one culture in which women and men were seen as ex-
tremely different from each other-but exactly the opposite of the model familiar to
us. Each culture, of course, believed that women and men were the way they were be-
cause their biological sex determined their personality. None of them believed that
women and men were the outcome of economic scarcity, military success, or cultural
arrangements (figure 3.2).
Mead urged her readers to "admit men and women are capable of being molded to
a single pattern as easily as a diverse one."6 She demonstrated that women and men are
capable of similar or different temperaments, but she did not adequately explain why
women and men turn out to be different or the same. These, then, are the questions for
anthropologists: What are the determinants of women's and men's experiences? Why
should male domination be nearly universal? These questions have been taken up by
other anthropologists.
THE CENTRALITY OF THE GENDER DIVISION OF LABOR

In almost every society, labor is divided by gender (as well as age). Certain tasks are
reserved for women, others for men. How do we explain this gender division of labor,
if not by some biologically based imperatives?
Females
Masculine Feminine
Masculine Mundugumor United States
Males
Feminine Tchambuli Arapesh
Figure 3.2. From Margaret Mead 's Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (New York:
William Morrow, 1935) (plus her implicit fourth case).
One school of thought, functionalism, maintains that a sex-based division of

labor was necessary for the preservation of the society. As society became increasingly
complex, there arose a need for two kinds oflabor: hunting and gathering. Functional-
ists differ as to whether this division of labor had any moral component, whether the
work of one sex was more highly valued than the work of the other. But they agree that
the sex-based division of labor was functionally necessary for these societies. Such
models often assume that because the sex-based division oflabor arose to meet certain
social needs at one time, its preservation is an evolutionary imperative, or at least an
arrangement that is not to be trifled with casually.
On the other hand, because the sex-based division oflabor has a history, it is not
biologically inevitable; societies have changed and will continue to change. And it's
a very recent history at that. "The sexual division oflabor as we know it today prob-
ably developed quite recently in human evolution," writes anthropologist Adrienne
Zihlman.7 Moreover, this sex-based division oflabor is far more varied than we might
have assumed. In some cultures, women build the house; in others, they do the cooking.
But in a few, it's the reverse. In most cultures, women are responsible for child care. But
not in all cultures, and women are certainly not doing it all. In some cultures, tasks are
dramatically skewed and labor rigidly divided; others offer far more flexibility and
fluidity. Today, a sex-based division oflabor is functionally anachronistic, and the bio-
logical bases for specific social tasks being assigned to either men or women have long
been eroded. In the place of such foundations, though, lie centuries of social customs
and traditions that today contribute to our gender ideologies about what is appropriate
for one sex and not the other. The gender-based division oflabor has become a part of
our culture, not a part of our physical constitutions.
In fact, our physical constitutions have become less determinative in the as-
signment of tasks and the choosing of careers. It may even be true that the less
significance there is to real physical differences, the more emphasis we place on
them ideologically. For example, men no longer need to have physical strength to be
powerful and dominant. The most highly muscular men, in fact, appear in cultural side-
shows of body-building competition, but they do no more physical labor than the aver-
age suburban husband mowing the lawn and shoveling snow. As for women, the
technologies of family planning and sexual autonomy-birth control technology, legal
abortion, and institutional child care-have freed them from performing only child-
care duties and enabled them to participate in the institutions of the public sphere.
Once free, women have entered every area of the public sphere. A century ago,
women campaigned to enter the college classroom, the polling place, the professions,
and the work world. More recently, it's been the military and military colleges that
have opened their doors to women, the latter by court order. Today, very few occupa-
tions exist for which only women or only men are strictly biologically suited. Ask
yourselves: What occupations do you know of that biologically only women or only
men can perform? Offhand, I can think of only three: for women, wet nurse and sur-
rogate mother; for men, professional sperm donor. None of these is exactly a career of
choice for most of us.
If a sex-based division of labor has outlived its social usefulness or its physical
imperatives, it must be held in place by something else: the power of one sex over the
other. Where did that power come from? How has it developed? How does it vary from
culture to culture? What factors exaggerate it; what factors diminish it? These are
among the questions that anthropologists have endeavored to answer.
THEORIES OF GENDER DIFFERENTIATION

AND MALE DOMINATION
Several theorists have tried to explain the sexual division of labor and gender in-
equality by reference to large, structural forces that transform societies' organizing
principles. They've pointed to the impact of private property, the demands of war, and
the importance of male bonding to hunting and gathering as possible explanations
(figure 3.3).
Private Property and the Materialism of Male Domination

In the late nineteenth century, Friedrich Engels applied ideas that he developed
with his collaborator, Karl Marx, and assigned to private property the role of central
agent in determining the division of labor by sex. In The Origin of the Family, Private
Property and the State, Engels suggested that the three chief institutions of modern
Western society-a capitalist economy, the nation-state, and the nuclear family-
emerged at roughly the same historical moment-and all as a result of the develop-
ment of private property. Prior to that, Engels asserts, families were organized on a
communal basis, with group marriage, male-female equality, and a sexual division of
labor without any moral or political rewards going to males or females. The birth of
the capitalist economy created wealth that was mobile and transferable-unlike land,
which stays in the same place. Capitalism meant private property, which required the
establishment of clear lines of inheritance. This requirement led, in turn, to new prob-
lems of sexual fidelity. If a man were to pass his property on to his son, he had to be
sure that his son was, indeed, his. How could he know this in the communal group
marriage of precapitalist families?
"We've gathered enough. L et's hunt."

Figure 3.3. Stuart Leeds/The New Yorker Collection/The Cartoon Bank.
OH?
REALLY•
The origins of gender inequality date back to caveman days.
We like to think that gender inequality was found among our most ancient
ancestors, as if that would somehow justify contemporary inequality. Images
of cavemen dragging women by their hair, or of Fred Flintstone heading off
to work in the slag heap while Wilma stays at home in Bedrock with Pebbles
and Dino, dominate our consciousness.
Turns out it's all wrong. Actually, those first hunter-gatherers were far more gender-equal.
Gender equality gave those hunting-gathering bands an evolutionary advantage, according to
research by Mark Dyble and his colleagues. Wider social networks brought closer coopera-
tion among unrelated people, and a higher likelihood of innovation. And it also meant less
inbreeding.
Gender inequality began in earnest when people settled down. Settled agriculture meant
that people could accumulate resources and save them, which led to hierarchies and imbalances,
and men sought to solidify their gains by taking multiple wives. So it was farmers, not cavemen,
who introduced patriarchy.
Source: M. Dyble, G. D. Salini, N . Chaudhary, A. Page, D. Smith, J. Thompson , L. Vinicius, R. Mace, and
A. B. Migliano, "Sex Equality Can Explain the Unique Social Structure of Hunter- Gatherer Bands" in Science,
348(6236), May 15, 2015, pp. 796- 798.
Out of this need to transmit inheritance across generations of men the traditional
nuclear family emerged, with monogamous marriage and the sexual control of women
by men. And if inheritance were to be stable, these new patriarchs needed to have
clear, binding laws, vigorously enforced, that would enable them to pass their legacies
on to their sons without interference from others. This required a centralized political
apparatus (the nation-state) to exercise sovereignty over local and regional powers that
might challenge them. 8
Some contemporary anthropologists continue in this tradition. Eleanor Leacock,
for example, argues that prior to the rise of private property and social classes, women
and men were regarded as autonomous individuals who held different positions that
were held in relatively equal esteem. "When the range of decisions made by women is
considered," she writes, "women's autonomous and public role emerges. Their status was
not as literal 'equals' of men ... but as what they were-female persons, with their own
rights, duties and responsibilities, which were complementary to and in no way second-
ary to those of men." In her ethnographic work on the Labrador peninsula, Leacock
shows the dramatic transformation of women's former autonomy by the introduction of
the fur trade. The introduction of a commercial economy turned powerful women into
home-bound wives. Here again, gender inequality, introduced by economic shifts, re-
sulted in increasing differences in the meanings of masculinity and femininity. 9
Karen Sacks (now Karen Brodkin) examined four African cultures and found that
the introduction of the market economy shifted basically egalitarian roles toward male
dominance. As long as the culture was involved in producing goods for its own use,
men and women were relatively equal. But the more involved the tribe became in a
market exchange economy, the higher the level of gender inequality and the lower the
position of women. Conversely, when women and men shared access to the productive
elements of the society, the result was a higher level of sexual egalitarianism.
10
Warfare, Bonding, and Inequality

Another school of anthropological thought traces the origins of male domination to
the imperatives of warfare in primitive society. How does a culture create warriors
who are fierce and strong? Anthropologist Marvin Harris has suggested two possibili-
ties. The culture can provide different rewards for the warriors, based on their dexter-
ity or skill. But this would limit the solidarity of the fighting force and sow seeds of
dissent and enmity among the soldiers. More effective would be to reward virtually all
men with the services of women, excluding only the most inadequate or cowardly
men. Warrior societies tend to practice female infanticide, Harris observes, ensuring
that the population of females remains significantly lower than that of males (and thus
the males will be competing for the women). Warrior societies also tend to exclude
women from the fighting force, because their presence would reduce the motivation
of the soldiers and upset the sexual hierarchy. In this way, warfare leads to female
subordination as well as patrilinearity, because the culture will need a resident core of
fathers and sons to carry out its military tasks. Males come to control the society's
resources and, as a justification for this, develop patriarchal religion as an ideology
that legitimates their domination over women. 11
Two other groups of scholars use different variables to explain the differences
between women and men. Descent theorists, like Lionel Tiger and Robin Fox, stress
the invariance of the mother-child bond. Men, by definition, lack the tie that mothers
have with their children. How, then, can they achieve that connection to the next gen-
eration, the connection to history and society? They form it with other men in the
hunting group. This is why, Tiger and Fox argue, women must be excluded from the
hunt. In all societies, men must somehow be bound socially to the next generation, to
which they are not inextricably, biologically connected. Male solidarity and monog-
amy are the direct result of men's needs to connect with social life. Alliance theorists
12
like Claude Levi-Strauss are less concerned with the need to connect males to the next
generation than they are with the ways that relationships among men come to organize
social life. Levi-Strauss argues that men turn women into sex objects whose exchange
(as wives) cements the alliances among men. Both descent and alliance theorists treat
these themes as invariant and natural, rather than as the outcomes of historical rela-
tionships that vary dramatically not only over time but also across cultures.13
DETERMINANTS OF WOMEN'S STATUS

Virtually every society of which we have knowledge claims some differentiation
between women and men, and virtually every society exhibits patterns of gendered
inequality and male domination. Yet the variety within these universals is still as-
tounding. Gender differences and gender inequality may be more or less pronounced.
It is not simply the case that the higher the degree of gender differentiation, the greater
the gender inequality, although this is generally the pattern. One could, conceivably,
imagine four such possibilities-high or low levels of gender differentiation coupled
with either high or low levels of gender inequality.
What, then, are the factors that seem to determine women's status in society?
Under what conditions is women's status improved, and under what conditions is it
minimized? Economic, political, and social variables tend to produce different cultural
/
I 0/
~"~-=-...,,:-.----==-----------
1 ··
Figure 3.4. Source: Kim Warp/The New Yorker Collection/The Cartoon Bank.
configurations. For example, one large-scale survey of different cultures found that
the more a society needs physical strength and highly developed motor skills, the
larger will be the differences in socialization between males and females . It also seems
to be the case that the larger the family group, the larger the differences between
women and men. In part this is because the isolation of the nuclear family means that
males and females will need to take the other's roles on occasion, so that strict separa-
tion is rarely enforced.14
One of the key determinants of women's status has been the division of labor
around child care. Women's role in reproduction has historically limited their social
and economic participation. Although no society assigns all child-care functions to men,
the more that men participate in child care and the freer women are from child-rearing
responsibility, the higher women's status tends to be. There are many ways to free
women from sole responsibility. In non-Western societies, several customs evolved,
including employing child nurses who care for several children at once, sharing child
care with husbands or with neighbors, and assigning the role of child care to tribal
elders whose economic activity has been curtailed by age.15
Relationships between children and their parents have also been seen as keys to
women's status. Sociologist Scott Coltrane found that the closer the relationship be-
tween father and son, the higher the status of women is likely to be. Coltrane found
that in cultures where fathers are relatively uninvolved, boys define themselves in op-
position to their mothers and other women and therefore are prone to exhibit traits of
hypermasculinity, to fear and denigrate women as a way to display masculinity. The
more mothers and fathers share child rearing, the less men belittle women. Margaret
Mead also emphasized the centrality of fatherhood. Most cultures take women's role
in child rearing as a given, whereas men must learn to become nurturers. There is
much at stake, but nothing is inevitable: "Every known human society rests firmly on
the learned nurturing behavior of men.''16
That men must learn to be nurturers raises the question of masculinity in general.
What it means to be a man varies enormously from one culture to another, and these
definitions have a great deal to do with the amount of time and energy fathers spend
with their children. Such issues are not simply incidental for women's lives either;
OH? Everyone knows that cavemen and cavewomen were hunters and gatherers,
respectively, and that she was entirely responsible for child care. Except it may
REALLY• not be true. Anthropologist Lee Gettler found that fathers in ear ly human spe-
cies coparented-they were involved in bathing, feeding, playing, and teaching.
(Only about 10 percent of all mammals find males helping out around the
"house.") Male involvement in such harsh conditions also helped ensure the likelihood of survival,
while a strict division of labor was probably a much ris kier proposition. (And with fathers helping
out, mothers didn't have to expend as much energy and could therefore reproduce again sooner,
leading to more children.) Even way back then, dads were hugger s as well as hunters.
Source: L. T. Gettler, " Direct Male Care and Hominin Evolution: Why Male- Child Interaction Is More Than a Nice
Social Idea," in American Anthropologist, 112(1) , 2010, pp. 7- 21.
it turns out that the more time men spend with their children, the less gender inequal-
ity is present in that culture. Conversely, the freer women are from child care-the
more that child care is parceled out elsewhere and the more that women control their
fertility-the higher will be their status. Coltrane also found that women's status de-
pends upon their control over property, especially after marriage. A woman's status is
invariably higher when she retains control over her property after marriage.
Interestingly, recent research on male bonding, so necessary to those theories
that stress warfare or the necessity of attaching males to the social order, also seems
to bear this out. Sociologist and geographer Daphne Spain argues that the same
cultures in which men developed the most elaborate sex-segregated rituals were
those cultures in which women's status was lowest. Spain mapped a number of cul-
tures spatially and found that the greater the distance the men's hut was from the
center of the village, the more time the men spent at their hut, and the more cultur-
ally important the men's rituals were, the lower women's status was. "Societies with
men's huts are those in which women have the least power," she writes. If you spend
your time away from your hut, off at the men's hut with the other men, you'll have
precious little time, and even less inclination, to spend with your family and to share
in child rearing!17
Similarly, anthropologist Thomas Gregor found that all forms of spatial segrega-
tion between males and females are associated with gender inequality. The Mehinaku
of central Brazil, for example, have well-institutionalized men's huts where the tribal
secrets are kept and ritual instruments are played and stored. Women are prohibited
from entering. As one tribesman told Gregor, "This house is only for men. Women
may not see anything in here. If a woman comes in, then all the men take her into the
woods and she is raped."18
These two variables-the father's involvement in child rearing (often measured by
spatial segregation) and women's control of property after marriage-emerge as
among the central determinants of women's status and gender inequality. It is no
wonder that they are also determinants of violence against women, because the lower
women's status in a society, the higher the likelihood of rape and violence against
women. In one of the most wide-ranging comparative studies of women's status, Peggy
Reeves Sanday found several important correlates of women's status. Contact was one.
Sex segregation was highly associated with women's lower status, as if separation were
"necessary for the development of sexual inequality and male dominance." (By con-
trast, a study of a sexually egalitarian society found no ideology of the desirability of
sex segregation.) Of course, women's economic power, that crucial determinant, is
"the result of a sexual division of labor in which women achieve self-sufficiency and
establish an independent control sphere." In addition, in cultures that viewed the
environment as relatively friendly, women's status was significantly higher; cultures
that saw the environment as hostile were more likely to develop patterns of male
domination.19
Finally, Sanday found that women had the highest levels of equality, and thus the
least frequency of rape, when both genders contributed about the same amounts to the
food supply. When women contributed equally, men tended to be more involved in
child care. Ironically, when women contributed a lot, their status was also low. So
women's status tended to be lower when they contributed either very little or a great
deal and more equal when their contribution was about equal.
We can now summarize the findings of cross-cultural research on female status
and male dominance.
1. Male dominance is lower when men and women work together with little
sexual division of labor. Sex segregation of work is the strongest predictor of
women's status.
2. Male dominance is more pronounced when men control political and ideologi-
cal resources that are necessary to achieve the goals of the culture and when
men control all property.
3. Male dominance is "exacerbated under colonization"-both capitalist pene-
tration of the countryside and industrialization generally lower women's status.
Male dominance is also associated with demographic imbalances between the
sexes: The higher the percentage of marriageable men to marriageable women,
the lower is women's status.
4. Environmental stresses tend to exaggerate male domination.2°
THE CROSS-CULTURAL EXPLANATIONS OF RAPE

The earlier quotation, cited by Gregor, and the research of Peggy Reeves Sanday and
others suggest that rape is not the evolutionary reproductive strategy of less successful
males, as was suggested by some evolutionary psychologists. Rather, rape is a cultural
phenomenon by which relations between men are cemented. Rape may be a strategy
to ensure continued male domination or a vehicle by which men can hope to conceal
maternal dependence, according to ethnographers, but it is surely not an alternative
dating strategy.
Think, for example, of the way that rape is used in warfare. The mass rape of
Bosnian women or the current mass rapes of women in the Sudan or the Congo are
not some product or convoluted expression of evolutionary mating strategies, but
rather a direct and systematic effort on the part of one militarized group of males to
express and sustain the subordination of a conquered group of males. Mass rape in
warfare is about the final humiliating appropriation of the conquered group's prop-
erty. It is as if to say: "We burn your houses, eat your chickens, and rape your women.
We have fully and completely conquered you."
And what about rape not as a crime to be punished but as the restitution for a
crime that has been committed? In June 2002, a Pakistani woman, Mukhtar Mai, was
gang-raped in a small village in southern Punjab. She was ordered to be raped by a
local judicial council as punishment for nonmarital sex. Except she didn't actually
have nonmarital sex-her brother did. Or so they believed. Mukhtar was ordered
raped because of a crime her brother was said to have committed. (It was later revealed
that her brother, age twelve, had himself been abducted and sodomized by three elder
tribesmen, who fabricated the sex story as a cover-up.) Were these elder tribesmen
tried and convicted of the rape of the twelve-year-old boy? No. Were the men who
sentenced Mukhtar Mai to be gang-raped themselves brought to justice? Eventually,
after a world outcry against such obvious injustice. Although obviously neither of
these rapes could even be remotely tied to some evolutionary strategy for reproductive
success, together they reveal the way that rape serves to reproduce male domination.
Both the dominance hierarchies among men and the hierarchies that place men over
women were revealed in this horrific moment. 21
In her ethnographic study of a gang rape at the University of Pennsylvania, Peggy

Reeves Sanday underscores how a campus gang rape looks surprisingly like this
Pakistani judicial council. She suggests that gang rape has its origins both in the
gender inequality that allows men to see women as pieces of meat and in men's needs
to demonstrate their masculinity to one another. Gang rape cements the relations
among men. But more than that, gang rape permits a certain homoerotic contact be-
tween men. When one participant reported his pleasure at feeling the semen of his
friends inside the woman as he raped her, Sanday sensed a distinct erotic component.
The woman was the receptacle, the vehicle by which these men could have sex with
one another and still claim heterosexuality. Only in a culture that degrades and deval-
ues women could such behaviors take place. Rape, then, is hardly an evolutionary
strategy by which less successful males get to pass on their reproductive inheritance.
It is an act that occurs only in those societies where there is gender inequality and by
men who may be quite "successful" in other forms of mating but believe themselves
entitled to violate women. It is about gender, not about sex, and it is a way in which
gender inequality produces gender difference. 22
RITUALS OF GENDER
One of the ways by which anthropologists have explored the cultural construction of
gender is by examining specific gender rituals. Their work suggests that the origins of
these rituals lie in nonbiological places. Because questions of reproduction and child
rearing loom so large in the determination of gender inequality, it makes sense that a
lot of these rituals are concerned with reproduction. And because spatial segregation
seems to be highly associated with gender difference and gender inequality, ritual
segregation-either in space or time-may have also been a focus of attention. For
example, the initiation of young males has been of particular concern, in part because
of the relative disappearance of such formal cultural rituals in the contemporary
United States. Initiation rituals provide a sense of identity and group membership to
the men who participate in them. Many cultures, especially settled agricultural and
pastoral societies, include circumcision, the excision of the foreskin of a boy's penis,
in a ritual incorporating a male into the society. The age of this ritual varies; one
survey of twenty-one cultures that practice circumcision found that four perform it in
infancy, ten when the boy is about ten years old (before puberty), six perform it at
puberty, and one waits until late adolescence.
Why would so many cultures determine that membership in the world of adult
men requires genital mutilation? Indeed, circumcision is the most common medical
procedure in the United States. Theories, of course, abound. In the Jewish Bible, cir-
cumcision is a visible sign of the bond between God and man, a symbol of man's
obedience to God's law. (In Genesis 17:10- 11, 14, God commands Abraham to circum-
cise Isaac as part of a covenant.) But circumcision also seems to have been seen as a
way of acquiring a trophy. Successful warriors would cut off their foes' foreskins to sym-
bolize their victory and to permanently disfigure and humiliate the vanquished foe. (In
I Samuel 18:25, King Saul demands that David slay one hundred enemies and bring back
their foreskins as a bride-price. David, a bit overeager, brings back two hundred.)
In other cultures, ethnographers suggest that circumcision creates a visible scar
that binds men to one another and serves as a rite of passage to adult masculinity.
Whiting, Kluckhohn, and Anthony argue that it symbolically serves to sever a
boy's emotional ties to his mother and therefore to ensure appropriate masculine
identification. Other writers point out that cultures that emphasize circumcision of
young males tend to be those where both gender differentiation and gender in-
equality are greatest. Circumcision, which is always a public ceremony, simultane-
ously cements the bonds between father (and his generation) and son (and his
generation), links the males together, and excludes women, visibly and demonstra-
bly. Circumcision, then, tends to be associated with male domination, 23 as do other
forms of male genital mutilation. In a very few cultures, for example, the penis is
ritually bled by cutting. Such cultures still believe in bleeding as a cure for illness-
in this case, illness brought about by sexual contact with women, who are believed
to be impure and infectious. And we know of four cultures that practice hemicas-
tration, the removal of one testicle. In one culture, people believe it prevents the
birth of twins. 24
Female circumcision is also practiced in several cultures, though far fewer than
practice male circumcision. This circumcision consists either of clitoridectomy, in
which the clitoris is cut away, or infibulation, in which the labia majora are sewn to-
gether with only a very small opening left to allow for urination. It is interesting that
female circumcision is often performed by adult women. In other cultures, it is
performed by the brother of the girl's father. Clitoridectomy is widespread in Africa
but few other places, and it invariably takes place in societies that also practice male
circumcision. Infibulation seems to be most widely practiced in East Africa and
Somalia, and its goal is to prevent sexual intercourse, whereas the goal of clitoridec-
tomy is simply to prevent sexual pleasure and thereby sexual promiscuity. It is esti-
mated by the World Health Organization that 130 million girls and women have
undergone some form of cutting of the clitoris (figure 3.5).25
ATLANTIC Prevalance of female genital cutting

OCEAN of 15- to 49-year-olds, %
•'
•- 41-60
61-so
1995
*Bannei:l in some states
Figure 3.5.
72
I'',,,I''
iJ :n)Q IIa
Female genital mutilation (FGM) is becoming a global public health and human rights issue. But
while it initially seemed to be a problem linked to Muslim societies in which women's status is
remarkably low, it turns out to be far more widespread than Muslim cultures. In fact, according
to Thomas von der Osten-Sacken and Thomas Uwer, who together are directors of a German-
based human rights organization, the variations in dynamics of organization of FGM make it
impossible to treat with a one-size-fits-all policy. A coordinated effort to promote human
rights is, they argue, necessary to fully address the issue.
It is interesting that both cultures that circumcise men and those that circumcise
women tend to be those where men's status is highest. The purpose of the ritual reveals
the reason for some of this difference. For men, the ritual is a marking that simultane-
ously shows that all men are biologically and culturally alike-and that they are differ-
ent from women. Thus it can be seen as reinforcing male dominance. Historically, there
was some evidence that male circumcision was medically beneficial, because it reduced
Female Circumcision
Here is a description of female circumcision from one buy razors from the Yemeni grocer next door.
who underwent it, a Sudanese woman now working I still remember her when she came back with
as a teacher in the Middle East: the razors, which were enveloped in purple
wrappings with a crocodile drawing on it.
I will never forget the day of my circumcision, The women ordered me to lie down on a
which took place forty years ago. I was six bed [made of ropes] that had a little hole in
years old. One morning during my school the middle. They held me tight while the mid-
summer vacation, my mother told me that wife started to cut my flesh without anesthet-
I had to go with her to her sisters' house ics. I screamed till I lost my voice. The midwife
and then to visit a sick relative in Halfayat El was saying to me " Do you want me to be
Mulook [in the northern part of Khartoum, taken into police custody?" After the job was
Sudan]. We did go to my aunt's house, and done I could not eat, drink, or even pass urine
from there all of us went straight to [a] red for three days. I remember one of my uncles
brick house [I had never seen]. who discovered what they did to me threat-
While my mother was knocking, I tried to ened to press charges against his sisters. They
pronounce the name that was on the door. were afraid of him and they decided to bring
Soon enough I realized that it was Haija me back to the midwife. In her sternest voice
Alamin's house. She was the midwife [who she ordered me to squat on the floor and
performed circumcisions on girls in my neigh- urinate. It seemed like the most difficult thing
borhood]. I was petrified and tried to break to do at that point, but I did it. I urinated for a
loose. But I was captured and subdued by my long time and was shivering with pain.
mother and two aunts. They began to tell me It took a very long time [before] I was back
that the midwife was going to purify me. to normal. I understand the motives of my
The midwife was the cruelest person I had mother, that she wanted me to be clean, but
seen ... [She] ordered her young maid to go I suffered a lot.26
the possibilities of penile infection by removing the foreskin, a place where bacteria
could congregate. This is no longer the case; rates of penile infection or urethral cancer
show only minuscule differences between those men who have and have not been cir-
cumcised. There is some evidence, however, that in Africa, male circumcision is associ-
ated with a lower risk of HIV infection and therefore recommended to reduce HIV
infections among both women and men. But there is no medical justification for male
circumcision in the United States, which is the only nation in which the majority of
male babies are still medically circumcised (not due to religious beliefs). Rates in the
United States have dropped from about 85 percent in the 1960s to about 58 percent
today. Thus, health organizations may be in the ironic position of discouraging routine
medical circumcision in some regions and encouraging it in others.27
For women, circumcision has never been justified by medical benefits; it directly
impedes adequate sexual functioning and is designed to curtail sexual pleasure. Female
circumcision is nearly always performed when women reach the age of puberty, that is,
when they are capable of experiencing sexual pleasure, and seems to be associated with
men's control over women's sexuality. Currently, political campaigns are being waged to
prohibit female circumcision as a violation of women's human rights. In Kenya, some
women have developed alternative rituals to enable girls to come of age without any form
of genital mutilation. For example, "Cutting Through Words" is one ritual that provides
a celebration of adulthood that honors the girl and her family. "We need to tread carefully
since female genital mutilation is deeply rooted into the culture," says Priscilla Nangurai,
headmistress of a church-sponsored girls, boarding school, who has been one of the
advocates of change. "We can end it through education, advocacy and religion."28
However, many defenders of female circumcision suggest that such campaigns are
motivated by Western values. They insist that afterward women are revered and re-
spected as members of the culture. (There are no widespread political campaigns
against male circumcision, though some individuals have recently begun to rethink
the ritual as a form of genital mutilation, and a few men are even undergoing a surgical
procedure designed to replace the lost foreskin.29) Others counter that the right to
control one's own body is a fundamental human right and that cultures that practice
such behaviors must conform to universal standards.
One of the more interesting theories about the prevalence of these reproductive
and sexual rituals has been offered by Jeffrey and Karen Paige in their book The
Politics of Reproductive Ritual. Paige and Paige offer a materialist interpretation of
these rituals, locating the origins of male circumcision, couvade, and purdah in the
culture's relationship with its immediate material environment. Take couvade, for
example (figure 3.6). This is a ritual that men observe when their wives are having
babies. Generally, the men observe the same food taboos as their wives, restrict their
ordinary activities, and even seclude themselves during their wives' delivery and
postpartum period. What could possibly be the point of this? Some might think it is
anthropologically "cute," as the men often even imitate the symptoms of pregnancy, in
apparent sympathy for their wives. But Paige and Paige see it differently. They argue
that couvade is significant in cultures where there are no legal mechanisms to keep
the couple together or to assure paternity. Couvade is a way for men to fully claim
paternity, to know that the baby is theirs. It is also a vehicle by which the men can
control women's sexuality by appropriating control over paternity.30
,ouvade
Figure 3.6. Courtesy of Kathleen Moore/moorestories.com.
Women everywhere adorn themselves with jewelry, makeup, and other
OH?
REALLY•
fashion accessories in order to be more attractive to men. Actually, there are
many cultures in which it's the ma/es who adorn themselves and parade
around for women's approval. In one culture, the Wodaabe of Niger, each
year the men dress up in ceremonial garb, paint their faces and lips, and
parade in front of the unadorned women, who sit in judgment of the men, deciding which one
they will sleep with. (The opening photo of this chapter shows a dancer applying makeup.) The
Wodaabe prize height, white teeth, and white eyes-all signs of health-so the men desper-
ately try to set off their teeth (by staining their lips black), stand on tiptoes, and open their eyes
as wide as possible.
Figure 3.7. Source: Courtesy of Photography Collection, Harry Ransom Center, The University of
Texas at Austin.
Paige and Paige also examine the politics of purdah, the Islamic requirement that
women conceal themselves at all times (figure 3.7). Ostensibly, this requirement is to
protect women's chastity and men's honor-women must be completely covered be-
cause they "are so sexy, so tempting, so incapable of controlling their emotions and
sexuality, the men say, that they are a danger to the social order." It is as if by conceal-
ing women, men can harness women's sexuality. But this is only half the story. It also
suggests that men are so susceptible to temptation, so incapable of resistance, such
easy prey, that they are likely to fall into temptation at any time. In order to protect
women from men's sexual rapaciousness, men must control women and take away the
source of the temptation.31
HOW MANY GENDERS ARE THERE?

We've explored the relationship between levels of gender difference and levels of
inequality. But in some cultures, gender itself doesn't seem to be that important,
certainly not the central organizing principle of social life. In fact, it hardly matters
at all. What accounts for that difference?
76
I'',,,I''
iJ :n)Q IIa
We tend to think we are either men or women (and that, biologically, this corresponds to
being male or female). Yet the cross-cultural record demonstrates that gender is not nearly
as fixed and categorical as we might believe. Instead, it is fluid, and not only do people move
between poles, but societies can use gender as a way to respond to ecological or political
crises. When a society loses a significant number of men (e.g., in war) or women (e.g., in some
environmental calamity), it is not uncommon for members of one sex to live as the other, with
complete social approval, as sociologist Judith Lorber shows in her essay "Men as Women and
Women as Men." Indeed, this isn't as foreign a concept as we might at first think. Just re-
member Joan of Arc or Molly Pitcher (who fought bravely against the British in the American
Revolution).
The discussion of gender difference often assumes that differences are based on
some biological realities that sort physical creatures into their appropriate categories.
Thus we assume that because there are two biological sexes (male and female), there
must only be two genders (men and women). But some research challenges such bipo-
lar assumptions. Some societies recognize more than two genders-sometimes three
or four. Research on Native American cultures is particularly fascinating and pro-
vocative. The Navajo, for example, appear to have three genders-one for masculine
men, one for feminine women, and another, called the nadle, for those whose sex is
ambiguous at birth. One can be born a nadle or decide to become one; either way,
nadles perform tasks assigned to both women and men and dress as the gender whose
tasks they are performing, though they are typically treated as women and addressed
using feminine kinship terms. But let's not jump to conclusions: Being treated as a
woman is a promotion, not a demotion, in Navajo society, where women historically
have had higher status than men and are accorded special rights and privileges, in-
cluding sexual freedom, control over property, and authority to mediate disputes.
Nadles are free to marry either males or females, with no loss of status (figure 3.8).32
Another custom among some Native American cultures is the two-spirit person,
which is also found in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific. (Two-spirit people have
historically been called berdache, but they prefer the new term since "berdache" was
the term the French colonialists used.) Two-spirit people are members of one biological
sex who adopt the gender identity of the other sex, although such a practice is far more
common for males than for females. In his pathbreaking study The Spirit and the
Flesh, anthropologist Walter Williams explored the world of the two-spirit person in
detail. These are men who dress, work, and generally act as women-though everyone
knows that they are biologically males. Among the Crow in North America, the two-
spirit people are simply males who do not want to become warriors.33
In southern Mexico, indigenous communities in the state of Oaxaca allow for a
third gender, called muxe (a Zapotec word derived from the Spanish word mujer or
woman). Like the others, these are males who feel themselves, from an early age, to be
more like women. Not only does the community accept them, but they are embraced as
especially gifted, artistic, and intelligent.34
Figure 3.8. This remarkable photograph is titled "Squaw Jim and His Squaw." On the left is
Squaw Jim, a biological male in woman's attire-a Crow berdache afforded distinctive social and
ceremonial status within the tribe. In addition to the special attributes that distinguished the
berdache or bote, Squaw Jim served as an enlisted scout at Fort Keogh and achieved a reputation
for bravery when he saved the life of a tribesman at the Battle of the Rosebud, on June 17, 1876. This
image is the earliest known photograph of a North American two-spirit person. Photograph by
John H. Fouch, 1877.
Source: Courtesy of Dr. James S. Brust.
Some grow up to be gay, some straight. What is clear, and most important to us
here, is that the muxe represent a distinct gender, not necessarily a gay masculinity. In
that sense, they might be considered transgender, but not necessarily homosexual.
Consider how we treat males who dress and act like women. We treat them like
freaks or deviants or assume they must be homosexual. They are outcasts; acting
like a two-spirit in this culture is not recommended if you value your health and your
life. Among the Native American cultures of the Great Plains, though, two-spirit
people are revered as possessed of special powers, enjoy high social and economic
status, and frequently control the tribe's ritual life. The reasoning is straightforward
and logical: By being men who act like women, the two-spirit people are sexually in-
different to women, something that other men are not capable of being. Surely, they
must be possessed of some supernatural power to be able to resist the charms of
females! Only a two-spirit person can be counted on to administer fairly without seek-
ing to advance his claim on a specific woman whom he might fancy.
And what about the other way around? Native American poet and author Paula
Gunn Allen argued that among the Sioux there were warrior women who married
other women and were known as "manly-hearted women." Among the Cherokee,
these women were called "beloved women" and they were "warriors, leaders and
influential council members."35
The Mohave seemed to have four genders and permitted both women and men
to cross genders to carefully demarcated roles. A boy who showed preferences for
feminine clothing or toys would undergo a different initiation at puberty and
become an alyha. He would then adopt a female name, paint his face as a woman,
perform female roles, and marry a man. When they married, the alyha would cut
his upper thigh every month to signify "his" menstrual period, and he would learn
how to simulate pregnancy and childbirth. Martin and Voorhies suggest how this
was accomplished:
Labor pains, induced by drinking a severely constipating drug, culminate in the
birth of a fictitious stillborn child. Stillborn Mohave infants are customarily buried
by the mother, so that an alyha's failure to return to "her" home with a living infant
is explained in a culturally acceptable manner.36
If a Mohave female wanted to cross genders, she would undergo an initiation cere-
mony to become a hwame. Hwame lived men's lives-hunting, farming, and the
like-and assumed paternal responsibility for children, though they were prohibited
from assuming positions of political leadership. Neither a hwame nor an alyha was
considered deviant.
In the Middle East, we find a group of Omani males called xanith who are biologi-
cally males, but whose social identity is female. They work as skilled domestic servants,
dress in men's tunics (but in pastel shades more associated with feminine colors), and
sell themselves in passive homosexual relationships. They are permitted to speak with
women on the street (other men are prohibited). At sex-segregated public events, they
sit with the women. However, they can change their minds-and their gender experi-
ences. If they want to be seen as males, they are permitted to do so, and they then may
engage in heterosexual sex. Others simply grow older and eventually quit the homo-
sexual prostitution; they are then permitted to become "social men." Some "become"
women, even going as far as marrying men. And still others move back and forth be-
tween these positions throughout their lives, suggesting a fluidity of gender identity
that would be unthinkable to those who believe in biological determinism.
Gender fluidity can be associated with greater gender equality, if people believe
that the relationship between biological sex and socially constructed gender is more
porous and that one can move readily between them. Or it can be associated with less
gender equality, as if any variation from the expected norm can be cause to invent a
whole new gender. In Afghanistan, boys are so highly prized and gender inequality
so extreme that it is not uncommon for a family with no sons to raise one of their
daughters as if she were a boy. They are called neither daughter nor son, but bacha
posh, which means "dressed as a boy," a specific identity that remains until she hits
puberty. And it's not a bad deal for the daughter, since the life of a girl is pretty well
circumscribed. "Do you want to look like a boy and dress like a boy, and do more fun
things like boys do, like bicycling, soccer and cricket?" one little girl was asked. She
answered yes immediately. Wouldn't you?37
Figures 3.9a and 3.9b. Photographer Shahria Sharmin photographed the hijra community in
Bangladesh after meeting a young hijra named Heena. Here is how Heena described herself: "/ fee/
like a mermaid. My body tells me that I am a man but my soul tells me that I am a woman. I am like a
~ower, a ~ower that is made of paper. I shall always be loved from a distance, never to be touched and no
smell to fall in love with."
Source: Photos courtesy of Shahria Sharmin.
SEXUAL DIVERSITY
Studies of gender fluidity are complemented by studies of sexual variation. Taken
together, they provide powerful arguments about the cultural construction of both
gender and sexuality. Anthropologists have explored remarkable sexual diversity and
thus have suggested that biological arguments about the naturalness of some activities
and arrangements may be dramatically overstated. Take homosexuality, which evolu-
tionary biologists would suggest is a biological "aberration" if ever there were one,
because homosexuality is not reproductive, and the goal of all sexual activity is to pass
on one's genetic code to the next generation. Not only is homosexual activity ubiquitous
in the animal kingdom, but also it is extraordinarily common in human cultures-so
common, in fact, that it would appear to be "natural." What varies is not the presence
or absence of homosexuality-those are pretty much constants-but the ways in
which homosexuals are treated in those cultures. We've already seen that many cul-
tures honor and respect those who transgress gender definitions and adopt the gender
of the other sex. Some of these might be considered "homosexual," if your definition
of "homosexual" has to do only with the biological sex of your sex partner.
Even by that definition, though, we find astonishing variation in the ways in which
homosexuals are regarded. In 1948, anthropologist Clyde Kluckhohn surveyed North
American Indian tribes and found homosexuality accepted by 120 of them and re-
jected by 54. Some cultures (Lango in East Africa, Koniag in Alaska, and Tanala in
Madagascar) allow homosexual marriages between men. Some cultures have clearly
defined homosexual roles for men and women, with clearly defined expectations.38
I ii'',,,!'' :n)Q IIa

Many societies construct elaborate rituals by which boys become men and girls become women.
Even when they believe that gender identities are biologically based, the culture still has a re-
sponsibility to ensure safe passage between these two age-related states. These rituals vary
enormously, as anthropologist Gilbert Herdt shows in his essay "Coming of Age and Coming
Out Ceremonies Across Cultures." Herdt did the original research on the Sambia that we'll
discuss, here he takes us inside the world of the Sambia-and other cultures, including our
own-to discuss the rich diversity of initiation rituals.
In a remarkable ethnography, Gilbert Herdt described the sexual rituals of the

Sambia, a mountain people who live in Papua New Guinea. The Sambia practice ritu-
alized homosexuality as a way to initiate young boys into full adult manhood. Young
boys ritually daily fellate the older boys and men so that the younger boys can receive
the vital life fluid (semen) from the older men and thus become men. "A boy must be
initiated and [orally] inseminated, otherwise the girl betrothed to him will outgrow
him and run away to another man," was the way one Sambia elder put it. "If a boy
doesn't eat semen, he remains small and weak." When they reach puberty, these
boys are then fellated by a new crop of younger boys. Throughout this initiation, the
boys scrupulously avoid girls and have no knowledge of heterosexuality until they
are married. Neither the boys nor the older men think of themselves as engaging in
homosexual behavior: The older men are married to women and the younger men
fully expect to be. There is no adult homosexuality among the Sambia. But these young
boys must become, as Herdt puts it, "reluctant warriors." How else are the boys to re-
ceive the vital life force that will enable them to be real men and warriors?39
Nearby, also in Melanesia, are the Keraki, who engage in a related practice. There,
the boys are sodomized by older men, because the Keraki believe that without the
older men's semen, the boys will not grow to be men. This ritual practice occurs until
the boys enter puberty and secondary sex characteristics appear-facial hair, dropped
voice-at which point the ritual has accomplished its task. When an anthropologist
asked Keraki men if they had been sodomized, many responded by saying, "Why,
yes! Otherwise how should I have grown?" Other ritualized homosexual practices
have been reported from other cultures. 40 Interestingly, such ritual practices, as those
among the Sambia and Keraki, are more evident in cultures in which sex segregation
is high and women's status is low. This conforms to other ethnographic evidence that
suggests that elaborate rituals of male bonding have the effect of excluding women
from ritual life and thus correlate with women's lower status. Sex segregation is
almost always associated with lower status for women-whether among the Sambia
or among cadets at the Citadel.41
If all this sounds extraordinarily exotic, remember this: In every major city in the
United States, there is a group of young men, many of whom are married and virtually
all of whom consider themselves to be heterosexual, who have sex with other men for
money. These gay hustlers will perform only certain acts (anal penetration) or will
allow only certain acts (they permit their clients to fellate them but will not recipro-
cate). By remaining the "insertor" in homosexual acts, these men do not identify as
homosexual, but rather as men. Men are insertors, whether with women or with men,
so as long as they remain insertors, they believe their masculinity is not compromised.
"Objectively," you may argue, they are engaging in gay sex. But by their definition,
homosexuality equals passivity in sexual contact, having sex like a woman. And by
that definition, they are not having gay sex. Whatever you might make of this, though,
suddenly the Sambia do not look completely alien; they look more like distant cousins.
Some cultures take permissiveness regarding homosexuality to a remarkable
level. Among the Aranda of Australia, Siwans of northern Africa, and Keraki of New
Guinea, already described here, every male is homosexual during adolescence and
bisexual after marriage. The purpose of this is to divert adolescent sex away from
young girls and prevent teenage pregnancy and therefore to keep the birth rate down
in cultures that have very scarce resources. The well-studied Yanomam6 have an insti-
tutionalized form of male homosexuality as well as female infanticide. This warrior
culture fears population explosion and the depletion of resources to females.42
The Etero and the Marind-anim, both in New Guinea, prefer homosexuality to
heterosexuality, even though they maintain heterosexual marriages. How, you might
ask, do they solve the problem of reproduction? The Etero place a taboo on hetero-
sexual sex for most of the year but prohibit gay sex when the moon is full (and thus
when all the women are ovulating). For the Marind-anim, even that much sexual con-
tact with the opposite sex is undesirable. Their birth rate is so low that this warrior
culture organizes raids every year, during which it kidnaps the babies of other cultures,
raising them to be happy, healthy-and, of course, homosexual-Marind-anim. 43
One Melanesian society, called "East Bay" in William Davenport's ethnographic

study, practices full adult bisexuality. Nearly every male has extensive homosexual
sexual contact throughout his life, though all are also heterosexual and married to
women. (None is exclusively homosexual, and only a few exclusively heterosexual.)
Women and men are seen as relatively equal in terms of sexual drive, and there are no
taboos against contact with women.44
SEXUAL CUSTOMS AS GENDER DIVERSITY

Sexual customs display a dizzying array that, all elements taken together, implies
that sexual behavior is anything but organized around reproduction alone. Where,
when, how, and with whom we have sex vary enormously from culture to culture.
Ernestine Friedel, for example, observed dramatic differences in sexual customs
between two neighboring tribes in New Guinea. One, a highland tribe, believes
that intercourse makes men weaker and that women are naturally prone to tempt
men, threatening them with their powerful sexuality. They also find menstrual
blood terrifying. These sexual ideologies pit women against men, and many men
would rather remain bachelors than risk contact with women. As a result, popula-
tion remains relatively low, which this culture needs because it has no new land or
resources to bring under cultivation. Not far away, however, is a very different cul-
ture. Here, both men and women enjoy sex and sex play. Men worry about whether
women are sexually satisfied, and they get along relatively well. They have higher
birth rates, which is manageable because they live in a relatively abundant and un-
cultivated region, where they can use all the hands they can get to farm their fields
and defend themselves.45
Sex researchers have explored the remarkable cultural diversity of sexual behav-
iors and in so doing have exposed the ethnocentrism of those arguments that stress
the inevitability and naturalness of our own behaviors. Take the typical American
couple, Mr. and Mrs. Statistical Average. They're white, middle-aged, married, and
have sex about twice a week, at night, in their bedroom, alone, with the lights off,
in the "missionary position" -the woman on her back, facing the man, who lies on top
of her. The encounter-from the "Do you want to?" to kissing, foreplay, intercourse
(always in that order), and finally to "Goodnight, sweetheart"-lasts about fifteen
minutes. Now consider other cultures: Some cultures never have sex outside. Others
believe that having sex indoors would contaminate the food supply (usually in the
same hut). What about our rates of sexual contact? The Zande have sex two or three
times a night and then once again upon awakening. Chaga men have about ten
orgasms a night, and Thonga men try to have sex with as many as three or four of
their wives each night. But few beat the Marquesa: Although it's not uncommon for a
Marquesan man to have thirty or more orgasms a night, it is normal to have at least
ten. Older married men are exempted: They have only about three or four a night. By
contrast, the Yapese have sex only once a month or so. During this encounter, the man
sits with his back against the side of the hut and his legs straight out. The woman
straddles him, and he inserts his penis into her vagina a little bit and then proceeds to
stimulate her for several hours while she has dozens of orgasms.4 6
Whereas for us kissing is a virtually universal initiation of sexual contact-"first
base," as it were-other cultures find it disgusting because of the possibility of
exchanging saliva. "Putting your lips together?" say the Thonga or the Siriano. "But
that's where you put food!" Some cultures practice almost no foreplay at all, but in-
stead go directly to intercourse; others prescribe several hours of touching and caress-
ing, in which intercourse is a necessary but sad end to the proceedings. Some cultures
include oral sex in their lovemaking; others have never even considered it. Alfred
Kinsey found that 70 percent of the American men he surveyed in 1948 had had sex
only in the missionary position and that 85 percent had an orgasm within two minutes
of penetration. In his survey of 131 Native American cultures, Clyde Kluckhohn found
the missionary position preferred in only 17. 47
In our culture, it is men who are supposed to be the sexual initiators and women
who are supposed to be sexually resistant. We've all heard stories about men giving
women aphrodisiacs to make them more sexually uninhibited. The latest is Rohypnol,
the "date rape drug," which men apparently put into unsuspecting women's drinks to
make them more "compliant" or at least unconscious (which, in these men's minds,
may amount to the same thing). How different are the Trobriand Islanders, to whom
women are seen as sexually insatiable and as those who take the initiative. Or the
Tukano-Kubeo in Brazil. Here, women are the sexual aggressors and may even avoid
getting pregnant or abort a pregnancy because pregnancy would mean forgoing sex.
Women, not men, commit adultery, but women justify it by saying that it was "only
sex." Tukano-Kubeo men secretly give the women anaphrodisiacs to cool them down. 48
These are but a few examples. When questioned about their practices, people in
these cultures give the same answers we would. "It's normal," they'll say. And they've
developed the same kind of self-justifying arguments that we have. The Bambara, for
example, believe that having sex during the day will produce albino children, whereas
the Masai believe daytime sex can be fatal. So members of these cultures have sex
only at night, and apparently, there are no albinos born and no fatalities during sex.
The Chenchu, by contrast, believe that sex at night will lead to the birth of blind
babies. So they have sex only during the day and thus avoid having blind children.
The Yurok believe that practicing cunnilingus would keep the salmon from running.
No oral sex, no shortage of salmon. Such sexual variety suggests that the biological
imperative toward reproduction can take many forms but that none is more "natural"
than any other.
ANTHROPOLOGY AS HISTORY
Anthropological research has helped to expose the faulty logic of those who argue that
the universality of gender difference or of male domination is somehow natural and
inevitable. By exploring the variety of meanings that has accompanied the cultural
definitions of masculinity and femininity and by examining cultural configurations
that either magnify or diminish gender inequality, cross-cultural research has taken
us beyond apparent biological imperatives. In another sense, anthropological research
on our human ancestors has also provided a historical retort to biological inevitability.
Take, for example, the arguments we saw earlier that male domination was a natural
development in the shift to hunting-and-gathering societies. Remember the story:
Men's superior physical strength led them naturally toward hunting, whereas weaker
women stayed home and busied themselves with gardening and child rearing. Tidy
and neat-but also, it appears, historically wrong.
It turns out that such stories actually read history backward, from the present to
the past, seeking the historical origins of the patterns we find today. But recent re-
search suggests that meat made up a rather small portion of the early human diet,
which meant that all that celebrated hunting didn't count for much at all. And those
weapons men invented, the great technological breakthrough that enabled cultures to
develop-placing cultural development squarely on the backs of men? Turns out that
the great technological leap was more likely slings that women with babies developed
so they could carry both baby and food. It may even be true that the erect posture of
human beings derives not from the demands of hunting, but rather from the shift
from foraging for food to gathering and storing it. Although celebrants of "masculin-
ist" evolution credited the demands of the hunt for creating the necessity of social
(male) bonding for the survival of the community, surely it is the bond between mother
and infant that literally and materially ensures survival. Painting a more accurate an-
thropological picture would require that we acknowledge that females were not simply
passive and dependent bearers of children, but rather were active participants in the
technological and economic side oflife. 49
Another way to look at this is suggested by Helen Fisher. She notes startling
similarities between contemporary American culture and early human cultures. The
elements we have inherited as the biologically natural system-nuclear families, mar-
riages with one partner for life, the dramatic separation of home and workplace-all
seem to be relatively recent cultural inventions that accompany settled agricultural
societies. On the other hand, divorce and remarriage, institutionalized child care,
and women and men working equally both at home and away are more typical of the
hunting-and-gathering societies that preceded ours-and lasted for millions of years.
It may be, Fisher suggests, that after a brief evolutionary rest stop in settled agricultural
domain (during which time male domination, warfare, and monotheism all developed),
we are returning to our "true" human evolutionary origins. "As we head back to the
future," she suggests, "there's every reason to believe the sexes will enjoy the kind of
equality that is a function of our birthright."50
If this sounds a bit too mythical, there is a school of feminist anthropology that
goes much further. Most anthropologists agree with Michelle Rosaldo, who concluded
that "human cultural and social forms have always been male dominated," or with
Bonnie Nardi, who finds "no evidence of truly egalitarian societies. In no societies do
women participate on an equal footing with men in activities accorded the highest
prestige."51 But one school of feminist anthropologists sees such universality as "an
ethnological delusion," and this school argues that there have been, and are, societies
in which women and men have been, and are, equal. What's more, there also may have
been societies in which women were the dominant sex. Based on archeological excava-
tions in Crete and elsewhere, Marija Gimbutas and Riane Eisler and others have
argued that Neolithic societies were goddess-worshipping, gender-equal, virtual
Gardens of Eden, in which women and men may have occupied separate spheres but
were equal and mutually respectful. Symbolized, Eisler writes, by the chalice-the
symbol of shared plenty-these ancient peoples evidenced a "partnership" model of
human interaction.52
Then, the story goes, the barbarians invaded, instituting male domination, in-
troducing a single omnipotent male God, and unleashing "the lethal power of the
blade"-a violent and hierarchical world drenched in the blood of war and murder.
We've been living under such a brutal dominator model-"in which male dominance,
male violence, and a generally hierarchic and authoritarian social structure was the
norm"-ever since. In such a world, "having violently deprived the Goddess and the
female half of humanity of all power, gods and men of war ruled," Eisler writes, and
"peace and harmony would be found only in the myths and legends of a long lost past."53
Another just-so story? Perhaps. I'm always skeptical of arguments that point to
a dimly lit historical past for our models of future social transformation, because
they so often rely on selective evidence and often make for retrogressive politics. And
I'm equally uneasy with sweeping categorizations of "female" peace-loving cultures
being swept aside by brutally violent "male" ones. After all, the contemporary world,
for all its murderous, rapacious, and bloodthirsty domination, is far less violent than
hunter-gatherer societies. Ethnographic data suggest that only about 10 percent of so-
cieties rarely engage in war; most cultures are engaged in conflict either continuously
or more than once a year. The !Kung bushmen celebrated by Eisler as the "harmless
people" have a murder rate higher than that of Detroit or Washington, D.C. "The sad
archeological evidence," writes Francis Fukuyama, "indicates that systematic mass
killings of men, women, and children occurred in Neolithic times. There was no age
of innocence."54
On the other hand, why would we want to believe that male domination is somehow
natural and inevitable? Some of Eisler's arguments are on firm evolutionary footing: It is
likely, for example, that descent was originally traced through matrilinearity. This
would make descent far more certain in cultures that did not understand the relation-
ship between sexual intercourse and birth nine months later. And one can believe the
credible evidence that women played a greater role in early human societies, without
assuming one momentous calamity of invasion when that Edenic world was forever lost.
There is even some evidence of cultures that, although not fully female-dominated,
evince women's power in all public and private arenas. Maria Lepowsky's impressive
ethnography of the Vanatinai, a matrilineal, decentralized culture in New Guinea,
found no evidence of male domination-no men's huts, no special ceremonial cults.
Boys as well as girls care for their younger siblings. Men do child care. And both women
and men exercise sexual freedom. Women have, Lepowskywrites, "equal opportunities
of access to the symbolic capital of prestige derived from success in exchange." That is,
both women's and men's economic participation gives everyone equal possibilities of
prestige and honor. It depends on what you do, not what biological sex you are.55
Peggy Sanday's fascinating study of the matrilineal Minangkabau of western
Sumatra, one of the largest ethnic groups in Indonesia, is a case in point. Instead of
looking for a mirror-image world, in which women wield power as men do, Sanday
finds instead a culture in which women's ways of governing parallel men's ways and at
times even supplant men's ways. Here, women are self-confident and independent of
their husbands, and although men hold many of the formal political offices, women
"rule without governing." They "facilitate social bonding outside the machinations of
political power," which enables "the men's job of adjudicating disputes according to
the rules of adat [customs] and consensus decision-making."56
Women's status varies widely, depending on many cultural factors . And that alone
makes it clear that male domination is not inevitable.
THE VALUES OF CROSS-CULTURAL RESEARCH

If anthropologists have demonstrated anything, it is the rich diversity in human
cultural arrangements and the disparate definitions of gender and sexuality that we
have produced within our cultures. Several theories explain the historical origins of
these patterns and suggest ways we can modify or abandon some historically coercive
or exploitative practices without doing damage to our evolutionary legacy. Cultural
relativism also suggests that, in this enormous cultural variety and historical evolu-
tion of custom and culture, we shed those customs we no longer need, even if once
they served some societal purpose. "Assertions of past inferiority for women should
therefore be irrelevant to present and future developments," writes Eleanor Leacock.57
Still, questions linger. Given such diversity of sexuality and gender, why is male domi-
nance so universal? If it's not inevitable, how do we explain its persistence? Here, the
answers may be a bit closer to home.
KEY TERMS
Alliance Theory Gender Fluidity Pseudohermaphrodite
Circumcision Genital Mutilation Purdah
Clitoridectomy Hwame Ritualized Homosexuality
Colonization Hypermasculinity Rohypnol
Couvade Initiation Rituals Sex Segregation
Descent Theory Market Economy Sexual Division of Labor
Ethnocentrism Matrilinearity Third Genders
Excision Muxe Two-Spirit People
Female Circumcision Nad/e Xanith
Oh , so that explains the
difference in our sa lari es!
CHAPTER
((so, THAT EXPLAINS IT"

4
Psychoanalytic and Developmental
Perspectives on Gender
Upon no subject has there been so much dogmatic assertion based on

so little scientific evidence, as upon male and female types of mind.
-JOHN DEWEY, "Is COEDUCATION INJURIOUS TO GIRLS?" (1911)
T he cartoon above adopts a popular idea about the theories of Sigmund Freud,
the founder of psychoanalysis. Freud believed that the anatomical differ-
ences between males and females led them toward different personalities, that
sex did determine temperament. However, he did not believe that such differ-
ences were biologically programmed into males and females at birth. On the
contrary, Freud saw his work as challenging those who held that the body con-
tained all the information it needed at birth to become an adult man or woman.
He believed that the observed differences between women and men were trace-
able to our different experiences from infancy onward, especially in the ways we
were treated in our families.
Gender identity, Freud maintained, was a crucial part of personality
development-perhaps the most crucial part. Gender was acquired, molded
through interactions with family members and with the larger society. And it
wasn't an easy acquisition; the route to appropriate gender identity was perilous
87
and included the constant possibility of gender identity failure, which was mani-
fested most clearly in sexual nonconformity, especially homosexuality. Of course,
biology did play some role here: Freud and his followers believed that visible anatomi-
cal differences were decisive in the development of the child and especially that sexual
energy, located in the body, propelled the child's experiences that determined gender
identity. But the essence of psychological development was "not based on any premise
of inherent differences between the sexes, but solely on the different nature of their
experiences.'"
FREUD'S THEORY OF PSYCHOSEXUAL DEVELOPMENT

Freud proposed a stage theory of individual gender development, one in which each
individual passes through a number of stages on his or her path to adult gender iden-
tity. These stages are set into motion by two factors: the composition or structure of
the psyche and the realities of life. Four elements comprise Freud's model of the
psyche: id, ego, super-ego, and the external world. These elements together form the
basic architecture of the self, and each has a decisive role to play in the formation of
personality. The id represents our desire to satisfy our basic animal needs for food,
shelter, and pleasure. Id is energy, drive, craving. Id "knows" only that it wants gratifi-
cation but has neither morality nor the means to acquire what it wants. Freud calls the
id "a cauldron filled with seething excitations.'"'
Unfortunately, the external world possesses limited possibilities for instinctual
gratification; the id's desires are constantly thwarted. How we cope with those frustra-
tions determines personality development. The ego, the rational, problem-solving
portion of our personality, takes the impulses of the id and translates them into strate-
gies for gratification that will be effective. The ego must discipline the id, tame it, and
seek possible sources of gratification for it. Another part of the psyche, the super-ego,
is an outgrowth of ego's efforts to seek socially effective and appropriate outlets for
gratification of id's desires. Freud calls the super-ego an "internalized externality"-it
sees the limited possibilities for gratification offered by society as legitimate. Super-
ego is the seat of morality, and it assists the ego in selecting effective strategies to
achieve socially approved goals.
These different components of the self emerge gradually through a child's devel-
opment as the ego tries to navigate its way through the narrow straits presented by the
incessant demands of the id and the imperious claims of the super-ego. In a way,
Freud's theory of development is a rather sad story, as each successive stage does not
provide nearly the pleasures of the one it replaces-we grow by giving up things that
give us pleasure-and, because the ego is often not strong enough to undertake such a
struggle, there are the omnipresent dangers of temporary backsliding to earlier stages
in our fantasies (neurosis) or a dramatic break with reality and the attempt to live in
that earlier stage (psychosis).
Prior to birth, Freud believed, all the infant's desires are gratified; in the womb we
are sensuously content. But birth expels us from this enveloping Eden; hungry and
alone, we can take nothing for granted. Now the infant transfers gratification to the
mother's breast, seeking pleasure through ingesting food. This Freud calls the "oral
stage.'' But just as the ego accommodates itself to this source of gratification, it's re-
moved by weaning. In the next stage, the "anal stage," gratification is achieved not by
Chapter 4: "So, That Explains It" 89
taking food in but rather by giving food back, as in urination and defecation. These
bodily functions are now a source of pleasure, but no sooner do we discover the joys of
excretory creation that can compensate for the loss of the breast than we are toilet-
trained, forced to repress that source of gratification until it is socially appropriate to do
it, until, that is, it's convenient for grown-ups. Finally, after oral denial and anal repres-
sion, we reach what Freud calls the "phallic stage." And here's where gender comes in.
Until now, both boys and girls experience roughly the same things. But after the
resolution of the anal crisis, our paths diverge sharply. In this stage it is our task to
"become" either masculine or feminine. Freud believed that this process is more dif-
ficult for boys than for girls, because from the beginning a girl learns to identify with
her mother as a female, and this identification remains continuous into adulthood. In
contrast, a boy must detach himself from his identification with his mother, disiden-
tify with her, and identify with his father, a process that requires unlearning one at-
tachment and forming a new one. This is made more difficult because mothers
commonly offer a great deal of affection and caring, whereas fathers are often less af-
fectionate and more authoritarian.
This critical moment for the boy is called the "Oedipal crisis," after the play by
Sophocles, Oedipus, the King. The resolution of the Oedipal crisis is vital-the boy
learns to desire sex with women and to identify as a man. This is crucial in Freudian
theory: The boy achieves gender identity and sexual orientation at the same moment in
time. During the Oedipal stage, the boy desires sexual union with his mother, but he
also realizes that he is in competition with his father for her affections. With his
sexual desire for his mother thwarted by his father, the little boy sexualizes his fear of
the father, believing that if he were to compete sexually with his father, his father
would castrate him. The boy's ego resolves this state of terror of castration by trans-
ferring the boy's identification from mother to father, so that, symbolically, he can
have sexual access to his mother. Thus the boy must break the identification with his
mother, repudiate her, and identify with his father. This is a great shock-the mother
has been the source of warmth and love and is the object of his desire; the father has
been a more distant source of authoritarian power and is the source of the boy's
terror. But by identifying with the father the little boy ceases being "feminine" (iden-
tified with the mother) and becomes masculine, as he simultaneously becomes het-
erosexual, symbolically capable of sexual relations with mother-like substitutes.
Almost literally, as the 1930s popular song put it, he will "want a girl just like the girl
that married dear old Dad."
For girls, Freud believed, the path is complementary but not nearly as traumatic.
Girls retain their identification with the mother but must renounce their sexual desire
for her. They do this by acknowledging that they are incapable of sexual relations with
the mother, because they lack the biological equipment that makes such relations possi-
ble. This is why Freud believed that women experience "penis envy." The little girl un-
derstands that her only chance for sexual gratification is to retain her identification with
the mother and to be sexually possessed by a man who can satisfy her so that she can
have a baby, which will be her source of feminine gratification. In the process, she trans-
fers the location of sexual gratification from the clitoris (an "atrophied penis," in Freud's
terms) to the vagina, in other words, she develops feminine, passive sexuality. Again,
gender identity and sexual orientation go hand in hand. (Freud did acknowledge that his
"insight into these developmental processes in girls is unsatisfactory, incomplete, and

vague"-given how it was really an effort to derive some complementary comparison
with boys' development and was not a theory of girls' development itself.3)
Three issues are worth noting in this account of gender identity and sexuality.
First, Freud dislocates gender and sexuality from the realm of biology. There is noth-
ing inevitable about males becoming masculine or females becoming feminine.
Gender identity and sexuality are psychological achievements-difficult, precarious,
and full of potential pitfalls (an absent father may prevent a boy from transferring his
identification from his mother, for example). Gender and sexuality are accomplished
within the family, Freud argues, not activated by internal biological clocks.
Second, Freud links gender identity to sexual orientation, making homosexuality
a developmental gender issue rather than an issue of immorality, sin, or biological
anomaly. Homosexuals are simply those who have either failed to renounce identifica-
tion with the mother in favor of the father (gay men) or those who have failed to retain
their ties of identification to the mother (lesbians). (This idea also served as the basis
for therapeutic interventions designed to "cure" homosexuals by encouraging gender-
appropriate behaviors.) Homosexuality is a kind of proof that something went wrong
in the gender identity acquisition path.
Third, Freud restates with new vigor traditional gender stereotypes as if they
were the badges of successful negotiation of this perilous journey. A boy must be the
sexual initiator and scrupulously avoid all feminine behaviors, lest he be seen as
having failed to identify with the father. A girl must become sexually passive, wait for
a man to be attracted to her, so that she can be fulfilled as a woman. Femininity means
fulfillment not as a lover, but as a mother.
It's important to remember that though Freud postulated that homosexuality is
the failure of the child to adequately identify with the same-sex parent and is therefore
a problem of gender identity development, he did not believe in either the criminal
persecution or the psychiatric treatment of homosexuals. In fact, when Freud was
contacted by a woman whose son was homosexual, he patiently explained why he did
not think her son needed to be "cured":
Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice,
no degradation; it cannot be classified as an illness; we consider it to be a variation of
the sexual function ... Many highly respectable individuals of ancient and modern
times have been homosexuals, several of the greatest men among them ... It is a
great injustice to persecute homosexuality as a crime-and a cruelty too .. .
What analysis can do for your son runs in a different line. If he is unhappy, neu-
rotic, torn by conflicts, inhibited in his social life, analysis may bring him harmony,
peace of mind, full efficiency, whether he remains homosexual or gets changed. 4
It took another forty years before the American Psychiatric Association declassified
homosexuality as a mental illness.
Today, many popular stereotypes about homosexuality continue to rely on Freudian
theories of gender development. Many people believe that homosexuality is a form of
gender nonconformity; that is, effeminate men and masculine women are seen in the
popular mind as likely to be homosexual, whereas masculine men's and feminine
women's gender-conforming behavior leads others to expect them to be heterosexual.
In fact, we often believe we can "read" someone's sexual orientation by observing his
or her gender stereotypic behavior, as if really masculine men or really feminine
women couldn't possibly be gay or lesbian.
Freud's theories have been subject to considerable debate and controversy. He
based his theories about the sexuality of women on a very small sample of upper-
middle-class women in Vienna, all of whom were suffering from psychological diffi-
culties that brought them to treatment with him in the first place. (Freud rejected the
idea that they had been the victims of sexual abuse and incest, although many of
them claimed they had been.) His theories of male development were based on even
fewer clinical cases and on his own recollections of his childhood and his dreams.
These are not the most reliable scientific methods, and his tendency to make sexual-
ity the driving force of all individual development and all social and group processes
may tell us more about his own life, and perhaps contemporary Vienna, than about
other societies and cultures. Some researchers have argued that many of Freud's
patients were actually telling the truth about their sexual victimization and not fan-
tasizing about it and that, therefore, it is not the fantasies of children but rather the
actual behaviors of adults that form the constituent elements in the construction of
children's sexual view of the world.5
Although many today question Freud's theories on methodological, political, or
theoretical grounds, there is no question that these theories have had a remarkable
impact on contemporary studies and on popular assumptions about the relationship
between gender identity and sexual behavior and sexual orientation. If gender identity
and sexual orientation were accomplished, not inherent in the individual, then it was
the parents' fault if things didn't turn out "right." Magazine articles, child-rearing
manuals, and psychological inventories encouraged parents to do the right things and
to develop the right attitudes, traits, and behaviors in their children; thus the children
would achieve appropriate gender identity and thereby ensure successful acquisition
of heterosexual identity.
THE M-F TEST

In the early 1930s, just three decades after Freud developed his theories, Lewis Terman,
a psychology professor at Stanford, and his associate, Catherine Cox Miles, tried to
codify masculinity and femininity into their component parts-traits, attitudes, and
behaviors. Marshalling all the available diagnostic methods of their time, they pro-
duced a survey, published in 1936 as Sex and Personality. Their book presented an in-
ventory of behaviors, attitudes, and traits that enabled parents and teachers to monitor
a child's successful acquisition of masculinity or femininity. 6
Terman and Miles utilized a broad range of empirical measures to test gender
identity and constructed a continuum from masculinity to femininity, along which
any individual could be placed according to answers on a series of questions. (The
systematic-even obsessive-enterprise to find all possible measures of gender iden-
tity is itself an indication of the perceived significance of successful gender identity.)
As a result of inventories like the M-F test, gender identity came to be associated with
a particular bundle of attitudes, traits, and behaviors, which, once acquired, could be
seen as indicators of successful gender acquisition. When embraced by social science
in the 1940s, these inventories became the basis for sex-role theory.
The M-F test was perhaps the single most widely used means to determine suc-
cessful acquisition of gender identity and was still being used until the 1960s. The test
was quite wide-ranging, including Rorschach-like interpretations of inkblots, which
were coded for gender appropriateness, as well as identification, sentence completion,
and some empirical questions. Here is a small sample of the questions on the M-F test.
(If you want to keep your own score on these few items-to make sure that your own
gender identity is progressing "normally" -you should score it the way that Terman
and Miles suggested in 1936: If the response is "masculine," give yourself a "1"; if femi-
nine, score with a "2." Interesting how these little value judgments creep into scientific
research!)
Gendered Knowledge: In the following completion items there are right and wrong
answers, and it was assumed that the more "boyish" would know the right answer to
questions 2, 3, and 5 and that the more "girlish" would know the answers to items 1 and
4. Girls who knew the answers to 2, 3, and 5 would be scored as more "masculine."
1.Things cooked in grease are: boiled ( + ), broiled (+),fried (- ), roasted ( + ).

2. Most of our anthracite coal comes from: Alabama (- ), Colorado (- ), Ohio (- ),
Pennsylvania ( + ).
3. The "Rough Riders" were led by: Funston (-), Pershing (-), Roosevelt ( + ),
Sheridan (- ).
4. Red goes best with: black(-), lavender (+),pink (+),purple ( + ).
5. The proportion of the globe covered by water is about: 1/8 (-), 1/4 (-), 1/2
(- ), 3/4 ( + ).
Gendered Feelings: The test also included a variety of stimuli that were thought to
provoke certain emotions. Respondents were to answer whether these things caused
(a) a lot, (b) some, (c) little, or (d) none of the expected emotion. For example:
• Does: being called lazy; seeing boys make fun of old people; seeing someone cheat
on an exam make you ANGRY?
• Does: being lost; deep water; graveyards at night; Negroes [this is actually on the
list!] make you AFRAID?
• Does: a fly caught on sticky fly paper; a man who is cowardly and can't help it; a
wounded deer make you feel PITY?
• Does: boys teasing girls; indulging in "petting"; not brushing your teeth ; being a
Bolshevik make you feel that a person is WICKED?
To score this section, give yourself a minus (2) for every answer in which you said the
thing caused a lot of the emotion, except for the answer "being a Bolshevik," which was
obviously serious enough for men to get very emotional about. On all others, including
being afraid of "Negroes," however, high levels of emotion were scored as feminine.
Gendered Occupations, Appearances, Books: The test also included possible ca-
reers and their obvious sex-typing, such as librarian, auto racer, forest ranger, florist,
soldier, and music teacher. There were lists of character traits (loud voices, men with
beards, tall women) that those tested were asked to like or dislike and a list of chil-
dren's books (Robinson Crusoe, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Little Women, Biography
of a Grizzly) that they either liked, didn't like, or had not read.
Gendered People: There was a list of famous people whom one either liked, dis-
liked, or did not know (Bismarck, Lenin, Florence Nightingale, Jane Addams). (Obvi-
ously, not having read a book or not knowing about a famous person could be seen as
gender confirming or nonconfirming.)
There were also questions about what you might like to draw if you were an artist
(ships or flowers), what you might like to write about if you were a newspaper reporter
(accidents or theater), and where you might like to travel if you had plenty of money
(hunt lions in Africa or study social customs; learn about various religions or see how
criminals are treated). Finally, the test included some self-reporting about the respon-
dent's own behaviors and attitudes. Such yes or no items (here listed with the scoring
of a yes answer) included:
• Do you rather dislike to take your bath? (+)
• Are you extremely careful about your manner of dress?(-)
• Do people ever say you talk too much?(+)
• Have you ever been punished unjustly?(+)
• Have you ever kept a diary?(-)
The research by Terman and Miles enabled a new generation of psychologists to

construct a continuum between masculinity and femininity, along which any indi-
vidual could be located, and thereby to chart the acquisition of gender identity by ex-
amining the traits, attitudes, and behaviors appropriate to each gender. If a boy or girl
exhibited the appropriate traits and attitudes, parents could be reassured that their
child was developing normally. If, however, the child scored too high on the "inap-
propriate" side of the continuum, intervention strategies might be devised to facilitate
the adoption of more appropriate behaviors. Artistic boys would be pushed toward
rough-and-tumble play; tomboys would be forced into frilly dresses to read quietly a
book like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm instead of climbing a tree. Behind these inter-
ventions lay the spectre of the sissy, the homosexual male, who, Terman and Miles and
other psychologists believed, had gender identity problems. Following Freud, they be-
lieved that homosexuality was a gender disorder. As another psychologist, George W.
Henry, wrote in 1937:
In a large majority of ... cases the tendencies to homosexuality as shown by at-
titude and behavior can be observed in early childhood ... To the extent that his
interests, attitude and behavior are out of harmony with his actual sex he is likely
to meet with circumstances which will accentuate his deviation. Boys appear to be
somewhat more vulnerable than girls and if they show undue feminine tendencies
special care should be exercised to give them opportunity to develop masculine
characteristics.7
This notion that gender nonconformity is an indicator of sexual orientation re-

mains a most common assumption. If a boy acts "feminine," or a girl acts "masculine,"
we assume this reveals his or her sexuality-not some expression of his or her gender
identity. For decades it has served as the basis for pop psychologists' warnings about
"growing up straight" and how to prevent your son from "turning gay." (Pop psycholo-
gists seem far less concerned about girls becoming lesbians.) Today, it's often the reli-
gious right that offers such neo-Freudian warnings.8
How Parents Can Tell ...

The evangelical Christian organization Focus on the 5. A susceptibility to be bullied by other boys,
Family offers parents several warning signs that might who may tease them unmercifully and call
indicate "gender confusion," which, if left unattended, them "queer," "fag," and "gay."
might lead them on the path toward homosexuality. 6. A tendency to walk, talk, dress, and even
For boys age 5 to I I, these may include: "think" effeminately.
7. A repeatedly stated desire to be-or insist-
I. A strong feeling that they are "different" from
ence that he is-a girl.
other boys.
2. A tendency to cry easily, be less athletic, and If your child is experiencing these symptoms, the
dislike the roughhousing that other boys enjoy. organization urges you to seek professional help.
3. A persistent preference to play female roles in
make-believe play. Source : See www.focusonyourchild.com/develop/artl/
4. A strong preference to spend time in the com- A0000684.html.
pany of girls and participate in their games and
other pastimes.
Post-Freudian Theories of Gender Development

Freudian psychoanalytic theory spawned several different traditions in psychology.
Some developmental psychologists sought to chart the sequences or stages of gender
and sexual development, as children pass through psychological stages that corre-
spond to physical changes. Other psychologists used various statistical tests to more
precisely measure the differences between males and females at certain ages. Feminist
psychoanalysts took Freud and his followers to task for their implicit or explicit use of
masculinity as the normative reference against which all developmental stages were
plotted and understood. And, finally, some psychologists sought to specify the social
requirements for both masculine and feminine sex roles.
Cognitive development theories locate the trigger of gender development and
gender identity formation slightly later in life than early childhood. Psychologists of
this school argue that children are born more or less gender neutral; that is, no impor-
tant biological differences between boys and girls at birth explain later gender differ-
ences. As they grow, children process new information through "cognitive filters" that
enable them to interpret information about gender. Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget ex-
amined the developmental sequences in children's self-perception and their views of
the world. Children are active participants in their own socialization, Piaget argued,
not simply the passive objects of social influence. Piaget applied this model to cogni-
tive development, pointing out the sequences of tasks and mental processes appropri-
ate to children of various ages.9
Lawrence Kohlberg applied this Piagetian model of sequential cognitive develop-
ment to the acquisition of a stable gender identity. One of the central developmental
tasks of early childhood, Kohlberg argued, is to label oneself as either male or female.
The point in time at which children learn "I am a boy" or "I am a girl" is a point after
which self-identification seems fixed. The decision is cognitive, part of the pattern of
mental growth in the organism. Early in life, children develop a gendered mental filter,
after which new information from the social world is interpreted and acted upon in
terms of its appropriateness to their gender identity. Even by age two, children have
relatively stable and fixed understandings of themselves as gendered, and this catego-
rization, Kohlberg argues, "is basically a cognitive reality judgment rather than a
product of social rewards, parental justifications, or sexual fantasies." Things, persons,
and activities are labeled "this is appropriate to who I am" or "this is not appropriate
to who I am." Messages coded in certain ways get through to boys; those coded in
other ways get through to girls. 10
According to this theory, children's early gender identities depend on concrete,
physical cues like dress, hairstyle, and body size in their categorization of the world
into two genders. Boys never wear dresses and have short hair; girls do wear dresses
and have long hair. Many children believe that they can change their gender by getting
haircuts or changing their clothing, because they believe gender identity is concrete
and attached to physical attributes. Some children become upset if their parents
engage in gender-inappropriate conduct (Daddy carries Mommy's purse, Mommy
changes the tire). It is not until age five or six that most children have the cognitive
machinery to recognize gender as an attribute of the person and not the result of the
material props that we use to display gender.
By this view, the acquisition of a gender identity is a switching point in the child's
life. After age six, the child sees the world in gender terms. The child cannot go back,
because the process of acquiring gender identity is irreversible after age three or four.
All gender-role performances that are socially coded as appropriate for men or women
become, thereafter, more easily acquired by the child who possesses the "correct"
filter. Because so many aspects of behavior depend on gender identity, the acquisition
of an irreversible filter is necessary to human development and is to be expected in all
societies.
Social learning of gender does not end in childhood. Acquisition of gender
identity may begin early, but it continues throughout the life cycle. Young children
label themselves "boy" or "girl" at an early age, after which they actively begin to
use the label to make sense of the world. However, this label, demonstrated by the
capacity to express the sentence "I am a boy (girl)" in a number of ways and situa-
tions, does not exhaust the content of gender roles or pick out unerringly the ap-
propriate gender-typed stimuli. A child does not know most of the things that an
adult knows or believes or likes or feels . The two- or three-year-old girl does not
know that a woman is not likely to become president. She knows only that she uses
the word "girl" to label herself and that she is comfortable with that label. Gender
identity is more fluid than young children believe, and our gender socialization
continues throughout our lives. And, equally important, we are active agents in our
own socialization, not simply the passive receptors of cultural blueprints for ap-
propriate gender behaviors.
Because there is no "natural" relationship between gender identity and gender-
role performances, the young child who "knows" his or her gender possesses a label
with very little content. However, the label is used to organize the new things that are
experienced. This is done by observing who (in gender terms) leaves the house to go to
work, who is in charge of the labor of the household, and who plays with cars or dolls
(or at least who the child sees playing with these toys in the media). All of these activi-
ties are more or less gender-typed, mostly by who does them rather than by what is
done. In addition, all children hear verbal exhortations of what boys do/don't do and
what girls do/don't do. Children naturally tend to imitate models of behavior, even if
that imitation is not reinforced, and this includes the vast amount of gender-typical
behavior that is performed in front of them. Children swim in an ocean of gendered
conduct, and it is terribly difficult to swim against the tide.
11
From this point of view, the stability of the sense of a gendered self does not
depend on biological differences at birth, the experiences of early childhood, or a
cognitive filter. It depends on the way that a child's day-to-day situations continu-
ously stabilize his or her sense of being a boy or a girl. Because men and women each
have different social learning histories, we find gender differences in the behaviors
and values of children and adults. To understand our own sexuality, we must first
look at the kinds of arrangements we have made for the ways in which men and
women are supposed to behave in our society and the ways they conceive of them-
selves. If you conceive of yourself as a woman, and you are put into circumstances in
which people in your society expect women to react in a certain way, the fact that
you think of yourself as a woman shapes the way you react to those circumstances.
Thus in a society there are always two factors that affect gendered behavior: the
demands of the social situation and one's prior experience of being a girl or a boy
or a woman or a man.
FEMINIST CHALLENGES TO PSYCHOANALYSIS

AND DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
Freud's theory of psychosexual development offered a very different kind of challenge
to assumptions of biological inevitability. Rather than focus on variation, as did
anthropologists, Freud stressed the universality of sex differences but argued that
such differences were produced-learned by children in interactions with their fami-
lies and the larger society. He saw nothing inevitable about becoming either masculine
or feminine, or about becoming heterosexual. Sexual orientation and gender identity
were achievements.
Many women have dismissed Freud's arguments because he argued that their de-
velopment was the result of their coming to terms with the shame that would naturally
follow from the realization that they did not have penises. Not only did his arguments
place an absurd emphasis on a little flap of tissue, but also penis envy meant that
women would always see themselves as inferior to men. What's more, Freud asserted
that female development required the repudiation of the clitoris, the source of sexual
agency and pleasure, for the more "mature" sexuality of vaginal receptivity.
No sooner had Freud published his theories than women challenged the centrality
of penis envy in girls' development. Karen Horney's 1922 essay "On the Genesis of
the Castration Complex in Women" suggested that a theory that posited one-half of
the human race to be unsatisfied was itself theoretically problematic. It was, rather, "the
actual social subordination of women" that provided the context for women's develop-
ment. Since then, women have patiently explained that it was men, not women, who saw
the possession of a penis as such a big deal. After all, without one, how could women
know what it felt like? As one psychoanalyst put it:
OH?
REALLY•
Boys wear blue and girls wear pink-and that's how the natural biological dif-
ferences between the two are clearly marked for everyone to see.
You'd think that's the way it's always been, right-that boys and girls are
color-coded from infancy? But the historical reality of such color coding is far
from straightforward. Before the twentieth century, Americans believed that boys and girls
were pretty much the same, and so they were all dressed the same: in flowing white dresses.
The photo here shows one such boy.
Recognize him? It's Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who would
one day be president. (You can almost see his cigarette
holder clenched in his teeth if you look closely!)
In a historical study of infant and toddler dress codes, his-
torian Jo Paoletti found that when color coding first came into
vogue, it was exactly the opposite of our current style. In 1890,
Ladies Home Journal recommended pink for boys because it
was a stronger color! Others said that pink was more flatter-
ing for dark-haired children, and blue for the fair-haired, re-
gardless of their biological sex. It wasn't until the 1920s that
the current fashion of pink = feminine and blue = masculine
was established.
Source: Jo Paoletti, Pink and Blue: Telling the Boys from the Girls in America
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012) .
It is the male who experiences the penis as a valuable organ and he assumes that
women also must feel that way about it. But a woman cannot really imagine the
sexual pleasure of a penis-she can only appreciate the social advantages its pos-
sessor has.12
Perhaps women had a more political and social "privilege envy" than any envy to do
with the body.
In fact, some argued, Freud had it backward. Women did not have penis envy as
much as men had "womb envy." Women, after all, can produce babies, apparently (at
least in those cultures in which a rather uneventful moment nine months earlier is not
remembered or not considered as significant) all by themselves! No matter what men
do, they cannot create life. Bruno Bettelheim and several others suggested that the ori-
gins of women's subordination stemmed from men's fears of women's reproductive
powers, and these researchers pointed to male initiation rituals that imitated birth
throes as an indication of ritual appropriation masking significant envy.13
Another line of critique has been to reverse Freud's initial proposition. Instead of
asking how and why women come to see themselves as inferior to men, why not ask
how men come to see themselves as superior to women? Several feminist writers such
as Nancy Chodorow, Lillian Rubin, Dorothy Dinnerstein, and Jessica Benjamin have
posed that question.1 4 Inspired by the object-relations school of psychoanalytic thought,
these theorists pointed to the more deeply embedded masculine biases in Freud's
formulation. Freud argued that the final achievement of gender development was
individual autonomy-freedom from dependency on the mother and thus freedom
from the need for group identification. Autonomy was achieved in the boy's renuncia-
tion of identification with his mother and subsequent identification with his father.
However, in The Reproduction of Mothering, Chodorow argued that Freud inadvertently
revealed the sources of men's sense of superiority and, thus, of male domination.15
What if, she argued, we were to suggest that the capacities for intimacy, connec-
tion, and community were healthy adult experiences? That would mean that the stage
before the Oedipal crisis-when both boys and girls are deeply attached to their
mother-is crucial. What happens is that boys lose that capacity for connection and
intimacy in the break with the mother and the shift to the father, whereas girls retain
that capacity. What's more, such a shift is so traumatic for boys-and yet so necessary
in our culture-that they must demonstrate constantly that they have successfully
achieved it. Masculinity comes to be defined as the distance between the boy and his
mother, between himself and being seen as a "mama's boy" or a sissy. So he must spend
a significant amount of time and energy demonstrating his successful achievement of
this distance, which he does by devaluing all things feminine-including girls, his
mother, femininity, and, of course, all emotions associated with femininity. Male
domination requires the masculine devaluation of the feminine. As Chodorow puts it:
A boy, in his attempt to gain an elusive masculine identification, often comes to

define his masculinity in largely negative terms, as that which is not feminine or
involved with women. There is an internal and external aspect to this. Internally,
the boy tries to reject his mother and deny his attachment to her and the strong
dependency on her that he still feels. He also tries to deny the deep personal
identification with her that has developed during his early years. He does this by
repressing whatever he takes to be feminine inside himself, and, importantly, by
denigrating whatever he considers to be feminine in the outside world.
Thus Freud provided a decidedly "feminist" reading of male domination. He just

didn't know it, so fixated was he on the break with the mother as the crucial moment
in human development.16
Kohlberg's ideas about the stages of cognitive and moral development have also
come under critical scrutiny from feminist scholars. Kohlberg's stages proceeded from
very concrete and practical rules to the application of universal ethical principles. But
when girls and boys were evaluated, girls seemed "arrested" at the third stage of moral
development, a stage that stresses mutual interpersonal expectations and relationships.
(Kohlberg argued that this difference followed logically from the more remote and
abstracted nature of the boy's relationship with his father, compared with the girl's
more interdependent relationship with her mother.) Carol Gilligan, one of Kohlberg's
students, was not persuaded and believed the different types of moral reasoning ought
not be hierarchically ranked. In her pathbreaking book In a Different Voice, Gilligan
suggested that such stages appear only when men's lives are regarded as the norm. In
her interviews with Harvard women undergraduates, Gilligan found very different
criteria for moral decision making. She heard another moral voice besides the "ethic
of justice"-that abstract, universal, ethical paradigm Kohlberg proposed as the final
stage of moral development. There is also an "ethic of care," stressing intimacy and
connectedness, that seems to be followed more often by women. From this, Gilligan
suggested that the origins of aggression might be different for women and men.
For men, the ethic of justice demands the blind and indifferent application of sanctions;
aggression stems from constraints on individual autonomy. Women, Gilligan writes, hear
a different voice, wherein "lies the truth of an ethic of care, and the tie between the rela-
tionship and responsibility, and the origins of aggression in the failure of connection.'"7
Gilligan's work unleashed a broad controversy among feminist psychologists that
has continued to ripple through the larger culture. Gilligan's work seemed to support
arguments that women and men are fundamentally, irretrievably, and irreconcilably
different. Other work building on that premise followed quickly, including works on
cognition and epistemology and popular works that emphasized differences between
women's and men's linguistic and mythical spheres. 18 Ironically, groups that sought to
exclude women from various arenas attempted to use Gilligan's arguments to legiti-
mate discrimination. If women and men are so obviously different, their reasoning
went, then excluding women from certain positions would not be discrimination, but
rather really a way to honor and respect differences. Historically, men who argued
against woman suffrage made exactly the same case that Gilligan made. Here, for ex-
ample, is an antisuffragist, writing in 1914:
One practical difficulty in the way of the participation of women in public affairs we
might as well put bluntly. They do not seem to be intellectually fit for it ... [l]t is
very rare to find a woman who has a statesmanlike mind. The ordinary woman is
interested in persons rather than in principles. Only when a principle is embodied
in a person is she aroused to any enthusiasm. She sees the picturesque aspects of
a cause, but does not readily follow an economic process ... She is more likely to
be interested in little things which touch her own life than in great things which
determine the destinies of nations.
More recently, the Citadel and Virginia Military Institute cited the differences be-
tween women and men as justifications for excluding women from their state-
supported corps of cadets (figure 4.1), and fire departments sought to exclude women
from entering their ranks. (Given that the legal code requires the indifferent applica-
tion of the law and adherence to abstract principles, one might have also predicted a
move to exclude women from serving as judges.) 19
Gilligan herself was more circumspect and deplored efforts to use her findings "to
rationalize oppression.'' What she found is that "educationally advantaged North
American males have a strong tendency to focus on issues of justice when they de-
scribe an experience of moral conflict and choice; two thirds of the men in our studies
exhibited a 'justice focus.' One third of the women we studied also showed a justice
focus . But one third of the women focused on care, in contrast to only one of the 46
men.'' Moreover, "one third of both females and males articulate justice and care con-
cerns with roughly equal frequency." The psychological patterns Gilligan observed,
she argued, are "not based on any premise of inherent differences between the sexes,
but solely on the different nature of their experiences.'' To extrapolate from these data
to claim that men and women differ on moral voices would be to distort her findings
into stereotypes; she writes:
The title of my book was deliberate; it reads, "in a different voice," not "in a woman's
voice." In my introduction, I explain that this voice is not identified by gender but by
theme. Noting as an empirical observation the association of this voice with women,
Figure 4.1. Upperclass cadets "socialize" a young woman at Virginia Military Institute after the
Supreme Court demanded that VMI admit women to its Corps of Cadets.
Source: AP Photo/Steve Helber.
I caution the reader that "this association is not absolute, and the contrasts
between male and female voices are presented here to highlight a distinction
between two modes of thought and to focus a problem of interpretation rather
than to represent a generalization about either sex." In tracing development,
I "point to the interplay of these voices within each sex and suggest that their
convergence marks times of crisis and change." No claims, I state, are made
about the origins of these voices or their distribution in a wider population,
across cultures or time (...). Thus, the care perspective in my rendition is neither
biologically determined nor unique to women. It is, however, a moral perspective
different from that currently embedded in psychological theories and measures,
and it is a perspective that was defined by listening to both women and men describe
their own experience.2°
Subsequent research has failed to replicate the binary gender differences in ethics; most
researchers "report no average differences in the kind of reasoning men and women use
in evaluating moral dilemmas, whether it is care-based or justice-based.'"'
Feminist psychologists did, however, expose an androcentric bias in the psycho-
logical literature of gender identity and development. With men as the normative
standard against which both men and women were evaluated, women always seemed
to be coming up short. As Gilligan demonstrated, when psychologists began to shift
their framework and to listen closely to the voices of women, new patterns of devel-
opment emerged. This bias also had consequences in the lives of real people. For ex-
ample, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual ofMental Disorders (DSM), published
by the American Psychiatric Association, is the diagnostic bible of mental illness
professionals. For some time, the DSM has listed such mental illnesses as "premen-
strual dysphoric disorder," which is its version of PMS. So each woman potentially
suffers from a specific mental illness for up to one week a month-which adds up to
about 25 percent of her adult life. (Homosexuality was removed from the manual.)
Psychologist Paula Caplan suggested that the DSM instead consider adding a new set
of diagnoses, including "Delusional Dominating Personality Disorder" (DDPD) to
classify sexist behavior as symptomatic of mental illness. And what about "John
Wayne syndrome" or "macho personality disorder"? she asks. Her quiz to identify
DDPD goes a long way toward exposing the gender biases in those ostensibly gender-
neutral manuals (figure 4.2).
DEVELOPMENTAL DIFFERENCES
So what are the real-and not the imagined or produced-psychological differences
between women and men? Developmental psychologists have pointed to some signifi-
cant differences between males and females that emerge as we grow. Yet even these are
differences between the means of two distributions, in which there is more variation
among men and among women than there is between women and men. When psy-
chologist Janet Hyde reviewed forty-six meta-analyses-studies that reviewed all the
available studies on a certain topic-in a sort of"meta-meta-analysis," she found that
the size of the gender difference for 78 percent of all the traits, attitudes, and behaviors
measured by these studies was "small or close to zero." And when psychologists Eleanor
22
Maccoby and Carol Jacklin surveyed over 1,600 empirical studies from 1966 to 1973,
they found only four areas with significant and consistent sex differences: (1) Girls
have relatively higher verbal ability; (2) boys have better visual and spatial ability;
(3) boys do better on mathematical tests; (4) boys were consistently more aggressive
than girls. In fact, Maccoby and Jacklin conclude that their work
revealed a surprising degree of similarity in the rearing of boys and girls. The
two sexes appear to be treated with equal affection, at least in the first five
years of life (the period for which most information is available); they are equally
allowed and encouraged to be independent, equally discouraged from dependent
behavior; ... there is even, surprisingly, no evidence of distinctive parental reac-
tion to aggressive behavior in the two sexes. There ARE differences, however.
Boys are handled and played with somewhat more roughly. They also receive more
physical punishment. In several studies boys were found to receive both more
praise and more criticism from their caretakers-socialization pressure, in other
words, was somewhat more intense for boys-but the evidence on this point is
inconsistent. The area of greatest differentiation is in very specifically sex-typed
behavior. Parents show considerably more concern over a boy's being a "sissy"
than over a girl's being a tomboy. This is especially true of fathers, who seem to
take the lead in actively discouraging any interest a son might have in feminine toys,
activities, or attire.2i
DO YOU RECOGNIZE THIS MAN?*

A quiz you'll never see in Cosmo and Redbook
Men who meet at least six of the following criteria may have Delusional Dominating
Personality Disorder! Warning: DDPD is pervasive, profound, and a maladaptive organization
of the entire personality! (Check as many as apply.)
1. Is he ...
• unable to establish and maintain meaningful • unable to respond appropriately and empathically
interpersonal relationships? to the feelings and needs of close associates and
intimates (often leading to the misinterpretation of
• unable to identify and express a range of feelings
signals from others)?
in himself (typically accompanied by an inability
to identify accurately the feelings of other • unable to derive pleasure from doing things for
people)? others?
2. Does he ...
• use power, silence, withdrawal, and/or avoidance • display any of the following delusions:
rather than negotiation in the face of interpersonal • the delusion that men are entitled to the
conflict or difficulty? services of any woman with whom they are
• believe that women are responsible for the bad personally associated;
things that happen to him, while the good things • the delusion that women like to suffer and
are due to his own abilities, achievements, or be ordered around;
efforts?
• the delusion that physical force is the best
• inflate the importance and achievements of method of solving interpersonal problems;
himself, males in general, or both?
• the delusion that men's sexual and aggressive
• categorize spheres of functioning and sets of impulses are uncontrollable;
behavior rigidly according to sex (like believing
the delusion that pornography and erotica
housework is women's work)?
are identical;
• use a gender-based double standard in interpreting
• the delusion that women control most of the
or evaluating situations or behavior (considering a
world's wealth and/or power but do little of
man who makes breakfast sometimes to be
the world's work;
extraordinarily good, for example, but considering
a woman who sometimes neglects to make • the delusion that existing inequalities in the
breakfast deficient)? distribution of power and wealth are a
product of the survival of the fittest and that,
• feel inordinately threatened by women who fail to therefore, allocation of greater social and
disguise their intelligence? economic rewards to the already privileged
are merited.
3. Does he have ...

• a pathological need to affirm his social importance • a distorted approach to sexuality, displaying itself
by displaying himself in the company of females in one or both of these ways:
who meet any three of these criteria:
• a pathological need for flattery about his sexual
• are conventionally physically attractive; or performance and/or the size of his genitalia;
• are younger; • an infantile tendency to equate large breasts
• are shorter; on women with their sexual attractiveness.
• weigh less; • emotionally uncontrolled resistance to reform
• appear to be lower on socioeconomic efforts that are oriented toward gender equity?
criteria; or
• are more submissive ... than he is?
The tendency to consider himself a "New Man" neither proves nor disproves that the
subject fits within this diagnostic category.
*Some women also fit many of these criteria, either because they wish to be as dominant as men or
because they feel men should be dominant.
Freely adapted, with permission, from They Say You're Crazy:
How the World's Most Powerful Psychiatrists Decide Who's Normal (Addison-Wesley, 1995) by Paula J. Caplan.
Figure 4.2. Hypothetical Diagnostic Tool for Delusional Dominating Personality Disorder (DDPD) by
Paula J. Caplan. Used with permission.
Relying on parents for signals about what is appropriate turns out to be more de-
cisive than the sex of the children. In one experiment, half of sixty preschool children
were told that a tool set was for boys and a kitchen set was for girls. The children were
also asked what they thought their mothers and fathers would say if they played with
the toys: Would their parents say it was good, bad, or that it didn't matter?
How much time did they play with each of the toys (figure 4.3)? The results of the
experiment were interesting. For the boys, it depended less on the type of toy and more
Boys Playing with the Tool Set
180
160
• Dad thinks it's
bad to play with
140 "girl toys"
""'0.. cl"
1= "'
.9 120 D Dad thinks it's
" .s"
..,E okay to play
..i:::
4-<
100 with "girl toys"
0
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-~
""
.: 80
E ·»
0
< ..::l
0..
60
40
20
Told nothing Told tool set is for boys
Boys Playing with the Kitchen Set
180
160
• Dad thinks it's
bad to play with
140 "girl toys"
""
.:
·»
..::l 120
0..
1= ""' .:
D Dad thinks it's
""'0.. ..i:::.s" 100 okay to play
" ;;;;
..,E 80
with "girl toys"
'cl .s
"
1=
.s 60
;::, "ii<
0
E 40
<
20
0
Told nothing Told kitchen set is
for girls
Figure 4.3. "Boys Playing with the Tool Set" and "Boys Playing with the Kitchen Set" graphs. Sex
Roles, "Preschoolers' Awareness of Social Expectations of Gender: Relationships to Toy Choices,"
Vol. 38 Issue 9, 1998, pp. 695-696, Tarja Raag and Christine L. Rackliff.
Source:© 1998 Plenum Publishing Corporation. With permission of Springer.
104
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Forget Mars and Venus, says psychologist Janet Hyde. We're all Earthlings! And in her "Gender
Similarities Hypothesis" she reviews all the empirical evidence that women and men are far
more similar than we are different. Turns out there is way more evidence for similarity than
there is for difference-except, of course, for outdated stereotypes.
on what they were told about it-and what they thought their fathers would think.
When boys were told nothing about the toys, they spent the same amount of time
playing with both the tools and the kitchen set. When the tools were labeled "for boys,"
those who thought their fathers would consider cross-gender play as "bad" spent a lot
more time playing with the tools. And when the kitchen set was labeled "for girls," not
one boy who thought his father would say that such play was "bad" even touched it.
Now, remember that when the toys were not labeled, the boys spent as much time
with the tools as they did with the kitchen set. Clearly there was nothing intrinsic
about tools or kitchen sets that was more or less attractive to the boys. What mattered
is how they were labeled-and what they thought their fathers would say. (It's equally
interesting that the kids didn't think the fathers would care which toys their daughters
played with or that their mothers would care what either the boys or the girls played
with. Only the sons, and only the fathers .)24
Given the amount of attention we have been paying to the gender of children's toys,
it is perhaps ironic that they've actually become more gendered in recent years, not less.
Or, perhaps, not so ironic after all. (Remember that baby boys' and girls' outfits are in-
creasingly gendered as well.) The chart in figure 4-4 shows the ratio oftoys advertised
as especially for boys or toys advertised as particularly for girls in relationship to the
total number of toys for children. Two things stand out. First, notice that between 1910
and 1940, more toys for girls were gender-coded than toys for boys. This coincides with
the feminist campaigns for women to work, join unions, serve on juries, attend univer-
sities, and, of course, vote. (Suffrage was granted in 1920.) Perhaps there was more anxi-
ety about women's roles at that time, and gender-coded toys were a way to suppress that
interest in breaking out of those roles? And second, notice that after a relatively stable
period from 1940 to 1970, during which the ratios were relatively low, toys have begun
to diverge again, with both boys and girls getting a larger percentage of gender-coded
toys than ever before. And, what's more, while both are increasing, the coding of toys
for boys is significantly higher than for girls, indicating, perhaps, increased anxiety
about making sure that boys don't "stray" from their prescribed roles.
Males and females can be trained for a vast array of characteristics, and indi-
vidual variations along this array overlap extensively. Because only small actual dif-
ferences are found between girls and boys, how do we account for the relative
ineffectiveness of socialization activities (toys, play, television, schools) in shaping the
behavior of children in psychological experiments, and yet the continuing assignment
to children and adults of roles on the basis of gender typing? Our answer can be only
speculative. It appears that most psychological experiments offer boys and girls an op-
portunity to perform similar tasks without labeling the tasks as gender-appropriate.
20.0% - (toys for boys) / (toys for children) -

18.0% - (toys for girls)/ (toys for children) _
16.0% 1/'
IN'
A/" i\r-v
r -
14.0%
12.0%
10.0% rl ~ -I'\ .. I
\ ) ~,..
r--..
...I
8.0%
6.0%
..,/ v-'"\ ~ /~ ~ .r---
11'-N If'/ '----- \
~
~ \~.r~
4.0%
2.0%
,~
---- -
0.0%
1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000
Figure 4.4. The frequency of "toys for boys" and "toys for girls" relative to "toys for children,
graphed by Sociologist Philip Cohen.
Source: Google Books Ngram Viewer, http:/ /books.google.com/ngrams; http://socimages.tumblr.com/
post/ I05142152260/ gender-segregation-of-boys-and-girls-toys-in.
In these contexts, males and females perform mostly alike. It would appear that the
real power of gender typing resides less in the child than in the environments in which
the child finds him- or herself. The social environment is filled with gendered mes-
sages and gendered activities. Even if the child possesses no fixed and permanent
gender role, social arrangements will continually reinforce gender differences. In a
gender-neutral experiment, social requirements are removed, and so the child does
not behave in accord with a gender stereotype. Perhaps it is not internalized beliefs
that keep us in place as men or women, but rather our interpersonal and social envi-
ronments. Because there is considerable variation in what men and women actually
do, it may require the weight of social organization and constant reinforcement to
maintain gender-role differences.
• ,1 ,, ,,, , ,, =n1u,, a
As we grow up, we pass through different stages when gender expression is more or less
rigid-and more or less relentlessly applied. While we often begin our childhoods dressed
more or less the same-overalls, running shoes-it's not too long before the opposite sex
is said to have "cooties" and we become rigidly insistent on exaggerated stereotypic forms
of dress. Some girls go all "girly girl"-that sudden desire to wear ballet outfits to school-
and some boys go all rough and tumble, avoiding any outfit that might be even remotely
associated with girls. In "Pink Frilly Dresses and the Avoidance of All Things 'Girly' ... ,"
psychologist May Ling Halim and her colleagues chart this rigidity and examine how com-
mitted children are to such rigid notions of gender identity. Do you think boys or girls are
more gender rigid? Why?
Boys like to play with guns, and girls like to play house.
OH? Actually, it depends. Boys and girls, aged three to seven, were presented
REALLY• with three possible toys to play with: a gun and holster (traditionally male), a tea
set (traditionally female), and a ball (neutral). After establishing that certain
characteristics were gender-coded-hard, sharp, angular (masculine), soft and smooth
(feminine)-the researchers altered the toys. The gun was adorned with rhinestones in a purple
holster. The camouflage-colored tea set was covered with sharp spikes.
And both the boys and girls were certain that the tea set was for boys and the gun and holster
were for girls.
Source: Rosalind Chait Barnett, "Understanding the Role of Pervasive Negative Gender Stereotypes: What Can
Be Done?" Paper presented at The Way Forward, Heidelberg, Germany, May 2007.
Resistance to such constricting gender arrangements comes in many shapes and

sizes. Consider Riley, a little girl who is frustrated with the color coding of toys for
boys and girls. In a well-watched YouTube video (seen four million times), she says,
utterly exasperated, "Why do all the girls have to buy pink stuff and all the boys have
to buy different color stuff?" (Watch her one-minute video at: http://www.youtube
.com/watch?v=-CU040Hqbas)
• ,J Ii •Ii! Ii :n)Q Ii I
Much of our childhood socialization-from infancy through adulthood, actually-is a form of
gender policing, a way that our peers, families, and the larger culture all remind us, all the time,
what is expected of us as women and men. Step out of line and you're likely to hear it-and
loudly. "Dude, you're a fag!" is what sociologist C. J. Pascoe heard from high school students
in one California school. It so perfect ly captured the ways that young boys police gender per-
formances from other boys, extracting conformity so that no one could possibly get the wrong
idea about you.
And then there are Sasha's parents, Beck Laxton and Kieran Cooper in Cambridge,
England. For five years, they kept Sasha's biological sex a secret, letting Sasha dress as
Sasha wanted-hand-me-downs from older brothers and sisters mostly-referring
to Sasha as "the child" or "the infant," and playing with dolls, trucks, and whatever
else Sasha liked. It drove other folks nuts, but Sasha is a completely happy child, who,
at age five, had his sex revealed to the world because it was required by the school
authorities. A Toronto couple recently did the same with their baby. Despite all the
dire predictions, the kids seem to be doing well. "As long as he has good relationships
and good friends," Laxton says, "then nothing else matters, does it?"25
THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX ROLES

In their effort to understand the constellation of attitudes, traits, and behaviors that
constitutes appropriate gender identity, some social psychologists elaborated and
Creating Little Martians and Venusians
The goal of gender socialization is not to enable little Here's a good one. In 2013, after years of Lara
boys and little girls to express their natural gender Croft and Dora the Explorer, Marvel Comics came
differences, but to create those differences in the first out with new Avengers T-shirts for boys and girls.
place and then make them seem natural. And how For boys, royal blue; for girls, bright red and tapered.
better than to make sure boys and girls get the
message than through fashion? Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/ 11 /sexist-
avengers-t-shirts-n_3063942.html.
Bi A
~ - If.IQ
5 .i . .~-t, ~~
·- . ,,,
. '.,
: <\~ ...
Source: Disney Store (left); SuperHeroStuff.com (right) .
extended the original classifications of the M-F scale offered by Terman and Miles. If
masculinity and femininity could be understood as points on a continuum, a variety
of abnormal behaviors could possibly be understood as examples of gender-
inappropriate behavior.2 6 In the years after World War II, for example, some psycholo-
gists hypothesized that the propensity toward fascism and Nazism stemmed from
distorted assertions of gender identity. The authors of The Authoritarian Personality
posited a typology of behaviors, based on the M-F scale, a scale that suggested that
femininity and masculinity can describe both an internal psychological identification
and an external behavioral manifestation. Their typology thus created four possible
combinations instead of two:
Internal Psychological
Organization
Masculine Feminine
External Behavioral Masculine MM MF

Manifestation
Feminine FM FF
Two of the cells, upper left and lower right, would be considered "gender
appropriate"-males and females whose internal psychological identification matches
their external behaviors. Those males whose scores placed them in the upper right
cell-internally feminine, externally masculine-also scored highest on measures of
racism, authoritarianism, and hypermasculinity. The authors proposed that such
attitudes were the means for those who were insecure about their masculinity to cover
up their insecurities-by more rigid adherence to the most traditional norms.2 7
This notion became common wisdom in 1950s America and was used to study
juvenile delinquency, Southern resistance to integration and civil rights, and male re-
sistance to feminism. A more recent study has included homophobia. It resonated in
popular advice about schoolyard bullies-that they are the least secure about their
masculinity, which is why they have to try to prove it all the time. One's response to a
bully-"Why don't you pick on someone your own size?"-will always fall on deaf
ears, because the goal is not to compete but to win, so that insecure masculinity can
be (however momentarily) reaffirmed. It doesn't work, of course, because the oppo-
nent is no real match, and so the bully has to do it all over again.
Interestingly, Sanford and his colleagues found that the men who scored in the
lower left cell-externally feminine and internally masculine-were the most creative,
artistic, and intelligent. It took a very secure man, indeed, to stray from the behavioral
norms of masculinity, they suggested. And a recent study confirmed this trend.
Cognitive biologist Qazi Rahman and his colleagues at the University of London
administered a series of tests to heterosexual men and women. They found that higher
levels of childhood gender nonconformity correlated with higher IQ and reading
ability in both males and females . That is, higher levels of childhood femininity in
males and lower levels in females were correlated with higher levels of intelligence
ii'',,,!''
and academic achievement.2 8
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If you're perceived as "feminine," you can be pretty vulnerable to gender policing, bullying, and
the like. This, argues Robb Willer and his colleagues in "Overdoing Gender," is what leads
some guys to completely go overboard in proving their masculinity. Willer et al. argue that
when guys feel their masculinity is vulnerable, being questioned or even threatened, they'll
dramatically overcompensate and be more homophobic, bellicose, and, well, more likely
to buy an SUV. Willer's study gives some credence to the idea that those muscle cars, dude
SUVs, and Hummers are not expressions of a secure manhood, but exactly the opposite-
one of several ways that men can compensate for not feeling masculine enough.
A recent effort to revisit this thesis found that men who felt that their masculinity
was more "threatened" would overcompensate; they showed higher rates of support
for the Iraq War, more negative attitudes toward homosexuals, and a greater interest
in purchasing a sport utility vehicle. That old adage that the bigger the car, the smaller
the ... well, you know, may turn out to have some empirical validity.2 9
Whereas Sanford and his colleagues had developed a typology of inner identities
and external behaviors, Miller and Swanson saw a developmental sequence. All children,
both males and females, begin their lives as "FF"-totally identified with and behaving
like the mother. Boys then pass through the Oedipal stage, or "FM," during which they
continue to identify with the mother but begin to make a break from that identification,
while they simultaneously acquire superficial masculine traits and behaviors. Finally,
males arrive at "MM," both internal identification and external behaviors that are
gender-appropriate. Thus authoritarianism, racism, sexism, and homophobia might
now be seen as examples of psychological immaturity, a kind of arrested development.
(The potential fourth stage, "MF," was dropped from the study.)30
A second trajectory that coincided with these studies was the work of Talcott
Parsons and other sociologists who sought to establish the societal necessity for mascu-
linity and femininity. Parsons argued that society had two types of major functions-
production and reproduction-and that these required two separate institutional
systems-the occupational system and the kinship system-which, in turn, required
two types of roles that needed to be filled in order for it to function successfully. Instru-
mental roles demanded rationality, autonomy, and competitiveness; expressive roles
demanded tenderness and nurturing so that the next generation could be socialized. In
this way, Parsons shifted the emphasis of sex-role identity development away from the
"need" of the infant to become either masculine or feminine to the need of society for
individuals to fill specific slots. Fortunately, Parsons argued, we had two different types
of people who were socialized to assume these two different roles.
Parsons suggested, however, that the allocation of roles to males and females did
not always work smoothly. For example, in Western societies, the isolation of the
nuclear family and the extended period of childhood meant that boys remained iden-
tified with the mother for a very long time. What's more, the separation of spheres
meant that girls had their appropriate role model immediately before them, whereas
boys did not have adequate role models. Thus, he argued, boys' break with the mother
and their need to establish their individuality and masculinity often were accompa-
nied by violent protest against femininity, and angry repudiation of the feminine
became a way for the boy to purge himself of feminine identification. He "revolts
against identification with his mother in the name of masculinity," Parsons writes,
equating goodness with femininity, so that becoming a "bad boy" becomes a positive
goal. This, Parsons suggests, has some negative consequences, including a "cult of
compulsive masculinity":
Western men are peculiarly susceptible to the appeal of an adolescent type of as-
sertively masculine behavior and attitudes which may take various forms. They
have in common a tendency to revolt against the routine aspects of the primarily
institutionalized masculine role of sober responsibility, meticulous respect for the
rights of others, and tender affection towards women. Assertion through physical
prowess, with an endemic tendency toward violence and hence the military ideal,
is inherent in the complex and the most dangerous potentiality.3'
For the girl, the process is somewhat different. She has an easier time because she
remains identified with the mother. Her rebellion and anger come from recognizing
"masculine superiority"-"the fact that her own security like that of other women is
dependent on the favor-even 'whim'-of a man." Suddenly she realizes that the
qualities that she values are qualities that may handicap her. She may express the
aggression that would invariably follow upon such frustration by rebelling against
the feminine role altogether: She may become a feminist.
By the 1970s, sex-role theory was, itself, facing significant critical scrutiny. Some
thinkers found the binary model between roles, system needs, and males and females
just a bit too facile and convenient, as well as politically conservative-as if changing
roles meant disrupting the needs that society had. Others stressed the coercive nature
of these roles: If they were natural and met readily evident needs, why did so many
people rebel against them, and why did they need to be so rigorously enforced?
Two significant challenges came from social psychologists themselves. Sandra
Bern and others explored the content of sex roles. The Bern Sex Role Inventory tested
respondents on their perception of sixty different attributes, twenty of which were
coded as "feminine," twenty as "masculine," and twenty more as "fillers" (table 4.1).
Although this replaced a continuum with categorical sex roles, Bern discovered that
the most psychologically well adjusted and intelligent people were those who fell in
between the polar oppositions of masculinity and femininity. It was, she argued,
androgyny, "the combined presence of socially valued, stereotypic, feminine and
masculine characteristics," that best described the healthily adjusted individual.
What's more, Bern argued, is that given where most of us actually fall on the contin-
uum, masculinity and femininity are hardly opposites.
Table 4.1. Items on the Masculinity, Femininity, and Social Desirability Scales of the BSRI
Masculine items Feminine items Neutral items
49. Acts as a leader 11 . Affectionate 51. Adaptable

46. Aggressive 5. Cheerful 36. Conceited
58 . Ambitious 50. Childlike 9. Consc ientious
22 . Analytical 32. Compassionate 60. Conventional
13 . Assertive 53 . Does not use harsh language 45 . Friendly
I 0. Athletic 35 . Eager to soothe hurt feelings 15. Happy
55 . Competitive 20. Feminine 3. Helpful
4. Defends own beliefs 14. Flatterable 48 . Inefficient
37. Dominant 59. Gentle 24. Jealous
19. Forceful 47. Gullible 39. Likable
25 . Has leadership abilities 56. Loves children 6. Moody
7. Independent 17. Loyal 21. Reliable
52. Individualistic 26. Sensitive to the needs of others 30. Secretive
31 . Makes decisions easily 8. Shy 33 . Sincere
40. Masculine 38. Soft spoken 42 . Solemn
I. Self-reliant 23 . Sympathetic 57. Tactful
34. Self-sufficient 44. Tender 12. Theatrical
16. Strong personality 29. Understanding 27. Truthful
43 . Willing to take a stand 41 . Warm 18. Unpredictable
28 . Willing to take risks 2. Yielding 54. Unsystematic
Note: The number preceding each item reflects the position of each adjective as it actually appears on the
Inventory.
Several empirical studies seemed to bear out the desirability of an androgynous
personality constellation over a stereotypically feminine or masculine one. But subse-
quent studies failed to confirm the validity of these measures, and androgyny was
discredited as a kind of wishy-washy nonpersonality, rather than the synthesis of the best
of both worlds.32 What's more, conceptually, dividing male and female traits into two
categories makes it impossible to integrate power and gender inequality in the discussion;
twenty years after her initial studies, Bern notes that the scale "reproduces ... the very
gender polarization that it seeks to undercut."33
Whereas proponents of androgyny challenged the content of sex-role theory,
Joseph Pleck challenged the form. In a series of articles that culminated in his book
The Myth of Masculinity, Pleck advanced the idea that the problem was not that men
were having a hard time fitting into a rational notion of masculinity but rather that the
role itself was internally contradictory and inconsistent. Instead of simply accepting
the sex role as a package, Pleck operationalized what he called the "Male Sex Role
Identity" model into a discrete set of testable propositions. These included:
1. Sex-role identity is operationally defined by measures of psychological sex

typing, conceptualized in terms of psychological masculinity and/ or femininity
dimensions.
2. Sex-role identity derives from identification-modeling and, to a lesser extent,
reinforcement and cognitive learning of sex-typed traits, especially among males.
3. The development of appropriate sex-role identity is a risky, failure-prone pro-
cess, especially for males.
4. Homosexuality reflects a disturbance of sex-role identity.
5. Appropriate sex-role identity is necessary for good psychological adjustment
because of an inner psychological need for it.
6. Hypermasculinity indicates insecurity in sex-role identities.
7. Problems of sex-role identity account for men's negative attitudes and behavior
toward women.
8. Problems of sex-role identity account for boys' difficulties in school perfor-
mance and adjustment.
9. Black males are particularly vulnerable to sex-role identity problems.
10. Male adolescent initiation rites are a response to problems of sex-role identity.
11. Historical changes in the character of work and the organization of the family
have made it more difficult for men to develop and maintain their sex-role
identities.
When virtually all of these propositions turned out to be empirically false, Pleck
argued that the male sex role itself was the source of strain, anxiety, and male prob-
lems. Psychology was thus transformed from the vehicle that would help problematic
men adapt to their rational sex role into one of the origins of their problems, the ve-
hicle by which men had been fed a pack of lies about masculinity. The sex-role system
itself was the source of much of men's anxieties and pain. In its place, Pleck proposed
the Male Sex Role Strain model:
1. Sex roles are operationally defined by sex-role stereotypes and norms.

2. Sex roles are contradictory and inconsistent.
3. The proportion of individuals who violate sex roles is high.
4. Violating sex roles leads to social condemnation.
5. Violating sex roles leads to negative psychological consequences.
6. Actual or imagined violation of sex roles leads individuals to overconform
to them.
7. Violating sex roles has more severe consequences for males than females.
8. Certain characteristics prescribed by sex roles are psychologically dysfunctional.
9. Each gender experiences sex-role strain in its work and family roles.
10. Historical changes cause sex-role strain.
The net effect of this new model is to shift the understanding of problems from the
men themselves to the roles that they are forced to play.34 Subsequent research has ex-
plored the grappling with these contradictory role specifications by different groups of
men and the problematic behaviors (such as sexual risk taking) that are expressions of
men's efforts to reconcile contradictory role demands.35
But there remain problems with sex-role theory that even these two ambitious
efforts could not resolve. For one thing, when psychologists discussed the "male" sex
role or the "female" sex role, they posited a single, monolithic entity, a "role," into
which all boys and all girls were placed. Through a process of socialization, boys
acquired the male sex role; girls, the female one. Imagine two large tanks, into which
all biological males and females are placed. But all males and all females are not alike.
There are a variety of different "masculinities" or "femininities" depending on class,
race, ethnicity, age, sexuality, and region. If all boys or all girls were to receive the
same socialization to the same sex role, differences in the construction of black mas-
culinity, or Latina femininity, or middle-aged gay masculinity, or midwestern older
white femininity, and so on, would all be effaced. Sex-role theory is unable to account
for the differences among men or among women because it always begins from the
normative prescriptions of sex roles, rather than the experiences of men and women
themselves. (Remember that the differences among men and among women-not the
differences between women and men-provide most of the variations in attitudes,
traits, and behavior we observe.)
A second problem with sex-role theory is that the separate tanks into which males
and females are sorted look similar to each other. When we say that boys become mas-
culine and girls become feminine in roughly similar ways, we posit a false equivalence
between the two. If we ignore the power differential between the two tanks, then both
privilege and oppression disappear. "Men don't have power," writes pop therapist
Warren Farrell; "men and women have roles."36 Despite what men and women may feel
about their situation, men as a group have power in our society over women as a group.
In addition, some men-privileged by virtue of race, class, ethnicity, sexuality, and so
on-have power over other men. Any adequate explanation of gender must account
not only for gender difference but also for male domination. Theories of sex roles are
inadequate to this task.37
This theoretical inadequacy stems from the sorting process in the first place.
Sex-role theorists see boys and girls sorted into those two separate categories. But what
we know about being a man has everything to do with what it means to be a woman;
and what we know about being a woman has everything to do with what it means to
be a man. Constructions of gender are relational-we understand what it means to be
a man or a woman in relation to the dominant models as well as to one another. And
those who are marginalized by race, class, ethnicity, age, sexuality, and the like also
measure their gender identities against those of the dominant group.
Finally, sex-role theory assumes that only individuals are gendered, that gendered
individuals occupy gender-neutral positions and inhabit gender-neutral institutions.
But gender is more than an attribute of individuals; gender organizes and constitutes
the field in which those individuals move. The institutions of our lives-families,
workplaces, schools-are themselves gendered institutions, organized to reproduce
the differences and the inequalities between women and men. If one wants to under-
stand the lives of people in any situation, the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre
once wrote, one "must inquire first into the situation surrounding [them]."38 Theorists
of sex roles and androgyny help us move beyond strictly psychological analyses of
gender. But the inability to theorize difference, power, relationality, and the institu-
tional dimension of gender means that we will need to build other elements into the
discussion. Sociological explanations of gender begin from these principles.
KEY TERMS
Androgyny Diagnostic and Statistical M-F Test
Bern Sex Role Manual of Mental Oedipal Crisis
Inventory Disorders (DSM) Penis Envy
Castration Complex Expressive Roles Psycho sexual
Cognitive Development Gender Identity Development
Theories Gender Stereotypes Womb Envy
Compulsive Masculinity Instrumental Roles
CHAPTER
5 The SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION

of GENDER RELATIONS
Society is a masked ball, where every one hides his real character, and
reveals it by hiding.
-RALPH WALDO EMERSON, "WORSHIP" (1860)
n one of the most thoughtful definitions, C. Wright Mills defined sociology as

I the intersection of biography and history. In his view, the goal of a sociological
perspective would be to locate an individual in both time and space, to provide
the social and historical contexts in which a person constructs his or her iden -
tity. In that sense, sociology's bedrock assumption, upon which its analyses of
structures and institutions rest, is that individuals shape their lives within both
historical and social contexts. We do not do so simply because we are biologi-
cally programmed to act in certain ways, nor because we have inevitable human
tasks to solve as we age. Rather, we respond to the world we encounter, shaping,
modifying, and creating our identities through those encounters with other
people and within social institutions.
Thus sociology takes as its starting points many of the themes raised in
earlier chapters. Sociological perspectives on gender assume the variability of
gendered identities that anthropological research has explored, the biological
"imperatives" toward gender identity and differentiation (though sociology
locates the source of these imperatives less in our bodies and more in our
114
Chapter 5: The Social Construction of Gender Relations 115
environments), and the psychological imperatives toward both autonomy and con-
nection that modern society requires of individuals in the modern world. To a sociolo-
gist, both our biographies (identities) and histories (evolving social structures) are
gendered.
Like other social sciences, sociology begins with a critique of biological determin-
ism. Instead of observing our experiences as the expressions of inborn, interplanetary
differences, the social sciences examine the variations among men and among women,
as well as the differences between them. The social sciences thus begin with the explic-
itly social origin of our patterns of development.
Our lives depend on social interaction. Literally, it seems. In the thirteenth cen-
tury, Frederick II, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, decided to perform an experi-
ment to see if he could discover the "natural language of man." What language would
we speak if no one taught us language? He selected some newborn babies and decreed
that no one speak to them. The babies were suckled and nursed and bathed as usual,
but speech and songs and lullabies were strictly prohibited. All the babies died. And
you've probably heard those stories of "feral children"-babies who were abandoned
and raised by animals became suspicious of people and could not be socialized to live
in society after age six or so. In all the stories, the children died young, as did virtually
all the "isolates," those little children who were locked away in closets and basements
by sadistic or insane parents.'
What do such stories tell us? True or apocryphal, they suggest that biology alone-
that is, our anatomical composition-doesn't determine our development as we
might have thought. We need to interact, to be socialized, to be part of society. It is
that interaction, not our bodies, that makes us who we are.
Isolated Children
Some children have been isolated from almost all sentences, and soon she was able to attend school
human contact by abusive caregivers. One of the best- with other children. By the age of fourteen, she was in
documented cases of an isolated child was "Isabelle," the sixth grade, happy and well-adjusted. She managed
who was born to an unmarried, deaf-mute teenager. to overcome her lack of early childhood socialization,
The girl's parents were so afraid of scandal that they but only through exceptional effort.
kept both mother and daughter locked away in a Studies of other isolated children reveal that some
darkened room, where they had no contact with the can recover, with effort and specialized care, but that
outside world. In 1938, when she was six years old, others suffer permanent damage. It is unclear exactly
Isabelle escaped from her confinement. She was why, but no doubt some contributing factors are the
unable to speak except to make croaking sounds, she duration of the isolation, the child's age when the iso-
was extremely fearful of strangers, and she reacted lation began, the presence of some human contacts
to stimuli with the instinct of a wild animal. Gradually (like Isabelle's mother), other abuse accompanying
she became used to being around people, but she the isolation, and the child's intelligence. The 1994
expressed no curiosity about them; it was as if she did film Nell starred Jodie Foster as a near-isolate who
not see herself as one of them. But doctors and social gradually learns language and social interaction well
scientists began a long period of systematic training. enough to fall in love with her doctor (played by Liam
Within a year she was able to speak in complete Neeson).
Often, the first time we hear that gender is socially constructed, we take it to
mean that we are, as individuals, not responsible for what we do. '" Society' made me
like this," we might say. "It's not my fault." (This is often the flip side of the other re-
sponse one often hears: "In America an individual can do anything he or she wants
to do," or "It's a free country, and everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion.")
Both of these rhetorical strategies-what I call "reflexive passivity" and "impulsive
hyperindividualism" -are devices that we use to deflect individual accountability
and responsibility. They are both, therefore, misreadings of the sociological mandate.
When we say that gender identity is socially constructed, what we do mean is that our
identities are a fluid assemblage of the meanings and behaviors that we construct from
the values, images, and prescriptions we find in the world around us. Our gendered
identities are both voluntary-we choose to become who we are-and coerced-we
are pressured, forced, sanctioned, and often physically beaten into submission to some
rules. We neither make up the rules as we go along nor fit casually and without strug-
gle into preassigned roles.
For some of us, becoming adult men and women in our society is a smooth and
almost effortless drifting into behaviors and attitudes that feel as familiar to us as
our skin. And for others of us, becoming masculine or feminine is an interminable
torture, a nightmare in which we must brutally suppress some parts of ourselves to
please others-or, simply, to survive. For most of us, though, the experience falls
somewhere in between: There are parts we love and wouldn't part with, and other
parts where we feel we've been forced to exaggerate one side at the expense of others.
It's the task of the sociological perspective to specify the ways in which our own expe-
riences, our interactions with others, and institutions combine to shape our sense of
who we are. Biology provides the raw materials, whereas society and history provide
the context, the instruction manual, that we follow to construct our identities.
A SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONIST PERSPECTIVE

In the first chapter, I identified the four elements of a social constructionist perspec-
tive on gender. Definitions of masculinity and femininity vary, first, from culture to
culture, and, second, in any one culture over historical time. Thus social construction-
ists rely on the work of anthropologists and historians to identify the commonalities
and the differences in the meanings of masculinity and femininity from one culture
to another and to describe how those differences change over time.
Gender definitions also vary over the course of a person's life. The issues confront-
ing women when they are younger-their marketability in both the workplace and the
marriage market, for example-will often be very different from the issues they face at
menopause or retirement. And the issues confronting a young man about proving
himself and achieving what he calls success and the social institutions in which he
will attempt to enact those experiences will change throughout his life. For example,
men often report a "softening," the development of greater interest in care giving and
nurturing, when they become grandfathers than when they became fathers-often to
the puzzlement and distress of their sons. But in their sixties and seventies, when their
children are having children, these men do not feel the same pressures to perform,
to leave a mark, to prove themselves. Their battles are over, and they can relax and
enjoy the fruits of their efforts. Thus we rely on developmental psychologists to specify
the normative "tasks" that any individual must successfully accomplish as he or she
matures and develops, and we also need scholars in the humanities to explore the
symbolic record that such men and women leave us as evidence of their experiences.
Finally, definitions of masculinity and femininity will vary within any one cul-
ture at any one time-by race, class, ethnicity, age, sexuality, education, region of the
country, and so on. You'll recall that it seems obvious that an older, gay, black man in
Chicago will have a different idea of what it means to be a man than will a heterosex-
ual white teenager in rural Iowa.
Social constructionism thus builds on the other social and behavioral sciences,
adding specific dimensions to the exploration of gender. What sociology contributes
are the elements that the social psychology of sex roles cannot explain adequately: dif-
ference, power, and the institutional dimensions of gender. To explain difference,
social constructionism offers an analysis of the plurality of gender definitions; to ex-
plain power, it emphasizes the ways in which some definitions become normative
through the struggles of different groups for power-including the power to define.
Finally, to explain the institutional dimension, social constructionism moves beyond
the socialization of gendered individuals who occupy gender-neutral sites to the study
of the interplay between gendered individuals and gendered institutions.
BEYOND SEX-ROLE THEORY

As we saw in the last chapter, social psychologists located the process of acquisition of
gender identity in the developmental patterns of individuals in their families and in
early childhood interaction. Specifically, sex-role theorists explored the ways in which
individuals come to be gendered and the ways in which they negotiate their ways toward
some sense of internal consistency and coherence, despite contradictory role defini-
tions. Still, however, the emphasis is on the gendering of individuals and occasionally
on the inconsistent cultural blueprints with which those individuals must contend.
Sociological understandings of gender begin, historically, with a critique of sex-role
theory, with sociologists arguing that such theory is inadequate to fully understand the
complexities of gender as a social institution. Sociologists have identified four signifi-
cant problems with sex-role theory-problems that require its modification.
First, the use of the idea of roles has the curious effect of actually minimizing the
importance of gender. Role theory uses drama as a metaphor-we learn our roles
through socialization and then perform them for others. But to speak of a gender role
makes it sound almost too theatrical and thus too easily changeable. Gender, as Helena
Lopata and Barrie Thorne write, "is not a role in the same sense that being a teacher,
sister, or friend is a role. Gender, like race or age, is deeper, less changeable, and infuses
the more specific roles one plays; thus, a female teacher differs from a male teacher in
important sociological respects (e.g., she is likely to receive less pay, status and credi-
bility)." To make gender a role like any other role is to diminish its power in structuring
our lives.'
Second, sex-role theory posits singular normative definitions of masculinity and
femininity. If the meanings of masculinity and femininity vary across cultures, over
historical time, among men within any one culture, and over the life course, we cannot
speak of masculinity or femininity as though each were a constant, singular, universal
essence. Personally, when I read what social psychologists wrote about the "male sex
role" I always wondered whom they were writing about. "Who, me?" I thought. Is there
really only one male sex role and only one female sex role?
One key theme about gender identity is the ways in which other differences-race,
class, ethnicity, sexuality, age, region-all inform, shape, and modify our definitions of
gender. To speak of one male or one female sex role is to compress the enormous variety
of our culture's ideals into one and to risk ignoring the other factors that shape our
identities. In fact, in those early studies of sex roles, social psychologists did just that,
suggesting that, for example, black men or women or gay men or lesbians evidenced
either "too much" or "too little" adherence to their appropriate sex role. In that way,
homosexuals or people of color were seen as expressing sex-role problems; because
their sex roles differed from the normative, it was they who had the problem. (As we saw
earlier, the most sophisticated sex-role theorists understand that such normative defini-
tions are internally contradictory, but they still mistake the normative for the "normal.")
By positing this false universalism, sex-role theory assumes what needs to be
explained-how the normative definition is established and reproduced-and explains
away all the differences among men and among women. Sex-role theory cannot fully
accommodate these differences among men or among women. A more satisfying
investigation must take into account these different definitions of masculinity and
femininity constructed and expressed by different groups of men and women. Thus we
speak of masculinities and femininities. What's more, sociologists see the differences
among masculinities or femininities as expressing exactly the opposite relationship
than do sex-role theorists. Sex-role theorists, if they can accommodate differences at all,
see these differences as aberrations, as the failure to conform to the normal sex role.
Sociologists, on the other hand, believe that the differences among definitions of mas-
culinity or femininity are themselves the outcome of the ways in which those groups
interact with their environments. Thus sociologists contend that one cannot under-
stand the differences in masculinity or femininity based on race or ethnicity without
first looking at the ways in which institutional and interpersonal racial inequality
structure the ways in which members of those groups actively construct their identities.
Sex-role theorists might say, for example, that black men, lesbians, or older Latinas
experience discrimination because their definitions of masculinity and femininity are
"different" from the norm. To a sociologist, that's only half right. A sociologist would
add that these groups develop different definitions of masculinity and femininity in
active engagement with a social environment in which they are discriminated against.
Thus their differences are more the product of discrimination than its cause.
This leads to a third arena in which sociologists challenge sex-role theory. Gender
is not only plural, it is also relational. A related problem with sex-role theory is that it
posits two separate spheres, as if sex-role differentiation were more a matter of sorting
a herd of cattle into two appropriate pens for branding. Boys get herded into the mas-
culine corral, girls the feminine. But such a static model also suggests that the two
corrals have virtually nothing to do with one another. "The result of using the role
framework is an abstract view of the differences between the sexes and their situations,
not a concrete one of the relations between them.''3 But what surveys indicate is that
men construct their ideas of what it means to be men in constant reference to defini-
tions of femininity. What it means to be a man is to be unlike a woman; indeed, social
psychologists have emphasized that although different groups of men may disagree
about other traits and their significance in gender definitions, the "antifemininity"
component of masculinity is perhaps the dominant and universal characteristic.
Fourth, because gender is plural and relational, it is also situational. What it
means to be a man or a woman varies in different contexts. Those different institu-
tional contexts demand and produce different forms of masculinity and femininity.
"Boys may be boys," cleverly comments feminist legal theorist Deborah Rhode, "but
they express that identity differently in fraternity parties than in job interviews with a
female manager.'¾ Gender is thus not a property of individuals, some "thing" one has,
but rather a specific set of behaviors that is produced in specific social situations. And
thus gender changes as the situation changes.
Sex-role theory cannot adequately account for either the differences among
women and men or their different definitions of masculinity and femininity in differ-
ent situations without implicitly assuming some theory of deviance. Nor can it express
the relational character of those definitions. In addition, sex-role theory cannot fully
account for the power relationships between women and men and among different
groups of women and different groups of men. Thus the fourth and perhaps most sig-
nificant problem in sex-role theory is that it depoliticizes gender, making gender a set
of individual attributes and not an aspect of social structure. "The notion of 'role' fo-
cuses attention more on individuals than on social structure, and implies that 'the
female role' and 'the male role' are complementary (i.e., separate or different but
equal)," write sociologists Judith Stacey and Barrie Thorne. "The terms are depoliticiz-
ing; they strip experience from its historical and political context and neglect ques-
tions of power and conflict.''5
But how can one speak of gender without speaking of power? As I pointed out in
the book's introduction, a pluralistic and relational theory of gender cannot pretend
that all masculinities and femininities are created equal. All American women and all
American men must also contend with a singular vision of both masculinity and fem-
ininity, specific definitions that are held up as models against which we all measure
ourselves. These are what sociologist R. W. Connell calls the "hegemonic" definition
of masculinity and the "emphasized" version of femininity. These are normative con-
structions, the ones against which others are measured and, almost invariably, found
wanting. (Connell's trenchant critique of sex-role theory, therefore, hinges on her con-
tention that sex-role psychologists do not challenge but in fact reproduce the hege-
monic version as the "normal" one.) Hegemonic masculinity is a "particular variety
of masculinity to which others-among them young and effeminate as well as homo-
sexual men-are subordinated.''6 We thus come to know what it means to be a man or
a woman in American culture by setting our definitions in opposition to a set of
"others"-racial minorities, sexual minorities, and so on. One of the most fruitful
areas of research in sociology today is trying to specify exactly how these hegemonic
versions are established and how different groups negotiate their ways through prob-
lematized definitions.
Sex-role theory proved inadequate to explore the variations in gender definitions,
which require adequately theorizing the variations within the category of men or
women. Such theorizing makes it possible to see the relationships between and among
men or between and among women as structured relationships as well. Tension about
gender was earlier theorized by sex-role theory as a tension between an individual and
the expectations that were established by the sex role-that is, between the individual
and an abstract set of expectations.
This leads to the fifth and final problem with sex-role theory-its inadequacy in
comprehending the dynamics of change. Movements for social change, like feminism
or gay liberation, become movements to expand role definitions and to change role
expectations. Their goal is to expand role options for individual women and men,
whose lives are constrained by stereotypes. But social and political movements are not
only about expanding the opportunities for individuals to break free of the constraints
of inhibiting sex roles, to allow their "true" selves to emerge: They are also about the
redistribution of power in society. They demand the reallocation of resources and an
end to forms of inequality that are embedded in social institutions as well as sex-role
stereotypes. Only a perspective that begins with an analysis of power can adequately
understand those social movements. A social constructionist approach seeks to be
more concrete, specifying tension and conflict not between individuals and expecta-
tions, but rather between and among groups of people within social institutions. Thus
social constructionism is inevitably about power.
What's wrong with sex-role theory can, finally, be understood by analogy. Why is
it, do you suppose, no reputable scholars today use the terms "race roles" or "class roles"
to describe the observable aggregate differences between members of different races or
different classes? Are such "race roles" specific behavioral and attitudinal characteris-
tics that are socialized into all members of different races? Hardly. Not only would
such a term flatten all the distinctions and differences among members of the same
race, but also it would ignore the ways in which the behaviors of different races-to the
extent that they might be seen as different in the first place-are the products of racial
inequality and oppression and not the external expression of some inner essence.
The positions of women and blacks have much in common, as sociologist Helen
Hacker pointed out in her groundbreaking article "Women as a Minority Group,"
which was written more than a half century ago. Hacker argued that systematic struc-
tural inequality produces a "culture of self-hatred" among the target group. And yet
we do not speak of "race roles." Such an idea would be absurd, because (1) the differ-
ences within each race are far greater than the differences between races; (2) what it
means to be white or black is always constructed in relationship to the other; and
(3) those definitions make no sense outside the context of the racially based power that
white people, as a group, maintain over people of color, as a group. Movements for
racial equality are about more than expanding role options for people of color.
Ultimately, to use role theory to explain race or gender is to blame the victim. If
our gendered behaviors "stem from fundamental personality differences, socialized
early in life," suggests psychologist David Tresemer, then responsibility must lie at
our own feet. This is what R. Stephen Warner and his colleagues call the "Sambo
theory of oppression" - "the victims internalize the maladaptive set of values of
the oppressive system. Thus behavior that appears incompetent, deferential, and
self-degrading is assumed to reflect the crippled capabilities of the personality."7
In this worldview, social change must be left to the future, when a more egalitarian
form of childhood socialization can produce children better able to function ac-
cording to hegemonic standards. Social change comes about when the oppressed
learn better the ways of their oppressors. If they refuse, and no progress is made-
well, whose fault is that?
A NOTE ABOUT POWER
One of the central themes of this book is that gender is about difference and also about
inequality, about power. At the level of gender relations, gender is about the power that
men as a group have over women as a group, and it is also about the power that some
men have over other men (or that some women have over other women). It is impos-
sible to explain gender without adequately understanding power-not because power
is the consequence of gender difference, but rather because power is what produces
those gender differences in the first place.
To say that gender is a power relation-the power of men over women and the
power of some men or women over other men or women-is among the more contro-
versial arguments of the social constructionist perspective. In fact, the question of
power is among the most controversial elements in all explanations of gender. Yet it is
central; all theories of gender must explain both difference and domination. Whereas
other theories explain male domination as the result of sex differences, social con-
structionism explains differences as the result of domination.
Yet a discussion about power invariably makes men, in particular, uncomfortable
or defensive. How many times have we heard a man say, when confronted with
women's anger at gender-based inequality and discrimination, "Hey, don't blame me!
I never raped anyone!" (This is analogous to white people's defensive response denying
that their family ever owned or continues to own slaves when confronted with the
contemporary reality of racial oppression.) When challenged by the idea that the
gender order means that men have power over women, men often respond with aston-
ishment. "What do you mean, men have all the power? What are you talking about?
I have no power at all. I'm completely powerless. My wife bosses me around, my chil-
dren boss me around, my boss bosses me around. I have no power at all!" Most men,
it seems, do not feel powerful.
Here, in a sense, is where feminism has failed to resonate for many men. Much
of feminist theory of gender-based power derived from a symmetry between the
structure of gender relations and women's individual experiences. Women, as a
group, were not in power. That much was evident to anyone who cared to observe a
corporate board, a university board of trustees, or a legislative body at any level
anywhere in the world. Nor, individually, did women feel powerful. In fact, they felt
constrained by gender inequality into stereotypic activities that prevented them
from feeling comfortable, safe, and competent. So neither were women in power, nor
did they feel powerful.
That symmetry breaks down when we try to apply it to men. Because although
men may be in power everywhere one cares to look, individual men are not "in power,"
and they do not feel powerful. Men often feel themselves to be equally constrained by
a system of stereotypic conventions that leaves them unable to live the lives to which
they believe they are entitled. Men as a group are in power (when compared with
women) but do not feel powerful. The feeling of powerlessness is one reason why so
many men believe that they are the victims of reverse discrimination and oppose
affirmative action. Or why some men's movement leaders comb through the world's
cultures for myths and rituals to enable men to claim the power they want but do not
feel they have. Or even why many yuppies took to wearing "power ties" while they
munched their "power lunches" during the 1980s and early 199os-as if power were a
fashion accessory for those who felt powerless.
Pop psychologist Warren Farrell called male power a "myth" because men and
women have complementary roles and equally defamatory stereotypes of "sex object"
and "success object." Farrell often uses the analogy of the chauffeur to illustrate his
case. The chauffeur is in the driver's seat. He knows where he's going. He's wearing the
uniform. You'd think, therefore, that he is in power. But from his perspective, some-
one else is giving the orders; he's not powerful at all. This analogy does have some
limited value: Individual men are not powerful, at least none but a small handful of
individual men. But what if we ask one question of our chauffeur and try to shift the
frame just a little. What if we ask him: What is the gender of the person who is giving
the orders? (The lion's share of riders in chauffeur-driven limousines are, after all,
upper-class white men.) When we shift from the analysis of the individual's experience
to a different context, the relations between and among men emerge also as relations
of power-power based on class, race, ethnicity, sexuality, age, and the like. "It is par-
ticular groups of men, not men in general, who are oppressed within patriarchal
sexual relations, and whose situations are related in different ways to the overall logic
of the subordination of women to men." 8
Like gender, power is not the property of individuals-a possession that one has or
does not have-but rather a property of group life, of social life. Power is. It can neither
be willed away nor ignored. Here is how the philosopher Hannah Arendt put it:
Power corresponds to the human ability not just to act but to act in concert. Power
is never the property of an individual; it belongs to a group and remains in exis-
tence only so long as the group keeps together. When we say of somebody that he
is "in power" we actually refer to his being empowered by a certain number of
people to act in their name. The moment the group, from which the power origi-
nated to begin with ... disappears, "his power" also vanishes. 9
To a sociologist, power is not an attitude or a possession; it's not really a "thing" at all.
It cannot be "given up" like an ideology that's been outgrown. Power creates as well as
destroys. It is deeply woven into the fabric of our lives-it is the warp of our interac-
tions and the weft of our institutions. And it is so deeply woven into our lives that it is
most invisible to those who are most empowered.
In general, sociology adds three crucial dimensions to the study of gender:
(1) the life course perspective, (2) a macrolevel institutional analysis, and (3) a micro-
level interactionist approach.
GENDER THROUGH THE LIFE COURSE

I've suggested that role theory is ill-equipped to account for the significant differences
among different groups of women or men-differences of class, race, ethnicity, sexual-
ity, and so on. Gender identities and expressions vary far more than the prescriptive
roles to which we are presumably assigned. Nor can role theory fully embrace the
changes in gender identity over the course of our lives. Sex-role theory overemphasizes
the developmental decisiveness of early childhood as the moment that gender social-
ization happens. Developmental psychologists have provided compelling evidence con-
cerning the acquisition of gender identity in early childhood. Through socialization,
especially in families and schools, the basic elements of gender identity are established,
the foundation laid for future elaboration and expression.
But the story doesn't stop there. At its least convincing, some developmental psy-
chology proposes that once one acquires gender identity it is fixed, permanent by age
five or six. Sociologists embraced some of that idea, although they often pushed the
age limit up to that tumultuous period called "adolescence." Surely, though, gender
identity was fixed indelibly by puberty, which is marked, after all, by all the physical
changes that mark the full-fledged assumption of adult masculinity and femininity.
Sociologists used to think that the three primary institutions of socialization were
the family, school, and church; the three primary bearers of their socializing message
were parents, teachers, and religious figures (priests, ministers, rabbis, imams, and the
like). This model has proved inaccurate for two reasons. First, it assumes that social-
ization is a smooth process that is accomplished by the end of childhood, when family,
school, and church have receded in significance in a person's life. Second, it views the
socialization process from the point of view of the socializer, not the socialized. That
is, from the point of view of the child, the chief agents of socialization-parents,
teachers, and religious figures-translate as grown-ups, grown-ups, and grown-ups.
Kids know better. They also know that a primary agent of their socialization is
their peer group-the other boys and girls, and later men and women-with whom
they interact. They also know that the images and messages that daily surround them
in the media are constantly giving them messages about what men and women are
supposed to look and act like. Media and peer groups are, today, part of the pentagram
of socializing institutions.
Media and peer groups, however, do not recede after early childhood; indeed,
one might say they pick up where family, church, and school leave off. Some of the
messages from peer groups and media reinforce what we've learned; other messages
directly contradict those earlier messages. And it's up to us to sort it out.
Gender socialization continues throughout the life course. The process is neither
smooth nor finite-it's bumpy and uneven and continues all our lives. What mascu-
linity or femininity might mean to us in our twenties will mean something dramati-
cally different to us in our forties or our sixties. And although a small part of that
explanation has to do with biological stages of development-puberty, reproductive
years, menopause, physical decline-these stages vary so significantly from culture to
culture that sociologists search for the meaning of such biological shifts in the ways in
which those aging bodies interact with their social context. The institutions in which
we find ourselves change, and with those changes come different meanings of mascu-
linity and femininity.
Take, for example, a well-known "factoid" about the differences between male
and female sexuality. We hear, for example, that males reach their sexual "peak" at age
eighteen or so but that women reach their sexual peak somewhat later, perhaps as late
as their mid-thirties. This biological mismatch in hitting our sexual stride is often at-
tributed to different maturational trajectories or different evolutionary strategies. He
reaches his sexual peak when he is capable of producing the highest quantity of fertile
sperm and thus is capable of fertilizing the highest number of females . She reaches her
sexual peak when she is leaving fertility behind and, in all likelihood, has already had
all the children she will have.
To be sure, these different moments correspond with some hormonal shifts, espe-
cially for women as they end their childbearing years and enter menopause. But can
we explain this divergence solely on the basis of different rates of maturation, hor-
mones, and bodies? I don't think so. This divergence in sexualities is far more easily
and convincingly explained by putting male and female sexuality in context. And that
context is the relationship to marriage and family life. For men, what's experienced as
sexy is unknown, mysterious, even a bit dangerous. Men reach their sexual peak early
because that's when their sex life is unconstrained by marriage. By contrast, women
often feel that they need the security of a stable relationship to really let themselves
explore their sexuality: They reach their peak because marriage provides that trust
and intimacy that activate women's pleasure. What's more, women's fertility is fre-
quently accompanied by a certain "danger"-unwanted pregnancy-that is hardly an
aphrodisiac. Could it be that women reach their sexual peak when they are in a stable
and secure relationship with someone they trust enough to give full voice to their de-
sires and don't have to worry about the possibility of unwanted pregnancy as a result?
Or take that staple of daytime self-help talk shows: the midlife crisis. In the 1970s,
two best-selling books, Seasons of a Man's Life (D. J. Levinson, Darrow, Klein,
M. H. Levinson, and McKee, 1978) and Passages (Sheehy, 1976), popularized the belief
that middle-aged men (and, to a lesser extent, women) go through a developmental
"crisis" characterized by a pressure to make wholesale changes in their work, relationships,
and leisure. For men, stereotypical responses to this pressure might include divorcing
their wives to date younger women, pursuing lifelong ambitions, changing jobs, buying
a sports car, growing a ponytail, and piercing an ear or taking up adventurous and
risky hobbies and suddenly professing a newfound love of hip-hop (figure 5.1).
Figure 5.1. Male midlife crises often provide fodder for popular films . In City Slickers (1991 ), Billy
Crystal (center) flanked by Daniel Stern and Bruno Kirby play three middle-class guys who bring
in a herd of steer on a dude ranch adventure.
Source:© Columbia Pictures / Courtesy Everett Collection.
The idea of midlife crisis was embraced by a large segment of mainstream American
culture. Middle-aged people found the concept intuitively compelling as a way of
understanding changes in their own feelings and behaviors. Others employed it as a
useful explanation of erratic behavior in their middle-aged adult parents or friends .
Thirty years later, it remains a popular concept, the subject of pop psychology books
and websites offering advice to people who struggle with the symptoms of the "crisis":
depression, angst, irrational behavior, and strong urges to seek out new partners.
Careful research clearly demonstrates that this so-called crisis is not typical.
Most men do not experience any sort of crisis in their middle adult years. Discon-
firming research became available shortly after the concept was introduced, and
more recent research finds no empirical support for midlife crisis as a universal ex-
perience for either men or women. Midlife does present a series of developmental
challenges, and some middle-aged men do respond in ways that fit the stereotype.
However, people go through challenges and crises in every life stage. The triggers are
usually changes in work, health, or relationships rather than a mere accumulation of
birthdays.10
In the largest study to date on midlife, Elaine Wethington demonstrated that

the midlife crisis is far from inevitable. Yet more than 25 percent of those over age
thirty-five surveyed (all residing in the United States) believed that they have had such
a crisis. Upon further investigation, about half of these reports reflected only a time of
stressful life events, not a sustained period ofloss of balance and searching. 11
Belief in midlife crisis may partially hinge on what's called "confirmation bias,"
whereby a single case or a few cases of the expected behavior confirm the belief,
especially when the behavior is attention-getting or widely reported. Less-obvious
dis confirming behavior is easier to ignore. In other words, if we happen to know a
man who spent the year after his forty-fifth birthday getting a divorce, dating a
twenty-two-year-old, buying a sports car, and taking up skydiving, we might believe
in the midlife crisis, even though we know a dozen other middle-aged men who have
done none of these things.
GENDER AND AGING

Gender is a lifelong project. As people age in the contemporary West, men experience
a great deal less stigma than do women. On men, gray hair and wrinkles are signs of
maturity; on women, they are signs of "getting old." It's not uncommon for a man to
date or marry a woman twenty years younger, but rare-and labeled bizarre-when
an older woman dates or marries a younger man. In 1991, comedienne Martha Raye,
age seventy-five, married forty-two-year-old Mark Harris, and the media was scan-
dalized. Speculation ran rampant about Mark's ulterior motives. Surely he was just
after her money. How could a forty-two -year-old man find a seventy-five-year-old
woman attractive? But when Tony Randall, also age seventy-five, married Heather
Harlan, a full fifty years his junior, he was universally praised for his vigor, and no one
questioned Heather's motives. (Both couples stayed married until the older partner's
death.)
In the media, much older men are commonly paired as romantic leads with
much younger women. Michael Douglas was fifty-four when he played the husband of
twenty-six-year-old Gwyneth Paltrow in A Perfect Murder (1998). Harrison Ford was
fifty-seven when he romanced thirty-nine-year-old Kristin Scott Thomas in Random

Hearts (1999). In Entrapment (1999), thirty-year-old Catherine Zeta-Jones played an
insurance agent who falls in love with a jewel thief played by Sean Connery. He was
sixty-nine, old enough to be her grandfather.
But women are almost never paired romantically with younger men in the movies
(unless the women are around twenty-three and the "younger man" is fifteen, as in
Private Lessons, Tadpole, and Summer of42). In fact, most actresses have trouble find-
ing any work at all after age forty. In the 2002 documentary Searching for Debra
Winger, Rosanna Arquette interviews many actresses on the problems they have expe-
rienced being "old" in Hollywood. Debra Winger temporarily retired from acting in
her late thirties when the offers stopped coming, even though she had won three
Academy Award nominations. Daryl Hannah was in her mid-thirties when she was
cast as the mother of a sixteen-year-old. Even superstars like Jane Fonda and Cher now
find themselves relegated to supporting roles as mothers and grandmothers, while
women under thirty play most of the romantic leads. Deciding who is old, and who is
too old, seems to be a matter of cultural expectations, not biology.
As the meaning of age varies by gender, so, too, does the experience of aging. The
meanings of masculinity and femininity that we take into adulthood and beyond reso-
nate in different ways as we age. For example, men and women face retirement differently.
Men value independence and stoic resolve, and so in retirement might end up with a
more attenuated friendship and support network, fewer friends, and a greater sense of
isolation-which in turn might lead to earlier death because loneliness and isolation
are risk factors for aging people. Women are far more likely to have maintained close
contact with children, with workplace colleagues, and with friends and head into re-
tirement with their larger friendship and support network intact. Buttressed by that
support, women will be less isolated and lonely and therefore likely to live longer. Could
this different expression of different gender ideologies partly explain the difference in
women's and men's life expectancies? Not entirely, to be sure. But it probably pushes a bit.
And just as gender shapes our lives, so, too, should it structure our deaths. And
gender is just as salient at the end of our lives as it was during them. Take, for example,
when we die. Because women live longer than men, the elderly are more likely to be
female. In the United States, the ratio of women to men is about 10:8 for those sixty-
five to seventy-five, and by eighty-five, it decreases to 10:4.
12
But why do women live longer? Earlier, I speculated that some small part of the
reason has to do with the ways that gender ideology structures our sustaining net-
works of friends and kin. But some part is surely physical: Physicians have long specu-
lated that women have stronger constitutions and more immunity to disease. They are
less likely to fall victim to heart disease, because testosterone increases the level of
"bad" cholesterol (low-density lipoprotein), whereas estrogen increases the level of
"good" cholesterol (high-density lipoprotein). British researcher David Goldspink
(2005) found that men's hearts weaken much more rapidly as they age: Between the ages
of eighteen and seventy, their hearts lose one-fourth of their power (but don't worry,
regular cardiovascular exercise can slow or stop the decline), but healthy seventy-year-old
women have hearts nearly as strong as those of twenty-year-olds.
Because the gap is decreasing, one cannot attribute this difference to biology
alone. What sociological reasons might account for women living longer? Between the
ages of eighteen and twenty-four, men are four to five times more likely to die than
women, mostly from accidents: During this period oflate adolescence and early adult-
hood, men often prove their masculinity through reckless and risky behavior, whereas
women do not. At every age, men spend more time in the public sphere, where they are
more likely to get into accidents, commit violent crimes, be victimized by crime, and
be exposed to illnesses and hazardous material. Meanwhile, women spend more time
at home. So as gender inequality lessens and more women work outside the home, we
would predict that the gap will decrease.
The problem is that the life expectancy gap is decreasing everywhere, in both
gender-polarized and egalitarian countries: five years in Norway and eight years in
Sri Lanka, seven years in France and seven years in Mongolia. In fact, it seems to be
decreasing more rapidly in gender-polarized countries: two years in Ethiopia, one year
in Pakistan; and in Swaziland, men outlive women.13
Sociologists explain this by pointing out that rich and poor countries are diverg-
ing far more than women and men are in those countries. In poor countries, both
women and men are increasingly susceptible to poor nutrition or health care, HIV, or
violence and war and women to problem pregnancies. In wealthy countries, better
health care and nutrition mean that both women and men are living longer. By 2040,
European and American women will live to be about one hundred, and men will live
to be ninety-nine.14
GENDER AS AN INSTITUTION
My earlier argument that power is the property of a group, not an individual, is
related to my argument that gender is as much a property of institutions as it is part
of our individual identities. One of the more significant sociological points of de-
parture from sex-role theory concerns the institutional level of analysis. As we've
seen, sex-role theory holds that gender is a property of individuals-that gendered
people acquire their gender identity and move outward, into society, to populate
gender-neutral institutions. To a sociologist, however, those institutions are them-
selves gendered. Institutions create gendered normative standards, express a gen-
dered institutional logic, and are major factors in the reproduction of gender
inequality. The gendered identity of individuals shapes those gendered institutions,
and the gendered institutions express and reproduce the inequalities that compose
gender identity.
To illustrate this, let us undertake a short thought experiment. To start with, let's
assume that (1) men are more violent than women (whether biologically derived or
socialized, this is easily measurable by rates of violent crime); that (2) men occupy
virtually all the positions of political power in the world (again, easily measurable by
looking at all political institutions); and that (3) there is a significant risk of violence
and war at any moment.
Now, imagine that when you awaken tomorrow morning each of those power
positions in all those political institutions-every president and prime minister; every
mayor and governor; every state, federal, or local official; every member of every
House of Representatives; and every Parliament around the world-was filled by a
woman. Do you think the world would be any safer from the risk of violence and war?
Do you think you'd sleep better that night?
Biological determinists and psychologists of sex roles would probably answer yes.
Whether from fundamental biological differences in levels of testosterone, brain
chemistries, or evolutionary imperatives, a biological perspective would probably con-
clude that because females are less violent and aggressive than men, the world would
be safer. (It is ironic, then, that the same people who believe these biological differ-
ences are also among the least likely to support female candidates for political office.)
And those who observe that different socialization produces women who are more
likely to avoid hierarchy and competition and to search instead for peaceful solutions
by another gendered value system would also breathe a collective sigh of relief.
"But," I hear some of you saying, "what about the women who have already been
heads of state? What about Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi, and Margaret Thatcher?
They're not exactly poster girls for a pacific ethic of care, are they?"
Indeed, not. And part of the reason why they were so unladylike in political office
is that the office itself demands a certain type of behavior, independent of the gender
of the person who holds it. Often it seems that no matter who occupies those positions,
he-or she-can do little to transform them.
This observation is the beginning of a sociological perspective-the recognition
that the institutions themselves express a logic-a dynamic-that reproduces gender
relations between women and men and the gender order of hierarchy and power. Men
and women have to express certain traits to occupy a political office, and their failure
to do so will make the officeholder seem ineffective and incompetent. (That these
criteria apply to men also, anyone who witnessed the gendered criticisms launched
against Jimmy Carter for his being frightened by a scurrying rabbit or for his failure
to invade Iran during the hostage crisis in 1979-1980 can testify.)
To argue that institutions are gendered is only the other half of the story. It's as
simplistic to argue that the individuals who occupy those positions are genderless as it
is to argue that the positions they occupy are gender-neutral. Gendered individuals
occupy places within gendered institutions. And thus it is quite likely that if all the
positions were filled with the gender that has been raised to seek peaceful negotiations
instead of the gender that is accustomed to drawing lines in the sand, the gendered
mandates of those institutions would be affected, modified, and moderately trans-
formed. In short, if all those positions were filled with women, we might sleep more
peacefully at night-at least a little bit more peacefully.
Another example will illustrate this in a different way. Take the work of Barbara
McClintock, the Nobel Prize-winning research cytogeneticist. McClintock came
upon her remarkable discovery of the behavior of molecules by a very different
route than that used by her male colleagues. Whereas earlier models had always
assumed a hierarchically ordered relationship, McClintock, using what she called
"feminine methods" and relying on her "feeling for the organism," discovered that
instead of each cell being ruled by a "master molecule," cells were driven by a com-
plex interaction among molecules. In this case, the gender of the person collided
with the gendered logic of scientific inquiry to generate a revolutionary-and Nobel
Prize-winning-insight. 15
To say, then, that gender is socially constructed requires that we locate individual
identity within a historically and socially specific and equally gendered place and
time and that we situate the individual within the complex matrix of our lives, our
bodies, and our social and cultural environments. A sociological perspective exam-
ines the ways in which gendered individuals interact with other gendered individuals
in gendered institutions. As such, sociology examines the interplay of those two
forces-identities and structures-through the prisms of socially created difference
and domination.
Gender revolves around these themes-identity, interaction, institution-in the
production of gender difference and the reproduction of gender inequality. These
themes are quite complex, and the relationships between and among them are also
complex. These are the processes and experiences that form core elements of our
personalities, our interactions with others, and the institutions that shape our lives.
These experiences are shaped by our societies, and we return the favor, helping to re-
shape our societies. We are gendered people living in gendered societies.
A social constructionist perspective, however, goes one step further than even
this. Not only do gendered individuals negotiate their identities within gendered insti-
tutions, but also those institutions produce the very differences we assume are the
properties of individuals. Thus "the extent to which women and men do different
tasks, play widely disparate concrete social roles, strongly influences the extent to
which the two sexes develop and/or are expected to manifest widely disparate per-
sonal behaviors and characteristics." Different structured experiences produce the
gender differences that we often attribute to people. 16
Let me illustrate this phenomenon first with a mundane example and then
with a more analytically complex one. At the most mundane level, think about
public restrooms (figure 5.2). In a clever essay on the "arrangement between the
Figure 5.2. This mural from a men's room in New Zealand makes fun of men's anxieties about
penis size, even as it increases their anxiety.
Source: http:/ /thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/03/ I8/more-urinals/.
sexes," the late sociologist Erving Goffman playfully suggested the ways in which
these public institutions produce the very gender differences they are supposed to
reflect. Though men and women are "somewhat similar in the question of waste
products and their elimination," Goffman observes, in public, men and women
use sex-segregated restrooms, clearly marked "gentlemen" and "ladies." These
rooms have very different spatial arrangements, such as urinals for men and more
elaborate "vanity tables" and other grooming facilities for women. We think of
these as justifiably "separate but equal."
But in the privacy of our own homes, we use the same bathrooms and feel no need
for separate space. What is more, virtually no private homes have urinals for men, and
few have separate and private vanity tables for women. (And, of course, in some cul-
tures, these functions are performed publicly, with no privacy at all.) If these needs are
biologically based, Goffman asks, why are they so different in public and in private?
The answer, of course, is that they are not biologically based at all:
The functioning of sex differentiated organs is involved, but there is nothing in this
functioning that biologically recommends segregation; that arrangement is a totally
cultural matter ... Toilet segregation is presented as a natural consequence of the
difference between the sex-classes when in fact it is a means of honoring, if not
producing, this difference.' 7
In other words, by using separate facilities, we "become" the gentlemen and ladies
who are supposed to use those separate facilities. The physical separation of men and
women creates the justification for separating them-not the other way around.
At the less mundane but certainly no less important level, take the example of
the workplace. In her now-classic work Men and Women of the Corporation, Rosabeth
Moss Kanter demonstrated that the differences in men's and women's behaviors in
organizations had far less to do with men's and women's characteristics as individu-
als than it had to do with the structure of the organization. Organizational positions
"carry characteristic images of the kinds of people that should occupy them," she
argued, and those who occupied them, whether women or men, exhibited those nec-
essary behaviors. Though the criteria for evaluation of job performance, promotion,
and effectiveness seem to be gender-neutral, they are, in fact, deeply gendered. "While
organizations were being defined as sex-neutral machines," she writes, "masculine
principles were dominating their authority structures." Once again, masculinity-
the norm-was invisible. 18
In a series of insightful essays, sociologist Joan Acker has expanded on Kanter's
early insights and specified the interplay of structure and gender. It is through our
experiences in the workplace, Acker maintains, that the differences between women
and men are reproduced and through which the inequality between women and men
is legitimated. Institutions are like factories, and what they produce is gender differ-
ence. The overall effect of this is the reproduction of the gender order as a whole. Thus
an institutional level cannot be left out of any explanation of gender-because institu-
tions are fundamentally involved in both gender difference and gender domination.
"Gender is not an addition to ongoing processes, conceived as gender neutral," she
argues. "Rather, it is an integral part of those processes."19
Institutions accomplish the creation of gender difference and the reproduction of
the gender order, Acker argues, through several "gendered processes." These gendered
processes mean that "advantage and disadvantage, exploitation and control, action and
emotion, meaning and identity, are patterned through and in terms of a distinction be-
tween male and female, masculine and feminine." She observes five of these processes:
1.The production of gender divisions-the ways in which "ordinary organiza-
tional practices produce the gender patterning of jobs, wages, and hierarchies,
power and subordination." In the very organization of work, gender divisions
are produced and reinforced, and hierarchies are maintained-often despite
the intentions of well-meaning managers and supervisors.
2. The construction of symbols and images "that explain, express, reinforce, or
sometimes oppose those divisions." Gender images, such as advertisements, re-
produce the gendering of positions so that the image of a successful manager or
business executive is almost always an image of a well-dressed, powerful man.
3. The interactions between individuals-women and men, women and women,
men and men, in all the forms and patterns that express dominance and sub-
mission. For example, conversations between supervisors and subordinates
typically involve power dynamics, such as interruptions, sentence completion,
and setting the topic for conversation, which, given the gendered positions
within the organization, will reproduce observable conversational gender
differences.
4. The internal mental work of individuals "as they consciously construct their
understandings of the organization's gendered structure of work and opportu-
nity and the demands for gender-appropriate behaviors and attitudes." This
might include patterns of dress, speech, and general presentation of self.
5. The ongoing logic of organizations themselves-how the seemingly gender-
neutral theories of organizational dynamics, bureaucracy, and organizational
criteria for evaluation and advancement are actually very gendered criteria
masquerading as "objective" and gender-neutral.2°
As we've seen, sex-role theory assumed that gendered individuals enter gender-
neutral sites, thus maintaining the invisibility of gender-as-hierarchy and specifically the
invisible masculine organizational logic. On the other hand, many organizational theo-
ries assume that genderless "people" occupy those gender-neutral sites. The problem is
that such genderless people are assumed to be able to devote themselves single-mindedly
to their jobs, have no children or family responsibilities, and perhaps even have familial
supports for such single-minded workplace devotion. Thus the genderless jobholder turns
out to be gendered as a man. Once again, the invisibility of masculinity as the unexam-
ined norm turns out to reproduce the power differences between women and men.
A few more examples should suffice. Many doctors complete college by age twenty-
one or twenty-two, medical school by age twenty-five to twenty-seven, and then endure
three more years of internship and residency, during which time they are occasion-
ally on call for long stretches of time, sometimes even two or three days straight.
They thus complete their residencies by their late twenties or early thirties. Such a
program is designed for a male doctor-one who is not pressured by the ticking of a
biological clock, one for whom the birth of children will not disrupt these time de-
mands, and one who may even have someone at home taking care of the children while
he sleeps at the hospital. No wonder women in medical school-who number nearly
one-half of all medical students today-began to complain that they were not able to
balance pregnancy and motherhood with their medical training. (The real wonder is
that the male medical school students had not noticed this problem earlier!)
Similarly, lawyers just out oflaw school who take jobs with large corporate law firms
are expected to bill up to fifty to sixty hours per week-a process that probably requires
working eighty to ninety hours per week. Assuming at least six hours of sleep per night,
a one-hour round-trip commute, and one half-day of rest, these young lawyers are going
to have a total of about seventeen hours per week to eat, cook, clean their house, talk
with and/or make love with their spouse (or date if they're single), and spend time with
their children. Without that half-day off on the weekend, they have about one hour per
day for everything else. Failure to submit to this regime places a lawyer on a "mommy
track" or a "daddy track," which means that everyone will think well of that lawyer
for being such an involved parent but that he or she is certain never to be promoted to
partner, to join all the rest of the lawyers who made such sacrifices for their careers.
Or, finally, take academic tenure. In a typical academic career, a scholar completes
a PhD about six to seven years after the BA, or roughly by the early thirties. Then he
or she begins a career as an assistant professor and has six more years to earn tenure
and promotion. This is usually the most intense academic work period of a scholar's
life-he or she works night and day to publish enough scholarly research and prepare
and teach courses. The early thirties are also the most likely childbearing years for
professional women. The academic tenure clock is thus timed to a man's rhythms-
and not just any man, but one who has a wife or other family supports to relieve him
of family obligations as he works to establish his credentials. Remember the adage
"publish or perish"? Often, to academics struggling to make tenure, it feels as though
publishing requires that family life perish.
Observing the institutional dimension also offers the possibility to observe ad-
justment and readjustment within institutions as they are challenged. Sometimes,
their boundaries prove more permeable than originally expected. For example, what
happens when the boundaries between work and home become permeable, when
women leave the home and enter the gendered workplace? Judith Gerson and Kathy
Peiss suggest that boundaries "within the workplace (e.g., occupational segregation)
and interactional microlevel boundaries assume increased significance in defining the
subordinate position of women." Thus occupational segregation can reproduce gender
difference and gender inequality by assigning women to secondary statuses within
organizations. For those women who enter nontraditional positions, though, microlevel
boundary maintenance would come into play-"the persistence of informal group be-
havior among men (e.g., after-work socializing, the uses of male humor, modes of
corporate attire)-act to define insiders and outsiders, thus maintaining gender-based
distinctions."21
Embedded in organizational structures that are gendered, subject to gendered
organizational processes, and evaluated by gendered criteria, then, the differences
between women and men appear to be the differences solely between gendered indi-
viduals. When gender boundaries seem permeable, other dynamics and processes can
reproduce the gender order. When women do not meet these criteria (or, perhaps more
accurately, when the criteria do not meet women's specific needs), we see a gender-
segregated workforce and wage, hiring, and promotional disparities as the "natural"
outcomes of already present differences between women and men. It is in this way that
those differences are generated and the inequalities between women and men are
legitimated and reproduced.
(One should, of course, note that it is through these same processes that the
"differences" between working-class and professional men, between whites and people
of color, and between heterosexuals and homosexuals are also produced and that
the inequalities based on class or race or sexuality are legitimated and reproduced.
Making gender visible in these organizational processes ought not to blind us to the
complex interactions with other patterns of difference and principles of inequality.
Just as a male pattern becomes the unexamined norm, so, too, does a white, hetero-
sexual, and middle-class pattern become the unexamined norm against which others'
experiences and performances are evaluated.)
The idea of organizational gender neutrality, then, is the vehicle by which the
gender order is reproduced. "The theory and practice of gender neutrality," writes
Acker, "covers up, obscures, the underlying gender structure, allowing practices that
perpetuate it to continue even as efforts to reduce gender inequality are also under
way." Organizations reflect and produce gender differences; gendered institutions
22
also reproduce the gender order by which men are privileged over women and by
which some men-white, middle-class, heterosexual-are privileged over other men.
"DOING" GENDER
There remains one more element in the sociological explanation of gender. According
to sex-role theory, we acquire our gender identity through socialization, and afterward
we are socialized to behave in masculine or feminine ways. It is thus the task of society
to make sure that the men act in the masculine manner and that the women act in the
feminine manner. Our identity is fixed, permanent, and-now-inherent in our per-
sonalities. We can no more cease being men or women than we can cease being human.
• ,1 ,, ,,, , ,, =n1u1, a
We tend to think of gender identity as something one "has." One "acquires" gender identity
through socialization, and then, at some culturally appointed time, one "becomes" a woman
or a man. Not true, write sociologists Candace West and Donald Zimmerman in their classic
article "Doing Gender." Gender isn't something one "has"; it's what we "do"-in every inter-
action with others, every time we engage with some institution, every time we look in the
mirror. Gender is a lifelong process, based in interaction, where we are constantly being asked
to credit other people's gender performance and also asking them to credit ours.
In an important contribution to the social constructionist perspective, sociolo-

gists Candace West and Don Zimmerman argued that gender is less a component of
identity-fixed, static-that we take with us into our interactions than it is the product
of those interactions. They argued that "a person's gender is not simply an aspect of
what one is, but, more fundamentally, it is something that one does, and does recur-
rently, in interaction with others." We are constantly "doing" gender, performing the
activities and exhibiting the traits that are prescribed for us.23
If our sex-role identity were inherent, West and Zimmerman might ask, in what
does it inhere? What are the criteria by which we sort people into those sex roles to
begin with? Typically, our answer returns us to biology and, more specifically, to the
primary sex characteristics that we believe determine which gender one will become.
Biological sex-externally manifested genitalia-becomes socialized gender role. Those
with male genitalia are classified in one way; those with female genitalia are classified
in another way. These two sexes become different genders, which are assumed to have
different personalities and require different institutional and social arrangements to
accommodate their natural-and now socially acquired-differences.
Most of the time we carry around these types of commonsense understandings.
We see primary sex characteristics (those present at birth) as far more decisive than
secondary sex characteristics (those that develop at puberty) for the assignment of
gender-role identity. But how do we know? When we see someone on the street, it is his
or her secondary sex characteristics that we observe-breast development, facial hair,
musculature. Even more than that, it is the behavioral presentation of self-how some-
one dresses, moves, talks-that signals to us whether that someone is a man or a
woman. It would be a strange world, indeed, if we had constantly to ask to see people's
genitals to make sure they were who they appeared to be!
One method that sociologists developed to interrogate this assumption was to
imagine that primary and secondary sex characteristics did not match. In many cases,
"intersex" infants, or hermaphrodites-whose primary sex characteristics cannot be
easily discerned visually-have their genitals surgically reconstructed, depending upon
the size of the penis and not on the presence or absence of Y chromosomes. To these sur-
geons, "chromosomes are less relevant in determining gender than penis size." Therefore,
to be labeled "male" does not necessarily depend on having one Y and one X chromo-
some, nor on the production of sperm, but rather on "the aesthetic condition of having an
appropriately sized penis." The surgeons assume that no "male" would want to live as a
man with such minute genitalia, and so they "correct" what will undoubtedly be per-
ceived as a problem. (These surgically constructed females go on to live their lives as
women.) It would appear, then, that size really does matter-at least to the doctors! 24
This procedure has come under increasingly withering criticism from scientists,
feminists, and intersexuals themselves, who are more interested in being happy with
their bodies than in having someone "reassign" them because of some social idea that
there can be only two sexes. Intersexuality, which affects about one thousand babies
a year, pushes us to reconsider the genitals as the defining feature of biological sex.
Gender, as William Reiner, a urologist and psychiatrist who treats intersex children,
says, "has far more to do with other important structures than external genitals."25
Perhaps, but the genitals remain the commonsense "location" of biological sex.
In a brilliantly disconcerting study, Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach,
Suzanne Kessler and Wendy McKenna proposed two images in which primary and
secondary sex characteristics did not match (see figures 5.3 and 5-4). Which one is the
"man," and which is the "woman"? How can you tell? If you base your decision on
primary sex characteristics-the genitals-you would have to conclude that many of
the people with whom you interact in daily life might be hiding their "true" selves.
But, if you base your decision on what you see "above the waist," which is more visible
in daily life, you would have to conclude that many people may actually be a different
sex from that which they appear to be.
Figure 5.3. Figure with penis, breasts, hips, no body hair, and long hair.
Source: From Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach by Kessler and Mc Kenna. Copyright© 1985 by University of
Chicago Press. Reprinted by permission of John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Looking at those images, one might be tempted to dismiss this as the stuff of fan-
tasy. After all, in real life, people's genitals match their secondary sex characteristics,
and we are always easily able to tell the difference, right? Well, maybe not always.
Recall the consternation in the popular film The Crying Game when it was revealed, to
both the audience and the film's protagonist simultaneously, that Dil, the woman the
lead was in love with, was actually a man. And remember everyone's reaction when
Dustin Hoffman revealed that Emily Kimberly was, in fact, Edward Kimberly in
Tootsie; or the Broadway play M Butterfly, which was about a man who lived with a
woman for more than thirty years without ever realizing that the woman was actually
a man. And think of the commotion and confusion about Marilyn Manson in recent
years. And what about the consternation and disgust expressed by men who pay cross-
dressing prostitutes for oral sex and then find out that "she" is actually "he"? Such
confusion is often the basis for comedy. Knowing whether someone is male or female
is far more important to the observer than it often is to the observed, as fans of the
television program Saturday Night Live will recall with the ambiguous character "Pat."
People who interacted with Pat were constantly trying to trick him/her into revealing
Figure 5.4. Figure with vulva, no breasts, no hips, body hair, and short hair.
Source: From Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach by Kessler and McKenna. Copyright © 1985 by University
of Chicago Press. Reprinted by permission of John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
what he/she "really" was, while Pat nonchalantly answered their questions and eluded
every rhetorical trap.
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Not only are we constantly "doing" gender through all our interactions, but we are also con-
stantly classifying and sorting people, making sure that there are two-and only two-genders
out there. In "Doing Gender, Determining Gender," sociologists Laurel Westbrook and Kristen
Schilt take us inside those moments when it's not clear-and when we feel uncomfortable that
it's not clear-about who is a man and who is a woman-and how you know in the first place!
It's no surprise that the areas in which gender is being challenged as a simple, binary sex-based
construction make us so uncomfortable. What is the "sex" on your driver's license? Which
bathroom do you use? These are the sorts of questions that make us anxious.
Figure S.S. The real story ofBrandon Teena, a biological female (named Teena Brandon) who identified
and passed as a boy in a small town in Nebraska, offers a less humorous side of gender indeterminacy.
Brandon hung out and was accepted by a group of guys, but when he was exposed, he was beaten, raped,
and eventually murdered. His story was made into an Oscar-winning movie, Boys Don't Cry, in 2006.
Source: AP Photo.
Of course, these are all media creations, and in real life, "passing" is far more
difficult and far less common. But one reason we enjoy such a parade of such ambigu-
ous characters is because gender certainty is so important to us. Without it, we feel as
if we have lost our social bearings in the world and are threatened with a kind of
"gender vertigo," in which the dualistic conceptions that we believe are the founda-
tions of our social reality turn out to be more fluid than we believed or hoped.26 It's as
though our notions of gender are anchored in quicksand. One sociologist reported
how she became disturbed by the sexual ambiguity of a computer salesperson:
The person who answered my questions was truly a salesperson. I could not cat-
egorize him/her as a woman or a man. What did I look for? (1) Facial hair: She/he
was smooth skinned, but some men have little or no facial hair. (This varies by race,
Native Americans and Blacks often have none.) (2) Breasts: She/he was wearing a
loose shirt that hung from his/her shoulders. And, as many women who suffered
through a 1950s adolescence know to their shame, women are often flat-chested.
(3) Shoulders: His/hers were small and round for a man, broad for a woman.
(4) Hands: Long and slender fingers, knuckles a bit large for a woman, small for a
man. (5) Voice: Middle range, unexpressive for a woman, not at all the exaggerated
tones some gay males affect. (6) His/her treatment of me: Gave off no signs that
Okay, you convinced me in chapter 3 that there are more than only two
OH?
REALLY•
genders. But surely there are two, and only two, biological sexes, right? Male
and female. Well, no. The National Institutes of Health has four categories of
"intersex" people:
XX intersex: A person with the chromosomes and ovaries of a woman, but with the external
genitalia that appear male. (Usually the result of exposure to male hormones in utero
or CAH). The person has a normal uterus, but the labia fuse and the clitoris is large
and "penis-like."
XY intersex: A person with XY chromosomes, but with ambiguous or clearly female genitalia.
Internally, testes may be absent, malformed, or normal. In the most famous cases of male
pseudo-hermaphrodites in the Dominican Republic, this is caused by a specific deficiency
in 5-alpha reductase. The children appear female until puberty, when their bodies are
"transformed" into male bodies.
True gonadal intersex: A person with both ovarian and testicular tissue in one or both gonads.
The cause of true gonadal intersexuality is unknown.
Complex or undetermined intersex: Other chromosomal combinations, such as XXY, XXX,
or XO (only one chromosome) can also result in ambiguous sex development.
would let me know if I were of the same or different sex as this person. There were
not even any signs that he/she knew his/her sex would be difficult to categorize
and I wondered about this even as I did my best to hide these questions so I would
not embarrass him/her while we talked of computer paper. I left still not knowing
the sex of my salesperson, and was disturbed by that unanswered question (child
of my culture that I am).27
Transvestites and cross-dressers reveal the artifice of gender. Gender is a perfor-

mance, a form of drag, by which, through the successful manipulation of props, signs,
symbols, behaviors, and emotions, we attempt to convince others of our successful
acquisition of masculinity or femininity.
By contrast, there are nearly one million transgender individuals in the United
States-individuals whose gender identity does not match up with the sex they were
assigned at birth.28 Gender identity is someone's internal, personal sense of being a
man or a woman (or, as we'll discuss below, existing outside that binary). Trying to
change a person's gender identity is no more successful than trying to change a per-
son's sexual orientation-it doesn't work! As such, sometimes transgender people seek
to bring their bodies-that is, their "sex"-more into alignment with their gender
identity. This can happen through a variety of medical and nonmedical options:
voice therapy, top surgery, makeup, hormone therapy, vaginoplasty, tattoos, hair re-
placement, binding, phalloplasty, breast implants, piercing, metoidioplasty, prosthetic
breasts, artificial facial hair, name and/or pronoun change, psychotherapy, change of
sex designation, hair removal, gendered dress .. . of course, this is a partial list! 29
People under the transgender umbrella are incredibly diverse. Terms like non-
binary (NB) and genderqueer (GQ) are intended to encompass individuals who feel
that "man" and "woman"-and/or "male" and "female"-are insufficient to describe
the way they experience their gender and/or the way they outwardly present it. Some
The "Social Construction" of Biology: The Case of Caster Semenya

We're led to believe that males and females are bio- 99 percent of the population, it's easy to determine,"
logically different-Martians and Venusians-and that Dr. Richard Auchus said. "But one percent of the popu-
these differences are fixed, permanent, and categori- lation are not so straightforward." That's one in a hun-
cal. After all, Martians can't survive on Venus, and dred, not one in sixteen hundred-three million of us.
vice versa. But how do we know-really know-who Caster Semenya was forced to undergo a series
belongs where? of tests to determine her biological sex. In the end,
For most of us, it's a simple anatomical glance at an anatomist, an endocrinologist, a neuroscientist, a
either primary or secondary sex characteristics. Give- gynecologist, and a psychotherapist deliberated for
away secondary sex-characteristic markers: Adam's several weeks before determining her sex. That is, all
apple, breasts, facial hair. Not perfect, I grant you, but five scientists had to agree on her biology. Rarely is
they roughly correlate with what we consider biologi- biological sex so obviously "socially constructed"!
cally male or female. In 2012, Caster Semenya carried the South African
But what if someone doesn't neatly fall into those flag in the opening of the Summer Olympics. She won
categories? In 2009, the sports world was rocked by a silver medal in the eight-hundred-meter-race.
an eighteen-year-old South African sprinter named
Caster Semenya. She was the first-place finisher in
the eight-hundred-meter race at the World Track
and Field championships held that year in Berlin-by
a lot. By so much, in fact, that people wondered if she
was, perhaps, not a "she" after all. One Italian runner,
who finished sixth in the race, said, "These kind[s] of
people should not run with us. For me, she is not a
woman. She's a man."
Let's consider that last sentence for a moment,
shall we? "She's a man."
As we've seen earlier, about one American in sixteen
hundred is born clinically "intersex"-that is, with Caster Semenya is a gold and silver medalist from South
genetic, anatomical, or other conditions that render Africa whose achievements were questioned when ge-
simple classification impossible. That's about two hun- netic tests revealed that she carries XY chromosomes as
dred thousand of us. But one medical specialist believes a female athlete. It was claimed that this gives her an
that this number only covers those at the extreme "unfair" advantage over cisgender female athletes.
ends and the precise middle of the continuum. "For Source: AP Photo/Mark Allan .
NBGQ individuals undergo medical/surgical transitioning or continue to identify

partially with one gender, but many others believe their bodies don't define or dictate
their gender. What they share is an understanding that the binary sex and gender
systems are problematic, limiting, and not aligned with their personal sense of self.
Just as with trans men and women, there is an ever-expanding terrain of identities
under the NBGQ umbrella: agender, bigender, neutrois, genderfluid, transmasculine/
feminine, masculine of center, boi, demiboy/girl, and androgyne, just to name a few.30
The fact that there are transgender, gender nonconforming, nonbinary, and
genderqueer individuals who are ardent biological determinists and others who are
social constructionists suggests that there is something imperfect and vague about
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Figure 5.6. The transgender umbrella is a big one. When it comes to gendered presentation in ev-
eryday life, some trans people conform to gender norms for femininity or masculinity, while others-
particularly those who identify as non-binary or genderqueer-play around with the gender binary,
mixing and matching aspects of both masculinity and femininity or choosing to disavow both entirely.
Photo by D Dipasupil/Getty Images for Logo TV
the "choice" between biology and social construction. Despite a prolific literature in
women's, feminist, and anthropological studies that proves the socially constructed
nature of sex and gender, our society tends to understand sex and gender in terms
of mutually exclusive hierarchical categories. As such, many transgender men and
women are bound to play the "game of categories" with the rest of us. (Figure 5.6) But,
beyond the rigid duality of sex and gender, there exists a broad diversity of identities
and experiences. While the sex and gender binary arguably works fine for most people,
who are we to impose it on those for whom it does not?
Most of us find the walls of those boxes enormously comforting. We learn gender
performance early in childhood, and it remains with us virtually all our lives. When our
gender identities are threatened, we will often retreat to displays of exaggerated
masculinity or exaggerated femininity. And when our sense of others' gender identity is
disrupted or dislodged, we can become anxious, even violent. "We're so invested in
being men or women that if you fall outside that easy definition of what a man or woman
is, a lot of people see you as some kind of monster," commented Susan Stryker, who is a
male-to-female transsexual. Many transsexuals are murdered or attacked every year.31
The fascinating case of "Agnes" reported by Harold Garfinkle also demonstrates
these themes. Agnes was first encountered in the late 1950s by a psychiatrist, Robert
Stoller, and by Garfinkle, a sociologist. Though Agnes appeared in every way to be a very
North Dakota
South Dakota
Kansas
Oklahoma
NOTE: In states that amend but

do not reissue birth certificates,
Texas it is obvious that the person's
name and gender have been
changed on the document.
This has privacy and safety
,,o implications for the person to
Cs whom the amended birth
..~
Hawan [) certificate has been issued.
• State issues new birth certificate and does not D State requires proof of sex reassignment surgery to
require sex reassignment surgery (6 states+ D. C.) issue new birth certificate (25 states)
D State requires proof of sex reassignment surgery to • State does not issue new birth certificate or amend
amend birth certificate (15 states) existing documents (3 states)
Figure 5.7. Transgender birth certificate laws .

....~ Copyright© 2015 Movement Advancement Project.
feminine woman, she also had a penis, which she regarded as a biological mistake. Agnes
"knew" she was a woman and acted (and demanded to be treated) as a woman. "I have
always been a girl," she proclaimed to her interviewers, and she regarded her early
childhood socialization as a relentless trauma of being forced to participate in activities
for boys, like sports. Because genitals were not "the essential signs of her femininity,"
Agnes instead referred to her prominent breasts and her lifelong sense that she was, in
fact, female. "Her self-described feminine feelings, behavior, choices of companions, and
the like were never portrayed as matters of decision or choice but were treated as given as
a natural fact," writes Garfinkle. (Revealingly, Garfinkle refers to Agnes, as I have, with
a feminine pronoun, although biologically Agnes possessed male genitalia.) 32
Understanding how we do gender, then, requires that we make visible the perfor-
mative elements of identity and also the audience for those performances. It also opens
up unimaginable possibilities for social change; as Suzanne Kessler points out in her
study of "intersex people" (hermaphrodites) :
If authenticity for gender rests not in a discoverable nature but in someone else's
proclamation, then the power to proclaim something else is available. If physicians
recognized that implicit in their management of gender is the notion that finally, and
always, people construct gender as well as the social systems that are grounded in
gender-based concepts, the possibilities for real societal transformations would
be unlimited. 33
Kessler's gender utopianism does raise an important issue in the sociological perspec-
tive. In saying that we "do" gender, we are saying that gender is not only something
that is done to us. We create and re-create our own gendered identities within the
contexts of our interactions with others and within the institutions we inhabit.
GENDERED COMMUNICATION
The multilayered approach offered by social constructionism emphasizes three levels
of analysis: the individual, the institutional, and the interactive. First, through social-
ization, individuals acquire a gender identity, which they then proceed to adapt
through the course of their lives. Second, the institutions in which we find ourselves
are, themselves, gendered, so that seemingly "objective" or "gender-neutral" rules and
regulations and operating procedures reproduce gender relations and reinforce gen-
dered identities. And, third, our interactions themselves not only reflect gendered
identities, but actually produce them.
So gendered interactions and gendered institutions do not reflect difference, but
often create them. And the material with which these differences are created, remem-
ber, is inequality. So institutional arrangements often, without any malign intention,
result in favoring men over women. That means that sometimes what we perceive to
be differences between gendered individuals may actually be differences in their insti-
tutional location.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the way we communicate. We generally think
that women and men communicate differently-and by communicate, I mean more
than simply how we talk, but also how we use language, how we use nonverbal types of
communication, when we speak, where we speak, and under what circumstances.
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Do young men and women communicate differently? Of course they do. Andrew
Schwartz and his colleagues analyzed seven hundred million words, phrases, and
topics collected from the Facebook messages of seventy-five thousand volunteers.
Figure 5.8 depicts the two word clouds-hers and his-of the words and phrases most
commonly used. But do these differences exist because men and women communicate
differently-or because people who occupy different positions communicate differently?
Take, for example, the well-known differences in communication patterns ob-

served by Deborah Tannen in her best-selling book ... You Just Don't Understand.
Tannen argues that women and men communicate with the languages of their respec-
tive planets-men employ the competitive language of hierarchy and domination to
get ahead; women create webs of inclusion with softer, more embracing language that
ensures that everyone feels okay. At home, men are the strong, silent types, grunting
monosyllabically to their wives, who want to use conversation to create intimacy. Men,
she argues, use language to establish their position in a hierarchy. To men, conversations
"are negotiations in which people try and achieve and maintain the upper hand if they
can, and protect themselves from some others' attempts to put them down and push
them around." Men interrupt more often, ignore comments from others, and make more
declarations of facts and opinions. Women, by contrast, use conversation to establish
and maintain relationships. To women, conversations are "negotiations for closeness in
which people try and seek and give confirmation and support, and to reach consensus."
Women negotiate in private, ask more questions to maintain the flow of conversation,
use more personal pronouns. Often when women speak, they end a declarative sentence
with a slight rise in tone, as if ending it with a question mark.34
Like Gilligan, Tannen claims that she has simply identified two distinct patterns
and that one is not "better" than the other. Unlike Gilligan, though, Tannen ascribes
the difference between these patterns entirely to gender. Nor are her biases as con-
cealed as she might have thought. For example, Tannen writes that men's need for
autonomy and independence can be a "hindrance" because "there are times when they
do not have all the information needed to make a decision." By contrast, women "make
better managers because they are more inclined to consult others and involve employ-
ees in decision making."35
But are such observed differences between women and men real? Here, the evi-
dence is less conclusive. Studies of interruption suggest a far more complicated pic-
ture, that women interrupt women and men interrupt men at about the same rates,
whereas men interrupt women far more than women interrupt men-a finding that
led researchers to conclude that it's not the gender of the speaker, but rather the gender
of the person to whom one is speaking that makes the difference. This also seems to be
the case with silence-that the same man, silent and uncommunicative at home, is
quite talkative at work, where he uses conversation to make sure everyone feels all
right. Again, it is not the gender of the silent one, but rather his or her relative power
in the situation. Tannen's argument that men and women use language differently is
another version of Mars and Venus pop psychology-and just as riddled with misat-
tributions. In the workplace, for example, employers and employees use language dif-
ferently-regardless of whether they are women or men. Are bosses from Mars and
secretaries from Venus? When we actually look at interactions, one's social position is
far more important than one's gender.
Or think of the differences in communication patterns among women and men in
hospitals. Men tend to be strong and silent, giving orders, but are not particularly
nurturing or emotionally sensitive. Women, by contrast, are very empathic, and they
listen carefully, speak more softly and kindly. Except, of course, when those women
are doctors or those men are nurses. It is medically important for doctors not to
become too emotionally expressive because, medical schools teach them, to do so
might compromise the quality of care. (An odd concept, and a gendered one, that
adequate care depends on emotional disengagement, i.e., forgetting or ignoring that
both patient and caregiver are human beings with actual emotions.) And it is part of
the quality of care that nurses are more emotionally attuned (perhaps to shield the
doctors from messy feelings) . So these ideas that "men" and "women" communicate
differently turn out to be about people in different positions-and we are coming to
see this as the "gender" of the professions breaks down and women enter medicine
and men enter nursing. These are qualities of gendered positions, not expressions of
gendered people, women and men are entering. I suppose doctors are from Mars and
nurses are from Venus?36
Or take one more example: When he examined the recorded transcripts of wom-
en's and men's testimony in trials, anthropologist William O'Barr concluded that the
witnesses' occupation was a more accurate predictor of their use of language than was
gender. "So-called women's language is neither characteristic of all women, nor limited
only to women," O'Barr writes. If women use "powerless" language, it may be due "to
the greater tendency of women to occupy relatively powerless social positions" in soci-
ety.37 Communication differences turn out to be "deceptive distinctions" because rarely
do we observe the communication patterns of dependent men and executive women.
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Linguist Deborah Tannen caused a big stir with her best-seller You Just Don't Understand.
Women and men use language differently, Tannen asserted: women to create connections,
men to establish and maintain competitive hierarchies. No wonder men and women ended up
in different positions at work, with women taking a backseat to the men getting all the promo-
tions. Except it turns out to be untrue, a confusing of people's actual positions and their gender.
In "Men and Women Are from Earth," their scathing critique of Tannen and others, Rosalind
Barnett and Caryl Rivers dismantle this interplanetary theory of language and offer a far more
grounded idea that people's language styles also depend on their positions: parents-male or
female-with young children tend to use language to make peace, not draw lines in the sand.
Corporate executives-male or female-can be monosyllabic and inexpressive, while their
underlings-again, male or female-will use language to make everyone feel the conversation
is progressing smoothly.
A SOCIOLOGY OF RAPE
In previous chapters, we illustrated theoretical perspectives by observing how each
perspective deals with one specifically gendered phenomenon-rape. We've seen,
for example, how some evolutionary biologists explain rape as an evolutionary re-
productive strategy for "losers" who are unable to pass on their genetic inheritance
by old-fashioned seduction. (It is therefore evolutionary biologists, not mainstream
feminists, who insist that rape and sex are the same thing!) And we've seen how
anthropologists undermine such biological arguments, suggesting instead that rape
varies dramatically from one culture to another and that what causes the differences
between rape-prone and rape-free societies is the status of women. Where women are
valued and honored, rape rates are exceptionally low. Where women are degraded
and devalued, rape rates are high.
Psychologists enable us to differentiate between rapists and nonrapists by under-
standing the psychodynamic processes that lead an individual man to such aberrant
behavior. Whether because of childhood trauma, unresolved anger at his mother, or a
sense of inadequate gender identity, rapists are characterized by their deviance from
the norm. "Rape is always a symptom of some psychological dysfunction, either tem-
porary and transient, or chronic and repetitive." In the popular view, rapists are "sick
individuals.''3 8
As we have seen, the sociological perspective builds upon these other perspectives.
But it also offers a radical departure from them. Rape is particularly illustrative because
it is something that is performed almost exclusively by one gender-men-although it
is done to both men and women. Thus it is particularly useful for teasing out the dy-
namics of both difference (because only men do it) and dominance (because its pri-
mary function is the domination of either women or men). Instead of seeing a collection
of sick individuals, sociologists look at how ordinary, how normal, rapists can be-and
then at the culture that legitimates their behaviors. It also assesses the processes and dy-
namics that force all women to confront the possibility of sexual victimization-a pro-
cess that reproduces both gender division and gender inequality.
Sociological studies of rapists have found that many are married or have steady,
regular partners. Studies of gang rape reveal an even more "typical" guy who sees
himself simply as going along with his friends. Rapists see their actions in terms that
express power differentials between women and men. They see what they do to women
as their "right," a sense of entitlement to women's bodies. And they often see their
behavior in light of their relationship with other men. For example, the members of
Spur Posse, a group of teenage boys in Southern California accused of numerous acts
of date rape and acquaintance rape, kept score of their "conquests" using athletes'
uniform numbers-which only the other members could understand. And during
wartime, the rape of vanquished women becomes a form of communication between
the victor and the loser, and women's bodies are the "spoils of war."
Although rape is an act of aggression by an individual man, or a group of men, it
is also a social problem that women, as a group, face. Women may deal with rape as
individuals-by changing their outfits, their patterns of walking and talking, their
willingness to go to certain places at certain times-but rape affects all women. Rape
is a form of "sexual terrorism," writes legal theorist Carol Sheffield, a "system of con-
stant reminders to women that we are vulnerable and targets solely by virtue of our
gender. The knowledge that such things can and do happen serves to keep all women
in the psychological condition of being aware that they are potential victims.''3 9
To the sociologist, then, rape expresses both a structure of relations and an indi-
vidual event. At the individual level, it is the action of a man (or group of men) against
a woman. It is sustained by a cultural apparatus that interprets it as legitimate and
justified. It keeps women in a position of vulnerability as potential targets. In this way,
rape reproduces both gender difference (women as vulnerable and dependent upon
men for protection, women afraid to dare to enter male spaces such as the street for
fear of victimization) and gender inequality.4 0
TOWARD AN EXPLANATION OF THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION

OF GENDER RELATIONS
So how shall we think about gender from a sociological perspective? The elements of
a definition seem clear enough. We shall explore three related levels-(1) identity,
(2) interaction, and (3) institution-and, of course, the interactions among them, in
order to explain the related phenomena-gender difference and gender inequality.
First, we understand that gender is not a "thing" that one possesses, but rather a
set of activities that one does. When we do gender, we do it in front of other people; it
is validated and legitimated by the evaluations of others. Gender is less a property of
the individual than it is a product of our interactions with others. West and Zimmerman
call gender a "managed property," which is "contrived with respect to the fact that others
will judge and respond to us in particular ways." Women and men are distinct social
groups, constituted in "concrete, historically changing-and generally unequal-social
relationships." What the great British historian E. P. Thompson once wrote about class
applies equally to gender. Gender "is a relationship, not a thing" -and, like in all rela-
tionships, we are active in its construction. We do not simply inherit a male or female
sex role, but we actively-interactively-constantly define and redefine what it means
to be men or women in our daily encounters with one another. Gender is something
one does, not something one has.4'
Second, we understand that we do gender in every interaction, in every situation,
in every institution in which we find ourselves. Gender is a situated accomplishment,
as much an aspect of interaction as it is of identity. As Messerschmidt puts it, "Gender
is a situated accomplishment in which we produce forms of behavior seen by others in
the same immediate situation as masculine or feminine." Gender is what we bring to
these interactions and what is produced in them as well.42
Nor do we do gender in a genderless vacuum but, rather, in a gendered world, in
gendered institutions. Our social world is built on systemic, structural inequality
based on gender; social life reproduces both gender difference and gender inequality.
We need to think of masculinity and femininity "not as a single object with its own
history, but as being constantly constructed within the history of an evolving social
structure." As Karen Pyke defines it, gender is:
an emergent property of situated interaction rather than a role or attribute.
Deeply held and typically nonconscious beliefs about men's and women's essential
natures shape how gender is accomplished in everyday interactions. Because those
beliefs are molded by existing macrostructural power relations, the culturally
appropriate ways of producing gender favor men's interests over those of women.
In this manner, gendered power relations are reproduced. 4 3
In short, sociology is uniquely equipped to understand both what is really different

between women and men and what is not really different but only seems to be, as well
as the ways in which gender difference is the product of-and not the cause of-gender
inequality. We are gendered people living gendered lives in a gendered society-but
we do actually live on the same planet. (In fact, it may be that only on this planet
would such differences make a difference.)
In the remainder of this book, we'll look at some of the institutions that create
gender difference and reproduce gender inequality-families, schools, workplaces-
and observe some of the ways in which those differences and that inequality are
expressed through our interactions with one another-in love, sex, friendship, and
violence.
KEY TERMS
Agents of Socialization Gender Socialization Secondary Sex
Confirmation Bias Hegemonic Masculinity Characteristics
Cross-Dressing Impulsive Sex-Role Theory
Daddy Track Hyperindividualism Sexual Ambiguity
"Doing" Gender lntersexuality Sexual Terrorism
Feminism Midlife Crisis Sociological Perspective
Gay Liberation Primary Sex Characteristics Transgender
Gender Neutrality Reflexive Passivity Transvestite
PART
Gendered
Identities,
Gendered
Institutions
CHAPTER
The GENDERED FAMILY

6
Nobody has ever before asked the nuclear family to live all by itself in
a box the way we do. With no relatives, no support, we've put it in an
impossible situation.
-MARGARET MEAD
mother of five children, one a newborn with Down's syndrome, leaves

A home to pursue a career as the CEO of a major organization. She has a taste
for high fashion. Her husband, a union worker and part-time fisherman, goes
along for the ride. Her unwed sixteen-year-old daughter is pregnant and the
baby's father is another sixteen-year-old whose MySpace profile says he is a "red-
neck" who loves dirtbikes, "lives to play hockey," and does "not want kids." Then
his mother is arrested for selling illegal drugs.
Who is this paragon of bad mothering, this feckless father, this slutty teen-
ager, her randy boyfriend with the felonious mother? Who is this poster family
of dysfunctionality? Why it's Sarah Palin, of course, the then-governor of Alaska
and the Republican candidate for vice president in the 2008 election, and her
husband Todd, their daughter Bristol, Bristol's boyfriend, Levi Johnston, and his
mother, Sherry. And remember that one of the major planks in her campaign to
become the country's Second Family was a return to "family values."
The barrage of criticisms and defenses of the Palin family was dizzying in
its confusion. Some questioned her putting career over family, and others
151
152 PART 2: GENDERED IDENTITIES, GENDERED INSTITUTIONS
defended her as a working mom. The religious right was ashamed of her daughter's
"condition" but applauded her decision to keep the baby, and some feminists defended
her sexual decision making but decried the fact that in Alaska she could not legally
obtain an abortion without one of her parents' permission. And while many found Levi
Johnston's postings distasteful, adoring fans of this hockey hunk proliferated instantly
on Facebook and MySpace. (I don't think anyone rose to his mother's defense.)
Americans are confused about the family. On the one hand, it seems so fragile:
Divorces skyrocket. Teenagers have babies out of wedlock. Feckless fathers abandon
their family responsibilities to pursue other pleasures. Moms leave home and go off to
work, leaving their children in the hands of strangers. Middle-class couples adopt
babies from all over the world. Young people are living together, without marrying.
And now even gay men and lesbians want to get married and raise families!
But, on the other hand, the family has proved a most resilient institution, able to
adapt to changing economic, social, and cultural circumstances and remain the foun-
dation of society. It has most decidedly not gone the way of the horse and buggy. It's
survived the massive social mobility of modern society, which has meant the geo-
graphic dispersal of extended kin. It's survived the entry of women-including mothers
of young children-into the labor force. New family forms abound: step-families,
blended families, adoptive families. People who divorce often remarry quickly, indicat-
ing that they still believe in the institution, just not the person they married! And even
gay men and lesbians believe in the family enough to want to have one of their own!
And Americans have been confused about the family for decades. Did I just say
"decades"? Make that "over a century." Since the late nineteenth century, we've de-
bated about whether or not the family is in crisis. In the nineteenth century, pundits
warned that men were so dedicated to their work they were becoming absentee land-
lords at home. They fretted that if women entered the workplace or got the vote, the
family would collapse.
Both sides of the debate have some merit. The data on the crisis of the family seem
overwhelming: Married people do seem less happy than they did a generation ago.
We're more isolated, have fewer close confidants and friends, and have little social sup-
port for family life, save a heaping helping of "family values." And you can't eat that.
Marriage rates have consistently declined; less than two-thirds (62.6 percent) of
American women aged 35-44 were legally married in 2013; the marriage rates in 2010
and 2011 (6.8 per 1,000 in both years) were the lowest in more than forty years. Cohabi-
tation (both prior to marriage and in lieu of marriage) has increased dramatically in
the past two decades, from 1.1 million in 1977 to 8.1 million in 2011 (7.6 million oppo-
site-sex couples and 514,735 same-sex couples); the cohabiting population includes all
age groups, but the average cohabiting age group is between twenty-five and thirty-
four. Current estimates of divorce indicate that about half of first marriages end in
divorce and 60 percent of those marriages involve children. Forty-one (40.7) percent of
all births are to unmarried mothers (1.6 million in 2012). Among whites, the propor-
tion of births to unmarried women rose from 5 percent in 1964-1969 to 35.9 percent in
2012; among black women, the proportion rose from 35 percent to 71.6 percent. Twenty-
four percent of children live without their biological fathers. And children who are
raised by only one parent are more likely to be poor, commit a crime, drop out of
school, earn lower grades, and experience emotional problems.'
Chapter 6: The Gendered Family 153
30
23
20
10
10
0
1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2012
Figure 6.1. Percent of men and women ages twenty-five and older who have never been married,
1960-2012.
Source: "Record Share of Americans Have Never Married ," Pew Research Center, Washington, DC (September
2014) http:/ /www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/09124/ record-share-of-americans-have-never-married/.
Though the family feels like one of the most fragile of social institutions, it is also
perhaps among the most resilient. It's never been ossified into a static form, except in
some mythic constructions that the family has "always" looked like this or that.
American families have changed dramatically over the course of our history, and the
family form continues to adapt to changing circumstances. There is, however, only
modest evidence that the family is in decline or decay. Marriage remains quite popu-
lar, with more than nine in ten Americans taking the plunge. The proportion of
women who remain single all their lives is actually lower today than it was at the start
of the twentieth century. That almost half of all marriages in the United States are re-
marriages indicates both the increasing numbers of divorces and the continued belief
in the institution of marriage. More men than ever are identifying themselves as fa-
thers, and there are more single fathers raising children than ever before as well. And
virtually everyone wants to get married-including gay men and lesbians, whose cam-
paigns for the right to marry are currently on the political agenda (and are, ironically,
opposed by the very people who want to "defend" marriage).2
If the nuclear family is not exactly in crisis, then what is all the noise about? Some
part of the family values debate rests on what we might call "misplaced nostalgia" -a
romanticized notion that the family form of the 1950s (the era of many of the debaters'
adolescence) is a timeless trope that all family forms ought to emulate. In the 1960s,
anthropologist Raymond Birdwhistell labeled this "the sentimental model" when he
described the way people in rural Kentucky talked about or "remembered" their
families-which, as he pointed out, bore little resemblance to the families in which
they actually lived. Often our descriptions of the family conform more to this mythic
model than to our actual experiences. When transformed into public policy, this
blurred and ahistorical vision is often accompanied by a hearing disorder that seeks to
block out the unpleasant sounds of modernity-the cacophonous chorus of different
groups of people in a democracy, the hum of the workplace toward which both women
and men are drawn, the din of television and rock or rap music, the moans of the
sexual revolution.
Much of the family values debate is a displaced quarrel with feminism, which is
often wrongly blamed or wrongly credited with what may be the single greatest trans-
formation of American society in the twentieth century-the entry of women into the
workplace. This process long antedates modern feminism, although the attack on the
"feminine mystique" launched by the women's movement in the 1960s gave working
women a political peg upon which to hang their aspirations and longings.
Finally, much of the debate about the crisis of the family is based on a misread-
ing of history. Although we think of the family as the "private" sphere, a warm re-
spite from the cold competitive world of economic and political life, the family has
never been a world apart. The modern family was built upon a wide foundation of
economic and political supports; it is today sustained by an infrastructure that in-
cludes public funding for roads, schools, and home buying and the legal arrange-
ments of marriage and divorce. The workplace and family are deeply interconnected;
the "family wage" organizes family life as well as economic life, expressing an ideal-
ized view of what the family is and should be. This public component of the private
sphere is often invisible in current debates about the family, in part because it is so
deeply ingrained in our historical development. The current "crisis" dates back to
the beginning of the twentieth century, but the origins of the current dilemma lie
much further back in our nation's past.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN FAMILY

From the start, American families were the beneficiaries of dramatic changes in family
morality that swept Europe and the colonies in the mid-eighteenth century. Though
paternal authority was still the core of the "well-ordered family," a new morality of
"affective individualism" led to an ideal of warmer and more intimate relationships
between husbands and wives and between parents and children. In a "surge of senti-
ment," men and women were encouraged to marry on the basis of mutual affection;
marriage was regarded as the "union of individuals" rather than as the "union of two
lineages." Husbands became less brutal to their wives-there was a decline in hus-
bands beating wives and in men insisting on their conjugal "rights" -and parents less
harsh toward their children, measured by a decline in corporal punishment.3
American women had greater freedom than their European counterparts. With-
out dowries to tie them economically to their families, and with the right to own
property in their own names after marriage, American women had an easier time
both marrying and remarrying. Thus the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century
American family looked less like a miniature monarchy and more like a "little com-
monwealth" in which husbands, wives, and children "worked together as participants
in common enterprise." There was far less differentiation between "his" and "her"
spheres: Women and men both worked in and around their homes; women produced
many of the things needed for the family; and men worked to a rhythm of family time,
not industrial time. Just as women and men were involved in the worlds of work, fa-
thers and mothers were both involved in child rearing; historian John Demos writes
of an "active, encompassing fatherhood, woven into the whole fabric of domestic and
productive life." In fact, at the dawn of the nineteenth century, child-rearing manuals
were written to fathers, not mothers, and children were largely raised by their same-
sex parent in an informal but common sex-segregated pattern.4
In the first decades of the nineteenth century, however, this world was trans-
formed. By the middle of the century, a gap between work and home grew dramati-
cally, both in reality and in ideology, to create the separation of spheres. Family life
"was wrenched apart from the world of work," and the workplace and the home clearly
demarcated as his and hers. In 1849, Alfred Lord Tennyson expressed this separation
of spheres in a poem, "The Princess":
Man for the field and woman for the hearth:
Man for the sword and for the needle she:
Man with the head and woman with the heart:
Man to command and woman to obey;
All else confusion.5
Men experienced this separation in two ways. First, paid work shifted from home
and farm to mill and factory, shop and office. Men now marched to a different beat as
the day's rhythm shifted to the incessant pounding of industry. Second, men's share of
the work around the home was gradually industrialized and eliminated as such tasks
as fuel gathering, leather working, and grain processing shifted to the external world.
This further "liberated" men to exit their homes and leave the rearing of both sons and
daughters to their wives.
If men were liberated, women's position was as exalted in popular literature as it
was potentially imprisoning in reality. In popular literature, from the nation's pulpits,
and in high art, women's work was reconceptualized, not as "work" at all, but rather
as a God-given mission. Although some home-based work was eliminated, such as
spinning and weaving, much of women's sphere remained intact; women still cooked
meals and baked bread, even if their husbands no longer grew and milled the grain or
butchered the meat they cooked. Housecleaning and child rearing were increasingly
seen as "women's work."
Though men's and women's spheres were symmetrical and complementary, they
were not equal. As Catharine Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote in their cele-
brated book The American Woman's Home (1869):
When the family is instituted by marriage, it is man who is head and chief magis-
trate by the force of his physical power and requirement of the chief responsibility;
not less is he so according to the Christian law, by which, when differences arise,
the husband has the deciding control, and the wife is to obey. 6
Many historians argue that this new ideology actually represented a historical
decline in women's status. Historian Gerda Lerner, for example, points out that there
were fewer female storekeepers and businesswomen in the 1830s than there had been
in the 1780s. "Women were," she argues, "excluded from the new democracy." Democ-
racy meant mobility-geographic, social, economic-and women were "imprisoned"
in the home by the new ideology of feminine domesticity. Little wonder women's
sphere needed the ideological buttressing of rhapsodic poetry and religious sermons
to keep it in place. But men's "liberation" from the home was also partly illusory,
because they were also in exile from it. As early as the 1820s and 1830s, critics were
complaining that men spent too little time at home. "Paternal neglect at the present
time is one of the most abundant sources of domestic sorrow," wrote the Reverend
John S. C. Abbott in Parents Magazine in 1842. The father, "eager in the pursuit of busi-
ness, toils early and late, and finds no time to fulfill .. . duties to his children." Theo-
dore Dwight attempted to persuade men to resume their responsibilities at home in
The Father's Book (1834), one of the nation's first advice books for men.7
The family had now become the "haven in a heartless world" that the great French
writer Alexis de Tocqueville observed when he visited the United States in the early
1830s. "Shorn of its productive functions, the family now specialized in child-rearing
and emotional solace, providing a much-needed sanctuary in a world organized
around the impersonal principles of the market."8
Of course, this ideology and reality of the separation of spheres in mid-nineteenth-
century America were largely white and middle class, but they were imposed on others
as the norm, as the "American" family form. Working-class women and women of
color continued to work outside the home, while the men shared housework and child
care more readily out of economic necessity if not because of ideological commitment.
Cast "primarily as workers rather than as members of family groups, [minority]
women labored to maintain, sustain, stabilize and reproduce their families while
working in both the public (productive) and private (reproductive) spheres.''9
Having been relegated to women, the family's importance also declined, its inte-
gration into the community attenuated. As if to compensate for this shift, the family's
symbolic importance increased. Events that had been casually organized were routin-
ized as family events; community celebrations became household celebrations. "The
Family" as the site of sentimentalized romantic longing was an invention of the nine-
teenth century, as families tried to shore up what they were, in fact, losing. Historian
John Gillis writes:
When men had worked at home, mealtimes had seldom been private, or even very
regular. Holidays had revolved around community festivals and visiting rather than
home-cooked meals and private family celebrations. Leisurely dinner hours,
Sunday family time, and nuclear family togetherness on holidays such as Christmas
were invented during the mid-nineteenth century. 10
The rapid industrialization of the American economy in the decades following the
Civil War only reinforced earlier trends. By 1890, only about 2 percent of married
women were employed outside the home. And probably just as few men were working
inside it. As motherhood came to be seen as women's sole "calling," the importance of
fatherhood declined. "The suburban husband and father is almost entirely a Sunday
institution," one writer in Harper's Bazaar put it in 1900. Articles with titles like "It's
Time Father Got Back in the Family" appeared with some regularity in popular maga-
zines. "Poor father has been left out in the cold," observed Progressive reformer Jane
Addams in 1911. "He doesn't get much recognition. It would be a good thing if he had
a day that would mean recognition of him." (This noble idea had to wait another sixty-
one years to be implemented.)"
Commentators at the turn of the twentieth century fretted about the crisis of the
family. The divorce rate had been steadily climbing since soldiers returned from the
Civil War-from seven thousand in 1860 to fifty-six thousand in 1900 and one hundred
thousand in 1914. In 1916, one in every four marriages in San Francisco ended in di-
vorce; in Los Angeles the number was one in five, and, in the more traditional and
Catholic Chicago, one in seven. A 1914 survey of women graduates of Barnard, Bryn
Mawr, Cornell, Mount Holyoke, Radcliffe, Smith, Vassar, Wellesley, and Wells colleges
showed that fewer than 40 percent had married. Of Harvard graduates during the
1870s, almost one-third between the ages of forty and fifty were still single. "In fifty
years, there will be no such thing as marriage," predicted the esteemed Harvard psy-
chologist John Watson at the dawn of the new century. 12
The crisis of the family was so pressing that President Theodore Roosevelt con-
vened the first White House Conference on Children in 1909. Roosevelt believed that
men needed to be encouraged to become more active fathers and that white, native-
born women needed encouragement to have more children, lest white people commit
what he called "race suicide." And he also believed that poverty, especially the poverty
of widowed mothers, was the primary problem in the lives of children and that it was
the government's obligation to help. Roosevelt advocated giving money to single
mothers who had been certified as capable of providing decent care to their children if
only they had a little more cash in their pocketbooks.13
The separation of spheres provided the foundation for a virtual perpetual crisis of
the family throughout the twentieth century. Women's efforts to leave the home-to
go to college, enter the labor force, join unions, attend professional schools-were met
with significant resistance, and men's interest in returning home waxed and waned
through the 1940s. World War II disrupted this pattern, as women entered the labor
force in dramatic numbers. But the postwar economic boom, which was fueled by
massive government expenditures in highway and school construction and the G.I.
Bill that made single-family suburban home ownership a reality for an increasing
number of American families, also stabilized this aberrant family form: the nuclear
family of June and Ward Cleaver and their children Wally and the Beaver.14
This massive infusion of public expenditures to shore up the nuclear family
ideal-breadwinner husband, housewife mother, and their children-was accompanied
by a dramatic increase in marriage rates and a sharp decline in the ages of first mar-
riage. Whereas today's marriage rates and marriage ages are in keeping with the rest of
the twentieth century, the era 1945-1960 stands out as dramatically different, as "young
men and women . .. reacting against the hardships and separations of depression and
war ... married unusually early." In 1867, there were 9.6 marriages per 1,000 people in
the United States; a century later, the number was 9.7. In 1946, by contrast, the number
hit an all-time high of 14.2. Thus the 1950s pattern of family life-characterized by
high rates of marriage, high fertility, and low and stable rates of divorce, which many
continue to regard as an ideal- "was the product of a convergence of an unusual series
of historical, demographic and economic circumstances unlikely to return again," in
the words of two leading family historians.1 5
As soon as this new family form emerged it was declared to be natural-that is,
both biologically inevitable and morally appropriate. The effort to reinforce it became
a constant hum in the nation's ears. "The effort to reinforce traditional norms seemed
almost frantic," writes historian William Chafe, "as though in reality something very
different was taking place." In academia, the structural-functionalist school of social
science gave it legitimacy, arguing that the isolated suburban nuclear family, with dis-
tinct separation of spheres, served the needs of both children and society. The family
system required both expressive (female) and instrumental (male) components to
function appropriately, wrote sociologist Talcott Parsons, and this could be accom-
plished only in a family in which the housewife mother maintained the home for her
breadwinner husband who worked outside it. Here's how another sociologist described
this domestic paradise in 1955:
Father helps mother with the dishes. He sets the table. He makes formula for the
baby. Mother can supplement the income of the family by working outside. Never-
theless, the American male, by definition, must "provide" for his family. He is re-
sponsible for the support of his wife and children. His primary area of performance
is the occupational role, in which his status fundamentally inheres; and his primary
function in the family is to supply an "income," to be the "breadwinner." There is
simply something wrong with the American adult male who doesn't have a "job."
American women, on the other hand, tend to hold jobs before they are married
and to quit when "the day" comes; or to continue in jobs of a lower status than their
husbands. And not only is the mother the focus of emotional support for the American
middle class child, but much more exclusively so than in most societies .. . The cult
of the warm, giving "Mom" stands in contrast to the "capable," "competent," "go-
getting" male. The more expressive type of male, as a matter of fact, is regarded as
"effeminate," and has too much fat on the inner side of his thigh.16
A generation of middle-class men tried to toe the line of bland conformity as suburban
breadwinners; here was the corporate clone of countless satires, the "man in the gray
flannel suit" who drove his late-model car down to the suburban train station to catch
the same train every morning-with every other man in the neighborhood. And a
generation of women cooked and cleaned, dusted and mopped, washed and ironed,
toiling to meet ever-increasing standards of cleanliness.
For many parents and children of the baby boom, this family form worked well.
Suburban life was safer and simpler than life in the crowded cities from which many
fifties families fled, and family life gave postwar men a secure anchor in an increasingly
insecure corporate world. The home front centered on the kids' homework and a pleth-
ora of hobbies and leisure-time pursuits-hiking and camping, concerts and theater,
sailing and photography. Middle-class Americans took family vacations, hung out to-
gether in family rooms, and purchased family-sized packages of prepared foods-when
they weren't practicing gourmet French cooking. They walked together to the local li-
brary or movie theater. Some husbands doted on their wife-companions, and together
they built lives more stable, comfortable, child-centered, and companionable-divorce
being a last resort- than anything their own parents had ever envisioned.
The veneer of domestic bliss only partially concealed an increasing restlessness on
the part of both husbands and wives (not to mention their children, for whom the
1960s would provide many creative [and not so creative] outlets for their discontent).
Many women and men felt frustrated and unhappy with this supposedly "natural"
family form. Some fathers felt alienated from their families, and especially from their
children. Though they watched Ward Cleaver, Jim Anderson, and other devoted dads
on television sitcoms, a large number of middle-class American men were better
fathers in theory than in practice; they talked more about spending more time with
their children than they actually did. Full-time housewifery and motherhood were
"something new and historically unprecedented," and wives, laboring under the
"senseless tyranny of spotless shirts and immaculate floors," swallowed their growing
resentment as the world passed them by. In his 1957 panorama of American culture,
America as a Civilization, historian Max Lerner discussed the "ordeal" of the modern
woman, arguing that "the unhappy wife has become a characteristic culture type."17
Such unhappiness also fueled an increasingly politicized anger. In 1963, Betty
Friedan's feminist call to arms, The Feminine Mystique, rang like a tocsin across those
neatly manicured suburban lawns and campus quadrangles. Calling the suburban
home a "comfortable concentration camp," Friedan declared that real life lay outside
worrying about dishpan hands and diaper rash. Beatniks, playboys, and juvenile de-
linquents presented three alternatives to the suburban breadwinner. And the era's
popular music exposed the ironies of such "well-respected men" and their wives, gulp-
ing vast quantities of "mother's little helper.',,. 8
In fact, no sooner was it fully established and acknowledged than this "traditional"
family began to crack under the enormous weight put on it. The family was supposed
to be the sole source of comfort and pleasure in an increasingly cold, bureaucratic
world; the marital union was the single most important and sustaining bond of inti-
macy and friendship that a person could have. Gone were the more "traditional" sup-
ports of community networks, civic participation, and extended kinship ties-now the
family was supposed to provide for all psychological and emotional needs.
It was almost too much to bear: The "traditional" family was an anachronism
from the moment of its birth. In the 1960s, fewer than half (43 percent) of American
families conformed to the traditional single-earner model; one-fourth (23 percent)
were dual-earner couples. Yet nearly nine out of ten (88 percent) white children under
the age of eighteen lived with both parents, 9 percent lived with one parent, and 3 per-
cent with neither parent. Among black families, two-thirds (67 percent) lived with
both parents, and one-fifth lived in mother-only households.
The family of the 1970s and early 1980s was actually stronger and more resilient
because of its increasing diversity of form. In the early 1970s, Theodore Caplow and a
team of sociologists returned to Middletown (Muncie, Indiana) fifty years after a
landmark historical study of small-town America conducted by Robert and Helen
Lynd. They found the family in better shape than it had been in the 1920s. Much of the
credit was given to economic and social conditions-better pay, more leisure time,
improved housing. Parents spent more time with their children than they had a half-
century earlier. More flexible gender roles, women's increased opportunities, and in-
creased knowledge about birth control and sexuality had markedly enhanced
husbands' relationships with their wives.19
OH?
REALLY•
The idealized traditional family of the 1950s-breadwinner father and house-
wife mother with at least two school-aged kids at home-is still considered
the norm in the United States. Actually, fewer than one out of every ten fami-
lies looks like that. Does yours?
But since the early 1980s, the family has indeed been in trouble, partly because of
the dramatic withdrawal of public supports. Decreased and depressed wages, espe-
cially for men, decreased leisure time, decreased funding for public housing, greater
needs for both parents to work, and the return to earlier restrictions on access to birth
control and to abortion have all led to dramatic declines in the quality of family life.
Many of the problems associated with the family are really problems that are atten-
dant upon economic downturn. In 1970, 15 percent of all children under age eighteen
were living in families defined as "poor"; today that number is 21.2 percent.2°
For middle-class families, the erosion ofleisure time and the increasing demands
of work have added strain to already attenuated family relationships. The "five o'clock
dad" of the 1950s family has become "an endangered species." Over 10 percent of men
with children under six years old work more than sixty hours a week, and 25 percent
work between fifty and sixty hours. (Less than 8 percent of women with children that
young work such long hours.) Ever resilient and responsive to the progressive erosion
of the family foundation, American families have responded with a host of changes
and modifications-as well as a host of prophets and pundits promoting false solutions. 21
Since the 1960s, the median age of first marriage has crept steadily upward, in-
creasing by five or six years for both women (26.9) and men (28.8). The number of
children has steadily declined as couples have delayed childbearing so that both
women and men could attend college and establish themselves in the labor force.
Today 62 percent of American children live in nuclear families with both birth par-
ents. Five percent live in step-families, and more than 25 percent live in a single-parent
home. The number of single parents has increased about 6 percent a year. 22
Age (years)
30 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
28 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----
26 ------. --------------------------------------------------------------------
• •
24
Women
22 ------ - ------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------
• • • •
20 --------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------
18 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1890 1900 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 2000 10 14
Figure 6.2. Median age at first marriage, 1890 to present_ Median age at first marriage in 1950
for men was 22_8 and for women was 20_3_ Median age at first marriage in 2013 for men was 29_0
and for women was 26_6_
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Decennial Censuses, 1890 to 1940, and Current Population Survey, Annual Social and
Economic Supplements, 1947 to 2014, http://www.census.gov/hhes/families/data/marital.html, table MS-2.
Table 6.1. Types of Households, 2012
Living alone 27.5 %

Married couples with children 19.6 %
Married couples without children 29.1 %
Other family households ' 17.8%
1
Families whose householder was living with children or other relatives but
had no spouse present.
Source: America's Families and Living Arrangements 2012 (Washington, DC:
U .S. Census Bureau , 2012).
Though single parents living with their children counted for only 13 percent of all
families in 1970, they represented more than one-fourth (27.1) of all families by 2011.
Fathers currently head 3.5 percent of all single-headed households with children. These
U.S. percentages are the highest among industrial nations (see table 6.1). While the
number of people who had not married by age thirty was 11 percent of women and
19 percent of men in 1970, today 65.6 percent of men and 55.6 percent of women ages
twenty to thirty-four have never married, while 23.3 percent of men and 18 percent of
women ages thirty-five to forty-four have never married. The number of women ages
twenty-five to forty-four who had never married in 1950 was 9 percent for women of
color and 10 percent for white women; by 1979, those numbers were 23 percent for
women of color and 10 percent for white women. Cohabitation is increasingly common,
and not simply as a phenomenon among college students and young people. (In fact,
most cohabiters have never attended college and represent the least educated sector of
society; cohabitation is replacing early marriage among poor and working-class
people.) And around 39 percent of all cohabiting households include children.23
P er cent of all households
Married couples
~~?::
with children <18 40.3%• ,
30.3%• _:~~-:: : :~:=,cc~:: ::;_:::::::~:;~:::::~":-:: 29.1%

27.5%
19.6%
alone 17.1 %• --
14.6%
Other
households 9.3%
Single parents
with children <18
1970 1980 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2012
Figure 6.3. Changing Families, Changing Households, America's Families and Living Arrangements
in 2012.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau: Current Population Survey.
At the same time, divorce rates have soared. There were only about two divorces
per one thousand married women age fifteen and older in 1860 and about four in 1900;
there are over twenty-two today. Nearly half of all marriages begun in 1980 and 1990
will end in divorce. These divorce rates are the highest in the industrial world. Most
divorces occur after only a few years of marriage. As a result, it might be fair to say that
the family is less the "haven in a heartless world" of nostalgic sentimentalism and
more the "shock absorber" of contradictory pressures from the world outside it.24
An article in Newsweek asserted that "the American family does not exist." Rather,
the article suggested, "we are creating many American families, of diverse styles and
shapes ... We have fathers working while mothers keep house; fathers and mothers
working away from home; single parents; second marriages ... childless couples; un-
married couples with and without children; gay and lesbian parents." Such family di-
versity is well illustrated by one prominent contemporary political figure: A white,
middle-class, Southern boy, born into a single-parent family, raised by his mother
alone, who divorced his first wife, has never paid alimony or child support, has no
contact with his children, had an affair, and has a lesbian sister who is starting her own
family. Who could such a model of diversity be? It's Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of
the House of Representatives-who ran for president in 2012 proclaiming "family
values."25
As the family has changed, so, too, have our ideas about it. Family sociologist Scott
Coltrane writes that "support for separate spheres and the automatic dominance of men
has weakened dramatically in the past few decades, though a substantial minority of
Americans still clings to the so-called traditional view." Consider one or two examples:
In the mid-197os, one man being interviewed by sociologist Lillian Rubin said that "if a
man with a wife and kids needs a job, no woman ought to be able to take it away from
him." Few men today would express such a sense of entitlement to those jobs as to
consider them "his" property. In 1977, two-thirds of Americans agreed with the statement
that "it is much better for everyone involved if the man is the achiever outside the home
and the woman takes care of the home and family." Twenty years later, fewer than two
out of five (38 percent) agreed with that statement, and fewer than 30 percent of all baby
boomers agreed. In 1977, more than half agreed with the statement that "it is more
important for the wife to help her husband's career than to have one herself." By 1985,
36 percent agreed, and by 1991, 29 percent did. Today the percentage is closer to 25.26
These sentiments are echoed around the world. In an international Gallup poll,
fewer than half of those questioned agreed that the "traditional" male breadwinner/
female housewife model is desirable: 48 percent in the United States, 49 percent in
Chile, 46 percent in France, and 46 percent in Japan. In only one country, Hungary,
did a majority agree (66 percent); whereas in several countries less than one-third of
the population supported this family structure, including Spain (27 percent), India (28
percent), Germany (28 percent), and Taiwan (26 percent).
The "traditional" family, a normative ideal when it was invented, has never been
the reality for all American families. And it is even less so today. It represents the last
outpost of traditional gender relations-gender differences created through gender
inequality-that are being challenged in every observable arena. Families are gen-
dered institutions; they reproduce gender differences and gender inequalities among
adults and children alike. Families raise children as gendered actors and remind
parents to perform appropriate gender behaviors. It is no wonder, then, that each spe-
cific aspect of family life-marriage, child rearing, housework, divorce-expresses the
differences and the inequalities of gender.
GENDERED MARRIAGE
Consider, for a moment, how we think about marriage. A woman devises some clever
scheme to "trap" a man. When she's successful, her friends all celebrate the upcoming
nuptials with delighted anticipation at a bridal shower. Women celebrate their
weddings-they have finally "landed" a man. Their future is secure. By contrast, men
"mourn" their upcoming nuptials. They've been trapped, and the future that stretches
out before them is now heavy with responsibilities laid upon them by the "old ball and
chain," the smiling warden of their personal prison. The bachelor party, traditionally
held the night before the wedding, exudes a mournful, elegiac quality underneath its
raucous exterior as the groom goes out with his male friends for his "last night of free-
dom," a night that often consists of smoking fat cigars, getting rip-roaring drunk, and
watching porn movies and/or hiring lap dancers or prostitutes.
If you believed this cultural definition of marriage-something she wants and he
has to be coerced or tricked into-you would think that marriage benefited women,
that it was "their" domain. Yet according to much social science research, you would
be mistaken. In the early 1970s, sociologist Jessie Bernard identified two distinct mar-
riages, "his" and "hers." And, she argued, "his is better than hers."
Marriage benefits men. All psychological measures of indices of happiness and
depression suggest that married men are much happier than unmarried men, whereas
unmarried women are somewhat happier than married women. (The greatest differ-
ence is between married and unmarried men.) A greater proportion of men than
women eventually marries; husbands report being more satisfied than wives with
their marriages; husbands live longer and enjoy better health benefits than unmarried
men, as well as better health than women (married or unmarried); and fewer men
than women try to get out of marriage by initiating divorce. After divorce, men re-
marry much more quickly than women, and widowers die sooner than widows after
the death of a spouse. Married men earn more than single men. And single men are
less likely to be employed, tend to have lower incomes than married men, and are
more prone to crime and drug use.27
All this suggests that marriage is a better deal for men than it is for women. And
how could it be otherwise? Given the traditional division of labor in the family (she
works, he doesn't) and the nontraditional division of labor outside the family (he
works, and she probably does, too), the husband who works outside the home receives
the emotional and social and sexual services that he needs to feel comfortable in the
world. His wife, who (probably) works as well, also works at home providing all those
creature comforts-and receives precious few of them in return. As New York Times
writer Natalie Angier summed up this research, "Marriage is pretty good for the goose
much of the time, but golden for the gander practically all of the time."28
To be sure, marriage also benefits women and is therefore positive for both men
and women. According to sociologist Linda Waite, married people have more sex
more often than unmarried people and enjoy it more. Married people have longer
life expectancies and fewer health problems and lower levels of risky behavior,
suicide, depression, and other psychological problems. And married people save
more money.
Some of these benefits are explained by other factors that have little, if anything,
to do with the matrimonial state. For example, married men's higher incomes seem to
come from the unequal politics of housework (the wife's doing the housework frees
the married man to work longer hours), and the fact that married couples save more
has more to do with women in the labor force than it does with being married. And
the fact that the benefits of marriage fall far more readily toward men would suggest
that marriage increases, not diminishes, gender inequality. Women and men are un-
equal going into their marriages, and marriage only exacerbates this inequality by
benefiting men more than women.29
I ii'',,,,,, :n)Q IIa

Gender roles in the family are changing rapidly. Does it make a difference which partner earns
more? How do we navigate turning the traditional stereotypes upside down? In "At Home
Fathers and Breadwinning Mothers ... " communications scholars Caryn Medved and William
Rawlings ask what happens in families when men stay home and women go off to work as the
family breadwinner. The authors identify several different types of reactions, but the major
finding is that the couple's reaction has more to do with their already existing relationship.
That is, it's not this new role reversal that changes things, but it's just one more expression of
how the couple handles all sorts of issues together.
In recent years, some of the subjective measures of marital happiness have declined
for both women and men. The sharp reversal of young men's economic prospects-the
declining wages of white men in the Reagan era and since-combined with the in-
creased tension in work-family negotiations, changing attitudes about child care and
housework, and the absence of governmental provision of a structural foundation of
adequate health care, child care, and family-friendly workplace policies, have all led to
increased strains on marriage. Can the family continue to absorb the shock, as these
forces buffet an institution that is at once so enduring and so fragile?
OH?
REALLY•
Having a baby is the best way to ensure a happy marriage.
Actually, marital happiness decreases, often dramatically, after the transi-
t ion to parenthood.
But that drop is not true across the board. Parents who slide into parent-
hood, disagree about it, or ar e ambivalent experience a really steep drop in marital happiness.
Parents who equally welcome the baby often increase thei r marital happiness. The more equal
the parents-in both planning and welcoming the baby-the more likely the baby is an actual
"bundle of joy."
Source: Stephanie Coontz, "Till Children Do Us Part," in New York Times, February 5, 2009.
Another cause of the decline in marital happiness is, surprisingly, children. Chil-
dren tend to put a damper on marital bliss. Couples who remain childless report higher
levels of marital satisfaction than do those with children. They're better educated and
more likely to live in cities, and the wives are more committed to their careers. They have
more savings and investments, of course, and are more apt to buy an expensive home in
their fifties. Marital happiness sinks with the arrival of the first baby, plunges even fur-
ther when the first child reaches school age, and drops further when the child reaches
the teenage years. Husbands begin to feel better about their marriages once their chil-
dren turn eighteen, but wives don't feel better about their marriages until after the chil-
dren leave home, according to Mary Bebin, a sociologist at Arizona State University.30
Yet having and raising children are two of the major purposes of the family, its raison
d'etre. If one of the chief purposes of the family is to maintain both gender inequality
and gender difference between the parents, then its other chief purpose is to ensure that
those gendered identities are imparted to the next generation. It is in the family that the
seeds of gender difference are planted, that we first understand that being a man or a
woman, a boy or a girl, has different, and unequal, meanings.
THE GENDERED POLITICS OF HOUSEWORK AND CHILD CARE

We are living through a historic, fundamental transformation of family life. Perhaps
the greatest single shock the family has had to absorb has been the entry of women
into the workplace. This is, perhaps, the most profound and dramatic social change in
recent American society, rippling outward to transform every other social institution.
That women now work outside the home as a matter of course, of economic necessity,
and of ambition and will has dramatically altered the life of the modern family. Some
would like to turn back the clock to the rather unusual and short-lived family form
that emerged in the 1950s and reassert it as the norm. Such a vision is unlikely to be
embraced by most men, let alone most women, who today work outside the home be-
cause they want to and because they have to-and because it's good for them, good for
their husbands, and good for their children.
Working mothers report higher levels of self-esteem and are less depressed than
full-time housewives. Yet they also report lower levels of marital satisfaction than do
their husbands, who are happier than the husbands of traditional housewives. Why
would this be so? In part, because women's workload actually increases at home,
whereas the men benefit by having almost the same amount of work done for them at
home and having their standard of living buttressed by an additional income.31
So women today are working more but enjoying family life less. Consistently, and
in every industrial country, women report higher levels of stress than do men.32 Per-
haps one reason women are so tired and unhappy is that they remain responsible for
what sociologist Arlie Hochschild has called "the second shift," the housework and
child care that every family must do to function properly. The movement of women
from the home to the workplace has not been accompanied by a comparable move-
ment of men back into the home. The transformation of American life promised by
women's entry into the labor force is a "stalled revolution," a revolution that depends,
now, on changes in men's attitudes and behaviors.
In 1970, a young feminist writer described what she saw as "the politics of house-
work." In the spirit of the feminist slogan "the personal is political," Pat Mainardi
argued that the separation of spheres that defined the traditional family and made
housework "women's work" was a reflection of male domination, not the expression of
some feminine biological predisposition toward laundry or dishwashing. Women did
housework and child care because they had to, she argued, not because they wanted to
or because of some genetic master plan. And men didn't do housework because they
could get out of it.33
Few people actually like doing housework. "A woman's work is never done, and
happy she whose strength holds out to the end of the [sun's] rays," wrote Martha
Moore Ballard in her diary in 1795. Nearly a century later, Mary Hallock Foote wrote:
"I am daily dropped in little pieces and passed around and devoured and expected
to be whole again next day and all days and I am never alone for a single minute." And
in 1881, Helen Campbell wrote that spring housecleaning was "a terror to every one,
and above all to gentlemen, who resent it from beginning to end." Perhaps Emily
Dickinson said it best (using the passive voice). " 'House' is being 'cleaned,' " she wrote.
"I prefer pestilence." (Of course, she wasn't the one cleaning it; Bridget and her other
servants simply disturbed her peace.) 34
Dozens of studies have assessed the changing patterns of housework, child care,
and the different amounts of investments in family life. Who does what? How do
people decide? Are men doing more now than they used to? Can they be encouraged/
asked/cajoled/forced to do more? One statistic about family involvement is revealing
of a larger pattern. Most studies, as you will see, suggest how little men's participation
in family life has changed. In one respect, though, it has changed dramatically and
completely. Thirty years ago, virtually no fathers were present at the births of their
children; today, more than 90 percent are present in the delivery room. If men want to
change their involvement in the family, there is evidence that they are capable of doing
so quickly and relatively easily.35
The way mothers and fathers spend their time has changed dramatically in the
past half century. Dads are doing more housework and child care; moms more paid
work outside the home. Neither has overtaken the other in their "traditional" realms,
but their roles are converging. For their part, fathers now spend more time engaged
in housework and child care than they did half a century ago. Fathers' time spent
doing household chores has more than doubled since 1965, from an average of about
four hours per week to about ten hours in 2011. Mothers' time doing housework has
gone down significantly over the same period, from thirty-two hours per week in 1965
to eighteen hours per week in 2011. Fathers have by no means caught up to mothers
in terms of time spent caring for children and doing household chores, but there
has been some gender convergence in the way they divide their time between work
and home.36
And what men do is dramatically different from what women do. It's as if our
houses were divided into discrete "zones"-his and hers-and husbands and wives had
their own sphere of responsibility. "His" domain is outdoors-the yard, the driveway-
or an outdoor space moved indoors, like the basement, garage, trash receptacles,
and den; "her" domain is always indoors-the kitchen, laundry room, bedrooms, and
bathroom. (If she moves outdoors, it is often with an "indoor" element-hanging
laundry, tending the garden.) These two domains demand different types of activities.
In one study, women and men were asked to list all the different things they do around
the house. The total number of items on each list was roughly equivalent. But when the
specific tasks were examined, the men listed items like "wash the car" and "mow the
lawn," whereas the women listed "cook the meals" and "make the beds." As Arlie
Hochschild explains:
Even when couples share more equitably in the work at home, women do two-
thirds of the daily jobs at home, like cooking and cleaning up-jobs that fix them
into a rigid routine. Most women cook dinner and most men change the oil in the
family car. But, as one mother pointed out, dinner needs to be prepared every
evening around six o'clock, whereas the car oil needs to be changed every six
months, any day around that time, any time that day. 37
What's more, men tend to see their participation in housework in relation to their
wives' housework; women tend to see their work as necessary for family maintenance.
That's why men use terms like "pitch in" or "help out" to describe the time they spend
in housework-as if the work was their wives' to do. "When men do the dishes it's
called helping," Anna Quindlen, op-ed writer for the New York Times, observed wryly.
"When women do dishes, that's called life."38 And it may not even be all that helpful.
According to the Center for Talent Innovation, 40 percent of professional wives felt
that their husbands actually create more work around the house than they perform.39
It is true that men's share of housework has increased; "husbands of working
wives are spending more time in the family than in the past." In 1924, 10 percent of
working-class women said their husbands spent "no time" doing housework; today
that figure is less than 2 percent. Between the mid-196os and the mid-197os, men's
housework increased from 104 to 130 minutes a day, whereas women's decreased from
7-4 to 6.8 hours a day. In another survey of forty-five hundred married dual-career
couples between the ages of twenty-five and fourty-four, 15 percent of the men admit-
ted that they performed less than one hour of housework per week. The median
amount for men was about five hours a week; for women it was about twenty hours.
Men reported that they did 10 percent of the housework in 1970 and 20 percent in
1990-which, depending upon how you look at it, represents double the percentage in
only twenty years or still only one-fifth the amount that needs to be done.40
Although men report that they currently do between one-fifth and one-fourth of
all domestic labor, there is some evidence that asking people how much housework
they do leads to rather large inaccuracies, because people often report how much they
think they ought to be doing, not how much they actually do. Both women and men
overreport the amount of housework they do-men overreport by about 150 percent,
more than double the overreporting by women (68 percent). Interestingly, more
privileged husbands with egalitarian gender attitudes tend to overreport at a higher
rate than more traditional husbands, who probably believe that they should not be
doing so much housework. Less privileged "supermoms" are more likely to overreport
their housework than more privileged working mothers because only such inflated
hours could justify their staying at home. The overreporting by men was so significant
that the researchers doubt "that husbands have increased their supply of domestic
labor to the household in the past 25 years.'li1
Other survey methodologies have yielded results that make me confident that men's
participation in housework has increased somewhat over the past quarter-century,
though probably not as much as men themselves might claim. When couples were
asked to keep accurate records of how much time they spent doing which household
tasks, men still put in significantly less time than their wives. Recent figures from the
National Survey of Families and Households at the University of Wisconsin show that
husbands were doing about fourteen hours of housework per week (compared with
thirty-one hours for wives). In more traditional couples in which she stays home and
the husband is the sole earner, her hours jump to thirty-eight and his decline slightly
to twelve. This is reasonable, because they've defined housework as "her" domain. But
when both work full time outside the home, the wife does twenty-eight hours and the
husband does sixteen. (This is four times the amount of housework that Japanese men
do, but only two-thirds of the housework that Swedish men do.) Men's increased par-
ticipation has not been a steady progressive rise; rather, it increased from 1965 to 1985
and has leveled off since.42
Actually, the major finding of these recent studies is not that men are doing more
housework but rather that less housework is being done-by anyone. In 1965, women
did forty hours a week; now they do twenty-seven, so the amount of total time that
men and women spend doing housework has decreased from fifty-two hours to forty-
three hours per week. And marriage tends to exacerbate the differences between
women and men. It turns out that men reduce their housework when they form a
couple and increase it when they leave; women increase their time spent on housework
when they form a couple and reduce it when they leave.43
Housework turns out to fluctuate a lot by timing, season, and marital status and
among different groups of men. Not all men are doing more housework; or, rather,
some men are doing more of it than others. Men's changing experience of family life
depends on age, race, class, and level of education. Younger men, for example, are doing
far more around the house than their fathers did-though their wives still do a lot
more. A poll of women younger than thirty in Ladies Home Journal in May 1997 found
that 76 percent said they do most of the laundry; 73 percent do most of the cooking;
70 percent do most of the housecleaning; 67 percent do most of the grocery shopping;
and 56 percent pay most of the bills. In Canada, the numbers are similar: 77 percent of
women prepare meals on an average day, compared with 29 percent of the men, and
54 percent of the women clean up after meals, compared with 15 percent of the men.44
While men's share of housework has increased modestly, the changes have been
more pronounced in some younger dual-career families. Both ideologically and
practically, there is increasing gender convergence, especially at the front of this new
wave. According to the Pew Research Center, 62 percent of married adults said "shar-
ing household chores" was the third most important ingredient (after faithfulness
and sex) in a successful marriage in 2007-up from 47 percent in a comparable study
in 1990. So, it seems more men are walking their talk. According to the U.S. Bureau
of Labor Statistics, men and women in 2010 who were married, childless, and working
full time (defined by the BLS as more than thirty-five hours a week) had combined
daily totals of paid and unpaid work that were almost exactly the same: eight hours
and eleven minutes for men, eight hours and three minutes for women. For those who
had children under the age of eighteen, women employed full time did just twenty
minutes more of combined paid and unpaid work than men did, the smallest difference
ever reported, noted Time magazine writer Ruth Konigsberg.45
Ironically, working men are feeling more pressure as a result, as they find their
workplaces less flexible. In one survey from Boston College's Center for Work and
Family, nearly three-fifths of the fathers agreed with the statement "In the past three
months, I have not been able to get everything done at home each day because of my
job." Brad Harrington, executive director of the Center for Work and Family, points
out that men may be feeling particularly squeezed because they never anticipated
having so much domestic responsibility. "It's a surprise for them. They weren't pre-
pared that this would be expected of them, and they have no role models of how to do
it," he says. And a 2011 report from the Families and Work Institute concluded that
long hours and increasing job demands are conflicting with more exacting parenting
norms. "Men are feeling enormous pressure to be breadwinners and involved fa-
thers," says Ellen Galinsky, the institute's director. "Women expect more of men, and
men expect more of themselves.'li 6
More work, more housework, less flexibility at work. Sounds pretty grim. So it
may come as a surprise that the more housework and child care fathers do, the hap-
pier they are! In a 2010 study in Britain, fathers who shared housework and child care
reported the highest levels of marital satisfaction and life satisfaction and the least
stress. Maybe equality-sharing the burdens and the joys-just makes people feel
better about their lives.47
Though we tend to think that sharing housework is the product of ideological
commitments-progressive, liberal, well-educated, middle-class white families with
more egalitarian attitudes-the data suggest a more complicated picture that has less
to do with ideological concerns. In every single subcategory (meal preparation, dishes,
cleaning, shopping, washing, outdoor work, auto repair and maintenance, and bill
paying), for example, black men do more housework than white men. In more than
one-fourth of all black families, men do more than 40 percent of the housework, in
other words, men's "share" of housework comes closer to an equal share. In white
families, only 16 percent of the men do that much. And blue-collar fathers, regardless of
race-municipal and service workers, policemen, firefighters, maintenance workers-
are twice as likely (42 percent) as those in professional, managerial, or technical jobs
(20 percent) to care for their children while their wives work. A 2009 study found that
lower-income, less educated male EMT workers did more housework and child care
than did high-earning, highly educated physicians. The doctors congratulated them-
selves on being "good fathers" because they attended special school events and soccer
games. The EMT workers didn't label themselves at all; their flexible schedules enabled
them to attend to all the routine tasks of parenthood, like cooking, cleaning, and
taking care of kids when they're sick.48 This difference comes less from ideological
commitments and more from an "informal flex time," a split-shift arrangement with
one's spouse, which is negotiated by about one-fourth of all workers in the United
States and by one-third of all workers with children under age five. 49
The presence of children increases the gender gap. Mothers spend far more time
with children than fathers do, especially when the children are infants, during which
time families report "very low levels of paternal engagement.'' Mothers spend 50 per-
cent more time with kindergarten to fourth-grade children than do fathers. Men's
share of child care increases as the children get older, both requiring a different type
of engagement and also perhaps offering more "fun" for dad. But when researchers
School
TV
Eating
Socializing
Chores
Sports
:I • Girls • Boys I
Studying
5 10 15 20 25 30 35
Hours per week
Figure 6.4. Average time U.S. children ages 6-17 spent on activities, 2002-2003 .
Source: /SR Research Update, Number 4 , January 2007. University of Michigan Institute for Social Research.
asked about how much time each parent spends alone with the children, fathers
averaged only 5.5 hours a week, while mothers averaged closer to 20 (19.5) hours a
week-a 350 percent difference. When they have children, men tend to spend longer
hours at work, in part because they have to earn more to support their children and in
part because they either want to or simply are able to. Their wives, of course, spend less
time at work, thus exaggerating the gender gaps both at work and at home. "The gender
gap is present even with no children," notes sociologist Beth Ann Shelton, "but it is
exacerbated by the presence of children in the household."50
Children learn the gender expectations that their parents teach them. One 1991
study found that daughters of women working full time did more than ten hours a
week of housework; sons did less than three hours a week. A recent study found that
one of the best predictors of men's participation in child care was whether or not their
fathers did housework and child care. One consultant who runs workshops called
"Grateful Dad" found a more seasonal fluctuation in men's participation around the
house. Although pundits fished around for possible explanations, he had a more par-
simonious answer: Football season was over.51
More than with housework, there is consistent evidence of change in men's par-
ticipation in child care. The major pull toward increasing men's participation in do-
mestic work is as fathers, not as husbands. Men seem to maintain the contradictory
ideas that they want to shield and protect their wives from life's unpleasantness, al-
though they steadfastly refuse to perform a task as degrading as washing out the toilet.
According to demographer Martha Farnsworthe Riche, "The great lesson of the past
15 to 20 years is that men don't care if the house is clean and neat, by and large." Or, as
one wife noted, wearily, "I do my half, I do half of [my husband's] half, and the rest
doesn't get done.''5 2
But when it comes to being fathers, men are evidently willing to do more. A poll
in Newsweek magazine found that 55 percent of fathers say that being a parent is more
important to them than it was to their fathers, and 70 percent say they spend more
"And then Winnie the Pooh decided that it was time to check Daddy's e-mail again. »
Figure 6.5. Source: Paul Noth/The New Yorker Collection/The Cartoon Bank.
time with their children than their fathers spent with them. A 1995 survey sponsored
by the Families and Work Institute found that 21 percent of the 460 men surveyed said
that they would prefer to be home caring for their families if they had enough money
to live comfortably. (This is actually a fairly low percentage because the amount these
men believed they needed in order to live comfortably was over $200,000.) 53
Still, American men's rate of participation in child care lags behind the rates of
participation of men in other industrial countries. In Australia, Canada, and the
Netherlands men's rates are about double the rates in the United States, whereas in
Britain the rates are about 40 percent higher.54
In Sweden, for example, there are so many men who either stay home to care for
their children or split their time with their partners and wives that they have a special
name for it: the "latte pappas." And data from Denmark suggest that child-care ar-
rangements are rarely the cause of marital strife; it's housework. One study asked
three thousand Danish married dual-career couples how often they fight about vari-
ous things.55 Here's what they found:
How often do you fight about . . . Once a week Once a month Once every 6 months Rarely
Housework 9 31 22 39
Child care 2 10 13 74
Child rearing ideas 7 19 17 58
These Danish couples seem to get along pretty well!

Men consistently report that they would like to spend more time with their chil-
dren and families, if they only could. "No man, on his deathbed, ever regretted spend-
ing too much time with his family" is the way Senator Paul Tsongas put it when he
left the Senate. Many men say they want to do more, but demands of work continue
to get in their way. Others fear being seen by their colleagues and bosses as less com-
mitted to their careers and fear being placed on a "daddy track" from which there
will be no advancement. Still others continually bump up against inflexible ideas of
what it means to be a man. "The person whom I damaged most by being away when
[my children] were growing up was me," observed one man sadly. "I let my nurturing
impulse dry up."
For some men (and women), these desires are spilling over into action. In a study
sponsored by the Dupont Corporation, 47 percent of managerial women and 41 per-
cent of managerial men had told their supervisors that they would not be available
for relocation; 32 percent of women and 19 percent of men had told their bosses that
they would not take a job that required extensive travel; and 7 percent of women and
11 percent of men had already turned down a promotion they had been offered. To
want to spend more time with the family is an old and tired male lament; to actually
sacrifice career ambitions to do so is a new development, a most visible way to walk
one's talk.56
Men often say that they want to be involved fathers and to spend more quality
time with their children. But rarely are they willing to make such sacrifices in order
to do it. The payoffs, however, when they do can turn out to be great. Men who do
more housework are also better fathers. And men who have closer relationships with
_I _! I
''My wife is about to have a baby, so I was wondering ifyou

could make me work late far the next eighteen years or so. "
Figure 6.6. John Donohue/The New Yorker Collection/The Cartoon Bank.
their children report greater marital satisfaction and better health. They feel less
stress (if you can believe that!) and less pressure to be successful, powerful, and com-
petitive. They also live longer, causing the normally staid British financial magazine
The Economist to quip, "Change a nappy, by God, and put years on your life." "When
males take full responsibility for child care," sociologist Barbara Risman points out,
"they develop intimate and affectionate relationships with their children." Nurturing
their children is good for men's health. And, of course, increased family involvement
by men benefits women, freeing them from the obligations of the second shift. And
that enhances gender equality: Recall that anthropologists found consistently that
women's economic and political status is highest in those cultures in which men do
more domestic work.57
OH?
REALLY•
The Rise of the Stay-at-Home Dad
Countless stories seem to pour out of media outlets about stay-at-home dads.
It seems every time there is even a ripple of interest in how much more house-
work and child care men might actually be doing, there are stories either extol-
ling the virtues or questioning the masculinity of these new (usually) urban pioneers. Is there a
"surge" in stay-at-home dads?
Yes and no. On the one hand, especially since the economic recession of2008 and 2009, when
many men lost their jobs, there has been an increase in stay-at-home dads. Here's one chart:
2.5 million
2.0
1.5
1.0
0.5
0.0
1989 1994 1999 2004 2009 2012
Rising number of stay-at-home dads. Number of fathers living with child(ren) younger
than 18 who do not work outside the home.
Note: Based on fathers ages 18-69 with own children younger than 18 in the household. Fathers who
live apart from their children are not included. Fathers are categorized based on employment status in
the year prior to the survey.
Source: "Growing Number of Dads Home with the Kids," Pew Research Center, Washington, DC
(June, 2014) http:/ /www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/06/05/growing-number-of-dads-home-with-
the-kids/ .
(Continued)
But at the same time, such graphs can be deceptive- in the same way that the "hordes" of
women were "opting out" of the workforce a few years ago . In both cases , their time at home is
rarely permanent; rather, it's a temporary respite while job hunting or while the kids are very
little . And besides, stay-at-home moms are far more prevalent:
26%
24.2%
24%
22 %
20%
18%
16%
14%
12%
10%
8% - - Stay-at-home mother s
6% - - Stay-at-home fathers
4%
2% - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 1.0%
Stay-at-home mothers and stay-at-home fathers as percent of married -couple families with
children under 15, 1994- 2013.
Note: Stay-at-home parents are those who were out of the labor force for the previous year for
the purpose of "taking care of home and family," while their spouse was in the labor force all of the
previous year.
Source: Alex Williams, "Just Wait Until Your Mother Gets Home" in New York Times , August 12, 2012,
Styles. p. I.
There are, however, lots of payoffs for greater family participation by men. Obvi-
ously, when men do more housework and child care, their wives are happier. But it also
has a significant impact on their children. In one study, girls raised in families where
gender did not determine housework responsibilities were likely to be more ambitious
as they considered their own occupational prospects. The study's lead author told a
journal that "girls grow up with broader career goals in households where domestic
duties are shared more equitably by parents."58
Increasing men's participation in housework and child care will require a combi-
nation of microlevel and macrolevel supports. Individually, men have to want to do
more, and they will also need support from their wives and from their male friends, co
workers, and colleagues. They'll need to know how to do it, as well, learning the set of
OH?
REALLY•
Does a More Equal Marriage Mean Less Sex?
A cover story in the New York Times Magazine in February 2014 concluded,
sadly, that when married couplesdeviatedfromamoretraditional arrangement-
that is, when men did "women's work" or women did "men's work"-or even
when the balance shifted and he did more or she did less, they also reported having less sex. The
writer, a psychotherapist, suggested that we'd better return to Mars and Venus-a consciously
gendered division of household labor, both in terms of who does what and how much time we
spend doing it-for the sake of our sex lives.
Except it turns out that the author leapt to erroneous conclusions based on a misreading of
some very sketchy data. The study, by sociologist Sabino Kornrich and his colleagues, was based
on data from the 1990s-but the couples in the study were married in the 1950s and 1960s, a
time when men's household participation would have been seen as very disruptive to traditional
gender arrangements. And child care wasn't included-it was just housework. And cohabiters
weren't included, though their relationships tend to be far more egalitarian-and cohabiters have
a lot more sex than married couples. (That's because they tend to be younger; stable cohabiters
usually end up getting married.)
A better study, drawing on more recent and more comprehensive data, found no significant
differences in sexual frequency between traditional and egalitarian couples. But, more signifi-
cantly, they found that women in more traditional relationships expressed far lower sexual
satisfaction.
So quantity doesn't go down, and quality goes up. Which may be why most men's advice
columns these days advise men to engage in "choreplay." As Men's Health magazine put it, "House-
work makes her horny." Well, perhaps not when she does it ...
Sources: Sabino Kornrich, Julie Brines, and Katrina Leupp , "Egalitarianism, Housework, and Sexual Frequency in
Marriage" in American Sociological Review, 78(1), 2013, pp. 26-50; Daniel L. Carlson, Amanda Miller, Sharon Sassier,
and Sarah Hanson, "The Gendered Division of Routine Housework and Couples' Sexual Relationships : A Re-
examination ," manuscript, Georgia State University, 2014.
skills that, taken together and performed regularly, constitutes nurturing and caring-
cooking, cleaning, laundry. "Unless fathers do a greater share of the work at home,
mothers will remain disadvantaged in working outside the home. Mothers can't win
unless fathers change, too."59
Working couples will also need to have structural, macrolevel supports, such as
family-friendly workplace policies, paid parental leave, and adequate health care.
The United States is one of the few countries in the world without a national policy
of paid maternity leave; some Nordic countries include additional paternity leave
as well. Nearly every Western European country has a child allowance-a payment
to families for each child they have, regardless of income or whether the mother is
employed or not. And U.S. corporations have not stepped into the institutional
breach created by such governmental indifference to the plight of working parents
(figure 6.7). Only 8 percent of American workers have any child-care benefits pro-
vided by their employers. Enacting corporate and governmental policies to promote
the health and well-being of working families is a tall order, to be sure, but leaving
Figure 6.7. "First of all, Harrington, let me tell you how much we all admire your determination
not to choose between job and family."
Source: Lee Lorenz/The New Yorker Collection/The Cartoon Bank.
individual family members to sort it out for themselves guarantees that little will
change. The "failure to invest in children can lead to economic inefficiency, loss of
productivity, shortages in needed skills, high health care costs, growing prison costs,
and a nation that will be less safe, less caring, and less free."60
Perhaps the most interesting trend is the gradual separation of housework and
child care over the last decade. Whereas mothers and fathers are spending from four
to six hours more per week with their children, women have dramatically decreased
the amount of housework they do, and men have not exactly jumped in to fill the void.
"Either the house is clean or I see my kids," is how one female doctor in Milwaukee put
it. Evidently, choosing between housework and child care is easier than choosing be-
tween career and family. 61
Of course, there are wrinkles. Dads' increases in "family time" may actually push
moms back into more traditional roles. In some places, Dad has become the "fun
parent." Dad takes the kids to the park on Saturday morning to play soccer while mom
washes the breakfast dishes, makes the beds, does the laundry, and prepares lunch.
"What a great time we had with Dad," the kids will sing merrily when they return
home. "He's such an involved parent!" (Well, they might not say it exactly like that, but
you get the point.)
That women continue to perform the lion's share of the second shift puts enor-
mous strains on marriage. Balancing work and family pulls working women in differ-
ent directions, and either way they move, they are bound to feel guilty and frustrated.
Even Karen Hughes, who was President George W. Bush's senior counselor and the
architect of his policies, decided to return to Texas and her family because she couldn't
have it all. One high-level executive who recently quit her job confessed that she "had
as much going my way as any working mother could have. And I was absolutely flat-
out. All I managed to do were the kids and my job. I could have continued to do this
indefinitely, but I would have been a shell of myself."62
THE "CONSTRUCTED PROBLEMS"

OF CONTEMPORARY FAMILY LIFE
Obviously, a woman or a man who feels like a "shell of myself" cannot provide a strong
foundation on which to build a family, with a vibrant marriage and healthy children
who are nourished physically and emotionally. Yet, increasingly, that's how parents
feel, and their relationships with each other and with their children suffer as a result.
Without a concerted national policy to assist working women and men to balance
work and family obligations, we continue to put enormous strains on two sets of
bonds, between husbands and wives and between parents and children, and virtually
guarantee that the "crisis" of the family will continue. And we will also continue to
face a series of "constructed problems"-problems that stem from the strain felt by
individual families as they negotiate the increased pressures of sustaining dual-career
couples and dividing housework and child care in the absence of help from the
outside.
In the 1950s, the government stepped in where once the community and extended
kinship networks had sustained family life and created an infrastructure (schools,
hospitals, roads, and suburban homes) that supported and sustained family life. Today,
we expect families to accomplish far more-expect them, for example, to support
children often beyond high school and college and to provide for virtually all of an
adult's emotional needs-on far less. It is from this widening chasm between what we
expect from our families and what support we offer them that several "constructed
problems" emerge. These problems are also the result of gender inequality-both its
persistence and the efforts by women to remedy it. Only when we develop a sustained
national effort-both individually and politically-to reduce the gender inequality in
both the home and the workplace will these constructed problems begin to ease.
The "Problem" of Day Care

Take, for example, the "problem" of day care. Many Americans are reluctant to place
their children in day care, the government has no national funding for day-care cen-
ters, and employers contribute about 1 percent of the total spent on child care. There is
virtually no quality care available for infants and toddlers, and the costs of private
care are staggering to parents at all income levels. Yet the most common conclusion
from the research on the impact of day care on children's development is that there are
no negative psychological, intellectual, developmental, or emotional consequences to
being in day care. In fact, there is some evidence that quality child care has positive
effects on children's curiosity, ability to share, ability to create friendships, and prepa-
ration for school. What's more, a 1996 National Institutes of Health study found that
children's attachment to their mothers is not affected by whether or not they are in day
care, what age they enter, or how many hours they spend there.63
So there really is a "problem" with day care: Despite its positive effects, there's not
enough of it, it's not affordable, and the government and our employers don't seem to
care very much about our children. But that is not the "problem" that we are asked to
worry about. Almost daily, we seem to be bombarded with headlines that remind us
of negative consequences of such care, including child sexual abuse at day-care cen-
ters. The implication of such terrifying stories is that if these children were home with
their mothers, where they "belong," such terrible things would not be happening to
them. The "problem" of day care turns out to be a debate about whether or not women
should be working outside the home. "Having a nanny read you a story isn't the same
as having your mother do so," writes William R. Mattox, a senior writer for the con-
servative Family Research Council. "A mother's worth cannot be reduced to the cost
of what a paid substitute might command. To suggest that it can is like saying that the
value of a woman making love to her husband is equal to the going rate for prostitutes
in the area.''6 4
To ask whether or not women should work outside the home is, of course, to ask
the wrong question. For one thing, it poses a class-based contradiction, because we
encourage poor women to leave the home and go to work and ask middle-class
women to leave the workplace and return home. The landmark welfare reform legis-
lation of 1996 requires that welfare recipients start working within two years of going
on welfare. "It is difficult to argue that poor mothers should find jobs but that middle
class mothers should stay home," writes family researcher Andrew Cherlin. And
when they can find jobs, working-class and middle-class women are simply not going
to stop working. 65
Nor is there any reason why they should, because there is no evidence whatsoever
that mothers' working outside the home adversely affects children. In fact, most of
the evidence indicates that both direct and indirect benefits accrue to children of
working mothers. Such children tend to have expanded role models, more egalitarian
gender-role attitudes, and more positive attitudes toward women and women's em-
ployment. Daughters of employed women are more likely to be employed, and in jobs
similar to those of their mothers, than are daughters of nonemployed women. More-
over, adolescent children of working mothers assume more responsibility around the
home, which increases their self-esteem.66
Working outside the home also increases women's self-esteem and sense of
personal efficacy and well-being, so working mothers tend to be happier in their
marriages-which makes divorce less likely. One study found that the happier wives
were in their jobs, the happier they were in their marriages. In a four-year study
sponsored by the National Institute for Mental Health, Rosalind Barnet observed
three hundred dual-career families and found that the women were neither depressed
nor stressed out but rather that they had good marriages and good relationships with
their children. Another survey of more than eight hundred two-career couples found
similar results.67
A comparison with other industrial nations is instructive here. The United States
is the only industrial country that does not have a national system of day care.
Throughout the European Union, for example, child care is available, affordable, and
expedient. Parents still balance career and family, albeit uncertainly-but they do it
with far more social support than American parents do. In neither Europe nor the
United States do women show any inclination to leave the labor force, but rather they
seem to be demanding that the work world accommodate their family needs-and not
the other way around.
Not only will women continue to work outside the home, but also they should
work outside the home, argues Joan Peters. "If they do not, they cannot preserve their
identities or raise children" who are able to be both independent and family-oriented.
But, "women can do so successfully only if men take half the responsibility for child
care." Again, the "solution" turns out to be social and political. Only one-third of all
employees in large and midsize U.S. companies can receive even unpaid parental
leave. Both nationally and in each family, the solution turns out to be greater gender
equality-not women working less outside the home, but rather men working more
inside it. 68
The "Problem" of "Babies Having Babies"

The problem of day care is related to the problem of "babies having babies"-the in-
creasing fertility of teenage women. Although the number of teen pregnancies has
declined significantly since 1990, the number of teenage girls giving birth every year
remains remarkably high-in fact, the United States has the highest rate of births to
teenage mothers of all industrial nations-double that of the next highest country, the
United Kingdom (which includes all of Ireland in its tabulation).
That decline hasn't quelled the debate. Some of the same people who complain
about women delaying childbearing while they wallow in unbridled sexual consumer-
ism are also among the loudest critics of teen pregnancy. Is it a problem of a sort of
"Goldilocks" mentality-you should have children when you are not too young and
not too old, but rather "just right" in terms of age? Actually, it often seems that the
problem of teenage motherhood is a mask for what is really bothering its critics-
women's sexual agency. Some concern stems from a disguised critique of feminism,
which enables women to explore a healthy and safer sexuality. Efforts to stop teen
35
30
24.1
25
20
15
10
0
Germany Japan France Australia Canada United
States
Figure 6.8. Teen birth rates (per 1,000 women aged 15-19, 2014).
Source: World Bank: World Development Indicators, Adolescent fertility rate (births per 1,000 women ages 15-19)
(SP.ADO.TFRT) . United Nations Population Division, World Population Prospects.
motherhood have included, for example, increasing restrictions on access to birth

control and even birth control information and restrictions on abortion, including
parental consent and waiting periods.
Take, for example, the statistics on rates of teenage motherhood (figure 6.8). In
the mid-195os, 27 percent of all girls had sexual intercourse by age eighteen; in 1988,
56 percent of girls and 73 percent of boys had sexual intercourse by age eighteen. In
1991, the rate of adolescent childbearing-births to teen mothers per one thousand
girls-was 62.1, the highest rate since 1971, which was the year before abortion was
legalized. This accounts for 9 percent of all births in the nation. Sixty-six percent of
these young women were unmarried, compared with 1960, when only 15 percent
were unmarried.69
Such numbers can be "read" in several ways. For some, such numbers illustrate a
calamitous increase in teen motherhood, attributable to wanton teenage sexuality and
rampant immorality, an erosion of respect for the institution of marriage, and the
growing crisis of fatherlessness. But for others, such numbers illustrate the erosion of
access to adequate birth control information, the steady attacks on women's right to
choose that restrict women's access to abortion and other means of birth control, and
the increased freedom of young people from their parents' insistence on "shotgun
weddings."
On these questions, the research is unanimous: Restricting access to information
about birth control, access to birth control, and access to abortion has little bearing
on rates of sexual activity. In fact, virtually all studies of the effect of sex education
indicate a decrease in rates of sexual activity, greater sexual selectivity, and higher
rates of safer sex practices. Young people will continue to become sexually active in
their mid-teens, whether or not they have access to birth control or information about
it. In fact, restricting access is the surest way to encourage unwanted pregnancy.
The problem of babies having babies is also a way to blame women for men's
irresponsibility. Politically, we are saying to young women that if they are going to
dance (become sexually active), they will have to pay the piper (bear the conse-
quences of unwanted pregnancies). But if, as we also know, it takes two to tango,
perhaps the solution to the crisis of young motherhood lies in both increasing the
abilities of these young women to become responsible (adequate health care, birth
control information, and access to birth control) and fostering a more respon-
sible young manhood. In fact, casting the crisis as "babies having babies" masks
another serious problem-young girls' sexual victimization by men. Most of the
fathers of babies born to teenage mothers are not themselves teenagers, but rather
are adult men whose predatory sexual behavior goes unnoticed when the problem
is cast in this way.
Occasionally, the problem of babies having babies is merged into the problem of
unwed parenthood in general. Out-of-wedlock births in America have increased
600 percent in the past three decades, from 5 percent of all births in 1960 to about
40 percent today. Out-of-wedlock births to black parents have increased from 22 per-
cent in 1960 to over two-thirds today. Doomsayers abound. David Blankenhorn, a
conservative policy pundit, claims that the United States is moving toward "a post-
marriage society" in which marriage is no longer a dominant institution. Again, one
can attribute this to the increased freedom of both women and men from shotgun
weddings, which certainly kept down the number of out-of-wedlock births. And
Andrew Cherlin points out that much of this increase is not to single mothers or wel-
fare cheats, but rather to cohabiting white mothers. That is, most of the births are to
people in committed relationships who just don't happen to be married.70
But this controversy also illustrates the way family life and public policy are inti-
mately connected. The percentage of out-of-wedlock births in the Nordic countries-
Sweden, Norway, Denmark-is significantly higher than that rate in the United States.
But in Nordic countries, with adequate child care, universal health care, and access to
free education, the "need" of children to be born to married parents-access to paren-
tal health care programs, for example-is eliminated by a concerted policy of state
spending to ensure the health and well-being of its citizens. So women and men marry
when they want the additional sanctioning of religious authority, not because they
need to be married for economic reasons.
The "Problem" of Fatherlessness

The question of men's responsibility also surfaces in the debates about fatherlessness.
In recent years, commentators have noticed that fathers are not around, having left
their children either through divorce or cavalier indifference. Recent works such as
David Blankenhorn's Fatherless America or David Popenoe's Life Without Father have
blamed absent fathers for causing myriad social problems, ranging from juvenile de-
linquency to crime and violence to unemployment. We read, for example, that 70 per-
cent of all juveniles in state reform institutions come from fatherless homes. This
bodes especially ill for young boys, because without a father, we are told, these young
boys will grow up without a secure foundation for manhood: "In families where the
father is absent, the mother faces an impossible task: she cannot raise a boy into a man.
He must bond with a man as he grows up," writes psychologist Frank Pittman. It is a
mistake to believe that "a mother is able to show a male child how to be a man." "Boys
raised by traditionally masculine fathers generally do not commit crimes," adds Blan-
kenhorn. "Fatherless boys commit crimes." In a home without a father, Robert Bly
writes somewhat more poetically, "the demons have full permission to rage." This has
consequences for both the fathers and the boys, creating in one moment two sets of
unattached and unconstrained males roaming around the streets. "Every society must
be wary of the unattached male," family researcher David Popenoe reminds us, "for he
is universally the cause of numerous social ills."71
It is true that more children of both sexes are being raised in single-parent homes
and that the "single parent" doing that child raising is more often than not a woman.
Whereas just over one-tenth (11 percent) of children were being raised by unmarried
mothers in 1970, just under one-fourth (24.6 percent) were being raised that way as of
2013. Almost half (41 percent) of all births are to unmarried women. But the number of
single fathers has increased from about 393,000 in 1970 (10 percent of all single parents
raising children) to more than two and a half million today (around 13 percent of single
parents raising children)-without much appreciable decrease in raging demons.7 2
It's also true that the other side of the "feminization of poverty" coin is the "mas-
culinization of irresponsibility"-the refusal of fathers to provide economically for
their children. What is less certain, however, is the impact of fathers on the myriad
social problems with which their absence seems to be correlated. Involvement by
nonresident fathers does provide some benefits to children and consistently predicts
higher academic achievement-which argues for maintaining fathers' connection to
their children. And although fatherlessness may be correlated with high crime rates,
that does not mean that fatherlessness causes the criminality. In fact, it might just
be the other way around. To be sure, high crime rates and fatherlessness are indeed
correlated. But it turns out that they are both products of a larger and more over-
whelming problem: poverty.73
The National Academy of Sciences reports that the single best predictor of violent
crime is not fatherlessness but rather "personal and neighborhood income." And, it turns
out, fatherlessness also varies with income; the higher the income bracket, the more likely
that the father is home-which suggests that the crisis of fatherlessness is actually a crisis
of poverty. In his impressive ethnographic research on street gangs in Los Angeles, Martin
Sanchez-Jankowski found "as many gang members from homes where the nuclear family
was intact as there were from families where the father was absent" and "as many members
who claimed close relationships with their families as those who denied them." Clearly
something other than the mere presence or absence of a father is at work here.74
Occasionally public policy actually discourages fathers from maintaining contact
with their children after separation or divorce. Or from paying child support in the first
place. If a poor man pays child support to the state government, the state typically keeps
the money to pay itself back for welfare payments paid to its children, on the logic that
poor children might otherwise double-dip. But as a result, the mother and children see
no tangible evidence of the father's efforts to support his children. So he might decide to
give them money directly, under the table, which tangibly supports them but does
nothing to offset his allocated payments, so the state may still have his wages garnished,
arrest him, or otherwise penalize him. (Only Wisconsin allows the father's payments to
go directly to the family without a reduction in welfare benefits-a policy that motivates
fathers to pay and reduces the amount of time that mothers stay on welfare.) 75
The confusion of correlation and causation also reveals a deeper confusion of
consequence and cause. Fatherlessness may be a consequence of those larger, deeper,
more structural forces that drive fathers from the home and keep them away-such as
unemployment or increased workplace demands to maintain a standard of living.
Pundits often attempt to transform the problem of fatherlessness into another excuse
to blame feminism, and specifically women working outside the home. They yearn for
a traditional nuclear family, with traditional gender inequality. For example, David
Popenoe writes nostalgically about the family form of the 1950s-"heterosexual, mo-
nogamous, life-long marriage in which there is a sharp division of labor, with the
female as the full-time housewife and the male as primary provider and ultimate
authority" -without pausing to underscore that such a family form was also dramati-
cally unequal when viewed from a gender perspective. Such a vision substitutes form
for content, apparently under the impression that if only the family conformed to a
specific form, then the content of family life would dramatically improve.76
This emphasis on form over content is most evident in the prescriptions about
fatherlessness. You would think, naturally, that the solution is for fathers to be truly
and deeply involved in family life, to share child care, if not housework, and to become
a passionate presence in the lives of their children. You'd be wrong. Blankenhorn and
others who lament fatherlessness do not issue a clarion call for a new fatherhood,
based on emotional receptivity and responsiveness, compassion and patience, care
and nurture (which are, after all, the human qualities one needs to be a good father in
the first place). Instead he rails against him:
He is nurturing. He expresses his emotions. He is a healer, a companion, a col-
league. He is a deeply involved parent. He changes diapers, gets up at 2:00 A.M. to
feed the baby, goes beyond "helping out" in order to share equally in the work,
joys, and responsibilities of domestic life.77
How utterly "selfish" of him. Obviously, this sensitive father does all this because he
"reflects the puerile desire for human omnipotentiality in the form of genderless parent-
hood, a direct repudiation of fatherhood as a gendered social role for men.' 78 Let's assume
for the moment that this sentence is actually sensible. It means that the real father is
neither nurturing nor expressive; he is neither a partner nor a friend to his wife, and he
sleeps through most of the baby's infantile helplessness, oblivious to the needs of his wife
and child. This guy is a selfless, giving father simply because he has a Y chromosome.
THE "PROBLEM" OF GAY AND LESBIAN FAMILIES

Another recent constructed problem is that of gay and lesbian families. It's ironic that
the same political commentators who fret about the decline of the family are the very
people who would prevent gay men and lesbians from creating them. But the problems
of gay families-marriage, child rearing-are actually less about families and more
about the legal status of homosexuals. As soon as the Hawaii Supreme Court indicated
the likelihood that it would recognize gay and lesbian marriages in 1997, for example,
several states rescinded their adherence to the "full faith and credit" clause of the U.S.
Constitution, the clause that requires one state to recognize contracts concluded in
another state, such as those relating to marriage, voting, education, or driving. Soon
thereafter, the U.S. Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act, as if the institution
of marriage were under attack by those who sought to enter it.
The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was a hodgepodge of intolerance and dis-
crimination masquerading as concern for the sanctity of marriage. It was only a matter
of time before the U.S. Supreme Court found it to be unconstitutional, and, in 2013, the
Court struck down a key part of DOMA so that same-sex couples married in states
that allow it are now entitled to federal benefits afforded to heterosexual couples. On
June 25, 2015, after the Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, same sex mar-
riage is permitted in all 50 states.79
Although the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v Hodges that prohibiting
same-sex marriage was unconstitutiona-that it denied to some people a right enjoyed
by others based solely on their gender-there are many other grounds for discrimina-
tion that are still unevenly distributed across the country. Some states have lifted ob-
stacles to full equality just as other states invent ways to add new ones (figure 6.9).
It is expressly prohibited to discriminate against gay men and lesbian couples in
adoption procedures in only eleven states and the District of Columbia (New Jersey,
New York, Indiana, Maine, California, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, Oregon,
Vermont, and Florida). 80
Although many political observers see same-sex marriage as a political football,
tossed around when the socially conservative base of the Republican Party seemed
poised to drift away from full allegiance, the issues that are raised by the controversy
speak to the core issues about gender difference and gender inequality. What appears
• H~h 0Vcr1111 Polley Tilly ( 14 11.atH + 0 ,C.)
n Medium Overall Poley Tall~ fB E.ta1es) • Negative OYerall Policy Talty (2 stales}
States with high equality offer solid protections across the six major policy areas (i.e ., Marriage and Relation-
ship Recognition , Adoption and Parenting, Non-Discrimination, Safe Schools, Health and Safety, and Ability for
Transgender People to Correct the Gender Marker on Identity Documents).
States with medium equality often offer positive parenting laws, but fall short on safe schools, non-discrimina-
tion laws, health and safety laws, or laws and policies that help transgender people update the gender marker
on their identity documents.
States with low or negative equality offer few or no protections.
Figure 6.9. This map shows the overall equality tallies for each state and the District of Columbia.
A state's "pol icy tally" counts the number of positive laws and policies within the state that help
drive equality for LGBT people.
In general laws covering sexual orientation affect lesbian, gay and bisexual people, while laws
covering gender identity affect transgender people, although there is significant overlap. A state
that has good protections on the basis of sexual orientation, but does not have good protections
on the basis of gender identity, may not be considered a "high equality state" in overall state policy.
Source: http:/ /www.lgbtmap.org/ equality-maps/legal_equality_by_state
to be a concern for the sanctity of marriage is often accompanied by a discomfort with

the idea of gay and lesbian families, based on misinformation about the quality of
those relationships and their impact on children.
One reason why many gay and lesbian couples want to marry is because so many
benefits accrue to married couples-benefits that heterosexual couples often take for
granted. These benefits include the right to inherit from a spouse who dies without a
will; the right to consult with doctors and make crucial medical decisions if the part-
ner is incapacitated; the right of residency of a foreign spouse; the right to Social Secu-
rity benefits; the right to include a spouse on one's health plan; the right to visit a
spouse in a government institution like a prison or hospital; and the right to immunity
from having to testify against one's spouse in a legal proceeding. 81
It is no longer true that gay male relationships are more fragile than heterosexual rela-
tionships or that gay men are more "promiscuous" (i.e., have a greater number of different
sexual partners) than do heterosexuals and lesbians. Some of the reasons for this can
be found in masculine gender socialization, which discourages men from commitment
to domestic life in the first place; exclusion from formal, legal marriage, which cements
heterosexual relationships and increases the couple's likelihood of staying together
despite disagreement; lack of children, who are often the reason why heterosexual cou-
ples continue to work on their relationships; and social disapproval and institutional-
ized homophobia, which can destabilize any couple. "It is paradoxical that mainstream
America perceives gays and lesbians as unable to maintain long term relationships while
at the same time denying them the very institutions that stabilize such relationships,"
argues Craig Dean, executive director of the Equal Marriage Rights Fund.82
Marriage is more than a legal right, more than a relationship. It is an institution,
the bedrock institution of our ideal of the family. Without the right to marry, it is
codified into law that gay relationships are less valuable, less important, than hetero-
sexual ones. Such a devaluation leads to the very promiscuity that is used as the ratio-
nale for denying the right to marry in the first place.
In many cases, gay and lesbian couples provide a model of family life. For one
thing, gay and lesbian couples are "less likely to fall into patterns of inequality" that
define heterosexual marriages. By bringing together two people of the same gender,
gender inequality is neutralized and gender difference eliminated. Compared with
heterosexual couples, gay and lesbian couples are more likely to share housework; les-
bian couples are the most egalitarian of all couple arrangements. 83 And, it turns out,
gay men and lesbians often make excellent parents. In the late 1960s, one woman la-
mented her position, not as a lesbian, but rather as a nonparent:
One of my mother's big disappointments was the fact that there would be no
grandchildren. I love both of my parents a great deal, and I would do almost anything
for their happiness, but I couldn't do that. I think I was saddened too, when ... I knew
that I wasn't ever going to have children. And I would like to have some . .. for myself.84
140
120
<I)
100
(I.)
al
<= 80
:@
"Cl
~
• Unconditional
:.s" 60 • Conditional
i:
p..
40
20
0
Women with Women with Men with Men with
Different-Sex Same-Sex Different-Sex Same-Sex
Partners Partners Partners Partners
Figure 6.10. Unconditional and conditional predicted minutes spent engaged with children by
family structure.
Source: Figure I from Kate Prickett, Alexa Martin-Storey, and Robert Crosnoe, "A Research Note on Time with
Children in Different- and Same-Sex Two Parent Families" in Demography 52:3, pp. 905-918. With kind permission
from Springer Science and Business Media.
Just as heterosexual women once felt they were forced to choose between having
a career and having a family, many gay men and lesbians feel forced to choose between
acknowledging their sexuality and having a family. And just as women today are
unwilling to make that choice, wanting to "have it all," so, too, are gays and lesbians,
who have decided that their homosexuality ought not to disqualify them as good
parents. In 1976, there were between three hundred thousand and five hundred thou-
sand gay and lesbian parents; today, there are an estimated one and a half to five mil-
lion lesbian mothers and between one and three million gay fathers. Currently,
between eight million and thirteen million children (about 5 percent of all children in
the United States) are being raised by at least one gay parent. 85
None of the fears of gay parenting has materialized. There is no evidence that gay
fathers or lesbian mothers exert any special negative influence on child development or
that they sexually abuse their children. In fact, the few studies that have been conducted
show that "the outcomes for children in these families tend to be better than average."
The research on lesbian mothers suggests that their children, both boys and girls, have
patterns of gender identity development similar to those of children of heterosexual
parents at comparable ages and display no differences in intelligence or adjustment.
And O percent-as in none-physical or sexual abuse, compared with 26 percent of
American adolescents who report parent or caregiver physical abuse and 8.3 percent
who report sexual abuse, according to a national longitudinal study. "Quality of moth-
ering," rather than sexual orientation, is the crucial determinant of children's develop-
ment.86 Cambridge University psychologist Michael Lamb reviewed more than one
hundred studies from the last thirty years and concluded that the "research shows that
the children and adolescents of same-sex parents are as emotionally healthy, and as
educationally and socially successful, as children and adolescents raised by hetero-
sexual parents." 87 As the fifteen-year-old daughter of a lesbian mother put it:
I think I am more open-minded than if I had straight parents. Sometimes kids at
school make a big deal out of being gay. They say it's stupid and stuff like that. But
they don't really know, because they aren't around it. I don't say anything to them,
but I know they are wrong. I get kind of mad, because they don't know what they
are talking about.
This statement echoed a recent New Jersey court decision, which found that children
in gay and lesbian families
emerge better equipped to search out their own standards of right and wrong,
better able to perceive that the majority is not always correct in its moral judg-
ments, and better able to understand the importance of conforming their beliefs
to the requirements of reason and tested knowledge, not the constraints of cur-
rently popular sentiments or prejudice.
Such sentiments, as family sociologist Judith Stacey points out, might well "serve as
child-rearing ideals for a democracy." 88
A recent meta-analysis of social science studies of gay and lesbian parenting sug-
gests that children of these parents are more accepting of homosexuality and may be
more likely to indicate a willingness to consider homosexual relationships themselves,
although they are no more likely to identify themselves as "gay" than are children of
heterosexual parents. More interestingly, however, are the gender consequences, as
opposed to the sexual ones: Daughters of lesbian and gay parents are more assertive,
confident, and ambitious, and sons are less conforming to traditional notions of
masculine aggression and domination and more fluid in their gender identities.89
• ,1 ,, ,,, , ,, =n1u1, a
How do LGBT people decide to become parents and create families? Is it the same way that
heterosexual couples do? Or do different communities navigate the routes to pregnancy
and parenthood differently? In their compelling study of black lesbians, psychologist Sarah
Reed and her colleagues found that sexual orientation and race matter significantly in how this
community understands the opportunities and challenges of pregnancy and the process of
becoming parents.
And Americans seem to finally be getting the message that same-sex marriage is
not a real threat to the stability of heterosexual marriage. Opposition has been dropping
significantly, especially among those under thirty, while support has steadily grown
(figure 6.11). I make this prediction based on the demographic data, not some ideologi-
cal agenda: It is only a matter of time before same-sex marriages are legal in all fifty
states, ratified by a Supreme Court that cannot find any constitutional justification for
preventing people who love each other from marrying. Eventually, I imagine, the op-
position to LGBT families will go the way of opposition to mixed-race marriages-the
attitude of a small but significant minority, but with no legal foundation.
That many of the "crises" turn out to be manufactured political efforts to push
back the gains of women or LGBT people doesn't mean that there aren't some real
and serious problems in our gendered families. I'll focus on three here, both because
they illustrate the ways in which gender inequality often leads us to see gender dif-
ference, and also because gender offers us a way to think about these problems in new
and different ways.
• % Should be valid • % Should not be valid
68
62
~
55 59 56 56 57 I0 55
--- --
53 53 53 ~4
......
--
~ ~
~
....r ~
48
--
27
35
42
37
42
46
40 40
44 45 ri3 42
'96 '97 '98 '99 '00 '01 '02 '03 '04 '05 '06 '07 '08 '09 '10 '11 '12 '13 '14
Figure 6.11. Do you think marriages between same-sex couples should or should not be recog-
nized by the law as valid, with the same rights as traditional marriages?
Note: Trend shown for polls in which same-sex marriage question followed questions on gay /lesbian rights and
relations. 1996-2005 wording: "Do you think marriages between homosexuals ... "
Source: Justin McCarthy, 2014. Same-Sex Marriage Support Reaches New High at 55%, nearly eight in IO young
adults favor gay marriage. Copyright© 2014 Gallup, Inc. All rights reserved. The content is used with permission;
however Gallup retains all rights of republication.
DIVORCE
It's hard to deny that divorce is a real problem. The divorce rate in the United States is
astonishingly high. Around half of all marriages end in divorce-considerably more
than in other industrialized countries (table 6.2). The U.S. rate is more than double
the rate in Germany and France and nearly double the rate in Sweden and Britain-
countries where individuals remain supported by national health care and children
specifically benefit from adequate access to education and health care, while their cus-
todial parents receive regular governmental stipends. (These, of course, ameliorate the
harsh economic impact of divorce.) According to the Census Bureau, the number of
divorced people more than quadrupled from 4.3 million in 1970 to 19.3 million in 1997.
This represents 10 percent of all adults aged eighteen or over, up from 3 percent in 1970.90
Divorce may be a serious social problem-but not exactly for the reasons that
many political commentators claim it is: These high divorce rates are not shattering
the family. Rates of marital dissolution are roughly the same as they have been for a
very long time. Looked at historically, high rates of divorce are merely accomplishing
by conscious action what higher mortality rates had accomplished in an earlier period.
As historian Lawrence Stone put it, "The median duration of marriage today is almost
exactly the same as it was 100 years ago. Divorce, in short, now acts as a functional
substitute for death: both are means of terminating marriage at a premature stage."
(Of course, he adds, the psychological effects are not the same.) 91 Nor does the number
of divorces necessarily indicate a loss of faith in marriage. Ninety-five percent of men
and 94 percent of women between the ages of forty-five and fifty-four have been mar-
ried. In fact, writes sociologist Constance Ahrons, author of The Good Divorce, "we
like marriage so much that many of us will do it two, three, or more times." Remar-
riages now comprise about half of all marriages every year.92
The problem with divorce is more accurately linked to the constructed problem of
fatherlessness and the real problem of gender inequality. Divorce reform was pro-
moted, after all, by women who at the turn of the last century sought to provide legal
recourse to those who wanted to escape marriages that were desperately unhappy and
others that were brutally, even violently oppressive. The option of divorce loosened the
marital knot to keep it from choking women. Like birth control and abortion, both of
which have also generated heated debates, divorce undermined men's power over
women and reduced gender inequality in the family.
Although liberalized divorce laws may have reduced gender inequality within
marriage, they seem neither to have reduced it entirely nor to have reduced it after
the marriage is dissolved. One recent study found that three of four women listed
OH?
REALLY•
The United States has the highest divorce rate in the world.
Actually, that's not true. Russia is the divorce capital of the world. Accord-
ing to the United Nations Demographic Yearbook, there are 5 divorces for
every 1,000 people. The United States comes in fifth, with 3.4 divorces per
1,000 people.
Source: Ashley Reich, "Highest Divorce Rates in the World" in Huffington Post, May 25, 2011 , http://www
.huffingtonpost.com/20 I0/ I2/2 I/highest-divorce-rates-in_n_798550.html?
COMPARED to WHAT?
U.S. Marriage and Divorce Rates in Comparative Perspective
Table 6.2. Crude Marriage and Divorce Rates by Country: 1960-2012
(per 1,000 Population)
Marriage rate
Country 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2012
United States' 8.5 10.6 10.1 9.8 8.2 6.8 6.8

Canada' N/ A 8.8 7.3 5.5 4.7 4.4 N/A
3
Japan N/ A 9.9 6.1 6.3 5.6 5.5 N/ A
France 7 7.8 6.2 5. 1 5 3.9 3.7
Germany 9.5 7.4 6.3 6.5 5. 1 4.7 4.8
Italy 7.7 7.3 5.7 5.6 5 3.7 3.5
Netherlands 7.7 9.5 6.4 6.5 5.5 4.5 4.2
Sweden 6.7 5.4 4.5 4.7 4.5 5.3 5.3
United Kingdom 7.5 8.5 7.4 6.6 5.2 N/ A 4.4
Divorce rate
Country 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2012
United States' 2.2 3.5 5 4.7 4 3.4 3.6

Canada' N/A 1.4 2.5 2.6 2.2 2. 1 N/A
Japan 3 N/A 0.9 1.4 1.6 2 2 N/A
France 0.7 0.8 1.5 1.9 1.9 2.1 N/A
Germany 1.3 1.8 1.9 2.4 2.3 2.2
Italy 1.2 1.2 1.2 0.5 0.7 0.9 N/A
Netherlands 0.5 0.8 1.8 1.9 2.2 2 2.1
Sweden 1.2 1.6 2.6 2.7 2.6 2.5 2.5
Un ited Kingdom N/A 1.9 1.9 1.9 2.1 N/A
Notes: N/A = Not available. Marriage and divorce figures for most years include some estimated data .
'Data are for 1985 instead of 1980 and 201 I instead of 2012. ' Data are for 1985 instead of 1980, 1995
instead of 1990, 2002 instead of 2000, and 2008 instead 2010. 3Data are for 1985 instead of 1980, 1995
instead of I990, and 2005 instead of 2000.
Sources: NVSS National Marriage and Divorce Rate Trends, "Marriages and Crude Marriage Rates,"
United Nations Statistical Division (UN STAT), 2011 ; "Divorces and Crude Divorce Rates," United Nations
Statistical Division (UNSTAT), 201 I; Eurostat (demo_nind) and Eurostat (demo_ndivind); U.S. Department
of Health and Human Services, National Center for Health Statistics.
pathological behaviors by male partners (adultery, violence, substance abuse, aban-

donment) as their reason for divorce. Just as there are "his" and "her" marriages,
there are also "his" and "her" divorces because divorce affects wives and husbands
differently. Divorce exaggerates gender differences in the marriage, exacerbating
gender inequality. In the mid-198os, family researcher Leonore Weitzman calculated

that following divorce, the woman's income drops a precipitous 73 percent, whereas
her ex-husband's income increases 42 percent. In recent years, these data have been
revised as overly dramatic, but no research suggests that the economic and social
statuses of women and men after divorce are equivalent, and researchers still agree
that women's resources decline somewhat more than men's. (Men's income goes
down if their wives had careers.) As sociologist Paul Amato writes, "The greater the
inequality between men and women in a given society, the more detrimental the
impact of divorce on women."93
Divorce has different impacts on women and on men. Many divorced fathers "lose
almost all contact with their children over time," writes David Popenoe. "They with-
draw from their children's lives." Over half of all divorced fathers have no contact with
their children; even one-third of the noncustodial fathers who have written visitation
provisions have not seen their children in the past year. Noncustodial mothers, however,
OH? Does feminism cause divorce? That's what John Gray, proponent of the inter-
planetary theory of gender (Men are from Mars ...) thinks. "The reason why
REALLY• there's so much divorce is that feminism promotes independence in women,"
he told a journalist. "I'm very happy for women to find greater independence,
but when you go too far in that direction, then who's at home?"
Actually, the more the divorce rate goes down, the more egalitarian the marriage. And the
more gender equal, the more stable.
A study by Laurie Rudman and Jo Phelan found that having a feminist partner was linked to
healthier and more stable heterosexual relationships for both women and men. Oh, yeah, and
greater sexual satisfaction.
So, what are the best predictors of likely divorce? Age, income, and education.
College-educated middle-class people who get married later have the best chance of staying
together. Non-college-educated, early-marrying working-class people are the most likely to
divorce. (Oh, and those are the most likely to subscribe to the interplanetary theory of gender.)
Of college graduates who got married in the early 2000s, only about 11 percent were divorced
by their seventh anniversary, while 17 percent of non-college graduates were divorced. Over
80 percent of 1980s college graduates who got married at age twenty-six or later were still
married two decades later, compared with less than two-thirds (65 percent) who got married
before age twenty-six. And while both working-class and middle-class women are working
outside the home, middle-class women are more likely to couple that work with a more egali-
tarian view of marriage-dual career-than working-class women, who work because their
husbands cannot earn enough to support the family, but who retain a more traditional notion of
the male-breadwinner-female-homemaker model.
That is, John Gray has it exactly backward! Gender equality keeps marriages together. It's the
interplanetary theory of gender that leads to higher divorce rates.
Sources: "Feminism and Free Porn Are Ruining Relationships-Author" in NZHera/d.co.nz, June 6, 2014, http://www
.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/news/article.cfm?c_id=6&objectid= 11268800; Laurie Rudman and Jo Phelan, "The Interper-
sonal Power of Feminism: Is Feminism Good for Romantic Relationships?" in Sex Roles, 57 ( 11-12), 2007, pp. 787-799.
rarely lose contact with their children after divorce, maintaining family connections
over employment possibilities and new relationships. In addition, divorced men ex-
hibit increased symptoms of psychological and emotional distress. Divorce seems to
affect women more adversely in material and financial terms and men more adversely
in emotional and psychological terms.94
What predicts continued involvement of parents in their children's lives after a
divorce is the quality of the relationship between the ex-spouses prior to the divorce.
And ironically, it also appears that it is the men who were more involved with their
children prior to the divorce who are most likely to disappear after it, whereas those
men who were relatively uninvolved prior to divorce tend to become more active with
their children afterward. In part, as Edward Kruk observes, this counterintuitive dif-
ference stems from the less involved fathers also being more "traditional" in their
outlooks, which would increase their sense of commitment to family life even after
divorce; whereas more "liberal" men are more likely to see themselves as "free" from
family responsibilities.95
The debate about divorce in contemporary America often has less to do with the
divorcing couple and far more to do with the anticipated outcome on children. In a
widely publicized study, psychologist Judith Wallerstein found that a significant
number of children "suffer long-term, perhaps permanent detrimental effects from
divorce," whereas other children repress these effects, only to have them emerge years
later. Children, she argues, lose the "scaffolding" upon which they construct their de-
velopment. "When that structure collapses," she writes, "the children's world is tem-
porarily without supports. And children, with a vastly compressed sense of time, do
not know that the chaos is temporary." Ten years after divorce, Wallerstein found a
significant number still adrift, troubled, and achieving less than expected. Many were
having trouble establishing and sustaining relationships of their own. Twenty-five
years after divorce, those problems had not disappeared-in fact, they may have been
exacerbated. "When people decide to divorce, it has a short-term and long-term trau-
matic effect upon the children that makes their subsequent life journey more difficult,"
she writes. A lousy marriage, she now concludes, beats a good divorce. And a "good
enough" marriage will dramatically enhance children's lives.96
Although such dire warnings as Wallerstein's have claimed countless magazine
covers and public discussion, there is far less social science in her work than first
meets the eye. After following sixty-one families in an affluent California suburb, she
concluded that about half the women and two-thirds of the men carried serious emo-
tional problems through to adulthood, including the inability to form cohesive rela-
tionships, distrust of the opposite sex, and associated problems. But Wallerstein had
no control group, even of similarly affluent white families. So how do we know that the
divorce was the cause of these later emotional problems? What's more, about one-
third of the original children were not interviewed for this survey-are they the ones
who adjusted successfully and moved on with their lives? We cannot know. And fi-
nally, and most damning, the original participants in the study were recruited through
a promise of free therapy for divorcing couples who were having a difficult time of it.
Wallerstein herself tells us (in Surviving the Breakup, though she fails to mention this
in subsequent volumes) that most of them were having serious psychological problems
to begin with. Only one-third were functioning adequately; half the fathers and close
to half the mothers were "moderately disturbed or frequently incapacitated by dis-
abling neuroses or addictions." She goes on:
Here were the chronically depressed, sometimes suicidal individuals, the men and
women with severe neurotic difficulties or with handicaps in relating to another
person, or those with long-standing problems in controlling their rage or sexual
impulses.
Hardly the sort of nationally representative sample that would provide convincing
evidence. What Wallerstein has found is that the children of seriously psychologically
impaired divorcing parents will have some difficulties themselves down the road.97
Consistently, though, the public discussion has been informed by these simple
axiomatic assertions that divorce has a deleterious effect on children's well-being.
And, to be sure, all other things being equal, having two parents in a happy, stable,
intact family is pretty much certain to produce happier, healthier, and better-adjusted
children than are families that are unhappy, unstable, or separated. The question is
which of those variables-unhappy, unstable, separated-is the most crucial in pro-
ducing the outcome.
Perhaps the most level-headed researcher to weigh in on these issues is Andrew
Cherlin, a sociologist and demographer at Johns Hopkins University. In his 1999
Presidential Address to the Population Association of America, Cherlin made clear
that his research found that the line of causation ran exactly counter to Wallerstein's
clinical assertions. "We found that children whose parents would later divorce already
showed more emotional problems at age 7 than children from families that would stay
together," he notes. Divorce "occurs in families that are already troubled." In other
words, divorce is the outcome of the problem, not its cause.9 8
Most research on divorce actually finds that after the initial emotional upset that
affects nearly all children, over the long term, "most children settle down and return to
a normal process of maturation." Another recent book found that about three-fourths of
children of divorce are "coping reasonably well and functioning in the normal range."
Most children recover from the stress of divorce and show few adverse signs a few years
later if they have adequate psychological supports and economic resources.99
No one doubts that divorce is difficult for children or that being raised by two
parents is probably better than being raised by one. For starters, with two parents,
each is less likely to be tired and overworked. This makes higher levels and a higher
quality of parent-children interaction more likely. And there is little doubt that, all
else being equal, two people raising children together, whatever the parents' sexual
orientation, is better for the children than one. The debate really concerns what we
mean by "all else being equal." If we compare, for example, the educational achieve-
ment scores, sense of well-being, or levels of psychological and emotional adjustment
of children who are raised in intact families with those of children raised in single-
parent, postdivorce families, we find that those children in single-parent families
manifest lower levels of well-being, self-esteem, educational attainment, and adjust-
ment than those in two-parent homes.
But such comparisons are misdirected, because they compare two types of
families-divorced and intact-as if they were equivalent. Divorce is not a remedy for
OH? Conventional wisdom has it that if your marriage is in trouble, you should stay
together for the sake of the children. Although it's true that all things being
REALLY• equal, two-parent intact families are better for children's emotional well-being,
things are rarely equal. In fact, as family sociologist Paul Amato has shown,
children in intact, high-conflict families fare far worse than children in divorced families. Instead of
staying together "for the sake of the children," if your marriage is in serious trouble, and conflict
is constant, it might be better to divorce-for the sake of the children!
Source: Paul Amato, Laura Spencer Loomis, and Alan Booth, "Parental Divorce, Marital Conflict, and Offspring
Well-Being During Early Adulthood" in Socia/ Forces, 1995, 73 (3): 895-915 .
marriage; it is a remedy for a bad marriage. And when researchers compare the out-
comes for children being raised in a postdivorce family with the outcomes for children
being raised in an intact-but unhappy-family, the evidence is clear. The conse-
quences of divorce on children depend on the level of marital conflict prior to the
divorce. One study found that children in divorced families did, indeed, feel lonely,
bored, and rejected more often than those in intact families-but that children in un-
happily married families felt the highest levels of neglect and humiliation. 100
A longitudinal study begun in 1968 by psychologists Jeanne and Jack Block tracked
a group of three-year-olds for several years. When the children were fourteen, the
Blocks looked back at their data and found that some of the children whose parents
would eventually divorce, especially the boys, were observed to be more aggressive and
impulsive and more likely to be in conflict with their parents. Although, as sociologist
Arlene Skolnick observes, it is impossible to discern whether parental conflict led to
problems for these children, or vice versa, it is clear that "these children's problems did
not result from the divorce itself." Another British study tracking seventeen thousand
families also found that children's problems long antedate divorce and that problems
among young children can, in fact, be a good predictor of eventual divorce.1°1
The most systematic research on these issues has been undertaken by family soci-
ologists Paul Amato and Alan Booth and their colleagues. Amato and Booth found
the single best predictor of a child's happiness and well-being to be the quality of the
parents' marriage. Those children who grow up in homes where parental conflict is
high and a divorce ensues do as well as those who grow up in happily married, intact
homes. What's more, parents who are jealous, moody, inclined to fly off the handle,
critical, and prone to dominate their spouse have a far worse effect on their children's
eventual marriages than whether or not the parents are divorced. Further, these re-
searchers found that in high-conflict families, children had higher levels of well-being
if their parents divorced than if they stayed together; whereas in low-conflict families,
children had higher levels of well-being if their parents stayed together than if they
divorced. Divorce, Amato and Booth conclude, "is beneficial for children when it re-
moves them from a high conflict marriage." But, like marriage, divorce ought not be
entered into casually or without thought, because the consequences can be deleterious
"when it removes them from a low-conflict marriage" (figure 6.12).102
The preponderance of research echoes these themes. Levels of family conflict are
far more important in the lives of children than whether or not families stay together.
Offspring Psychological Distress Offspring Overall Happiness
16 3.5
15
3.0
14
2.5
13
12
2.0
11
10
1.5
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Parental Conflict Parental Conflict
Figure 6.12. Offspring outcomes as a function of the interaction between parental marital conflict
and parental divorce while controlling for parents' age, sex, race, and education and offspring's sex
and age.
Source: Fig. I. Paul R. Amato et al. "Parental Divorce, Marital Conflict, and Offspring Well-Being During Early Adult-
hood." Social Forces ( 1995) 73(3):895-915. Reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press and the Depart-
ment of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Most research has found that "frequent marital and family conflict in so-called intact
families is detrimental to children's physical health and that divorce may, in fact, in-
sulate some children and adolescents from prolonged exposure to health-threatening
family interactions." And it turns out that parent-child relations prior to marriage are
the key determinant of whether the divorce is psychologically catastrophic. Content,
it would appear, is more important than form. 103
But this may be yet another case of mistaking correlation for causation. Although
it may be true that children from divorced families experience more severe problems
than children in intact families, it may be that both the divorces and the problems are
caused by something else-the greater marital conflict. A longitudinal study found
that children in families that eventually divorce manifest problems long before the
actual divorce. The authors argue that many of the consequences attributed to divorce
may, in fact, derive from the marital conflict and family stress that precede a divorce,
rather than from the divorce itself. Blaming the problems of children on their parents'
divorce "is a bit like stating that cancer is caused by chemotherapy," argues the presi-
dent of the Family and Divorce Mediation Council of Greater New York. "Neither di-
vorce nor chemotherapy is a step people hope to have to take in their lives, but each
may be the healthiest option in a given situation."104
The solution that some propose to the problem of divorce is, of course, simple:
Make divorce harder to obtain. The state of Louisiana has instituted "covenant mar-
riages," which, unlike the contractual legal marriage, demand that couples take liter-
ally and seriously the provision of "'til death do us part." Several other states are now
considering such a distinction. Yet most family researchers agree that such a triumph
of form over content-making divorce harder to get without changing the content of
the marriage-would "exacerbate the bitterness and conflict that are associated with
the worst outcomes of divorce for kids."105
Divorce is a serious undertaking and not to be undertaken casually. But it is a
"necessary 'safety-valve' for children (and parents) in high conflict households." From
the standpoint of the children, "an end to an unhappy marriage is probably preferable
to living in a household characterized by tension and acrimony," whereas forcing un-
happy families to stay together would have the most deleterious outcomes for chil-
dren, as well as for the adults. After divorce, most families "adjust," and some even
"thrive." Divorce might better be seen as a social indicator that something is wrong
not with one-half of all marriages, taken individually, but rather with the institution
of marriage, that the foundation upon which marriage rests cannot sustain and sup-
port one-half of all the marriages that take place-without some serious efforts on the
part of policymakers. Family therapist Betty Carter pointed out that if any other social
institution were failing over half the people who entered it, we would demand that the
institution change to fit people's new needs, not the other way around.106
CHILD CUSTODY
Whether or not divorce has simply accomplished by social policy what high mortality
rates used to accomplish "naturally," there is one significant difference between the
two methods to dissolve a marriage. With a divorce often comes the problem of child
custody. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, children were seen as an economic "good,"
and courts utilized an economic means test to determine who would receive custody,
and custody was regularly and routinely given to fathers. In the early years of the
twentieth century, though, children came to be seen as a luxury, and so a new test,
based on care and nurture, was used to determine custody arrangements-a policy
that favored mothers. Today, the "best interests of the child" is the criterion employed
to provide the foundation for custody decisions, although in practice, the best inter-
ests of the child are presumed to be better served by staying with the mother, not the
father, because the presumption is that mothers provide better child care-especially
for young children-than do fathers.
Such a policy makes a certain amount of sense, because women perform most of
the tasks that provide the care and nurturing that children need. And yet, in the late
1970s, 63 percent of fathers who requested custody received it, a significant increase
from the 35 percent and 37 percent who requested and received it in 1968 and 1972,
respectively. In a recent study of one thousand divorces in two California counties,
psychologist Eleanor Maccoby and law professor Robert Mnookin found that a ma-
jority of mothers and fathers wanted joint legal custody, whereas those who didn't
preferred that they, and not their spouse, be given custody. Nearly 82 percent of
mothers and 56 percent of fathers requested the custody arrangement they wanted,
whereas 6.7 percent of women and 9.8 percent of men requested more than they
wanted, and 11.5 percent of women and 34.1 percent of men requested less than they
wanted. This suggests that "gender still matters" in what parents ask for and what
they do to get it. That mothers were more likely to act on their desires by filing for a
specific request also indicates that men need to ask for more up front to avoid feeling
bitter later.1°7
Maccoby and Mnookin's research is notable for another finding. Children living
with mothers generally did as well as children living with fathers; "the welfare of kids
following a divorce did not depend a lot on who got custody," Maccoby told a journal-
ist, "but rather on how the household was managed and how the parents cooperated."
But one consequence of current custody arrangements is paternal withdrawal.
Whether this is because the father is bereft to be kept from regular contact with his
children or because after the marital bond is severed he experiences a euphoria of
"freedom" and considers himself to have escaped from a conflict-ridden family situa-
tion, it appears that many men "see parenting and marriage as part of the same
bargain-a package deal," write sociologists Frank Furstenberg and Andrew Cherlin.
"It is as if they stop being fathers as soon as the marriage is over." In one nationally
representative sample of eleven- to sixteen-year-old children living with their moth-
ers, almost half had not seen their fathers in the previous twelve months. Nearly half
of all divorced fathers in the United States pay no child support; in Europe the compa-
rable number is about one-fourth.108
Paternal withdrawal, it turns out, actually affects the father-daughter relationship
most significantly, even more than the much-touted father-son relationship, whereas
the mother-daughter relationship seems to be the most resilient to divorce and cus-
tody disputes. This may surprise those who believe that the father-son bond is the
most fragile and most hard-hit by postdivorce fatherlessness, but it illustrates how
frequently daughters are ignored in that literature and how both boys and girls benefit
from paternal responsibility and continued presence in their children's lives.109
In recent years, postdivorce fatherhood has become a political issue, as "father's
rights" organizations have sprouted up, declaring men to be the victims of inequality
in custody decisions. It is true that most court decisions grant custody to the mother,
based on the "best interests of the child" standard. Father's rights groups challenge
this assumption and claim that, invariably, joint custody is preferable for children.
Sometimes, it appears that their rhetoric substitutes these aggrieved fathers' vindic-
tiveness against their ex-wives, or their bewilderment at the entire divorce proceeding,
for the "best interests" of children, but it also appears to be the case that all things
being equal, joint physical and legal custody ought to be the norm in custody deci-
sions. Here, of course, "all things being equal" means that there is no discernible
danger to the child of sexual or physical abuse; that the parents can manage to contain
their own postdivorce conflict and prevent the children from becoming pawns in a
parental power struggle; and that the parents agree to equally support the children
financially and emotionally. Such arrangements may be more difficult for parents than
for children, who often report "a sense of being loved by both parents," as well as "feel-
ing strongly attached to two psychological parents, in contrast to feeling close to just
one primary parent." Contrary to some popular opinion, joint custody "does not
create uncertainty or confusion" and seems to benefit children, who say they are more
satisfied with the arrangement than those in single-custody homes and consider
having two homes advantageous.110
We know, too, that joint custody will benefit men, who will, by maintaining a legal
connection to their children, be far more likely to continue to share financial respon-
sibilities for their development. What's more, joint custody may relieve the deep sense
of loss, disengagement, and depression often experienced by men who are cut loose
from continued involvement with their families. On the other hand, mandated joint
legal custody may not be so good for women. Feminist legal theorist Martha Fineman
argues that mandated joint legal custody may appear to be gender-neutral but that
gender "neutrality" in one arena in a system of overall gender inequality may actually
perpetuate gender discrimination, much the way the abandonment of affirmative
action sounds race- or gender-neutral but actually favors white males over others by
withdrawing from explicit challenges to historical discrimination. As Fineman writes:
What may have started out as a system which, focusing on the child 's need for care,
gave women a preference solely because they had usually been the child 's primary
caretaker, is evolving into a system which, by devaluing the content or necessity
of such care, gives men more than an equal chance to gain the custody of their
children after divorce if they choose to have it, because biologically equal parents are
considered as equal in expressive regards. Nonnurturing factors assume importance
which often favors men.111
Perhaps the most judicious system of child custody will be one that recognizes the
difference in "inputs" between fathers and mothers in the actual experiences of the
children-time spent in child care, level of parental involvement in child development-
while at the same time presuming that both parents are capable of and interested in
(absent any evidence to the contrary) continued committed and involved relationships
with their children. Men's becoming more involved in predivorce child care ought to
be reflected in custody arrangements, as should women's continuing to shoulder the
overwhelming majority of such care, despite their commitments to work. Fa-
thers' "rights" after divorce will come more readily if the fathers have recognized their
responsibilities during the marriage. 112
THE PROBLEM OF FAMILY VIOLENCE

For too many Americans-children and parents alike-the family bears only a pass-
ing resemblance to the "haven in a heartless world" of nostalgic myth. Far from shield-
ing their members from the cold and violent world outside its doors, the family is that
cold and violent world. Violence tears at the fabric of the family. Although I will dis-
cuss some forms of family violence, particularly the violence between women and
men, in chapter 13, here I want to discuss violence between parents and children, as
well as violence among children. Family violence is remarkably gendered, reproducing
and reinforcing gender inequality. The overwhelming amount of family violence is
perpetrated by males-husbands beating wives, fathers hitting children, sons hitting
their parents, or boys hitting their brothers or their sisters. "The actual or implicit
threat of physical coercion is one of many factors underlying male dominance in the
family," writes sociologist Murray Straus.113
Violence against children by parents is among the most controversial type of
family violence. Although widespread support exists for corporal punishment-over
two-thirds of Americans believe that it is all right for a parent to spank a child-that
support disappears when such violent behavior by parents against children becomes
systematic or extreme. Most Americans have hit their children, and most children
have been hit by their parents. But the costs may outweigh the obvious benefits of
immediate compliance from the child. Spanking is associated with several negative
Everyone spanks their kids.
OH? Actually, the global trend is away from spanking-especially in advanced

REALLY• industrial countries. In 1979, Sweden banned corporal punishment in the
home. As of 2014, thirty-eight other countries-including most of Europe
and Brazil-have joined Sweden, and another twenty are about to follow suit.
Africa North Latin Caribbean Asia Europe Oceania

America America
Percent of countries where corporal punishment is prohibited in the home, by

region.
Information provided by the Global Initiative to End All Corporal Punishment of
Children, www.endcorporalpunishment.org, 2015.
The effect of the ban has been enormous-and fast. A 2009 study found that thirty years
after banning it, only IO percent of Swedes approved of corporal punishment and only IO percent
used it. In less than two generations, the use of violence against children dropped from almost
I 00 percent to about IO percent.
Source: http://www.endcorporalpunishment.org/pages/pdfs/G1oba1Progress.pdf.
behaviors in children, including aggression, antisocial behavior, and mental health

problems. The American Academy of Pediatrics has taken an official stand against
spanking. 114
Although the most common forms of parental violence against children are
spanking or slapping, 20 percent of parents have hit their child with an object, almost
10 percent have kicked, bit, or hit their child with their fist, and almost 5 percent of
families have experienced a parent beating up a child. And although mothers as well
as fathers commit this violence, they are not equivalent. In one study, Bergman and
his colleagues found that men are over ten times more likely to inflict serious harm on
their children and that every perpetrator of the death of a child in this limited sample
was either a father or a father surrogate. 115
The most evident consequence of parental violence against children is observed
in the behaviors of children. Children see that violence is a legitimate way to resolve
disputes and learn to use it themselves. Violence against siblings is ubiquitous in
American families. As Straus writes:
Violence between siblings often reflects what children see their parents doing to
each other, as well as what the child experiences in the form of discipline. Children
of non-violent parents also tend to use non-violent methods to deal with their
siblings and later with their spouses and children. If violence, like charity, begins at
home, so does non-violence.116
(Parents wondering how to discourage violence among their children might begin by
resisting the temptation to hit them and by settling marital problems without resort-
ing to violence.)
The long-term consequences of parental violence against children are also evi-
dent. The greater the corporal punishment experienced by the child, the greater the
probability that the child will hit a spouse as an adult. And the likelihood is also higher
that children hit by their parents will strike back. Child-to-parent violence is also seri-
ous; nearly one in ten (9 percent) of all parents of children aged ten to seventeen is a
victim of violence perpetrated by his or her own children. Mothers are more likely to
be victims of such violence, especially in the more severe cases.
The antecedent causes of children hitting their parents, and especially their moth-
ers, are directly related to the severity of the violence experienced by the children and
the severity of the spousal violence that the children observe. Children see their moth-
ers hit by their fathers, and they "learn that mothers are an appropriate and acceptable
target for intrafamily violence," writes sociologist Richard Gelles. Nowhere is the
gender inequality of the family more evident than when a young boy hits his mother
because he has learned by watching his father that violence against women is accept-
able behavior for a boy coming into manhood. 117
THE FAMILY OF THE FUTURE

Perhaps the most consistent finding to emerge from the literature on divorce, custody,
and sexual orientation is that the form of the family-intact, divorced, single-parent,
lesbian, or gay-matters far less for children than its content. This is the key issue, and
we distract ourselves from developing policies and personal relationships built to
nurture and sustain children because we are so preoccupied with the size and shape of
the package. A home filled with love and support, where parents spend both quality time
and quantity time with their children and with each other, is the strongest predictor of
future physical, emotional, and psychological health of both the children and their
parents. Family sociologist Arlene Skolnick writes that the most reliable studies "find
that family structure-the number of parents in the home or the fact of divorce-is not
in itself the critical factor in children's well-being. In both intact and other families, what
children need most is a warm, concerned relationship with at least one parent."118
For example, a recent longitudinal study followed 126 Harvard undergraduates
since their student days in the 1950s. Thirty-five years later, 116 of them were reevalu-
ated. Of these, 25 percent who had rated their parents as loving and caring had devel-
oped major illnesses, whereas 87 percent of those who had rated their parents as
uncaring had experienced at least one serious health problem. (The researchers con-
trolled for other potential causes, such as family history of illness, parental death or
divorce, smoking habits, and marital experiences.) Men who had a low perception of
the parental care and love that they received as children had a far greater risk of be-
coming ill in midlife. 119
The crisis of the family appears less a crisis of form than a series of challenges
to its content. It is true that both marital happiness and children's well-being have
declined over the past two decades. But it seems equally true that, as David Demo
writes, "the negative consequences attributed to divorce, single-parent family struc-
ture and maternal unemployment have been greatly exaggerated." As a gendered insti-
tution, the family rests on assumptions about gender difference and the reality of
gender inequality at both interpersonal and structural levels. At the structural level,
gender inequality is maintained by governmental indifference to the plight of working
families-from inadequate child care and parental leave provisions to a failure to sup-
port and sustain different types of families, in which children may grow up sensing
that their lives are not as valuable and worthwhile as those of others.120
Family-friendly workplace policies would enable and encourage families to balance
their working lives and their family commitments. In the United States, slightly more
than 33 percent of workers at companies with more than one hundred employees get
unpaid maternity leave, and, although 83 percent of all working men say that they feel
the need to share the responsibilities of parenting, only 18 percent of all such corpora-
tions actually offer parental leave to men, and only 9 percent of all companies do. Com-
pare these figures with those in Sweden or Norway, for example, where couples are
offered one full year of paid parental leave at 80 percent of their salary. Norway and
Sweden have even instituted what they call "daddy days," when fathers can take parental
leave after the mother has returned to work, to ensure that the fathers have special time
to spend with their children. In these countries, even grandparents get financial support
to take time away from work to spend with their new grandchildren! These sorts of poli-
cies proclaim that a nation loves and cherishes its children so much that it is willing to
use its resources to foster and facilitate that love. To me, that's "family values."
121
Yet despite our claims to be a society that values the next generation, American
governmental policy actually makes effective parenting more difficult for rich and poor
alike. Inadequate funding for education, inadequate health care for children and adults,
inadequate corporate policies regarding parental leave, and "family-unfriendly"
workplaces-with inflexible hours, rigid time schedules, and lack of on-site child-care
facilities-place too great a burden on already fragile and strained marital bonds and
bonds between children and their parents. "We're trying to do what women want of us,
what children want of us, but we're not willing to transform the workplace," notes an
anthropologist who studies men's lives in several different cultures. 122
The family as a gendered institution also depends on interpersonal relationships
among family members, on the gendered division of household labor that reproduces
male domination in society. Gender inequality is expressed in the different amounts
of housework and child care performed by men and by the different trajectories of
men's and women's lives after divorce. It is maintained too often by the real or implicit
threat of violence.
Often we believe that forcing families to stay together will benefit the children, even
if the parents are unhappy. "We stayed together for the sake of the children" is the way
parents often put it. Sociologist Frank Furstenberg suggests instead that we place the
welfare of children at the center of the discussion, not as the assumed outcome. "By di-
recting more resources to low-income children, regardless of the family form they live
in, through such mechanisms as access to quality child care, health care, schooling, and
income in the form of tax credits, it may be possible to increase the level of human, social
and psychological capital that children receive." In other words, do we "invest in
strengthening marriage and hope that children will benefit, or invest in children and
hope that marriages will benefit?'"-23 Like Furstenberg, I place my bet on the latter option.
In my opinion, gender equality in the family does not require a large "dose of
androgyny," nor do I prescribe, as does sociologist Andrew Greeley, that "men become
more like women." Just as it is possible for women to enter the workplace without be-
coming "masculinized," it is also possible for men to return home from their long exile
without becoming "feminized." If present trends continue, it seems inevitable that
men will be doing an increasing amount of what used to be called "women's work"
inside the home, just as women are doing an increasing amount of what used to be
called "men's work" outside it. One can easily accommodate changes in one's activities
without transforming one's identity or self-image.124
It was in the nineteenth century that the ideology of the separation of spheres was
invented and imposed, "imprisoning" women in the home and "exiling" men from it.
In the latter half of the twentieth century, the structural foundations of that ideology
eroded, and it came under increasing ideological attack. My prediction is that the
twenty-first century will witness a "reintegration of spheres," in which home and work
will become increasingly similar, and men and women will be more active partici-
pants in both spheres. We should "insist on a closer integration between people's pro-
fessional lives and their domestic lives," writes social critic Christopher Lasch. "Instead
of acquiescing in the family's subordination to the workplace, [we] should seek to re-
model the workplace around the needs of the family." And on the home front, an in-
creasing number of people are "telecommuting" to work, traveling from bedroom to
home office, and using laptops, cell phones, and fax machines to conduct paid work,
while they cook for their children and clean the house during breaks.' 25
The most dramatic shift in family life in the twenty-first century will surely be the
changing roles of men, just as the most dramatic demographic shift in the workplace
in the twentieth century was the entry of women. Family sociologist Scott Coltrane pre-
dicts that as wives are employed longer hours, identify more with their jobs, and provide
a larger share of family income, men will do increasing amounts of housework. What's
more, he argues, as "fathers become more involved in baby care, they will begin to take
more responsibility for routine child care, and a significant minority will move beyond
the role of household helper." In the workplace, men will increasingly identify as fathers,
just as within the home, women have increasingly identified as workers.126
IiJ ,, ,,, I'' :n)Q IIa

What's Your "Plan B"?
A fascinating study of young people by sociologist Kathleen Gerson found that both women
(80 percent) and men (70 percent) want a balanced, egalitarian marriage, where both work
outside the home and both are involved parents. But such an arrangement is difficult to
achieve, right? Both family and work take enormous amounts of time, and, unlike in other
countries, our social policies provide virtually no support. So, Gerson asked these same
people what they would prefer if it didn't work out, if they couldn't have the egalitarian rela-
tionships they wanted. In other words, what's your Plan B?
It was here that women and men diverged. About 70 percent of the men said they'd opt
for a more traditional family arrangement: They'd work outside the home and their wives
would keep house and raise the kids. But nearly three-quarters of the women said they'd
rather divorce and go it alone with their kids than return to that 1950s family model.
Look at the difference:
Women' s ideals Men 's ideals Women' s Men's fallback

fallback position position
D Egalitarian D Neotraditional • Self-reliant
Here is one guy from Gerson's study:
If I could have the ideal world, I'd like to have a partner who's making as much as I am-
someone who's ambitious and likes to achieve. [But] if it can't be equal , I would be the
breadwinner and be there for helping with homework at night.
And here is what one woman thinks of that plan:
My mother is such a leftover from the fifties and did everything for my father. I'm not plan-
ning to fall into that trap. I'm really not willing to take that from any guy at all.
The question is, can we develop family policies that enable both women and men to have the
family lives they actually want?
Source: Kathleen Gerson , The Unfinished Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press 20 IO); Lisa Wade ,
"Most Women Would Rather Divorce Than Be a Housewife" in Huffington Post, January 29, 2013, http://www
.huffingtonpost.com/ lisa-wade/ housewife_b_2568 I87.html. Graph reproduced by permission of Oxford
University Press, USA.
When men and women fully share housework and the raising of children, gender
inequality in the family will gradually decrease, and the gender stereotypes and gender
differences that were presumed to be the source of that inequality will also gradually
begin to dissolve. After all, as we learn from anthropologists, those societies in which
men take a larger role in child care are those in which women's status tends to be high-
est. Plus, a society in which women and men share parenting will be a society in which
they are also equally active in the labor force. A change in the private sphere will bring
about dramatic changes in the public sphere.
Think, for a moment, about the implications of shared parenting and housework,
about the full impact of the reintegration of spheres. A child who experiences love and
nurturing from his or her father and mother will come to see that nurturing is some-
thing that adults do, not something that women do and that men may or may not do,
depending on whether there's a good game on the television. So all children, both boys
and girls, will expect to be nurturing when they become adults. Similarly, a child will
also see that working is something that adults do, not something that men do and that
women may or may not do, depending on whether their husband "allows" it or whether
they're raising children. In this sense, shared parenting might be a crucial step in "de-
gendering" the two most highly gendered experiences we have, the two experiences
that Freud himself identified as the most crucial elements of healthy adult life: love
and work.
Robert Frost wrote these oft-quoted lines:
Home is the place where, when you go there
they have to take you in.
Our families are places in which we are both constrained by duty and obligation and
inspired by love, respect, and honor. Love, we've found, can abide in traditional fami-
lies, in single-parent families, and in gay and lesbian families. It can sustain children
in intact families or after divorce. What matters is the content of the family, not its
form. Love can abide, nourish, and sustain-wherever it lives and in whatever form.
KEY TERMS
Covenant Marriage Feminine Mystique Second Shift
Defense of Marriage Act Maternity Leave Traditional Family
Family Values Parental Violence Women's Work
Family Wage Paternity Leave
Family-Friendly Workplace Race Suicide
Policies Same-Sex Marriage
CHAPTER
7 The GENDERED CLASSROOM
The Higher Education of Women is one of the great world battle-cries

for freedom; for right against might. It is the cry of the oppressed
slave. It is the assertion of absolute equality.
-HENRY FOWLE DURANT, PRESIDENT
WELLESLEY COLLEGE, "THE SPIRIT OF THE COLLEGE" (1877)
"M ath class is tough" were among the first four words Barbie ever spoke.
When Mattel introduced the talking Barbie in 1992, a new group of her
nearly eight hundred million owners heard more than a teenager's complaint-
even if that teenager was the buxom blond bombshell whose feet were designed
to fit into high heels. That group heard the way gender inequality and gender
differences are reproduced.'
The interplanetary theory of gender tells us that boys and girls are funda-
mentally and categorically different: that boys excel in science and math, play
violently on the playground, and shout out in class; that girls, on the other hand,
sit quietly, speak softly, play gingerly, and excel in French and in literature. At the
same time, of course, we sit in the same classroom, read the same books, listen
to the same teachers, and are supposedly graded by the same criteria.
But are we having the same experience in those classes? Not exactly. Our gen-
dering experiences begin even before we get to school. By the time we enter our first
classroom, we are learning more than our ABCs, more than spelling, math, and
science, more than physics and literature. We learn-and teach one another-what
204
Chapter 7: The Gendered Classroom 205
it means to be men and women. And we see it all around us in our schools-who teaches
us, what they teach us, how they teach us, and how the schools are organized as institu-
tions. Schools are like old-fashioned factories, and what they produce is gendered indi-
viduals. Both in the official curriculum-textbooks and the like-and in the parallel
"hidden curriculum" of our informal interactions with both teachers and other students,
we become gendered. This is reinforced in the parallel curriculum presented by the
mass media. And the message that students get-from both the content and the form of
education-is that women and men are different and unequal, that the inequality comes
from those differences, and that, therefore, such inequality is justified. Consider, though,
the opposite position-that the differences we observe are the products, not the cause,
of gender inequality. As law professor Deborah Rhode writes, "What schools teach and
tolerate reinforces inequalities that persist well beyond childhood.',,
TRADITIONAL EDUCATION FOR MANHOOD

Since the eighteenth century in America, education had been reserved for upper-class
boys and men. We've seen earlier how opponents of women's equality used biological
arguments to maintain gender exclusion-how, for example, they argued that higher
education for women would result in "monstrous brains and puny bodies" with "flow-
ing thought and constipated bowels," because it would violate the "plan" women's
bodies held for them. Harvard professor Edward Clarke cited cases of "pale, weak,
neuralgic, dyspeptic, hysterical, menorraghic, dysmenorrhoeic" educated women
with "arrested development of the reproductive system.''3
Many of the Victorian opponents of women's education believed that women could
not withstand and would not wish to subject themselves to the rigors of higher education.
By contrast, some opponents of co-education also believed that bringing women and
men together would have disastrous effects on both sexes. Because the "minds of men and
women are radically different," wrote one editorialist in the University of California at
Berkeley Daily Californian in the 1890s, men and women must be taught separately.
When the University of Michigan first debated co-education in 1858, its president op-
posed it because "men will lose as women advance, [and] we shall have a community of
defeminated women and demasculated men." A local paper applauded the trustees' deci-
sion, arguing that to educate women would "unwoman the woman and unman the man.'¾
Some worried that educating women and men together would "emasculate" the
collegiate curriculum, watering it down by forcing the inclusion of subjects and tem-
peraments better omitted, slowing down the pace, or otherwise reducing standards
that would allow women to keep up. In his influential treatise on adolescence, the
great psychologist G. Stanley Hall warned against co-education because it "harms
girls by assimilating them to boys' ways and work and robbing them of their sense of
feminine character," whereas it harms boys "by feminizing them when they need to be
working off their brute animal element." By making boys and girls more alike, he
warned, co-education would "dilute" the mysterious attraction of the opposite sex-
that is, co-education would cause homosexuality. (Of course, Hall could not yet have
previewed Alfred Kinsey's studies of human sexuality, which found that most
homosexual experimentation among males occurred precisely in those single-sex
institutions-all-male schools, summer camps, Boy Scouts, the military, and prisons-
that Hall believed would be palliatives against homosexuality.)
Of course, there were also strong supporters of women's education, such as the
founders and first presidents of historically women's colleges, like Matthew Vassar
and Milo Jewett (Vassar), Henry Durant (Wellesley), and L. Clark Seelye (Smith).
Durant went as far as to argue that the real meaning of women's education is "revolt" -
"against the slavery in which women are held by the customs of society-the broken
health, the aimless lives, the subordinate position, the helpless dependence, the dis-
honesties and shams of so-called education."5
Women's physical weakness and helpless dependency were thus consequences of
gender inequality, not their cause. The great British physician Henry Maudsley elabo-
rated this more sociological explanation for women's difference in 1874:
There are other reasons which go to make up the languid young-ladyhood of the
American girl. Her childhood is denied the happy out-door sports of her brothers.
There is a resolute shutting out of everything like a noisy romp; the active games
and all happy, boisterous play, by field or roadside, are not proper to her! She is cased
in a cramping dress, so heavy and inconvenient that no boy could wear it for a day
without falling into gloomy views of life. All this martyrdom to propriety and fashion
tells upon strength and symmetry, and the girl reaches womanhood a wreck. That
she reaches it at all, under these suffering and bleached out conditions, is due to her
superior elasticity to resist a method of education which would have killed off all
the boys years before ... There are abundant statistics to prove that hard study is
the discipline and tonic most girls need to supplant the too great sentimentality and
useless day dreams fostered by fashionable idleness, and provocative of "nerves,"
melancholy, and inanition generally, and, so far as these statistics can, that the women-
graduates of these colleges make as healthy and happy wives and mothers as though
they had never solved a mathematical problem, nor translated Aristotle. 6
Official policies promoting co-education did not deter its male opponents. In
1900, the University of Rochester promised to open the door to women-if women
could raise enough money to construct new dormitories and facilities. When they
did-after Susan B. Anthony sold her life insurance policy to overcome the final mon-
etary hurdle-and women tried to enter the classrooms, male students responded by
stamping their feet, physically blocking classroom doors, and jeering at the women
whenever they appeared on campus. The administration responded by physically seg-
regating the women in a separate, but clearly less-than-equal, college of their own. The
collegiate classroom that women had struggled so hard to enter did not exist so much
to train them intellectually as to ensure social obedience to gender difference. They
had entered another gendered classroom.
THE GENDERED CLASSROOM

The formal educational gendering process begins the moment we enter school and
continues throughout our educational lives. In nursery schools and kindergarten
classes, we often find the heavy blocks, trucks, airplanes, and carpentry tools in one
area and the dolls and homemaking equipment in another area. Although they may be
officially "open" to anyone for play, the areas are often sex-segregated by invisible but
real boundaries. In the elementary school years, the informal play during out-of-school
hours involves different sports, different rules, and different playground activities.
The nursery school where I taught in the late 1970s was divided into three zones.
Indoors was a place for quiet play, and there were shelves of books, a small sandbox
with cups and saucers, a quiet room, and a set of easels for painting. Immediately out-
side the building was the "near yard," which included two larger sandboxes with sev-
eral larger pots and pans arrayed around them and an area marked off for foot games
like hopscotch. Beyond this lay the "far yard," which included jungle gyms, a large,
unenclosed sandbox, and other gross motor skill activities.
In the morning, the three-year-old girls would come into school quietly, place
their coats neatly in their open locker, and walk slowly and uncertainly into the inside
room. There they would look for a friend and sit quietly looking at books, talking, or
playing at the interior sandbox while they adjusted to a new day at school. The boys
would race in, throw their coats into their lockers (missing half the time), dash out-
side, grab a truck, and run to the far yard, shouting all the way.
All the boys, that is, except "Brad." Brad was a quiet and thoughtful three-year-
old, kind and considerate, and one of the brightest students I ever taught-at any age!
Each morning, Brad would walk in and head right for the easels, where he would
spend his entire day happily painting. Some days he would go into full-scale produc-
tion, producing painting after painting; on other days he would paint for a while and
then stare dreamily outside at the trees.
When his parents saw me-the new male teacher-they were thrilled. "You must
get Brad to go out to the far yard!" they pleaded with me, a look of terror in their eyes.
"Please," Brad's mother repeated, softly. "Please."
One didn't need a PhD in elementary education to understand what was so terrifying
to Brad's parents. The specter of homosexuality hovered in the air. Brad was not acting
like the other boys, and his gender nonconformity was seen as a signal of his future sexual
orientation. I tried to reassure his parents that Brad seemed genuinely happy painting and
that he was very good at it, but they were not satisfied until I also promised that I would
encourage Brad to play with trucks. They were certain that the nursery school could
produce a masculine-and heterosexual-son. (Brad, I think, was hoping that they'd
leave him alone and let him become an artist. As for me, I would occasionally come over
to the easel where Brad was painting and ask if he wanted to come with me to the far yard.
Invariably, he'd smile broadly and decline and return to his art.)
Although there are some signs of change, this nursery school experience is repro-
duced in every classroom in every town in America every day. Boys and girls learn-
and teach each other-what are the appropriate behaviors and experiences for boys
and girls and make sure that everyone acts according to plan. What's less visible are the
ways the teachers and curriculum overtly and subtly reinforce not only gender differ-
ence, but also the inequalities that go along with and even produce that difference.
The classroom setting reproduces gender inequality. "From elementary school
through higher education, female students receive less active instruction, both in the
quantity and in the quality of teacher time and attention," note education professors
Myra and David Sadker, summarizing the research in their important book Failing at
Fairness. Many teachers perceive boys as being active, capable of expressing anger,
quarrelsome, punitive, alibi-building, and exhibitionistic, and they perceive girls as
being affectionate, obedient, responsive, and tenacious. When boys "put girls down,"
as they often do at that age, teachers (female usually) often say and do nothing to
correct them, thus encouraging the boys' notion of superiority. Many teachers assume
that girls are likely to "love" reading and "hate" mathematics and sciences, and they
expect the opposite ofboys.7
Teachers call on boys more often and spend more time with them. They ask boys
more challenging questions than they do girls and wait longer for boys to answer. They
urge boys to try harder, constantly telling boys that they can "do it." One study found
that in all ten of the college classrooms observed, boys were more active, regardless of
the gender of the teacher, though a female teacher increased girls' participation signifi-
cantly. A report sponsored by the American Association of University Women sum-
marized these studies when it concluded that whether "one is looking at preschool
classrooms or university lecture halls ... research spanning the past twenty years con-
sistently reveals that males receive more teacher attention than do females." Part of
the reason for this is that boys demand more attention, and part of the reason is that
teachers also treat boys and girls differently. When the Sadkers were doing research
for their book, they asked teachers why they paid more attention to the boys. The
teachers told them things like: "Because boys need it more" and "Boys have trouble
reading, writing, doing math. They can't even sit still."8
Here's a particularly evocative example from Failing at Fairness, a book that
documents the myriad ways in which gender inequality permeates the classroom.
One fifth-grade classroom the Sadkers observed was having a particularly noisy and
rambunctious discussion about who was the best president in American history. "Just
a minute," the teacher told the class. "There are too many of us here to all shout out at
once. I want you to raise your hands, and then I'll call on you. If you shout out, I'll
pick somebody else." This restored order for a moment. Then one boy enthusiastically
called out:
STEPHEN: I think Lincoln was the best president. He held the country together
during the war.
TEACHER: A lot of historians would agree with you.
OH?
REALLY•
Boys don't like girls who are "too smart."
How many female readers have heard something like that? "Don't be too
smart, you'll never find a husband!"
This is just one of the ways that gender inequality creates the very differ-
ences we then believe are the cause of the inequality. But it turns out not to be true. Once, if a
woman had a higher level of education than her husband, the odds were that the marriage would
be more fragile, and divorce more likely. Not anymore. In a recent study, sociologists Christine
Schwartz and Hongyun Han found that marriages in which the wife's educational level outstripped
that of her husband had no increased risk of marital dissolution. (It's also true that the most stable
marriages are the ones where the couple are relatively equal in their educational attainment-
that is, stability no longer comes when his level is higher than hers.) Two pretty smart women,
huh?
Source: Christine Schwartz and Hongyun Han , "The Reversal of the Gender Gap in Education and Trends in Marital
Dissolution" in American Sociological Review, 79(4), 2014, pp. 605-629.
MIKE (seeing that nothing happened to Stephen, calls out): I don't. Lincoln
was okay, but my Dad liked Reagan. He always said Reagan was a great
president.
DAVID (calling out): Reagan? Are you kidding?
TEACHER: Who do you think our best president was, Dave?
DAVID: FDR. He saved us from the Depression.
MAX (calling out): I don't think it's right to pick one best president. There
were a lot of good ones.
TEACHER: That's interesting.
KIMBERLY (calling out): I don't think that presidents today are as good as the
ones we used to have.
TEACHER: Okay, Kimberly. But you forgot the rule. You're supposed to raise
your hand. 9
Journalist Peggy Orenstein observed another junior high school class where boys
"yelled out or snapped the fingers of their raised hands when they wanted to speak,
[while the] girls seemed to recede from class proceedings." As one girl told her, "Boys
never care if they're wrong.'" 0
Here's an innovative way to try and correct these cultural biases. At one preschool
in Stockholm, Sweden, named the "Egalia School" to proclaim its belief in equality,
everything is organized to eliminate gender bias. Kids call each other "friends," not
"boy" and "girl.'' No one uses gender pronouns like "his" or "her." Boys and girls play
together; there is no gender segregation at all. Books focus on a wide range of subjects,
but you won't find "Cinderella" or "Snow White" there-too sexist and heteronorma-
tive! "Society expects girls to be girlie, nice and pretty, and boys to be manly, rough
and outgoing," explains one teacher. "Egalia gives them a fantastic opportunity to be
whoever they want to be.'' The school doesn't deny anatomical differences-all the
dolls are "correct"-but the educators insist that such differences "don't mean boys
and girls have different interests and abilities. This is about democracy. About human
equality.'"'
I iJ ' ' ,,, 111 :n)Q IIa

Schools are more than institutions in which we learn reading, writing, and 'rithmetic. They are
factories of gender, and what they produce are gender-conforming boys and girls. From the
curriculum to classroom configurations to the ways children interact with each other and with
teachers, a central goal is to inculcate appropriate gender behavior from gendered children to
appropriate gender identities. Think I used the word "gender" too often? Just think about how
often you use it-or gendered language to talk about yourself and your friends. In two sepa-
rate articles-'"Cool Boys,' 'Party Animals,' 'Squids' and 'Poofters'" and "Spice Girls, Nice
Girls, Girlies and Tomboys"-sociologists Diane Reay and Wayne Martino respectively dis-
cuss the various languages that boys and girls use to police each other, to make sure that eve-
ryone does gender "right." How do you and your friends police gender behavior among your
friends? What sorts of punishments do kids get if they "stray"?
OH?
REALLY •
Everyone knows that boys are better at math. It's biological.
Except it turns out not to be true. Psychologist Janet Hyde found virtu-
ally no differences at all in a survey of over seven million Amer ican students.
Perhaps all those reforms to encourage girls in math and science are actually
succeeding. Or perhaps there really weren't such big differences to begin with.
Here's what the distr ibutions look like:
I
/
' \
\
I \
I \
\
I \
I
\
\
I
I
/
/
z SCORE -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4
Figure 7. la. Two normal distributions that are 0.15 standard deviations aparts (i.e., d = 0. 15; this is
the approximate magnitude of the gender difference in mathematics performance, averaging over
all samples).
Source: Hyde, J; Fennema, E; Lamon, S. "Gender differences in mathematics performance: A meta-analysis." Psychologi-
cal Bulletin Vol I 07(2) , Mar 1990, 139- 155. Published by APA and reprinted with permission .
Maybe it's not the mean differences, but the differences at the extremes. In 2005, Lawrence
Summers, then president of Harvard, speculated that it wasn't that average scores were all that
different, but that the shape of the distr ibutions was different, that males were overrepresented
at both ends of the continuum-that is, there were more male math geniuses and more males at
the extreme low end. That, he suggested, was why there were so many more male professors in
math and science at the highest-pr estige universities.
Except that turned out not to be true either. Using a massive data set drawn from eighty-six
countr ies, Jonathan Kane and Janet Mertz found that this greater male variability is not present in
some countries, meaning that, as Kane puts it, "it is reasonable to attribute differ ence in male
performance primarily to country-specific social facto r s."
No Mars and Venus here. Just different cultures on planet Earth. In fact, we might even
go further. Perhaps the differences we observe are not the cause of gender inequality, but
the result of gender inequality. In a compar ative study of several countries, boys had higher
math scores in some countries, girls had higher scores in others, and in most cases boys' and
girls' scores were virtually identical. What accounted for the difference? Those countries
where girls did better in math also tended to be the countries that score higher on other
measures of gender equality, like labor force participation, women in public office, and
work-family balance policies.
Even in the United States, the gender differences in math performance are not nearly as great
as the race or class differences. Look at the differences in math scores by class:
24
• High income D Middle income D Low income
23.1
23
21.9
-~""' 20
Ei
.,"
..i:::
Ei
E-< 19.0
u 19
<
18 18.0
17
Female Male
Figure 7.1 b. Mathematics mean score, by gender and family income level, 2007.
Note: Low-income students reported an annual family income of less than $30,000, middle-income students reported
an annual family income of $30,000 to $60,000, and high-income students reported an annual family income of more
than $60,000.
Source : Unpublished data provided to the AAUW Education Foundation by the ACT Statistical Research Department.
© The American Association of University Women .
Would anyone seriously argue that rich people are from Mars and poor people are from Venus?
Of cou rse not.
Sources: Janet Hyde, Sara Lindberg, Marcia Linn, Amy Ellis, and Caroline Williams, "Gender Similarities Character-
ize Math Performance" in Science, 321 , July 25 , 2008 , pp. 494 - 495; Sara Lindberg, Janet Shibley Hyde, Jennifer
Petersen, and Marcia Linn, "New Trends in Gender and Mathematics Performance: A Meta-Analysis" in Psychological
Bulletin, November 2010, pp. 1123- 1135; Jonathan Kane and Janet Mertz, " Debunking Myths About Gender and
Mathematics Performance" in Notices of the American Mathematical Society, 59( I), January 20 12, pp. I 0 - 21 .
The "chilly classroom climate" for girls also takes place within a sexually "hostile
environment." In recent years, sexual harassment has become a significant problem
in more than our workplaces; it's also a problem in our classrooms. In 1980, the na-
tion's first survey of sexual harassment in schools, conducted by the Massachusetts
State Department of Education, found widespread sexual harassment of girls. A 1986
Minnesota survey of predominantly white and middle-class juniors and seniors in
vocational schools found that between one-third and three-fifths of the girls had
experienced sexual harassment.
Lawsuits followed, and finally the issue began to get the attention it deserved. In
1991, nineteen-year-old Katy Lyle was awarded $15,000 to settle a lawsuit she brought
against her Duluth, Minnesota, school district, because school officials failed to
remove explicit graffiti about her from the walls of the boys' bathrooms, even after her
parents complained several times. The next year, Tawnya Brawdy was awarded $20,000
from her Petaluma, California, junior high school, which had taken no action to stop
boys from making obscene sounds and gestures about her breasts. (Tawnya had
reached puberty early and had developed large breasts at a young age. The boys' be-
havior made her life so miserable that she could not eat, sleep, or function in class.)
That same year, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously sided with a young girl, Chris-
tine Franklin, in her case against the Gwinnett County, Georgia, school board, and
awarded her $6 million in damages resulting from a violation of Title IX.
By the spring of the next year, 1993, almost half of all the sexual harassment cases
then being investigated by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights in-
volved elementary and secondary schools. And sexual harassment continues to plague
our nation's schools. The Supreme Court found one school liable for the harassment of
one girl by other students. In a landmark case (Davis v. Monroe County Board of Educa-
tion), a mother sued the school board because her ten-year-old daughter suffered a con-
stant "barrage of sexual harassment and abuse" from one of her classmates while her
teachers and other school officials ignored it. According to a study commissioned by the
American Association of University Women, nearly four-fifths of girls (78 percent) and
over two-thirds of boys (68 percent) have been subjected to harassment (Figure 7.2).
60 • All students
56%
• Girls
D Boys
50
..:I 40
0
z~ 30
..:I
u 24%
0::
..:I
0..
20
10
0
Experienced Experienced Experienced
any kind of sexual harassment sexual harassment
sexual harassment in person online
(in person or online)
Figure 7.2. Students who experienced sexual harassment du ring the 20I0-2011 school year, by
gender.
Notes: Students were asked if they had experienced any of ten types of sexual harassment since the beginning
of the school year. Bold numbers indicate statistically significant gender differences at the 95 percent level .
Base= survey respondents (n = 1,965 students), 1,002 girls and 963 boys in grades 7-12.
Source: AAUW sexual harassment survey, May-June 20 I I. © The American Association of University Women.
In both cases, it's almost invariably other boys who are the perpetrators. As Bernice
Sandler puts it:
Sexual persecution starts at a very early age. In some elementary schools there is
skirt flip-up day; in others girls refuse to wear clothes with elastic waistbands be-
cause the boys pull down their slacks and skirts. In junior high schools boys tape
mirrors to the tops of their shoes so they can look up girls' dresses. Groups of boys
in some high schools claim tables near the line where food is purchased. Whenever
a female student walks by, they hold up a card with a number on it: one for an unat-
tractive girl and ten for a superstar. In other schools there is "Grab a Piece of Ass
Week" or lists circulate, such as "The Twenty Sluttiest Girls in School."1 2
WHAT ABOUT THE BOYS?

Given these dramatically divergent patterns, you might think that the systematic de-
molition of girls' self-esteem, the denigration of their abilities, and the demotion of
their status would yield positive effects for young boys, that boys would rise as the girls
declined. But that isn't what happens. In the elementary grades, boys are about four
times more likely to be sent to child psychologists and far more likely to be diagnosed
with dyslexia and attention deficit disorder than are girls. Beginning in elementary
school and continuing throughout their schooling, boys receive poorer report cards;
they are far more likely to repeat a grade. Nine times more boys than girls are diag-
nosed as hyperactive; boys represent 58 percent of those in special education classes
for the mentally retarded, 71 percent of the learning disabled, and 80 percent of the
emotionally disturbed. Nearly three-fourths of all school suspensions are of boys. By
adolescence, boys are more likely to drop out, flunk out, and act out in class. Their self-
esteem also drops during adolescence-not, admittedly, as much as girls' self-esteem,
but it does drop.13
These data are often used to suggest that boys, not girls, are the new victims of
significant gender discrimination in schools. After all, what happens to boys in schools?
They have to sit quietly, take naps, raise their hands, be obedient-all of which does
extraordinary violence to their "natural," testosterone-inspired, rambunctious playful-
ness. "Schools for the most part are run by women for girls. To take a high spirited
second or third grade boy and expect him to behave like a girl in school is asking too
much," comments Christina Hoff Sommers, author of The War Against Boys. The effect
of education is "pathologizing boyhood." "On average, boys are physically more restless
and more impulsive (than girls)," comments school consultant Michael Thompson.
"We need to acknowledge boys' physical needs, and meet them." While we've been
paying all this attention to girls' experiences- raising their self-esteem, enabling them
to take science and math, deploring and preventing harassment and bullying-we've
ignored the boys. "What about the boys?" asks the backlash chorus.1 4
Make no mistake: Boys' needs do merit our serious attention. We've already ob-
served the consequences of ignoring them. But the classroom is hardly the feminizing
environment that critics charged at the turn of the twentieth century as well as today.
In my classroom, women students dress in flannel shirts, blue jeans and T-shirts,
leather bomber jackets, and athletic shoes. They call each other "guys" constantly,
even if the group is composed entirely of women. The classroom, like the workplace, is
a public sphere institution, and when women enter the public sphere, they often have
to dress and act "masculine" in order to be taken seriously as competent and capable.
(I will detail this workplace process in chapter 9). A recent advertising campaign for
Polo by Ralph Lauren children's clothing pictured young girls, aged about five or six,
in Oxford button-down shirts, blazers, and neckties. Who is being feminized, and
who is being masculinized?
As we've seen, there is little evidence that boys' aggression is biologically based.
Rather, we understand that the negative consequences of boys' aggression are largely
the social by-product of exaggerating otherwise healthy and pleasurable boisterous
and rambunctious play. And it is exaggerated by boys so that they may better fit in
with other boys; they overconform to the expectations of their peers. Instead of un-
critically celebrating "boy culture," we might inquire instead into the experience of
boys when they cease being boys themselves and begin to posture and parade their
masculinity before the evaluative eyes of other boys.
At that moment we might find a psychological "disconnect," equivalent to that
observed by Carol Gilligan with young girls. Gilligan and her associates described the
way that assertive, confident, and proud young girls "lose their voices" when they hit
adolescence. It is the first full-fledged confrontation with gender inequality that
produces the growing gender gap in adolescence.15 By contrast, boys become more con-
fident, even beyond their abilities, just as girls grow less confident. Gender inequality
means that just at the moment when girls lose their voice, boys find one-but it is the
inauthentic voice of bravado, of constant posturing, of foolish risk taking and gratu-
itous violence. According to psychologist William Pollack, boys learn that they are sup-
posed to be in power and thus begin to act like it. "Although girls' voices have been
disempowered, boys' voices are strident and full of bravado," he observes. "But their
voices are disconnected from their genuine feelings." Thus, he argues, the way we bring
boys up leads them to put on a "mask of masculinity," a posture, a front. They "ruflle in
a manly pose," as the poet William Butler Yeats put it, "for all their timid heart."16
That girls "lose their voice" means that girls are more likely to undervalue their
abilities, especially in the more traditionally "masculine" educational arenas such as
math and science and the more traditionally masculine employment arenas such as
medicine, the military, or architecture. Only the most able and most secure women
take such courses or pursue those career paths. Thus their numbers tend to be few and
their grades high. Boys, however, possessed of this false voice of bravado (and many
facing strong family pressure to enter traditionally masculine arenas), are likely to
overvalue their abilities, to remain in programs though they are less qualified and
capable of succeeding. In one recent study, sociologist Shelley Correll compared
thousands of eighth-graders in similar academic tracks and with identical grades and
test scores. Boys were much more likely-remember, their scores and grades were
identical-to say, "I have always done well in math" and "Mathematics is one of my
best subjects" than were the girls. The boys were no better than the girls-they just
thought they were.17
This difference, and not some putative discrimination against boys, is the reason
why girls' mean test scores in math and science are now, on average, approaching
those of boys. Too many boys who overvalue their abilities remain in difficult math
and science courses longer than they should; they pull the boys' mean scores down. By
contrast, few girls whose abilities and self-esteem are sufficient to enable them to "tres-
pass" into a male domain skew female data upward.
A parallel process is at work in the humanities and social sciences. Girls' mean
test scores in English and foreign languages, for example, also outpace boys' scores.
But this is not because of "reverse discrimination," but rather because the boys bump
up against the norms of masculinity. Boys regard English as a "feminine" subject. The
research by Shelley Correll, for example, found that those same boys who had inflated
their abilities in math suddenly rated themselves as worse than their female classmates
in English and languages.18
Pioneering research in Australia by Wayne Martino and his colleagues found that
boys are uninterested in English because of what an interest might say about their
(inauthentic) masculine pose. "Reading is lame, sitting down and looking at words is
pathetic," commented one boy. "Most guys who like English are faggots," commented
another. The traditional liberal arts curriculum is seen as feminizing; as Catharine
Stimpson recently put it sarcastically, "Real men don't speak French."19
Boys tend to hate English and foreign languages for the same reasons that girls love
them. In English, boys observe, there are no hard-and-fast rules, but rather one ex-
presses one's opinion about the topic, and everyone's opinion is equally valued. "The
answer can be a variety of things, you're never really wrong," observed one boy. "It's not
like maths and science where there is one set answer to everything." Another boy noted:
I find English hard. It's because there are no set rules for reading texts ... English
isn't like maths where you have rules on how to do things and where there are right
and wrong answers. In English you have to write down how you feel and that's what
I don't like.
Compare this with the comments of girls in the same study:

I feel motivated to study English because ... you have freedom in English-unlike
subjects such as maths and science-and your view isn't necessarily wrong. There
is no definite right or wrong answer and you have the freedom to say what you feel
is right without it being rejected as a wrong answer. 2 0
It is not the school experience that "feminizes" boys, but rather the ideology of traditional
masculinity that keeps boys from wanting to succeed. "The work you do here is girls'
work," one boy commented to a researcher. "It's not real work." Added another, "When I
go to my class and they [other boys] bunk off, they will say to me I'm a goody goody."
One English teacher at Central High School in St. Paul, Minnesota, says she sees
this phenomenon all the time. "Boys don't want to look too smart and don't want to
look like they're pleasing the teacher," she said. "Girls can negotiate the fine line be-
tween what peers want of them and excelling at school. Boys have a harder time bal-
ancing being socially accepted and academically focused." And sociologist Andrew
Hacker notes that girls "are proving themselves better at being good students and
scholars" than boys are. "It's not in the genes," he continues. "It's almost as if being a
man and being a good student" are antithetical. Such comments echo the consistent
findings of social scientists since James Coleman's pathbreaking 1961 study that
identified the "hidden curriculum" among adolescents in which good-looking and

athletic boys were consistently more highly rated by their peers than were good
students.21
In one international study, researchers compared middle schoolers in twelve
countries and found that girls reported themselves more engaged in school and that
this engagement accounted for gender differences in academic performance. The more
engaged the students, the better they did. But what accounts for this level of engage-
ment by girls or boys' disengagement? Parental support and teacher support mattered
a little, but the absence of peer support had an independent effect on school perfor-
mance. The less peers thought doing well in school was important, the poorer students
did-regardless of what their parents or teachers thought.2 2
In fact, such sentiments echo dire warnings from the turn of the twentieth cen-
tury, when parents worried that the combination of co-education, female teachers,
and increased mothering (and father absence) was turning hardy boys into a bunch of
wimpy pantywaists. Then, as now, pundits worried that boyhood was being diluted in
a feminizing sea, and groups sprang up to rescue and defend boyhood. It was at the
turn of the twentieth century, for example, that collegiate sports were developed and
the strenuous life was proclaimed by President Theodore Roosevelt. Boys' groups pro-
liferated. One earnest reformer, Ernest Thompson Seton, was so concerned that
modern life was turning "robust, manly, self-reliant boyhood into a lot of flat chested
cigarette smokers of shaky nerves and doubtful vitality" that he founded the Boy
Scouts as a sort of boys' liberation movement to enable boys to regain that hardy boy-
ishness of the frontier.2 3 And schools, too, had to be changed. Consider this diagnosis
next to the comments of the boys in Martino's study (cited earlier) :
Literature is becoming emasculated by being written mainly for women and largely
by women. The majority of men in this country, having been co-educated by
women teachers, are unaware of this ... I call it the sissification of literature and life.
The point of view of the modern "important" novel like Ulysses is feminine in its
preoccupation with the nastiness of sex.2 4
That was written in 1927!

Gender disparities-both numerical and experiential-are also evident on college
campuses. Women now constitute the majority of students on college campuses, pass-
ing men in 1982, so today, 60 percent of all college students are female, and there are
three women for every two men at the nation's community colleges. One reporter, obvi-
ously a terrible statistics student, tells us that if present trends continue, "the graduation
line in 2068 will be all females." (That's like saying that if the enrollment of black stu-
dents at Ole' Miss was one in 1964, twenty-four in 1968, and four hundred in 1988, by 1994
there would have been no white students there.) Women now outnumber men in the
social and behavioral sciences by about three to one, and they've invaded such tradition-
ally male bastions as engineering, where they now make up about 20 percent of all stu-
dents, and biology and business, where the genders are virtually on par (figure 7.3).25
But the numbers cited by these critics just don't add up. For one thing, more
people are going to college than ever before (see figure 7.4 on page 218). In 1960, 54
percent of boys and 38 percent of girls went directly to college; today the numbers are
100 ~ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
80
Psychology
Biological/agricultural sciences
60 L~~=----- - - - -
---=---~----:;,;,;
---,;,:,:
---,;,:,:
---;,;,;,
----;,;,;,
---,;,:,:
- ,;,:,:;,;,;,~~
-----------------------------------------------
________________ Mathematics Social sciences
40 b==~=~=====~".'.'-~-""
--,,.,--.,,,-,,.,
--.,,,--,,.,--,.,:-;;;
--;,--::;-;,;
--:;;--; ;-;;
--;;--:.::-.:.:i
--
Physical sciences
Computer sciences
2o i----- ~·=···=··-=··-=-··-=--··-_---_---_---..;.:··-:::,,-:::.··--...=~;;;;;;;~=~
Engineering
o~~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~
2000 2003 2005 2007 2009 2011
Figure 7.3. Women's share of science and engineering bachelor's degrees, by field: 2000-2011.
Note: Physical sciences include Earth, atmospheric, and ocean sciences.
Sources: National Center for Education Statistics, Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, Completions
Survey; and National Science Foundation, National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, WebCASPAR
database, http:/ / webcaspar.nsf.gov. See appendix table 2- 18.
64 percent of boys and 70 percent of girls. Here is the always reliable sociologist Joel
Best (who has made a career out of explaining how to read statistics) on this manu-
factured crisis:
Does this mean that males have stopped going to college? No. Overall, the
number of males enrolled in college rose by 33 percent from 1970 to 2000. How-
ever, female enrollments rose much faster-143 percent during the same period.
Well, does it mean that a smaller proportion of males are attending college?
Again, no-male enrollments outstripped population growth (the number of
resident males in the U.S. population 15-24 increased only about 14 percent
during those years).2 6
And while some college presidents fret that to increase male enrollments they'll be
forced to lower standards (which is, incidentally, exactly the opposite of what they
worried about twenty-five years ago when they all went co-educational), no one seems to
find gender disparities going the other way all that upsetting. Many of the top colleges
and universities tilt toward higher male enrollments-like Princeton (53 percent),
Columbia (53 percent), and MIT (55 percent). Nor does anyone seem driven to distraction
about the gender disparities in nursing, social work, or education, traditionally far lower-
paid occupations than those professions where men still predominate (engineering and
computer sciences). "The idea that girls could be ahead is so shocking that they think it
must be a crisis for boys," says Sara Mead, author of a report for Education Sector, a policy
research center. 'Tm troubled by this tone of crisis. Even if you control for the field they're
Millions
25
Projected
20
15
10
Women
5 Men
0 --'-,-----,---,----,-,---,---.------.-------,----,---.----,----,----,----,-----,,---,---.------.-------,----,---.----,-----,---,---,--
1994 1999 2004 2009 2014 2019
Year
Figure 7.4. Actual and projected numbers for enrollment in all degree-granting institutions, by
sex: fall 1994 through fall 2019.
Note: Some data have been revised from previously published figures . Mean absolute percentage errors of selected
education statistics can be found in table A-2, appendix A.
Source: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Integrated Postsecondary Educa-
tion Data System, " Fall Enrollment Survey" (IPEDS-EF 94- 99) , and Spring 200 I through Spring 2008; and Enroll-
ment in Degree-Granting Institutions Model , 1973- 2008. http :/ / nces.ed .gov/ pubs2011/2011017.pdf. (This figure
was prepared April 20 I0.)
in, boys right out of college make more money than girls, so at the end of the day, is it
grades and honors that matter, or something else the boys may be doing?"27
Much of the great gender difference we hear touted is actually what sociologist
Cynthia Fuchs Epstein calls a "deceptive distinction," a difference that appears to
be about gender but is actually about something else-in this case, class or race. The
shortage of male college students is also actually a shortage of nonwhite males. The
gender gap between college-age white males and white females is rather small. But
only 36 percent oflow-income black college students are male, and only 39 percent of
low-income Hispanic students are male. (See table 7.1.)
Those who suggest that feminist-inspired reforms have been to the detriment of
boys seem to believe that gender relations are a zero-sum game and that if girls and
women gain, boys and men lose. But the reforms that have been initiated to benefit girls
in class- individualized instruction, attention to different learning pathways, new ini-
tiatives, classroom configurations, teacher training, and more collaborative team-
building efforts-have also been to the benefit of boys as well, as such methods also
target boys' specific experiences. Perhaps instead of fretting about the numbers alone,
we ought to pay attention to the effect of this gender imbalance. A UCLA higher educa-
tion professor, Linda Sax, says such a discussion should address what effect, if any, the
gender composition of a college has on men and women. To find out, she examined data
from more than seventeen thousand students at 204 four-year colleges. Preliminary
Table 7.1. How Male Representation Breaks Down by Race and Income
About 9.9 million women (57.4%) and 7.4 million men (42.6%) were enrolled in colleges eligible for federal
student aid in 2003- 2004. The percentage of undergrads (18 - 24) who are male, by race and income:
Low-income Middle-income Upper-income

(less than $30,000) ($30,000 to $69,999) ($70,000 or more)
1995- 1996 2003- 2004 1995- 1996 2003- 2004 1995- 1996 2003- 2004
White 46 42 so 43 52 49
Black 32 36 48 42 41 48
Hispanic 43 39 46 42 so 49
Asian 53 47 57 so 52 51
All 44 40 so 44 51 49
Source: U.S. Department of Education , National Center for Education Statistics, National Postsecondary Student
Aid Studies, 1995- 1996, 1999- 2000, 2003- 2004.
Income ranges adjusted for inflation to 1995- 1996 dollars .
Source: ACE Center for Policy Analysis.
results show that on campuses that were predominantly female, both men and women
got higher grades. Predominantly female campuses also led to a "significant increase"
in men's commitment to promoting racial understanding and led males to more liberal
views on abortion, homosexuality, and other social issues, her research found.2 8
And the efforts to make the classroom safer and more hospitable to girls have
also redounded to boys' benefit. Take, for example, classroom decorum. In 1940, the
top disciplinary problems identified by high school teachers were (in order): talking
out of turn, chewing gum, making noise, running in the hall, cutting in line, com-
mitting dress code violations, and littering. In 2010, the top problems were: bullying,
gang activities, abuse of teachers other than verbal, verbal abuse of teachers, sexual
harassment, cult or extremist group activities, and, last, student racial/ethnic ten-
sions.29 Challenging stereotypes, decreasing tolerance for school violence, and de-
creasing bullying enable both boys and girls to feel safer at school. Those who would
simply throw up their hands in resignation and sigh that "boys will be boys" would
have you believe that nothing can or should be done to make those classrooms safer.
To my mind, those four words, "boys will be boys," may be the most depressing words
in educational policy circles today.30
The "battle of the sexes" is not a zero-sum game-whether it is played out in our
schools, our workplaces, or our bedrooms. Both women and men, girls and boys will
benefit from real gender equality in the schools. "Every step in the advancement of
woman has benefited our own sex no less than it has elevated her" was how an edito-
rial in the Amherst College campus newspaper, the Amherst Student, put it when the
school first debated co-education at the turn of the twentieth century.31
THE GENDER POLICE

Perhaps the central mechanism that maintains gender inequality in schools is the way
we see educational success in terms of gender conformity. Consistently, when girls are
asked questions about school success, they see high achievement, ambition, and
competence as ungendered-that is, as not especially related to either masculinity or

femininity. And just as consistently, boys see any connection to school as "feminine."
To be successful in school is to be seen as not acting like a real boy. And anyone who
does that risks a lot-losing self-esteem, losing one's friends, being targeted by bullies.
It's through peer culture that students learn appropriate gender behavior. Peers estab-
lish the rules and enforce them-constantly, relentlessly, and mercilessly.
Just about every student reading this book knows that the most common put-
down in middle school and high school in America today is, "That's so gay." And every
student reading this book knows that such a statement has less to do with presumed
sexual orientation and more to do with performance of gender conformity. But don't
believe me. Here is Dave, explaining how he "knows" if a guy is gay: "If they show any
sign of weakness or compassion, then other people jump to conclusions and bring
them down. So really it's a survival of the fittest. It's not very good to be sensitive. If
you have no feeling or compassion or anything like that, you will survive." Or listen to
the words of one of my favorite gender theorists in the United States today, Eminem.
When asked in 2001 why he was always rapping about "faggots," Eminem replied that
calling someone a "faggot" is not a slur on his sexuality, but rather on his gender. "The
lowest degrading thing that you can say to a man ... is to call him a faggot and try to
take away his manhood. Call him a sissy. Call him a punk. 'Faggot' to me doesn't mean
gay people. 'Faggot' just means taking away your manhood."32
The fear of being tainted with homosexuality-the fear of emasculation-has
morphed into a generic put-down. These days, "That's so gay" has far less to do with
aspersions of homosexuality and far more to do with "gender policing"-making sure
that no one contravenes the rules of masculinity.
High schools have become far more than academic testing grounds; they're the
central terrain on which gender identity is tested and demonstrated. And unlike the
standardized tests for reading and arithmetic, the tests of adequate and appropriate
gender performance are administered and graded by your peers, by grading criteria
known only to them. Bullying has become a national problem in high schools, in part
because of the relentlessness and the severity of the torments. Verbal teasing and phys-
ical bullying exist along a continuum stretching from hurtful language through shov-
ing and hitting to criminal assault and school shootings. Harmful teasing and bullying
happen to more than one million schoolchildren a year.
In one study of middle and high school students in Midwestern towns, 88 per-
cent reported having observed bullying, and 77 percent reported being a victim of
bullying at some point during their school years. In another, 70 percent had been
sexually harassed by their peers, 40 percent had experienced dating physical vio-
lence, 66 percent had been victimized by emotional abuse in a dating relationship,
and 54 percent had been bullied. Another national survey of 15,686 students in
grades six to ten published in the Journal of the American Medical Association
(JAMA) found that 29.9 percent reported frequent involvement with bullying-13
percent as bully, 10.9 percent as victim, and 6 percent as both. One-quarter of kids
in primary school, grades four to six, admitted to bullying another student with
some regularity in the three months before the survey. And yet another survey
found that during one two-week period at two Los Angeles middle schools, nearly
half the 192 kids interviewed reported being bullied at least once. More than that
said they had seen others targeted.33
Many middle and high school students are afraid to go to school; they fear locker
rooms, hallways, bathrooms, lunch rooms, and playgrounds, and some fear even their
classrooms. They fear being targeted or bullied in hostile high school hallways. Among
young people aged twelve to twenty-four, three-tenths report that violence has in-
creased in their schools in the past year, and nearly two-fifths have worried that a
classmate was potentially violent. More than half of all teens know somebody who has
brought a weapon to school. And nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of parents believe a
school shooting is somewhat or very likely to occur in their communities.34
If bullying creates hostile high school hallways, those homosocial preserves
within the school can be even more terrifying. Clubs, sports teams, and even the
school band are plagued by increasingly dangerous and harmful incidents of hazing.
There were over one hundred hazing-related deaths on high school and college cam-
puses between 1995 and 2005. A national survey of high school students found that
hazing is ubiquitous. Nearly half (48 percent) of all students who belonged to a group
reported being subjected to hazing. Forty-three percent were subjected to humiliating
activities, and fully 30 percent performed possibly illegal acts as part of their initia-
tion. Hazing was so universal that there were virtually no groups that were safe. One-
fourth of all students involved in church groups were subjected to hazing. Substance
abuse in hazing is prevalent in high school (23 percent) and increases in college, where
over half of all hazing activities (51 percent) involve substance abuse.
Most of the kids who are targeted cope; they're resilient enough or have enough
emotional resources to survive reasonably intact. Many try valiantly, and often
vainly, to fit in, to conform to these impossible standards that others set for them.
Some carry psychological or even physical scars for the rest of their lives. Some
withdraw or become depressed, alienated, or despondent. Some self-medicate with
drugs or alcohol. And a few explode. As every adolescent knows, "doing a Colum-
bine" means exploding in a murderous rage-and taking as many classmates and
teachers as you can with you.
Between 1992 and 2006, there were twenty-nine cases of random school violence
in which a young boy (or boys) opened fire on classmates.35 All twenty-nine were
committed by boys. Contrary to many stereotypes, all but one of those cases took
place in a rural or suburban school-not an inner-city school. And all but two of the
shooters were white. Yet we seem to have missed this in all the discussion about these
school shootings. We continue to call the problem "teen violence," "youth violence,"
"gang violence," "suburban violence," "violence in the schools." Just who do we think
is doing it-girls? Imagine if the shooters in schools in Littleton, Colorado; Pearl, Mis-
sissippi; Paducah, Kentucky; Springfield, Oregon; and Jonesboro, Arkansas, were in-
stead black girls from poor families who lived in New Haven, Newark, Detroit,
Compton, or South Boston. Then we'd notice race and class and gender! We'd likely
hear about the culture of poverty, life in the inner city, and racial violence. Someone,
I'd bet, would blame feminism for encouraging girls to become violent in vain imita-
tion ofboys.36 Yet the obvious fact that these school killers were all middle-class white
boys seems to have escaped almost everyone's notice.
More startling, though, is not that they were overwhelmingly middle-class white
boys but that so many also had the same story. Virtually every single one of the shoot-
ers had a story about being gay-baited, bullied, and harassed-not every now and
then, but constantly, daily. Why? It was not because they were gay (at least there is no
evidence to suggest that any of them were gay), but rather because they were different
from the other boys-shy, bookish, honor students, artistic, musical, theatrical, non-
athletic, "geekish," or weird. It was because they were unathletic, overweight or under-
weight, or wore glasses.
Take Luke Woodham, a bookish, overweight sixteen-year-old in Pearl, Mississippi.
An honor student, he was part of a little group that studied Latin and read Nietzsche.
Students teased him constantly for being overweight and a nerd, taunted him as "gay"
or "fag." Even his mother called him fat, stupid, and lazy. Other boys bullied him rou-
tinely, and, according to one fellow student, he "never fought back when other boys
called him names." On October 1, 1997, Woodham stabbed his mother to death in her
bed before he left for school. He then drove her car to school, carrying a rifle under his
coat. He opened fire in the school's common area, killing two students and wounding
seven others. After being subdued, he told the assistant principal, "The world has
wronged me." Later, in a psychiatric interview, he said, "I am not insane. I am angry ...
I am not spoiled or lazy; for murder is not weak and slow-witted; murder is gutsy and
daring. I killed because people like me are mistreated every day. I am malicious be-
cause I am miserable."
Or recall Michael Carneal, a fourteen-year-old freshman at Heath High School in
Paducah, Kentucky. Shy and skinny, Carneal was barely five feet tall and weighed about
no pounds. He wore thick glasses and played in the high school band. He felt alienated,
pushed around, picked on. Boys stole his lunch and constantly teased him. In middle
school, someone pulled down his pants in front of his classmates. He was so sensitive
and afraid that others would see him naked that he covered the air vents in the bath-
room and was devastated when students called him a "faggot" and the school gossip
sheet labeled him as "gay." On Thanksgiving Day, 1997, he stole two shotguns, two
semiautomatic rifles, a pistol, and seven hundred rounds of ammunition and, after a
weekend of showing them off to his classmates, brought them to school hoping that
they would bring him some instant recognition. "I just wanted the guys to think I was
cool," he said. When the cool guys ignored him, he opened fire on a morning prayer
circle, killing three classmates and wounding five others. Now serving a life sentence in
prison, Carneal told psychiatrists weighing his sanity, "People respect me now."37
At Columbine High School, the site of the nation's most infamous school shoot-
ing, this connection was not lost on Evan Todd, a 255-pound defensive lineman on
the Columbine football team, an exemplar of the jock culture that Dylan Klebold
and Eric Harris found to be such an interminable torment. "Columbine is a clean,
good place, except for those rejects," Todd said. "Sure we teased them. But what do
you expect with kids who come to school with weird hairdos and horns on their
hats? It's not just jocks; the whole school's disgusted with them. They're a bunch of
homos ... If you want to get rid of someone, usually you tease 'em. So the whole
school would call them homos." Ben Oakley, a soccer player, agreed. "Nobody liked
them," he said, "the majority of them were gay. So everyone would make fun of
them." Athletes taunted Klebold and Harris and would throw rocks and bottles
at them from moving cars. The school newspaper had recently published a rumor
that Harris and Klebold were lovers.38
Actually, both boys sailed under the radar. Harris's parents were a retired army
officer and a caterer, decent, well-intentioned people. Klebold's father was a geophysi-
cist who had recently moved into the mortgage services business, and Klebold's
mother worked in job placement for the disabled. Harris had been rejected by several
colleges; Klebold was due to enroll at Arizona in the fall. But the jock culture was re-
lentless. "Every time someone slammed them against a locker and threw a bottle at
them, I think they'd go back to Eric or Dylan's house and plot a little more-at first as
a goof, but more and more seriously over time," said one friend.39
The rest is now tragically familiar. Harris and Klebold brought a variety of weap-
ons to their high school and proceeded to walk through the school, shooting whom-
ever they could find. Students were terrified and tried to hide. Many students who
could not hide begged for their lives. The entire school was held under siege until the
police secured the building. In all, twenty-three students and faculty were injured, and
fifteen died, including one teacher and the perpetrators.
Of course, these explosions are rare; most bullying victims manage to survive
reasonably intact. But the fears of being targeted, the fears that others will shun you
because of your stepping outside the boundaries of "appropriate" gender behavior, are
pervasive. Gender conformity is demanded and extracted through such fear; it is often
what keeps us in line.
THE SCHOOL AS GENDERED WORKPLACE

Just as historically women and girls were excluded from the classroom as students, so,
too, were women excluded from the profession of teaching. Remember Ichabod Crane
in Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"? In the eighteenth and nine-
teenth centuries, teaching had been seen as a respectable profession for a man. But the
mid- to late-nineteenth-century gender ideology of the "separation of spheres" meant
that women were pushed out of other arenas of work, and they soon began to see
elementary education as a way they could fulfill both their career aspirations and their
domestic functions of maternal nurturance.
This coincided conveniently with the expansion of public elementary school edu-
cation, and especially the age segregation of students. (Remember that from the six-
teenth to the eighteenth centuries, the educational norm was the one-room schoolhouse
in which all ages were schooled together.) By segregating students into age categories,
women's specific appropriateness with the younger students became apparent. Be-
sides, administrators could pay these women teachers much lower salaries than they
paid men. As a result, elementary education became "feminized." This meant that the
occupational prestige and salaries of teachers dropped, discouraging men from enter-
ing the field and ensuring that it would become even more populated by women.
Teaching was "women's work." But not, of course, school administration, which has
remained largely a masculine arena. Thus the school came to resemble every other
social institution in American society (table 7.2).
The frightful consequences were much debated at the start of the twentieth cen-
tury. Some warned of the "invasion" of women teachers as if it were the "Invasion of
the Boy Snatchers." One of the founders of American psychology, J. McKeen Cattell,
worried about this "vast horde of female teachers" to whom boys were exposed. This
had serious consequences; a boy taught by a woman, one admiral believed, would
"render violence to nature," causing "a feminized manhood, emotional, illogical,
noncombative." Another worried that "the boy in America is not being brought up
to punch another boy's head or to stand having his own punched in a healthy and
proper manner.'¾ 0
In the second half of the twentieth century, women still held most of the primary
education positions and virtually all positions in prekindergarten and special educa-
tion. In 1994, 74 percent of all public and private school teachers were women. The
number of women teachers decreases as students progress through the educational
ranks. Most male teachers end up in secondary and postsecondary educational posi-
tions, whereas most female teachers end up in elementary grades.41
The sex composition of the labor force is related to its salary structure. It is virtually
axiomatic that the greater the proportion of women in the field, the lower the salary.
Within the educational field, women continue to earn less money than men doing the
same jobs. The average female prekindergarten teacher in 1980 earned $8,390, whereas
her male counterpart earned $14,912. (Data since then are consistent.) Ninety-eight per-
cent of all prekindergarten teachers are women. As one progresses through the educa-
tional system the salary discrepancies become even more pronounced, in part because
raises are based on years of experience, and women take more time off for childbearing.
Table 7.2. The Gender of Teaching
Number (thousands) Percentage of women
Preschool and kindergarten 695 98

Elementary and middle school 3,038 81
Secondary school 1,063 57
Postsecondary 1,313 so
Special education 377 80
Other teachers and instructors 753 64
Source: Current Population Survey, 2013, http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaatl 1.pdf.
OH?
REALLY•
The "shortage" of male teachers is a major reason that boys are not succeeding
in school; boys need a good male role model.
Actually, it's a myth. In a serious empirical examination of whether the sex
of the teacher makes any difference at all, Martin Neuebauer and his colleagues
used a large-scale data set and found virtually no evidence of a benefit from having a same-sex
teacher. Other factors-like resources, class size, teacher preparation, and peer effects-are far
more important, it turns out. The sex of the teacher is far less important than how the teacher
teaches and with what sorts of resources and support.
Source: Martin Neuebauer, Marcel Helbig, and Andreas Landmann , "Unmasking the Myth of the Same-Sex Teacher
Advantage" in European Sociolgical Review, October 2011 , pp. 669-689.
Change has been more evident in higher education. A study in 1975 found that
eight-tenths of all college teachers were men; by 1989 about one-third of all college
teachers were women. But the implications of such evidence are not necessarily that
gender equity is even close to having been achieved. When ranked by quality of school,
women made up less than 10 percent of the faculty at high-prestige colleges, but nearly
25 percent at community colleges. More than two-thirds of women teach at two- and
four-year colleges; men are equally divided between research universities and all other
institutions. And the "uneven distribution of the sexes within academia," noted by
sociologist Martin Trow in 1975, continues. Men continue to dominate in the sciences,
where teaching loads are lower and the number of research and teaching assistants is
highest. For example, women make up 45 percent of all lecturers, 35 percent of all as-
sistant professors, 25 percent of all associate professors, and about 10 percent of all
professors in the sciences and engineering. By contrast, women dominate in the semi-
professions (nursing, social work, education) and those fields that require significant
classroom contact, like languages.42
And that's not all. The slight trickling down of salary increases among college
teachers has also been soaked up mainly by men. Between 1970 and 1980, female sala-
ries increased 66 percent; men's salaries increased 70 percent. In 1970, women were
making 84 percent of men's salaries; but in 1980, they were making only 70 percent.
Today, women at all ranks receive lower salaries than do men at the same rank, in the
same field, in the same department.
Women also dominate the ranks of the most populous arena of college teaching-
adjunct lecturers and instructors. Part-time instructors, victims of both an
OH?
REALLY•
Knowledge is knowledge. It doesn't matter whether the professor is male or
female. What matters is that he or she can communicate effectively.
At least that's what most of us think. But it turns out that the gender of the
professor matters in our assessments. A lot.
Benjamin Schmidt, a history professor at No rtheastern University, built some interactive
charts by analyzing the adjectives used by students in reviews on the Rate My Professor website.
What interested Professor Schmidt was the way that students evaluated how smart the professor
was: the more lofty the adjective-smart, brilliant, genius-the mo re the gender divide grew
between female and male teachers. Each step was "more strongly gendered male than the previ-
ous one was," he said.
Far more male teachers were described with adjectives like "awesome," "a star," o r "best
professor ever," while more women were described with adjectives like "disorganized," "helpful,"
"annoying," or "playing favorites." (There was no gender difference with adjectives like "easy,"
"lazy," or "inspiring.") One of the largest differences was with the word "funny"- it seems that
many students think their male professors are hilarious and their female professors have no sense
of humor.
Go ahead, try it yourself. Go to http://benschmidt.org/profGender.
Type in some adjectives and watch the chart change.
Source: Claire Cain Miller, "Is the Professor Bossy or Brilliant? Much Depends on Gender" in New York Times,
February 6, 2015 , available at http://nyti.ms/lzgUOkg.
educational glut and covert gender discrimination, currently teach about one-half of
all college classes, yet they are paid by the course, even if hired on yearly contracts,
with neither health nor retirement benefits, and with paltry salaries. Well over half of
them are women. Men are dramatically overrepresented at the top of the educational
pyramid. In 1972, fewer than 3 percent of all top-level college and university adminis-
trators were women, and the typical relationship held that the more women adminis-
trators, the lower the prestige of the school. (This was modified, but only slightly, at the
historically all-women colleges.) Only in the late 1990s, as women assumed the presi-
dencies at Duke, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, Harvard, Yale, and SUNY
at Stony Brook-as well as the presidencies at historically women's colleges like Vassar,
Smith, Wellesley, and Bryn Mawr-did this equation begin to break down.
One reason for this disparity, of course, is that just like in all other workplaces, the
efforts to balance work and family fall disproportionately on women's shoulders. At all
ranks, and in all types of educational institutions, female professors and teachers with
children spend much more time on family life (child care, care for aging parents and
relatives, housework) than do their male counterparts. 43
This disparity might help explain why so few women have risen to the ranks of the
very top positions in science and engineering at the most prestigious schools (table 7.3).
In January 2005, Lawrence Summers, then president of Harvard, set off a controversy by
suggesting that women are simply not biologically suited to put in the eighty-hour work
week required of these top-flight scientists. President Summers was soon enlightened by
scores of female scientists who explained that working eighty-hour weeks makes having
a family virtually impossible-unless one has someone else who will do it.
Just do the math. Let's assume you sleep seven hours a night (one hour less than
you should). And let's say it takes you half an hour, door to door, to get to work every
day. And let's assume that you spend two and a half hours a day getting showered and
dressed, preparing and eating all your meals, and exercising. And let's just say that
once a week you have a "date" with your spouse and have dinner, see a movie, and
maybe even make love (total five hours). That accounts for 78.5 hours. Add that to your
eighty-hour work week, and you've accounted for 158.5 hours-out of a 168-hour week.
That leaves you less than ten hours-about an hour and a half a day for reading, relax-
ing, watching television, doing housework, and spending time with your family. In
fact, the only sensible response to Summers's claim is to ask not what women can have
such a life, but rather what rational human being could possibly want to live such an
Table 7.3. Women in Science and Mathematics

Assistant professor Associate professor Full professor All ranks
Computer and 25% 17% 12% 17%
information
Physics 30% 25% 13% 22%
Biology 43% 31% 23% 37%
Mathematics 32% 28% 17% 26%
Note: Figures are for 20 I0 .

Source: National Science Foundation report, "Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and
Engineering: 2013," http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/wmpd/2013/pdf/nsfl 3304_full.pdf, p. 204.
unbalanced life. Although we often imagine education to be a more sedentary and
relaxed workplace, balancing work and family remains an obstacle to women's ad-
vancement in education-just as it does in every other workplace.
ARE SINGLE-SEX SCHOOLS THE ANSWER?

One might think that, after so many years of educational reform, and especially
attention to the differences between girls and boys, things would be getting better.
But the National Assessment of Educational Progress found that the gender differ-
ences for thirteen-year-olds actually increased in all the sciences except biology,
as boys' skills improved and girls' skills declined. One educator sadly concluded that
it is still true today that "co-educational schools are male-dominated and male-
controlled institutions."44
Simple enumeration of equality may not be the answer. One teacher told journalist
Peggy Orenstein that after learning that teachers paid more attention to boys than to
girls, she explained to the class that henceforth she was going to call on both sexes ex-
actly equally and that to make sure she did, she would hold the attendance roster in her
hand. What happened next surprised her. "After two days the boys blew up," she told
Orenstein. "They started complaining and saying that I was calling on the girls more
than them. I showed them it wasn't true and they had to back down. I kept on doing it,
but for the boys, equality was hard to get used to; they perceived it as a big loss.'¼5
(Of course, equality is virtually always seen as a loss by the privileged group. If a
teacher gives exactly equal time to heterosexuality and to homosexuality, to people of
color and to white people, to women and to men, he or she is invariably going to be
criticized as being biased in favor of the minority group. When one is used to being the
center of attention all the time, being out of the limelight for a moment or even an
hour can feel like complete rejection.)
So what is the answer? A return to single-sex schools? Some educators have
thought so. In the early 1970s, as virtually all previously all-male colleges and many
previously all-female colleges became co-educational, several studies indicated that
single-sex colleges still held significant benefits. A study by Elizabeth Tidball in 1973
looked at the educational backgrounds of women listed in Who's Who of American
Women and concluded that women's colleges with large numbers of women faculty
provided the most beneficial environment for educating women.46
Although it is true that most of the women listed in Who's Who from the 1960s
and before had gone to Vassar, Radcliffe, Bryn Mawr, Smith, and the other Seven Sis-
ters colleges, Tidball's study had several serious flaws . First, her data came from the
1960s, before any formerly all-male Ivy League and other prestigious all-male schools
were opened to women, and the actual number of women in the study was so small as
to defy efforts at generalization. Second, there were far more women's colleges at the
time-nearly three hundred in 1960, compared with just eighty-four in 1990. Third,
many of the women listed in Who's Who were there because of the accomplishments
of their fathers or their husbands; that is, they were not accomplished in their own
right, but rather only in their connection to a man-which couldn't have been the
result of attending an all-women's college. (For example, until the 1980s, most women
who were in the U.S. Senate or House of Representatives or who were governors of
states were the daughters or widows of men who had held those offices.)47
Perhaps the most glaring error in the Tidball research was that she assumed that
it was attendance at a single-sex college that led to wealth and fame. However, most of
the women who attended such prestigious colleges were already wealthy and had likely
gone to single-sex boarding schools (or at least private preparatory schools). What
Tidball had inadvertently measured was not the effect of single-sex schools on wom-
en's achievement, but rather the correlation between social class and attendance at
all-female colleges. Here was a reported gender difference that turned out not to be a
gender difference at all. Social class turned out to be the far better predictor of wom-
en's achievement than whether their college was single-sex or co-educational. Subse-
quent research found that co-educational colleges produced a higher percentage of
women earning bachelor's degrees in the sciences, engineering, and mathematics.48
There was, additionally, some evidence that men's achievement was improved by
attending a single-sex college. Again, many of these supposed gains in achievement
vanished when social class and boys' secondary school experiences were added to the
equation. In fact, when one discusses gender equality, the outcome of attending an
all-male college, according to sociologist David Riesman, is "usually unfortunate.
Stag undergraduate institutions are prone to a kind of excess." Although Jencks and
Riesman "do not find the arguments against women's colleges as persuasive as the
arguments against men's colleges," they conclude:
The all-male college would be relatively easy to defend if it emerged from a world
in which women were established as fully equal to men. But it does not. It is there-
fore likely to be a witting or unwitting device for preserving tacit assumptions of
male superiority-assumptions for which women must eventually pay. So, indeed,
must men ... [who] pay a price for arrogance vis-a-vis women. Since they almost
always commit a part of their lives into a woman's hands anyway, their tendency to
crush these women means crushing a part of themselves. This may not hurt them
as much as it hurts the woman involved, but it does cost something. Thus while we
are not against segregation of the sexes under all circumstances, we are against it
when it helps preserve sexual arrogance. 49
In short, what women often learn at all-women's colleges is that they can do anything
that men can do. By contrast, what men learn is that women cannot do what men do.
In this way, women's colleges may constitute a challenge to gender inequality, whereas
men's colleges reproduce that inequality.
Consider an analogy with race here. One might justify the continued existence
of historically all-black colleges on the grounds that such schools challenge racist
ideas that black students cannot achieve academically and provide a place where
black students are free of everyday racism and thus free to become serious students.
But one would have a more difficult time justifying maintaining an all-white college,
which would, by its existence, reproduce racist inequality. Such a place would be
more like "David Duke University" than Duke University. Returning to gender, as
psychologist Carol Tavris concludes, "there is a legitimate place for all-women's
schools if they give young women a stronger shot at achieving self-confidence, intel-
lectual security, and professional competence in the workplace." On the other hand,
because co-education is based "on the premise that there are few genuine differences
between men and women, and that people should be educated as individuals, rather
than as members of a gender," the question is "not whether to become co-educational,
but rather when and how to undertake the process."50
Single-sex education for women often perpetuates detrimental attitudes and ste-
reotypes about women, such as "by nature or situation girls and young women cannot
become successful or learn well in co-educational institutions."51 Even when supported
by feminist women, the idea that women cannot compete equally with men in the same
arena, that they need "special" treatment, signals an abandonment of hope, the inabil-
ity or unwillingness to make the creation of equal and safe schools a national priority.
"Since we cannot do that," we seem to be telling girls, "we'll do the next best thing-
separate you from those nasty boys who will only make your lives a living hell."52
In some cases, making one's life a living hell was sort of the pedagogical point.
Virginia Military Institute and the Citadel, both state-supported military-style institu-
tions, fought women's entry because, they claimed, their "adversative" educational
methodology-cadets are regimented and uniformed, heads are shaved, privacy is en-
tirely removed, and stress is intentionally induced by incessant drilling, merciless ha-
rassment, and rigid discipline-is effective only for males. Women, the schools claimed,
are "not capable of the ferocity requisite to make the program work." They are "physi-
cally weaker ... more emotional, and cannot take stress as well as men." If admitted,
VMI averred, female cadets would "break down crying" and suffer "psychological
trauma" from the rigors of the system.53 Whereas males "tend to need an environment
of adversativeness or ritual combat in which the teacher is a disciplinarian and a worthy
competitor," females "tend to thrive in a cooperative atmosphere in which the teacher
is emotionally connected with the students," was the way the Citadel's lawyers put it.54
The Citadel also argued that women's entry would destroy the mystical bonding
experience among the male cadets. One of the Citadel's expert witnesses, Major
General Josiah Bunting III (a VMI graduate who became superintendent at VMI),
suggested that women would be "a toxic kind of virus" that would destroy the Citadel.
"Adolescent males benefit from being able to focus exclusively on the task at hand,
without the intrusion of any sexual tension," he claimed.55
Instead of admitting women, VMI and the Citadel proposed funding women's
"leadership" training at nearby private, all-female colleges. Such separate programs
for men and women were not to be "separate but equal"-the fiction maintained by
segregated schools to maintain segregation, which was ruled unconstitutional in
1954-but, as VMI protested, "distinct but superior," because educational methodolo-
gies would be tuned to the needs of males and females, respectively. The Supreme
Court saw through this charade and overwhelmingly determined that these women's
programs would be but a "pale shadow" of VMI; women were admitted in 1997.
In reality, the "rigors" of the adversative system are attractive to only a small
number of men to begin with and probably to an even smaller number of women. In
autumn 2002, forty women cadets enrolled at VMI. There has also been an increase in
applications from men.
Such proposals to maintain sex segregation in education also seem to be based on
faulty understandings of the differences between women and men, the belief in an
unbridgeable chasm between "them" and "us" based on different styles of learning,
qualities of mind, structures of brains, and ways of knowing, talking, or caring.
John Dewey, perhaps America's greatest theorist of education and a fierce supporter
of women's equal rights, was infuriated at the contempt for women suggested by such
programs. Dewey scoffed at "'female botany,' 'female algebra,' and for all I know a
'female multiplication table,'" he wrote in 1911. "Upon no subject has there been so
much dogmatic assertion based on so little scientific evidence, as upon male and
female types of mind." Co-education, Dewey argued, is beneficial to women, opening
up opportunities previously unattainable. Girls, he suggested, become less manipula-
tive and acquire "greater self-reliance and a desire to win approval by deserving it
instead ofby 'working' others. Their narrowness of judgment, depending on the en-
forced narrowness of outlook, is overcome; their ultra-feminine weaknesses are
toned up." What's more, Dewey claimed, co-education is beneficial to men. "Boys
learn gentleness, unselfishness, courtesy; their natural vigor finds helpful channels of
expression instead of wasting itself in lawless boisterousness," he wrote.56 Another
educational reformer, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, also opposed single-sex
schools. "Sooner or later, I am persuaded, the human race will look upon all these
separate collegiate institutions as most American travelers now look at the vast mo-
nastic establishments of Southern Europe; with respect for the pious motives of their
founders, but with wonder that such a mistake should ever have been made."57
Although Higginson predicted correctly for the collegiate level-there are today only
three all-male colleges and fewer than half the number of all-female colleges that
there were forty years ago-there are also some efforts to revive the single-sex ideal,
at both the collegiate and the secondary levels.
The proposals for single-sex schools seem to be based either on a facile, and incor-
rect, assessment of some biologically based different educational "needs" or learning
styles or on some well-intentioned efforts to help at-risk groups (black boys or girls).
Listen to a statement from the National Association for Single Sex Public Education:
Girls and boys differ fundamentally in the learning style they feel most comfortable
with. Girls tend to look on the teacher as an ally. Given a little encouragement,
they will welcome the teacher's help. A girl-friendly classroom is a safe, comfort-
able, welcoming place. Forget hard plastic chairs: put in a sofa and some comfort-
able beanbags . . . The teacher should never yell or shout at a girl. Avoid
confrontation. Avoid the word "why" ... Girls will naturally break up in groups of
three and fourto work on problems. Let them. Minimize assignments that require
working alone. 58
I assume that most female readers of this statement will be as offended by this in-
sulting and condescending message as students in my classes were. And what does
it assume is a sound pedagogical philosophy for boys? Answer: Make the classroom
dangerous and inhospitable, seat students on uncomfortable chairs, yell at them,
confront them, and always ask why. To put it as charitably as possible, I am sure
that such organizations believe they have the best interests of children at heart.
They base their claims, though, on the flimsiest of empirical evidence and the wild-
est of stereotypical assertions. Every day, real boys and girls prove such insulting
stereotypes wrong.
In truth, the calls for single-sex schooling are based on "pseudo-science"-the
rehashing of outmoded gender stereotypes as if they were based on anything more
than anecdotal observation. In one short research note, several noted empirical
researchers made clear that single-sex schools confer virtually no academic advan-
tages, are not based on any credible evidence from brain research, and in fact may
increase gender stereotyping instead of breaking it down.59
Such proposals also mistake consequence for cause, or, perhaps better put, em-
phasize form over content. Let me ask the question this way: Which sort of school
would you choose: a really great co-educational school or a really terrible single-sex
school? Odds are you would choose the co-ed school, because you know what some
of these misguided educational reformers do not: The form of the school-co-ed or
single-sex-is less important than its content. It turns out that single-sex schools tend
to be private, small, with lots of resources, dedicated faculty, and low student-teacher
ratios-not to mention wealthier students, with better educational backgrounds. And
it is those qualities-not the single-sexedness-that yield the better outcomes.
In some sense, proposals for single-sex schools offer a resigned defeatism: Because
we cannot fix the large co-ed public schools because the resources aren't there, let's re-
treat to single-sex schools. Surely, educational policy can set the bar higher than that.
TOWARD GENDER EQUALITY IN SCHOOLS

Many school districts are experimenting with single-sex schools or single-sex
classrooms, especially to teach math and science to girls. There have been notable ex-
periments with single-sex schools for black boys in Detroit and Newark and for black
girls in New York City to teach math and science. In Detroit, for example, city officials
tried to respond to a crisis in the black community: Of twenty-four thousand males
enrolled in the Detroit public schools, only 30 percent had grade point averages better
than 2.0; boys were suspended three times more often than girls; 60 percent of the drug
offenses were committed by eighth- and ninth-grade dropouts. The city of Detroit pro-
posed an all-male academy to offer boys "self-esteem, rites of passage, role model inter-
action and academic improvement." Although these goals were worthy, many parents
objected that the project was ignoring the needs of girls, and, faced with likely lawsuits
and public opposition, the city officials withdrew the proposal. Similar programs were
canceled or withdrawn in Philadelphia and Miami, though one is still in operation in
Baltimore. President Bush also advocated some forms of single-sex schools. 60
The evidence to support such innovations is inconsistent and discouraging. In a
sense, such schools propose a "racial" or "gender" remedy for a problem of "class" -
because children, both boys and girls, would no doubt thrive in schools with lots
of resources, small classes, and fabulously trained teachers. In addition, much of the
celebrated "need" for positive role models and the excoriation of black men for aban-
doning their families take no account of the economic uncertainties that black males
face or of the economic pressures that tear families apart. Economic hope for a real
future would probably go a lot further in keeping families together and keeping boys
in school and off the streets.61
And for girls? At the new Young Women's Leadership School in Harlem,
160 middle-school girls are doing somewhat better than their counterparts at co-
educational schools. Ninety percent of them scored at or above grade level on math
tests; 63 percent read at or above grade level (compared with 51 percent and 44 percent,
respectively, for the rest of New York City). And their attendance rates exceed city
averages by 3 percent. "Our intention is to give inner-city kids a choice which in the
past has only been reserved for the wealthy and parochial school children," said Ann
Rubenstein Tisch, one of the school's founders .62
But that school is currently being opposed legally by the American Civil Liber-
ties Union and by the National Organization for Women on the grounds that it dis-
criminates against boys. And the claims of benefits are being challenged empirically
by a recent study by the American Association of University Women (AAUW), which
found that although many girls report that they feel single-sex classrooms are more
conducive to learning, they also show no significant gains in achievement in math
and science. Another researcher found some significant differences between co-
educational and single-sex classes-but only in Catholic schools, not in private
single-sex schools, and only for girls. A third researcher found no advantages of one
or the other type of school for middle-class and otherwise advantaged students but
found some positive outcomes for black or Hispanic girls from low socioeconomic
homes. "Separating by sex is not the answer to inequities in the schools," noted
Maggie Ford, president of the AAUW Educational Foundation. And Kenneth Clark,
the pioneering African-American educator, was equally unequivocal. "I can't believe
that we're actually regressing like this. Why are we still talking about segregating and
stigmatizing black males?" he asked. He should know: His research provided the em-
pirical argument against "separate but equal" schools in the U.S. Supreme Court's
landmark Brown v. Board of Education civil rights decision in 1954. 63
The findings of the only systematic study of a pilot program for single-sex schools
in California reported rather depressing results. Traditional gender stereotypes re-
mained in full effect; in fact, such schools actually perpetuated stereotypes that girls
are good and boys are bad, which should prompt some reconsideration from those
who want to "rescue" boys from meddling feminists. In the end, after three years, five
of the six school districts closed their single-sex academies. 64
TITLE IX AND ATHLETIC EQUALITY

Another arena in which gender inequality in education is today being challenged is in
extracurricular activities, especially sports. Here, girls once received the clear message
that their place was on the sidelines, cheering for the boys, whose programs received
the lion's share of funding. The passage of amendments to the Education Act of 1972
contained Title IX, which abolished sex discrimination in public schools and has
since been taken to mandate that women's sports be funded equally with men's (ex-
cluding football, which is extraordinarily expensive for schools to fund and which
virtually no women are able to play). Since then, girls' participation in interscholastic
sports has soared from three hundred thousand to nearly three million, and the in-
volvement of college-age women has expanded by more than 600 percent.65
The benefits of female participation in sports, spurred by Title IX, redound to
everyone's benefit-and for the long term as well. Sociologist Don Sabo has studied
these benefits for the past ten years and finds that female athletes are less likely than
nonathletes to have unwanted pregnancies and less likely to take drugs, smoke ciga-
rettes, or drink alcohol to excess, but are more likely to wear seat belts, to have a posi-
tive outlook on life, and to achieve higher grades.66
Predictably, this clear and unequivocal success has been met with loud and vocif-
erous criticism that adequate enforcement of Title IX programs has rendered males
the "second sex" of college sports, the new victims of reverse discrimination, because
a number of men's teams have been cut to achieve the proportionality mandated by
Title IX. The Commission on Opportunity in Athletics has offered a plan that would
dilute the law so much that it would "significantly undermine the equality that Title
IX has always stood for," according to an editorial in the New York Times.67
Such short-sighted criticism fails to note several important ways in which equality
in sports is good for both women and men. By maintaining a zero-sum approach, for
example, critics miss the ways in which both male and female sports programs are
utterly disfigured by the salaries paid to male coaches in big-revenue college sports.
When many college football and basketball coaches earn salaries-not including en-
dorsement bonuses from athletic footwear companies-that are often ten times higher
than the salary of their college's president, then clearly revenues for college sports
need not mandate the cutting of a men's team, but rather demand the reallocation of
funds throughout the entire athletic program. Simple fairness would dictate that girls
and boys have equal opportunities to participate in sports, as in the rest of their lives,
and the dramatic success of Title IX demonstrates that when such opportunities are
offered, women take them. Besides, what could be more of a benefit to a guy than a
woman who is strong and capable and appreciates the physicality of her own body?68
Across the country, state governments are mandating gender equity programs for
elementary and secondary education. These programs are designed to reduce the
obstacles that continue to stand in the way of girls', as well as boys', achievement-
the harassment and bullying from other boys and the brutal enforcement of rigid ste-
reotypes of masculine and feminine behavior by both teachers and classmates. Be-
cause the same assumptions-that males and females are so fundamentally different
that we could not possibly learn equally and together-plague both boys and girls.
Gender inequality in education produces the gender differences we assume, with del-
eterious consequences for both genders; it impairs both boys' and girls' efforts to find
their voices, discipline their minds, and prepare themselves for their futures.
KEY TERMS
Brown v. Board of Education Hazing Single-Sex Schools/
Co-education Hidden Curriculum Classrooms
"Deceptive Distinction" Separate but Equal Title IX
Gender Policing Sexual Harassment
GODIS
A______
MAN
CHAPTER
8 GENDER and RELIGION

od is a man! was the full-page headline of the a local tabloid
New York Post,
G newspaper, on June Apparently, during a Father's Day sermon, John
17, 1991.
Cardinal O'Connor, then the archbishop of New York City, had excoriated radi-
cal feminists who had suggested the possibility of a more androgynous, all-
embracing deity.'
The headline was actually a bit of a hyperbolic overstatement, typical of
the tabloid press. Actually, O'Connor had said that "in the fatherhood of the
Almighty God is, of course, all personhood, the personhood of mother and
father simultaneously." And he went on to quote a Vatican official who said that
"we are not authorized to change the 'Our Father' into an 'Our Mother.'" (That
Vatican official, incidentally, was Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, who became Pope
Benedict XVI in 2005.)
Critical reaction was nonetheless swift. Many felt that again, women were
being reminded that they were not equal in the church. One German theologian
dismissed the statement facetiously by drawing this analogy: "A donkey thinks
God is a donkey because in the eyes of a donkey, the donkey is the top of creation.
O'Connor seems to me to be a combination of a man and a theological donkey.'' 2
This little flare-up was actually only the latest skirmish in a centuries-long
struggle. In Western societies, religion has long been bound up with questions
about gender. Is God a man? Why do most of the world's great religious tradi-
tions have male prophets? What sorts of relationships does God prescribe, and
which ones does God proscribe? Do men and women have equal roles in the
various religious ministries?
Monotheistic religious traditions-Judaism, Christianity, and Islam-have
been especially concerned with gender issues. Both in theological doctrine and
234
Chapter 8: Gender and Religion 235
as a social institution, religion has, for many centuries, played a dominant role in the
idea that women and men are fundamentally different and that such difference is part
of a divine plan. From that difference, these religious traditions hold, women and men
are to perform different tasks, are assigned different roles, and are placed in subordi-
nate and superordinate positions in a hierarchy. Most simply said, religious doctrine
has been a consistent wellspring of claims of essential and eternal gender difference
and, institutionally, a foundation justifying gender inequality.
IiJ ,, ,,, I'' :n)Q IIa

We tend to think that religion is conservative when it comes to gender issues: that traditional
religious beliefs reinforce a divinely ordained separation of spheres and the subordination of
women. But what are the constellations of values and ideas, and what are their actual impact
on people's gender attitudes? Are some religions worse or better about this? Are there factors
that accentuate or minimize the way these doctrinal tenets are received? Stephanie Seguino,
an economist at the University of Vermont, has examined the effect of religion on gender
attitudes globally.
It needn't be this way, of course. One can imagine religious doctrines and rituals
that celebrate equality. Perhaps a more Buddhist notion of complementarity, of yin
and yang, heaven and earth, masculine and feminine, that values each as necessary
and equal. Or perhaps a more pantheistic understanding in which various gods, some
gendered and some not, are responsible for a wide variety of earthly phenomena.
THE HISTORICAL GENDERING OF RELIGION

Indeed, the historical record suggests that it wasn't always this way at all. In pre-
modern societies, goddesses proliferated; as far back as human societies existed there
were goddesses, especially of fertility, reproduction, and, later, plentiful harvests.
Many of the great historical anthropologists of the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries proposed that primitive matriarchies and polytheistic cultures were gradu-
ally replaced-either by conquest or contact.3 This is a matter of significant debate.
Historically, the Great Goddess was known by so many names that it is impossible
to count them all: Astarte, Anat, Anahita, Asherah, Attoret, Attar, and Au-and that's
just the "A's"! 4 There are hundreds, if not thousands, of goddesses who have occupied
the pantheon of deities throughout world history. In Female Power and Male Domi-
nance, for example, anthropologist Peggy Reeves Sanday traces the origins of male
domination in Europe and the Middle East to the triumph of sky gods over earth
goddesses-that is, the triumph of the invisible and all-powerful over the more visible,
immediate, and pragmatic.
Yet many cultures today continue to worship goddesses-with significant cross-
overs. For example, animist religions like the Yoruba in Africa have influenced religious
cult traditions in the Western hemisphere such as Voodoo and Santeria, traditions
that maintain women's spiritual power.5
Greek and Roman mythology paired up gods and goddesses, and while Zeus
thundered angrily, goddesses like Athena and Hera proved able problem solvers.
Mesopotamians worshipped Ishtar; Isis and Demeter were goddesses of law and jus-
tice in Egypt and Greece, respectively. Ancient cultures in the Near East and Middle
East routinely included fertility goddesses, who controlled life forces such as birth and
death. Some cultures even developed matriarchal religions in which the Great Mother
was the source of all life.
Many contemporary nonindustrial cultures that have been less tainted by incor-
poration into Western networks still maintain such female deities, which suggests that
seeing the female as both equal and divine answers some important cultural needs
across historical time-needs that are largely unmet in our culture, perhaps to our
detriment. For example, in South America, contemporary Andean peoples such as the
Quechua and Aymara believe in the Mother Earth Pachamama, whose worship cult is
found in rural areas and towns in Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, northern Chile, and north-
western Argentina. Andean migrants carried the Pachamama cult to cities and many
other extra-Andean places, including metropolitan Buenos Aires.
Among those religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism, which are older than
Judaism (which is the oldest of the three major monotheistic religions), there is far
more spiritual "diversity." Hinduism holds that there are many gods and goddesses
(although the practice of the religion allows for significant gender inequality). And
Buddhists don't believe in any titular "god" who stands above, but rather in the god-
like potential of all humans.6
Shaktism, the worship of the female force that animates the world, is one of the
three major sects of Hinduism. And in Tibetan Buddhism, the highest level any person
can achieve is to become like the great female Buddhas (e.g., Arya Tara), who are de-
picted as being supreme protectors, fearless and filled with compassion for all beings.
Monotheism changed all that. There has never been much of a question that the
single unitary God who first spoke to Abraham was a male God. God has had many
personalities-merciful, vengeful, fraternal helper or angry judge, patient and pater-
nal, or proud and patriarchal-but ever since Abraham heard that voice, that voice
has been male.
Can you imagine what you might have thought if Charlton Heston had gone up to
the top of the mountain in Cecil B. DeMille's epic movie The Ten Commandments and
it was a sweetly feminine voice that spoke to him from the burning bush? My guess is
that people would never have taken it seriously; indeed, even to suggest such a thing
might have been so heretical that you might have been burned at the stake.
The monotheistic assertion of a male God, and a normative code that demanded
that women be subordinate to men, had practical historical implications. It meant not
only elevating men over women, but stamping out and suppressing all those other re-
ligious traditions that posited the equality of women, celebrated women's reproductive
power as divine, or envisioned women as goddesses.
Indeed, much of the history of religion in Europe over the course of its first two
millennia has been a history of purification, of a search for finer and finer expression
of doctrinal truth through the suppression of all who might deviate from it. Many of
the norms concerning gender relations-the commandments for the subordination of
women, the deference of women to men-are not encoded into the initial scriptures,
Figure 8.1. Snake Goddess, Crete, seventh century BCE. This image is from "Goddess Tours,"
which organizes women-only tours to ancient goddess sites.
Source: Archaeological Museum, Heraklion, Crete, Greece. Anna Pakutina/Shutterstock.com.
but came along later as commentaries on it. That is to say, they are not the word of
God, but the words of mortal men, interpreting those scriptures within a specific his-
torical context.
And not all are scriptures, either. Entire doctrinal traditions have been suppressed
as heresy, including gospels that were contemporaneous to the New Testament but
suggested far more egalitarian relations between the sexes and the divinity of women.
These notions simmer just below the surface because they also suggest the eternal
human desire for equality and the elevation of women to an equal station. Most re-
cently, these ideas crept into the pop potboiler The Da Vinci Code, the tenth best-
selling book of all time (the Bible is number one). A quasi-feminist text, it turns out
that the entire Vatican hierarchy was determined to use all available methods, in-
cluding murder, to suppress the possibility that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were
more than "just friends."
Some scholars argue that as these goddess traditions were suppressed, they went
underground and reemerged as witchcraft. (The word witch means "wise one.")
Witches were often healers, ritually in charge of medicine, and midwives, in charge of
birth. These were powerful women, often independent of the rule of men (which, of
course, made them especially threatening to the consolidation of patriarchal power).
As Carol Christ writes:
The wise woman was summoned at the crises of the life cycle before the priest; she
delivered the baby, while the priest was called later to perform the baptism. She
was the first called upon to cure illness or treat the dying, while the priest was
called in after other remedies had failed, to administer the last rites ... It is not
difficult to see why she was persecuted by an insecure misogynist Church which
could not tolerate rival power.7
Women's spirituality (to which I will return later) has also been the other side of
patriarchal religions.
THEOLOGIES OF DIFFERENCE, THEOLOGIES OF INEQUALITY

Not only when it comes to the gender of God, but in so many areas the Bible and other
canonical texts are normative, prescribing the appropriate relationship between men
and women, husbands and wives, parents and children. It's estimated that four-fifths
of the Qur'an is concerned with prescribing and proscribing the appropriate relations
between women and men. 8 The Bible, both the New and Old Testaments, has a lot to
say about domestic relationships.
What is perhaps most interesting is that the sacred texts, and their prophets, are
far more equinanimous-or at least ambiguous-than their subsequent male inter-
preters have indicated. Those conflicting interpretations have provided the basis for
centuries of conflict and discord. For example, Jesus seemed equally concerned with
women as with men and made it a point to single out some women who were scorned
by others for special devotion. (One woman, Junia, is referred to in Romans 16:7 as an
apostle.) According to theologian Leonard Swidler, "Jesus neither said nor did any-
thing which would indicate that he advocated treating women as intrinsically inferior
to men, but ... on the contrary, he said and did things which indicated he thought of
women as the equals of men.''9
And Mohammed insisted that women's consent had to be obtained before
marriage-a startling reform at the time; women were also entitled to initiate divorce,
to inherit, to maintain their own property, and to exercise certain conjugal rights.
Women were also subject to the same requirements for prayer and fasting during the
holy month of Ramadan. At the same time, men were permitted to have up to four
wives (provided they could adequately provide for them), and women were subservi-
ent to men because men were to be "a degree above" women, because "God has made
one to excel over the other.'"0
It is more often in the commentaries on these canonical texts that the religious
imperative for gender inequality seems to have been most firmly instituted. It was not
inevitable, and one could imagine that such textual ambiguity might have been inter-
preted to allow for greater gender inequality. This inequality is almost universally evi-
dent in the language of the Bible. Whenever the text uses the second person, singular
or plural, it assumes the actor is male. In fact, although "you" must do this or that,
some texts go on to explain that women "may not" do them.
"We've been wandering in tbe des,r/ far forty year,. But

be'i a 11111n-wo11ld ht roer ask dir,dionsr
Figure 8.2. Peter Steiner/The New Yorker Collection/The Cartoon Bank.
So, for example, St. Paul's epistle to the Ephesians leaves no doubt about where he
stood on gender equality (itself a comment that something must have been perceived
as amiss for him to even comment on it):
Let the wives be subject to their husbands as to the Lord; because a husband is
head of the wife, just as Christ is head of the Church ... But just as the Church is
subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands.
(Ephesians 5:22-24)
And in 1 Corinthians 11:3, again, a similar theme: "The head of every man is Christ,
and the head of a woman is her husband." (Of all the apostles, Paul seemed most
obsessed with women's subordination.) Just to be sure there was no misunderstanding,
in 1998, in the wake of several decades of intense feminist campaigns, the Southern
Baptist Convention amended its official statement of beliefs to insist that a wife should
"submit graciously" to her husband and assume her "God-given responsibility to re-
spect her husband and to serve as his 'helper.' " 11
(Of course, what the religion says and what people actually do varies enormously.
For example, though the Catholic Church forbids birth control, nearly all American
Catholic women use some form of birth control. And while the man is supposed to be
the head of the household, many evangelical Christians have-and support-egalitarian
marriages.12
)
Orthodox Judaism certainly enshrines gender inequality: Women may not be

rabbis, read the Torah during worship, sing in synagogue, or lead a service.13 Indeed,
only men count toward a minyan, the quorum of ten Jews who must be present in
order to hold a prayer service. A hundred women and nine men? No service. Jewish
women may not initiate marriage or divorce, may not pray at the Western Wall (they've
been physically attacked by Orthodox men when they've tried), and there's a sort of
informal morality brigade of Orthodox men who publicly chastise women who are
dressed "immodestly" or who sit where they like on public buses. This sounds awfully
similar to the roving bands of Muslim purification groups that roamed Afghanistan
under the Taliban, enforcing its gendered code of conduct on Afghanis.
Such conflicts over the interpretations of sacred texts may be, at their heart, doc-
trinal, but they are often expressed as secular policies. For example, in the nineteenth
century, it was the Protestant clergy that led the charge against women's rights,
whether the right to vote, go to college, or enter professions such as medicine or law.
It wasn't that women should have the "right" to these activities, wrote Rev. John Todd,
but rather their divinely created frail constitutions required that they be "exempted
from certain things which men must endure."14
But on the other side, though, many Protestant ministers were among the most
fervent supporters of women's suffrage. Rev. Samuel B. May's 1846 sermon "The Rights
and Condition of Women" argued that the disenfranchisement of women "is as unjust
as the disenfranchisement of the males would be; for there is nothing in their moral,
mental, or physical nature, that disqualifies them to understand correctly the true in-
terests of the community, or to act wisely on reference to them."15
Similarly, while across Islamic societies today men are the heads of the household
and women are often relegated to the private sphere, these practices are not at all con-
sistent. In some of the world's largest Muslim countries, like Indonesia, women wear
Western clothing and are engaged in every profession. Girls go to school unimpeded,
and women and men are equally enfranchised.
In most religions, gender inequality is enshrined and enforced through a politici-
zation of the body. All the monotheistic religions prescribe some bodily practices and
proscribe others. For example, Christian men are not supposed to cover their heads,
but Christian women are-and for similar reasons. (It is probable that Christian men
were prohibited from covering their heads because Jews were required to do so, and
this differentiated them from Jews.) As Paul explained to the Corinthians:
A man indeed ought not to cover his head, because he is the image and glory of God.
But woman is the glory of man. For man is not from woman, but woman from man.
For man was not created for woman, but woman for man. (1 Corinthians 117-9)
In some more fundamentalist Islamic societies, women's bodies are to be com-

pletely concealed at all times; even if she must venture out in public in the first
place (and then accompanied by a male relative) she must remain hidden under a
burka. She may show no part of her body or face in public. Even today, women who
defy these strictures in Afghanistan risk having acid thrown on their face to per-
manently disfigure them, public shaming of themselves and their families, and
even ritual stonings.
IiJ '' ,,, 111 :n)Q I Ia

France has banned the wearing of any head covering in its public schools-a practice that
affects Muslim women and Jewish men, as well as members of other faiths. Why do people
choose to wear these religious garments in public? More important, why do they choose
to do so when their own parents and families do not? In "Veiled Submission," sociologists
John Bartkowski and Jen'nan Ghazal Read interviewed evangelical women and Muslim
women on college campuses to try to understand how they viewed gender inequality and
identity.
Men's bodies are also policed. Since the prophet wore a beard, Muslim men, these
moral enforcers believe, are required to wear a beard. Any man caught shaving could
be executed-and barbers who shaved them could have their hands cut off. (Again,
this by no means applies to all Islam; indeed, in those countries with the largest
Muslim populations, such as Indonesia, such requirements are virtually unheard of.)
One of the hallmarks of women's second-class status among Orthodox Jews has
always been the ritual cleansing. Menstruation makes women ritually unclean; for
twelve days a month-that is, about 40 percent of every month-a woman is consid-
ered unclean; anything she touches becomes impure, and she must be physically seg-
regated from men. Seven days after her menstrual cycle ends, she goes to a ritual bath
called a mikvah where she is purified and thus able to rejoin social life.
You might think that women might chafe at such elaborate and lengthy remind-
ers of their inequality. But in a fascinating study of young women who convert to
Orthodox Judaism, sociologist Debra Kaufman discovered that what might be seen
as "oppression" to an outsider might carry alternative meanings to the participants.
Women who had converted to Orthodoxy, or become significantly more orthodox,
actually valued the experience and found it "empowering." Participation, Kaufman
writes, "put them in touch with their own bodies, in control of their own sexuality,
and in a position to value the so-called feminine virtues of nurturance, mutuality,
family and motherhood."16
Another study of Orthodox Jewish women in Israel found a wide range of re-
sponses to these ceremonies of ritual purification. One woman chafed at the oppres-
sion she felt, that she had "this feeling that it is the long hands of the rabbis of hundreds
of years literally entering my body to check me." But another woman cherished her
sense of "renewal," feeling "that I enter the water as a religious person who is accepted
for who I am, without makeup, without colours: I have an intrinsic net worth, with-
out any props."
And it's a decidedly sexual power, since the mikvah purifies her for sex, and Jewish
law guarantees her rights to pleasure. One woman says:
The mikveh gives me a wonderful feeling, when I go I feel like my husband is waiting
for me like an honored guest, like he waits Friday night for the Sabbath angels ... it
makes me feel like our relationship moves to a higher level.
While another says:
A woman can also initiate physical things. It's good to say that I want this or that,
especially because the woman is supposed to enjoy. In fact, the husband is not ful-
filling his commandment of onah if you don't enjoy. So that means that if you want
sex, or whatever, then he has to agree and you have the right to ask for it.17
Actually, so, too, the veil-or hijab-among Muslim women. Some have argued that
wearing the hijab is a political statement, a statement of solidarity with other immi-
grant Muslims in more secular Western societies. Despite its denunciation as oppres-
sive by feminist women worldwide, many young Muslim women embrace the hijab as
an act of solidarity and community. For example, young Muslim women in France
refused to remove their veils in schools, despite a French law that requires all head
coverings to be removed, since education is a secular institution.
In one study in the United States, Muslim women saw wearing the hijab as an ex-
pression of their opposition to colonialism in the Middle East and an affirmation of
gender differences as prescribed by their religion. In a fascinating dissertation in my
department, one of our PhD students, Etsuko Maruoka, interviewed young Muslim stu-
dents at Stony Brook who had decided to begin to wear the veil-much to their parents'
discomfort! For them it was an act of rebellion against parents who were too eager to
"Americanize" them, as well as an act of solidarity with Muslims all over the world
(figure 8.3). But most important, Maruoka argued, it was an act of self-identification as a
minority group, as an outsider, as different. In this act of conformity, these young women
HIJAB IS BAS/t
HUIIANR/GH
O,C:--
A//Jj/JI,(' WOJIEN
Figure 8.3. Source: © Rizwan Saeed/Reuters/Corbis.
sought to differentiate themselves from their classmates, forging an oppositional iden-
tity. (On the other hand, many of these young women's parents had immigrated from
countries like Malaysia and Indonesia, where veils are virtually unheard of. Their view
of a global Islamic practice was likely the result of watching Al-Jazeera, the Saudi-
financed global Muslim television channel that promotes such a unified vision, rather
than any genuine act of solidarity with some mythic Islamic world.)18
Perhaps, as psychologist Rosine Perelberg writes, these multiple meanings at-
tached to the same activity suggest how "power can be exercised from a subordinate
position" and that such fluidity "is fundamental to both the way in which gender roles
are constructed in different societies and the respective positions from which men and
women perceive themselves.'" 9
Of course, it is the body and its pleasures that especially elicit religious passions.
I suspect that all religions require the suppression of sex for the glory of God. Yet even
here, there are many interpretations. Among Orthodox Jews, for example, women
and men are both entitled-indeed, encouraged-to experience sexual fulfillment in
marriage.
One of Christianity's innovations over Judaism was a strict repression of
sexuality. Sex was to be avoided and engaged in only for procreation. According
to St. Augustine, sex was the vehicle by which original sin was transmitted from
one generation to the next. Celibacy was promoted as a higher moral and spiritual
position. Lust is listed as among the seven deadly sins, and women (of course) are
the repositories of lust. As the infamous Malleus Maleficarum put it (this was the
church manual for witch hunting): "All witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which
is in women insatiable.''20
At the same time, Christian writers have penned best-selling Christian sex
manuals that basically say that God wants you to have great sex-as long as you are
married, heterosexual, and faithful to your spouse. This has naturally led to a cer-
tain amount of confusion among contemporary Christians. As one young man in
Lubbock, Texas, put it,
Life in Lubbock, Texas taught me two things:

One is that God loves you and you are going to hell;
The other is that sex is the most awful, filthy thing on Earth and you
should save it for someone you love. 21
Generally, that "someone you love" has to be someone of a gender different from yours.
Another of religion's hallmark elements of maintaining gender difference is to require us
to love only those of a different gender. Many religions either discourage or prohibit
homosexuality-and this is particularly true of monotheistic religions. While 60 percent
of all Americans believe that homosexuality should be accepted by society, three-quarters
of Jehovah's Witnesses (76 percent), about six in ten Muslims (61 percent), and roughly
two-thirds of Mormons (68 percent) and members of evangelical churches (64 percent)
say homosexuality ought to be discouraged.
The majority of other religious groups say homosexuality should be accepted
by society. This includes Catholics (64 percent), members of mainline churches
(65 percent), Jews (79 percent), Buddhists (82 percent), and the unaffiliated (79 percent).
OH?
REALLY•
Christians Have Better Sex
According to Pat Fagan of the conservative Christian Marriage and Religion
Research Institute, Christians have more and better sex. "We've got it more
orgasmic, more enjoyable, more frequent!" Taunting nonbelievers, he added,
"We know how to have sex much better than you do!"
His evidence for this? According to the 1992 National Health and Social Life Survey, 88 percent
of always-married people enjoy having intercourse with their current partner extremely or very
much-compared to 72 percent of divorced or separated people and 66 percent of single
people. And 84 percent of people who attend church regularly are very happy with their sex
lives, compared to 79 percent of people who never go to church. (The people who rated their
sex lives the worst, though, were the ones who went to church occasionally.)
But is that because Christians are more proficient at achieving sexual ecstasy? Or is it really
simply a matter of the ability to compare? Always-married churchgoers are likely to have had only
one sex partner in their lives, so they have little grounds for comparison, and they likely add lots
of religious meaning to it, so even if the sex itself isn't so ecstatic, they might feel more spiritually
satisfied. "Those who are monogamous have the best sex they'll ever know, because they don't
know anything else," Fagan says, admiringly.
As for the orgasm gap between the churchgoers and nonchurchgoers-well, it doesn't hold
for men, but it does for women. Perhaps that's really more about the relationship between
monogamy and trust, since women often report higher frequency of orgasm when they know and
trust their partner.
Source: Amanda Hess , "Do Christians Have Better Sex?" in Slate, July 19, 2013 , http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_
factor/2013/07 I 19/the_family_research_council_argues_that_ch ristians_have_more_orgasmic_frequent.html.
By contrast, members of historically black churches, Orthodox Christians, and Hindus

are more divided over the issue of homosexuality. For example, four in ten members
of historically black churches say homosexuality should be accepted, while 46 percent
say it should be discouraged. 22
Religiosity also tends to be associated with more negative views on gay marriage.
According to a 2011 survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life and the
Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 46 percent of Americans support
gay marriage, while 44 percent oppose it. But those with a high frequency of church
attendance oppose it by a substantially wider margin (68 percent in opposition vs.
24 percent in favor) (from Pew 2010 data). Opposition among white evangelicals, re-
gardless of frequency of church attendance, is even higher-at 74 percent. A majority
of black Protestants (62 percent) oppose gay marriage, as do an equal percentage of
Latino Catholics (42 percent). However, there has been a dramatic shift in support
among certain sects (a 5 to 10 percentage point increase in support). For example, in
2007, while only Americans without a religious affiliation had majority support for
gay marriage, today you find that those without religious affiliation (72 percent) are
joined by white, mainline Protestants (54 percent) and white, non-Hispanic Catholics
(57 percent).
100% - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
82
80%
Unaffiliated
61
60%
40%
20% ------------------------- ~ - ·-- 24 ---
13 White evangelical Protestants
0%
2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
Figure 8.4. Percent of people who favor same-sex marriage.

Source: "Changing Attitudes on Gay Marriage," Pew Research Center, Washington, DC (July, 2015)
http:/ /www.pewforum.org/2015/07129 / graphics-slideshow-changing-attitudes-on-gay-marriage/.
THE GENDER OF RELIGIOSITY

Both in doctrine and in practice, most mainstream monotheistic religions proclaim
divinely inspired gender difference and thus legitimate gender inequality. Every morn-
ing, the Orthodox Jew thanks God he was not born a woman. The Catholic declares
obedience to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Muslims read in the Qur'an,
"Men are in charge of women because God has made one to excel over the other." The
Hindu Code of Manu, V, declares that "a woman must never be free of subjugation." 23
Where, you might ask, are the women?
In the pews. One of the great paradoxes of religion is that deities, doctrines, and
institutional practices promote the naturalness of both gender difference and male
domination, and yet the majority of the faithful are female.
Logically, you might imagine that it would be otherwise: that God imagined as
male, the word of God has historically been the touchstone for assertions of gender
difference, and, perhaps even more importantly, the basic justification for gender
inequality; that religion would be a man's domain; that far more men would be
religious- since it reaffirms natural differences and props up men's domination of
women. Right?
Not so fast. In fact, women are far more religious than men. Here in the United
States, which is the most religious nation in the industrial world, virtually every-
one professes some religious belief. (The United States is the fifth most religious
nation in the world, falling behind only Nigeria, Poland, India, and Turkey.) Over
95 percent of Americans say they believe in God or some universal spirit. More than
three-fourths of women (77 percent) and just over three-fifths of men (63 percent) say
their faith is "very important" to them. Women believe in life after death by a 60-40
margin as well. 24
But when it comes to walking one's talk, women seem to do a far better job of it.
According to a 2008 survey of the American Religious Landscape, women are more
likely to identify with a particular religion and more likely to practice it. Earlier re-
search found that more women than men consider religion "important" in their lives.
More women than men pray, read the Bible, and attend religious services. Of all those
who attend church services once a week, 60 percent are female; of those who attend
more than once a week, 70 percent are female (figure 8.5). 25
On the other side of the ledger, the 2008 survey found that men are significantly
more likely than women to claim no religious affiliation. Nearly one out of every five
(19.6 percent) men say they have no formal religious affiliation, compared with
roughly 13 percent of women. Men are twice as likely to say they are agnostic or
atheist (5.5 percent compared with 2.6 percent of women).
Among Protestants and Catholics, the gender gap is about 8 percent, 54 percent-
46 percent. But that gap balloons to 20 percent (60 percent-40 percent) in histori-
cally black churches and among Jehovah's Witnesses. In historically black churches,
women often make up from 70 to 90 percent of the congregation. Turns out that
black women are the most religious of all. (Among Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and
% of women and men who...

Are affiliated
90
with a religion Have absolutely
-4--
certain belief
in God or a
80 universal spirit
79
70 - - - - - - - + - + - - - - - - ' - - - - ~ - ~ - - - - - - - - - - - -
Have absolutely
65 certain belief
Attend worship services

50 49 49 at least weekly
40 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - t -~-t---
30 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
~
0 Women
Q Men
• Gap between women and men
Figure 8.5. The spiritual gender gap.

Source: "The Stronger Sex-Spiritually Speaking," Pew Research Center, Washington, DC (February, 2009) http://
www.pewforu m.org/ 2009 / 0 2/ 26/ the-stronger-sex-Sp iritually-speaking/ .
Hindu Americans the gender gap goes the other way, ranging from a modest 4 percent
[52 percent-48 percent] among Jews to a significantly larger 22 percent [61 percent-
39 percent] among Hindus.) 26
There is some evidence in recent years that the gender gap in religion is narrow-
ing somewhat. This does not appear to be because men's religious participation is
increasing, but rather because women's is declining. Perhaps the demands of full-
time work outside the home and performing virtually all the second shift tasks of
housework and child care leave women little time to attend to the spiritual side
of things. In one recent study of former White House Fellows, researchers found that
the female alumnae were somewhat less religious than the men. The authors conclude
that high-achieving women may not benefit from religion the same way men do, or
that they don't get the same sorts of moral support as men. But these findings are
pretty unpersuasive. After all, White House Fellows are predominately male (their
survey had 362 male and 107 female respondents) and are appointed by political crite-
ria, so the alumnae interviewed were more likely to be Republicans than Democrats,
and the males who were selected might have been more likely to have been screened
for religious affiliation. (After all, many aspire to political office, and proclamations of
faith are required of all political candidates these days.) In short, so many other factors
may explain the small differences between male and female White House Fellows that
we really can't say for sure that elite status exerts such a disparate effect on religious
preference.27
However, we should not mistake small swells in the ocean for massive changes in
the natures of the tides. The level of enforcement of gender inequality varies histori-
cally. During periods of prosperity, religious structures may relax: Women may make
great strides in the public arena without religious interference, and they also may
successfully challenge doctrinal proscriptions on their religious participation. Peri-
ods of secular crisis, though, are often accompanied by fundamentalist calls to return
to basic texts, to repurify the religion from contamination by secularizing forces.
That is, during periods of prosperity, religions can turn outward and embrace others;
during crises, they turn inward and demand increasing illustrations of faithful
adherence.
The fundamentalist impulse is a sort of back to basics, a return to the tried
and true. It redraws boundaries between in-group and out-group more firmly. One
hardly "needs" fundamentalism when the old doctrines are firmly in place and
unchallenged. During those moments, fundamentalists seek to return women to their
"rightful" place as one method of solving massive confusion caused by social and
economic upheavals. Just as women and men are becoming more and more equal
throughout the world-in education, family life, the professions, or the workplace-
fundamentalists seek to remind us that the differences between women and men,
which are everywhere disappearing, are in fact indelible and fixed.28
RELIGION AS A GENDERED INSTITUTION

To a sociologist, religion is more than the codification of an ethical way of life, a set of
beliefs about the meaning of life, its purpose and its creator, or a set of spiritual prac-
tices designed to express those beliefs. It's also a social institution, an institution that
employs people, in which people have careers, earn livings, and make a most secular
life for themselves. While there may be much mystery in the actual ideas of a religion,
in a social sense, religious institutions may look like virtually any other institution.
There is significant symmetry between religious doctrine and institutional prac-
tices. Since monotheistic religions posit intractable divinely ordained gender differ-
ences, and thus justify gender inequality, their institutional arrangements often reflect
these beliefs. Because the United States accords religious institutions the freedom
to profess their beliefs and institutionalize practices based on them-within limits, of
course-our government allows religious institutions to develop their own hiring and
firing policies and to determine their own criteria for selection, hiring, and member-
ship. Thus, even though the law prohibits gender as a criterion for hiring or promo-
tion, we permit religious institutions to use gender as a criterion. However, this is not
carte blanche to practice your religion in whatever way you might want. For example,
even if your religious beliefs require that you stone adulterers or moneylenders to
death, the U.S. penal code prohibits such behavior. (So bankers can breathe a sigh of
relief, not to mention those who might be tempted to cheat on their spouse!)
Given the doctrinal beliefs of the three major monotheistic religions, then, it is not
surprising to see dramatic sex segregation in the institutional positions that women
and men occupy. (In chapter 9 on the workplace, we will discuss how sex segregation
is the primary mechanism by which gender inequality is rendered to appear as
"natural" when it is anything but.) Sex segregation is both an expression of gender
inequality and one of its chief props.
Historically, women were simply prohibited from serving as ministers, imams,
rabbis, or priests. The first female minister ordained in the United States was
Antoinette Brown, a Congregationalist, in 1853. (Antoinette Brown soon married
Samuel Blackwell, whose sister, Elizabeth, was the first woman to graduate from medical
school in the United States. Quite a family!)
Yet in recent decades, there has been significant progress in enabling women to
assume a position of greater equality. The Association of Theological Schools reports
that the percentage of women seeking master of divinity degrees in member semi-
naries has increased by more than 700 percent in thirty years and that female semi-
narians constituted 32 percent in 2002. For example, while Reform and Conservative
Judaism permit both women and gays and lesbians to be rabbis, Orthodox Judaism
prohibits both. Reform Judaism began ordaining rabbis in 1972, and there are cur-
rently over four hundred female rabbis. Different Protestant denominations permit
women to minister, and some permit gays and lesbians; other denominations pro-
scribe either women or gays and lesbians or both. The Evangelical Lutheran Church
in America says the percentage of its ordained clergy who are women doubled from
1991 to 2003, to 16 percent. The Episcopal Church began ordaining women in 1973;
today, women constitute nearly 14 percent of all priests. And among Lutherans,
nearly one in five ministers is a woman.29
Within the black church in America, only about 5 percent have female pastors,
and these are often in small, remote, or troubled congregations. And only 5 percent of
all seminary students are black women. (Two percent of all seminarians are Asian
women, and 1 percent are Hispanic women.)
By contrast, the Catholic Church has remained steadfastly opposed to the ordina-
tion of women and of gay men and lesbians. Since priests are believed to act in the
name of Jesus, they must resemble him physically: that is, they must be male. In the
mid-199os, then-Cardinal Ratzinger (who became Pope Benedict XVI) claimed that
the pope's prohibition of women's ordination was to be considered "infallible" teach-
ing, which means that it must be upheld without any debate or question as the word of
God.
The Southern Baptist Convention reversed its long-standing position in 2000 and
refused to ordain female ministers, despite the hundreds who had already been or-
dained since the practice was permitted in 1964.
Catholic clergy must also remain celibate, a vow that is not required of other
monotheistic clergy. Celibacy extends traditional Catholic teachings that sex is the
route by which original sin is transmitted from one generation to the next, so that
those who seek to represent God's will on earth must themselves renounce not their
own original sin (for all who are born are born with it), but must not transmit it to the
next generation.
Partly because of these strictures, and the devastating and embarrassing pedo-
phile priest scandal that has rocked the Catholic Church in the past decade, the
number of men becoming priests worldwide has declined significantly, from 419,728
in 1970 to 412,236 in 2013-while the number of Catholics has nearly doubled, from 653
million to 1.2 billion over the same period. Thousands of parishes have closed, and
nearly fifty thousand existing parishes have no priest. As a result, various Catholic
organizations have tried to re-masculinize the priesthood, suggesting that only "real
men"-and decidedly not gay men-are strong enough to be priests.
Intransigent resistance to the movements for gender equality and the recognition
of a diversity of sexuality puts the Catholic Church increasingly at odds with many of
its parishioners. A commission of biblical scholars appointed by the pope in the 1970s
found no scriptural foundation for the prohibition of women from the priesthood,
and a 2005 Associated Press poll found that nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of all
American Catholics believed that women should be ordained.30
90,000 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
70,000
80,000
60,000
--===========================:~:;;~~~~~~~===
50,000
40,000 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- =~ .......- ...._ ------
30,000 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
20,000 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
10,000 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
0 ---------------------------
1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015
~Total priests ~ Catholic population (in thousands)
Figure 8.6. Gap between priests and Catholics in United States.

Source: "Frequently Requested Church Statistics" accessed on September 24, 2015 from cara.georgetown.edu
Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) , Georgetown University, Washington, DC 20007.
Despite this, when Father Roy Bourgeois participated in the ordination of Janice
Sevre-Duszynska in Lexington, Kentucky, in August 2008, he was threatened with
excommunication. "Deeper than the hurt, the sadness, there's a peace that comes
from knowing I followed my conscience in addressing this great injustice," he said.31
Women's progress toward the altar has been slow but steady. The National Con-
gregations Study found that 10 percent of congregations had senior women pastors in
1998, while the 2001 Pulpit and Pew survey of American pastors found that 12 percent
were female. By 2010, one national survey found that 12 percent of all U.S. congrega-
tions had a woman senior pastor or sole ordained leader. In mainline Protestant con-
gregations the figure was 24 percent, while for evangelical congregations the number
dropped to 9 percent.32 Despite the proscriptions against women's ordination, those who
work in religious institutions almost exactly parallel church membership. At the turn
of the twenty-first century, more than three out of every five people (62 percent) who
worked in religious settings-everyone from clergy to managerial and secretarial and
even janitorial positions-were women. Women also compose more than half of all
students studying for the clergy and more than a quarter of all students studying for
advanced degrees in theology.33
What's more, in practice, even the Catholic Church's ban on female clerics
breaks down. Given the worldwide crisis in recruitment of Catholic clergy-there
are currently half the number of priests in the United States that there were in the
1960s, and there are more Catholic priests over ninety years old than under thirty-
laypeople have begun to take over ministerial functions out of expedience or neces-
sity. There are more than thirty thousand lay ministers who are serving as substitutes
in parishes that do not have regular priests-and more than four out of five of these
lay church people (82 percent) are women.34 (There are some things that the women
are not permitted to do, like administer last rites, but they can and do perform other
rituals, like communion, baptism, confirmation, and marriage.) If present trends
continue, women will probably eventually be ordained in the Catholic Church not
because of a sudden change of heart from the Vatican, but because the church will
simply have run out of men who are willing to embrace lifelong celibacy in the
priesthood.35
Finally, religious institutions in the United States serve many civic functions as
well as spiritual ones. On any given weekday, a tourist in a European church might
encounter a few dozen other tourists and one or two parishioners. But the church is
largely empty. Not so in the United States, where there is constant secular activity-
day-care programs, after-school events, maternity classes, men's groups, women's
groups, gyms and swimming pools and other recreational activities, Little Leagues,
meal service for the homeless, administration of charities, and various twelve-step
and other recovery programs, in addition to Bible study classes. And don't forget
Sunday school! Indeed, in the United States, the local church has assumed the institu-
tional role of community center (especially given the paucity oflocal municipal fund-
ing for such activities). And in the United States, it is women who maintain the
nondoctrinal components of religious institutions, running these programs, orga-
nizing all the secular functions, and arranging for the institution's upkeep and
maintenance.
PUMPING UP THE PROPHETS: RE-ENGAGING MEN IN RELIGION
The gender of religiosity poses two parallel problems. One is how to increase men's
religiosity and the other might be characterized as how to decrease women's. Well, if
not to decrease it, at least to transfer it to a domain in which women are at least the
equals of men.
One of the reasons that women are more religious than men has to do with the
fact that being observant itself is gender-coded. Stated most simply: Real men don't
pray. They don't need to. They can take care of things on their own. There is an implied
contradiction between masculinity-being in control, powerful, and king of the hill-
and religiosity, which implies service, subservience, and acknowledging that you are
not in control. Indeed, ministers have long been plagued by the question of how to
reconnect men to religious institutions. What will attract men back to the pews?
This isn't a new question. In the middle of the last century, one observer com-
mented he had never seen a country "where religion had so strong a hold upon the
women or a slighter hold upon the men" than the United States. By the turn of the last
century, Protestant ministers worried that religion had become a women's domain,
that the sentimental piety and sanctimonious moralism-churches were the spring-
boards for Prohibition, after all-were well-suited for female churchgoers, but hardly
enticing to men, who needed to steel themselves for the rigors of competition in the
urban jungle. The typical Protestant minister "moved in a world of women." Henry
James Sr., father of the great novelist, lamented that the old "virile" religion had disap-
peared and been "replaced by a feeble Unitarian sentimentality."36
Images of Jesus himself reinforced this perceived feminization of religion. In
paintings and drawings of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Jesus was
imaged as a thin, reedy man, with long, bony fingers and soft, doelike eyes, a man who
could easily counsel you to turn the other cheek and love your enemies. Such an image
was actually thought to be transformative to American men; one Methodist minister
described that transformation:
It is wonderful to see a great burly man, mostly animal, who has lived under the
dominion of his lower nature and given rein to his natural tendencies, when he is
born of God and begins to grow in an upward and better direction. His affections
begin to tap over his passion ... The strong man becomes patient as a lamb, gentle
as the mother, artless as the little child.
That is, he ceases to be a "real man." "Have we a Religion for men?" asked one dis-
gruntled guy.37
His prayers were quickly answered. A new movement was born: Muscular Chris-
tianity, a movement "to bring manliness in its various manifestations to church and to
keep it awake when it got there." Its goal was to revirilize the image ofJesus and thus
to masculinize the church. Jesus was "no doughfaced, lick-spittle proposition," pro-
claimed evangelist Billy Sunday, but "the greatest scrapper who ever lived." Books such
as The Manhood of the Master (1913), The Manliness of Christ (1900), and The Manly
Christ (1904) all sought to refashion Jesus as more Hans and Frans than girly man.
Billy Sunday was perhaps the most celebrated of these Muscular Christians.
Sunday abandoned his lucrative career as a professional baseball player to become an
evangelical preacher (he was the model for Elmer Gantry) who organized tent revivals
all across the Midwest and South (figure 8.7). These tent meetings were for men only,
and they drew effusive praise from journalists and new followers:
He stands up like a man in the pulpit and out of it. He speaks like a man. He works
like a man ... He is manly with God and with everyone who comes to hear him.
No matter how much you disagree with him, he treats you after a manly fashion.
He is not an imitation, but a manly man giving all a square deal.38
These all-male revivals celebrated Jesus as he-man with colorful language and spirited
services. Sunday proclaimed that mainstream ministers had become "pretentious,
pliable mental perverts" who were egged on by their cronies, intellectuals, who were
"fudge eating mollycoddles," and big-city fat cat capitalists ("big, fat, hog-jowled,
weasel-eyed, pussy-lobsters"). "Lord save us from off-handed, flabby cheeked, brittle
boned, weak-kneed, thin-skinned, pliable, plastic, spineless, effeminate, ossified three-
karat Christianity!" he thundered in "The Fighting Saint," his most famous sermon.
"Don't tell me about the peaceful gentle Jesus! Jesus Christ could go like a six cylinder
engine ... I'd like to put my fist on the nose of the man who hasn't got grit enough to
be a Christian."39
Such gendered evangelical fervor was part of the birth of modern society at the
turn of the last century, true, but it is revived every so often as the gender differences
in religiosity become an organizing vehicle for renewed religiosity among men. In the
1990s, several evangelical preachers made the manhood of Jesus a central element in
their ministry. "Christ wasn't effeminate," grumped Jerry Falwell. "The man who lived
on this earth was a man with muscles ... Christ was a he-man!'l!o
Figure 8.7. Billy Sunday preaching to an all-male audience. From the archives of the Billy Graham
Center, Wheaton, Illinois.
The most visible of these renewed revirilization efforts has been the Promise
Keepers, who held massive fifty-thousand- to seventy-five-thousand-men-only ral-
lies in sports stadiums (because it was where men felt comfortable gathering), where
ministers (called coaches) and their assistants (dressed in zebra-striped shirts as if
they were football referees) sought to return men to the church. Founded in 1990 by
Bill McCartney, former football coach at the University of Colorado, the Promise
Keepers are an evangelical Christian movement that seeks to bring men back to Jesus.
They heralded a more "feminine" notion of evangelical Christianity-ideals of service,
healing, and racial reconciliation-with a renewed assertion of men's God-ordained
position as head of the family and master of women. In return for men keeping their
promises to be faithful husbands, devoted fathers, and general all-around good men,
the movement's "bible," The Seven Promises of a Promise Keeper, suggests that men
deal with women this way:
Sit down with your wife and say "Honey I've made a terrible mistake. I've given you
my role in leading this family and I forced you to take my place. Now I must reclaim
that role" ... I'm not suggesting that you ask for your role back ... I'm urging you
to take it back ... There can be no compromise here. If you're going to lead you
must lead.41
Others have followed suit. Bodybuilder John Jacobs founded the "Power Team," a
group of massively muscled zealots who used a pumped-up theology as the basis for
motivational speaking. "Jesus Christ was no skinny little man," Jacobs claimed. "Jesus
Christ was a man's man." He and his acolytes performed circus feats of masculine
strength, like breaking stacks of bricks or large blocks of ice with their bare hands, to
illustrate Christ's power.42 And then there are the "JBC Men," who promised to deliver
the "shock and awe" gospel to manly men. JBC stands for "Jesus-Beer-Chips"-and
the organization provides the beer and chips! With film clips from Gladiator, Bravehe-
art, and The Matrix, these religious Rambos expound a "manly gospel," saturated with
images of redemptive violence. They promise a "shock and awe" gospel and sermons
about how "Jesus is no Mr. Rogers." (Even their website, linked military masculinity,
9-11, and evangelical Christianity.) And Seattle evangelical minister Mark Driscoll
rehearses Billy Sunday's fulminations almost verbatim. The mainstream church has
transformed Jesus into "a Richard Simmons, hippie, queer Christ," a "neutered and
limp-wristed popular Sky Fairy of pop culture that ... would never talk about sin or
send anyone to hell.'¾3 And to Driscoll, reasserting traditional gender roles-women as
utterly subservient to men-is part of God's divine plan.
And then there's Tim Tebow, the former backup quarterback for the New York
Jets (figure 8.8). A fervent evangelical Christian, Tebow became famous for kneeling in
prayer. In fact, it's called "Tebowing." One theologian suggested that Tebow had
become a cipher for both ardent evangelicals-who saw in him a charismatic leader,
the sublimely gifted athlete who was still a humble supplicant-and equally fervent
atheists, who saw in him the smug sanctimoniousness of those who are "too sure" of
their faith. Both sides watched him with growing fascination; half wanted him to suc-
ceed, the other to fail.
Of course, these efforts to re-masculinize Jesus are only partly about men and
masculinity. They suggest just how malleable are portrayals of religious prophets.
Figure 8.8. Tim Tebow "Tebows." From Donovan Schaefer, "Tebow and the Religious Body
(Politic)" in Religious Bulletin, available atwww.equinoxjournals.com/blog/2012/0 I /tebow-and-the-
religious-body-politic.
Source: Courtesy AP Images.
Don't forget that Jesus has also been portrayed as a socialist (the working-class man, a
carpenter, who organizes the working masses to rise up against their ruling-class op-
pressors) and a capitalist (Jesus was a "turnaround specialist" who motivated workers
to be a "lean, mean, marketing machine" according to the book Jesus, CEO). He's been
imagined as a white racist (the resurgent Ku Klux Klan invokes a "red blooded and
virile" man who "purged the temple with a whip" and wrestled "the continent from
savages") and a passionate advocate of civil rights and racial equality (as in the black
church).44
And while Jesus's gender identity has long been a major theme among American
Protestants, it is interesting that while the gender gap in religiosity is greater in Europe,
there have been no comparable movements to "masculinize" religion there.
Most of all, these movements and groups are responses to women- or, more ac-
curately, to women's increased equality. Katie Ladd, a liberal Methodist, offered a bit
of a historial perspective when she observed that "it's only since women have been in
church leadership that this backlash has come."
A revirilized Jesus seems necessary to re-establish the divinely ordained hierar-
chy of men over women, but only by those who feel threatened by women's equality.45
One might even say, the more equal women get, the more masculine God becomes in
the eyes of His earthly stewards.
f ll/1...iS[
"First, I'd like to blame the Lordfar causing us to lose today."
Figure 8.9. David Sipress/ The New Yorker Collection / The Cartoon Bank.
IiJ '' ,,, 111 :n)Q I Ia

Stereotypes hold that gay men aren't "real" men, but are somehow more effeminate. And
similarly, stereotypes hold that religious men are not "real" men, since they are committed to
peace, turning the other cheek, and loving their neighbors instead of killing them. (As we've
seen, the entire "Muscular Christianity" movement was an effort to masculinize religion and
make Jesus more "butch.") So how do men compensate for this slander on their manhood?
And how do gay Christian men reaffirm masculinity? Sociologist Ed Sumerau explores the
compensatory behaviors that rescue these men's sense of themselves as men.
A WOMAN-CENTERED SPIRITUALITY
There has also been significant opposition to these efforts to masculinize Jesus. Parallel
to this movement has been a feminist-inspired effort to challenge the implicit or
explicit subordination of women by citing alternative contemporaneous texts or by
reinterpreting texts or images in different ways. Throughout American history,
female-dominated Protestant sects have emerged, such as the Shakers and Christian
Scientists. For example, in the early 1970s, theologian Leonard Swidler argued that
Jesus was a "feminist" who "vigorously promoted the dignity and equality of women
in the midst of a very male-dominated society.'l46
Back in the era of Billy Sunday, feminist sociologist Charlotte Perkins Gilman
turned Muscular Christianity on its head. In an indictment of mainstream Protes-
tantism, His Religion and Hers (1923), Gilman asks a simple question: Why is it that
"neither religion, morality, nor ethics has made us 'good' "?47 Typically, theologians
would point to human fallibility: No matter how the clergy had tried to steer us toward
the path of God, we humans always seemed to manage to fall off the path. That is, it's
our fault for being so imperfect.
Gilman stands this on its head. It's not that we are imperfect, but that the religion
that has been foisted upon us has led us astray. Religion has focused on the wrong
thing-life after death instead of life before death-because, stated most simply, men
have been in charge of it. "Religion, our greatest help in conscious progress, has been
injured by coming through the minds of men alone." This is, she is quick to point out,
"not in any essential fault of the male of our races." 48 It's not that men have done this
deliberately, but that this distortion of what religion could be, should be, is the inevi-
table by-product of the great tragedy of our species-the subjugation of the female."49
Much of the book is spent detailing the calamitous consequences of what she believes
is our original sin: "Making a private servant of the mother of the race.50
Just as the sociologist Jessie Bernard had argued that there were two marriages,
"his" and "hers," so, too, did Gilman argue that there were two religions. "His" reli-
gion is preoccupied with death. Because men in prehistory were concerned with war
and hunting and competition among men, they developed a religion that revolves
around the question "What is going to happen to me after I am dead?"51 Heaven, in this
scheme, is a hypermasculine paradise. "Never a feminine paradise among them.
Happy Hunting Grounds-no Happy Nursing grounds."52 All of this justifies war,
which enables death-based religions to carry out wars with moral righteousness. "No
peace can ever be maintained in a wholly male world," she writes. "No war could ever
endure for long in a world of equal men and women."53
Against this, Gilman proposes "her" religion. Because women experience child-
birth and nurturing oflife, so their religion would be life-affirming. Such a "birth-based
religion" would pose a different framing question: "What must be done for the child
who is born?" It is the Great Mother-a somewhat mythic creation that stands as a foil
to the cavalcade of priests and saints and superordinate males who have constructed
"his" religious edifice-who is the real source of life, the origin of humanity. And the
mother, Gilman writes, is, by virtue of her experience, altruistic: "She works, not to get
but to give." And God? God is "within us," not "above us."54
And just as the Muscular Christianity of Billy Sunday echoed through the late
twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, so, too, has Gilman's anchoring of spiritu-
ality in women's concrete embodied experience as mother. In the early years of the
contemporary feminist movement, feminist theologians undertook a struggle to
emancipate women's spirituality. This endeavor had several fronts.
First, there were efforts to reinterpret traditional texts in a more favorable light.
After all, as feminist theologian Mary Daly argued in her first book, the authors of the
Bible were men of their times, "and it would be naive to think that they were free of the
prejudices of their epochs."55 Extracting the original intentions of various prophets
from the layers of interpretation by more fallible human interpreters is always tricky,
but so, too, is finding the actual textual references that point to the marked inequality
that has been imposed on those same prophets' words. And those texts often do seem
more egalitarian than some of those fallible interpretations. For example, Paul makes
a pretty radical and egalitarian case when he cautions that "there is neither Jew nor
Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one
in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28). (And you wonder how slave owners also used the
Bible to justify slavery!) If there are no distinctions, then there can be no inequality,
for the claims of inequality, as we've seen, have always rested on difference, whether
biologically derived or divinely ordained.56
Second, there were efforts to retrieve from obscurity females who had been reli-
gious leaders-prophetesses and priests, goddesses and theologians-and to retrieve
lost or suppressed texts and restore them to the central canonical doctrines. Impor-
tant texts, such as the Gnostic Gospels, as well as female prophets and priests have
been restored to prominence. Yet even this restorative move, while important histori-
cally, often fails to fully resonate with the faithful, in part because the teachings of
these women, while laudable, do not approach the rhetorical power or spiritual depth
of the original prophets.
And besides, discovering such worthies may actually distract us from the more
pressing historical questions. (This is analogous to searching for great female artists
or composers during the Renaissance and Baroque periods who were the equals of
Michelangelo and Rembrandt or Bach and Handel. Elevating Christine de Pisan or
Hildegard von Bingen does not solve the problem; indeed, it only begs the question:
What were the historical circumstances that prevented truly talented women from
becoming great composers or artists?) 57
Part of this tradition has been to look less at official doctrine or at organized reli-
gious institutions and more at the way people actually use religion, or experience the
sacred, in daily life. To take one impressive example, anthropologist Laurel Kendall
has shown how in small Korean villages, it is women who are the local shamans, bless-
ing families, offering prayers for propitious events, helping them choose auspicious
days for weddings and the like, offering potions for illness, smoothing over family
problems, and scaring away evil spirits. "The job of the Korean shaman is to seek out
the gods, lure them into houses, and bargain with them." She's part nurse-practitioner,
part family therapist, and part itinerant priest. Thus, despite a patriarchal official cul-
ture in which women are relegated to the home and official religions like Christianity,
Confucianism, and Buddhism that are male-dominated, at the daily practical level,
shamanism is the dominant religion in the country, and it is carried out entirely by
women. Here Kendall finds that shamans offer a vision of women's empowerment and
engage women in a spiritual life from which they are officially barred.58
Third have been efforts to re-envision female spirituality in more experiential
ways, to anchor a spiritual vision within the lived experience of women. Like Gilman
at the turn of the twentieth century, it is women's presumed connection to life-as
mothers-and to the Earth ("Mother Earth") that enables women to have a different,
and presumably superior, spirituality to that of men. Ecofeminism is a spiritual branch
of feminism that celebrates women's intimate connection to life-as mother-as the
potential salvation of an Earth that seems hell-bent on destroying itself. Women are
closer to the Earth, to its natural balances, its rhythms and forces, and thus better able
to realign Mother Earth with its core principles of harmony. Here is Charlene Spret-
nak, one of the pioneering ecofeminists, explaining the core of the movement's
beliefs:
Earth is a bountiful female, the ever-giving Mother, Who sends forth food on
Her surface in cyclical rhythms and receives our dead back into Her womb. Rituals
in Her honor took place in womb-like caves, often with vulva-like entrances, and
long slippery corridors. The elemental power of the female was the cultural focus
as far back as we can trace. At the moment this awe turned to envy, resentment,
and fear, patriarchy was born. Why or how we do not know ... The objective of
patriarchy was and is to prevent women from achieving, or even supposing, our
potential ... They [patriarchy] almost succeeded. 59
It may also involve a more direct and literal (or mythic) retrieval of the past. Mary
Daly, for example, espouses what she calls "Gyn/Ecology" -an essentially feminine
spirituality that invokes "the Witch within ourSelves, who spins and weaves the tapes-
tries of Elemental creation."6 0 The revival of Wicca is one such example. Wicca repre-
sents a retrieval of ancient polytheistic and naturalist theologies by women who
proudly declare themselves to be witches; they worship a Mother Goddess and focus
on the intimate connections among all living creatures.61
Feminist spirituality is more than simply a critique of a male-dominated religion
or a religious institution that justifies and legitimates male domination. It is also a
powerful testament to the human yearnings for the sacred-a realm in which all are
equal on earth and in heaven.
CONCLUSION
It's one of the great ironies of American religion that an institution that is among the
central pillars of gender inequality and male domination-whether in theological
doctrine that places men above women and demands that women remain subservi-
ent to men, institutional arrangements that enshrine sex segregation and gender
discrimination, placing a permanent glass ceiling on women's occupational mobil-
ity, or the representations of God and "his" prophets themselves-actually finds
more adherents among women than among men. Perhaps it's so "naturalized," so
taken for granted, that men feel they needn't participate to sustain their dominance.
Perhaps men aren't religious for the same reason men don't do housework: Because
they don't have to.
Feminist theologian Mary Daly explained the connection between gendered reli-
gion and our gendered society.
The symbol of the father God spawned in the human imagination and sustained
as plausible by patriarchy, has in turn rendered service to this type of society by
making its mechanisms for the oppression of women appear right and fitting.
If God in "his" heaven is a father ruling "his" people, then it is in the "nature" of
things and according to divine plan and the order of the universe that society be
male-dominated. 62
In the middle of the nineteenth century, as women began their long march for equal-
ity, the pioneering women's rights advocate Elizabeth Cady Stanton reminded women
that "the first step in the elevation of women under all systems of religion is to con-
vince them that the great Spirit of the Universe is in no way responsible for any of
these absurdities."63 Religion, she insisted, is always political, because it deals with
secular arrangements such as power, obligation, and inequality between women and
men, inequalities she called "absurdities." God, the omnipotent and infallible, may
have created the heavens and the Earth, but men are frail, fallible, and easily given to
temptation. Gender inequality is the work of men, not God.
KEY TERMS
Celibacy Original Sin Tent Revivals
Burka Prohibition Wicca
Fundamentalism Promise Keepers Witchcraft
Goddess Traditions Religiosity Women's Spirituality
Hijab Ritual Purification
Monotheism Shamanism
CHAPTER
9 SEPARATE and UNEQUAL

The Gendered World of Work
Well, Son, I'll tell you:

Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
It had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards all torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor-
Bare.
-LANGSTON HUGHES, "MOTHER TO SoN"
reud once wrote that the two great tasks for all human beings are "to work
F and to love." And it is certainly true that people have always worked-to
satisfy their basic material needs for food, clothing, and shelter; to provide for
children and loved ones; to participate in community life; as well as to satisfy
more culturally and historically specific desires to leave a mark on the world and
to move up the social ladder. So it shouldn't surprise us that virtually every soci-
ety has developed a division of labor, a way of dividing the tasks that must be
done in order for the society as a whole to survive. And because gender, as we
have seen, is a system of both classification and identity and a structure of power
relations, it shouldn't surprise us that virtually every society has a gendered
division of labor. There are very few tasks, in very few societies, that are not
260
Chapter 9: Separate and Unequal 261
allocated by gender. This doesn't necessarily imply that the tasks assigned to one
gender are less or more significant to the life of the community than the tasks assigned
to the other. One might use a variety of criteria to assign tasks, and one might deter-
mine the relative values of each in a variety of ways. Valuing women's work over men's
work, or vice versa, is not inevitable; it is an artifact of cultural relationships.
All this hardly comes as a surprise. But what might surprise contemporary American
readers is that the gendered division of labor that many have called "traditional," the
separation of the world into two distinct spheres-the public sphere of work, business,
politics, and culture and the private sphere of the home, domestic life, and child care-
is a relatively new phenomenon in American society. The doctrine of separate spheres
was not firmly established until the decades just before the Civil War, and even then it
was honored as much in the breach as in its fulfillment. Women have always worked
outside the home for both economic and personal reasons-though they have had to
fight to do so. The so-called traditional system of dads who head out to work every
morning, leaving moms to stay at home with the children as full-time housewives and
mothers, was an invention of the 195os-and part of a larger ideological effort to facili-
tate the reentry of American men back into the workplace and domestic life after
World War II and to legitimate the return of women from the workplace and back into
the home.
OH?
REALLY•
Men work longer and harder than women .
That's wrong, both globally and in the United States. Just as poor people
probably work harder and longer hou r s than rich people, so too do women
wor k longer hours than men.
Globally, the Organization for Economic Cooper ation and Development (OECD) estimates
that between one-third and one-half of all "valuable economic activity" in its twenty-six member
countries is not accounted for by measures of wages and hours. And since women do far more of
that work than men, their contribution to the economy is seriously underestimated.
Female less male unpaid working time in minutes per day, for the population aged 15-64
over the period 1998-2009.
Source: OECD, Miranda, V. (20 I I), " Cooking, Caring, and Volunteering: Unpaid Work Around the
World," OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers, No. I 16, OECD Publishing, Paris.
http:/ /dx.doi.org/ I 0. 1787/Skghrjm8s 142-en.
And what also might surprise us is that this universal gendered division of labor
tells us virtually nothing about the relative values given to the work women and men do.
And, interestingly, it turns out that in societies in which women's work is less valued-
that is, in more traditional societies in which women's legal status is lower-women do
more work than the men do, up to 35 percent more in terms of time.
THE CHANGING GENDER COMPOSITION

OF THE LABOR FORCE
Perhaps the most significant change in the relationship of gender and work is
numerical-the enormous shift in the gender composition of the labor force. In the
twentieth century, women entered every area of the labor force and in unprecedented
numbers. The impact has been enormous. In my classes I often illustrate this phenom-
enon by asking the women who intend to have full-time careers or jobs outside the
home to raise their hands. Without exception, all two hundred or so women do. Then
I ask them to keep their hands raised if their mothers have or had a full-time job or
career outside the home for at least eight years without interruption. About one-third
put their hands down. Then I ask them to keep their hands raised if their grandmoth-
ers had a full-time job or career outside the home for at least eight uninterrupted
years. Perhaps now four or five hands remain raised. In the class, one can clearly see
the differences in women's working lives over just three generations.
What would happen if I posed the same question to the men in the class? "How
many men expect to have full-time careers, outside the home, when they graduate
from college?" The very question sounds ridiculous. Of course they expect to have
careers, as did their fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers. They'd never put
their hands down, unless a distant relative was unemployed or we reach back to the
1930s Great Depression.
This experiment illustrates in miniature the dramatic change in the composition
of the labor force. The percentage of both women and men entering the labor force
increased throughout the last century, but women's rate of increase far outpaced men's.
The percent of women working rose from 20.6 percent in 1900 to 57.2 percent in 2013
(men's rates were 85 percent and 69.7 percent, respectively). Marriage and children
slowed that entry, but the trajectory is still the same. And whereas only 12 percent of
married women with children under six years old were working outside the home as
recently as 1950, nearly 64 percent were doing so in 2013.'
This dramatic increase in labor force participation has been true for all races and
ethnicities. In 2013 black women's rates (59.2 percent) were slightly higher than white
women's (56.9 percent), and Hispanic women's were slightly lower (55.7 percent) than
those of both black and white women. Among men in 2013, however, Hispanic men
had the highest rates (76.3 percent), compared with white men (70.5 percent) and black
men (63.5 percent). Even since 1970, the increase in women's participation has been
2
dramatic (figure 9.2). In the next decade, 80 percent of all new entrants into the labor
force will be women, minorities, and immigrants. Among married women, the data
are actually more startling. In 1900, only 4 percent of married women were working,
and by 1960, only 18.6 percent of married women with young children were working.
This number has tripled since 1960, so that today, over 64 percent of all married women
with children under six years old are in the labor force.3
80
75
.... .. -~---- ---- ----- --------- ....... - --- •74-_7
.. .- -
70
65
60
55
_ ,; ;
; ~'
;
,,,,.-
, -"-
.... ....
~
7
----
~- -
_.,..~
- - - - - -- '""-iii; ......
-- -- - - -
69. 9
63. 9
50 / ,- /
/
45 -/-
/
40 - -/-
35
30
1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2013
- - Women with children younger than 18
- - - - Women with children ages 6-17
- - Women with children younger than 6
Figure 9. la. Labor force participation rate of mothers, 1975-2013 percentages of women in the
labor force.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Women in the Labor Force.
80% 79%
o--.....,..___________~M~e:n_ _ _ _ __
70% - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -~ %
+35 PTS
------ +12 PTS
GENDER GAP GENDER GAP
60% ...................................................... 53%
40%-~-----~------~-------~--------~
1972 1980 1990 2000 2012
Figure 9.1 b. The labor force participation gender gap. Percentage of men and women ages 16 years
and older who are part of the civilian labor force.
Source: 'The disappearing male worker," Pew Research Center, Washington, DC (September, 2013) http:/ /www
.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/20 I3/09 /03 /the-disappearing-male-worker/.
Women's entry into the labor force has taken place at every level, from low-paid
clerical and sales work through all the major professions. In 1962, women represented
less than 1 percent of all engineers, 6 percent of all doctors, and 19 percent of all uni-
versity professors. By 1990, women made up over 7 percent of all engineers, 20 percent
of all doctors, and almost 40 percent of all university professors, and by 2013, they made
up 10.8 percent of all architects and engineers, 36.1 percent of doctors, and 47.5 percent
80
70
60
50 48.8
1::V
8 40
V
0-.,
30
• 1976
20
• 2013
10
0
Under 18 years 6-17 years, none Under 6 years, Under 3 years,
younger none younger none younger
Age of youngest child
Figure 9.2. Labor force participation rates have increased dramatically among mothers over the
past thirty-seven years.
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics.
of university professors.4 From 1970 to 1995, women's shares of doctoral degrees

jumped from 25 percent to 44 percent among whites and from 39 percent to 55 percent
among blacks. "The increasing representation of women among the ranks of managers
in organizations," writes sociologist Jerry Jacobs, "is perhaps the most dramatic shift
in the sex composition of an occupation since clerical work became a female domi-
nated field in the late 19th century."5
We've come a long way, indeed, from the mid-nineteenth century, when a young
Mary Taylor wrote to her friend Charlotte Bronte that "there are no means for a
woman to live in England, but by teaching, sewing, or washing. The last is the best,
the best paid, the least unhealthy and the most free." These changes have rippled
Try This at Home: Economic Shift

Interview your parents, grandparents, and other rela- And what about the men and the women? Odds
tives to find out what jobs your ancestors had. Go are that both women and men worked on those farms
back as far as you can. If your grandparents were or that those first immigrant relatives, both male and
born in this country, odds are that most will have female, were working to try to support their families.
been farmers in 1820 and factory workers in 1920, as If there are stay-at-home moms in your family his-
the agricultural economy was replaced by the indus- tory, in what generation did the women stop work-
trial economy. If your grandparents or parents were ing? Where was the family living? Odds are that the
immigrants, odds are that the people who immigrated women stopped working when the family moved to
were the agricultural workers. If not, it's a good bet the suburbs or small towns: Among farmers and the
they were small shopkeepers or craft workers, and urban poor, everyone worked.
when they came here they began their careers as fac-
tory workers or peddlers (sales) of some sort.
through the rest of society, gradually changing the relationship of the family to the
workplace. Gone forever is the male breadwinner who supports a family on his
income alone. What was the norm at the turn of the twentieth century now consti-
tutes less than 5 percent of all families. Forget the Cleavers, the Andersons, and the
Nelsons. Forget the Cramdens and the Nortons. And forget even Lucy, whose every
scheme to enter the work world, from the bakery to Ricky's nightclub act, ended in
disaster. Today, the norm is the dual-earner couple. And yet we don't seem to get it.
The Workplace 2000 forecast report issued during the Reagan administration, for
example, admitted that "most current policies were designed for a society in which
men worked and women stayed home."6
THE PERSISTENCE OF GENDER IDEOLOGIES

Such statements acknowledge that whereas the realities of home and workplace
have changed, our ideas about them have lagged far behind. Many Americans still
believe in the "traditional" male breadwinner/female housewife model even if our
own lives no longer reflect it-much like the way we say we believe in the individual
small shopkeeper, the mom-and-pop grocery on Main Street, as the cornerstone of
American business-even as we shop almost exclusively at Walmart, the Gap, Sam's
Club, and shopping malls. Our adherence to gender ideologies that no longer fit the
world we live in has dramatic consequences for women and men, both at work and
at home.
Since the early nineteenth century, the workplace has been seen as a masculine
arena where men could test and prove their manhood against other men in the dog-
eat-dog marketplace. Working enabled men to confirm their manhood as breadwin-
ners and family providers. The workplace was a site of "homosocial reproduction" -a
place where men created themselves as men. As psychiatrist Willard Gaylin writes:
Nothing is more important to a man's pride, self-respect, status, and manhood
than work. Nothing. Sexual impotence, like sudden loss of ambulation or physical
strength, may shatter his self-confidence. But ... pride is built on work and achieve-
ment, and the success that accrues from that work. Yet today men often seem
confused and contradictory in their attitudes about work.7
Gaylin captures a contradiction at the heart of men's relationship to the workplace: On

the one hand, it is the most significant place where men prove manhood and confirm
identity, but, on the other hand, all that breadwinning and providing do not necessar-
ily make men happy. "I have never met a man-among my patients or friends," Gaylin
writes, "who in his heart of hearts considers himself a success."8
The nineteenth-century ideal of the self-made man and the prospect of unlim-
ited upward mobility for those who worked hard enough placed men on a treadmill
of work, sacrifice, and responsibility. If a man could rise as high as his dreams and
discipline could take him, he could also fall just as far. A 1974 Yankelovitch survey
found that about 80 percent of American men were unhappy in their jobs. Another
study found that 74 percent of men said they would choose a slower career track to
spend more time with their families. "No man on his deathbed ever said he wished
he had spent less time with his family and more time at the office," as the familiar
cliche has it.
Yet why would men be unhappy in an arena whose homosociality they struggle so
hard to maintain? Part of the reason has to do with what women and men carry with
them into the workplace. Though most married couples are now dual-earner couples,
when the wife outearns the husband all sorts of assumptions might bubble up to the
surface: His masculinity may no longer be tied to being the only worker, but rather it
may be tied to making the most money to support the family. The gender ideologies
about who earns more are currently in much flux: A Newsweek poll found 25 percent
of respondents thought it unacceptable for a wife to earn more than her husband, but
35 percent of men said they'd quit their jobs or reduce their hours if their wives earned
more money. And though traditional gender stereotypes would have us believe that
women would be content to marry less attractive but financially stable men (whereas
men would be happier marrying very attractive women, without regard to finances),
50 percent of women now say that earning potential is "not at all important" in their
mate choice. Men, alas, are still drawn to the gorgeous bombshell with no earning
capacity.9
Another part of the reason has to do with what happens in the workplace. Given
the demands of corporate or factory life, men rarely, if ever, experience any ability to
discuss their inner lives, their feelings, their needs. The workplace becomes a tread-
mill, a place to fit in, not to stand out. It is a place where a man sacrifices himself on
the altar of family responsibility. Many men say they lose sight of what they're work-
ing for. Men often feel that they are supposed to be tough, aggressive, competitive-
the "king of the hill," the boss, their "own man," on "top of the heap." We measure
masculinity by the size of a man's paycheck. Asked why he worked so hard, one man
told an interviewer:
I don't know ... I really hate to be a failure. I always wanted to be on top of what-
ever I was doing. It depends on the particular picture but I like to be on top, either
chairman of the committee or president of an association or whatever.10
Most men, of course, are neither at the top of the hierarchy nor likely to get there.
Raised to believe that there are no limits, they bump constantly into those limits and
have no one to blame except themselves. And because men conflate masculinity with
workplace success, they remain unaware that the work they are doing is also produc-
ing and reproducing gender dynamics; they see it as just "work." Men, as the saying
11
goes, are "unsexed by failure": They cease to be seen as real men.

Women, on the other hand, are "unsexed by success." To be competent, aggres-
sive, and ambitious in the workplace may be both gender confirming and gender con-
forming for men, but those traits are gender nonconforming and thus gender
disconfirming for women, undermining women's sense of themselves as feminine.
Geri Richmond, a chemist, describes how she constantly battled between being "femi-
nine" and being a scientist. A high school cheerleader and chemistry whiz, she gradu-
ally shed all the trappings of traditional femininity in graduate school in order to fit
in-she threw out her dresses, nail polish, makeup, high-heeled shoes. She even tossed
out her hand lotion, out of fear that its scent would evoke femininity. 12
In the all-male workplace, women's role was to "lubricate" the male-male interac-
tions. Women performed what sociologist Arlie Hochschild calls "emotion work,"
making sure that the all-male arena was well-oiled and functioning smoothly. So, for
OH? We like successful men better than successful women.

"As a man gets mo re successful, he is better liked by men and women, and as
REALLY• a woman gets more successful, she is less liked by men and women." So wrote
Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook and author of the best-seller Lean In.
And on the surface, this seems to be true. In one famous experiment in 2003, business school
professors Frank Flynn and Cameron Anderson recruited students to evaluate the resumes of a
real-life successful Silicon Valley venture capitalist named Heidi Roizen. But for half of the stu-
dents, Heidi's name was changed to Howard; everything else remained the same. Students rated
Heidi and Howard as equally competent, but they liked Howard more. They found Heidi mo re
"selfish."
This would seem to demonstrate the persistence of gender stereotypes in our evaluation of
success. But does it? After all, these were students, looking at resumes. What about in the actual
business case?
Well, maybe not. A 2011 study of sixty thousand workers found something interesting.
When asked whom they would rather have as a boss, 54 percent had no preference: of those
who did have a preference, 72 percent wanted the male boss. But those who had female manag-
e rs did not rate them less favorably than did those with male supervisors. In other wo rds, the
preferences may exist in the abstract, where stereotypes reign, but not in real life, where real
people interact with other real people and those stereotypes break down.
In a recent CNN segment, ten years after the original one, Anderson Cooper had NYU repli-
cate the Heidi-Howard study. This time students rated the female entrepreneur more likable and
desirable as a boss. (And Frank Flynn no longer posts the original study on his website.)
Sources: Kim Elsesser and Janety Lever, '" Does Gender Bias Against Female Leaders Persist? Quantitative and
Qualitative Data from a Large Scale Survey," in Human Relations, 64(12) , pp. 1555- 1578; Eleanor Barkhorn , "Are
Successful Women Really Less Likab le than Successful Men? " in Atlantic, 2014; www.frankflynn .com.
example, women performed jobs like stewardess, office manager, cocktail waitress,
and cheerleader to make sure the male-male interactions went smoothly-and re-
mained unmistakably heterosexual. 13
If women had no "real" role in the workplace, what did they do there? The tradi-
tional idea was that women worked either because they had to-because they were
single, working class, and/or the sole economic support for their children or
themselves-or because they wanted to earn the extra pocket money ("play money")
that they, as middle-class consumers, wanted for their trifles. This often made working
women apologetic for working at all. "If the world were perfect," it pushed them to say,
"we would stay home with our children, which is, after all, where we belong and where
we would rather be." But such a position belies women's actual experience. Women
work, the political columnist Katha Pollitt writes, "because we enjoy our jobs, our
salaries, the prospect of a more interesting and secure future than we would have with
rusted skills, less seniority, less experience."14
Of course, these traditional gender ideologies have undergone significant change
as well. It's not the 195os-even in our heads. (Actually, even the 1950s weren't the
195os-that is, the reality, as we saw in the chapter on the family, hardly resembled the
sanitized image of nostalgic conservatives that has been romanticized by Hollywood.)
Take, for example, Mad Men, among the most popular television shows of the past few
years. Mad Men depicts a group of ambitious advertising executives at the very begin-
ning of the 1960s. The world is perfectly gender segregated: All the executives are male;
all the secretaries are female. (Incidentally, almost every single character is white, and
no one-either "then" or now-seems to make much of a fuss about that.) The world
of male entitlement is fully intact, and the men's sexual predation isn't considered
sexual harassment; it's just how things are. The show elicits a sort of self-congratulatory
feeling from a contemporary viewer-back in the day, we say to ourselves, they did all
sorts of things we now know to be wrong: Everyone smoked everywhere; the men
drank pretty much all day in their offices and preyed on female support staff as if
in a brothel. (One secretary's ambition to become an account executive provides a
tension-filled plotline for an entire season.) How benighted their views! How archaic!
We know better now!
But the transparently anachronistic themes only mask how today those archaic
attitudes still hold sway and how they continue to clash with the changing realities of
the work world. And that clash makes the workplace a particularly contentious arena
for gender issues. On the one hand, women face persistent discrimination based on
their gender: They are paid less, promoted less, and assigned to specific jobs despite
their qualifications and motivations; and they are made to feel unwelcome, like in-
truders in an all-male preserve. On the other hand, men say they are bewildered and
angered by the changes in workplace policy that make them feel like they are "walking
on eggshells," fearful of making any kind of remark to a woman lest they be hauled
into court for sexual harassment.
The structural backdrop to this current workplace wariness and corporate con-
fusion is one of the highest levels of workplace gender inequality in the industrial
world. That the United States manifests this gender inequality may contradict
American assumptions about freedom and equality of opportunity, but it is not so
terribly surprising because we also have among the highest levels of income inequal-
ity in general in the industrial world. According to a study commissioned by the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the difference between
the best-paid 10 percent and the lowest-paid 10 percent of all working Americans is
COMPARED to WHAT?
While the self-congratulatory nostalgia of Mad Men invites us to compare the progress made in the
American workplace since the 1960s, a glance at other countries can be both sobering and edifying.
In China, for example, old stereotypes about gender persist and hamper individual women's ability
to pursue the careers they want. One young woman, for example, is a twenty-six-year-old business
school graduate, fluent in English, Chinese, French, and Japanese. Yet in interviews she was asked
only about when she was planning to have a baby, and even though she said she was planning to wait
for at least five years, the interviewers didn't believe her. She was rejected countless times and even-
tually took a lower-paying job in the state sector.
Source: Didi Kirsten Tatlow, "Old Biases Hamper Women in China's New Economy" in New York Times,
November 30, 2010, p. A-18 .
Subtle Sexism
Gender discrimination is both structural and attitudi- Radiant devaluation: Offering exaggerated praise
nal; it's embedded both in social institutions and struc- for an accomplishment that might otherwise
tural arrangements and in our heads. Of course, the be seen as routine.
blatant forms of sexism of the 19 S0s workplace are Uberated sexism: Inviting a woman for a drink after
no longer acceptable. Gone, largely, is Don Draper's work, just like one of the boys, but then refus-
(of Mad Men) patronizing pat on his secretary's butt. ing to let her pay for a round.
But in its place has come a myriad assortment of sub- Benevolent exploitation: Giving a woman the
tle attitudes and behaviors that reproduce workplace opportunity to work on a project to get expe-
inequality. In a marvelously clever analysis, sociologist rience, but then taking all credit for the final
Nicole Benokraitis outlines several forms of "subtle product.
sexism," behaviors that may even be invisible to those Considerate domination: Making decisions for
who enact them. women about what they can and cannot han-
dle (as, for example, a new mother) without
Condescending chivalry: A supervisor withholds
letting her decide how best to manage her
useful criticism from a female employee to
time.
"protect" her.
Collegial exclusion: Scheduling meetings at times
Supportive discouragement: Discouraging a woman
when parents have family responsibilities that
from competing for a challenging opportunity
might conflict, such as 7 a.m. breakfast "net-
because she might not succeed.
working" or "team building" meetings.
Friendly harassment: Kidding a woman in public
about her appearance.
Subjective objectification: Believing that all women Source: Nicole Benokraitis, Subtle Sexism: Current Practices
fit some particular stereotype. and Prospects for Change (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1997).
wider than that in any other industrial nation. During the economic boom of the
1980s, the top 1 percent of the income pyramid received about 60 percent of all the
economic gains of the decade. The next 19 percent received another 25 percent, so
that, in all, 85 percent of all economic gains of the decade went to the top 20 percent
of the economic hierarchy. The bottom 20 percent of Americans actually lost 9 per-
cent, and the next 20 percent above them lost 1 percent. So much for "trickle down"
economics! For the bottom 80 percent of Americans, the peak earning year in the
past decades was 1973-that is, their annual incomes have since then either remained
flat or declined. According to the Congressional Budget Office, median family
income, in fact, has remained absolutely flat. Measured in 2012 dollars, median
family income in 1973 was $62,261; in 1990 it was $52,533; in 2010, it was $52,015; and
in 2014, it was $51,939. 15
Remember, also, this is average family income-and the greatest single change in
the labor force is the increasing presence of women. So this means that men's incomes
have actually declined over the past quarter-century. A thirty-year-old man in 1949 saw
his real earnings rise by 63 percent by the time he turned forty. In 1973, that same thirty-
year-old man would have seen his real income fall by 1 percent by his fortieth birthday.
These economic indicators are particularly important as the general context for gender
inequality, because they suggest that the majority of male workers have felt increasingly
squeezed in the past two decades, working longer and harder to make ends meet while
experiencing a decline in income. This increased economic pressure, coupled with in-
creased economic precariousness caused by downsizing, corporate layoffs, and market
volatility, has kept American men anxious about their previously unchallenged posi-
tion as providers and breadwinners. Indeed, male workers account for more than four
out of every five jobs lost in the current recession (since June 2008).16
I ii'',,,!'' :n)Q IIa

The dynamics of workplace inequality-wage discrimination, sex segregation, sexual
harassment-have been shifting dramatically in recent years. Women have "leaned in," and
the glass ceiling has been pushed higher. But from a bird's eye view, as sociologist Paula England
writes, progress has been "uneven" and the gender transformation of the workplace has
"stalled." This is clearly a case of "both/and" and not "either/or"-to a sociologist, what is
interesting is where things have gotten better, where progress has been frustrated, and what
dynamics have led to these arrangements.
THE PERSISTENCE OF GENDER DISCRIMINATION

IN THE WORKPLACE
For many years, the chief obstacle facing women who sought to enter the labor force
was sex discrimination. Discrimination occurs when we treat people who are similar
in different ways or when we treat people who are different in similar ways. For ex-
ample, women and African Americans are seen, legally, as "similar" in all functionally
relevant aspects relating to employment, housing, and education. Therefore, to ex-
clude one race or gender from housing, educational opportunities, or employment
would be a form of discrimination. On the other hand, people with certain physical
disabilities are seen as legally different and thus deserving of antidiscrimination pro-
tection. Treating them "the same" as able-bodied people-failing to provide wheel-
chair-accessible facilities, for example-is therefore also a form of discrimination.
In gender discrimination in the workplace, employers have historically referred
to a variety of characteristics about women in order to exclude them, for example,
women don't really want to work; they don't need the money; they have different ap-
titudes and interests. It was assumed that women either couldn't do a job or, if they
could, would neither want to nor need to do it. What these arguments share is a belief
that the differences between women and men are decisive and that these differences
are the source of women's and men's different experiences. Such arguments also
provided the pretense for justifying race discrimination in employment and educa-
tion, at least until 1954, when the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Educa-
tion of Topeka that there were no compelling differences between blacks and whites
that could serve as a qualification for equal access to employment or education.
Today, the Court holds race cases to what it calls "strict scrutiny," meaning that dis-
crimination on the basis of race is always legally suspect and that there are no legal
grounds for racial discrimination. It is discrimination to treat those who are alike-
blacks and whites-as if they were different.
This is not completely true, however, when it comes to gender. In its cases involv-
ing gender discrimination, the Supreme Court has granted only "intermediate scru-
tiny." Discrimination on the basis of gender is permissible, but only under the most
exceptional of circumstances. The basis for the discrimination may not rely on any
stereotypic ideas about the differences between women and men, and there must be a
"bona fide occupational qualification"-that is, the discrimination must be based on
some occupational requirement that either only men or only women could meet. In
federal cases, the discrimination must also be "substantially related to an important
governmental interest"-that is, it must serve some larger goal of the government.
Consider, for example, the case of a nine-year-old girl who applies to work as a
lifeguard at the beach. Denying her the job would not be a case of either gender or age
discrimination because one would equally deny the job to a nine-year-old boy, as age
is a functionally relevant category for the performance of the job. But it is extraordi-
narily difficult to demonstrate in court that the requirements of any particular job are
such that only women or only men could possibly perform that job.
One such case involved a woman who applied for a job with Trans World Airlines.
During her interview, she was asked about her marital status, her plans regarding
pregnancy, her relationship with another TWA employee, the number of children
she had, whether they were legitimate, and her child-care arrangements. In fact, that
was all she was asked at her first interview. She was not hired. The courts found that
she had been treated differently based on gender and thus had been discriminated
against. Can we even imagine the interviewers asking a male applicant those kinds
of questions?
Most legal cases of workplace discrimination have involved women bringing suit
to enter formerly all-male workplaces. One interesting recent case, however, explored
the other side of the coin. The Hooters restaurant chain was sued by several men who
sought employment as waiters in restaurants in Illinois and Maryland. Historically,
Hooters hired only "voluptuous" women to work as their "scantily clad" bartenders
and food servers. The male plaintiffs, and their lawyers, argued that such a policy vio-
lates equal employment statutes. Hooters countered that its restaurants provide "vi-
carious sexual recreation" and that "female sexuality is a bona fide occupation," citing
other all-female occupations like Playboy Bunnies and the Rockettes. Hooters wait-
resses "serve Buffalo wings with a side order of sex appeal" was the way one newspaper
columnist put it. Company spokesman Mike McNeil claimed that Hooters doesn't sell
food; it sells sex appeal-and "to have female sex appeal, you have to be female." The
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) quietly dropped its own inves-
tigation, saying it had better cases to pursue. Eventually, the case was settled out of
court, with Hooters paying $3.75 million to the men and their attorneys and adding a
few men to its staffs as bartenders-but not as waiters.17
Gender discrimination is often compounded by discrimination based on other
factors, such as race or sexual orientation. While men have higher incomes than
women in all categories-white or black, gay or straight-how these different catego-
ries of identity work themselves out is far from obvious. In a fascinating study, sociolo-
gist David Pedulla found that stereotypes about gay men being effeminate and weak
will result in discrimination against white gay men, but that these same stereotypes
might cancel out the negative stereotypes about black men being threatening and
criminal. In this way, racial stereotypes conflict with homophobic stereotypes, and
actually may provide a small advantage to black gay men over either white gay men or
black heterosexual men.18
SEX SEGREGATION
Outright gender discrimination is extremely difficult to justify. But far more subtle
and pervasive mechanisms maintain gender inequality. Perhaps the most ubiquitous
of these is sex segregation. Sex segregation, writes sociologist Barbara Reskin, "refers
to women's and men's concentration in different occupations, industries, jobs, and
levels in workplace hierarchies." Thus sex segregation becomes, itself, a "sexual divi-
sion of paid labor in which men and women do different tasks, or the same tasks under
different names or at different times and places." Different occupations are seen as
more appropriate for one gender or the other, and thus women and men are guided,
pushed, or occasionally shoved into specific positions. 19
In fact, sex segregation in the workplace is so pervasive that it appears to be the
natural order of things, the simple expression of women's and men's natural predispo-
sitions. In that sense, it's more subtle than some garment factories in Bangladesh,
where male and female workers actually work on different floors to ensure no contact
between them. In the United States, it appears to be the result of our "natural" differ-
ences; but, as we have seen before, these differences are themselves the consequence of
segregation. Today, fewer than 10 percent of all Americans have a coworker or a col-
league of the other sex who does the same job, for the same employer, in the same loca-
tion, on the same shift. Though almost equal numbers of women and men go off to
work every morning, we do not go together to the same place, nor do we have the same
jobs. In fact, of the nearly sixty-six million women in the labor force in the United
States, 30 percent worked in just 10 of the 503 "occupations" listed by the U.S. Census.
Or, to put it another way, more than 52 percent of all women or of all men would have
to change their jobs for the occupational distribution to be completely integrated.2°
Sex segregation starts early and continues throughout our work lives. And it has
significant consequences for incomes and experiences. I frequently ask my students how
many of them have worked as babysitters. Typically, at least two-thirds of the women say
they have, and occasionally one or two men say they have. How much do they earn?
They average about $4 to $5 an hour, typically earning $20 for an afternoon or evening.
When I ask how many of them have earned extra money by mowing lawns or shoveling
snow, though, the gender division is reversed. Most of the men, but only an occasional
woman, say they had those jobs and typically earned about $20-$25 per house-or about
$100 a day. And although it is true that shoveling snow or mowing lawns requires far
more physical exertion than babysitting, babysitting also requires specific social, mental,
and nurturing skills, caring and feeding, and the ability to respond quickly in a crisis.
And in most societies, ours included, it is hardly the menial physical laborers who are
paid the most (think of the difference between corporate executives and professional
lawn mowers). In fact, when grown-ups do these jobs-professional baby nursing or
lawn maintenance-their incomes are roughly similar. What determines the differences
in wages for these two after-school jobs has far less to do with the intrinsic properties of
the jobs and far more to do with the gender of who performs them. That we see the
disparities as having to do with something other than gender is exactly the way in which
occupational sex segregation obscures gender discrimination.
The impact of sex segregation on income remains just as profound as the differ-
ences between babysitting and snow-shoveling for the rest of our lives. Job segregation
by sex is the single largest cause of the pay gap between the sexes (tables 9.1 and 9.2).
Consider that in 2013, while women represented just over 44 percent of all workers
in the civilian labor force, they were 32.7 percent of all dentists; 34.8 percent of all
lawyers and 38.8 percent of all judges; 13 percent of all police officers; 3-1 percent of all
firefighters; 4 .2 percent of all workers in natural resources, construction, and mainte-
nance occupations; and 36.1 percent of all physicians and surgeons. On the other hand,
women were also 94.7 percent of all secretaries, 91 percent of all nurses, 93 percent of
all child-care workers, 75.3 percent of all teachers (excluding college and university),
and 80-4 percent of all data entry keyboard operators.21 Almost half of all female
employees today work in occupations that are more than 75 percent female. And yet
all of these represent significant improvements since 1990.2 2
Explanations of sex segregation often rely on the qualities of male and female job
seekers. Because of differential socialization, women and men are likely to seek differ-
ent kinds of jobs for different reasons. However, socialization alone is not sufficient as
an explanation. "Socialization cannot explain why a sex-segregated labor market
emerged, why each sex is allocated to particular types of occupations, and why the sex
typing of occupations changes in particular ways over time." Instead, we need to think
of sex segregation as the outcome of several factors-"on the differential socialization
of young men and women, sex-typed tracking in the educational system, and sex-
linked social control at the workplace, at the hiring stage and beyond."23
If sex segregation were simply the product of socialized differences between
women and men, we should expect that professions would have roughly comparable
gender distributions in other cities or countries. But they do not. For example, in
New York City, there are only 44 women out of 10,500 firefighters, or -4 percent of the
force. In Minneapolis, 17 percent of the firefighters are women. New York lags behind
San Francisco (15 percent) and Seattle (8 percent) and is actually less than one-tenth
the national average of 4.5 percent. (Minorities don't fare that much better: The na-
tional averages for Latinos [9.3 percent], African Americans [7.1 percent] and Asian
Americans [.7 percent] remain markedly low.)24
Or take dentists. In the United States, dentistry is a male-dominated profession
(figure 9.3); in Europe, most dentists are female. In Russia, about half of all doctors are
women and have been for some time. Assuming that European and Russian women
and men are roughly similar to North American women and men, you would expect
the gender composition of dentistry or medicine to be similar.
This leads to another consequence of sex segregation: wage differentials. Profes-
sions that are male dominated tend to have higher wages; professions that are female
dominated tend to have lower wages. And though one might be tempted to explain this
by the characteristics of the job, it turns out that the gender composition of the position
is actually a better predictor. Again, take dentists. In the United States, dentistry sits
near the top of the income pyramid. In Europe, the income level of dentists is about
average. This difference has nothing to do with the practice of dentistry, which is,
Table 9.1. The Ten Most Common Occupations for Women (Highest Percentage of Workers
Who Are Female, Full-time Workers Only), 2013
Share of Share of
male female
workers in workers in
Men's Women's Women's Share of occupation occupation
median median earning as female as percent as percent
weekly weekly percent of workers in of all male of all female
earning earning men's occupation workers workers
$860 $706 82. 1% 44.4% 100% 100%
All female workers

(46,268 ,000)
Elementary and
middle school
teachers $1,025 $937 91.4% 80.1% 0.9% 4.6%
Secretaries and
administrative
assistants $772 $677 87.7% 94.6% 0.2% 4.6%
Registered
nurses $1,236 $1,086 87.9% 88 .8% 0.4% 4.4%
Nursing,
psychiatric,
and home
health aides $499 $450 90.2% 86.6% 0.3% 2.6%
Customer
service
representatives $639 $616 96.4% 66.1% 0.9% 2.3%
First-line
supervisors
of retail sales
workers $778 $612 78.7% 42.3% 2.3% 2.1%
Accountants
and auditors $1,268 $1,029 81.2% 62.3% 1.0% 2.0%
Cashiers $426 $379 89.0% 69.0% 0.7% 2.0%
First-line
supervisors
of offices and
administrative
support
workers $846 $748 88.4% 67.7% 0.7% 1.8%
Receptionists
and information
clerks $600 $527 87.8% 91.9% 0.1% 1.8%
Sum 7.6% 28.2%
Source: U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics. 2013. "Household Data Annual Average.
Table 39." http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat39.htm (retrieved November 2014).
Table 9.2. The Ten Most Common Occupations for Men (Highest Percentage of Workers
Who Are Male, Full-time Workers Only), 2013
Share Share of
of male female
workers in workers in
Men's Women's Women's Share of occupation occupation
median median earning as female as percent as percent
weekly weekly percent of workers in of all male of all female
earning earning men's occupation workers workers
$860 $706 82.1% 44.4% 100% 100%
All male workers

(57,994,000)
Driver/sales
workers and
truck drivers $738 $583 79.0% 4. 1% 4 .3% 0.2%
First-line
supervisors of
retail sales
workers $778 $612 78 .7% 42 .3% 2.3% 2. 1%
Janitors and
building cleaners $517 $418 80.9% 27.4% 1.9% 0.9%
Retail
salespersons $719 $485 67.5% 40.3% 1.9% 1.6%
Construction
laborers $592 2.7% 1.8% 0. 1%
Laborers and
freight, stock,
and material
movers, hand $524 $421 80.3% 17.3% 1.8% 0.5%
Software
developers,
applications and
systems
software $1,737 $ 1,370 78.9% 19.8% 1.5% 0.5%
Sales
representatives ,
wholesale and
manufacturing $1,131 $859 76.0% 22 .8% 1.4% 0.5%
Cooks $411 $382 92.9% 34.6% 1.4% 0.9%
Grounds
maintenance
workers $441 3.9% 1.3% 0. 1%
Sum 19.6% 7.3%
Note: Dash indicates no data or data that do not meet publication criteria (values not shown where base
is less than 50,000).
Source: U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics . 2013 . "Household Data Annual Average .
Table 39." http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat39.htm (retrieved November 2014).
Female
27%
Male
73%
Figure 9.3. Percentage distribution of all professionally active dentists in the United States by
gender, 2013.
Source: American Dental Association, Health Policy Institute analysis of ADA masterfile. Copyright © 2015
American Dental Association. Reprinted by permission .
Case in Point: The Case of Nurses

Nursing is one of the most gender-segregated pro- Well, legislate, for one thing. In 2013, Senator
fessions. Close to nineteen out of twenty nurses Barbara Boxer (D-CA) introduced Senate Bill 739, the
are female. It's a profession that requires patience, National Nursing Shortage Reform and Patient Advo-
empathy, emotional engagement, and a desire to help cacy Act. (It's in committee at this writing.)
others-all qualities generally coded as feminine. At And, of course, recruit men. Make nursing mas-
the same time, there is a worldwide nursing shortage, culine! Sociologist Marci Cottingham examined vari-
which is only expected to become more intense as ous recruitment strategies to engage men to become
an aging population requires more medical care. nurses, including this advertisement from Central
What's a profession to do? Florida (with many others that have copied it):
... TO BE ANURSE?
Source: Partners for a Healthy Community, Workforce Central Florida.
Of course, when men enter the field, the old rules male nurses earn about $5, I00 more per year than
apply. At every level, male nurses out-earn female female nurses. Among the highly specialized nurse
nurses. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, anesthetists, the gap was a whopping $17,290!
Hospital • $3,873
• By work setting
Ambulatory • $7,678 •
----$
By clinical specialty
Medical/surgical - $5,28 • By job position
Neurology
,146
Newborn/pediatrics
Chronic care
Orthopedics $2,086
Psychiatry - - $5,0 8
Cardiology . . $6, 34
Other &J $5,285
Staff nurse • $5,277
Advanced clinical • $4,238
Advanced practice
• 5,787
Nurse anesthetists $17,290
Education/ research
- - -•- $5,308
Senior academic
~ - - - - -•- . . - - - -$1 732
Middle management $3,956
Senior administrator • $6,918
Other $5, 39
$-10,000 $0 $10,000 $20,000 $30,000
Salary gaps between male and female registered nurses.

Notes: Figures are in 2013 dollars. Lighter bars indicate margin of error (at a 95 percent confidence interval).
Source: Analysis of data from the National Sample Survey of Registered Nurses ( 1988--2008) by Dr. Ulrike Muench,
et al. Published in theJouma/ of the American Medical Association. Credit: Alyson Hurt/NPR.
Sources: Marci Cottingham, "Recruiting Men, Constructing Manhood: How Health Care Organizations Mobilize Masculinities as
Nursing Recruitment Strategy" in Gender & Society, 28( 1), February 2014, pp. 133-156; Catherine Saint Louis, "Stubborn Pay Gap
Is Found in Nursing" in New York Times, March 24, 2015, http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/20 I 5/03/24/stubborn-pay-gap-is-
found-in-nursing/?_r=2 .
one assumes, fairly comparable. The wage difference is entirely the result of the gender
of the person who does the job. There is nothing inherent in the job that makes it more
"suitable" for women or for men.
One of the easiest ways to see the impact of sex segregation on wages is to watch
what happens when a particular occupation begins to change its gender composition.
For example, clerical work was once considered a highly skilled occupation, in which a
virtually all-male labor force was paid reasonably well. (One is reminded, of course, of
the exception to this rule, the innocent and virtuous Bob Cratchit in Charles Dickens's
A Christmas Carol.) In the early part of the twentieth century, in both Britain and the
United States, though, the gender distribution began to change, and by the middle of
the century, most clerical workers were female. As a result, clerical work was reevalu-
ated as less demanding of skill and less valuable to an organization; thus, workers'
wages fell. As sociologist Samuel Cohn notes, this is a result, not a cause, of the chang-
ing gender composition of the workforce.25
Veterinary medicine, also, had long been a male-dominated field. In the late 1960s,
only about 5 percent of veterinary students were women. Today that number is closer
to 60 percent, and the number of female veterinarians has more than doubled since
1991, whereas the number of male veterinarians has declined by 15 percent. And their
incomes have followed the changing gender composition. In the 1970s, when males
dominated the field, veterinarians' incomes were right behind those of physicians;
today, veterinarians average about $70,000 to $80,000 a year, whereas physicians aver-
age closer to double that figure. "Vets are people with medical degrees without the
medical income," commented one veterinary epidemiologist.26
The exact opposite process took place with computer programmers. In the 1940s,
women were hired as keypunch operators, the precursors to computer programmers,
because the job seemed to resemble clerical work. In fact, however, computer pro-
gramming "demanded complex skills in abstract logic, mathematics, electrical cir-
cuitry and machinery, all of which," sociologist Katharine Donato observed, "women
used to perform in their work" without much problem. However, after programming
was recognized as "intellectually demanding," it became attractive to men, who began
to enter the field and thus drove wages up considerably.27
The relationship between gender composition and prestige (and wages) has long
been in evidence. In the 1920s, the feminist writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman found it
amusing to see how rapidly the attitude toward a given occupation changed as it
changed hands. For instance, two of the oldest occupations of women, the world
over, were that of helping other women to bring babies into the world and that of
laying out the dead. Women sat at the gates of life, at both ends, for countless
generations. Yet as soon as the obstetrician found one large source of income in his
highly specialized services, and the undertaker found another in his, these occupa-
tions became "man's work"; a "woman doctor" was shrunk from even by women,
and a "woman undertaker" seemed ridiculous. 28
(It is interesting that women have returned to obstetrics, but undertaking remains
virtually all male.)
The effects of sex segregation may be "geographic" in everyday life-both in the
workplace and in leisure. In a 2008 study, Michelle Arthur, Robert del Campo, and
Harry Van Buren, three business professors at the University of New Mexico, studied
golf courses. Well, what they actually studied were the placement of the tees at the
beginning of each hole at 455 courses in all fifty states. Typically, women tee off from a
tee placed somewhat in front of the men's tee (part of an understanding that equality
doesn't mean treating people exactly the same, since the only place where women's and
men's different upper body strength actually makes a difference is on the first shot).
What Arthur, Del Campo, and Van Buren found was a correlation between the dis-
tance between the men's and women's tee and the wage gap in that immediate locale.
That's right: The farther apart were the tees, the lower were women's wages! The closer
the tees were, the higher were women's wages.
How is this to be explained? The obvious answer is that those locales where golf
course administrators believed women needed increased assistance were those char-
acterized by a patronizing view of women's abilities in general. And those attitudes
would have seeped into local workplaces, where women's abilities would have been
undervalued. Seems plausible. But the authors also suggested a less attitudinal expla-
nation as well. Where the tees were closer together, women and men were more likely
to ride in the same golf carts; where the tees were far apart, women were more likely to
ride only with other women. And it's in those golf carts, in the informal conversations
and networking that accompany our "leisure time," that one hears of opportunities,
connections, and contacts that can advance a career. 29
The sex of the worker is also vitally important in determining wages. Women and
men are paid to do not the same work, but rather different work, and they are evalu-
ated on different standards. As William Bielby and James Baron write, "Men's jobs are
rewarded according to their standing within the hierarchy of men's work, and
OH?
REALLY•
Men take all the dangerous jobs, so they should be paid more. You've heard
this, right? The most dangerous jobs are all heavily male dominated, and since
men are willing to take those risks, they should be compensated for it. Here's
the list:
Top Ten Most Dangerous U.S. Occupations and Percent Male, 2013
Fatal injury rate per Percent
Rank Occupation I 00,000 workers male
I Logging workers 91.3 97.9%

2 Fishers 75.0 100.0%
3 Aircraft pilots 50.6 94.5%
4 Extraction workers 46.9 97.9%
5 Roofers 38 .7 99.3%
6 Refuse collectors 33 .0 95 .2%
7 Mining machine operators 26.9 95 .0%
8 Truck drivers 22.0 94.8%
9 Farmers and ranchers 21.8 74.7%
10 Electrical power-line workers 21.5 98 .9%
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics , Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries.
Well, that would be true-if we paid those who do those jobs the most money. I mean, it's a
lot more "dangerous" to be a roofer or a logger or a fisherman than it is to be an investment
banker or a corporate lawyer-but we don't pay them commensurately to the dangers they face.
But it would also make more sense if the resistance to women's entry into those fields wasn't
so fierce. Women who try to become loggers or roofers or mining machine operators face a
steady barrage of physical and sexual harassment by the very men who complain that men take
all the dangerous jobs. Perhaps that is because when men take those jobs, they are also doing so
to prove that they are "real men"-and women's entry, they believe, would dilute that.
women's jobs are rewarded according to their standing within the hierarchy of wom-
en's work. The legitimacy of this system is easy to sustain in a segregated workplace."
Stated simply, "Women's occupations pay less at least partly because women do them."30
Here's a novel way to consider the impact of sex segregation on wages. As we just
saw, when a particular occupation shifts its gender composition, wages shift too. The
more "masculine," the higher the wages; the more "feminine," the lower the wages. But
what happens when the gender of the worker changes? I'm not talking about the gender
of a category of workers. Rather, the actual gender of the actual individual worker: Then
what happens? In their research sociologist Kristen Schilt and economist Matthew
Wiswall tracked the wages of transgender people-before and after their transitions.
Female-to-male transgender people's wages went up slightly following their transitions,
while average wages for male-to-female transgender workers fell by nearly one-third.
What's more, male-to-female workers saw a loss of authority, greater levels of harass-
ment, and possible termination compared with female-to-male transgender people,
who often saw an increase in respect and authority. Remember-these were the same
human beings. Only their gender had changed. And that mattered a lot.31
Legal remedies for sex stereotyping of occupations have yielded mixed results. In
a 1971 case, Diaz v. Pan American World Airways, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
Fifth Circuit ruled that men could not be denied employment as flight attendants on
the grounds that passengers expected and preferred women in this position. In 1996,
you will recall from the last chapter, the Supreme Court ruled that women could not
be denied the educational opportunity offered to men at the Virginia Military Insti-
tute, despite the school's arguments that women would not want such an "adversative"
education, nor would they be able to withstand the physical rigors of the program.
Perhaps the most widely cited case in sex segregation is the case of EEOC v. Sears,
a case brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against the giant
chain of retail stores. The EEOC had found that Sears had routinely shuttled women
and men into different sales positions, resulting in massive wage disparities between
the two. Women were pushed into over-the-counter retail positions, largely in cloth-
ing, jewelry, and household goods, where commissions tended to be low and where
workers received a straight salary for their work. Men, on the other hand, tended to be
concentrated in sales of high-end consumer goods, such as refrigerators and televi-
sions, which offered high commissions.
Sears argued that this sex-based division of retail sales resulted from individual
choice on the part of its male and female labor forces. Differential socialization, Sears
suggested, led women and men to pursue different career paths. Women, Sears
claimed, were less interested in the more demanding, intensely competitive, and time-
consuming higher-end commission sales positions and were more interested in those
that offered them more flexibility, whereas the men were more interested in those
pressure-filled, high-paying positions. Women, Sears argued, were more relationship-
centered and less competitive.
The EEOC, by contrast, argued that although Sears did not intend to discrimi-
nate, such outcomes were the result of gender-based discrimination. The case did not
pit the interests or motivations of all men against those of all women, but rather in-
cluded only those women who were already in the labor force, who, one assumed, had
similar motivations to those of men in the labor force. Just because it is true, argues
historian Alice Kessler-Harris, who was an expert witness for the EEOC, that there are
average differences between women and men in their motivations does not mean that
every single member of the group "men" or "women" is identical and that some would
not seek the opportunities afforded to the other group. To discriminate against indi-
viduals on the basis of average between-group differences ignores the differences
within each group, differences that often turn out to be greater than the differences
between the groups.
Such behavior, of course, relies on stereotypes and should be prohibited under
the law. Stereotypes assume that all members of a group share characteristics that,
possibly, some members of the group share-and even, occasionally, most members
share. Logically, stereotypes fall into a compositional fallacy-assuming that what is
true of some is true of all. So it would be illogical to assert that just because all mem-
bers of category A are also members of category B, all members of category B are
members of category A. You know nothing, for example, about the relative size of
these categories: All A's may be B's, and yet all B's may not be Xs. Thus in the classic
formulation of the compositional fallacy one might say, "All members of the Mafia
are Italian, but all Italians are not members of the Mafia" or "All humans are ani-
mals, but not all animals are human."
In the Sears case, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Sears's acquittal on sex dis-
crimination charges, in part because the Court said that no single individual woman
had stepped forward and declared that she had sought to enter high-commission
sales or had been refused because of these stereotypes. (Often legal cases seem to
need a concrete plaintiff because the courts are less convinced by aggregate statistical
disparities if no individual has been harmed.) And the Court found that gender
differences did play a role, that "since difference was real and fundamental, it could
explain statistical variations in Sears hiring." Yes. And it probably also explains the
differences in salary.32
INCOME DISCRIMINATION-THE WAGE GAP

Another major consequence of the combination of sex segregation and the persistence
of archaic gender ideologies is income discrimination. At both the aggregate level and
the individual level-whether we average all incomes or look at specific individuals'
wages for the jobs they do-women earn less than men. This wage difference begins
early in our lives-even before we begin working. A 1995 Wall Street Journal report
observed that elementary school girls receive smaller allowances and are asked to do
more chores than boys are.33
Income inequality often remains invisible precisely because of sex segregation-
what appears to us simply as paying people doing different jobs is actually a way of
paying different genders differently for doing roughly the same jobs with the same skill
levels. As long as it appears that pay is the attribute of the job, and not of the gender of
the person doing the job, income inequality remains invisible to us (figures 9-4 a and b).
In 1999, the median annual income for men working full time was $37,057. For women
it was $27,194, about 73 percent of men's annual income. By 2013, that gap had shrunk-
women's wages were about 78.3 percent of men's wages (77-4 percent for whites,
84.1 percent for blacks and Hispanics). Actually, that is due, in large part, not to the
massive increases in women's wages, but rather to the decline in men's wages-the
$60,000 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
$55,000 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
$50,000 ~ ~
- - -- -- ....., ~ -
j $45,000 - ~--------------------------
.g $40,000 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- ~~ - -
= $35,000
-~ -------------------------~-=-=-~-~-~-=-·"" -----------~,------
.5
8 $30,000
"' $25,000 - - --- ----
,-- ----~----- - - ·..--·-=----- -------------------
- ----' - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
"'" $20,000 ----- -- -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
$15,000 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - Earning of men - - - Earning of women
Figure 9.4a. Full-time, year-round workers by median earnings and gender, 1960-2013.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Historical Income Tables: People, https://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/
data/historical/people/ (retrieved November 2014).
100.0% - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
90.0% - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
80.0% - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
~
70.0% - - - - - - - - - -
- -....-- ---- ~ -_ : : : :,,,
_
60.0% ~~----~
50.0% - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Figure 9.4b. Women's-to-men's earnings as a percentage of men's earnings, 1960-2013.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Historical Income Tables: People, https:/ / www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/
data/historical / people/ (retrieved November 2014).
decline, especially, in the high-wage skilled manufacturing sector of the economy, where
jobs have been exported overseas to workers who receive decidedly lower wages.
On average, working women still bring home $154 a week less than men. To illus-
trate the extent of this wage inequality, every year the president proclaims a date in
early April "National Pay Inequity Awareness Day." Why then? Because the average
woman in a full-time job would need to work for a full year and then until early April
of the next year to match what the average man earned the year before.34
The National Committee on Pay Equity estimated that in 1996 alone working
women lost almost $100 million due to wage inequality. Over the course of her life-
time, the average working woman will lose about $420,000. And the gender gap in
income is made more complex by both race and educational level. Black and Hispanic
men earn less than white men, and black men earn only slightly more than white
women. Black and Hispanic women earn significantly less than white men or white
women, and black women earn slightly more than Hispanic men (figure 9.6).
TH!Rf~ NO CATCH/ rJOM[N !XC[PT; rJH(N I £AY "f,JOM[N•• I

MAX[ N/NtrY- [IGHT' PfRCtNT ONLY M[AN f,)OM(N AG[ 27 ro
or (JHAT M[N MAK[/ £CX/~M 33 - OLPtR f,JOM[N fACt A
/£ OV[R/ HOORAY/ MUCH LARC[R f,JAG( GAP.
I AL£0 tJ/tJN'T aJlJNf HOTH!R~.

fJ~! UNPA/P CHILP- R(AR/NG
HURT; THEIR EARNING~. THAT
FATH[R~ VIRTUALLY NfV[R f?O
THE UNPAIP !,JORK HM NOrHINC
TO {?(} /,J/TH ;m;M! tr; JU;r A
8/C COINCIP[NC[/
Figure 9.5 The gender wage gap explained .

Source: B. Deutsch, leftycartoons.com.
• Women • Men
$1,200
$1,059
$1,000
1 $800
"5
:::::1,
"' $600
OJ)
·s<=
ti! $400
""
$200
$0
Total White Black or African Asian Hispanic or
American Latino ethnicity
Figure 9.6. Median weekly earnings of workers sixteen years of age and over in 2013, by gender
and race and Hispanic or Latino ethnicity.
Source: Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics- Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey
(2013 annual averages), http:/ / bls.gov/ cps/ cpsaat37.htm.
What is perhaps most astonishing is how consistent this wage gap has been. In
biblical times, female workers were valued at thirty pieces of silver, whereas men were
valued at fifty, in other words, women were valued at 60 percent. In the United States,
this wage difference has remained relatively constant for the past 150 years! Since the
Civil War, women's wages have fluctuated between one-half and two-thirds of
men's wages.
The wage gap varies with the level of education. College-educated women earn
29 percent less than college-educated men; in fact, college-educated women earn
about the same as non-college-educated men. And the gap varies with age. The reason
for this is simple: Women and men enter the labor force at more comparable starting
salaries; women aged fifteen to twenty-four earn 93 percent as much as their male
counterparts. But as women continue their careers, gender discrimination in promo-
tion and raises adds to the differences in income. Age also affects the wage gap. Before
age thirty-five, women's wages are slightly lower than men's, but they drop precipi-
tously between the ages of thirty-five and sixty-four-which just happen to be the
prime child-raising and family-centric years of our lives. (Men's wages tend to sky-
rocket during those years, which exacerbates the gender gap.) Once the children are
launched and retirements begin, women's wages go back up relative to men's (figure
9.7). A report from the General Accounting Office found that the difference in salaries
between male and female managers actually grew by as much as twenty-one cents for
every dollar earned between 1995 and 2000.35
Lawyers fare no better. A 2004 study, "Gender Penalties Revisited," found that
despite their increasing numbers, female attorneys had not reached the top positions
in the field. Between four and ten years after law school, women attorneys were making
about 96 percent of their male counterparts' salaries; but after the ten-year mark,
women's salaries dipped to only 74 percent of men's.36
95% - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
91%
: ,. ,
I
. I
ll',
..
.,.' I I I I I I
.: _I__J_l_LLJ_
16-19 20-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64 65+
Figure 9.7. Women's median full-time earnings, as percentage of men's, by age, second quarter
of 2012.
Source: BLS News Release, July 18, 20 12.
OH?
REALLY•
Have you heard the gender wage gap is a myth, a "feminist fiction"? Some have
argued that the wage gap is the natural outcome of differences in education,
years working, and especially the different motivations that women and men
bring to the workplace.
Don't believe it. Sure, people have different motivations when they enter the workplace.
Unfortunately, these different motivations account for only a small amount of the differences in
women's and men's wages. The wage gap persists because it combines structural inequalities, the
attitudes and assumptions that both men and women carry around in our heads, and the choices
we all have to make about balancing work and family.
Source: Arrah Nielsen, "Gender Wage Gap Is Feminist Fiction," Washington, D.C. Independent Women's Forum,
April 15, 2005.
Such a gap is probably better explained by women's and men's different experi-
ences than by any conspiracy by men at the top to "permit" women to rise only so far,
and no further, in their chosen fields. It's far more subtle and thus far more difficult a
problem to tease apart. When men enter the labor force, they enter for good, whereas
women occasionally take time out for childbearing and parental leave. This has a
calamitous effect on women's wages and fuels the growing gap across the life span.
In fact, women who drop out of the labor force have lower real wages when they come
back to work than they had when they left. Two sociologists recently calculated that
each child costs a woman 7 percent in wages.37
Actually, there's a wage gap among men also that is especially instructive about
gender relations. Psychologists Timothy Judge and Beth Livingston divided male and
female workers into two groups based on their gender attitudes. After they controlled
for other variables-hours worked, education, occupational segregation, and the
like-they found that men with "traditional" gender role attitudes-such as believing
that women's place was in the home-translated into a whopping $8,549 increase over
men who held more egalitarian values. "If you are a man and you become more egali-
tarian, it really has a detrimental effect on your earnings," says Judge.38
Within any occupation, women tend to be concentrated at the bottom of the pay
scale. Across all industries, women make up nearly 50 percent of the workers but only
12 percent of the managers. Sociologist Judith Lorber described the reason why female
physicians earn less than male physicians. "The fault may not lie in their psyches or
female roles, but in the system of professional patronage and sponsorship which
tracked them out of their prestigious specialties and 'inner fraternities' of American
medical institutions by not recommending them for the better internships, residen-
cies, and hospital staff positions, and by not referring patients," she writes.39
As you might expect, the wage gap is complicated by other parts of our identities,
like race, class, age, and sexuality(Table 9.3). Take, for example, age. While one can see
the wage gap decreasing over time between women and men, younger women con-
tinue to fare much better than older women. On the other hand, in the past few years,
even younger women have slipped back, from a gap of 7.7 percent in 2011 to 10.6 percent
in 2013 . 40
Table 9.3. Annual Median Income for Different Groups
2013 person income, Median income 2013 person income, Median income
18 to 64 years (dollars) 18 to 64 years (dollars)
Male white alone, not 42 ,520 Female white alone, not 28 , 184
Hispanic Hispanic
Male black alone 26, 187 Female black alone 21,663
Male Asian alone 42 ,344 Female Asian alone 27,223
Male Hispanic (any race) 26,261 Female Hispanic (any race) 19,765
Source: CPS 2014 Annual Social and Economic Supplement.
And while women of color consistently make less than white women-as well as
less than men of color-there are some variations, as you can see from the accompa-
nying maps (figures 9.8a-d on pages 288-289).
How have women coped with this income inequality? In the 1860s, one woman
came up with a rather novel solution:
I was almost at the end of my rope. I had no money and a woman's wages were not
enough to keep me alive. I looked around and saw men getting more money, and
more work, and more money for the same kind of work. I decided to become a
man. It was simple. I just put on men's clothing and applied for a man's job. I got
good money for those times, so I stuck to it. 4'
Novel, yes, but not exactly practical for an entire gender! So women have pressed for
equal wages-in their unions, professional associations, and every arena in which they
have worked. In 1963, Congress passed the Equal Pay Act and established the Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission to monitor discrimination by race and by
gender. To date, the EEOC has heard thousands of cases, among them a 1986 case in
which the Bethlehem Steel Corporation was found to be paying women workers about
$200 a month less than men doing the same clerical work. (In a settlement out of
court, the company paid each of the 104 female plaintiffs $3,000.) In a widely discussed
1992 case, a female assistant metropolitan editor at the New York Times earned be-
tween $6,675 and $12,511 less than male coworkers doing the same job. What's more,
she earned $2,435 less than the male editor she replaced and $7,126 less than the man
who replaced her when she quit in disgust.
Women thus face a double bind in their efforts to achieve workplace equality. On
the one hand, traditional gender ideologies prevent them from entering those occupa-
tions that pay well; they are pushed into less-paying sectors of the economy. On the
other hand, when they enter those well-paying fields, they are prevented from moving
up. This is what is known as the "glass ceiling."
THE "GLASS CEILING"

One consequence of sex segregation is discrimination against women in promotion.
Women face the twin barriers of the "glass ceiling" and the "sticky floor," which com-
bine to keep them stuck at the bottom and unable to reach the top. The sticky floor
keeps women trapped in low-wage positions, with little opportunity for upward
mobility. The glass ceiling consists of "those artificial barriers, based on attitudinal or
organizational bias, that prevent qualified individuals from advancing upward within
their organization into management level positions.'ll 2
In 1995, the U.S. government's Glass Ceiling Commission found that the glass
ceiling continued "to deny untold numbers of qualified people the opportunity to
compete for and hold executive level positions in the private sector." Although women
held 45.7 percent of all jobs and more than 50 percent of all master's degrees, 95 percent
of senior managers were men, and female managers' earnings were 68 percent of
those of their male counterparts. Ten years later, women held 46.5 percent of all jobs
but continued to hold less than 8 percent of top managerships, and their earnings
were about 72 percent of those of their male colleagues. Absent some government-
sponsored policy initiatives, these numbers are likely to remain low.43
A recent court case provides examples of both phenomena and a graphic illus-
tration of how traditional gender stereotypes continue to work against women.
Eight women brought suit against the Publix Super Markets, Inc., a chain of gro-
ceries with over nine hundred stores throughout the South. One of the plaintiffs
said that she was stuck in a cashier's job and was denied a transfer or promotion to
stocking shelves because, as a male supervisor told her, women were not capable of
holding supervisory positions. Another woman employee was denied a promotion
on the grounds that she was not the head of her household-despite the fact that
she was raising her three children alone! In February 1997, Publix agreed to pay
$81.5 million to settle the case.
The glass ceiling keeps women from being promoted equally with men. Women
hold only 15.7 percent of all corporate board seats. There are only seventeen women
CEOs in the Fortune 500 (about 3-4 percent) and only another nineteen in the next five
hundred. And the glass ceiling's effects are multiplied when race is brought into the
equation. In 1970, between 1 and 3 percent of all senior management positions in all
Fortune 500 companies were held by women and minorities; in 1990, only 5 percent
were held by women and minorities. In 1988, 72 percent of all managers in companies
with more than one hundred employees were white men; 23 percent were white women;
3 percent were black men; and 2 percent were black women (figure 9.9).
In 2004, white men held 71.2 percent of board seats associated with the nation's
Fortune 100 companies. By 2010, that figure had decreased slightly to 69.9 percent.
During that same period, women gained sixteen board seats-with five occupied by
minority women. But that growth represented just a 1.1 percentage point increase for
women on corporate boards over six years. When including Fortune 500 companies,
there was not a single Latino female board chair of a Fortune 500 company in 2010.
Also, just twenty-six of the nation's Fortune 500 boards include at least one member
of each of the major ethnic groups tracked by the U.S. Census. Right now, there are
nearly nine hundred Fortune 1000 companies that do not have a single Latino
member of their board. Among Fortune 100 companies, only half have a Latino
board member.
Business Week surveyed 3,664 business school graduates in 1990 and found that a
woman with an MBA from one of the top business schools earned an average of
$54,749 in her first year after graduation, whereas a man from a similar program earned
D Less than 70.0 cents • 70.0-76.9 cents D 77.0-79.9 cents • 80.0 cents and greater
Figure 9.Ba. What women make for every dollar men make.
D Less than 50.0 cents D 50-59.9 cents • 60-69.9 cents • 70-79.9 cents • 80 cents and greater
Figure 9.Bb. What African-American women make for every dollar white, non-Hispanic men make.
Source note: "What a woman makes for every dollar a man makes" is the ratio of female and male annual median earnings for
full-time, year-round workers. The "wage gap" is the additional money a woman would have to make for every dollar made by a
man in order to have equal annual earnings. Overall figures calculated by the NWLC are based on 2013 American Community
Survey data. Figures for African-American women , Latinas, and Asian-American women calculated by the NWLC are based on
288
D Less than 50.0 cents D 50-59.9 cents • 60--69.9 cents • 80 cents and greater
Figure 9.Bc. What Latinas make for every dollar white, non-Hispanic men make.
-
, • • •'I .
: •-.. I ~
.I L . •
D 50- 59.9 cents D 60--69.9 cents •
•
80 cents and greater

• 70-79.9 cents
Figure 9.Bd. What Asian-American women make for every dollar white, non-Hispanic men make.
20 I 1- 2013 American Community Survey three-year estimates. State minimum wages from Department of Labor, Wage and
Hour Division, "Minimum Wage Laws in the States- September I, 2014." Minimum wages for tipped workers are often lower.
Images used with permission of the National Women's Law Center, source: http:/ /www.nwlc.org/wage-gap-state-by-state.
289
CEOs
4.6%
Board seats
19.2%
Executive/senior-level
officials and managers
25.1 %
First/mid-level
officials and managers
36.8%
S&P 500 labor force

45.0%
Women in S&P 500 companies

Figure 9.9. The Catalyst Pyramid: U.S. women in business.
Source: Catalyst. Pyramid : Women in S&P 500 Companies. New York: Catalyst, October 13 , 2015 .
$61,400. This gap-12 percent-actually widened as these business graduates progressed.

A 1993 study of the Stanford University Business School class of 1982 found that only
ten years after graduation, 16 percent of the male graduates were CEOs, chairmen, or
presidents of companies, compared with only 2 percent of the female graduates.
Again, these different trajectories have virtually nothing to do with the ambi-
tions or aspirations of the men and women who occupy these positions. For two
years, an economist followed five female and five male trainees in a large Swedish
multinational corporation (with six thousand employees). All came from similar
backgrounds, had similar education, and had similar goals and ambitions. All ten
aspired to top management positions. After their training, they all still were similar.
At the end of the two years, all the men and none of the women had entered the top
management group.
The glass ceiling occurs under a variety of circumstances. Corporate management
may be either unable or unwilling to establish policies and practices that are effective
mechanisms to promote workplace diversity. The company may not have adequate
job evaluation criteria that allow for comparable-worth criteria, or it may rely on
traditional gender stereotypes in evaluation. Limited family-friendly workplace
policies will also inhibit women's ability to rise.
The "glass ceiling" has been shattered by all those corporate women leaning in.
OH? While it's true that the glass ceiling has been pushed up significantly, as
REALLY• women have entered the ranks of middle and upper management, the doors to
the executive suites remain firmly shut. In fact, according to the New York Times,
there are more companies in the United States run by men named John than companies run by
women. David, too.
Source: Justin Wolfers , "Fewer Women Run Big Companies Than Men Named John " in New York Times , March 2,
2015, http://www.nytimes .com/20 I5/03/03/upshot/fewer-women-run-big-companies-than -men -named-john
.html.
COMPARED to WHAT?
A 20 IO study by the consulting and accounting firm Deloitte compared the percentage of women
serving on corporate boards. (An asterisk indicates that the country has legislative quotas for women
serving on boards.)
Norway 34.3%*
Canada 12.5%
United States 12.2%
New Zealand 12.1%
France 9.5%* (pending)
United Kingdom 8.5%
Australia 8.3%
Germany 8.2%
Spain 8.0%*
Belgium 6.8%* (pending)
Netherlands 4.0%* (pending)
Italy 3.4%* (pending)
Source: Deloitte Global Center for Corporate Governance, "Women in the Boardroom: A Global Perspective,"
January 2011.
Perhaps the most important element that reinforces the glass ceiling is the
informal effort by men to restore or retain the all-male atmosphere of the corporate
hierarchy. Equal opportunities for advancement would disrupt the casual friendliness
and informality of the homosocial world at the top-the fact that those with whom
one interacts share similar basic values and assumptions. "What's important is com-
fort, chemistry, relationships and collaborations," one manager explained. "That's
what makes a shop work. When we find minorities and women who think like we do,
we snatch them up." One British study of female MBAs, for example, found that by
far the "most significant" and "most resistant" barrier to women's advancement was
the "'men's club' network.'¾ 4
The most celebrated decision involving a corporate glass ceiling was the 1989 Su-
preme Court decision in Hopkins v. Price Waterhouse. A woman, Ann Hopkins, was
denied promotion to partnership in one of the nation's largest and most prestigious
accounting firms. Although she had brought more business into the company than
any of the men who were promoted, she was perceived as abrasive and demanding.
Opponents of her promotion said she was "macho" and that she "overcompensated for
being a woman" and that she would benefit from "a course at charm school.'' One of
her supporters told her that she might make partner if she could learn to "walk more
femininely, talk more femininely, dress more femininely, wear makeup, have her hair
styled, and wear jewelry." The court awarded her $400,000 in back pay and fees and
required that she be promoted to partner.
The Hopkins case provides a perfect illustration of the ways in which traditional
gender stereotypes also impede women's progress. Had Ms. Hopkins been more
traditionally feminine, she would never have been the aggressive and ambitious suc-
cess that she became. Thus, either way, women lose. Either they are too aggressive,
in which case they are seen as mannish, "ball-busting bitches," or they are too lady-
like and as a result are passed over as being too passive, sweet, and not ambitious
enough.
In 1991, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, which established the Glass Ceil-
ing Commission to eliminate "artificial barriers based on attitudinal or organiza-
tional bias." These barriers included management relying on word of mouth to fill
upper-level positions (the "old boys' network"). The commission suggested that a
system of monetary compensations be instituted for word-of-mouth referrals of
qualified women and minorities. Some companies have already instituted their own
policies designed to enable women to break through the glass ceiling in all three
areas where women experience it-hiring, promotion, and retention. These compa-
nies tend to be among the more forward-looking companies. For example, in 1992,
Reebok International initiated a diversity program in hiring practices by developing
effective college recruitment policies and internships for women and minorities. In
two years, the company tripled its minority employment to 15 percent of its U.S.
workforce and increased the number of women to more than 50 percent. The Bank
of Montreal targeted promotion and between 1991 and 1993 increased the percentage
of women at the executive level from 29 percent to 54 percent. The bank also initi-
ated a program that specified targets for promoting and retaining women and mi-
norities and developed a series of gender-awareness workshops for senior
management. Finally, in 1993-1994, Lotus, the international software company, tried
to increase retention of capable women and minorities who were leaving the com-
pany because they felt they did not get either the information they needed to be ef-
fective or the opportunities they expected. The company offered incentives to
managers who reduced turnover and initiated disincentives for managers whose
staff showed higher turnover rates. Turnover of women fell from 21 percent to 16 per-
cent and among African Americans from 25.5 percent to 20.5 percent.
•,1 ,, ,,, 11, =n111 ia

Women's entry into and rise across the entire economic spectrum has been one of the most
notable achievements of the women's movement. But at what cost? And does it mean we've
"arrived" at some gender equality? Hardly. As Harvard Business School professor Robin Ely
and her colleagues note, no matter how hard women strive, and how many sacrifices they
make, they never achieve the same level of professional success that their male colleagues do.
And this is true even when you match them from the same class of MBAs, over the course of
their lives. Structural and interactional constraints keep women from achieving all they want
to achieve. Even when they lean in as hard as they can, sometimes the walls of the organiza-
tions are just too inflexible.
The glass ceiling has different impacts on men, depending upon your political
persuasion. Writer Warren Farrell argues that all the attention paid to the ways
Highway incidents 22%
127%
Homicides 1110%
I 26%
Contact with
I 17%
objects and equipment I 4%
Falls I 14%
I 13%
Exposure to
harmful substances or I 9%
environments I 8%
Men= 4,322
Fires and explosions II 4% D Women =368

_J 2%
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Percent of fatal work injuries within gender
Figure 9.10. Distribution of fatal injury events, by gender of worker, 2010.

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, 2012.
women are held back from promotion by the glass ceiling hides the fact that it is
men who are the victims of sex discrimination in the workplace. Men, Farrell
argues, are the victims of the "glass cellar"-stuck in the most hazardous and dan-
gerous occupations. In fact, Farrell argues, of the 250 occupations ranked by the
Jobs Related Almanac, the twenty-five worst jobs (such as truck driver, roofer, boil-
ermaker, construction worker, welder, and football player) were almost all male.
Over 90 percent of all occupational deaths happen to men (figure 9.10). All the
hazardous occupations are virtually all male-including firefighting (99 percent),
logging (98 percent), trucking (98 percent), and construction (97 percent)-whereas
the "safest" occupations are those held by women, including secretary (99 percent
female) and receptionist (97 percent). 45
Farrell has a point: Many of the jobs that men take are hazardous-and made
more so unnecessarily by an ideology of masculinity that demands that men remain
stoic and uncomplaining in the face of danger. Thus on dangerous construction sites
or offshore oil rigs, men frequently shun safety precautions, such as safety helmets, as
suitable, perhaps, for sissies or wimps, but not for "real" men. But the conclusion that
men, not women, are discriminated against flies in the face of both evidence and
reason. Because the jobs that are the most exclusively male are also those whose work-
ers have fought most fiercely against the entry of women in the first place. And they're
far better paying than the jobs that are almost exclusively female. For example, the
nation's fire departments have been especially resistant to women joining their "fra-
ternal order," doing so only under court order and often admitting women with a
significant amount of harassment. It would be odd to propose that this is the result of
discrimination against men or to blame women for not entering those occupations
from which they have been excluded by men's resistance.
294
I'',,,I''
PART 2: GENDERED IDENTITIES, GENDERED INSTITUTIONS
iJ :n)Q IIa
Some workplaces remain homosocial preserves, workplace "locker rooms" where male bra-
vado and risk-taking are the norm. They don't get more "macho" than offshore oil rigs, where
men often eschew safety helmets as a way of defying the dangers of the work. Turns out,
though, that all that male posturing is not good for business. After nearly two years of working
with these men, Harvard Business School professor Robin Ely and her colleagues found that
hypermasculine behavior is actually counterproductive, and that, as they put it, "extinguishing
macho behavior is vital to achieving top performance."
THE PROBLEM OF TOKENS

What really does happen when women enter "men's" occupations and men enter
"women's" occupations? In both cases, they experience tokenism. But their experi-
ences as tokens vary considerably. Tokens are people who are admitted into an orga-
nization but who are recognizably different from the large majority of the members of
the organization. But tokens are more than simply the members of a numerical minor-
ity: Tokens are accepted not despite their minority status but rather because of it. They
are actively discouraged from recruiting others like themselves and become eager to
fit in and become part of the organizational mainstream. Typically, tokens may even
become more strongly wedded to organizational norms than do members of the
numerical majority.
According to Rosabeth Moss Kanter, whose pioneering work Men and Women of
the Corporation first analyzed the problem, tokenism widens the contrasts between
groups rather than narrowing them, as the contrasts between the token and the ma-
jority are exaggerated to become the sole difference. Tokens, Kanter writes, are thus
"often treated as representative of their category, as symbols rather than as individu-
als.'ll6 The token is always in the spotlight-everyone notices him or her, but only be-
cause he or she is different. Tokens are rarely seen as similar to others in the group.
Thus tokens have a double experience of visibility-they are hypervisible as members
of their "category," but they are completely invisible as individuals.
Think about a situation where you were virtually the only "something" in a group.
It could be that you were the only man or woman, the only white person or person of
color, the only gay or straight person in a group. How did you feel when someone
would turn to you and say, "So, how do white people feel about this issue?" or "What
do women say about this?" At that moment you cease to be an individual and are seen
only as a representative of the group. Chances are you responded by saying something
like, "I don't know. I'm not all women or all white people. You'd have to take a survey."
If you can imagine that experience of hypervisibility and invisibility all the time in
your workplace, you'll begin to have an idea of what tokenism feels like.
Simultaneous hypervisibility and invisibility have serious consequences. "The
token does not have to work hard to have her presence noticed, but she does have to
work hard to have her achievements noticed," Kanter writes. The token is often forced
to choose between the two-"trying to limit visibility-and being overlooked-or
taking advantage of the publicity-and being labeled a 'troublemaker."' This can inflict
an enormous emotional and psychological toll:
Tokenism is stressful; the burdens carried by tokens in the management of social
relations take a toll in psychological stress, even if the token succeeds in work per-
formance. Unsatisfactory social relationships, miserable self-imagery, frustrations
from contradictory demands, inhibition of self-expression, feelings of inadequacy
and self-hatred, all have been suggested as consequences oftokenism .47
Kanter argues that her theory of tokenism holds regardless of whether the tokens are
male or female. Subsequent research has suggested dramatically different experiences
when women are the tokens in a largely male work world and when men are the tokens
in a largely female occupation.48 Men entering mostly female occupations have the op-
posite experience from women. They don't bump up against a glass ceiling; instead, they
ride on what sociologist Christine Williams calls the "glass escalator," having a much
easier time being promoted than even women do. Williams conducted interviews with
seventy-six men and twenty-three women in four fields-nursing, librarianship, elemen-
tary education, and social work. She found that men experienced positive discrimina-
tion when entering those fields; several people noted a clear preference for hiring men.
And men were promoted to managerial positions more rapidly and frequently, thus
making men overrepresented in the managerial ranks. Men who do women's work, it
appears, may earn less than men who work in predominantly male occupations, but
they earn more and are promoted faster than women in the same occupation.49
IiJ ,, ,,, I'' :n)Q IIa

Women who seek to rise in "male" occupations bump into the glass ceiling, while men who
seek to rise in "female" occupations-say, librarian or nurse-seem to ride a "glass escalator"
to the administrative tops of their professions, as sociologist Christine Williams once put it.
Not so fast, says sociologist Adia Harvey Winfield. That glass escalator may work well for
white men, but it's not nearly as easy a path for men of color.
Men did experience some negative effects, especially in their dealings with the
public. For example, male nurses faced a common stereotype that they were gay. Male
librarians faced images of themselves as "wimpy" and asexual; male social workers
were seen as "feminine" or "passive." One male librarian found that he had difficulty
Men don't like wo rking for a female boss-and their productivity shows it.
OH? Not true! University of Cincinnati sociologist David Maume used national
REALLY• data from the National Study of the Changing Workfo rce and found that men
received more job-related support and were more optimistic about their
careers when they reported to a female supervisor. He suggests that female supervisors are both
encouraged to, and also want to, promote the careers of male subordinates so it doesn't appear
they are playing favorites.
Source: David Maume, "Meet the New Boss .. . Same as the Old Boss?: Female Supervisors and Subordinate
Career Prospects" in Social Science Research, January 2011, pp. 287- 298.
establishing enough credibility so that the public would accept him as the children's
"storyteller." Ironically, though, Williams found that these negative stereotypes of
men doing "women's work" actually added to the glass escalator effect "by pressuring
men to move out of the most female-identified areas, and up to those regarded as more
legitimate and prestigious for men."50
Williams concluded that men "take their gender privilege with them when they
enter predominantly female occupations: this translates as an advantage in spite of
their numerical rarity." Men, it seems, win either way. When women are tokens, men
retain their numerical superiority and are able to maintain their gender privilege by
restricting a woman's entry, promotion, and experiences in the workplace. When men
are tokens, they are welcomed into the profession and use their gender privilege to rise
quickly in the hierarchy. "Regardless of the problems that might exist," writes Alfred
Kadushin, "it is clear and undeniable that there is a considerable advantage in being a
member of the male minority in any female profession.''s1
Such a statement goes a long way toward explaining why men continue to resist
workplace equality. After all, men have a pretty good deal with things as they are; as
economist Heidi Hartmann writes:
Low wages keep women dependent on men because they encourage women to
marry. Married women must perform domestic chores for their husbands. Men
benefit, then, from both higher wages and the domestic division of labor. This do-
mestic division of labor, in turn, acts to weaken women's position in the labor
market. Thus, the hierarchical domestic division of labor is perpetuated by the
labor market, and vice versa.52
Workplace inequality is not only a good deal for men, but also often invisible to
them. Inequality is almost always invisible to those who benefit from it-in fact, that's
one of the chief benefits! What is certainly not a level playing field is experienced as
level, which leads men to feel entitled to keep things just as they are. Let me give you
one example. I recently appeared on a television talk show opposite three "angry white
males" who felt that they had been the victims of workplace discrimination. The
show's title, no doubt to entice a large potential audience, was "A Black Woman Stole
My Job." These men all complained that they had been the victims of "reverse dis-
crimination," because, they believed, they had lost a job possibility to a woman who
was less qualified than they.
In my comments to these "angry white males," I invited them to consider one
word in the show's title-the word "My." What did that word mean? Did they feel that
those jobs were actually "theirs," that they were entitled to them, and that when some
"other" person-black, female-got the job, that person was really taking "their" job?
But by what right is that their job? By convention, perhaps, by a historical legacy of
discrimination, certainly. Of course, a more accurate title for the show should have
been "A Black Woman Got a Job" or "... Got the Job." But "my" job? Competing
equally for rewards that we used to receive simply by virtue of our race or our sex actu-
ally feels like discrimination. Equality will always feel uncomfortable for those who
once benefited from inequality.
Another reason why men resist the gender-integrated workplace is that men say
they would be distracted by women. A headline in the Wall Street Journal in 1991
announced, "Women as Colleagues Can Turn Men Off." The 1995 report of the De-
partment of Labor's Glass Ceiling Commission quoted one male executive who said,
"What's important is comfort, chemistry, .. . and collaborations." Many white men, he
continued, "don't like the competition and they don't like the tension" of working
alongside female colleagues. That the presence of women would distract men from
the tasks at hand or disturb the fragile yet necessary bonding among males was also
the argument made by men in the military and at military schools like VMI and the
Citadel.53
Except, as we've seen, it's not necessarily true. There are many situations in which
women and men work side by side without there being any " distractions." Doctors and
nurses, managers and secretaries don't seem to have much problem with distraction.
And all the women at VMI and the Citadel (before co-education)-all those professors,
service workers, staff, maids, and kitchen workers-didn't seem to upset the cadets
very much. It's not the presence or absence of women that seems to be distracting-it's
the presence of women as equals that men are really worrying about.
SEXUAL HARASSMENT
Sexual harassment is one of the chief ways by which men resist gender equality in
the workplace. The nation's current preoccupation with sexual harassment is fueled
by several different trends-the increased reporting by women of their experiences
at work or in school, the relabeling of behaviors that men used to take for granted,
the increasing pressure that men face in the workplace, and the increasing willing-
ness of the legal system to assign blame-costly blame-for this practice. Sexual
harassment was first identified as a form of sex discrimination and litigated in the
late 1970s. Feminist lawyer Catharine MacKinnon argued that sexual harassment is
a violation of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which makes it "an unlawful
employment practice for an employer ... to discriminate against any individual
with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment,
because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin." Sexual
harassment, MacKinnon argued, violates this law because it discriminates against
women on the basis of their sex, and, what's more, sexual harassment creates a hos-
tile environment for working women.54 By 1982, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
Eleventh Circuit declared:
Sexual harassment which creates a hostile or offensive environment for members
of one sex is every bit the arbitrary barrier to sexual equality at the workplace that
racial harassment is to racial equality. Sure, a requirement that a man or woman
run a gauntlet of sexual abuse in return for the privilege of being allowed to work
and make a living can be as demeaning and disconcerting as the harshest of racial
epithets. 55
But it was not until 1991 that the extent of the problem and its effects on women in
the workplace began to be fully recognized. In October of that year, Anita Hill de-
clared that she had been sexually harassed by Clarence Thomas when she worked
for him at the EEOC, and suddenly the entire nation sat transfixed before its television
sets as Thomas's confirmation hearings for the U.S. Supreme Court took a dramati-
cally different turn. Hill alleged that she had been subjected to unwanted sexual
advances, vile pornographic attempts at humor, and constant descriptions of Thom-

as's sexual prowess-even after she had made it clear that she was not interested in
dating her boss.
At the time, the Senate Judiciary Committee treated Hill as if she were the crimi-
nal, accusing her of harboring desires for Thomas, insinuating that she was "a woman
scorned," and implying that she was being duped by liberals who sought to derail the
nomination. And, at the time, the nation split about evenly on the question of whom
they believed, Thomas or Hill. The media declared in unison that the committee's
harsh and suspicious treatment of Hill would have a "chilling effect" on American
women, who would be less likely to come forward and describe the harassment that
they had experienced.
A chilling effect? Have the media ever been more wrong? In the ensuing decade
there was more of a national thaw-as thousands of women came forward to describe
what they had earlier kept as shameful personal secrets. The number of sexual harass-
ment cases has more than doubled since 1991. Suddenly the nation had a name for
what had been happening for decades to women in the workplace. In homes across the
nation women were telling their husbands, their children, their parents, their friends
of what had happened to them. By 1997, well over 80 percent of Americans had come
to realize that Anita Hill had been telling the truth all along.
Since that time, sexual harassment has become a major issue in America. Be-
tween 50 and 85 percent of working women will experience some form of sexual
harassment during their career. In a 1981 study of female federal employees, 12 per-
cent reported mild harassment (suggestive gestures or remarks, pressure for dates),
29 percent reported severe harassment (touching, fondling, pressure for sex, men-
acing letters or phone calls), and 1 percent were raped on the job. Nearly thirty
years later, in December 2008, a Harris poll found that 31 percent of female workers
had been harassed at work, as had 7 percent of male workers. (All of the women
reported that their harasser was a man, as did 41 percent of the males who reported
harassment.)5 6
A 1989 study of almost a thousand female attorneys found that 60 percent had
experienced sexual harassment; 13 percent had been the victim of rape, attempted
rape, or assault. Only 7 percent of those attorneys reported the incident to the firm. A
1997 study of two thousand attorneys at twelve of the largest law firms found that 43
percent had experienced sexual teasing, jokes, remarks, or questions; 29 percent had
experienced suggestive looks or gestures, and 26 percent had experienced deliberate
touching, pinching, leaning over, or cornering-all within the past year alone.57
And it's not just lawyers and other professionals. In fact, the number of cases filed
with the EEOC doubled between 1990 and 1995 and has leveled off at between twelve
thousand and fifteen thousand per year ever since- and the majority of those cases
were from women in blue-collar jobs. Women were far more likely to experience
sexual harassment in traditionally male-only jobs like mining, construction, trans-
portation, or manufacturing than they were in professional and white-collar jobs.
Clearly, when women try to "cross over" into male-dominated jobs, they are seen as
invaders, and sexual harassment is a way to keep them out.58
Sexual harassment takes many forms, from sexual assault to mocking innuendo.
Typically, it takes one of two forms. In the most obvious, quid pro quo form, a trade
North Country
The 2005 film North Country, starring Charlize 1984 and eventually won a landmark sexual discrimi-
Theron, recounted the story of Lois Jenson, a nation lawsuit-the first class-action sexual harass-
mineworker in Eveleth, Minnesota. Like the few other ment case in U.S. history. "It really was about getting
women mineworkers, Jenson, a single mother and a better paying job with benefits. I didn't go there to
daughter of a mineworker, was repeatedly threat- bring up issues. I just wanted to make a decent life for
ened, humiliated, groped, stalked, and assaulted until my family," Jenson said in an interview.
she and twenty other women miners went to court in
of sexual contact is offered for a reward or the avoidance of punishment. This is the
sex-for-grades model of teacher-student interaction, or the "sleep with me and you'll
get promoted" or "don't sleep with me and you'll get fired" workplace scenario. Thus,
for example, did U.S. Senator Robert Packwood end his congressional career-after
nearly a dozen former female staffers accused him of unwanted kissing, fondling, at-
tempts at sexual contact, and inappropriate remarks during his otherwise distin-
guished twenty-seven-year career.
The second form is far murkier and is understood as the creation of a "hostile
environment," one in which women feel compromised, threatened, or unsafe.
Women in medical schools, for example, described sexual harassment as taking sev-
eral different forms, including being ignored, left behind during rounds, and not
invited to assist during medical procedures. Consistently, female medical students
reported being subjected to jokes or pranks, hearing women's bodies being mocked
during anatomy classes, and finding pornography shuffled into anatomy slides
during lectures. Some law students recalled "ladies' days," when women were actu-
ally called on in class.
One of the more interesting sexual harassment cases involved the Mitsubishi
Motor Corporation. In December 1994, twenty-nine women working at the car com-
pany's plant in Normal, Illinois, filed a lawsuit alleging sexual harassment, claiming
that their male coworkers routinely groped and grabbed at them. Some women had to
agree to have sex in order to obtain jobs. Drawings of breasts, genitals, and sex acts
were labeled with the names of women workers and attached to the cars' fenders as
they passed down the assembly line. After an investigation, the EEOC filed its own suit
against the company in April 1996 on behalf of more than 280 women employees. A
little over a year later, after a critical review of the company's policies and procedures
by former labor secretary Lynn Martin, the company settled its suit with twenty-seven
of the twenty-nine original plaintiffs for $9.5 million and began to implement broad
changes in its corporate management.59
Whether sexual harassment is manifest as quid pro quo or a hostile environment,
it is rarely about sexual attraction between employees. Men accused of harassment are
seldom men who are simply awkward at asking women out for dates or men who are
unusually lustful. Sexual harassment is, in fact, just the opposite. It is about making
workers feel unwelcome in the workplace, about reminding them that they do not
belong because the workplace is men's space. As legal scholar Deborah Rhode writes,
it is a "strategy of dominance and exclusion-a way of keeping women in their places
and out of men's."60
Think, for example, of sexual harassment on the street. Imagine a man making a
rude, offensive comment to a woman as she walks by. "Hey, baby," he shouts, "nice
tits!" or, "You look good enough to eat!" If you were to ask this man about his com-
ment, he might shrug off the issue by saying he was just trying to meet women or to
indicate sexual interest. But what if we were to take these men at their word? Imagine
what would happen if that woman who was being harassed were to turn around and
say, "Who me? Great. Dinner at eight?" Or if she had met his crude remarks with some
crudeness of her own. What would that man do now?
It's clear that these remarks are not meant to attract women, but rather to
repel them and send them scurrying away, reminded that the streets belong to
men and that women who dare to walk on them alone, or who show up in bars
alone, are defying an unwritten ordinance. Such remarks are rude reminders of
male entitlement, an unwritten and often unconscious sense that the public arena
belongs to "us" and that interlopers, female invaders, will be reminded that they
don't really belong.
Until recently, the workplace has been such a male space, a homosocial preserve.
But that world has vanished forever. It is now virtually impossible for a man to go
through his entire working life without having a female colleague, coworker, or boss.
Women have entered the former boys' clubs-the streets, the corporate boardrooms,
the hallowed halls of learning-and they are not going away, as much as some men
might wish them to. Just when men's breadwinner status is threatened by economic
downsizing and corporate restructuring, women appear on the scene and become
easy targets for men's anger. This is the context in which we must consider the question
of sexual harassment, its gendered political economy, so to speak. Sexual harassment
in the workplace is a distorted effort to put women back in their place, to remind them
that they are not equal to men in the workplace, that they are, still, after all their gains,
just women, even if they are in the workplace. "Harassment is a way for a man to make
a woman vulnerable," says Dr. John Gottman, a psychologist at the University of
Washington.
And it works. Harassed women report increased stress, irritability, eating and
sleeping disorders, and absenteeism. Often, as one researcher writes, they feel humili-
ated and helpless and describe the "daily barrage of sexual interplay in the office as
psychological rape." Harassment occurs most frequently in the most recently inte-
grated workplaces, like the surgical operating theater, firefighting, and investment
banking, where women are new and in the minority. "Men see women as invading a
masculine environment," says Dr. Louise Fitzgerald, a University of Illinois psycholo-
gist. "These are guys whose sexual harassment has nothing whatever to do with sex.
They're trying to scare women off a male preserve.''61
One other thing that sexual harassment is typically not about is one person tell-
ing the truth and the other person lying. Sexual harassment cases are difficult and
confusing precisely because there are often many truths. "His" truth might be what
appears to him as an innocent indication of sexual interest or harmless joking with
the "boys in the office" (even if those "boys" happen to include women). He may
experience sexual innuendo or references to pornography as harmless fun, as what
the workplace is supposed to be like for men. He works there, therefore he's entitled
to treat the workplace as an extension of the locker room. "Her" truth may be that
his seemingly innocent remarks cause stress, anxiety about promotion, firing, and
sexual pressure.
The law about sexual harassment has reflected these two truths. The legal stan-
dard of harassment has been whether a "reasonable person" would see the behavior as
harassment. A 1991 Ninth Circuit Court case, Ellison v. Brady, nearly changed all that.
For the first time, the court "saw" the invisibility of gender-and ruled that the "rea-
sonable person" actually meant a reasonable man and that men and women might well
see the situation differently. Harassers often "do not realize that their conduct creates
a hostile working environment," the court found, but "the victim of sexual harassment
should not be punished for the conduct of the harasser." Thus the court established a
"reasonable woman standard," because, as the court opinion stated, "a sex-blind rea-
sonable person standard tends to be male-biased and tends to systematically ignore
the experiences of women."
Unfortunately, this reasoning didn't hold for too long, as cases became so complex
and convoluted that the Supreme Court stepped in two years later and ruled in Harris v.
Forklift again that the "reasonable person" standard is sufficient. However, the effect
was noticeable: Now, no longer is the intention of the harasser the standard against
which the crime is measured-it's the perceived effect on the victim by a "reasonable
person.''6
2
And this change has predictably caused a significant amount of defensiveness and
confusion among American men. After all, the rules have been changed. What used to
be routine behavior for men in the workplace may now be called "sexual harassment.''
"Clarence Thomas didn't do anything wrong, that any American male hasn't done,"
commented Dale Whitcomb, a thirty-two-year-old machinist during the Thomas
confirmation hearings. Two-thirds of the men surveyed said they would feel compli-
mented if they were propositioned by a woman at work, giving some idea about how
men have misperceived the problem.
At the societal level, sexual harassment stymies women's equality. And it is costly.
Both private and public sectors lose millions because of absenteeism, reduced produc-
tivity, and high turnover of female employees. One study by Working Woman maga-
zine indicated that the top 150 of the Fortune 500 companies lose $6.7 million per year
due to sexual harassment. The U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board reports that ab-
senteeism, job turnover, and lost productivity because of sexual harassment cost the
government an estimated minimum of $189 million a year. Corporate executives and
partners in large law firms say they are terrified about massive lawsuits from charges
of sexual harassment.63
Men are also harmed by sexual harassment. Male supervisors and employers are
hurt when sexual harassment makes women less productive. With increased absentee-
ism, higher rates of turnover, and greater job-related stress, women will not perform
to the best of their abilities. Some men may find such compromised performance a
relief-competing with women as equals and losing may be too great a blow to fragile
male egos-but supervisors cannot afford to have women working at less than their best
without it eventually also affecting their own performance evaluations. Supervisors and
The Great Recession of 2008 was the most gendered economic downturn in
OH? our history. Between December 2007 and June 2009, 70 percent of all the jobs
REALLY• lost were jobs that had been held by men.
This is half true. What's true, of course, are the percentages. Seven out of
every ten jobs lost were jobs held by men.
But the "most" gendered? Unlikely. After all, during the Great Depression of 1929-1930s,
virtually all the jobs lost were jobs held by men-because they were disproportionately repre-
sented in the labor force to begin with.
The Recession of 2008 was so visibly gendered that it was also known as the "he-cession" or
"Mancession." Less well known, though, is that the recovery has been just as gendered-in the
other direction. After all, in all those shovel-ready programs that were awaiting bailout funding,
what gender did you imagine was holding the shovel?
Since January 20 I0, job growth for men has been significantly greater than job growth for
women. Women lost 222,000 jobs and men gained 640,000 jobs between July 2009 and
December 2010.
This isn't exactly a "she-covery." Part of the explanation has not been whose jobs were lost
or gained, but where the losses and gains were. The private sector has added jobs every single
month since 2009, largely due to the stimulus package that spurred private sector growth. The
way we have "paid" for the stimulus has been to slash public sector jobs at the state and local
levels. Jobs in teaching, administrative support, and secretarial areas are mostly held by women.
Women lost a whopping 99.6 percent of the 257,000 jobs cut from the public sector.
The American response to the Mancession was a massive transfer of wealth and jobs to the
private sector and away from state and local governments. In a sense, we gave to "him"-at her
expense.
Government
Information
Financial activities
• Men
Manufacturing
• Women
Construction
Mining and logging
Other services
Trade, transportation, utilities
Leisure/hos pi tali ty
Professional/business services
Education/health
-500,000 0 500,000 1,000,000 1,500,000
Women's and men's job gains/losses by industry, June 2009-June 2014.

Source: IWPR analysis of U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Statistics, Current
Employment Statistics (September 5, 2014) .
Source: Heather Boushey, "The End of the Mancession" in Slate, January 25, 2011. National Women's Law Center,
www.nwlc.org.
employers should want all their employees to feel safe and comfortable so that they
may perform to the maximum of their abilities. Men's ability to form positive and
productive relationships with equal colleagues in the workplace is undermined by
sexual harassment. So long as sexual harassment is a daily occurrence and women are
afraid of their superiors in the workplace, innocent men's cordial and courteous be-
haviors may also be misinterpreted.
And finally, men can be harmed by sexual harassment from other men. In
March 1998, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that men can be the victims of sexual
harassment from other men, even when all the men involved are heterosexual.
Slightly more than 10 percent of all cases filed with the EEOC in 1997 were by men,
but that percentage has steadily climbed to over 17 percent today.64 Although the
majority of the harassers in such cases are also male, there are some cases in which
a female supervisor has harassed a male subordinate. Sexual harassment, then, has
been expanded to include men who are not traditionally "masculine" and are there-
fore punished for it by other men, as well as women who are harassed when they act
"too" masculine or when they don't act masculine "enough." And people still believe
that the workplace isn't gendered!
REMEDIES FOR WORKPLACE INEQUALITY

Despite all the arguments about gender difference that presume that men and women
are from different planets, the fact is that comparable percentages of women and men
are in the workplace and for the same reasons. Yet the workplace remains a decidedly
unequal arena, plagued by persistent sex segregation, wage inequality, sex discrimina-
tion, and sexual harassment. These inequalities exaggerate and even create the differ-
ences we think we observe. How can the workplace become a more equal arena, a
place in which women and men can earn a living to support themselves and their
families and experience the satisfaction of efficacy and competence?
Well, women can just "lean in." Lean In was more than the title of Sheryl Sandberg's
2013 mega-best-selling book. Like Nike's slogan "Just Do It," it became a mantra for
working women who were frustrated by continuing gender disparities in the work-
place. Women were holding themselves back from promotion and raises by the strictures
of traditional femininity; women had to "lean in" to smash through the glass ceiling.
Critics were quick to point out that "leaning in" shifts the entire burden away
from structural barriers (sex segregation, discrimination, archaic stereotypes held by
managers and supervisors) and onto women themselves. While leaning in might
enable a woman to get a raise, or be noticed for a promotion, it wouldn't change the
social and institutional arrangements that sustain a gender-unequal workplace.
In Japan, women are resisting leaning in, resisting entering the workforce at all,
because, as they explain, they are still expected to be the sole child-care providers to
their children, maintain the household, and care for aging relatives. To add a full-time
job would be overwhelming and lead, they fear, to "karoshi"-death by overwork.
Unless . . .
Unless men change. Leaning in asks nothing of men. It doesn't require a shift in
men's attitudes or behaviors around housework and child care. Which is why Sheryl
Sandberg launched a new campaign, "Lean In Together," to engage men to support
gender equality, both at work and at home (www.leanin.org/together). Obviously, such
personal change needs to be accompanied by policy initiatives as well.
One arena of change is the application of existing law. A good beginning might be
full compliance with the 1963 Pay Equity Act, which prohibits employers from paying
different wages to men and women who are doing the same or essentially the same
work, or Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which guarantees the absence of dis-
crimination based on race, sex, or national origin. To date, thirty states have under-
taken some form of pay equity reform, and about $527 million has been disbursed by
twenty state governments to correct wage discrimination.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is charged with prosecuting
cases of discrimination and harassment based on race, gender, national origin, and
pregnancy. And since the EEOC was established, lawsuits have spiraled upward every
year. Between 1992 and 2001, sexual harassment charges increased 146 percent, preg-
nancy discrimination 126 percent, and sex discrimination 112 percent. Since 1980,
sexual harassment charges have increased 150,000 percent-thanks to that one brave
woman, Anita Hill, who had the courage to name what had happened to her while
working for now-Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas-at the EEOC! 65
But a simple strategy of pay equity would be unlikely to make wages more equal,
because, as we have seen, wage inequality depends on sex segregation for its legitimacy
(and its invisibility). Comparable-worth programs require that "dissimilar work of
equivalent value to the employer be paid the same wages." Thus comparable-worth
programs require a systematic review of jobs, ordering them on criteria of complexity
and skills required so that they can be compared and thus wages allocated on a more
gender-equal basis. Some social scientists have devised the Gender Neutral Job Com-
parison System to measure jobs more accurately; the system also factors into its equa-
tions such traditionally invisible (and traditionally "female") skills as emotional labor
or undesirable working conditions.66
Comparable-worth programs have become necessary because sex segregation is
so intimately tied to wage inequality. But such programs have generated significant
opposition, largely based on misperceptions of what the idea entails. For example,
some argue that it is impossible to determine the worth of jobs, despite the fact that
nearly two-thirds of all companies already utilize job evaluations. Others say such
programs will interfere with the normal operations of the labor market-as if the
labor market set wages to begin with, and not bureaucracies, union officials, and man-
agers relying on gender stereotypes. (If the labor market operated perfectly, there
would be no wage discrimination, would there?) Others argue that such programs
open a door for a paternalist government to set wage levels or that they would bank-
rupt employers forced to pay women higher wages. But each firm could set its wage
levels based on skill, not sex. And besides, women earning higher wages would in-
crease consumer purchasing power, which would help the economy, not hurt it.67
Comparable-worth and pay-equity schemes are not, of course, without their
problems. They might have a remedial effect of evening out women's and men's wages
at lower levels, for example, but they would also preserve the gap between lower-level
jobs and upper-level management jobs, because both pay equity and comparable
worth preserve "the idea that some jobs are worth more than others." What's more,
they mute the effect of persistent gender stereotypes in the evaluation of positions, so
that some men would be able to continue to resist gender equality by embedding it in
performance evaluations.68
Workplace equality also requires interventionist strategies in hiring and promo-
tion. Although in recent years the trend has been for the United States to abandon
affirmative action policies, such policies have been enormously effective in leveling
the playing field, even a little bit. (Could that be why there's so much opposition?
After all, as political commentator Michael Kinsley notes, affirmative action is one of
the few policies that "gives white men whining rights in the victimization bazaar, just
like minorities and women.") One reason why well-meaning Americans say they
oppose affirmative action is that members of minority groups would find it demean-
ing to accept positions strictly on the ground that they are members of an underrep-
resented group, despite the fact that few women or minorities actually are hired or
promoted for that reason alone. Anyway, it's probably more demeaning to be denied
a position or a promotion because of membership in that group. When Barbara Allen
Babcock, an assistant attorney general in the Carter administration, was asked how
she felt about getting her position because she was a woman, she replied, "It's better
than not getting your job because you're a woman."69
Another remedy will be the elimination of the "mommy track"-a subtle way
that workplace gender inequality is reproduced. The mommy track refers to the ways
in which workplace discrimination transmutes itself into discrimination against those
workers who happen to take time off to get pregnant, bear children, and raise them.
Though it is illegal to discriminate against women because of pregnancy, women are
often forced off the fast track onto the mommy track because of what appear to be the
demands of the positions they occupy. Young attorneys, for example, must bill a
certain number of hours per week; failing to do so will result in their being denied
partnerships. A woman thus faces a double bind: To the extent that she is a good
mother, she cannot rise in the corporate world; to the extent that she rises in the cor-
porate world, she is seen as a bad mother.7°
The Pregnancy Discrimination Act, passed in 1978, makes it illegal for employers
to use pregnancy (or the likelihood that an employee will become pregnant) as the
basis for decisions concerning hiring or promotion. The Family and Medical Leave
OH?
REALLY•
In the United States, our commitment to "family values" enables working women
to opt out of working to take care of their families.
Such myths abound today. But let's look a little closer. First, the only women
who seem to be "opting out" are women at the very top of the economic
pyramid, since virtually all young people want to work-and have families. And those very few
women who do opt out do so largely because their husbands do virtually no housework or child
care. And who can balance work and family all by themselves? Did you know that in one survey of
173 countries, only 5 offered no paid leave for either parent in any segment of the labor force:
Lesotho, Liberia, Papua New Guinea, Swaziland, and the United States. "Family values" encom-
passes the workplace as well as the family, and it requires placing the recourses of the state at the
service of families. That is, family values requires that we actually, in our policies, value families.
Source: Jody Heymann, Alison Earle, and Jeffrey Hayes, The Work, Family, and Equity Index (Boston: Project on
Global Working Families, 2006).
Act of 1993 provides up to twelve weeks of unpaid leave to care for a child, an adoptive
child, or an ill child or relative. Compare this with the policies in the Nordic countries,
where couples receive from twelve to fifteen months of paid parental leave to care for
their newborn babies and in which both mothers and fathers are encouraged to take
some portion of it.
Policies to remove the glass ceiling, especially on corporate boards, will likely
have to come from governments that are brave enough to wade into intervention in
corporate governance. Some governments have issued targets-the percentages of
women they want on corporate boards. The European Union, as a whole, has begun to
set such targets. Norway recently established a quota, mandating that the board of
each company listed on its stock exchange be 40 percent female by 2008; France fol-
lowed by mandating 20 percent for its boards by 2009.71
While quotas are controversial, we must also keep them in perspective. "We've
excluded women for a thousand years," said Hilde Tonne, a Norwegian executive VP
for a global telecommunications company. "So we have already had quotas-it's just
that they were for men."72
The most obvious set of remedies falls under the general heading of "family-
friendly workplace policies" -that collection of reforms, including on-site child care,
flexible working hours, and parental leave, that allows parents some flexibility in bal-
ancing work and family life. The National Report on Work and Family reported in
December 1997 that these were among the most significant criteria in helping compa-
nies to retain qualified and well-trained personnel.
Turns out it's good business strategy as well. Roy Douglas Adler, a marketing
professor at Pepperdine University, has looked at data from the Fortune 500 for the
past thirty years. Consistently, the companies that most aggressively promoted
women outperformed the industry medians, with overall revenue profits about 34
pecent higher (equity profits were more than double that, or 69 percent higher). The
top ten firms with the best record of promoting women showed even greater increases
than those that were "merely" good. (Of course, one needs to be careful with such
correlations. It might simply be that those companies that are more profitable may
feel freer to experiment with promoting women. But when you find such results
coming from other countries as well, as we do in Britain, Sweden, and Norway, then
perhaps there is something to the other explanation: that promoting women is good
for the company's bottom line.73)
In the end, workplace equality will require significant ideological and structural
change-both in the way we work and in the way we live. We still inherit such out-
moded ideas about what motivates us to work and what skills we bring when we get to
work. John Gray's book Mars and Venus in the Workplace rehashed his stereotypes
about how men and women approach situations differently. According to Gray, in the
workplace men "retreat to a cave" when they have a problem to work out by them-
selves, whereas women "demonstrate sharing, cooperation, and collaboration." Except
that such interplanetary styles depend at least as much on the problem to be solved as
on the gender of the person solving it. To make men feel more comfortable, Gray rec-
ommends that we take photos of male workers alongside their achievements and ask
about their favorite football teams-ideas that Lucy Kellaway, a writer for the Finan-
cial Times, found "ill conceived, outdated and bizarre."74
Another sociologist, Karen Oppenheim Mason, writes that gender inequality in
the workplace is likely to remain "unless major revisions occur in our ideology of
gender and the division oflabor between the sexes . .. Ultimately," she concludes, "job
segregation is just a part of the generally separate (and unequal) lives that women and
men in our society lead, and, unless the overall separateness is ended, the separateness
within the occupational system is unlikely to end, either."75
But reform will be worth it. Workplace equality will enable both women and men
to experience more fulfilling lives-both in the workplace and outside of it.
CONCLUSION: TOWARD A BALANCE OF WORK AND FAMILY

Despite enormous and persistent gender inequality in the workplace, women are there
to stay. Women work for the same reasons that men work-to support themselves and
their families, to experience the sense of accomplishment, efficacy, and competence that
comes from succeeding in the workplace. Both men and women work because they
want to and because they have to. The social and economic realities of most American
families' lives these days are that both partners are working, which means that both
are struggling to balance work and family life.
And a struggle it is, in part because our lives have changed faster than the insti-
tutions in which we find ourselves. "Our jobs don't make room for family obliga-
tions," writes Stephanie Coontz. "To correct this imbalance, we need to reorganize
work to make it more compatible with family life." That is to say, we will never find
"O. K, now-on three, I'm going to toss a secondjob in there!"

Figure 9.11. Source: Danny Shanahan/The New Yorker Collection/The Cartoon Bank.
that balance if all we do is tinker with our family relationships, better organize our
time, outsource family work, juggle, or opt out. It will be possible only when the
workplace changes as well.7 6
Several different kinds of policy reforms have been proposed to make the work-
place more "family friendly"-to enable working men and women to effect that bal-
ancing act. These reforms generally revolve around three issues: on-site child care,
flexible working hours, and parental leave. By making the workplace more family
friendly, by implementing these three policy reforms, the workplace would, we think,
be transformed from Ebenezer Scrooge's accounting firm into the set from the hit film
9 to 5. Suddenly, overnight, when the evil boss was gone, the workplace was trans-
formed. Green plants were everywhere. The women's desks had photographs of their
children, while their children played in playpens right behind them. And, of course,
productivity shot up so high that the corporate CEO decided to maintain these
changes permanently.
But in the United States, we continue to think of these reforms as women's issues.
It is women who campaign for them and women who say they want them. One recent
best-selling book put all the pressure on women to accommodate themselves to the
virtual impossibility of balancing work and family. Sylvia Hewlett found startlingly
high percentages of childlessness among high-achieving women and argued that "the
brutal demands of ambitious careers, the asymmetries of male-female relationships
and the difficulties of bearing children late in life conspire to crowd out the possibility
of having children." Childlessness becomes, as she puts it, a "creeping non-choice,"
and she urges a woman to be "intentional" about family life-grabbing a husband and
having babies in her twenties and putting the career on the back burner.77
Hewlett's solutions may appear overly voluntaristic, assuming that individual
women need to make individual choices, rather than structural changes to the work-
place itself, but they do have a ring of truth to them-because they are half right. The
research does suggest that having children does stymie women's career ascendancy and
that putting one's career first may hinder one's ability to have children.78 But in both of
these halves of the equation there is a variable missing: men. Women's career chances
are stymied and their maternity is eclipsed only if the men in their lives don't change.
But on-site child care, flextime, and parental leave are not women's issues, they're
parents' issues, and to the extent that men identify as parents, men ought to want these
reforms as well. Politically, women probably cannot get the kinds of reforms they need
without men's support; personally, men cannot have the lives they say they want with-
out supporting these reforms. Women have already become what we might call "private
careerists"-people who are willing to claim their workplace ambitions in the private
domain of their homes and families, willing to reorganize the shape, the size, and the
timing of their family lives to try to balance both. Now we need a "public fatherhood"
to complement that-men who are publicly committed, in their workplaces, to reorga-
nizing their career trajectories to accommodate their family responsibilities and com-
mitments. Private careerism needs a public fatherhood.
Which was, you may recall, the trap that British prime minister Tony Blair fell
into when he and his wife were expecting the birth of their son in 2000. Could he take
the parental leave that he and his government had fought to institute? Did he dare? Of
course, his wife, Cherie, a high-prestige lawyer who earned three times what Blair
earned as prime minister and was the family breadwinner, took all of her allotted
thirteen weeks of unpaid parental leave. Could Blair take a week off?
The answer was "almost." Public opinion was split: Overwhelmingly (72 percent)
Britons supported the idea of men taking parental leave, but over half (57 percent)
thought Blair shouldn't use it. His wife urged him to follow the example of the Finnish
prime minister, who had just taken six whole days off when his daughter was born. In
the end, Blair took two days off and worked from home.79
It's celebrated cases like this that make clear the problems we will continue to face
in balancing work and family. These problems are both structural and attitudinal. Often
the problem is that there are no policies in place that enable mothers and fathers to also
be productive workers-that is, to balance their work and family commitments.
Take, for example, parental leave. Recall that the United States is one of only five
countries in the world whose government offers no paid parental leave to either parent.
And while some states (like Rhode Island and New Jersey) and some cities (like Wash-
ington, DC, and Boston) and many corporations have begun to fill the gap left by a
federal government that is MIA in supporting working families, the obstacles to dual-
career couples balancing work and family often feel insurmountable.
And when it comes to paternity leave, there's a real wasteland. Only 15 percent of
American companies offer paid paternity leave. Companies have been slow to offer
paternity leave, as much for cultural reasons as for financial ones. The ideal employee
is "unencumbered," available to the company 24/7. An employee, especially a man,
who is "distracted" by family obligations is not a reliable employee in that model.
Even in Silicon Valley companies, where vegan entrees are served in the company
cafeteriaand organized Frisbee games and regular massages are part of the "campus"
amenities, companies struggle to enable employees to balance work and family.
While Google offers men seven weeks of paid paternity leave, Yahoo offers eight, and
Facebook and Reddit offer seventeen weeks, the companies still schedule all-night
"hackathons," insist on early morning and late night work sessions, and require par-
ticipation in weekend activities-all hardly conducive to those balancing work and
family.
But the benefits of paid paternity leave are enormous-both to the companies and
to the men and their families. Companies that offer parental leave tend to be more
profitable and more flexible in responding to increasingly diverse economic landscapes.
Men who take parental leave tend to remain more involved in their children's lives as
their children grow up, and they share housework more equally also. And one Swedish
study found that men who take paternity leave live longer than men who don't. 80
The absence of a coherent national policy of family leave makes it very difficult for
both women and men to balance work and family. We are increasingly a nation of
dual-career/dual-carer couples, taking care of aging parents and young children, often
at the same time.
And often the problem is that workers don't avail themselves of the policies. Men
are afraid they'll be seen as less than fully committed to their careers, and their mas-
culinity will be threatened; women fear they'll be forever pegged as "mommies" and
not as employees. Both fear the mommy or the daddy track. "Young fathers need to
feel very secure in their careers, and they believe that asking for flexibility is seen as a
lack of commitment-which makes them more vulnerable," commented one British
parental leave advocate. When Erika Kirby interviewed women and men about their
experiences with parental leave policies she heard statements like this:
"No one talked to me directly and said 'Gee, I resent the fact that you were on
maternity leave,' but I know that people felt that way."
"People don't understand that when I had six weeks off [for maternity leave]
I needed six weeks off. I didn't sit there and play cards, you know what I mean, go
shopping every day."
"Someone wanted paternity leave, and everybody laughed. I mean, they thought
that was funny."
"I wanted to take two weeks [of paternity leave] and the supervisor was saying
'No, I don't think, you know, that's probably not a very good idea.'"
No wonder Kirby titled her article on the subject with another line she heard repeat-
edly: "The Policy Exists but You Can't Really Use It."81
Balancing work and family will enable women to live the lives they say they want
to live. Working mothers are happier and more productive, both as mothers and as
workers, than are full-time mothers, notes psychologist Faye Crosby. Another psy-
chologist, Joan Peters, writes that "mothers should work outside the home. If they do
not, they cannot preserve their identities or raise children to have both independent
and family lives." But to do so will require a dramatic change in the lives of American
men. Men will need to take on their share of housework and child care-not merely to
"pitch in" or "help out." Balancing work and family will also enable American men to
live the lives they say they want to live. As one man recently put it:
It's amazing. I grew up thinking a man was someone who was gone most of the
time, then showed up and ordered people around and, aside from that, never said
a word. I don't want my sons to have to deal with that kind of situation or to think
that's how the world is. 82
With more men like him-and a generation of women whose members refuse to
remain second-class citizens in the workplace-his sons and his daughters may come
to know a very different world.
KEY TERMS
Affirmative Action Gender Discrimination Occupational Sex
Double Bind Gendered Division of Labor Segregation
Emotion Work Glass Ceiling Pregnancy
Family and Medical Glass Cellar Discrimination Act
Leave Act Glass Escalator Tokenism
Family-Friendly Workplace Labor Force Participation Wage Gap
Policies Mommy Track
CHAPTER
The GENDER of POLITICS and

10
the POLITICS of GENDER
t a campaign stop early in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary season,
A New York Senator Hillary Clinton was addressing a crowd of supporters in
New Hampshire. In the middle of her speech, a couple of young men held up a
sign and began to chant "Iron My Shirt."
"Oh, the remnants of sexism are alive and well," Senator Clinton said. After
everyone had settled down, she caught her breath and said, "As I think has just
been abundantly demonstrated, I am also running to break through the highest
and hardest glass ceiling."'
There are several items worth mentioning in this story. For one thing, I'd
wager that very few of you actually even heard of it. (I'd even bet that most of
your instructors didn't hear of it.) In 2009, just a year later, I asked my own stu-
dents, and about 10 percent said they remembered that incident. It was barely
covered in the media and disappeared without a trace.
Now recall that Clinton was running to be the first female president against
Barack Obama, who was running to be the nation's first African-American pres-
ident. Imagine, for a moment, that at an Obama rally some white people had
held up a sign and started shouting something equally stereotypical and equally
offensive, like, say, "Shine My Shoes."
Had that happened, I believe that every single front page of every newspaper
in America would have carried a banner headline about racism; every television
and radio news show would have led with the story; and every single candidate,
Republican or Democrat, would have immediately denounced that behavior as
racist and inappropriate.
311
But when the subject is a woman, and the sign expresses a sexist sentiment that a
woman's place is only in the home? Well, that passes right under the radar of the
media and the public. In a sense, it points out that, at this moment in history, sexism
is far more permissible to be expressed than racism.
Clinton was right, of course, in another sense: In the United States, being elected
to the highest office in the land has proved to be among the more enduring glass ceil-
ings. No woman has been elected president in the United States-indeed, there have
been only a handful of minor-party candidates since suffragist Victoria Woodhull ran
(with Frederick Douglass as her vice presidential running mate) in 1872.
As we will see, it need not be that way: There have been plenty of women who have
been elected to their country's highest political office, including several in countries
that Americans routinely criticize as being "backward" or behind us on measures of
gender equality. Yet a woman has twice been elected prime minister in India, where
traditionally, women were such second-class citizens that widows were expected to
throw themselves on their husband's funeral pyres and kill themselves; and twice in
neighboring Pakistan, a Muslim country where we believe that women are far more
oppressed than they are in the West. And that doesn't even count the European coun-
tries where women have been elected as heads of state: Great Britain, Norway, Germany,
Iceland, Portugal, Denmark, Finland, and Ireland. Or Canada and Australia. Or these
countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Senegal, Chile, Costa Rica, Jamaica, Brazil, South Korea,
and Indonesia. Or these, where a woman's been elected more than once: Israel, Sri
Lanka, New Zealand, Bangladesh, Lithuania, and the Philippines. It's no wonder that
the United States has little credibility around the world when we proclaim our support
for women's rights in such places as Bangladesh or Pakistan, since they've elected
female heads of state twice each.2
Here's a list of current (January 2016) female heads of state:
• Angela Merkel, chancellor of Germany
• Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, president of Liberia
• Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, president of Argentina
• Sheikh Hasina Wajed , prime minister of Bangladesh
• Dalia Grybauskaite, president of Lithuania
• Kamla Persad-Bissessar, prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago
• Dilma Rousseff, president of Brazil
• Atifet e Jahjaga, president of Kosovo
• Portia Simpson Miller, prime minister of Jamaica
• Park Geun-hye, president of South Korea
• Erna Solberg, prime minister of Norway
• Laimdota Straujuma, prime minister of Latvia
• Michelle Bachelet, president of Chile
• Marie Louise Coleiro Preca, president of Malta
• Beata Szydto prime minister of Poland
• Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, president of Croatia
• Tsai Ing-wen , president of Taiwan
The United States lags woefully behind the rest of the world not only among heads
of state, but also among legislators at every level. As of 2012, the United States ranked
Chapter 10: The Gender of Politics and the Politics of Gender 313
eighty-fourth in the world in percentage of female legislators-behind Bangladesh,
Sudan, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia-that is, behind countries we ste-
reotypically think of as far less gender equal. Only 18.3 percent of the Senate and House
of Representatives and 24 percent of state legislators are female. Of the hundred largest
cities in the country, only nine have female mayors, and of the fifty governors, only six
are women.
How are we to explain this dramatic gender gap? Generally, social scientists offer
three possible explanations (figure 10.1).
First, simple prejudice. What holds women back is the attitudes of other
people. Some people believe that women are just not suited for positions of politi-
cal power. Women, they believe, are too emotional and too weak to be responsible
leaders. Or their physiology gets in the way. For example, in 1995, arguing against
women's participation in the military, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich com-
mented that women shouldn't be soldiers because they "get infections," while
males are "biologically driven to go out and hunt giraffes" (address at Reinhart
College, January 5, 1995).
Although such overt prejudice has been declining in recent years, it still re-
mains a significant barrier to women's full electoral success. In 1971, two-thirds of
Americans said they would vote for a woman if she were nominated-which was
nearly double the percentage just thirty-five years earlier. That is, even by 1971, fully
one-third of Americans would not vote for a woman for elected office simply be-
cause she was a woman. Today nearly nine out of ten Americans say they would vote
for a woman. Even though more than three times as many Americans believe that
men make better leaders (21 percent) than women do (6 percent), nearly seven out of
ten (69 percent) believe that it makes no difference at all. It is still the case that many
people believe that, all things being equal, men are more suited for political leader-
ship positions than women are.3
Some of those who believe that women are less qualified are women themselves.
A second explanation puts more of the responsibility on women. Some psychologists
of sex roles argue that differential socialization of men and women leads women to be
What is the greatest obstacle preventing more women around the world from entering politics?
(Average rank, greatest to smallest obstacle)
The country
with the highest
proportion of
Educational
womenm
inequality:
Economic parliament (56%)
3.8
Barriers in the inequality: is Rwanda.
3 4
political process: •
General culture
Cult:;~=~~ious ~ 2 . 7
2 ·5
J-1 The U.S. Congress
is less than
of sexism: 17% female .
2.3 ~
~I- - - - r--------=:::::.- -
Greatest
obstacle
1 2 l 3 4 5
Smallest
obstacle
Figure I 0.1. Survey regarding women leaders.

Source: From Foreign Policy, April 2012.
more reticent about taking leadership positions. Just as men are more likely to ask for
raises at work than are women, so, too, are women less likely to put themselves for-
ward for local office, which is the first step toward being elected to higher office.
And there is some truth to this explanation as well. Women are socialized to be
more demure and self-effacing, but the many programs on campuses and in corpora-
tions to promote women's leadership have certainly identified large numbers of women
willing and able to assume political responsibility.
A third explanation is more structural and has less to do with women's abilities
or temperaments. The structure of politics-the requirement that one be so com-
pletely devoted to the job, constantly working either to be an effective legislator or
campaigning for re-election-is like any other high-pressure profession. And just as
we saw that differential socialization alone could not explain the historical shortage
of qualified female lawyers or doctors or corporate board members, so too can it not
alone explain the shortage of female legislators. Trying to balance work and family,
and being a good parent requires significant effort and support. The lack of adequate
child-care support is a major barrier to women's entry into politics-as it is in any
other field .
A story told by former Colorado congresswoman Pat Schroeder is illustrative
here. After her first election to office, her husband was asked how it felt to be the hus-
band of a congresswoman. He replied that in the future, it would be he who would be
taking the children to the pediatrician. When Schroeder heard this, she immediately
called her husband on the telephone and said, "For $500, what is the name of our chil-
dren's pediatrician?" He replied, somewhat sheepishly, that what he had meant to say
was that he would be willing to take them if she asked him to.4
Is it any wonder that 86 percent of all female legislators do not have school-aged
children at home when they are elected to office? It's a kind of double whammy for
women: If they have children, they're scolded for neglecting them; if they don't have
children, people wonder what's wrong with them. Ruth Mandel, director of the Eagleton
Institute of Politics at Rutgers University, recalled one married female legislator who
told her that "she was portrayed during the election as about to have children (thereby
neglecting her constituents) and another said she was asked, 'Who is going to watch
the baby?' ... The female young elected leaders who were single said they faced gossip,
even slanderous comments, about their sexual habits. Male candidates did not men-
tion this as a problem for them."5
Politics is similar to other professions in another way: Getting ahead depends not
only on what you know, but whom you know. Networks are essential: Party leaders
(typically men) have to "notice" your talents and leadership abilities, groom you for
the grueling process of elections, and promote you within the ranks of your political
party. These networks are like supply chains for information, talents, and opportuni-
ties, and they are essential for a successful career. At the local level, then, formal crite-
ria are accompanied by less formal (but no less institutional) factors such as networks.
And women tend to have less developed institutional networks, fewer mentors, and
worse access to information.
Finally, there's money. Female candidates often have a harder time raising money
for campaigns than men do, as larger corporate donors tend to favor the people they
already know and trust. The enormous initial cost of entering the political arena sets
I iJ ' ' ,,, 111 :n)Q IIa

Men spend a lot more time talking than women do, and men in power tend to take up an in-
ordinate amount of airtime. But what about women in power, in, say, the U.S. Senate? Accord-
ing to organizational psychologist Victoria Brescoll, in her article "Who Takes the Floor and
Why?," powerful male senators tend to speak a lot more than less powerful male senators.
But this doesn't seem to be true of women. Since this could be an artifact of how long the
senators have been in the Senate, she conducted an experiment in which women and men
were "allotted" a certain amount of power in a group setting. Sure enough, the more powerful
men tended to talk a lot more than the less powerful men, while the women tended to be
more democratic. In fact, as Brescoll found out in a subsequent experiment, those women
who did use up a lot of airtime tended to be more negatively viewed by others. That suggests
that the gender difference is not because women "naturally" tend to be kinder and cede the
floor, but because those women who don't yield are not listened to anyway.
a high bar for female candidates, which discourages many qualified candidates. To
counter this initial barrier to entry, a group of wealthy women founded Emily's List in
1985 to raise money for women's election campaigns. (Emily is not a person; the name
is an acronym for "Early Money Is Like Yeast.")
THE GENDER GAP IN VOTING

Not only is gender a key factor in who gets elected, but it is also a critical determinant
of who does the electing. For some time, there has been a significant gender gap among
the electorate. Women are more likely to vote Democratic, while men are more likely
to vote Republican.
The gender gap is found when people are asked about their party affiliations as
well (figure 10.2); not only are women more likely to vote Democratic, they are more
likely to register as Democrats.
This gender gap in both voting and party affiliation is typically explained by two
things. First, it reflects the increased independence of women, especially married
women. Not that long ago, it was assumed that married women would vote the same
way their husbands voted-that is, that they would vote the way their husbands told
them to vote. In fact, one of the most popular arguments against woman suffrage in
the first decades of the twentieth century was that it would violate the fundamental
constitutional principle of "one man, one vote." Anti-suffragists argued, giving women
the vote was akin to discriminating against single men by giving them only one vote
while in effect giving married men two votes. It was inconceivable at the time that a
woman might have a political opinion of her own.
Second, in general, women tend to hold more liberal attitudes than do men. For
example, attitudes about same-sex marriage, alleviating poverty, racial equality, dis-
crimination against LGBT people, the environment, women's rights, and the like all
show some significant differences by gender, with women holding what would be called
the more "progressive" position, supporting greater state intervention to remedy
50%
45% 2'½
40%
35%
30%
32%
25%
20%
15%
10%
5%
0%
- - Women - -Men
Figure 10.2. Percent identifying as Democrats or leaning Democratic by gender.

Source: "The Gender Gap: Party Identification and Presidential Performance Ratings," based on data from CBS/
New York Times and ABC News/Washington Post polls , Center for American Women and Politics, Rutgers
University, http:/ /www.cawp.rutgers.edu/ sites/ default/files/ resources/ ggprtyid.pdf.
inequalities. Since the Republican Party is understood to be more right wing and to sup-
port fewer government programs to address inequality, this gender gap in party affilia-
tion and voting behavior provides an accurate picture of gender and political attitudes.
That the gender gap has increased in recent decades, however, is usually explained
by the increasingly liberal political attitudes held by women or by the failure of the
Republican Party to appeal to women's interests. However, women's voting patterns
are only part of the picture. As Everett C. Ladd of the Roper Center explained, "Women
are not really more Democratic than they were fifteen years ago." The real story is that
"men have become more Republican."6
The gender gap in voting has become a staple of political analysis. But it's impor-
tant to see that it changes dramatically when race is factored in (figure 10.3). White
• % DEM (Obama) • % GOP (Romney)
Total Men Women White White Black Black Latino Latina All other
men women men women men races
Figure I 0.3. 2012 election: exit poll data by gender and race/ethnicity.
Source: Christina Bejarano, 2014. The Latino Gender Gap in U.S. Politics. Latino Decisions. http:/ /www.latinodecisions
.com/blog/2014/02/ I 9/the-latino-gender-gap-in-u-s-politics/ (retrieved November 2014).
people-both women and men-are more likely to vote Republican, while African
American and Hispanic voters-also both women and men-are more likely to vote
Democratic. Yes, it's true that a higher percentage of African American or Hispanic
women vote Democratic than African American or Hispanic men; in fact, the race
and ethnic voting gap is actually larger than the gender gap.
POLITICS IS FOR "REAL MEN," NOT "GIRLIE MEN":

THE MASCULINITY OF POLITICS
The flip side of believing that women's "natural" femininity disqualifies them for politi-
cal office is the equally pervasive stereotype that only the manliest of men are quali-
fied to hold such office. Elections are always meditations on masculinity: Is he man
enough to push the button, stare down the nation's enemies, and, if necessary, be the
commander in chief and lead them into battle? (Of course, political leaders must also
exhort us to care for those less fortunate, insist that everyone share, and make sure that
people are kind and respectful of the rights of others [i.e., traditionally feminine traits],
but this recedes to the background when we contemplate that the business of politics is
the capacity for war.)
Nowhere is this more evident than in presidential elections. Often, different
parts of masculinity are embodied by different candidates, and the electorate often
debates which particular version will triumph. Will it be the paternal, rational, and
balanced masculinity of Washington (the "father" of our country), Jefferson, FDR,
or Lincoln-calming stormy seas during turbulent times-or the saber-rattling,
bellicose fulminations of Jackson, Teddy Roosevelt, or George W. Bush? (Once, it
was literally the actual paternalistic father and vengeful son, as the nation elected
first the "kinder, gentler" George H. W. Bush, with his "thousand points of light,"
and the militaristic George W. Bush, who went looking for weapons of mass de-
struction in all the wrong places and led the country into its longest and least suc-
cessful war in history.)
Perhaps no campaign was more gendered than the presidential election of 1840.
Then-president Martin Van Buren was an able iflackluster administrator. But his op-
ponent, William Henry Harrison, a military hero fresh from victorious campaigns
against the Seminoles in Florida, ran a relentless campaign questioning Van Buren's
masculinity. Van Buren was ridiculed as a wimp whose administration was composed
of "eastern officeholder pimps." Campaign songs chastised "Little Van," the "used up
man," who "wore corsets, put cologne on his whiskers, slept on French beds, and rode
in a British coach." One Harrison supporter declared Van Buren's White House to be
staffed by "French cooks" who furnished the president's table with "massive gold plate
and French sterling silver services." (It is true that Van Buren presided over the instal-
lation of indoor plumbing in the White House.) Davy Crockett, he of unimpeachable
masculinity, declared that "it would be difficult to say," from Van Buren's appearance,
"whether he was man or woman." And it was rumored that when Van Buren read
about these scandalous attacks, "he burst his corset." Campaign posters depicted
Harrison, his sleeves rolled up, spade in hand, in front of his log cabin.
Harrison's supporters chanted:
Old Tip he wore a homespun coat, he had no ruffled shirt
But Matt he has the golden plate, and he's a little squirt!
In fact, none of it was true. Van Buren was a capable administrator, the son of an
upstate New York innkeeper; Harrison was an aristocratic scion, bred in a three-story
manor on a Virginia plantation. But the campaign worked: Over 80 percent of the eli-
gible white male voters turned out for the election, and Harrison won in a landslide.
Alas, the story has a sad coda. Harrison apparently believed his own hype. Taking
the oath of office on one of the most bitterly cold days on record in Washington,
Harrison refused to wear a topcoat, lest he appear weak and unmanly. He caught
pneumonia as a result, was immediately bedridden, and died thirty-two days later-
the shortest term in office in our nation's history.
It's not just the leaders, of course, but the political ideas they espouse and the par-
ties they represent that are seen as gendered. The Democrats generally support higher
taxes in order to develop programs for education, social services, and health care for
those less fortunate. Republicans, by contrast, advocate both higher levels of military
spending and dramatic cutting of taxes, offsetting those costs by cutting the very
social programs the Democrats advocate. Thus, to the Republicans, the Democrats
advocate a feminine government, a "Nanny State," more along the lines of the Euro-
pean social democracies, while, to the Democrats, the Republicans are the "Daddy Party,"
proposing a lean, mean fighting machine that operates as a reverse Robin Hood, taking
from the poor and giving to the rich. Democrats, then, have to show they are manly;
Republicans have to show they have at least a modicum of compassion.
Take a look at some fairly recent presidential contests.7 Bill Clinton's manhood
was always in doubt and always on display. He didn't serve in the military; his wife was
hardly the subservient but gracious hostess we had come to expect from First Ladies;
he expressed his feelings and felt our pain. Depicted by his enemies as alternately con-
niving and gay (in both cases, Hillary was depicted as a demonically masculinized
hydra), he was also beloved by his admirers as deeply compassionate and politically
astute. The revelations of a sexual liaison with Monica Lewinsky, a White House
intern, seem to have confirmed rumors of his habitual skirt-chasing, and his subse-
quent impeachment trial was discrediting if not dethroning. 8
The hotly contested election of 2000 featured two literal as well as symbolic sons.
George W. Bush and Al Gore were both the namesake sons of venerated political fa-
thers and had been carefully groomed for elective office. Yet Gore could not shake his
image as a ruling-class wimp when compared to the equally preppy, equally Ivy
League, and equally entitled Bush. No matter how Gore tried to "butch" it up and
present the male toughness of an alpha male, as he was advised by feminist writer
Naomi Wolf, he seemed officious, stiff, effete (figure 10-4). It was as if Gore presented
the image of the man who had never been a boy; Bush, by contrast, appeared to be a
boy who had never grown up, a good-time frat-boy Peter Pan. And, as we've seen, the
gender gap was in full evidence, as white men voted overwhelmingly for Bush.
The election illustrated the deep gendered political divide. Red and blue states
were seen as "masculine" or "feminine" states: gun owners versus gun controllers, ag-
gressively military versus conciliatory and diplomatic, environmentally rapacious
versus environmental stewardship, tax-cutting free-marketeers who run up the debt
versus fiscal prudence in both taxation and spending.
Not since 1840 had a national election been more saturated with contested images
of masculinity than the presidential election of 2004. As then, an aristocratic blue
Figure 10.4. The Kiss. Al Gore delivered a very long kiss with his then-wife Tipper Gore at the
2000 Democratic National Convention, no doubt as a way to butch up his image. And it worked,
for a time. He got a short bump in the polls and went on to win the popular vote in the election.
Source: AP Photo/David J. Phillip.
blood-prep school, Ivy League, summering in Kennebunkport-cast himself as a

virtual log-cabin-born everyman who pulled himself by his bootstraps. And he cast
his opponent, a sage and sober bureaucrat, as a soft and sensitive Francophile, under
the thumb of an emasculating wife. Bush snickered as Kerry windsurfed and waffled.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, our own contemporary Davy Crockett, called Kerry a "girlie
man." What might have been seen as "manly reticence" was sneered at as "patrician
aloofness." Kerry, we heard, "looks French." Kerry and John Edwards, his running
mate, were called "the first metrosexual presidential hopefuls." Edwards's styled hair
brought him the label "the Breck Girl."9
Yet Kerry had fought bravely in a war and, following his experience in Vietnam, did
the unthinkable for a man- he changed his mind. He then fought bravely against it. This
was, of course, used against him, proof that he waffled and flip-flopped in a feminine
way. (Rarely has an election so denigrated femininity as a liability.) On Memorial Day
weekend, one New York tabloid published the fictitious menus of the two candidates.
For Bush it was sausages and beer (nonalcoholic, of course), and for Kerry it was frogs'
legs, Chardonnay, and creme bnllee. It was parodies like these, and not his meritorious
service or economic policies, that seemed to resonate with white male voters, who turned
out overwhelmingly for Bush. Former president Bill Clinton summed up this new
OH?
REALLY•
One particularly telling sign of the importance of masculinity in politics and
elections is the fact that voters are more likely to elect candidates with deeper
voices regardless of the speaker's gender!
Duke University researchers found that both male and female participants
consistently prefer red the lower-pitched voice of two potential candidates,
even among two women. They also found that both men and women felt like lower-pitched
female voices seemed stronger and more trustworthy and competent, but only male participants
perceived lower-pitched male voices to be stronger and more competent. Researchers explain
that male participants may have been more tuned in to the voice pitch to gauge the speaker's
competitiveness and social aggressiveness, compared to female participants, who may not dis-
criminate strength and competence based on male voices because they are focusing on other cues,
not pitch, to evaluate those traits. No matter, the female par ticipants ultimately chose potential
candidates with deeper vo ices.
Source: Christine Hsu , "Voters Consistently Elect Candidates with Deeper Voices" in Medical News Daily, March 14,
2012, http://www.medicaldaily.com/voters-consistently-elect-candidates-deeper-voices-239941.
collective gendered psychology when he observed that when people feel uncertain or
afraid, "they'd rather have somebody who's strong and wrong than somebody who's
weak and right." 10
THE ELECTIONS OF 2008 AND 2012

The election of 2008 was a "game changer" in many respects. On the one hand, it was
the first national presidential campaign that featured two women vying for the presi-
dency and vice presidency. And just as there surely was a choice of different masculini-
ties in the candidacies of Barack Obama and John McCain, so too did Hillary Clinton
and Sarah Palin offer a choice of femininities. On one side was Clinton, the brainy
former First Lady who was as adroit an administrator and adept at policy analysis as
her celebrated wonkish husband, but came across as coldly efficient and "masculine:'
Right-wing satires of Clinton even managed to transform her as the hapless victim of
her husband's notorious philandering into a raving, crypto-lesbian "nutcracker;' as one
novelty item put it-thus fusing antifeminism, homophobia, and gender traditionalism
in one swoop (figure 10.5).
If Hillary Clinton was the "bitch," then Sarah Palin's folksy, ditzy lack of com-
mand of any meaningful policy analysis managed to render her the "babe." Palin's
handlers tried to massage her lack of experience and her laughably tenuous grasp of
policy into an asset, so as to seduce white male voters to vote for the "brainless babe."
Her attempts to bridge the divide between brainless babe and "ball-busting bitch"
included one of her most oft-quoted lines from the campaign, "The heels are on, the
gloves are off." 11
This pairing of femininities captured in miniature the dilemmas of the contem-

porary American working woman-she must be competent, but not sacrifice her
quaintly ladylike demeanor. She must be a good mother and devoted to her family, but
also be sexually alluring to men. Warm and hot, competent and comely. While
Figure 10.5. Hillary Clinton is shown a "Hillary nutcracker," a novelty item that imagined this
female presidential candidate as unfeminine.
Source: AP Photo/Elise Amendola.
contemporary American women want to "have it all," they often seem to feel they need
to be everything to everyone.
Between Obama and McCain, the gendered choice was equally stark. "Now that
the actual presidential campaign is under way, we have the traditionally 'masculine'
style, embodied by John McCain, emphasizing experience, toughness, feistiness, stub-
bornness, grit, exclusivity, etc., and the newly emergent 'feminine' managerial style
practiced by Obama and emphasizing communication, consensus, collegiality and
inclusiveness."12
McCain reached for the mantle of heroic masculinity, playing on his heroic cap-
tivity as a POW during the Vietnam War. His campaign videos referred to his faith in
the "fathers," his having been "tested in hard and cruel ways," and his "will to fight and
survive" the brutality of his captivity. 13
That Barack Obama was African American underscored the racial elements of
the debate about masculinity and tinged it with a 250-year-old history of seeing race
as a gender issue. Obama's masculinity was entirely tied up in racial stereotypes. His
oratorical style was inspiring, but his demeanor was always measured, tempered, as
if aware that any flash of anger might propel him backwards to those older stereo-
types about out-of-control, hypermasculine black men. Filmmaker Byron Hurt's short
campaign video "Barack and Curtis" contrasted Obama with the gangsta rapper
50 Cent, who, Hurt asserted, embodied every negative stereotype of the black man-
an angry, inarticulate, money-grubbing sexual predator-that had fueled centuries
of racist demonization. Obama may have been a "black man," but the emphasis was
on the "man."14
And thus efforts to taint him as an effete Harvard-educated elitist fell equally flat.
No amount of massaging his anemic attempts at bowling could offset his genuine prow-
ess at basketball; and there were no photographs of him windsurfing off Nantucket
Island or snowboarding in Sun Valley, as there had been ofJohn Kerry.
Not that pundits and opponents didn't try. Media pundits declared Obama "kind
of a wuss" (Tucker Carlson), "prissy" (Joe Scarborough), and "a sissy boy" (Don Imus).
"Americans want their president, if it's a man, to be a real man," said Scarborough-
ignoring the fact that they also sort of want a female president to be a "real man" and
a real lady. 15
Yet Obama not only weathered that emasculating storm, he transcended it. His
even-tempered affability coupled with his sharp intelligence enhanced his status as a
brilliant orator, a skilled politician, a devoted husband and father, and a decent man.
Barack Obama became a sex symbol. "President Barack Obama is the personification
of contemporary masculinity," cooed one blogger with an obvious man crush. An-
other called him "the embodiment of cool." "Smart, sexy, dashingly handsome and
cool, he is the embodiment of the type of twenty-first-century contemporary man.''16
Perhaps Obama, more than any other president before him, has been able to limn
the boundaries of gender, embracing qualities that had been previously coded as either
masculine or feminine. Legal scholar Frank Rudy Cooper called Obama the nation's
first "unisex" president; others called him androgynous.17
The campaign of 2012 pitted a seasoned, but far more subdued, President
Obama against a very different sort of masculine icon: the handsome ultra-rich
elite in the person of Mitt Romney. Throughout the campaign Romney battled the
perception that he was not in touch with everyday Americans, much the way George
H. W. Bush lost votes in 1992 when he was asked the price of a gallon of milk in the
presidential debate (because he hadn't actually shopped in decades, or, more likely,
because his aides were so elite themselves that they never thought to find out to tell
him). Both the elder President Bush and Romney (Figure 10.6) had an aristocratic
bearing that was a throwback to an earlier era, when Americans preferred having
native aristocrats as their leaders, endowing them with virtues that were different
from those of the common man.
As we await the results of the presidential campaign of 2016, one thing is certain:
There will be many masculinities on display, each trying to strike the balance between
a virile decisiveness and unbendable strength with compassion for the struggles of
everyday folk just trying to get by. And also, at least one iteration of femininity, trying
to strike pretty much the same balance. Just how much empathy can a candidate show
before we whip out the "w" word?
THE POLITICS OF GENDER

We've been discussing what could only be called "the gender of politics" -the way
that we can see gender differences in political behavior, or in public perceptions
of different candidates, or the ways that gender is used to both praise and criticize
ROMNEY:
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Figure I 0.6. Newsweek, October 19, 1987 (left); Newsweek, July 29, 2012 (right).
elected officials. But what about the other side, about the ways that various gender
issues play out in the political arena? How did it happen that questions that raise gen-
der issues-sexuality, work-family balance, women's reproductive rights-became
"political"? Why should the government even care with whom you have sex, whether
or not you use birth control, or how you decide to raise your child? Are these any of
your neighbor's business?
But governments do care about gender issues, very much. For one thing, as
we've seen, gender issues emerge in every arena, so other social institutions such as
the family, education, and the workplace are all filled with gender issues. And
gender also structures our intimate lives-our relationships with our friends, our
lovers, our partners-and these, too, come constantly under the scrutiny of the
political realm.
Take fertility, for example. How many children you might individually decide to
have has enormous political and economic implications-it will affect the educa-
tional system and the number of people entering the workplace, which also affects
the money that people leaving the workforce due to retirement will be able to have.
It affects the health care system. "Too many" children will put a burden on the edu-
cation and health care system, but will eventually help raise the money needed to
fund Social Security and Medicare. "Too few" children eases the burden on the edu-
cation and health care system, but will eventually dry up the funds that feed Social
Security and Medicare. Clearly, these personal individual decisions have political
implications. (And it's ironic, isn't it, that much of the debate about them is framed
not in economic or political terms, but instead as questions of morality and
religion?)
Here's a good illustration:
This is a photo of a panel of "experts" assembled to testify in Congress on the

health care measure's coverage of birth control for women. Should birth control be
covered by the health care law-that is, should women be able to have their insurance
cover their expenses for birth control? Notice anything odd about this panel of experts
testifying about women's sexuality and women's reproductive choices?
When this hearing took place in the early spring of 2012, there was a national
outcry. In 2012, was it really impossible to find any qualified women-physicians, epi-
demiologists, public health experts, let alone actual women who felt they might have a
stake in the outcome of such hearings-who might have been able to comment more
authoritatively on women's sexual and reproductive needs?
Actually, the photograph presents a somewhat false picture, because there actu-
ally were some women who wanted to offer some expert testimony. But they were ex-
cluded from this blue-ribbon panel. You may remember the story of Sandra Fluke, a
Georgetown University law student who asked to be heard and was denied. Fluke
argued that her health care coverage should include birth control-because, in her
view, her health depended on her ability to make safe choices about her sexuality.
(Of course, birth control is far more cost-effective: birth control by private insurers
costs the taxpayer nothing, while unwanted pregnancies are very expensive.)
In response, right-wing commentator Rush Limbaugh leapt into the fray, trying to
shame Fluke for having the temerity to suggest that birth control might be part of her
health care package:
What does it say about the college co-ed Sandra Fluke, who goes before a congres-
sional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex, what does
that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be
paid to have sex. She's having so much sex she can't afford the contraception. She
wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex.
The next day, the unapologetic radio host went even further:
If we're going to pay for your contraceptives and thus pay for you to have sex, we
want something for it. We want you to post the videos on line so we can all watch.
Reaction was swift and entirely negative. Sponsors of his show withdrew their ads and
stations dropped the show, because they felt that Limbaugh's comments were offensive.
But his comments were not only offensive; they were also incorrect. After all, it's not
taxpayers who would be paying this woman to have sex, but a private health insurance
company, into which she pays a monthly enrollment fee to be able to have sex and not
get pregnant unless she wants to. What's more, if Rush Limbaugh has erectile dysfunc-
tion, as he has admitted in the past, he can get a prescription for Viagra or another
erectile dysfunction medication. (He's said he uses Viagra.) His prescription will likely
be covered by his insurance policy so that he pays only a modest copay. That is, by his
logic, you, the reader of this book, will be paying for him to have sex. By his criteria,
then, he will also be a prostitute. (About the videos? Maybe we shouldn't push it. I think
I'd prefer that he demand for women the same privacy he'd expect for himself.) 18
Take something a little less controversial. How about family-friendly workplaces?
That's a gendered policy issue. As you may recall, currently the United States is one of
only five countries in the world that offers no paid parental leave to either parent when
they have a kid.1 9 (The other four are Swaziland, Papua New Guinea, Lesotho, and Li-
beria.) We offer virtually no public, free child care prior to when the child enters public
school at pre-K or nursery school, and many states and communities don't even offer
that. Few workplaces offer on-site child care for their employees, and few offer flextime
so that parents can balance their child care commitments. All these policy initiatives
to bridge the gap between the public and the private arenas are gendered, as they dra-
matically affect women's economic participation.
On the other hand, declaring family-friendly policies such as child care and pa-
rental leave "women's issues" actually misses the point. Yes, of course, they are issues
for women-those who seek to balance work and family commitments. But in that
sense, they are also issues for men who want to balance their work and family lives.
That is, they are parents' issues: issues that are really not about women and men, but
about women and men who are parents. It's parents who want and need family-friendly
workplace policies so that they can balance the two sides of their lives. Seeing them as
women's issues equates women with mothers and thus leaves out all those women who
are not mothers. But it also lets men entirely off the hook, assuming that men are
"free" from family responsibilities and wouldn't want to try to balance work and
family in the first place.
Obviously, then, the state takes an interest in our private lives, our gendered inti-
mate lives. There are all sorts of laws regulating birth control, abortion, marriage, and
divorce. There are laws prohibiting discrimination based on gender in employment,
housing, and education. There are laws that protect women from unwanted sexual at-
tention at work (or in school) that might interfere with their ability to perform their
workplace duties. All of these are examples of how the realm of the political intersects
with gender difference and gender inequality.
For example, the U.S. government believes that there are few functionally relevant
gender differences on which you can develop a workplace or educational policy that
would favor one gender over another. The key words there are, of course, "functionally
relevant." Obviously the government takes no position on whether or not there are
actual biological differences between women and men. Of course there are biological
differences!
The question is what difference those differences make. What difference do our
different physiologies, brain chemistries, hormone secretions have on our ability to
do our jobs, go to school, be effective citizens? Here, the courts have advanced a some-
what equivocating position. Unlike race, which receives what the courts call "strict
scrutiny"-the courts recognize no functionally relevant differences among people
based on race, and so there can be no policies in education or housing or employment
that would promote discrimination based on race-gender is slightly different. Gender
receives what the courts have labeled "intermediate scrutiny." That means that under
most circumstances, gender discrimination would be impermissible. There are some
situations in which gender discrimination might be allowed, but the courts have set
the bar fairly high.
Gender discrimination is permitted if-and only if-these criteria are met. First,
the discrimination has to be based on "real differences" between women and men,
not based on stereotypes. That means you can't argue that women are less aggressive
than men and that therefore you won't allow them to enlist in the military. Why is
that a stereotype? Because even if women as a group are less aggressive than men as
a group, that doesn't mean that any particular woman is less aggressive than any
particular man. We all know some pretty aggressive women and some pretty nonag-
gressive men. What we might want in the military is aggressive people, and such
people come in all genders.
Second, the discrimination has to be actually relevant to the task at hand. That
means that even if men are less empathic listeners than women are, again as groups, you
can't therefore hire only women as nurses in hospitals. How, exactly, is being an empathic
listener a qualification for the job? Finally, the third hurdle that a potential "discrimi-
nator" must pass is that there has to be a compelling state interest in the discrimination,
a reason the state should set aside its general opinion that discrimination is wrong
and inappropriate. That's pretty difficult to demonstrate, so the fallback position is
that in virtually all circumstances, discrimination on the basis of gender is illegal.
However, the scrutiny afforded to people of color (strict scrutiny) and to women
(intermediate scrutiny) is not offered at all to LGBT people. They get no scrutiny: LGBT
people are not considered members of a protected class, in which the courts would inter-
vene. Thus, in some people's eyes, there is no legal argument for same-sex marriage:
LGBT people have no protected right to marry. But consider the issue of same-
sex marriage through a gender perspective. The law regarding gender discrimination
includes a clause "but for sex." Since the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitu-
tion guarantees "equal protection under the law," that means that any form of discrimi-
nation would violate that equal protection (unless, as we've seen, the laws are based
on real differences, are relevant to the position, and serve a legitimate state interest).
So that notion-that were it not for your biological sex, such a right would be granted
to you-is understood by the courts as grounds to declare the form of discrimination
unconstitutional. Women's exclusion from various arenas was successfully challenged
because the women could have been admitted, "but for sex" they were not.
So consider same-sex marriage through such a lens. If two people, let's call them
David and Barbara, want to marry, there is nothing stopping them. But if David and
Bob want to marry, there is something stopping them. That is, "but for sex" (in this
case, Bob's biological sex), they would be permitted to marry. The only thing prevent-
ing them from marrying is Bob's biological sex. And that is clearly unconstitutional.
In this way, it appears inevitable that same-sex marriage will become legal throughout
the United States: Prohibiting it is clearly a case of sex discrimination.
But these issues do raise important questions. What about someone who was born
female but has now transitioned and become a man? How shall we understand dis-
crimination in this case? What if you could demonstrate that some type of gender
discrimination met all three criteria the courts had set: it was free of stereotypes and
based on real difference; it was based on actual criteria for the job; and the government
had a compelling state interest in promoting it?
TRANSGENDER LAW AS GENDER POLITICS

Transgender individuals are subject to a host of gender-based discrimination. Here's
an instance where the law has failed to keep pace with the changes in people's lives.
Transgender people reveal that what we thought was a binary set of two categories-
"men" and "women" -and that the entire task of society was to make sure all the
biological males ended up in the "men'' box and that all the biological females ended
up in the "women" box-was actually a series of cross-cutting intersecting continua-
biological sex at birth, social presentation of gender, performance of gender, and bio-
logical sex as an adult, among others. Identities such as transgender, gender queer, and
"gender-fuck'' are so new and culturally jarring to our previously held cultural under-
standings that we simply don't know how to understand this dizzying array of identi-
ties, bodies, and performances.
What about someone who was born a male, but who transitions and is now bio-
logically a female? What should her birth certificate say? What about her passport, or
driver's license? Or what about someone who is biologically female, but dresses like a
man and acts "masculine" and calls herself Mick instead of Michelle? Now imagine
that she goes to an all-female college. And what about someone whose "sex" we aren't
really sure about, who dresses in neither a "masculine" nor "feminine" way in, for
example, jeans and a sweatshirt? What public restroom should this person use? And
what of someone who changes as the mood suits, one day dressing and acting as a very
"masculine" man and another day as a very "feminine" woman? (One of the things
about these new identities and behaviors is that they require the writer to put virtually
everything in quotation marks. Such new identities reveal that nothing is fixed, noth-
ing can be taken for granted; all these categories are such by convention and habit, not
necessarily because they are found in nature.)
Consider just a few examples. The 2011 National Transgender Discrimination
Survey found that one in five people who identified as transgender were the victim of
housing discrimination at some point in their lives, and more than one in ten had actu-
ally been evicted because of their identity. At school, transgender students face serious
discrimination and harassment. Nearly nine out of ten (89.5 percent) transgender
students reported feeling unsafe in school. Transgender students are at significantly

higher risk of dropping out of school and of suicide. Those who expressed a transgender
identity or gender nonconformity in grades K-12 reported high rates of harassment
(78 percent), physical assault (35 percent), and sexual violence (12 percent); harassment
was so severe that it led almost one-sixth (15 percent) to leave a school in K-12 settings
or in higher education.
The survey also found that transgender people experienced widespread abuse in
the public sector: 22 percent reported being denied equal treatment by a government
agency or official; 29 percent reported police harassment or disrespect; and 12 percent
reported being denied equal treatment or harassed by judges or court officials. More-
over, one-fifth (22 percent) of respondents who have interacted with police reported
harassment by police, with much higher rates reported by people of color. Military
regulations deny transgender Americans the right to serve openly, and transgender
veterans face significant discrimination in the Veterans Affairs medical system.
Finally, nearly all-a startling 97 percent-had experienced harassment or other
negative experiences at work, and more than a quarter (26 percent) reported losing
their jobs because of their gender identity. In most states, it's still legal to fire someone
simply for being transgender. And despite increasing protections, transgender people
experience unemployment at roughly twice the rate of the general population, and rates
for transgender people of color are nearly four times the national unemployment rate. 20
You might say that such discrimination is legitimate because transgender people
make the other employees uncomfortable, and when you're uncomfortable, you're dis-
tracted and don't perform as well. Reasonable. But you'll also recall, of course, the case
of Pan Am v. Diaz, where a man sued because he wanted to be a flight attendant, but the
company said that a male flight attendant would make the passengers uncomfortable
while serving drinks, might arouse feelings in him he would rather not have aroused."21
The courts struck down Pan Am's policy and ruled that the "comfort" of the passengers
was not a legitimate grounds for discrimination. Today you see plenty of male flight
attendants. (And we'll probably get used to transgender coworkers just as easily.)
And then, of course, there is the problem of bathrooms. (Bathroom discrimination
is actually housed under gender discrimination for housing and employment.) Where
do transgender people go to, well, go? It's tricky. They don't say "male" and "female" but
"men" and "women." So the bathrooms don't necessarily require anatomical maleness
or femaleness, just gendered people who are socially men and women-that is, who
look like they belong in that bathroom until they unfasten their clothes.
There are, of course, signs of change. In 2009, gender identity was added to federal
hate crimes law, explicitly protecting transgender people under federal civil rights law
for the first time. An increasing number of college campuses are adopting transgender
nondiscrimination protections. Many colleges and universities now offer gender-
neutral housing options for students living on campus. Even bathrooms are no longer
so fraught with peril. Some institutions offer gender-neutral bathrooms, and others
offer them as a third option, with a more traditional "men" and "women." And re-
cently, a transgender woman was allowed to compete in the Miss Universe pageant
(figure 10.7). Personally, I like the signs on the two bathrooms at my favorite coffee
shop in Santa Cruz, California. No "men" or "women" here. Their signs? "Us" and
"Them." You can decide for yourself where you belong (figure 10.8).
Figure I 0.7. Jenna Talackova, born Walter Page Talackova, was prohibited and then permitted
to compete as the Canadian contestant for Miss Universe in 2012.
Source: AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Aaron Vincent Elkaim.
THE STATE AS A GENDERED INSTITUTION

Not only do gender issues show up constantly on the political agenda, but the political
arena is, itself, a gendered, and a gendering, institution. And that gender is masculine.
You'll recall from the discussion of the timing of the career clock in chapter 9-
that the most intense work time is "front-loaded" so you'll have to work hardest during
your first decade on the job, which is, coincidentally, the peak childbearing years-
managable for a male worker whose children are being looked after by others (either
their mother or a mother-substitute). That a career in medicine or law or as a professor
requires the most time from the end of your training (late twenties) through your be-
coming "tenured" or a partner, or having an established practice, means that you
won't be really able to devote much time to raising children until your mid-thirties.
Suddenly, people have what you might call a "V-8 moment"-hitting yourself on the
forehead as if to say, "Oh, wow, I forgot to have children!"
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re.pondent& in a DC Trans Coalition survey reported bein9 harassed
or assaulted in gender-segregated bathrooms.
He lp make bathrooms safe for everyone and stop trans harassme nt. Let
people use the restroom in peace, and speak up if you witness harassment.
Resources: stop streetharassment.c om,

dctranscoalition.wordpress.com., gwlgbt.word press.com
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Figure 10.8. Source: Stopstreetharassment.com.
Gender is not only a facet of your identity-something you have-but also a set of
processes, deeply embedded in the institutions, and the institutional logics, of our
society. The dynamics of these institutions, their organizing principles, presuppose a
gendered actor-whether the actor is a worker or a citizen. In a modern democratic
society, the "citizen" is a man.
That's not because the founding fathers wrote that "all men are created equal."
If only it were that easy to fix-a simple grammatical revision to say "All people are
created equal." But, alas, just as it has proved incredibly difficult to envision the
"citizen" as anything but a white person, so, too, is it incredibly difficult to envision
the citizen as anything but a man.
Even when we venture outside the United States, though, the institutional arrange-
ments of global society are gendered. The marketplace, multinational corporations,
and transnational geopolitical institutions (World Court, United Nations, European
Union) and their attendant ideological principles (economic rationality, liberal
individualism) express a gendered logic. Imagine if the "ideal" worker was not an
"unencumbered worker" about to devote himself to the job 24/7, but instead an "em-
bedded" worker, who is anchored in a set of relationships that inform his or her life,
inspire and motivate workplace activity, and who brings to the workplace skills honed
in those relationships? Imagine if the conversation about the European debt crisis was
about what is best for our children or our families or our elderly parents, rather than
about what is best for the banks?
Globalization is gendered as well, as economic integration has differential impacts
on women and men. At the national and global levels, the world gender order privileges
men in a variety of ways, such as unequal wages, unequal labor force participation,
unequal structures of ownership and control of property, unequal control over one's
body, and cultural and sexual privileges. On the other hand, traditional notions of male
breadwinners and female homemakers have created two large migrant populations-
one of mothers who leave their children behind to care for other people's children and
one of fathers who leave their families behind to seek manual work in other countries,
often living in squatter camps and all-male dormitories on factory grounds.
It's equally true that the very definition of masculinity and femininity is shifting
as a result of globalization. Increasingly, there is emerging a single dominant global
model of corporate masculinity. Such a definition flattens and mutes traditional re-
gional and local iterations of masculinity and replaces them with a version that
looks and acts similarly regardless of the context. You can envision this dominant
global "masculinity": he's white, middle-aged, sitting in the business-class lounge in
any international hub airport. He's utterly connected by electronic gadgets to the
Internet and his clients, with adapters for every conceivable electric outlet around
the world. Regardless of his national origin, he speaks English fluently. Regardless of
his traditional manner of dress, he wears a business suit, expertly tailored. He is
cosmopolitan in his cultural style: He loves continental cuisine and good wines. His
social and sexual preferences are very liberal, but his economic and political sympa-
thies are very conservative. He is the global 1 percent. (He is so ubiquitous in our
newspapers, magazines, and TV shows that it's often hard to remember that there
are very few people in the world like him!)
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Women's political participation varies enormously across nations. But according to sociolo-
gists Richard York and Shannon Elizabeth Bell, women's political participation is closely associ-
ated with other measures of life satisfaction. In their article "Life Satisfaction Across Nations,"
York and Bell show that life satisfaction- people's sense of well -being- is correlated with
three other variables: high level of political participation by women, low military spending, and
high levels of health care spending. Of course, this doesn't just mean that the women are
happier-the men are, too.
If this is one of the gendered faces of the new globalized world, it also means
that resistance to globalization often reveals a gendered face as well. Historically,
movements against colonialism have often used gender as a way to mobilize nationalist
resistance. For example, in late nineteenth-century Bengal, British colonialists justified
their imperial domination by constantly humiliating Bengali men as both effeminate
and rapacious predatory sexual animals, incapable of self-control. (Historically,
marginalized groups are often subject to this twin depiction of the men of the subor-
dinated group: They are hypermasculine and hypo-masculine, both out-of-control,
predatory animals and irresponsible, lazy, and incapable of supporting a "normal"
family.) So, on the one hand, Bengali men were seen as uncontrolled predators, and
the British passed the Age of Consent Act in 1891, outlawing the marriage of young
girls to grown men. As a Bengali newspaper put it, angrily:
The Government wishes to civilize us for it seems we are a people who are ex-
tremely uncivilized and barbarous, and steeped in superstition ... who subject
their women to gross ill usage, nay commit bestial oppression on their girls. 22
And, on the other hand, such predation was actually the result of "effeminacy, mental
imperfection and moral debility" that was endemic to Bengali culture, as the Indian
Medical Gazette put it.
Colonial powers nearly always used gender-both the inadequate masculinity of
the colonized men and the helpless innocence of the colonized women, who were in
dire need of rescue. So it is hardly a surprise that as they revolted against their impe-
rial oppressors, they also used a gendered rhetoric for political mobilization. It's as if
the men said: "It is they, not us, who abuse our women, and we, real men, manly men
who are natives, must rise up and throw them out!"
You needn't look far to see this. Virtually every movement for national liberation
during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries used a gendered language of emascu-
lation to describe the impact of colonialism on native peoples. Theorists like Frantz
Fanon argued that colonial powers had created a black "other" that was simultane-
ously emasculated and a projection of the repressed white desire. Grafting a Freudian
analysis onto the situation of colonialism, Fanon argues that the white colonialist
projects onto the black man all the repressed sexuality that is required for civiliza-
tion. (One of the central tenets of Freud's theory is that civilization requires sexual
sublimation: You take all that sexual energy and channel it toward more "productive"
pursuits.) Here's Fanon in his explosive book Black Skin, White Masks (1952):
Every intellectual gain requires a loss in sexual potential. The civilised white man
retains an irrational longing for unusual eras of sexual license, of orgiastic scenes, of
unpunished rapes, of unrepressed incest ... Projecting his own desires onto the
Negro, the white man behaves "as if" the Negro really had them ... the Negro is
fixated at the genital; or at any rate he has been fixated there. 23
Racism is, by definition, sexual-that is, it is gendered. Fanon argues that the white
man projects onto the black man all the untamed sexual desires that he, the white man,
has had to repress and then assumes the black man is consumed by that very same
uncontrolled lust. Thus, the white man becomes fascinated with black male sexuality;
this is why fears of black men raping white women animated racists for centuries and
why lynching often included the genital mutilation of the black man.
If the institutional forces of racist oppression and colonial subordination used
gender as a justification for intervention, as well as a consequence or outcome of that
intervention, it is no surprise that resistance movements are equally saturated with
gendered ambitions (reclaiming manhood) and gendered strategies. In some cases, as
with the Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver, it meant using the white man's fears of
black sexuality against white people. Cleaver infamously (and reprehensibly politi-
cally, in my view) argued that for a black man to rape a white woman was a revolution-
ary act of resistance to racism.
But one can find elements of this gendered language in just about every social
movement in the world today-whether progressive movements that seek to re-
claim the nation for the people themselves (and therefore to kick out the colonizers)
or movements against globalization that seek to "restore" the nation to its tradi-
tional, and often religious, foundations. Each social movement is a meditation on
the appropriate roles for women and men and a debate about the manhood of each
group of men.
In some cases, women have been imprisoned within the traditional society's con-
straints and then further subordinated by the colonial intervention. So, in movements
such as the Iranian uprising of 2009 or the Arab Spring of 2010, women were very
much in evidence demanding to be permitted to join the global public arena as the
equals of men. "If you ask someone if they want gender equality, that's a loaded term
here," explained one Egyptian woman. "Do you mean all women should be like men?
Figure 10.9. Despite women's active participation in the protest movements in the Middle East
(illustrated by these women gathered in Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt, in 2011 ), there has been little
progress in ending sexual assault and violence against them .
Source: AP Photo/Khalil Hamra, File.
Figure I 0.10. Women demonstrate in Yemen, 2011 .

Source: AP Photo/ Muhammed Muheisen.
Most would say no. If you mean women have choice and equal protection under the
law, most would say yes." And their participation does seem to be having some effect
on the direction of the movements and their acceptance by the male leaders. "Our
demands are somehow similar to men, starting with freedom, equal citizenship, and
giving women a greater role in society," says Faizah Sulimani, twenty-nine, a protest
leader in Yemen (figure 10.10). "Women smell freedom at Change Square where they
feel more welcomed than ever before. Their fellow [male] freedom fighters are showing
unconventional acceptance to their participation and they are actually for the first
time letting women be, and say, what they really want."24
On the other side of the political spectrum, conservative and fundamentalist
movements that seek to restore the society to its traditional foundations also seek
to transform gender relations, but in exactly the opposite direction. Women, they
may argue, have been "masculinized"-forced by market conditions to work outside
the home, to refuse to be mothers, to seek to claim the rights and privileges in the
public sphere that had been previously reserved for men. For example, the Taliban in
Afghanistan, formed as both an anti-imperialist movement against the Soviet occu-
pation in the 1980s and a fundamentalist religious movement, sought to remove
women from all public life and return them to the home, where, they argued, women
belong. All across the Islamic world, but particularly in Iran and Iraq, women had
made enormous strides towards equality, asserting rights to go to school and even
universities, to enter professions, to choose their husbands. Even in Saudi Arabia,
women were insisting that they be allowed to open bank accounts and drive cars.
They sought entry into the public realm, just as the country was entering the global
political and economic arena.
Traditional movements have tried to put a stop to this, pushing women out of the
labor force and closing girls' and women's schools. At the same time, these movements
reassert men's dominance in the home, insisting that women obey their fathers and
husbands, and punishing them, often brutally or even lethally, when they resist. "We
will take action against women who go out shopping in the markets, and any shop-
keeper seen dealing with women shoppers will be dealt with severely," is how one
poster put it in Peshawar, Pakistan.25
While these efforts have been most visible in Muslim countries, there are many
other examples. In Israel, for example, the ultra-Orthodox backlash against the secu-
lar Israeli state has punished women for sitting in whatever seat on the bus they choose
(as opposed to sitting in the back) or thrown rocks at schoolgirls wearing their school
uniforms (since these were deemed immodest by these self-proclaimed arbiters of
fashion) . Given this, it's no wonder that some of the leaders of the movements that
made up the Arab Spring in 2010 were women. Women spearheaded the movements
in Egypt and Iran and were also in evidence in the movements that toppled tradition-
alist and authoritarian leaders in Tunisia, Libya, and Yemen.
Less visible, but equally gendered, have been the efforts to re-masculinize men
(figure 10.11). If women had strayed into the "male" sphere of public life, men's un-
questioned authority in that arena, as well as at home, had been steadily eroding. Men,
these fundamentalist leaders argued, must return to being real men. For example,
one group targeted by the Taliban in Afghanistan were the barbers, since not shaving
one's beard is a symbol of virility commanded by the Prophet. (This is also true
among the Haredi-the ultra-Orthodox-in Israel, who do not shave their sideburns
Figure 10.11. A barber stands by his window in Buner, Pakistan, where the Taliban has warned
"Do Not Shave."
Source: Tariq Mahmood/ AFP/ Getty Images.
or their beards.) Afghani barbers who shaved men were in danger of having their
hands cut off. In one well-known case, twenty-eight Afghani barbers were impris-
oned for giving men haircuts that resembled Leonardo DiCaprio's in Titanic. "Beatles
cut" hairstyles were legally banned as "dangerous."
Closer to home, in October 2011, three members of a breakaway Amish cult in
Ohio were arrested for forcibly shaving the beards of several Amish men, an act ofter-
rible humiliation to a religious group that does not permit shaving and denounces the
use of electricity (as in electric shavers, which were used). Cult leader Sam Mullet
(figure 10.12) explained the shavings as retaliation for marginalizing him. So, whether
it's the Taliban prohibiting shaving or Sam Mullet forcibly shaving, it's clear that men's
beards are more than simply a fashion statement: They're the proof of a divinely sanc-
tioned masculinity.26
Even Osama bin Laden used gendered language to exhort the men of Al Qaeda
to their suicidal terrorist sacrifice, first by claiming that Americans were weak and
effeminate (since we allow women to join the military) and then by exhorting his fol-
lowers to show that they are "real men":
Our brothers who fought in Somalia saw wonders about the weakness, feebleness,
and cowardliness of the U.S. soldier ... We believe that we are men, Muslim men
who must have the honor of defending [Mecca]-We do not want American
women soldiers defending [it] ... The rulers in that region have been deprived of
their manhood ... and they think that the people are women. By God, Muslim
women refuse to be defended by these American and Jewish prostitutes.
Such statements provide ample evidence that the call to arms is almost always a call to
reclaim, if not to prove, one's manhood. And, sadly, it will not be the last time we hear
such calls.
REDRESSING THE GENDERED POLITICAL REALM

One of the great rallying cries of the feminist movement since the 1960s has been "the
personal is political;' by which people meant that the daily routines of personal life-
housework, raising children, negotiating activities with your partners and your friends,
what TV and movies you watched, what music you listened to, even sex-were "politi-
cal;' utterly intertwined with the political realities of gender inequality. How you lived
your life, every single day, reflected and reproduced both gender difference and gender
inequality.
It's equally true that "the political is personal"-the arena of the political, from
policy decisions to the choices you have about voting in elections-all reflect the
gender differences we assume are "natural" and the gender inequalities we often be-
lieve flow inevitably from those natural differences.
Since its origins in the mid-nineteenth century, the women's movement has
sought to redress both elements of gender inequality. In the nineteenth century,
women's campaigns for political inclusion were based on the moral and theological
assumptions that since both women and men were equal souls in the eyes of God,
there could be no justification for prohibiting women from participating in the fruits
of democratic political life. From the first Woman's Convention at Seneca Falls, New
York, in 1848, women sought political inclusion as a way to become equal citizens.
Figure 10.12. Sam Mullet led a breakaway Amish cult in Ohio that forcibly shaved his male rivals,
an act of humiliation that also led to his arrest.
Source: AP Photo/ Amy Sancetta, file .
The modern women's movement was born to remove obstacles to women's full
participation in modern life. In the nineteenth century, the "first wave" of the wom-
en's movement was concerned with women's entry into the public sphere. Campaigns
to allow women to vote (suffrage), to go to college, to serve on juries, to go to law
school or medical school, or to join a profession or a union all had largely succeeded
by the middle of the twentieth century. The motto of the National Woman Suffrage
Association was "Women, their rights and nothing less! Men, their rights and nothing
more!" Around the world, women began to challenge restrictive definitions of femi-
ninity and the barriers that prevented their full participation in society. From its ori-
gins, the women's movement has been a global movement, yet each national and
cultural expression has sought changes tailored to its specific context. In the first de-
cades of the twentieth century, women in Europe and North America obtained basic
rights to enter the public arena. In the past few decades, some of the most active devel-
opments in global feminism have been generated outside the United States.
Once they had achieved the right to vote, serve in the military, and become
doctors, lawyers, architects, and every other kind of professional, then the next step
was to ensure that those women who did enter the public arena were able to live full
lives in doing so: safe from harassment and discrimination in their public arenas and
also able to have the sorts of family arrangements they wanted, to balance work and
family. Beginning in the 1960s, a "second wave" of the women's movement appeared,
determined to continue the struggle to eliminate obstacles to women's advancement
but also equally determined to investigate the ways that gender inequality is also part
of personal life, which includes women's relationships with men. In the industrialized
world, the second wave focused on public participation-equality in the working
world, election to political office-as well as beginning to focus on men's violence
against women, rape, the denigration of women in the media, and women's sexuality
and lesbian rights.
This required, of course, influencing the political arena that shaped how people
live their personal lives. Women have campaigned, as women, for health care, repro-
ductive rights, freedom to control their own bodies, and policies that would keep
women safe when they left their homes from assault, violence, and rape, as well as safe
from those same problems when they returned to their homes.
Think about all the rights that any contemporary American woman might take
for granted: the right to vote, to drive a car, to serve on a jury, to play sports, to work
in her chosen profession, to be able to work free of unwanted harassment and earn
wages equal to the wages that men earn, to be safe on the streets and in her home, to
be able to open a checking account in her own name, to run for office, to serve in the
military, to put her own name on the mailbox of her own home, to have an orgasm.
Contemporary women can take these rights for granted because other women, thousands
of them, devoted their entire lives to fighting in the political arena just so contempo-
rary women could be lucky enough to eventually take them for granted.
Today, a "third wave" of the women's movement has emerged among younger
women. While third-wave feminists share the outrage at institutional discrimination
and interpersonal violence, they also have a more playful relationship with mass
media and consumerism. While they support the rights oflesbians, many third-wavers
are also energetically heterosexual and insist on the ability to be friends and lovers
with men. They are also decidedly more multicultural and seek to explore and chal-
lenge the "intersections" of gender inequality with other forms of inequality, such as
class, race, ethnicity, and sexuality. They are equally concerned with racial inequali-
ties or sexual inequalities and see the ways in which these other differences construct
our experiences of gender. Third-wave feminists also feel more personally empowered
than their foremothers; they often feel there is no need for feminism because they can
now do almost anything they want.
The political position of many young women today is often 'Tm not a feminist,
but ... " Most young women subscribe to virtually all the tenets of feminism-equal
pay for equal work, the right to control their bodies and sexuality-but they believe
that they are already equal to men and therefore don't need a political movement to
liberate them and that the term feminist carries too many negative connotations.
Feminism is a catch-all term that describes the wide variety of theories that guide
and shape women's efforts to transform the political arena. There are, of course, as
many feminisms as there are feminists, but the general outlines of different strands of
feminism also enable us to discern the different ways in which the women's movement
has sought to politically mobilize people to redress gender inequality. Feminists be-
lieve that women should have the same political, social, sexual, economic, and intel-
lectual rights that men enjoy. Feminists insist on women's equality in all arenas-in
the public sphere, in interpersonal relations, at home and at work, in the bedroom and
the boardroom. One can, of course, be a feminist and like men, want to look attractive,
and shave one's underarms and wear mascara. Or not. Feminism is about women's
choices and the ability to choose to do what they want to do with no greater obstacles
than the limits of their abilities.
Feminism is also a global political movement-with local, regional, and transna-
tional expressions. The United Nations Declaration of 1985 made it clear that women's
rights were universal human rights-and that women's bodily integrity, her sexual
autonomy, and her rights to public participation knew no national boundaries. There
are several major strands of feminism. Each emphasizes a different aspect of gender
inequality and prescribes a different political formula for equality.
Different strands of feminism focus on different political issues. For example, liberal
feminism emphasizes removing the obstacles to individual women's entry into the public
sphere. Liberal feminists have been at the forefront of campaigns for equal wages and
comparable worth, as well as reproductive choice. The Equal Rights Amendment, which
did not pass as a constitutional amendment in the 1970s, is an example of a liberal femi-
nist political agenda. The amendment states simply that "equality of rights under the law
shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex."
Critics ofliberal feminism claim that the focus on removing barriers to individual rights
ignores the root causes of gender inequality; liberal feminists tend to be largely white and
middle class, and their focus on career mobility reflects their class and race.
By contrast, radical feminists emphasize not so much the constraints on indi-
vidual women's mobility and choices, but the systematic oppression of women-be-
cause they are women. Many radical feminists believe that women are oppressed
and subordinated by men directly, personally, and most often through sexual rela-
tions. Radical feminists often believe that patriarchy is the original form of domina-
tion and that all other forms of inequality derive from it. To radical feminists, it is
through sex that men appropriate women's bodies. Radical feminists have been
active in campaigns to end prostitution, pornography, rape, and violence against
women. Many argue that it is through "trafficking" in women's bodies-selling their
bodies as prostitutes or making images of that trafficking in pornography-that
gender inequality is reproduced. Pornography provides a rare window into the male
psyche: This is how men see women, they argue. "Pornography is the theory, rape is
the practice," is a slogan coined by radical feminist writer Robin Morgan (1976).
Radical feminists have also been successful in bringing issues of domestic violence
and rape to international attention. They have created a growing worldwide concern
for the new and revived sex slave marketplace.
However, radical feminism relies too much on unconvincing blanket statements
about all men and all women, without taking into account differences among men and
among women. Thus, it's often "essentialist," claiming that the single dividing line in
society is between men and women. That is, of all feminisms, it may be the radical
variety that believes men are from Mars and women from Venus. Their claims about
universal sisterhood have not been convincing to black feminists, who feel that when
radical feminists say "women," they really mean "white women."
In response to the perceived whiteness of both liberal feminism and radical
feminism, some women have tried to both broaden and deepen the reach of feminist
analysis. Liberal feminists believe all women are individuals and therefore entitled to
rights; radical feminists claim that each woman is "all women," which is to say that
every woman faces a common oppression as a woman. They thus try to extend femi-
nism to other women. But multicultural feminism begins where liberal and radical
feminism end: acknowledging that the word "woman" means many different things,
depending on class, race, ethnicity, region, religion, sexuality, age, or any other status.
That is, multicultural feminism understands that each woman does not experience her
oppression in quite the same way as every other. An older black lesbian in the country-
side might relate differently, for example, to lesbian pornography than a young urban
white heterosexual woman. (Or maybe not; the point is that one cannot claim that all
women react the same way.) To multiculturalists, liberal feminism disaggregates the
category "women" so profoundly that all commonalities are lost; radical feminism, by
contrast, lumps all women into one master category, "woman," blurring any other
distinctions among women.
Multicultural feminists tend to be third-wavers-younger, better educated, and
of many different races and sexualities. They take an "intersectional approach" to the
gender of politics, understanding the ways in which different facets of identity-race,
or class, or ethnicity, or sexuality and the like-shape women's experiences as women.
Multicultural feminists also sometimes clash with other types of feminism. For exam-
ple, some feminist women denounce the burqa-the full covering required of Islamic
women in some (but not all) Muslim countries-as oppressive to women, suppressing
their ability to be full citizens. But some Islamic women defend the practice as their
expression of their autonomy and their choice to express themselves as women. Such
a debate cannot be resolved as an either/or. Both sides are right, for entirely different
reasons. Multicultural feminism expresses and embraces those differences among
women and thus must encompass differing, even conflicting, perspectives.
Multicultural feminists make another critical point: Feminism is a global move-
ment, encompassing women around the world engaged in their own struggles for po-
litical power, public access, and an end to discrimination. Global feminist movements
and organizations engage with gender inequality in every political arena-from trans-
national labor organizing to campaigns to increase political participation and those to
decrease violence and trafficking.
MEN AND GENDER POLITICS

Feminism is a movement for women's equality, but that doesn't mean it's only about
women. After all, women's equality would require not only the entry of women into the
public sphere-a process by which men might simply move over to give women a seat
at the table-but also the transformation of the most intimate and personal elements
of relations between women and men. So since the beginning of the women's move-
ment, there have been efforts to mobilize men-from ferocious denunciation of and
resistance to women's equality to ardent support.
In the early days of the woman suffrage movement, there were visible and vocal
male allies. In fact, at the first women's rights meeting at Seneca Falls in 1848, it was
only after the great African-American former slave Frederick Douglass made an im-
passioned speech in favor of granting women the vote that the woman suffrage plank
passed and was included in the "Declaration of Sentiments," the American women's
movement's founding document.
Of course, a large number of men-from the mid-nineteenth century to the
present-found in feminism such a dramatic challenge to traditional, unquestioned
male authority that they opposed gender equality. Some antifeminists actively re-
sisted women's entry into the public arena, often because they believed that women, as
the inferior sex, were simply physically incapable of handling the stress and difficulty
that such public participation might entail. Some went further, arguing that women's
entry would degrade the public sphere, disrupting the male camaraderie that was
necessary for workers, soldiers, doctors, lawyers, corporate executives, athletes, or even
students. Thus did Josiah Bunting III, a VMI graduate and former military officer,
claim that women's entry into the Virginia Military Institute would represent "a toxic
kind of virus" that would pollute the pristine homosocial world of that all-male
military school. (The Supreme Court rejected that argument in 1996, and women have
been cadets at VMI ever since. No epidemics of viruses have been reported.)
Antifeminist men went further, arguing that women's entry would also destroy
the traditional family, as women renounced their God-ordained and natural position
as homemaker and mother. They predicted that divorce and promiscuity would both
increase, while faith in tradition and religion would decrease. (Their predictions were
true, but obviously not for the reasons they thought. Divorce rose because men, not
women, did not rise to meet the challenge of balancing work and family life, and so
women became predictably frustrated in their marriages.)
Today's antifeminists have largely abandoned physical ability as the grounds to
exclude women from the public arena, except, of course, when women seek entry into
occupations for which men have decided they are unfit, such as firefighting, the mili-
tary, or construction. Most of the time, contemporary antifeminists argue only that
women's liberation has gone too far and has now resulted in reverse discrimination
against men. According to the men's rights activists, women now run virtually every
show in town, and men have become the "second sex." Some antifeminist groups seek
to return to a golden era of unquestioned male authority in the home. For example,
the evangelical Christian group Promise Keepers embraces a traditional nineteenth-
century vision of masculinity in which men are responsible fathers and providers-as
long as their wives also return to a traditional nineteenth-century definition of femi-
ninity, staying home and taking care of the children.
The global struggle against gender inequality also engages men as allies. These
"pro-feminist" men believe not only that gender equality is a good thing for women
but that it would also transform masculinity in ways that would be positive for men,
enabling them to be more involved fathers, better friends, more emotionally respon-
sive partners and husbands-fuller individuals and human beings. They work with
women to end men's violence against women and sexual harassment in the workplace
and guarantee equality in the workplace and at home. Global organizations like the
White Ribbon Campaign, begun in Canada in 1991, have groups in more than fifty
countries working to end men's violence against women. In the United States, organi-
zations such as the National Organization for Men Against Sexism (NOMAS), Men
Can Stop Rape (MCSR), and A Call to Men seek to bring men together to promote
gender equality.
Such groups are particularly visible on campuses-perhaps even your own. On
campuses around the country, there are men's organizations working to support the
campus women's groups. Groups such as Harvard Men Against Rape, Montana Men
Against Rape, and Tulane Men Against Violence actively work to engage men in
campus-based activities such as supporting "Take Back the Night" marches or Vagina
Monologues productions or "Walk a Mile in Her Shoes" campaigns to raise men's
awareness.
KEY TERMS
Antifeminists Globalization Radical Feminism
First-Wave Feminism Liberal Feminism Second-Wave Feminism
Gendered Political Divide Multicu ltural Feminism Third-Wave Feminism
CHAPTER
The GENDERED MEDIA

11
n Saudi Arabia, women cannot drive cars, but they can get rides on Uber.
I Speech is heavily censored, but Saudi youth carry on debates via Twitter. Flirt-
ing is prohibited, but they use Snapchat and WhatsApp. Just before shops close
for prayers, they can check their smartphones to find the nearest Dunkin' Donuts
before it closes. One Saudi woman, dressed entirely in black from head to toe, is
a medical student who likes Jimmy Kimmel and Game of Thrones, and has a
half-million followers on Instagram. When asked what changes she would like
to see in Saudi society, does she answer: woman suffrage, free speech, an end to
brutal gender discrimination? No. "We need movies," she said. "I think if we
could just achieve that, I mean, that's all we need." Oppressed? There's probably
1
an app for that.

Here in the United States, Americans have a love/hate relationship with
the media. On the one hand, we're an utterly media-saturated society. As you've
read this book, I'll bet you've also checked your Facebook page, texted several
of your friends about what you are having for dinner, followed some inane
celebrity's tweet, watched a movie on Netflix and a video of adorable kittens
or cute babies on YouTube, played a video game (or several), and watched an
episode of The Big Bang Theory on Hulu, your smartphone, your iPad, through
a game console-or on an actual television set. We're weighed down by lap-
tops, desktops, smartphones, tablets-each of which is supposed to make our
workloads lighter and easier.
Our images of ourselves-how we are supposed to look, what we should
wear, and how we should behave-are constructed by using the materials we get
from the media-magazines, newspapers, television, Internet. We're bombarded
343
with media images and representations, and we creatively construct identities and
styles based on the images that appeal to us and our social circle.
Okay, you get the point. We rely on media, we love media, we couldn't live without
media. So how come when something goes wrong, we instantly blame the media?
When someone walks into his school armed to the teeth and opens fire, it must be
because he watched violent video games! Lonely? It must be because we only know
how to use the word "friend" as a verb. Sexual assault on campus? Must be because the
guys all watch gonzo porn on the Internet. Disobedient children? Has their attention
span become truncated and their diet of rebellious images become engorged?
Only when things go wrong, though. Consider the corollary: How come when
something goes right, we don't credit the media? You met the love of your life on
Match.com? Must be the media! Victorious in battle? Must be those military video
games! Win the Nobel Prize in Medicine? Must be because you watched House.
Try this experiment. The next time there is a random school shooter who opens
fire on his classmates-I choose my pronoun carefully; nearly 100 percent of random
school shooters are boys-watch as the media-bashers come out to play.
"Common sense tells you that if these kids are playing video games, where they're
on a mass killing spree in a video game, it's glamorized on the big screen," television
therapist Dr. Phil told Larry King in the aftermath of Seung-Hui Cho's massacre of
thirty-two classmates and professors at Virginia Tech in 2007. "You take that and mix
it with a psychopath, a sociopath or someone suffering from mental illness and add in
a dose of rage, the susceptibility is too high."
One Florida attorney, Jack Thompson, popped up all over the news, decrying the
violent video games that caused the massacre. Cho, he claimed was an avid gamer,
and his game of choice was CounterStrike. He threatened to sue Bill Gates because
Microsoft manufactures video games. "This is not rocket science. When a kid who has
never killed anyone in his life goes on a rampage and looks like the Terminator, he's a
video gamer," Thompson said.2
Unfortunately for these instant experts on the relationship between video games
and violence, the search of Cho's dorm room turned up no video games. Not one.
(How many would they turn up in your dorm room?) His roommate said he never saw
Cho playing any video games. Apparently, they played no part in his life. (This did not,
however, lead to some other instant expert proclaiming that if only Cho had played
violent video games he would have had a constructive outlet for all that pent-up
aggression.)
As a society, we keep having this debate: Do the media cause violence, or do the
media simply reflect the violence that already exists in our society?
Think of how many times we have heard variations of it. Do gangsta rap or violent
video games or violent movies or violent heavy metal music lead to increased violence?
Does violent pornography lead men to commit rape? Or do these media merely remind
us of how violent our society already is?
Surely, the media play an enormous role in our lives. And, just as surely, the
media are major building blocks in the construction of our identities as women
and men. How do the various media contribute to our understanding of gender?
What role do the various media play in the maintenance of gender difference or
gender inequality?
Chapter 11: The Gendered Media 345
THE MEDIA AS A GENDERED INSTITUTION
To say that the media are a gendered institution is to say simply that they are an
institution, like all other institutions (schools, churches, families, corporations, or
states, for example), that (1) reflects existing gender differences and gender inequali-
ties, (2) constructs those very gender differences, and (3) reproduces gender inequality
by making those differences seem "natural" and not socially produced in the first
place. Part of an institution's function of maintaining inequality is to first create the
differences and then to attempt to conceal its authorship so that those differences seem
to flow from the nature of things.
Media reflect existing gender differences and inequalities by targeting different
groups of consumers with different messages that assume prior existing differences. In
a sense, women and men don't use or consume the same media-there are women's
magazines and men's magazines, chick flicks and action movies, chick lit and lad lit,
pornography and romance novels, soap operas and crime procedurals, guy video
games and girl video games, biogs and 'zines-and, of course, advertising that is intri-
cately connected to each of these different formats (figures 11.ia, b).
Adopting Jessie Bernard's famous phrase about marriage, to which we referred
in chapter 6, there are also at least two medias-"his" and "hers." There are also
multiple medias based on race-BET and WWE or "urban" and "country" radio, for
example-class, ethnicity, and age (think of the complex rating system that says
what age level is appropriate for some media content). And although, thinking of
marriage, Bernard was right to say that "his" is better than "hers," such a statement
may be less true when it comes to the media. Both media are part of a gigantic cul-
tural apparatus designed to reproduce gender inequality by making it appear that
such inequality is the natural result of existing gender differences. First, the media
create the differences; then the media tell us that the inequality is the natural result
of those differences.
The problem is that no matter how pervasive the avalanche of media might be, the
ruse never completely works. The media are fabulously effective, and yet there are so
many fissures in the walls they collectively construct that efforts to shore it up feel
almost frenzied, an almost blind obsession with overkill, just to make sure that
everyone gets the message. And still, we get several messages and do different things
with them.
One reason for this is that many of the debates about the effects of the media pres-
ent the media as the sole actor in the drama-and the consumer, namely us, as passive
consumers, as sponges who uncritically soak up all the messages we're fed. To the
social scientist, of course, nothing could be further from the truth. It is not the media
itself, but rather the interaction of consumers and media that remains the constitutive
force in gender relations. We bring our selves-our identities, our differences-to our
encounters with various media; and we can take from them a large variety of mes-
sages. We need to also consider the way we act on the media, the way we consume it,
actively, creatively, and often even rebelliously. The question is never whether or not
the media do such and such, but rather how the media and its consumers interact to
create the varying meanings that derive from our interactions with those media. We
need to think differently about the media, to treat them as another central institution
in our lives, not some outside influence that tells us what to do. The media are a
Figure I I.la. Source:© Robert W . Ginn/Photo Edit.
Figure I I.lb. Source: © Michael Newman/Photo Edit.
primary institution of socialization. And like all the institutions whose mission is our
socialization, the media are deeply gendered.
THE MEDIA AS A GENDERING INSTITUTION

That sentence-that the media are a primary institution of socialization-is an es-
sential starting point in our analysis. And such a perspective takes us far beyond
the traditional sociological canon. If you were to pick up an introductory sociology
textbook from, say, the 1950s or even the 1970s, you would find that there were three
major institutions tasked with the socialization of children: family, education, and
religion (which are, not coincidentally, the first three chapters of this part of the
book). Their sole purpose was the gradual and complete inculcation of a society's
values, an acceptance of the legitimacy of established norms to express those values,
and a belief in the institutional apparatuses designed to maintain social cohesion
and stability. And you would read that the agents-the people-charged with those
socializing tasks were, naturally, parents (family), teachers (education), and religious
figures (clergy).
All well and good, and, of course, largely true. But to a child, the earlier list
above-parents, teachers, and clergy-sounds more like "grown-ups, grown-ups, and
grown-ups." And any child could tell you that the primary agents of socialization are
also their friends, their peers, and the images of themselves they see represented in the
media. We must now revise all those old textbooks to include the six primary institu-
tions of socialization: family, schools, and religious institutions, to be sure-and also
peer groups, the workplace, and the media.
The dynamics of socialization are also different than we earlier believed: We are
not blank slates upon which these institutions imprint a uniform cultural code. Were
that true, how could we explain the massive diversity we observe around us? In every
arena-some more, some less, of course-we are active agents of our own socializa-
tion, active participants in this process.
The relationship between media and consumers is complex. Do we absorb all the
images and then construct our identities from them, or do the media simply tell us
what we already know? Neither-or, rather, a little of both. It is not simply that the
media are part of the mechanism by which we construct our gendered identities. The
media as an institution are gendered as well. The media, like all other social institu-
tions, provide the materials for the construction of gendered identities, maintain and
reproduce gendered inequality, and naturalize that inequality to appear as though it is
the natural outcome of gender difference. The media are so saturated with images of
gender-from normative depictions of appropriate or inappropriate behaviors to
images that capture our aspirations and imaginations-that it is sometimes barely
noticeable. Sometimes, in fact, that seems to be the chief function of many media-to
entertain us by presenting various images of men and women and enabling us to iden-
tify with, aspire to, or laugh at them.
And as the media is saturated with gender, we are saturated with media. The aver-
age American home today has 3.8 television sets, 2.8 DVD/VCRs, 2.5 radios, 2.2 CD
players, 2.3 video game consoles, 2 computers, and one TiVo/other DVR.3
Television is omnipresent: 63 percent of families with children have the TV on
during dinner, and 51 percent are "constant television households"- that is, they have
a TV on virtually all day, whether or not anyone is actually watching it.4 More than
two-thirds of American kids eight to eighteen have a TV in their bedroom. (Kids with
TVs in their bedrooms spend, on average, 1.5 hours more per week watching TVs than
kids who don't.) And while once restaurants and bars were a way to escape the isola-
tion of being in front of the tube, now those restaurants and bars are as likely to have
TVs mounted on the walls so you don't have to miss a second.
• Frequent readers • Infre quent readers
Ages 6-11 Ages 12-17
11 11
Watch TV, DVDs,
or videos
Play games or apps
on any kind of
electronic device
Go online u sing a
computer for fun ,
not for school
II II
Use a cell phone
to text or talk
Use a smartphone or
11
Visit social
other h andheld device networking sites like
for going online F acebook, Twitter , etc.
Figure 11.2. Percentage of children who do activities five to seven days a week, base: children
ages six to seventeen.
Source: Kids & Family Reading Report™ : Fifth Edition from Scholastic Inc. and managed by You Gov. 2015.
Maybe this is why 40 percent of eight- to thirteen-year-olds said they did not read
any part of a book on the previous day, a figure that shoots up to 70 percent of kids
fourteen to eighteen. In fact, the one medium people do not seem to interact with is
books. In 2004, the U.S. Department of Education asked seventeen-year-olds, "How
often do you read for fun on your own time?" Nearly one in five (19 percent) said
"never"-double the rate from twenty years earlier. And four-fifths of American
families say they did not buy a book last year.5
These media seem to reflect gender differences that are already there-that is, they
appeal to different audiences who use them differently. These different ways of using
"his" and "her" media are one of the primary ways in which we construct our gen-
dered identities-and this, then, becomes one of the chief ways in which we naturalize
gender inequality.
WHAT CHILDREN SEE

It starts so early. Early in the school years, children learn to read, thus opening a new
source of influence. And they begin to observe the content of other media-television,
films, or cartoons. Do these materials counter sex typing, or do they reinforce it? As
we explore gender and mass media, it is important to discuss the ways in which the
school-based curriculum reinforces gender stereotypes and makes those stereotypes
feel as though they were based on something "natural."
Until recently, studies of children's books and anthologies have consistently
reported traditional sex differences and pro-male biases. Females have been vastly
underrepresented, and often absent, in pictures, in titles, and as main characters. In
addition, female characters have usually been cast in insignificant or secondary roles.
Their activities have been limited to loving, watching, or helping, whereas males have
engaged in adventuring and solving problems. Women have not been given jobs or
professions; motherhood has been presented as a full-time, lifetime job. The son in
the family has worn trousers, and the daughter has worn a skirt; he has been active,
she has been passive. In biographies, women have often been portrayed as dependent.
For example, Marie Curie has been depicted as a helpmate to her husband, rather
than as the brilliant scientist and Nobel Prize-winner that she was.6
In preschool school books, the gender bias has been consistent. In 1972, Leonore
Weitzman and her colleagues surveyed winners of the Caldecott Award for the best
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children's books for the years 1967 to 1971. Since then, the research has been updated
several times, most recently in 2011, and the researchers now find that though females
are more visible in the books, their portrayal still reveals gender biases. Females are
still depicted in passive and submissive positions, whereas males are shown as active
and independent. Even in these more recent books, Weitzman and her colleagues
conclude:
Not only does Jane express no career goals, but there is no model to provide any
ambition. One woman in the entire twenty books has an occupation outside the
home and she works at the Blue Tile Diner. How can we expect Dick to express
tender emotions without shame when only two adult males in this collection have
anything resembling tender emotions and one of them is a mouse? 7
In 1975, the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare surveyed 134 texts and
readers from sixteen different publishers, looking at the pictures, stories, and language
used to describe male and female characters. "Boy-centered" stories outnumbered
"girl-centered" stories by a 5:2 ratio; there were three times as many adult male char-
acters as adult female characters; six times as many biographies of men as of women;
and four times as many male fairy tales as female. Recalling her American history
classes, one scholar recently remembered a strange biological anomaly-"a nation
with only founding fathers."8
Of course, some changes have occurred over the past forty years. In children's
books today, girls and women are far more likely than before to be depicted as the
main character and far less likely to be depicted as passive, without ambition or career
goals. But gender stereotypes still prevail: Girls are still depicted as more interested in
domestic life than boys are. In fact, the major change in all media images-books,
television, and movies-has been that women are no longer cast as helpless domestic
helpmates. There has been no comparable change in the depiction of men or boys in
children's books, no movement of men toward more nurturing and caring behaviors.
As in real life, women in our storybooks have left home and gone off to work, but men
still have enormous trouble coming back home.9
As in children's books, so, too, in the other media that enter our lives. What chil-
dren learn in school is reinforced at home, not only in our families, but also in our
entertainment. Television programs, movies, music videos-all reiterate gender ste-
reotypes. Television takes vast chunks of its time to deliver entertainment and com-
mercial messages to younger children as well as to those in school. There are programs
for preschoolers in the morning, for schoolchildren in the afternoon, and for all children
every Saturday morning. For many children, this is one of their largest commitments
of waking time; for parents, it often serves as a built-in baby sitter.
The presentation of gender roles on children's television shows has been, at least
until recently, quite similar to that of children's readers, the playground, and the
schools. Boys are the centerpiece of a story; they do things and occupy the valued
roles. Girls serve as backdrop, are helpful and caring, and occupy the less valued roles.
Even Sesame Street, hailed as a breakthrough in enjoyable educational programming,
presented far more male characters than female. Commercials for children on Saturday
morning usually depict boys driving cars or playing with trucks and depict girls
playing with dolls. There has been some pressure to eliminate gender stereotyping
in both commercials and show content, but television shows are linked to a gender-
stereotyped system. Toy manufacturers sell gender-linked toys, parents buy them, and
writers often take their stories from existing materials (including the toys that are for
sale, such as G.I. Joe and the Ninja Turtles) for children.
Television commercials are especially powerful, perhaps even more powerful
than the shows themselves, because they are expressly designed to persuade. Com-
mercials also link gender roles to the significant adult roles that the young will be
playing in the future. The authoritative voices advising you what to buy are nearly all
men's voices, which indicates to children who the experts are. Similarly, gender stereo-
types are attached to consumption, one of the most valued activities in U.S. society. By
linking material benefits to gender roles, the commercials teach a powerful lesson-if
you consume this product, this is the kind of man or woman you can be.
Television, films, and other media also habituate viewers, young and old, to a
culture that accepts and expects violence. In the nation's most thorough investigation
of violence on television, the National Television Violence Study, four teams of re-
searchers systematically examined TV violence. They found that violence is ubiquitous
(61 percent of all shows contained some violence) and that typically it is perpetuated
by a white male, who goes unpunished and shows little remorse. The violence is typi-
cally justified, although nearly one-half (43 percent) of shows presented it in a humor-
ous way. Consistently, "the serious and long-lasting consequences of violence are
frequently ignored." 10
On broadcast television a bladed weapon or gun appeared on screen every three

minutes. These calculations represent only when a new weapon entered the scene. The
numbers do not account for the length of time a weapon remained on screen. The most
violent shows on broadcast TV have essentially similar levels of violence as the most
violent cable TV shows, rendering untrue the popular assumption that broadcast TV
is a "safer" media environment for children. 11
Violence against women and teenage girls on television is increasing at rates that
far exceed the overall increases in violence on television. Violence, irrespective of
gender, on television increased during the study period only 2 percent from 2004
(3,840 storylines that included violence) to 2009 (3,929 storylines). During that same
period instances of violence against women increased 120 percent (from 195 storylines
that included female victims of violence in 2004 to 429 storylines in 2009). Although
female victims appeared to be primarily of adult age, collectively, there was a 400 percent
increase in the depiction of teen girls as victims across all networks from 2004
to 2009.12
Media presentations do not have immediate effects on the gender behavior of

children. Although media influence the ideas about gender that children have, chil-
dren also negotiate a real world of people who do not fit these stereotypes. Media
representations become just one more element in a child's process of organizing his or
her own ideas of gender, part of his or her "concept formation" about gender. Nor do
these media representations have the dramatic and immediate effects that media crit-
ics often ascribe to them, because most of human learning is a steady accumulation
of information, attitudes, and ways of responding rather than a sudden revelation
or recognition. The media simply provide another push toward accepting current
arrangements as if they were natural, right, and preordained.
Let's look next at gender differences-both in media use and in media content.
What we use, what we watch, what we consume-these are clearly marked by gender.
There are his and her magazines, books, TV shows, radio shows, satellite radio,
movies, video games. He has Maxim and FHM and Sports Illustrated and Playboy and
Penthouse; she has Vogue, Glamour, Modern Bride, and Cosmopolitan. She has novels
and short stories, and he has books about business. He has Spike TV and dozens of
sports-related channels; she has WE, Oxygen, OWN, and Lifetime. He has action
flicks and horror movies, 007 and Freddy; she has chick flicks like Bridget Jones's Diary
and Pride and Prejudice. He has The Americans, Better Call Saul, Game of Thrones, The
Walking Dead, and Brooklyn Nine-Nine. She has Against the Wall, Covert Affairs,
Army Wives, New Girl, and Switched at Birth. He has online pornography and poker;
she has online shopping and e-mail contact with family and friends. He has Eminem,
50 Cent, and Nickelback; she has Ani diFranco, Nelly Furtado, and "grrl power"
music. He has G.I. Joe; she has Barbie and Bratz.
By now I suspect that many of the male readers of this book are nodding their
heads in agreement. "Yeah, that's true, that's the stuff I watch and I would never watch
or listen to what she likes. Yuck." And I suspect that many women are saying, "Huh?
I like some of that stuff Kimmel says are 'his' media! And I definitely do not like some
of the stuff he says are 'her' media. He's completely wrong."
And you'd both be right. One way to look at it is that he has "his" media, but she
can also share "his" media-that she seems to have more choices than he does. Or you
could say that he wouldn't be caught dead consuming her media, whereas the penal-
ties when she crosses over into his media are far less severe. It is not simply that the
gendered world of media production and consumption is neatly divided into his and
her realms. It is also useful to remember what Jessie Bernard said about marriage. Not
only is there "his" and "hers," she wrote, but also "his is better than hers."
So, too, with media. And that's because his and her media are not simply equiva-
lent, satisfying the different needs that derive naturally from preordained gender dif-
ferences. It's that his and her media exist in a world of gender inequality-and his
media are better than hers; in fact, his are often the media, and she fits herself in
around the margins. And she crosses over because, well, what are her choices? Recall,
for example, Barrie Thorne's important research about the elementary school play-
ground. Girls can try to cross over into the boy zones, but boys must never cross over
into the girl zones. Separate is never equal.
There are far more women who like sports TV, Tool, gangsta rap, online porno-
graphy, and Grand Theft Auto than there are guys who like General Hospital, Bridget
Jones, and romance novels. That's not just a reflection of difference: It's the production
of inequality.
"HIS" AND "HERS" MEDIA: SEPARATE AND UNEQUAL

Take, for example, the new "crisis" in television-a perfect illustration of the dynamics
I'm describing. For years, television neatly divided up its audience into its targeted
demographic niches to better enable advertisers to reach the consumers they most
wanted to reach. Guy TV was weekend sports, crime dramas, and westerns-in the
1950s it was shows like Dragnet and Bonanza (a delightful "family" drama, in which
there were no women!). Gal TV was soap operas and game shows during the day and
sitcoms and variety shows in prime time. That is, "her" TV invited him to watch (men
watched Ed Sullivan as much as women did)-but his shows were pretty much his
alone.
All gender stereotypes were fully in place. Back then, male characters were more
courageous and active, fighting crime and solving mysteries. Female characters were
caring but befuddled housewives who occasionally ventured outside the home only to
realize that they really loved baking cookies. (Lucy is the standard-bearer of the genre,
constantly coming up with hare-brained ideas to work outside the home and just as
constantly screwing them up and returning to Ricky's admonishingly forgiving do-
mestic embrace.)13
These differences are important, especially because increased exposure to images of
inequality often can contribute to more stereotypical ideas. For example, the more tele-
vision you watch, the more gender-stereotypic are your gender attitudes likely to be.14
But something happened to television in the 1970s and 198os-in the wake of the
civil rights and feminist movements. Feminist and minority media critics began to
point out just how separate and unequal the world of the small screen actually was.
Women and men watched different shows at different times of day, and the characters
fully reproduced gender and racial stereotypes. Hollywood's response? Those shows
that targeted women or minorities became increasingly "ghettoized"-attracting
fewer men and white audiences. Men rarely watched Alice or Rhoda whites almost
never watched Sanford and Son or Good Times. But the shows for men began to attract
more female viewers, so that by the mid-198os, from Hill Street Blues to L.A . Law,
the "ensemble" cast, including several female and minority characters, became a new
Hollywood norm.
The ensemble prime-time drama (like L.A. Law in the 1980s and ER and NYPD
Blue in the 1990s and Grey's Anatomy and Lost recently) has far more racial and gender
diversity than any other TV shows in our history. Even standard formats like crime
procedurals and detective stories were refashioned with more diverse casts, as in the CSI
and Law and Order franchises . Women have entered the formerly all-male workplace-
the police station, court house, hospital operating theater-in both real life and prime-
time drama. (Even the hit show Desperate Housewives was a clever throwback that
presumes a certain new equality of desire-and boredom-in domestic life!)
And what has been the result? For one thing, women have been abandoning the
traditionally "female" TV world of daytime soap opera, a decline of nearly 10 percent
in 2005 alone. Women cross over far more readily than men do, and they're leaving the
all-female ghetto. "I think women have broad tastes and are more likely to watch a
show their husband or boyfriend wants to watch than the reverse," noted Susanne
Daniels, president of entertainment at Lifetime Television.15
IiJ ,, ,,, I'':n)Q IIa

Nearly everyone watches reality television, and we especially love those makeover shows
like The Biggest Loser. An increasing number of men are contestants on reality makeover TV
shows, and this enables sociologists Alexander Davis, Laura Rogers, and Bethany Bryson to
examine the ways that reality makeover shows try to enable men to "achieve" a greater sense
of themselves as men. By engaging in "manhood acts," they assert themselves and remake
themselves as men. In the zero-sum world of makeover television, the more the man en-
hances his masculinity, the more he seems to expect deference from women and to benefit
from gender inequality. After all, from his perspective, he's "earned" it.
Meanwhile, male viewers have been leaving network television in droves-

network viewing by males in the eighteen to thirty-four age range has declined pre-
cipitously. Just as women have been entering, men have been leaving. Executives now
worry about the "feminization of prime time" because the network fare no longer ap-
peals to the "elusive" and "disappearing" male viewer. "Men want shows with action
and explosives. Women want to watch programs about relationships. Some shows try
to mix the two," noted Tim Brooks, executive vice president of research for Lifetime.
But the reality is that men can't bear any pollution of their media. Women watch the
action shows; men run away-and the men are supposed to be the driving engine of
American consumerism, the consumers everyone wants to land. (This is, by the way, a
myth, because women either influence or make about 85 percent of all consumer pur-
chases, including those of cars and stereo equipment. It shows how ideology-men
buy stuff and women use it-trumps even the market research the networks pay so
handsomely for.) Network executives are trying desperately to recapture these guys,
who are bailing out for the Internet, cable, video games, and other media. Some net-
works are even gobbling up small video and Internet games to add content to lure
those guys back.16
And it's not just gender equality that seems to frighten men away and back into
the cozy comfort of all-action hero and sexy babe TV. It's racial equality as well. White
men seem to turn off shows that have African Americans in leading roles-or even
ensemble casts that have minority actors alongside females, even if the majority of the
cast remains white and male.17
Fortunately for these men, there's sports: sports TV, sports radio, sports magazines
and newspapers, and the sports section of the daily newspaper. There are dozens of
sports on television every single day and dozens of shows about sports in between. And
if you don't want to watch sports, talk about sports on sports radio, or read about sports
in sports magazines or daily newspapers, perhaps you'll want to watch nonsports TV or
listen to nonsports radio. On talk radio or TV talk shows, male emcees outnumber
females; they talk differently and listen differently. Talk show hosts like Howard Stern,
Mike Savage, and Rush Limbaugh yell at each other about everything; they and their
legions of fans alternate between fuming at lost privileges, whining about how "they"-
minorities, women, gays-are taking over, and seething that they are now society's vic-
tims. Meanwhile, Oprah-and her many imitators-cocks her head to the side and nods
empathically, really listening to your heartache. (Among the more notable exceptions
are Dr. Phil, who embodies tough love, empathic but stern, and Ann Coulter, who loves
being tough.) Late at night, it's a steady parade of men: Colbert, Meyers, Kimmel (no
relation!), Conan, Fallon, and all the rest. This is the new male media, the "den" of tele-
vision, the garage, the barbecue pit-the "man's zone." It's like the clubhouse when they
were seven-year-olds, with the sign that read "He-Man Woman Haters Club." At least
here, in this virtual "room of his own," a man can finally be alone-with other guys.
"U'hen did meri become women?"

Figure 11.4. Source: William Haefeli/The New Yorker Collection/The Cartoon Bank.
"HIS" AND "HER" PRINT MEDIA

As with TV, so, too, with those older, more established media, like books and maga-
zines. Women and men buy and read different sorts of books and magazines and read
them differently. In the literary world, women outnumber men in the purchase of
every single genre (except war and sports stories), and they also buy 80 percent of all
fiction sold in the United States and Europe. That's right-four out of every five novels
are bought by women-and that includes guy writers like Tom Clancy, Michael
Crichton, and J. R. R. Tolkien.
Is the novel a "feminine" form? Generations of hardy American men have sug-
gested as much. Even, ironically, in our nation's first novels was this anti-intellectualism
evident. In James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mahicans, Natty Bumppo, the
first in a long literary series of "the last real man in America," lashes out against the
whole enterprise: "'Book!' repeated Hawk-eye, with singular and ill-concealed dis-
dain. 'Do you take me for a whimpering boy at the apron string of one of your old
gals ... Book! What have such as I, who am a warrior of the wilderness ... to do with
books?'" Real men act; they don't read. (Apparently they don't write, either; recall
Nathaniel Hawthorne's tirade against all those "scribbling women" and Hemingway's
near-obsessive concern with trying to write a masculine sentence.) Recall the words
of the boys in the chapter on education-how they saw English as a subject fit only for
"sissies." (Of course, Cooper wrote this hoping to entice men to do exactly that-and
OH?
REALLY•
Sexism in the movies and on TV is a thing of the past. Why, today, there are
female characters in every single movie and TV show. Gender inequality in the
media is an old story.
Not so fast. In the early 1990s, journalist Katha Pollitt coined what she called
"the Smurfette Principle." That's the tendency to "achieve" gender equality by
adding one-and only one-female character to any TV show or movie and declaring gender
equality to have been achieved. In case you've forgotten those cute little blue cherubs, here's the
Smurfette Principle in action (well, the males are acting; she's standing there offering a flower).
Go ahead and try it out: Miss Piggy. Princess Leia. Penny (The Big Bang Theory). Kanga. Hermione.
Jessie. Katniss Everdeen. (Well, okay, if you count Rue it's two, but that's stretching it.) One
female among many equals gender equality!
But it's more than just how many female characters there are. It's what they do. Alison Bechdel,
a feminist cartoonist, came up with a test to see just how equal the characters actually are.
Say you are watching a movie or TV show and you want to know how gender equal it is. Answer
three questions:
I. Are there two or more female characters with names?

2. Do they talk to each other?
3. Do they talk about something other than men?
Source: Katha Pollitt, "The Smurfette Principle" in New York Times, April 7, 1991.
in rather precious prose.) 18 A decade or so later, General Robert E. Lee chimed in,
declaring that fiction "weakens the mind."
Think for a moment of the meteoric rise of "chick lit"-the most successful new
genre of fiction in the past quarter-century. Chick lit, like Helen Fielding's Bridget
Jones's Diary in 1998, which sold two million copies, spawned two sequels, two films,
and countless imitators, centers around affably befuddled modern urban women who
struggle mightily to sustain careers that don't consume them and develop intimate
relationships with men who do. It's the literary version of Ally McBeal and the gal pals
on Sex and the City.
Now consider the sad fate of "lad lit"-the male riposte to chick lit. It was osten-
sibly heralded by Nick Hornby's High Fidelity, in which Rob, a thirty-five-year-old
London slacker, works at a record store and organizes his life by top five lists; or About
a Boy, in which the well-named Will Lightman drifts along on inherited family money
(his father composed a truly horrific and massively successful Christmas jingle).
Worldly wise and wisecracking, both men are temperamentally unable to commit to
relationships or even to a sense of purpose in their own lives. But then something
happens-and they actually do get a life, commit, and live, if not happily, then at least
in a relationship, ever after.
But contemporary American purveyors of lad lit present a sort of anti-
bildungsroman, in which a wry, clever, unapologetic slacker refuses to grow up, get a
meaningful job, commit to relationships, or find some meaning in life. Works such as
Booty Nomad, Love Monkey, and Indecision have tanked at the bookstore and failed
miserably as TV adaptations. And they failed precisely because their protagonists
refuse to be transformed in the course of the novel by their relationship with women.
They failed because women won't read them unless there is some hope of redemption,
and men won't read them because men don't read fiction.1 9
One more example should suffice. It has become virtually axiomatic in feminist
literature that women's magazines are a prime example of women's oppression-that
the magazines construct unattainable ideals of femininity, lock women into never-
ending struggles to be skinny enough, sexy enough, and gorgeous enough, and thus
contribute to women's second-class status. Dozens of class projects in women's studies
have found countless students clipping ads and showing how the media representa-
tions of women in magazines are a prime agent of their subordinate status.
Actually, this critique is the well from which Betty Friedan poured the second
wave of feminism itself with her incendiary call to women, The Feminine Mystique
(1963). Friedan argued that women's magazines constructed "a weak, passive, vacuous
woman who is dependent on her husband for happiness and status, who is devoid of
ambition beyond mothering and home decoration, and who lacks a voice to express
the emptiness, the incompleteness, of her gender-delimited life," writes media critic
Amy Aronson.20 (Never mind that Friedan's book was first serialized in Mademoiselle
and later in Ladies' Home Journal and McCall's, where Friedan herself worked as an
editor and writer!)
To Friedan, magazines were part of a full-scale cultural onslaught that constructed
the feminine mystique: "This image," she wrote, "created by the women's magazines,
by advertisements, television, movies, novels, columns and books by experts on mar-
riage and the family, child psychology, sexual adjustment and by the popularizers of
sociology and psycho-analysis ... is young and frivolous, fluffy and feminine; passive;
gaily content in a world of bedroom and kitchen, sex, babies and the home.'"'
This argument became the prevailing feminist orthodoxy about the impact of
women's magazines; they were accused of "debilitating women, making them depen-
dent on men" (and on the magazines themselves), preventing self-realization, promot-
ing self-denial, and treating the reader as little more than ornament, object, euphemism,
maid, or mom machine. Most scholarship has seen the women's magazine as capable
of perfect domination and its popular women readers as utterly "feminine": passive,
dependent, and witless in the extreme. "What makes women's magazines particu-
22
larly interesting," writes another feminist critic, Marjorie Ferguson, "is that their in-
structional and directional nostrums are concerned with more than the technology of
knitting or contraception of cooking. They tell women what to think and do about
themselves, their lovers, husbands, parents, children, colleagues, neighbors or bosses ...
Here is a very potent formula indeed," she concludes, "for steering female attitudes,
behavior and moving along a particular path of femininity."23
Others have fully embraced this critique, from sociologist Gaye Tuchman in her
1977 co-edited volume The Symbolic Annihilation of Women by the Mass Media, to
media critic Jean Kilbourne in her trenchant critique of advertising images of women
"Killing Us Softly," to, finally, Naomi Wolf in her debut work, The Beauty Myth.24
Recently, though, commentators have assailed the American women's magazine
for having exactly the opposite impact on women: rendering them dissatisfied by
instilling ideals of careers, consumerism, and independence. Just as feminists saw a
conspiracy to keep women in their place, these antifeminist critics see a conspiracy to
enrage women and cause their rebellion. The Media Research Center in Alexandria,
Virginia, a conservative watchdog group, studied thirteen popular women's maga-
zines over a twelve-month period and reported in late 1996 that all are "left-wing po-
litical weapon[s]" that "hammer home a pro-big government message and urge liberal
activism."25 Christina Hoff Sommers accused such magazines as Redbook, Mademoi-
selle, Good Housekeeping, and Parenting of advancing "Ms.-information" that "gives
the Democrats a clear advantage."26 As Danielle Crittenden writes:
The women who buy these magazines today have heeded their mothers' advice:
Do something with your life; don't depend on a man to take care of you; don't make the
same mistakes I did . .. So they are the women who postponed marriage and child-
birth to pursue their careers only to find themselves at thirty-five still single and
baby-crazy, with no husband in sight ... They are the female partners at law firms
who thought they'd made provisions for everything about their careers-except
for that sudden, unexpected moment when they find their insides shredding the first
day they return from maternity leave, having placed their infants in a stranger's arms.27
So one side says women's magazines enslave women to household drudgery, and the
other side says such magazines offer them false freedoms. Who's right?
Each polarized position focuses on only one element and is therefore wrong.
Women's magazines do both. Pick up a copy of Cosmopolitan or O or Glamour or
Latina sometime. Try minority-themed magazines like Essence or Latina. Sure, there
are several articles instructing readers on how to lose ten pounds in a week or keep
their boyfriends sexually delighted and photo spreads of the sexiest new bikinis and
lipsticks. And there is also an article about how the right wing is trying to take away
your right to choose and about how global warming might impact more than your
shopping for next year's Uggs. In other words, women's magazines offer polyvocality-
multiple voices, differing perspectives.
And it's always been that way. Since the first women's magazines appeared, Amy
Aronson found, this polyvocality has been one of the hallmarks of women's magazines-
which makes them, in a sense, so democratic. (The earliest women's magazines were
largely composed of letters to the editor and articles cribbed from other magazines.)
Women's magazines are so polyvocal because women cross over into men's arenas
(like the workplace or sexual agency). Women are not duped into being household
drudges or glamorous objects or liberal harpies because women are so diverse.28
Men's magazines, by contrast, are as monotonal as you can get. Pick up Maxim or
FHM. On the front cover of virtually every issue are bikini-dad buxom babes, usually
drenched in sweat or water. Inside, along with articles about muscles and sexual
prowess, are nearly naked starlets, models, and other assorted hotties, all suggestively
posed. "All babes all the time" is, apparently, the only way to successfully launch a new
magazine geared exclusively to this demographic segment. The two magazines boast
2.5 million and 1 million subscribers, respectively. According to its editors, Maxim's
readers are overwhelmingly male (76 percent), unmarried (71 percent), and young
(median age is twenty-six). 29
Maxim is but one of a spate of "new lad" magazines that began in Britain, in part
as an antifeminist backlash, a way to help men "regain their self-esteem," having
been "diminished by the women's movement.''3° Here in the States, Madison Avenue
advertisers have tried for years to figure out how to market cosmetics-shaving para-
phernalia, colognes, skin-care products-to straight white men. (Only gay men and
black men were fashion-conscious enough to read GQ or M, and these magazines
morphed into a kind of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy a decade before the hit TV
show.) But Maxim figured it out by being brazen enough to make every magazine
cover a wet T-shirt contest. And it's been wildly successful.31
As has Men's Health, the most successful magazine launched in the 1980s and
1990s. Once devoted to organic foods and herbal medicines for various men's illnesses,
Men's Health reconfigured itself into a magazine that caters to men's sexual anxiety by
assuring them that they can be the sexual acrobats they had only dreamed of becom-
ing before. Next to the articles that suggest some pointers on how to have abs of steel,
buns of iron, and other body parts turned into resilient metals flows a steady stream of
articles about how to drive her wild in bed, how to be bigger, thicker, harder, and how
to have more sexual endurance. Men's Health panders to sexual anxiety by suggesting
one can never be potent enough or enough of a sexual athlete.
And the best-selling single issue of men's magazines in America? The "Swimsuit"
issue of Sports Illustrated, which depicts women who could not possibly swim in the
skimpy bikinis they almost wear, and the "Back to School" issue of Playboy, which
features a dozen or so "coeds" from some collegiate athletic conference playfully
disrobed. (They don't bother with the swimsuits.) "Women of the ACC!" "Women of
the Southeast Conference!" Even "Women of the Ivy League!" These magazines are so
popular because men are eager to know that those college girls, the ones who are at
least their equals in chemistry class, on the debating team, or even on the soccer field,
are really, underneath it all, "just girls" who are happy to bare their breasts and let men
look. Everywhere, even on campus, the magazines tell us, men are entitled to look at
naked women-and the women volunteer to do it. Even those brainy Yalies are, well,
just girls who like to take their clothes off for men.
Yet efforts to retain these male readers as they age out of laddism have failed.
"What we discovered pretty quickly," publisher Phil Hilton told a journalist, "is that
there is not an age any more when men suddenly grow up and start getting interested
in IRAs and bathroom tiles. They are never interested in those things. For better or
worse, most men stay interested in looking at girls and knowing about cars and talk-
ing about football.''3
2
Why are women's magazines so diverse and men's magazines so monochromatic?

Why is it that as prime-time TV shows inch toward gender equality, men seem to be
leaving? Are men so frightened of equality that when the going gets tough, the tough
run away to Spike TV and Howard Stern?
The only way to understand these dynamics, I've suggested, is to understand that
the worlds of women and men may be separate, but they are not equal. She can enter
his world-whether it's the military or science or business-and in both reality and
media representation. Magazines that appear to be "gender-neutral" illustrate this
issue. For example, when Forbes or Fortune has an article about a female CEO, it's
always the "women's issue," and the female gender is played to attract female readers.
That is, readers of these mainstream magazines about money and finance have two
groups of consumers: "female readers" (a specialized niche) and "readers" (the general
public, meaning, of course, men).
Girls can play with boys' toys (sports equipment, action heroes, science games),
but boys dare not play with girls' toys. Girls can play sports; boys dare not be uninter-
ested in sports. Women can balance family and career; men must stay focused on their
careers at all costs.
Thus far in our history, gender equality has come almost entirely from women
entering "male" spheres formerly closed to them. Men have retreated into smaller and
smaller pristine preserves of "pure" masculinity that become increasingly hyperbolic
in their assertions of the one "true" way to be a "real man" -and as the men them-
selves become increasingly anxious and defensive.
WE GOT GAME(S)
Video games began innocently enough with Pong, a computer-generated Ping-Pong
game in 1972; Centipede was introduced later that same year. Who would have pre-
dicted then that video games would today be the fastest-growing segment of the enter-
tainment industry? Worldwide, more than 1.2 billion people play video games. Video
games made about $76 billion in revenues in 2014. In the United States, video games
earned about $24 billion in 2014 on sales and rentals. (Sales of hardware and game
software topped $10 billion in 2003, 2004, and 2005 and $9.5 billion in 2010.) That's
nearly two games purchased per household every year since 2000. Nearly 75 percent of
Americans age six and older play video games regularly.
The most popular game of 2014 was Titanfall, a new futuristic game developed by
the creators of the Call of Duty franchise (Call of Duty: Ghosts was the second-best
seller). It's a violent, militaristic game of futuristic soldiers, massive weapons and
robots, and terrifying machines bent on destroying the world.33
Although the age range of gamers is wide-the average age is thirty-one-games
tend to appeal most to guys in their teens and twenties. However, women age eighteen
or older represent a significantly greater portion of the game-playing population
(37 percent) than boys age seventeen or younger (13 percent). The average teenage
boy plays video games for about ten and a half hours a week; girls play about six hours
a week. (Both boys and girls watch TV about thirty-one hours a week.) One-third
of Americans rank computer and video games as their "favorite entertainment
activity."34
The games vary a lot-by type, by format, and, of course, by gender. Some games
are played by one or two (or a few more) players on a console box, hooked up to the TV.
Others are played online, on a computer. And some, called "massively multiplayer
online role-playing games" (or MMORPG), are played live, with thousands of people
all over the world playing simultaneously.
Of video games, sports games-like Madden NFL or the various baseball and
basketball games- command a large share of the market. Adventure and action
games, like GTA and Halo, are by far the most popular genre. And strategy games, like
Sims, involve players in real-life decision making and strategic thinking, not simply
adventures in the land of blood and guts. There's even a game called Bully that
revolves around elite prep school "pranks."
Although the majority of players of every game format and genre are male, the
percentages vary enormously.35 At a recent World Cyber Games competition in
Singapore, seven hundred boys and men-and one woman!-crossed cyber-swords in
Ego shooter (e.g, Half-Life)

I
12.83
I
p .18
•
Action adventure (e.g, Mafia)
I
2.41
3 .72
I
•
~
!
Real-time strategy (e.g, Age of My thology) 12.61
3.58
•
Sport (e.g, Fifa-Soccer 2002) ~ 1 . 6 1 1
I
2.50 • • Female
Simulation (e .g, Comanche 4)
I
12.17
12 85
2.61
• • Male
Peaceful build-up (e.g, SIMS)

2.53
I
13.44
Role-playing (e.g, Baldur 's Gate)
3.34
I
Adventure (e.g, Monkey Island) 3.12
'"' .62
2 3 4 5
Genre
Figure I 1.5. Gender preference for different types of video games.

Source: T. Hartmann and C. Klimmt. "Gender and Computer Games: Exploring Females' Dislikes." Journal of Computer-
Mediated Communication, I I (4), 2006 , article 2, available at: http://jmcm.indiana.edu/vol I I /issue4/hartmann
.html. © 2006 International Communication Association , published by John Wiley and Sons.
online game competition.36 But female gamers are catching up. Today, only 52 percent
of all gamers are male. From 2012 to 2013, the number of female gamers increased by
32 percent. Perhaps this rapid influx of female gamers is what has made so many young
male gamers so anxiously, angrily defensive about what they might perceive as the last
homosocially pure locker room in the world.37 Sports and adventure games come close
to 95 percent male players; whereas strategy games, like Sims, are the only genre where
female players have made any inroads. In Sims, the "action," such as it is, has to do with
real-life situations in the home. People get jobs, get married, have kids, and even clean
the house. "All the men in my class HATED that game," comments sociologist William
Lugo, who studies video games and teaches a college course on them (figure 11.5).
"It was a little too realistic for them."38
• ,1 ,, ,,, , ,, =n1u1, a
Video games are a central site for gender expression and construction. In fantasy and play,
we temporarily try on new identities, test ourselves, and release tension. As more and more
girls play video games, the gaming world has become more gender-integrated than ever.
But the images of women in these games have not kept pace at all with the change in the
compositions of the gamer community. Actually, it seems to be getting worse. Alicia Summers
and Monica Miller examined video game magazines over the last twenty years, and found that
images of women went from more benign "damsels in distress" to more actively hostile por-
trayals of women as "sexy superheroes."
OH?
REALLY•
C'mon dude, lighten up. Games are just a way to blow off steam. Nobody takes
them that seriously.
Oh really? What about Gamergate? Remember that? Gamergate-the
name that was given to a very nasty social media campaign against several
women-began in 2013 when an independent game developer, Zoe Quinn, developed a new
game that got really good reviews. A bunch of gamer guys objected that she was only getting at-
tention because she was female. The hate mail, public denunciations, hacking, and doxing got so
bad, the rape and violence threats so persistent and menacing, that she had to change her phone
number and withdraw from public space.
Then, in 2014, feminist writer and blogger Anita Sarkeesian released a new YouTube video in
a series that had illustrated the depiction of women in the media. She was immediately and relent-
lessly har assed and threatened. A scheduled lecture at Utah State University had to be canceled
because of death threats (and the fact that the state's "open-carry" laws meant that the university
could not protect her). The New York Times called it "the most noxious example of a weeks long
campaign to discredit or intimidate outspoken critics of the male-dominated gaming industry and
its culture."
Whether in fantasy games or in reality, men often feel threatened by women's entry into an
arena they perceive as their own. As women have entered every arena of the public sphere, some
men, insecure and terrified that the purity of the homosocial arena is forever tainted, will defen-
sively circle the wagons.
Death threats for critiquing media images? Sound familiar? It should: It's what these same guys
probably condemned when terrorists murdered twelve of the staff and others of Charlie Hebda in
France.
So, c'mon dudes. Lighten up. It's only a game.
Sources: Nick Wingfield, "Feminist Critics of Video Games Facing Threats in 'GamerGate' Campaign" in New York
Times, October 15 , 2014; Anita Sarkeesian, "Tropes vs . Women in Video Games," available at https://www
.youtube .com/watch?v=Si_RPr9DwMA.
Nina Huntemann, communications professor and avid gamer, is a keen observer

and has researched games and created the documentary Game Over for the Media
Education Foundation. "I constantly got the message that gaming was for guys," she
told me. The computer labs in college were "completely dominated by guys," she says
now, "and the fact that I liked games, and liked them for the same reasons that they
did, made more than a few somewhat uncomfortable."39
Sex segregation of the game console is only one element of video games' obvious
gendered element. The characters are almost always massively exaggerated gender
stereotypes: The male characters in their torn T-shirts and Army fatigues have biceps
that would make G.I. Joe look puny; indeed, their upper torsos are so massive, their
waists so small, and their thighs so powerfully bulging that there is no way that most
of these characters could stand up.4 0
Even if they resemble contemporary gay male stereotypes of pumped bodies,
avatars in gameland are all straight. And so are the women-powerful and strong
enough to be threatening, but always straight, with blond, disheveled, "bedroom"
hair-a sort of recently sexually ravaged look-with breasts so large and a waist so
small they make Barbie look like a waif.41 And they're eternally grateful to their hy-
permasculine muscle-bound rescuers. In one game, Duke Nukem, the "Everyman
American Hero," finds a landscape in which all the men have been killed, and only
Duke can rescue a million "babes" who have been captured by aliens. The women
are, of course, grateful. Even Lara Croft, the female action-game icon, is a hyper-
sexualized "babe" -she just happens to know how to handle a grenade launcher.42
Some games blur the boundaries between militarized urban war zones and por-
nographic revenge fantasies. Take Panty Raider. "It's More Than Just Underwear," the
ads for this popular game read, "It's an Adventure!" The object of this adventure is to
lure supermodels from their hiding places out into the open and then use X-ray gog-
gles to see if they are wearing the lingerie that was prescribed by the aliens. If they are,
then you try to shoot them, hit them with some cyber-goop to melt their clothes off,
and snap a picture of them in their panties.
For some players, the fantasy world of video games doesn't offer a sufficient real-
time dose of reality. Millions of players-overwhelmingly male-around the world log
on to MMORPGs. These games, like EverQuest or World of Warcraft, are elaborate
fantasy worlds, often quite Tolkienesque, where players battle each other or battle
against monsters, live, online, in real time. World of Warcraft has five million sub-
scribers. One needs to accumulate various props in the game-property, weapons,
gold, various potions-and these enable the player to gain advantages over other
players. These MMORPGs are so seductive because they are both virtual and real; the
games utterly blur the boundaries between reality and fantasy, as commodities flow
across the borders of cyberspace into the real marketplace. Edward Castronova worries
that some players will experience a sort of "toxic immersion," in which their virtual
lives become more real, and more pressing, than their real-world lives.43
PORN IN THE USA

Women's entry into a formerly all-male media environment is nowhere more evident
than in the pornography industry. No, I'm not talking about the featured actors and
actresses (who, in various gender combinations, are about equal numerically). Women
are consuming far more pornography than ever, and, some of them say, they are even
liking it more than they ever did-or than they feel they are "supposed" to, because it's
so unfeminine. By contrast, there are very few men who are renting movies from
Femme Productions. Again, women can enter men's space, but men dare not enter
women's. And though I will deal with pornography as a mechanism in the construc-
tion of our sexualities in a later chapter, here I want to focus on pornography not only
in its representation of sex, but also in its representation of gender.
Pornography is a massive industry in the United States, with gross sales of all
pornographic media ranging between $10 billion and $14 billion annually for the
whole industry-more than the NFL, the NBA, and Major League Baseball combined
or, in media terms, with revenues greater than ABC, NBC, and CBS combined. Sales
and rentals of videos and DVDs alone gross about $4 billion a year. More than two
hundred pornographic videos are produced every week. Adult "entertainment" out-
numbers McDonald's restaurants in the United States-by a margin of at least three to
one. On the Internet, pornography has increased 1,800 percent, from 14 million web-
pages in 1998 to 420 million in 2008.44
OH?
REALLY•
"Playing violent video games has no effect on the rest of my life. I know the
difference between fantasy and reality. It just lets me let off steam."
That's the sort of defensive pushback from gamers that parents, educators,
and cultural critics often hear when anyone dares to offer a critique of
entertainment.
But it's only half right. Of course, there is no quasi-Pavlovian response pathway that is acti-
vated by repeated video game play, causing you to suddenly pick up an assault weapon and start
murdering immigrants, women, terrorists, or anyone else who is demonized in your video game.
But on the other hand, would you really want to claim that consumption of media images has no
effect on our behaviors? That would be like saying that the entire advertising industry does not
help to shape our consumer choices.
Of course media images affect our behaviors. The question isn't whether or not; it's how and
how much.
The empirical evidence is revealing. Again, nothing Pavlovian, no monkey-see, monkey-do. But
recent empirical studies by Yang Wang and his colleagues in the Radiology Department at Indiana
University should give us pause. Dr. Wang performed MRls on two groups of young adults. One
group played violent video games for ten hours during one week and then none at all for the next
week. The other group played no video games at all. M Rls of their brains were conducted before
the gaming, at the end of the first week, and at the end of the second week.
After the first week, the video game group showed less activation in their brain functions, both
in the areas of the brain that are linked to emotion and those involved in mathematical reasoning,
than did the nongamers. After the second week, the first group's brain functions had returned to
near-normal, but were not quite the same as the nongamers'.
Does this mean that playing violent video games makes you stupid and callously nonempathic?
Not entirely. It does mean that it has an effect on your brain-that's the point, after all. But it
doesn't transform you permanently into some game-zoned-out zombie. You'll have to work
harder to achieve that.
Sources: Tom A . Hummer, Yang Wang, William G . Kronenberger, Kristine Mosier, Andrew Kalnin, David Dunn,
and Vincent Mathews, "Short-Term Violent Video Game Play by Adolescents Alters Prefrontal Activity During
Cognitive Inhibition" in Media Psychology, 13, 2010, pp. 136-154; "Short-Term Exposure to a Violent Video Game
Induces Changes in Frontolimbic Circuitry in Adolescents" in Brain Imaging and Behavior, 3, 2009, pp. 38-50; "The
Interacting Role of Media Violence Exposure and Aggressive-Disruptive Behavior in Adolescent Brain Activation
During an Emotional Stroop Task" in Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, 192(1), 2011, pp. 12-19.
And it is hardly sleazy, clandestine back-alley production. "The adult film indus-
try in Southern California is not being run by a bunch of dirty old men in the back
room of some sleazy warehouse," wrote Larry Flynt in an op-ed article in the Los Angeles
Times in 2004. "Today, in the state of California, XXX entertainment is a $9 billion to
$14 billion business run with the same kind of thought and attention to detail that
you'd find at GE, Mattel, or Tribune Co.'¼5
As of 2012, 13 percent of all web searches on the Internet are for porn sites. More
people access pornography than access Twitter, Netflix, and Amazon-combined.
More than twenty-five thousand of us are watching porn every second. And two-
thirds of those watchers are male. Indeed, nearly eight out of ten guys, age eighteen to
twenty-four, visit a porn site in a typical month. And two-thirds of human resource
professionals have found porn on employees' computers. 46
But perhaps equally important is not simply the size of the pornographic market
but its reach and its pervasiveness. It's everywhere, creeping into mainstream media
as well as growing in the shadowlands to which it has historically been consigned.
A large percentage of Americans use pornography "as daily entertainment fare." Of
the one thousand most-visited sites on the Internet, one hundred are sex-oriented.47
Our society has become, as journalist Pamela Paul titles her book, Pornified. As she
puts it, pornography today "is so seamlessly integrated into popular culture that em-
barrassment or surreptitiousness is no longer part of the equation.' 48
The standard claim of pornography's defenders is that the women and men who
participate in pornography are doing so out of free choice-they choose to do it-so it
must be an accurate representation of both the women's and the men's sexual desires.
And, in that framing, pornography depicts an egalitarian erotic paradise, where
people always want sex, get what they want, and have a great time getting it. On the
surface, it appears to be equal-both women and men are constantly on the prowl,
looking for opportunities for sexual gratification.
But this equality of desire is a fiction. The typical porn scene finds a woman and a
man immediately sexually aroused, penetration occurs immediately, and both are
orgasmic within a matter of seconds. That is, the fantasy is one in which women's
sexuality is not their own, but rather men's sexuality. In the erotic paradise of pornog-
raphy, both women and men act, sexually, like men-always ready for it, always want-
ing it, and always having penetration and intercourse lead to an immediate orgasm.
No wonder antiporngraphy activist John Stoltenberg writes that pornography "tells
lies about women" even though it "tells the truth about men.' 49
The lie about women is, of course, that women's sexuality is as predatory,
depersonalized, and phallocentric as men's sexuality. Women's sexuality in real life,
by contrast, usually requires some emotional connection. "For sex to really work for
me, I need to feel an emotional something," commented one woman to sociologist
Lillian Rubin. "Without that, it's just another athletic activity, only not as satisfying,
because when I swim or run, I feel good afterward."50
I think pornography also tells lies about men-but they are lies men really want to
hear. And the major lie is that every woman really, secretly, deep down, wants to have
sex with you. It is a lie that is a revenge fantasy more than an erotic fantasy, revenge for
the fact that most men don't feel they get as much sex as they think they are supposed
OH?
REALLY•
Pornography is harmless entertainment. It doesn't affect our actual experi-
ences at all.
Actually, pornography does influence our perceptions and attitudes about
men, women, and sex. Of course there is no one-to -one correspondence, no
monkey-see-monkey-do behaviorist response, but it does leave an impression.
(If media images didn't work on ou r perceptions, the entire advertising industry would collapse!)
In one recent psychological experiment, 154 undergraduates evaluated ads after some had seen
sexually explicit materials featuring young girls (the "barely legal" porn category). Exposure to
virtual child pornography led viewers to be "more likely to associate sex and sexuality to subse-
quent, non-sexual depictions of minors." That is, if you see it in pornography, you are more likely
to see it in nonpornographic images.
to get. Pornography also provides hassle-free vicarious sex. "You don't have to buy
them dinner, talk about what they like to talk about," says Seth, a twenty-four-year-old
computer programmer in New York. "And even when you do, there's no guarantee
that you're gonna get laid. I mean with pornography, no one ever says no."
And if they do say no, well, they really mean yes. In a sexual marketplace that men
feel is completely dominated by women-from women's having the power to decide if
you are going to get sex in the first place to all those dispiriting reminders that "no
means no"-pornography gives you a world in which no one takes no for an answer.
I remember a performance piece by New York City performance artist Tom
Cayler:
I come home from work and I am tired. I wanna take a shower, see the kids, get
something to eat and lie down, watch a little TY. Maybe if there's not a ballgame on,
I'll read a book, okay? So, there I am, I'm reading this adventure novel and I get to
the portion of the book where the hero has got this gorgeous dame writhing above
him, biting her lips with pleasure. I mean, how do you even do that? That doesn't
feel so good to me.
But I am getting turned on by this. I am getting turned on by this imaginary, illicit,
sexual liaison. And I say to myself, "Hey, there's the wife. She is lying right next to
you. She is gorgeous, available, warm, loving, naked." But am I turned on by her?
No, I am turned on by these little black dots marching across the page.
Because, see, if I wanted to have sex with her, I would have to put down my
book, I would have to roll over, I would have to ask her to put down her book,
I would have to say .. . "How ya doin? Are the kids in bed, is the cat out, is the
phone machine on, are the doors locked, maybe we should brush our teeth, is the
birth control device handy?" Then I would have to turn on the sensitivity. I would
have to ask her what's been goin' on with her, what she's been dealin ' with, I mean
with the kids and the house, and the budget, and her mom, and everything like
that. I'd have to tell her what was happenin' with me. My problems, my worries. I'd
have to hold her, I'd have to stroke her. I would have to tell her how important she
is to me. I would have to commit myself to an act which these days I may or may not
be able to consummate. You think that is easy? The little black dots, they are easy.5'
The world of escape offered by guys' media is "easy." It makes few relationship de-
mands; it asks so little of us morally, intellectually, politically and offers so much in
return: the illusion of power and control.
The major reason why guys say they watch and play is escape, to "get away from
reality." "They love to be able to win the Super Bowl, or travel to another planet," says
sociologist William Lugo.52 They want to escape to a world where men rule, where real-
ity doesn't get in the way. "Where else can you get the chance to storm the beach of
Normandy or duel with light sabers or even fight the system and go out for a pizza
when you're done?" asks David, an avid gamer for over twenty years.
GENDER AND SOCIAL MEDIA

The gaming world is decreasingly gendered as more and more women are entering
that world. The world of social media has been pretty gender-equal from the begin-
ning. Of all Internet users, 72 percent of males and 76 percent of females use social
networking sites. But like gaming, it's which social media they use that is gendered.
Across different sites, men and women have varying degrees of engagement. Among
Internet users, women are significantly more likely than men to use Facebook, Pinter-
est, and Instagram. A roughly equal proportion of men and women use Twitter and
Tumblr. reddit is the only site in which men are significantly more likely than women
to be users.53
But what do such differences tell us? Could it be that those sites that encourage
networking, sustaining relationships, and sharing useful information are coded as
"feminine," and are favored by women, and those where you complain, mouth off
about others anonymously, or attack others are coded as "masculine" and are more
likely to be favored by men? Perhaps. Men have long sought those all-male spaces to
prove their masculinity in front of other men. Once, it was the frontier, the "Wild
West," where a man could go test himself against the elements and other men. When
the frontier era ended, American men kept reinventing it-in other countries
through imperial expansion, in Alaska and other untamed wildernesses. In his inau-
gural address in 1961, President John F. Kennedy proclaimed a "new frontier." A few
short years later, in 1966, Star Trek announced that space was "the final frontier."
Perhaps in the twenty-first century, it's "cyberspace, the final frontier"-or so men
might like to think.
This might explain both the sex segregation of social media, the "his" and "hers"
of social media-and also the gender inequality of that gender difference. It may be
that women use social media to stay connected, and men use social media to connect
with other men-in order to keep women out. Once again, gender difference may ac-
tually be a mechanism by which gender inequality is maintained.
--Women
28%
20% ~ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Figure 11.6. Women, men, and social networking over time. Among Internet users, the percent
of men versus women who use social networking sites.
Note: Percentages in bold, larger font indicate statistical significance between men and women.
Source: "It's a woman's (social media) world," Pew Research Center, Washington, DC (September, 2013) http://
www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/09 / 12/its-a-womans-social-media-world/.
80%
72%
70%
60%
• Women
40%
• Men
30%
20%
10%
0%
Facebook Pinterest Instagram Twitter Tumblr reddit
Figure 11.7. Men's versus women's site-specific social media use. Among Internet users, the percent
of men versus women who use the following sites.
Note: Percentages in bold, indicate statistical significance between men and women.
Source: "It's a woman's (social media) world," Pew Research Center, Washington , DC (September, 2013) http://
www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/09 I 12/its-a-womans-social-media-world/.
I ii'',,,!'' :n)Q IIa

Jenna Maurey has one of the most subscribed channels on YouTube. As Jenna Marbles, she
humorously explains the meaning of life, from the tiniest and least important of issues like
"how Lady Gaga writes a song" to, well, slightly less tiny and slightly more important issues
like, say, how to get everyone to think you're cool. That a woman dares to comment on
contemporary life is enough to send a significant number of young men around the bend,
and in "Performing Gender on YouTube," English and journalism professors Lindsey Wotanis
and Laurie McMillan analyze the reactions to Jenna Marbles's YouTube channel. The good
news is that Maurey seems relatively unfazed and continues to have more than fifteen million
subscribers.
CONVERGENCE AND EQUALITY

Despite all the different ways that the media reflect, constitute, and reproduce
gender differences and gender inequality, it's somewhat startling to see that gender
differences are really rather small, though, as I've argued, quite consequential. Despite
all the ways in which women have begun to enter formerly all-male domains and men
have retreated in the face of this new media equality, the differences are shrinking.
Despite all the efforts to keep women and men apart, so that men can stay men (even
if women are changing), our media use is increasingly converging. And despite all the
extraordinarily pervasive efforts of various media to convince us that we are Martians
and Venusians, as different as night and day, we are increasingly Earthlings, using the
same media, in roughly equal amounts, and for roughly the same reasons.
Nowhere is this more true than with newer media-like iPods, the Internet, and
other digital technologies. Gender differences in the use of these media are actually far
smaller than we assume they are. And on websites for younger people, like Instagram,
Snapchat, and Facebook, the percentages are about even. Online, for example, women
and men are roughly equal users of the Internet. Although men dominated the Internet
in its earliest days, that gender gap has disappeared; 78 percent of men and women use
the Internet.54
Women and men use the Internet for somewhat different purposes. For example,
although women and men equally use the Internet to buy products and do their bank-
ing, men are more likely to pay bills, participate in auctions, trade stocks, and buy
digital content (like Internet pornography). Men search for information more often
than women; women use e-mail to maintain relationships and communicate with
friends more than men do.55
But the biggest difference turns out to be not who uses it and why: The biggest
difference turns out to be what we think. Although all available studies suggest that
women are just as adept at navigating the Internet as men are, men think they're a lot
better at it. In a study of one hundred Internet users in New Jersey, researchers never
heard a woman say she was an expert and never heard a man say he was a complete
novice. Yet when faced with increasingly complex tasks, both women and men did
equally well. "It could be that women are underestimating their skills and men are
overestimating their skills," commented the author of the study. "I can't say which."
Well, maybe it's both.56
Even in some traditionally male bastions, like sports, the evidence of gender con-
vergence is pretty hard to miss. Three-fourths of American adult men-and fully half
of all adult women-say they are sports fans, according to a Gallup poll.57 The Super
Bowl still dwarfs all other single-event shows for sheer numbers of viewers, and week-
end football games continue to attract huge audiences. But whereas some sports-like
the spectacle of professional wrestling-skew almost entirely toward men, the other
really popular sports-including NASCAR and golf-are approaching gender parity.
Women currently comprise 40 percent of NASCAR's seventy-five million viewers-as
well as a full 50 percent of the Super Bowl's 111.9 million viewers. Not content with a
single "super" event, women also comprise 38 percent of the NFL's 120 million total
annual viewers. Quick-how many men watch Oprah, let alone the WNBA? 58
When women and men diverge, it's not in their enjoyment of watching or playing
sports. It's when they watch "sports"-that is, when they're not watching the real
thing, but watching the fake thing. Four and one-half million of them-virtually all
male- are watching World Wrestling Entertainment; WWE's Raw is the number one
weekly cable program among the male audience. And when they "play" sports-not
on a field, but on a screen or on a computer-with video games or fantasy leagues,
they've entered, again, a pristine homosocial preserve. The most popular video game
of all is John Madden NFL Football, and the NBA and baseball video games are close
behind. And thirty-two million Americans-92 percent of them men-are playing
some version of fantasy sports. They're spending several hours a day, every day of the
week, assembling their teams, trading players, assessing their opponents, and then
poring over box scores online and in the newspapers to calculate how their players
have fared in their fantasy game.59
Perhaps nowhere is the sports world more gendered than in sports talk. Guys talk
constantly, endlessly, about sports. (At least straight guys do; perhaps it's one way that
guys can hang out together and remind themselves that they're straight?) Every major
media market boasts sports talk radio stations, and guys call in constantly to voice
their opinions. Among young men, participating in sports talk has pretty much re-
placed playing sports as the line of demarcation between women and men. Girls may
be running circles around guys on the soccer field, and women can be working out
and toning up as much as the next guy, but the one thing women don't do is talk about
sports. They don't pore over the box scores as if they were the Talmud. The woman you
work with or the one sitting across from you in a chemistry lecture may be as athletic
as you are, but she wouldn't be able to tell you how many saves Mariano Rivera has for
his career, Tom Brady's total yards passing during the 2011 season, or who had the
highest field goal percentage in the NBA during the 2011-2012 season. (For your infor-
mation, the answers are 608, 5,235, and Joakim Noah, respectively. Bonus: Noah 's field
goal percentage was .731. I am a guy, after all.) Nor would she care. For women, sports
are something you do, not something you are.
One of the best titles for any book I've read in recent years is Mariah Burton
Nelson's The Stronger Women Get, the More Men Love Football. In her book, she shows
how women's increasing equality on the sports field had led men to increasingly pro-
claim the superiority of football over all other sports-it's the one sport exempt from
Title IX, and it's the one sport women don't play. Nelson's title perfectly illustrates the
increasing anxiety men feel about women's equality. The more and more equal women
get in the real world, the more men are retreating into mediated fantasy worlds of
video games, pornography, online poker, and sports talk. Only there do they feel that
they are still the masters of the universe, sexually omnipotent, kings of the world.
Yet women's increasing equality comes at a steep price in a world marked less and
less by gender difference, but still marked by gender inequality. Women can enter
men's fields, but then they are on men's turf and play by men's rules. Just as when
women enter men's fields in the workplace, or in education, or in the professions, if
they succeed too well, they can be seen as insufficiently feminine, have their sexuality
called into question, and risk not being taken seriously as women. If they fail, they are
seen as very feminine women, demonstrating that inequality is really the result of dif-
ference, not its cause. Gender equality in the virtual world of the media, just like the
real world, will come not when gender difference disappears, but rather when gender
inequality disappers, when Nelson's book could be titled The Stronger Women Get, the
More Men Like It.
KEY TERMS
Boy-Centered Stories Phallocentrism Pornography
Girl-Centered Stories
PART
Gendered
Interactions
CHAPTER
GENDERED INTIMACIES
12
Friendship and Love
"M an's love is of man's life a thing apart," wrote the legendary British Roman-
tic poet George Gordon, Lord Byron, "'Tis woman's whole existence."
Presumably, this is because men like Byron have other, far more important
things to occupy their time-like poetry, politics, and sexual conquest. A few
years later, a fellow English poet, Robert Browning, offered that "love is so differ-
ent with us men." A century and a halflater, novelist Doris Lessing commented
that she'd never met a man who would destroy his work for a love affair-and
she'd never met a woman who wouldn't.
Such sentiments underscore how unconsciously our most intimate emo-
tional relationships are shaped by gender, how women and men have different
experiences and different expectations in friendships, in love, and in sex. Like the
family, sex and love are also organized by gender, which may not come as much
of a surprise. After all, how often have we heard a woman complain that her hus-
band or partner doesn't express his feelings? How often have we heard men
wonder what their wives are doing talking on the phone all the time? And how
often do we hear of men saying that their extramarital affair was "just sex," as if
sex could be separated from emotions? How often do we hear women say that?
Part of the interplanetary theory of gender-that women and men come
from different planets-emphasizes these differences between women and men.
We hear that it is our celestial or biological natures that decree that women be
the emotionally adept communications experts and that men be the clumsy
unemotional clods. And yet the gender differences in intimate relationships
often don't turn out to be the ones we expected; nor are the differences as great
373
374 PART 3: GENDERED INTERACTIONS
as commonsense assumptions predict. Although it is true that men and women often
have different ways ofliking, loving, and lusting, these differences neither are as great
as predicted, nor always go in the directions that common sense would lead us to
expect. Moreover, the differences we observe in the contemporary United States did
not always exist, nor are they present in other cultures. In this and the next chapter,
I'll explore the gender of intimacy by examining friendship, love, and sexuality. (I've
already discussed the gender of marriage and the family, so I'll confine myself here to
nonmarital relationships.) What we'll see is that the gendering of intimate life-of
friendship, love, and sex-is the result of several historical and social developments.
I'',,,I''
iJ :n)Q IIa
Men like to look at women's bodies; it's just that simple. Or is it? When do they like to look
at women? Why? Under what circumstances? What do they hope to achieve? Does it lead to
anything else? In a thoughtful empirical study, "Sexual Harassment and Masculinity: The Power
and Meaning of 'Girl-Watching,"' sociologist Beth Quinn addresses these questions. She sug-
gests that the purpose of girl-watching is a form of male bonding-cementing relationships
among men in the workplace that might otherwise be fraught with tension-and dominance
bonding, which means that the foundation of male bonding is the various ways that men keep
women in their place. In that sense, it's hardly benign. Sometimes, looking at someone can be
the same as appreciating a work of art-even though that work of art doesn't have feelings.
And sometimes looking can be a behavior, an action that makes you feel good by making
someone else feel bad.
THE GENDER OF FRIENDSHIP

In fact, women were not always considered the emotional experts. As Byron's maxim
suggests, historically, it was men's "way ofloving" that was considered superior. From
Greek and Roman myths to Renaissance balladry, men's friendships were celebrated
as the highest expression of the noblest virtues-bravery, loyalty, heroism, duty-
which only men were thought to possess. Think of Orestes and Pylades, Hercules and
Hylas, David and Jonathan, Roland and Oliver, Achilles and Patroclus.
For the Greeks, friendship was even more noble than marital love or the eroticized
idealization of the young boy by the older man. As described by Plato and Aristotle,
friendship occurred only between peers and transcended sexuality. Only men could de-
velop the emotional depth and connections that could cement a friendship. And our own
literature affords us no shortage of such friendships-from Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer,
Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and the Lone
Ranger and Tonto to Kirk and Spock and Murtaugh and Riggs. Walt Whitman constantly
celebrated "the dear love of man for his comrade, the attraction of friend to friend."
A virtual parade of literary figures commented on men's capacity for friendships
and women's inability to form deep and lasting friendships, attributed largely to wom-
en's lack of strong emotions about anything. The sixteenth-century French moralist
Michel Montaigne's classic essay "On Friendship" described his relationship with his
best friend in a language that most of us would use to describe our spouse (Montaigne
Chapter 12: Gendered Intimacies 375
wrote little about his wife and children). Friends, for instance, are "souls that mingle
and blend with each other so completely that they efface the seam that joined them."
In a 1960 essay on the topic, the great British man ofletters C. S. Lewis treated friend-
ship as if it were entirely a masculine domain. "Only men," wrote Jeremy Taylor in his
Discourse on Friendship, are "capable of all those excellencies by which men can oblige
the world."1
Many women agreed. For example, the great eighteenth-century British feminist
and writer Mary Wollstonecraft believed that although "the most holy bond of society
is friendship," it is men, not women, who are most adept at it. And Simone de Beauvoir,
whose book The Second Sex is one of modern feminism's groundbreaking works,
commented that "women's feelings rarely rise to genuine friendship." 2
Why were men's friendships considered deep and lasting but women's fleetingly
emotional? In a controversial study, anthropologist Lionel Tiger argued that the
gender division of labor in hunting-and-gathering societies led to deeper and more
durable friendships among men. Hunting and warfare, the domains of male activity,
required deep and enduring bonds among men for survival, and thus close male
friendships became a biologically based human adaptation. Women's friendships,
however pleasant, were not "necessary" in an evolutionary sense.3
In the twentieth century, however, we witnessed a dramatic transformation in the
gendered division of emotional labor. Since the early 1970s, studies of friendship have
taken a decidedly different turn, fueled in part by two related events. On the one hand,
feminism began to celebrate women's experiences not as a problem but rather as a
source of solidarity among women. Women's greater experiences of intimacy and
emotional expressiveness were seen not as a liability but rather as an asset in a culture
that increasingly elevated the expression of feelings as a positive goal. And it was not
just women who were suddenly celebrating exactly what Tiger and others had claimed
women lack-the capacity for the deep and intimate bonds of friendship. A new gen-
eration of male psychologists and advocates of "men's liberation" were critical of the
traditional male sex role as a debilitating barrier to emotional intimacy. It was women's
experiences in friendships and women's virtues-emotional expressiveness, depen-
dency, the ability to nurture, intimacy-that were now desirable.
And it was men who were said to be missing something-a capacity for intimacy,
skills at nurturing. One psychologist derided "the inexpressive male," and sociologist
Mirra Komorovsky explored men's "trained incapacity to share." Another psycholo-
gist claimed that men's routine avoidance of self-disclosure was dangerous to their
emotional and even physical health, whereas another explored the very few social
skills that men have developed to cement close intimate friendships. No wonder that
psychologist Joseph Pleck spoke for many male liberationists when he observed that
men's emotional relationships are "weak and often absent.'ll
Psychologist Robert Lewis examined four "barriers" to emotional intimacy
among men: (1) competition, which inhibits the ability to form friendships and also
minimizes the ability to share vulnerabilities and weaknesses; (2) the false need to
be "in control," which forbids self-disclosure and openness; (3) homophobia, which
inhibits displays of affection and tenderness toward other men; and (4) lack of skills
and positive role models for male intimacy. Men, he argued, learn to avoid appearing
weak and vulnerable in order to maintain a competitive edge.5
In contemporary society, we have reversed the historical notion of friendship.

Most women, according to surveys, believe that women's friendships are decidedly
better than men's because they involve personal concern, intimate sharing, and more
emotional exchange, whereas men's friendships are seen (by the same women) as more
likely to involve work, sports, business, and other impersonal activities. By contrast,
men, when asked the same question about which gender's friendships are better, re-
sponded that they hadn't really given the matter much thought. In a widely cited study,
psychologist Daniel Levinson concluded that for men, friendship is noticeable, largely,
by its "absence"; as he writes:
As a tentative generalization, we would say that close friendship with a man or
woman is rarely experienced by American men. The distinction between a friend
and acquaintance is often blurred. A man may have a wide social network in which
he has amicable "friendly" relationships with many men and perhaps a few women.
In general, however, most men do not have an intimate male friend of the kind that
they recall fondly from boyhood or youth. Many men have had casual dating rela-
tionships with women, and perhaps a few complex love-sex relationships, but most
men have not had an intimate non-sexual friendship with a woman. 6
Before we continue, ask yourself how you felt as you read the preceding statement. Does
it describe your experiences? Or does it reveal that the definitions of friendship, love,
and intimacy have been transformed from glorifying the more "masculine" compo-
nents at the expense of "feminine" ones to the reverse? One sociologist has criticized
what she calls the "feminization oflove," so that now intimacy is defined by "feminine"
norms that favor gender differences over similarities, reinforce traditional gender ste-
reotypes, and render invisible or problematic men's ways of creating and sustaining
intimacy.7
While we may "friend" a lot of people, we seem to have fewer close friends. Yet
friendship is extremely important. It even changes your perception of the world. In a
clever experiment, four psychologists took a group of students at the University of
Virginia to the base of a steep hill and fitted them with weighted backpacks. They were
told they would climb the hill and they were then asked to estimate how steep the incline
of the hill was. Some stood next to a close friend, some stood next to an acquaintance,
and others stood alone. Those who stood with a close friend saw the steepness as signifi-
cantly less than those who stood alone. In fact, the closer the friend who stood next to
you, the less steep the hill seemed. The researchers concluded that this feeling of close-
ness acts as a material resource that enables people to see obstacles as less difficult.8
GENDER DIFFERENCES IN FRIENDSHIP: REAL AND IMAGINED

Most of the research on gender differences in friendship turns out to reinforce existing
stereotypes of women as emotionally expressive and men as inexpressive and either
incapable or uninterested in nurturing. There's even some evidence that brain differ-
ences account for friendship differences. A recent study found that whereas men re-
spond to stress with the now-famous "fight-or-flight" response, women look to friends
or allies as a source of emotional sustenance in a response labeled "tend and befriend."
The researchers believe that this is because men respond to stress by releasing testos-
terone, which causes the fight-or-flight response, whereas women release oxytocin,
which produces a calming effect and a desire for closeness. (I suspect men's response
may have less to do with testosterone and more to do with norms of masculinity that
turn every stressful encounter into a demonstration of masculine prowess; women's
tending and befriending may also be a rational sizing-up of the situation and a need
for allies to even the odds.) 9 In another psychological experiment, Sharon Brehm re-
versed the genders of two stereotypically gendered friendship events to reveal how
different, and "odd," they would sound:
Jim and Henry were good close friends. Often, they would stay up half the night
talking about love and life and how they felt about everything and everyone. In
times of trouble, each was always there for the other to lean on. When they expe-
rienced any conflicts in their romantic relationships with women, they'd immedi-
ately be on the phone to each other, asking advice and getting consolation. They
felt they knew everything about each other.
Sally and Betty were good close friends. Often, they would stay up half the night
playing chess or tinkering with Sally's old car, which was constantly breaking down.
In times of trouble, they'd always help each other out. Sally would loan Betty
money, or Betty would give Sally a ride home from work whenever their best
efforts had failed to revive Sally's beloved 1960 Chevy. They went everywhere
together-to the bars, to play basketball, to the latest sci-ti movie. They felt they
were the best of buddies.10
It does sound strange, of course. But does it mean that men have shallower, less emo-
tionally demanding and rewarding friendships than women or that women and men
achieve the same ends via different means?
Some psychologists have found few differences in what women and men say they
desire in a friend. Mayta Caldwell and Letitia Peplau, for example, studied college
students' friendships and found that although both women and men desire intimacy
and closeness, have roughly the same number of close and casual friends, and spend
about the same amount of time with their friends, they often have different ways of
expressing and achieving intimacy with them. Men were almost twice as likely to say
they preferred" doing some activity" with their best friend and looked for friends who
liked "to do the same things" as they did. Women, by contrast, were more likely to
choose someone "who feels the same way about things" as a friend and to favor "just
talking" as their preferred mode of interaction. Sociologist Beth Hess found that
women were twice as likely to talk about personal issues with their friends. And
women and men are far more similar than different in both providing and responding
to supportive communication from a friend during "trouble talk"-that is, when they
are feeling some relationship distress. 11
Other researchers don't believe the men's responses-no matter what they say.
Men may ''perceive that they are being open and trusting," write sociologists Lynne
Davidson and Lucille Duberman, "even though they report little investment in the
personal and relational levels of the friendship." Despite the findings that both women
and men say they disclose equal amounts of personal information and that they are
completely open with and trusting of their best friends, the authors conclude that
women actually disclose more to their friends. For example, the authors describe one
man who said of his best friend, "We are pretty open with each other, I guess. Mostly
we talk about sex, horses, guns, and the army." From this, they conclude that these
friends do not disclose their feelings. Yet the authors do not probe beneath this re-
sponse to uncover, possibly, the way that talking about sex (like sexual fears, ques-
tions, or inadequacies) or the army (and the intense emotions of terror, exhilaration,
and shame it evokes) requires just as deep a level of trust as women's friendships. 12
Not all research that finds gender differences in friendship turns a deaf ear to the
voices of half its informants. In a revealing portrait of the role of friendship in our
lives, Lillian Rubin interviewed over three hundred women and men and found star-
tling differences in both the number and the depth of friendships. "At every life stage
between twenty-five and fifty-five, women have more friendships, as distinct from col-
legial relationships or workmates, than men," she writes, "and the differences in the
content and quality of their friendships are marked and unmistakable." Generally, she
writes, "women's friendships with each other rest on shared intimacies, self-revelation,
nurturance, and emotional support." By contrast, she argues that men's friendships
are characterized by shared activities and that conversations center on work, sports, or
expertise-"whether about how to fix a leak in the roof or which of the new wine re-
leases is worthy of celebrating." Three-fourths of the women Rubin interviewed could
identify a best friend, whereas over two-thirds of the men could not. Even when a man
could identify a best friend, Rubin found that "the two usually shared little about the
interior of their lives and feelings." If we understand intimacy to be based on both
verbal and nonverbal sharing of thoughts and feelings so that the intimate under-
stands the inner life of the other, then men's friendships are, Rubin concludes, "emo-
tionally impoverished."13
Other research corroborates some of her findings. Women were far more likely to
share their feelings with their friends than were men, to engage in face-to-face interac-
tions instead of men's preferred side-to-side style, and to discuss a wider array of issues
than men did. Women's friendships seem to be more person oriented; men's more
activity oriented. Women's friendships appear to be more "holistic" and men's more
"segmented." Women may say they have fewer friends, one study found, but those they
have are more intimate. 14
These differences are reinforced by technological developments. Take, for exam-
ple, the telephone. For women, the telephone serves as the chief form of relationship
maintenance, making it possible to sustain friendships over long distances and with
increased time pressures. However, for men, the telephone is a poor substitute for the
shared activities that sustain men's friendships . Men tend to use the telephone far less
to sustain intimacy. 'Tm not friends the way she's friends," one man told sociologist
Karen Walker. "I don't work on them. I don't pick the phone up and call people and
say 'how are you?'" And another man compared his friendships with those of his
partner:
It's not like Lois, the woman I live with, and the women in her group. They're real
buddies; they call each other up and talk for hours; they do things together all the
time. We just never got that close, that's all. 15
Even after a long day in a workplace where she talks on the phone constantly as a re-
ceptionist or secretary, a woman is far more likely to call her friends at night.
Without such relationship maintenance, men's friendships experience greater at-
trition than women's over time. "Over the years, the pain of men's loneliness, the
weakening of their male ties, the gradually accumulating disillusionment with male
friends, the guilt at their own betrayals of others, are just ignored. Partly it is a result
of resignation. We lower our expectations. The older we get, the more we accept our
essential friendlessness with men.''16
In general, gender differences in friendships tend to be exactly what common-
sense observation and talk-show pseudorevelations would suggest. Men are more re-
served in their emotional patterns and less likely to disclose personal feelings, lest they
risk being vulnerable to other men; women tend to be comparatively more open and
disclosing. But that is part of the problem. These differences make it appear that men
and women come from different planets, when often the differences have nothing
whatever to do with gender and everything to do with other factors in our lives-like
our workplace experiences, our marital status, our age, race, ethnicity, and sexual ori-
entation. Those factors may tell us more about which gender differences are "real" and
which are really symptomatic of something else.
Of course, at the same time, we should be careful not to overstate the case. As one
psychologist warns:
There is, of course, a danger here of "reifying" gender differences by underplaying

the other factors which shape people's friendships ... In order to analyse friend-
ship satisfactorily it is necessary to examine the range of social and economic fac-
tors that pattern an individual's immediate social environment, rather than focusing
solely on any particular one ... Friendship is certainly influenced by gender, but
exactly in what way depends on the interaction there is with the other factors that
collectively shape the personal space for sociability that people have.17
In fact, it turns out that there is "much more similarity than dissimilarity in the
manner in which women and men conduct their friendships," writes psychologist
Paul Wright in a review of the existing literature of gender differences. Although it is
true, he notes, that women are "somewhat more likely to emphasize personalism,
self-disclosure, and supportiveness" and that men are "somewhat more likely to em-
phasize external interest and mutually involving activities," these differences "are not
great, and in many cases, they are so obscure that they are hard to demonstrate.''
What's more, what differences there are tend to diminish markedly and virtually
disappear "as the strength and duration of the friendship increases.'" 8
For example, when women and men choose a best friend, they look for the same
virtues-communication, intimacy, and trust. And the majority of us-75 percent of
women and 65 percent of men-choose someone of the same sex as our best friend.
Even when we're not looking for a "best friend," women and men tend to look for simi-
lar things in a potential friend. Both women and men select the same indicators of
intimacy. In fact, Wall and her colleagues' study of fifty-eight middle-class men re-
vealed a pattern-stressing confidentiality and trust over simply the pleasure of one's
company-that was more consistent with middle-class British women than middle-
class British men. This really isn't much of a surprise; we all-women and men-know
what we are supposed to want and value in a friend.1 9
But apparently what we do in our friendships turns out to be not nearly as great as
we might have thought. Differences in self-disclosure turn out to be very small. Men's
friendships seem to be based on "continuity, perceived support and dependability,
shared understandings, and perceived compatibility," qualities based on shared per-
ceptions rather than constant, sustained interaction to maintain them. Yet men's
friendships also center on "self-revelation and self-discovery, having fun together, in-
termingled lives, and assumed significance"-as do women's.2°
In sum, most studies that measure interpersonal skills, friendship styles, or self-
disclosure find few, if any, significant differences between women and men when it
comes to friendship. What is more, because "feminine" expressions of intimacy now
define the criteria for evaluation, men's styles of intimacy may become invisible. It is
not that men do not express intimacy, but rather that they do it in different ways. Psy-
chologist Scott Swain argues that men do express intimacy "by exchanging favors,
engaging in competitive action, joking, touching, sharing accomplishments and in-
cluding one another in activities." It's often covert, embedded in activities, rather than
direct. One man Swain interviewed put it this way:
I think that the men characteristics [sic] would be the whole thing, would be just the
whole thing about being a man. You know, you go out and play sports with your
brothers, and have a good time with them. You just ... you're doing that. And
there are some things that you can experience, as far as emotional, [with] your best
friends that are men ... you experience both. And that's what makes it do good
is that. With most of the girls you're not going to go out and drink beer and have
fun with them. Well, you can, but it's different. I mean it's like a different kind of
emotion. It's like with the guys you can have all of it. 21
Who Makes Better Friends?

"Who makes better friends, men or women? And and 2008, I recorded a slight majority of both women
why?" and men (54 percent) who said men make better
I've asked this question in my classes on gender for friends. Why?
the past twenty years. And I've noticed a significant
"Guys don't judge you."
change. Until about eight years ago, both women and "Two words: cat fight."
men answered overwhelmingly that women made "You can relax."
better friends than men. Some years the majority was "Girls always want you to talk about your
as high as 80 percent. Why? Here is what the students feelings."
said:
What do you make of this? Have guys become better
"Women are more honest." friends, or have women become worse friends? Maybe
"Women tell you what they really feel." neither. It appears more that the criteria by which we
"With a girl , you can really express your measure the quality of our friendships may have begun
feelings."
to shift. Instead of looking to our friends to tell us the
"It's just so much more intimate and
truth, engage us emotionally, push us around, and
connected."
invite us to explore our real feelings, we're looking to
In 2000 or so, that trend began to shift. Women and our friends to provide a vacation from that self-explo-
men pretty much split down the middle. And in 2007 ration, to simply chill without judgment.
And what about those "differences" in friendship styles, like using the telephone?
Perhaps it is true that women use the telephone more to sustain friendships, but that
may be because men see the telephone as impersonal, and they see friendship as a
relief from having to do business over the phone. In other words, gender might not be
the only variable in predicting phone use in friendships . Barbara Bank reports that
men are just as likely to defend their friends, to ask for help when needed, and to go
out of their way to help their friends as are the women she studied. What's more,
women are just as capable of developing friendships that incorporate traditionally
"masculine" friendship virtues-trust, loyalty, obligation-as are men, and it is these
qualities that often lead women to value friendship highly in their social worlds. 22
OH?
REALLY•
Harry: You realize of course that we could never be friends.
Sally: Why not?
Harry: What I'm saying is-and this is not a come-on in any way, shape or
form-is that men and women can't be friends because the sex part always
gets in the way.
Sally: That's not true. I have a number of men friends and there is no sex involved.
Harry: No you don't.
Sally: Yes I do.
Harry: No you don't.
Sally: Yes I do.
Harry: You only think you do.
Sally: You say I'm having sex with these men without my knowledge?
Harry: No, what I'm saying is they all want to have sex with you.
Sally: They do not.
Harry: Do too.
Sally: They do not.
Harry: Do too.
Sally: How do you know?
Harry: Because no man can be friends with a woman that he finds attractive. He always wants to
have sex with her.
Sally: So you're saying that a man can be friends with a woman he finds unattractive?
Harry: No, you pretty much want to nail 'em too.
That's the dialogue between Harry and Sally early in the 1989 film When Harry Met Sally. (That
scene takes place in the early 1970s.) By the 1980s, in the film, they've become friends-best
friends, but " just friends," as they say, to make sure that sex doesn't get in the way. And, of course,
by the end of the film they also discover that they're in love.
If they are anything like me, your parents are probably from the "When Harry Met Sally Genera-
tion," believing, like Harry, that women and men can't be friends. But how many of you actually do
not have a good friend of the opposite sex? If you're like the students in my classes, no one. Nearly
everyone has a good cross-sex friend. (When I started asking, twenty-five years ago, around the
time of the film, about 20 percent of my students said they had a good cross-sex friend.) In fact,
cross-sex friendship may be the single biggest change in our intimate lives in the past half-century.
But try explaining that to your parents.
Perhaps it's the combination of gender with other factors that best predicts
our friendship patterns. For example, some of the studies that found gender dif-
ferences compared working men with homemakers. But surely whether one works
outside the home or not dramatically affects both the quality and the quantity of
one's friendships. "The combination of the inflexible demands of the workplace
and the cultural expectations associated with familial roles are at least as powerful
as determinants of the nature of men's social ties, as are whatever socially acquired
capacities and preferences men might possess," writes sociologist Ted Cohen.
Those who work outside the home satisfy their intimacy needs in the family and
thus seek friendship to meet needs for sociability. This is true of both women and
men who work outside the home. By contrast, those who stay at home with chil-
dren need friends to fulfill intimacy needs as well, because children, no matter
how much we love them, are not capable of sustaining intimate relationships of
mutual self-disclosure with their parents (nor would we want them to). Because
those who remain at home with children tend to be women, these people have "less
space in their lives for leisure and less opportunity for engaging in sociable rela-
tionships than most men."23
I'',,,I''
iJ :n)Q IIa
One of the biggest changes in young people's friendships is the near-universality of cross-sex
friendships. Nearly every one of you has a good friend of the opposite sex. What you might
not know is how recent this is in our history. Just twenty-five years ago, Billy Crystal said to
Meg Ryan in one of the iconic scenes in When Harry Met Sally that women and men can't be
friends, because sex always gets in the way. Not anymore. Cross-sex friendships are so recent
that often people feel that they are making up the rules as they go along. Which is why "Gender
Rules" by sociologist Diane Felmlee and her colleagues is so useful in delineating the new
emergent norms for cross-sex friendships.
WHAT ELSE AFFECTS OUR FRIENDSHIPS?

Sociologists who explore the impact of race, ethnicity, age, class, or sexuality on social
life suggest that factors other than gender may complicate the convenient gendering of
friendship. Men and women may be more alike in their emotional lives, but there may
be big differences among, say, working-class white women and men, on the one hand,
and middle-class Latinos on the other.
Racism, for example, directly affects black men's and women's experiences of
friendships. For example, impassivity and inexpressiveness for men may be an adap-
tive strategy to "disguise painful emotions such as shame and sadness influenced by
frustrations encountered with mainstream society." On the other hand, black men
exhibit significant emotional expressiveness, often designed to release anger and re-
sentment toward the existing social structure. (Thus the expressive styles of black
men, which whites come to assume are part of black culture, are, in fact, adaptive
strategies to deal with the outrage and injustice of racism and economic inequality.)
"For Black men in this society," writes journalist Martin Simmons, "the world is a
hostile, dangerous place-a jungle." Friendship is a survival strategy: "Me and him
against the world."24
Class also shapes black men's emotional experiences. Working-class black male
friendships are often self-disclosing and close, in part due to a shared political ideol-
ogy. Yet upwardly mobile black men have fewer friends, and those they have are less
intimate than those of their working-class counterparts, in part because they have
accepted traditional definitions of masculinity. Although such celebration may be a
useful rhetorical strategy of resistance to racism, it may have negative consequences
for male-female relationships and for the men themselves. Shanette Harris suggests
that the very strategies embraced by black men to "promote African American male
empowerment and survival" may also lead to such maladaptive behaviors as gang
membership and to fewer economic opportunities than might have accrued via adopt-
ing traditional masculine behaviors. She suggests that the definition of masculinity
must be "redefined to exclude themes of domination and superiority_''2s
Age and marital status also affect friendship patterns. Unmarried men are more
likely to maintain close and intimate friendships with both women and other men
than are married men, for example. And the dynamics of the friendships themselves
tend to erase gender differences. For example, when the duration and closeness of
friendships are controlled, women do not exhibit the face-to-face style and men the
side-by-side style that researchers found. Women and men are just as likely to be self-
revealing in face-to-face interactions with close long-time friends.2 6
When we sift through the conflicting evidence, some gender differences in friend-
ships do assert themselves with a certain insistence. And most of them concern
sexuality-whether avoiding it with same-sex friends or confronting it with cross-sex
friends. With cross-sex friends, sexual attraction almost always complicates matters.
Harry (see Oh Really?) was half right. Sex does show up in cross-sex friendship
among heterosexual women and men. Inevitably. But men and women can still be
friends. It's just more work. In one recent study, both men and women listed "attrac-
tion" as a cost in a friendship rather than a benefit. 27 Virtually all the men and women
Lillian Rubin interviewed described sexual tension in their cross-sex friendships,
which made stability and trust in the relationship more fragile. "Once a relationship
becomes sexual, I'm inclined to give too much away," said one woman, explaining why
she didn't want to confuse the two. Another woman explained the contradiction in
her life:
I'd like to have friendships with men, but I don't seem to be able to pull it off very
well. If you get sexually involved, it ruins whatever friendship was possible, and if
you don't, there's all that gaminess that goes on. In my experience, it's a problem
whatever you do or ... don't do.
I used to be friends with this guy who never made any kind of a sexual overture,
and I didn't exactly love that either. It made me feel unattractive and undesirable.
It wasn't even so much that I wanted to go to bed with him, but I wanted him to
want to.2 8
When we say someone is "just a friend," we're usually lowering that person on the
cosmic hierarchy of importance. But it's equally true that we believe friendships to be
purer and more lasting than sexual relationships. In our world, lovers may come and
go, but friends are supposed to be there forever. That's why we also often find ourselves
saying that we don't want to "ruin" the friendship by making it sexual. This
contradiction-the ranking oflover over friend in the statement "just a friend" versus
the ranking of friend over lover in our desire not to "ruin" the friendship-also may
work itself out in gendered ways, though exactly the opposite of the ways we typically
expect women and men to behave. After all, it is typically women, not men, who try to
keep the love of a friend and the sexual attraction of a lover separate, and it's men who
seek to connect sex and love.
Because emotional disclosure equals vulnerability and dependency, and those
feelings accompany sexual relationships with women, most men report that they are
less comfortable disclosing their true feelings to a close male friend than to a woman
friend. To be emotionally open and vulnerable with another man raises the second
significant gender difference in friendship-the impact of homophobia. Homophobia
is one of the central organizing principles of same-sex friendships for men but virtu-
ally nonexistent for women. Homophobia is more than simply the irrational fear and
hatred of gay people; it is also the fear that one might be misperceived as gay by others.
Think of all the things that you do to make sure no one gets the "wrong idea" about
you-from how you walk and talk to how you dress and act to how you interact with
your friends.
I ii'',,,!'' :n)Q IIa

Cross-sex friendships are relatively new on the historical stage; cross-gender-identity friend-
ships are even more recent. In fact, they're so recent it sometimes feels like there are no rules
yet. How do transgender individuals navigate the world of sexual orientation and gender
identity in their friendship patterns? Do transmen tend to gravitate toward other men-
heterosexual or gay-or women-heterosexual or lesbian? Or other trans people? T ransmen?
Transwomen? All? Some? In a large-scale survey of over five hundred transgender individuals,
psychologist M. Paz Galupo and her colleagues found both similarities and differences in all
these possible friendship permutations, and suggest some of the ways in which these more
fluid gender identities can both disrupt and energize our friendship circles.
For men, friendship itself may be seen as a problem to be explained. Needing,

caring about, being emotionally vulnerable and open to another man are acts of non-
conformity to traditional notions of masculinity. As one sociologist puts it:
The very basic assumption friends must make about one another is that each is
going beyond a mere presentation of self in compliance with "social dictates." Inevi-
tably, this makes friendship a somewhat deviant relationship because the surest
test of personal disclosure is a violation of the rules of public propriety.2 9
Thus to even raise the question of male friendships is to raise the "spectre" of homo-
sexuality. In the opening pages of his book on male friendships, Stuart Miller writes
that the first person he sought to interview, a philosophy professor, said to him, "Male
OH? "Homophobia does not affect my friendships with my bros." I hear this line
from guys all the time, how their friendships with their guy friends are as inti-
REALLY• mate as women's friendships. In fact, they often proclaim that their greatest
emotional allegiances are to other guys: "Bros before hos." And what about
"bromances"?
But studies of male friendships indicate that homophobia is among the dominant themes of
male friendships. Fears that straight guys might appear to be gay constrain their physical expres-
siveness and compromise their ability to become emotionally vulnerable and disclose their
feelings.
But heck, you don't have to believe all that social science literature. Just go to the movies.
Watch two guys who come to the movies together. How many seats do they take up? Even if they
are good friends, the usual answer is three. They use the seat between them for their jackets,
or just to have more room. "You just don't want anyone to think you're there, like, 'together,"'
commented one of my students.
How many seats do women take up?
friendship. You mean you're going to write about homosexuality?" The next interviewee,
a science professor, brought up the same issues. "You must be careful. You know, of
course, that people will think you're writing about homosexuality." "Everywhere
I have gone," Miller reports, "there has been the same misconception. The bizarre
necessity to explain, at the beginning, that my subject is not homosexuality." And
Lillian Rubin found that "association of friendship with homosexuality is so common
among men."30
Changes in men's friendships have become a Hollywood staple. Take "bromance"
movies. It's as if young Hollywood directors read the older social psychological re-
search that suggested men's friendships were deficient and have offered us a host of
guys for whom friendship is a mainstay of their lives. Homophobia still creeps in, of
course-all the characters are definitively straight-but they are also capable of that
endearing knuckleheaded tenderness that is expected of a real male friend. From The
Hangover to Wedding Crashers-indeed, just about any movie with Owen Wilson,
Vince Vaughn, Seth Rogen, or Paul Rudd-revolves on the changing world of men's
friendships.
The consequences are significant. In a lovely ethnography of urban boys, develop-
mental psychologist Niobe Way observed deep and intimate friendships among young
boys-and the language to express it:
Regardless of what happens, he will be there. There is nothing we don't do or say,
there is nothing I can do or say that would make us less close than we are ... yes,
he is the only person that I know that I am never going to NOT have a relationship
with, understand? Yes, it's not ever going to change between us ... we love each
other, we agree how we feel.
So says a fifteen-year-old. But, alas, Way documents that something does change,
and that by junior or senior year, most boys have lost that one true, deep friend.
They mourn the loss of intimacy, they know something is gone, and that it is likely
irretrievable; one boy sadly notes that he no longer has a best friend:
Not really ... The friend I had, I lost it ... That was the only person that I could
trust and we talked about everything. When I was down, he used to help me
feel better. The same I did to him. So I feel pretty lonely and sometimes
depressed ... because I don't have no one to go out with, no one to speak on
the phone, no one to tell my secrets, no one for me to solve my problems.
And so, they become stoic, hardened, determined not to let anyone ever get that close
again.
But it is that hardening, that manly stoicism that comes from a deep loss, which
facile friendship researchers interpret as something inherent about men's friend-
ships. They see the symptom, but they fail to see the process by which the symptom
emerges and thus utterly misunderstand the deep, long-suppressed anguish of loss
that preceded it. This gradual diminishment of male friendships is not due to some
hormonal imbalance, brain chemistry, or evolutionary imperative. It's due to the
persistence of homophobia in boys' and young men's lives-a fear of the mispercep-
tion that somehow one is a sissy or gay. Having a dear, close, intimate friendship
may be perceived as emasculating for teenage boys, and they would rather lose inti-
macy than lose face.31
Homophobia inhibits men's and women's experience of physical closeness. In one
famous experiment from the early 1970s, high school girls behaved as close friends had
behaved in the nineteenth century. They held hands, they hugged each other, sat with
their arms around the other, and kissed on the cheek when they parted. They were
instructed to make sure that they did not give any impression that such behavior was
sexual. And yet, despite this, their peers interpreted their behavior as an indication
that they were lesbian, and their friends ostracized them. For men, also, homophobia
restricts expressions of intimacy. One man explained why he would feel weird if he
hugged his best friend:
The guys are more rugged and things, and it wouldn't be rugged to hug another
man. That's not a masculine act, where it could be, you know, there's nothing un-
masculine about it. But somebody might not see it as masculine and you don't want
somebody else to think that you're not, you know-masculine or ... but you still
don't want to be outcast. Nobody I think wants to be outcast.32
For men or women who are, "you know, together"-that is, for lesbians and gay
men-cross-sex and same-sex friendships often have different styles. In a 1994 survey,
Peter Nardi and Drury Sherrod found significant similarities in the same-sex friend-
ship patterns of gay men and lesbians. Both value close, intimate friendships, define
intimacy in similar ways, and behave similarly with their friends. Two differences
stood out to the researchers-how gay men and lesbians dealt with conflict and sexu-
ality within their friendships. Gay men, for example, are far more likely to sexualize
their same-sex friendships than are lesbians. "Like their straight sisters, lesbians can
have intensely intimate and satisfying relationships with each other without any
sexual involvement," writes Lillian Rubin. Although it may overstate the case to claim,
as Rubin does, that asexual gay male friendships are "rare," such gender differences
between lesbians and gay men underscore that gender, not sexual orientation, is often
the key determinant of our intimate experiences. For gay men, it may be that sex is less
significant, rather than that friendship is more significant.33
Gay men, after all, also report far more cross-sex friendships than do lesbians, who
report few, if any, male friends. Yet lesbians have far more friendships with hetero-
sexual women than gay men have with heterosexual men. Lesbians' friendships tend to
be entirely among women-straight or gay. Gay men, by contrast, find their friends
among straight women and other gay men. "Lesbians apparently feel they have more
in common with straight women than with either gay or straight men," writes one
commentator.34
Of course they do. Gender is one of the key determinants in their social lives. And
yet gay men and lesbians also share one important theme in the construction of their
friendships . Whereas heterosexuals clearly distinguish between friends and family,
many gay men and lesbians fuse the two, both out of necessity (being exiled from their
families when they come out) and by choice. "A person has so many close friends,"
comments a gay male character in Wendy Wasserstein's Pulitzer Prize-winning play
The Heidi Chronicles. "And in our lives, our friends are our families."35
THE HISTORICAL "GENDERING" OF INTIMATE LIFE

These three major differences-the different experience of sexual tension in cross-sex
friendships, the impact of homophobia, and the gendered differences in friendship
patterns among gay men and lesbians-require some explanation. Lionel Tiger, for
example, stressed evolutionary prehistoric demands of hunting and warfare as the
reasons why men's friendships appeared to him to be so much deeper than women's.
Contemporary research has no shortage of reasons why women's friendships are
deeper and more intimate than men's. Many of these reasons, though, turn out to be
tautologies in which gender is both the dependent and independent variable. Women's
and men's friendship patterns differ because women and men are different. Men are
more instrumental and task-oriented, women more expressive and empathic. And
thus their friendships are described with the same language. Such explanations don't
explain very much.
Some writers offer psychoanalytic explanations. For example, scholars like Lillian
Rubin and Nancy Chodorow, who are both sociologists and psychologists, argue, as
Rubin puts it, that "the traditional structure of parenting comes together with the
developmental tasks of childhood and the cultural mandates about masculinity and
femininity to create differences in the psychological structures of women and men."
Our experiences of friendship, love, and intimacy are the result of the different devel-
opmental tasks of young boys and young girls as they struggle to achieve a sense of self
and identity. The young boy must separate from his mother- the source oflove, nur-
turance, and connection-and establish his independence. He learns to downplay the
centrality of those experiences, because they will tend, he thinks, to emasculate him.
Thus emotional intimacy often negates or diminishes sexual excitement for men. For
girls, by contrast, continued connection with their mothers ensures a continuity of
emotionality, love, and nurturance: In fact, it becomes the foundation for women's
experience of sexual intimacy, rather than its negation. As a result, separation and
individuation are more difficult for women; connection and intimacy more difficult
for men. This constellation permits women "to be more closely in touch with both
their attachment and dependency needs than men are."36 (See chapter 4 for a fuller
discussion of this process.)
Although such explanations seem right, they take little notice of the dramatic
variations in gender development and friendship styles in other cultures. In some so-
cieties, for example, boys must still undergo rigorous ritual separation from their
mothers; and yet they, and not women, are still seen as having the deeper interior
emotional lives and the more intimate and expressive friendships. For example, an-
thropologist Robert Brain documents several societies in Africa, South America, and
Oceania in which men develop very close male friendships, ritually binding them-
selves together as "lifetime comrades, blood brothers, or even symbolic 'spouses.' "37
Psychoanalytic explanations take us part of the way, but even they must be in -
serted into the larger-scale historical transformation of which they are a part. The
notion that boys and girls have such dramatically different developmental tasks is,
itself, a product of the social, economic, and cultural transformation of European and
American societies at the turn of the twentieth century. That transformation had sev-
eral components that transformed the meaning and experience of friendship, love,
and sexuality. Both Rubin and Chodorow recognize this. "Society and personality live
in a continuing reciprocal relationship with each other," Rubin writes. "The search for
personal change without efforts to change the institutions within which we live and
grow will, therefore, be met with only limited reward.''38
Rapid industrialization severed the connection between home and work. Now,
men left their homes and went to work in factories or offices, places where expressions
of vulnerability or openness might give a potential competitor an economic advan-
tage. Men "learned" to be instrumental in their relationships with other men; in their
friendships, men have come to "seek not intimacy but companionship, not disclosure
but commitment.'' The male romantic friendship, so celebrated in myths and legend,
was, in America, a historical artifact.39
Simultaneously, the separation of spheres also left women as the domestic experts:
Women became increasingly adept at emotional expression just as men were abandon-
ing that expressive style. Separate spheres implied more than the spatial separation of
home and workplace; it divided the mental and social world into two complementary
halves. Men expressed the traits and emotions associated with the workplace-
competitiveness, individual achievement, instrumental rationality-whereas women
cultivated the softer domestic virtues of love, nurturance, and compassion.
The cultural equation of femininity with emotional intimacy exaggerated gender
differences in friendships, love, and sexuality. These differences, then, were the result of
the broad social and economic changes, not their cause; the exclusion of women from the
workplace was the single most important differentiating experience. That is, again, a case
where gender inequality produced the very differences that then legitimated the in-
equalities. And, ideologically, the triumph of autonomy as the highest goal of individual
development, along with the ascendant ideal of companionate marriage-marriage based
on the free choice of two people who devote themselves emotionally to each other-
reinforced the growing gender gap in emotional expressiveness. When we began to
marry for love, we fused sexual passion and deep friendship-for the first time in
history. (Remember how the Greeks had kept those three completely separate.)
Finally, the birth of the modern homosexual had enormous implications for the
construction of gendered ways ofloving. French philosopher Michel Foucault argued
that "the disappearance of friendship as a social institution, and the declaration of
homosexuality as a social/political/medical problem, are the same process." Prior to
the start of the twentieth century, the word "homosexual" described behaviors, not
identity. But as the word changed from an adjective to a noun, homophobia became
increasingly significant in men's lives. Homophobia increases the gender differences
between women and men because "the possible imputation of homosexual interest to
any bonds between men ensured that men had constantly to be aware of and assert
their difference from both women and homosexuals," writes sociologist Lynne Segal. 40
Industrialization, cultural ideals of companionate marriage and the separation of
spheres, and the emergence of the modern homosexual-these simultaneous forces
created the arena in which we have experienced intimacy and emotional life. Its divi-
sion into two complementary gendered domains is part of the story of our gendered
society.
LOVE AND GENDER

The separation of spheres also had a profound impact on our experiences of love.
As with friendship, love has a history: Its meanings and expressions change over time.
"Passionate attachments between young people can and do happen in any society,"
writes historian Lawrence Stone, "but the social acceptability of the emotion has
varied enormously over time and class and space, determined primarily by cultural
norms and property arrangements." As with friendship, women have come to be seen
as the love experts-notice how all the advice columns on love and relationships are
written for and by women-whereas men's attempts to express love are evaluated on
what have become "feminine" criteria. "Part of the reason that men seem so much less
loving than women," argues sociologist Francesca Cancian, "is that men's behavior is
measured with a feminine ruler." This has devalued and displaced one type of loving
and replaced it with another. "His" expressions of love included sexual passion, the
practical aspects of providing and protecting, ensuring material survival and mutual
aid. "Her" way of loving was sharing feelings, developing mutual emotional depen-
dency, and nurturing through talk.41
It wasn't always this way. Troubadours of the eleventh to thirteenth centuries de-
scribed undying passion as a hallmark of love for both women and men. But the ro-
mantic love they described was also seen as socially disruptive, a threat to the power of
the church, the state, and the family. Thus by the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
"every advice book, every medical treatise, every sermon and religious homily .. . firmly
rejected both romantic passion and lust as suitable bases for marriage." By the
eighteenth century, attitudes had softened, and individuals were advised to make
marital choices based on love and affection-provided, of course, that the two families
approved and the individuals' social and economic statuses were roughly equal.42
It wasn't until the nineteenth century that love became the ordinary experience
for couples, that it was "normal and indeed praiseworthy for young men and women
to fall passionately in love, and that there must be something wrong with those who
fail to have such an overwhelming experience sometime in late adolescence or early
adulthood." But in the nineteenth-century marriage manuals, love is rarely mentioned
The "Rating-Dating-Mating Complex"

Based on his research at Penn State University, soci- Boys competed with other boys and girls com-
ologist Willard Waller wrote his classic article "The peted with other girls to get the best dates, because
Rating and Dating Complex" ( 1937), which suggested the higher the ranking of their dating partner, the
that dating among high school and college students higher would be their ranking among their same-sex
was a competitive enterprise, organized among peers, peers. Equally, boys and girls competed with each
with significant social consequences. People wanted other over the meaning of being a "good" date. For
to date someone of slightly higher social rank than girls, it meant preserving their reputation, so they
they thought they were ranked-not too much higher, wouldn't be seen as "easy." For boys, it often meant
but certainly not too much lower, either. Both boys being seen as sexually sophisticated and experienced.
and girls wanted to be seen as good dates and also
to date others who were seen as good dates.
as a reason to get married. In fact, love "is presented more as a product of marriage
than its prerequisite." By the end of the century, though, "love had won its battle along
the whole line in the upper sections of the middle class. It has since been regarded as
the most important prerequisite to marriage.'ll3
So love as we know it-the basis for marriage, sexuality, and family-is relatively
recent. Nor is it the foundation of marriage and/or sexual expression everywhere else
in the world. As the basis for sexual activity, love turns out to be relatively rare. Love
and sex turn out to be most highly associated in cultures where women and men are
more unequal and where women are materially dependent upon men. Where women
and men are mutually dependent and relatively equal, love and sex tend not to be
equated. Even in our society, love may or may not accompany sexual activity or family
life, and it may wax and wane in its intensity. In a classic article, sociologist William J.
Goode noted that there was little evidence that the ideology of romantic love was
widely or deeply believed by all strata of the American population.44
GENDERED LOVE, AMERICAN STYLE

Since the mid-nineteenth century, according to historians, love has come to mean
tenderness, powerlessness, and emotional expression. And love has become increasingly
a woman's business, the home its domain. The masculine workplace was rough and
competitive, "a vast wilderness," a "rage of competitive battle," and demanded that men
suppress their emotions; home was the place where a man "seeks refuge from the vexa-
tions and embarrassments of business, an enchanting repose from exertion, a relaxation
from care by the interchange of affection," as one New England minister explained in
1827. Women, said to possess "all the milder virtues of humanity," became the ministers
of love. (This separation of emotional spheres was neither intended nor experienced as
a gain for women. Indeed, women's emotionality-women were "accustomed to feel,
oftener than to reason," as one Unitarian minister put it-was the chief justification for
excluding women from the workplace, colleges and universities, and the voting booth.)45
Like friendship, then, the separation of spheres "feminized" love, so that today love
implies "an overemphasis on talking and feeling, a mystification of the material basis of
attachment, and a tendency to ignore physical love and the practical aspects of nurtur-
ance and mutual assistance." Men's style of loving, focusing on "practical help, shared
physical activities, spending time together, and sex," has been demoted to "less than" the
feminine style. These different styles of loving are the products of the large-scale trans-
formations that created the modern system of gender relations, and they are as much the
cause of gender inequality as the result of preexisting gender differences. They are the
result of gender inequality; these differences, as psychologist Carol Tavris tells us,
emerged "because women are expected, allowed, and required to reveal certain emotions,
and men are expected and required to deny or suppress them." They are the source of so
much miscommunication between women and men that it often feels as though we are
from different planets, or at least, in Lillian Rubin's phrase, "intimate strangers.'¼6
Consider, for example, the classic "he said/she said" tussle about whether we really
love our partner. Here's what one husband said to Lillian Rubin:
What does she want? Proof? She's got it, hasn't she? Would I be knocking myself
out to get things for her-like to keep up this house-if I didn't love her? Why does
a man do things like that if not because he loves his wife and kids? I swear, I can't
figure out what she wants.
His wife said something very different. "It is not enough that he supports us and takes
care of us. I appreciate that, but I want him to share things with me. I need for him to
tell me his feelings.''
These two statements aptly illustrate the differences between "his" and "her" ways
of loving.47 Or do they? The empirical research on the gender of love reveals fewer
differences, and of less significance, than we might otherwise expect. One recent
review of the literature, for example, found that women's and men's experiences and
attitudes are statistically similar on forty-nine of the sixty correlates of love. And a
recent study found that generally women and men are pretty much equally emotion-
ally expressive-although women are more likely to express those emotions associated
with inequality (smoothing things over, unruffiing feathers, and the like). 48
And those differences that we do find are occasionally the opposite of what we
might have expected. Take, for example, the received wisdom that women are the ro-
mantic sex, men the rational, practical sex. After all, women are the domesticated,
emotional experts and the primary consumers of romance literature, emotional advice
columns, and television talk-show platitudes.
Some research confirms these gendered love stereotypes. One study found that
men are more likely to respond to ephemeral qualities such as physical appearance
when they fall in love and are far more likely to say they are easily attracted to mem-
bers of the opposite sex. Yet most studies have found men to be stronger believers in
romantic love ideologies than are women. (On the other hand, men also tend to be
more cynical about love at the same time. 49 ) Men, it seems, are more likely to believe
myths about love at first sight, tend to fall in love more quickly than women, are more
likely to enter relationships out of a desire to fall in love, and yet also tend to fall out of
love more quickly. Romantic love, to men, is an irrational, spontaneous, and compel-
ling emotion that demands action. Who but a man, one might ask, could have said, as
Casanova did, that "nothing is surer than that we will no longer desire them, for one
does not desire what one possesses"?50
Women, on the other hand, show a more "pragmatic orientation" toward falling in
and out oflove and are more likely to also like the men they love. Once in love, women
tend to experience the state more intensely. One experiment found that after only four
dates, men were almost twice as likely as women to define the relationship as love
(27 percent to 15 percent). But by the twenty-first date, 43 percent of the women said that
they were in love, whereas only 30 percent of the men did. The researchers write:
lfby "more romantic" we referto the speed of involvement and commitment, then
the male appears to be more deserving of that label. If, on the other hand, we
mean the experiencing of the emotional dimension of romantic love, then the
female qualifies as candidate for "more romantic" behavior in a somewhat more
judicious and rational fashion. She chooses and commits herself more slowly than
the male but, once in love, she engages more extravagantly in the euphoric and
idealizational dimensions of loving.5'
Despite the fact that men report falling out oflove more quickly, it's women who initi-
ate the majority of breakups. And women, it seems, also have an easier time accepting
their former romantic partners as friends than men do. After a breakup, men-
supposedly the less emotional gender-report more loneliness, depression, and sleep-
lessness than women do. This is equally true after divorce: Married men live longer
and emotionally healthier lives than divorced or single men; unmarried women live
longer and are far happier than married women.52
Though some gender differences tend to both confirm and contradict traditional
gender stereotypes, there is some evidence that these differences have narrowed con-
siderably over the past few decades. In the late 1960s, William Kephart asked more
than one thousand college students, "If a boy (girl) had all the other qualities you de-
sired, would you marry this person if you were not in love with him (her)?" In the
1960s, Kephart found dramatic differences between men, who thought that marriage
without love was out of the question, and women, who were more likely to admit that
the absence of love wouldn't necessarily deter them from marriage. (Kephart attrib-
uted this to women's economic dependence, which allowed men the "luxury" of mar-
rying for love.) 53
Since the 1960s, sociologists have continued to ask this question, and each year
fewer women and men say they are willing to marry for any reason but love. By the
mid-198os, 85 percent of both women and men considered such a marriage out of the
question; and by 1991, 86 percent of the men and 91 percent of the women responded
with an emphatic "no." A 2012 survey (Singles in America) found that 31 percent of
adult men said they'd commit to a person they were not in love with-as long as she
had all the other attributes they were looking for in a mate-and 21 percent said
they'd commit under those same circumstances to somebody they weren't sexually
attracted to. Women, meanwhile, were more likely than men to say they "must have"
someone with a similar level of education, participating in the same religion, who
has a successful career and a sense of humor. It would seem that women are now the
"pickier" sex.54
But such studies yielded very different results in different countries, suggesting
that our definitions oflove may have more to do with cultural differences than they do
with gender. When students in Japan and Russia were asked the same question in 1992,
their answers differed dramatically from those of Americans. More Russian women
(41 percent) and men (30 percent) answered yes than did either the Japanese (20 percent
of the men and 19 percent of the women) or the Americans (13 percent of the men and
9 percent of the women). And whereas the American and Japanese women were slightly
less likely than the men to say yes, Russian women were much more likely than
Russian men to do so.55
Another study compared American men and women with Chinese men and
women. The differences between women and men were small-as were the differences
between the Chinese and American samples. Culture, not gender, was a far more sa-
lient variable in understanding these differences. In both cases, men were more likely
to hold romantic and idealized notions about love but were slightly more likely to be
willing to marry without love. American men held less erotic notions about love (that
is, they were more likely to separate love and sex) and more "ludic" notions (love is
about closeness and intimacy) than did women.56
And it may be that other factors enhance or diminish women's and men's ways of
loving. Remember that man and woman cited earlier, whose statements about what
they want from each other seemed to speak so loudly about intractable gender differ-
ences? These two statements may actually say more about the transformation of love
in a marriage than they do about deep-seated personality differences between women
and men. Some startling research was undertaken by sociologist Cathy Greenblat on
this issue. Greenblat asked thirty women and thirty men two questions just before
they were to get married: "How do you know you love this person?" "How do you
know you are loved by this person?"57
Prior to marriage, the answers revealed significant gender differences that meshed
in a happy symmetry. The men "knew" that they loved their future wives because they
were willing to do so much for them, willing to sacrifice for them, eager to go out of
their way to buy them flowers or demonstrate their love in some other visible way-
willing, as one might say, to drop everything in the middle of the night and drive three
hours in a blinding snowstorm because the women were upset. Happily, conveniently,
their future wives "knew" that they were loved precisely because the men were willing
to go to such extraordinary lengths to demonstrate it. The women "knew" that they
loved their future husbands because they wanted to take care of them, to nurture and
support them, to express their emotions of caring and tenderness. And, happily, the
men "knew" they were loved because the women took care of them, nurtured them,
and were emotionally caring.
So far, so good-and perfectly symmetrical. Greenblat then interviewed twenty-
five couples who had been married at least ten years. She added a question asking
whether the men and women questioned whether they loved their spouse or whether
their spouse loved them. Overwhelmingly, women had no doubts that they still loved
their husbands but had significant doubts about whether they were still loved by their
husbands. By contrast, the husbands had no doubts that they were loved by their
wives but had serious doubts about whether they loved their wives any longer.
It would be easy to interpret such data as revealing a gender difference: Men fall in
love sooner but also fall out oflove sooner than women. But such research may tell us
more about the way that the structure of marriage transforms our ability to love and
to be loved. After all, when you are married, you no longer have many opportunities
to go well out of your way to do extraordinary things in order to demonstrate your

love. You live together, come home from work to each other every day, and raise chil-
dren together. Although that may, in my estimation or yours, be heroic enough in
itself, it does not lead men to feel that they are expressing their love in the way they
"know" they love someone. Hence, they may begin to doubt whether they truly love
their wives. By contrast, the nuclear family in the suburban single-family home en-
hances women's expression ofloving as domestic nurturing and care giving. Thus the
wives were certain that they still loved their husbands but were unsure that their
husbands still loved them.
To "read" such differences as revealing something essential about women and
men would be to miss the structural impact of the modern family arrangement and
the way that structural arrangements enhance some relational styles and inhibit
others. Even if women and men are not from different planets, the modern, insular,
nuclear family may be foreign territory for men's ways of expressing the love they feel.
It may mean that we need to expand our capacities for loving in different ways in dif-
ferent situations.
Our current feminization oflove, psychologist Carol Tavris argues, has detrimen-
tal effects on women's lives:
The feminization of love in America, the glorification of women's ways of loving, is
not about the love between autonomous individuals. It celebrates a romantic,
emotional love that promotes the myth of basic, essential differences between
women and men. It supports the opposition of women's love and men's work. In
so doing, it derails women from thinking about their own talents and aspirations,
rewarding instead a narrowed focus on finding and keeping Mr. Right. 58
Fortunately, love need not be feminized, as Francesca Cancian argues. Men's way of
loving-"the practical help and physical activities"-is, she notes, "as much a part of
love as the expression of feelings." And the feminization of love as the expression
of feelings, nurturing, and intimacy also obscures women's capacity for instrumental,
activity-centered forms of love and thus, in effect, freezes men and women into pat-
terns that mask some of their traits, as if right-handedness meant one could never
even use one's left hand. Cancian poses an important question: "Who is more loving,"
she asks, "a couple who confide most of their experiences to each other but rarely co-
operate or give each other practical help, or a couple who help each other through
many crises and cooperate in running a household but rarely discuss their personal
experiences?" Perhaps, Cancian suggests, what we need is a more embracingly univer-
sal definition of love that has as its purpose individual development, mutual support,
and intimacy-and that women and men are equally capable of experiencing.59
CONCLUSION
Love and friendship are perhaps the major avenues of self-exploration and, along with
sexuality (the subject of the next chapter), the chief routes we take in our society to
know ourselves. "Love provides us with identities, virtues, roles through which we
define ourselves, as well as partners to share our happiness, reinforce our values, support
our best opinions of ourselves and compensate for the anonymity, impersonality or
possibly frustration of public life," writes Robert Solomon. Our friends, Lillian Rubin
writes, "are those who seem to us to call up the best parts of ourselves, even while they
also accept our darker side."60
Yet friendship is so precarious. "Unlike a marriage," Rubin writes, friendship "is
secured by an emotional bond alone. With no social compact, no ritual moment, no
pledge of loyalty and constancy to hold a friendship in place, it becomes not only the
most neglected social relationship of our time, but, all too often, our most fragile one
as well." So, too, are love relationships, which require much care and nurturing in a
world that seems to present an infinite number of distractions and subterfuges. Sexual
encounters are more fragile still, holding at any particular moment only the most
fleeting promise of sustained emotional connection.
To sustain our lives, to enable us to experience the full range of our pleasures, to
achieve the deep emotional connections with lovers and friends, we must remember
the ways that gender does and does not construct our emotional lives. To pretend that
women and men are from different planets condemns us, at best, to occasional interga-
lactic travel, with interpreters and technical assistance. I'd prefer that the interpreters
stay home and that we learn to reveal more of ourselves. Love and friendship are deeply
human experiences-ones we should be able to manage on our own. As the great British
novelist E. M. Forster once wrote of passionate human connection, "Men and women
are capable of sustained relations, not mere opportunities for an electrical discharge."
KEY TERMS
Bromance Gendered Love The Second Sex
Emotional Intimacy Homophobia
Feminized Love Men's Liberation
CHAPTER
13 The GENDERED BODY

e think of our bodies as either our own private possessions, over which we
W exercise complete control, or as collections of biological impulses over
which we have virtually no control at all. And though our culture is saturated
with sexual jokes and innuendo, and we talk about sex incessantly, for most of
us sexuality remains a pretty private experience, rarely discussed honestly and
openly. For centuries, the body has been shrouded in myth, taboo, and ignorance.
Yet nothing could be more gendered than these most individual, private
experiences. We inscribe our bodies with a wide range of cultural signs and
symbols, and our sexualities are intimate expressions of well-established social
norms and practices. Our bodies become social texts that we construct to be
"read" by others. And significant changes in the past few decades-new surgi-
cal procedures, over-the-counter emergency contraception, the Internet-have
transformed this system of gendered signifying, making us more aware of our
bodies than ever before and enabling new groups to claim their own embodied
agency, a kind of embodied democracy that has also been met, characteristically,
with increased backlash.'
GENDER AND THE BEAUTY MYTH

Our ideals of beauty and attractiveness themselves are deeply gendered. For one
thing, we know a lot more about standards of female beauty in other cultures
than we know about standards of male beauty-in part because it's men who
created those standards in the first place, and their valuation derived from other
things, like wealth and power. Specifically, sexual standards of beauty often vary
depending on the status of women. In societies where women's status is higher,
smaller breasts are considered more attractive, probably because smaller breasts
396
Chapter 13: The Gendered Body 397
mm1mize the anatomical differences between women and men and also because
smaller breasts make it easier for women to move about quickly. In the United States,
men's preferences for larger or smaller breasts on women tend to vary with economic
trends-as do the hemlines on women's skirts. During periods of prosperity, when
male breadwinners can afford to have their wives stay at home, larger breast sizes and
shorter hemlines tend to be preferred, because these exaggerate the biological differ-
ences between women and men (and thus reinforce the social separation of spheres).
During economic downturns, women's hemlines come down, and smaller breast sizes
OH?
REALLY•
Florence Colgate was awarded the title "Britain's Most Beautiful Face" in 2012.
The competition was sponsored by a cosmetics company, and eight thousand women entered.
The company used a mathematical algorithm to determine beauty "scientifically." Here's an
extract of that algorithm:
A woman's face is said to be most attractive when the space between her pupils is just under
half the width of her face from ear to ear. Florence scores a 44 percent ratio. Experts also
believe the relative distance between eyes and mouth should be just over a third of the meas-
urement from hairline to chin. Florence's ratio is 32.8 percent.
Sounds pretty scientific, right? But then listen to how one psychologist unpacked that mathemati-
cal formula for "classical" beauty:
Florence has all the classic signs of beauty. She has large eyes, high cheekbones, full lips and a
fair complexion. Symmetry appears to be a very important cue to attractiveness.
Wait! "Fair complexion"? "Science of beauty"?
Can our diverse multicultural society come up with a "scientific" analysis of beauty that isn't based
on racial codes? Beauty may be skin deep; racism goes a lot deeper and may be far more subtle.
Source: Lisa Wade, "Colorism and the 'Science' of Beauty" in Society Pages, May 12, 2012 , http://thesocietypages.
org/socimages/2012/05/12/colorism-and-the-science-of-beauty. Image courtesy of: ©SWNS.COM
tend to become the norm, as women and men both work to make ends meet, and the
natural distinctions between women and men are minimized.
In many tropical cultures, women do not cover their breasts, but this doesn't
mean that the men there are in a constant state of sexual frenzy. The breasts are simply
not considered a sexual stimulus in those cultures, and attention may be focused else-
where. And in some Islamic cultures, women are believed to be so sexually alluring
(and men so unable to control themselves when confronted with temptation) that
women practice purdah, which requires that they keep their entire bodies covered.
In the United States, women's beauty is placed at such a high premium and the
standards of beauty are so narrow that many women feel trapped by what Naomi
Wolf calls the "beauty myth"-a nearly unreachable cultural ideal of feminine
beauty that "uses images of female beauty as a political weapon against women's ad-
vancement." Just as Max Weber decried the "iron cage" of consumption in modern
society, so, too, does Wolf decry the "Iron Maiden" created by this beauty myth,
which entraps women in an endless cycle of cosmetics, beauty aids, diets, and exer-
cise fanaticism and makes women's bodies into "prisons their homes no longer were."
Is this "tyranny of slenderness," as one writer called it, an ironic outcome of women's
increased independence-a kind of backlash attempt to keep women in their place
just as they are breaking free? It's unlikely that it is any more than a coincidence, but
it is worth noting that the first Miss America pageant was held in 1920-the same
year women obtained the right to vote.2
Women are particularly concerned with weight and breast size. Breasts are "the
most visible signs of a woman's femininity," writes philosopher Iris Young, "the sign of
her sexuality." Women are often trapped in what we might call the "Goldilocks
dilemma," after the young girl of the fairy tale. As Goldilocks found the porridge
"too hot" or "too cold" but never "just right," so, too, do women believe their breasts are
either too large or too small-but never just right. In 2001, cosmetic surgeons performed
nearly 220,000 breast augmentations and close to half as many breast reductions.
Women's weight often forces women to submit to the tyranny of slenderness. For
example, the average weight of Miss America and Playboy pinups has decreased
steadily since 1978, even though their average height and breast size have increased. In
1954, Miss America was five foot eight and weighed 132 pounds. Today, the average
Miss America contestant still stands five foot eight but now weighs just 118 pounds.
(An article in Harper's Bazaar in 1908 declared the normal weight for a healthy woman
of five foot eight to be 155 pounds; 133 would have been normal for a woman of five foot
three, and 117 would have been less than the prescribed weight of 120 pounds for a
woman who stood five foot one.) In 1975, the average fashion model weighed about
8 percent less than the average American woman; by 1990, that difference had grown
to 23 percent, and it remains about 20 percent today. And though the average Ameri-
can woman today is five foot four and weighs 162.9 pounds and wears a size 14 dress,
the average model is five foot eleven and weighs 117 pounds and wears a size 2.3 Mari-
lyn Monroe, perhaps the twentieth century's most recognizable sex symbol, wore a
size 12 dress; contemporary sex symbols are more likely to wear a size 4. For instance,
Gisele Bundchen was Vogue's model of the year in 2011, in part because, as the maga-
zine states, she strays from the rail-thin image. Gisele is five foot eleven and weighs
only 115 pounds. That is 25 percent below her ideal body weight. Even "plus-size"
models have shrunk. A decade ago, plus-size models averaged between size 12 and size
18. Today, a model is considered "plus-size" starting at a size 6. 4 "Girls are terrified of
being fat," writes Mary Pipher. "Being fat means being left out, scorned, and vilified . ..
Almost all adolescent girls feel fat, worry about their weight, diet and feel guilty when
they eat." Perhaps most telling is that 42 percent of girls in first through third grades
say they want to be thinner, and 81 percent of ten-year-olds are afraid of being fat.
Forty-six percent of nine- to eleven-year-olds are on diets; by college the percentage
has nearly doubled.5
Current standards of beauty for women combine two images-dramatic thinness
and muscularity and buxomness-that are virtually impossible to accomplish.
Research on adolescents suggests that a large majority consciously trade off health
concerns in their efforts to lose weight. As a result, increasing numbers of young
women are diagnosed with either anorexia nervosa or bulimia every year. Anorexia
involves chronic and dangerous starvation dieting and obsessive exercise; bulimia
typically involves "binging and purging" (eating large quantities of food and then
either vomiting or taking enemas to excrete the food) . Although anorexia and bulimia
are extreme and very serious problems that can, if untreated, threaten a girl's life, they
represent only the furthest reaches of a continuum of preoccupation with the body
that begins with such "normal" behaviors as compulsive exercise or dieting.
It is important to remember that rates of anorexia and bulimia are higher in the
United States than in any other country-by far. Estimates in the United States range
between 5 and 10 percent of all post-pubescent girls and women affected-that means
about twenty million girls and women and ten million men. Anorexia is the third
most common chronic illness among adolescents. Half of all American girls between
the ages of eleven and thirteen see themselves as overweight. 6
In Britain the number is more like 1 to 2 percent of young women, and across Europe
only 14.5 of every 10,000 women suffer from bulimia or anorexia, according to the
European Medical Association. That's just over one-tenth of 1 percent-and about fifty
times less than in the United States.7 By contrast, many non-Western societies value
plumpness, and there is a correlation between bodyweight and social class, and through-
out Europe and the United States, nonwhite girls are far less likely to exhibit eating dis-
orders than are white and middle-class girls. (Ironically, in societies where food is
plentiful, ideals of thinness are imposed constantly, while in societies where the food
supply is erratic, plumpness is more often the feminine ideal.)8 Recent dramatic increases
have, however, been observed among young middle- and upper-class Japanese women.9
Combine this preoccupation with thinness with the equation of thin and sexy,
and you have a cultural recipe for some very confused people. Clothing stores sell
thongs sized for seven- to ten-year-olds. In early 2012, Abercrombie Kids was forced
to remove a "push-up" bikini top from its stores and online sales site over public out-
rage. They issued a statement on their Facebook page, agreeing "with those who say it
is best 'suited' for girls age 12 and older." (Abercrombie Kids markets its clothing for
ages 7 to 14.) The American Psychological Association was so alarmed at this trend
10
that it convened a task force on the sexualization of young girls. 11
Although some stereotypic understandings would have it that such dramatic

emphasis on thinness afllicts only middle- and upper-class white girls and women, the
evidence suggests that this emphasis also defines working-class and black ideals of the
feminine body. Largeness "was once accepted-even revered-among Black folks,"

lamented an article in Essence magazine in 1994, but it "now carries the same unmis-
takable stigma as it does among Whites." And a study the following year found that
black adolescent girls demonstrated a significantly higher drive for thinness than did
white adolescent girls. The media coverage of Oprah's dramatic weight loss and the
depiction of ultrathin African-American models and actresses may have increased
black women's anxieties about their weight; indeed, it may be a perverse signal of as-
similation and acceptance by the dominant culture that "their" ideal body type is now
embraced by the formerly marginalized. 12
Here's a good example. In March 1985, the New York Times ran a story with the big
banner headline "Dislike of Own Body Found Common Among Women." The article
went on to describe the growing concern about eating disorders and unhealthy body
image. Not much new there now, right? But underneath that banner headline was a little
box with what is called in journalism a "call out"-a short phrase that illustrates some
big theme in the article. It said, "Men tend to see themselves as just about perfect."
How true is that today? Could it be that the biggest change in body image is not
women's continued dislike of their bodies but the fact that men no longer "see them-
selves as just about perfect"? Over the past thirty years, men, too, have come to dislike
their own bodies. Men haven't exactly caught up to women on the dislike-o-meter, but
we're closing the gap considerably. Some progress, huh?
Men have become increasingly concerned with their bodies, especially in fitness
and weight. Although men have long been concerned about appearing strong and fit-
witness the enormous success of Charles Atlas bodybuilding apparatus since the turn
of the twentieth century-the building of strong muscles seems to increase as a preoc-
cupation and obsession during periods when men are least likely to actually have to
use their muscles in their work. That is, we want to look stronger during periods when
we actually don't need it, re-creating in our appearances what we no longer require in
actuality. Today, successful new men's magazines like Men's Health encourage men to
see their bodies as women have been taught to see theirs-as ongoing projects to be
worked on. (The magazine's circulation grew from 250,000 to over 1.5 million in
its first seven years-the most successful magazine launch in history.) In part, this
I ii'',,,!'' :n)Q IIa

Almost daily, we read alarming studies about the obesity crisis in the United States-that
Americans are getting fatter, and nearly half of all Americans have been classified as "obese" or
"overweight" since the 1980s. Our remedies range from diets based on willpower, prepared
foods, or drugs to healthy and unhealthy exercise regimes and a national anxiety about bodies
and their vicissitudes. In "The Unequal Weight of Discrimination: Gender, Body Size and Income
Inequality," sociologist Katherine Mason explores the social meanings of obesity and the ways
that social consequences for obesity differ for men and women (men suffer some forms of dis-
crimination, which disappear over time; discrimination against women tends to stick around).
What Mason shows is that the solution to this "crisis" of obesity is not a national diet, but
a rethinking of our understanding of the body and gender identity.
coincides with general concerns about health and fitness, and in part it is about look-
ing young in a society that does not value aging. But more than that, it also seems to
be about gender.
Men's bodily anxieties mirror those of women. Whereas women are concerned
with breast size and weight, men are concerned with muscularity-that is, both are
preoccupied with those aspects of the male and female body that suggest and exagger-
ate innate biological differences between the sexes. It would appear that the more
equal women and men become in the public sphere, the more standards of beauty
emphasize those aspects that are biologically different.
Standards of male muscularity have also increased dramatically. Many men expe-
rience what some researchers have labeled "muscle dysmorphia," a belief that one is
too small, insufficiently muscular. Harrison Pope calls it the "Adonis Complex"-the
belief that men must look like Greek gods, with perfect chins, thick hair, rippling
muscles, and washboard abdominals. The increasing packaging of men's bodies in the
media-it is now common to see men's bodies displayed in advertising in ways that
were conceivable only for women's bodies a generation ago-coupled with increased
economic anxiety (which leads us to focus on the things we can control, like how we
look) has led to a dramatic shift in men's ideas about their bodies.13
In 1999, Pope and his colleagues took G.I. Joe's proportions and translated them
into real-life proportions (parallel to the descriptions of Barbie's changes). In 1974,
G.I. Joe was five feet ten inches tall, had a thirty-one-inch waist, a forty-four-inch
chest, and twelve-inch biceps. Strong and muscular, it's true, but at least within the
realm of the possible. G.I. Joe in 2002 was a little bit different. He was still five feet ten
inches tall, but his waist had shrunk to twenty-eight inches, his chest had expanded to
fifty inches, and his biceps were now twenty-two inches-almost the size of his waist.
Such proportions would make one a circus freak, not a role model (figure 13.1).14
Such hypertrophied ectomorphs make many men feel utterly inadequate. Nearly
half of all men in one survey reported significant body image disturbance. A 1997
study reported in Psychology Today found that 43 percent of the men were dissatisfied
with their appearance, compared with only 15 percent twenty-five years earlier. And
now, a British study finds nearly double that rate (80.7 percent) talk in ways that sug-
gest significant anxiety about their bodies. (Two of five would sacrifice a year of their
lives for a perfect body.) 15
When I look in the mirror, I see two things: what I want to be and what I'm not.
I hate my abs. My chest will never be huge. My legs are too thin. My nose is an
odd shape. I want what Men's Health pushes. I want to be the guy in the Gillette
commercials.' 6
And increasing numbers of men are also exhibiting eating disorders. Pope and
his colleagues believe that over one million men suffer from some form of eating
disorder. Some experts believe that about 40 percent of binge eaters and one-fourth
of anorexia and bulimia sufferers are male-compared with only 10 percent a
decade ago-while the equivalent rates for women have not changed significantly. 17
(According to one study, men are far less likely to seek treatment for eating disor-
ders because they believe such disorders to be a woman's illness.) Although these
problems may be more prevalent among gay men, increases among heterosexual
Figure 13.1. The evolution of the "G.I. Joe" action toy from 1964 (left) to 1975 (center) to 1992
(right), showing an increasing emphasis on muscularity through the years.
Source: For additional similar images and a detailed discussion, see Pope HG, et al . "Evolving ideals of male body
image as seen through action toys," International journal of Eating Disorders 1999; 26:65- 72.
men are also pronounced. A 1994 study of football players at Cornell found that
40 percent engaged in dysfunctional eating patterns and 10 percent manifested
diagnosable eating disorders. Two recent studies indicate that while virtually no male
college athletes have been diagnosed with an eating disorder, about 16 to 20 percent
are symptomatic. "Although the frequency of pathogenic behaviors was low," the
authors write, "exercise (37 percent) and fasting/dieting (14.2 percent) were the
primary and secondary means for controlling weight; fewer than 10 percent used
vomiting, laxatives, or diuretics."18 A 1997 survey of 1,425 active-duty naval men
found that nearly 7 percent fit the criteria for bulimia, another 2.5 percent were
anorexic, over 40 percent fit the criteria for eating disorder, and nearly 40 percent
reported current binge eating. One in four reported compensatory behaviors such
as fasting, vomiting, taking laxatives, and taking water pills-numbers that doubled
when physical standards were being measured. And a recent survey of Australian
college men found that one in five had used restrained eating, vomiting, laxative
abuse, or cigarette smoking for weight control. About one in five also reported
binge eating and weight control problems.19
And just as women have resorted to increasingly dangerous surgical and pros-
thetic procedures-such as having silicone-filled bags placed in their breasts or being
given mild localized doses of botulism to paralyze facial muscles and thereby "remove"
wrinkles-so, too, are men resorting to increasingly dramatic efforts to get large. The
use of anabolic steroids has mushroomed, especially among college-aged men. Legal
prescriptions for steroids have quadrupled since 1997, to more than 1.75 million in
2002 and 4.5 million in 2010, and countless more illegal sources provide less-regulated
doses. One study found that more than 40 percent of middle school and high school
boys exercised regularly with the goal of increasing muscle mass, 38 percent used pro-
tein supplements, and nearly 6 percent said they had experimented with steroids. 2 0
Steroids enable men to increase muscle mass quickly and dramatically, so that one
looks incredibly big. Prolonged use also leads to dramatic mood changes, increased
uncontrolled rage, and a significant shrinkage in the testicles.21
Eating disorders among women and muscular dysmorphia among men are paral-
lel processes, extreme points on a continuum that begins with almost everyone. There
are, for example, very few women who do not have a problematic relationship with
food-virtually all women see food as something other than simple taste or nourish-
ment but instead mentally count the calories, determine whether this indulgence is
worth it, and calculate how much extra time they can spend in the gym to compensate
and how much they weigh. And virtually all young men have a problematic relation-
ship with violence. (As we'll see in the next chapter, violence is so closely equated with
masculinity that it would be difficult to extricate the two.) And what signifies the ca-
pacity for violence but physical strength-or at least looking strong? One can hear this
in the voices of the anorexics and the obsessive bodybuilders. The young women, liter-
ally starving to death, talk constantly about how fat they are and how if only they
could lose weight they'd feel better about themselves, whereas their male counter-
parts, who are so muscle-bound that they cannot bend over to tie their shoes, talk
about how "small" they are and how much they have to eat and work out to get larger.
If a measure of successful femininity is being thin, and if a measure of masculinity is
appearing strong and powerful, then anorexics and obsessive bodybuilders are not
psychological misfits or deviants: They are overconformists to gender norms to which
all of us, to some degree, are subject. 22
• ,J Ii •Ii! Ii :t11UIi I
How do we understand the changes in our bodies, and the relationship of those changes to
gender, ethnicity, race, and other aspects of our identities? During puberty, our bodies go
through some big changes, especially as hormones kick in and secondary sex characteristics
emerge. But even if those bodies change in similar ways, certainly we would understand that
the meanings attached to those changes vary enormously by race, ethnicity, region, and so on.
How could we think otherwise? In "Do It All for Your Pubic Hairs," sociologist Richard Mora
explores the meaning of puberty to young Latino males in the United States, finding that their
associations among physical changes, emergent masculinity, and feelings of entitlement and
dominance have a very specific constellation.
Just as there has been an increase in the gap between rich and poor-the gap
between the top 20 percent and the bottom 20 percent of American society is cur-
rently the highest in our history-so, too, has there been an increased bifurcation
between the embodied "haves" and "have-nots." Americans are both increasingly thin
and increasingly overweight, obsessive exercisers or sedentary couch potatoes, eating
tofu and organic raw vegetables or Big Macs and supersized fried foods. This growing
divide reflects different class and racial cultures, but it also is deeply gendered.
CHANGING THE BODY

Virtually all of us spend some time and energy in some forms of bodily beautification,
by wearing fashionable clothes and jewelry, for example. But until recently, only a few
marginalized "out-groups," like motorcycle gangs, practiced any forms of permanent
bodily transformation-running the gamut from simply piercing ears to piercing
other body parts, getting tattoos, having cosmetic surgery, and even undergoing
sex-change operations. Today, body piercing involves far more than the earlobes and
can include the tongue, eyebrows, navel, nose, lips, nipples, and even the genitals. In-
creasing numbers of young people are also getting tattoos. Given their vaguely trans-
gressive character in American society, tattoos and piercing denote a slight sexualized
undertone-if only because they indicate that the bearer is aware of his or her body as
an object of pleasure or desire.
About 45 million Americans-about 21 percent-have at least one tattoo, de-
scribed by one psychiatrist as a "bumper sticker of the soul." And more than a third
(36 percent) of Americans aged eighteen to twenty-five has one. And while gay men,
lesbians, and bisexuals are more likely to have tattoos than heterosexuals, males and
females are about evenly split.
Design and placement are highly sexually charged; we believe they say something
about ourselves and our sexuality. Among Americans with tattoos, 31 percent said having
a tattoo has made them feel sexier. Interestingly, more tattooed females (42 percent)
feel this way than males (25 percent). Additionally, those with tattoos said that having
a tattoo has made them feel more rebellious (25 percent), while others said a tattoo
makes them feel more attractive (21 percent). The most recent fiftieth anniversary
Barbie is-you guessed it-"Totally Stylin' Tattoos Barbie."23
Barbie's tattoos are removable; most are not, however, except with laser surgery.
Although 86 percent of people do not regret getting tattoos, one 2006 survey of people
seeking removal found that 44 percent of participants said they had chosen to have a
tattoo to feel unique, 33 percent said to feel independent, and 28 percent said to make
life experiences stand out. This stands in contrast to a 1996 study in which motivations
for a tattoo were "to be part of a group," because a person "just wanted one," "sheer
stupidity," and "love." Researchers of the 2008 study concluded that, unlike the 1996
study, "While the vast majority of individuals who are tattooed are pleased with
their skin markings, the popularity and prevalence of tattoos often mean that derma-
tologists are increasingly hearing stories of regrets and requests for tattoo removal."24
Recently, though, laser surgeons report that women are having their tattoos re-
moved because of "social stigma." In one recent survey, 93 percent of women seeking
removal of their tattoo said that having to hide the tattoos on occasion was a factor in
the removal, compared with only 20 percent of men. About 40 percent of women en-
dured negative comments at work, in public, or in school, compared with 5 percent of
men. "Societal support for women with tattoos may not be as strong as for men," said
the authors of the study.25
Liposuction 302,028
Breast 2B,6,694
augmentation
Tummy tuck 156,4' 9
Eyelid surgery 137,949
Breast lift 132,908
0 100,000 200,000 300,000 400,000
Liposuction 40,466
Nose surgery 32,641
Eyelid surgery 27,7( 5

Male breast reduction
(for the treatment of gynecomastia) 24,234
Facelift 15,01!)
0 10,000 20,000 30,000 40,000 50,000
Figure 13.2. Top five cosmetic surgeries for women (top) and men (bottom) in 2014.
Source: The American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery 2014 Cosmetic Surgery Statistics.
One of the fastest-growing methods of bodily transformation is cosmetic surgery

(figure 13.2). According to one study by the American Society of Plastic and Recon-
structive Surgeons, the total number of cosmetic procedures increased from 413,208
in 1992 to 15.1 million in 2013. And the most common procedures increased by almost
500 percent. In 2013, cosmetic surgeons performed over 290,000 breast augmenta-
tions (breast implants), but only 23,770 implant removals for women and 22,939 re-
ductions for men. 26 In addition to breast augmentation and reduction, these included
199,817 liposuctions (compared with 47,212 in 1992) and 215,641 eyelid surgeries
(59,461 in 1992).27
OH?
REALLY•
No one is more preoccupied with body image than Americans.
While it often seems impossible to imagine a more beauty-obsessed culture
than the United States, when it comes to cosmetic surgery, we're only number
six. The number one slot belongs to South Korea-by a lot. It's estimated that
between one-fifth and one-third of women in Seoul have had some cosmetic
surgery: the BBC believes that the number is closer to SO percent for women in their twenties.
"We want to have surgeries while we are young so we can have our new faces for a long time,"
explained one college student to a journalist. While eyelid surgery remains by far the most
popular (blepharoplasty, the insertion of a crease into the top of the eyelid to make them appear
more "Western"), nose jobs and chin-thinning techniques are popular gifts for girls' high school
graduation.
Source: Patricia Marx, "About Face" in New Yorker, March 23, 2015, pp. 50, 51.
Though women continue to be the primary consumers of such cosmetic surgery,

male patients have gone from 54,845 in 1992 to 204,359 in 2007 and now make up more
than 13 percent of all surgical procedures. "More men are viewing cosmetic surgery as
a viable way oflooking and feeling younger," observed ASPRS President Dennis Lynch,
MD, "especially to compete in the workplace."
This comment raises what may be most interesting from our gender perspective:
not which gender is having the surgery, but rather which gender is the one for whom
the surgery is being performed. It may be that, as one writer explains, "the traditional
image of women as sexual objects has simply expanded: everyone has become an
object to be seen." The question remains: Seen by whom? Whom do we imagine seeing
us in our newly reconstructed state?28
For women, the answer is usually men. Women's beauty-thinness, breast size,
attractiveness-is valuable currency in the sexual marketplace, and given gender in-
equality, women have traded on their physical appearance to attract a mate. (Ironi-
cally, in one study, virtually all the male partners of women having plastic surgery
thought the procedure was unnecessary.) 29
For men, though, the answer is men. Men also are the object of the "male gaze"
and feel a need to look big, strong, and virile in front of other men. Take one extreme
example of this-penile enlargement surgery. This is a dramatic (and expensive)
procedure-every year about fifteen thousand men pay about $6,000 to have it done-
by which the penis can be lengthened by about two inches. (The average flaccid penis
is about 3.5 inches long; erect it's about 5.1 inches long.) In one of the few studies that
relies on data and not anecdotal evidence and thrilled testimonials, psychologist
Randy Klein found that the average penile length before surgery was 2.6 inches
(flaccid) and 5.4 inches (erect); after surgery, penile length was 3.8 inches (flaccid) and
5.7 inches (erect). That is, the only significant difference in length was when the penis
was flaccid.30
One would think that men engage in this painful procedure to be "better" lovers
or to please women more, and indeed many men say that is part of their motivation.
But in many cases it has far less to do with women's potential pleasure than men's
visual perception. Men who have this procedure more often experience what one
physician called "locker room syndrome"-the fear of being judged as inadequately
masculine by other men. Take, for example, the testimonial letter from a satisfied
customer:
I was always afraid to get into situations where I would have to shower with other
men or be seen by anyone. I can remember avoiding many of the sports and
activities I loved dearly, all because I was afraid that I would be seen and made
fun of ... I even avoided wearing shorts and tight clothes because of my fear that
others would notice me.
"The thing I missed most was the changing room camaraderie and male bonding
associated with these sports which was always something I enjoyed," writes another.
"I felt ashamed to even go to the urinals in a public place and have made sure I never
use these whilst other men are there too."31
Women, too, seem to undergo genital "reconstruction" surgery to please men.
Plastic surgery can tighten the labia, the vaginal walls, or the skin around the vagina-all
Figure 13.3. Models show off their tattoos.

Source: Kazuhiro Nogi/ AFP/Getty Images.
in the name of looking like a nubile twenty-something centerfold. And plastic sur-
gery can also physically reshape women so that they "appear" to be as virginal as
those models as well. Hymenoplasty-the surgical reconstruction of the hymen,
which is usually broken during first intercourse-was once used by panic-stricken
parents of "deflowered" Muslim, Asian, or Latina girls whose value in the marriage
market had suddenly plummeted to zero. Now it's increasingly popular among young
women who want to keep their earlier sexual experience a secret and who want their
new boyfriend to have the "thrill" of being their "first," or even among Christian
women who violated the abstinence pledge. "You wouldn't want your boyfriend/
future husband to feel ashamed because your hymen no longer existed" is the way
Revirgination.net put it in their web-based advertising. "It's the ultimate gift for the
man who has everything," says Jeannette Yarborough, a forty-year-old medical as-
sistant from San Antonio.32
One Los Angeles plastic surgeon offers "laser vaginal rejuvenation" that will
"completely re-sculpt and rejuvenate the vagina with a 1 hour laser procedure"; he
promises "enhancement of sexual gratification."33 Just whose sexual gratification
might be enhanced by lasering the labia is not difficult to guess.
Nowhere is gender inequality better observed than in the motivations of both
women and men in changing their bodies. It is the male gaze-whether of a potential
sexual partner, a potential sexual rival, or a competitor in the marketplace or athletic
field-that motivates such drastic measures, among both women and men.
Gender, Race, and Beauty
Standards of beauty may be culturally specific, but they leggy supermodels has led many Chinese women to
also cross national borders. In Asia, for example, undergo this painful procedure. The legs are broken
there is a steadily growing demand for eyelid surgery, and steel pins are pushed into the tibia. The legs are
to implant a second fold in the eyelid to make the eyes attached to an external brace that stretches them
look more Western. It is also the most common up to four inches over several months. (The patient
cosmetic surgical procedure for Asian Americans turns the screws each day to increase the stretch.
(figure 13.4). See figure 13.5.)
In recent years, Chinese women have also been
undergoing a far more dramatic cosmetic surgical Source: Jonathan Watts, "China's Cosmetic Surgery Craze"
procedure: leg lengthening. The influence of very tall, in Lancet, 363 , March 20, 2004, p. 958 .
Figure 13.4. Source: Reuters/Nir Elias.
Figure 13.5. Source: AP Photo/Elizabeth Dalziel.

SEXUALITY
Nowhere in our intimate lives is there greater expression of gender difference than in
our sexual relationships. Yet even here, as we shall see, there are signs of change and
convergence. As friendship and love have become "feminized" -that is, as the model of
appropriate behavior has come to resemble what we labeled as traditionally "feminine"
models of intimacy-sexuality has become increasingly "masculinized." The "mascu-
linization of sex"-including the pursuit of pleasure for its own sake, the increased at-
tention to orgasm, the multiplication of sexual partners, the universal interest in sexual
experimentation, and the separation of sexual behavior from love-is partly a result of
the technological transformation of sexuality (from birth control to the Internet) and
partly a result of the sexual revolution's promise of greater sexual freedom with fewer
emotional and physical consequences. In many respects, male and female sexuality are
similar-and becoming more similar all the time. There are virtually no differences
between males and females in the timing of their first sexual experience: The average
age of first intercourse for both males and females is seventeen years old.
But not only are behaviors converging, but so too are motivations: Males and fe-
males seem to be having sex for similar reasons-adventure, pleasure, emotional ex-
pression. But the interpretation of that similar behavior for similar reasons by the
wider society remains remarkably wedded to the sexual double standard, which re-
mains in place-perhaps a bit less stable now, true, but still in place.
In fact, the sexual revolution was a rejection of both general social prudishness-
social discomfort with and disapproval of sex in the first place-and the sexual double
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Figure 13.6. Trends in heterosexual experience among teens.

Source: From Pepper Schwartz and Virginia Rutter, The Gender of Sexuality: Sexual Possibilities (Altamira Press, 1998),
p. 165. Republished with permission of Altamira Press; permission conveyed through Copyright Clearance Center, Inc.
standard that prescribed different sexual behaviors for women and men. That double
standard was, after all, merely the nineteenth-century version of the interplanetary
theory of gender. According to writers of the time, women and men were different spe-
cies. As the celebrated French historian Jules Michelet put it in 1881:
[Woman] does nothing as we [men] do. She thinks, speaks, and acts differently.
Her tastes are different from our tastes. Her blood even does not flow in her
veins as ours does, at times it rushes through them like a foaming mountain
torrent ... She does not eat like us-neither as much nor of the same dishes. Why?
Chiefly, because she does not digest as we do. Her digestion is every moment
troubled with one thing: She yearns with her very bowels. The deep cup of love
(which is called the pelvis) is a sea of varying emotions, hindering the regularity of
the nutritive function. 34
Sex was invariably seen as bad for women-unhealthy and immoral-whereas it was
tolerated or even encouraged for men. "The majority of women (happily for them) are
not much troubled with sexual feelings of any kind," wrote one physician (obviously
male) in the 189os.35
Even when Alfred Kinsey undertook his pioneering studies of sexual behavior in
the decade after World War II, this double standard was still firmly in place. As he
wrote in 1953:
We have not understood how nearly alike females and males may be in their
sexual responses, and the extent to which they may differ. We have perpetuated
the age-old traditions concerning the slower responsiveness of the female, the
greater extent of the erogenous areas on the body of the female, the earlier sexual
development of the female, the idea that there are basic differences in the nature
of orgasm among females and males, the greater emotional content of the female's
sexual response, and still other ideas which are not based on scientifically accumu-
lated data-and all of which now appear to be incorrect. It now appears that the
very techniques which have been suggested in marriage manuals, both ancient and
modern , have given rise to some of the differences that we have thought inherent
in females and males.i6
Kinsey believed that males and females have basically the same physical responses,
though men are more influenced by psychological factors . Note in the preceding
passage how Kinsey suggests that the advice of experts actually creates much of the
difference between women and men. One study of gynecology textbooks published
between 1943 and 1972 bears this out. The researchers found that many textbooks as-
serted that women could not experience orgasm during intercourse. One textbook
writer observed that "sexual pleasure is entirely secondary or even absent" in women;
another described women's "almost universal frigidity." Given such assumptions, it's
not surprising that women were counseled to fake orgasms; after all, they weren't ca-
pable of real ones. "It is good advice to recommend to the women the advantage of
innocent simulation of sex responsiveness; as a matter of fact many women in their
desire to please their husbands learned the advantage of such innocent deception,"
was the way one text counseled gynecologists to raise the issue with their patients.37
IiJ '' ,,, 111 :n)Q I Ia

Even if women and men are not from different planets, there are some significant differences
between us as we approach each other in adolescent sexual relationships. Even the ideologies
of masculinity and femininity themselves serve as a touchstone for young men and women as
they begin to navigate heterosexual attractions and activities. Psychologist Deborah Tolman
and her colleagues found that the ideology of interplanetary gender is not the cause of adoles-
cent male and female experiences in heterosexual couplings as much as it is the consequence.
We learn to be sexual as we confirm that interplanetary theory; it comes to feel natural and
right. But, Tolman and her colleagues insist, it needn't be this way, and a feminist critique of
these first forays also challenges notions that sexual coercion is a "normal" part of the male
psyche.
The double standard persists today-perhaps less in what we actually do and more
in the way we think. Men still stand to gain status and women to lose status from
sexual experience: He's a stud who scores; she's a slut who "gives it up." Boys are taught
to try to get sex; girls are taught strategies to foil the boys' attempts. "The whole game
was to get a girl to give out," one man told sociologist Lillian Rubin. "You expected her
to resist; she had to if she wasn't going to ruin her reputation. But you kept pushing.
Part of it was the thrill of touching and being touched, but I've got to admit, part of it
was the conquest, too, and what you'd tell the guys at school the next day." "I felt as if
I should want to get it as often as possible," recalled another. "I guess that's because if
you're a guy, you're supposed to want it." "Women need a reason to have sex," com-
mented comedian Billy Crystal. "Men just need a place.''38
The sexual double standard is much more than a case of separate-but-equal
sexual scripting, much more than a case of one sexuality for Martians and another
for Venusians. The sexual double standard is itself a product of gender inequality, of
sexism-the unequal distribution of power in our society based on gender. Gender
inequality is reinforced by the ways we have come to assume that men are more
sexual than women, that men will always try to escalate sexual encounters to prove
their manhood, and that either women-or, rather, "ladies"-do not have strong
sexual feelings or those they do have must be constantly controlled lest they fall into
disrepute. With such a view, sex becomes a contest, not a means of connection; when
sexual pleasure happens, it's often seen as his victory over her resistance. Sexuality
becomes, in the words of feminist lawyer Catharine MacKinnon, "the linchpin of
gender inequality."39
Women are raised to believe that to be sexually active or "promiscuous" is to
transgress the rules of femininity. These rules are enforced not just by men, of course,
but also by other women and institutionalized in church, state, and school. The pur-
suit of sex transforms good girls into bad girls, so most women accept the cultural
standard of sexual minimalism-few partners, fewer positions, less pleasure, less sex
without emotional commitment. Such an ideology keeps a woman waiting for her
Prince Charming to liberate her, to arouse her with his tender kisses, and to release the
passion smoldering beneath her cooler surface. 40
The sexual double standard is far more rigidly enforced than any ideological dif-
ference in men's and women's patterns of friendship and love. As a result, we are far
more likely to observe significant gender differences in sexuality. Examples of these
different scripts abound-in what we think about, what we want, and what we actually
do. For example, consider what "counts" as sex. When they say the word "sex," women
and men often mean different things. In one study, monogamous heterosexual couples
in their mid-forties were asked, "How many times did you make love last week?"
Consistently, the researchers found, the men reported slightly higher numbers than
the women. What could this indicate-better memories? Masculine braggadocio?
Clandestine affairs? Solitary pleasures? When the researchers asked more questions,
they found the difference was the result of women and men counting different experi-
ences as "making love." The women would count one sexual encounter once, whereas
the men tallied up the number of their orgasms. Thus, whereas a woman might say,
"Hmm, we made love three times last week," her husband might say, "Hmm, let me
see, we did it three times, but one of those times we did it twice [meaning that he had
two orgasms], so I guess the answer is four."
The differences in counting criteria reveal deeper differences in the understand-
ing of sexual expression. Women's understanding that sex equals the entire encounter
gives women a somewhat broader range of sexual activities that count as sex. Men's
focus on orgasm as the defining feature of sex parallels men's tendency to exclude
all acts except intercourse from "having sex." Oral and manual stimulation are seen
as "foreplay" for men, as "sex" for women. Men cannot tally the encounter on their
mental scorecard unless intercourse also occurs. This often results in complex rules
about what constitutes a "technical virgin." (The public seminar on what counts as
"sexual relations" in the impeachment trial of President Clinton in the late 1990s bears
this out. Because he and Monica Lewinsky did not have sexual intercourse and instead
did what girls in my high school used to call "everything but," Clinton argued that he
did not lie when he denied having sex with Lewinsky. In his mind, as one of my pals
in the locker room explained it to me, "it only counts if you put it in." And some recent
medical evidence bears this out; a recent article in the Journal of the American Medical
Association reported that only intercourse "counted" as sex.) 41
Intercourse and orgasm are more important forms of sexual expression for men
than they are for women. This leads to a greater emphasis on the genitals as the
single most important erogenous zone for men. If men's sexuality is "phallocentric"-
revolving around the glorification and gratification of the penis-then it is not sur-
prising that men often develop elaborate relationships with their genitals. Some men
name their penis-"Willie," "John Thomas," or "Peter"-or give them cute nick-
names taken from mass-produced goods like "Whopper" and "Big Mac." Men may
come to believe that their penises have little personalities (or, perhaps, what feel like
big personalities), threatening to refuse to behave the way they are supposed to
behave. If men do not personify the penis, they objectify it; if it is not a little person,
then it is supposed to act like a machine, an instrument, a "tool." A man projects
"the coldness and hardness of metal" onto his flesh, writes the French philosopher
Emmanuel Reynaud.42
Few women name their genitals; fewer still think of their genitals as machines.
Can you imagine if they called their clitoris "Shirley" or their labia "Sally Ann"? In fact,
OH? Everybody knows that men think about sex more often than do women.
There's some evidence for this. When asked how often they think about
REALLY• sex, 54 percent of men and 19 percent of women said "very frequently"-but
no one measured exactly how much "very frequently" means. Once an hour?
Every ten minutes? Every five seconds? Some crazed pundits estimate that men think about sex
eight thousand times in a typical sixteen-hour waking day.
When the amount was quantified, the gender gap largely disappeared. Men's nineteen thoughts
about sex per day barely beat out thoughts about food, which reached eighteen. Most women,
on the other hand, reported ten thoughts per day about sex and fifteen about food. Men and
women thought about sleep eleven and eight times per day, respectively.
The study suggests men do think about sex more than women, but less than expected. "Males
did think more about sex but they also thought more about food and sleep," said the author. "It's
not clear whether they're just more focused on need-related states than females or whether they
simply recall thoughts more often or are more willing to report them."
Source: Terri D . Fisher, Zachary T. Moore, and Mary-Jo Pittenger, "Sex on the Brain? An Examination of Frequency
of Sexual Cognitions as a Function of Gender, Erotophilia, and Social Desirability" in Journal of Sex Roles, 49(1),
2012, pp. 69-77, available at http://www.ncbi.nlm .nih.gov/pubmed/2 I 512948.
women rarely refer to their genitals by their proper names at all, generally describing
vulva, labia, and clitoris with the generic "vagina" or even the more euphemistic
"down there" or "private parts." And it would be rare indeed to see a woman having a
conversation with her labia.43 So when they think about sex, men and women are often
thinking about different things.
Forty years earlier, Alfred Kinsey and his colleagues had found that 89 percent of
men who masturbated fantasized, whereas only 64 percent of women did. And what
men and women "use" for their fantasies differs. Today, nearly one-fourth (23 percent
of men and 11 percent of women) use X-rated movies or videos; 16 percent of men and
4 percent of women use sexually explicit books or magazines. 44 And what they fanta-
size about differs dramatically. A research assistant and I have collected over one
thousand sexual fantasies from students over the past decade. In those fantasies, defi-
nite gender patterns emerge. Men tend to fantasize about strangers, often more than
one at a time, doing a variety of well-scripted sexual acts; women tend to fantasize
about setting the right mood for lovemaking with their boyfriend or husband but
rarely visualize specific behaviors. Consider, for example, these "typical" scenes, com-
posites of fantasies we've collected. The following were reported by women:
My boyfriend and I are on a deserted island. The palm trees flap in the soft breeze,
the sand glistens. The sun is warm and we swim for a while in the cool blue water
and then come back to the beach and lie there. We rub suntan oil on each other's
bodies, and soon we are kissing passionately. Then we make love in the sand.
My husband and I are at a ski resort, in a cabin and it's late at night. It's snowing
outside, so we build a fire in the fireplace and lie down on the fur rug in front of it.
We sip champagne by the roaring fire, and then he kisses me and takes my blouse
off. Then we make love.
Compare them with this one, a composite of a typical man's fantasy:

I'm walking down the street and these two unbelievably gorgeous blondes are
walking towards me. Our eyes meet and we realize we have to have each other.
One of them kneels in front of me and unzips my fly and begins to give me the best
blow job I've ever had. The other pulls down her shorts and begins to play with
herself. Then I do her while the first one gets eaten out by the one I'm fucking. We
do it every way we can imagine, and then they get it on while I'm resting, but watch-
ing them turns me on, so we start up again. Then we all get up and walk away with
these big smiles on our faces. We never see one another again. 45
IiJ ,, ,,, I'' :t11 UIIa

Heterosexual behavior may be a compromise between "his" sexuality and "hers." Each side
feels like they compromise a little and achieve some sort of balance in the middle. Is this true?
And if so, what do women and men "really" want their sexual behaviors to look like? Working
with one of my colleagues, Rebecca Plante, we asked young women and men about their
sexual fantasies, thinking that the realm of fantasy was a realm without compromise, a world
in which you could have everything in just the way you like it. After analyzing college students'
sexual fantasies, we saw two significant trends, which we discuss in "The Gender of Desire."
First, we found that when we started the research, men and women had very different sexual
fantasies: Hers were saturated with romance and emotional closeness with someone she
loved, and his were explicitly detailed sexual acrobatics with strangers selected for certain
physical characteristics. Second, we began to notice over time that women's fantasies began
to change, and the direction of that change was increasingly toward the fantasies that men
had. Men's fantasies didn't change at all. This "masculinization" of sexual fantasies was not
universal, but it took up a greater and greater share of women's fantasies. Why do you think
that is?
Men's fantasies are idealized renditions of masculine sexual scripts: genitally fo-
cused, orgasm centered, and explicit in the spatial and temporal sequencing of sexual
behaviors. We know exactly who does what to whom in what precise order. Physical
characteristics of the other participants are invariably highly detailed; these partici-
pants are most often strangers (or famous models or actresses) chosen for their physical
attributes. Rarely do these fantasies include the physical setting for the encounter.
Women's fantasies, on the other hand, are replete with descriptions that set the scene-
geographic and temporal settings, with elaborate placement of props like candles,
rugs, and wine glasses. They often involve present or past partners. Explicitly sexual
description is minimal and usually involves vague references to lovemaking. One-
third of women fantasize about meeting for a sexual rendezvous at the Eiffel Tower;
about a third of men think about the White House.
Thus we might say that women's sexual imaginations are impoverished at the ex-
pense of highly developed sensual imaginations; by contrast, men's sensual imagina-
tions are impoverished by their highly developed sexual imaginations. (These differences
hold for both heterosexual and homosexual women and men, a further indication that
the basic component in our sexual scripts is gender, not sexual orientation.) Although
there has been some evidence of shifts in women's fantasies toward more sexually ex-
plicit scenes and increasing comfort with explicit language, these fantasies do reveal
both what we think and what we think we are supposed to think about when we think
about sex.46
Where do these dramatically different mental landscapes come from? One place,
of course, is sexual representation. Pornography occupies a special place in the devel-
opment of men's sexuality. Nearly all men confess to having some exposure to
pornography, at least as adolescents; indeed, for many men the first naked women they
see are in pornographic magazines. And pornography has been the site of significant
political protest-from an erotophobic right wing that considers pornography to be as
degrading to human dignity as birth control information, homosexuality, and abor-
tion to radical feminist campaigns that see pornography as a vicious expression of
misogyny, on a par with rape, spouse abuse, and genital mutilation.
Whereas the right wing's efforts rehearsed America's discomfort with all things
sexual, the radical feminist critique of pornography transformed the political debate,
arguing that when men look at pornographic images of naked women, they are
actually participating in a culture-wide hatred of and contempt for women. Porno-
graphic images are about the subordination of women; pornography "makes sexism
sexy," in the words of one activist. These are not fictional representations of fantasy;
these are documentaries of rape and torture, performed for men's sexual arousal. Here
is one pornographic director and actor, commenting on his "craft":
My whole reason for being in the [pornography] Industry is to satisfy the desire of
the men in the world who basically don't much care for women and want to see the
men in my Industry getting even with the women they couldn't have when they
were growing up ... So when we come on a woman's face or somewhat brutalize
her sexually, we're getting even for their lost dreams. I believe this. I've heard audi-
ences cheer me when I do something foul on screen. When I've strangled a person
or sodomized a person or brutalized a person, the audience is cheering my action,
and then when I've fulfilled my warped desire, the audience applauds.47
The claims of antipornography feminists-that pornography causes rape or

that it numbs us to the real effect of real violence in women's lives-have been diffi-
cult to demonstrate empirically. Few studies have shown such an empirical relation-
ship, though several have documented some modest changes in men's attitudes
immediately after exposure to violent pornography. (These changes tend to dissipate
in the weeks after exposure.) Yet whether or not there is any empirical evidence that
pornography alone causes rape or violence, there remains the shocking difference
between us: On any given day in the United States, there are men masturbating to
images of women enduring sexual torture, genital mutilation, rape, and violence.
Surely, this points to a dramatic difference between women's and men's sexualities-
one can hardly imagine many women masturbating to reenactments of Lorena Bobbitt's
ministrations to her husband. Violence is rarely sexualized for women; that such
images can be such a routine and casual turn-on for many men should at least give
us pause. 48
Given men's and women's different sexual mentalities, it's not surprising that we
develop different sexualities, as evidenced in our attitudes and behaviors. For one
thing, women's inclusion of their boyfriend or husband in their fantasies indicates
that women's sexuality often requires an emotional connection to be fully activated.
"For sex to really work for me, I need to feel an emotional something," one woman told
Lillian Rubin. "Without that, it's just another athletic activity, only not as satisfying,
because when I swim or run, I feel good afterward." Women's first sexual experiences
are more likely to occur in the context of a committed relationship. 49
Because women tend to connect sex and emotion, it makes sense that they would
be less interested in one-night stands and in affairs and nonmonogamy. In one survey,
women were about 20 percent more likely to agree that one-night stands are degrading
(47 percent of the men agreed, 68 percent of the women agreed). Men are more likely
to be unfaithful to their spouse, though that gender gap has closed considerably in the
past two decades. And, of course, the separation of sex and emotion means that men
are more likely to have had more sexual partners than women. In figure 13.6, one can
see these differences and also observe how this gender gap has also been narrowing
over the past few decades.50
Men's wider sexual repertoire usually includes desiring oral sex, about which
women report being far less enthusiastic. As one woman explained:
I like going down on him. It makes him feel good, truly good. I don't find it unpleasant.
I don't say I wish I could do it all the time. I don't equate it with a sale at Blooming-
dale's. That I could do all the time. But it's not like going to the dentist either. It's
between two extremes. Closer to Bloomingdale's than to the dentist.51
OH? Men are more likely to be unfaithful to their spouse. According to evolutionary
psychologists, men's evolutionary imperative propels men to attempt to spread
REALLY• their seed far and wide, while psychologists often argue that differential sociali-
zation leaves men far better able to separate love and sex.
Actually, the most recent study found only modest differences in infidelity between women
and men: 32 percent to 19 percent, respectively.
The actual differences aren't in the rate, but in the motivation. For men, predictors of infidelity
tended to be personality variables, including propensity for sexual excitation (becoming easily
aroused by many triggers and situations) and concern about sexual performance failure. (This
latter finding might seem counterintuitive, but other studies confirm this. "People might seek out
high-risk situations to help them become aroused, or they might choose to have sex with a part-
ner outside of their regular relationship because they feel they have an 'out' if the encounter
doesn't go well-they don't have to see them again," says the study's author.)
For women, it's far less about their personality and far more a comment on their relation-
ship. Women who are dissatisfied with their relationship are more than twice as likely to
cheat; those who feel they are sexually incompatible with their partners are nearly three
times as likely.
Source: Kristen P. Mark, Erick Janssen, and Robin R. Milhausen, .. Infidelity in Heterosexual Couples: Demographic, In-
terpersonal, and Personality-Related Predictors ofExtradyadic Sex" in Archives of Sexual Behavior, (40)2011, 971-982 ..
But perhaps this has less to do with the intrinsic meaning of the act and more to do
with the gender of the actor. For example, when men describe their experiences with
oral sex, it is nearly always from the position of power. Whether fellatio- "I feel so
powerful when I see her kneeling in front of me"-or cunnilingus- "being able to get
her off with my tongue makes me feel so powerful"-men experience the giving and
receiving of oral sex as an expression of their power. By contrast, many women per-
ceive both giving and receiving oral sex from the position of powerlessness-not nec-
essarily because they are forced to do so, but rather because "it makes him happy" for
them to either do it or to let him do it. So oral sex, like intercourse, allows him to feel
"like a man," regardless of who does what to whom.
GENDERED SEXUAL SOCIALIZATION

Where does the sexual gender gap come from? Though we are constantly bombarded
with sexual images in the media and receive lessons about sexual morality from our
parents, our teachers, and our religious institutions, most of our sexual learning comes
during adolescence, and most of our adolescent sexual socialization is provided by
our peers. We teach ourselves and each other about what feels good and why, and then
we practice performing those activities until they feel the way we're told they're sup-
posed to feel.
Remember, for example, those junior high school "wrestling matches"-two
adolescents trying to negotiate, usually without words, the extent of their sexual con-
tact. Both the boy and the girl have goals, though the goals may be very different. "His"
goal, of course, is to score-and toward that end he has a variety of maneuvers, argu-
ments, and other strategies his friends have taught him. "Her" goal may be pleasure,
but it is also to preserve and protect her reputation as a "good girl," which requires that
she be seen as alluring but not "easy." "Young men come to sex with quite different
expectations and desires than do young women," the NORC sex survey declared.
"Young women often go along with intercourse the first time, finding little physical
pleasure in it, and a substantial number report being forced to have intercourse."52
Let's follow one typical adolescent boy and girl as they negotiate their competing
desires. If they have been dating for a while, he may decide it's time to escalate the
sexual relationship, to move from kissing (first base) to touching her breast (second
base). It is nearly universally "his" job to escalate and "her" job to decide if she will let
him. So he moves his hand toward her breast, on top of her blouse. She lets him.
Is our hero now thinking, "Mmmm. This feels good. Her breast is so soft and
warm. I think I'll keep my hand here for a while"? Unlikely. If he's typical, he's already
strategizing how to get underneath her blouse. And she's thinking-what? "Mmmm.
This feels good. I like this better than when that other guy tried this a few weeks ago."
More likely she is thinking, "I know he's going to try to get underneath my blouse now.
Do I want him to? How do I stop him without hurting his feelings?"
Each time he escalates, he barely has time to enjoy it before developing his strategy
to get to the next stage. And each time, she has to decide whether and how to prevent
him from doing so. Rarely is either of them fully experiencing the thrill and pleasure
of exploring the other's body. Both are actually far ahead, in the future, plotting their
next move. Much of our adolescent sexual socialization emphasizes the future over
the present; it often takes place as much in the future tense as the present tense.
If they are not in the same "time zone," you'd think, at least, that they'd be on the
same planet. (Of course, they might each be on Mars and Venus anyway!) But, even
here, their attention is divided. He may be thinking, "Wow, I got to third base! I can't
wait to tell the other guys!" whereas she is thinking, "Oh, my God, I let him go too far.
I hope none of my friends finds out!" So he promises not to tell anyone (even though
that may be a lie) in return for her allowing him to go a bit further. Spatially, too, they
are in different places-each with same-sex peers, enhancing and preserving their
reputations. As one feminist researcher put it, "Although their sexual interest is fo-
cused on the opposite sex, it is primarily to their same-sex peers that adolescents will
look for validation of their sexual attitudes and accomplishments." Given this spatial
and temporal separation-both in the future and with their same-sex peers-it's a
wonder that pleasure and intimacy happen at all! 53
This dynamic helps to explain why there seems to be so much pressure on adolescents
and why there are so many breakdowns in communication, including boys attempting
to go further than girls want them to. That young boys and young girls have sexual ex-
periences for reasons other than intimacy and pleasure has been a truism in sex re-
search. Psychologist Charlene Muehlenhard, for example, has been studying adolescents'
sexual encounters for more than a decade. She found that more men (57-4 percent) than
women (38.7 percent) reported that they had engaged in unwanted sexual intercourse
due to being enticed-that is, the other person made an advance that the person had
difficulty refusing. More men (33.5 percent) than women (11.9 percent) had unwanted
sexual intercourse because they wanted to get sexual experience, wanted something to
talk about, or wanted to build up their confidence. And more men (18-4 percent) than
women (4.5 percent) said they engaged in sexual intercourse because they did not want
to appear to be homosexual, shy, afraid, or unmasculine or unfeminine. Peer pressure
was a factor for 10.9 percent of the men but only o.6 percent of the women.54
By the time we get to be adults, this socialized distance between women and men
can ossify into the different experiences we are said to have. Each gender is seeking to
express different feelings, for different reasons, with different repertoires, and so it may
appear that we are originally from different planets. On an episode of Friends, the tact-
less Phoebe is making small talk with her new boyfriend's mother and mentions that
"he is the most gentle lover I've ever had." His mother looks aghast at this inappropriate
revelation, but Phoebe misunderstands the woman's shock and reassures her. "Oh-I
don't mean in a sissy way. Believe me, when he gets going, he's all man!" In the British
film Sammy and Rosie Get Laid, a lesbian character suggests that heterosexuals are to
be pitied. "The women spend all their time trying to come, and they're unsuccessful,
and the men spend all their time trying not to come, and they're unsuccessful also."
She has a point. Because many men believe that adequate sexual functioning is
being able to delay ejaculation, some develop strategies to prevent what they consider
to be premature ejaculation-strategies that exaggerate emotional distancing, phal-
locentrism, the focus on orgasm, and objectification. Here's how Woody Allen put it in
a stand-up comedy routine from the mid-196os. After describing himself as a "stud,"
Allen says:
When making love, in an effort to [pause] to prolong [pause] the moment of
ecstasy, I think of baseball players. All right, now you know. So the two of us are
making love violently, and she's digging it, so I figure I'd better start thinking of
OH? The best sex is when you both experience simultaneous orgasm.
While there is no biological reason why simultaneous orgasm would be
REALLY• more pleasurable, most of us understand it as an elusive quarry, sort of like
seeing Bigfoot.
Actually, come to think of it, nearly half of respondents (46 percent) in a
recent survey believed that they were more likely to see Bigfoot than to "finish" at the same time.
On the other hand, just over one in ten Americans under twenty-five said that they would
read a text message while having sex.
Source: http://www.marketwatch .com/story/durex-survey-reveals-what-americans-really-want-in-the-bedroom-
2012-04-30 and Harper's Index, September, 2010, p. 11.
baseball players pretty quickly. So I figure it's one out, and the Giants are up. Mays
lines a single to right. He takes second on a wild pitch. Now she's digging her nails
into my neck. I decide to pinch-hit for McCovey. [pause for laughter] Alou pops
out. Haller singles, Mays takes third. Now I've got a first and third situation. Two
outs and the Giants are behind one run. I don't know whether to squeeze or to
steal. [pause for laughter] She's been in the shower for ten minutes already. [pause]
I can't tell you anymore, this is too personal. [pause] The Giants won.
Readers may be struck by several things-the imputation of violence, how her

pleasure leads to his decision to think of baseball players, the requirement of victory
in the game, and the sexual innuendo contained in the sports language. The text also
supplies a startling revelation of male sexual distancing. Here's a device that is so suc-
cessful at delaying ejaculation (or any sexual connection) that the narrator is rendered
utterly unaware of his partner's experience. "She's been in the shower for ten minutes
already," Allen remarks, as if he's just noticed. Other men describe mentally scripting
sports scenes, reciting multiplication tables, or, in the case of one of my students, a
chemistry major, reciting, in order, the elements of the periodic table. No wonder
women often wonder what men are thinking about during sex!
And that doesn't factor in the variety of creams and ointments that are advertised
in the back of men's magazines, products men can apply to their penises before inter-
course to enable them to delay ejaculation. Such products have been incorporated into
new "endurance" condoms. But what are these creams and ointments that promise
delayed ejaculation? Most use benzocaine, a mild anesthetic (similar to the novocaine
your dentist uses). Is it possible that men experience themselves as better lovers when
they feel less pleasure?55
When it goes "right," we clearly observe the gendered qualities of sex. Another
illustration of the genderedness of sex comes from research on what happens when
things go wrong. For example, when men seek therapeutic evaluation for sexual prob-
lems, they rarely describe not experiencing enough pleasure. One man who experi-
enced premature ejaculation reported that he felt like he "isn't a real man" because he
"can't satisfy a woman." Another, with erectile problems, told a therapist that "a real
man never has to ask his wife for anything sexually" and that he "should be able to
please her whenever he wants." Each of these men thus expressed a sexual problem in
gender terms; each feared that his sexual problem damaged his masculinity, made him
less of a real man. For them, sexuality was less about mutual pleasuring and more
about hydraulic functioning. Is it any wonder that men use the language of the work-
place (in addition to using metaphors from sports and war) to describe sexual experi-
ences? We use the "tool" to "get the job done," which is, of course, to "achieve" orgasm,
or else we experience "performance anxiety." Men with sexual problems are rarely
gender nonconformists, unable or unwilling to follow the rules of masculine sexual
adequacy. If anything, they are overconformists to norms that define sexual adequacy
by the ability to function like a well-oiled machine.56
It's in this gendered context that we can also understand the enormous popularity
of Viagra and other drugs that minister to men's sexual problems. Although most men
who experience "erectile dysfunction" (the current term for what used to be called
"impotence," a term that equates erections with power in the first place) also experience
"morning erections"-which indicates that their problems are not physiological but
rather psychological-Viagra and other drugs enable men to achieve and sustain erec-
tions. Viagra was the most successful new drug ever launched in the United States; over
thirty-five thousand prescriptions were filled within the first two weeks on the market.
Many men crowed that they had found the "magic bullet," the fountain of sexual youth.
"You just keep going all night," gushed one man. "The performance is unbelievable."57
Certainly believable, however, was how these men experienced the demands of
male sexuality in mechanical terms and how relieved they were that the machine had
been repaired. And no sooner did Viagra appear on the market than it was misunder-
stood. Viagra enables erections when there is adequate sexual desire-that is, when
the men want to have sex and are aroused. Viagra does not work as an aphrodisiac,
creating the desire in the first place. And what therapists call "inhibited sexual desire,"
or "low sexual interest"-once, interestingly, called "frigidity" in women-is now the
leading sexual problem among men. Unfortunately, medical knowledge has yet to find
a pharmaceutical remedy for that.58
CLOSING THE SEXUAL GENDER GAP

Despite the persistence of gender differences in sexual attitudes and behaviors, the
sexual gender gap has been closing in recent years, as women's and men's sexual ex-
periences come to more closely resemble one another's. Or, rather, women's have come
to resemble men's. As I argued earlier, our experience oflove has been feminized, and
our sexuality has been increasingly "masculinized." Whereas men's sexual behavior
has hardly changed, women's sexual behavior has changed dramatically, moving
increasingly closer to the behavior of men. (This change probably both thrills and
terrifies men.)
Part of this transformation has been the result of the technological breakthroughs
and ideological shifts that have come to be known as the "sexual revolution." Since
the 1960s, the pursuit of sexual pleasure for its own sake has been increasingly avail-
able to women, as adequate and relatively safe birth control and legal abortion have
made it possible to separate fully sexual activity from reproduction. (Men, of course,
always were able to pursue sexual pleasure for its own sake; thus, in this sense, women's
sexuality has come to more closely resemble men's.) "I guess sex was originally to pro-
duce another body; then I guess it was for love; nowadays it's just for feeling good," was
the way one fifteen-year-old boy summed up the shift. In addition, widespread sex
education has made people more sexually aware-but not necessarily more sexually
active. In one recent review of fifty-three studies that examined the effects of sex educa-
tion and HIV education on sexual activity, twenty-seven found no changes in rates of
sexual activity, and twenty-two observed marked decreases, delayed onset of activity,
and reduced number of sexual partners. Only three studies found any increase in sexual
activity associated with sex education. It would appear that sex education enables
people to make better sexual decisions and encourages more responsibility, not less.)59
Ideologically, feminism made the pursuit of sexual pleasure, the expression of
women's sexual autonomy, a political goal. No longer would women believe that they
were sexually disinterested, passive, and virtuous asexual angels. Women were as en-
titled to pleasure as men were. And, practically, they knew how to get it, after feminists
exposed what one feminist called "the myth of the vaginal orgasm." Feminism was
thus, in part, a political resistance to what we might call the "socialized asexuality" of
feminine sexuality. "Part of my attraction to feminism involved the right to be a sexual
person," recalls one woman. Another envisioned a feminism that "validates the right
for a woman to say yes instead of no." In the past three decades, then, it's been women's
sexuality that has been transformed, as women have sought to express their own
sexual agency. Consider, for example, the transformation of the idea of sexual experi-
ence in the first place. Whereas it used to be that men were expected to have some
sexual experience prior to marriage, many women and men placed a premium on
women's virginity. Not anymore. As Lillian Rubin writes, "In the brief span of one
generation-from the 1940s to the 196os-we went from mothers who believed their
virginity was their most prized possession to daughters for whom it was a burden."
Virginity was no longer "a treasure to be safeguarded"; now, it was "a problem to be
solved."60
Rates of and motivations for masturbation have also begun to converge. What,
after all, is masturbation but self-pleasuring-surely an expression of sexual agency.
One recent large-scale national sex survey found that men's and women's motivations
for masturbation are roughly similar (figure 13.7). As are sexual attitudes. In the NORC
sex survey, 36 percent of men and 53 percent of women born between 1933 and 1942
believed that premarital sex is almost always wrong. These numbers declined for both
groups but declined far more sharply for women, so that for those born between 1963
and 1974, only 16 percent of men and 22 percent of women believed that premarital sex
is almost always wrong.61
Sexual behaviors, too, have grown increasingly similar. Among teenage boys,
sexual experience has remained virtually the same since the mid-194os, with about
70 percent of all high school-aged boys having had sexual intercourse (the rates were
about 50 percent for those who went to high school in the late 1920s). But the rates
for high school girls have increased dramatically, up from 5 percent in the 1920s to
20 percent in the late 1940s, to 55 percent in 1982 and 60 percent in 1991. There has been
a bit of a decline since the 1990s. About one in five teenagers has had sex before age
fifteen.62 And the age of first intercourse has steadily declined for both boys and girls.
Similarly, although the rates of teenage virgins have declined for both girls and boys,
they have declined more rapidly for girls. The number of teenagers who have had more
than five different sexual partners by their eighteenth birthday has increased for both
sexes; the rate of increase is greater for girls as well. 63
• Women • Men
53%
People who use vibrators when masturbating -
17%
48%
People who admit to masturbating weekly
55%
22%
People who admit to masturbating daily
40%
70%
Married people who admit to masturbating
70%
89%
People who admit to masturbating
95%
Figure 13.7. Masturbation statistics-Statistic Brain.

Source: 2014 Statistic Brain Research Institute, publishing as Statistic Brain. 7/7/2014. http:/ /www.statisticbrain.
com/ masturbation-statistics/.
JUST SAYING NO
Just as adolescents' sexual experiences are becoming more similar, more "masculin-
ized," a backlash political campaign has also been underway to stop adolescent sex in
its tracks. Abstinence campaigns encourage young people to "just say no" to sex, to
refrain from sexual intercourse until marriage. The campaigns were begun in the early
1990s in Southern Baptist churches and fueled in part by growing concern about sexually
transmitted diseases (STDs), especially HIV. Teenagers are now encouraged to take a
"virginity pledge" and avoid sexual intercourse until marriage. Abstinence has such
political currency that it has now been celebrated as a dramatic success; a cover story in
Newsweek magazine portrayed two white teenagers, happily hugging under the head-
line "The New Virginity: Why More Teens Are Choosing Not to Have Sex." Inside, the
magazine offered data to show that the total percentage of high school students who say
they've had sex had dropped from more than 50 percent in 1991 to slightly more than
45 percent in 2001. Teen birth rates had likewise dropped from 6 percent to about
5 percent of all births.64 Proponents point to the success of abstinence-based sex educa-
tion and elaborate publicity campaigns in a 10 percent drop in teen sexual activity.
Such efforts do appear to have some effect, but they are hardly a counterweight to
the other messages teenagers are getting. Sociologist Peter Bearman analyzed data
from over ninety thousand students and found that taking a virginity pledge does lead
an average teenager to delay his or her first act of intercourse- by about eighteen
months. And the pledges are effective only for students up to age seventeen. By the
time students are twenty years old, over 90 percent of both boys and girls are sexually
active. And the pledges were not effective at all if a significant proportion of students
at the school were taking the pledges. That is, taking the pledges seems to be a way of
creating a "deviant" subculture, a group of nonconformists, what Bearman called an
"identity movement"-add "virgins" to the Goths, Deadheads, jocks, nerds, preppies,
and rappers. Ironically, what that means is that in those schools where most kids take
Table 13.1. Percentage of Americans Performing Certain Sexual Behaviors in the Past Year, 2010 (N = 5,865)
Age Groups
14-15 16-17 18-19 20-24 25-29 30-39 40-49 50-59 60-69 70+
Sexual Behaviors Men Women Men Women Men Women Men Women Men Women Men Women Men Women Men Women Men Women Men Women
Masturbated alone 62% 40% 75% 45% 81% 60% 83% 64% 84% 72% 80% 63% 76% 65% 72% 54% 61% 47% 46% 33%
Masturbated with partner 5% 8% 16% 19% 42% 36% 44% 36% 49% 48% 45% 43% 38% 35% 28% 18% 17% 13% 13% 5%
Received oral from women 12% 1% 31% 5% 54% 4% 63% 9% 77% 3% 78% 5% 62% 2% 49% 1% 38% 1% 19% 2%
Received oral from men 1% 10% 3% 24% 6% 58% 6% 70% 5% 72% 6% 59% 6% 52% 8% 34% 3% 25% 2% 8%
Gave oral to women 8% 2% 18% 7% 51% 2% 55% 9% 74% 3% 69% 4% 57% 3% 44% 1% 34% 1% 24% 2%
Gave oral to men 1% 12% 2% 22% 4% 59% 7% 74% 5% 76% 5% 59% 7% 53% 8% 36% 3% 23% 3% 7%
Vaginal intercourse 9% 11% 30% 30% 53% 62% 63% 80% 86% 87% 85% 74% 74% 70% 58% 51% 54% 42% 43% 22%
Received penis in anus 1% 4% 1% 5% 4% 18% 5% 23% 4% 21% 3% 22% 4% 12% 5% 6% 1% 4% 2% 1%
Inserted penis into anus 3% 6% 6% 11% 27% 24% 21% 11% 6% 2%
Source: Tables I and 2 in Herbenick et al., "Sexual Behavior in the United States: Results from a National Probability Sample of Men and Women Ages 14- 94," Journal of Sexual
Medicine, 20 I0, ?(suppl. 5):255- 265. ©20 IO International Society for Sexual Medicine. Reprinted by permission of John Wiley and Sons via Copyright Clearance Center.
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the pledges-in other words, in those very fundamentalist communities where such
pledges are virtually mandated and have become normative-they don't delay sexual
activity at all. And, what's worse, when the pledgers finally did have sex, they were far
less likely to use contraception-and with no reduction in STDs, either.65
Not only don't virginity pledges seem to reduce the amount of teen sexual activity,
but also they often lead to some strange understandings of sex itself. Because absti-
nence pledges are often bundled with religious resistance to sex education, kids seem
not to know what abstinence actually means. In one study, 20 percent of teenagers
who had taken an abstinence pledge believed that oral sex did not violate their pledge,
and 10 percent believed that anal sex was still within the boundaries of abstinence. On
the other hand, another 10 percent believed that kissing with tongues did violate their
abstinence pledge.
It also appears that only boys' rates are declining, not girls' rates. Why would this be
so? Partly, sociologists Barbara Risman and Pepper Schwartz argue, because girls are
now presumed to be sexually active inside a romantic relationship, and so boys are more
likely to begin their sexual lives with a girlfriend. (In the past, boys were more likely to
begin their sexual careers furtively, with someone outside their social circle, a "bad girl.")
The decline in boys' rates, then, "reflects girls' increasing negotiation power to restrict sex
to relationships"; teen pregnancies are further testament to the increasing power of girls
within romantic relationships because they are far more likely to insist on safer sex
practices. If that's the case, feminism-the empowerment of women and girls-may actu-
ally have had a dampening effect on boys' sexual behaviors by empowering girls to insist
on safer sex and relationship intimacy, whereas right-wing efforts to encourage students
to "just say no" will actually increase teen pregnancy as fewer teenagers use contraception.66
CAMPUS CONVERGENCE: THE HOOK-UP CULTURE

One place where one can observe the political ramifications of the gender convergence
in sexual behavior is the campus, where a culture of hooking up has virtually erased
the older pattern of "rating-dating-mating" observed by sociologist Willard Waller
decades ago. Waller saw a competitive marketplace, in which students evaluated their
marketability in reference to both the opposite sex and the evaluations of their same-
sex friends and sought to date appropriately-slightly up, but not too much. 67 But
although the rest of the culture has embraced "dating"-singles go on blind dates or
try speed dating, and even toddlers have "play dates"-colleges and universities have
utterly abandoned the idea. No longer do students meet and mate with the intention
of marrying. On campus, "hooking up" is the norm.
"Hooking up" is a deliberately vague blanket term; one set of researchers defines
it as "a sexual encounter which may nor may not include sexual intercourse, usually
occurring on only one occasion between two people who are strangers or brief ac-
quaintances."68 Although that seems to cover most cases, it fails to include those people
who hook up more than once or twice or "sex buddies" (acquaintances who meet regu-
larly for sex but rarely, if ever, associate otherwise) or "friends with benefits" (friends
who do not care to become romantic partners but may include sex among the activi-
ties they enjoy together).
On many campuses, the sexual marketplace is organized around groups of
same-sex peers who go out together and meet an opposite-sex peer group in a casual
setting like a bar or a party. Party scenes feature hooking up as the standard mode of
sexual interaction. In collaborative research I have undertaken with other sociologists
at Stanford, Indiana, Ithaca, and Arizona among a dozen other schools surveying over
twenty thousand students, we have found that hooking up covers a multitude of be-
haviors, including kissing and nongenital touching (34 percent), manual stimulation
of the genitals (19 percent), oral sex (22 percent), and intercourse (23 percent). Almost
all hooking up involves more alcohol than sex: Men averaged 4.7 drinks on their most
recent hook-up, women 2.9 drinks. It would appear that Willard Waller's 1937 observa-
tion of "rating-dating-mating" has been, in some ways, reversed. Today, it is less about
dating to find an appropriate mate and more, one might say, about mating to find an
appropriate date!
There are two large gender differences in the hookup culture: pleasure and pur-
pose. The Online College Social Life Survey found a significant "orgasm gap" between
women and men. In their most recent hookup, only 19 percent of the women had an
orgasm, compared with 44 percent of the men. When we asked if their partner had an
orgasm in their last hookup, the women's estimations of their male partners' pleasure
matched the men's self-reports pretty exactly. But the men seem to have dramatically
overestimated their female partners' pleasure. For cunnilingus, the women reported
an orgasm 40 percent of the time (the men estimated about 60 percent), and for inter-
course, the women reported 34 percent (and the men estimated 58 percent).
Which means that either men aren't especially perceptive or that women are
faking it. Or both. In interviews, women said that they sometimes faked it "to make
them feel like they've done their job," or just basically "to end it." As Trish, a university
senior, puts it:
He was, like trying so hard to make me come. And there was like, no way it was
going to happen. I felt so bad for him. I mean, I had gone down on him and he came
already, and he was, like, trying to be a good sport about it, but really ... So I just
faked it, and he felt good and I felt relieved. 69
Although hooking up is a mutual and consensual activity, it is up to the women to

negotiate whether the hooking up proceeds to a deeper level of intimacy. And this is
where the gender politics comes in. Women tend to be more ambivalent about the
hookup culture; some report feeling sexy and desirable, while others feel it's cheap and
rarely leads anywhere. On many campuses, women's initiative is typically to begin a con-
versation called the "DTR"-Define the Relationship, or, more simply, "the talk." "Are we
a couple or not?" she asks. And, as one report worries, when she asks, "he decides."70
Antifeminist groups fret about women's lost modesty, chastity, or even their ca-
pitulation to male standards of sexual conduct. Women, they counsel, must remember
the message that their grandmothers might once have told them: "Men want only one
thing." And so women, if they yearn for commitment and marriage, have to relearn
how to just say no. Such strategies, though, ignore the pleasure-seeking behaviors and
intentions of both women and men and assume that women would be naturally chaste
and virginal, were it not for those rapaciously predatory men. Such an image is prob-
ably insulting to women, who have shown themselves capable of sexual entitlement
and agency themselves; and it is certainly insulting to men, because it assumes that
men are, equally inevitably, violent, rapacious predators.
Perhaps the problem is not the sex, but rather the gender-that is, not the consen-
sual sexual activity between two consenting near-adults, but rather the gender in-
equality that accompanies it. Mutually negotiated sexual contact-by which I mean
mutually and soberly negotiated-with care for the integrity of the partner can be a
pleasurable moment or form the basis of a longer-lasting connection. The question is
who gets to decide.
ADULT SEXUAL CONVERGENCE

For adults, rates of premarital sex and the number of sex partners also seem to be
moving closer. In another survey, 99 percent of male college graduates and 90 percent
of female college graduates said that they had had sex before marriage. Researchers in
one survey of sexual behavior from the 1970s found far greater sexual activity and
greater variety among married women in the 1970s than Kinsey had found in the late
1940s. Ninety percent of all married women claimed to be happy with their sex lives;
75 percent were content with its frequency, whereas 25 percent wanted more. A study
in the 1980s echoed this trend. Women and men displayed similar sexual desires-
both wanted frequent sex, were happiest when initiating and refusing sex in equal
amounts, and became discontent when sex was infrequent.71
What turns us on sexually is also similar. In the 1970s, psychologist Julia Heiman
developed a way to measure women's sexual arousal. Samples of college women lis-
tened to two sorts of tapes-romantic and explicitly sexual-while wearing a tampon-
like device that measured blood flow to the vagina. Like men, women were far more
sexually aroused by explicit sex talk than they were by romance. And interest in sexual
variety also appears to be converging. Experiences of oral sex have increased dramati-
cally for both women and men. And, if one twenty-year-old college woman is to be
believed, the meanings attached to oral sex seem to be shifting as well. "I was about 16
and I had this friend-not a boyfriend, a boy friend-and I didn't know what to give
OH?
REALLY•
Women are pressured into hooking up, even though they don't want to. And
they don't enjoy it.
That's what you'd hear if you were to listen to some of the cultural critics of
campus life. Campus life is wanton debauchery, where drug-addled and drunk
students grope each other mindlessly. No wait, that was the 1960s. Actually, it's what people
always have said about college life-even in the 1800s.
But it doesn't seem to be true any longer. Two recent studies of hooking up found the experi-
ence to be largely positive for both women and men (though slightly more positive for men), while
another found no differences in reports of psychological problems among those college students
who engaged in casual sex ("friends with benefits") compared to those who were in more com-
mitted relationships.
Sources: Jesse Own and Frank Fincham, "Young Adults' Emotional Reactions After Hooking Up Encounters" in
Archives of Sexual Behavior, April 2011 , pp. 321-330; Marla Eisenberg, Diann M. Ackard, Michael Resnick, and
Dianne Neumark-Sztainer, "Casual Sex and Psychological Health Among Young Adults: Is Having ' Friends with
Benefits' Emotionally Damaging?" in Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health , 41(4) , December 2009,
pp. 231-237.
"If we're goinrr to befriends with benefit f want health and dental.
Figure 13.8. William Haefeli/The New Yorker Collection/The Cartoon Bank.
COMPARED to WHAT?
If conservatives in the United States are determined to reduce the rates of sexual activity among
young Americans, cultural conservatives in Japan may be more concerned about how to raise it.
In a recent study by the Japan Family Planning Association, more than one-third (36 percent)
of all males aged sixteen to nineteen described themselves as "indifferent or averse" toward
having sex. That's nearly a 20 percent increase in just two years. But even if they were interested,
they'd need to find a partner. Nearly three-fifths (59 percent) of Japanese females aged sixteen to
nineteen said that they were uninterested or averse to sex.
Japanese politicians are seriously concerned about the declining birth rate, which has dipped
below replacement levels.
him for his birthday, so I gave him a blow job. I wanted to know what it was like; it was
just for kicks," is what she told an interviewer, who noticed she had not "a trace of
embarrassment or self-consciousness."72
It would appear that women are having more sex and enjoying it more than ever
in our history. And so women are far less likely, now, to fake orgasm. When Lillian
Rubin interviewed white working-class women in the mid-197os for her study Worlds
of Pain, she found that over 70 percent of the women said they faked orgasm at least
some of the time. Now, she finds that the same percentage says that they never fake it.
(Although the evidence from college students may actually begin to push that rate
back upward.) 73
The evidence of gender convergence does not mean that there are no differences
between women and men in their sexual expression. It still means different things to
be sexual, but the rules are not enforced with the ferocity and consistency that they
were in the past. "It's different from what it used to be when women were supposed to
hold out until they got married. There's pressure now on both men and women to lose
their virginity," is how one twenty-nine-year-old man put it. "But for a man it's a sign
of manhood, and for a woman there's still some loss of value."74
The current popular panic over the dramatic increases in oral sex among teen-
agers is a good indication of both gender convergence (what I've called the "mascu-
linization of sex") and gender inequality. Recent articles express alarm and surprise
that well over half of all teens ages fifteen to nineteen have had oral sex. By age
nineteen, the number increases to about 60 percent. It's possible that parents' con-
cern is fueled by the different meaning of oral sex to their generation-as a sexual
behavior that was even more intimate than intercourse. Today, oral sex is viewed far
more casually, as just a "kind of recreational activity that is separate from a close
personal relationship." But a closer look at the sex research data indicates that a con-
cern over "oral sex" among teenagers misses the real story. Whereas there has been
'By the way, what's your position on some-sex marriage?"

Figure 13.9. Robert Mankoff/The New Yorker Collection/The Cartoon Bank.
a small increase in cunnilingus among teens, there has been an epic rise in fellatio.
The oral sex craze is not about mutual pleasuring, but rather about girls servicing
boys. Teenage girls are often faced with a cruel dilemma: Because "guys rule" in
teenland, guys get to set the rules for sexual engagement. If girls "hold out" on inter-
course, they have to service the guys if they are going to be able to hang out with
them, get invited to the right parties, and the like. Such a demand may lead to the
undervaluing of oral sex as sexual intimacy, because it's a way for teenage girls to
accommodate these new social demands. One teenager described this conversation
at a party: "I was talking to this guy for like, I dunno, ten minutes, and he asked if I
wanted to have sex, and I said no. So he said, 'OK, but could you, like, come into the
bathroom and go down on me' and I was like, 'Huh?'"
In several other interviews, teenage girls described the "pressure" to perform oral
sex on the popular boys. "They told me, like, it was like a ticket for admission or
OH? Men and women want different things out of sex. Evolutionary psychologists
argued that women and men seek sex for diametrically opposed reasons: He
REALLY• wants immediate spontaneous pleasure with no strings attached; she wants ro-
mantic connection with someone with whom she is already emotionally intimate.
Not really. In a survey of undergraduates at the University of Texas, evolutionary psychologists
Cindy Meston and David Buss found that women and men had sex for pretty much the same
reasons. They argued they found significant gender differences. Oh really? Here are the top
twelve reasons people (well, at least undergraduates at a large public university in Texas) had sex,
along with the rankings:
Top Twelve Reasons Why Men and Women Had Sex
Men Reason Women
I I was attracted to the person I

2 It feels good 3
3 I wanted to experience the physical pleasure 2
4 It's fun 8
5 I wanted to show my affection to the person 4
6 I was sexually aroused and wanted the release 6
7 I was "horny" 7
8 I wanted to express my love for the person 5
9 I wanted to achieve an orgasm 14
10 I wanted to please my partner II
17 I realized I was in love 9
13 I was in the heat of the moment 10
Source: Meston and Buss 2007:506. With kind permission from

Springer Science + Business Medid.
Source: Cindy M. Meston and David M. Buss , "Why Humans Have Sex" in Archives of Sexual Behavior, 36, 2007,
pp. 477- 507.
•Over all, I liked it, but I have a couple of notes. "

Figure 13.10. Alex Gregory/The New Yorker Collection/The Cartoon Bank.
something, like they wouldn't invite me to parties and stuff if I didn't do it. So I told
myself, it's no big deal anyway, and it's not like I'm gonna get pregnant, so, like, what-
ever." Although today, both women and men feel entitled to pleasure, this is hardly a
discourse of mutual pleasuring; rather, it is a discourse of gender inequality. This ex-
tends to other forms of entitlement and coercion. "I paid for a wonderful evening,"
commented one college man, "and I was entitled to sex for my effort." As a result of
attitudes like these, cases of date rape and acquaintance rape continue to skyrocket on
our campuses.75
About 15 percent of college women report having been sexually assaulted; more
than half of these assaults were by a person the woman was dating. Some studies have
estimated the rates to be significantly higher, nearly double (27 percent) that of the
study undertaken by Mary Koss and her colleagues.76 And, although some pundits
have expressed outrage that feminists have transformed college-aged women into
"victims," it is more accurate to express outrage that predatory males have turned col-
lege women into victims of sexual assault. Any number of rapes is unacceptable. But
that significant numbers of college women are forced to change their behaviors be-
cause of the behaviors of these men-where they study, how late they stay in the li-
brary, which parties they go to, whom they date-is the outrage.
Among adults, women and men report quite different rates of forced sex. Al-
though 96.1 percent of men and 77.2 percent of women say they have never been forced
to have sex against their will, those who have been forced display dramatic differences.
Just slightly more than 1 percent of men (1.3 percent), but more than 20 percent of
women (21.6 percent) were forced to have sex by the opposite sex; only about 2 percent
of men (1.9 percent) and just .3 percent of women were forced by someone of the same
sex. Men continue to be the principal sexual predators. Several studies estimate the
likelihood that a woman will be the victim of a completed rape to be about one in five.
The figure for an attempted rape is nearly double that.7 7
Women's increase in sexual agency, revolutionary as it is, has not been accompa-
nied by a decrease in male sexual entitlement or by a sharp increase in men's capacity
for intimacy and emotional connectedness. Thus just as some feminist women have
celebrated women's claim to sexual autonomy, others-therapists and activists-have
deplored men's adherence to a "nonrelational" model of sexual behavior. As with
friendship and with love, it's men who have the problem, and psychologists like Ronald
Levant seek to replace "irresponsible, detached, compulsive, and alienated sexuality
with a type of sexuality that is ethically responsible, compassionate for the well-being
of participants, and sexually empowering of men."78
The notion of nonrelational sex means that sex is, to men, central to their lives,
isolated from other aspects of life and relationships, often coupled with aggression,
conceptualized socially within a framework of success and achievement, and pursued
despite possible negative emotional and moral consequences. Sexual inexperience is
viewed as stigmatizing. Examples of male nonrelational sexuality abound, report the
critics. Men think about sex more often than do women; have more explicit sexual
fantasies; masturbate more often than women; buy more porn; have more sex part-
ners; and have more varied sexual experiences than women.79
In a recent edited volume on this problem, psychologist Gary Brooks pathologizes
male sexual problems as a "centerfold syndrome." Symptoms include voyeurism, ob-
jectification, sex as a validation of masculinity, trophyism, and fear of intimacy. Ron
Levant contributes a medical neologism, alexithymia, to describe the socially condi-
tioned "inability to feel or express feelings." This problem must be serious: After all, it
has a Greek name. Some authors also note the danger to women from men who have
this type of "masculine" sex, who "deny the humanity of their partners, and ... objec-
tify and even violate the partner who is actually treated more as a prop." Others warn
of "the damage ultimately done to men when they are socialized in a way that limits
their ability to experience intimacy."80
Not all the studies of male nonrelationality are so critical. Psychologists Glenn
Good and Nancy Sherrod argue that for many men nonrelational sex is a stage of de-
velopment, not necessarily a way of being:
Men progress through the NS [non relational sexuality] stage by mastering the de-
velopmental tasks associated with this stage ... [which] include gaining experience
as a sexual being, gaining experience with interpersonal aspects of sexuality, devel-
oping identity, and developing comfort with intimacy. Men following this route de-
velop internally directed senses of their behavior that allow them to form and
sustain intimate, caring relationships with others.
In fact, Good and Sherrod argue, experience with nonrelational sexuality may be a
positive experience, allowing adolescents "to reduce sexual tensions," "gain sexual
experiences, refine skills associated with sexual activities, and experience different
partners and behaviors, thereby reducing curiosity about different partners in the
future." 81
The idea of nonrelational sex as a "problem" for men is relatively recent and is
part of a general cultural discomfort with the excesses of the sexual revolution. In the
1970s, as Martin Levine and Richard Troiden point out, the significant sexual prob-
lems were problems that came from too little sexual experience-anorgasmia (the
inability to achieve orgasm), especially for women, ejaculatory and erectile problems
for men. Now the problems are sex "addiction," a relatively new term that makes
having a lot of sex a problem, and "nonrelational sex," which makes pursuing sexual
pleasure for its own sake also a problem. Although it may be true that nonrelational
sexuality may be a problem for some men, especially for those for whom it is the only
form of sexual expression, it is not necessarily the only way men express themselves
sexually. Many men are capable of both relational and nonrelational sexuality. Some
men don't ever practice nonrelational sexuality because they live in a subculture in
which it is not normative; other men develop values that oppose it. 82 One possibly
worthy goal might be to enlarge our sexual repertoires to enable both women and
men to experience a wide variety of permutations and combinations of love and lust,
without entirely reducing one to the other-as long as all these experiences are mutu-
ally negotiated, safe, and equal.
HOMOSEXUALITY AS GENDER CONFORMITY

Thus far, I've been describing the ways in which men and women are socialized toward
"his" and "her" sexualities. I've deliberately avoided the obvious disclaimer that I was
speaking about heterosexuality and not homosexuality, because this gendering of
sexuality is as applicable to homosexuals as it is to heterosexuals. In fact, it may be
even more obvious among gay men and lesbians, because in homosexual encounters
there are two gendered men or two gendered women. That is, you have masculinity or
femininity multiplied by two! Gender differences may even be exaggerated by sexual
orientation.
This is, of course, contrary to our commonsense understandings of homosexual-
ity, as well as those biological studies that suggest that gay men have some biological
affinity with women, as opposed to with heterosexual men. Indeed, our common-
sense assumption is that gay men and lesbians are gender nonconformists-lesbians
are "masculine" women; gay men are "feminine" men. But such commonsense think-
ing has one deep logical flaw-it assumes that the gender of your partner is more
important, and more decisive in your life, than your own gender. But our own
gender-the collections of behaviors, attitudes, attributes, and assumptions about
what it means to be a man or a woman-is far more important than the gender of the
people with whom we interact, sexually or otherwise. Sexual behavior, gay or straight,
confirms gender identity.
That doesn't mean that these commonsense assumptions haven't completely satu-
rated popular discussions of homosexuality, especially in those advice books designed
to help parents make sure that their children do not turn out "wrong." For example,
Peter and Barbara Wyden's book Growing Up Straight: What Every Thoughtful Parent
Should Know About Homosexuality argued that "pre-homosexual" boys were identifi-
able by their lack of early childhood masculinity, which could be thwarted by an overly
"masculine" mother, in other words, one who had a job outside the home and paid
attention to feminist ideas! 83
A few empirical studies have also made such claims. For example, psychiatrist
Richard Green tracked a small group of boys (about fifty-five) from preschool to young
adulthood. All the boys were chosen for patterns of frequent cross-dressing at home.
They liked to play with girls at school, enjoyed playing with dolls, and followed their
mothers around the house doing housework. Their parents were supportive of this
behavior. These "sissy boys," as Green called them, were four times more likely to have
homosexual experiences than nonfeminine boys. But this research has also been
widely criticized: Such gender nonconformity is extremely rare (there was great diffi-
culty in finding even fifty-five boys) and thus cannot be the source of the great major-
ity of homosexual behavior. Extreme patterns of nonconformity are not equivalent to
milder patterns, such as not liking sports, preferring music or reading, and being in-
different to rough-and-tumble play. The homosexual experience may be a result of the
social reactions to their conduct (persecution by other boys or the therapy to which
they were often exposed), which thwarted their ability to establish conventional het-
erosocial patterns of behavior. It may have been the ostracism itself, and not the of-
fending behavior, that led to the sexual experiences. When milder forms of gender
nonconformity are examined, most boys who report such behavior turn out to be
heterosexual. Finally, when studies by Green and his colleagues were extended to
"tomboys," it was found that there was no difference in eventual sexual preference
between girls who reported tomboy behavior and those who did not. (What Green and
his colleagues seem to have found is that being a sissy is a far more serious offense to
the gender order than is being a tomboy.)84
The evidence points overwhelmingly the other way: that homosexuality is deeply
gendered and that gay men and lesbians are true gender conformists. To accept such a
proposition leads to some unlikely alliances, with gay-affirmative writers and femi-
nists lining up on the same side as an ultraconservative writer like George Gilder, who,
in his unwavering critique of masculinity-both gay and straight-writes that lesbian-
ism "has nothing whatever to do with male homosexuality. Just as male homosexuals,
with their compulsive lust and promiscuous impulses, offer a kind of caricature of
typical male sexuality, lesbians closely resemble other women in their desire for inti-
mate and monogamous coupling."85
Since the birth of the gay liberation movement in the Stonewall riots of 1969-
when gay men fought back against the police who were raiding a New York City gay
bar-gay men have been particularly eager to demonstrate that they are not "failed"
men, as earlier popular images portrayed them. In fact, many gay men became ex-
tremely successful as "real" men, enacting a hypermasculine code of anonymous sex,
masculine clothing, and physical appearance, including bodybuilding. The "clone," as
he was called, comprising about 35 percent of all gay men, was perhaps even more suc-
cessful at masculinity than were straight men. By the early 1980s, this notion had
produced some curious inversions of traditional stereotypes. In one popular song
from 1983, Joe Jackson commented on this:
See the nice boys, dancing in pairs

Golden earring, golden tan, blow wave in their hair
Sure they're all straight, straight as a line
All the gays are macho, can't you see their leather shine?86
By contrast, the sexual lives of lesbians were quite different. For many lesbians,
gay liberation did not mean sexual liberation. In the lesbian community, there
was more discussion of "the tyranny of the relationship" than of various sexual
practices; lesbian couples in therapy complained of "lesbian bed death," the virtual
cessation of sexual activity for the couple after a few years. One woman told an
interviewer:
As women we have not been socialized to be initiators in the sexual act. Another
factor is that we don't have to make excuses if we don't want to do it. We don't say
we have a headache. We just say no. We also do a lot more cuddling and touching
than heterosexuals, and we get fulfilled by that rather than just the act of inter-
course ... Another thing is that such a sisterly bond develops that the relationship
almost seems incestuous after a while. The intimacy is so great. We know each
other so well. 87
Although some lesbians did embrace a sexual liberationist ethic and sought arenas for
sexual variety, most remained gender conformists.
This was underscored by the fact that feminism also played a large role in the
social organization of lesbian life. During the early waves of the women's movement,
lesbianism was seen as a political alternative, a decision not to give aid and comfort to
the enemy (men). How could a woman be truly feminist, some people asked, if she
shared her life and bed with a man? The "political lesbian" represented a particular
fusion of sexual and gender politics, an active choice that matched one's political com-
mitment. "For a woman to be a lesbian in a male-supremacist, capitalist, misogynist,
racist, homophobic, imperialist culture," wrote one woman, "is an act of resistance."
Although, of course, not all lesbians are feminists, even this construct of political les-
bianism is a form of gender conformity. If one resists gender inequality, political lesbi-
ans argue, then one must opt out of sexual relationships with men and choose to be
sexual only with women because they are women. Gender remains the organizing
principle of sexuality-even a sexuality that is understood as a form of resistance to
gender politics. 88
The weight of evidence from research on homosexuality bears out this argument
that gay men and lesbians are gender conformists. Take, for example, the number of
sexual partners. In one study, sex researchers found that most lesbians reported having
had fewer than ten sexual partners, and almost half said they had never had a one-
night stand. A 1982 survey of unmarried women between the ages of twenty and
twenty-nine found an average of 4.5 sexual partners over the course of their lives. But
the average gay male in the same study had had hundreds of partners and many one-
night stands, and more than a quarter of the men reported a thousand or more part-
ners. Masters and Johnson found that 84 percent of males and 7 percent of females had
had between fifty and one thousand or more sexual partners in their lifetimes and that
97 percent of men and 33 percent of women had had seven or more relationships that
had lasted four months or less. Whereas 11 percent of husbands and 9 percent of wives
in another study described themselves as promiscuous, 79 percent of gay men and
19 percent of lesbians made such a claim. (Among heterosexual cohabiters, though,
25 percent of the men and 22 percent of the women described themselves as promiscu-
ous.) Gay men have the lowest rates of long-term committed relationships, whereas
lesbians have the highest, and lesbians place much greater emphasis on emotional
relationships than do gay men. Thus it appears that men-gay (or) straight-place
sexuality at the center of their lives and that women-straight or lesbian-are more
interested in affection and caring in the context of a love relationship. 89 New research
also reports same-sex couples are actually happier than married heterosexual couples.90
Research on frequency of sexual activity bears this out. In one study among
heterosexual married couples, 45 percent reported having sex three or more times per
week during the first two years of their marriage, and 27 percent of those married
between two and ten years reported such rates. By contrast, 67 percent of gay men
together up to two years and 32 percent of those together two to ten years had sex three
or more times per week. One-third of lesbians had sex three or more times per week in
the first two years of their relationship, but only 7 percent did after two years. After ten
years, the percentages of people reporting sex more than three times per week were
18 for married couples, 11 for gay men, and 1 for lesbians. Nearly half the lesbians
(47 percent) reported having sex less than once a month after ten years together. One
interviewer described a lesbian couple:
She and her roommate were obviously very much in love. Like most people who
have a good, stable, five year relationship, they seemed comfortable together, sort
of part of one another, able to joke, obviously fulfilled in their relationship. They
work together, have the same times off from work, do most of their leisure activi-
ties together. They sent me off with a plate of cookies, a good symbolic gesture of
the kind of welcome and warmth I felt in their home. 9'
If heterosexuality and homosexuality are so similar, in that men and women ex-
press and confirm their gendered identities through sexual behavior, what, then, are
the big differences between heterosexuals and homosexuals-aside, of course, from
the gender of the partner? One difference is that gay relationships are more egalitar-
ian. When we ask, for example, who initiates sex, gay men and lesbians report identi-
cal rates, which are far more egalitarian than the rates for married or cohabiting
heterosexual couples.
And yet there are signs that this is changing. A recent study found some similari-
ties to previous research, including an upward trend in monogamy among gay males,
but not yet equal to the level of monogamy among lesbians. But gone were the large
differences in, for example, initiating sex, which are now identical for gay and lesbian
couples and heterosexual couples. And while the percentage of participants who have
had sex with someone else during the time they have been a couple declined between
1975 and 2000 (we're becoming more monogamous), there were very small gender
differences at all. And while gay men had the most sex outside the relationship, it too
had declined, as had the number who had had a meaningful love affair outside their
relationship.
Because homosexuals' identities are defined by their sexuality, and because
their sexuality is not procreative, gay men and lesbians have also been more sexually
experimental, especially with nonpenetrative sex. As one sex therapist writes, "Gay
men have more ways of sexually relating than do heterosexual men." And Masters
and Johnson found that gay couples have longer lovemaking sessions than hetero-
sexual couples.9 2
"What I was wondering is, Doctor, can you make me straight

during the week and gay on the week.ends?"
Figure 13.11. David Sipress/The New Yorker Collection/The Cartoon Bank.
One other way that heterosexuality and homosexuality are similar, actually, is in
the impact of homophobia on sexual behavior. Obviously, for gay people homophobia
saturates all their interactions. The systematic devaluation of homosexuality, the
stigma attached to being homosexual, becomes a crucial element in one's identity. As
sociologist Ken Plummer writes:
The perceived hostility of the societal reactions that surround ... homosexual-
ity ... renders the business of becoming a homosexual a process that is character-
ized by problems of access, problems of guilt, and problems of identity. It leads to
the emergence of a subculture of homosexuality. It leads to a series of interaction
problems involved with concealing the discreditable stigma. And it inhibits the de-
velopment of stable relationships among homosexuals to a considerable degree. 93
To understand more fully the experience of stigma, try this little thought experi-
ment, which was developed by two social psychologists: Imagine for a moment that
you are an anxious person and that being anxious is against the law. You must try to
hide your anxiety from others. Your own home may be a safe place to feel anxious, but
a public display of anxiety can lead to arrest or, at least, to social ostracism. At work
one day, an associate looks at you and says, "That's funny, for a crazy moment there
I thought you were anxious." "Heck, no," you exclaim a bit too loudly, "not me!" You
begin to wonder if your fellow worker will report his suspicions to your boss. If he
does, your boss may inform the police or will at least change your job to one that
requires less contact with customers, especially those who have children.94
Whereas it is clear that homophobia constructs gay experience, we are less aware
of the power of homophobia to structure the experiences and identities of heterosexu-
als. Although there is evidence that social attitudes toward homosexuality have
become increasingly accepting in recent decades, homophobia is more than "accep-
tance" or the fear or hatred of homosexuals; it is also, for men, the fear of being per-
ceived as unmanly, effeminate, or, worst of all, gay. This fear seems less keen among
heterosexual women, though many worry about the dangers of homosexuals (nearly
always men) to their children.95
I iJ ' ' ,,, 111 :n)Q IIa

But what of sexuality and gender identity? We know very little about the foundations on which
transgender people construct their sexualities. If they've transitioned, do they tend toward
the traditionally and stereotypically gendered behaviors of their "new" assigned sex, or do
they hark back to previous behaviors? For those who have not transitioned or identify as gen-
derqueer or non binary, do they "pick a side" or develop yet a third way of being sexual? Soci-
ologist Raine Dozier gives us one potential answer: fortransmen, a widely varied set of cognitive
and behavioral mechanisms are used. Her article "Beards, Breasts, and Bodies" explains that
when sex characteristics do not align with gender identity, sexual behavior becomes more
important to confirming gender identity (e.g., transmen who are not yet ready, physically, as
transmen tended toward more hypermasculine sexual behaviors); but when sex characteris-
tics become more congruent with gender identity, sexual behavior becomes more fluid and
varied. Definitively, we can say that we need more research on gender identity/
expression-including voices from the diverse spectrum of identities-and sexuality.
Male heterosexuals often spend a significant amount of time and energy in mascu-
line display so that no one could possibly get the "wrong" impression about them. In
one study, many heterosexual men said they had sex in order to prove they weren't gay.
Because our popular misperceptions about homosexuality usually center on gender
inversion, compensatory behaviors by heterosexuals often involve exaggerated versions
of gender stereotypic behaviors. In this way, homophobia reinforces the gender of sex,
keeping men acting hypermasculine and women acting ultrafeminine. "Heterosexual-
ity as currently construed and enacted (the erotic preference for the other gender) re-
quires homophobia," write sex researchers John Gagnon and Stuart Michaels.96
WHAT ELSE AFFECTS SEXUALITY?

Although gender remains one of the organizing principles of sexuality, other aspects
of our lives also profoundly influence our sexual behaviors and expectations. For one
thing, sexual behavior, as we've seen, varies widely among different cultures. Margaret
Mead found that in some cultures, the idea of spontaneous sex is not encouraged for
either women or men. Among the Arapesh, she writes, the exceptions are believed to
occur in women. "Parents warn their sons even more than they warn their daughters
against permitting themselves to get into situations in which someone can make love
to them." Another anthropologist reported that in one southwest Pacific society,
sexual intercourse is seen as highly pleasurable and deprivation as harmful to both
sexes. And Bronislaw Malinowski saw significant convergence between women and
men in the Trobriand Islands, where women initiate sex as often as men and where
couples avoid the "missionary" position because the woman's movements are ham-
pered by the weight of the man so that she cannot be fully active.
In the contemporary United States, several variables other than gender affect sex-
uality, such as class, age, education, marital status, religion, race, and ethnicity. Take
class, for example. Kinsey found that, contrary to the American ideology that holds
that working-class people are more sensual because they are closer to their "animal
natures," lower-class position does not mean hotter sex. In fact, he found that upper-
and middle-class people were more sophisticated in the "arts of love," demonstrating
wider variety of activities and greater emphasis on foreplay, whereas lower-class people
dispensed with preliminaries and did not even kiss very much.
There is evidence that race and ethnicity also produce some variations in sexual
behavior. For example, blacks seem to hold somewhat more sexually liberal attitudes
than whites and have slightly more sex partners, but they also masturbate less fre-
quently, have less oral sex, and are slightly more likely to have same-sex contacts. His-
panics are also more sexually liberal than whites and masturbate more frequently than
- 0-10
- 31-40
41-50
-51-60
- 61-70
- 71-80
Figure 13.1 la. Percent of people reporting "exciting" sex life by country. Where people have the
best sex, the worst sex, and the most STls.
Source: The data come from two surveys done by Durex, the condom folks. Their Sexual Wellbeing Survey
(from 200712008) and Face of Global Sex (2012) are methodologically rigorous. Zack Beauchamp, "6 Maps and
Charts That Explain Sex Around the World" in Vax , May 26, 20 I5, http://www.vox.com/2014/5/7 /5662608/
in-different-area-codes.
• Percent • Percent • Percent
dissatisfied neutral satisfied
60
40
20
Japan France Hong Kong Thailand Singapore Italy Germany Malaysia
Figure 13.llb. The least sexually satisfied countries. Where people have the best sex, the worst
sex, and the most STls.
Source: The data come from two surveys done by Durex, the condom folks. Their Sexual Wellbeing Survey (from
200712008) and Face of Global Sex (20 12) are methodologically rigorous. Zack Beauchamp, "6 Maps and Charts
That Explain Sex Around the World" in Vax, May 26, 2015, http://www.vox.com/2014/5/7 /5662608/in-
different-area-codes.
blacks or whites, but they also have less oral sex than whites (yet more than blacks) and
have fewer sex partners, either of the same or opposite sex, than do whites or blacks.97
Age also affects sexuality. What turns us on at fifty will probably not be what
turned us on at fifteen . Not only are there significant physiological changes that augur
a decline in sexual energy and interest, but also age is related to marital status and
family obligations. As Lillian Rubin writes,
On the most mundane level, the constant negotiation about everyday tasks leaves
people harassed, weary, irritated, and feeling more like traffic cops than lovers.
Who's going to do the shopping, pay the bills, take care of the laundry, wash the
dishes, take out the garbage, clean the bathroom, get the washing machine fixed,
decide what to eat for dinner, return the phone calls from friends and parents?
When there are children, the demands, complications and exhaustion increase
exponential ly. 98
Ah, children. By far one of the greatest anaphrodisiacs-sexual turn-offs-in our

society is having children. Couples-gay and straight-with children report far less
sexual activity than couples without children. There's less time, less freedom, less
privacy-and less interest (figure 13.13).
You've probably heard reports that women hit their sexual peak in the late thirties
and early forties, whereas men peak before they turn twenty, after which they are
increasingly likely to appreciate softer, more sensual activities. And you've probably
heard that such differences reveal biological differences in male and female sexual
anatomy. But that ignores the ways in which women's and men's sexualities are related
to each other. That "his" sexuality shifts toward the more sensual just as "her" sexual-
ity takes a sharp turn toward the explicitly sexual indicates more than a simple diver-
gence in biological patterns, especially because it is not the case in other cultures,
where men and women biologically age "differently." What these reports suggest is
that marriage has a pronounced effect on sexual expression, domesticating sex, bring-
ing it into the domain historically reserved for women: the home. When men feel that
• I had better sex before we had kids
• I had better sex after we had kids
• There's been no change
Decline to answer
Figure 13.13. 2013 Married Sex Survey.

Source: iVillage.
sex is no longer dangerous and risky (which is, to them, exciting), their sexual reper-
toire may soften to include a wider range of sensual pleasures. When women feel that
sex is no longer dangerous and risky (which they interpret as threatening), they feel
safe enough to explore more explicitly sexual pleasures. Such an interpretation sug-
gests, of course, that the differences we observe between women and men may have
more to do with the social organization of marriage than with any inherent differ-
ences between males and females.
In one recent study, researchers surveyed over one thousand older heterosexual
couples from five countries-the United States, Brazil, Germany, Spain, and Japan-
who had been together an average of twenty-five years and found something they
thought startling-and exactly the opposite of what they had expected. They found
that among the couples that had been together the longest, the women were the more
sexually satisfied but the men reported more relationship happiness. In fact, though, it
conforms entirely to the gendered sexualities argument we have been making. Each
gender offers its strength, so to speak, to the other. So, the men feel more emotionally
satisfied because the women are providing all the emotional nurturance they need. By
contrast, the women feel more sexually satisfied because their sexual needs are met by
men who are more interested in sex in the first place.99
Yet despite this, the longer-range historical trend over the past several centuries
has been to sexualize marriage, to link the emotions of love and nurturing to erotic
pleasure within the reproductive relationship. Thus sexual compatability and expres-
sion have become increasingly important in our married lives, as the increased amount
of time before marriage (prolonged adolescence), the availability of birth control and
divorce, and an ethic of individual self-fulfillment have combined to increase the im-
portance of sexual expression throughout the course of our lives.
Here's one startling conclusion: Politics affects sex. Gender politics, that is. It
turns out that the more equal are women and men, the more satisfied women and men
are with their sex lives. In a recent survey of twenty-nine countries, sociologists found
that people in countries with higher levels of gender equality-Spain, Canada, Belgium,
and Austria-reported being much happier with their sex lives than those people in
OH?
REALLY•
Electoral politics affects sex. The more liberal you are politically, the more
"liberal" you are in your sexual behavior.
Actually, not true. While it is true that Democrats have more sex than
Republicans, Republicans have more orgasms. In a recent survey, mo re than
half of those who identified as conservative Republicans said they reached
climax almost every time they had sex, compared to 40 percent of liberal Democrats.
Can you think why that might be the case? Remember, that's 50 percent of all survey
respondents-male and female. So it's very possible that a high percentage of conservative
Republican men had orgasms and a lower percentage of women, because the men were simply
more concerned with their own pleasure than the pleasure of their partner. They do believe in
freedom, after all. By contrast, those liberal Democrats don't have orgasms unless their partners
do, since they believe in equality and all.
So the real finding is that there is a greater orgasm gap between Republican men and women
than there is between Democratic men and women.
Source: Jessica Bennett, "Republicans Have More Orgasms, According to Match.com Sex Survey" in Daily Beast,
February 2, 2012, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/02/02/republicans-have-more-orgasms-according-
to-match-com-sex-survey.html.
countries with lower levels of gender equality, like Japan. "Male-centered cultures
where sexual behavior is more oriented toward procreation tend to discount the
importance of sexual pleasure for women," said Ed Laumann of the University of
Chicago, lead author of the study.1° 0
What's more, within each country, the greater the level of equality between women
and men, the happier women and men are with their sex lives. It turns out that those
married couples who report the highest rates of marital satisfaction-and the highest
rates of sexual activity in the first place-are those in which men do the highest amounts
of housework and child care.101 This led a recent article in Men's Health magazine to pro-
claim, "Housework Makes Her Horny"-but, I suspect, only when he does it. It makes
intuitive sense: The more housework and child care the husband does, the more time
and energy she has and the less resentful she feels about that inequality. That sounds like
both opportunity and motive to me. Whether we compare countries or couples, gender
equality turns out to be sexier than gender inequality. How's that for an incentive?
HEALTH, SEX, AND HIV-AIDS

With the onset of the HIV-AIDS epidemic, major changes occurred in the sexual pat-
terns of gay men, including fewer partners, less anonymous sex, and increases in the
practice of safe sex and the number of gay male couples. The emphasis on "safe sex"
was seen by many as an effort to "feminize" sexuality, to return it to the context of
emotional and monogamous relationships, thus abandoning the earlier gay libera-
tionist ethic of sexual freedom. To men, the very phrase "safe sex" was experienced as
an oxymoron: What's sexy-heat, passion, excitement, spontaneity-was the exact op-
posite of what's safe-soft, warm, cuddly. Many men feared that practicing safe sex
would mean no longer having sex like men and that programs encouraging such
gender nonconformity would be doomed to failure. (This is not simply an issue for gay
men, of course. Heterosexual women have been trying to get heterosexual men to
practice a form of safe sex for decades, finding that their own sexual expressivity is less
encumbered when both partners take responsibility for birth control. Fear of preg-
nancy and fear of HIV transmission both require that one fuse sexual pleasure with
sexual responsibility.)102
Critics needn't have worried. Much of the work to minimize the risk for HIV
among gay men has been to reaffirm masculine sexuality, to develop ways that men
could still have "manly" sex while they also practiced safe sex. Gay organizations
promoted safe sex clubs, pornographic videos, and techniques. As a result, gay men
did begin to practice safe sex, without disconfirming their masculinity, though there
is some evidence of recent backsliding by younger gay men, especially because HIV
treatments now seem to augur longer and healthier lives for HIV-positive people
than previously.
Of course, the epicenter of the HIV epidemic has shifted dramatically since the
disease was first diagnosed in 1984. Globally, more than twenty-one million men,
women, and children have died from AIDS, and another thirty-four million are living
with it-that's 1 out of every 162 people on Earth (figure 13.14). The global epicenter of
AIDS has shifted dramatically since it was first diagnosed in the United States. Seven
out of every ten people infected live in sub-Saharan Africa; adding South and South-
east Asia and Latin America brings the total up to 88 percent.103
It is noteworthy that rates of infection are roughly equally distributed between
women and men throughout the underdeveloped world, where women's significantly
lower status often renders them powerless to resist sexual advances, to insist on
safe sex practices, or to have much access to health care. In sub-Saharan Africa,
nearly three-fifths of all HIV-positive cases are women. Among African adoles-
cents, girls outnumber boys among the infected by about five to one. Empowering
women, affording women equal rights, will prove the major mechanism to reduce
HIV. Dr. Pascoal Mocumbi, prime minister of Mozambique, challenged Africans
to "break the silence regarding the sexual behaviour and gender inequalities that
drive the epidemic."104
Such gender symmetry is true around the world-except in the United States and
Western Europe and Australia and New Zealand. In North America and Western
Europe, the percentage of HIV-positive women is less than 25 percent; in Australia
and New Zealand (where women's status is the highest in the industrial world), only
7 percent.105 In these places, AIDS remains a highly "gendered" disease. Although
women and men are both able to contract the virus that causes AIDS-and, in fact,
women are actually more likely to contract the disease from unprotected heterosexual
intercourse than are men-and despite the fact that rates of new infection among
women are increasing faster than among men, the overwhelming majority of all AIDS
patients in the United States are men. (And rates of new infections are far higher
among young black men than white men, an indication that class and race are also
keys that drive the epidemic.)106
Seen in this way, AIDS is the most highly gendered disease in American history-a
disease that both women and men can get but one that overwhelmingly dispropor-
tionately affects one gender and not the other. It would be useful to understand
masculinity-risk taking, avoidance of responsibility, pursuit of sex above all other
~
,Jr,;; . ,, .... 1'i!: -,.:~- .,iY. --.. ,~, 1 .,,,, t:.aster-n--euro~-ana , " , ",::::;..,_
- 'C:entral'Asia ---
North AmefiCa and,.Western and Central~ rope---+-- 1,j milli6n
_2.3 million (980,000-1 .3 mill~n]
1
; [2.0..,million-3.0 million]
;r t /
fa----c'--- ~
1,,.,,,.1 .... .. "
Middle East and North Africa
CaribJean 230,000
250,000 (160,000-330,00Q
Asia and the Pacifi'c
[23"0,000-280,000]
4.8 million
- ~--1 4.1- milli0r:i-;-a.§ milli0n]
Su~Saharan Africa
Latin America 24.7 million
1.6 million (23.5 m(llion-26,.1 r\i'illion]
[1.4 million-2.1 million]
I
\ I
I
"' ~ \
-1-
, / / //
"
Total: 35.0 million (33.2 million-37.2 million]
Figure 13.14. Adults and children estimated to be living with HIV, 2013 .
Source: U NAI DS, http://www.aids.gov/federal-resources/ around-the-world/ global-aids-overview/.
,j:,,.
,j:,,.
(,u
ends-as a risk factor in the spread of the disease, in the same way as we understand
masculinity to be a risk factor in drunk driving accidents.1°7
GENDERED HEALTH
Understanding gender to be a major risk factor in explaining drunk driving reminds
us that health and illness are also deeply gendered. Historically, it was men who took
all the health-related risks, both by engaging in behaviors like drinking and taking
drugs and by considering it unmasculine to seek health care treatment. Ignoring
health issues, "playing through pain," was, in fact, a symbol of masculinity. And it was
women who took far fewer risks, took better care of their health, took vitamins, exer-
cised, and saw doctors more regularly. An old adage among those who study gender
and health is that "women get sicker, but men die quicker."108
Researchers have long understood gender to be a primary factor in health-related
behavior. As men's health researcher and advocate Will H. Courtenay puts it:
A man who does gender correctly would be relatively unconcerned about his
health and well-being in general. He would see himself as stronger, both physi-
cally and emotionally, than most women. He would think of himself as indepen-
dent, not needing to be nurtured by others. He would be unlikely to ask others
for help. He would spend much time out in the world and away from home ... He
would face danger fearlessly, take risks frequently, and have little concern for his
own safety.109
Howard Friedman, a psychologist at UC Riverside, found that "less manly" men lived
longer than "masculine men."
Race, class, and ethnicity complicate the picture. Middle-aged black men, for
example, have much lower longevity (up to seven years less) and much higher rates
of stress- and lifestyle-related diseases (heart attack, stroke, diabetes) than their
white counterparts (figure 13-15). A report by the Kellogg Foundation concluded
that "from birth, a black male on average seems fated to a life so unhealthy that a
white man can only imagine it." Although some part of this is attributable to age-
young black males have astronomically higher health risks than do whites-and to
class-working-class men of all races also have lower longevity and higher morbid-
ity than middle-class men-this holds true even for middle-aged black men at
every level of the class hierarchy. Whereas men, "overall, have a particular set of
pressures to show strength and not reveal weakness," writes columnist Ellis Cose,
"this feeling is intensified in black men." There is, he continues, "an ethic of tough-
ness among black men, built up to protect yourself against racial slights and from
the likelihood that society is going to challenge you or humiliate you in some way.
This makes it hard to admit that you are in pain or need help." African-American
and Latino men are significantly less likely to see a doctor-even when they are in
poor health (figure 13-16).110
Yet even in health, there are signs of gender convergence. First, more women
are disregarding traditional strictures of femininity and taking increased risks-in
their sexual behaviors and elsewhere. Take drinking, for example. Of course, far
more men drink to excess than women do, and drinking is heaviest among young,
85
White female _ _ _ _ _ _ __,...-

80
65
60
011,,,, 1,,,, 1,,,, 1,,,, 1,,,, 1,,,, 1,,,, 1,,,, 1

1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010
Figure 13.15. Life expectancy, by race and sex: United States, 1970-20 I0.
Source: S. L. Murphy, J. Q . Xu, and K. D. Kochanek, "Deaths: Final Data for 20 IO" in National Vital Statistics Reports,
61 (4), 2013, pp. 1-1 18, http:/ /www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr6 I/nvsr6 I_04.pdf.
Figure 13.16. PSA road signs attempt to engage men in health-seeking behavior.
Source: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
white, male students attending four-year institutions and often revolves around
fraternities and sports events. But an increasing number of women are binge drink-
ing as well, especially in sororities, where 80 percent of women are binge drinkers,
compared with 30 percent outside sororities. "To be able to drink like a guy is kind
of a badge of honor," commented one senior at Syracuse University. "For me, it's a
feminism thing." Although few feminists would actually suggest that binge drink-
ing is an index of women's liberation, many young women have come to feel that
drinking, fighting, smoking, and other typically "masculine" behaviors are a sign
of power-and therefore cool. "I don't think women gain any power in outdrinking
a man," commented another Syracuse senior, "because it will always be a standard
set by the man. In drinking and everywhere else, women need to start setting their
own standards." As journalist Barbara Ehrenreich put it, "Gender equality wouldn't
be worth fighting for if all it meant was the opportunity to be as stupid and self-
destructive as men can be." 111
And there are signs that more men are seeking health professionals, taking
better care of their health-a domain that had been traditionally reserved for women.
Efforts to develop men's health awareness have been especially successful in the un-
derdeveloped world, where campaigns for reproductive health and family planning
for women have branched out to include men in health planning. In such campaigns,
it is clear that the health interests of women and men are hardly the conflicting in -
terests of Martians and Venusians. There is no zero-sum game; rather, our interests
are complementary. Both women's and men's health needs confront dominant ideas
about gender that inhibit men's health-seeking behavior and often prohibit women's.
Gender inequality is bad for both women's and men's health. 112
Of course, predictably, just as there are increasing signs of gender convergence,

there is a small backlash chorus that argues that the dramatic gains in women's health
have come at the expense of men. After all, this chorus argues, the gender gap in life
span has been slowly growing over the past century; whereas women outlived men by
about one year in 1920, they now outlive men by almost six years. And men have a
higher death rate for every one of the leading causes of death. And yet, this chorus
claims, men are vastly underserved in the national health research budgets. Just as
predictably, though, these critics rarely argue for increased funding for health care
across the board. Rather, they see health care as a zero-sum game and urge decreases
for women and increases for men.
But the mortality gap in the United States by which women outlive men is
not found in the economic South, where men typically outlive women by the same
six years-or more. Gender inequality-unequal access to health care, unequal
nutrition, and men's control of reproduction-led the Nobel laureate economist
Amartya Sen to estimate that worldwide there are one hundred million "missing
women" -women whose deaths are directly attributable to gender inequality in
health care. 113 Here in the United States several of the top ten causes of death are
related to lifestyle-such as heart disease, injuries, diabetes, HIV, suicide, and ho-
micide. The "enemy" of these misguided multitudes is not feminist-inspired efforts
to promote health awareness for women but rather an ideology of masculinity that
encourages us to "live fast and die young" and an indifferent federal government
that makes the United States the only industrial nation without a national program
of funded health care. As usual, the solution to this problem is more gender
114
equality-not less.
The women's health movement has made it abundantly clear that health is not a
zero-sum game, in which one gender benefits at the expense of the other. Rather, ef-
forts to promote women's health also invariably benefit men-from the decline in
mortality of the women in our lives to the decline in mortality of fetuses and babies
caused by poor prenatal treatment or illegal back-alley abortions to women's decreased
dependence on men. And efforts to promote men's health also benefit women, both
directly because they will increase the quality and longevity of the lives of the men
women care about and indirectly because decreasing risk taking and drug and alcohol
use will reduce the amount of violence that women endure from men.
Gender differences persist in our sexual expression and our sexual experiences, in
our health experiences and our health seeking, but they are far less significant than
they used to be, and the signs point to continued convergence. It may come as a relief
to realize that our lovers are not from other planets but rather are capable of the same
joys and pleasures that we are.
Yet one health issue remains-perhaps our nation's number one public health
issue: violence. And it is here that the gender gap is as wide as it is deep. In fact, it is the
only area in which the gender gap is increasing, where there are truly significant dif-
ferences between women and men.
KEY TERMS
Adonis Complex Gay Liberation Sexual Assault
Anaphrodisiac Movement Sexual Double Standard
Anorexia Nervosa Genital Reconstruction Sexual Entitlement
Antiporn Feminism Surgery Sexual Response
Beauty Myth Goldilocks Dilemma Sexual Revolution
Breast Augmentation HIV-AIDS Sexual Socialization
Surgery Hooking Up Sexually Transmitted
Bulimia Iron Maiden Diseases
Centerfold Mortality Gap Standards of Female Beauty
Syndrome Muscle Dysmorphia Virginity Pledge
Cunnilingus Nonrelational Sex
Erectile Dysfunction Penile Enlargement Surgery
Fellatio Sexual Agency
CHAPTER
14 The GENDER OF VIOLENCE
To be or not to be: that is the question:

Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?
-WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, HAMLET
I am not insane. I am angry. I killed because people like me are

mistreated every day. I did this to show society, "Push us and
we will push back."
-LUKE WOODHAM, 1997
wo sentiments-a question and an answer-separated by four centuries.

T Does one suffer, or does one seek revenge? Get mad or get even? Each has an
unacceptably high price: Luke Woodham resolved the dilemma by stabbing his
mother to death and then killing two students in his Pearl, Mississippi, high
school in October 1997. Two months later, three students were killed in Paducah,
Kentucky. And four students and a teacher were killed in Jonesboro, Arkansas,
in March 1998. Both Woodham and the two boys who opened fire in Jonesboro
were said to be distraught after being snubbed by girls. Suffer a loss? Or make
someone pay?
As a nation, we are preoccupied by violence. We fret about "teen violence,"
complain about "inner-city crime," or fear "urban gangs." We express shock at
448
Chapter 14: The Gender of Violence 449
the violence in our nation's public schools, where metal detectors crowd the door-
ways, and knives and guns crowd out pencils and erasers in students' backpacks.
Those public school shootings left us speechless and sick at heart. Yet when we think
about these wrenching events, do we ever consider that, whether white or black, inner
city or suburban, these bands of marauding "youths" or these troubled teenagers are
virtually all young men?
Nightly, we watch news reports of suicide bombings in the Middle East or terrorist
attacks on the United States or on our (and our allies') outposts abroad or of racist
attacks against Turks in Germany or Pakistanis in London or of homophobic gay-
bashing murders or of Mexican drug lords and their legions of gun-toting thugs or of
the well-armed right-wing militias. Do these reports ever mention that virtually every
single one of these terrorists, suicide bombers, or racist gang members is male? Do
they investigate how ideologies of masculinity may have contributed to the motivation
for such heinous crimes?
Seldom do the news reports note that virtually all the violence in the world today
is committed by men. Imagine, though, if the violence were perpetrated entirely by
women. Would that not be the story, the only issue to be explained? Would not a
gender analysis occupy the center of every single story? The fact that these are men
seems so natural as to raise no questions, generate no analysis.
Let's look at how we understand youth violence. In 1993, Youth and Violence, the
American Psychological Association's Commission on Violence and Youth report, at-
tributed rising rates of violence to access to guns, involvement in gangs, mass media
violence, physical punishment, parental neglect, substance abuse, poverty, prejudice,
and absence of antiviolence programs. The next year, the Carnegie Corporation de-
voted an entire issue of its quarterly journal to "Saving Youth from Violence" and
came up with a list of factors that contribute to youth violence, including frustration,
lack of social skills, being labeled as "dumb," poverty, abuse, neglect, drugs, alcohol,
violent video games, and the availability of guns. Neither of these blue-ribbon panels'
reports mentioned the word "masculinity.'"
In 2013, more than 6.5 million men and about 2.5 million women were arrested in
the United States. Nearly three-quarters (73.5 percent) of all arrestees were males. Males
accounted for 79.9 percent of persons arrested for violent crimes and for 62.2 percent
of persons arrested for property crimes. Men constituted 98.1 percent of all persons
arrested for rape, 88.3 percent of those arrested for murder, 86.6 percent of those ar-
rested for robbery, 77 percent of those arrested for aggravated assault, 72.2 percent of
those arrested for other assaults, 73.3 percent of those arrested for all family violence,
and 72.1 percent of those arrested for all disorderly conduct.2
From early childhood to old age, violence is the most obdurate, intractable
behavioral gender difference. The National Academy of Sciences puts the case
starkly: "The most consistent pattern with respect to gender is the extent to which
male criminal participation in serious crimes at any age greatly exceeds that of fe-
males, regardless of source of data, crime type, level of involvement, or measure of
participation." "Men are always and everywhere more likely than women to commit
criminal acts," write criminologists Michael Gottfredson and Travis Hirschi.3 Yet
how do we understand this obvious association between masculinity and violence?
Is it a product of biology, a fact of nature, caused by something inherent in male
anatomy? Is it universal? In the United States, what has been the historical associa-
tion between gender and violence? Has that association become stronger or weaker
over time? What can we, as a culture, do to prevent or at least ameliorate the prob-
lem of male violence?
There has surely been no shortage of explanations for male violence. Some re-
searchers rely on biological differences between women and men, suggesting that "the
durability, universality and generality of the relative aggressiveness of males" points
definitively toward a genetic difference. So, for example, some scholars argue that an-
drogens, male hormones, especially testosterone, are what drive male aggression. It is
true that testosterone is highly correlated with aggressive behavior: Increased testos-
terone levels typically result in increased aggression. Other scholars have looked to
more evolutionary explanations such as homosocial competition, in which male
violence is the result of the evolutionary competition for sexual access to females. Men
fight with each other to create dominance hierarchies; the winners of those fights have
their choice of females. 4
But, as we saw earlier, by itself the biological evidence is unconvincing. Although
testosterone is associated with aggression, it does not cause the aggression but rather
OH?
REALLY•
Man Bites Dog
Did you know that a dog being walked by a man is four times more likely to
attack another dog than one walked by a woman?
Researchers in the Czech Republic studied two thousand dog-dog interac-
tions in different areas of the city where people walked their dogs. They found that dogs walked
by men, who were on a leash, were the most aggressive.
How to explain this? First, the authors suggest a kind of cross-species male-male transfer of
aggressive impulses. "Dogs are unusually skilled at reading human social and communicative be-
havior," wrote the researchers. So they pick up on the aggressiveness in their owners and project
that outwards, perhaps with a "don't mess with me" swagger. And, of course, being on the leash
is frustrating, especially when hot female dogs are nearby. That'll make any critter aggressive,
right?
Can the explanation really be that there is an interspecies osmosis by which the dogs sense
their human's innate virility and get all juiced on their own testosterone? Couldn't it be that male
owners tend to have male dogs? And particular breeds of dogs? (If I'm a guy, and I'm walking a
female miniature poodle, I wouldn't be worried about my dog attacking another dog!) Or that
male owners handle their dogs on leashes more aggressively (all that greater upper-body strength
and all)? And what about the owners' age? (Older men will have "family" dogs [i.e., less aggressive
dogs]; younger single men will have "guy" dogs-think of the canine equivalent of minivans and
muscle cars).
Alas, males-human and canine-may be more aggressive than females, but I somehow doubt
that doggie aggression has much to do with the sex of the owner. Still, I'd be careful where you
step.
Source: Petr Rezac, Petra Viziova, Michaela Dobesova, Zdenek Havlicek, and Dagmar Pospisilova, "Factors Affecting
Dog-Dog Interactions on Walks with Their Owners" in Applied Animal Behavior Science, 134, 2011 , pp. 170-176.
only facilitates an aggressiveness that is already present. (It does nothing for non-
aggressive males, for example.) Nor does the causal arrow always point from hormone
to behavior. Winners in athletic competitions experience increased testosterone levels
after they win. Violence causes increased testosterone levels; hormonal increases cause
violence. Nor does testosterone cause violence against those who are significantly
higher on the dominance ladder. Increased testosterone will cause a midlevel male
baboon, for example, to increase his aggression against the male just below him, but it
will not embolden him to challenge the hierarchical order.5
In fact, there is also little evidence to support the evolutionary theory ofhomoso-
cial competition. In some cultures, males are not in the least violent or competitive
with each other. If "boys will be boys," as the saying goes, they will be so differently in
different cultures. And, in some societies, including ours, males are especially violent
against females-the very group they are supposedly competing for. (To murder or
assault the person you are trying to inseminate is a particularly unwise reproductive
strategy.) Sociologist Judith Lorber intelligently reframes the question:
When little boys run around noisily, we say "Boys will be boys," meaning that physi-
cal assertiveness has to be in the Y chromosome because it is manifest so early and
so commonly in boys. But are boys universally, the world over, in every social
group, a vociferous, active presence? Or just where they are encouraged to use
their bodies freely, to cover space, take risks, and play outdoors at all kinds of
games and sports? 6
Following Freud, some psychoanalysts have looked for an explanation of male

violence in the Oedipal drama: The frustration of the young boy's sexual desires is
translated into aggression (the frustration-aggression hypothesis). Stated more neu-
trally, the young boy must constantly and publicly demonstrate that he has success-
fully separated from his mother and transferred his identity to his father-that is, that
he has become masculine. Male violence is a way to prove successful masculinity.
Or, at least, an adaptive strategy for males to avoid becoming prey themselves.
In a fascinating study, Barbara Ehrenreich argues that the origins of war lie less in an
innate propensity for aggression and a lust for predation than in the fear that we are
slated to become someone else's dinner entree. The origins of society lie in defense-
we became social not because we had some deep need for sociability, but rather be-
cause only together could we defend ourselves successfully. Thus, she argues, the
near-universal association of masculinity and war is compensatory and defensive, a
"substitute occupation for underemployed male hunter-defenders."7
Although not necessarily describing a cultural universal, these psychological
models do help explain the particular association of masculinity with violence, espe-
cially among younger males. (There are, of course, many societies in which masculin -
ity is not associated with violence.) In particular, psychologists have pointed out how
violence is a form of masculine emotional expressiveness, as if the only legitimate
emotion a man could express was rage. Hamlet's complex argument addressing the
moral choices before him becomes Luke Woodham's self-justifying shrug.
Psychological explanations often assume universal generalizability. They take
little account of either cross-cultural variation or the historical shifts in any culture
over time. But such cultural and historical shifts are important if we are adequately to
explain violence in the first place. In the 1980s, two social anthropologists reversed the
question: What can we learn from those societies in which there is very little violence?
They found that the definition of masculinity had a significant impact on the propen-
sity toward violence. In societies in which men were permitted to acknowledge fear,
levels of violence were low. But in societies in which masculine bravado-the posture
of strength and the repression and denial of fear-was a defining feature of masculin-
ity, violence was likely to be high. It turns out that those societies in which bravado is
prescribed for men are also those in which the definitions of masculinity and feminin-
ity are very highly differentiated.8
So societies in which gender inequality is highest are those where masculinity
and femininity are seen to be polar opposites, and thus they are societies that
mandate "masculine bravado." For example, Joanna Overing tells us that in the
Amazon jungle, the extremely violent Shavante define manhood as "sexual belli-
cosity," a state both superior to and opposed to femininity, whereas their peaceful
neighboring Piaroas define manhood and womanhood as the ability to cooperate
tranquilly with others in daily life. In sum, these are a few of the themes that anthro-
pologists have isolated as leading toward both interpersonal violence and intersocietal
violence:
1. The ideal for manhood is the fierce and handsome warrior.
2. Public leadership is associated with male dominance, both of men over other
men and of men over women.
3. Women are prohibited from public and political participation.
4. Most public interaction is between men, not between men and women or
among women.
5. Boys and girls are systematically separated from an early age.
6. Initiation of boys is focused on lengthy constraint of boys, during which time the
boys are separated from women; taught male solidarity, bellicosity, and endur-
ance; and trained to accept the dominance of older groups of men.
7. Emotional displays of male virility, ferocity, and sexuality are highly elaborated.
8. The ritual celebration of fertility focuses on male generative ability, not female
ability.
9. Male economic activities and the products of male labor are prized over those
of females.9
One of the most significant "causes" of male violence, then, is gender inequality.
And the victims of this are not only women, but also men.10 Taken together, these works
provide some policy-oriented goals toward which we might look if we are to reduce the
amount of gendered violence in society. First, it seems clear that the less gender differ-
entiation between women and men, the less likely violence will be gendered. This means
the more "like women" men can be seen-nurturing, caring, frightened-and the more
"like men" women can be seen-capable, rational, competent in the public sphere-the
more likely that aggression will take other routes besides gendered violence. 11
Men's violence against women is the result of entitlement thwarted; men's vio-
lence against other men often derives from the same thwarted sense of entitlement.
I imagine that there is a curvilinear relationship between male-to-male violence and
male-to-female violence and the entitlement to patriarchal power. To find peaceful
societies, we might want to look at societies in which entitlement to power is either not
thwarted or not present. Societies with the least male-male gendered violence would
be those in which patriarchy is either intact and unquestioned or else hardly present at
all and hasn't been for some time.
• ,1 ,, ,,, , ,, =n1u1, a
Many Americans hold some stereotypic assumptions about gun ownership, especially that
men who own guns-and the vast majority of handgun owners are men-are likely to be out
to "prove" something. Feeling otherwise insecure about it, the gun is proof of masculinity.
Whether it's inner-city gangs or suburban and rural guys, the handgun is the symbol of mascu-
linity, an instant masculinity enhancer. But in a fascinating article, "Good Guys with Guns,"
sociologist Angela Stroud asks what about just regular guys, nice guys with guns? What about
those guys who don't seem to have much to prove at all, who don't feel insecure about that
manhood? How is gun ownership interwoven with other masculine virtues, like being a pro-
vider for and protector of his family and being a good father and husband? Making gun owners
the problem, Stroud suggests, will get us nowhere in addressing the problem of gun violence
in America.
THE GENDER OF CRIME

If we are to understand the association of masculinity and violence, we must, there-
fore, be specific. First, we must look at different groups of men. Surely, violence is not
evenly distributed among all groups of men but rather varies by class, race, age, region,
ethnicity, and sexuality. Second, we must explore the historical fluctuations of that
association and compare the contemporary United States with other industrial
countries.
When we do that, an astonishing picture emerges. Stated most baldly: Young
American men are the most violent group of people in the industrialized world. Our
homicide rate is between five and twenty times higher than that of any other industrial
democracy, and we imprison five and twenty times more people than does any other
country on Earth except Russia. (Some might say that our prison population is so
much higher because our crime rate is higher; others argue the opposite case, that our
crime rate is so high because our prison population is so high. I think that both are
partly true but that the relationship between prison and crime is not what common
sense would have us believe. Prisons not only deter crime, but also teach criminals
how to commit crimes.) Nine out of ten male murder victims are killed by other men;
and nine out of ten female murder victims are killed by men. The U.S. homicide rate
declined by nearly half (49 percent), from 9.3 homicides per one hundred thousand
U.S. residents in 1992 to 4.7 in 2011(figure 14.1), falling to the lowest level since 1963.
From 2002 to 2011, the average homicide rate for males was 3.6 times higher than the
rate for females. The average homicide rate for blacks was 6.3 times higher than the
rate for whites. This figure is about ten times higher than that of the next-closest in-
12
dustrialized country, Italy, and more than sixty times greater than that of the same age
group in England.13
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Figure 14.1. Homicide rates, by country or territory (2012 or latest year) .

Source: From "Global Study on Homicide" by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, © 2013 United Nations. Reprinted with the permission of the United Nations.
• •
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Figure 14.2. Global homicide rate, by sex and age group (2012 or latest year).
60+
Source: From "Global Study on Homicide" by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, © 2013 United
Nations. Reprinted with the permission of the United Nations.
And it's getting worse. Between 1985 and 1994, the number of homicides by
fourteen- to seventeen-year-old males more than tripled-as did the number of men
in prison. In 1971, the American prison population was about two hundred thousand.
Less than thirty years later it had mushroomed to more than 1.5 million convicted
criminals incarcerated in the nation's fifteen hundred state and federal prisons, with
another half-million sitting in the country's three thousand local jails. That's a rate of
645 per one hundred thousand Americans. On any given day, one out of every three
African-American men in their twenties is either in prison, in jail, on probation, or on
parole, compared with 17 percent of Hispanic males and 5.9 percent of white males.1 4
In 2008, five states- Vermont, Michigan, Oregon, Connecticut, and Delaware- spent
more on prisons than on higher education.15
According to the California Highway Patrol, nine out of ten of those arrested for
drunk driving are men, 84 percent of those who are jailed for fatal accidents resulting
from drunk driving are men, and 86 percent of arson crimes are committed by men.
The "Gender" of War and Peace

What do you think: Are war and peace somehow than their male counterparts! What about Margaret
more masculine or feminine? If women were running Thatcher, Golda Meir, or Indira Gandhi?
things, do you think there would be less risk of vio- And you'd be thinking sociologically. A sociologi-
lence and war? cal approach would consider the gender of the person
Of course, if you subscribed to more biological argu- occupying the office, as well as the gender of the office
ments about brain chemistry or testosterone, you might itself. Of course, it's true that if you raise one gen-
agree with that idea: If you believe that males are pro- der to be nonviolent empathic listeners who encour-
grammed by evolution to be violent and competitive, age children to "use their words," they might be less
or driven to aggression by testosterone, then you might prone to use violence in public life. But it's just as true
also believe that you might well sleep more peacefully if that certain offices require that one be willing, if one
tomorrow morning you awakened to a world in which deems it necessary, to authorize violence.
every single political office-every local, national, and Violence is the product of both gendered people
global institution-were staffed entirely by women. and gendered institutional and political arrangements.
But, you might say, what about those women
who are in political office? They're no less bellicose
In fact, the classic profile of the arsonist is entirely gendered. "Look for a passive, un -
married man between the ages of 18 and 30 who lacks a capacity to confront people,"
according to Allan Hedberg, a California psychologist who studies arsonists. "Big
forest fires with massive fire trucks and pandemonium are a way of making a mascu-
line statement for an unstable young man who in the past has been wronged."16
On the other side of the police ledger, the statistics are also revealing. Although
fewer than 5 percent of high-speed chases involve suspects wanted for violent
felonies-most of the suspects are suspected of traffic violations-20 percent of all
high-speed chases end in serious injury or death, most often of innocent bystanders.
Why? Because it is almost always younger male officers who do the chasing. In one
study in southern Florida, "winning a race" was cited by officers as the objective in a
pursuit.17
Criminologist Marvin Wolfgang notes that violent crime rises any time there is
an unusually high proportion of the population of young men between the ages of
fifteen and twenty-four. Psychiatrist James Gilligan observes that the only two innate
biological variables that are predictors of violence are youth and maleness. The rela-
tionship is immediately apparent if you look at a chart, as in figure 14.3a for mid-
nineteenth-century Britain. And things aren't so different today, as you can see from
a similar chart for Chicago between 1965 and 1990 (see figure 14.3b). Figure 14.3c shows
the U.S. homicide rate in 2012 by age and sex.
Taken separately, gender and age are the two most powerful predictors of vio-
lence. Men are far more violent than women, and the likelihood of violence by either
gender decreases as one ages. Consider, for example, the data from a survey of high
school seniors in 1994. Nearly one-fifth of high school boys reported that they hurt
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Figure 14.3a. Criminal offenders by age and gender, England and Wales, 1842-1844.
Source: Based on data from F. G. P. Neison, Contributions to Vital Statistics, 3rd ed . (London, 1857), pp. 303-304,
as plotted by Travis Hirschi and Michael Gottfredson, "Age and the Explanation of Crime," AJS, 89, 1983, p. 556.
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Figure 14.3b. Homicide rates in Chicago, 1965-1990, by age and gender.

Source: From "Darwinism and the Roots of Machismo," Scientific American, special issue, 2002.
--Male
--Female
Figure 14.3c. Homicide rate by offender age group and gender, United States, 2012.
Source: Figure is based on Expanded Homicide Data Table 3 in the FBI Crime in the United States 2012 Report:
https://www.fbi.gov/ about-us/ cjis/ucr/ crime-in-the-u.s/20 12/ crime-in-the-u.s/2012/ offenses-known-to-law-
enforcement/ expanded-homicide/ expanded_ho micide_ data_table_3_mu rder_offenders_by _age_sex_and_
race_20 12.xls.
someone so badly that he or she needed to be bandaged or to see a doctor. One-twentieth

of girls reported that level of violence.
In 2007, 5,764 young people ages ten to twenty-four were murdered-an average
of sixteen each day (CDC 2010). Homicide was the second leading cause of death for
young people ages ten to twenty-four years old. Among ten- to twenty-four-year-olds,
86 percent (4,973) of homicide victims were male and 14 percent (791) were female.
In 2008, more than 656,000 young people ages ten to twenty-four were treated in
emergency departments for injuries sustained from violence. Physical fighting was
more reported by males (four in ten reported being in a physical fight in the preceding
twelve months) than females (23 percent), but girls reported higher rates of bullying
(21.2 percent) than males (18.7 percent).18
"MEAN GIRLS" AND WOMEN'S CRIMINALITY

Nonetheless, we should not pretend that just because males are overwhelmingly more
likely to commit an act of violence or a crime, women never do so. In fact, there is
some interesting evidence about criminality among women. Certainly, women
commit crimes. But which crimes they commit and their reasons for committing
them are sometimes very different from men's. In the mid-197os, two sociologists
noted that crime rates for women were increasing significantly. Freda Adler and Rita
Simon each argued that there was evidence of increasing rates of women's criminality.
And each blamed feminism. "Is it any wonder," asked Adler, "that once women were
armed with male opportunities they should strive for status, criminal as well as civil,
through established male hierarchical channels?" Simon nuanced her claims a bit
more, arguing that feminism actually decreased the rates of female violent crime, be-
cause women were less subject to direct male control but that feminism increased the
rates of property crimes.19
Some contemporary analysts blame feminism not for the increase in women's
criminality, but rather for our ignorance of it. "Women commit the majority of child
homicides in the United States, a greater share of physical child abuse, an equal rate of
sibling violence and assaults on the elderly, about a quarter of child sexual abuse, an
overwhelming share of the killings of newborns, and a fair preponderance of spousal
assaults," writes Patricia Pearson, and yet we still think violence is entirely the prov-
ince of the male. As we will see, many of these statistics hinge on curious misreadings
of the data, but even if they were entirely accurate, the number of child or newborn
homicides is so minuscule that even if women committed all of them, the gender ratio
of homicide would barely move.20
What's more interesting is that although both claims may be politically useful to
those who want to return women to their "natural" place in the home, they are not
supported by the empirical evidence. First of all, the most interesting long-term his-
torical evidence suggests that women's criminality has actually decreased since the
eighteenth century. Court records reveal a steady decline in women's arrests and pros-
ecutions since the eighteenth century, brought about, in part, by changes in the defini-
tion of femininity and the "cult of domesticity" that made women angels of their
households:
By the end of the nineteenth century, there was a clear separation of home and
work, a firmer sexual division of labor, the exclusion of women from the public
sphere and from productive work, and the confinement of women to reproductive
and domestic work in the home ... There was also a decline in female criminal
court involvement during this period. 21
Despite the increases in crime rates for women over the past few decades, the base
numbers were so small to begin with that any modest increase would appear to be a
larger percentage increase than that among men. In fact, the sex differential in crime
has remained roughly the same when seen as a number per one hundred thousand of
population. Then it becomes clear that, as one criminologist put it simply, "relative to
males, the profile of the female offender has not changed.":»
Violent crimes by women actually seem to have decreased. Murder is the most
prevalent form of violent crime committed by women, and nearly two-thirds of those
women convicted of murder killed a relative, intimate, or someone else they knew (com-
pared with less than one-third of the men). Over the past twenty years, the rate at which
men have been killed by their wives has fallen by close to two-thirds, whereas the rate at
which women have been killed by their intimate partners has fallen by one-third, which
was the overall decline in the nation's homicide rate from 1981 to 1998.23 (Although
women convicted of murder receive, on average, a sentence more than three years
shorter than that of men convicted of murder, this sentencing differential seems to have
less to do with the gender of the murderer and more to do with the circumstances of the
murder, the past criminal history of the murderer, and the murderer's relationship to the
murdered-that is, men who murder an intimate partner tend to receive sentences
roughly equal in length to those of the women.) 24 At least part of the explanation for this
precipitous decline in the women's homicide rate must be the expansion of services for
battered women, so that now women whose intimate partner batters and/or rapes them
have alternatives that support their leaving the relationship.25
There have been some reported increases in women's property crime, especially
fraud, forgery, and embezzlement, but most of those increases have been in petty
theft-in other words, shoplifting, committing credit card fraud, passing bad checks.
Crimes that seem to be most attractive to women are those that, like shoplifting,
enable women to express their desires without taking responsibility for them. They
want, they desire, they crave-but they know that femininity requires the suppres-
sion of desire. Shoplifting is "stealing beauty," as in the title of a recent film; stealing
sexuality, adulthood, lust, and passion-without loss of reputation. As criminologist
Jack Katz argues:
The young girls seem especially seduced by items of makeup, jewelry, and clothes:
things used to cover up the naked female self, to give the body the appearance
of the mature female, and to make the self dazzlingly attractive to a world blinded
to the blemishes underneath. Females take symbols of adult female identity-
cosmetics, jewelry and sexy underwear. 26
If, Katz argues, shoplifting is the prototypical "female" crime because it is about satis-
fying desire without taking responsibility, then the stickup is the prototypical "male"
crime: fast, aggressive, dangerous, and violent. (Men outnumber women in arrests for
robbery by about fifteen to one.) And directly personal. The "badass" stickup guy is
phallic power-hard and tough, using his gun to threaten penetration. Street robbery
may make little rational sense as a way of making money, but it is still enormously
appealing to young males; it's a way of" doing gender":
Unless it is given sense as a way of elaborating, perhaps celebrating, distinctively
male forms of action and ways of being, such as collective drinking and gambling on
street corners, interpersonal physical challenges and moral tests, cocky posturing
and arrogant claims to back up "tough" fronts, stickup has almost no appeal at all. 27
Yet the evidence on gender and violence does not lead to the conclusion that all
men are violent, rapacious beasts and that all women are angelic and nonviolent little
lambs. Societies that have high rates of male crime also tend to have high rates of
female crime. We need to remember that the three most common arrest categories-
for both women and men-are driving under the influence, larceny-theft, and "other
except traffic" (a category that includes mostly criminal mischief, public disorder, and
minor offenses). Taken together, these three offense categories account for 48 percent
of all male arrests and 49 percent of all female arrests. It's when crime turns violent
that the gender patterns emerge most starkly.28
There is evidence of female violence, of course-but it remains dramatically dif-
ferent from men's violence. For example, women's violence tends to be defensive,
whereas men are more often the initiators of violent acts. And whereas men's violence
may be instrumental-designed to accomplish some goal-or expressive of emotion,
women's violence often is the outcome of feeling trapped and helpless. For example,
the types of violent crimes that women are either as likely or more likely to commit
than men-child homicide, child abuse, assault on the elderly, murder of newborns, as
well as female-initiated spousal abuse or spousal murder-seem to stem from terror
and helplessness.29
The gendered patterns of violence among children are also revealing. Among
three-year-olds, for example, the most frequent acts of violence are boy-to-boy; girl-
to-girl violence, by contrast, is the least frequent. Boy-to-girl violence is far more fre-
quent than girl-to-boy. In one study, two Finnish psychologists contrasted physical,
verbal, and "indirect" forms of aggression. They found that girls at all ages (except the
youngest) were more likely to engage in indirect aggression (telling lies behind a per-
son's back; trying to be someone's friend as revenge against another; saying to others,
"Let's not be friends with him or her"). Boys at all ages were more likely to engage in
direct aggression (kicking, hitting, tripping, shoving, arguing, swearing, and abusing)
and verbal aggression. Girls at all ages were also more likely to use peaceful means
(talking to clarify things, forgetting about it, telling a teacher or parent) to resolve
problems and were also more likely to withdraw or sulk.30
We have some evidence that the gender gap in violence is decreasing. One study
from Finland found that girls in the 1980s were much less violent than in the 1990s,
both from self-reports and from reports of their peers. The study also found greater
acceptance of violence among the girls. But in the late 1990s, the study found, violence
had a more positive connotation for girls, "something that makes the girl feel power-
ful, strong, and makes her popular"-in short, doing for girls what violence and ag-
gression have historically done for boys.31
A spate of recent books about girls' aggression throws new light on these issues.32
Some writers, like Rachel Simmons, argue that such indirect aggression may have
devastating effects on girls' development, self-esteem, and aspirations:
Unlike boys, who tend to bully acquaintances or strangers, girls frequently attack
within tightly knit friendship networks, making aggression harder to identify and
intensifying the damage to the victims. Within the hidden culture of aggression,
girls fight with body language and relationships instead of fists and knives. In this
world, friendship is a weapon, and the sting of a shout pales in comparison to a day
of someone's silence. There is no gesture more devastating than the back
turning away.
But girls' indirect forms of aggression are not the expression of some innately devious
feminine wiles, but rather the consequences of gender inequality. "Our culture refuses
girls access to open conflict, and it forces their aggression into nonphysical, indirect,
and covert forms. Girls use backbiting, exclusion, rumors, name-calling, and manipu-
lation to inflict physical pain on targeted victims," Simmons writes. Indirect horizon-
tal aggression is the safest and easiest way to express one's anger. Were girls permitted
the kind of aggression that boys are, they would not express their anger in such back-
handed ways.33
Evidence of women's increased violence-that is, of a decreasing gender gap-is
still scant and spotty. In the United States, women constitute only 7 percent of the
prison population (about 115,000 inmates). One-half of women prisoners are incarcer-
ated in just four states-Florida, Texas, California, and New York. The female inmate
population tends to mirror the male inmate population demographically (not in terms
of offenses), including a disproportionate number of nonwhite, poor, and underedu-
cated and unemployed women. Violence remains perhaps the most gendered behavior
in our culture.34
GENDERED VIOLENCE: AN INSTITUTIONAL PROBLEM

After he had successfully tested a nuclear bomb in November 1952, creating a fusion
explosion about one thousand times more powerful than the fission bomb that de-
stroyed Hiroshima seven years earlier, Edward Teller, the Nobel Prize-winning
nuclear physicist, wrote the following three-word telegram to his colleagues: "It's a
boy." No one had to point out to Teller the equation of military might-the capacity
for untold violence-with masculinity. Such a tragic connection remains fixed for
both the military heroes of our masculine fantasies and the bespectacled scientists
who create the technology that enables those Rambo-wannabes to conquer the world.
It would be easy to catalog all the phallic images and rhetoric in that vast historic
parade of military heroes in decorated uniforms and scientists in white lab coats,
suggesting that proving masculinity is a common currency for both warrior and
wonk, gladiator and geek. Pop psychologists have yet to run out of sexually tinged
phrases to describe this; one feminist calls masculine militarism a case of "missile
envy"; another writes about how men "created civilization in the image of a perpetual
erection: a pregnant phallus." But these images turn gender into a screen against which
individuals project their psychological fears and problems, reducing war and the
state's use of institutional violence to a simple aggregation of insecure men desperate
to prove their masculinity. Although this argument is not entirely without merit, as we
shall see, it leaves us without an understanding of the institutional violence that is
implicit in the construction of the modern bureaucratic state. For that understanding
we need to explore the link between the two realms, how "militarism perpetuates the
equation between masculinity and violence" and how war "encodes violence into the
notion of masculinity generation after generation."35
Though masculinity may be associated historically with war, the way we fight
today would leave many men without the ability to test and prove their manhood in a
conventional military way. After all, most soldiers today are not combatants. Most
are in support services-transport, administration, technical support, maintenance.
The increasingly technological sophistication of war has only sped up this process-
nuclear weapons, "smart bombs," automatic weaponry, self-propelled military vehicles,
and long-distance weapons all reduce the need for Rambo-type primitive warriors
and increase the need for cool, rational button-pushers.36
Yet there is something powerful in the ways that our political leaders seek to prove
an aggressive and assertive masculinity in the political arena. War and its technology
confer upon men a "virile prestige," as French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir put it.
Think of Andrew Jackson's man-making slaughter of the Seminoles or Theodore
Roosevelt's thundering about the strenuous life as he charged up San Juan Hill. For
much of our history, our political leaders have tried to balance manly restraint with
equally manly belligerence. Military prowess and the willingness to go to war have
been tests of manhood. Explaining why President Lyndon Johnson continued to esca-
late the war in Vietnam, a biographer writes,
He wanted the respect of men who were tough, real men, and they would turn out
to be hawks. He had unconsciously divided people around him between men and
boys. Men were activists, doers, who conquered business empires, who acted in-
stead of talked, who made it in the world of other men, and had the respect of
other men. Boys were the talkers and the writers and the intellectuals, who sat
around thinking and criticizing and doubting instead of doing.
(In case you find such sentiments strange, think about the cliche "Those who can do,
and those who can't do, teach.") When opponents criticized the war effort, Johnson
attacked their masculinity. When informed that one member of his administration
was becoming a dove on Vietnam, Johnson scoffed, "Hell, he has to squat to piss!"
And, as Johnson celebrated the bombings of North Vietnam, he declared proudly that
he "didn't just screw Ho Chi Minh. I cut his pecker off."37
Such boasts continue to plague American politics. Jimmy Carter's reluctance to
intervene in Iran led one security affairs analyst to comment that the United States was
"spreading its legs for the Soviet Union" and led to the election of Ronald Reagan, who
promised to rescue America from its post-Vietnam lethargy-which he accomplished,
in part, by invading small countries like Grenada. As one political commentator put it,
Reagan "made mincemeat of Mr. Carter and Mr. Mondale, casting them as girly-boys
who lacked the swagger necessary to lead the world." George H. W. Bush inherited the
right to that masculine mantle when he invaded Panama and the Persian Gulf for
Operation Desert Storm. Bill Clinton's popularity ratings soared when, during his im-
peachment hearings in 1998, he threatened and eventually undertook air strikes
against Iraq. And George W. Bush's invasion oflraq proved popular enough to ensure
Republican electoral victories and to knock the corporate scandals of his friends' com-
panies, the failure of the war against terrorism, and an economic recession off the front
page (figure 14-4).38
Such presidential sentiments both trickle down to those who are charged with
creating and fighting those wars and bubble up to policymakers from the defense
strategists who are trained to prosecute those wars and who are today calculating the
megatonnage and kill ratios for future ones. "There is among some people a feeling of
compulsion about the pursuit of advanced technologies-a sense that a man must be
continually proving his virility by pioneering on the frontiers of what is only just pos-
sible." In an article about masculinity and the Vietnam War, journalist I. F. Stone il-
lustrated this compulsive proving of masculinity among those who planned the war.
Figure 14.4. AP Photo/J . Scott Applewhite, File.
At a briefing about the escalation of the bombing of North Vietnam, one Pentagon
official described the U.S. strategy as two boys fighting: "If one boy gets the other in an
arm lock, he can probably get his adversary to say 'uncle' if he increases the pressure
in sharp, painful jolts and gives every indication of willingness to break the boy's
arm." And recently, when a German politician indicated he was concerned about pop-
ular opposition to Euromissile deployment, one American defense strategist opined,
"Those Krauts are a bunch of limp-dicked wimps."39
Carol Cohn conducted an ethnographic analysis of defense intellectuals. She recalls
that "lectures were filled with discussion of vertical erector launchers, thrust-to-weight
ratios, soft lay-downs, deep penetration, and the comparative advantage of protracted
versus spasm attacks-or what one military advisor to the National Security Council
has called 'releasing 70 to 80 percent of our megatonnage in one orgasmic whump.'
There was serious concern about the need to harden our missiles, and the need to 'face
it, the Russians are a little harder than we are.' Disbelieving glances would occasionally
pass between me and my ally-another woman-but no one else seemed to notice.'ll 0
It would be simplistic to reduce the complexities of military and political deci-

sions to psychological "pissing contests," but it is equally important to include a dis-
cussion of gender in our investigations. From the top political leaders to military
strategists and technological experts, issues of gender play themselves out in the for-
mulation of military policy. And public opinion also plays an important role in these
demonstrations of sexual potency. Recall, for example, how during the Gulf War, our
enemy Saddam Hussein was constantly sexualized on bumper stickers that read
"Saddam, Bend Over" and "U.S.A.-Up Saddam's Ass," insults that equated military
conflict with homosexual rape. One widely reprinted cartoon showed Saddam Hussein
bending over as if in Muslim prayer, with a huge U.S. missile approaching, about to
penetrate him from behind. Thus was the sexual nature of military adventurism played
out in sexual paraphernalia.
AMERICA: A HISTORY OF GENDERED VIOLENCE

Although we commonly think that all states require the use of violence-that the
creation and maintenance of politics require both a police force and a military to
subdue both ourselves and others-the equation of violence and masculinity remains
a particularly strong one for Americans. The United States has a long and bloody his-
tory of specifically gendered violence, in which both individual men and Americans
as a nation have demonstrated and proved manhood. It's not just our political and
military leaders-although, as we have seen, they certainly have had their issues as
well. One psychologist speaks of a "civic advocacy of violence as socially acceptable,
appropriate and necessary." Our most venerated cultural heroes were soldiers-or, at
least, the actors who played them in the movies.41
Historians suggest that this particularly American, and particularly tragic, code
of violence arrived in the eighteenth century, imported and developed by Scottish and
Irish immigrants to the American South, where brawling, dueling, fighting, hunting,
and drinking became the means to express manhood. Andrew Jackson's mother told
her son, arguably the most mean-tempered and violent president in our nation's his-
tory, that "the law affords no remedy that can satisfy the feelings of a true man." The
American frontier-perhaps the single largest collection of younger males in the his-
tory of the industrialized world-provided a legacy of violence to American life. Vio-
lence has always been highest in those places where young men gather, especially away
from the "civilizing" effect of women.42
In the aftermath of the Civil War, after the South had suffered a humiliating and
emasculating defeat, young boys took to placing chips of wood on their shoulders,
daring other boys to knock off the chips so the boys could legitimately fight with them.
Only in America is "having a chip on one's shoulder" considered a badge of honor
among boys. More than that, violence was seen as legitimate-as long as it was retalia-
tory. If someone else knocked that chip off, kicking his ass was a reasonable response.
In her penetrating analysis of American violence, anthropologist Margaret Mead de-
scribed the typically American refusal to initiate aggression but a willingness to re-
taliate far out of proportion to the original offense in "an aggression which can never
be shown except when the other fellow starts it" and which is "so unsure of itself that
it had to be proved." Remember these words the next time you watch two young boys
square off in a playground. "You wanna start something?" one of them yells. "No, but
if you start it, I'll finish it!" replies the other. No one wants to take responsibility for
the initial act of aggression, but everyone wants to finish the fight.43
Violence has long been understood as the best way to ensure that others publicly
recognize one's manhood. Fighting was once culturally prescribed for boys, who, the
theory went, needed to demonstrate gender identity. In one of the best-selling advice
manuals of the first part of the twentieth century, parents learned the following:
There are times when every boy must defend his own rights if he is not to become
a coward and lose the road to independence and true manhood ... The strong
willed boy needs no inspiration to combat, but often a good deal of guidance and
restraint. If he fights more than, let us say, a half dozen times a week,-except, of
course, during his first week at a new school-he is probably over-quarrelsome
and needs to curb. The sensitive, retiring boy, on the other hand, needs encour-
agement to stand his ground and fight.
In this best-seller, boys were encouraged to fight once a day, except during the first
week at a new school, when, presumably, they would fight more often! 44
Lurking beneath such advice was the fear that boys who were not violent would
not grow up to be real men. The specter of the "sissy"-encompassing the fears of
emasculation, humiliation, and effeminacy that American men carry with them-is
responsible for a significant amount of masculine violence. Violence is proof of mas-
culinity; one is a "real" man, because one is not afraid to be violent. Psychiatrist James
Gilligan speaks of "the patriarchal code of honor and shame which generates and ob-
ligates male violence"-a code that sees violence as the chief demarcating line between
women and men.45
The contemporary code of violence of the streets descended from old Southern
notions of honor-a man had to be ready to fight to prove himself in the eyes of others.
Southern whites called it "honor"; by the turn of the twentieth century it was called
"reputation." By the 1950s Northern ghetto blacks spoke of "respect," which has now
been transformed again into not showing "disrespect," or "dissing." It's the same code
of violence, the same daring. Listen to one New York gang member describing the
reasons that his gang requires random knife slashings as initiation rituals: "Society
claims we are notorious thugs and killers but we are not," he says. "We're a family of
survivors ... proud young black men living in the American ghetto. Harlem princes
trying to rise up and refusing to be beaten down." Another man recalls his days in a
juvenile detention facility where "you fought almost every day because everybody
trying to be tougher than the next person." Another street hood gives a contemporary
slant to the old "chip on the shoulder" when he describes what he calls the "accidental
bump" when a male is walking around Spanish Harlem "with your chest out, bumping
into people and hoping they'll give you a bad time so you can pounce on them and
beat 'em into the goddamn concrete." Sociologist Vic Seidler writes that "as boys, we
have to be constantly on the alert to either confront or avoid physical violence. We
have to be alert to defend ourselves ... Masculinity is never something we can feel at
ease with. It's always something we have to be ready to prove and defend." And crimi-
nologist Hans Toch adds that "in cultures of masculinity, the demonstrated willing-
ness to fight and the capacity for combat are measures of worth and self-worth.'¾ 6
Masculinity is still often equated with the capacity for violence. From the locker
room to the chat room, men of all ages learn that violence is a socially sanctioned form
of expression. Male socialization is a socialization to the legitimacy of violence-from
infantile circumcision to violence from parents and siblings to routine fights with
other boys to the socially approved forms of violence in the military, sports, and
prison (the United States is the only industrialized country that still employs capital
punishment) to epigrams that remind us that we should get even, not mad, and
that the working world is the Hobbesian war of each against all, a jungle where dogs
eat dogs.
VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

Men learn that violence is an accepted form of communication among men and be-
tween women and men. It's so commonplace, so deeply woven into the fabric of daily
life, that we accept violence as a matter of course-within families, between friends,
between lovers. Most victims of violence know their attackers; many know them
Not Just Whistlin' Dixie

What if I told you it's not just age and gender that are levels. They asked the guys to read a short story and
good predictors of violence, but also region? That to supply an ending (to see if the insulted guys' ending
young Southern white men are more prone to vio- was more violent).
lence than young men in any other part of the coun- For some of the guys, being insulted caused no
try? Sound far-fetched? changes at all. (They were like the control group
In the early 1990s, two Michigan psychologists, who simply walked down the hall.) But for some of
Dov Cohen and Richard Nisbett, conducted an exper- the guys, the insult changed a lot. And virtually all of
iment to find out. They invited young men to fill out a them were from the South. (Northerners were more
questionnaire in a classroom building at the university amused by it, and their reactions were unchanged.)
and then to drop it off at the end of the hallway and Young white guys from the South, Cohen and Nisbett
then return to the classroom. Half the guys did just concluded, are driven by a strict code of honor; insult
that. The other half, however, encountered another that honor and they are ready to fight.
guy (a confederate of the experiment) in the narrow Think of it this way. When the Canadian Neil Young
hallway, who opened a drawer in a filing cabinet as the wrote a song condemning racism in the South, some
"subject" walked by. The hallway was even narrower young white Southern boys took it as a slur on the
now, and the confederate looked up, annoyed, and South itself. That code of honor kicked into high gear
slammed the filing cabinet drawer shut and muttered, and Lynyrd Skynyrd penned one of t he angriest hymns
in an audible voice, "Asshole. " to their home state of Alabama. Maybe white South-
Cohen and Nisbett then did a series of tests to erners are, as Floridian Tom Petty put it, "born a rebel."
see if the insult had any effect on the guys who expe-
rienced it. They watched and recorded their faces. Source: Robert Nisbett and Dov Cohen, Culture of Honor:
They shook their hands to see if their grip changed. The Psychology of Violence in the South (Boulder: Westview,
They took saliva samples to measure testosterone 1996).
intimately. Nearly one in five victims of violence treated in hospital emergency rooms
was injured by a spouse, a former spouse, or a current or former boyfriend or girl-
friend. Violence can be a private, personal, and intimate language, just as it can be a
mode of public address between societies and social groups.
The gender imbalance of intimate violence provides insight into gender dynamics.
According to the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey prepared by
the Centers for Disease Control, more than one out of three women (35.6 percent) and
more than one out of four men (28.5 percent) have experienced rape, physical violence,
and/or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime. For about one in four women
(24.3 percent) and one in seven men (13.8 percent), that violence was severe. Just under
half of both women and men have experienced psychological aggression. Between
30 percent and 40 percent of all women who are murdered are murdered by a husband or
a boyfriend, according to the FBI (about 5 percent of males are murdered by wives or
girlfriends) (Figure 14.5). Every six minutes a woman in the United States is raped;
every eighteen seconds a woman is beaten; and every day four women are killed by
their batterers.47
Interestingly, while rates of intimate partner violence have decreased over the
past two decades, that decrease is almost entirely in the rates of male victims.
Percent
50 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Female
30 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
20 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
10 -----~-=
- --
-----------
------= ~
o---------------------
1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2008
Figure 14.5. Homicides of intimates, by sex of victim, 1980-2008.
Note: Percentages are based on the 63.1 percent of homicides from 1980 through 2008 for which victim/ offender
relationships were known . Intimate includes spouses, ex-spouses, boyfriends, girlfriends, and same-sex relation-
ships. Friend/acquaintance includes neighbors, employees, employers, and other known persons.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics: Homicide Trends in the United States, 1980-2008,
http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf, p. 18.
It doesn't have to be this way, of course. As we saw earlier, societies may be located
on a continuum from rape-free to rape-prone. Anthropologist Peggy Reeves Sanday
found that the best predictors of rape-proneness were levels of militarism,
Remember Thornhill and Palmer, from chapter 2-the guys whose studies of
OH?
REALLY•
fruit flies led them to claim that rape is an evolutionary strategy for guys who
can't otherwise get a date?
Don't you wonder how they could explain rape as a strategy of war? Sure,
they might say that the victorious soldiers might rape the women of the vanquished population
so as to impregnate them with a new generation of "their" offspring. This seems to have been
partially a motivation for the mass rapes of Bosnian Muslim women by Serbs or the half-million
Tutsi women who were raped by Hutu men in the Rwandan genocide of 1994.
But it doesn't explain the rape-as-recreation model employed by the Soviet army in
Germany after World War II (estimates vary between one hundred thousand and two million
women raped), or the Bengali women raped by Indian soldiers in 1971, or the two hundred
thousand Chinese sex slaves provided to the Japanese army during World War II. Let alone the
Congo, where, at this writing, hundreds of thousands of women have been raped and murdered.
A report by the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and Oxfam examined rape survivors at one
hospital in a northern province. Their ages ranged from three to eighty. Some were single, some
married, some widowed. Three out of five had been gang raped. They were raped in front of
husbands and children. Sons were forced to rape their mothers and killed if they refused.
There is nothing evolutionary or "natural" about this cruel sport.
Source: "War's Overlooked Victims" in Economist, January 15, 2011, pp. 63-65 .
interpersonal violence in general, ideologies of male toughness, and distant father-

child relationships. Those societies in which rape was relatively rare valued women's
autonomy (women continued to own property in their own name after marriage) and
valued children (men were involved in child rearing). Stated most simply, "the lower
the status of women relative to men, the higher the rape rate." What does that tell us
about women's status in the United States?4 8
Forty-five percent of female troops returning from Afghanistan and Iraq had ex-
perienced sexual trauma in the military. This means that American female soldiers are
more likely-by far-to be attacked by their own comrades than by the enemy.49
In fact, the United States has the highest rate of reported rape in the industrial world.
Between 12 percent and 25 percent of all American women have experienced rape, and
another 12-20 percent have experienced attempted rape. That means that between one-
fourth and nearly one-half of all women have been sexually assaulted and that between
two-thirds and four-fifths of these rapes involved acquaintances. One calculation esti-
mates that between 20 percent and 30 percent of all girls now twelve years old will suffer
a violent sexual attack during their lives.50
What is perhaps more frightening is that of those twelve-year-old girls, more than
12 percent have already been raped. According to the National Intimate Partner and
Sexual Violence Survey, 12.3 percent of rape victims were younger than age twelve
when they were first raped, and 29.9 percent were between the ages of eleven and
seventeen.51
Another study found that 96 percent of those female rape victims under twelve
knew their attackers. In one of five cases, their rapist was also their father. Although
there is some evidence that suggests that females under eighteen are also the most
likely to file false reports of rape with the police (though virtually none of these
allegations ever went to trial, and all the reports were retracted in the interview stage),
these false reports seem to be the result of fears of pregnancy and the hope that de-
claring they were raped would permit the females to get an abortion, because in many
states, abortion is legal only in cases of rape or a threat to the mother's health. But
these cases of rape of young girls can hardly be subsumed under some vague and
insulting heading of relationship "miscommunication."52
I'',,,I''
iJ :n)Q IIa
We all know that rape is less a crime of passion than a crime of violence. It is an assault, not a
date-gone-wrong. So if we know that, how come so many of us get it "wrong"-that is, how
come sexual assault remains one of the most painful aspects of campus life in twenty-first-
century America? Maybe it's because we don't really understand what the assault is, what
makes sexual assault " permissible" among large groups of us. Perhaps young men give them-
selves permission not to "understand" what "no" might mean-let alone what "yes" might
mean. In a revealing study, psychologist Rachel O'Byrne and her colleagues found that men
strategically don't hear that "no," or claim that it was "insufficient knowledge." As they put it,
" If a girl doesn't say 'no' ... " What might on the surface look like a miscommunication is actu-
ally far more strategic, and far less spontaneous, than we might have earlier thought.
He said, she said?

OH? Many of us believe that sexual assault is difficult to prosecute because it is a
REALLY• case of "he said, she said." But what he and she actually say is based on what
they perceive. We may believe it when we see it, but in this case, see it only if
we already believe it.
In perhaps the largest survey of sexual behavior ever undertaken in the United States, Edward
Laumann and other researchers at the University of Chicago found that 96.1 percent of men had
never been forced to do something sexual against their will. Over three-fourths of women
(77.2 percent) had never been forced to do something sexual.
But that's not necessarily the most interesting part of the research findings. Here's what the
researchers found:
Prevalence of Forced Sex, by Gender (percentages)
Men Women
Respondent ever forced a woman 2.8 .I
Respondent ever forced a man .2
Never sexually forced 96.1 77.2
Forced by a woman .3
Forced by a man 1.9 21.6
Forced by both men and women .4 .5
Missing/no answer .3 .5
N 1,409 1,749
Source: Laumann et al., The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the
United States (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), p. 336.
Sociologist Tristan Bridges notes that he asks students to reconcile the highlighted parts of the
chart: 1.5 percent of women stated that they had forced sex on a man, which is a teeny-tiny bit
higher than the percentage of men (1.3 percent) who said they'd ever had sex forced on them by
a woman. In other words, the percentages match nearly perfectly. But 2.8 percent of men said
they'd ever forced sex on a woman-which is close to eight times lower than the percentage of
women who said they'd had sex forced on them by a man (21.6 percent).
How can we reconcile this? Women are overreporting? Men are lying? One can't tell by the
data. What it means is that many men are unaware that they have sexually forced women in the
first place. That is, what seemed "consensual" or "normal" was perceived by her as forcing. This
is the result, Bridges puts it, of gender inequality "shaping the ways in which we experience desire
in addition to the ways we fulfill those desires."
Sources: Edward Laumann, Robert Michels, John Gagnon, and Stuart Michaels, The Social Organization of Sexuality:
Sexual Practices in the United States (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), p. 336; and Tristan Bridges,
"Gendering Sex and Sexual Violence," available athttp://inequalitybyinteriordesign.wordpress.com/2012/03/0 I/
gendering-sex-and-sexual-violence.htm.
The recent revelations of pervasive child sexual abuse by Catholic priests (and the
church's subsequent efforts to cover up these crimes) remind us of how vulnerable boys
are as well. Although these revelations have been shocking, pedophile sexual abuse
should not be confused with homosexual rape; pedophilia is a "sexual orientation," not
a variation of homosexuality. Pedophile priests are erotically attracted not to members

of their own sex, but rather to children (some choose boys, others choose girls, and some
are indiscriminant). The erotic charge comes from the presumed seductive innocence of
the child, not the attraction of one's own gender. And boys are no more vulnerable to
same-sex sexual assault by their peers (as opposed to adults) in the Catholic Church than
they are in any other mostly single-sex and gender-unequal institutions.
As we saw in earlier chapters, different theoretical schools offer different explana-
tions for all sorts of rape. Arguments that rape is simply the reproductive strategy for
losers in the sexual arena are unconvincing. Equally unconvincing are psychological
arguments that rape is an isolated, individual act, committed by sick individuals who
experience uncontrollable sexual impulses. After all, almost 75 percent of all rapists
plan their rapes. And only about 5 percent of rapists can be categorized as psychotic.
Nor is it persuasive to blame alcohol or drugs as the cause of men losing control. Why,
then, wouldn't women lose control of themselves in the same way?
An adequate explanation of rape has to recognize that it is men who rape women
and ask the more frightening question: Why do so many "otherwise" typical, normal
men commit rape? As sociologist Allan Johnson puts it, how can such a pervasive
event be the work of a few lunatics? "It is difficult to believe that such widespread vio-
lence is the responsibility of a small lunatic fringe of psychopathic men," he writes.
"That sexual violence is so pervasive supports the view that the focus of violence
against women rests squarely in the middle of what our culture defines as 'normal'
interaction between men and women." The reality is that rape is committed by all-
American, regular guys. And, on campus, "college women are at greater risk of being
raped or aggressed against by the men they know and date than they are by lunatics in
the bushes."53
Surveys of college women reveal the prevalence of rape, and surveys of college
men indicate how casually rape can be viewed. Mary Koss's research on campus
date and acquaintance rape, although the subject of vicious backlash attacks, remains
the most impressive and thorough research we have on rape's frequency and scope.
She found that nearly half (44 percent) of all women surveyed experienced some
forms of sexual activity when they didn't want to, 15 percent experienced attempted
rape, 12 percent were coerced by drugs and alcohol, a full 25 percent had sexual inter-
course when they didn't want to because they were "overwhelmed" by a man's over-
whelming arguments and pressure, and 9 percent were forcibly raped. The National
College Women Sexual Victimization Study, published in 2000, estimated that be-
tween 20 and 25 percent of college women experience completed or attempted rape
during their college years.54
Further, a 2007 national-level study of drug-facilitated, incapacitated, and forc-
ible rape, which included a sample of college women, found that approximately
673,000 of nearly six million current college women (11.5 percent) have been raped. In
addition, another 2007 Department of Justice survey found 19 percent of the women
reported experiencing completed or attempted sexual assault since entering college.
Since entering college, slightly more women experienced completed sexual assault
(13 .7 percent) than attempted sexual assault (12.6 percent), with 7.2 percent of the
women experiencing both completed sexual assault and attempted sexual assault
during college.55
No wonder feminist writer Susan Griffin called rape "the all-American crime,"
engaged in by normal, all-American guys. Yet it is also equally true that most men do
not commit rape. In several surveys, many men indicated that they would consider
rape-provided the conditions were "right" and they knew that they would not get
caught. In a survey of American college men, 28 percent indicated that they would be
likely to commit rape and use force to get sex; 6 percent said they would commit rape
but not use force, and 30 percent said they might use force but would not commit rape.
Forty percent indicated that they would neither use force nor commit rape-less than
half! In another survey, 37 percent indicated some likelihood of committing rape if
they were certain they would not be caught.56
Something still holds men back-well, at least some men! Is it simply the fear of
being caught? Or is it that they can't quite take demonstrating their masculinity to
that next level? In a sense, what we see is not that rapists are nonconformists, psycho-
logically unbalanced perverts who couldn't otherwise get sex but rather that rapists
are actually overconformists-exceptionally committed to a set of norms about mas-
culinity that makes every encounter with every woman potentially, even inevitably,
about sexual conquest, that turns every date into a contest, and that turns a deaf ear to
what a woman might want because, after all, women aren't men's equals to begin with.
"The most striking characteristic of sex offenders," writes one researcher, "is their ap-
parent normality." Bernard Lefkowitz, author of a chillingly detailed portrait of a gang
rape of a mentally retarded girl by several high-status high school athletes in Glen
Ridge, New Jersey, argues that "for a lot of boys, acting abusively toward women is
regarded as a rite of passage. It's woven into our culture." So any discussion of rape has
to take account of the ordinariness of the crime within the normative definition of
masculinity and of the empirical reality that despite all that, most men do not and
never will commit rape. If rape is normative, are nonrapists not real men?57
In a fascinating study of convicted rapists, sociologist Diana Scully develops these
themes. Scully found that rape was used by men "to put women in their place," she
writes. "Rape is a man's right," one convicted rapist told her. "If a woman doesn't want
to give it, a man should take it. Women have no right to say no. Women are made to
have sex. It's all they are good for. Some women would rather take a beating, but they
always give in; it's what they are for." Men rape, Scully concludes, "not because they are
idiosyncratic or irrational, but because they have learned that in this culture sexual
violence is rewarding" and because "they never thought they would be punished for
what they did."58
OH? Rapists are sick individuals who otherwise can't get sex.
Actually, that's not true at all. In her fascinating study of convicted rapists,
REALLY• sociologist Diana Scully found that rapists are just as likely to have regular
sexual partners as nonrapists. In fact, they have higher rates (so much for
being sexual "losers," as the evolutionary psychologists claimed). They're
just as likely to be married and fathers as nonrapists. And most showed little evidence of
mental illness.
Source: Diana Scully, Understanding Sexual Vidence (New York: Routledge , 1991 ).
Rape is a crime that combines sex and violence, that makes sex the weapon in an
act of violence. It's less a crime of passion than a crime of power, less about love or lust
than about conquest and contempt, less an expression of longing than an expression
of entitlement. You might think that when men think about rape, then, they think
about the power they feel.
You'd be wrong. Listen to the voice of one young man, a twenty-three-year-old
stock boy named Jay in a San Francisco corporation, who was asked by author Tim
Beneke to think about under what circumstances he might commit rape. Jay has
never committed rape. He's simply an average guy trying to imagine the circum-
stances under which he would commit an act of violence against a woman. Here's
what Jay says:
Let's say I see a woman and she looks really pretty and really clean and sexy and
she's giving off very feminine, sexy vibes. I think, wow I would love to make love to
her, but I know she's not interested. It's a tease. A lot of times a woman knows that
she's looking really good and she'll use that and flaunt it and it makes me feel like
she's laughing at me and I feel degraded ... If I were actually desperate enough to
rape somebody it would be from wanting that person, but also it would be a very
spiteful thing, just being able to say "I have power over you and I can do anything
I want with you" because really I feel that they have power over me just by their
presence. Just the fact that they can come up to me and just melt me makes me feel
like a dummy, makes me want revenge. They have power over me so I want power
over them. 59
Jay speaks not from a feeling of power, but rather from a feeling of powerlessness.
"They have power over me so I want power over them." In his mind, rape is not the
initiation of aggression against a woman, but rather a form of revenge, a retaliation
after an injury done to him. But by whom?
Beneke explores this apparent paradox by looking at language. Think of the terms
we use in this culture to describe women's beauty and sexuality. We use a language of
violence, of aggression. A woman is a "bombshell," a "knockout," a "femme fatale."
She's "stunning," "ravishing," "dressed to kill." We're "blown away," "done in." Wom-
en's beauty is experienced by men as an act of aggression: It invades men's thoughts,
elicits unwelcome feelings of desire and longing, makes men feel helpless, powerless,
vulnerable. Then, having committed this invasive act of aggression, women reject
men, say no to sex, turn them down. Rape is a way to get even, to exact revenge for
rejection, to retaliate. These feelings of powerlessness, coupled with the sense of enti-
tlement to women's bodies expressed by the rapists Diana Scully interviewed, combine
in a potent mix-powerlessness and entitlement, impotence and a right to feel in con-
trol. The astonishing, shamefully high U.S. rape rate comes from that fusion.
Thus rape is less a problem of a small number of sick individuals and more a prob-
lem of social expectations of male behavior, expectations that stem from gender in-
equality (disrespect and contempt for women) and may push men toward sexual
predation. A completed rape is only the end point on a continuum that includes sexual
coercion as well as the premeditated use of alcohol or drugs to dissolve a woman's re-
sistance. In the most famous study of college men's behaviors, Mary Koss and her
colleagues found that one in thirteen men admitted to forcing (or attempting to force)
a woman to have sex against her will, but 10 percent had engaged in unwanted sexual
contact, and another 7.2 percent had been sexually coercive. In another study, Scott
Boeringer found that more than 55 percent had engaged in sexual coercion, 8.6 percent
had attempted rape, and 23.7 percent had provided drugs or alcohol to a woman in
order to have sex with her when she became too intoxicated to consent or resist (which
is legally considered rape in most jurisdictions). Such numbers belie arguments that
rape is simply the crime of sick individuals.60
Men's feelings of both powerlessness and entitlement are also part of the backdrop
to the problem of violence in the home. Though the family is supposed to be a refuge
from the dangerous outside world, a "haven in a heartless world," it turns out that the
home is, for women and children, the single most dangerous place they can be. Not
even the legal "protection" of marriage keeps women safe from the threat of rape, and
levels of violence against women in the home are terrifyingly high. Family violence
researcher Murray Straus and his colleagues concluded that "the American family and
the American home are perhaps as or more violent than any other American institu-
tion or setting (with the exception of the military, and only then in time of war)."61
Marriage certainly doesn't protect women from rape. In one study of 644 married
women, 12 percent reported having been raped by their husbands. One researcher es-
timates that between 14 percent and 25 percent of women are forced by their husbands
to have sexual intercourse against their will during the course of their marriage,
whereas another claims that about one-third of women report having "unwanted sex"
with their partner. In yet another study of 393 randomly selected women, a date or a
spouse was more than three times as likely to rape a woman than was a stranger, a
friend, or an acquaintance. Fully 50 percent of the sample reported more than twenty
incidents of marital rape, and 48 percent indicated that rape was part of the common
physical abuse by their husbands. In that study, David Finklehor and Kersti Yllo also
found that nearly 75 percent of the women who had been raped by their husbands had
successfully resisted at least once; that 88 percent reported that they never enjoyed
being forced; and that 22 percent had been sexually victimized as children.62
One of the more dramatic changes in rape laws has been the removal of exemp-
tions of husbands from prosecution for rape. As recently as 1985, more than half of
the states in the United States still expressly prohibited prosecution for marital rape
on the grounds that women had no legal right to say no to sex with their husbands.
When a woman said "I do," it apparently also meant "I will ... whenever he wants to."
Although by 1993, all states had declared marital rape a crime "at least where force is
used," according to the National Clearinghouse on Marital and Date Rape, as of
1996, the exemption still applies in several states where the husband and wife are
living together (not separated), and only five states have extended such protection to
unmarried men and women who cohabit. Family researcher Richard Gelles described
the scope of this problem in his testimony before the New Hampshire state legisla-
ture in 1981, when that state was considering removing the marital exemption from
prosecution:
In reality, marital rape is often more traumatic than stranger rape. When you have
been intimately violated by a person who is supposed to love and protect you, it
can destroy your capacity for intimacy with anyone else. Moreover, many wife
victims are trapped in a reign of terror and experience repeated sexual assaults
over a period of years. When you are raped by a stranger you have to live with a
frightening memory. When you are raped by your husband, you have to live with your
rapist. 63
Marital rape is a significant problem in other countries as well, where husbands
remain excluded from prosecution, because a man is legally entitled to do whatever he
wants with his property. And wife abuse is also a chronic problem in other countries.
In Hong Kong and Quito, Ecuador, for example, as many as 50 percent of all married
women are estimated to be regularly beaten by their husbands. 64
Though domestic violence is certainly a problem in other countries, it also ap-
pears that rates of wife abuse in the United States are among the highest in the world.
Battery is the major cause of injury to women in the United States. More than two
million women are beaten by their partners every year. According to the Bureau of
Justice Statistics, 85 percent of all victims of domestic violence are women.
GENDER "SYMMETRY" IN DOMESTIC VIOLENCE?

Despite the overwhelming evidence of the problems of domestic violence against
women, we often hear a small chorus of voices shouting about "husband abuse."
When one sociologist claims that the abuse of husbands by wives is the most un-
derreported form of domestic violence, suddenly legions of antifeminists trot out
such arguments in policy discussions. Some of the studies of "gender symmetry"
in domestic violence-a presumption that rates of domestic violence are roughly
equal by gender-suggest that women are "as likely" to hit men as men are to hit
women and that women commit 50 percent of all spousal murders. These studies
provide "facts," such as that 1.8 million women suffered one or more assaults by a
husband or boyfriend and that over two million men were assaulted by their wives
or girlfriends; that 54 percent of all violence labeled as "severe" was committed by
women; or that among teenage dating couples, girls were more violent than boys.
(Ironically, the people who claim equivalent rates of domestic violence are often
the same people who argue that women and men are biologically different and that
women are not biologically aggressive enough to enter the military or serve on police
forces .) One obviously confused journalist suggests that because "only" 3-4 percent
of women are battered each year, "we ought to consider it the unfortunate behavior
of a few crazy men." (If 3-4 percent of all men were stricken with testicular or
prostate cancer each year, or were victims of street assault, this same journalist
would no doubt consider it a national emergency and try to mobilize the entire
medical community or the National Guard-and perhaps both!) 65
If these data were true, you might ask, why are there no shelters for battered men,
no epidemics of male victims turning up in hospital emergency rooms, no legions of
battered men coming forward to demand protection? (Well, that's not entirely true.
0. J. Simpson did call himself an "abused husband" after he beat up his former wife
Nicole. And one shelter for battered men did open in Vancouver, Canada, but closed
within two months because no one came to it.) Partly, these pundits tell us, because
men who are victims of domestic violence are so ashamed of the humiliation, of the
denial of manhood, they are unlikely to come forward and are more likely to suffer in
silence the violent ministrations of their wives-a psychological problem that one re-
searcher calls "the battered husband syndrome." "Because men have been taught to
'take it like a man' and are ridiculed when they feel that they have been battered by
women, women are nine times more likely to report their abusers to the authorities,"
observe two writers. And partly, the pundits tell us, because the power of the "feminist
lobby" is so pervasive, there has been a national cover-up of this demonstrably politi-
cally incorrect finding. As one polemicist puts it,
While repeated studies consistently show that men are victims of domestic vio-
lence at least as often as are women, both the lay public and many professionals
regard a finding of no sex difference in rates of physical aggression among intimates
as surprising, if not unreliable, the stereotype being that men are aggressive and
women are exclusively victims. 66
Such assertions are not supported by empirical research at all, and the inferences
drawn from them are even more unwarranted. For example, in the original study of
"the battered husband syndrome," sociologist Susan Steinmetz surveyed fifty-seven
couples. Four of the wives, but not one husband, reported having been seriously
beaten. From this finding, Steinmetz concluded that men simply don't report abuse,
that there must be a serious problem of husband abuse, that some 250,000 men were
hit every year-this, remember, from a finding that no husbands were abused. By the
time the media hoopla over these bogus data subsided, the figure had ballooned to
twelve million battered husbands every year! 67
One problem is the questions asked in the research. Those studies that found that
women hit men as much as men hit women asked men and women if they had ever,
during the course of their relationship, hit their partner. An equal number of women
and men answered yes. The number changed dramatically, though, when men and
women were asked who initiated the violence (was it offensive or defensive?), how
severe it was (did she push him before or after he'd broken her jaw?), and how often the
violence occurred. When these three questions were posed, the results looked like
what we knew all along: The amount, frequency, severity, and consistency of violence
against women are far greater than anything done by women to men-Lorena Bobbitt
notwithstanding.68
Another problem stems from the question of whom was asked. The studies that
found comparable rates of domestic violence asked only one partner about the inci-
dent. But studies in which both partners were interviewed separately found large dis-
crepancies between reports from women and from men. The same researchers who
found comparable rates have urged that such results be treated with extreme caution,
because men underreport severe assaults. (Perhaps it is felt to be equally unmanly to
beat up a woman as to be beaten up by one, because "real men" never raise a hand
against a woman.)69
A third problem results from when the informants were asked about domestic
violence. The studies that found comparability asked only whether or not any incident
occurred in a single year, thus equating a single slap with a reign of domestic terror
that may have lasted decades. And, although the research is clear and unequivocal
that violence against women increases dramatically after divorce or separation, the
research that found comparable results excluded incidents that occurred after
separation or divorce. About 76 percent of all assaults take place at that time, though-
with a male perpetrator more than 93 percent of the time.7°
Finally, the research that suggests comparability is all based on the Conflict
Tactics Scale (CTS), a scale that does not distinguish between offensive and defen-
sive violence, equating a vicious assault with a woman hitting her husband while
he is, for instance, assaulting their children. Nor does it take into account the
physical differences between women and men, which lead to women being six
times more likely to require medical care for injuries sustained in family violence.
Nor does it include the nonphysical means by which women are compelled to
remain in abusive relationships (income disparities, fears about their children,
economic dependency). Nor does it include marital rape or sexual aggression. As
one violence researcher asks, "Can you call two people equally aggressive when a
woman punches her husband's chest with no physical harm resulting and a man
punches his wife's face and her nose is bloodied and broken? These get the same
scores on the CTS."71
Supporters of claims about battered men, by the way, rarely dispute the numbers
of battered women-they claim only that the number of battered men is equivalent.
This is curious, because they typically do not advocate more funding for domestic vio-
lence but rather less funding for women's programs. Such politically disingenuous ef-
forts have earned the disapproval of even the researcher whose work is used most
commonly to support their claims.72
Of course, some research suggests that women are fully capable of using violence
in intimate relationships, but at nowhere near the same rates or with the same severity.
Perhaps as much as 3-4 percent of all spousal violence is committed by women, ac-
cording to criminologist Martin Schwartz. About one in eight wives reports having
ever hit her husband. And when women are violent, they tend to use the least violent
tactics and the most violent ones. Women shove, slap, and kick as often as men, Straus
and his colleagues found. But they also use guns almost as often as men do.73
Domestic violence varies as the balance of power in the relationship shifts. When
all the decisions are made by one spouse, rates of spouse abuse-whether committed
by the woman or the man-are at their highest levels. Violence against women is most
common in those households in which power is concentrated in the hands of the
husband. Interestingly, violence against husbands is also more common (though much
less likely) in homes in which the power is concentrated in the hands of the husband
or, in extremely rare cases, in the hands of the wife. Concentration of power in men's
hands leads to higher rates of violence, period-whether against women or against
men. Rates of wife abuse and husband abuse both plummet as the relationships
become increasingly equal, and there are virtually no cases of wives hitting their hus-
bands when all decisions are shared equally, in other words, when the relationships
are fully equal.74
Women and men do not commit acts of violence at the same rate or for the same
reasons. Family violence researcher Kersti Yllo argues that men tend to use domestic
violence instrumentally, for the specific purpose of striking fear and terror in their
wives' hearts, to ensure compliance, obedience, and passive acceptance of the men's
rule in the home. Women, by contrast, tend to use violence expressively, to express
frustration or immediate anger-or, of course, defensively, to prevent further injury.
Figure 14.6. In 2009, R&B singer Chris Brown pied guilty to assaulting Rihanna. At the time, the
photographs of her bruised and swollen face circulated virally on the Internet, and swayed public
opinion. His response? Three years later, he was sporting a tattoo on his neck of a battered woman,
a defiant response to critics and a "trophy" image to celebrate his masculinity.
Source: Amanda Marcotte, "What Chris Brown 's Tattoo Tells Us About Violence Against Women" available at
http://www.rawstory.com/20 12/09 / what-chris-browns-tattoo-tells-us-about-violence-agai nst-women/. See
also Lisa Wade, "Gender, Power, and Chris Brown's Battered Woman Tattoo" available at http:/ /thesocietypages
.org/ socimages/2012/09 / 13/gender-power-and-chris-browns-battered-woman-tattoo/ . Photo credit: © MJT /
AdMedia/Corbis.
But rarely is women's violence systematic, purposive, and routine. As two psycholo-
gists recently put it:
In heterosexual relationships, battering is primarily something that men do to
women, rather than the reverse ... There are many battered women who are vio-
lent, mostly, but not always, in self-defense. Battered women are living in a culture
of violence, and they are part of that culture. Some battered women defend them-
selves: they hit back, and might even hit or push as often as their husbands do. But
they are the ones who are beaten up.75
In the results of a survey that simply adds up all violent acts, women and men might
appear to be equally violent. But the nation's hospital emergency rooms, battered
women's shelters, and county morgues suggest that such appearances are often deadly
deceptive.
Violence against women knows no class, racial, or ethnic bounds (tables 14.ia and
14.1b). "Educated, successful, sophisticated men-lawyers, doctors, politicians, busi-
ness executives-beat their wives as regularly and viciously as dock workers." Yet
there are some differences. For example, one of the best predictors of the onset of do-
mestic violence is unemployment. And a few studies have found rates of domestic vio-
lence to be higher in African-American families than in white families. One study
found that black men hit their wives four times as often as white men did and that
black women hit their husbands twice as often as white women did. Although subse-
quent studies have indicated a decrease in violence among black families, the rates are
still somewhat higher than for white families.76
Among Latinos the evidence is contradictory: One study found significantly less
violence in Latino families than in Anglo families, whereas another found a slightly
higher rate. These contradictory findings were clarified by separating different groups
of Latinos. Kaufman Kantor and colleagues found that Puerto Rican husbands were
about twice as likely to hit their wives as were Anglo husbands (20-4 percent to
9.9 percent) and about ten times more likely than Cuban husbands (2.5 percent). In
many cases, however, these racial and ethnic differences disappear when social class is
taken into account. Sociologist Noel Cazenave examined the same National Family
Table 14. la. Lifetime Prevalence of Rape, Physical Violence, and/or Stalking by an Intimate
Partner, by Race/Ethnicity-U .S. Women, NISVS 2010
Hispanic Non-Hispanic
American
Asian or Indian or
Pacific Alaska
Black White Islander Native Multiracial
Rape Weighted% 8.4 12.2 9.2 t t 20.1
Estimated 1,273,000 1,768 ,000 7,475 ,000 273 ,000
number of
victims*
Physical Weighted% 35.2 40.9 31.7 t 45 .9 50.4
violence Estimated 5,317,000 5,955 ,000 25 ,746,000 399,000 683,000
number of
victims*
Stalking Weighted% 10.6 14.6 10.4 t t 18 .9
Estimated 1,599,000 2, 123 ,000 8,402,000 256 ,000
number of
victims*
Rape, Weighted% 37. 1 43.7 34.6 19.6 46.0 53 .8
physical Estimated 5,596,000 6,349,000 28 ,053 ,000 1,110,000 400,000 729,000
violence, number of
and/or victims*
stalking
Note: Race/ ethnicity was self-identified . The American Indian or Alaska Native designation does not indicate
being enrolled or affiliated with a tribe .
*Rounded to the nearest thousand .
!Estimate is not reported ; relative standard error > 30 percent or cell size ~ 20.
Table 14.1 b. Lifetime Prevalence of Rape, Physical Violence, and/or Stalking by an Intimate
Partner, by Race/Ethnicity-U.S. Men, NISVS 2010
Hispanic Non-Hispanic
American
Asian or Indian or
Pacific Alaska
Black White Islander Native Multiracial
Rape Weighted% t t t t t t
Estimated
number of
victims*
Physical Weighted% 26.5 36 .8 28 . 1 8.4 45 .3 38.8
violence Estimated 4,277,000 4,595 ,000 21,524,000 428,000 365,000 507,000
number of
victims*
Stalking Weighted% t t 1.7 t t t
Estimated 1,282 ,000
number of
victims*
Rape, Weighted% 26.6 38 .6 28 .2 t 45 .3 39.3
physical Estimated 4,331,000 4,820,000 21,596,000 365 ,000 513,000
violence, number of
and/or victims*
stalking
Note: Race/ethnicity was self-identified. The American Indian or Alaska Native designation does not indicate
being enrolled or affiliated with a tribe .
*Rounded to the nearest thousand.
!Estimate is not reported ; relative standard error >30 percent or cell size :s 20.
Violence Survey and found that blacks had lower rates of wife abuse than whites in
three of four income categories-the two highest and the lowest. Higher rates among
blacks were reported only by those respondents in the $6,000-$11,999 income range
(which included 40 percent of all blacks surveyed). Income and residence (urban) were
also the variables that explained virtually all the ethnic differences between Latinos
and Anglos. The same racial differences in spousal murder can be explained by class:
Two-thirds of all spousal murders in New York City took place in the poorest sections
of the Bronx and Brooklyn.77
Of course, gay men and lesbians can engage in domestic violence as well. A
recent informal survey of gay victims of violence in six major cities found that gay
men and lesbians were more likely to be victims of domestic violence than of antigay
hate crimes and just as likely to experience violence as heterosexuals. Over one-
fourth of lesbians and gay men (27.9 percent of lesbian and gay adults) reported
having experienced IPV (interpersonal violence) in their adult lives. Compare that
to the 28.5 percent of heterosexual men and 35.6 percent of heterosexual women in
the NISVS (National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey). And it's even
worse if you're bisexual: two in five (40.6 percent) bisexuals experienced violence-
the highest percentage of all.
480
I'',,,I''
PART 3: GENDERED INTERACTIONS
iJ :n)Q IIa
Lesbians and gay people have long been targets of violence. In recent years, transgender
people have been especially singled out as targets as well, in part because they expose the
artificiality of the gender binary and reveal gender to be more fluid, more of a continuum. To
some people, this feels like the earth is no longer solidly beneath their feet; they experience
a sense of gender vertigo. As Karl Marx once wrote on an entirely different topic, "All that
is solid melts into air." This can really make some people angry. Doug Meyer's article "An
lntersectional Analysis of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender People's Evaluations of Anti-
Queer Violence" asks LGBT people themselves how they understand and interpret that
violence. Meyer finds that black and Latino victims of violence often interpret it through a lens
of race and ethnicity, somehow betraying their racial and ethnic communities, while white
people tend to see the violence entirely in sexual and gender terms.
Intimate partner violence is ultimately about power. For men who abuse their
women partners, it is just another way in which they can access and exert power and
control. And yet, like rape, domestic violence is most likely to occur not when the man
feels most powerful, but rather when he feels relatively powerless. Violence is restor-
ative, a means to reclaim the power that he believes is rightfully his. As one sociologist
explains, "abusive men are more likely to batter their spouses and children whenever
they feel they are losing power or control over their lives." Another reminds us that
"male physical power over women, or the illusion of power, is nonetheless a minimal
compensation for the lack of power over the rest of one's life."78
CONCLUSION
Violence is epidemic in American society today. The United States is, by far, the most
violent industrial nation in the world-despite our nation being the society with the
highest rates of incarceration and the only industrialized nation that uses the death
penalty to deter violence. Did I say "despite"? Don't I mean "because"?
Violence takes an enormous social toll, not just on its victims, but also in the
massive costs of maintaining a legal system, prisons, and police forces. And it takes
an incalculable psychic toll-an entire nation that has become comfortable living in
fear of violence. (Turn on the evening news in any city in America for the nightly
parade of murders, fires, parental abuse, and fistfights masquerading as sports.) "To
curb crime we do not need to expand repressive state measures, but we do need to
reduce gender inequalities," writes criminologist James Messerschmidt. And assuag-
ing that fear, as criminologist Elizabeth Stanko puts it, "will take more than better
outdoor lighting."79
Of course, better lighting is a start. And we have to protect women from a cul-
ture of violence that so often targets them. But we also have to protect boys "from a
culture of violence that exploits their worst tendencies by reinforcing and amplify-
ing the atavistic values of the masculine mystique." After all, it is men who are
overwhelmingly the victims of violence-just as men are overwhelmingly its
perpetrators. 80
Often, biological explanations are invoked as evasive strategies. "Boys will be
boys," we say, throwing up our hands in helpless resignation. But even if all violence
were biologically programmed by testosterone or the evolutionary demands of repro-
ductive success, the epidemic of male violence in America would still beg the political
question: Are we going to organize our society so as to maximize this propensity for
violence or are we going to take steps to minimize it? These are political questions, and
they demand political answers-answers that impel us to find alternative, nonviolent
routes for men to express themselves as men.
Frankly, I believe that men are better than that, better than biologically pro-
grammed violent and rapacious beasts. A colleague recently devised a way to suggest
that men can do better. For Rape Awareness Week at his university, he created hun-
dreds of "splash guards" to be distributed in the men's rooms on campus. (For those
who don't know, a splash guard is the plastic grate that is placed in men's public uri-
nals to prevent splatter.) He had thousands made up with a simple and hopeful slogan.
It says simply: "You hold the power to stop rape in your hand."
I believe that we can also do far better than we have in reducing violence in our
society and in withdrawing our tacit, silent, and thereby complicit support for it.
When right-wingers engage in this sort of "male-bashing"-asserting that men are
no better than testosterone-crazed violent louts (and that therefore women must
leave the workplace and return home to better constrain us)-most men know these
slurs to be false. But they are false with a ring of truth to them. Because as long as
men remain in their postures of either silent complicity or defensive denial, one
might very well get the idea that we do condone men's violence. "All violent feelings,"
wrote the great nineteenth-century British social critic John Ruskin, "produce in us
a falseness in all our impressions of external things." Until we transform the mean-
ing of masculinity, we will continue to produce that falseness-with continued tragic
consequences.
KEY TERMS
Acquaintance Rape Gendered Violence Masculine Bravado
Batter ed Husband Intimate Partner Violence Pedophilia
Syndrome Male Violence Rape as Recreation
Cult of Domesticity Marital Rape Women's Criminality
Epilogue
((A DEGENDERED SOCIETY"?
The principle which regulates the existing social relations between the
two sexes-the legal subordination of one sex to the other-is wrong
in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement;
and ... it ought to be replaced by a principle of perfect equality, admit-
ting no power or privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other.
-JOHN STUART MILL
THE SUBJECTION OF WOMEN (1869)
n this second decade of a new millennium, we sit perched on a precipice, look-

I ing into an uncharted expanse of the future. What kind of society do we want
to live in? What will be the gender arrangements of that society?
To see gender differences as intransigent leads also to a political resignation
about the possibilities of social change and increased gender equality. Those who
proclaim that men and women come from different planets would have us be-
lieve that the best we can hope for is a sort of interplanetary detente, an uneasy
truce in which we exasperatingly accept the inherent and intractable foibles of
the other sex, a truce mediated by ever-wealthier psychological interpreters who
can try to decode the sexes' impenetrable language.
I think the evidence is clear that women and men are far more alike than
they are different and that we need far fewer cosmic interpreters and far more
gender equality to enable both women and men to live the lives they want to live.
The future of gender differences is intimately tied to the future of gender in-
equality. As gender inequality is reduced, the differences between women and
men will shrink.
And besides, the interplanetary model of gender differences entirely ignores
the historical record. For the past century, we have steadily moved to lessen
gender inequality-by removing barriers to women's entry into all arenas of the
public sphere, protecting women who have been victimized by men's violent ef-
forts to delay, retard, or resist that entry. And as we have done so, we have found
that women can perform admirably in arenas once believed to be suitable only
483
484 EPILOGUE: "A DEGENDERED SOCIETY"?
for men and that men can perform admirably in arenas once held to be exclusively
women's domain. Don't believe me: Ask those women surgeons, lawyers, and pilots.
And ask those male nurses, teachers, and social workers, as well as all those single
fathers, if they are capable of caring for their children.
In this book, I've made several arguments about our gendered society. I've argued
that women and men are more alike than we are different, that we're not at all from
different planets. I've argued that it is gender inequality that produces the differences
we do observe and that that inequality also produces the cultural impulse to search for
such differences, even when there is little or no basis for them in reality. I've also
argued that gender is not a property of individuals, which is accomplished by social-
ization, but rather a set of relationships produced in our social interactions with one
another and within gendered institutions, whose formal organizational dynamics re-
produce gender inequality and produce gender differences.
I've also pointed to evidence of a significant gender convergence taking place over
the past half-century. Whether we look at sexual behavior, friendship dynamics, ef-
forts to balance work and family life, or women's and men's experiences and aspira-
tions in education or the workplace, we find the gender gap growing ever smaller. (The
lone exception to this process, as we saw in the last chapter, is violence.)
To celebrate this gender convergence in behavior and attitudes is not to advocate
degenderingpeople. A recent book by Judith Lorber makes a case for degendering. She
argues that, as one reviewer put it, "degendering reduces gender inequality by elimi-
nating gender difference as a meaningful consequential component of institutions and
identities." Such an argument, to my mind, however utopian, still puts the cart before
the horse, claiming that eliminating difference will lead to eliminating inequality. But
such a model equates equality with sameness-only by flattening all differences will
equality be possible. I see it exactly the other way around: Only by eliminating in-
equality will difference recede until the variations among us-by race, age, ethnicity,
sexuality, and, yes, biological sex-will prove largely epiphenomena!. (There are some
differences, after all, and we should neither ignore nor minimize them.) Just as we
know that sameness doesn't automatically lead to equality, so, too, is difference not
necessarily incompatible with it.'
I don't have much faith, for example, in the ideal of androgyny. Some psycholo-
gists have proposed androgyny as a solution to gender inequality and gender differ-
ences. It implies a flattening of gender differences, so that women and men will think,
act, and behave in some more "neutralized" gender-nonspecific ways. "Masculinity"
and "femininity" will be seen as archaic constructs as everyone becomes increasingly
"human."
Such proposals take a leap beyond the ultimately defeatist claims of immutable
difference offered by the interplanetary theorists. After all, proponents of androgyny
at least recognize that gender differences are socially constructed and that change is
possible.
But androgyny remains unpopular as a political or psychological option because
it would eliminate differences between people, mistaking equality for sameness. To
many of us, the idea of sameness feels coercive, a dilution of difference into a bland,
tasteless amalgam in which individuals would lose their distinctiveness. It's like
Hollywood's vision of communism as a leveling of all class distinctions into a
colorless, amorphous mass in which everyone would look, act, and dress the same-as
in those advertisements that feature poorly but identically dressed Russians. Androgyny
often feels like it would enforce life on a flat and ultimately barren, degendered land-
scape. Is the only way for women and men to be equal to become the same? Can we not
imagine equality based on respect for and embracing of difference?
Fears about androgyny confuse gendered people with gendered traits. It's not that
women and men need to be more like each other than we already are but rather that
all the psychological traits and attitudes and behaviors that we, as a culture, label as
"masculine" or "feminine" need to be redefined. These traits and attitudes, after all,
also carry positive and negative values, and it is through this hierarchy, this unequal
weighting, that gender inequality becomes so deeply entwined with gender difference.
To degender people does not by itself eliminate gender inequality.
In fact, calls for androgyny paradoxically reify the very gender distinctions that
they seek to eliminate. Advocates frequently urge men to express more of their "femi-
nine" sides; women, to express more of their "masculine" sides. Such exhortations,
frankly, leave me deeply insulted.
Let me give you an example. Some years ago, as I sat in my neighborhood park
with my newborn son in my arms, a passerby commented, "How wonderful it is to see
men these days expressing their feminine sides." I growled, underneath my conspicu-
ously false smile. Although I tried to be pleasant, what I wanted to say was this: 'Tm
not expressing anything of the sort, ma'am. I'm being tender and loving and nurturing
toward my child. As far as I can tell, I'm expressing my masculinity!"
Why, after all, are love, nurturance, and tenderness defined as feminine? Why do
I have to be expressing the affect of the other sex in order to have access to what
I regard as human emotions? Because I am a man, everything I do expresses my mas-
culinity. And I'm sure my wife would be no less insulted if, after editing a particularly
difficult article or writing a long, involved essay, she were told how extraordinary and
wonderful it is to see women expressing their masculine sides-as if competence, am-
bition, and assertiveness were not human properties to which women and men could
equally have access.
Love, tenderness, nurturance; competence, ambition, assertion-these are human
qualities, and all human beings-both women and men-should have equal access
to them. And when we do express them, we are expressing, respectively, our gender
identities, not the gender of the other. What a strange notion, indeed, that such emo-
tions should be labeled as masculine or feminine, when they are so deeply human
and when both women and men are so easily capable of a so much fuller range of
feelings .
Strange, and also a little sad. "Perhaps nothing is so depressing an index of the
inhumanity of the male supremacist mentality as the fact that the more genial human
traits are assigned to the underclass: affection, response to sympathy, kindness, cheer-
fulness," was the way feminist writer Kate Millett put it in her landmark book, Sexual
Politics, first published in 1969.2
So much has changed since then. The gendered world that I inhabit is totally
unlike that of my parents. My father could have gone to an all-male college, served in
an all-male military, and spent his entire working life in an all-male work environ-
ment. Today that world is but a memory. Women have entered every workplace, the
military, and its training academies (both federally and state supported), and all but
three or four colleges today admit women. Despite persistent efforts from some politi-
cal quarters to turn back the calendar to the mid-nineteenth century, those changes
are permanent; women will not go back to the home where some people think they
belong.
These enormous changes will only accelerate in the next few decades. The society
of the third millennium will increasingly degender traits and behaviors without deg-
endering people. We will still be women and men, equal yet capable of appreciating
our differences, different yet unwilling to use those differences as the basis for
discrimination.
Imagine how quickly the pace of that change might accelerate if we continue to
degender traits, not people. What if little boys and girls saw their mothers and their
fathers go off to work in the morning, with no compromise to their masculinity or
femininity? Those little boys and girls would grow up thinking that having a job-
being competent, earning a living, striving to get ahead-was something that grown-
ups did, regardless of whether they were male or female grown-ups. Not something
that men did and that women did only with guilt, social approbation, and sporadic
and irregular dependence on their fertility. "And when I grow up," those children would
say, 'Tm going to have a job also."
And when both mothers and fathers are equally loving and caring and nurturing
toward their children, when nurture is something that grown-ups do-and not
something that mothers do routinely and men do only during halftime on Saturday
afternoon-then those same children will say to themselves, "And when I get to be a
grown-up, I'm going to be loving and caring toward my children."
Such a process may sound naively optimistic, but the signs of change are every-
where around us. In fact, the historical evidence points exactly in that direction. It
was through the dogged insistence of that nineteenth-century ideology, the separa-
tion of spheres, that two distinct realms for men and women were imposed, with
two separate sets of traits and behaviors that accompany each sphere. This was the
historical aberration, the anomaly-its departure from what had preceded it and
from the "natural" propensity of human beings goes a long way in explaining the
vehemence with which it was imposed. Nothing so natural or biologically deter-
mined has to be so coercive.
The twentieth century witnessed the challenge to separate spheres, undertaken,
in large part, by those who were demoted by its ideological ruthlessness-women.
That century witnessed an unprecedented upheaval in the status of women, possibly
the most significant transformation in gender relations in world history. From the
rights to vote and work, asserted early in the century, to the rights to enter every con-
ceivable workplace, educational institution, and the military in the latter half, women
shook the foundations of the gendered society. And at the end of the century they had
accomplished half a revolution-a transformation of their opportunities to be work-
ers and mothers.
This half-finished revolution has left many women frustrated and unhappy. For
some reason, they remain unable to "have it all"-to be good mothers and also to be
effective and ambitious workers. With astonishing illogic, some pundits explain women's
frustrations as stemming not from the continued resistance of men, the intransigence
of male-dominated institutions to accept them, or the indifference of politicians to
enact policies that would enable these women to balance their work and family lives,
but rather from the effort of women to expand their opportunities and to claim a full
share of humanity. It is a constant source of amazement how many women have full-
time jobs exhorting women not to take full-time jobs.
The second half of the transformation of gender is just beginning and will be,
I suspect, far more difficult to accomplish than the first. That's because there was an
intuitively obvious ethical imperative attached to enlarging the opportunities for, and
eliminating discrimination against, women. But the transformation of the twenty-
first century involves the transformation of men's lives.
Men are just beginning to realize that the "traditional" definition of masculinity
leaves them unfulfilled and dissatisfied. Whereas women have left the home, from
which they were "imprisoned" by the ideology of separate spheres, and now seek to
balance work and family lives, men continue to search for a way back into the family,
from which they were exiled by the same ideology. Some men express their frustration
and confusion by hoping and praying for a return to the old gender regime, the very
separation of spheres that made both women and men unhappy. Others join various
men's movements, like Promise Keepers or the Million Man March, or troop off to a
mythopoetic men's retreat in search of a more resonant, spiritually fulfilling defini-
tion of masculinity.
The nineteenth-century ideology of separate spheres justified gender inequality
based on putative natural differences between the sexes. What was normative-
enforced by sanction-was asserted to be normal, a part of the nature of things.
Women have spent the better part of a century making clear that such an ideology did
violence to their experiences, effacing the work outside the home that women actually
performed and enforcing a definition of femininity that allowed only partial expres-
sion of their humanity.
It did the same for men, of course-valorizing some emotions and experiences,
discrediting others. As with women, it left men with only partially fulfilled lives. Only
recently, though, have men begun to chafe at the restrictions that such an ideology
placed on their humanity.
In the twenty-first century, it might be wise to recall the words of a writer at the
turn of the twentieth century. In a remarkable essay written a century ago, in 1917, the
New York City writer Floyd Dell spelled out the consequences of separate spheres for
both women and men:
When you have got a woman in a box, and you pay rent on the box, her relationship
to you insensibly changes character. It loses the fine excitement of democracy. It
ceases to be a companionship, for companionship is only possible in a democracy.
It is no longer a sharing of life together-it is a breaking of life apart. Half a life-
cooking, clothes and children; half a life-business, politics and baseball. It doesn't
make much difference which is the poorer half. Any half, when it comes to life, is
very near to none at all.
Like feminist women, Dell understands that these separate spheres that impoverish
the lives of both women and men are also built upon gender inequality. (Notice how
he addresses his remarks to men who "have got a woman in a box.") Gender inequality
produced the ideology of separate spheres, and the ideology of separate spheres, in
turn, lent legitimacy to gender inequality. Thus, Dell argues in the opening sentence of
his essay that "feminism will make it possible for the first time for men to be free.''3
The direction of the gendered society in the new century and the new millen-
nium is not for women and men to become increasingly similar, but rather for them
to become more equal, for those traits and behaviors heretofore labeled as masculine
and feminine-competence and compassion, ambition and affection-to be labeled
as distinctly human qualities, accessible to both women and men who are grown-up
enough to claim them. It suggests a form of gender proteanism-a temperamental
and psychological flexibility, the ability to adapt to one's environment with a full
range of emotions and abilities. The protean self, articulated by psychiatrist Robert
Jay Lifton, is a self that can embrace difference, contradiction, and complexity, a self
that is mutable and flexible in a rapidly changing world. 4 Such a transformation does
not require that men and women become more like each other, but, rather, more
deeply and fully themselves.
Notes
CHAPTER ONE 13. Carol Tavris, "The Mismeasure of

1. John Gray, Men Are from Mars, Woman'' in Feminism and Psychology,
Women Are from Venus (New York: 1993, p. 153.
HarperCollins, 1992), p. 5. 14. Cynthia Fuchs Epstein, Deceptive
2. J.E.B. v. Alabama, 114 S. Ct., 1436 Distinctions (New Haven, CT: Yale
(1994). University Press, 1988).
3. Barbara Risman, Gender Vertigo (New 15. Alex Witchel, "Our Finances, Ourselves"
Haven: Yale University Press, 1998) , in New York Times, June 4, 1998, p. 13.
p. 25. See also Judith Lorber, Paradoxes of 16. Ibid.
Gender (New Haven, CT: Yale University 17. Rosabeth M. Kanter, Men and Women of
Press, 1994). the Corporation (New York: Harper and
4 . Catharine Stimpson, Where the Row, 1977).
Meanings Are (New York: Methuen, 18. Kathleen Gerson, Hard Choices
1988). (Berkeley: University of California Press,
5. See Michael Kimmel, Manhood in 1985); No Man's Land (New York: Basic
America: A Cultural History (New York: Books, 1993).
Free Press, 1996). 19. Risman, Gender Vertigo, p. 70.
6. This story also appears in Kimmel, 20. David Almeida and Ronald Kessler,
Manhood in America. "Everyday Stressors and Gender Differ-
7- Torri Minton, "Search for What It Means ences in Daily Distress" in Journal of
to Be White" in San Francisco Chronicle, Personality and Social Psychology, 75(3),
May 8, 1998. 1998, pp. 670-680.
8. Simmel is cited in Lewis Coser, "Georg 21. See Nancy Stedman, "In a Bad Mood-
Simmel's Neglected Contributions to the for a Good Reason" in New York Times,
Sociology of Women'' in Signs, 2(4), 1977, October 24, 1998, for an example of a
p. 872. journalist who actually understood the
9. Ibid. story.
10. R. W. Connell, Gender and Power 22. Risman, Gender Vertigo, p. 21.
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University 23. Gayle Rubin, "The Traffic in Women'' in
Press, 1987), p. 183; Erving Goffman, Toward an Anthropology of Women, R. R.
Stigma (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice- Reiter, ed. (New York: Monthly Review
Hall, 1963), p. 128. Press, 1975), pp. 179-180.
11. Connell, Gender and Power, pp. 183, 188, 24. Catharine MacKinnon, Towards a
187. Feminist Theory of the State (Cambridge:
12. Cited in Risman, Gender Vertigo, Harvard University Press, 1989),
p. 141. pp. 218-219.
489
490 NOTES
25. Michael Kimmel, Diane Diamond, and Kirby Men and Women (New York: Viking, 1997), pro-
Schroeder, " 'What's This About a Few Good vides a good summary. Robert Nadeau, S/ He
Men?' Negotiating Sameness and Difference in Brain: Science, Sexual Politics and the Myths of
Military Education from the 1970s to the Present" Feminism (New York: Praeger, 1996), illustrates the
in Masculinities and Education, N. Lesko, ed. conservative and antifeminist uses to which this
(Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1999), research can so effortlessly be put.
pp. 231-252. 12. E. 0 . Wilson, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis,
2nd ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1977).
CHAPTER TWO 13. Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (New York:
1. Jerre Levy, cited in Jo Durden-Smith and Diane Oxford University Press, 1976), p. 152; Edward 0.
deSimone, Sex and the Brain (New York: Warner Wilson, On Human Nature (Cambridge: Harvard
Books, 1983), p. 61. University Press, 1978), p. 167.
2. Rev. John Todd, Womans Rights (Boston: Lee and 14. Anthony Layng, "Why Don't We Act Like
Shepard, 1867), p. 26. the Opposite Sex?" in USA Today magazine,
3. Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English, For January 1993; Donald Symons, "Darwinism
Her Own Good: 150 Years of the Experts' Advice to and Contemporary Marriage" in Contemporary
Women (New York: Doubleday, 1979), p. 111. Marriage: Comparative Perspectives on a Changing
4. Cited in Carl Degler, In Search of Human Nature: Institution, K. Davis, ed. (New York: Russell
The Decline and Revival of Darwinism in American Sage Foundation, 1985), cited in Carl Degler,
Social Thought (New York: Oxford University Press, "Darwinians Confront Gender; or, There Is More
1991), p. 107. to It Than History" in Theoretical Perspectives on
5. Todd, Womans Rights, p. 25. Sexual Difference, D. Rhode, ed. (New Haven, CT:
6. California State Historical Society Library, San Yale University Press, 1990), p. 39.
Francisco, ms. #2334. For a summary of the 15. Edward Wilson, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis
way biological arguments were used to exclude (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974).
women from public participation, see Michael 16. Lionel Tiger, "Male Dominance?" in New York
Kimmel, "Introduction;' in Against the Tide: Times Magazine, October 25, 1970.
Pro-Feminist Men in the United States, 1776- 17. See, for example, Judy Stamps, "Sociobiology: Its
1990, a Documentary History, M. Kimmel and Evolution and Intellectual Descendents" in Politics
T. Mosmiller, eds. (Boston: Beacon, 1992). and Life Science, 14(2), 1995: 191-193.
7. Cited in Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of 18. David Buss, The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of
Man (New York: WW. Norton, 1981), pp. 104-105. Human Mating (New York: Basic Books, 1994), but
8. Edward C. Clarke, Sex in Education; or, A Fair see also Robert Sapolsky, Monkeyluv (New York:
Chance for the Girls (Boston: Osgood and Co., Scribner, 2006), p. 175. See Martha Mccaughey,
1873), p. 152. The Caveman Mystique: Pop-Darwinism and the
9. See Cynthia Eagle Russet, Sexual Science: Debates over Sex, Violence, and Science (New York:
The Victorian Construction of Womanhood Routledge, 2007), p. 117.
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989). 19. Randy Thornhill and Craig T. Palmer, "Why Men
10. Newt Gingrich, comments in his course Rape" in New York Academy of Sciences, January
"Renewing American Civilization'' at Reinhardt 2000, p. 30.
College, January 7, 2005, available at http:/ /lists 20. Randy Thornhill and Craig T. Palmer, A Natural
.asu.edu/ cgi- bin/wa? A2=ind9503e&L=christia& History ofRape (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000), p. 53.
D=o&T =o&P=15988, accessed May 24, 2006. 21. Richard Alexander and K. M. Noonan,
11. There are several important texts that provide "Concealment of Ovulation, Parental Care and
good ripostes to the biological arguments. Among Human Social Evolution" in Evolutionary Biology
them are Ruth Bleir, ed., Feminist Approaches to and Human Social Behavior, N. Chagnon and
Science (New York: Pergamon, 1986); Lynda Birke, W. Irons, eds. (North Scituate, MA: Duxbury,
Women, Feminism and Biology: The Feminist 1979), p. 449.
Challenge (New York: Methuen, 1986). Anne 22. Richard Lewontin, "Biological Determinism as
Fausto-Sterling's Myths of Gender: Biological a Social Weapon" in Biology as a Social Weapon,
Theories About Women and Men (New York: Basic Ann Arbor Science for the People Editorial
Books, 1985) is indispensible. Deborah Blum, Sex Collective, ed. (Minneapolis: Burgess, 1977),
on the Brain: The Biological Differences Between p. 15; Stephen Jay Gould, Ever Since Darwin:
Notes 491
Reflections in Natural History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); Suzanne Franks,
WW Norton, 1977), p. 254. "They Blinded Me with Science: Misuse and
23. Sapolsky, Monkeyluv, p. 30. Misunderstanding of Biological Theory" in
24. Carol Tavris and Carole Wade, The Longest War Fundamental Differences: Feminists Talk Back
(New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1984). to Social Conservatives, Cynthia Burack and Jyl
25. See, for example, Frans de Waal, Our Inner Ape: J. Josephson, eds. (Lanham, MD: Rowman and
A Leading Primatologist Explains Why We Are Littlefield, 2005).
Who We Are (New York: Riverhead Books, 2005). 34. N . Burley, "The Evolution of Concealed
De Waal cautions against explaining any human Ovulation" in American Naturalist, 114, 1979;
behavior strictly from looking at primate behav- Mary McDonald Pavelka, "Sexual Nature;' p. 19.
iors, as they are far too variable and diverse-sort See also Sarah Blaffer Hardy, The Woman That
oflike humans. Never Evolved ( Cambridge: Harvard University
26. Mary McDonald Pavelka, "Sexual Nature: What Press, 1981).
Can We Learn from a Cross-Species Perspective?" 35. Elisabeth Lloyd, The Case of the Female Orgasm:
in Sexual Nature, Sexual Culture, P. Abrahamson Bias in the Science of Evolution (Cambridge:
and S. Pinkerton, eds. (Chicago: University of Harvard University Press, 2005).
Chicago Press, 1995), p. 22. 36. Stephen Beckerman, R. Lizzarralde, C. Ballew,
27. See Jonah Lehrer, "The Effeminate Sheep-and S. Schroeder, C. Fingelton, A . Garrison, and
Oilier Problems with Darwinian Sexual Selection'' H . Smith, "The Bari Partible Paternity Project:
in Seed, June 2006. Preliminary Results" in Current Anthropology,
28. Simon Le Vay, "Survival of the Sluttiest" at Nerve 39(1), 1998, pp. 164-167.
.com, 2000, available at www.nerve.com. 37. Steven Gangestad, Randy Thornhill, and Christine
29. Laurence Gesquiere, Niki Learn, M. Carolina Garver, "Changes in Women's Sexual Interests and
M. Simao, Patrick Onyango, Susan Alberts, and Their Partners' Mate-Retention Tactics Across tlie
Jeanne Altmann, "Life at the Top: Rank and Stress Menstrual Cycle: Evidence for Shifting Conflicts
in Wild Male Baboons" in Science, 333(6040), of Interest" in Proceedings of the Royal Society,
July 15, 2011, pp. 357-360. See also James Gorman, 2002. Not surprisingly, Gangestad repudiated the
"Baboon Study Shows Benefits for Nice Guys, journalist's interpretation, because it's pretty much
Who Finish md;' in New York Times, July 14, 2011. the mirror image of his argument that it is more in
30. Lloyd DeMause, "Our Forbears Made Childhood males' interest to be promiscuous and in females'
a Nightmare" in Psychology Today, April 1975. interest to be monogamous. Personal communica-
31. Thornhill and Palmer, "Why Men Rape;' pp. 32, tion, December 16, 2002.
34; see also Thornhill and Palmer, A Natural 38. See Evelyn Fox Keller, A Feeling for the Organism:
History ofRape. See also my critique of their book, The Life and Work of Barbara McClintock (San
''An Unnatural History of Rape;' in Cheryl Travis, Francisco: W H. Freeman, 1983).
ed., Evolution, Gender, and Rape (Cambridge: 39. Martha McClintock, "Menstrual Synchrony and
MIT Press, 2003). Even other evolutionary psy- Suppression'' in Nature, 229, January 22, 1971.
chologists have dismissed Thornhill and Palmer's 40. See Natalie Angier, "Men, Women, Sex, and
apologetics. See Michael Gard and Benjamin Darwin" in New York Times, February 21, 1999; see
Bradley, "Getting Away with Rape" in Psychology, also her Women: An Intimate Geography (Boston:
Evolution and Gender, 2(3), December 2000, Houghton, Mifflin, 1999).
pp. 313-319. 41. Paul Ehrlich, Human Natures: Genes, Cultures, and
32. See Roy Baumeister, Kathleen Catanese, and the Human Prospect (New York: Penguin, 2002).
Harry Wallace, "Conquest by Force: A Narcissistic 42. Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society
Reactance Theory of Rape and Sexual Coercion'' (New York: Free Press, 1984 [1893]), p. 21; see also
in Review of General Psychology, 6(10), 2002, Ehrenreich and English, For Her Own Good, p. 117.
pp. 92-135. Of course, Durkheim's assertion of the progressive
33. I. Singer and J. Singer, "Periodicity of Sexual Desire historical divergence could be due not to evolution
in Relation to Time of Ovulation in Women" in but rather to women's increased confinement and
Journal of Biosocial Science, 4, 1972, pp. 471-481; restriction.
see also Elisabeth A. Lloyd, "Pre-theoretical 43. James C. Dobson, Straight Talk to Men and Their
Assumptions in Evolutionary Explanations of Wives (Dallas: Word Publishing Co., 1991), p. 177;
Female Sexuality" in Feminism and Science, Adam Begley, "Why Men and Women Think
E. F. Keller and H. E. Longino, eds. (New York: Differently" in Newsweek, May 12,1995, p. 51.
492 NOTES
44. See Elizabeth Fee, "Nineteenth Century 51. Joseph Lurito cited in Robert Lee Hotz, "Women
Craniology: The Study of the Female Skull" in Use More of Brain When Listening, Study Says" in
Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 53, 1979. Los Angeles Times, November 29, 2000.
45. Turner is cited in South Side Observer, April 29, 52. Durden-Smith and deSimone, Sex and the Brain,
1896; C. A. Dwyer, "The Role of Tests and Their p. 60.
Construction in Producing Apparent Sex-Related 53. Levy, "Lateral Specialization:'
Differences" in Sex-Related Differences in Cognitive 54. Janet Hyde, "How Large Are Cognitive Differences?
Functioning, M. Wittig and A. Peterson, eds. A Metanalysis" in American Psychologist, 26, 1981;
(New York: Academic Press, 1979), p. 342. Janet Hyde, Elizabeth Fennema, and S. J. Laman,
46. Doreen Kimura's summary of these brain differ- "Gender Differences in Mathematics Performance:
ences, Sex and Cognition (Cambridge, MA: MIT A Meta-Analysis" in Psychological Bulletin, 107,
Press, 1999), catalogs a large variety of brain dif- 1990.
ferences in spatial, verbal, and other forms of rea- 55. Michael Peters, "The Size of the Corpus Callosum
soning. She feels comfortable stating that "we can in Males and Females: Implications of a Lack of
say with certainty that there are substantial stable Allometry" in Canadian Journal of Psychology,
sex differences in cognitive functions like spatial 42(3), 1988; Christine de Lacoste-Utamsing and
rotation ability, mathematical reasoning, and ver- Ralph Holloway, "Sexual Dimorphism in the
bal memory; and in motor skills requiring accurate Human Corpus Callosum" in Science, June 25,
targeting and finger dexterity" (p. 181). Because she 1982; but also see William Byne, Ruth Bleier, and
never tells the reader about the shape of the distri- Lanning Houston, "Variations in Human Corpus
bution of these traits, we have no idea whether such Callosum Do Not Predict Gender: A Study Using
differences actually mean anything at all, if they are Magnetic Resonance Imaging" in Behavioral
categorical, or if the distribution is larger among Neuroscience, 102(2), 1988.
women and among men than it is between women 56. See Michael Gurian, The Wonder of Girls (New
and men-which is the case in virtually every one York: Pocket Books, 2002); see also Caryl Rivers,
of these studies. Such is typically the case when "Pop Science Book Claims Girls Hardwired for
authors argue from ideology rather than evidence. Love" in Womens E-News, June 29, 2002.
A better source is Lesley Rogers, Sexing the Brain 57. See "The Merrow Report;' January 8, 2000, ''Are
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), Boys in Trouble?" transcript, p. 11.
which is at least intellectually honest and does not 58. See Larry Cahill, "His Brain, Her Brain" in
conceal or obscure conflicting information. Scientific American, May 2005, pp. 22-29.
47. Norman Geschwind, cited in Durden-Smith and 59. Simon Baron-Cohen et al., "Sex Differences in
deSimone, Sex and the Brain, p. 171. Other influ- the Brain: Implications for Explaining Autism"
ential studies on hormone research include G. W in Science, 310, 2005, pp. 819-823; "Intelligence in
Harris, "Sex Hormones, Brain Development and Men and Women Is a Gray and White Matter" in
Brain Function'' in Endocrinology, 75, 1965. ScienceDaily, available at http:/ /www.sciencedaily
48. Ruth Bleier, Science and Gender: A Critique of .com/releases/2005/01/050121100142.htm, accessed
Biology and Its Theory on Women (New York: August 14, 2009.
Pantheon, 1984). 60. Cited in Le Anne Schreiber, "The Search for His
49. A. W H . Buffery and J. Gray, "Sex Differences and Her Brains" in Glamour, April 1993; Kimura,
in the Development of Spacial and Linguistic cited in Rivers, "Pop Science Book:'
Skills" in Gender Differences: Their Ontogeny 61. Lise Eliot, Pink Brain, Blue Brain (Boston:
and Significance, C. Ounsted and D. C. Taylor, Houghton, Mifflin, 2009), p. 9.
eds. (London: Churchill Livingston, 1972); Jerre 62. Marcel Kinsbourne, "The Development of
Levy, "Lateral Specialization of the Human Lateralization" in Biological and Neurological
Brain: Behavioral Manifestation and Possible Mechanisms, H. W Reese and M. D. Franzen, eds.
Evolutionary Basis" in The Biology of Behavior, (Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 1996).
J. A. Kiger, ed. (Corvallis, Eugene: University of 63. Several books are useful summaries of this
Oregon Press, 1972); see also Fausto-Sterling, research, including Dean Hamer and Peter
Myths of Gender, p. 40. Copeland, The Science ofDesire (New York: Simon
50. Jean Christophe Labarthe, ''Are Boys Better Than & Schuster, 1994); Simon LeVay, Queer Science:
Girls at Building a Tower or a Bridge at 2 Years of The Use and Abuse of Research into Homosexuality
Age?" in Archives of Disease in Childhood, 77, 1997, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996); Lee Ellis and Linda
pp. 140-144. Ebertz, eds., Sexual Orientation: Toward Biological
Notes 493
Understanding (New York: Praeger, 1997). Several May 10, 2005, available at http:/ /www.nytimes.
other works provide valuable rejoinders to the com/ 2005/ 05/10/science/10smell.html, accessed
scientific research; see, for example, Vernon May10,2005.
Rosario, ed., Science and Homosexualities (New 71. See, for example, Dennis McFadden and Edward
York: Routledge, 1997); Timothy Murphy, Gay G. Pasanen, "Comparison of the Auditory Systems
Science: The Ethics of Sexual Orientation Research of Heterosexuals and Homosexuals: Click-
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1997); Evoked Otoacoustic Emissions" in Proceedings
John Corvino, ed., Same Sex: Debating the Ethics, of the National Academy of Sciences, 95, March
Science and Culture of Homosexuality (Lanham, 1998, pp. 2709-2713; and McFadden and Pasanen,
MD : Rowman and Littlefield, 1997). A double "Spontaneous Otoacoustic Emissions in
issue of Journal of Homosexuality, 28(1-2), 1995, Heterosexuals, Homosexuals, and Bisexuals" in
was devoted to this theme. For a strong dis- Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 105 (4),
senting opinion, see William Byne, "Why We April 1999, pp. 2403-2413; and Dennis McFadden
Cannot Conclude That Sexual Orientation Is and Craig Champlin, "Comparison of Auditory
Primarily a Biological Phenomenon" in Journal Evoked Potentials in Heterosexual, Homosexual
of Homosexuality, 34(1), 1997; William Byne, and Bisexual Males and Females" in Journal of the
"Science and Belief: Psychobiological Research on Association for Research in Otolaryngology, 1, 2000,
Sexual Orientation" in Journal of Homosexuality, pp. 89-99.
28(2), 1995. 72. Marc Breedlove and Pat McBroom, "Sexual
64. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality (New Experience May Affect Brain Structure" at http://
York: Pantheon, 1978). See also Jonatlian Ned Katz, www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/1997/1119/
The Invention of Heterosexuality (New York: E. P. sexexp.html, accessed August 14, 2009; see also
Dutton, 1993). Jim McKnight, "Editorial: The Origins of Male
65. Gunter Dorner, W Rohde, F. Stahl, L. Krell, and Homosexuality" in Psychology, Evolution and
W. Masius, ''A Neuroendocrine Predisposition Gender, 2(3), December 2000, p. 226.
for Homosexuality in Men'' in Archives of Sexual 73. See F. Kallmann, "Comparative Twin Study on the
Behavior, 4(1), 1975, p. 6. Genetic Aspects of Male Homosexuality" in Journal
66. Simon LeVay, "The 'Gay Brain' Revisited" at www of Nervous Mental Disorders, 115, 1952, pp. 283-298.
.nerve.com/Regulars/Science of Sex/o9-05-oo/, Kallmann's findings may have been an artifact of
accessed August 14, 2009; Le Vay, ''A Difference his sample, which was drawn entirely from insti-
in Hypothalamic Structure Between Homosexual tutionalized mentally ill patients-some of whom
and Heterosexual Men'' in Science, 253, August 30, had been institutionalized because tliey were gay.
1991; Simon Le Vay, The Sexual Brain (Cambridge: See also Richard Lewontin, Steven Rose, and Leon
MIT Press, 1994); Simon Le Vay and Dean Hamer, Kamin, Not in Our Genes: Biology, Ideology and
"Evidence for a Biological Influence in Male Human Nature (New York: Pantheon, 1984).
Homosexuality" in Scientific American, 270, 1994. 74. J. Michael Bailey and Richard Pillard, ''A Genetic
See also "Born or Bred?" in Newsweek, February Study of Male Sexual Orientation'' in Archives of
24, 1992. General Psychiatry, 48, December 1991; J. Michael
67. P. Yahr, "Sexually Dimorphic Hypothalamic Cell Bailey and Richard Pillard, "Heritable Factors
Groups and a Related Pathway That Are Essential Influence Sexual Orientation in Women'' in Archives
for Masculine Copulatory Behavior" in The ofGeneral Psychiatry, 50, March 1993.
Development of Sex Differences and Similarities 75. This is equally a problem in Frederick Whitam,
in Behavior, M. Haug, R. Whalen, C. Aron, and Milton Diamond, and James Martin, "Homosexual
K. Olsen, eds. (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Orientation in Twins: A Report on 61 Pairs and
Academic Publishers, 1993), p. 416. Three Triplet Sets" in Archives of Sexual Behavior,
68. See Chronicle of Higher Education, November 10, 22(3), 1993.
1995. 76. Richard Pillard and James Weinreich, "Evidence
69. Ivanka Savic, Hans Berglund, and Per Lindstrom, of a Familial Nature of Male Homosexuality" in
"Brain Response to Putative Pheromones in Archives of General Psychiatry, 43, 1986.
Homosexual Men" in Proceedings of the National 77. See Peter Bearman and Hannali Bruckner, "Opposite
Academy of Sciences, 102(20), May 17, 2005, Sex Twins and Adolescent Same-Sex Attraction'' in
pp. 7356-7361. American Journal ofSociology, March 2002.
70. Cited in Nicholas Wade, "For Gay Men, an Attraction 78. Steven Goldberg, The Inevitability of Patriarchy
to a Different Kind of Scent" in New York Times, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1973), p. 93.
494 NOTES
79. C. Apicella, A. Dreher, P. Gray, M . Hoffman, Testosterone in Males" in Evolution and Human
A. C. Little, and B.C. Campbell, ''Androgens Behavior, 23, 2002, pp. 193-201; see also the coverage
and Competitiveness in Men" in Journal of of this study, William Cromie, "Marriage Lowers
Neuroscience, Psychology and Economics, February Testosterone" in Harvard Gazette, September
2011, pp. 54-62. 19, 2002; Ellen Barry, "The Ups and Downs of
Bo . C. Eisenegger, M. Naef, R. Snozzi, M. Heinrichs, Manhood" in Boston Globe, July 9, 2002.
and E. Fehr, "Prejudice and Truth About the Effect 87- See, for example, Jed Diamond, Male Menopause
of Testosterone on Human Bargaining Behaviour;' (Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, 1998); and Groopman,
in Nature, 08711, 2009, pp. 1-6. "Hormones for Men:'
81. See James McBride Dabbs (with Mary Godwin 88. See Celina Cohen-Bendahan, Cornelieke van
Dabbs), Heroes, Rogues and Lovers: Testosterone de Beek, and Sheri Berenbaum, "Prenatal Sex
and Behavior (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000), Hormone Effects on Child and Adult Sex-Typed
p. 8; Andrew Sullivan, "The He Hormone" in New Behavior: Methods and Findings" in Neuroscience
York Times Magazine, April 2, 2000, p. 48. Dabbs and Biobehavioral Reviews, 29(2), April 2005,
rampages through the literature about testos- pp. 353-384, for a summary of such clinically based
terone, claiming to be able to predict (cause and studies.
effect) behaviors ranging from rape to fraternity 89. John Money and Anke Ehrhardt, Man and
keg parties, from choice of occupation to likeli- Woman, Boy and Girl (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
hood to commit crimes, simply by the level of University Press, 1972).
testosterone. About the only statement that Dabbs 90. Anke Ehrhardt and S. W Baker, "Fetal Androgens,
makes that is less than completely hyperbolic is Human Central Nervous System Differentiation,
that "sometimes male bluster is hardwired into the and Behavior Sex Differences" in Sex Differences
brain by early testosterone" (p. 66). Well, at least in Behavior, R. Friedman, R. M. Richart, and
some people's bluster may be. R. L. Vande Wiele, eds. (Huntington, NY: Krieger,
82. There is some evidence that AndroGel is dan- 1978), p. 49.
gerous and should not be taken without signifi- 91. Fausto-Sterling, Myths of Gender, pp. 136-137.
cant testing. Testosterone may shrink the testes 92. Irvin Yalom, Richard Green, and N. Fisk, "Prenatal
(because they no longer need to produce it) but Exposure to Female Hormones-Effect on
also may exacerbate prostate cancer, acting like Psychosexual Development in Boys" in Archives of
food to a growing tumor. See Jerome Groopman, General Psychiatry, 28, 1973.
"Hormones for Men" in New Yorker, July 29, 2002, 93. See John Colapinto, As Nature Made Him:
pp. 34-38. The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl (New York:
83. Robert Sapolsky, The Trouble with Testosterone HarperCollins, 2000), and John Colapinto,
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), p. 155. "Gender Gap: What Were the Real Reasons
84. Theodore Kemper, Testosterone and Social Behind David Reimer's Suicide?" in Slate, June
Structure (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University 3, 2004, available at www.slate.com/id/2101678.
Press, 1990); Arthur Kling, "Testosterone and Scholarly papers include M. Diamond, "Sexual
Aggressive Behavior in Man and Non-human Identity, Monozygotic Twins Reared in
Primates" in Hormonal Correlates of Behavior, Discordant Sex Roles and a BBC Follow-Up" in
B. Eleftheriou and R. Sprott, eds. (New York: Archives of Sexual Behavior, 11(2), 1982, pp. 181-185;
Plenum, 1975); see also E. Gonzalez-Bono, M. Diamond and H . K. Sigmundson, "Sex
A. Salvador, J. Ricarte, M. A. Serrano, and Reassignment at Birth: Long Term Review and
M. Arendo, "Testosterone and Attribution of Clinical Implications" in Archives of Pediatrics
Successful Competition" in Aggressive Behavior, and Adolescent Medicine, 151, March 1997,
26(3), 2000, pp. 235-240. pp. 298-304.
85. Anu Aromaki, Ralf Lindman, and C. J. Peter 94. Shari Roan, "The Basis of Sexual Identity" in Los
Eriksson, "Testosterone, Aggressiveness and Angeles Times, March 14, 1997, p. El.
Antisocial Personality" in Aggressive Behavior, 25, 95. See Judith Lorber and Lisa Jean Moore, Gendered
1999, pp. 113-123; Sapolskycited in Richard Lacayo, Bodies: Feminist Perspectives (Palo Alto CA:
''Are You Man Enough?" in Time, April, 24, 2000. Roxbury Press, 2006).
86. Peter B. Gray, Sonya Kahlenberg, Emily Barrett, 96. Gloria Steinem, "If Men Could Menstruate" in
Susan Lipson, and Peter T. Ellison, "Marriage Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions (New
and Fatherhood Are Associated with Lower York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1983).
Notes 495
97. Durden-Smith and deSimone, Sex and the Brain, Inversion in Nineteenth Century Sexology"
p.92. in Third Sex, Third Gender, Gilbert Herdt, ed.
98. Gunter Dorner, B. Schenk, B. Schmiedel, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993).
and L. Ahrens, "Stressful Events in Prenatal 105. See Julliane Imperato-McGinley et al., "Steroid
Life of Bisexual and Homosexual Men" in 5-Alpha Reductase Deficiency in Man: An
Explorations in Clinical Endocrinology, 81, 1983, Inherited Form of Pseudo-hermaphroditism"
p. 87. See also Dorner et al., "Prenatal Stress as in Science, 186, 1974; Julliane Imperato-
a Possible Paetiogenic Factor of Homosexuality McGinley et al., ''Androgens and the Evolution
in Human Males" in Endokrinologie, 75, 1983; of Male-Gender Identity Among Male
and G. Dorner, F. Gotz, T. Ohkawa, W Rohde, F. Pseudohermaphrodites with 5-Alpha Reductase
Stahl, and R. Tonjes, "Prenatal Stress and Sexual Deficiency" in New England Journal of Medicine,
Brain Differentiation in Animal and Human 300, 1979, p. 1235. For an excellent summary
Beings;' Abstracts, International Academy of Sex of the research, see Gilbert Herdt, "Mistaken
Research, Thirteenth Annual Meeting, Tutzing, Sex: Culture, Biology and the Third Sex in New
June 21-25, 1987. Guinea" in Herdt, Third Sex, Third Gender.
99. The other side is presented in a clever article by 106. Herdt, "Mistaken Sex:'
Gunter Schmidt and Ulrich Clement, "Does 107. Dobson, Straight Talk, p. 184.
Peace Prevent Homosexuality?" in Journal of 108. Goldberg, Inevitability of Patriarchy,
Homosexuality, 28(1-2), 1995. pp. 233-234; see also Fausto-Sterling, Myths of
100. John Stossel, "Just Too Taboo to Talk About" in Gender, p. 124.
Orange County Register, January 30, 2005, Home 109. A recent effort to use hormone research and evolu-
section. tionary imperatives is J. Richard Udry, "Biological
101. Terrance Williams, Michelle Pepitone, Scott Limits of Gender Construction" in American
Christensen, Bradley Cooke, Andrew Huberman, Sociological Review, 65, June 2000, pp. 443-457.
Nicolas Breedlove, Tess Breedlove, Cynthia Udry's thesis is elegantly demolished by Eleanor
Jordan, and S. Marc Breedlove, "Finger Length Miller and Carrie Yang Costello, "Comment on
Ratios and Sexual Orientation" in Nature, 404, Udry" in American Sociological Review, 65, June
March 30, 2000, p. 455; see also S. J. Robinson, 2000, pp. 592-598.
"The Ratio of 2nd to 4th Digit Length and 110. Lewontin et al., Not in Our Genes, p. 147.
Male Homosexuality" in Evolution and Human m. Alice Rossi, Gender and the Life Course (Chicago:
Behavior, 21, 2000, pp. 333-345. Also see Tim Aldine, 1982).
Beneke, "Sex on the Brain'' in East Bay Express, 112. Darrell Yates Rist, "Are Homosexuals Born
September 22, 2000, for a superb profile of That Way?" in The Nation, October 19, 1992,
Breedlove and his research. p. 427; "Born or Bred?" in Newsweek, February 24,
102. Marc Breedlove, personal communication with 1992.
the author, February 13, 2001; see also Susan 113. Karen De Witt, "Quayle Contends Homo-
Rubinowitz, "Report: Index Finger Size May sexuality Is a Matter of Choice, Not Biology" in
Indicate Homosexuality" in New York Post, March New York Times, September 14, 1992; Ashcroft
30, 2000. cited in Eric Alterman, "Sorry, Wrong President"
103. Anthony Bogaert, "Biological Versus in The Nation, February 26, 2001, p. 10. See John
Nonbiological Older Brothers and Men's Sexual Leland and Mark Miller, "Can Gays Convert?"
Orientation" in Proceedings of the National in Newsweek, August 17, 1998. Although it is cer-
Academy of Science, 103(28), July 11, 2006, tain that some therapeutic interventions can lead
pp. 10771-10774; see also David Puts, Cynthia people to change their sexual behavior and sexual
Jordan, and S. Marc Breedlove, "O Brother, object choice, the evidence that people's orienta-
Where Are Thou? The Fraternal Birth-Order tions change is less than convincing.
Effect on Male Sexual Orientation" in Proceedings 114. John D'Emilio, Making Trouble: Essays on Gay
of the National Academy of Science, 103(28), July History (New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 187.
11, 2006, pp. 10531-10532. 115. See, for example, Martin P. Levine, Gay Macho:
104. See Alice Domurat Dreger, Hermaphrodites and The Life and Death of the Homosexual Clone (New
the Medicalinvention of Sex (Cambridge: Harvard York: New York University Press, 1997); see also
University Press, 1998); Gert Hekma, "'A Female John Gagnon and William Simon, Sexual Conduct
Soul in a Male Body': Sexual Inversion as Gender (Chicago: Aldine, 1973).
496 NOTES
116. Vera Whisman, Queer by Choice (New York: 8. Friedrich Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private
Routledge, 1992). Property and the State (New York: International
117. Charlotte Bunch, "Lesbians in Revolt" in Feminist Publishers, 1970).
Frameworks, A. Jaggar and P. Rothenberg, eds. 9. Eleanor Leacock, "Women's Status in Egalitarian
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1984), p.144. Society: Implications for Social Evolution'' in
118. Le Vay, Sexual Brain, p. 6. Current Anthropology, 19(2), 1978, p. 252; see also
119. Ruth Hubbard, "The Political Nature of Human Eleanor Leacock, "Montagnais Women and the
Nature" in Theoretical Perspectives on Sexual Jesuit Program for Colonization'' in Women and
Difference, Deborah Rhode, ed. (New Haven, CT: Colonization, M. Etienne and E. Leacock, eds.
Yale University Press, 1990), p. 69. (New York: Praeger, 1980).
120. Robert A. Padgug, "On Conceptualizing Sexuality 10. Sacks, "Engels Revisited" in Sisters and Wives.
in History" in Radical History Review, 20, 1979, p. 9. 11. Marvin Harris, Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches:
121. Richard Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American The Riddle of Culture (New York: Random House,
Thought (New York: Random House, 1944), p. 204. 1974); and Marvin Harris, Cannibals and Kings
122. Deena Skolnick Weisberg, Frank C. Keil, Joshua (New York: Random House, 1977).
Goodstein, Elizabeth Rawson, and Jeremy 12. Lionel Tiger and Robin Fox, The Imperial Animal
Gray, "The Seductive Allure of Neuroscience (New York: Holt, 1971).
Explanation'' in Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 13. Claude Levi-Strauss, The Elementary Structures
20(3), 2008, pp. 470-477. of Kinship (London: Tavistock, 1969); see also
123. Adam Begley, "Why Men and Women Think Collier and Rosaldo, "Politics and Gender in
Differently" in Newsweek, 1995. Simple Societies" in Sexual Meanings: The Cultural
Construction of Gender and Sexuality, S. B. Ortner
and H. Whitehead, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge
CHAPTER THREE University Press, 1981).
1. See, for example, Karen Sacks, "Engels Revisited: 14. Barry, Herbert, III, Margaret K. Bacon, and Irvin
Women, Organization of Production, and L. Child, "A Cross-Cultural Survey of Some Sex
Private Property" in Women, Culture and Society, Differences in Socialization:' in Journal ofAbnormal
M. Rosaldo and L. Lamphere, eds. (Stanford, CA: and Social Psychology, 55, 1957, pp. 327-332.
Stanford University Press, 1974); and Sisters and 15. Judith Brown, "A Note on the Division of Labor by
Wives: The Past and Future of Sexual Equality Sex;' in American Anthropologist, 72(5), 1970.
(Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1979). 16. Mead, Male and Female, pp. 189, 190.
2. Margaret Mead, Sex and Temperament in Three 17. Daphne Spain, Gendered Spaces (Chapel Hill:
Primitive Societies (New York: William Morrow, University of North Carolina Press, 1992); and
1935). Critics such as Derek Freeman have suggested Daphne Spain, "The Spatial Foundations of Men's
that Mead, like the biologists she was criticizing, Friendships and Men's Power" in Mens Friendships,
simply found what she was looking for, especially Peter Nardi, ed. (Newbury Park, CA: Sage
in Samoa, where she apparently fabricated some Publications, 1992), p. 76.
details. Yet challenges to the core insight in her work 18. Thomas Gregor, Mehinaku: The Drama of Daily
in New Guinea, that of cultural variation in gender Life in a Brazilian Indian Village (Chicago:
roles, are unsubstantiated and unconvincing. University of Chicago Press, 1977), p. 255; see also
3. Mead, Sex and Temperament, pp. 29, 35, 57-58, 84, pp. 305-306. In another passage, Gregor recounts
101,128. a child's game in which a girl pretends to invade
4. Margaret Mead, Male and Female (New York: the men's house, and the boys pretend to gang rape
William Morrow, 1949), p. 69; Mead, Sex and her (p. 114). See also Thomas Gregor, "No Girls
Temperament, p. 171. Allowed;' Science, 82, December 1982.
5. Mead, Sex and Temperament, pp. 189, 190, 197; 19. Peggy Reeves Sanday, Female Power and Male
Mead, Male and Female, p. 98. Dominance (New York: Cambridge University
6. Mead, Sex and Temperament, p. 228. Press, 1981), pp. 75, 128. See also Maria Lepowsky,
7. Adrienne Zihlman, "Woman the Gatherer: The "Gender in an Egalitarian Society: A Case Study
Role of Women in Early Hominid Evolution" from the Coral Sea'' in Beyond the Second Sex: New
in Gender and Anthropology, S. Morgen, ed. Directions in the Anthropology of Gender, P. R.
(Washington, DC: American Anthropological Sanday and R. G. Goodenough, eds. (Philadelphia:
Association, 1989), p. 31. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990).
Notes 497
20. See Carol Tavris and Carole Wade, The Longest 37. See Jenny Nordberg, "Where Boys Are Prized,
War (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1984), Girls Live the Part" in New York Times, September
pp. 330-331. 21, 2010, p. 1.
21. See Salman Masood, "Pakistan's High Court 38. Cited in Clyde Kluckhohn, Mirror for Man
Reviewing Officially Ordered Gang Rape" in New (Greenwich, CT: Greenwood, 1970).
York Times, June 28, 2005, p. 3. 39. Gilbert Herdt, Guardians of the Flutes (Chicago:
22. See Peggy Reeves Sanday, Fraternity Gang Rape University of Chicago Press, 1981), pp. 1,165,282.
(New York: New York University Press, 1991). 40. F. E. Williams, Papuans of the Trans-Fly (Oxford:
23. John W. Whiting, Richard Kluckhohn, and Oxford University Press, 1936), p. 159; see also
Albert Anthony, "The Function of Male Initiation E. L. Schiefflin, The Sorrow of the Lonely and the
Ceremonies at Puberty" in Readings in Social Burning of the Dancers (New York: St. Martin's
Psychology, E. Maccoby, T. M. Newcomb, and E. L. Press, 1976); R. Kelly, Etero Social Structure (Ann
Hatley, eds. (New York: Henry Holt, 1958). Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1977);
24. Edgar Gregersen, Sexual Practices (New York: J. Carrier, "Sex Role Preference as an Explanatory
Franklin Watts, 1983), p. 104. Variable in Homosexual Behavior" in Archives
25. Marc Lacey, "African Activists Urge End to Female of Sexual Behavior, 6, 1977; Stephen 0 . Murray,
Mutilation" in International Herald Tribune, Homosexualities (Chicago: University of Chicago
February 7, 2003, p. 10. Press, 2000).
26. Cited in Rogaia Mustafa Abusharaf, "Unmasking 41. William Davenport, "Sex in Cross-Cultural
Tradition" in The Sciences, March/April 1998, Perspective" in Human Sexuality in Four
p. 23. Perspectives, F. Beach and M. Diamond, eds.
27. AMA, http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/ (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
2012/02/27/prseo302.htm. 1977); see also Gilbert Herdt, ed., Ritualized
28. Frederick Nzwili, "New Ritual Replaces Female Homosexuality in Melanesia (Berkeley: University
Genital Mutilation" in Womens ENews, April 10, of California Press, 1984), p. 66.
2003, www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/ 42. Gregersen, Sexual Practices, p. 257.
aid/1284. 43. Ibid.
29. See, for example, Joseph Zoske, "Male 44. Davenport, "Sex in Cross-Cultural Perspective:'
Circumcision: A Gender Perspective" in Journal of 45. Ernestine Friedel, Women and Men : An
Mens Studies, 6(2), Winter 1998; see also Michael Anthropologists View (New York: Holt, Rinehart,
Kimmel, "The Kindest Uncut" in Tikkun, 16(3), 1975).
May 2001. 46. Gregersen, Sexual Practices.
30. Karen Paige and Jeffrey Paige, The Politics of 47. Clyde Kluckhohn, Mirror for Man (New York:
Reproductive Ritual (Berkeley: University of Whittlesey Houx, 1949); see also Gregersen,
California Press, 1981). Sexual Practices.
31. Tavris and Wade, Longest War, p. 314; see also 48. Gregersen, Sexual Practices.
Paige and Paige, Politics of Reproductive Ritual; 49. Nancy Tanner and Adrienne Zihlman, "Women
Fatima Mernissi, Beyond the Veil: Male-Female in Evolution" in Signs, 1(3), Spring 1976.
Dynamics in a Modern Muslim Society (New York: Nancy Tanner, Becoming Human (New York:
Wiley, 1975). Cambridge University Press, 1981); Adrienne
32. Michael Olien, The Human Myth (New York: Zihlman, "Motherhood in Transition: From
Harper and Row, 1978); M. K. Martin and Ape to Human" in The First Child and Family
B. Voorhies, Female of the Species (New York: Formation, W. Miller and L. Newman, eds.
Columbia University Press, 1975). (Chapel Hill: Carolina Population Center, 1978).
33. Walter Williams, The Spirit and the Flesh (Boston: 50. Helen Fisher, The Anatomy of Love (New York:
Beacon Press, 1986). Norton, 1992), p. 57.
34. Marc Lacey, ''A Lifestyle Distinct: The Muxe of 51. Michelle Rosaldo, "The Use and Abuse of
Mexico" in New York Times, December 7, 2008. Anthropology: Reflections on Feminism and
35. Paula Gunn Allen, "Beloved Women: Lesbians in Cross-Cultural Understanding" in Signs, 5(3),
American Indian Cultures" in Conditions: Seven: Spring 1980, p. 393; Bonnie Nardi, review of
A Magazine of Writing by Women (self-published, Peggy Reeves Sanday's Female Power and Male
1981), p. 67. Dominance Power and Male Dominance in Sex
36. Martin and Voorhies, Female of the Species, p. 97. Roles, 8(11), 1982, p. 1159.
498 NOTES
52. Marija Gimbutas, The Goddesses and Gods of Old of homophobia will actually encourage the ten-
Europe, 7000-3500 B.C. (Berkeley: University of dency toward homosexuality.
California Press, 1982); and Marija Gimbutas, The 8. See Peter Wyden and Barbara Wyden, Growing
Living Goddesses (Berkeley: University of California Up Straight: What Every Thoughtful Parent Should
Press, 1999). See also Riane Eisler, The Chalice and Know About Homosexuality (New York: Trident
the Blade (New York: HarperCollins, 1987). Press, 1968).
53. Eisler, Chalice and the Blade, pp. 45, 58. 9. See Jean Piaget, Plays, Dreams and Imitation in
54. Francis Fukuyania, "Women and the Evolution of Children (New York: Norton, 1951), The Language
World Politics" in Foreign Affairs, September 1998, and Thought of the Child (London: Routledge,
p. 27; see also Lawrence Keely, War Before Civilization 1952), and The Moral Judgment of the Child (New
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). York: Free Press, 1965).
55. Maria Lepowsky, Fruit of the Motherland: Gender 10. Lawrence Kohlberg, ''A Cognitive-Developmental
in an Egalitarian Society (New York: Columbia Analysis of Children's Sex Role Concepts and
University Press, 1993), p. 219. Attitudes" in The Development of Sex Differences,
56. Peggy Reeves Sanday, Women Center: Life in a E. Maccoby, ed . (Stanford, CA : Stanford
Modern Matriarchy (Boston: Beacon, 2002), p. 116. University Press, 1966); and Lawrence Kohlberg
57. Leacock, "Montagnais Women;' p. 200. and Edward Zigler, "The Impact of Cognitive
Maturity on the Development of Sex Role
CHAPTER FOUR Attitudes in the Years 4 to 8" in Genetic Psychology
1. Carol Gilligan, affidavit in Faulkner v. Jones Monographs, 75, 1967.
(D. Ct., S.C., filed January 7, 1993), p. 3; affidavit on 11. Albert Bandura and Althea Huston, "Identification
file with the author. as a Process of Incidental Learning" in Journal
2. Sigmund Freud, "The Dissection of the Psychical of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 63, 1961;
Personality" in New Introductory Lectures on Albert Bandura, Dorothea Ross, and Sheila Ross,
Psychoanalysis [1933] (New York: W. W Norton, ''A Comparative Test of the Status Envy, Social
1965), p. 74. Power, and Secondary Reinforcement Theories
3. Sigmund Freud, "The Dissolution of the Oedipus of Indeificatory Learning" in Journal of Abnormal
Complex" [1924] in The Standard Edition of and Social Psychology, 67, 1963; Walter Mischel,
the Complete Psychological Works (New York: ''A Social-Learning View of Sex Differences" in
WW Norton, 1965), Vol. 19, p. 179. Maccoby, Development of Sex Differences.
4. Sigmund Freud, Letters of Sigmund Freud, 1873- 12. See Karen Horney, "On the Genesis of the
1939, Ernst Freud, ed. (London: Hogarth Press, Castration Complex in Women'' in Psychoanalysis
1961), pp. 419-420. and Women, J. B. Miller, ed. (New York: Bruner/
5. See, for example, Jeffrey Masson, The Assault Maze!, 1973).
on Truth (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 13. Bruno Bettelheim, Symbolic Wounds (New York:
1984); and Alice Miller, Thou Shalt Not Be Aware: Collier, 1962); Wolfgang Lederer, The Fear of
Societys Betrayal of the Child (New York: Farrar, Women (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
Straus and Giroux, 1984) and For Your Own Good 1968).
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1983). 14. Nancy Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering
6. Lewis Terman and Catherine Cox Miles, Sex (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978);
and Personality (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1936); Jessica Benjamin, The Bonds of Love (New York:
see also Henry Minton, "Femininity in Men and Pantheon, 1984); Dorothy Dinnerstein, The
Masculinity in Women: American Psychiatry and Mermaid and the Minotaur (New York: Harper
Psychology Portray Homosexuality in the 1930s" and Row, 1977); Lillian Rubin, Intimate Strangers
in Journal of Homosexuality, 13(1), 1986. (New York: Harper and Row, 1983). Three of these
7. George Henry, "Psychogenic Factors in Overt writers-Chodorow, Benjamin, and Rubin-have
Homosexuality" in American Journal of PhDs in sociology and also are practicing thera-
Psychiatry, 93, 1937; cited in Minton, "Femininity pists, a combination that, in my view, enabled
in Men;' p. 2. Note, however, that Henry's them to explore the social consequences of the
secondary claim is not that these tendencies individual devaluation of women with rare acuity.
will simply emerge, but rather that the social 15. Chodorow, Reproduction of Mothering; see also
response to these traits will exaggerate and sus- Chodorow, "Family Structure and Feminine
tain them; in other words, that overt responses Personality" in Women, Culture and Society,
Notes 499
M. Rosaldo and L. Lamphere, eds. (Stanford, CA: 32. Sandra Bern, "The Measurement of Psychological
Stanford University Press, 1974). Androgyny" in Journal of Consulting and Clinical
16. Chodorow, "Family Structure;' p. 50. Psychology, 42, 1974; Sandra Bern, ''Androgyny
17. Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice (Cambridge: vs. the Tight Little Lives of Fluffy Women and
Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 173. Chesty Men" in Psychology Today, September
18. Mary Belenky, Blythe Clinchy, Nancy Goldberger, 1975; Sandra Bern, "Beyond Androgyny: Some
and Jin Tamie, Womens Way of Knowing (New Presumptuous Prescriptions for a Liberated
York: Basic Books, 1987); Deborah Tannen, Sexual Identity" in The Future of Women: Issues
You Just Don't Understand (New York: William in Psychology, J. Sherman and F. Denmark, eds.
Morrow, 1990); Robert Bly, Iron John (Reading: (New York: Psychological Dimensions, 1978). See
Addison-Wesley, 1991). also Alexandra Kaplan and Mary Anne Sedney,
19. See H. Crothers, Meditations on Votes for Women Psychology and Sex Roles: An Androgynous
(Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1914), p. 74. Perspective (Boston: Little Brown, 1980), quote is
20. Carol Gilligan, "Reply" in "On In a Different Voice: on p. 6; Janet Spence, Robert Helmreich, and Joy
An Interdisciplinary Forum" in Signs, 11(2), 1986, Stapp, "The Personal Attributes Questionnaire: A
p. 327; affidavit of Carol Gilligan in Faulkner v. Measure of Sex-Role Stereotypes and Masculinity-
Jones, D. Ct., S.C., filed January 7, 1993, p. 3. Femininity" in JSAS Catalog ofSelected Documents
21. Carol Tavris, "The Mismeasure of Woman" in in Psychology, 4, 1974.
Feminism and Psychology, 3(2), 1993, p. 153. 33. Sandra Bern, Lenses of Gender (New Haven, CT:
22. Janet Hyde, "The Gender Similarities Hypothesis" Yale University Press, 1993), p. 124.
in American Psychologist, 60, 2005, pp. 581-592. 34. Joseph Pleck, The Myth ofMasculinity (Cambridge:
23. Eleanor Maccoby and Carol Jacklin, The MIT Press, 1981).
Psychology of Sex Differences (Stanford, CA: 35. See, for example, James M. O'Neil, ''Assessing
Stanford University Press, 1974), p. 362. Men's Gender Role Conflict" in Problem Solving
24. Rosalind Chait Barnett, "Understanding the Role Strategies and Interventions for Men in Conflict,
of Pervasive Negative Gender Stereotypes: What D. Moorer and F. Leafgren, eds. (Alexandria,
Can Be Done?" paper presented at The Way VA: American Association for Counseling and
Forward, Heidelberg, Germany, May 2007. Development, 1990); J. M. O'Neil, B. Helms,
25. Piper Weiss, "Couple Finally Reveals Child's R. Gable, L. David, and L. Wrightsman, "Gender
Gender, Five Years After Birth" in Yahoo! Shine, Role Conflict Scale: College Men's Fear of
January 20, 2012. Femininity" in Sex Roles, 14, 1986, pp. 335-350;
26. Joseph Pleck offered a superb summary of these Joseph Pleck, "The Gender Role Strain Paradigm:
studies in "The Theory of Male Sex Role Identity: An Update" in A New Psychology of Men,
Its Rise and Fall, 1936 to the Present" in In the R. Levant and W Pollack, eds. (New York: Basic
Shadow of the Past: Psychology Views the Sexes, Books, 1995); James Mihalik, Benjamin Locke,
M. Lewin, ed. (New York: Columbia University Harry Theodore, Robert Cournoyer, and Brendan
Press, 1984). Much of my summary draws from his Lloyd, ''A Cross- National and Cross-Sectional
essay. Comparison of Men's Gender Role Conflict and
27. Teodor Adorno et al., The Authoritarian Its Relationship to Social Intimacy and Self-
Personality (New York: Harper and Row, 1950). Esteem" in Sex Roles, 45(1/2), 2001, pp. 1-14.
28. Qazi Rahman, Suraj Bhanot, Hanna Emrith- 36. Warren Farrell, The Myth of Male Power (New
Small, Shilan Ghafoor, and Steven Roberts, York: Simon & Schuster, 1993), p. 40.
"Gender Nonconformity, Intelligence, and Sexual 37. That's not to say that Pleck doesn't try valiantly
Orientation" in Archives of Sexual Behavior, to do so. His "Men's Power over Women, Other
February 18, 2011, unpaginated. Men and in Society" in Women and Men: The
29. See Robb Willer, "Overdoing Gender;' unpub- Consequences of Power, D. Hiller and R. Sheets,
lished manuscript, Department of Sociology, eds. (Cincinnati: University of Cincinnati
Cornell University, 2005. Women's Studies, 1977), takes the theory as far as it
30. Walter Miller and E. Guy Swanson, Inner Conflict will go, which is quite far in my view. But the the-
and Defense (New York: Holt, 1960). ory is still unable to theorize both difference and
31. Talcott Parsons, "Certain Primary Sources and institutionalized gender relations adequately.
Patterns of Aggression in the Social Structure of 38. Jean-Paul Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew (New York:
the Western World" in Psychiatry, 10, 1947, p. 309. Schocken Press, 1965), p. 60.
500 NOTES
CHAPTER FIVE 16. Janet Saltzman Chafetz, "Toward a Macro-
1. M. Pines, "Civilizing of Genes" in Psychology Level Theory of Sexual Stratification" in Current
Today, September 1981. Perspectives in Social Theory, 1, 1980.
2. Helen Z. Lopata and Barrie Thorne, "On the 17. Erving Goffman, "The Arrangement Between the
Term 'Sex Roles'" in Signs, 3, 1978, p. 719. Sexes" in Theory and Society, 4, 1977, p. 316.
3. Tim Carrigan, Bob Connell, and John Lee, "Toward 18. Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Men and Women of the
a New Sociology of Masculinity" in Theory and Corporation (New York: Basic Books, 1977). See also
Society, 14, 1985. See also R. W. Connell, Gender and Rosabeth Moss Kanter, "Women and the Structure
Power (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, of Organizations: Explorations in Theory and
1987); R. W. Connell, Masculinities (Berkeley: Behavior" in Another Voice: Feminist Perspectives
University of California Press, 1995); Judith on Social Life and Social Science, M. Millman and
Stacey and Barrie Thorne, "The Missing Feminist R. M. Kanter, eds. (New York: Anchor Books, 1975).
Revolution in Sociology" in Social Problems, 32(4), 19. Joan Acker, "Hierarchies, Jobs, Bodies: A Theory
1985, for elaboration and summaries of the socio- of Gendered Organizations" in Gender & Society,
logical critique of sex-role theory. 4(2), 1990, p. 146; see also Joan Acker, "Sex Bias
4. Deborah Rhode, Speaking of Sex (Cambridge: in Job Evaluation: A Comparable Worth Issue'' in
Harvard University Press, 1997), p. 42. Ingredients for Womens Employment Policy, C. Bose
5. Stacey and Thorne, "The Missing Feminist and G. Spitze, eds. (Albany: SUNY Press, 1987);
Revolution;' p. 307. "Class, Gender and the Relations of Distribution''
6. Carrigan, Connell, and Lee, "Toward a New in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society,
Sociology of MasulinitY:' p. 587; see also Connell, 13, 1988; Doing Comparable Worth: Gender, Class
Gender and Power. and Pay Equity (Philadelphia: Temple University
7. David Tresemer, "Assumptions Made About Gender Press, 1989); and Joan Acker and Donald R. Van
Roles" in Another Voice: Feminist Perspectives on Houten, "Differential Recruitment and Control:
Social Life and Social Science, M. Millman and The Sex Structuring of Organizations" in
R. M. Kanter, eds. (New York: Anchor Books, 1975), Administrative Science Quarterly, 19(2), 1974.
p. 323; R. Stephen Warner, David Wellman, and 20. Acker, "Hierarchies, Jobs, Bodies:' pp. 146-147.
Leonore Weitzman, "The Hero, the Sambo and 21. Judith Gerson and Kathy Peiss, "Boundaries,
the Operator: Three Characterizations of the Negotiation, Consciousness: Reconceptualizing
Oppressed" in Urban Life and Culture, 2, 1973. Gender Relations" in Social Problems, 32(4), 1985,
8. Carrigan, Connell, and Lee, "Toward a New p.320.
Sociology of Masculinity;' p. 587. 22. Acker, "Hierarchies, Job, Bodies;' p. 258.
9. Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (New York: 23. Candace West and Don Zimmerman, "Doing
Viking, 1976). Gender" in Gender & Society, 1(2), 1987, p. 140.
10. P. T. Costa and R. R. McCrae, "Age Difference 24. Suzanne J. Kessler, "The Medical Construction of
in Personality Structure: A Cluster Analytic Gender: Case Management of Intersex Infants" in
Approach" in Journal of Gerontology, 31, 1978, Signs 16(1), 1990, pp. 12-13.
pp. 564-570; see also G. E. Valliant, Adaptations 25. Claudia Dreifus, "Declaring with Clarity When
to Life (Boston: Little Brown, 1978). Gender Is Ambiguous" in New York Times, May 31,
11. Elaine Wethington, "Multiple Roles, Social 2005, p. F2.
Integration, and Health" in K. Pillemer, P. Moen, 26. The phrase comes from R. W. Connell; I take it
E. Wethington, and N. Glasgow, eds., Social from the title of Barbara Risman, Gender Vertigo
Integration in the Second Half of Life (Baltimore, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998).
MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000). 27. Cited in West and Zimmerman, "Doing Gender;'
12. U.S. Bureau of the Census, United States Census pp. 133-134.
2000 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of 28. It is difficult to accurately estimate how many
Commerce, Bureau of the Census, 2000). individuals identify as transgender, as most sur-
13. United Nations, The Worlds Women 2010 (New veys don't include gender identity questions, or
York: United Nations, 2010). incorrectly include "transgender" as a sexual ori-
14. Richard Woods, "Women Take Lead as Lifespan entation. Additionally, we have no estimates on
Heads for the Happy 100;' in London Times, the number of people who identify as nonbinary,
October 30, 2005, p. 14. genderqueer, or gender nonconforming (or any of
15. Evelyn Fox Keller, A Feelingfor the Organism (New the other myriad diverse gender identities). The
York: W. H. Freeman, 1985). estimate of one million comes from Gary J. Gates,
Notes 501
"How Many People Are Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and 41. West and Zimmerman, "Doing Gender;' p. 140;
Transgender?" in Williams Institute, 2011. E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English
29. http:/ /www.revelandriot.com/resources/trans- Working Class (New York: Pantheon, 1963), p. 11.
health/ 42. James Messerschmidt, Masculinities and Crime
30. Vanessa Vitiello Urquhart, "What the Heck is (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1993), p. 121.
Genderqueer?" in Slate, March 24, 2015, accessed at 43. Carrigan, Connell, and Lee, "Toward a New
http:/ /www.slate.com/blogs/ outward/ 2015/ 03/ 24/ Sociology of Masculinity;' p. 589; Karen D. Pyke,
genderqueer_what_does_it_mean_and_where_ "Class-Based Masculinities: The Interdependence
does_it_come_from.html. of Gender, Class and Interpersonal Power" in
31. Cited in Carey Goldberg, "Shunning 'He' and Gender & Society, 10(5), 1996, p. 530.
'She: They Fight for Respect" in New York Times,
September 8, 1996, p. 24 CHAPTER SIX
32. Harold Garfinkle, Studies in Ethnomethodology 1. "Marital Status of People 15 Years and Over, by Age,
(Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1967), Sex, Personal Earnings, Race, and Hispanic Origin/I,
pp. 128,132. 2013;' in Americas Families and Living Arrangements:
33. Kessler, "The Medical Construction of Gender'' p. 25. 2013: Adults (Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau,
34. Tannen, You Just Don't Understand, pp. 24, 25; 2013); CDC/NCHS National Vital Statistics System,
see also Deborah Tannen, Gender and Discourse http:/ /www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/marriage_divorce_
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). tables.htrn; "Table UC1" in Americas Families and
35. Tannen, You Just Don't Understand, p. 181. Living Arrangements: 2011 (Washington, DC: U.S.
36. C. L. Bylund and G. Makoul, "Empathic Census Bureau, November 2011); "Census Bureau
Communication and Gender in the Physician- Releases Estimates of Same-Sex Married Couples"
Patient Encounter" in Patient Education and Coun- (Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau, September
seling, 48(3), 2002, pp. 207-216; J. A. Hall, J. T. Irish, 2011); "Cohabitation Is Replacing Dating" in USA
D. L. Roter, C. M. Ehrlich, and L. H. Miller, "Gender Today, July 17, 2005; National Center for Health
in Medical Encounters: An Analysis of Physician and Statistics, Vital Health Statistics, 23(28), 2010, avail-
Patient Communication in a Primary Care Setting" able from http:/ /www.cdc.; Current Population
in Health Psychology, 13(5), 1994, p. 38,4; J. A. Hall, J. T. Reports, P70-125 (Washington, DC: U.S. Census
Irish, D. L. Roter, C. M. Ehrlich, and L. H. Miller, Bureau, 2011), available from http:/ /www.census
"Satisfaction, Gender, and Communication in Medical .gov/prod/2011pubs/p70125.pdf; "Table 14" in Trends
Visits" in Medical Care, 32(12), 1994, pp. 1216-1231; in Nonmarital Birth Rate by Age, Race, and Hispanic
D. L. Roter, J. A. Hall, and Y. Aoki, "Physician Origin Births: Final Data for 2012 (Washington,
Gender Effects in Medical Communication: A Meta- DC: USDHHS, 2012); Americas Families and Living
analytic Review" in Jama, 288(6), 2002, pp. 756-764; Arrangements: 2013: Children (Washington, DC: U.S.
D. L. Roter and J. A. Hall, "Physician Gender and Census Bureau, 2013).
Patient-Centered Communication: A Critical 2. Scott Coltrane, Gender and Families (Newbury
Review of Empirical Research'' in Annual Review Park, CA: Pine Forge Press, 1998), pp. 48-49;
of Public Health, 25, 2004, pp. 497-519; H. Sandhu, Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Really Are: Coming
A. Adams, L. Singleton, D. Clark-Carter, and J. Kidd, to Terms with Americas Changing Families (New
"The Impact of Gender Dyads on Doctor-Patient York: Basic Books, 1998), p. 30.
Communication: A Systematic Review" in Patient 3. On the transformation of the idea of marriage,
Education and Counseling, 76(3), 2009, pp. 348-355. see, for example, Edward Shorter, The Making
37. William O'Barr and Jean F. O'Barr, Linguistic of the Modern Family (New York: Basic Books,
Evidence: Language, Power and Strategy-The 1977); Arlene Skolnick, Embattled Paradise: The
Courtroom (San Diego: Academic Press, 1995); American Family in an Age of Uncertainty (New
see also Alfie Kohn, "Girl Talk, Guy Talk" in York: Basic Books, 1993); Christopher Lasch,
Psychology Today, February 1988, p. 66. Women and the Common Life: Love, Marriage and
38. Nicholas Groth, Ann Burgess, and Suzanne Sgroi, Feminism (New York: Norton, 1997), especially
Sexual Assault of Children and Adolescents (San p. 162. On husbands' brutality, see, for exam-
Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1978). ple, Steven Mintz and Susan Kellogg, Domestic
39. Carol Sheffield, Feminist Jurisprudence (New York: Revolutions: A Social History of the American
Routledge, 1997), p. 203. Family (New York: Free Press, 1988), p. 58.
40. I will explore the sociology of rape in significantly 4. Mintz and Kellogg, Domestic Revolutions, p. 50;
more detail in chapter 11. see also Page Smith, Daughters of the Promised
502 NOTES
Land: Women in American History (Boston: Little 15. Mintz and Kellogg, Domestic Revolutions, p. 179;
Brown, 1970); John Demos, "The Changing Faces Coontz, The Way We Really Are, p. 30; Mintz and
of Fatherhood: A New Exploration in American Kellogg, Domestic Revolutions, p. 237.
Family History" in Father and Child: Developmental 16. William Chafe, The Unfinished Journey:
and Clinical Perspectives, S. Cath, A. Gurwitt, and America Since World War II (New York: Oxford
J. Ross, eds. (Boston: Little Brown, 1982), p. 429. University Press, 1986), p. 125; Morris Zelditch,
5. John Demos, Past, Present, and Personal: The "Role Differentiation in the Nuclear Family: A
Family and Life Course in American History Comparative Study" in Family, Socialization and
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), Interaction Process, T. Parsons and R. F. Bales, eds.
p. 32; see also Tamara Hareven, Family Time and (New York: Free Press, 1955), p. 339.
Industrial Time (New York: Cambridge University 17. Griswold, Fatherhood in America, p. 204; Lasch,
Press, 1982). Tennyson, "The Princess;' is cited in Women and the Common Life, p. 94; Ruth Schwartz
Skolnick, Embattled Paradise, p. 35. Cowan, More Work for Mother: The Ironies of
6. Cited in David Popenoe, Life Without Father: Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the
Compelling New Evidence That Fatherhood Microwave (New York: Basic Books, 1983), p. 216;
and Marriage Are Indispensable for the Good of Lerner, cited in Skolnick, Embattled Paradise, p. 115.
Children and Society (New York: Free Press, 1996), 18. See, for example, Barbara Ehrenreich, The Hearts
p.95. of Men (New York: Doubleday, 1983), on the "male
7. Gerda Lerner, "The Lady and the Mill Girl: revolt" from breadwinner status. Also see Kimmel,
Changes in the Status of Women in the Age of Manhood in America, especially chapter 7.
Jackson'' in American Studies Journal, 10(1), Spring 19. See Skolnick, Embattled Paradise, p. 148.
1969, pp. 7, 9. Theodore Dwight, The Father's Book 20. U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey,
(Springfield, MA: G. and C. Merriam, 1834). See, 2015 Annual Social and Economic Supplement,
generally, Michael Kimmel, Manhood in America: https://www.census .gov/hhes/www /poverty/
A Cultural History (New York: Free Press, 1996), about/ overview/.
chapters 1 and 2. 21. Anna Quindlen, "Men at Work" in New York
8. Lasch, Women and the Common Life, p. 162. Times, February 18, 1990.
9. Bonnie Thornton Dill, "Our Mothers' Grief: 22. Coontz, Way We Really Are, p. 79; Arlene
Racial-Ethnic Women and the Maintenance of Skolnick, The Intimate Environment (New York:
Families" in Journal of Family History, 13(4), 1988, HarperCollins, 1996), p. 342; Judith Bruce, Cynthia
p.428. B. Lloyd, and Ann Leonard, Families in Focus: New
10. John Gillis, "Making Time for Family: The Perspectives on Mothers, Fathers, and Children (New
Invention of Family Time(s) and the Reinvention York: Population Council, 1995); Dirk Johnson,
of Family History" in Journal of Family History, 21, "More and More, the Single Parent Is Dad" in New
1996; John Gillis, A World of Their Own Making: York Times, August 31, 1993, p. 1. See also U.S. Bureau
Myth, Ritual, and the Quest for Family Values (New of the Census, 2007 Current Population Survey
York: Basic Books, 1996). (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Commerce,
11. Skolnick, Embattled Paradise, p. 33; Harper's, cited Bureau of Census, 2007).
in John Demos, "Changing Faces of Fatherhood;' 23. "Opposite Sex Unmarried Couples by Presence
p. 442; see also Ralph LaRossa, "Fatherhood and of Biological Children Under 18;' in American
Social Change" in Family Relations, 37, 1988; and Families and Living Arrangements (Washington,
Ralph LaRossa, The Modernization of Fatherhood: DC: U.S. Census Bureau, 2014).
A Social and Political History (Chicago: University 24. Arlie Hochschild (with Anne Machung), The
of Chicago Press, 1997); Robert Griswold, Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution
Fatherhood in America: A History (New York: at Home (New York: Viking, 1989), p. 258.
Basic Books, 1993). 25. J. K. Footlick, "What Happened to the Family?"
12. Skolnick, Embattled Paradise, p. 41; Mintz and in "The 21st Century Family;' special edition,
Kellogg, Domestic Revolutions, p. 110. Newsweek, Winter-Spring 1990, p. 14.
13. See Stephen D. Sugarman, "Single Parent Families" 26. Scott Coltrane, Family Man : Fatherhood,
in All Our Families: New Policies for a New Housework and Gender Equity (New York: Oxford
Century, M. Mason, A. Skolnick, and S. Sugarman, University Press, 1996), p. 203; Lillian Rubin,
eds. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), Worlds of Pain (New York: Basic Books, 1976),
pp. 20-21. p. 131; Cherlin, "By the Numbers;' p. 39; Coltrane,
14. See LaRossa, Modernization ofFatherhood. Family Man, p. 203.
Notes 503
27. Jessie Bernard, The Future of Marriage (New York: 38. Anna Quindlen, cited in Deborah Rhode, Speaking
World, 1972); Walter R. Gove, "The Relationship of Sex (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
Between Sex Roles, Marital Status and Mental 1997), p. 8.
Illness" in Social Forces, 51, 1972; Walter Gove 39. Phyllis Moen and Patricia Roehling, Career
and M. Hughes, "Possible Causes of the Apparent Mystique: Cracks in the American Dream (Lanham,
Sex Differences in Physical Health: An Empirical MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2004).
Investigation" in American Sociological Review, 44, 40. On men's involvement in family work, see Joseph
1979; Walter Gove and Jeanette Tudor, ''Adult Sex Pleck, "Men's Family Work: Three Perspectives
Roles and Mental Illness" in American Journal of and Some New Data" in Family Coordinator,
Sociology, 73, 1973; "The Decline of Marriage" in 28, 1979; ''American Fathering in Historical
Scientific American, December 1999. Perspective" in Changing Men: New Directions in
28. Natalie Angier, New York Times, 1998, p. 10. Research on Men and Masculinity, M. S. Kimmel,
29. See Linda J. Waite and Maggie Gallagher, The Case ed. (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1987);
for Marriage: Why Married People Are Happier, Working Wives/ Working Husbands (Newbury
Healthier and Better Off Financially (New York: Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1985); "Families
Doubleday, 2000). See also, for example, Hynubae and Work: Small Changes with Big Implications"
Chun and Injae Lee, "Why Do Married Men Earn in Qualitative Sociology, 15, 1992; "Father
More: Productivity or Marriage Selection?" in Involvement: Levels, Origins and Consequences"
Economic Inquiry, 39(2), April 2001, pp. 307-319; in The Father's Role, 3rd ed., M. Lamb, ed. (New
and Leslie Stratton, "Examining the Wage York: John Wiley, 1997).
Differential for Married and Cohabiting Men'' in 41. Julie Press and Eleanor Townsley, "Wives' and
Economic Inquiry, 40(2), April 2002, pp. 199-212. Husbands' Housework Reporting: Gender, Class
See also Paula England's review of The Case for and Social Desirability" in Gender & Society,
Marriage in Contemporary Sociology, 30(6), 2001. 12(2), 1998, p. 214. See also Yun-Suk Lee and
30. Bebin and statistics cited in Elaine Carey, "Kids Linda J. Waite, "Husbands' and Wives' Time Spent
Put a Damper on Marital Bliss: Study" in Toronto on Housework: A Comparison of Measures" in
Star, August 15, 1997, pp. A1, A14. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 67, May 2005,
31. Arlie Hochschild, Second Shift; Paul Amato and pp. 328-336.
Alan Booth, "Changes in Gender Role Attitudes 42. Lisa Belkin, "When Mom and Dad Share It All" in
and Perceived Marital Quality" in American New York Times Magazine, June 15, 2008, p. 47.
Sociological Review, 60, 1995. 43. Hiromi Ono, "Husbands' and Wives' Resources
32. For example, see "Stress: Relevations sur un ma! and Marital Dissolution in the United States;'
frarn;:ais" in le Figaro, April 15, 2006, p. 46. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 60, 1998,
33. Pat Mainardi, "The Politics of Housework" in pp. 674-689; see also Dirk Johnson, "Until Dust
Sisterhood Is Powerful, R. Morgan, ed. (New York: Do Us Part" in Newsweek, March 25, 2002, p. 41;
Vintage, 1970). see also Sanjiv Gupta, "The Effects of Transitions
34. Ballard and Foote are cited in Schwartz Cowan, in Marital Status on Men's Performance of
More Work for Mother, p. 43; Campbell is cited in Housework" in Journal ofMarriage and the Family,
Susan Strasser, Never Done: A History ofAmerican August 1999.
Housework (New York: Pantheon, 1982), p. 62. 44. Ladies Home Journal, September 1997; John Gray,
35. Johnson, "More and More, the Single Parent Is "Domesticity, Diapers and Dad" in Toronto Globe
Dad;' p. A15. and Mail, June 15, 1996.
36. Kim Parker and Wendy Wang, "Modern 45. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ arti
Parenthood: Roles of Moms and Dads Converge de/ 0,9171,2084582,oo.html.
as They Balance Work and Family;' Pew Research 46. Ibid.
Center, March 14, 2013, www.pewsocialtrends.org/ 47. Amelia Hill, "Fathers Are Happier When Doing
2013/ 03/11/modern-parenthood-roles-of-moms- More Housework, Study Says" in Guardian,
and-dads-converge-as- they- balance-work-and- November 4, 2010.
family/; "Parental Time Use;' Pew Research Center, 48. Carol Shows and Naomi Gerstel, "Fathering, Class
http://www.pewresearch .org/ data-trend/ and Gender: A Comparison of Physicians and
society-and-demographics/parental-time-use/. EMTs" in Gender & Society 23(2), 2009, pp. 161-187.
37. Arlie Hochschild, "Ideals of Care: Traditional, 49. See Bart Landry, Black Working Wives: Pioneers
Postmodern, Cold-Modern and Warm-Modern'' of the American Family Revolution (Berkeley:
in Social Politics, Fall 1995, p. 318. University of California Press, 2001); Margaret
504 NOTES
Usdansky, "White Men Don't Jump into Chores" 61. Johnson, "Until Dust Do Us Part."
in USA Today, August 20, 1994; Julia Lawlor, "Blue 62. Jane R. Eisner, "Leaving the Office for Family Life"
Collar Dads Leading Trend in Caring for Kids, in Des Moines Register, March 27, 1998, p. 7A.
Author Says" in New York Times, April 15, 1998. 63. Jay Belsky, ''A Reassessment oflnfant Day Care;'
50. Cited in Coltrane, Family Man, p. 162: see also Scott and Thomas Gamble and Edward Zigler, "Effects
Coltrane and Michele Adams, "Men's Family Work: oflnfant Day Care: Another Look at the Evidence;'
Child Centered Fathering and the Sharing of Dom- both in The Parental Leave Crisis: Toward a National
estic Labor" in Working Families: The Transfor- Policy, E. Zigler and M. Frank, eds. (New Haven,
mation of the American Home, Rosanna Hertz CT: Yale University Press, 1988}; see also Susan
and Nancy Marshall, eds. (Berkeley: University of Chira, "Study Says Babies in Child Care Keep
California Press, 2001). Secure Bonds to Mother" in New York Times, April
51. Mick Cunningham, "Parental Influences on the 21, 1996. For a handy summary of these data, see
Gendered Division of Housework" in American "Child Care in the United States, 1972 vs. 1999;' a
Sociological Review, 66, April 2001, pp. 184-203; flyer from the National Council of Jewish Women
see also Janet Simons, "Life with Father" in Rocky at www.ncjw.org.
Mountain News, August 20, 2001. 64. Susan Chira, "Can You Work and Have Good
52. Barbara Vobejda, "Children Help Less at Home, Happy Kids?" in Glamour, April 1998.
Dads Do More" in Washington Post, November 24, 65. Cherlin, "By the Numbers:'
1991, p. A1. 66. See S. M. Bianchi and Daphne Spain, American
53. Jerry Adler, "Building a Better Dad" in Newsweek, Women in Transition (New York: Russell Sage
June 17, 1996; Tamar Lewin, "Workers of Both Foundation, 1986); E. G. Menaghan and Toby
Sexes Make Trade-Offs for Family, Study Shows" Parcel, "Parental Employment and Family Life:
in New York Times, October 29, 1995, p. 25. Research in the 1980s" in Journal of Marriage and
54. United Nations, The Worlds Women, 1970-1990: the Family, 52, 1990; Glenna Spitze, "Women's
Trends and Statistics (New York: United Nations, Employment and Family Relations: A Review" in
1991). Journal ofMarriage and the Family, 50, 1988.
55. Mette Deding, "Born Familieidyl begynder med 67. Philip Blumstein and Pepper Schwartz, American
Ligestilling" ("Children: The Idyllic Family Begins Couples (New York: William Morrow, 1983), p. 155;
with Gender Equality") in Politiken, April 28, Chira, "Can You Work;' p. 269.
2007, p. 4. 68. Joan K. Peters, When Mothers Work: Loving Our
56. Lewin, "Workers of Both Sexes Make Trade- Children Without Sacrificing Our Selves (Reading,
Offs;' p. 25. MA: Addison-Wesley, 1997).
57. "Sex, Death, and Football" in The Economist, June 69. Popenoe, Life Without Father, p. 63; National
13, 1998, p. 18; Robert D. Mintz and James Mahalik, Center for Health Statistics, "Births, Marriages,
"Gender Role Orientation and Conflict as Divorces and Deaths for January, 1995" in Monthly
Predictors of Family Roles for Men'' in Sex Roles, Vital Statistics Report, 44(1) (Hyattsville, MD:
34(1-2), 1996, pp. 805-821; Barbara Risman, "Can Public Health Service).
Men 'Mother'? Life as a Single Father" in Family 70. Popenoe, Life Without Father, pp. 6, 34; see also
Relations, 35, 1986; see also Caryl Rivers and Tamar Lewin, "Is Social Stability Subverted if You
Rosalind Barnett, "Fathers Do Best" in Washington Answer 'I Don't'?" in New York Times, November 4,
Post, June 20, 1993, p. Cs. 2000, pp. Bu, 13; U.S. National Center for Health
58. Alyssa Croft, Toni Schmader, Katharina Block, and Statistics, National Vital Statistics Reports (NVSR),
Andrew Scott Baron, "The Second Shift Reflected Births: Final Data for 2005, 56, December 5, 2007;
in the Second Generation: Do Parents' Gender see also Emily Bazelon, "2 Kids + o Husbands =
Roles at Home Predict Children's Aspiration" in Family" in New York Time Magazine, February 1,
Psychological Science 25, 7 (2014): 1418-1428 See 2009, p. 32.
also Ian Johnston, "Dad, Do the Dishes for the 71. Pittman, cited in Olga Silverstein, "Is a Bad Dad
Sake of your Daughter" in Independent, May 30, Better Than No Dad?" in On the Issues, Winter
2014. 1997, p. 15; David Blankenhorn, Fatherless
59. Andrew Cherlin, "By the Numbers" in New York America: Confronting Our Most Urgent Social
Times Magazine, April 5, 1998, p. 41. Problem (New York: Basic Books, 1993), p. 30;
60. Ibid.; Donald Hernandez, "Children's Changing Robert Bly, Iron John (Reading, MA: Addison-
Access to Resources: A Historical Perspective" in Wesley, 1990), p. 96; Popenoe, Life Without
Social Policy Report, 8(1), Spring 1994, p. 22. Father, p. 12. See also Stephen Marche, "Manifesto
Notes 505
of the New Fatherhood" in Esquire, June/July 85. J. Schulenberg, Gay Parenting (New York:
2014, pp. 118-121. Doubleday, 1985 ); F. W Bozett, ed., Gay and Lesbian
72. Carey Goldberg, "Single Dads Wage Revolution Parents (New York: Praeger, 1987); Katherine Allen
One Bedtime Story at a Time" in New York Times, and David H . Demo, "The Families of Lesbians
June 17, 2001, pp. A1, 16. and Gay Men: A New Frontier in Family Research"
73. Cherlin, "By the Numbers"; Kristin Luker, in Journal of Marriage and the Family, 57, 1995;
"Dubious Conceptions: The Controversy over Ann Sullivan, ed., Issues in Gay and Lesbian
Teen Pregnancy" in American Prospect, 5, 1991; Adoption: Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Peirce-
Paul Amato and Alan Booth, A Generation at Warwick Adoption Symposium (Washington, DC:
Risk: Growing Up in an Era of Family Upheaval Child Welfare League of America, 1995), p. 5; John
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), J. Goldman, "N.J. Gays Win Adoption Rights" in
p. 229; P. Amato and J. Gilbreth, "Nonresident Los Angeles Times, December 18, 1997.
Fathers and Children's Well-Being: A Meta- 86. Nanette Gartrell and Henny Bos, "US National
Analysis" in Journal of Marriage and the Family, Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study: Psychological
61, 1999, pp. 557-573- Adjustment of 17-Year-Old Adolescents" in
74. Martin Sanchez-Jankowski, Islands in the Street: Pediatrics, 126(1), June 2010; and Nanette Gartrell,
Gangs and American Urban Society (Berkeley: Henny Bos, and Naomi Goldberg, ''Adolescents
University of California Press, 1991), p. 39. of the U.S. National Longitudinal Lesbian Family
75. Blaine Harden, "Finding Common Ground on Poor Study: Sexual Orientation, Sexual Behavior,
Deadbeat Dads" in New York Times, February 3, and Sexual Risk Exposure" in Archives of Sexual
2002, p. 3. Behavior, November 2010.
76. David Popenoe, "Evolution of Marriage and Step- 87. Michael Lamb, "Mothers, Fathers, Families and
family Problems" in Stepfamilies: Who Benefits? Circumstances: Factors Affecting Children's
Who Does Not?, A. Booth and J. Dunn, eds. Adjustment" in Applied Developmental Science,
(Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1994), p. 528. 16(2), 2012, pp. 98-m.
77. Blankenhorn, Fatherless America, p. 96. 88. Judith Stacey, "Gay and Lesbian Families: Queer
78. Ibid., p. 102. Like Us" in All Our Families: New Policies for
79. http:/ /www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/I4pdf/ a New Century, M. Mason, A. Skolnick, and
14-556-3204.pdf S. Sugarman, eds. (New York: Oxford University
80. Michael J. Kanotz, "For Better or for Worse: A Press, 1998), p. 135. See also Michael Rosenfeld,
Critical Analysis of Florida's Defense of Marriage "Nontraditional Families and Childhood
Act" in Florida State University Law Review, 25(2), Program Through School;' in Demography,
1998. August 2010, pp. 755-775.
81. Gilbert Zicklin, "Deconstructing Legal 89. Judith Stacey and Timothy J. Biblarz, "(How)
Rationality: The Case of Lesbian and Gay Family Does the Sexual Orientation of Parents Matter?"
Relationships" in Marriage and Family Review, in American Sociological Review, 66, April 2001,
21(3/ 4), 1995, p. 55. pp. 159-183; see also Michael Bronski, "Queer as
82. Cited in New York Times, September 27, 1991. Your Folks" in Boston Phoenix, August 3, 2001;
83. Laura Benkov, Reinventing the Family: Lesbian and and Erica Goode, ''A Rainbow of Differences in
Gay Parents (New York: Crown, 1994); Skolnick, Gays' Children'' in New York Times, July 17, 2001.
Intimate Environment, pp. 293-294; Blumstein 90. United Nations, Demographic Yearbook, Department
and Schwartz, American Couples; Lawrence for Economic and Social Information and Policy
Kurdek, "The Allocation of Household Labor in Analysis, Statistical Division, November 1996; United
Gay, Lesbian and Heterosexual Married Couples" States Bureau of the Census, Current Population
in Families in the United States: Kinship and Report: Marital Status and Living Arrangements,
Domestic Politics, K. Hansen and A. Ilta Garey, March, 1996 (Washington, DC: United States
eds. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998). Government Printing Office, 1997); "Divorce,
See also Abbie Goldberg, Juli Anna Smith, and American Style" in Scientific American, March 1999.
Maureen Perry Jenkins, "The Division of Labor 91. Lawrence Stone, ''A Short History of Love" in
in Lesbian, Gay and Heterosexual New Adoptive Harper's Magazine, February 1988, p. 32.
Parents" in Journal of Marriage and the Family, 92. Constance Ahrons, The Good Divorce (New York:
August 2012. HarperCollins, 1994).
84. John Gagnon and William Simon, Sexual Conduct 93. Demie Kurz, For Richer, For Poorer: Mothers
(Chicago: Aldine, 1973), p. 213. Confront Divorce (New York: Routledge, 1995);
506 NOTES
Leonore Weitzman, The Divorce Revolution: The and the Family, 57(3), 1995; Amato, "Impact of
Unexpected Social and Economic Consequences for Divorce:'
Women and Children in America (New York: Free 100.Joan B. Kelly, "Mediated and Adversarial Divorce:
Press, 1985); Patricia A. McManus and Thomas Respondents' Perceptions of Their Processes and
A. DiPrete, "Losers and Winners: The Financial Outcomes" in Mediation Quarterly, 24, Summer
Consequences of Separation and Divorce for Men'' 1989,p. 125.
in American Sociological Review, 66, April 2001, 101. J. Block, J. Block, and P. F. Gjerde, "The Personality
pp. 246-268; Paul Amato, "The Impact of Divorce of Children Prior to Divorce: A Prospective
on Men and Women in India and the United States" Study" in Child Development, 57, 1986; Skolnick,
in Journal ofComparative Family Studies, 25(2), 1994. Embattled Paradise, p. 212; for British study, see
94. Popenoe, Life Without Father, p. 27; Frank Jane Brody, "Problems of Children: A New Look at
Furstenberg and Andrew Cherlin, Divided Families: Divorce" in New York Times, June 7, 1991.
What Happens to Children When Parents Part? 102. Amato and Booth, Generation at Risk, pp. 201,
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991); Debra 230, 234; Paul Amato and Alan Booth, "The
Umberson and Christine Williams, "Divorced Legacy of Parents' Marital Discord: Consequences
Fathers: Parental Role Strain and Psychological for Children's Marital Quality" in Journal of
Distress" in Journal ofFamily Issues, 14(3), 1993. Personality and Social Psychology, 81(4), 2001,
95. Valerie King, "Nonresident Father Involvement pp. 627-638; see also Amato,"Impact of Divorce";
and Child Well-Being" in Journal of Family Issues, "The Implications of Research Findings on Children
15(1), 1994; Edward Kruk, "The Disengaged in Stepfamilies" in Stepfamilies: Who Benefits? Who
Noncustodial Father: Implications for Social Work Does Not?, A. Booth and J. Dunn, eds. (Hillsdale,
Practice with the Divorced Family" in Social Work, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1994); "Single-Parent
39(1), 1994. Households as Settings for Children's Development,
96. Judith Wallerstein and J. Kelly, Surviving the Well-Being and Attainment: A Social Networks/
Breakup: How Children and Parents Cope with Resources Perspective" in Sociological Studies of
Divorce (New York: Basic Books, 1980); Judith Children, 7, 1995; Paul Amato and Alan Booth,
Wallerstein and Susan Blakeslee. Second Chances: "Changes in Gender Role Attitudes and Perceived
Men, Women, and Children a Decade After Divorce Marital Quality" in American Sociological Review,
(New York: Ticknor and Fields, 1989), p. n; Judith 60, 1995; Paul Amato, Laura Spencer Loomis, and
Wallerstein, Julia Lewis, and Sandra Blakeslee, The Alan Booth, "Parental Divorce, Marital Conflict,
Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25 Year Landmark and Offspring Well-Being During Early Adulthood"
Study (New York: Hyperion, 2000). in Social Forces, 73(3), 1995. "Low conflict;' by the
97. For criticism of Wallerstein's study, see, for way, is unhappy but not physically violent.
example, Andrew Cherlin, "Generation Ex-" in 103. B. Berg and R. Kelly, "The Measured Self-Esteem
Nation, December 11, 2000; Katha Pollitt, "Social of Children from Broken, Rejected and Accepted
Pseudoscience" in Nation, October 23, 2000, p. 10 Families" in Journal ofDivorce, 2, 1979; R. E. Emery,
(and subsequent exchange, December 4, 2000); "Interparental Conflict and Children of Discord
Thomas Davey, "Considering Divorce" in American and Divorce" in Psychological Bulletin, 92, 1982;
Prospect, January 1-15, 2001; Walter Kirn, "Should H. J. Raschke and V. J. Raschke, "Family Conflict
You Stay Together for the Kids?" in Time, September and the Children's Self-Concepts" in Journal of
25, 2000; and Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, "Loving and Marriage and the Family, 41, 1979; J. M. Gottman
Leaving" in New Republic, May 6, 2002. and L. F. Katz, "Effects of Marital Discord on
98. Andrew Cherlin, "Going to Extremes: Family Young Children's Peer Interaction and Health'' in
Structure, Children's Well-Being and Social Science" Developmental Psychology, 25, 1989; D. Mechanic
in Demography, 36(4), November 1999, p. 425. and S. Hansell, "Divorce, Family Conflict and
99. See E. Mavis Heatherington and John Kelly, Adolescents' Well-Being" in Journal of Health
For Better or for Worse: Divorce Reconsidered and Social Behavior, 30, 1989; Paul Amato and
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2002); Leonard Juliana Sobolewski, "The Effects of Divorce and
Beeghley, What Does Your Wife Do? Gender Marital Discord on Adult Children's Psychological
and the Transformation of Family Life (Boulder, Well-Being" in American Sociological Review,
CO: Westview Press, 1996), p. 96; Donna Ruane 66, December 2001, pp. 900-921.
Morrison and Andrew Cherlin, "The Divorce 104. Block, Block, and Gjerde, "The Personality of
Process and Young Children's Well-Being: A Children"; president of council cited in Coontz,
Prospective Analysis" in Journal of Marriage Way We Really Are, p. 108.
Notes 507
105. Coontz, Way We Really Are, p. 83. of Divorce, 9, 1986; V. Shiller, "Loyalty Conflicts
106. Amato and Booth, Generation at Risk, p. 207; and Family Relationships in Latency Age Boys:
see also Susan Jekielek,"The Relative and A Comparison of Joint and Maternal Custody" in
Interactive Impacts of Parental Conflict and Journal ofDivorce, 9, 1986.
Marital Disruption on Children's Emotional m. Kelly, "Longer-Term Adjustments;' p. 136; Crowell
Well-Being;' paper presented at the annual meet- and Leeper, Americas Fathers and Public Policy,
ing of the American Sociological Association, p. 27.
New York, 1996; Carl Degler, At Odds: Women 112. For more about the U.S. fatherhood move-
and the Family in America from the Revolution to ment, see Anna Gavanas, Fatherhood Politics in
the Present (New York: Oxford University Press, the United States (Urbana: University of Illinois
1980); Terry Arendell, "Divorce American Style" Press, 2004).
in Contemporary Sociology, 27(3), 1998, p. 226. 113. Cited in Richard Gelles, The Violent Home
See also Terry Arendall, Mothers and Divorce: (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1972), p. 14.
Legal, Economic and Social Dilemmas (Berkeley: 114. Elizabeth Thompson Gershoff; "Corporal Puni-
University of California Press, 1986); ''After shment by Parents and Associated Child Behaviors
Divorce: Investigations into Father Absence" and Experiences: A Meta-Analytic and Theoretical
in Gender & Society, December 1992; Fathers Review" in Psychological Bulletin, 128(4), 2002,
and Divorce (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publica- pp. 539-579. Gershoff's critics suggest that the
tions, 1995). negative effects are the result of "inept harsh par-
107. Griswold, Fatherhood in America, p. 263; enting" and not specifically spanking. See Diana
Nancy Polikoff, "Gender and Child Custody Baumrind, Robert Larzelere, and Philip A. Cowan,
Determinations: Exploding the Myths" in "Ordinary Physical Punishment: Is It Harmful?" in
Families, Politics and Public Policy: A Feminist Psychological Bulletin, 128(4), 2002, pp. 580-589.
Dialogue on Women and the State, I. Diamond, 115. Abraham Bergman, Roseanne Larsen, and Beth
ed. (New York: Longman, 1983), pp. 184-185; Mueller, "Changing Spectrum of Child Abuse" in
Robert H . Mnookin, Eleanor Maccoby, Catherine Pediatrics, 77, 1986.
Albiston, and Charlene Depner, "Private Ordering 116. Murray Straus, Richard Gelles, and Suzanne
Revisited: What Custodial Arrangements Are Steinmetz, Behind Closed Doors: Violence in the
Parents Negotiating?" in Divorce Reform at the American Family (New York: Anchor, 1981), p. 94;
Crossroads, S. Sugarman and H . Kaye, eds. (New see also Murray Straus, Beating the Devil Out of
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990), especially Them (New York: Jossey-Bass, 1994).
p. 55; Eleanor Maccoby and Robert Mnookin, 117. Richard Gelles, Family Violence (Newbury Park,
Dividing the Child: Social and Legal Dilemmas of CA: Sage Publications, 1987), p. 165.
Custody ( Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 118. Skolnick, Intimate Environment, p. 426.
1992), especially p. 101. 119. Harvard Mens Health Watch, 2(11), June 1998.
108. Maccoby, quoted in Johnson, "More and More, 120. David H . Demo, "Parent-Child Relations:
the Single Parent Is Dad;' p. A15; Furstenberg and Assessing Recent Changes" in Journal ofMarriage
Cherlin, Divided Families; Frank Furstenberg, and the Family, 54(1), 1990, p. 224.
"Good Dads-Bad Dads : Two Faces of 121. Hochschild, Second Shift, p. 269.
Fatherhood" in The Changing American Family 122. Cited in Quindlen, "Men at Work:'
and Public Policy, A. Cherlin, ed. (Lanham, 123. Frank Furstenberg, "Can Marriage Be Saved?" in
MD: Urban Institute Press, 1988); William Dissent, Summer 2005, p. Bo .
J. Goode, "Why Men Resist" in Rethinking the 124. Andrew Greeley, "The Necessity of Feminism" in
Family: Some Feminist Questions, B. Thorne and Society 30(6), September 1993, pp. 13-14.
M. Yalom, eds. (New York: Longman, 1982). 125. Lasch, Women and the Common Life, p. 119.
109. Amato and Booth, Generation at Risk, p. 74. 126. Coltrane, Family Man, pp. 223-225.
110. See, for example, Joan Kelly, "Longer-Term
Adjustments of Children of Divorce" in
Journal of Family Psychology, 2(2), 1988, p. 131; CHAPTER SEVEN
D. Leupnitz, Child Custody: A Study of Families 1. In M. G. Lord, Forever Barbie: The Unauthorized
After Divorce (Lexington, KY: Lexington Books, Biography of a Real Doll (New York: William
1982); D. Leupnitz, ''A Comparison of Maternal, Morrow, 1994).
Paternal and Joint Custody: Understanding the 2. Deborah Rhode, Speaking of Sex (Cambridge:
Varieties of Post-Divorce Family Life" in Journal Harvard University Press, 1997), p. 56.
508 NOTES
3. Edward C. Clarke, Sex in Education; or, A Fair Masculinity'" in Education Week, May 13, 1998;
Chance for the Girls (Boston: Osgood, 1873), Thompson, cited in Margaret Combs, "What
pp. 128,137. About the Boys?" in Boston Globe, June 26, 1998.
4. W W Ferrier, Origin and Development of the For more of this backlash argument, see Michael
University of California (Berkeley: University of Gurian, The Wonder of Boys (New York: Jeremy
California Press, 1930); see also Myra Sadker and Tarcher/Putnam, 1997); and Judith Kleinfeld,
David Sadker, Failing at Fairness: How Schools "Student Performance: Male Versus Female" in
Shortchange Girls (New York: Simon & Schuster, Public Interest, Winter 1999. For dissenting opin-
1994), p. 22. ions, see my review of Gurian, "Boys to Men .
5. Henry Fowle Durant, "The Spirit of the College" . . ;' in San Francisco Chronicle, January 12, 1997;
[1977], reprinted in Michael S. Kimmel and Martin Mills, "What About the Boys?" and R. W
Thomas Mosmiller, Against the Tide: Pro- Connell, "Teaching the Boys" in Teachers College
Feminist Men in the United States, 1776-1990, a Record.
Documentary History (Boston: Beacon Press, 15. Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice; Lyn Mikel
1992), p. 132. Brown and Carol Gilligan, Meeting at the
6. Henry Maudsley, "Sex in Mind and in Education" Crossroads (New York: Ballantine, 1992).
[1874] in Desire and Imagination: Classic Essays in 16. Pollack, cited in Viadero, "Behind the Mask."; see
Sexuality, R. Barreca, ed. (New York: Meridian, also Pollack, Real Boys.
1995), pp. 208-209. 17. Shelley Correll, "Gender and the Career Choice
7. Sadker and Sadker, Failing at Fairness, p. 14. These Process: The Role of Biased Self-Assessments"
stereotypes can break down when complicated in American Journal of Sociology, 106(6),
by other, racially based stereotypes; for example, pp. 1691-1730.
Asian American girls are expected to like math 18. Ibid.
and science more than are white girls. 19. Wayne Martino, "Masculinity and Learning:
8. David Karp and William C. Yoels, "The College Exploring Boys' Underachievement and Under-
Classroom: Some Observations on the Meanings representation in Subject English'' in Interpretation,
of Student Participation" in Sociology and Social 27(2), 1994; "Boys and Literacy: Exploring the
Research, 60(4), 1976; American Association of Construction of Hegemonic Masculinities and
University Women, How Schools Shortchange Girls: the Formation of Literate Capacities for Boys in
A Study of Major Findings on Girls and Education the English Classroom'' in English in Australia, 112,
(Washington, DC: American Association of 1995; "Gendered Learning Experiences: Exploring
University Women, 1992), p 68; Sadker and Sadker, the Costs of Hegemonic Masculinity for Girls and
Failing at Fairness, p. 5. Boys in Schools" in Gender Equity: A Framework
9. Sadker and Sadker, Failing at Fairness, pp. 42-43. for Australian Schools (Canberra: Publications and
10. Peggy Orenstein, Schoolgirls (New York: Public Communications, Department of Urban
Doubleday, 1994), pp. 11, 12. Services, ACT Government, 1997). Catharine
11. Jenny Soffel, "Gender Bias Fought at Egalia Stimpson, quoted in Tamar Lewin, ''American
Preschool in Stockholm, Sweden" in Huffington Colleges Begin to Ask, Where Have All the Men
Post, June 26, 2011, www.huffintonpost.com/ Gone?" in New York Times, December 6, 1998.
2011/ o 6/ 26/ gender- bias-egalia-preschool_n_ 20. Wayne Martino, "Gendered Learning
884866.html. Experiences;' pp. 133, 134.
12. American Association of University Women, 21. Martain Mac an Ghaill, The Making of Men:
Hostile Hallways: The AAUW Survey on Sexual Masculinities, Sexualities and Schooling
Harassment in America's Schools (Washington, (Buckingham, UK: Open University Press,
DC: American Association of University Women, 1994), p. 59; David Gillborne, Race, Ethnicity and
1993); Sandler, cited in Sadker and Sadker, Failing Education (London: Unwin Hyman, 1990), p. 63;
at Fairness, p. 111. James Coleman, The Adolescent Society (New York:
13. See, for example, William Pollack, Real Boys: Harper and Row, 1961). "Report: Girls Are Smarter
Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood Than Boys" in Stockton Record, September 20,
(New York: Random House, 1998). 2003. Thanks to Lisa Jones for her help in tracking
14. Christine Hoff Sommers, The War Against down this article.
Boys (New York: Scribner's, 1999); Sommers, 22. Sui-fong Lam, et al., "Do Girls and Boys Perceive
cited in Debra Viadero, "Behind the 'Mask of Themselves as Equally Engaged in School?
Notes 509
The Results of an International Study from 12 the Weak and the Troubled" in Pediatrics, 112(6),
Countries" in Journal of School Psychology. December 2003, pp. 1231-1237.
23. Cited in David Macleod, Building Character in the 34. "Fear of Classmates" in USA Today, April 22, 1999,
American Boy (Madison: University of Wisconsin p. A1; "Half of Teens Have Heard of a Gun Threat at
Press, 1983), p. 49. School" in USA Today, November 27, 2001, p. 6D.
24. William Mcfee, letter to the editor, Nation, July 20, 35. This section draws on Michael Kimmel and
1927, p. 2. Matthew Mahler, "Adolescent Masculinity,
25. Brendan Koerner, "Where the Boys Aren't" in Homophobia, and Violence: Random School
US. News & World Report, February 8, 1999; Shootings, 1982-2001" in American Behavioral
Lewin, ''American Colleges Begin to Ask"; Michael Scientist, 46(10), June 2003.
Fletcher, "Degrees of Separation" in Washington 36. Actually, somebody did. Tom DeLay, the Texas
Post, June 25, 2002; Jamilah Evelyn, "Community congressman, blamed day care, the teaching of
Colleges Start to Ask, Where Are the Men?" in evolution, and "working mothers who take birth
Chronicle of Higher Education, June 28, 2002; control pills:' Don't ask; I don't get it either! (See
Ridger Doyle, "Men, Women and College" in "The News of the Weak in Review" in Nation,
Scientific American, October 1999. November 15, 1999, p. 5.)
26. Joel Best, Stat-Spotting (Berkeley: University of 37. J. Adams and J. Malone, "Outsider's Destructive
California Press, 2008), p. 95. Behavior Spiraled into Violence" in Louisville
27. Cited in Tamar Lewin, ''At Colleges, Women Are Courier Journal, March 18, 1999; J. Blank, "The Kid
Leaving Men in the Dust" in New York Times, No One Noticed" in US. News & World Report,
July 9, 2006 . December 16, 1998, p. 27.
28. Mary Beth Marklein, "College Gender Gap Widens: 38. N. Gibbs and T. Roche, "The Columbine Tapes" in
57% Are Women'' in USA Today, October 19, 2005, Time, December 20, 1999, p. 40; D. Cullen, "The
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education/ 20 o 5-10 -19-male-college-cover _x 1999, available at http:/ /www.salon.com/news/
.htm. feature/1999/ 04/ 24/rumors/index.html.
29. http://nces.ed.gov/programs/crimeindi cators/cri 39. Eric Pooley, "Portrait of a Deadly Bond" in Time,
meindicators2010/figures/fig ure_o7_1.asp. May 10, 1999, pp. 26-27.
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last four words of Hoff Sommers's antifeminist Progressive Era (New Haven, CT: Yale University
creed. Press, 1967), p. 81; Admiral F. E. Chadwick, "The
31. Cited in Michael S. Kimmel, "The Struggle for Woman Peril" in Educational Review, February
Gender Equality: How Men Respond" in Thought 1914, p. 47; last cited in Sadker and Sadker, Failing
and Action: The NBA Higher Education Journal, at Fairness, p. 214.
8(2), 1993. 41. United States Department of Education, 1996.
32. Richard Kim, "Eminem-Bad Rap?" in Nation, 42. National Science Foundation, "Characteristics of
March 13, 2001, p. 4. In his film 8 Mile, and in sub- Doctoral Students;' cited in Linda Schliebenger,
sequent albums, Eminem goes out of his way to Has Feminism Changed Science? (Cambridge:
repudiate his earlier homophobia. Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 34.
33. T. R. Nansel, M. Overpeck, R. S. Pilla, W J. Ruan, 43. See Scott Jaschik, "Disparate Burden" in Inside
B. Simons-Moore, and P. Scheidt, "Bullying Higher Ed, March 21, 2005, www.insidehighered.
Behaviors Among U.S. Youth: Prevalence and com/news/2005/03/21/care, accessed March 31, 2005.
Association with Psychosocial Adjustment" in 44. Cornelius Riordan, "The Future of Single-Sex
Journal of the American Medical Association, Schools" in Separated by Sex: A Critical Look at
285(16), 2001, pp. 2094-2100; S. P. Limber, Single-Sex Education for Girls (Washington, DC:
P. Cunningham, V. Florx, J. Ivey, M. Nation, American Association of University Women
S. Chai, and G. Melton, "Bullying Among School Educational Foundation, 1998), p. 54.
Children: Preliminary Findings from a School- 45. Orenstein, Schoolgirls, p. 27.
Based Intervention Program;' paper presented at 46. Elizabeth Tidball, "Perspectives on Academic
the Fifth International Family Violence Research Women and Affirmative Action;' Educational
Conference, Durham, NH, June 1997; Juvonen Record, 54(2), 1973.
Jaana, Sandra Graham, and Mark Schuster, 47. Cynthia Fuchs Epstein, Deceptive Distinctions (New
"Bullying Among Young Adolescents: The Strong, Haven: Yale University Press, 1991).
510 NOTES
48. Faye Crosby et al., "Taking Selectivity into 58. See www.singlesexschools.org.
Account, How Much Does Gender Composition 59. Diane Halpern, Lise Eliot, Rebecca Bigler, Richard
Matter? A Reanalysis of M. E. Tidball's Research" Fabes, Laura Hanish, Janet Hyde, Lynn Liben,
in National Womens Studies Association Journal, 6, Carol Lynn Martin, "The Pseudoscience ofSingle-
1994; see also Cynthia Fuchs Epstein, "The Myths Sex Schooling" in Science, 333, September 23, 2011,
and Justifications of Sex Segregation in Higher pp. 1706-1707.
Education: VMI and the Citadel" in Duke Journal 60. Mike Bowler, ''All-Male, All-Black, All Learning"
of Gender Law and Policy, 4, 1997; and Cynthia in Baltimore Sun, October 15, 1995; Susan Estrich,
Fuchs Epstein, "Multiple Myths and Outcomes of "For Girls' Schools and Women's College,
Sex Segregation" in New York Law School Journal Separate Is Better" in New York Times, May 22,
of Human Rights, 14, 1998. 1994.
49. Christopher Jencks and David Riesman, The 61. See Kim Gandy, "Segregation Won't Help" in USA
Academic Revolution (New York: Doubleday, Today, May 10, 2002.
1968), pp. 298, 300. Despite his own findings, see 62. "Harlem Girls School vs. the Three Stooges" in
also David Riesman, ''A Margin of Difference: The New York Observer, March 30, 1998, p. 4.
Case for Single-Sex Education'' in Social Roles and 63. Pamela Haag, "Single-Sex Education in Grades
Social Institutions: Essays in Honor of Rose Laub K-12: What Does the Research Tell Us?" in
Coser, J. R. Blau and N. Goodman, eds. (Boulder, Separated by Sex: A Critical Look at Single-Sex
CO: Westview Press, 1991). Riesman supported the Education for Girls (Washington, DC: American
continuation of VMI's and the Citadel's single-sex Association of University Women Educational
policy. Foundation, 1998), p. 34; Valerie Lee, "Is Single-
50. Carol Tavris, The Mismeasure of Woman (New Sex Secondary Schooling a Solution to the
York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), p. 127; R. Priest, Problem of Gender Inequity?" in Separated by
A. Vitters, and H. Prince, "Coeducation at West Sex p.43; Riordan, "Future of Single-Sex Schools;'
Point" in Armed Forces and Society, 4(4), 1978, p. 590. p. 53; Connie Leslie, "Separate and Unequal?" in
51. Fuchs Epstein, "Multiple Myths and Outcomes;' Newsweek, March 23, 1998, p. 55; Clark, cited in
p.191. Charles Whitaker, "Do Black Males Need Special
52. See Margaret Talbot, "Sexed Ed" in New York Schools?" in Ebony, March 1991, p. 18.
Times Magazine, September 22, 2002. 64. Amanda Datnow, Lea Hubbard, and Elisabeth
53. VMI I, 766 F. Supp., p. 1435; VMI V, 116 S. Ct. Woody, Is Single Gender Schooling Viable in the
2264, Brief for Petitioner; see also Valorie Public Sector? Lessons from Californias Pilot
K. Vojdik, "Girls' Schools After VMI: Do They Program (Toronto: Ontario Institute for Studies in
Make the Grade?" in Duke Journal of Gender Law Education, 2001).
and Policy, 4, 1997, p. 85; Fuchs Epstein, "Myths 65. Sadker and Sadker, Failing at Fairness, pp. 125-126.
and Justifications;' p. 108. 66. See Don Sabo, Kathleen Miller, Merrill Melnick,
54. Faulkner v. Jones, 858 F. Supp. 552 1994; Citadel Michael Farrell, and Grace Barnes, "High School
Defendants' Proposed Findings of Fact, p. 1434. Athletic Participation and Adolescent Suicide:
55. Josiah Bunting quote in Citadel case. Cited A Nationwide Study" in International Review
in Vojdik, "Girls' Schools After VMI;' p. 76. for the Sociology of Sport, 40(1), 2005, pp. 5-23;
(As someone who began his college career at Don Sabo, Kathleen Miller, Merrill Melnick, and
an all-male college and later transferred to a Leslie Haywood, Her Life Depends on It: Sport,
co-educational one, I could readily testify that men Physical Activity and the Health and Well-Being
at the single-sex school were far more distracted of American Girls (East Meadow, NY: Women's
by the absence of women than were the men at the Sports Foundation, 2004); Don Sabo, Kathleen
co-educational school by their presence! With no Miller, Merrill Melnick, Michael Farrell, and
women around, most of the young men couldn't Grace Barnes, "High School Athletic Participation,
stop thinking about them!) Sexual Behavior and Adolescent Pregnancy: A
56. John Dewey, "Is Coeducation Injurious to Girls?" Regional Study" in Journal of Adolescent Health,
in Ladies Home Journal, June 11, 1911, p. 60. 25(3), 1999, pp. 207-216.
57. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, "Sex and Education'' 67. "The Attack on Women's Sports" in New York
in Womans Journal, 1874, editorial, p. 1, reprinted Times, February 17, 2003, p. A22.
in History of Woman Suffrage, S. B. Anthony and 68. See, for example, Christine Stolba, "We've Come
E. C. Stanton, eds. (New York: Ayer, 1974). the Wrong Way Baby" in Womens Quarterly,
Notes Sll
Spring 2002. On the other side, see the "Title IX Judaism are significantly less "orthodox" and more
FAQ Packet;' published by the Women's Equity egalitarian.
Resource Center at www.edc.org/womensequity. 14. John Todd, Womens Rights (Boston: Lee and
Shepard, 1867), p. 25 .
15. Samuel B. May, "The Rights and Condition
CHAPTER EIGHT of Women;' reprinted in Against the Tide:
I thank the three anonymous reviewers engaged by Pro-Feminist Men in the United States, 1776-1990,
the press; their comments improved this chapter Michael Kimmel and Thomas Mosmiller, eds.
enormously. (Boston: Beacon, 1992), pp. 94-97.
1. Front page, New York Post, June 17, 1991. 16. Debra Kaufman, Rachels Daughters: Newly
2. Ari Goldman, "Cardinal Said God Is a Man? Not Orthodox Jewish Women (New Brunswick, NJ:
Really" in New York Times, June 22, 1991. Rutgers University Press, 1991), p. 8.
3. See, for example, Louis Henry Morgan, Ancient 17. Tova Hartman and Naomi Marmon, "Lived
Society (1877); Frederich Engels, The Origin of the Regulations, Systemic Attributions: Menstrual
Family, Private Property and the State (1902); and Separation and Ritual Immersion in the
Lester Ward, Pure Sociology (1903). Experience of Orthodox Jewish Women" in
4. I take this from Claire Renzetti and Robert Gender & Society, 18, June 2004, pp. 389-408.
Curran, Women, Men and Society, 5th ed. (Boston: 18. Jen'nan Ghazal Read and John Bartkowski, "To Veil
Allyn and Bacon, 2003), p. 333. or Not to Veil?" in Gender & Society, 14(3), 2000,
5. See, for example, Karen McCarthy, Mam Lola: A pp. 395-417; Etsuko Maruoka, "Veiled Passion:
Voudou Priestess in Brooklyn (Berkeley: University Negotiation of Gender, Race and Religiosity
of California Press, 1991). Among Young Muslim American Women;' PhD
6. At least in theory. In practice, organization- dissertation, Department of Sociology, SUNY
ally, Buddhism rehearses many of the inequali- Stony Brook, 2008.
ties its actual doctrines caution against. See, for 19. Rosine J. Perelberg, "Quality, Asymmetry, and
example, Wendy Cadge, "Gendered Religious Diversity: On Conceptualization of Gender" in
Organizations: The Case of Theravada Buddhism Gender and Power in Families, R. J. Perelberg
in America'' in Gender and Society, 8(6), 2004. and A. Miller, eds. (London: Routledge, 1990),
7. Carol Christ, "Heretics and Outsiders: The p. 45.
Struggle Over Female Power in Western Religion'' 20. Cited in Mary Daly, Beyond God the Father
in Feminist Frontiers, Laurel Richardson and Verta (Boston: Beacon, 1973), 44.
Taylor, eds. (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1983), 21. Butch Hancock, cited in The Education of Shelby
pp. 93-94. Knox: Sex Lies, and Education, Marion Lipschutz
8. Yvonne Y. Haddad, "Islam, Women and Revolution and Rose Rosenblatt, dir. (New York: Women
in Twentieth Century Arab Thought" in Women, Make Movies, 2005).
Religion and Social Change, Y. Y. Haddad and 22. Table available on p. 96 of http:/ !religions
E. B. Findley, eds. (Albany: SUNY Press, 1985). .pewforum.org/pdf/report2-religious-landscape-
9. Leonard Swidler, "Jesus Was a Feminist" study-full.pdf. See also "Muslim Americans:
[1973], available at http ://www.gods Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream;' Pew
wordtowomen.org/feminist.htm, accessed August Research Center, 2007.
1, 2009. 23. The actual Jewish prayer is "I thank tliee, 0 Lord,
10. Cited in Haddad, "Islam, Women and Revolution;' that thou has not created me a woman:' Hindu
p. 294. Code also cited in Daly, Beyond God the Father, p.
11. Kristen Moulton, "Southern Baptists Say Women 132.
Should 'Submit Graciously' to Their Husbands;' 24. Andrew Kohut and Melissa Rogers, Americans
Associated Press, June 10, 1998, available at http:// Struggle with Religions Role at Home and Abroad
www.encyclopedia.com/ doc/IPI -1975 2545 .html, (Washington, DC: Pew Forum on Religion and
accessed August 1, 2009. Public Life, 2002).
12. Christian Smith, Christian America? What 25. See Alan Miller and John Hoffman, "Risk and
Evangelicals Really Want (Berkeley: University of Religion: An Explanation of Gender Differences
California Press, 2002). in Religiosity" in Journal for the Scientific Study of
13. Ortliodox Judaism is only one of the three major Religion 34(1), 1995, pp. 63-75; current data from
branches of Judaism. Conservative and Reform the General Social Survey, 2006.
512 NOTES
26. George Gallup and J. Castelli, The People's 37. Cited in Ted Ownby, Subduing Satan: Religion,
Religion (New York: Macmillan, 1989); Cheryl Recreation and Manhood in the Rural South
Townsend Gilkes, "Together and in Harness: (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
Women's Traditions in the Sanctified Church" 1991), p. 14.
in Signs, 10, 1985, pp. 678-699; Pew Forum on 38. Cited in Roger Bruns, Preacher: Billy Sunday
Religion and Public Life, U.S. Religious Landscape and Big-Time American Evangelicism (New York:
Survey (Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, Norton, 1992), p. 137.
February 2008). 39. Cited in Bruns, Preacher, pp. 16, 121, 122, 138;
27. Orestes Hastings and D. Michael Lindsay, William G. McLaughlin, Billy Sunday Was His
"Rethinking Religious Gender Differences: The Real Name (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
Case of Elite Women" in Sociology of Religion, 1955), p. 175.
2013, pp. 1-25. 40. Cited in Frances Fitzgerald, Cities on a Hill (New
28. This is not always the work of men. One recent York: Simon and Schuster, 1986), p. 166.
fundamentalist group called "True Womanhood" 41. Randy Phillips, "Spiritual Purity" in The Seven
seeks to undo all the gains of feminism since the Promises of a PromiseKeeper (Colorado Springs:
1960s and return women to submissive subordina- Focus on the Family, 1994), pp. 79-80.
tion as an expression of their freedom to choose. 42. See Sharon Mazer, "The Power Team: Muscular
See Kathryn Joyce, "Women's 'Liberation' Through Christianity and the Spectacle of Conversion" in
Submission: An Evangelical Anto-Feminism Is Drama Review, 38(4), Winter 1994, pp. 162, 169.
Born'' at www.altemet.org/story/121603, accessed 43. Molly Worthen, "Who Would Jesus Smack
August 1, 2009. Down?" in New York Times Magazine, January 11,
29. See http:/ /www.ats.edu/Resources/Documents/ 2009, p. 22.
AnnualData Tables/ 20 07-0 8Annua!Data Tables 44. See my Manhood in America, p. 206; see also
.pdf; see also http://www.elca.org/Who-We- Laurie Beth Jones, Jesus CEO: Using Ancient
Are/Welcome-to-the- EL CA/Quick- Facts.aspx, Wisdom for Visionary Leadership (New York:
accessed August 1, 2009. Hyperion, 1994).
30. Peter Steinfels, "Vatican Says the Ban on Women 45. In Worthen, "Who Would Jesus Smack Down?;'
as Priests Is 'Infallible' Doctrine" in New York p. 23.
Times, November 19, 1995. 46. Swidler, "Jesus Was a Feminist:'
31. Bill Frogameni, "Vatican Justice" in Ms., Winter 47. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, His Religion and Hers
2009, p. 16. (New York: Century, 1923), p. 154.
32. "Women Clergy: A Growing and Diverse 48. Ibid., p. 202.
Community" in Religion Link, August 4, 2014, 49. Ibid., p. 206.
http:/ /www.religionlink.com/source-guides/ 50. Ibid., pp. 217, 237.
women-clergy-a-growing-and-diverse-community/. 51. Ibid., p. 46.
33. Angela Bonavoglia, Good Catholic Girls (New 52. Ibid., p. 20.
York: HarperCollins, 2006). 53. Ibid., p. 259.
34. Kevin Christiano, William Swatos, and Peter 54. Ibid., pp. 255, 292.
Kivisto, eds., Sociology of Religion: Contemporary 55. Mary Daly, The Church and the Second Sex
Developments (Lanham, MD: Rowman and (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968), p. 74; see also Cullen
Littlefield, 2002). See also Bonavoglia, Good Murphy, The Word According to Eve (Boston:
Catholic Girls. Houghton, Mifflin, 1998).
35. See also Ruth Wallace, They Call Her Pastor: A 56. See Elizabeth Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A
New Role for Catholic Women (Albany: SUNY Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian
1992), and They Call Him Pastor: Married Men Origins (New York: Crossroads, 1983); and Susan
in Charge of Catholic Parishes (New York: Paulist Farrell, "Women-Church and Egalitarianism:
Press, 2003). Revisioning 'in Christ There Is No More
36. Cited in Ann Douglas, The Feminization of Distinctions Between Male and Female'" in The
American Culture (New York: Knopf, 1977), pp. 17, Power of Gender in Religion, G. A. Weatherly
97, 101, 113. Much of the material in this section and S. A. Farrell, eds. (New York: McGraw- Hill,
is adapted from my book Manhood in America: 1996).
A Cultural History, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford 57. The classic and still unsurpassed argument like
University Press, 2006), pp. 116-120. this is Linda Nochlin, "Why Have There Been No
Notes 513
Great Women Artists?" ARTnews, January 1971, 10. Marc Feigen-Fasteau, The Male Machine (New
pp. 22-39, 67-71. York: Dell, 1974), p. 120.
58. Laurel Kendall, Shamans, Housewives, and Other 11. See Patricia Yancey Martin, "'Mobilizing
Restless Spirits: Women in Korean Ritual Life Masculinities': Women's Experiences of Men at
(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1985); Work" in Organization, 8(4), 2001, pp. 587-618.
quoted in Susan Starr Sered, Priestess Mother 12. Cited in Londa Schiebinger, Has Feminism
Sacred Sister: Religions Dominated by Women Changed Science? (Cambridge: Harvard University
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 18. Press, 1999), p. 76.
59. Charlene Spretnak, "Introduction'' in The Politics 13. See Arlie Hochschild, The Managed Heart
of Womens Spirituality, Charlene Spretnak, ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982).
(New York: Doubleday, 1982), p. xii. 14. Katha Pollitt, "Killer Moms, Working Nannies" in
60. Mary Daly, Pure Lust (Boston: Beacon, 1984), Nation, November 24, 1997.
p. xii. 15. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Inflation
61. See also Starhawk, Dreaming in the Dark: Magic, Calculator," www. bis. gov/data/inflation_
Sex, and Politics (Boston: Beacon, 1997), and The calculator.htm.
Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion 16. Catherine Rampell, ''As Layoffs Surge, Women
of the Goddess, 20th anniversary ed. (New York: May Pass Men in Job Force" in New York Times,
HarperCollins, 1999). A good guide to this tradi- February 5, 2009.
tion is Margot Adler's Drawing Down the Moon: 17. John Baden, "Perverse Consequences (P.C.) of the
Witches, Druids, Goddess- Worshippers and Other Nanny State" in Seattle Times, January 17, 1996; Del
Pagans in America Today (New York: Penguin, Jones, "Hooters to Pay $3.75 Million in Sex Suit" in
1986). USA Today, October 1, 1997, p. 1A.
62. Mary Daly, Beyond God the Father (Boston: 18. David S. Pedulla, "The Positive Consequences of
Beacon Press, 1973), p. 13. Negative Stereotypes: Race, Sexual Orientation,
63. Cited in Daly, Beyond God the Father, p. 13. and the Job Application Process" in Social
Psychology Quarterly, 77(1), 2014, pp. 75-94.
19. Barbara Reskin, "Sex Segregation in the
CHAPTER NINE Workplace" in Women and Work: A Handbook, P.
1. Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Dubeck and K. Borman, eds. (New York: Garland,
Labor, Current Population Survey. 1996), p. 94; see also Barbara Reskin, ed., Sex-
2. "Latest Annual Data Women of Working Age, Segregation in the Workplace: Trends, Explanations,
2013;' Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department Remedies (Washington, DC: National Academy
of Labor, Current Population Survey. Press, 1984); Barbara Reskin, "Bringing the Men
3. See Felice Schwartz, "Management Women and Back In: Sex Differentiation and the Devaluation
the New Facts of Life" in Harvard Business Review, of Women's Work" in Gender and Society, 2(1),
January-February 1989. 1988; and Barbara Reskin and Patricia Roos, eds.,
4. Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Job Queues, Gender Queues: Explaining Womens
Labor, 2013. Inroads into Male Occupations (Philadelphia:
5. Jerry Jacobs, 1993, see GS2, FN3, p. 318. Temple University Press, 1990).
6. Taylor, cited in Ashley Montagu, The Natural 20. Padavic and Reskin, Women and Men at Work,
Superiority of Women (New York: Anchor, 1952), pp. 65, 67; see also Andrea Beller and Kee-Ok Kim
p. 28; Workplace 2000, cited in Rosalind Barnet Han, "Occupational Sex Segregation: Prospects
and Caryl Rivers, She Works/ He Works (New York: for the 1980s" in Reskin, Sex-Segregation in the
Simon & Schuster, 1992), p. 64. Workplace, p. 91.
7. Michael Kimmel, Manhood in America: A Cultural 21. "2013 Household Data Annual Average;' Bureau
History (New York: Free Press, 1996); Willard of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor,
Gaylin, The Male Ego (New York: Viking, 1992), Table 39.
cited also in Michael Kimmel, "What Do Men 22. Current Population Survey, 2007, U.S.
Want?" in Harvard Business Review, November- Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics.
December 1993. Earlier data from Dana Dunn, "Gender-
8. Gaylin, Male Ego, p. 64. Segregated Occupations" in Women and Work,
9. Peg Tyre and Daniel McGinn, "She Works, He P. Dubeck and K. Borman, eds. (New York:
Doesn't" in Newsweek, May 12, 2003, pp. 45-53. Garland, 1996), p. 92.
514 NOTES
23. Margaret Mooney Marini and Mary C. Brinton, 35. Elizabeth Becker, "Study Finds a Growing Gap
"Sex Typing in Occupational Socialization" in Between Managerial Salaries for Men and
Reskin, Sex-Segregation in the Workplace, p. 224; Women'' in New York Times, January 24, 2002,
Jerry A. Jacobs, Revolving Doors: Sex Segregation p. 18; Shannon Henry, "Wage Gap Widens" in
and Womens Careers (Stanford, CA: Stanford Washington Post, January 23, 2002.
University Press, 1989), p. 48. 36. Joyce Sterling and Nancy Reichman, "Gender
24. "Tables of Employment and Earnings, 2009-2013;' Penalties Revisited;' cited in Jim Dunlap, "Will
Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Women Ever Be Equal?" in National Jurist,
Labor. November 2004.
25. Samuel Cohn, The Process of Occupational Sex- 37. Mary Corcoran, Greg Duncan, and Michael
Typing: The Feminization of Clerical Labor in Great Ponza, "Work Experience, Job Segregation
Britain (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, and Wages" in Reskin, Sex-Segregation in the
1985). Workplace; p. 188; Michelle Budig and Paula
26. Yilu Zhao, "Women Soon to Be Majority of England, "The Wage Penalty for Motherhood"
Veterinarians" in New York Times, June 9, 2002, p. 24. in American Sociological Review, 66, 2001,
27. Katharine Donato, "Programming for Change? pp. 204-225.
The Growing Demand Among Computer 38. Timothy Judge and Beth Livingston, "Is the Gap
Specialists" in Job Queues, Gender Queues: More Than Gender? A Longitudinal Analysis of
Explaining Womens Inroads into Male Occupations, Gender, Gender Role Orientation and Earnings"
B. Reskin and P. Roos, eds. (Philadelphia: Temple in Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(5), 2008,
University Press, 1990), p. 170. pp. 994-1012.
28. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, His Religion and Hers 39. Becker, "Study Finds Growing Gap Judith Lorber,
[1923], edited with a new introduction by Michael "Women and Medical Sociology: Invisible
Kimmel (Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press, 2003), Professionals and Ubiquitous Patients" in Another
p. 72. Voice, M. Millman and R. M. Kanter, eds. (Garden
29. Michelle Arthur, Robert Del Campo, and City, NY: Anchor, 1975), p. 82.
Harry Van Buren III, "The Impact of Gender- 40. Sarah Portlock, "Gender Wage Gap in Eight
Differentiated Golf Course Structures on Women's Charts" in Wall Street Journal, April 14, 2015,
Networking Abilities;' paper presented at the http :/ /biogs .wsj .com/economics/ 2015/ 04/14/
Academy of Management meeting, Anaheim, the-gender-wage-gap-in-eight-charts.
California, August 10, 2008. 41. Cited in Julie Mathaei, An Economic History of
30. William Bielby and James Baron, "Undoing Women in America (New York: Schocken, 1982),
Discrimination: Job Integration and Comparable p. 192.
Worth" in Ingredients for Womens Employment 42. Lynn Martin, A Report on the Glass Ceiling
Policy, C. Bose and G. Spitze, eds. (Albany: SUNY Initiative (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of
Press, 1987), p. 226; Reskin, "Bringing the Men Back Labor, 1991), p. 1.
In;' p. 64. 43. "The Conundrum of the Glass Ceiling" in The
31. Kristen Schilt and Matthew Wiswall, "Before Economist, July 21, 2005.
and After: Gender Transitions, Human Capital, 44. Good for Business: Making Full Use of the
and Workplace Experiences" in B.E. Journal of Nations Human Capital (Washington, DC: U.S.
Economic Analysis & Policy 8(1), 2008, available Government Printing Office, 1995); Ruth Simpson,
at http:/ /www.bepress.com/bejeap/vol8/issl/art39, "Does an MBA Help Women?-Career Benefits of
accessed August 1, 2009. the MBA'' in Gender, Work and Organization, 3(2),
32. EEOC v. Sears, Roebuck and Co., 628 F. Supp. 1264 April, 1996, p. 119.
(N.D. Ill. 1986); 839 F. 2d 302 (7th Cir. 1988). 45. Warren Farrell, The Myth of Male Power (New
33. Asra Q. Nomani, ''A Fourth Grader's Hard Lesson: York: Simon & Schuster, 1993), pp. 105-106.
Boys Earn More Money Than Girls" in Wall Street 46. Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Men and Women of the
Journal, July 7, 1995, p. B1. Corporation (New York: Basic Books, 1977),
34. Census 2000, http://www.census.gov/Press- p. 209.
Release/wwwI 2002/ demo profiles.html, accessed 47. Ibid. pp. 216, 221, 230.
August 14, 2009; see also Ronnie Steinberg, "How 48. Lynn Zimmer, "Tokenism and Women in the
Sex Gets into Your Paycheck" in Womens VU, Workplace: The Limits of Gender-Neutral
20(2), 1997, p. 1. Theory" in Social Problems, 35(1), 1988, p. 64;
Notes 515
Nina Toren and Vered Kraus, "The Effects of 67. See Barbara Reskin and Irene Padavic, Women and
Minority Size on Women's Position in Academia'' Men at Work (Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge
in Social Forces, 65, 1987, p. 1092. Press, 1995).
49. Christine Williams, "The Glass Escalator: 68. Sara Evans and Barbara Nelson, Wage Justice:
Hidden Advantages for Men in the 'Female' Comparable Worth and the Paradox of Technocratic
Professions" in Social Problems, 39(3), 1992; Reform (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
Still a Man's World: Men Who Do "Women's 1989), p. 13; Barbara Reskin, "Bringing the Men
Work" (Berkeley: University of California Press, Back In:'
1995); see also Marie Nordberg, "Constructing 69. Cited in Rhode, Speaking of Sex, pp. 165,169.
Masculinity in Women's Worlds: Men Working 70. See, for example, Felice Schwartz and Gigi Anders,
as Pre-school Teachers and Hairdressers" in "The Marni Track" in Hispanic, July 1993.
NORA: Nordic Journal of Women's Studies, 10(1), 71. Richard Bernstein, "Men Chafe as Norway Ushers
2002, pp. 26-37. Women into Boardroom" in New York Times,
50. Williams, "Glass Escalator;' p. 296. January 12, 2006; Thomas Fuller and Ivar Ekman,
51. Ibid.; Alfred Kadushin, "Men in a Woman's "The Envy of Europe" in International Herald
Profession'' in Social Work, 21, 1976, p. 441. Tribune, September 17-18, 2005, p. 19; Mari Teigen,
52. Heidi Hartmann, "Capitalism, Patriarchy and Job "The Universe of Gender Quotas" in NIKK, 3,
Segregation by Sex" in Signs, 1(3), 1976, p. 139. 2002, pp. 4-8.
53. Cited in Deborah Rhode, Speaking of Sex: The 72. Nicola Clark, "The Norwegian Experi-
Denial of Gender Equality (Cambridge: Harvard ment" in International Herald Tribune Magazine,
University Press, 1997), p. 144. special issue, "The Female Factor;' 2010.
54. See Catharine MacKinnon, Sexual Harassment of 73. See The Week, p. 36.
Working Women (Cambridge: Harvard University 74. See Roy D. Adler, "Women in the Executive Suite
Press, 1977). Correlate to High Profits" in Harvard Business
55. Henson v. Dundee, 682 F.2d, 897, p. 902. Review, November 2001; Roy D. Adler, "Profit,
56. "Sexual Harassment in the Workplace;' avail- Thy Name Is .. . Woman?" in Miller-McCune
able at http://www.sexualharassmentsupport.org/ Magazine, March-April 2009.
SHorkplace.html, accessed August 1, 2009. 75. Karen Oppenheim Mason, "Commentary: Strober's
57. Susan Crawford, "Sexual Harassment at Work Theory of Occupational Sex Segregation" in Sex-
Cuts Profits, Poisons Morale" in Wall Street Segregation in the Workplace: Trends, Explanations,
Journal, April 19, 1993, p. nF; Elizabeth Stanko, Remedies, B. Reskin, ed. (Washington, DC: National
Intimate Intrusions (London: Routledge, 1985); Academy Press, 1984), p. 169.
E. Courie, ''An NJL/West Survey, Women in 76. Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were (New
the Law: Awaiting Their Turn" in National Law York: Basic Books, 1999), p. 52.
Journal, December 11, 1989; 1997 study by Klein 77. See Sylvia Ann Hewlett, Creating a Life:
Associates. Professional Women and the Quest for Children
58. Ellen Neuborne, "Complaints High from Women (New York: Talk Miramax Books, 2002); Sylvia
in Blue Collar Jobs" in USA Today, May 3-6, 1996. Ann Hewlett, "Executive Women and the Myth
59. De'Ann Weimer, "Slow Healing at Mitsubishi" in of Having It All" in Harvard Business Review,
U.S. News & World Report, September 22, 1997, April 2002, pp. 66-73. But see also the enormous
pp. 74, 76. critical response from feminists, including Katha
60. Rhode, Speaking of Sex, p. 28. Pollitt, "Backlash Babies" in Nation, May 13, 2002;
61. Stanko, Intimate Intrusions, p. 61. and Garance Franke-Ruta, "Creating a Lie" in
62. I am grateful to Erin Smith at the University of American Prospect, 13(12), July 1, 2002.
Texas at Dallas for bringing this to my attention. 78. See, for example, C. E. Miree and I. H . Frieze,
63. Crawford, "Sexual Harassment at Work Cuts "Children and Careers: A Longitudinal Study
Profits;' p. nF. of the Impact of Young Children on Critical
64. "Snapshot;' in USA Today, April 5, 2006. Career Outcomes of MBAs" in Sex Roles, 41,
65. Jennifer Hicks, "Number of Discrimination Suits 1999, pp. 787-808; J. E. Olson, I. H. Frieze, and
Soar in IMDiversity, October 29, 2012, " at http:// E. G. Detlefsen, "Having It All? Combining Work
www.imdiversity.com/Villages/ Careers/ articles/ and Family in a Male and Female Profession'' in
hicks_discrimination_suits_soar.asp. Sex Roles, 23, 1990, pp. 515-533. See also the sum-
66. Steinberg, "How Sex Gets into Your Paycheck;' p. 2. mary of this research in Maureen Perry-Jenkins,
516 NOTES
Rena Repetti, and Ann Crouter, "Work and Family is defined only by penile-vaginal intercourse.
in the 1990s" in Journal ofMarriage and the Family, Therefore, it appears that he was telling the truth,
62(4), 2000, pp. 981-998. at least according to public opinion, if not accord-
79. See Lisa Belkin, "Tony Blair's Baby: Some Decisions ing to the spirit of the law (cf. Stephanie Sanders
Last Longer" in New York Times, April 12, 2000, p. G1; and June Machover Reinisch, "Would You Say
Ellen Goodman, "Well Done, Mrs. Blair" in Boston 'Had Sex' If..'.' in/AMA, 281, January 20, 1999).
Globe, April 14, 2000. 9. Front-page headline in the New York Sun, July 13,
80. Scott Coltrane, "The Risky Business of Paternity 2004; see also Katha Pollitt, "The Girlie Vote" in
Leave" in Atlantic, December 2013; Liza Mundy, Nation, September 27, 2004, p. 12; Kenneth Walsh,
"The Daddy Track;' in Atlantic, January 2014, "What the Guys Want" in U.S. News and World
pp. 15-18. Report, September 20, 2004, pp. 22-23; Frank
81. Sarah Hall, "Fathers 'Scared' to Ask for Flexible Rich, "How Kerry Became a Girlie-Man" in New
Hours" in Guardian, January 14, 2003; Erika Kirby York Times, September 5, 2004, section 2, pp. 1,
and Kathleen Krone, "'The Policy Exists but You 18; George Will, "The Politics of Manliness" in
Can't Really Use It': Communication and the Washington Post, January 19, 2004 .
Structuration of Work-Family Policies" in Journal 10. Cited in Richard Goldstein, "Neo-Macho Man;'
of Applied Communication Research, 30(1), 2002, Nation, March 24, 2003, http://www.thenation
pp.50-77- .com/article/new_macho_men. See also Frank
82. Faye Crosby, Spouse, Parent, Worker: On Gender Rich, "How Kerry Became a Girlie-Man'.'
and Multiple Roles (New Haven, CT: Yale 11. See Jackson Katz, "It's the Masculinity Stupid: A
University Press, 1990); Joan Peters, When Mothers Cultural Studies Analysis of Media, the Presidency
Work: Loving Our Children Without Sacrificing and Pedagogy" in Handbook of Cultural Politics
Ourselves (New York: Addison-Wesley, 1997). and Education, Zeus Leonardo, ed. (Rotterdam,
Netherlands: Sense Publishers, 2010).
12. "The Macho Factor" in Orlando Sentinel,
CHAPTER TEN September 1, 2008, p. A18.
1. Sara Wheaton, "Iron My Shirt" in New York 13. Susan Faludi, "Think the Gender War Is Over?
Times, January 8, 2008, available at http://thecau Think Again'' in New York Times, June 15, 2008.
cus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/07/iron-my-shirt/. 14. http:/ /www.bhurt.com/barackandcurtis.php.
2. "Worldwide Guide to Women in Leadership;' 15. Susan Faludi, "Think the Gender War Is Over?
available at http:/ /www.guide2womenleaders. 16. Elwood Watson, Pimps, Wimps, Studs, Thugs, and
com/Female_Leaders.htm. Gentlemen: Essays on Media Images of Masculinity
3. "Men or Women: Who's the Better Leader?;' (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 2009),
Pew Research Center, August 25 , 2008, p.1.
http:/ /pewresearch.org/pubs/ 932/men-or- 17. Frank Rudy Cooper, "Our First Unisex President?
women-whos-the-better-leader. Black Masculinity and Obama's Feminine Side"
4. Deborah Rhode, Speaking of Sex (Cambridge: in Denver University Law Review, 86, 2009,
Harvard University Press, 1997), p. 7. pp. 633-661.
5. http:/ /www.cawp.rutgers.edu/research/reports/ 18. http:/ /www.cbsnews.com/2100-201_162-1753947
PoisedtoRun.pdf. .html.
6. Cited in Stephen J. Ducat, The Wimp Factor, p. 174. 19. Jody Heymann, Alison Earle, and Jeffrey Hayes,
7. Some parts of this section are drawn from the The Work, Family, and Equity Index (Boston:
third edition of my book Manhood in America Project on Global Working Families, 2004).
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). 20. These data come from the 2011 National
8. His impeachment trial came because he was Transgender Discrimination Survey, available at
accused of lying to the special prosecutor of the http://equity.lsnc.net/ 2011/ 03/ a-report-of-the-
case when he said that he "did not have sexual rela- national-transgender-discrirnination -survey/.
tions with that woman:' However, it appears that 21. Kate Johnson and Albert Garcia," 'Male steward-
President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky's sexual ess' just didn't fly;' Los Angeles Times, September
trysts involved "everything but" sexual inter- 27, 2007,
course, and instead were based on other sexual 22. Mrinhalini Sinha, "Gender and Imperialism:
acts. In a survey published by the Journal of the Colonial Policy and the Ideology of Moral
American Medical Association, most Americans Imperialism in Late Nineteenth Century Bengal" in
apparently agreed with him, saying that "sex" Changing Men: New Directions in Research on Men
Notes 517
and Masculinity, Michael Kimmel, ed. (Newbury 11. Parents Television Council, Media Violence: An
Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1987), p. 223. Examination of Violence, Graphic Violence, and
23. Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks [1952] Gun Violence in the Media 2012-2013.
(New York: Grove Press, 1971), p. 165. 12. Parents Television Council, Women in Peril: A
24. Xan Rice, Katherine Marsh, Tom Finn, Harriet Look at TVs Disturbing New Storyline Trend,
Sherwood, Angelique Chrisafis, and Robert 2004-2009.
Booth, "Women Have Emerged as Key Players 13. Kay Bussey and Albert Bandura, "Social Cognitive
in the Arab Spring" in Guardian, April 22, 2011, Theory of Development and Differentiation'' in
http://www.theguardian.com/world/ 2011/ apr/ 22/ Psychological Review, 106, 1999, pp. 676-713.
women-arab-spring. 14. Paul McGhee and Terry Frueh, "Television
25. "Taliban Shave Men for Listening to Music in Viewing and the Learning of Sex-Role Stereotypes"
Buner" in Islamization Watch, April 26, 2009, in Sex Roles, 6(2), 1980, pp. 179-188.
http://islamizationwatch.blogspot.com/ 200 9/ 04/ 15. John Consoli, "What Women Don't Want? Soap
taliban-shave-men-for-listening-to.html. Operas" in Adweek, November 1, 2004; Betty
26. http:/ /www.smh.com.au/world/were-here-for- Goodwin, "Cable Channels Take Aim at Women''
sam-mullet-to-get-revenge-saga-of-the-amish- in Television Week, November 5, 2005.
beard-snatchers-20111013-tlmn5.html. 16. See Stuart Elliott, "NBC Looks Beyond TV for a
Prime Time Revival" in New York Times, May 16,
CHAPTER ELEVEN 2006, p. C10; Alec Foge, "Searching for the Elusive
1. Ben Hubbard, "Young Saudis Find Freedom on Male" in Mediaweek, September 5, 2005; Betty
Smartphones" in New York Times, May 24, 2015, p. 11. Goodwin, "Programmers Cast a Wide Net" in
2. Winda Benedetti, "Were Video Games to Blame Television Week, November 7, 2005.
for the Massacre?" MSNBC.com, April 20, 2007, 17. See Zondra Hughes, "Prime-Time 2005 : More
available at www.msnbc.com/id/18220228.html. Stars, More Soul, More Sensation" in Ebony,
3. Victoria J. Rideout, Ulla G. Foehr, Donald F. October 2005.
Roberts, "Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- 18. James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mahicans
to 18-Year-Olds;' 2010, Kaiser Family Foundation, (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), pp. 26, 132.
https://kaiserfamilyfoundation.files.wordpress 19. See, for example, Scott Mebus, Booty Nomad (New
.com/2013/01/8010.pdf. York: Hyperion, 2004); Benjamin Kunkel, Indecision
4. Ibid. (New York: Random House, 2005); Kyle Smitli, Love
5. See, for example, http:/ /www.readwriteweb.com/ Monkey (New York: HarperCollins, 2005).
archives/ people_ do _read_they _j ust_do _it_ 20. See Amy Beth Aronson, Taking Liberties: Early
online.php; statistics on family book buying from American Womens Magazines and Their Readers
www.JenkinsGroupinc.com. (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002), p. 3; Betty
6. See Leonore Weitzman and Diane Russo, Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York: Dell
The Biased Textbook: A Research Perspective Publishing, 1983), pp. 15-79.
(Washington, DC: Research Center on Sex Roles 21. Friedan, Feminine Mystique, p. 36.
and Education, 1974). 22. Aronson, Taking Liberties, p. 3; see also, for exam-
7. Leonore Weitzman, Deborah Eifler, Elizabeth ple, Tanya Modeski's characterization of women
Hokada, and Catheine Ron, "Sex Role Socialization soap opera fans as "egoless receptacles:' See Tanya
in Picture Books for Preschool Children" in Modeski, "The Search for Tomorrow in Today's
American Journal of Sociology, 77( 6), 1972. Soap Operas" in Loving with a Vengeance: Mass-
8. Rhode, Speaking of Sex, p. 56. Produced Fantasies for Women (Hamden, CT:
9. Angela M. Gooden and Mark A. Gooden, "Gender Shoestring Press, 1982).
Representation in Notable Children's Picture Books: 23. Marjorie Ferguson, Forever Feminine: Womens
1995-1999" in Sex Roles, 45(1/2), July 2001, pp. 89-101; Magazines and the Cult of Femininity (London:
Janice McCabe, Emily Fairchild, Liz Grauerholz, Gower, 1983), p. 3.
Bernice Pescosolido, Daniel Tope, "Gender I 24. Gaye Tuchman, Arlene Daniels, and James Benit,
Twentieth-Century Children's Books: Patterns of eds., Hearth and Home: Images of Women in the
Disparity in Titles and Central Characters" in Gender Mass Media (New York: Oxford University Press,
& Society, 25(2), April 2011, pp. 197-226. 1978); Jean Kilbourne, "Killing Us Softly;' available
10. National Television Violence Study (Thousand from the Media Education Foundation, www.mef
Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1998), Vol. 2, p. 97. .org; Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth (New York:
I will return to this issue in the last chapter. William Morrow, 1991).
518 NOTES
25. Media Research Center, Landmark Study Reveals manuscript, University of California at Riverside,
Womens Magazines Are Left- Wing Political 2005.
Weapon (Alexandria, VA: Author). 41. The one game in which relationships exist is Sims,
26. Christina Hoff Sommers, "The Democrats' Secret because the game makes it possible for same-sex
Woman Weapon: In the Pages of Glossy Women's characters to live together, share a bed, kiss, have a
Magazines, the Party's Line Is in Fashion" in baby, and so on (Nina Huntemann, personal com-
Washington Post, January 13, 1997, p. 22. munication, December 19, 2005). And, of course,
27. Danielle Crittenden, What Our Mothers Didn't Sims is the one game that "real guys" can't stand!
Tell Us: Why Happiness Eludes the Modern Woman No doubt there will soon be a campaign by Focus
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999), pp. 20-21. on the Family against this particular game.
28. Aronson, Taking Liberties. 42. See, for example, Helen Kennedy, "Lara Croft:
29. Laramie Taylor, ''All for Him: Articles About Sex Feminist Icon or Cyberbimbo?" in Game Studies,
in American Lad Magazines" in Sex Roles, 52(3/4), 2(2), December 2002.
2005, p. 155. 43. Seth Schiesel, "The Year in Gaming: Readers
30. Tim Adams, "New Kid on the Newsstand" in Report" in New York Times, December 31, 2005,
Observer, January 23, 2005. p. B21; Edward Castronova, Synthetic Worlds
31. Circulation figures cited in David Brooks, "The (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).
Return of the Pig" in Atlantic Monthly, April 2003. 44. Jessica Williams, "Facts That Should Change the
32. Adams, "New Kid on the Newsstand:' World: America Spends $10bn Each Year on Porn''
33. Spil Games, State of the Industry 2013, http:// in New Statesman, June 7, 2004.
auth-83051f68-ec6c-44eo-afe5-bd8902acff57.cdn. 45. Larry Flynt, "Porn World's Sky Isn't Falling-It
spilcloud.com/v1/archives/1384952861.25-State_ Doesn't Need a Condom Rule" in Los Angeles
of_Gaming_2013-US_FINAL.pdf; 2014 Essential Times, April 23, 2004.
Facts About the Computer and Video Game 46. Ogi Ogasa and Sai Gaddam, A Billion Wicked
Industry, http:/ /www.theesa.com/wp-content/ Thoughts: What the Internet Tells Us About Sexual
uploads/2014/10/ESA_EF_2014.pdf; The State of Relationships (New York: Plume, 2011).
Gaming 2014, http:/ /www.bigfishgames.com/ daily/ 47. Stacy L. Smith and Ed Donnerstein, "The Problem
infographic/state-of-video-game-industry/#intro. of Exposure: Violence, Sex, Drugs and Alcohol" in
34. Video game data are drawn from Michel Marriott, Kid Stuff Marketing Sex and Violence to Americas
"The Color of Mayhem" in New York Times, Children, Diane Ravitch and Joseph Viteritti,
August 12, 2004, p. G3; www.idsa.com; www eds. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
.digiplay.org.uk; http:/ /www.theesa.com/facts/ 2003), p. 83 .
pdfs/ESA_EF_2011.pdf 48. Pamela Paul, Pornified (New York: St. Martin's,
35. See, for example, M. D. Griffiths, Mark N. 0 . Davies, 2006).
and Darren Chappell, "Online Computer Gaming: 49. John Stoltenberg, "Pornography and Freedom" in
A Comparison of Adolescent and Adult Gamers" Men Confront Pornography, M. Kimmel, ed. (New
in Journal of Adolescence, 10, 2003; James D. York: Crown, 1990), p. 64.
Ivory, "Still a Man's Game: Gender Representations 50. Lillian Rubin, Erotic Wars (New York: Farrar,
in Online Reviews of Video Games" in Mass Straus and Giroux, 1991), p. 102.
Communication and Society, 9(1), 2006. 51. Tom Cayler, ".. . Those Little Black Dots;' reprinted
36. "Cloudburst of Ghoul Slayers" in Economist, in Kimmel, Men Confront Pornography, p. 52.
November 26, 2005, p. 54. 52. William Lugo, interview, February 5, 2005.
37. Jeff Grubb, "Gaming Advocacy Group: The 53. M. Duggan, "It's a Woman's (Social Media) World;'
Average Gamer Is 31, and Most Play on a Console" Pew Research Center, 2013, http:/ /www.pewresearch.
in Venture Beat, April 29, 2014, http:/ /venturebeat. org/ fact- tank/ 2013/ o 9 /12/its-a -womans-social-
com/ 2014/ 04/ 29/ gaming-advocacy-group-the- media-world/, accessed May 2015; following data
average-gamer-is-31-and-most-play-on-a-console/. and charts are from Michael Patterson, "Social Media
38. William Lugo, interview, February 2, 2005. Demographics to Inform a Better Segmentation
39. Interview with Nina Huntemann, November 1, Strategy;' May 4, 2015, http://sproutsocial.com/
2005 . Game Over is available from the Media insights/new-social-media-demographics/.
Education Foundation. 54. Deborah Fallows, How Women and Men Use the
40. See Derek Burrill, "Watch Your Ass: The Structure Internet (Washington, DC: Pew Internet and
of Masculinity in Video Games;' unpublished American Life Project, 2005).
Notes 519
55. Ibid. 10. Sharon Brehm, Intimate Relationships (New York:
56. Eszter Hargittai and Steven Shafter, "Differences Random House, 1985), p. 346.
in Actual and Perceived Online Skills: The Role 11. Mayta Caldwell and Letitia Peplau, "Sex
of Gender" in Social Science Quarterly, 87(2), Differences in Same-Sex Friendships" in Sex Roles,
June 2006, pp. 432-448. 8(7), 1982; Beth Hess, "Friendship" in Aging and
57. Jeffrey Jones, "Six in 10 Americans Are Pro Football Society, M. Riley, M. Johnson, and A. Foner, eds.
Fans;' Gallup Poll, February 4, 2005. (New York: Russell Sage, 1972); Erina MacGeorge,
58. Brandweek, September 29, 2003. Angela Graves, Bo Feng, Seth Gillihan, and
59- http:/ /www.fsta.org. Brant Burleson, "The Myth of Gender Cultures:
Similarities Outweigh Differences in Men's
CHAPTER TWELVE and Women's Provision of and Responses to
1. Cited in Drury Sherrod, "The Bonds of Men: Supportive Communication" in Sex Roles, 50(3/ 4),
Problems and Possibilities in Close Male February 2004, pp. 143-175.
Relationships" in The Making of Masculinities: The 12. Lynne Davidson and Lucille Duberman,
New Men's Studies, H. Brod, ed. (Boston: Allen and "Friendship: Communication and Interactional
Unwin, 1987), p. 230; cited in Lillian Rubin, Intimate Patterns in Same-Sex Dyads" in Sex Roles, 8(8),
Strangers (New York: Harper and Row, 1983), p. 59. 1982, p. 817.
2 . Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights
13. Lillian Rubin, Just Friends (New York: Harper
of Women [1792] (London: Penguin, 1969), p. 56; and Row, 1985), pp. 60-61, 62-63; Rubin, Intimate
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (New York: Strangers, pp. 130, 135.
Vintage, 1959), p. 142. 14. Brehm, Intimate Relationships; Wright, "Men's
3. Lionel Tiger, Men in Groups (New York: Vintage, Friendships"; Davidson and Duberman,
1969). "Friendship"; R. Bell, Worlds ofFriendship (Beverly
4. Jack Balswick, "The Inexpressive Male: A Tragedy Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1981).
of American Society" in The Forty-Nine Percent 15. Karen Walker, "Tm Not Friends the Way She's
Majority, D. David and R. Brannon, eds. (Reading, Friends': Ideological and Behavioral Constructions
MA: Addison-Wesley, 1976); Mirra Komorovsky, of Masculinity in Men's Friendships" in Mascu-
Blue Collar Marriage (New York: Vintage, 1964); linities, 2(2), 1994, p. 228; Rubin, Intimate Strangers,
Joseph Pleck, "The Male Sex Role: Definitions, p. 104. On the impact of the telephone more gen-
Problems and Sources of Change" in Journal of erally, see Claude Fischer, To Dwell Among Friends
Social Issues, 32(3), 1976, p. 273. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982).
5. Robert Lewis, "Emotional Intimacy Among Men'' 16. Stuart Miller, Men and Friendship (Boston:
in Journal of Social Issues, 34, 1978; see also Pleck, Houghton, Mifflin, 1983).
"The Male Sex Role:' 17. Graham Allen, Friendship-Developing a
6. Paul Wright, "Men's Friendships, Women's Sociological Perspective (Boulder, CO: Westview,
Friendships and the Alleged Inferiority of the 1989), p. 66.
Latter" in Sex Roles, 8(1), 1982, p. 3; Daniel 18. Wright, "Men's Friendships;' p. 19.
Levinson, The Seasons of a Man's Life (New York: 19. N. L. Ashton, "Exploratory Investigation of
William Morrow, 1978), p. 335. Perceptions of Influences on Best-Friend
7. Francesca Cancian, "The Feminization of Love" Relationships" in Perception and Motor Skills, 50,
in Signs, 11, 1986; and Love in America: Gender 1980; Shavaun Wall, Sarah M. Pickert, and Louis
and Self-Development (Cambridge: Cambridge V. Paradise, ''American Men's Friendships: Self-
University Press, 1987). Reports on Meaning and Changes" in Journal of
8. Simone Schnall, Kent Harber, Jeanine Stefanucci, Psychology, 116, 1984.
and Dennis Proffiytt, "Social Support and the 20. Helen Hacker, "Blabbermouths and Clams: Sex
Perception of Geographical Slant" in Journal Differences in Self-Disclosure in Same-Sex and
of Experimental Social Psychology, 44, 2008, Cross-Sex Friendship Dyads" in Psychology of
pp. 1246-1255. Women Quarterly, 5(3), Spring 1981.
9- See S. E. Taylor, L. C. Klein, B. P. Lewis, 21. Scott Swain, "Men's Friendship with Women:
T. L. Gruenwald, R. A. R. Gurung, and Intimacy, Sexual Boundaries, and the Informant
J. A. Updegraff, "Biobehavioral Female Responses Role" in Men's Friendships, P. Nardi, ed. (Newbury
to Stress: Tend and Befriend, Not Fight or Flight" Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1992), pp. 84, 77.
in Psychological Review, 107(3), 2000, pp. 411-429. For a more general review of this literature,
520 NOTES
see Eleanor Maccoby and Carol Jacklin, The 36. Rubin, Intimate Strangers, pp. 58, 159, 205.
Psychology of Sex Differences (Stanford, CA: 37. Sherrod, "Bonds of Men;' p. 231.
Stanford University Press, 1974). 38. Rubin, Intimate Strangers, p. 206.
22. Barbara Bank, "Friendships in Australia and the 39. Sherrod, "Bonds of Men;' p. 221; E. Anthony
United States: From Feminization to a More Heroic Rotundo, "Romantic Friendships: Male Intimacy
Image" in Gender & Society, 9(1), 1995, p. 96. and Middle-Class Youth in the Northern United
23. Theodore F. Cohen, "Men's Families, Men's States, 1800-1900" in Journal of Social History,
Friends: A Structural Analaysis of Constraints 23(1), 1989, p. 21.
on Men's Social Ties" in Nardi, Men's Friendships, 40. Foucault cited in Nardi, Men's Friendships, p. 184;
p. 117; Allen, Friendship, p. 75. Lynne Segal, Slow Motion: Changing Masculinities,
24. Shanette Harris, "Black Male Masculinity and Changing Men (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers
Same Sex Friendships" in Western Journal of Black University Press, 1990), p. 139.
Studies, 16(2), 1992, p. 77. 41. Lawrence Stone, "Passionate Attachments in
25. Ibid., pp. 78, 81; see also Clyde W. Franklin II, the West in Historical Perspective" in Passionate
"'Hey Home'-'Yo, Bro': Friendship Among Black Attachments: Thinking About Love, W. Gaylin and
Men'' in Nardi, Men's Friendships. E. Person, eds. (New York: Free Press, 1988), p. 33;
26. Helen M. Reid and Gary Alan Fine, "Self- Francesca Cancian, Love in America, p. 70.
Disclosure in Men's Friendships: Variations 42. Stone, "Passionate Attachments;' p. 28.
Associated with Intimate Relations" in Nardi, 43. Ibid., p. 32; Michael Gordon and M. Charles
Men's Friendships; Jeanne Tschann, "Self- Bernstein, "Mate Choice and Domestic Life in the
Disclosure in Adult Friendship: Gender and Nineteenth Century Marriage Manual" in Journal
Marital Status Differences" in Journal of Social of Marriage and the Family, November 1970,
and Personal Relationships, 5, 1988; Wright, "Men's pp. 668, 669.
Friendships;' pp. 16-17. 44. William J. Goode, "The Theoretical Importance of
27. April Bleske-Rechek, Erin Somers, Cierra Micke, Love" in American Sociological Review, 24(1), 1959.
Leah Erickson, Lindsay Matteson, Corey Stocco, 45 . Cited in Cancian, Love in America, pp. 19, 21,
Brittany Schumacher, and Laura Ritchie, "Benefit 23; see also Mary Ryan, The Cradle of the Middle
or Burden? Attraction in Cross-Sex Friendship" in Class: The Family in Oneida County, NY., 1790-1865
Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 29(5), (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981).
2012, pp. 569-596. 46. Cancian, Love in America, p. 121; Carol Tavris,
28. Rubin, Intimate Strangers, pp. 154, 150. The Mismeasure of Woman (New York: Simon &
29. Gerald Suttles, "Friendship as a Social Institution'' Schuster, 1992), p. 263; Rubin, Intimate Strangers.
in Social Relationships, G. McCall, M. McCall, 47. Lillian Rubin, Worlds of Pain (New York: Basic
N. Denzin, G. Suttles, and S. Kurth, eds. (Chicago: Books, 1976), p. 147.
Aldine, 1970), p. 116. 48. Robin Simon and Leda Nath, "Gender and
30. Miller, Men and Friendship, pp. 2, 3; Rubin, Emotion in the United States: Do Men and Women
Intimate Strangers, p. 103. Differ in Self-Reports of Feelings and Expressive
31. Niobe Way, Deep Secrets: Boys' Friendships and Behavior?" in American Journal of Sociology,
the Crisis of Connection ( Cambridge: Harvard 109(5), pp. 1137-1176.
University Press, 2011), pp. 15, 20. 49. Elaine Hatfield, "What Do Women and Men Want
32. On experiment, see Lillian Faderman, Surpassing from Love and Sex?" in Changing Boundaries,
the Love of Men (New York: Columbia University E. Allegier and N. McCormick, eds. (Mountain
Press, 1981); quote from Scott Swain, "Covert View, CA: Mayfield, 1983).
Intimacy;' pp. 83-84. 50. William Kephart, "Some Correlates of Romantic
33. Peter Nardi and Drury Sherrod, "Friendship in Love" in Journal of Marriage and the Family, 29,
the Lives of Gay Men and Lesbians" in Journal of 1967; Kenneth Dion and Karen Dion, "Correlates
Social and Personal Relationships, 11, 1994; Rubin, of Romantic Love" in Journal of Consulting and
Intimate Strangers, p. 105. Clinical Psychology, 41, 1973; Charles Hill, Zick
34. Cited in Rubin, Intimate Strangers, p. 130. Rubin, and Letitia Anne Peplau, "Breakups Before
35. Peter Nardi, "The Politics of Gay Men's Marriage: The End of 103 Affairs" in Divorce and
Friendships" in Men's Lives, 4th ed., M. Kimmel Separation: Context, Causes and Consequences,
and M. Messner, eds. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, G. Levinger and 0 . C. Moles, eds. (New York: Basic
1998), p. 250. Books, 1979); Charles Hobart, "Disillusionment in
Notes 521
Marriage and Romanticism'' in Marriage and Family 3. See Emili Vesilind, "Fashion's Invisible Woman''
Living, 20, 1958; Charles Hobart, "The Incidence in Los Angeles Times, March 1, 2009, http://
of Romanticism During Courtship" in Social www.latimes.com/features/lifestyle/la- ig-size1 -
Forces, 36, 1958; David Knox and John Spoakowski, 2009maro1,o,2345629.story, accessed August 1, 2009.
''Attitudes of College Students Toward Love" in 4. http:/ /www.raderprograms.com/ causes-statistics/
Journal ofMarriage and the Family, 30, 1968; George media-eating-disorders.html; and Edward Lovett,
Theodorson, "Romanticism and Motivation to "Most Models Meet Criteria for Anorexia; Size 6
Marry in the United States, Singapore, Burma and Is Plus Size: Magazine" in ABC News, January
India'' in Social Forces, 44, 1965. 12, 2012, http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/head-
51. Dion and Dion, "Correlates of Romantic Love"; lines/ 2012/ 01/most-models-meet-criteria-for-
Zick Rubin, "Measurement of Romantic Love" in anorexia-size- 6-is- plus-size-magazine/.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 16(2), 5. See Debra Gimlin, Body Work: Beauty and Self-
1970; Arlie Hochschild, ''Attending to, Codifying Image in American Culture (Berkeley: University of
and Managing Feelings: Sex Differences in Love;' California Press, 2002), p. 5; "How to Get Plump"
paper presented at the annual meeting of the in Harper's Bazaar, August 1908, p. 787; Mary
American Sociological Association, August 1975; Pipher, Reviving Ophelia (New York: Ballantine,
Eugene Kanin, Karen Davidson, and Sonia Scheck, 1996); M. E. Collins, "Body Figure Perceptions
''A Research Note on Male-Female Differentials in and Preferences Among Preadolescent Children''
the Experience of Heterosexual Love" in Journal of in International Journal of Eating Disorders,
Sex Research, 6, 1970, p. 70. 10, 1991, pp. 199-208; A. Gustafson-Larson
52. Hill, Rubin, and Peplau, "Breakups Before and R. Terry, "Weight-Related Behaviors and
Marriage:' Concerns of Fourth Grade Children'' in Journal
53. Kephart, "Some Correlates of Romantic Love:' of the American Dietetic Association, 92(7), 1992,
54. http:/ /www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/ pp. 818-822; see also www.healthywithin.com/
02/ 02/republicans-have-more-orgasms-according- STATS.htm, August 14, 2009.
to-match-com-sex -survey.html and http:/ /www 6. J. I. Hudson, E. Hiripi, H . G. Pope Jr., and
.usatoday.com/ news/health/wellness/story/ 2012- R. C. Kessler, "The Prevalence and Correlates of
0 2- o 2/ Survey-gives-a-snapshot-of-singles- in - Eating Disorders in the National Comorbidity
America/ 52922248/1. Survey Replication" in Biological Psychiatry, 61,
55. Susan Sprecher, E. Aron, E. Hatfield, A. Cortese, 2007, pp. 348-358; T. D. Wade, A. Keski-Rahkonen,
E. Potapava, and A. Levitskaya, "Love: American and J. Hudson, "Epidemiology of Eating Disorders;'
Style, Russian Style, and Japanese Style;' paper in Textbook in Psychiatric Epidemiology, 3rd ed.,
presented at the Sixth Annual Conference on M. Tsuang and M. Tohen, eds., pp. 343-360 (New
Personal Relationships, Orono, Maine, 1992. York: Wiley, 2011).
56. Susan Sprecher and Maura Toro-Morn, ''A Study 7. "Europe Targets Eating Disorders;' available at
of Men and Women from Different Sides of Earth http://news.bbc.uk/1/hi/health/197334.stm; and
to Determine if Men Are from Mars and Women "Eating Disorders Factfile;' available at http:! /news
Are from Venus in Their Beliefs About Love and .bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/medical_notes/187517.stm.
Romantic Relationships" in Sex Roles, 46(5/6), 8. See A. Furnham and N. Alibhai, "Cross-Cultural
March 2002, pp. 131-147. Differences in the Perception of Female Body Shapes"
57. Cathy Greenblat, personal communication. This in Psychological Medicine, 13(4), 1983, pp. 829-837;
research has not yet been published. D. B. Mumford, "Eating Disorders in Different
58. Tavris, Mismeasure of Woman, p. 284. Cultures" in International Review of Psychiatry, 5(1),
59. Cancian, "Feminization of Love;' pp. 705, 709. 1993, pp. 109-113; N. Shuriquie, "Eating Disorders: A
60. Rubin, Just Friends, p. 41. Transcultural Perspective" in Eastern Mediterranean
Health Journal, 5(2), 1999, pp. 354-360, also avail-
CHAPTER THIRTEEN able at http:/ /www.emro.who.int/Publications/
1. It is ironic, perhaps, that some of these develop- EMHJ/0502/20.htm. I am grateful to Lisa Machoian
ments that have made us more aware of our bodies for her help in obtaining this material.
have also enabled us to change (surgery) or con- 9. Sonni Efron, "Eating Disorders on the Increase in
ceal (Internet) them. Asia in Dimensions Magazine:' available at http://
2. Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth (New York: William www.dimensionsmagazine.com/news/asia/html,
Morrow, 1991), pp. 10, 184. accessed August 14, 2009.
522 NOTES
10. http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2011/03/19/ 23. See http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/
push-up-bikini-tops-at-abercrombie-kids/. living/200882968o_barbieo9.html, accessed
11. Their report can be accessed at www.apa.org/pi/ August 1, 2009.
wpo/sexualization.html. 24. M. L. Armstrong, A. E. Roberts, J. R. Koch, J.
12. Deborah Gregory, "Heavy Judgment" in C. Saunders, D. C. Owen, and R. R. Anderson,
Essence, August 1994, pp. 57-58; G. B. Schreiber, "Motivation for Contemporary Tattoo Removal:
K. M. Pike, D. E. Wilfley, and J. Rodin, "Drive A Shift in Identity;' in Archives of Dermatology,
for Thinness in Black and White Preadolescent 144(7), 2008, pp. 879-884.
Girls" in International Journal ofEating Disorders, 24. Shari Roan, "Social Stigma Drives Some Women
18(1), 1995, pp. 59-69. to Remove Tattoos" in Los Angeles Times, July 21,
13. See Susan Bordo, The Male Body (New York: 2008, available at http:/ /latimesblogs.latimes.com/
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000). booster_shots/ 200 8/ 07 / social-stigma-d.html,
14. Harrison Pope, Katharine Phillips, and Roberto accessed August 14, 2009.
Olivardia, The Adonis Complex: The Secret Crisis of 26. http:/ /www.plasticsurgery.org/Documents/news-
Male Body Obsession (New York: Free Press, 2000). resources/ statistics/ 2011-statistics/ 2 on_Stats
15. Denis Campbell, "Body Image Concerns Men More Full_Report. pdf.
Than Women'' in Guardian, January 6, 2012, http:// 27. See the website of the American Society of Plastic
www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/ 2012/j an/ o 6/ Surgeons at http:///www.plasticsurgery.org/
body-image-concerns-men-more-than-women. mediactr/92sexdis.html, accessed August 14, 2009.
16. Cited in Richard Morgan, "The Men in the Mirror" 28. See Lynne Luciano, Looking Good: Male Body
in Chronicle of Higher Education, September 27, Image in Modern America (New York: Hill and
2002, p. A53. Wang, 2001).
17 Tracy McVeigh, "Skinny Male Models and 29. Gimlin, Body Work, p. 102.
New Fashions Fuel Eating Disorders Among 30. See Sam Fields, "Penis Enlargement Surgery;' avai-
Men" in Guardian, May 16, 2010, http:// labe at www.4-men.org/penisenlargementsurgery
www.guardian .co . uk/ society/ 2 01 o /may/ 16 / .html; and Randy Klein, "Penile Augmentation
skinny-models-fuel-male-eating-disorders. Surgery;' in Electronic Journal of Human Sexuality,
18. Trent Petrie, Christy Greenleaf, Jennifer Carter, 2, March 1999, chapter 2, p. 1; chapter 5, pp. 8-9.
and Justine Reel, "Psychosocial Correlates of 31. Letter testimonials to Dr. E. Douglas Whitehead,
Disordered Eating Among Male Collegiate available at www.penile-enlargement-surgeon
Athletes" in Journal of Clinical Sport Psychology, .com/diary.html, accessed August 14, 2009.
1(4), December 2007, pp. 340-357; see also Trent 32. Amy Chozcik, "Virgin Territory: U.S. Women
Petrie, Christy Greenleaf, Jennifer Carter, and Seek a Second First Time" in Wall Street Journal,
Justine Reel, "Prevalence of Eating Disorders December 15, 2005.
and Disordered Eating Behaviors Among Male 33. See David L. Matlock, Sex by Design (Los Angeles:
Collegiate Athletes" in Psychology of Men & Demiurgus Press, 2004); see also www.drmatlock
Masculinity, 9(4), October 2008, pp. 267-277. .com, accessed June 2, 2006.
19. Pope et al., Adonis Complex. 34. Jules Michelet, cited in Darlaine C. Gardetto,
20. Douglas Quenqua, "Muscular Body Image Lures "The Social Construction of the Female Orgasm,
Boys into Gym, and Obsession'' in New York Times, 1650-1890;' paper presented at the annual meeting
November 19, 2012, pp. 1, 13; R. J. DiClemente, of the American Sociological Association, Atlanta,
J. M. Jackson, V. Hertzberg, and P. Seth, "Steroid 1988, p. 18.
Use, Health Risk Behaviors and Adverse Health 35. Cited in Barbara Ehrenreich and Deidre English,
Indicators Among U.S. High School Students" in For Her Own Good: 150 Years of Medical Advice to
Family Medicine and Medical Science Research, Women (New York: Anchor, 1974).
3(127), 2014. 36. Alfred Kinsey, Wendall Pomeroy, and Charles
21. Gina Kolata, "With No Answers on Risks, Steroid Martin, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female
Users Still Say 'Yes"' in New York Times, December 2, (Philadelphia: W B. Saunders, 1953), p. 376.
2002, pp. A1, 19, NYTimes.com./2011/12/18/ 37. Pauline Bart, "Male Views of Female Sexuality:
opinion/sunday From Freud's Phallacies to Fisher's Inexact Test;'
22. See, for example, Christine Webber, "Eating paper presented at the Second National Meeting
Disorders;' available at http://netdoctor.co.uk/ of the Special Section of Psychosomatic Obstetrics
diseases/facts/eatingdisorders.htm, accessed and Gynecology, Key Biscayne, Florida, 1974,
August 14, 2009. pp. 6-7.
Notes 523
38. Lillian Rubin, Erotic Wars (New York: Farrar, An Aggregate Empirical Analysis of Pornography
Straus and Giroux, 1991), pp. 28, 42; Billy Crystal, and Rape" in Journal of Psychology and Human
quoted in Week, May 10, 2002, p. 17. Sexuality, 8(3), 1996.
39. Catharine MacKinnon, Only Words (Cambridge: 49. Rubin, Erotic Wars, p. 102; Carol Tavris and Carole
Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 185. Wade, The Longest War (New York: Harcourt
40. The best recent work on this dilemma for girls is Brace, 1984), p. 111.
Deborah Tolman, Dilemmas of Desire: Teenage 50. Philip Blumstein and Pepper Schwartz, American
Girls Talk About Sexuality (Cambridge: Harvard Couples (New York: William Morrow, 1983), p. 279;
University Press, 2002). Pepper Schwartz and Virginia Rutter, The Gender
41. Stephanie Sanders and June Machover Reinisch, of Sexuality (Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge
"Would You Say 'Had Sex' Press, 1998), pp. 60-61. Of course, there are also
42. Emmanuel Reynaud, Holy Virility, R. Schwartz, systematic gender biases in the reporting of sexual
trans. (London: Pluto Press, 1983), p. 41. experiences: Men tend to overstate their experi-
43. See, for example, Carol Tavris, The Mismeasure ences, and women tend to understate theirs. So
of Woman (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992); such wide discrepancies should be viewed with a
Harriet Lerner, Women in Therapy (New York: skeptical eye.
Harper and Row, 1989), chapter 2. 51. Blumstein and Schwartz, American Couples, p. 234.
44. Laumann et al., Social Organization of Sexuality, 52. Laumann et al., Social Organization of Sexuality,
p.135. p. 347.
45. Michael Kimmel and Rebecca Plante, "Sexual 53. Stevi Jackson, "The Social Construction of Female
Fantasies and Gender Scripts: Heterosexual Men Sexuality" in Feminism and Sexuality: A Reader,
and Women Construct Their Ideal Sexual S. Jackson and S. Scott, eds. (New York: Columbia
Encounters" in Gendered Sexualities, vol. 6 of University Press, 1996), p. 71.
Advances in Gender Research, ed. Patricia Gagne and 54. Charlene Muehlenhard, "'Nice Women' Don't
Richard Tewksbury (Amsterdam: JAI Press, 2002). Say Yes and 'Real Men' Don't Say No: How
46. See also E. Barbara Hariton and Jerome Singer, Miscommunication and the Double Standard Can
"Women's Fantasies During Sexual Intercourse: Cause Sexual Problems" in Women and Therapy, 7,
Normative and Theoretical Implications" in 1988, pp. 100-101.
Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 55. See Dwight Garner, "Endurance Condoms" in
42(3), 1974; Daniel Goleman, "Sexual Fantasies: New York Times Magazine, December 15, 2002, p. 84.
What Are Their Hidden Meanings?" in New York 56. See Jeffrey Fracher and Michael Kimmel, "Hard
Times, February 28, 1983; Daniel Goleman, "New Issues and Soft Spots: Counseling Men About
View of Fantasy: Much Is Found Perverse?" in Sexuality" in Handbook of Counseling and
New York Times, May 7, 1991; Robert May, Sex and Psychotherapy with Men, M. Scher, M. Stevens,
Fantasy: Patterns of Male and Female Development G. Good, and G. Eichenfeld, eds. (Newbury Park,
(New York: W. W Norton, 1980); David Chick CA: Sage Publications, 1987).
and Steven Gold, ''A Review of Influences on 57. Cited in Susan Bardo, The Male Body, p. 61. There
Sexual Fantasy: Attitudes, Experience, Guilt is actually some evidence of Viagra-related violence
and Gender" in Imagination, Cognition and against women and a sort of sexual "road rage:'
Personality, 7(1), 1987-1988; Robert A. Mednick, 58. See Bruce Handy, "The Viagra Craze" in Time,
"Gender Specific Variances in Sexual Fantasy" May 4, 1998, pp. 50-57; Christopher Hitchens,
in Journal of Personality Assessment, 41(3), 1977; "Viagra Falls" in Nation, May 25, 1998, p. 8.
Diane Follingstad and C. Dawne Kimbrell, "Sexual 59. Rubin, Erotic Wars, p. 13; on rates of change in
Fantasies Revisited: An Expansion and Further sexual activity, see A. C. Grunseit, S. Kippax, M.
Clarification of Variables Affecting Sex Fantasy Baldo, P. A. Aggleton, and G. Slutkin, "Sexuality,
Production'' in Archives of Sexual Behavior, 15(6), Education and Young People's Sexual Behavior: A
1986; Danielle Knafo and Yoram Jaffe, "Sexual Review of Studies;' manuscript from UNAID, 1997.
Fantasizing in Males and Females" in Journal of 60. Amber Hollibaugh, "Desire for the Future: Radical
Research in Personality, 18, 1984. Hope in Passion and Pleasure" in Jackson and
47. Robert Stoller, Porn (New Haven, CT: Yale Scott, Feminism and Sexuality: A Reader; Rubin,
University Press, 1991), p. 31. Erotic Wars, pp. 5, 46.
48. For a review of the empirical literature on por- 61. On rates of masturbation, see Laumann et al.,
nography, see Michael Kimmel and Annulla Social Organization of Sexuality, p. 86; Schwartz
Linders, "Does Censorship Make a Difference? and Rutter, Gender of Sexuality, p. 39. On sexual
524 NOTES
attitudes, see Laumann et al., Social Organization Violence Against Women at Home, at Work, and
of Sexuality, p. 507. in the Community (Washington, DC: American
62. Tamar Lewin, "One in Five Teenagers Has Sex Psychological Association, 1994).
Before 15, Study Finds" in New York Times, May 20, 76. Mary Koss, P. T. Dinero, C. A. Seibel, and S. L.
2003. Cox, "Stranger and Acquaintance Rape: Are
63. Laumann et al., Social Organization of Sexuality; There Differences in the Victim's Experience?" in
Schwartz and Rutter, Gender of Sexuality, p. 165. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 12(1), 1988.
64. Newsweek, December 9, 2002, pp. 61-71. 77. Laumann et al., Social Organization of Sexuality,
65. Peter S. Bearman and Hannah Bruckner, p. 336; see also Koss et al., No Safe Haven.
"Promising the Future: Virginity Pledges 78. Ronald F. Levant, "Nonrelational Sexuality in Men''
and First Intercourse" in American Journal of in Men and Sex: New Psychological Perspectives,
Sociology, 106(4), 2001, pp. 859-912; see also Alan R. Levant and G. Brooks, eds. (New York: John
Guttmacher Institute, "Why Is Teenage Pregnancy Wiley, 1997), p. 270.
Declining? The Role of Abstinence, Sexual Activity 79. See, for example, J. 0. Billy, G. K. Tanfer,
and Contraceptive Use;' 1996, available at www. W. R. Grady, and D. H. Klepinger, "The Sexual
agi.org; see also Ceci Connolly, "Teen Pledges Behavior of Men in the United States" in Family
Barely Cut STD Rates, Study Says" in Washington Planning Perspectives, 25(2), 1993; Laumann et al.,
Post, March 19, 2005, p. A3. Social Organization of Sexuality.
66. See Barbara Risman and Pepper Schwartz, ''After 80. Gary Brooks, The Centerfold Syndrome (San
the Sexual Revolution: Gender Politics in Teen Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1995), and "The Centerfold
Dating" in Contexts, 1(1), 2002, pp. 16-24. Syndrome" in Men and Sex: New Psychological
67. Willard Waller, "The Rating and Dating Complex" Perspectives, R. Levant and G. Brooks, eds.
in American Sociological Review, 2, October 1937, (New York: John Wiley, 1997). See also Levant,
pp. 727-734. "Nonrelational Sexuality;' p. 19; Joni Johnston,
68. "'Hookups': Characteristics and Correlates of ''Appearance Obsession: Women's Reactions to
College Students' Spontaneous and Anonymous Men's Objectification of Their Bodies" in Levant
Sexual Experiences" in Journal of Sex Research, and Brooks, Men and Sex, pp. 79, 101.
37(1), February 2000, pp. 76-88. 81. Glenn Good and Nancy B. Sherrod, "Men's
69. Interview conducted for my book Guy/and: The Resolution of Nonrelational Sex Across the
Perilous World Where Boys Become Men (New Lifespan" in Levant and Brooks, Men and Sex,
York: HarperCollins, 2008), p. 210. pp. 189, 190.
70. Norval Glenn and Elizabeth Marquardt, Hooking 82. See Good and Sherrod, "Men's Resolution of
Up, Hanging Out, and Hoping for Mr. Right: College Nonrelational Sex;' p. 186.
Women on Dating and Mating Today (New York: 83. Peter Wyden and Barbara Wyden, Growing Up
Institute for American Values, 2001). Straight: What Every Thoughtful Parent Should
71. Laumann et al., Social Organization of Sexuality; see Know About Homosexuality (New York: Trident
also Schwartz and Rutter, Gender of Sexuality, pp. Press, 1968).
102-103; see Sam Janus, The Janus Report on Sexual 84. Richard Green, The "Sissy Boy" Syndrome (New
Behavior (New York: John Wiley, 1993), pp. 315-316; Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986).
Blumstein and Schwartz, American Couples; see 85. George Gilder, Men and Marriage (Gretna, LA:
also Lynne Segal, ed., New Sexual Agendas (New Pelican Publishers, 1985).
York: New York University Press, 1997), p. 67. 86. Joe Jackson, "Real Men"; for a sociological inves-
72. Gina Kolata, "Women and Sex: On This Topic, tigation of the gender organization of clone life,
Science Blushes" in New York Times, June 21, 1998, see Martin P. Levine, Gay Macho: The Life and
p. 3; young woman cited in Rubin, Erotic Wars, p. 14. Death of the Homosexual Clone, M. S. Kimmel,
73. Rubin, Erotic Wars, p. 120. ed. (New York: New York University Press, 1998).
74. Laura Sessions Stepp, "Study: Half of All Teens 87. Cited in Steve Chapple and David Talbot, Burning
Have Had Oral Sex" in Washington Post, Desires: Sex in America (New York: Doubleday,
September 15, 2005; Sharon Jayson, "Teens Define 1989), p. 356.
Sex in New Ways" in USA Today, October 18, 2005. 88. G. Clarke, "Conforming and Contesting with (a)
75. Cited in Rubin, Erotic Wars, p. 58; Mary Koss, Difference: How Lesbian Students and Teachers
L. A. Goodman, A. Browne, L. F. Fitzgerald, Manage Their Identities" International Studies in
G. P. Keita, and N. F. Russo, No Safe Haven: Male Sociology ofEducation, 6(2), 1996, 191-209.
Notes 525
89. Alan Bell and Martin Weinberg, Homosexualities 101. See John Gottman, Why Marriages Succeed or Fail
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1978); William (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995).
Masters, Virginia Johnson, and Richard Kolodny, 102. See on tliese changes generally, Levine, Gay Macho .
Human Sexuality (New York: Harper and Row, 103. World Healtli Organization, "Adults and Children
1978); Blumstein and Schwartz, American Couples, Estimated to Be Living with HIV/ AIDS as of End
p. 317. 2002;' http:/ /www.who.int/hiv/facts/plwha_m.jpg,
90. American Psychological Association, "Equal Level accessed August 14, 2009.
of Commitment and Relationship Satisfaction 104. Michele Landsberg, "U.N. Recognizes Women
Found Among Gay and Heterosexual Couples" Double Victims of AIDS" in Toronto Star, July 1, 2001.
in Science News, January 23, 2008, http:/ /www 105. World Health Organization, "Adults and Children
.sciencedaily.com/releases/ 20 08/ 01/ 080122101929 Estimated:'
.htm. 106. Lawrence K. Altman, "Swift Rise Seen in H.I.V.
91. Data from Blumstein and Schwartz, American Cases for Gay Blacks" in New York Times, June 1,
Couples; woman is quoted in Bell and Weinberg, 2001, p. A1.
Homosexualities, p. 220. 107. See Michael Kimmel and Martin Levine, ''A Hidden
92. Masters, Johnson, and Kolodny, Human Factor in AIDS: 'Real' Men's Hypersexuality" in
Sexuality. Los Angeles Times, June 3, 1991. Of course, the route
93. Ken Plummer, Sexual Stigma: An Interactionist taken by women to high-risk behaviors is also
Account (New York: Routledge, 1975), p. 102. gendered. Whereas men are often eager to dem-
94. Gerald Davison and John Neale, Abnormal onstrate manhood by engaging in such high-risk
Psychology: An Experimental-Clinical Approach behaviors, women typically become IV drug users
(New York: John Wiley, 1974), p. 293. in tlie context of a "romantic" relationship or as
95. See Jeni Loftus, ''America's Liberalization in part of a sexual initiation. And some women are
Attitudes Toward Homosexuality, 1973-1998" in also exposed to risk from HIV by male sexual part-
American Sociological Review, 66, October 2001, ners who lie to tliem about their HIV status. I am
pp. 762-782. grateful to Rose Weitz for pointing tliis out to me.
96. Muehlenhard, "Nice Women Don't Say Yes"; 108. See Will Courtenay, "Engendering Healtli: A Social
John Gagnon and Stuart Michaels, ''Answer No Constructionist Examination of Men's Health
Questions: The Theory and Practice of Resistance Beliefs and Behaviors" in Psychology of Men and
to Deviant Categorization;' unpublished manu- Masculinity, 1(1), 2000, pp. 4-15; "Men's Health;'
script, 1989, p. 2. On the impact of homopho- editorial in British Medical Journal, January 13,
bia on heterosexual men's lives, see also Richard 1996, pp. 69-70. For more about men's healtli spe-
Goldstein, "The Hate That Makes Men Straight" cifically, see Men's Health on the Internet, M. Sandra
in Village Voice, December 22, 1998. Wood and Janet M. Coggan, eds. (Binghamton,
97. See Laumann et al., Social Organization of NY: Haworth Information Press, 2002).
Sexuality, pp. 82-84, 98, 177, 192, 302-309, 518-529. 109. Will H. Courtenay, "College Men's Health: An
98. Rubin, Erotic Wars, p. 165. Overview and a Call to Action" in Journal of
99. Julia Heiman, J. Scott Long, Shawna N. Smith, American College Health, 46(6), 1998; see also
William A. Fisher, Michael S. Sand, and Raymond Lesley Doyal, "Sex, Gender and Health: The Need
C. Rosen, "Sexual Satisfaction and Relationship for a New Approach" in British Medical Journal,
Happiness in Midlife and Older Couples in Five November 3, 2001, pp. 1061-1063.
Countries" in Archives of Sexual Behavior, 40, 2011, 110. Linda Villarosa, ''As Black Men Move into Middle
pp. 741-753. Age, Dangers Rise" in New York Times, September
100. "Does Equality Produce a Better Sex Life?" in 23, 2002, pp. F1, 8.
Newsday, April 19, 2006; see Edward 0 . Laumann, 111. See Diana Jean Schemo, "Study Calculates the
Anthony Paik, Dale Glasser, Jeong-Han Kang, Effects of College Drinking in the U.S:' in New
Tianfu Wang, Bernard Levinson, Edson Moreira, York Times, April 10, 2002, p. A21; Jodie Morse,
Anfredo Nocolosi, and Clive Gingell, ''A Cross- "Women on a Binge" in Time, April 1, 2002,
National Study of Subjective Sexual Well-Being pp. 57-61; Barbara Ehrenreich, "Libation as
Among Older Women and Men: Findings Liberation?" in Time, April 1, 2002, p. 62.
from the Global Study of Sexual Attitudes and 112. See Judith Lorber, Gender and the Social
Behaviors" in Archives of Sexual Behavior, 35(2), Construction of Illness (Newbury Park, CA: Pine
April 2006, pp. 145-161. Forge Press, 1997).
526 NOTES
113. Amartya Sen, "The Many Faces of Gender 11. See also Elizabeth Stanko, Everyday Violence
Inequality" in New Republic, September 17, 2001, (London: Pandora, 1990), p. 71.
pp. 35-40. 12. A. Cooper and E. L. Smith, Homicide in the U.S.
114. See, for example, "Whatever Happened to Men's Known to Law Enforcement, 2011 (Washington,
Health?" published by Men's Health America, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of
www.egroups.com/ group/menshealth, accessed Justice Statistics, 2013), http://www.bjs.gov/index
August 14, 2009. .cfrn ?ty=pbdetail&iid=4863.
13. Fox Butterfield, All God's Children: The Bosket
CHAPTER FOURTEEN Family and the American Tradition of Violence
1. Youth and Violence: Psychology's Response, Vol. 1 (New York: Avon, 1995), p. 329. Bureau of Justice
(Washington, DC: American Psychological Statistics, 2007.
Association Commission on Violence and Youth, 14. Butterfield, All God's Children, p. 325; see also
1993); "Saving Youth from Violence" in Carnegie Wray Herbert, "Behind Bars" in U.S. News &
Quarterly, 39(1), Winter 1994. World Report, March 23, 1998, p. 33. See also Jay
2. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Uniform Crime Livingston, "Crime and Sex: It's a Man's World"
Report (2013), table 42: ''Arrests by Sex:' in Crime and Criminology, 2nd ed. (Englewood
3. National Academy of Sciences, cited in Michael Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1996).
Gottfredson and Travis Hirschi, A General 15. See Public Safety Performance Project, "One
Theory of Crime (Stanford, CA: Stanford in 100: Behind Bars in America 2008;' Pew
University Press, 1990), p. 145. See also Steven Charitable Trusts, February 28, 2008, http://
Barkan, "Why Do Men Commit Almost All www. p ewce n te ro nth estates. o rg/ up 1o ad
Homicides and Assault?" in Criminology: A edFiles/One-in-100.pdf, accessed August 1, 2009.
Sociological Understanding (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: 16. Cited in June Stephenson, Men Are Not Cost
Prentice Hall, 1997); Masculinities and Violence, Effective (Napa, CA: Diemer, Smith, 1991), p. 248.
Lee Bowker, ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage 17. Joe Sharkey, "Slamming the Brakes on Hot Pursuit"
Publications, 1998). in New York Times, December 14, 1997, p. 3.
4. See James Q. Wilson and Richard Herrnstein, 18. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
Crime and Human Nature (New York: Simon & "Youth Violence: Facts at a Glance;' http://
Schuster, 1985), p. 121. For descriptions of various www. cd c . gov/Violence P reve n tio n/ p df /
biological theories of violence, see also chapter 2. YV- DataSheet-a.pdf.
5. I summarize these arguments in chapter 2. 19. Freda Adler, Sisters in Crime (New York: McGraw-
6. Judith Lorber, Paradoxes of Gender (New Haven Hill, 1975), p. 10; Rita Simon, Women and Crime
CT: Yale University Press, 1994), p. 39. On the (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing
sociology of men's violence, see especially Michael Office, 1975), p. 40.
Kaufman, Cracking the Armour: Power, Pain 20. See Patricia Pearson, When She Was Bad: Violent
and the Lives of Men (Toronto: Viking, 1993); Women and the Myth of Innocence (New York:
and Michael Kaufman, "The Construction of Viking, 1998); see also Larissa MacFarquhar,
Masculinity and the Triad of Men's Violence" in "Femmes Fatales" in New Yorker, March 9, 1998,
Men's Lives, 4th ed., M. Kimmel and M. Messner, pp. 88-91.
eds. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1997); see also 21. Malcolm Feely and Deborah L. Little, "The
Jackson Toby, "Violence and the Masculine Ideal: Vanishing Female: The Decline of Women in the
Some Qualitative Data'' in Annals of the American Criminal Process" in Law and Society Review,
Academy of Political and Social Science, 364, March 25(4), 1991, p. 739.
1966. 22. Darrell J. Steffensmeier, "Trends in Female Crime:
7. Barbara Ehrenreich, Blood Rites: Origins and It's Still a Man's World" in The Criminal Justice
History of the Passions of War (New York: System and Women, B. R. Price and N. J. Sokoloff,
Metropolitan Books, 1997), pp. 45, 127. eds. (New York: Clark, Boardman, 1982), p. 121.
8. Signe Howell and Roy Willis, Societies at Peace 23. John O'Neil, "Homicide Rates Fall Among
(New York: Routledge, 1983). Couples" in New York Times, October 23, 2001, p. EB.
9. Howell and Willis, Societies at Peace, p. 38. 24. Erich Goode, personal communication, December
10. See, for example, D. Stanistreet, C. Bambra, and 5, 2002; Jerome Skolnick, personal communica-
A. Scott-Samuel, "Is Patriarchy the Source of tion, December 5, 2002; see also Erich Goode,
Men's Higher Mortality?" in Journal of Epidemiology Deviant Behavior, 5th ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
and Community Health, 59, 2005, pp. 873-876. Prentice Hall), p. 127; and Kathleen Daly, Gender
Notes 527
Crime and Punishment (New Haven, CT: Yale in New York Times Magazine, February 24, 2002,
University Press, 1994). pp. 24-29, 40, 58, 64-65; and Carol Tavris, ''Are Girls
25. See Laura Dugan, Daniel Nagin, and Richard Really as Mean as Books Say They Are?" in Chronicle
Rosenfeld, "Explaining the Decline in Intimate of Higher Education, July 5, 2002, pp. B7-9.
Partner Homicide: The Effects of Changing 33. Simmons, Odd Girl Out.
Domesticity, Women's Status and Domestic Vio- 34. See, for example, Ann Donahue, "Population of
lence Resources" in Homicide Studies 3(3), 1999, Female Inmates Reaches Record" in USA Today,
pp. 187-214; and Richard Rosenfeld, "Changing July 21, 1997; Steffensmeier and Allen, "Criminal
Relationships Between Men and Women: A Note Behavior;' p. 85.
on the Decline in Intimate Partner Homicide" 35. Helen Caldicott, Missile Envy (New York: William
in Homicide Studies, 1(1), 1997, pp. 72-83; Chris Morrow, 1984); Barbara Ehrenreich, "The
Huffine, personal communication. Violence Debate Since Adam and Eve" in Test the
26. Jack Katz, Seductions of Crime: Moral and Sensual West: Gender Democracy and Violence (Vienna:
Attractions in Doing Evil (New York: Basic Books, Federal Minister of Women's Affairs, 1994), p. 34.
1988), p. 71. 36. R. W Connell, "Masculinity, Violence and War" in
27. Jack Katz, Seductions of Crime, p. 247; see also Men's Lives, 3rd ed., M. Kimmel and M. Messner,
James Messerschmidt, Masculinities and Crime eds. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1995), p. 129.
(Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1993), 37. David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest
especially p. 107; and Jody Miller, "The Strengths (New York: Random House, 1972), p. 531.
and Limits of 'Doing Gender' for Understanding 38. Maureen Dowd, "Rummy Runs Wampant" in New
Street Crime" in Theoretical Criminology, 6(4), York Times, October 30, 2002, p. A29.
2002, pp. 433-460. 39. Cited in Brian Easlea, Fathering the Unthinkable:
28. Darrell Steffensmeier and Ellie Allan, "Criminal Masculinity, Scientists and the Nuclear Arms Race
Behavior: Gender and Age" in Criminology: (London: Pluto Press, 1983), p. 117; see also his
A Contemporary Handbook, J. F. Sheley, ed. "Patriarchy, Scientists and Nuclear Warriors" in
(Mountain View, CA: Wadsworth, 1995), p. 85. Beyond Patriarchy: Essays by Men on Pleasure,
29. David Adams, "Biology Does Not Make Men Power and Change, M. Kaufman, ed. (Toronto:
More Aggressive Than Women" in Of Mice and Oxford University Press, 1987); I. F. Stone,
Women: Aspects of Female Aggression, K. Bjorkvist "Machismo in Washington" in Men and Mascu-
and P. Niemela, eds. (San Diego: Academic Press, linity, J. Pleck and J. Sawyer, eds. (Englewood
1992), p. 14; see also Pearson, When She Was Bad. Cliffs, NJ : Prentice Hall, 1974); Carol Cohn,
But see also Coramae Richey Mann, When Women "'Clean Bombs' and Clean Language" in Women,
Kill (Albany: State University of New York Press, Militarism and War: Essays in History, Politics
1996). and Social Theory, J. B. Elshtain, ed. (Savage, MD:
30. Adam Fraczek, "Patterns of Aggressive- Hostile Rowman and Littlefield, 1990), p. 137.
Behavior Orientation Among Adolescent Boys 40. Cohn," 'Clean Bombs;" p. 35.
and Girls" in Bjorkvist and Niemala, Of Mice and 41. Wayne Ewing, "The Civic Advocacy of Violence"
Women: Aspects of Female Aggression, K. Bjorkvist in Men's Lives, M. Kimmel and M. Messner, eds.
and P. Niemela, eds.; Kirsti M. J. Lagerspetz and (New York: Macmillan, 1989).
Kaj Bjorqvist, "Indirect Aggression in Boys and 42. Jackson's mother, cited in Butterfield, All God's
Girls" in Aggressive Behavior: Current Perspectives, Children, p. n; see also The Civilization of Crime,
L. R. Huesmann, ed. (New York: Plenum, 1994). Eric A. Johnson and Eric H. Monkkonen, eds.
31. Vappu Viemero, "Changes in Female Aggression (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996);
over a Decade" in Bjorkvist and Niemala, Of Mice David Courtwright, Violent Land: Single Men
and Women, p. 105. and Social Disorder from the Frontier to the Inner
32. See, for example, Rachel Simmons, Odd Girl Out: City (Cambridge : Harvard University Press,
The Hidden Culture ofAggression in Girls (New York: 1997). Also see the trilogy by Richard Slotkin,
Harcourt, 2002); Rosalind Wiseman, Queen Bees Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology
and Wannabes: A Parents' Guide to Helping Your of the American Frontier, 1600-1860 (New York:
Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and Atheneum, 1973); The Fatal Environment: The
Other Realities of Adolescence (New York: Crown, Myth of the Frontier in the Age ofIndustrialization
2002); Sharon Lamb, The Secret Lives of Girls: Sex, (New York: Atheneum, 1985); Gunfighter Nation:
Play, Aggression and Their Guilt (New York: Free The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth Century
Press, 2002). See also Margaret Talbot, "Mean Girls" America (New York: Atheneum, 1992).
528 NOTES
43. Margaret Mead, And Keep Your Powder Dry (New 54. Mary Koss, Christine A. Gidycz, and Nadine
York: William Morrow, 1965), pp. 151, 157. Misniewski, "The Scope of Rape: Incidence and
44. J. Adams Puffer, The Boy and His Gang (Boston: Prevalence of Sexual Aggression and Victimization
Houghton, Mifflin, 1912), p. 91. in a National Sample of Higher Education
45. James Gilligan, Violence (New York: Putnam, 1996). Students" in Journal of Consulting and Clinical
46. Butterfield, All Gods Children, pp. 206-207; Psychology, 55(2), 1987. Bonnie Fisher, Francis
Kit Roane, "New York Gangs Mimic California Cullen, and Michael Turner, National Social
Original" in New York Times, September 14, 1997, Victimization of College Women (Washington, DC:
p. A37; others cited in Jack Katz, Seductions ofCrime, United States Department of Justice, OJP, 2000).
pp. 88, 107; Vic Seidler, "Raging Bull" in Achilles 55. Dean G. Kilpatrick, Heidi S. Resnick, Kenneth
Heel, 5, 1980, p. 9; Hans Toch, "Hypermasculinity J. Ruggiero, Lauren M. Conoscenti, Jenna
and Prison Violence" in Masculinities and McCauley. Drug-Facilitated, Incapacitated, and
Violence, L. Bowker, ed. (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Forcible Rape: A National Study (NCJ 219181),
Publications, 1998), p. 170. National Institute of Justice, May 2007. NCJ 219181,
47. Data from New York Times, August 25, 1997; U.S. https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/ grants/ 219181.
Department of Justice, Family Violence, 1997; pdf. NCJ221153, https:/ /www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/
Reva Siegel, "The 'Rule of Love': Wife Beating nij/grants/221153.pdf.
as Prerogative and Privacy" in Yale Law Journal, 56. John Briere and Neil Malamuth, "Self-Reported
105(8), June 1996; Deborah Rhode, Speaking of Likelihood of Sexually Aggressive Behavior:
Sex: The Denial of Gender Inequality (Cambridge: Attitudinal Versus Sexual Explanations" in Journal
Harvard University Press, 1997), p. 108; of Research in Personality, 17, 1983; Todd Tieger,
Stephenson, Men Are Not Cost Effective, p. 285; "Self-Rated Likelihood of Raping and Social
see also Neil Websdale and Meda Chesney-Lind, Perception of Rape" in Journal of Research in
"Doing Violence to Women: Research Synthesis Personality, 15, 1991.
on the Victimization of Women" in Bowker, 57. J. L. Herman, "Considering Sex Offenders: A Model
Masculinities and Violence, L. Bowker, ed. of Addiction'' in Signs, 13, 1988; Bernard Lefkowitz,
48. Peggy Reeves Sanday, Female Power and Male Our Guys (Berkeley: University of California Press,
Dominance (New York: Cambridge University 1997); Don Terry, "Gang Rape of Three Girls Leaves
Press, 1981); quote from Larry Baron and Murray Fresno Shaken and Questioning" in New York
Straus, "Four Theories of Rape: A Macrosociological Times, April 28, 1998; see also Jane Hood, "'Let's Get
Analysis" in Social Problems, 34(5), 1987, p. 481. a Girl': Male Bonding Rituals in America'' in Mens
49. "By the Numbers" in Nation, June 23/30, 2014, p. 4. Lives, 4th ed., M. Kimmel and M. Messner, eds.
50. See, for example, Diana Scully, Under- (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1997).
standing Sexual Violence: A Study of Convicted 58. Scully, Understanding Sexual Violence, pp. 74, 140,
Rapists (New York: HarperCollins, 1990); Diana 159,166.
Russell, Rape in Marriage (New York: Macmillan, 59. Tim Beneke, Men on Rape (New York: St. Martin's
1982), and Sexual Exploitation (Beverly Hills, CA: Press, 1982), p. 81.
Sage Publications, 1984); Rhode, Speaking of Sex, 60. See Mary P. Koss, Christine Gidycz, and Nadine
pp. 119-120; Allan Johnson, "On the Prevalence Misniewski, "The Scope of Rape;' and Scott
of Rape in the United States" in Signs, 6(1), 1980, Boeringer, "Pornography and Sexual Aggression:
p. 145. For more on this, see also Diana Scully and Associations of Violence and Nonviolent
J. Marolla, "'Riding the Bull at Gilley's': Convicted Depictions with Rape and Rape Proclivity" in
Rapists Describe the Rewards of Rape" in Social Deviant Behavior, 15, 1994, pp. 289-304.
Problems, 32, 1985. 61. Murray Straus, Richard Gelles, and Suzanne
51. National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Steinmetz, Behind Closed Doors (Garden City, NY:
National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Anchor Books, 1981).
Survey: 2010 Summary Report, http:/ /www.cdc.gov/ 62. Diana Russell, Rape in Marriage (New York:
ViolencePrevention/pdf/NISVS_Report2010-a.pdf. Macmillan, 1982); David Finklehor and Kersti
52. U.S. Department of Justice, "Child Rape Victims, Yllo, License to Rape: Sexual Abuse of Wives
1992" (NCJ-147001), June 1994; Eugene Kanin, (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1985),
"False Rape Allegations" in Archives of Sexual pp. 217, 208. On marital rape generally, see also
Behavior, 23(1), 1994. Raquel Kennedy Bergen, "Surviving Wife Rape:
53. Johnson, "On the Prevalence of Rape;' p. 145; Scully, How Women Define and Cope with the Violence"
Understanding Sexual Violence, p. 53. in Violence Against Women, 1(2), 1995, pp. 117-138;
Notes 529
and the special issue of Violence Against Women, 69. J. E. Stets and Murray Straus, "The Marriage
5(9), September 1999, she edited; Raquel Kennedy License as a Hitting License: A Comparison of
Bergen, Wife Rape: Understanding the Response Assaults in Dating, Cohabiting and Married
of Survivors and Service Providers (Thousand Couples" in Journal of Family Violence, 4(2), 1989;
Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1996); Anne L. J. E. Stets and Murray Straus, "Gender Differences
Buckborough, "Family Law: Recent Developments in Reporting Marital Violence and Its Medical and
in the Law of Marital Rape" in Annual Survey of Psychological Consequences" in Physical Violence
American Law, 1989; "To Have and to Hold: The in American Families, M. Straus and R. Gelles,
Marital Rape Exemption and the Fourteenth eds. (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers,
Amendment" in Harvard Law Review, 99, 1986. 1990).
63. Gelles, cited in Joanne Schulman, "Battered 70. Bureau ofJustice Statistics, Family Violence.
Women Score Major Victories in New Jersey 71. Glanda Kaufman Kantor, Jana Janinski, and
and Massachusetts Marital Rape Cases" in E. Aldorondo, "Sociocultural Status and Incidence
Clearinghouse Review, 15(4), 1981, p. 345 . of Marital Violence in Hispanic Families" in
64. Ehrenreich, "Violence Debate;' p. 30. Violence and Victims, 9(3), 1994; and Jana Janinski,
65. Armin Brott, "The Battered Statistic Syndrome" in "Dynamics of Partner Violence and Types of
Washington Post, July 1994. Abuse and Abusers;' available at http:/ /www
66. R. L. McNeely and G. Robinson-Simpson, "The .nnfr.org/nnfr/research/pv_chi.html; Kersti Yllo,
Truth About Domestic Violence: A Falsely Framed personal communication.
Issue" in Social Work, 32(6), 1987. 72. See Richard Gelles, "Domestic Violence: Not an
67. Susan Steinmetz, "The Battered Husband Even Playing Field;' and "Domestic Violence
Syndrome" in Victimology, 2, 1978; M. D. Pagelow, Factoids;' both available from Minnesota Center
"The 'Battered Husband Syndrome': Social Against Violence and Abuse, www.mincava.umn.
Problem or Much Ado About Little?" in Marital edu. See also Kimmel, " 'Gender Symmetry~'
Violence, N. Johnson, ed. (London: Routledge and 73. Bachman and Saltzman, "Violence Against
Kegan Paul, 1985); Elizabeth Pleck, Joseph Pleck, Women," p. 6; Straus and Gelles, Physical
M. Grossman, and Pauline Bart, "The Battered Violence in American Families. Given that
Data Syndrome: A Comment on Steinmetz's Schwartz's estimate of the actual rates is exactly
Article" in Victimology, 2, 1978; G. Storch, "Claim the same as that used earlier by journalist Armin
of 12 Million Battered Husbands Takes a Beating" Brott, I wonder if he would say that we ought to
in Miami Herald, August 7, 1978; Jack C. Straton, consider this "the unfortunate behavior" of a few
"The Myth of the 'Battered Husband Syndrome"' crazy women.
in Masculinities, 2(4), 1994; Kerrie James, "Truth 74. See, for example, Kersti Yllo, "Through a Feminist
or Fiction: Men as Victims of Domestic Violence?" Lens: Gender, Power, and Violence" in Current
in Australian and New Zealand Journal of Family Controversies on Family Violence, R. J. Gelles
Therapy, 17(3), 1996; Betsy Luca!, "The Problem and D. Loseke, eds. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
witli 'Battered Husbands'" in Deviant Behavior, 16, Publications, 1993).
1995, pp. 95-112. 75. Neil Jacobson and John Gottman, When Men
After the first edition of tliis book was published, Batter Women (New York: Simon & Schuster,
I became increasingly distressed that social science 1998), p. 36.
research was being so badly misused for political 76. C. Saline, "Bleeding in the Suburbs" in
ends. So I undertook an attempt to thoroughly Philadelphia Magazine, March 1984, p. 82; Straus
investigate the case of "gender symmetrY:' See et al., Behind Closed Doors; R. L. Hampton, "Family
Michael Kimmel, "Gender Symmetry in Domestic Violence and Homicides in the Black Community:
Violence: A Substantive and Methodological Are They Linked?" in Violence in the Black
Research Review" in Violence Against Women, Family: Correlates and Consequences (Lexington,
8(11), November 2002, pp. 1332-1363. Useful data MA: Lexington Books, 1987); R. L. Hampton
can be found in Callie Marie Rennison, Intimate and Richard Gelles, "Violence Towards Black
Partner Violence and Age of Victim, 1993-1999 Women in a Nationally Representative Sample of
(Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Black Families" in Journal of Comparative Family
Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2001). Studies, 25(1), 1994.
68. See Kerrie James, "Trutli or Fiction;' which found 77. Noel Cazenave and Murray Straus, "Race, Class,
the same results in a sample of Australian and New Network Embeddedness and Family Violence: A
Zealand couples. Search for Potent Support Systems" in Straus and
530 NOTES
Gelles, Physical Violence in American Families; EPILOGUE
Pam Belluck, "Women's Killers Are Very Often 1. See Judith Lorber, Breaking the Bowls: Degendering
Their Partners" in New York Times, March 31, 1997, and Feminist Change (New York: W. W. Norton,
p. B1. 2005) ; and Lisa Brush, review of Lorber in
78. Cited in Stephenson, Men Are Not Cost Effective, Contemporary Sociology, 35(3), 2006, p. 246.
p. 300; Dorie Klein, "Violence Against Women: 2. Kate Millett, Sexual Politics (New York: Random
Some Considerations Regarding Its Causes and House, 1969).
Elimination'' in The Criminal Justice System and 3. Floyd Dell, "Feminism for Men'' in The Masses,
Women, B. Price and N. Sokoloff, eds. (New York: February 1917, reprinted in Against the Tide:
Clark Boardman, 1982), p. 212. Profeminist Men in the United States, 1776-1990
79. James Messerschmidt, Masculinities and Crime (A Documentary History), M. S. Kimmel and
(Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1993), T. Mosmiller, eds. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992).
p. 185; Elizabeth Stanko, "The Image of Violence" 4. Robert Jay Lifton, The Protean Self (New York:
in Criminal Justices Matters, 8, 1992, p. 3. Basic Books, 1994). See also Cynthia Fuchs
80. Myriam Miedzian, Boys Will Be Boys: Breaking the Epstein, "The Multiple Realities of Sameness and
Link Between Masculinity and Violence (New York: Difference: Ideology and Practice" in Journal of
Doubleday, 1991), p. 298. Social Issues, 53(2), 1997.
Sources for Chapter
Opening Art
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531
Index
Abbott, John S. C., 156 religion and, 244, 246, 248 America as a Civilization
Abercrombie Kids, 399 sexuality and, 332-333, 438 (Lerner), 159
Abortion, 63, 160, 180, 188, wages of, 281, 282, 283f, American Academy of
420,468 286t, 286f Pediatrics, 198
Ackard, Diann M., 426 women's position compared American Association of
Acker, Joan, 130-131, 133 with, 120, 270 University Women
Acquaintance rape, 470 in the workplace, 262, 264, (AAUW), 208,212,232
Addams, Jane, 156 270-272,273,287,292 American Civil Liberties
Adler, Freda, 458 Age Union, 232
Adler, Roy Douglas, 306 criminal offenders by, 456f American Psychiatric
Adolescence/adolescents. divorce and, 190 Association, 48, 90, 10 I
See Youth friendship and, 383 American Psychological
Adonis Complex, 401 genderand,125-127 Association, 399, 449
Adoption studies, 41-42 homicide rates by, 457f American Religous
Advertising, 345, 350-351 media and, 345 Landscape, 246
Affective individualism, 154 midlife crisis, 124-125 American Society of Plastic and
Affirmative action, 121,197,305 sexuality and, 439 Reconstructive Surgeons
Afghanistan of video gamers, 360 (ASPRS), 405, 406
gender inequality in, 78 violence and, 456 American Sociological
sexual assault of female troops wages and, 284, 285 Association, 56
in, 468 Age of Consent Act of The American Womans Home
Africa 1891,332 (Beecher and Stowe), 155
AIDS-HIV in, 442 Agents of socialization, 123 Amherst College, 219
circumcision in, 71, 73 Aggravated assault, 449 Amish cult, 336, 337f
market economy of, 65 Aggression. See Violence/ Amygdala, 37
African Americans aggression Anal sex, 424
AIDS-HIV in, 442 Agnes (trans woman), 140-142 Anal stage of psychosexual
body image issues in, 399-400 Ahrons, Constance, 188 development, 88-89
brain research, 33 AIDS-HIV, 39-40, 73,127,422, Anaphrodisiacs, 439
domestic violence and, 478, 479 441-444, 446 Anderson, Cameron, 267
education and, 218, 231, 232 prevalence and distribution of, Androgenital syndrome
family life of, 159 442, 443f (AGS), 45-46
feminism and, 340 sex education effect on rates Androgyny, 110- 111, 484-485
friendship and, 382-383 of, 421 Andropause, 45
health and, 444 Alexander, Richard, 27 Angier, Natalie, 163
homicide rate in, 453 Alexithymia, 431 Animist religions, 235
housework division in, 169 Allen, Paula Gunn, 78 Anorexia nervosa, 399,401, 402
incarceration rate for, 455 Allen, Woody, 418-419 Anorgasmia, 432
lesbianism in, 187 Alliance theory, 66 Anterior hypothalamus, 40
the media and, 354 Almeida, David, 13 Anthony, Albert, 71
out-of-wedlock births in, 5-Alpha reductase, 51, 138 Anthony, Susan B., 206
152, 180 Alyha, 78 Anthropomorphic
politics and, 3 l 6f, 317 Amato, Paul, 190, 193 hyperbole, 29, 55
533
534 INDEX
Antifeminists, 341 Baron, James, 279- 280 Birth weight, brain development and,
Antipornography feminism, 339, 415 Baron-Cohen, Simon, 38 35- 36
Antisocial personality disorder, 45 Bartkowski, John, 241 Bisexuals, 81 - 82, 404,479
Aphrodisiacs, 83 Bates, Vincent M., 33 Black Skin, White Masks (Fanon), 332
Arab Spring, 333, 335 Bathroom discrimination, 129- 130, 129f Blackwell, Elizabeth, 248
Aranda people, 81 327, 328, 330/ Blackwell, Samuel, 248
Arapesh people, 60, 62f 437- 438 "Battered husband syndrome;' 475 Blair, Cherie, 308- 309
Arendt, Hannah, 122 Baumeister, Roy, 30 Blair, Tony, 308- 309
Argentina, female heads of state in, 312 "Beards, Breasts, and Bodies" (Dozier), 437 Blankenhorn, David, 180, 181, 183
Aristotle, 374 Bearman, Peter, 42, 422 Bleier, Ruth, 35
Arizona State University, 165 Beauty, 408 Block, Jack, 193
Aronson, Amy, 357, 358 Beauty myth, 396- 404 Block, Jeanne, 193
Arquette, Rosanna, 126 defined, 398 Bly, Robert, 181
Arrest rates, 449, 460 standards for men, 400- 403 Bobbitt, Lorena, 415,475
Arson, 456 standards for women, 396- 400 Body, 396- 447. See also Health; Sexuality
Arthur, Michelle, 278- 279 The Beauty Myth (Wolf), 357 changing, 404- 407
As Nature Made Him : The Boy Who Was Beauvoir, Simone de, 375, 462 politicization of the, 240- 241
Raised as a Girl (Colapinto), 47 Bebin, Mary, 165 standards for men, 400- 403
Ashcroft, John, 53 Bechdel, Alison, 356 standards for women, 396- 400
Asian Americans Beckwith, Jonathan, 38 Body piercing, 404
cosmetic surgery and, 408 Beecher, Catharine, 155 Boeringer, Scott, 473
religion and, 248 Behan, Peter, 34, 35, 43 Bogaert, Anthony, 50
wages of, 283f 286t, 289/ Belgium Bolivia, female heads of state in, 312
in the workplace, 273 sexuality in, 440 "Bona fide occupational qualification''
Assaults, 449 the workplace in, 291 standard, 271
Associated Press poll on ordination of Bell, Shannon Elizabeth, 331 Bonobos, 28
women,249 "Beloved women;' 78 Books
Association of Theological Schools, 248 Bern, Sandra, 110- 111 children's, 348- 350
Atlas, Charles, 400 Bern Sex Role Inventory (BSRI), 110, 11 Ot novels, 355- 357
Attention deficit disorder, 213 Benedict XVI, Pope, 234, 249 Booth, Alan, 193
Auchus, Richard, 139 Beneke, Tim, 472 Boston College, 169
Augustine, Saint, 243 Benevolent exploitation, 269 Bourgeois, Roy, 250
Australia Bengal, colonialism in, 332 Boushey, Heather, 302
AIDS-HIV in, 442 Benjamin, Jessica, 97 Boxer, Barbara, 276
child care sharing in, 171 Benokraitis, Nicole, 269 Boy Scouts, 216
female heads of state in, 312 Berdache. See Two-spirit people Boy-centered stories, 350
importance of economic prosperity Bergman, Abraham, 198 Brady, Tom, 370
in, 26 Bernard, Jessie, 163, 256, 345, 352 Brain
teen birth rates in, 179/ Best, Joel, 217 friendship differences and, 376
the workplace in, 291 "Best interests of the child" standard, of gay people, 38- 41, 53- 54
Austria, sexuality in, 440 195, 196 gender differences in, 2, 3, 23, 33- 38
The Authoritarian Personality (Adorno, Bethlehem Steel Corporation, 286 gray and white matter of, 38
et al.), 107 Bettelheim, Bruno, 97 hemispheric function in, 34- 36, 43, 52
Authoritarianism, 107- 108, 109 Bible, 237, 238, 246, 256- 257 LeBon's theory of, 22
Avengers T-shirts, 107 Bielby, William, 279- 280 video games' effects on, 364
Aymara people, 236 Bin Laden, Osama, 336 Brain, Robert, 388
Binge eating, 401,402 Brandon, Teena, 137/
Babcock, Barbara Allen, 305 Biological determinism, 19- 57. See Brawdy, Tawnya, 212
Baboons,28- 29,451 also Brain; Evolutionary theory; Bray, Robert, 53
Baby boom, 158, 162 Hormones Brazil
Bacha posh, 78 central premise of, 2- 3 corporal punishment banned in, 198
Bachelet, Michelle, 312 culture and, 58- 59 female heads of state in, 312
Bailey, J. Michael, 41 - 42, 53 differential socialization sexuality in, 440
Ball, Edward, 8 compared with, 4 Breasts
Ballard, Martha, 166 primary areas of research on, 23 augmentation of, 398, 405
Bambara people, 83 social constructionism compared with, concern with appearance of, 396- 398
Bangladesh 114- 115, 128 Breedlove, Marc, 41 , 49- 50
female heads of state in, 312 Biological essentialism, 52- 54 Brehm, Sharon, 377
female legislators in, 313 Biological principle, 24 Brescoll, Victoria, 315
Bank, Barbara, 381 Birdwhistell, Raymond, 153 Bridges, Tristan, 469
Bank of Montreal, 292 Birth control, 188 Bridget Jones's Diary (Fielding), 356
"Barack and Curtis" (campaign video), Catholics and, 239 Brines, Julie, 175
321- 322 debate on coverage for, 324- 325 Brodkin, Karen, 58- 59, 65
Barbie, 204,401,404 liberating effects of, 63, 420 Bromances, 385
Bari people, 31 - 32 restrictions on, 160, 180 Bronte, Charlotte, 264
Barnett, Rosalind Chait, 106, 145, 178 virginity pledges and, 424 Bronte sisters, 6
Index 535
Brooks, Gary, 431 Celibacy, 243, 249, 250 China
Brooks, Tim, 354 Census Bureau, U.S., 188, 272, 287 leg lengthening in, 408
Brown, Antoinette, 248 Center for Talent Innovation, 167 love in, 393
Brown, Chris, 477/ Center for Work and Family (Boston the workplace in, 268
Brown v. Board of Education a/Topeka, College) , 169 Cho, Seung-Hui, 344
232,270 Centerfold syndrome, 431 Chodorow, Nancy, 97, 98, 387
Browning, Robert, 373 Centers for Disease Control, 466 Christ, Carol, 238
Bruckner, Hannah, 42 Chafe, William, 157 Christian Marriage and Religion Research
Bryn Mawr College, 226, 227 Chaga people, 82 Institute, 244
Bryson, Bethany, 353- 354 Charlie Hebdo, terrorist attack on, 362 Christian Science, 253
Buddhism, 236, 243, 246, 257 Chaudhary, N., 64 Christianity, 234, 257
Buffery, A. W. H., 35 Chenchu people, 83 evangelical, 239, 243, 244, 250, 253
Bulimia, 399,401,402 Cher, 126 gender differences and inequality
Bullying, 219, 220- 221, 457 Cherlin, Andrew, 178,180,192,196 in, 240
Bunch, Charlotte, 54 Cherokee Indians, 78 homosexuality and, 244
Bundchen, Gisele, 398 Chicago, homicide rate in, 457/ Muscular, 251 - 252, 253- 254, 256
Bunting, Josiah, III, 229, 341 Chick flicks, 345 sexuality and, 243, 244
Burka/burqa, 240, 340 Chick lit, 345, 356 The Cinderella Complex (Dowling), ll - 12
Bush, George H. W., 317,322, 323f 462 Child abuse, 197- 199, 458,460 Circumcision, 70- 73
Bush, George W., 176,231,317,318, Child allowance, 175 female, 71 - 73, 71/
319,462 Child care, 325 male, 70- 71, 72- 73, 465
Business Week survey on wages, 287 culture and, 62, 67- 68 Citadel, 99, 229, 297
Buss, David, 26, 429 day care "problem;' 177- 179 City Slickers (film), 124/
Byron, Lord, 373, 374 fathers and, 67- 68, 154- 155, 166, Civil Rights Act of 1964, 297,304
169- 176, 171/ Civil Rights Act of 1991, 292
Caldwell, Mayta, 377 gendered politics of, 165- 177 Clancy, Tom, 355
A Call to Men, 342 historical perspective on, 154- 155 Clark, Kenneth, 232
Cambridge University, 186 political office entry and, 314 Clarke, Edward, 22, 205
Campbell, Helen, 166 separation of housework from, 176 Class. See Social class
Canada Child custody, 195- 197 Cleaver, Eldridge, 333
child care sharing in, 171 Child support, 182, 196 Clerical work, gender composition of,
divorce rate in, 189t Children. See also Family; Fathers/ 277- 278
female heads of state in, 312 fatherhood; Mothers/motherhood; Clinton, Bill, 318, 319- 320, 412,462
housework division in, 168 Parents/parenting; Youth Clinton, Hillary, 3ll- 312, 318, 320, 321/
marriage rate in, 189t average time spent on activities, 170/ Clitoridectomy, 46, 71. See also Female
sexuality in, 440 in cohabiting households, 161 circumcision
teen birth rate in, 179/ decline in number of, 160 Clitoris, 31, 89, 96
the workplace in, 291 decline in well-being of, 200 Code ofManu, 245
Cancian, Francesca, 389, 394 divorce and, 152, 190- 195, 194/ Co-education, 205- 206, 230
Capital punishment, 465, 480 evolutionary theory on nurturing of, 28 Cognitive development theories
Capitalism, 63- 65 of gay and lesbian couples, 185- 187 feminist criticism of, 98- 101
Caplan, Paula, 101 as homicide victims, 458, 460 overview of, 94- 96
Caplow, Theodore, 159 housework performed by, 170 Cognitive filters, 94, 95, 96
Carlson, Daniel L., 175 investing in the future of, 200- 201 Cohabitation, 152, 161, 175
Carlson, Tucker, 322 isolated, ll 5 Cohen, Dov, 466
Carneal, Michael, 222 marital happiness decline Cohen, Ted, 382
Carter, Betty, 195 and,164,165 Cohn, Carol, 463
Carter, Jimmy, 128, 305, 462 the media and, 347, 348- 352 Cohn, Samuel, 278
Castration, 44 minutes spent engaged with by family Colapinto, John, 47
Castration complex, 89, 96 structure, 185/ Coleman, James, 215- 216
Castronova, Edward, 363 out-of-wedlock births, 152, 180- 181 Colgate, Florence, 397
Catalyst Pyramid, 290/ parental violence against, 197- 199, College
Catholic Church, 239 458,460 actual and projected numbers for
gap between priests and Catholics parents' sex life hindered by, 439, 440/ enrollment, 218/
in, 249/ percentage living with both gender disparities in, 216- 219
gender difference and inequality parents, 160 hazing in, 221
in, 245 percentage who do activities, 348/ hook-up culture on campuses, 424- 426
gender gap in religiosity, 246 as a political issue, 323 sexual assaults on campuses, 430,
homosexuality and, 243, 244 sexual abuse of, 458, 469- 470 468,470
pedophile priest scandal in, 249, 469- 470 violence among, 460 sexual behavior of men in, 472- 473
women's ordination prohibited in, women's career growth stymied by, 308 single-sex, 227- 230
248- 250 women's wages decreased by, 285 teachers' gender, 225- 227
Cattell, J. McKeen, 223- 224 Chile transgender protection on campus, 328
"Caveman Masculinity" (Mccaughey), 25 female heads of state in, 312 women's, 206, 225- 227
Cayler, Tom, 366 views of"traditional" family in, 162 Collegial exclusion, 269
Cazenave, Noel, 478- 479 Chimpanzees, 28 Colonialism, 332- 333
536 INDEX
Colonization, 69 Culture, 58- 86 Dickinson, Emily, 166
Color-coding of boys and girls, 23, 97 division oflabor and, 61 - 63, 68, 69 Differential socialization, 2
Coltrane, Scott, 67- 68, 162,201 friendship and, 388 biological determinism compared
Columbia University, 21 7 gender definition variations in, 59- 61 with, 4
Columbine High School shootings, 221, gender dimorphic and polymorphic, 51 central premise of, 3- 4
222- 223 gender fluidity and, 75- 78, 80 occupational sex segregation and, 273
"Coming of Age and Coming Out love and, 392- 393 Digit ratio studies, 49- 50
Ceremonies Across Cultures" masculinity and femininity defined by, Dinnerstein, Dorothy, 97
(Herdt) , 80 3, 4, 58, 59, 60- 61, 65, 67, 116 Discourse on Friendship (Taylor) , 375
Coming of Age in Samoa (Mead), 60 rape and, 68, 69- 70 Division oflabor. See Gendered division
Commission on Opportunity in rituals of gender in, 70- 75, 80 oflabor
Athletics, 233 sexual diversity and, 80- 83 Divorce, 188- 195, 200,341,392. See also
Commission on Violence and Youth, 449 sexuality and, 82- 83, 437- 438 Child custody
Communication, gendered, 142- 145 values of cross-cultural research, 86 best predictors of, 190
Companionate marriage, 388, 389 violence and, 59, 60- 61, 451 gender differences in impact of,
Comparable-worth criteria, 290, 304 Cunnilingus, 417,425,429 189- 191
Complex or undetermined intersex, 138 "Cutting Through Words" (ritual), 73 historical perspective on, 156- 157
Compositional fallacy, 281 rates of, 152, 153, 162, 188, 189t
Compulsive masculinity, 109 The Da Vinci Code (Brown), 237 religion and, 240
Computer programming, gender Dabbs, James, 43 remarriage following, 152, 163, 188
composition of, 278 "Daddy days;' 200 violence against women following,
Condescending chivalry, 269 "Daddy track;' 132, 172, 309 475- 476
Confirmation bias, 125 Dalton, Katherine, 29 "Do It All for Your Public Hairs"
Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS), 476 Daly, Mary, 256, 258 (Mora),403
Confucianism, 257 Daniels, Susanne, 353 Dobesova, Michaela, 450
Congenital adrenal hyperplasia Darwin, Charles, 20, 21 - 22, 24 Dobson, James, 52
(CAH), 49, 138 Date rape, 473 Dog attacks, based on sex of walker, 450
Connell, R. W.,10- 11, 119 Dating, 26, 390, 424, 425 "Doing" gender, 133- 142, 147,459
Connery, Sean, 126 Davenport, William, 82 "Doing Gender" (West and Zimmerman),
Conservative Judaism, 248 Davidson, Lynne, 377- 378 133
Considerate domination, 269 Davis, Alexander, 353- 354 "Doing Gender, Determining Gender"
Coontz, Stephanie, 164, 307 Davis v. Monroe County Board of (Westbrook and Schilt), 136
Cooper, Anderson, 267 Education, 212 Domestic violence, 339, 474- 480. See also
Cooper, Frank Rudy, 322 Dawkins, Richard, 24 Intimate partner violence
Cooper, James Fenimore, 355- 356 Day care "problem;' 177- 179 arrest rates for, 449
Cooper, Kieran, 106 Dean, Craig, 185 against children, 197- 199, 458,460
Coppen, Alec, 48 "Deceptive distinctions;' 11- 13, 218 against men, 458,460, 474- 477
Cornell University, 51 Declaration of Sentiments, 341 Donato, Katharine, 278
Corporal punishment, 154, Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), 183 Dorner, Gunter, 39, 48- 49
197- 198, 199 Degendering, 484- 486 Double bind, 286
Corpus callosum, 37 Del Campo, Robert, 278- 279 Double standard. See Sexual double
Correll, Shelley, 214,215 Dell, Floyd, 487- 488 standard
Cose, Ellis, 444 Deloitte Global Center for Corporate Douglas, Michael, 125
Cosmetic surgery, 398, 405- 408, 405f Governance, 291 Douglass, Frederick, 312, 341
Costa Rica, female heads of state in, 312 "Delusional Dominating Personality Dowling, Colette, 11- 12
Cottingham, Marci, 276, 277 Disorder (DDPD)': 101, 102f Dozier, Raine, 437
Coulter, Ann, 354 Demo, David, 200 Drinking, 444- 446
Courtenay, Will H., 444 Democracy in America (Tocqueville), 1 Driscoll, Mark, 253
Couvade, 73, 74f Democratic Party, 247,315, 316/, 317, Drunk driving, 444, 455, 459
Covenant marriage, 194- 195 318, 441 DTR (Define the Relationship)
Craniology, 34 Demos, John, 154- 155 conversation, 425
Crichton, Michael, 355 Denmark Duberman, Lucille, 377- 378
Crime child care sharing in, 171 Duke University, 226,320
fatherlessness and, 181, 182 female heads of state in, 312 Dunn, David, 364
gender of, 453- 457 out-of-wedlock births in, 181 Dupont Corporation, 172
women and, 458- 461 Dentistry, gender composition of, 273, 276f Durant, Henry Fowle, 204, 206
Crittenden, Danielle, 358 Depression, 38 Durden-Smith, Jo, 36
Croatia, female heads of state in, 312 The Descent of Man (Darwin) , 21 Durkheim, Emile, 33
Crockett, Davy, 317 Descent theory, 65- 66 Duster, Troy, 56
Crosby, Faye, 310 DeSimone, Diane, 36 Dwight, Theodore, 156
Cross-dressing, 135, 138 Dewey, John, 87, 229- 230 Dyble, Mark, 64
Crow Indians, 76 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Dyslexia, 213
The Crying Game (film), 135 Mental Disorders (DSM), 48, 101
Crystal, Billy, 411 Diamond, Milton, 47 Eagleton Institute of Politics (Rutgers
Cubans, domestic violence and, 478 Diaz v. Pan American World Airways, University), 314
Cult of compulsive masculinity, 109 280,328 Earle, Alison, 305
Cult of domesticity, 458 Dickens, Charles, 6 East Bay society, 82
Index 537
Eastwick, Paul, 26 Equal Rights Amendment, 339 Family values, 151,152,153,154, 162,
Eating disorders, 399- 400, 401 - 402 Erectile dysfunction, 420 200,305
Ecofeminism, 257- 258 Estrogen Family wage, 154
Education, 204- 233, 270,280, 327- 328. the gay brain and, 41 Family-friendly workplace policies,
See also College gender differences and, 43, 46, 48 175- 176, 200,290, 306,325
athletics equality in, 232- 233 life expectancy and, 126 Fanon, Franz, 332
boys' performance and behavior in, in males, 3, 43 Farrell, Warren, 112, 122, 292- 293
213- 219 Etero people, 81 Fatherless America (Blankenhorn), 181
bullying issue, 219, 220- 221 Ethic of care, 98- 100 Fatherlessness, 181- 183, 188
co-education, 205- 206, 230 Ethic of justice, 98- 100 The Fathers Book (Dwight), 156
divorce and, 190 Ethiopia, life expectancy gap in, 127 "Father's rights" organizations, 196
toward gender equality in, 231 - 232 Ethnocentrism, 82 Fathers/fatherhood, 308- 310
gender policing in, 219- 223 European Medical Association, 399 absent, 181 - 183, 188
the gendered classroom in, 206- 213 Europe/European Union of babies born to teen mothers, 180
"hidden curriculum" in, 205, 216 AIDS-HIV in, 442 in Bari people, 31 - 32
for manhood, traditional, 205- 206 child care in, 178 child abuse and, 198
school shootings, 221 - 223, 344,448 child support in, 196 child care and, 67- 68, 154- 155, 166,
single-sex schools/classrooms, 227- 232 corporal punishment banned in, 198 169- 176, 171/
teachers' gender, 223- 227, 224t female heads of state in, 312 child custody and, 195- 197
wages and, 282, 284 religion in, 254 cognitive development theories on, 98
women discouraged from pursuing, 22, the workplace in, 273, 306 culture and, 61 , 67- 68
34, 205- 206 Evangelical Christianity, 239,243,244, "daddy track" and, 132, 172, 309
women encouraged to pursue, 87, 250, 253 declining importance of, 156
204,206 Eves Rib (Pool), 37 divorce and, 190
Education Act of 1972, 232 Evolutionary imperative, 24- 27 grandfathers and, 116
Education Department, U.S., 348 Evolutionary psychology, 23, 27- 32, historical perspective on, 154- 155, 156,
Education Sector, 217 416, 429 158- 159
Edwards, John, 319 anthropomorphic language housework and, 166, 169, 171
EEOC v. Sears, 280- 281 used in, 29 psychosexual development theory on,
Egalia School, 209 central premise of, 26 89, 90, 98
Ego, 88, 89 as a "just-so story;' 31 single fathers, 13, 153, 161, 181
Egypt, social movements in, 334 Evolutionary success, 27 stay-at-home fathers, 164, 173- 174
Ehrenreich, Barbara, 446, 451 Evolutionary theory, 20- 33, 450- 451. testosterone decrease and, 45
Ehrhardt, Anke, 45- 46 See also Evolutionary imperative; Fausto-Sterling, Anne, 23, 35, 46
Ehrlich, Paul, 32 Evolutionary psychology; FBI, 466
Eisenberg, Marla, 426 Sociobiology Fellatio, 417, 429
Eisenegger, Christoph, 43 Expressive roles, 109, 158 Felmlee, Diane, 382
Eisler, Riane, 84- 85 Female circumcision, 71 - 73, 71/
Elder abuse, 458, 460 Facebook, 143,267,309,367,369 Female genital mutilation (FGM), 72, 73
Eliot, Lise, 35, 38 Fagan, Pat, 244 Female Power and Male Dominance
Ellis, Amy, 211/ Failing at Fairness (Sadker and Sadker), (Sanday), 235
Ellison, Peter, 45 207, 208- 209 Feminine mystique, 154
Ellison v. Brady, 301 Fallon, Conan, 354 The Feminine Mystique
Elsesser, Kim, 267 Falwell, Jerry, 252 (Friedan), 159, 357
Ely, Robin, 292, 294 Families and Work Institute, 169, 172 Femininities, 10, 112, 118
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 114 Family, 151- 203. See also Children; Femininity
Emily's List, 315 Domestic violence; Fathers/ aging and, 126
Eminem,220 fatherhood; Housework; Marriage; cultural definitions of, 3, 4, 58, 59,
Emotion work, 266- 267 Mothers/motherhood; Nuclear 60- 61, 65, 116
Emotional intimacy, 375 family education and, 220
Emphasized femininity, 11, 15, 119 brief history of, 154- 163 emphasized, 11, 15, 119
Endocrinological research, 23. See also "constructed problems" of globalization and, 331
Hormones contemporary, 177- 187 hormonal influences on, 43
Engels, Friedrich, 63 of the future, 199- 203 through the life course, 123
Engineering, gender differences in, 216, gay and lesbian, 183- 187 M-F test, 91 - 93, 107
217f 225 gender socialization and, 12- 13 plural meanings of, 10- 11
England. See Great Britain/United love in, 394 psychosexual development theory
Kingdom resilience of, 152 on, 90, 98
England, Paula, 270 "traditional;' 157- 158, 159, 162- 163 redefining, 485, 487, 488
Entrapment (film), 126 types of households (2012), 16lt sex-role theory on, 107- 113, 117- 119
Episcopal Church, 248 withdrawal of public support from, 160 sexuality and, 411
Epstein, Cynthia Fuchs, 11, 52, 218 work and (see under Work/workplace) social constructionist perspective on,
Equal Employment Opportunity Family and Divorce Mediation Council of 116- 117
Commission (EEOC), 271, 280- 281 , Greater New York, 194 the workplace and, 266
286, 297, 298, 299, 303, 304 Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, Feminism/feminists
Equal Marriage Rights Fund, 185 305- 306 basic beliefs of, 339
Equal Pay Act of 1963, 286 Family Research Council, 178 biological essentialism and, 52
538 INDEX
Feminism/feminists (Continued) divorce rate in, 188, 189t Gender. See also Men; Women
cognitive development theories life expectancy gap in, 127 aging and, 125- 127
vs., 98- 101 marriage rate in, 189t of crime, 453- 457
crime blamed on, 458 sexuality in, 439/ depoliticization of, 119
divorce blamed on, 190 teen birth rate in, 179/ "doing;' 133- 142, 147,459
eco-, 257- 258 views of "traditional" family in, 162 of friendship, 374- 376
family values debate and, 154 the workplace in, 291 , 306 homicide rates by, 457, 457/
fatherlessness blamed on, 182 Franklin, Christine, 212 increasing visibility of, 5- 9
first wave of, 337 Frederick II, Emperor, ll5 as an institution, 127- 133
focus of scholarship, 5- 6 Freedman, David, 29 through the life course, 122- 125
lesbianism and, 338, 434 Freud, Sigmund, 19, 39, 87- 91, 93, 94, life expectancy by, 445/
liberal, 339, 340 260, 332, 451. See also Post-Freudian love and, 389- 390
the media and, 353 theories; Psychosexual development as a "managed property;' 147
men and, 340- 342, 488 theory as plural, ll8
multicultural, 340 Friedan, Betty, 159, 357 politics of, 322- 327
politics and, 336- 342 Friedel, Ernestine, 82 as relational, ll8
pornography opposed by, 339, 415 Friedman, Howard, 444 rituals of, 70- 75, 80
on power, 121 Friendly harassment, 269 sex distinguished from, 3
psychosexual development theory Friends (television program), 418 as situational, ll9
vs., 94, 96- 98 "Friends with benefits;' 424, 426, 427/ Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach
radical, 339- 340, 415 Friendship, 374- 389, 394- 395 (Kessler and McKenna), 134
religion and, 234, 239, 255- 258 cross-sex, 381, 382, 383- 384, 386- 387 Gender conformity. See also Gender
second wave of, 338, 357 factors other than gender affecting, nonconformity
sex roles expanded by, 120 382- 387 in education, 209, 219- 223
sexuality and, 179,421 , 424 gender differences in, 376- 382 homosexuality as, 54, 432- 437
third wave of, 338 gender of, 374- 376 rape and, 471
on the traditional family, 159 historical gendering of, 387- 389 in the workplace, 266
women's magazines criticized by, 357 Frost, Robert, 203 Gender convergence
Feminist anthropology, 84- 85 Frustration-aggression hypothesis, 30,451 in health, 444
Feminization of poverty, 181 Fukuyama, Francis, 85 increase in, 484
Feminized love, 376, 390- 391, 394, 420 Full faith and credit clause of the in the media, 368- 370
Fennema, E., 210/ Constitution, 183 in sexuality, 426- 432
"Feral children;' ll5 Functionalism, 62 Gender development, 87- 113. See also
Ferguson, Marjorie, 357 Fundamentalism, 247 Cognitive development theories;
Fernandez de Kirchner, Cristina, 312 Fur trade, 65 Psychosexual development theory;
Fielding, Helen, 356 Furstenberg, Frank, 196, 200- 201 Sex-role theory
Fincham, Frank, 426 differences in, 101 - 106
Fineman, Martha, 197 Gagnon, John, 437, 469 M-F test of, 91 - 93, 107
Finkel, Eli, 26 Galinsky, Ellen, 169 Gender differences. See also
Finklehor, David, 473 Gallup Polls, 162 Interplanetary theory of gender
Finland Galupo, M. Paz, 384 difference
female heads of state in, 312 Game Over (documentary), 362 among vs. between the sexes, 10, 14, 36,
importance of economic prosperity Gamergate, 362 101, ll2, 281
in, 26 Gandhi, Indira, 128, 455 biological explanations for, 54- 57
violence in, 460 Gang rape, 69, 70,146, 471 brain research on, 2, 3, 23, 33- 38
First-wave feminism, 337 Garfinkle, Harold, 140- 142 culture and, 58- 86
Fisher, Helen, 84 Gates, Bill, 344 as "deceptive distinctions;' ll - 13, 218
Fisher, Terri D., 413 Gay gene, search for, 41 - 42, 53 developmental, 101- 106
Fisk, N., 46 Gay liberation movement, 120, 433- 434 divorce and, 189- 191
Fitzgerald, Louise, 300 Gay men evolutionary theory on, 20- 23, 25
Fluke, Sandar, 324 AIDS-HIV in, 441 - 442 the family and, 200, 203
Flynn, Frank, 267 brain research on, 39- 41, 54 in friendship, 376- 382
Flynt, Larry, 364 in the clergy, 248, 249 future of, 483, 484- 485
Focus on the Family, 52, 94 domestic violence and, 479 gender inequality and, 4- 5, 59, 484- 485
Fonda, Jane, 126 eating disorders in, 401 in the hookup culture, 425- 426
Foote, Mary Hallock, 166 family life and, 183- 187 hormonal influences on, 2- 3, 42- 48
Ford, Harrison, 125- 126 food claimed to produce, 46 institutions and, 129- 131, 132- 133, 147
Ford, Maggie, 232 friendship and, 386- 387 love and, 391
Forster, E. M., 395 gender conformity in, 54, 432- 435 as mean differences, 13- 15, 14/
Fortune 100 companies, 287 genetic research on, 41 - 42, 53 the media and, 345,347, 348, 352
Fortune 500 companies, 287, 301, 306 hormones and, 48- 50 politics of, 15- 16
Foucault, Michel, 39, 389 religion, manhood, and, 254 primary theories on reasons for, 1- 5
Fourteenth Amendment, 326 tattoos and, 404 religion and, 20, 238- 244, 245, 248
Fox, Robin, 26, 65- 66 violence against, 480 in sexuality, 412- 417
France in the workplace, 271 - 272 social constructionist perspective on, 5,
ban on religious head coverings in Gaylin, Willard, 265 129- 131, 132- 133, 147
schools, 241 , 242 Gelles, Richard, 199,473 social media and, 367
Index 539
Gender dimorphic cultures, 51 Gender neutrality Gilder, George, 433
Gender discrimination consequences of illusion of, 8 Gilligan, Carol, 98- 101, 144,214
biological explanations for, 23 of institutions, presumed, 127, 131, 133 Gilligan, James, 456, 465
in education, 212- 213 of joint child custody, apparent, 197 Gillis, John, 156
in religion, 258 in the workplace, assumption of, 15- 16 Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, 256, 257, 278
against transgender persons, 327- 328 Gender nonconformity, 140. See also Gimbutas, Marija, 84
in the workplace, 268, 270- 272, Gender conformity Gingrich, Newt, 23,162,313
292- 293, 304 homosexuality seen as, 90, 93 Girl-centered stories, 350
Gender diversity. See Sexual diversity sex-role theory on, 108 Girl-watching, 374
Gender fluidity, 75- 78, 80 in the workplace, 266 "Glass ceiling;' 270, 286, 287, 290- 293,
Gender gap "Gender Penalties Revisited" (study), 284 295, 303, 306
in education, 214 Gender policing, 219- 223 circumstances fostering, 290- 291
in elected officials, 312- 315 Gender polymorphic cultures, 51 in politics, 311, 312
narrowing of, 484 Gender queer (GQ) identity, 138- 140, 327 Glass Ceiling Commission, 287, 292, 297
in religiosity, 245- 247, 246f 251,255 Gender reassignment, 134 "Glass cellar;' 293
in sexuality, 416, 420- 421 Gender roles. See Sex-role theory "Glass escalator;' 295- 296
in violence, 460 "Gender Rules" (Felmlee), 382 Globalization, 331,333
in voting, 315- 317 "Gender Similarities Hypothesis" Gnostic Gospels, 257
in wages (see Wage gap) (Hyde), 104 God. See Religion
in the workplace, 263/ Gender socialization Goddess traditions, 84- 85, 235- 238, 258
Gender identity family experiences and, 12- 13 Goffman, Erving, 10, 130
biological explanations for, 42, 47 fashion and, 107 Goldberg, Steven, 43, 52, 58
cognitive development theories of, through the life course, 122- 123 Goldilocks dilemma, 398
94- 96 Gender stereotypes, 15 Goldspink, David, 126
hormonal influences on, 43, 45 education and, 229 Golf courses, study of, 278- 279
institutions and, 127 the media and, 350- 351, 353 Good, Glenn, 431
M-F test, 91 - 93, 107 psychosexual development theory The Good Divorce (Ahrons) , 188
psychosexual development theory of, and,90 "Good Guys with Guns" (Stroud), 453
87- 88, 89- 91 , 96 sexual orientation and, 39 Goode, William J., 390
rigid notions of, 105 in video games, 362- 363 Google, 309
sex-role theory on, 106- 109, 127, 133 in the workplace, 268,281,287,292 Gordon, George. See Byron, Lord
social constructionist perspective Gendered division oflabor, 2 Gore, Al, 318, 319/
on, 127 culture and, 61 - 63, 68, 69 Gore, Tipper, 319/
Gender inequality evolutionary theory on, 25- 26 Gorillas, 28
biological explanations for, 20, 54- 55 in hunting-and-gathering societies, Gottfredson, Michael, 449
circumcision linked to, 71 62, 375 Gottrnan, John, 300
cosmetic surgery and, 406, 407 prevalence of, 260- 262 Gould, Stephen Jay, 28
culture and, 58, 68, 78 private property and, 63 Grabar-Kitarovic, Kolinda, 312
differential socialization and, 4 Gendered love. See Love, gendered Grandfathers, 116
divorce and, 188- 190 Gendered political divide, 318 Grateful Dad (workshops), 170
domestic violence and, 199 Gendered processes, 130- 131 Gray, John, 1, 35, 37, 190, 306
in education, 207- 209, 214, 219- 220 Gendered violence. See Violence, Great Britain/United Kingdom
eliminating, 483- 485 gendered child care sharing in, 171
the family and, 200, 203 "Gender-fuck" identity, 327 crime by age and gender in, 456/
gender differences and, 4- 5, 59, Genes/genetics divorce rate in, 188, 189t
484- 485 anthropomorphic hyperbole on, 55 eating disorders in, 399
health and, 446 "gay gene" research, 41 - 42, 53 female heads of state in, 312
hunter-gatherers inaccurately limits to influence of, 32 homicide rate in, 453
blamed for, 64 sexuality and, 28 housework division in, 169
institutions and, 127,129, 132- 133, 147 Genital mutilation importance of economic prosperity
love and, 391 female, 72, 73 in, 26
the media and, 345, 347, 352 male, 70, 71 marriage rate in, 189t
religion and, 236, 238- 244, 245,248,259 Genital reconstruction surgery, 406- 407 teen birth rate in, 179
in same-sex relationships, Germany the workplace in, 291,306
neutralization of, 185 divorce rate in, 188, 189t Great Goddess, 235
separation of spheres and, 487- 488 female heads of state in, 312 Great Mother, 236, 256
sexuality and, 411, 426, 430 marriage rate in, 189t Great Recession of 2008, 302
social constructionist perspective on, 5, sexuality in, 439f 440 Greek mythology, 236
127,129, 132- 133, 147 teen birth rate in, 179/ Greeley, Andrew, 201
social media and, 367 views of"traditional" family in, 162 Green, Richard, 46, 433
violence and, 452, 460- 461 the workplace in, 291 Greenblat, Cathy, 393
warfare, bonding, and, 65- 66 Gerson, Judith, 132 Gregor, Thomas, 68, 69
in the workplace, 132- 133, 268- 270, Gerson, Kathleen, 12, 201 - 202 Griffin, Susan, 471
296- 297, 303- 307 Geschwind, Norman, 34, 35, 43 Growing Up Straight (Wyden and
Gender inversion, 54 Gesquiere, Laurence, 29 Wyden), 432
Gender Neutral Job Comparison Gettler, Lee, 67 Grybauskaite, Dalia, 312
System, 304 G.I. Joe, 401, 402/ Guevadoches, 51
540 INDEX
Gun ownership, 453 Hispanics/Latino/as Housework
Gurian, Michael, 37 domestic violence and, 478, 479 decrease in time spent on, 168, 176
"Gyn/Ecology;' 258 education and, 218,232 in gay and lesbian households, sharing
health and, 444 of, 185
Hacker, Andrew, 215 incarceration rate for, 455 gendered politics of, 165- 177
Hacker, Helen, 120 politics and, 316f 317 men's happiness increased by, 169
Hafen, Christopher A., 33 puberty meaning in, 403 overreporting of, 167
Halim, May Ling, 105 religion and, 244, 248 separate domains of, 166- 167
Hall, G. Stanley, 205 sexuality and, 438- 439 separation of child care from, 176
Hamlet (Shakespeare), 448 wages of, 281,282, 283f 288f 289/ sex life and, 175
Han, Hongyun, 208 in the workplace, 262, 273, 287 Hubbard, Ruth, 55
Hannah, Daryl, 126 Historically black churches, 244, 246 Hughes, Karen, 176
Hanson, Sarah, 175 HIV-AIDS. See AIDS-HIV Hughes, Langston, 260
Hardy, Thomas, 6- 7 Hochschild, Arlie, 165, 167, 266 Humbolt University, 48
Harlan, Heather, 125 Hofstadter, Richard, 55- 56 Hummer, Tom A., 364
Harrington, Brad, 169 Homicide, 85, 453- 455, 456, 466 Hungary, views of "traditional" family
Harris, Eric, 222- 223 arrest rates for, 449 in, 162
Harris, Mark, 125 child victims of, 458, 460 Hunting-and-gathering societies, 64f
Harris, Marvin, 65 of intimates, by sex of victim, 467/ 83- 84,85
Harris, Shanette, 383 rate of, 453, 454f 455f 457/ child care in, 67
Harris poll on sexual harassment, 298 spousal,460,474,479 division oflabor in, 62, 375
Harris v. Forklift, 301 women as perpetrators of, 458- 459 gender equality in, 64
Harrison, William Henry, 317 Homophobia, 185 separation of spheres in, 25- 26
Hartmann, Heidi, 296 friendship in men and, 375, Huntrnann, Nina, 362
Harvard Business School, 292, 294 384- 386, 389 Hurlbert, Anya, 23
Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, 467 in schools, 220, 222 Hurt, Byron, 321 - 322
Harvard Medical School, 38 sex-role theory on, 108, 109 Hussein, Saddam, 463
Harvard Men Against Rape, 342 sexual behavior affected by, 436- 437 Hwame, 78
Harvard University, 226 Homosexuality. See also Bisexuals; Gay Hyde, Janet, 36, 101, 104, 210/
Hate crimes, 328 men; Lesbians; LGBT community Hymenoplasty, 407
Havlicek, Zdenek, 450 in the animal kingdom, 28, 80 Hypermasculinity, 67, 108, 294
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 355 biological essentialism on, 52- 54 Hypothalamus, 39, 40, 41
Hayes, Jeffrey, 305 brain research on, 38- 41 , 53- 54
Hazing, 221 co-education viewed as a risk factor Iceland, female heads of state in, 312
Health, 441 - 447 for, 205 Id, 88
gendered, 444- 447 "conversioil' movement and, 53 Imperato-McGinley, Julliane, 51
sex and, 441 - 444 culture and, 80- 82 Impulsive hyperindividualism, 116
Health, Education, and Welfare declassified as a mental illness, 90, 101 Imus, Don, 322
Department, U.S., 350 emergence as a distinct identity, 39 In a Different Voice (Gilligan), 98- 100
Health care coverage, 324- 325 food claimed to produce, 46 Incarceration. See Prisons/incarceration
Heath High School shooting, 222 as gender conformity, 54, 432- 437 Income. See also Wages/earnings/salaries
Hedberg, Allan, 456 gender inversion linked to, 54 divorce and, 190
Hegemonic masculinity, 10, 15, 119 genetic research on, 41 - 42, 53 education and, 219t
The Heidi Chronicles (Wasserstein), 387 hormones and, 48- 50 inequality in, 268- 270, 281
Heiman, Julia, 426 M-F test, 93 mathematics scores by, 211/
Helbig, Marcel, 224 pedophilia distinguished form, 470 India
Hemicastration, 71 psychosexual development theory on, female heads of state in, 312
Hemingway, Ernest, 355 88, 90- 91 importance of economic prosperity
Herdt, Gilbert, 51, 80- 81 religion and, 243- 244 in, 26
Heresy, 237 ritualized, 80- 81 religion in, 245
Hermaphrodites. See Intersexuality/ sex-role theory and, 118, 119 views of"traditional" family in, 162
intersexed persons "warning signs" of, 94 Indiana University, 31,364
Hess, Amanda, 244 Homosocial reproduction, 265 Indiana University School of
Hess, Beth, 377 Hong Kong, sexuality in, 439/ Medicine, 36
Hewlett, Sylvia, 308 Hooking up, 424- 426 Indonesia, female heads of state in, 312
Heymann, Jody, 305 Hooters restaurant chain, 271 Industrialization, 156, 195,388,389
"Hidden curriculum;' 205,216 Hopkins, Ann, 291 - 292 The Inevitability of Patriarchy
Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, 230 Hopkinsv. Price Waterhouse, 291 - 292 (Goldberg) , 52
High Fidelity (Hornby) , 356 Hormones, 23. See also Estrogen; Infanticide, 29, 30, 458, 460
High-speed chases, 456 Testosterone female, 60, 65, 81
Hijab, 242- 243, 242/ gender differences and, 2- 3, 42- 48 male, 61
Hijra community, 79/ homosexuality and, 48- 50 Infibulation, 71. See also Female
Hill, Anita, 297- 298, 304 intersexuality and, 50- 51 circumcision
Hilton, Phil, 359 Hornby, Nick, 356 Infidelity, 416
Hinduism, 236, 244, 245, 247 Horney, Karen, 96 Inheritance, 63- 65
Hirschi, Travis, 449 Hostile environment sexual Initiation rituals, 70, 78, 97
His Religion and Hers (Gilman), 256 harassment, 299 Tnstagram, 367, 369
Index 541
Institute for Experimental Endocrinology Italy "Just-so stories"
(Humbolt University), 48 divorce rate in, 189t gender-equal societies as, 85
Institutions homicide rate in, 453 sociobiology and evolutionary
gender as, 127- 133 marriage rate in, 189t psychology as, 31
the media as a gendered, 345- 346 sexuality in, 439/ war-homosexuality link as, 49
the media as a gendering, 346- 348 the workplace in, 291
religion as a gendered, 247- 250 Kadushin, Alfred, 296
social constructionist perspective on, Jacklin, Carol, 101 Kalnin, Andrew, 364
127- 133, 147 Jackson, Andrew, 317,462,464 Kane, Jonathan, 210, 211/
the state as a gendered, 329- 336 Jackson, Joe, 433 Kanter, Rosabeth Moss, 12, 130, 294- 295
violence and, 127- 128, 461 - 463 Jacobs, Jerry, 264 Kantor, Kaufman, 478
Instrumental roles, 109, 158 Jacobs, John, 253 Karoshi, 303
"Intermediate scrutiny" standard, 271 , 326 Jahj aga, Atifete, 312 Katz, Jack, 459
Internet Jamaica, female heads of state in, 312 Kaufman, Debra, 241
gender differences in use of, 369 James, Henry, Jr., 7 Kellaway, Lucy, 306
pornography on, 363, 364, 365 James, Henry, Sr., 251 Kellogg Foundation, 444
social media, 366- 367, 367/, 368/ Janssen, Erick, 416 Kendall, Laurel, 257
Interplanetary theory of gender Japan Kennedy, John F., 367
difference, vii, 1- 2, 4, 11, 145, 190, divorce rate in, 189t Keraki people, 81
373, 483, 484 eating disorders in, 399 Kerry, John, 319, 322
in education, 204 housework division in, 168 Kessel, Neil, 48
importance of, 14- 15 love in, 392- 393 Kessler, Ronald, 13
sexuality and, 410, 411 marriage rate in, 189t Kessler, Suzanne, 134, 142
in the workplace, 306 sexuality in, 427, 439/, 440, 441 Kessler-Harris, Alice, 281
Interruptions, 144 teen birth rate in, 179/ Kilbourne, Jean, 357
Intersexuality/intersexed persons views of"traditional" family in, 162 "Killing Us Softly" (Kilbourne), 357
(hermaphrodites), 142 the workplace in, 303 Kimura, Doreen, 38
categories of, 138 Japan Family Planning King, Larry, 344
"gay brain'' theory on, 54 Association, 427 Kinsbourne, Marcel, 38
hormone studies on, 50- 51 Al-Jazeera, 243 Kinsey, Alfred, 42, 83, 205, 410, 413,
incidence of, 134, 139 JBCMen, 253 426,438
pseudohermaphrodites, 58, 138 Jefferson, Thomas, 317 Kinship system, 109
Intimate partner violence, 199, 466, 480. Jehovah's Witnesses, 243, 246 Kinsley, Michael, 305
See also Domestic violence Jencks, Christopher, 228 Kirby, Erika, 310
Intimate relationships. See Friendship; Jenson, Lois, 299 Klebold, Dylan, 222- 223
Love Jesus, 237, 249 Klein, Randy, 406
Invisibility concern for women, 238 Kluckhohn, Clyde, 80, 83
of masculinity, 6- 9, 131 efforts to remasculinize, 251,252, Kluckhohn, Richard, 71
of privilege, 7- 9 253- 255 Kohlberg, Lawrence, 94- 95, 98
of tokens, 294 feminist views attributed Komorovsky, Mirra, 375
of workplace inequality, 296 to, 255- 256 Koniag people, 80
IQ tests, 34 Jesus, CEO, 254 Konigsberg, Ruth, 168
Iran Jewett, Milo, 206 Korea
hostage crisis, 128 Jobs Related Almanac, 293 cosmetic surgery in, 405
social movements in, 333, 335 Johns Hopkins University, 192 female heads of state in, 312
women's progress in, 334 Johns Hopkins University Medical religion in, 257
Iraq Center, 47 Kornrich, Sabino, 175
sexual assault of female troops in, 468 Johnson, Allan, 470 Kosovo, female heads of state in, 312
U.S. invasion of, 462 Johnson,Lyndon,462 Koss, Mary, 430, 470, 472- 473
women's progress in, 334 Johnson, Virginia, 434, 435 Kronenberger, William, 364
Ireland, female heads of state in, 312 Johnston, Levi, 151 - 152 Kruk, Edward, 191
"Iron Maiden;' 398 Johnston, Sherry, 151 Ku Klux Klan, 254
"Is Coeducation Injurious to Girls?" Joint child custody, 196- 197 !Kung bushmen, 85
(Dewey), 87 Journal of the American Medical
Isabelle (isolated child), 115 Association (JAMA) Labarthe, Jean Christophe, 35
Islam, 234, 340 on bullying, 220 Labor Statistics, U.S. Bureau of, 168
female circumcision in, 72 on sexuality, 412 Lad lit, 345, 356- 357
gender differences and inequality in, Judaism, 234, 236, 335- 336 Ladd, Everett C., 316
238, 240, 241, 242- 243, 245 clergywomen in, 248 Ladd, Katie, 254
gender gap in religiosity, 246 gender differences and inequality in, Ladies Home Journal poll on
homosexuality and, 243 240,241 - 242,245 housework, 168
purdah in, 73, 75, 398 gender gap in religiosity, 246, 247 Lamb, Michael, 186
social movements and, 334- 336 homosexuality and, 243 Lamon, S., 210/
Isolated children, 115 Jude the Obscure (Hardy) , 6 LaMunyon, Craig W., 33
Israel Judge, Timothy, 285 Landmann, Andreas, 224
female heads of state in, 312 Junia, 238 Lango people, 80
Orthodox Judaism in, 241, 335- 336 Justice Department, U.S., 470 Langurs, 28
542 INDEX
Larceny-theft, 459 Lifton, Robert Jay, 488 The Manly Christ (Sunday), 251
Lasch, Christopher, 201 Limbaugh, Rush, 324- 325, 354 "Manly-hearted women;' 78
The Last of the Mahicans (Cooper), 355 Lincoln, Abraham, 317 Manson, Marilyn, 135
Latino/as. See Hispanics/Latino/as Lindberg, Sara, 2 llf Marbles, Jenna, 368
"Latte pappas;' 171 Ling, Yazhu, 23 Marcotte, Amanda, 477f
Latvia, female heads of state in, 312 Linn, Marcia, 211f Marind-anim people, 81
Laumann, Edward, 441,469 Lithuania, female heads of state in, 312 Marital rape, 473- 474, 476
Law of the excluded middle, 11 Livingston, Beth, 285 Mark, Kristen P., 416
Laws of nature, 21 Lloyd, Elisabeth, 31 Market economy, 65
Laxton, Beck, 106 Locker room syndrome, 406 Marquesa people, 82
Layng, Anthony, 24 Long, James, 22- 23 Marriage. See also Divorce; Same-sex
Leacock, Eleanor, 65 Loomis, Laura Spencer, 193 marriage
Lean In (Sandberg), 267,303 Lopata, Helena, 117 companionate, 388, 389
"Lean In Together" campaign, 303 Lorber, Judith, 76, 285,451,484 covenant, 194- 195
Leaning in, 292, 303 Lotus, 292 culture and, 60
LeBon, Gustav, 22 Love, 30, 373, 387- 395 decline in happiness of, 200
Lee, Robert E., 356 feminized, 376, 390- 391, 394,420 education and, 208
Lefkowitz, Bernard, 471 gender and, 389- 390 friendship and, 383
Leg lengthening, 408 gendered, American style, 390- 394 gendered, 163- 165
Lepowsky, Maria, 85 historical gendering of, 387- 389 historical perspective
Lerner, Gerda, 155 Lugo, William, 361,366 on,154,157
Lerner, Max, 159 Lutheran Church, 248 housework inequality increased
Lesbians Lyle, Katy, 212 by, 168
African-American, 187 Lynch, Dennis, 406 love and, 389- 390, 392, 393- 394
"bed death'' in, 434 Lynching, 332 median age at first, 157, 160, 160f
brain research on, 39, 41 Lynd, Helen, 159 percentage by gender, 188
in the clergy, 248 Lynd, Robert, 159 percentage of never-married persons,
domestic violence and, 479 153/, 161
family life and, 183- 187 M Butterfly (film), 135 "Plan B" for, 201 - 202
feminism and, 338, 434 Macaques, 28 private property and, 63- 65
friendship and, 386- 387 Maccoby, Eleanor, 101, 195- 196 rapein, 473- 474,476
gender conformity in, 54, 432, Mace, R., 64 rates of, 152, 153, 157, 189t
433, 434- 435 Machihembra, 51 religion and, 239, 240
genetic research on, 42 MacKinnon, Catharine, 297, 411 resilience of, 153
hormonal studies on, 50 Mad Men (television program), 268,269 sex and, 163, 175, 426, 428/, 435,
psychosexual development theory Magazines, 357- 359 439- 440, 440f
on,90 Mai, Mukhtar, 69 testosterone depressed by, 45
tattoos and, 404 Mainardi, Pat, 165- 166 working mothers happier in, 178
violence against, 480 Malaysia, sexuality in, 439f Mars and Venus in the Workplace
Lesotho, parental leave not offered in, Male and Female (Mead), 60 (Gray) , 306
305,325 Male bonding, 65- 66, 68, 81 , 374 Martin, Lynn, 299
Lessing, Doris, 373 Male domination, 3 Martineau, Harriet, 58
Leupp, Katrina, 175 biological essentialism on, 52 Martino, Wayne, 209,215
Levant, Ronald, 431 bonding and, 65- 66 Maruoka, Etsuko, 242
LeVay, Simon, 28, 39- 40, 53, 55 circumcision linked to, 71, 72 Marvel Comics, 107
Lever, Janety, 267 culture and, 59/, 63- 66, 69, 83- 85 Marx, Karl, 63, 480
Levine, Martin, 432 the family and, 200 Marx, Patricia, 405
Levinson, Daniel, 376 housework and, 166 Mary Magdalene, 237
Levi-Strauss, Claude, 66 in nonhuman primates, 28 Masai people, 83
Levy, Jerre, 35, 36 politics of, 15- 16 Masculine bravado, 452
Lewinsky, Monica, 318,412 prevalence of, 2 Masculinities, 10, 112, 118
Lewis, C. S., 375 private property and, 63- 65 Masculinity
Lewis, Robert, 375 psychosexual development theory aging and, 126
Lewontin, Richard, 27- 28 on,98 AIDS-HIV and, 442- 444
LGBT community, 326- 327 rape and, 69, 146 compulsive, 109
Liberal feminism, 339, 340 religion and, 235, 245, 257 cultural definitions of, 3, 4, 58, 59,
Liberated sexism, 269 warfare and, 65- 66 60- 61, 65, 67, 116
Liberia Male gaze, 406, 407 current debate about, 9
female heads of state in, 312 Male menopause, 45 education and, 220
parental leave not offered in, 305, 325 Male Sex Role Identity model, 111 globalization and, 331
Libya, social movements in, 335 Male Sex Role Strain model, 111 hegemonic, 10, 15, 119
Life expectancy, 126- 127, 163, 173, Malinowski, Bronislaw, 438 hormonal influences on, 43
444,445f Malleus Maleficarum, 243 hyper-, 67, 108, 294
"Life Satisfaction Across Nations" (York Malta, female heads of state in, 312 invisibility of, 6- 9, 131
and Bell), 331 Mandel, Ruth, 314 through the life course, 123
Life Without Father (Popenoe), 181 The Manhood of the Master (Sunday), 251 M-F test, 91 - 93, 107
Lifetime Television, 353, 354 The Manliness of Christ (Sunday), 251 plural meanings of, 10- 11
Index 543
of politics, 317- 320 Men. See also Fathers/fatherhood; Mikvah,241
psychosexual development theory Gender entries; Male domination; Miles, Catherine Cox, 91, 92, 93, 107
on,98 Masculinity Milhausen, Robin R., 416
redefining, 485, 487, 488 adornment of, 74 Military. See also Citadel; Virginia
religion and, 251 AIDS-HIV in, 442- 444 Military Institute
sex-role theory on, 107- 113, 117- 119 arrest rates for, 449 transgender persons banned from
social constructionist perspective body image issues in, 400- 403 service, 328
on, 116- 117 body politicization and, 241 women in, 23, 63, 326
violence and, 451,452,464,465 brain research findings, 33- 38 Mill, John Stuart, 483
war and, 462- 463 cosmetic surgery for, 405, 406 Miller, Amanda, 175
the workplace and, 265- 266, divorce impact on, 191 Miller, Claire Cain, 225
293,294 as domestic violence victims, 458, 460, Miller, Monica, 361
Masculinization of sex, 409, 420 474- 477 Miller, Stuart, 384- 385
Mason, Karen Oppenheim, 307 eating disorders in, 401 - 402 Miller, Walter, 108- 109
Mason, Katherine, 400 educated women valued by, 208 Millett, Kate, 485
Massachusetts State Department of education for manhood, traditional, Million Man March, 487
Education, 211 205- 206 Mills, C. Wright, 114
Masters, William, 434, 435 in the family, historical perspective on, Minangkabau people, 85
Masturbation, 413,421, 422/, 431,438 154- 163 Minyan, 240
Mate guarding, 32 feminism and, 340- 342, 488 Miranda, V., 261
"Maternal instinct;' 29, 60 gender politics and, 340- 342 Miss America pageant, 398
Maternity leave, 200. See also life expectancy of, 126- 127 Miss Universe pageant, 328, 329/
Parental leave marriage benefits, 163- 164, 392 MIT,217
Mathematics, gender differences in, married, percentage of, 188 Mitsubishi Motor Corporation, 299
11- 12, 36,204, 210- 211/, 214- 215, never-married, 153/, 161 MMORPG (massively multiplayer online
226t, 231 , 232 power and, 121- 122 role-playing games), 360, 363
Mathews, Vincent, 364 rape of, 30, 466 Mnookin, Robert, 195- 196
Matriarchal religions, 236. See also religious re-engagement of, 251 - 255 Mocumbi, Pascoal, 442
Goddess traditions retirement and, 126 Mohammed, 238
Matrilinearity, 85 sexual harassment of, 298, 301, 303 Mohave Indians, 78
Mattox, William R., 178 sexual peak myth, 123- 124, 439- 440 "Mommy track;' 132, 305, 309
Maudsley, Henry, 206 stress, reactions to, 13, 37- 38, 165, Mondale, Walter, 462
Maume, David, 295 376- 377 Money, John, 45- 46, 47
Maxim, 358- 359 in teaching, 223, 224, 225, 226 Mongolia, life expectancy gap in, 127
May, Samuel B., 240 tokenism and, 295- 296 Monkeys,44
McCain, John, 320 top 12 reasons for having sex, 429 Monogamy
McCartney, Bill, 253 wage decline for, 269- 270, 281 - 282 in the animal kingdom, 28
Mccaughey, Martha, 25 workplace discrimination claims of, evolutionary theory on, 24- 25, 28, 32
McClintock, Barbara, 128 271, 292- 293 in gay men and lesbians, 435
McClintock, Martha, 32 "Men and Women Are from Earth" male bonding and, 66
McGraw, Phil (Dr. Phil), 344, 354 (Barnett and Rivers), 145 private property and, 65
McKenna, Wendy, 134 Men and Women of the Corporation Monopolization behavior, 32
McKibbin, William, 33 (Kanter), 12, 294- 295 Monotheism, 234, 236, 240, 243, 248
McMillan, Laurie, 368 "Men as Women and Women as Men" Monroe, Marilyn, 398
McNeil, Mike, 271 (Lorber), 76 Montaigne, Michel, 374- 375
Mead, Margaret, 60- 61 , 62/, 67, 151, Men Can Stop Rape (MCSR), 342 Montana Men Against Rape, 342
437- 438,464 Men's Health, 175,359,400,441 Moore, Zachary T., 413
Mead, Sara, 217- 218 Men's huts, 68, 85 Mora, Richard, 403
Media, 343- 370 "Men's liberation;' 375 Morgan, Robin, 339
children and, 347, 348- 352 Menstruation, 21, 26, 29, 31, 32, 48, 82,241 Mormons, 243
convergence and equality increase in, Merit Systems Protection Board, U.S., 301 Mortality gap, 446
368- 370 Merkel, Angela, 312 Mosier, Kristine, 364
as a gendered institution, 345- 346 Mertz, Janet, 210, 211/ "Mother to Son" (Hughes), 260
as a gendering institution, 346- 348 Messerschmidt, James, 147,480 Mothers/motherhood
pervasiveness of, 343- 344 Meston, Cindy, 429 in Bari people, 31 - 32
pornographic (see Pornography) Meyer, Doug, 480 child abuse and, 198
print, 355- 360 M-F test, 91 - 93, 107 child care and, 154- 155, 166, 169
social, 366- 367, 367/, 368/ Michaels, Stuart, 437, 469 child custody and, 195- 197
television (see Television) Michelet, Jules, 410 child-to-parent violence and, 199
video games, 344, 360- 363, Michels, Robert, 469 cognitive development theories on, 98
361/, 364 Middle East culture and, 60- 61
Media Education Foundation, 362 female circumcision in, 72 day care "problem" and, 178- 179
Media Research Center, 358 gender fluid cultures in, 78 divorce and, 190- 191
Medial zone of the hypothalamus, 39 sexuality in, 439 gender socialization and, 12- 13
Medved, Caryn, 164 Middletown, 159 historical perspective on, 154, 156
Mehinaku people, 68 Midlife crisis, 124- 125 housework and, 166
Meir, Golda, 128,455 Migliano, A. B., 64 infanticide and, 29, 458, 460
544 INDEX
Mothers/motherhood ( Continued) Nature vs. nurture debate, 2- 5, 23, 47. Oral sex, 83, 416- 417, 424, 426- 427,
"maternal instinct" belief, 29, 60 See also Biological determinism; 428- 430,439
"mommy track'' and, 132, 305, 309 Differential socialization Oral stage of psychosexual
psychosexual development theory on, Navajo Indians, 76 development, 88
89, 90, 97- 98 Nell (film), ll5 Orenstein, Peggy, 209, 227
sex-role theory on, 109 Nelson, Mariah Burton, 370 Organization for Economic Cooperation
single mothers, 13, 152,157, 181- 183 Neolithic societies, 84- 85 and Development (OECD), 261,268
as sole "calling;' 156 Netherlands Orgasm, 244,410,412, 425- 426, 432
teenage, 179- 181, 179f, 422 child care sharing in, 171 cultural differences in, 82
workplace participation rate, 262, divorce rate in, 189t evolutionary theory on, 31, 33
263/, 264f marriage rate in, 189t faking, 427- 428
Muehlenhard, Charlene, 418 teen birth rate in, l 79f increased attention to, 409
Mullet, Sam, 336, 337f the workplace in, 291 political affiliation and, 441
Multicultural feminism, 340 Neuebauer, Martin, 224 simultaneous, 419
Mundugumor people, 60- 61, 62f Neumark-Sztainer, Dianne, 426 vaginal, myth of, 421
Muscle dysmorphia, 401 , 403 Neurosis, 88 Orgasm gap, 425- 426
Muscular Christianity, 251 - 252, 253, "New lad" magazines, 358- 359 The Origin of the Family, Private Property
255,256 New Testament, 237, 238 and the State (Engels), 63
Muslims. See Islam New York University, 34 Original sin, 243, 249, 256
Muxe, 76- 77 New Zealand Orthodox Judaism, 240, 241 - 242, 243,
The Myth of Masculinity (Pleck), 111 AIDS-HIV in, 442 245,248,335- 336
female heads of state in, 312 Osten-Sacken, Thomas von der, 72
Nadle, 76 the workplace in, 291 Out-of-wedlock births, 152, 180- 181
Nangurai, Priscilla, 73 Newsweek poll on spousal earnings, 266 "Overdoing Gender" (Willer), 108
Nardi, Bonnie, 84 Nielsen, Arrah, 285 Overing, Joanna, 452
Nardi, Peter, 386 Nigeria, religion in, 245 Ovulation, 31, 32, 81
National Academy of Sciences, 182, 449 Nisbett, Richard, 466 Own, Jesse, 426
National Assessment of Educational Noah, Joakim, 370 Oxfam,467
Progress, 227 Non-binary (NB) identity, 138- 140 Oxytocin, 37, 376- 377
National Association for Single Sex Public Nonrelational sex, 431 - 432
Education, 230 Noonan, K. M., 27 Pachamama, 236
National Clearinghouse on Marital and NORC sex survey, 417,421 Packwood, Robert, 299
Date Rape, 473 North County (film), 299 Padgug, Robert, 55
National College Women Sexual Northeastern University, 225 Page, A., 64
Victimization Study, 470 Norway Paige, Jeffrey, 73, 75
National Committee on Pay Equity, 282 female heads of state in, 312 Paige, Karen, 73, 75
National Congregations Study, 250 importance of economic prosperity Pakistan
National Family Violence Survey, 478- 479 in, 26 female heads of state in, 312
National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, 53 life expectancy gap in, 127 life expectancy gap in, 127
National Health and Social Life Survey, 244 out-of-wedlock births in, 181 Palin, Bristol, 151 - 152
National Institute for Mental Health, 178 parental leave policies in, 200 Palin, Sarah, 151 - 152, 320- 321
National Institutes of Health, 138, 177 the workplace in, 291,306 Palin, Todd, 151
National Intimate Partner and Sexual Novels, 355- 357 Palmer, Craig, 27, 30, 467
Violence Survey (NISVS), 466, 468, Nuclear family Paltrow, Gwyneth, 125
478/, 479, 479f emergence of, 63- 65 Paoletti, Jo, 97
National Nursing Shortage Reform and idealization of, 157- 158 Papua New Guinea, parental leave not
Patient Advocacy Act, 276 love expression in, 394 offered in, 305, 325
National Organization for Men Against percentage of children living in, 160 Parental leave, 175,200, 305, 308- 310, 325
Sexism (NOMAS), 342 women's status and, 67 Parents/parenting. See also Children;
National Organization for Women, 232 Nursing, gender composition of, 276- 277 Family; Fathers/fatherhood;
National Pay Inequity Awareness Day, 282 Mothers/motherhood; Single
The National Report on Work and Oakley, Ben, 222 parents/parenting
Family, 306 Obama, Barack, 3ll, 320, 321 - 322 child-to-parent violence and, 197
National Study of the Changing O'Barr, William, 145 evolutionary theory on, 28
Workforce, 295 Obesity, 400- 401 gay and lesbian, 185- 187
National Survey of Families and O'Byrne, Rachel, 468 gender expectations of children, 170
Households, 168 Occupational sex segregation, 132- 133, historical perspective on, 154
National Television Violence Study, 351 272- 281 parent-to-child violence and, 197- 199,
National Transgender Discrimination Occupational system, 109 458,460
Survey, 327- 328 O'Connor, John Cardinal, 234 Park Geun-hye, 312
National Woman Suffrage Association, 337 Oedipal crisis, 89, 98,109,451 Parsons, Talcott, 109, 158
Nation-state, 63, 65 Oedipus the King (Sophocles), 89 Pascoe, C. J., 106
Native American cultures, 76, 77- 78, "On Friendship'' (Montaigne), 374- 375 Passages (Sheehy), 124
80,83 "On the Genesis of the Castration Paternity leave, 175, 200, 309. See also
A Natural History of Rape Complex in Women" (Horney), 96 Parental leave
(Thornhill and Palmer), 27 On the Origin of Species (Darwin), 21 Paul, Pamela, 365
Natural selection, 21, 22 Online College Social Life Survey, 425 Paul, Saint, 239, 240, 257
Index 545
Pay Equity Act of 1963, 304 sex and, 440- 441 Protestantism, 240, 244, 246, 248,
Pay-equity schemes, 304 social movements and, 333- 336, 250,251, 255- 256
Pearson, Patricia, 458 333f 334f Prozac, 37
Pedophilia, 249, 469- 470 the state as a gendered institution, Pseudohermaphrodites, 58, 138
Pedulla, David, 271 - 272 329- 336 Psychology Today study on male body
Peiss, Kathy, 132 survey on women leaders, 313f image, 401
Penile enlargement surgery, 406 talk time, by gender, 314- 315 Psychosexual development theory, 87- 91
Penis, 50,134,412,419 transgender persons and the law, feminist challenges to, 94, 96- 98
Penis envy, 89, 96- 97 327- 328 overview of, 88- 91
Penn State University, 390 The Politics of Reproductive Ritual (Paige Psychosis, 88
Peplau, Letitia, 377 and Paige), 73 Puberty, 42- 43, 51,403
Pepperdine University, 306 Pollack, William, 214 Publix Super Markets, Inc., 287
Perelberg, Rosine, 243 Pollitt, Katha, 267, 356 Puerto Ricans, domestic violence and, 478
A Perfect Murder (film), 125 Polo ad campaign, 214 Pulpit and Pew study, 250
"Performing Gender on You Tube" Polygamy/polygyny, 60, 61 Purdah, 73, 75, 398
(Wotanis and McMillan), 368 Polyvocality, 358 Pyke, Karen, 147
Persad-Bissessar, Kamla, 312 Pool, Robert, 37
Peters, Joan, 179,310 Pope, Harrison, 401 Al Qaeda, 336
Petersen, Jennifer, 211f Popenoe, David, 181, 182, 190 Quayle, Dan, 53
Petty, Tom, 466 Pornified (Paul), 365 Quechua people, 236
Pew Forum on Religion and Public Pornography, 344, 363- 366 Quid pro quo sexual harassment, 298- 299
Life, 244 feminist opposition to, 339,415 Quindlen, Anna, 167
Pew Research Center for the People and p erceptions and attitudes influenced Quinn, Beth, 374
the Press, 168, 244 by, 365 Quinn, Jane Bryant, 12
Phallic stage of psychosexual p ervasiveness of, 365 Quinn, Zoe, 362
development, 89 size of U.S. industry, 363 Quota systems, 306
Phallocentrism, 365,412,418 women as consumers of, 363 Qur'an, 238
Phelan, Jo, 190 Portugal, female heads of state in, 312
Philippines, female heads of state in, 312 Pospisilova, Dagmar, 450 Race and ethnicity. See also specific racial
A Physician's Counsels to Woman in Health Post-Freudian theories, 94- 96 and ethnic groups
and Disease (Taylor), 20- 21 Poverty, 157, 160, 181, 182 beauty standards and, 397, 408
Piaget, Jean, 94 Power biological theories on, 22
Piaroas, 452 domestic violence and, 476, 480 brain research and, 33
Pillard, Richard, 41 - 42, 53 institutions and, 127, 128 domestic violence and, 478- 479,
"Pink Frilly Dresses and the Avoidance of invisiblity of, 9 478f 479f
All Things 'Girly"' (Halim), 105 rape and, 146,472,473 education and, 218, 219t, 231,232,270
Pinterest, 367 sex-role theory on, 119, 120 friendship and, 382- 383
Pipher, Mary, 300 sexuality and, 417 health and, 444
Pittenger, Mary-Jo, 413 social constructionist perspective life expectancy by, 444, 445f
Pittman, Frank, 181 on,121 - 122 marriage and, 161
Plante, Rebecca, 414 Power Team, 253 the media and, 345, 353, 354
Plato, 374 Powerlessness and rape, 472, 473 politics and, 316- 317, 316f
Playboy Bunnies, 271 Preca, Marie Louise Coleiro, 312 sex-role theory on, 108,109,118, 120
Pleck, Joseph, 111, 375 Pregnancy discrimination, 304, 305 sexual orientation and, 187
Plummer, Ken, 436 Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978, 305 sexuality and, 332- 333, 438- 439
PMS. See Premenstrual syndrome Premature ejaculation, 418- 419 transgenderism and, 328
Poland Premenstrual dysphoric disorder, 101 wages by, 282, 283f 286
female heads of state in, 312 Premenstrual syndrome (PMS), 48, 59, 101 the workplace and, 270- 271, 287, 295
religion in, 245 Presidential campaigns/ elections, 317- 322 "Race suicide;' 157
"The Policy Exists but You Can't Really Primary sex characteristics, 134- 135 Racism, 22, 33, 108, 109, 270- 271,
Use it" (Kirby), 310 Primates, nonhuman, 28- 29, 39, 44 332- 333, 382- 383, 397
Politicization of the body, 240- 241 "The Princess" (Tennyson), 155 Radcliff College, 227
Politics, 311 - 342 Princeton University, 217,226 Radiant devaluation, 269
of biological essentialism, 52- 54 Print media, 355- 360 Radical feminism, 339- 340, 415
deep voices preferred by voters, 320 Prisons/incarceration, 30, 453,455,480 Rahman, Qazi, 108
of gender, 322- 327 Private Lessons (film), 126 Ralph Lauren ad campaign, 214
of gender difference, 15- 16 Private property, male domination Ramadan, 238
gender gap in elected officials, 312- 315 and,63- 65 Randall, Tony, 125
gender gap in voting, 315- 317 Privilege, invisibility of, 7- 9 Random Hearts (film), 126
of housework and child care, 165- 177 Prohibition, 251 Rape, 467- 474
life satisfaction and participation in, 331 Promiscuity acquaintance, 470
of male domination, 15- 16 in the animal kingdom, 28 arrest rates for, 449
masculinity of, 317- 320 evolutionary theory on, 24- 25, 27, Cleaver on, 333
men and gender issues, 340- 342 28,31 - 32 cross-cultural explanations of, 68,
ofPMS,48 in gay men, 184- 185 69- 70
redressing the gendered realm Promise Keepers, 253,341 , 487 date, 473
of, 336- 340 Protected classes, 326 by fathers, 468
546 INDEX
Rape ( Continued) Resnick, Michael, 426 Sandberg, Sheryl, 267,303
gang rape, 69, 70, 146,471 Retirement, 126 Santeria, 235
incidence of, 431,466 Reverse discrimination, 121,233,296,341 Sapolsky, Robert, 28, 44, 45
intimate partner, 478J, 479/ Revirgination.net, 407 Sarkeesian, Anita, 362
male victims of, 30, 466 Reynaud, Emmanuel, 412 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 113
marital, 473- 474, 476 Rezac, Petr, 450 Sasha (gender-neutral child), 106
by "normal" men, 470- 473 Rhode, Deborah, 119, 205, 300 Sassier, Sharon, 175
pornography and, 415 Riche, Martha Farnsworthe, 170 Saturday Night Live (television program),
"reproductive strategy" argument, 27, Richmond, Geri, 266 135- 136
29- 30, 69, 70, 145- 146, 467,470 Riesman, David, 228 Saudi Arabia
social constructionist perspective "The Rights and Conditions of Women" female legislators in, 313
on, 145- 147 (May), 240 media in, 343
women's status and, 68, 146, 468 Risman, Barbara, 12- 13, 173, 424 women's progress in, 334
in the workplace, 298 Ritual purification, 241 Savage, Mike, 354
Rape Awareness Week, 481 Ritualized homosexuality, 80- 81 Savic, lvanka, 41
Rape cultures/rape-prone societies, 468 Rituals of gender, 70- 75, 80. See also Sax, Linda, 218- 219
Rape-as-recreation model, 467 Initiation rituals Scarborough, Joe, 322
Rate My Professor (website), 225 Rivera, Mariano, 370 Schilt, Kristen, 136, 280
"The Rating and Dating Complex" Rivers, Caryl, 145 Schmidt, Benjamin, 225
(Waller), 390 Robbery, 449,459 School. See Education
Rating-dating-mating complex, 390, Rockettes, 271 Schroeder, Pat, 314
424,425 Rogers, Laura, 353- 354 Schwartz, Andrew, 143
Ratzinger, Joseph Cardinal. Rohypnol, 83 Schwartz, Christine, 208
See Benedict XVI, Pope Roman mythology, 236 Schwartz, Martin, 476
Rawlings, William, 164 Romney, Mitt, 322, 323/ Schwartz, Pepper, 424
Raye, Martha, 125 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 97, 317 Schwarzenegger, Arnold, 319
Read, Jen'nan Ghazal, 241 Roosevelt, Theodore, 157,216,317,462 Science, gender differences in, 214- 215,
Reading Roper Center, 316 217f, 226, 226t, 227,231,232
gender differences in, 35- 36 Rosaldo, Michelle, 84 Scully, Diana, 471,472
percentage of students at the Rossi, Alice, 52 Searching/or Debra Winger (film), 126
proficient level, 349/ Rousseff, Dilma, 312 Sears, 280- 281
Reagan, Ronald, 462 Rubin, Gayle, 14 Seasons of a Man's Life
Reality makeover shows, 353- 354 Rubin, Lillian, 162 (Levinson et al.), 124
"Reasonable woman" standard, 301 on friendship, 378, 383, 385, 386, The Second Sex (Beauvoir), 375
Reay, Diane, 209 387- 388,394- 395 "Second shift;' 165,173, 176
Reddit, 309, 367 on love, 391 Secondary sex characteristics, 134- 135
Reebok International, 292 on pornography, 365 Second-wave feminism, 338, 357
Reed, Sarah, 187 on psychosexual development theory, 97 Seelye, L. Clark, 206
Reflexive passivity, 116 on sexuality, 411,416,421, 427- 428, 439 Segal, Lynne, 389
Reform Judaism, 248 Rudman, Laurie, 190 Seguino, Stephanie, 235
Reimer, Bruce, 47 Ruskin, John, 481 Seidler, Vic, 465
Reiner, William, 134 Russia Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, 37
Religion, 234- 259 divorce rate in, 188 Semenya, Caster, 139
clergy of, 248- 250 incarceration rate in, 453 Sen, Amartya, 446
gender differences and, 20, 238- 244, love in, 392- 393 Senate bill 739, 276
245,248 the workplace in, 273 Seneca Falls Women's Convention, 336, 341
gender inequality and, 236, 238- 244, Rutgers University, 314 Senegal, female heads of state in, 312
245, 248, 259 Rutz, Jim, 46 "Separate but equal" standard, 229, 232
gender of God, 234, 238 Rwandan genocide, 467 Separation of spheres, 201 , 223,261,486,
as a gendered institution, 247- 250 487- 488
historical gendering of, 235- 238 Sabo, Don, 232 declining support for, 162
monotheistic, 234, 236, 240, 243, 248 Sacks, Karen. See Brodkin, Karen evolutionary theory on, 25- 26
re-engaging men in, 251 - 255 Sadker, David, 207, 208 friendship and, 388, 389
woman-centered spirituality, 238, Sadker, Myra, 207,208 historical perspective on, 155- 156,
255- 258 Safe sex, 441 - 442 157, 158
Religiosity Salini, G. D., 64 love and, 389, 390
gender gap in, 245- 247, 246f, 251,255 Sambia culture, 80- 81 male domination and, 166
same-sex marriage and, 244 "Sambo theory of oppression;' 120 Serotonin, 37- 38
The Reproduction of Mothering Same-sex marriage, 80, 152,153,315, Sesame Street (television program), 350
(Chodorow), 98 326- 327 Seton, Ernest Thompson, 216
Reproductive strategies, 24- 25, 31 - 32. current legal status in U.S., 184/ The Seven Promises of a Promise Keeper
See also Rape, "reproductive strategy" increasing support for, 187, 187/ (McCartney) , 253
argument "problem" of, 183- 185 Sevre-Duszynska, Janice, 250
Reproductive success, 24- 25, 27, 30 religion and, 244, 245/ Sex (biological), 3
Republican Party, 183- 184, 247,315,316, Sammy and Rosie Get Laid (film), 418 Sex and Personality (Terman and Miles), 91
317,318,441 Sanchez-Janowski, Martin, 182 Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive
Reskin, Barbara, 272 Sanday, Peggy Reeves, 68, 69, 70, 85, 235, 467 Societies (Mead), 60, 62/
Index 547
Sex discrimination. See Gender hooking up, 424- 426 health and, 444
discrimination housework impact on, 175 housework and, 169
Sex education, 180, 420- 421 , 422 infidelity in, 416 sexuality and, 438
Sex in Education: or; A Fair Chance for the love and, 387- 389, 390,393 weight and, 399
Girls (Clarke), 22 marriage and, 163, 175, 426, 428/, 435, work and, 178
Sex segregation 439- 440, 440/ Social constructionist (sociological)
in cultural ritual practices, 68, 81 masculinization of, 409, 420 perspective, 5, 53, 114- 148
in education, 206- 207 in nonhuman primates, 28- 29 central premise of, 10
occupational, 132- 133, 272- 281 problems, evaluation for, 419- 420 on communication, 142- 145
in religion, 248, 258 racism and, 332- 333 on gender through the life course,
in social media, 367 religion and, 243, 244 122- 125
women's status and, 68, 81 sexual peak myth, 123- 124, 439- 440 on institutions, 127- 133, 147
Sexism, 269, 311 - 312, 356 sexual socialization and, 417- 420 overview of, 116- 117
Sex-role theory, 106- 113 sociobiology on, 24- 25, 31- 32 on power, 121 - 122
on institutions, 127, 128, 131 time spent thinking about, 413 on rape, 145- 147
limitations of, 110- 113, 117- 120, 122 top 12 reasons for having sex, 429 Social Darwinism, 21 - 23, 24, 55- 56
M-F test and, 91 virginity pledges and, 422- 424 Social media, 366- 367, 367/, 368/
overview of, 107- 110 in youth, 179- 180, 409/, 411, 417- 418, "Social men;' 78
on political office and gender, 313- 314 421 , 428- 430 Social psychology of sex roles, 106- 113
Sexual abuse, 458, 469- 470 Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), 422, Socialization. See Differential
Sexual agency, 179,421,431 424. See also AIDS-HIV socialization; Gender socialization;
Sexual ambiguity, 137- 138 Shackelford, Todd, 33 Sexual socialization
Sexual assault, 430- 431, 468,469,470. See Shakers, 255 Society in America (Martineau) , 58
also Rape Shakespeare, William, 19,448 Sociobiology, 23, 24- 32
Sexual customs, 82- 83 Shaktism, 236 anthropomorphic language used in, 29
Sexual diversity, 80- 83 Shamanism, 257 criticism of arguments, 27- 32
Sexual division oflabor. See Gendered Shavante people, 452 as a "just-so story;' 31
division oflabor Sheffield, Carol, 146 on separation of spheres, 25- 26
Sexual double standard, 409- 412 Shelton, Beth Ann, 170 on sexuality, 24- 25, 31 - 32
Sexual entitlement, 425 Sherrod, Drury, 386 Sociological perspective. See Social
Sexual harassment Sherrod, Nancy, 431 constructionist perspective
hostile environment form, 299-300 Shilts, Randy, 53 Solberg, Erna, 312
legal standard of, 301 Shoplifting, 459 Solomon, Robert, 394
of men, 298,301,303 Sibling violence, 198- 199, 458 Sommers, Christina Hoff, 213, 358
quid pro quo form, 298- 299 Silicon Valley companies, 309 Sophocles, 89
in schools, 211 - 212, 212/ Simmel, Georg, 8 South, violence in, 464, 465, 466
in the workplace, 268, 297- 303, 304 Simmons, Martin, 382- 383 South Korea
"Sexual Harassment and Masculinity" Simmons, Rachel, 460- 461 cosmetic surgery in, 405
(Quinn), 374 Simon, Rita, 458 female heads of state in, 312
Sexual orientation. See also Gay men; Simpson, 0 . J., 474 Southern Baptist Convention, 239, 249
Homosexuality; Lesbians Simpson-Miller, Portia, 312 Soy products, 46
birth order and, 50 Singapore, sexuality in, 439/ Spain
brain research on, 38- 41 Single parents/parenthood importance of economic prosperity
hormones and, 48 fathers as, 13, 153, 161, 181 in, 26
psychosexual development theory on, increase in, 160- 161, 181 sexuality in, 440
89- 91, 96 mothers as, 13, 152, 157, 181 - 183 views of"traditional" family in, 162
race and, 187 social problems associated with, 152 the workplace in, 291
sexuality and, 54 Singles in America Survey, 392 Spain, Daphne, 68
Sexual Politics (Millett), 485 Single-sex schools/classrooms, 227- 232 Spanking, 197- 198
"Sexual psychologies;' 24- 25 Sioux Indians, 78 Speed-dating, 26
Sexual response, 410 Siriono people, 83 Sperm, 29, 33
Sexual revolution, 409- 410, 420, 432 Sirleaf, Ellen Johnson, 312 The Spirit and the Flesh (Williams), 76
Sexual socialization, 417- 420 Siwans, 81 "The Spirit of the College" (Durant), 204
Sexual terrorism, 146 Skolnick, Arlene, 193, 199 Splenium, 37
Sexuality, 409- 444 Skynyrd,Lynyrd,466 Sports, 232- 233, 354, 360, 361, 369- 370
adult convergence in, 426- 432 Smith, D., 64 Spretnak, Charlene, 258
age of first intercourse, 409, 421 Smith College, 206, 226, 227 Spur Posse, 146
behaviors in, percentage "Smurfette Principle;' 356 "Squaw Jim and His Squaw" (photo), 77/
performing, 423t Snake Goddess, 237/ Sri Lanka
best and worst, by country, 438/, 439/ Snapchat, 369 female heads of state in, 312
culture and, 82- 83, 437- 438 Social class life expectancy gap in, 127
factors other than gender affecting, child care and, 169 Stacey, Judith, 186
437- 441 divorce and, 190 Stalking, 466, 478/, 479/
fantasies about, 413- 416 domestic violence and, 478- 479 Standards of female beauty, 396- 400
friendship and, 381, 382, 383- 384 education and, 228 Stanford University, 44, 91,290
gender as organizing principle of, 54 family life and, 156 Stanko, Elizabeth, 480
health and, 441 - 444 friendship and, 383 Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, 259
548 INDEX
State University of New York at Stony Swidler, Leonard, 238, 255 Thonga people, 82, 83
Brook, 226, 242 The Symbolic Annihilation of Women by Thorne, Barrie, 117,352
Steinem, Gloria, 48 the Mass Media (Tuchman), 357 Thornhill, Randy, 27, 30, 467
Steinmetz, Susan, 475 Symons, Donald, 24- 25 Tibetan Buddhism, 236
Stereotypes Szydlo, Beata, 312 Tidball, Elizabeth, 227- 228
gay, 39, 271 - 272 Tiger, Lionel, 26, 65- 66, 375, 387
gender (see Gender stereotypes) Tadpole (film), 126 Tisch, Ann Rubenstein, 232
racial, 272, 321 - 322 Tahrir Square, 333f Title VII, 297, 304
Stern, Howard, 354 Taiwan Title IX, 212, 232- 233, 370
Steroid use, 403 female heads of state in, 312 Tobago, female heads of state in, 312
Stickups, 459 views of "traditional" family in, 162 Toch, Hans, 465
Stimpson, Catharine, 5, 215 Take Back the Night, 342 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 1, 156
Stoller, Robert, 140 Talackova, Jenna, 329f Todd,Evan,222
Stoltenberg, John, 365 Taliban,240, 334, 335, 336 Todd, John, 20, 21,240
Stone, I. F., 462- 463 Tanala people, 80 Tokenism, 294- 297
Stone, Lawrence, 188, 389 Tannen,Deborah,144,145 Tolkien, J. R. R., 355
Stonewall riots, 433 Tatlow, Didi Kirsten, 268 Tolman, Deborah, 411
Stossel, John, 49 Tattoos, 404, 407f Tomboys, 45- 46, 433
Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 155 Tavris, Carol, 11, 28, 228- 229, 391, 394 Tonne, Hilde, 306
Straujuma, Laimdota, 312 Taylor, Jeremy, 375 Tootsie (film), 135
Straus, Murray, 197, 198- 199, 473 Taylor, Mary, 264 Torah, 240
Stress, 13, 37- 38, 45, 49, 165, 173, Taylor, W. C., 20- 21 Toys, gender-coded, 103- 104, 103/, 105/,
376- 377 Tchambuli people, 61 , 62f 106,351,360
"Strict scrutiny" standard, 270- 271 , 326 Teachers, 223- 227 "Traditional" family, 157- 158, 159,
The Stronger Women Get, the More Men Tebow, Tim, 253/, 253- 254 162- 163
Love Football (Nelson), 370 Technical virgins, 412 Trans World Airlines (TWA) , 271
Stroud, Angela, 453 Teena, Brandon, 137f Transgenderism/transgender persons, 77,
Structuralist-functionalist school of social Teenage mothers, 179- 181, 179/, 422 138- 142
science, 157- 158 Teenagers. See Youth birth certificate laws in the U.S., 14 lf
Stryker, Susan, 140 Telephone, gender differences in use of, diversity of, 138- 140
The Subjection of Women (Mill), 483 378,381 friendship and, 384
Subjective objectification, 269 Television, 360 law as gender politics, 327- 328
Subtle sexism, 269 children and, 347, 350- 351 numberof in U.S., 138
Sudan, female legislators in, 313 genderand,352- 354 sexuality and, 437
Sulimani, Faizah, 334 reality makeover shows on, 353- 354 violence against, 328, 480
Sumerau, Ed, 255 sexism on, 356 wage shift in, 280
Summer of'42 (film) , 126 Teller, Edward, 461 Transvestites, 138
Summers, Alicia, 361 The Tempest (Shakespeare), 19 Tresemer, David, 120
Summers, Lawrence, 210, 226 The Ten Commandments (film), 236 Trinidad, female heads of state in, 312
Sunday, Billy, 251 - 252, 252/, 253,256 Tennyson, Alfred Lord, 155 Trobriand Islanders, 83, 438
Super-ego, 88 Tent revivals, 252 Troiden, Richard, 432
Supportive discouragement, 269 Terman, Lewis, 91 , 92, 93, 107 "Trouble talk;' 377
Supreme Court decisions Testosterone (androgens) Trow, Martin, 225
on educational equality, 229, 232, in females, 3, 43 True gonadal intersex, 138
280,341 gender differences and, 43- 46, 48 "The Truth About Boys and Girls"
on gender discrimination, 271 homosexuality and prenatal levels of, (Eliot), 35
on gender-sex distinction, 3 39, 40, 41, 48- 50 Tsai Ing-wen, 312
on racial discrimination, 270- 271 intersexuality and, 51 Tsongas, Paul, 172
on same-sex marriage, 183, 187 life expectancy and, 126 Tuchman, Gaye, 357
on sexual harassment, 212, 301,303 the male brain and, 34, 35, 43 Tukano-Kubeo people, 83
on workplace discrimination, 270- 271, permissive effect of, 44- 45 Tulane Men Against Rape, 342
280- 281 , 291 - 292 stress and, 45, 376 Tumblr,367
Surviving the Breakup (Wallerstein), 191 violence and aggression and, 4, 43- 45, Tunisia, social movements in, 335
Swain, Scott, 380 450- 451 Turkey, religion in, 245
Swanson, E. Guy, 108- 109 Testosterone and Social Structure Turner, R., 34
Swaziland (Kemper), 44 Twin studies, 41- 42, 53
life expectancy gap in, 127 "Testosterone Rules" (Sapolsky), 44 Twitter, 367
parental leave not offered in, 305, 325 Thailand, sexuality in, 439f Two-spirit people (berdache), 76, 77, 77f
Sweden Thatcher, Margaret, 128, 455
child care sharing in, 171 Third genders, 76 UCLA,45
corporal punishment banned in, 198 Third-wave feminism, 338 "The Unequal Weight of Discrimination"
divorce rate in, 188, 189t Thomas, Clarence, 297- 298, 301,304 (Mason), 400
housework division in, 168 Thomas, Kristin Scott, 126 United Arab Emirates, female legislators
marriage rate in, 189t Thompson, E. P., 147 in, 313
out-of-wedlock births in, 181 Thompson, J., 64 United Kingdom. See Great Britain/
parental leave policies in, 200 Thompson, Jack, 344 United Kingdom
the workplace in, 306 Thompson, Michael, 213 United Nations Declaration of 1985, 339
Index 549
United Nations Demographic Veterinary medicine, gender Wall Street Journal
Yearbook, 188 composition of, 278 on income discrimination, 281
United States Viagra, 325, 420 on women as colleagues, 296- 297
AIDS-HIV in, 442 Video games, 344, 360- 363, 361/, 364 Waller, Willard, 390, 424, 425
beauty standards in, 397- 398 Vietnaro War, 319, 321, 462- 463 Wallerstein, Judith, 191 - 192
child support in, 196 Vinicius, L., 64 Wang, Yang, 364
circumcision practiced in, 70, 73 Violence/aggression, 9,403, 448- 481. The War Against Boys (Sommers), 213
compared with other cultures, 60, 61 See also Domestic violence Warfare, 68, 127,451, 461 - 463
cosmetic surgery in, 405 culture and, 59, 60- 61, 451 "gender" of, 455
day care not supported in, 177, 178 evolutionary theory on, 27, 450- 451 male domination and, 65- 66
divorce rate in, 188, 189t feminist theory on, 98 rape and, 146
eating disorders in, 399 gender gap in, 460 religious justifications for, 256
family history, 154- 163 gendered, 452, 461 - 463, 464- 465 testosterone levels and, 49
gender dimorphic view in, 51 institutions and, 127- 128, 461 - 463 Warner, R. Stephen, 120
health in, 446- 447 male-to-male, 452- 453 Wasserstein, Wendy, 387
homicide rate in, 453- 455, 456, the media and, 344, 351 Watson, Jaroes, 53
457, 457/ pornography and, 344,415 Watson, John, 157
incarceration rate in, 453, 461, 480 regional differences in, 466 Watts, Jonathan, 408
life expectancy in, 127 in schools, 220- 223, 344, 448 Way, Niobe, 385
love in, 390- 394 social constructionist perspective Weber, Max, 398
marriage in, 189t on,127- 128 Weight
masculinity in, 9 testosterone and, 4, 43- 45, 450- 451 obesity, 400- 401
math-gender correlation in, 210 against transgender persons, tyranny of slenderness, 398- 400
media in, 343 328, 480 Weinrich, Jaroes, 42
out-of-wedlock births in, 181 against women, 59, 68,342,351, 451, Weisberg, Deena Skolnick, 56
paid parental leave not offered in, 175, 452- 453,465- 474 Weitzman, Leonore, 190, 348- 350
200, 305, 309, 325 by women, 43, 48, 60- 61, 460- 461 Welfare reform legislation, 178
politics in, 312- 313 youth, 403, 449, 456 Wellesley College, 206, 226
pornography sales in, 363 Virginia Military Institute (VMI), 99, West, Candace, 133- 134, 147
rape in, 468 100/, 229,280,297,341 Westbrook, Laurel, 136
religion in, 242- 243, 245- 247, 248, 250 Virginia Tech shootings, 344 Western Wall, 240
sexuality in, 83, 423t, 438,440 Virginity, 32,407,412,421, 428 Wethington, Elaine, 125
teen birth rates in, 179, 179/ Virginity pledges, 422- 424 Wharton, Edith, 7
transgender birth certificate laws Viziova, Petra, 450 When Harry Met Sally (film), 381, 382
in, 141/ Voodoo, 235 "Where Does Gender Come From?"
video garoe popularity in, 360 Voting, gender gap in, 315- 317 (Fausto-Sterling), 23
violence in, 449, 450, 453- 455, Whisman, Vera, 54
462- 463, 464- 465, 466, 480 Wade, Carole, 28 Whitcomb, Dale, 301
wages in, 284, 288- 289/ Wade, Lisa, 477/ White House Conference on Children, 157
the workplace in, 268- 270, 272, 273, Wage gap, 278, 281 - 286 White House Fellows, study of, 247
291,305,308 cartoon explaining, 282/ White Ribbon Caropaign, 341 - 342
University of California at Berkeley, 205 consistency of, 284 Whites
University of California at Riverside, 444 "feminist fiction" claim, 285 domestic violence and, 479
University of California Irvine, 38 Wages/earnings/salaries, 272- 286 education and, 218
University of Chicago, 441, 469 activism for equality in, 286 health and, 444
University of Cincinnati, 295 annual median for different homicide rate in, 453
University of Illinois, 300 groups, 286t housework division in, 169
University of London, 108 dollar-for-dollar comparison by incarceration rate for, 455
University of Michigan, 205 gender, 288/ the media and, 354
University of New Mexico, 278 family wage, 154 never-married, 161
University of Pennsylvania, 70, 226 gender ideologies about, 266 out-of-wedlock births in, 152, 181
University of Rochester, 206 gender inequality in, 268- 270 politics and, 316- 317, 316/
University of Texas, 429 the "glass ceiling" and, 286- 287 sexuality and, 438- 439
University of Vermont, 235 median, by gender and race, 283/ wages of, 281 , 282, 283/, 286, 286t
University of Virginia, 376 occupational sex segregation and, in the workplace, 262, 272, 287
University of Washington, 300 272- 281 Whiting, John W., 71
University of Wisconsin, 36, 168 remedies for inequality in, 304 Whitman, Walt, 374
Uwer, Thomas, 72 for teachers, 223, 224, 225 "Who Takes the Floor and Why?"
women's as a percentage of men's, (Brescoll), 315
Vagina Monologues (play) , 342 283/, 284/ Wicca, 258
Van Buren, Harry, 278- 279 Waite, Linda, 163 Widows and widowers, 163
Van Buren, Martin, 317- 318 Wajed, Sheikh Hasina, 312 Willer, Robb, 108
Vanatinai people, 85 Wales, criminal offenders in, 456t Williams, Alex, 174
Vassar, Matthew, 206 "Walk a Mile in Her Shoes" Williams, Caroline, 211/
Vassar College, 206, 226, 227 caropaigns, 342 Williams, Christine, 295- 296
"Veiled Submission" (Bartkowski and Walker, Karen, 378 Williams, Walter, 76
Read), 241 Wall, Shavaun, 379 Wilson , Edward, 24, 25- 26
550 INDEX
Winfield, Adia Harvey, 295 top 12 reasons for having sex, 429 World War II, 157, 261, 467
Winfrey, Oprah, 19,354,400 violence against, 59, 68,342,351,451 , Worlds of Pain (Rubin), 428
Winger, Debra, 126 452- 453,465- 474 "Worship" (Emerson), 114
Wingfield, Nick, 362 violence by, 43, 48, 60- 61, 460- 461 Wotanis, Lindsey, 368
Wiswall, Matthew, 280 "Women as a Minority Group" Wright, Paul, 379
Witchcraft and witches, 237- 238, 243, 258 (Hacker), 120 Wyden, Barbara, 432
Wodaabe people, 74 Women's spirituality, 238, 255- 258 Wyden, Peter, 432
Wolf, Naomi, 318,357, 398 "Women's work;' 155, 166, 201,223
Wolfgang, Marvin, 456 Woodham, Luke, 222,448,451 Xanith, 78
Wollstonecoft, Mary, 375 Woodhull, Victoria, 312 XX intersex, 138
Womb envy, 97 Working Woman study of sexual XY intersex, 138
Women. See also Femininity; Feminism/ harassment, 301
feminists; Gender entries; Mothers/ Work/workplace, 260- 310 Yahoo,309
motherhood ancestral occupations in, 262, 264 Yale University, 226
African Americans' position compared dual-earner couples in, 265, 266 Yalom, Irvin, 46
with, 120, 270 family life and, 154, 155- 156, 157, 160, Yankelovitch survey on job
AIDS-HIV in, 442 164,165,169,172, 175- 176, 176J, dissatisfaction, 265
arrest rates for, 449, 460 177- 179, 200, 225- 227, 305, 307- 310 Yanomamii people, 81
beauty standards for, 396- 400 family-friendly policies in, 175- 176, Yapese people, 82
body politicization and, 240 200, 290, 306, 325 Yarborough, Jeannette, 407
brain research findings, 33- 38 friendship and, 382 Yeats, William Butler, 214
criminality in, 458- 461 gender composition changes in, Yemen, social movements in, 334, 335
cultures dominated by, 61, 84 262- 265 Yllo, Kersti, 473, 476
divorce impact on, 191 gender differences in, 12, 15- 16, 130, York, Richard, 331
education discouraged for, 22, 34, 132- 133 Yoruba, 235
205- 206 gender discrimination in, 268, 270- 272, You Just Don't Understand (Tannen),
education encouraged for, 87, 204, 206 292- 293, 304 144,145
education in valued by men, 208 gender ideology persistence in, 265- 270 Young, Iris, 398
in the family, historical perspective gender of bosses in, 267,295 Young, Neil, 466
on, 154- 163 "glass ceiling" in (see "Glass ceiling") Young Women's Leadership School,
"frigidity" in, 410, 420 "glass cellar" in, 293 231 - 232
as heads of state, 312 "glass escalator" in, 295- 296 Youth
life expectancy of, 126- 127 hazardous occupations in, 279, 293 aggression, hormones and, 43
marriage impact on happiness, hours worked by gender, 261 body image issues in, 399, 400, 403
163- 164, 392 job loss and growth by gender, 302 cultural rituals of, 81 , 388
married, percentage of, 188 male domination in, 15- 16 gender gap in, 214
in the military, 23, 63, 326 occupational deaths in, 293, 293/ gender socialization in, 123
in military schools, 99, lO0J, 229, 280, occupational sex segregation sexual socialization in, 417- 418
297,341 in, 132- 133, 272- 281 sexuality in, 179- 180, 409J, 411,
never-married, 153f, 161 professional sector, 262- 264, 273 417- 418,421,428- 430
pornography consumption by, 363 quota systems in, 306 teenage mothers, 179- 181, 179J, 422
power and, 121- 122 remedies for inequality in, 303- 307 violence in, 403, 449, 456
retirement and, 126 sexual harassment in, 268, virginity pledges and, 422- 424
sexual peak myth, 123- 124, 439- 440 297- 303, 304 working mothers and, 178
sports enjoyed by, 369- 370 ten most common occupations for Youth and Violence (report), 449
status of, 66- 69, 81, 146, 173, men, 275t YouTube, 368
396- 397, 468 ten most common occupations for Yurok people, 83
stress, reactions to, 13, 37- 38, 165, women, 274t
376- 377 tokenism in, 294- 297 Zande people, 82
suffrage for, 20, 21 , 104,240,315, 337, wages in (see Wages/earnings/salaries) Zeta-Jones, Catherine, 126
341,398 World Cyber Games, 360- 361 Zihlman, Adrienne, 62
tattoos and, 404 World Health Organization, 71 Zimmerman, Don, 133- 134, 147

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The Gendered Society

New York Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

© 2017, 2013, 2011, 2008, 2004, 2000 by Michael Kimmel

For titles covered by Section 112 of the US Higher Education

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

You must not circulate this work in any other form

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Kimmel, Michael S., author.

Printed in the United States of America

CHAPTER I Introduction: Human Beings: An Engendered Species

Part 1 Explanations of Gender 17

Part 2 Gendered Identities, Gendered Institutions 149

Part 3 Gendered Interactions 371

Epilogue: "A Degendered Society"? 483

In no country has such constant care been taken as in America to

MAKING GENDER VISIBLE FOR BOTH WOMEN AND MEN

Simmel's theoretical formulation echoes in our daily interactions. Recently, I was

THE CURRENT DEBATE

THE PLURAL AND THE POWERFUL

GENDER DIFFERENCES AS "DECEPTIVE DISTINCTIONS"

THE MEANING OF MEAN DIFFERENCES

The interplanetary theory of gender difference is important not because it's

THE POLITICS OF DIFFERENCE AND DOMINATION

A devil, a born devil, on whose nature

A side from his exasperated cry of "women-what do they want?" Sigmund

BIOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES, THEN AND NOW

I am opposed to woman's sufferage [sic] on account of the burden it will place

Social scientists quickly jumped on the biological bandwagon-especially social

IiJ '' ,,, 111 :n)Q I Ia

THE EVOLUTIONARY IMPERATIVE: FROM SOCIAL DARWINISM

Not surprisingly, Symons notes, this is "what we find":

Other evolutionary arguments examine other aspects of reproductive biology to

EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY-A JUST-SO STORY

neuroprimatologist Robert Sapolsky. "Sometimes, they influence them."23

Source: David Freedman, "The Aggressive Egg" in Discover, June I, 1992.

"HIS" BRAIN AND "HER" BRAIN

IiJ '' ,,, 111 :n)Q I Ia

THE GAY BRAIN

THE SEARCH FOR THE GAY GENE

ESTROGEN AND TESTOSTERONE: HORMONAL BASES

Can Food Make Us Gay?

"As Nature Made Him"?

HORMONES AND HOMOSEXUALITY

THE RESEARCH ON INTERSEXUALITY

THE POLITICS OF BIOLOGICAL ESSENTIALISM

Politically, unequal social arrangements are, in the end, ordained by nature.10 9

Notice how essentialist research links homosexuality with gender inversion, as if

In his presidential address to the American Sociological Association, Troy Duster

mined that adding a dollop of irrelevant scientific jargon to an answer on an exam

" ... so you see, women think with their brain,

3 SPANNING the WORLD

If a test of a civilization be sought, none can be so sure as the

THE VARIATIONS IN GENDER DEFINITIONS

Figure 3.1. Source: Courtesy Malcolm Evans Cartoons.

By contrast, Mead describes the Mundugumor, a tribe of headhunters and cannibals

THE CENTRALITY OF THE GENDER DIVISION OF LABOR

Masculine Mundugumor United States