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Teaching, Embodiment, and Social Change

12/15/2015

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Jessica MacNamara, PhD
Keuka College

Shortly after joining the faculty at Keuka College as an assistant professor I joined the campus Gender Education and Advocacy Committee. The committee includes students, staff, and faculty working on a wide range of issues including gender-neutral restrooms, Trans 101 trainings, and gender inclusive housing. This committee, along with on-campus student organizations, both PRIDE and the LGBTQA+ Resource Center paved the way for organizational change. But change tends to feel slow, uneven, and unsteady, especially to those most invested. This post is about student-driven efforts to secure gender inclusive on-campus housing at a small, rural, private college.
 
I was trained in the pedagogical tradition of Paulo Freire and bell hooks. We can’t engage in a disembodied, critical, feminist, liberatory education. We must recognize embodiment and embodied experiences. But, as teachers, where do we start? Powerful memoirs by transgender, genderqueer, and gender nonconforming people have provided rich insights (Bornstein 1994; Mock 2014). A small cache of studies provides a systematic glimpse into how cisgendered people think and feel about transgendered people (Carroll et al. 2012; Norton & Herek 2012; Woodford et al. 2013). But what is the experience of embodying difference as a college student on a small, rural campus? How does place and space impact embodied experiences? We have to ask our students these questions.
 
I teach in an applied sociology program. Despite various challenges, we train our students to uncover, analyze, and utilize mechanisms for change. While we discuss many structural and broad societal changes in my classrooms, it is incredibly fulfilling to see students develop interventions for more manageable social problems directly related to their everyday lives. My student, Indigo, did an enormous amount of work for an independent study I designed in the fall of 2015, Sociology of Gender and Transgender. Their experience working towards changing campus policy provides an example of how our classes can facilitate an exploration of embodiment, and social change.
 
In the last third of the semester, after extensive readings, a detailed annotated bibliography, and numerous individual meetings, Indigo began their final project. We discussed more traditional options all semester, but Indigo, and a number of other students on campus, are passionate about creating gender inclusive housing on campus. After witnessing the success of instituting a number of unisex bathrooms on campus, a step to alleviate distress for people who don’t conform to gender norms yet are forced, due to a lack of options, to use either “male” or “female” bathrooms, the focus turned to other spaces that could shift from concretely dichotomous gendered spaces to more inclusive ones.
 
Indigo worked with the available committees and clubs on campus to press forward with this initiative during their three years in college. Gender Inclusive housing on college campuses give students the option to live in campus housing that includes students of a variety of gender identities. For a fairly comprehensive list of gender inclusive (alternately called gender neutral housing) housing issues please visit this collection of articles at The Huffington Post. Often, colleges select a house, dorm, or hall that is gender inclusive, leaving exclusively “male” and “female” housing options for students as well. Before moving forward, administrators on our campus wanted more information, and rightly so. Indigo identified the next step, a campus climate survey. These surveys are used to establish a baseline of student perceptions of and experiences with the climate for transgender students on campus. Indigo modified an existing survey used by the Gender Education and Advocacy Committee, administered the survey, and later conducted data analysis with the assistance of their peers working in the LGBTQA+ resource center. The survey results were a turning point in their project. Two hundred and eighty one students responded to the survey and 81 percent indicated support for gender-inclusive housing.
 
With the survey results, Indigo set out to inform the campus. They presented the survey results at a student senate meeting, a meeting with the interim director of campus residential life, a town hall- style meeting attended by the college president, vice president, and other administrators, and was then invited to meet with the college dean of students about the results. Indigo followed up by creating a formal proposal for gender inclusive housing, presented to the president for consideration by the college cabinet. At ever step, Indigo encountered interest, support and a willingness to explore options for moving forward.
 
This is where I’d like to stop and note that the work Indigo completed, as part of an independent study, is extraordinary in a number of ways. Their ability to use a number of different skill sets, identify a problem on campus, research the problem, modify a survey tool to measure student perceptions, analyze data, present that data in a number of public forums, and complete a formal proposal goes above an beyond most final projects and papers. What is also extraordinary is that they were able to speak directly with student leaders, administrators, faculty and staff, to have a voice. This processes, and the responses to their work are incredibly valuable. It is a model for ensuring that students know they are essential and valued within the campus community.
 
The issue of gender inclusive housing on our campus is not decided. It is a process that will take time. However, as a part of a broader curriculum, this project’s success isn’t just about outcomes. Indigo and other students faced distinct challenges when their embodied, day-to-day experiences left them feeling marginalized and at times unsafe. Through all their work on campus, and this course project, Indigo became a central part of a community pulling together to make life more equitable. All institutions and organizations, created by social actors and myriad social forces, institutionalize bodies. Interventions, like Indigo’s indicate how important it is to teach and support student work that promotes social justice in tangible ways.

 

Acknowledgments: I’d like to thank Indigo for giving me permission to write about their final project.
 

References
Bornstein, Kate. 1994. Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and The Rest of Us. New York: Rutledge.
 
Carroll, Lynn, Dominkik Guss, Kimberyly S. Hutchinson, and Andy A. Gauler. 2012. “How do U.S. Students Perceive Trans Persons?” Sex Roles 67(9/10):516-527.
 
Mock, Janet. 2014. Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More. New York: Simon & Schuster.
 
Norton, Aaron T. and Gregory Herek. 2013. “Heterosexuals’ Attitudes Toward Transgender People: Findings from a National Probability Sample.” Sex Roles 68(11/12):738-753.
 
Woodford, Michael R., Brittanie Atterberry, Matthew Derr, and Michael Howell. 2013. “Endorsement for Civil Rights for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender People Among Heterosexual College Students: Informing Socially Just Policy Advocacy.” Journal of Community Practice 21(3):203-277.


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PETA, Patriarchy and the Body

12/1/2015

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by Stephanie Baran
Doctoral Student and Lecturer
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee


Social justice organizations, one would think, would be the last place one might find racism, sexism and ableism to mention a few, but we would be remiss if we did not give some critical attention to these organizations – most notably PETA. Sure, using the mantra of ‘sex sells’ will get the message out, on the news and in people’s faces, but at what cost? Is the goal of using women in positions of suffering in the place of animals really accomplishing the end? I ask this because perhaps in our own social life, seeing women placed in violent positions is actually not all that uncommon. One can just flip on the news and find a report about ciswomen or transwomen being catcalled, stalked, beaten and murdered for something as simple as saying no to a man. Also, by positing the ‘proper’ vegan as an ablebodied, cis, white, skinny woman – they erase so many other bodies and abilities as vegans and make vegan/vegetarianism an exclusive club versus and inclusive, safe space. Therefore, PETA’s attempt at an analogy fails because in present patriarchal society, women are meat.

PETA’s imagery create a visualized patriarchy, and does not act in a way that is revolutionary or countering to the established frame. PETA states their mission as “animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, use for entertainment, or abuse in any other way” (peta.org). While this is their mission statement in relation to animals, they do some of these exact things to women. They must manufacture the consumption of sex to sell their products and also motivate people to support their mission. In order to reach the general consuming public, PETA must use the language of the dominant group: the established patriarchal white male gaze to sell social justice.


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Within PETA advertising, skinny, white women are the most utilized models. While black women and women of color are also photographed, they are often photographed for shoots that have an ‘exotified’ frame or are ‘jezebelish’ in tone. Men of color are featured in similar ads, except these photos are images of power, strength, but allude to animal-like qualities, which is problematic.

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Also, many of PETA’s images feature <specifically> women in violent positions, strung up on meat hooks, enduring a foie gras simulation, and being photographed on a coroner’s table, etc. While PETA desires to use the suffering of women as stand-ins for the suffering of animals – these images are no different than perhaps your normalized horror film fare. Is the method of using women’s bodies in this manner really making the connection to animal cruelty for the viewing public?

PETA uses this same problematic message for advertisements about intelligence and other (dis)abilities. PETA uses bogus science

to try and connect autism with dairy consumption and intelligence with meat consumption. These ads feature a healthy dose of fatphobia and use fat bodies as punching bags instead of simply using other advertising slogans that aren’t problematic. What this does is shame bodies and people for not meeting the socially created ideals of skinniness. These advertisements essentially erase fat vegans and vegetarians, because using PETA’s logic, if you were a vegan or non-meat eater, you would be skinny, which is just. not. true. A key point in the presentation of bodies, is that of course, being skinny or thin is not a problem - but lifting up some women, at the expense of pushing down others (those who are not seen as skinny) is not. Being body positive is not demonizing fat women or skinny women or any size woman in preference for another type of body – that would be the opposite.
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Body positivity is connected to body policing, which PETA does their fair share. For example, in protest of using fur trim or fur in general, several of their ads utilize this no fur trim in reference to unsightly pubic hair. There are also unsubstantiated claims that dairy products cause acne and other socialized stigmas about the skin. With these advertisements, PETA does nothing revolutionary or countering the established frames by supporting these socialized ideals about beauty and ‘good’ skin.

 Connected to the body policing of women, PETA also inserts its ideals of masculinity on men as well. For example, PETA uses a cis, heteronormative gaze to connect meat consumption with a lack of ability for them to have sex with <the very specified> women. Therefore, instead of advocating vegan/vegetarian lifestyles for the sake of the animal – PETA sells it as a masculinity boost. Included in the imagery of hyper-masculinity, are nodes to domestic violence. With their video, BWVAKTBOM or My Boyfriend Went Vegan And Knocked The Bottom Out Of Me, depicts a woman, walking down the street naked in a disheveled state, with a neck brace returning home to her boyfriend fixing a wall. Here, going vegan means increased strength, rougher sexual experiences and no questions about performance and masculinity. PETA does not question fragile masculinity – but supports it.

In contrast, ads featuring out gay/queer men are more in alignment with the way women and their body hair is policed. This is accomplished by putting a big no fur sign – to really drive the point home- about proper body maintenance. In fact, in this particular photo, this man is almost hairless. Therefore, these images highlight the perceived effeminate body ideals of gay men – which erase all types of gay men that can and do exist.

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While not all of PETA’s ads are misogynistic and violent, the fact that even one of these ads exist should give us pause. Therefore, while PETA claims to be ridding the world of oppression against animals, it uses women to frame that oppression. The problem with this analogy is that patriarchy does kill and does treat women as pieces of meat to be exotified. PETA does not reclaim ‘sexy’; counter hegemony, or anything of that nature. PETA plays to these issues that women are to be overtly sexualized and objectified because in our culture, that will give them some press. Given that the oppression and domination over women and their image, displaying women in shackles, beaten, and dismembered actually hurts women because these things actually happen. Therefore, the message that PETA tries to send is lost because patriarchy creates this system of oppression upon women in the same way that capitalism and factory farming create a system of oppression on animals.

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