Sociological Explorations: Stuff I’m Reading
For the Week of September 26th: A series of discussions about what it means to be assigned female at birth, to identify as female, as feminine, whether cisgender or transgender, and the threat of violence facing cisgender and transgender women; about feminist politics and motherhood and heteronormativity.
It’s easy to say, “look over there” and pontificate about how bad things are somewhere else. And while we do in fact need to look everywhere, we must do so while always remembering to hold ourselves equally accountable. Mahsa Amini’s death should be both grieved and protested. As an American, however, I will do so with the knowledge of (as examples) the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe vs. Wade, and while holding Sandra Bland close to my heart, remembering that we have our own grief, grievances, and reasons to protest.
Speaking of protests, The New York Times recently reported that Russian bots/trolls intentionally fueled distrust and division, enhancing/strengthening fractures in the feminist movement:
Data on Russian messaging around the Women’s March first appeared late last year in an academic journal, where Samantha R. Bradshaw, a disinformation expert at American University, reviewed state interference in feminist movements.
She and her co-author, Amélie Henle, found a pattern of messaging by influential amplifier accounts that sought to demobilize civil society activism, by pumping up intersectional critiques of feminism and attacking organizers.
Movements, Dr. Bradshaw argues, are fragile structures, often unprepared to weather well-resourced state-backed sabotage campaigns, especially when combined with algorithms that promote negative content. But healthy social movements are essential to democracies, she said.
“We’re not going to have a robust public sphere if nobody wants to organize protests,” she said.
So often, we confuse gender with sexuality. We see some masculinity in a woman and assume she must be a lesbian. We look into the past, into the narrative arc of our lives, and we use gendered childhood experiences to make sense of our adult sexualities. See, I used to play with legos, not dolls, so I’ve always been a lesbian! The fact of the matter is this: I don’t know what my sexuality was when I was born, or 5, or 10; I don’t even know if I had sexuality yet. What I do know is that my process of coming out was both simple and complicated, and had both nothing and everything to do with my experience with (feminine, masculine, queer) gender. I was 100% shaped by the social conditions into which I was born. And while my body determined some things, I have made daily choices about how to live my life in this body I carry around, and I’m so happy with where I’ve landed. If you don’t know The Indigo Girls, they are a folk-rock duo that’s been making music since the 1980s, and they engage here in a meaningful and personal conversation about the fluidity of gender and sexuality. This conversation is relevant to anyone — whether you know their music or not — who wants to engage with the idea of fluidity and learn more about their queer elders, and place the LGBTQ experience into a historical context.
Like sexuality in general, motherhood is a social construct, and society has engaged in a “normalcy project” (Fredricks) that erases women with disabilities. REBEKAH TAUSSIG reflects on this sociological reality:
“So when I realized I was about to become a mom, I wondered: Is this the beginning of a deep bond and camaraderie with other mothers? It was one of many questions I had about parenthood in a world that erases disabled people from the narrative.”
Figuring out how to be a daughter can also be a complex ride. This is a beautiful story, both in cinematography and in this chef’s life. Check out the episode on Netflix — Chef’s Table, Season 6, Episode 3.
A Happy Song, for when a Happy Song is needed:
