Everyday Sociology Blog

Sex: It's Not What it Used to be

By Karen Sternheimer

As Sally Raskoff recently blogged about, the news of Roman Polanski’s arrest has sparked a conversation about how we think about rape and sexual assault of children. If Polanski loses his extradition fight and returns to the United States, he will return to a very different country than the one he fled. In 1978, the year he became a fugitive, the Rams still played in Los Angeles, Jimmy Carter was president, and the average price of a gallon of gas was 61 cents.

And as the New York Times recently noted, Polanski would also return to an America that has decidedly different mores about sex than we did during the 1970s. While in some ways we might have more liberal attitudes about sex, we are much more likely to condemn sexual assault today than we were in the 1970s, especially if children are involved.

Much of the sexual openness we attribute to the 1960s actually took place in the following decade, after birth control became more widely available. Oral contraceptives only became legal for unmarried women in all 50 states after the 1972 Supreme Court decision Eisenstadt v. Baird, which effectively legalized sex between unmarried men and women. Sex outside of marriage was technically illegal in many states, although these laws were not enforced often, but they remained on the books in some states until the Supreme Court ruling struck them down.

By the 1980s, sex was no longer viewed as an expression of freedom—with the discovery of AIDS, it was potentially dangerous. Ideas about recreational sex began to shift during the late 1980s and early 1990s as the disease spread and teen pregnancy rates rose.

Adults’ attitudes about teen sex are less lenient today too. In 1986 the General Social Survey, a nationally representative household survey, first asked respondents about their attitudes about teen sex (defined in the survey as sex between fourteen- to sixteen-year-olds). That year 67 percent of respondents answered that it was “always wrong,” compared with 73 percent in 2006, the most recent year for which we have data.

Just as concerns about consensual sex began to rise, legal responses to rape became more serious in the 1980s. For example, spousal rape was often considered an oxymoron, and it wasn’t until 1993 that all 50 states recognized it as a crime.

Acquaintance rape, or sexual assault committed by someone one knows, (and frequently called “date rape”) had barely entered everyday language in the 1970s, and states only began passing rape-shield laws – which made a victim’s sexual history and physical appearance inadmissible in court – in the 1970s. Michigan was the first state to pass a statute in 1974, with most states passing their own by the early 1980s.

Awareness about sexual violence had been increasing during the 1970s, thanks to small conscious raising groups and books published by feminist authors like Andrea Dworkin (Woman Hating: A Radical Look at Sexuality, 1974) and Susan Brownmiller (Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape, 1975). These books were influential in literary and academic circles, but with the explosion of confessional daytime talk shows on national television in the 1980s, such as Oprah (which debuted in 1986), a much larger swath of the population heard stories from survivors of rape and child sexual abuse further opened the eyes of the public to sexual violence and led to calls for tougher punishment for sexual offenders. Allegations of sexual abuse at the McMartin preschool in Manhattan Beach, California made for scandalous headlines in the 1980s, though all involved were acquitted in 1990.

Also drawing media attention were celebrity accounts of abuse. Former Miss America Marilyn Van Derbur spoke publically about being sexually abused by her father in 1991. That same year, 1960s teen star Sandra Dee spoke of similar victimization from her step father.

In response to the increasing awareness about sexual abuse, social workers, medical professionals, and educators were expected to be on the lookout for tell-tale signs in children they encountered. Dramatic headlines kept sexual abuse in the news: Ellie Nesler famously shot her son’s accused molester in court in 1993, the same year that Polly Klaas was abducted from her bedroom by a stranger, and later found dead, causing national outrage and later prompting the passage of California's Three Strikes law, which mandates life in prison for an individual’s third felony conviction.

Public contempt for those that harm children—especially if the harm is sexual—rose to a fever pitch in the 1990s. Celebrities such as Woody Allen and Michael Jackson were accused of sexual abuse. (Allen was never charged; Jackson was charged in 2003 and later acquitted). Widespread allegations of sexual abuse by priests rocked the Catholic Church. Reports of sexual abuse allegations against teachers, coaches, and others became regular news stories, and from the coverage it seemed that children were under constant sexual threat.

Perhaps because of our increased awareness and concern about sexual violence, rates of rape have declined significantly since 1977. According to the National Crime Victimization Survey, a nationally representative survey conducted annually by the U.S. Department of Justice, respondents in 1977 aged twelve and older were almost three times more likely to have been raped than those who completed the survey in 2008.

Child sexual abuse cases have been declining along with reductions in rape. A study conducted at the Crimes against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire found a 50 percent reduction in national sexual abuse rates between 1992 and 2006. While accurate measures of all cases of sexual abuse are impossible, this decline is still important, particularly at a time when awareness about abuse might encourage more reporting.

But concern about sexual violence against children has not subsided. If anything, it has increased. The public is seldom aware of decreases in crime. Add to that fears about new media, like social networking sites on the Internet and anxiety about sexual imagery in pop culture, and concerns about young people and sex only increase.

Polanski would have been better off dealing with his case—and fighting alleged prosecutorial misconduct—in the 1970s. Not only would attitudes about sex and acquaintance rape have been more favorable to him in the 70s, it would have been the right thing to do, given his admission of guilt.

Equality in Justice: Cognitive Dissonance and Fame

By Sally Raskoff

Two cases involving the rape of a young girl have been in the news: one involving Roman Polanski's arrest and the other about Elizabeth Smart's court testimony. While these cases have the “adult male-minor female” rapes as their basic similarity, most other things have been very different, especially in news reports and public reactions.

The “Polanski” case actually involves this Academy Award winning director’s flight from sentencing after his guilty plea and conviction in the rape of the 13-year-old girl. After 32 years, he was arrested recently in Switzerland to await extradition back to the United States for sentencing and additional charges of evading justice. The news reports focus on what a terrible time he’s had in life, from his family’s losses in the Holocaust to the murder of his pregnant wife by the Manson “family”, and on the fabulous movies he’s produced since living in Europe after he fled Los Angeles.

Until recently, little had been mentioned of the rape survivor, who is now an adult woman. A recent article fully identifies her and discusses the apparent civil settlement in which Polanski allegedly was to pay her half a million dollars, although no public documentation can confirm that she received those funds. Her lawyers’ requests to the court for him to pay the settlement past its due date ceased about the time she wrote a public letter stating that she thinks he should be able to return to the country, ostensibly to attend the Academy Awards show when he was nominated in 2002.

The "Smart" case involves the nine month long abduction of Utahan Elizabeth Smart. Her alleged kidnapper, Brian David Mitchell, subjected her to a “plural marriage” ceremony and according to Smart repeatedly raped her. She is now 21 and gave her testimony at the mental competency hearing of Mitchell just before leaving on her religious mission to France. Mitchell is cast as a religious fanatic who told her that he was doing what the lord wanted him to do. As of this writing, he has not yet been convicted of the crime as it has not yet been established if he is mentally competent to stand trial.

Let’s look at these cases sociologically.

Note the language used in the reporting of each case. Is it clear who the victim is in each case?

Many news reports and editorials about the Polanski case lament his treatment by the justice system, and some even suggest that he is the victim. Some articles discuss the cost of bringing him back to court, which makes the taxpayers the victim. Some articles focus on how the rape survivor, the actual victim, said that he should be free to live his life and if she says that, well, we should let her decide, which reinforces the idea that he is the victim.

The Smart articles focus on her as the rape survivor and certainly do not cast Mitchell as a victim. They cast him as crazy or as a crafty rapist who acts like a religious fanatic so as not to take the blame for his actions.

The headlines use “Polanski” and “Smart”, not “Mitchell” or “Geimer”.

Polanski’s name is certainly a familiar one since he is famous. Smart has become famous as an icon of parental fear – the girl who was abducted from her bedroom at night. As is typical in rape cases, Samantha Geimer’s name was withheld when she was a minor yet she herself went public when she wrote the letter in support of Polanski. Mitchell is not a name familiar to people even though most know that some man abducted and raped Elizabeth Smart.

From this point forward, I will refer to the “Smart” case as the Mitchell case.

Note the basic features of each case: an adult man raped a young girl.

Is this contested in either case? Yes and no. Mitchell has been in a mental institution since his arrest in 2003 and the recent hearing was to establish whether or not he could stand trial. Polanski testified that he did the crime (although in his plea agreement he plead guilty to “unlawful sex with a minor”) and his latest issues revolve around his flight from the justice system to escape sentencing and serving more time. Mitchell has not been convicted yet Polanski has. However, in the news articles, Polanski’s guilt is downplayed and Mitchell’s is assumed.

Note the social class differences in each case.

While Polanski is clearly a member of the upper socioeconomic strata, Mitchell and his co-defendant wife are in the lower strata. Polanski was able to flee to Europe, continuing to make his films and generate his substantial income. While the social class status of Ms. Geimer is not fully apparent, it is likely that she and her family live a middle class life, even if she did not receive the settlement. The Smart family are firmly in the upper middle class of suburban Salt Lake City, while the Mitchell couple were basically homeless and firmly ensconced in the lower echelon of society’s social class levels.

Social class alone can explain much of the dynamics of these cases. Those with the higher class status tend to gain more favorable coverage in the press. Polanski received more favorable coverage than his victim did, and Smart certainly received more media attention than her abductor did.

One might hope that people who have been victimized would receive more careful and supportive press coverage, this certainly didn’t happen in the Polanski case.

Note the issues of fame and social power in each case

Social power derives from social class but also from fame. Smart was featured on America's Most Wanted and has spoken in public and to Congress about sexual predator issues and legislation.

Most particularly in the Polanski case, fame insulates the perpetrator from paying his full debt to the justice system. So much so that some even call into question his guilt even though that had been firmly established in court. (See Harvey Weinstein’s quote about the “so-called crime” in the Los Angeles Times). Reaction to the Polanski case avoids discussion of his guilt in this crime of rape and focuses on other issues that are not salient. Consider how Mr. Weinstein might react if a female family member of his had been the victim in this case - might he advocate the release of that person as he does Polanski?

The exploitation of women in the entertainment industry is a related topic— some may not see why having sex with someone at a photo shoot was wrong – even if she was underage and under the influence of alcohol and drugs. Some also point to the mother who dropped her off at the house where the rape took place as culpable.

However, only the rapist is responsible for the rape, no matter what bad decisions others might have made.

What isn’t being talked about?

In the Polanski case, the exploitation of women is not a topic that many are choosing to discuss. How many other girls and women have been raped by people with power over them? We’ll never know, especially if those powerful people are not held to the legal standards that govern our society.

Absent from the discussion of the Mitchell case are the cultural underpinnings of how religion played a role in the abduction and rapes. The “plural marriage” as it was called when she was first rescued, was code for rape yet the word "rape" was not uttered for some time after she was freed. That this particular crime took place in a specific religious and cultural environment with a history of patriarchy (and, decades ago, of plural marriage) isn’t a coincidence. Elizabeth Smart was raised, as most of us are, in a culture of male dominance and female obedience.

It is also likely that Smart, like Patty Hearst and many other children abducted by sexual predators, was experiencing something akin to the Stockholm Syndrome. When she was first discovered, she did not readily identify herself. When held long enough under certain circumstances, people may “go along” with their captors and not escape when they might have had the chance.

So, how can we explain the different ways that we are reacting to these cases?

While both cases have at their core the rape of a 13- or 14-year-old girl by an adult man, public discussion and reaction to these cases is notably different. Social class, power, and fame all have their influences yet cognitive dissonance is also taking place.

Cognitive dissonance occurs when people have to reconcile two conflicting ideas at the same time. We often try and alter one of the ideas to be consistent with the other. For instance, people generally want to like and respect people with fame and power. When those people do bad things, we can react in many different ways but in the Polanski case, so many years after the event, some want to believe he paid his debt to society by having lived such a troubled life. Thinking of someone as both a good person and a rapist is very difficult to reconcile. Normally we decide that someone who commits rape is no longer a good person. In this example, many people, especially many in the entertainment industry, have chosen to downplay his actions to maintain the idea that their conflicting image of him as a good person.

But the justice system doesn’t see it this way, and after all, time spent living in a Swiss chalet isn’t the same as “doing time”. How do you think we would talk about the case if Elizabeth Smart’s alleged rapist had fled the country for more than three decades and evaded justice?

The Wages of War: The Oldest Profession

By Sally Raskoff

The other day I heard from someone currently on active duty in the Army. During a discussion on the difficulties of overseas deployments in wartime, he mentioned that female soldiers often make extra money “servicing” their fellow soldiers (i.e., sexual services if you didn’t get my innuendo). He said that this was common knowledge and due to the fact that the deployments are long and there were so few available women, especially American women.

Are you shocked? Surprised?

Historically, there are usually prostitutes available where a military congregates whether they are provided by the local economies or by the sponsoring governments themselves. Rarely, however, are those selling their bodies also members of the active duty military. (For example, the Comfort Women of World War Two)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chinese_girl_from_one_of_the_Japanese_Army%27s_%27comfort_battalions%27.jpg

Whether or not my acquaintance is right about this phenomenon, the pressures of the situation – and the structure of the situation –could easily lead to this kind of prostitution.

After I was active duty (Air Force) and started taking college classes, I wrote most of my sociology class papers analyzing my experiences in the military. This was a few decades ago when women made up a smaller percentage of the armed forces, but today women are still a minority – less than 15% - of those on active duty.

At that time, it was very clear that a woman, no matter what her job skills, was considered “available” unless she was married. If a woman stayed single, the chances that she would develop a “reputation” were quite high. It didn’t matter if she was exploring her sexuality with one or many partners or if she was celibate, many colleagues saw all single women as fair game. A civilian parallel is the phenomenon that early developing girls are sometimes called “sluts” whether they are sexually active or not. (Leora Tanenbaum wrote a great book on this phenomenon called Slut! Growing up Female with a Bad Reputation.)

When I was in the military, the pressure to get married was intense, especially for those concerned about maintaining a good or professional reputation. The service also encouraged marriage as it made more stable soldiers even if those soldiers were married to each other. Married soldiers got paid more, better housing, more services and family support.

Anyway, back to what my friend was saying about female soldiers prostituting themselves.

When does prostitution occur? The research literature points out a number of patterns. The buyer buys sex when they can’t get it elsewhere or don’t want the encumbrances from getting it elsewhere. The seller sells sex when they have no other options.

Alienation exists in each case as each person is exchanging their body for cash, thus their body becomes an object and commodity rather than remain a personal subject of experience and emotion.

There is more prostitution in societies with greater gender inequality since the more powerful gender can exploit the less powerful in a variety of ways. When there is more gender equality, those in the different gender groups are considered more equal and thus there’s less exploitation based on perceived differences in value. Social interactions are much less likely to enter into the commercial arena where pricing and negotiation assume power differences and competition.

What is it like to be deployed, especially in today’s wars?

Isolating. Alienating. Fearful. One doesn’t know if one is going home intact or at all.

Many members of the military struggle with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, and the suicide rate is higher in the military than it is for the general population. It often takes outside organizations to help soldiers deal with the conditions of their service, such as Suicide.org and Gold Star Families Speak Out, but those organizations are not meant for those currently deployed.

When you consider these unique stresses, is it surprising or shocking that an underground economy of sexual services emerges on overseas deployments, especially when outside purveyors of sexual services are not available in the areas to which these troops are deployed?

It’s not surprising at all when you consider: (1) single female soldiers face intense pressure to be socially and sexually active; (2) there are a minority of women compared to men thus there are not equal opportunities for heterosexual social interaction; (3) there is much inequality between women and men as men are more likely than women to have positions higher in the authority structure; (4) people are isolated from home, family, and even those in the host country; (5) they are in fear of their lives and may have no hope for their futures.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:755th_at_Bagram.jpg

An additional factor has to do with the age of these soldiers; most are in their twenties, some older, some younger. For these generations, oral sex is not as taboo as it was for previous generations. In fact, to many in these generations (and some others), oral sex isn’t really considered sex. Rather, it is something friends may do in the absence of a steady partner. And yet oral sex is considered a form of sexual intercourse, particularly by the Centers for Disease Control, and one can spread sexually transmitted diseases through it.

If indeed some soldiers are making extra money by doing sexual favors for their colleagues, it can be explained by the structural demands of the overseas deployments.

If our military leaders wanted to decrease the chances of this happening, what could they do to ease the strain of these conditions and ensure an effective egalitarian military force?

The Social Construction of Sex: Intersex as Evidence

By Sally Raskoff

In our society we take for granted that sex has only two categories: male and female. We learn in school that sex is caused or created by chromosomes, XX for females and XY for males. We assume that the typical path is that those sex categories create bodies with male or female characteristics. We teach in sociology classes that we then socially construct or build gender on top of the sex assignment based on those body characteristics.

All of this is founded upon the premise that sex has just those two categories. We tend to ignore the facts about sex that suggest that sex itself is also a socially constructed category.

The case of Caster Semenya has hit the news. She is an amazing athlete in track and field whose abilities were evident as a child. As she continues to win races, the controversy grows about her sex – is she a she or really a he? The Los Angeles Times published an article questioning the fairness of her competing as a woman since she appears to be a man.

A subsequent article cast her as a real person who has been teased since childhood about her appearance and abilities. However, an Associated Press video accompanying the story sounds suspicious, especially when they play a recording of her voice and assume everyone will hear it as a male voice. Note that the video also shows many images of her body and focuses on the area where breasts or curves would be expected on a typical female body. Semenya's story reminds us that biological sex is not always clear-cut.

Other articles in the Times bring up the dominant perspective on the variants of sex categories. The article below, to its credit, brings in the concept of Intersex that acknowledges how people may have variants of chromosomes and bodies that do not align with the expected XX female and XY male.

When the chromosomes present in a developing embryo give the instructions for hormones to work on the tissues and create the sex-specific physical structures, the hormones may not flow as instructed, the tissues may respond differently, or, later upon puberty, wholly different things may happen.

For example, a condition called 5 alpha reductase deficiency causes male infants to appear female, yet upon puberty they develop into fully functioning males. In societies without the medical resources that we have, they raise these children as girls and then accept them as men upon puberty (in the Dominican Republic and Papua New Guinea the condition occurs with frequency). However, in our society, we might surgically alter the person as a child or upon puberty to keep the gender assignment consistent.

Our dominant perspectives of sex and gender frames Intersex as a medical anomaly. However, using sociology, we can understand this situation more clearly.

Scholars disagree about the incidence of babies born with some form of Intersex condition. Biologist Anne Fausto-Sterling suggested that Intersex occurs at a rate of 1 in 2,000 births, yet other recent estimates range from 1 in 500 to 1 in 1,000. Either way, this happens fairly often!

In sports, where the sex distinction dictates which races you run and with whom you compete, the issue has been paramount. Yet the controversies are not often publicly discussed. The Los Angeles Times reports that eight female athletes in the last Olympics had XY chromosomes but were reinstated when it was also determined that they were physiologically female. (And isn’t it interesting that only women are scrutinized for their biological sex?)

Did you know that Texas marriage laws define their “marriage protection” statute by chromosomes and that a female with XY chromosomes can legally marry her female partner with XX chromosomes even though the state does not allow same-sex marriage? This could be useful for couples whose members include either transsexuals or Intersexuals.

In any case, our society has trouble understanding that these variations in sex may be part of our diversity as a species. Just as sexual orientation (though we have trouble with that one too) or other human characteristics that vary biological sex apparently can too. We accept that hair and eye color varies and that those characteristics have no implicit meaning yet we can’t seem to do the same for biological sex.

Sociologically, seeing how the cultural norms favor one category over another for specific types of traits demonstrates not only who has power in this society but also how we attribute meaning.

If we don’t allow ourselves to consider that there may be more than two types of sex categories, what does that mean to us as a culture and to people as individuals?

Beyond the issue of power and powerful groups based on membership in the privileged categories, what does it mean and what does it feel like to be in a non-dominant category?

In the past few years, groups of intersexed individuals have formed. The Intersex Society of North America has actually closed their doors but their website is still a useful resource. One of the ISNA founders, Cheryl Chase, has a strong presence on the internet. Organisation Intersex International is an active group providing perspective and resources for those who are part of the intersexed community or those who want to learn more.

Sociologically speaking, is there a social movement in the making? Perhaps as the experiences of intersexed people continue to be made public others will speak out and challenge the either/or notion of sex, which excludes those that don’t neatly fit into one category or another.

Photo source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:20090819_Caster_Semenya.jpg

Porn Stars and Public Health

By Sally Raskoff

Recently, news broke that a Los Angeles porn actress tested positive for the HIV virus. Take a look at how different articles addressed this topic:

 

Los Angeles Times

United Press International (UPI)

ABC News

e! Science News

Yahoo News

perezhilton.com

Oddly enough, Perez Hilton’s version was the only one that mentioned the importance of using condoms to prevent disease.

I heard someone on the radio suggest that LA rate porn film shoots like they do restaurants. In LA, restaurants must post their quality ratings based on public health inspections so customers can be informed about a kitchen’s cleanliness. Suggesting that porn film locations do the same is odd since the public does not patronize the actual work site nor is visiting or working at such a site a “choice” for someone who needs the job.

Suggesting that the city fund such ratings for the benefit of a few workers who already have the job before they step onto the site seems a colossal waste of taxpayer funds in these lean times.

If the issue is fear of spreading HIV, then public funds would be better spent on sex education, since the rates of sexually transmitted diseases in the general population are a more significant public health hazard than actors within the adult media industry are.

Source: http://www.prb.org/Datafinder/Topic/Map.aspx?variable=43

It is important for the adult entertainment industry to monitor and control the spread of sexually transmitted infections (STIs). The industry does test for some but by no means all STIs that may infect their workers. However if they did test for more than HIV, chlamydia, syphilis, and gonorrhea, as they currently do, the industry might lose most of its current workers!

Source: Chlamydia_Fig1_2007CDC.jpg

According to this Reuters article, the porn industry employs 1,200 actors, and since 2004, 1,357 actors have tested positive for gonorrhea, 15 for syphilis, and 22 for HIV. (You might be wondering how there could be more people with gonorrhea than the total number of actors—this figure is an annual average and there is significant turnover in the industry). These statistics, suggest a very high STI rate. But the most commonly occurring STI, chlamydia, is not included in this study.

Let’s consider STIs in context with another illness we’ve heard a lot about this year. The swine flu, H1N1, is considered a pandemic. A pandemic is typically defined as an infectious disease that spreads across some number of continents, potentially infecting a wide group of humans. Using this basic definition, one might wonder why sexually transmitted infections aren’t defined or perceived as pandemics although they too are shared across populations that do range across the globe.

If STIs were indeed defined as pandemics, more resources could be garnered to fight them and to stop their transmission. As it is, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) do what they can to track the numbers and raise awareness.

At the very least, our country could be doing more to better educate its population about sex and STIs. As it is, only 20 of our 50 states (plus the District of Columbia) mandate sex education and none require that forms of contraception, including condom use, be stressed in that curriculum.

Source: http://www.guttmacher.org/sections/sti.php

When STIs hit the news as a threat to the porn industry rather than as a public health issue, sociology can help us understand why we choose to focus on the threat as it affects others instead of ourselves.

What sociological theories or concepts might be useful here? Even though its profit margin is eroding (possibly due to the internet), porn does generate millions of profit for a variety of businesses, like hotels, satellite and cable companies, and media outlets. Would the issue of corporate power and the context of our capitalist system help us understand this issue more? What other sociological concepts might give us some insight?

News Coverage of Crime Victims

By Terry Glenn Lilley

Graduate Student, University of Delaware

Most of you have probably heard of Laci Peterson. She was pregnant with a baby boy when, on Christmas Eve of 2002, she was reported missing by her husband, Scott. Four months later, on April 14, 2003, Laci Peterson’s decapitated body was pulled from the San Francisco Bay. Four days after that, Scott Peterson was arrested for murdering his wife. He was later convicted and is currently on death row.

But how many of us have ever heard about Evelyn Hernandez? Evelyn Hernandez was a Salvadoran immigrant and single mother living in San Francisco. Seven months before Laci Peterson was reported missing, Evelyn Hernandez and her five year old son were reported missing. Like Laci Peterson, Evelyn Hernandez was pregnant and was due to deliver a baby boy in a week’s time. Three months after being reported missing, Ms. Hernandez’s decapitated body was pulled from the San Francisco Bay on July 24, 2002. This was nine months before Laci Peterson’s body would be recovered.

The circumstances of the two cases are remarkably similar. Yet one of the stories received considerable media attention while the other received very little. In the four months between Laci Peterson’s reported disappearance and husband Scott Peterson’s arrest on April 18, 2003, the San Francisco Chronicle published 32 stories about her disappearance and murder, four of which were on the front page. Meanwhile, the newspaper published a total of only four stories about Evelyn Hernandez and none of them made the front page.

The disparity in coverage wasn’t isolated to the pages of the San Francisco Chronicle. I conducted a LexisNexis Academic search in October 2008 for news items in U.S. Newspapers and Wires containing the name “Laci Peterson”, (results in Figure 1 below), and found 8,141 separate entries. On the other hand, a LexisNexis Academic search using the same parameters for “Evelyn Hernandez” produced only 57 results (0.7% of the total stories devoted to Laci Peterson).

What’s more, of the 57 stories mentioning Ms. Hernandez, 41 of them (72%) only mention her in relation to the Peterson case. One of the reasons for this is that during the Scott Peterson’s trial his defense team mentioned the Hernandez case to suggest that a serial killer might be targeting pregnant women in the area.

So, why the disparity in news coverage? Some researchers suggest that a case’s novelty determines the level of attention it receives. The race, class, and gender of the victim also play a role. Victims who are white, middle to upper-class females receive more media and political attention than their lower-class counterparts of color. This disparity matters for a variety of reasons. For one thing, highly-publicized cases often receive more police attention and, later when the perpetrator is caught, more attention from prosecutors. These cases are also often used to rally support for legislation.

For instance, the 1992 murder of 18-year old Kimber Reynolds was used to help gain support for California’s “Three Strikes” law. The 1994 rape and murder of 7 year old Meghan Kanka from New Jersey was used to help create and pass that state’s sex offender registration and community notification law which has become known as “Megan’s Law”. You’re probably familiar with of “AMBER Alerts”, which are issued to inform communities and law enforcement of child abduction cases. AMBER Alerts are named for 9-year-old Texan Amber Hagerman, who was kidnapped and murdered in 1996. Likewise, Laci Peterson’s murder in 2002 was used to pass “Laci and Connor’s Law” or “The Unborn Victims of Violence Act”. This act was passed by the United States Congress in 2004 and recognizes a child in utero that is injured or killed during the commission of federal crimes of violence as a legal victim.

In each of these cases, the victim was a white female. And, like the Peterson case, each had similarities to other crimes committed against women of color that received little to no media attention. Thus, while most of us have heard about Laci Peterson and Meghan Kanka, few of us know about Evelyn Hernandez, Tamika Huston, Dannarriah Finley, or Alexis Patterson, nonwhite victims of similar crimes whose names you might not know. Their murders didn’t make national headlines and no laws bear their names.

Some might argue that no matter which cases we rally around, protections for victims are being put in place so we should be satisfied either way. But if only a certain type of victim spurs action while other victims are ignored, already subordinated groups become more disenfranchised. Mourning white victims with news stories and then memorializing them with legislation can make minority victims seem even more nameless and forgotten.

Exactly what is it that makes Laci Peterson more newsworthy than Evelyn Hernandez? Why don’t we have ALEXIS alerts? Dannarriah’s law? What other ways do you think race, class, and gender shape our beliefs about crime?

Sport and Gender

By Bradley Wright

This week’s issue of ESPN magazine featured the star basketball player Candace Parker, and when I saw the cover photograph, I chuckled, but when I read the article, I rolled my eyes and sighed in exasperation.

You see, I had recently been writing a lecture on content analysis for my social research methods class, and I was looking for a video example to illustrate the power of this technique. With content analysis, we identify existing documents, photographs, or other forms of data, and we analyze them much the same way we would other forms of data, e.g., survey data or participant observation. In cruising around the internet, I found a presentation by Mediaed.org entitled Playing Unfair: The Media Image of the Female Athlete. It’s a clip from a longer film in which various experts subject talk about how female athletes are presented in the media.

The experts on this topic (and I am not one of them) identified several themes in the media presentation of female athletes. These representations tend to deemphasize the women’s athleticism by portraying them in street clothes or in everyday activities; in contrast, male athletes are more often portrayed in their uniform, performing their sport.

The representations also emphasize the women’s sexuality more so than men’s, so pictures and text about the women are more likely to highlight their sexual features. They emphasize the women’s heterosexuality to counteract stereotypes of female athletes as lesbians. Pictures of them often include a boyfriend, husband, or children. Finally, female athletes receive far less media coverage than do their male counterparts.

Okay, back to Candace Parker. I work at the University of Connecticut, which is a perennial powerhouse in women’s basketball. (At this point, you should be cheering U-C-O-N-N). Candace Parker, unfortunately, attended our archrival, Tennessee, where she led them to two national championships. She’s now gone pro in the WNBA, and in her first year she was both rookie-of-the-year and player-of-the-year. She even dunks the basketball! In short, Candace is perhaps the best women to ever play the game.

ESPN magazine wants to feature her on its cover, and which picture do they choose? As you can see, it’s a picture that epitomizes the sociological analysis of women in sports. Candace is shown in a white dress, not a basketball uniform or playing basketball. The lighting and make-up are glamorous, and she’s pregnant—holding her hands on her womb to emphasize it. This is when I laughed—a perfect illustration of what the sociologists in the video spoke of.

As I thought about this image of Parker, I realized perhaps ESPN magazine routinely portrayed athletes in everyday life, and I had just happen to notice this week’s issue with a woman on the cover. So, I looked up the covers of the last five issues of the magazine, and four of the five had men in uniforms doing something related to their sports. The fifth had a male basketball player in street clothes, but he was dunking a basketball.

Hm-m-m-m, maybe this is an ESPN magazine thing, so I looked up recent covers of Sports Illustrated--again all men, in uniforms, performing their sports except for one cover featuring a woman. The swimsuit issue.

Then I read the article about Candace Parker, and this is when I started rolling my eyes. Here are its opening lines:

THE SELLING OF CANDACE PARKER

She's the total package: your sister's pal, your brother's prom date, supermom-to-be. She's also an MVP—of a league few watch. So can Candace Parker be the female Jordan? Lots of folks are banking on it.
Candace Parker is beautiful. Breathtaking, really, with flawless skin, endless legs and a C cup she is proud of but never flaunts. She is also the best at what she does, a record-setter, a rule-breaker, a redefiner.

Can you imagine any mainstream magazine taking a similar approach to a male athlete? “Baseball player Sidd Finch is a hunk. A complete hunk, really, with chiseled features, rippling biceps, and a larger-than-average penis that he is proud of but never flaunts.” Ah, I don’t think so. (By the way, you get extra credit if you recognize the name of the player.)

Content analysis has various advantages. It’s a way to study existing documents and portrayals in society. It’s usually less work than collecting survey, interview or observation data. It can be analyzed using both qualitative and quantitative approaches.

It has its disadvantages too, but more than anything, after looking at these articles, I’m just depressed about the media’s portrayal of women athletes.

Michelle Obama: More Than Fashion Sense

By Janis Prince Inniss

Have you heard of Sleevegate? Best as I can tell, Sleevegate erupted over Michelle Obama’s sleeveless attire at her husband’s first Presidential address to Congress. Columnists in small, and even major papers such the New York Times have had their say on the matter. In the Times piece Maureen Dowd quotes fellow columnist David Brooks as saying of Mrs. Obama’s arms, “She’s made her point. Now she should put away Thunder and Lightning.” Everybody, it seems has an opinion about her arms.

What side are you on? Sleeveless or sleeves? You don’t care? Well apparently that puts you in the minority as lots of people have used tons of ink (and cyberspace) on the issue. There were also lots of articles and television shows directing women on how they too could get toned arms like the First Lady. Reportedly, trainers are now getting requests for “Michelle arms” from their clients.

People have scrutinized Michelle Obama’s entire appearance. Her hair has been the subject of much blogging and even her actual features have been commented upon (and not always kindly). I read some comments from people who were disappointed that the First Lady had not selected an African American designer for her Inauguration Day outfit, and others who complained that her ball gown was not made by an African American.

The attention to Michelle Obama’s clothing started before she became first lady. While on the campaign trail, she appeared on “The View”. At that appearance, she wore a $148 black and white dress, purchased from White House/Black Market. It was an instant hit and sold out overnight!

As the First Couple make their first splash overseas with a visit to Europe, (The President’s first foreign trip was actually to Canada in February.) the First Lady’s every outfit is coming under even greater scrutiny, as member of the international press join in on the commentary. The main event on this trip? Nothing to do with the G-20 summit that is supposedly the trip’s centerpiece! Nope. It was the fashion ‘face-off’ between Michelle Obama and France’s First Lady, former Victoria Secret model and singer, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy!

I haven’t seen anything written about the President’s clothing though. Who does he wear? Does his tie go well enough with his suit? How about his shoes? And was there a fashion faceoff between Presidents Obama and Sarkozy?

No doubt, lots of ink is spent on the appearance of women, regardless of their ”power” positions. And occasionally men get a dose: John Edwards and President Clinton both got a taste of this when the expensive haircuts they received from Hollywood hair-stylists caused a stir.

Why so much focus on Michelle Obama’s fashion sense? Aren’t there more interesting things about her to talk about? This is a woman who graduated cum laude from Princeton with a degree is in Sociology! Michelle Obama is also a graduate of the prestigious Harvard Law School. She served as adviser to her husband, our new President, when he joined her at the law firm of Sidley & Austin. She gave up corporate law for public service, working for Chicago Mayor Daley and then in the city office of planning and development. She was founding Executive Director for an AmeriCorps national service program. Later, Mrs. Obama served as Associate Dean of Student Services at the University of Chicago. In 2005 she became Vice President for Community and External Affairs at University of Chicago Hospitals.

From there, she took a leave of absence to join her husband on the campaign trail, a position from which she resigned this year. She is quite accomplished in terms of career, but it’s hard to tell that the First Lady has such an impressive resume when so much time is spent on whether she should cover her arms up. Or whether her ensembles for the Inauguration Day and evening balls were quite “right”.

Personally, I’m impressed by Michelle Obama, and I love to see pictures of her. But I’m impressed by all of what I’ve learned--not only by her appearance, although she does wear clothes well. Why are we paying so much attention to her appearance though? Why do we spend so much time on any woman’s appearance? That Michelle Obama is the U.S. First Lady heightens that focus. Add to that natural curiosity her straying from convention (Bare arms! And they’re toned! Wow!) and there is even more to talk about. What else could we say about a First Lady? Former First Lady Laura Bush did not engender this much attention to what she wore? How come?

Why haven’t we heard half as much about what Mrs. Obama is doing as First Lady as we have about her appearance? Have you heard much about her Women’s History event? Her trips to federal agencies? Her work regarding military families? Is sexism at work here? Racism?

Video

Did you hear what German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s husband (Joachim Sauer) wore to the G-20 or NATO Summits? How about Nestor Kirchner, husband of Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner? Me neither.

Are Teen "Sexters" Sex Offenders?

By Janis Prince Inniss

Eighteen-year-old Jesse Logan had talked about attending the University of Cincinnati. Logan sent nude pictures of herself to her boyfriend by cell phone. When the pair broke up, he sent the pictures to others, and Jesse’s torment began. She was called names like slut and whore by schoolmates, and some girls even threw objects at her. Eventually Jesse started skipping classes and in July 2008, she committed suicide.

Three teen girls in Greensburg, Pennsylvania sent racy pictures of themselves to three boys at their school. The six teens have been charged with child pornography and possessing or exhibiting a picture of a child in a sexual act. These are felony charges.

According to someone who worked in a Tampa high school, a male student there received video text of a girl masturbating.

In another case at the same high school, by the end of one day, the nude picture of a female student was sent to just about everyone at the school, including faculty and staff.

Results of a survey of teens indicate that most teens send suggestive images and texts to their boyfriends and girlfriends, but many others send them to people they want to “hook up” with. Referred to as sexting—sex and texting—the majority of teens believe that sending these messages can have “serious negative consequences”. Yet, some still send them. One of the obvious negative consequences of sexting is that “sexts” may be shared with many people other than the intended recipient(s). In fact almost half of teens say doing this is “common” and admit to doing this forwarding themselves.

Why are teens sexting? Of those male and female teens who have done it, most say they are being flirtatious, and half of the girls say they are giving their boyfriends a “sexy present”. Most of the teens surveyed believe that girls are more likely than boys to send sexy videos and photos. And why would girls be more likely to sext? The majority are doing so to get or keep a guy’s attention, to get noticed, to be fun/flirtatious, or to get a guy to like them, they said.

Teens are not the only people sending racy texts, pictures and videos. In a previous post, I discussed the fact that sexy text messages were evidence of “misconduct” by Detroit’s former mayor Kwame Kilpatrick (having an extramarital affair and lying under oath) and a Tampa teacher (having sex with her students). But sexting by teens is what is claiming our attention, even if its prevalence is questionable. (A Google search of the term finds tons of articles on teen sexting; on the first page of results there was only one piece on a man whose wife was sexting someone else, but that’s the only non-teen related piece I saw on several pages.)

Maybe we’re more comfortable with adult sexuality, but many of us are skittish about teens as sexual beings. And of course many are concerned about the possible far reaching repercussions for teens of having sexy videos, semi-nude or nude pictures ”out there”. How will these images look to college admissions boards and potential employers?

Is the answer to block text messages? My mobile carrier, T-Mobile, does offer message blocking but I don’t see how this would help me if I was a texter but wanted to stop someone from sending me racy pictures. Message Blocking allows one to block one or all of the following types of messages: text, video, photos, IMs and emails. All of them! If I used message blocking, I couldn’t chose who to exchange texts with.

What does how we handle actual teen sex, as opposed to sexual photos and videos suggest on this issue? Although laws vary by state, in many states it is not a crime for older teens to have consensual heterosexual intercourse, unless one is older by a certain number of years. The permitted age range varies depending on the state. That means that in many cases teens could have consensual sex with no legal repercussions but could be charged with child pornography for sexting. In some states, conviction for possession of child pornography also requires that one be registered as a sex offender, for life.

How should we as a society handle sexting? What do you think of the legal approach of responding with felony child pornography charges? Presumably this response is meant to act as a deterrent to other would be teen sexters. But how well do various deterrence strategies work with adults? Many of our actions are not the most rational; this is a hallmark of teen life. For example, many teens believe their images will be shared but they still sext anyway. Consider who the victims of these sext crimes are. Or are these victimless crimes? Would you say that Jesse Logan was a victim? How about the teenagers in Pennsylvania? Are the three girls who sent the pictures perpetrators of a crime and the boys victims? How about if the person receiving the sext does not want it? Is that sexual harassment? What do you think?

The Social Construction of Race, Ethnicity, Sex, and Gender

By Sally Raskoff

Is it easier to conceive of race/ethnicity or sex/gender as socially constructed categories? A recent assessment of students’ learning on our campus suggest that it’s easier to consider race and ethnicity as socially constructed categories than it is to think of sex and gender that way.

Why might this be so?

While both sets of identity categories seem to be taken for granted as natural or biological, there are plenty of examples of people who "passed" as members of a category. Actors sometimes play a character of a different race or ethnicity, but it’s much more rare to see an actor take on the role of a character who is a different sex or gender unless it involves a transgender situation or comedic drag. Audiences accepted Robert Downey, Jr.” passing” as an Australian actor playing an African American character in the comedy Tropic Thunder. Hilary Swank won an academy award for her performance as Brandon Teena in Boys Don’t Cry, a female whose gender identity was male.

There are many other examples of “passing” in real life, including the recent book Black Like Me, and the story of Billy Tipton, a musician whose female sex wasn’t known until after his death, even after two marriages to women. Yet we may hear about the racial/ethnic examples much more than those involving sex and gender. We may also assume that people are born and socialized into these categories and thus they stick – for most of us.

Which of these categories are more malleable? Do we assume that we can change our racial and  ethnic identity with some cultural markers or minor physical alterations? Are there obvious bodily markers of specific race and ethnic categories that are not just stereotypes? Many physical features may be perceived as belonging to particular groups yet they are in fact shared by many different groups and are not expressed in every member of that group. For example, I have a colleague of Latino background who travels widely in Mexico and is accepted there as a local. He is also considered a local in tropical island locales as his skin tone and build suggest some of their patterns. If he were to travel to various countries in the Middle East and Far East, he might also be accepted as a local in those places because his physical features may also be interpreted differently in different contexts.

We do know from research that physical features and genetic markers have tremendous diversity and are spread across groups in complex ways. From the sickle cell gene to nose shapes, many different groups from different geographic and cultural regions share s traits yet are not considered to be in the same racial groups. The American Association of Physical Anthropologists clarify this in their Statement on Biological Aspects of Race.

Most of us are assigned a sex and gender at birth (or earlier) and most of us assume that is what we are, case closed. We do learn in sociology classes that sex is a physical construct and gender is the social construct thus theoretically, gender may be more mutable than sex. However, considering the high rate of intersex births (1 in 500 according to some estimates, 1 in 2,000 births for the more conservative estimates) one must consider that both sex and gender exist on a continuum. Learning about other cultures that have more than two gender categories helps to make this clearer. 

Consider childhood encounters with race and sex categories – when we fill out forms for school, the sex or gender question has consistency yet the racial and ethnic questions offer us many choices and, since 2000, the Census has allowed us to choose more than one category of race.

While you might learn about the social construction of both race/ethnicity and sex/gender in a sociology class, our personal experience with standardized forms helps us presume a firm sex/gender category. Does seeing new choices for race/ethnicity make it easier to understand how these categories are social constructions?