Crafts in general, particularly knitting, sewing, and needlepoint, have a reputation for being “women’s work” or “women’s hobbies.”  Not always true.  In fact, at my college there were multiple male members in the kitting club, of which I was VP for a year.  A few months ago we took a look at crafting truckers.  Today, I bring you artist Nathan Vincent.

His artist statement reads:

“My work explores gender permissions and the challenges that arise from straying from the prescribed norms. It questions the qualities of gender by considering what constitutes masculine and feminine. It critiques stereotypical gender mediums by creating “masculine objects” using “feminine processes” such as crochet, sewing, and applique.”

Vincent’s work was recently featured on one of my favorite blogs, Sociological Images.  Here are a few of my favorite examples of his work:

In these three pieces a pair of boxing gloves, a collection of handguns, and a urinal have been constructed with yarn through crochet – traditionally a “feminine” medium, and yet all of the objects are considered “masculine.”  The gloves and guns are masculine symbols of aggression, and the urinal is masculine because, well, you know…  In two more examples a push lawn mower and beer-can graveyard have also been crafted:

Masculine or feminine or (!!!) simply objects, the creativity and uniqueness of this sculptural collection rocks my world.  Maybe it’s time for me to move up a notch from scarves and mittens…

Pat Robertson has made it into our archives of misogyny before, but this one is really something else.  Remember that time that Tina Fey hosted SNL and implied through her tear-down of “Bombshell” McGee that a husband’s cheating is more the fault of the mistress than the husband?  Pat Robertson takes it a step further and educates us all on how it’s the wife’s laziness that drives her husband to cheat.

E-mailed Question: “My husband has always been a flirt and loves to talk with other women he finds attractive.  He says he would never cheat on me, but his actions are starting to get to me.  What should I do?”

Robertson’s response: “First thing is you need to make yourself as attractive as possible and, uh, don’t hassle him about it.  And why is he doing this?  Well, he’s doing it because he wants affirmation that he is still a man, that he is attractive, and, uh, he gets an affirmation of himself.  That means he’s got an inferiority complex that’s coming out, and, uh, he’s not gonna cheat on you – he’s just playin.  But you need to not drive him away, start hassling and hamming on him, but make yourself as beautiful as you can, as fun as you can, and say ‘let’s go out here, let’s go there, let’s go do the other thing’ so…”

Co-host, laughing: “He has a lot more grace than I do.  Let me just say, we’d be having a serious conversation.”

Robertson: “Affirmation!  Affirmation, dearheart!”

Co-host: “Yeah, yeah. A little bit of affirmation goes a long way.”

Wow.  So much fail.  I need to take this apart, bit by bit. Read the rest of this entry »

“In this country, oddly, we have images of men as arrogant and aggressive. Humility is considered an unmasculine quality. What I found in the last five years is that humility is a beautiful thing.”

- David Duchovny

From USA Today via Jezebel.  In somewhat related news, check out this sweet post on The X-Files and rape over at The Sexist.

After 18 hours on the road, everyone needs to unwind.  These guys do it with balls.  Of yarn.

Oh hells yeah.  As a knitter, and as someone who believes that gender roles are entirely socially constructed B.S., I have much love for this article.  Check it out:

Since last year, when the economy left drivers with fewer hauls, Mr. White, a 6-foot-2, 240-pound ex-Air Force mechanic with a bushy mustache, has hunkered down inside his truck in his many off hours, making quilts… When he’s not sewing, he’s daydreaming about it, he said.

Kevin Abraham-Banks [pictured above], a 37-year-old trucker with a shaved head and dragon tattoos, passes time at truck stops with his cocoa and knitting… “The fact that you can take strands of thread and basically make something out of it, that’s awesome I think,” he said. “It’s pretty cool stuff, man.”

Thomas McConnaughy, a married grandfather from Hemet, Calif., hauls cereal, reads his Bible, plays Sudoku, and talks trout fishing at truck stops. He doesn’t let on to other drivers that he keeps 15 coils of yarn in his cab and makes what he describes as “really cute slippers.”

At times the tone of the article is a little patronizing (ex. “patterns with names like ‘Meet Me In Paris’,” “a square of yellow cotton with little violets,” and “his blue eyes widened behind his glasses as he moved to the topic of thread”).  It’s a little tongue-in-cheek, like wow, check out how feminine these macho truckers are when you’re not looking! As a crafter, I can understand getting excited about your projects, the time and energy you put into them, and the joy of finding a sweet yarn or print.  But it’s rarely with childlike widened blue eyes.  Or green or brown eyes, you know, depending.

Men and women of the world: hobby in what ever ways make you happy.  Knit, quilt, and stitch to your heart’s content, with pride.  Crafting’s not just for grannies anymore.  And if some journalist tries to belittle your art form because it utilizes flowery and fruity fabrics instead of chainsaws and wood glue, just remember:  you’re the one with the set of pointy sticks.  And you know how to use them. [via Bust]

I did not watch the SuperBowl.  Proudly.  But my stance on professional sports is a topic for another discussion.  Anyway, if there’s one thing that the SuperBowl is known for (besides hypermasculinity and large men in spandex trying to kill each other in addition to rubbing up against one another and grunting in a totally non-sexual way – wait, another post, right) it’s envelope pushing advertisements.  These are being covered all over the place today, so here are some links to get you thinking about the fallout.

Woes Of Bros: Super Bowl Ads Star Pathetic Men — And The Women Who Ruined Them [Jezebel]

Knowing that Super Bowl Sunday is the only day of the year in which TV viewers actually care about commercials, you’d think ad agencies would have tried to reach the men and the women watching at home, right? Wrong.

Superbowl Sexism: Spineless, skirtless edition [feministing]

I’m sensing an anxious masculinity theme for the Superbowl commercials this year. I mean, we get it, dudes: You’re worried about being castrated by lavender scented candles and shopping with your lady friend. Go kill something, quick! And for the love of god, stop being nice to your girlfriend.

The Super Bowl and Madison Avenue Misogyny [feministe]

Superbowl ads are sexist. This is well trod ground: Marketers objectify women and play up stereotypes in order to sell things to (heterosexual) men. But we knew this year was going to be special. This year there was going to be some extra anti-feminist flavor… There were fewer half-naked women and dick jokes this year. Instead, the 2010 Superbowl Ad Mantra seemed to have one common theme: “Feeling castrated? . . . by women? Man up.”

The Critics On The Super Bowl Ads: Boring, Misogynistic [Jezebel]

• From Time‘s James Poniewozik:

Wow, Super Bowl ad men really hate Super Bowl ad women this year, don’t they? …. Why would CBS turn down a Super Bowl ad from a gay-dating service, then run a bunch of ads with the message that men can’t stand to be around women?

• From  Slate‘s Seth Stevenson:

Is it me, or was this year’s dose of casual misogyny a little rawer and angrier than usual?

• From The Washington Post‘s Tom Shales:

An oddly recurring theme had to do with men asserting their masculinity, or attempting to assert it, as well as the perpetual male fear of emasculation.

• NOW via the Los Angeles Times:

NOW president Terry O’Neill said it glorified violence against women. “I am blown away at the celebration of the violence against women in it,” she said.

Looks like a big mess.  Did I miss any good critiques of last night’s ads?  Feel free to leave your own responses as well as links to more posts in the comments.

I don’t even know where to start with this one, although I will say that none of the lows that advertisers stoop to really surprise me when I’m watching football.

Okay, first, just because I am a woman doesn’t mean that the plethora of stereotypes spewed in the ad apply to me in any way.  Secondly, just because I don’t like those things, doesn’t mean I will like your man-machine.  Yoga and sports cars are not mutually exclusive.

Furthermore, beyond never wanting anything to do with this man-machine, I don’t want anything to do with anyone who does want anything to do with the hypermasculine desperation dripping from this hunk of metal.

I hate football commercials.

Yesterday in one of my graduate level classes we had a guest speaker who shared with us some of his experiences and thoughts about being a crossdresser.  He reported that he spent 95% of his time as a man and didn’t have a “chip on [his] shoulder” about the questions we asked him or the pronouns we used to refer to him, so despite his being dressed as a woman yesterday I’ll be referring to this individual as “him.”  Although he gave us the disclaimer that we could ask anything, I still wasn’t comfortable asking everything I wanted to or voicing some things I was struggling to understand, but I figured this was as good a place as any to work through my thoughts.

I was born female and identify as female, and I view that as a privilege.  I don’t know what it’s like to be born in the wrong body, but I believe it can and does happen, and I believe it can and does make life harder for many people.  I also understand that there are individuals who are drawn to crossdressing who have no feelings of wanting to be the other gender, but simply like the way it feels or the way they look when they experiment with gender atypical attire.  But something wasn’t sitting right with me today.

Our guest speaker kept repeating, as he showed us pictures of 50s housewives doing chores in dresses and heels, “doesn’t that look like fun!?”  Maybe.  But not to me.  And the idea that this was once an expectation for women but is now seen as kitchy, cute, and “fun” rubs me the wrong way.  Women have worked long and hard to have the option to get out of that role, and “fun” kind of belittles that struggle.  I was also getting bogged down in privilege-tied guilt that its acceptable for me as a woman to dress in “male” clothing and the reverse isn’t true for men. I firmly believe that rigid gender roles cut both ways and hurt both women and men, too.  It sucks that men can’t dress how they want, and our speaker was right in stating that it’s not fair.  But it’s a little more complicated than that. More thoughts after the jump.

It’s been awhile since 3rd Rock From the Sun went off the air, but now that reruns are airing on TVland, we can once again enjoy the antics of some of my favorite aliens; Dick, Sally, Harry and Tommy. 3rd Rock was always good for a laugh as the aliens observed human interactions from an outsiders perspective. In particular the romances between Dick and Dr. Mary Albright and Sally and Officer Don often played with gender stereotypes, as neither Mary nor Sally were willing to put up with any crap from their partners. Mary’s feisty attitude likely came from her extensive education and young adulthood during the second wave feminist movement. Sally, on the other hand, was never accustomed to gender differences as the aliens were asexual on their home planet.

When they first arrived on Earth, Sally was unhappy with her assignment into a female body while the rest of the aliens were male. She put in a request for a body-swap, but there was no word for years, and she not only adapted to her female form but grew to love it (a running gag on the show was that Sally was ashamed of her body, despite appearing like a supermodel to typical humans). However, three years later The Big Giant Head granted the request, resulting in shenanigans as she and Dick try to live in each others’ bodies until their request to switch back is answered.

Somewhat disappointingly Sally as Dick teaches his class about the formulas of shopping. Dick as Sally has a more difficult time adjusting: at 5:50 you can see how Dick’s brain copes with the harassment Sally’s body garnishes daily. If you want to watch the rest of the episode, you can catch part two here, and the great conclusion after the jump.

Click here for Sally and Dick’s reflections on their body swap

We’ve been over this, people. Girls (and women) play too. We don’t just watch our boyfriends play in amazement.

Even if it weren’t for this commercial, this isn’t the type of game I’d typically choose, but I have certainly known my share of bad@$$ gamer women who destroy male gamers on Halo and other shooter and action games.

Marketers would do well to realize that women are a viable video-game market, and they should try catering to us without the pink and romance and stop insulting our intelligence in male-targeted games.

“We will be our own role models, and the role models for other men and boys.
Rejecting some of traditional masculinity, we will embrace what is useful to us
and sometimes create new definitions of what it means to be a man…
We choose to respect, listen to, seek equality with and share power
with the women in our lives and to encourage other men and boys to do the same.”

- Ben Atherton-Zeman

Ben Atherton-Zeman is a spokesperson for the National Organization for Men Against Sexism.  This quote was featured in an article of the June 2009 issue of Psychology of Women Quarterly.