First, via Forever Geek, I discovered the artwork of Peter Callesen. I especially enjoyed his paper work, and I thought I'd share it with you!
Big Paper Castle
Erected Ruin
Erected Ruin
Erected Ruin, detail
Erected Ruin, detail
On the Other Side
On the Other Side, detail
Birds trying to escape their drawing
Birds trying to escape their drawing, detail
Next, via The Sexist, I found an online archive of the Punch cartoons drawn by John Leech. The "feminism" tag is by far the most entertaining. As Amanda says, "dude hated bloomers." Because they'll lead to women acting like men. Working outside the home! Leaving those poor, incapable men to struggle with the housework. Proposing for marriage! Asking men to dance! Condescending to their husbands (which is perfectly okay, apparently, if men do it to their wives)! A sample (click for larger):
From Pandagon: Thwarted sperm finally have an advocate. Amanda discovered anti-choice ecards for "men who’ve been violated by women just up and aborting without permission." Behold.
Unconvinced that these cards express the full range of the Fatherhood Forever Foundation's sentiment, Amanda made a few more appropriate cards of her own:
Finally, Geek Feminism points us to an experiment in which seventh graders were asked to draw and describe scientists before and after a visit to Fermilab:
See the drawings here.Among girls (14 in total), 36% portrayed a female scientist in the “before” drawing, and 57% portrayed a female scientist in the “after” drawing.
Among boys (17 in total), 100% portrayed a male scientist in the “before” drawing, and 100% portrayed a male scientist in the “after” drawing.
It looks like a visit to Fermilab has no impact on boys’ gender stereotypes about scientists, but it has a strong impact on challenging girls’ gender stereotypes about scientists. For girls, there was a 58% increase in female scientist representation in their drawings; for boys, there was a 0% increase in female scientist representation in their drawings.
If boys grow up to be men, and empirical evidence has no effect on males’ gender stereotypes about scientists, how do we challenge males’ association of science with maleness?
Have a good weekend, folks!
3 comments:
Man, those are disappointing results for the boys.
I hope you don't mind me asking this in comments, but I didn't find a "contact us" link (although maybe it's there and I missed it).
I was wondering: Would you consider setting your blog's RSS feed to "full posts" instead of just the first couple of sentences? I really like your blog, and want to read it -- but I simply don't have enough time to follow blogs I can't read in my RSS feeder.
And for what it's worth, statistics show it's not just me - a full text RSS feed will increase your readership.
Barry,
I've never had anyone ask, but now that you have, I changed it! Hope it helps!
I'm distressed by this, but would like to offer an explanation: It is perhaps because when we are asked to draw someone in a profession, the first thing we envision is OURSELVES doing that profession (being creatures of ego after all). Since the predominant (and incorrect) view of scientists in america is that they are male, there would be nothing to discourage a boy from drawing a male scientist, whereas this cultural expectation prevents women from necessarily doing the same. The demonstration at fermilab perhaps demonstrates a weakening of these expectations, allowing more women to project themselves into that role.
I would like to pose a hypothetical. Assume we did the same experiment, but instead of scientists, considered a profession which was predominantly female. Ballerinas or dancers, for example. I posit that while amongst males, the number of male ballerinas drawn would increase, but I think you would find that this would not be the case with women. (Basically you'd find the same situation as the fermilab experiment, but reversed.)
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