Gender Gone Wild

1
Lecture 10

• Gender Gone Wild?

2
things

• Paper due Thursdayjust do itanother good topic
  The Bubble Bath. You must pass something in. Do
  not plagiarize.
• Lectures 6-9 posted soon
• Last class
• babies at Frenchys are mostly white with
  blonde hair and blue eyes. Why?
• Making a birth announcement is a good example of
  the intersection between ideals and materials.
  Conscientious parent(s) are often conflicted
  between the expectation/joy around the ideals of
  just having had a child and the environmental
  implications of spreading that word.
• Pre-class slides on birth announcements will be
  posted

3
Today
The main topic of today is to consider the naked
body in/as part of nature, and presentations of
masculinity and femininity in that interaction.

• (1) SMUO Bell, D. and Holliday, R. (2000). Naked
  as nature intended. Body and Society, 6 (3/4),
  127-140.
• (2) NET Bean, M. (2007). Love lessons from the
  wild kingdom 5 primal ways to boost your animal
  magnetism. Mens Health, 22 (4), 64-65.

4
As we go over the readings today

• Consider Goffmans advice that we re-order the
  knowledge we have --- about ideals and materials
  linking ideals around sex and the animal world,
  and the taken-for-granted links between sex,
  gender, and nature.

5
READING Bean, M. (2007). Love lessons from the
wild kingdom 5 primal ways to boost your animal
magnetism. Mens Health, 22 (4), 64-65.Have
these in mind when you head out to a bar?
6
This Mens Health article (an example of a
material which represents dominant ideals) is
aimed at a specific, precluded audience. Which
one?

• Link to reading (Sadie Hawkins spinster, Lil
  Abner character, 1930s)
• The reading is an example of a Material aspect
  of the ecological dialogue on sex, bodies,
  gender, sexuality, and nature. It represents
  several idealswhat are they? Because we can
  see this website, we can also see the
  animalsmore material aspects.
• Baboon Link Listen to the male voice at the
  endwhat ideal is he reinforcing and reflecting?
  And, the female voice?
• Are men more connected to nature than women or
  other sexes or genders?
• Are those love lessons or sex lessons? Is
  there always a difference?
• What would the animals for women be?
• How would those animals mating habits be
  organized?
• What about animals and mating tips for gays and
  lesbians? For abstainers from sex? For
  transvestites? For divorced people? Widowers? ?
  What about for priests who cannot marry?

7
So, is having sex natural? Bodily functions
concerning sex organs are often considered
natural. Consider these links between physocal
bodily functions (materials) and social norms
(ideals)In the Western status quo,

• Boys, too, must keep their sexual arousal hidden,
  especially if it is in response to
  male/homosexuality taboo.
• You think thats problematic? Gays, lesbians,
  bi-sexuals, asexuals, transexuals,
  hermaphrodites, transvestites face compounded
  regulations out of fear and prejudice.

• Girls are segregated when they begin to
  menstruate in our society (generally).
• They can receive special treatment and can be
  excused from certain activities.
• The social connection to sex is associated mainly
  with becoming a woman, and promiscuity
  pregnancy, and disease to a lesser degree pads
  and tampons are hidden.

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On the relationship between bodies and
nature___Contrast the previous video with ideal
and material aspects in this menstrual ritual

• The Eland Bull Dance this is built around a
  fantasy of animal sex. Tribal females act like
  eland cows who are romancing each other and
  mating, dancing backward toward the huts where
  the menstruating girl lays under a cloak. She
  becomes a woman because of the dancing outside,
  but is not permitted to draw attention to herself
  (?). (www.dhushara.com/paradoxhtm/culture/eland1.j
  pg)
• How might we apply Goffman to both contexts?

9
Rock art (material) on the ritual see how the
creative aspect is also getting messages across?
(from about 3000 years ago)

• 
  
  (homepages.uel.ac.uk)

10

• Describe the ideal and material ways boys
  become men in your home town through performing
  like a man.
• Do they compare with any of the rituals in when
  girls begin to menstruate in your home town? Why
  or Why not?

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Not only do we have dominant ideals about
natural bodily functions, we constantly
interpret nude bodies in society -

• The Arts
• Myth
• Beauty
• Strength
• Eroticism
• Sexuality
• Taboo underground
• Religion
• Academic texts and popular press covers
• Health and medicine
• There is a (Federation of Canadian Nudists (FCN
  LINK)
• Famous Photo of ???? (photographer Annie
  Leibovitz)

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What ideals might this ideal challenge? (Whose
feathers would ruffle?)
13
A word on terminology

• What is a naturalist?
• (estb.msn.com)
• What is a naturist?
• (www.bbc.co.uk/wiltshire )
• What is a nudist?
• (clothing is not optional during at least some
  part of the naturist performance)
• (images-cdn01.associatedcontent.com)
• Much overlap exists, and we take them for
  granted, but they differ.

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Official definitions(combination of material
and ideal)- What makes a definition official?

• Naturism / Nudism are defined by the INF
  (International Naturist Federation)Naturism
  is a lifestyle in harmony with nature, expressed
  through social nudity, and characterized by
  self-respect of people with different opinions
  and of the environment. Social nudity constitutes
  an essential characteristic of naturism, fully
  exploiting the beneficial effects of the sun, the
  air and water. Naturism restores the balance
  between physical and psychic dimensions, with
  leisure spent in a natural environment, through
  exercising the body, within the fundamental
  principles of hygiene and dietetics. Furthermore,
  Naturism fosters many activities by nurturing
  creativity. Complete nakedness is the
  "best-possible suit" to realise the return of
  humans to nature, and it surely is the most
  visible mark of naturism, even though it is not
  the only one. Nudity has a balancing effect on
  humans by reducing the tensions caused by the
  taboos and provocations of modern society,
  showing the way to a more simple, healthy, and
  humane way of living.
  (http//www.inf-fni.org/index_e.htm)

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Reading 2Bell, D. and Holliday, R. (2000).
Naked as nature intended. Body and Society, 6
(3/4), 127-140.
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A word on naturismAdapted from Naked as Nature
Intended by Bell and Holiday (2000)

• Geography cultural norms affect how well we can
  negotiate our nudity in society and nature. For
  example, despite morality resistance, the nudist
  movement aligned with the liberating effects of
  the hippie movement in 1960s North America.
• In the early 1900s United Kingdom, as in North
  America, mass urbanization unfolded. This gave
  rise to a nostalgia toward the natural landscape
  many had left behind a leisure ideal.
• Many of those who had stayed behind considered
  themselves naturists involved in the
  back-to-the-land movement (vegetarianism, folk
  songs, handicrafts, communal living). But, their
  paradise collapsed as they suffered from the
  leisure ideal in that the city folk wanted to
  return to the countryside now and then.

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In Germany,

• Hitler outlawed social nudity---it became a
  material/physical/concrete representation of
  deviance
• This affected more than 3,000,000 German people
• Prior to that, it had been practiced and/or
  tolerated by the German populous for the most
  part
• This new law marked the first significant
  division in where it was acceptable to be nude
  and where it was not out in nature, it was a
  natural thing, but in the city or suburbs, it was
  viewed as lewd and sexual.

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In England,

• Around the same time Hitler outlawed social
  nudity, Englands eccentric writers and artists,
  who took part in nudity performances as a social
  fact, found themselves scorned by the morality
  squads of the day they were treated as vulgar,
  and were driven even further underground, such as
  the Sun Club which is going strong today.

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Ties between naturism/nudity and sexuality

• Remember, in England at the beginning to
  mid-1900s, the countryside was becoming
  re-Romanticized this included not only the
  landscape and beaches, but also the ideal of the
  humans who lived there --- rugged, naked,
  natural, animalistic which lent to an erotic
  ideal of the countryside.
• Sex in the outdoors had been going on forever,
  including groups who were social outcasts ---
  especially gay men, adding an air of eroticism
  within that leisure ideal of the countryside.
• Men now had an arena to be men, as part of a gay
  ideal and in direct response to the feminization
  of society and a growing sense of feminism in the
  air.
• In North America, men headed to the wilderness
  and wrote about it, such as Henry David Thoreaus
  Walden. They believed they were
  discovering/re-discovering their deep
  masculinity whereby becoming a man meant
  connecting intensely with nature through
  interaction rituals with the natural world around
  them. (Women stayed home with the kids!)

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All of this heated up the minds of the English
status quo

• Causing a moral panic of sorts Spurring off
  intensified surveillance of queer society
  PART OF HOW WE ARE ON CONSTANT GUARD FOR
  NUDITY-AS-DEVIANCE IN OUR SOCIETY IS HOW WE ARE
  SIMULTANEOUSLY ON CONSTANT GUARD FOR
  SEXUALITY-AS-DEVIANCE.
• What are some other examples of moral panics
  around sex and nature?

21
Paper due next classReadings for next class

• (1) SMUO Holmes, J.S. (2006). Bare bodies,
  beaches, and boundaries Abjected outsiders and
  rearticulation at the nude beach. Sexuality and
  Culture, 10 (4), 29-53.
• (Nudity is alive and well there as of last
  weekend!)
• (2) NET David H. Net Nude Crystal Crescent
  Beach, Halifax, Nova Scotia. http//www.netnude.co
  m/main/info/canada/cyrst981.html
• NOTE the second reading seems to have been
  removed from the InternetGoogle Crystal
  Crescent nude beach if you wish instead