A Sociological Eye

This is the story of David DePape : gamer, nudist, and rightwing conspiracy theorist. In the early morning of October 28, 2022, Depape broke into the home of Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House. She was in Washington, DC, with her security detail. But her husband Paul Pelosi was home. DePape beat him with a hammer, fracturing his skull and injuring his arm and hands. Within minutes of this news being announced, hot takes were being posted on Twitter. I looked, and here is what I saw: on the political right, the claim was that DePape was a crazed leftist. The “proof”? Well, come on, he lived in San Francisco! He had long hair! Googling the man turned up a history of participating in nudist protests. That couldn’t be a conservative! Oh, look, he listed his occupation in a newspaper article from a decade ago as a hemp jewelry artist. What could be a more ridiculous, emasculated lib-type job for a man? So, hmm, if he’s a leftist, why did he break into the Pelosi home and attack Paul, ...

I teach a course on the Sociology of the Body with graduate and undergraduate students. Students write a lot in the class, and that gives me a window into the zeitgeist when it comes to thinking about the body. Students reveal what is taken-for-granted about the body in the current moment in our society, and it is always shifting over time. This can be fascinating! For example, I've watched the language of "body positivity" replace the norm of self-shaming, over the 20 years I've been teaching the class--while, tellingly and fascinatingly, the amount of shame and insecurity students express about their own bodies has not decreased in the least. Students today just feel embarrassed by experiencing that shame. For students in an earlier period, expressing contempt for their bodies was experienced as a moral obligation, whereas now it seems to feel more to students like a failure of selfconfidence. But that's not what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about ...