A Sociological Eye

  Here’s something ironic: lawyers have gotten this individual’s statements about his DOGE activities cancelling basically all federal grants for work in the humanities taken down from YouTube, based on claims that he is now being cancelled by people on the internet.  We really need to talk about what it means to cancel something or someone, because those actions are not equivalent. . .  So: here is the context. The National Endowment for the Humanities is the US federal agency tasked with funding work in the humanities—including history, literature, philosophy, linguistics, languages, law, classics, ethics, and subjects MAGA particularly disdains like gender and women’s studies, ethnic studies, and sexuality studies.  A year ago, in March 2025, DOGE was let loose on the NEH, and within the space of 22 days, 97% of all NEH grants had been cancelled . Basically all work in the humanities other than preserving the papers of George Washington was defunded.  In May ...

  I teach a course in sociology of sexuality, and the etymologies of sexual phenomena are things I collect by habit. Let me share one with you!  In Mediaeval Latin, a "clapus" or "claperius" was a pile of stones. What might you do with a pile of stones in the Middle Ages? Well, if you put a few such piles in a stream, and then put stone slabs or wooden planks going from one pile to the other, you could construct what was called in English a "clapper bridge," like the one pictured here. Very picturesque! If on the other hand you piled the stones loosely on the ground with plenty of spaces amidst them, you could make a place to house rabbits for food. In French, this was a "clapier." The association of rabbits with sexual frequency and enthusiasm led the term clapier to come to be used as a euphemism for a brothel. The Normans brought these usages to English shores, where they became, just as in the bridges, a "clapper," referring either ...

  What happened to adolescence? In my seminar on sociology of the body this week, something strange emerged in the discussion. First, a student stated to widespread nodding that it used to be true that children became adolescents when they hit puberty at 12 or so, then existed in this awkward in-between phase of life until they turned 18 and were deemed adults--but that this not the case today. Instead, the student said, girls today hit puberty and instantly look like adults. The class agreed that 12-year-old girls today look like they're 25. And they felt the reason is because the girls immerse in TikTok videos about makeup applications that are designed for adult women, and then duplicate them. They can do that because, while Millennials at 12 got childish makeup palettes at a Claire's in the local mall, filled with bright colors designed for kids, Generation Alpha tweens were "Sephora kids," taught to desire skincare products for adults and indulged with purchases ...