A Sociological Eye

At the end of every summer, as the new school year approaches, I go out on a tour of manosphere spaces to collect terrible memes and videos relating to gender and sexuality, to use in my course lectures. It's a strange activity, and inevitably leaves me torn between eyerolling chortles and genuine horror. It also leaves me scratching my head at the internal contradictions. Let's consider two different image posts I encountered this week. We'll start with this one: This image was paired with the following text: "'A lock that is opened by many keys is a broken lock. A key that opens many locks is a Master Key' ladies you are that lock preserve your value. Men you are that key gain experience to acquire your value." Yes, it's the classic misogynist double standard. But let's consider the math! If an ideal man has sex with 800 women, while an ideal woman has sex with just one man, or at least a very small number of men, then in this universe there exis...

  Social media algorithms today are weird in many ways. One way is the overpolicing of content that relates to people's lives coming to an end. I watch a lot of medical videos, because one of the things I study is the sociology of medicine, and it is really quite bizarre to see doctors who are explaining medical cases have to resort to all sorts of euphemisms when the case involves someone who didn't make it. "Despite this treatment, the patient had an outcome incompatible with life." That's just silly. It doesn't help anyone. And it is hurtful that algorithms take down posts where people are mourning the passing of a loved one whose end by their own hand, because the posts used the standard term for such an act. When it comes to actually viewing people's passing or their disturbing remains in media and social media, that's been treated as forbidden ever since the aftermath of 9/11. Many Americans were traumatized by watching scores of people lea...

      This is the view from Wisconsin. Those are the presidential approval ratings that came out of the latest Marquette poll of Wisconsin voters. It's the most polarized result ever seen. As one of the 98% of Wisconsinites on the left who disapprove of what has happened since the second inauguration of Trump, all I see resulting is evil. A constant stream of lies and misinformation; the appointment of a loud swarm of self-promoting, hate-stirring incompetents; the spitting on our allies; the useless, destructive tariffs; the firing of thousands of American heroes, leaving agencies we all rely on for our safety scarred and staggering; the attacks on teachers and researchers and clinics and parks that are vital to a functioning society; the censorship of terms and destruction of data; the fostering of bigotry and promotion of discrimination. And all of this destruction done in order to enrich billionaires and feed shocking narcissism. How could anyone approve of that? yo...

  Credit for this familiar image goes to KC Green. The Orange Man has yet to take office, but already it feels like everything is on fire. So I am here to remind you what to do! Remember: this chaotic spew of announcements and speculations is intentional. It is called "flooding the zone with sh*t." The theory goes that setting multiple things on fire, day after day, will have the following effects:  1. It will paralyze a sector of the populace, who won't know which fire to put out first, and will just freeze, going, "I can't believe this is happening!" 2. It will divide and conquer those being attacked, because they will each want the fire at their house to be put out first, and will have screaming fights over priorities while everything burns. 3. It will make a whole swath of people act like mythic ostriches and shove their heads in the sand, singing "La la la, everything's fine! If I don't see the news, it can't hurt me!" 4. It will s...

 Are you you familiar with the Nestle's Lion Bar?  It's a product available in the UK, and as a US resident, I'd never had one. I was gifted one last month by a family member who knows I like to try foods not typically sold in the US. I looked forward to trying it, but when I did I stopped after a couple of bites. I didn't like it much at all--there's textural interest as it contains both rice crisps and wafer cookies, with "creme" between the wafers and caramel in there somewhere, but it is overpoweringly sweet. For me, it was so sweet as to be actively unpleasant. But that's not what I'm here to talk to you about! It interested me to see that at the bottom right corner of the top of the product packaging, there is an overall nutrition rating provided. Rather than the useless health proclamations so often found on US products (like a bag of sugar I saw truthfully but very unhelpfully proclaiming "FAT FREE!"), products are given an ove...

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, ...