Sexism

Extinguish Gaslighting

Gaslighting is an abusive process of psychological manipulating a person into doubting self-worth, sensory knowing, and perceptions (Jackson, 2011). Once aware of gaslighting, you can extinguish its harmful psychological impact, although it is much more difficult to change the gaslighter. Artists, such as Linda Stein, in her sexism series, help us recognize gaslighting. Once recognized there are steps to extinguish. Begin by looking for gaslighting phrases in the tapestries of Stein’s sexism series.

Since the 1944 film Gas Light, based on Patrick Hamilton’s 1938 play, the term and awareness of gaslighting entered popular culture (Tripney, 2019), such as the Dixie Chicks’s 2020 song “Gaslighter.” While the phrase gaslighting is not always used, once you know how to recognize gaslighting you will see how it is used in tweets that belittle, and explored in films and literature, such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1892 long-standing popular short story, The Yellow Wallpaper.

References

Dixie Chicks (2020). Gaslighter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbVPcPL30xc

Jackson, T. A. (2011). Which interests are served by the principle of interest convergence? Whiteness, collective trauma, and the case for anti-racism. Race Ethnicity and Education, 14(4), 435–459.

Perkins Gilman, C. (1892). The yellow wallpaper. The New England Magazine. https://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/theliteratureofprescription/exhibitionAssets/digitalDocs/The-Yellow-Wall-Paper.pdf

Tripney, N. (2019, October 8). Gaslight: the return of the play that defined toxic masculinity. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2019/oct/08/victorian-melodrama-gaslight-love-island-psychological-abuse-patrick-hamilton-play-buzzword

Tango

Tango is “an exchange of movement and touch, about a transnational negotiation of desire, of gender roles and communication” (Manning, 2006, p. x). As Horacio Ferrer writes, “before being an artistic expression, before tango came to light as such . . . tango was a certain attitude, a way of life adopted by those of diverse cultures” (1995, p. 11). Linda Stein asks: “In dancing tango does a women give and a man get?” Watch the 9-minute video of Stein discussing her tapestry in the sexism series titled “Loreen Arbus Says Tango is Egalitarian 974.”

“The history of the tango is a story of encounters between those who should never have met or between those who, having met, will remain forever disencountered … This political moment of (dis)encounter is initiated through an embrace that rarely lasts beyond the duration of the tango itself. This encounter, relentless and short-lived, proposes a violation of critical distances, inviting at once intimacy, tension, and conflict.” (Savigliano, 1995, p. xv).

“Tango is everything from a dance of solitudes to a nomadic movement of cultural displacement to a fierce locator of national identity. It is a dance of encounter and disencounter, a voyeuristic embrace of repressed sensuality and a complex network of (mis)understood directions. …

Tango as I encounter it is a peripheral engagement with the world that introduces us to a different way of living with an other. It is a movement that offers the possibility of improvising our encounters. It is a dance that turns us toward an other to whom we might otherwise not speak. …

A product of cultural exchange, tango has never ceased to transform itself through contact with new cultures. …

Tango is the dance of the impromptu rethinking of the politics of communication.” (Manning, 2006, pp. x).

References

Ferrer, H. (1995).

Manning, E. (2007). Politics of touch: Sense, movement, sovereignty. St. Paul, MN: University of Minnesota.

Savigliano, (1995).

Data Visualization Art

Zoom in on Linda Stein’s tapestry in the Sexism series titled, November 6, 2015, New York Times 865

What is the data? How is it presented in the tapestry? What is conveyed? When you look at the art section of the NYTimes, do you find artists promoted who share similar life experiences to you? What genders can you guess (from the names of the artists) in these ads? What do you think is conveyed by the artist’s captions and text in the tapestry?

Data visualization art, documentation, methodology, and activism protect individuals from harassment while producing evidence of the massive scale of a problem such as is revealed in the hashtag movements of TimesUp, and MeToo, and the collection of signatures such as with the Not Surprised letter. Feminist theories and practices that have moved away from monolithic notions of women, engage difference by focusing on context-specific positionings of women in relation to other identities. Digital dust (Bernardi, 2018), webscraping, and reverse-engineer strategies can be used to gather data about issues important to you. 

Discuss feminist data visualization art, strategies, manifestos and movements, which could include: glitch feminism manifesto, First Cyberfeminist International manifesto, Post-Cyber Feminist International, feminist data visualization (D’Ignazio & Klein, 2016, 2018; Gallagher, 2017) strategies such as mapping (Alexander & Mohanty, 2010), One Billion Rising, Technofeminism, and FemTechNet.

Return to study of Linda Stein’s tapestry in the Sexism series titled, November 6, 2015, New York Times 865 and discuss this work as feminist data visualization art.

Create an artwork that uses data visualization strategies to bring awareness to sexism. Refer to strategies, resources, and examples at http://cyberhouse.emitto.net/dataViz/.

References

Alexander, J. M., & Mohanty, C. T. (2010). Cartographies of knowledge and power: Transnational feminism as radical praxis. In A. L. Swarr & R. Nagar (Eds.), Critical transnational feminist praxis (pp. 23-45). Albany: State University of New York Press.

Bernardi, C. (2018). Digital dust and visual narratives of feminicidios. Visual Culture & Gender, 13, 6-16.

D’Ignazio, C. (a.k.a. kanarinka), & Klein, L. F. (2016). Feminist data visualization.

Friesinger, G., & Herwig, J. (Eds.). (2012). The art of reverse engineering: Open-Dissect-Rebuild. Vienna, Austria.

Gallagher, E. (2017). Data visualization of #MeToo tweets — October 16 to October 18, 2017

Walsh, C. (2020). MeToo founder discusses where do we go from here. The Harvard Gazette.

Sexism

Sexism: Exploring, Exploding, Expanding Expressions of Masculinities and Femininities

Sexism, the stereotyping and discrimination based on gender, is confronted in Linda Stein’s series SEXISM. Stories of women being told to put their legs together, to take up less space, and their defiant response to such narrow inscriptions of femininity are the content for the video and tapestry, Legs Together and Apart. 925 (2018). The top image on this page, titled “Gloria Steinem 1037,” is a tapestry created by Linda Stein in 2020, which is 64″x72″x3″.

Click here to see the art in this series

(en)COUNTERS with SEXISM

Tango

Tango is “an exchange of movement and touch, about a transnational negotiation of desire, of gender roles and communication” (Manning, 2006, p. x). As Horacio Ferrer writes, “before being an artistic expression, before tango came to light as such . . . tango was a certain attitude, a way of life adopted by those of diverse cultures” (1995, p. 11). Linda Stein asks: “In dancing tango does a women give and a man get?” Watch the 9-minute video of Stein discussing her tapestry in the sexism series titled “Loreen Arbus Says Tango is Egalitarian 974.”

Extinguish Gaslighting

Gaslighting is an abusive process of psychological manipulating a person into doubting self-worth, sensory knowing, and perceptions (Jackson, 2011). Once aware of gaslighting, you can extinguish its harmful psychological impact, although it is much more difficult to change the gaslighter. Artists, such as Linda Stein, in her sexism series, help us recognize gaslighting. Once recognized there are steps to extinguish. Begin by looking for gaslighting phrases in the tapestries of Stein’s sexism series.

Data Visualization Art

Zoom in on Linda Stein’s tapestry in the Sexism series titled, November 6, 2015, New York Times 865

What is the data? How is it presented in the tapestry? What is conveyed? When you look at the art section of the NYTimes, do you find artists promoted who share similar life experiences to you?

Data visualization art, documentation, methodology, and activism protect individuals from harassment while producing evidence of the massive scale of a problem such as is revealed in the hashtag movements of TimesUp, and MeToo, and the collection of signatures such as with the Not Surprised letter. Feminist theories and practices that have moved away from monolithic notions of women, engage difference by focusing on context-specific positionings of women in relation to other identities. Digital dust (Bernardi, 2018), webscraping, and reverse-engineer strategies can be used to gather data about issues important to you. 

Legs Apart

View the video Legs Together and Apart 925 Interview. Consider what gender expectations you have experienced. Draw or paint about your memory of gender expectations and how you navigated the expectations that seemed restrictive to your identity. Then look closely at Legs Together and Apart 925 and discuss the work in relation to how gender expectations are perpetuated and challenged.

Cosmetics

content

Double Standards

Gender is indeed complicated. It also is beautiful and inherently fluid. The ability to express gender identity, free from oppressive double standards imposed by unfair “rules” or “principles” on certain people, is paramount to thriving in a democracy. Double standards, or unjust application of different sets of principles for similar situations are seen, for example, in unfair expectations of behaviors deemed acceptable for men but not for women. Unequal treatment often results from biases, leading to unfair judgments, discrimination, and sexism. Justification for the double standard is missing, and when justification is provided, it is typically inappropriate. What does it mean to experience a “double standard,” especially a gendered one? This lesson deconstructs double standards students may have been a victim of or witnessed in their experience through open and honest conversation and artmaking in a safe space.