Diane Sawyer's interview with Bruce Jenner, the former Olympic gold medalist and member of the Kardashian family, was the most watched television special in 15 years of ABC's 20-20 news program, drawing 16.8 million viewers. At the time of Jenner's interview about his transition from male to female, he asked to be referred to with the pronoun “he” (Stell 2015). Less than two months later, the pronoun requested was “she” for her appearance in a white satin corset with her hair flowing on her bare shoulders on the cover of Vanity Fair, with the headline, “Call me Caitlyn.” She began her Twitter account with the tweet: “I'm so happy after such a long struggle to be living my true self. Welcome to the world Caitlyn. Can't wait for you to get to know her/me” (Somaiya 2015). Jon Stewart, the host of The Daily Show (2015), argued the public's acceptance of Caitlyn as a woman was evident by the sexist media coverage, which treated her like a woman by focusing entirely on her appearance. “You see, Caitlyn, when you were a man we could talk about your athleticism, your business acumen – but – now you're woman and it's your looks is the only thing we care about.” Or as Ronda Garelick (2015) wrote in her New York Times opinion piece, “It [Vanity Fair cover] is a commercial spectacle on an enormous scale, revealing some disturbing truths about what we value and admire in women.”
However, questions circulated about her new identity as a woman. For many, her choice to appear on the cover of Vanity Fair as a hypersexual image of a 65-year-old upper-class white woman did not seem consistent with personal freedom and self-expression or struggling to be her true self. This appearance runs counter to women's experience as they get older and become invisible. Jenner created further discomfort among feminists with her essentialist description of woman as a fixed category rather than a socially constructed identity. She spoke of “being born with the wrong body” and having a woman's brain or a female soul rather than the feminist view: that gender identity is a social construction (Burkett 2015). Decades of feminist research demonstrate the significance of socialization in developing gendered identities. In contrast, the notion of gendered brains suggests that male and female identities are monolithic and nature is more important than nurture – in other words, “gender” is a “fact of nature” rather than the product of socialization. Other feminists questioned Jenner's motives in light of the financial gain involved with this public coming-out followed by a reality show, I Am Cait. Still, the overwhelming media coverage, blogs and tweets considered her a role model for transgender youth who encounter hate, ignorance and violence (Kristof 2015).
Caitlyn's coming out as a trans person did give some in the transgender community pause to think about the meaning of her image in advancing transgender issues, because her experience is far from the norm (Grinberg 2015). This perspective was one that Laverne Cox (2015), the openly transgender actor in Orange Is the New Black, reflected upon in thinking about the motives behind her own photo shoots. She wrote that her photos functioned: “to serve up various forms of glamour, power, sexiness, body affirming, and racially empowering images of the various sides of my black, trans womanhood.…I also hope that it is my talent, my intelligence, my heart and spirit that most captivate, inspire, move and encourage folks to think more critically about the world around them.” She pointed out that not all trans people have the financial means, the genes or the desire to “embody certain cisnormative beauty standards”; “It is important to note that these standards are also informed by race, class and ability among other intersections.” Cox argued that there was a need for a wide range of media representations that capture many different trans narratives. She acknowledged her own privilege and called for support for trans persons who lack healthcare or are unemployed, homeless or are at risk because of their gender and/or sexual orientation, immigration status and economic circumstances. Cox, like other transgender activists, celebrated the transgender visibility resulting from Caitlyn's publicity, but she urged the public to realize that her experience is far from the reality that most transgender people face (Grinberg 2015).
In an interview with CNN, Lourdes Ashley Hunter, the director of the Trans Women of Color Collective, noted that “Caitlyn's coming out is relatable to mainstream American society because she is white, Republican, rich and famous” (Grinberg 2015). Commenting on the uniqueness of Vanity Fair's publication of Caitlyn on the cover, Kylar W. Broadus (2015), the director of the Transgender Civil Rights Project, released the following statement:
The realities that transgender people experience in America is [sic] truly alarming. Transgender people are twice as likely to be unemployed and four times more likely to live in poverty when compared to the general population – and these disparities are much greater for transgender Black and Latina women. And for transgender people who are able to find a job, ninety percent of them experience harassment, discrimination or mistreatment at the workplace.
Many activists commented on the contradiction in mainstream media embracing Caitlyn's coming out, while trans people face extreme violence and discrimination (Haberman 2015). Too often, the violence against LGBTQ people is homogenized without recognizing poor trans people of color are most vulnerable (Meyer 2012), particularly youth of color (Singh 2012).
Transgender narratives of the social construction of women's gender identity are contested territory (Emmons & Marcus 2015) with feminists like Elinor Burkett (2015), who argue that the social identity of woman is a process shaped by social circumstances. She explained her argument in her opinion piece published in the New York Times:
Ms. Jenner's experience included a hefty dose of male privilege few women could possibly imagine. While young “Bruiser,” as Bruce Jenner was called as a child, was being cheered on toward a university athletic scholarship, few female athletes could dare hope for such largess since universities offered little funding for women's sports. When Mr. Jenner looked for a job to support himself during his training for the 1976 Olympics, he didn't have to turn to the meager “Help Wanted – Female” ads in the newspapers, and he could get by on the $9,000 he earned annually, unlike young women whose median pay was little more than half that of men. Tall and strong, he never had to figure out how to walk streets safely at night.
(Burkett 2015)
This description of gender experiences can be further complicated by intersecting gender identities with race, ethnicity, class and sexuality; and, as the controversy surrounding Caitlyn Jenner highlights, trans women's identities are also complicated by these same intersections (Beyer 2015).
I begin this chapter on gender identities and intersectionality with Caitlyn's experience as a transgender woman to highlight the way that gender identity is a social construction that appears in many forms and is interactive with systems of oppression and privilege. In Caitlyn's case, her gender identity as a transgender woman included an emphasized feminine sexual appearance or hegemonic femininity, which not only points to the significance she places on the physical appearance of her body and style in her gender identity as a woman, but reflects her race and class privilege. She carefully avoids discussion of sexuality, which would distract from her performance of hegemonic femininity. While Caitlyn's presentation as a woman made transgender identity visible, hiring a showbiz publicist, Alan Nierob, to handle the process enabled careful control over the images of her new gender identity (Littleton 2015), and ensured a successful enactment of traditional normative femininity. Her 20-20 interview and media coverage in Vanity Fair illustrate the process of producing a hegemonic feminine identity through a narrative of memories, experiences, and interpretations (Lawler 2014).
Caitlyn recalled how, as a young boy, he secretly wore dresses and later his third wife's daughter, Kim Kardashian, caught him in a dress. However, Cox's Tumblr feed reminds us that transgender identity does not necessarily follow cisgender normative standards, which refers to having the gender identity to match the sex assigned at birth. Many women responded to Caitlyn's choice of hypersexualized representations of her womanhood as objectifying women. Feminists argued that these “cultural practices and ideology [are] associated with femininity that reflects a gendered power structure in which women are subordinate to men, and in turn, some women attain a higher status…resulting in social devaluation of other women” (Cole & Zucker 2007: 1). Overwhelmingly, the media embrace of her new gender identity demonstrates the power and status she received by embodying hegemonic femininity. Feminists challenged these normative standards because race, class, sexuality, religion and bodily status marginalize many women. A closer look at the intersectionality of gender with race, class and sexuality emphasizes the connection between social identities and power, and the manifestation of privilege, opportunities and subordination.
In sociology, intersectional approaches to social identities expand our knowledge and understandings of gender, race, class and sexuality as lived experiences. These approaches require sociologists to “examine gender concretely in context” and as historically “produced, reproduced, and transformed in different situations over time” (Scott 1999: 6). This chapter elaborates how gender identity takes on more than a singular, homogeneous category of femininity or masculinity. The range of gender identities are manifested with multiple dimensions of identity – including racial, ethnic, class, sexual and age – which position individuals in different locations of power. Exploring gender identity through intersectionality includes the connection to other identities that organize social relations in a complex socio-structure of larger power relationships in society – again, think of the Rubik's cube. Identities are not independent or separate from the processes of inequality: “The goal of most intersectional research is to address ways in which intersecting identities often create conflict between and within groups in an effort to create a richer and more thought out transgressive politics and/or a dynamic understanding of the social world” (Battle & Ashley 208: 3). Tasks critical to intersectional approaches to gender include: identifying gender regimes, recognizing the policing of gender boundaries, and assessing the cost for transgressing boundaries (Reardon 2012). We see this conflict in the case of Caitlyn, who chose a hegemonic femininity that embraced her race and class privilege. Understanding the everyday practices that evoke, shape and articulate identities and categorize them as marginalized or ideal will contribute to the deconstruction of essentialisms and move toward developing empowering articulations of individual and collective identity (Hall 1992). Narratives of poor transgender youth of color challenge the assumption of a hypersexualized presentation of womanhood as natural or of certain aspects as fundamental and absolute in gender identity. This chapter examines the intersectionality of gender identities and their relations to domination and privilege.
For most of its history, culture in the United States has treated gender identity as binary, fixed, natural and determined at birth (however, this is not the case with all cultures, including Native Americans). Essentialist approaches to gender identity that define differences, variations or transgressions as deviant and unnatural stem from Abrahamic religious traditions. For the more well-to-do social classes, an essentialist gender approach has relegated women to care-taking and domestic activities, on the basis that they are supposedly naturally inclined to such labor and women are better at these skills than men. Traditional views of womanhood have essentially denied women full participation in government and public life. Laws, religion, the economy and culture are institutions that establish and maintain the superiority of men over women. Common law introduced by English colonists placed women under the legal control of their husbands or fathers. A woman could not own property or sign contracts, rarely controlled her own earnings, and had no legal standing separate from her husband. Rape was a property crime against her husband or father. Based on white upper- and middle-class values, the idea of femininity was linked to a piety, purity, submission and domesticity requiring a devotion to enriching home and family. Abrahamic religions – Christianity, Judaism and Islam – restricted leadership roles to men, and only recently revisited religious documents to reconsider the significance of women. Five characteristics generally accepted as constructing femininity are: beauty, demeanor, marriage and family arrangements, heterosexuality and whiteness (Collins 2004). How did these ideas come about and why do they remain dominant themes? To answer these questions, I will examine social institutions, historical processes, and social practices that construct and maintain femininity.
As discussed in chapter 2, Evelyn Nakano Glenn's (1999: 9) use of an integrative framework is helpful in identifying “important points of congruence between the concept of racial formation and the concept of socially constructed gender.” US history constructed femininity, as well as masculinity, through its history of slavery, conquest and colonialism. Social structure and cultural representation are key concepts in the interpretative framework of gender and race. Social structure arranges privileges, opportunities and subordination around specific combinations of gender and racial identities. The economy structures the labor market into class, gender and racial segregation, allocating different monetary rewards to different positions. Upwardly mobile positions were traditionally “White-only” or “men-only” jobs. Race and class residential segregation had negative consequences for the education, health and well-being of families of color. Government classification of who the deserving poor were resulted in providing benefits to white mothers, which improved their families’ life chances. Simultaneously, migrant farm workers and domestics were ineligible for most benefits. As noted in the first chapter, institutions such as education, economy and religion imposed power relations based on race, class, gender and sexuality that even today influence everyday activity such as parenting.
Central to an integrative framework are relational concepts. In other words, we understand gendered concepts through their relation to another concept. In the case of femininity, white middle- and upper-class women's relationship to Black women on the plantation informed the processes that constructed the Black woman slave as a breeder rather than a mother, or as a seductress rather than a rape victim, and as the master's property rather than a Black man's daughter or wife. Similarly, indigenous women were devalued on reservations and in boarding schools and urbanization programs, while white middle-class women engaged in missionary work. Colonial relations in Puerto Rico, Hawaii and the Philippines established whiteness against the “other” living in occupied territory, and relegated women of color to the lowest ranks in society unless they were of royal ancestry – and then, at times, incorporated them into the government hierarchy as compradors to subjugate their own people. In many of these historical processes, religion and education contributed to defining and maintaining privilege and opportunity based on class, race and gender.
The ideal type of femininity required privileges which were denied to women who were poor, immigrant, Black, American Indian and Mexican. Excluded from the privileges and protections of domesticity, women of color could not obtain class and race privileges through birth or marriage because their fathers and husbands did not have the right to own property in many cases; and many men of color were relegated to the lowest-paying jobs. Instead, Black women, and many Mexican and Indian women, toiled alongside their husbands, fathers and sons in fields or worked as domestics, laundresses and cooks (Glenn 2004). Instead of gaining the full privileges of marriage, women of color entered the labor force to contribute necessities for their family (Dill 1988). Employers did not assume they were weak, fragile or in need of protection. Nor did they consider them first as mothers who needed to provide care for their children. Divisions in employment, referred to as occupational segregation, further structured poor and women of color's chances of attaining the social class necessary to maintain the ideal form of femininity.
A good place to start an integrative analysis is the culture of domesticity or cult of true womanhood, which was the normative standard for women during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the US and Great Britain. Social roles were based on two premises: (1) that the standards for women were universal (but could only be lived up to by upper- and upper-middle-class families); and (2) that the social world is divided into a private and a public sphere. The private sphere is the home and was assigned to women of means as their natural calling; the home was contrasted with the public sphere of men in business and politics. Femininity in the US was tied to the cult of domesticity, and thus to social-class-based gender enactments of “being a lady.” Along with being submissive to her husband and father, she was expected to be domestic, pious and pure, as well as weak and dependent. The making of a lady required leisure time and wealth to groom a specific type of appearance, to learn the mannerisms and style of the elite, upper-class and white etiquette, while engaging in activities suited to her position in life. One of these roles was to provide charity aimed at the poor. Constructed by powerful beliefs and reinforced by social structures of class, race and sexuality, this form of femininity was only for wealthy, white, heterosexual women who had access to the privileges that placed them in a position of power over other women and some men.
As the wives and daughters of wealthy white men, these women held power over poor and immigrant women, especially women of color employed in the kitchens and home, doing the cooking, laundry, housework and childcare. In effect, they were labor supervisors in the private sphere, as their men were in the public sphere. It is interesting that these aristocratic roles are so popular in the twenty-first century in television series like Downton Abbey. While Victorian and Edwardian England had a different, less racialized, social structure, US audiences seem fascinated by the ways the “Lady of the Manor” and the Dowager Countess asserted their power as managers of the home. They are portrayed as “powers behind the throne.” The cult of domesticity viewed women's place as in the home, but the “lady” was called to the “ ‘higher’ tasks and to supervision” of her servants, who were relegated to the drudgery of the physical labor (Dudden 1983: 155). The “lady” of the house was also in charge of the “help's” religious and moral training, or of educating poor, immigrant women and women of color to become respectable. Engaging in volunteer work and participating in “good works” in low-income neighborhoods reinforced their superiority over all other women. Several US dramas have introduced the color line and issues of race into the roles of “lady of the house,” for example Imitation of Life (1959), Driving Miss Daisy (1989) and The Help (2011). In each case, this role of the upper-class female is held as an epitome of womanhood.
While the cult of domesticity assured elite, upper-class, white women protection from the drudgery of dirty and dangerous work, it also limited their physical movement, aspirations and talents. They were dependent on their husbands or fathers. However, “historically, ‘the lady’ was an ideological tool useful for controlling all women, but it affected poor women and/or women of color differently. Those women were controlled by exclusion” (Meyers 2004: 36). Excluded from the protections of working and living in safe environments, working-class women held factory jobs working long hours, under deplorable conditions, and lived in crowded housing. Women of color and poor immigrants serving and caring for their employers also faced long hours. In addition, their living conditions lacked privacy, and even outside, their movements remained under the employer's watch. They gained none of the privileges of “true womanhood” and were denied access to the circumstances required for this type of femininity. Yet they were constantly evaluated by their failure to meet the criteria of being a lady.
It is important to remember that there was significant push-back by working-class women. For example, Mother Jones said, “No matter what the fight, don't be ladylike! God Almighty made women and the Rockefeller gang of thieves made the ladies.” Sojourner Truth's famous speech “Ain't I a woman?” included a scathing critique of domesticity and the way this ideology denied her experience as a hard-working woman. Sojourner Truth based her gender identity on her realities of being a Black woman born into slavery, sold, beaten and mistreated, who eventually escaped slavery and became a preacher and abolitionist.
For the poor and women of color, the experience of being a woman is much broader than prescribed by the cult of domesticity. Judged against normative white upper-middle-class standards of womanhood, neither Mother Jones nor Sojourner Truth ever experienced the privileges of domesticity but both confronted the disadvantages of gender, race and class. Poor women wore the scars of their identity as a Black woman or as a working-class woman. However, unlike the “ladies,” they were outspoken and political. Eventually, women of the upper class came to realize that they were in a gilded prison, as even one of the privileged daughters in Downton Abbey demonstrated for women's rights.
In her essay “Double jeopardy: To be Black and female,” Beale (1970: 91) provided a clear analysis of imperialism, racism and capitalism in the US definition of femininity. Writing the first draft in 1969, she identified the ideal model, consisting of being “estranged from all real work, spending idle hours primping and preening, obsessed with conspicuous consumption, and limiting life functions to a simple sex role.” Beale argued that Black women could not engage in such activity because they must seek employment to provide shelter, food and clothing for their families. Moreover, she wrote that seeking the feminine existence should not be a goal to strive for, because bourgeois women live their lives through their husbands and are reduced to a biological function and a “parasitic existence.” For Black women to limit their contributions to having children ignored the vibrant history of strong Black women leaders. Beale defined Black women's place in a technologically advanced society like the US to be as “teachers, doctors, nurses, electronics experts, chemists, biologists, physicists, political scientists” (1970: 93), rather than as unpaid care workers.
Intersectionality is tricky and attempts to portray it in popular culture are even trickier. The intersections of race, class and gender were contentious social issues in the 1970s and 1980s: civil rights demands had moved from the South to the North – in housing, schooling and the workplace, they had produced race riots. School bussing and court-enforced integration led to violence in some northern cities. Through the decade of the 1970s, women pushed hard for an equal rights amendment to the constitution, but lost in the early 1980s. Beginning in the decade of the 1970s, the decline of the American working class began to be seen as a significant and long-term problem. These tangible and in some ways intractable social problems were played out in political life and on the streets. Television and popular culture played an important but not always helpful role.
Intersectionality is clearly visible in attempts to portray Black families and women as the same as white middle- to upper-middle-class families, except in blackface. However, even while attempting to confront racism, The Jeffersons (1975–85) and The Bill Cosby Show (1984–1992) continued to reproduce strong elements of the cult of domesticity, mirroring the stereotypes of white women in TV series. The Jeffersons was a spin-off of All in the Family (1971–9), but whereas the main protagonist of All in the Family was white and working class, The Jeffersons focused on a Black middle-class family, aiming to reduce the threat to Whites from the rising Black middle class – George Jefferson ran a string of dry-cleaning shops, a stereotypically immigrant path to mobility (Chinese laundries being the archetype). The producer, Norman Lear, a white liberal and founder of People for the American Way, was normalizing race, class and gender stereotypes in order to confront the social changes of the time. The white working class was nervous about losing place and privilege to people of color, so the rising Black middle class portrayed was not a threat, nor was the Women's Movement.
Decades later, researchers continue to report that Black women fail to meet feminine standards set by white upper-class women, and instead are depicted in the media as unattractive, aggressive, and incompetent mothers (Cole & Zucker 2007). In other contemporary contexts, they are assumed to be asexual and nurturing or domineering and emasculating (West 2004). The asexual and nurturing set of characteristics is the “Mammy” role, which has been around throughout the history of Hollywood films. Recent film depictions of Mammy are The Help (2011), Madea Goes to Jail (2009) and Big Momma's House (2000). For some, the Oprah Winfrey Show was a contemporary example of the quintessential Mammy as she cried with her mostly white female audience. “Since the Oprah Winfrey Show's inception, the fan base has described its relationship to Winfrey much as white society did to the mammy” (Stanley 2007: 41).
The alternative stereotype of African American women as hypersexual, domineering and emasculating makes up the characteristics of the “Sapphire” stereotype; unlike the Mammy, Sapphire dominates men and usurps their roles. Spike Lee's first film, She's Gotta Have It (1986), attempts to create a strong female character, Nola Darling, who claimed the male prerogative of promiscuity with three partners, but ends up unhappy and alone. In Madea Goes to Jail, the main character is portrayed as having anger management problems, which degrades strong African American women as the “Angry Black Woman.” Shonda Rhimes, television producer and writer, created leading roles intended to depict strong Black women in Scandal, Grey's Anatomy and How to Get Away with Murder. However, a New Times critic reduced them to just angry Black women (Stanley 2014) rather than complex characters. The trope of the Angry Black Woman is so common that conservatives frequently framed the former first lady, Michelle Obama, as the Angry Black Woman – when she was anything but.
In the mid twentieth century, when middle-class white women entered offices as clerks, secretaries and other “pink-collar” positions, many women of color continued to toil in agriculture and domestic service. Poor white women and women of color dominated the dirty jobs in factories, sweatshops, poultry farms and canneries (Glenn 2004). As increasing numbers of Black women achieved class privileges, Black femininity did not always embrace the submissive and fragile characteristics imposed on white women. Instead, they were more likely to incorporate independence, intelligence and engagement in race consciousness activities in the larger community (Carlson 1992: 62). Comparing and contrasting these different gender constructions of femininity demonstrate that there are important gender, race and class intersections that have deep historical roots.
These oppositional categories are overgeneralizations to accentuate differences. For example, encountering women engaged in activities normally considered men's roles, such as the few Mexican women running businesses, riding horses bareback or smoking, generated depictions of seductive and loose women in the newly acquired territories after the Mexican–American War. The elite classes in the occupied territory perceived white women as a gentler sex, delicate and refined. The dichotomies established during this early history included Whites constructed against Blacks, or Anglos constructed against Mexicans. Subordinated groups were characterized by negative traits, such as being immoral, lazy or hypersexual. US soldiers invading Asian countries during World War II, and the Korean and Vietnam wars, imagined Asian women as “hyperfeminine: passive, weak, quiet, slavishly dutiful, submissive, sexually exotic, and available to white men” (Pyke & Johnson 2003: 36). It is remarkable that these imagined characteristics survived even when confronted by female Asian warriors. However, these stereotypes are controlling images that serve “not to reflect or represent a reality but to function as a disguise, or mystification, of objective social relations” (Carby 1987: 22). These controlling images of women of color seep into and present racialized gender expectations in such places as work, with colleagues and supervisors; in school, with teachers and classmates; and in clinics and hospitals, with nurses and doctors. An employer denying Black women promotions because he considers them irresponsible and aggressive is an example of the effect of controlling images. In schools, this might take the form of assuming Black and Latina adolescent girls to be promiscuous because they wear make-up (or think of the assumptions made about the Mexican American undergraduate and her 5-year-old sister from the preceding chapter). Healthcare workers may assume Black, Latina and indigenous women will abuse pain medicine and require them to undergo pain management supervision when given a prescription after surgery.
The intersectionality of race, ethnicity, class and nation are vital to understanding the ways in which colorism constructs gender. Black, Mexican, Indian and other dark Latinas and Asians are more likely to be depicted as unattractive and failing to attain the norms of female whiteness, and frequently have been represented as aggressive, sexually promiscuous and bad mothers. Unfortunately, even within their own cultures, lighter skin tone, “good hair” and western features are perceived as prettier. The legacy of slavery, conquest and colonialism defined whiteness as civilized, virtuous and beautiful; whereas non-Whites were considered barbaric, savage and physically ugly. Ideologies of white supremacy include the hierarchies of color or colorism in which is found a structure of privilege for individuals, particularly women of color, who have European physical characteristics. Women of color who are more likely to adhere to the white woman's appearance, and more likely to have some European ancestry, are characterized as attractive and exotic. Today, selecting lighter-skinned women over darker-skinned women in acting, modeling and television news anchors is a common practice. Preference for lighter skin color also incorporates hair texture and the size of lips, eyes, nose, and overall appearance. Related to racism but having a distinct position to institutional power, colorism operates differently at the local, regional, ethnic and national levels and is understood through the context of class, gender or national markers. To capture the significance of colorism to social identities, Angela Harris (2009) calls our attention to the economies of color linked to production, exchange and consumption. Colorism has functioned in the Black community dating back to slavery when mulattos were given advantages such as “desirable skilled and domestic positions, better food and clothing, and manumission and educational opportunities” that placed them in a better position to become the social and economic elite in the African American community after the Civil War (Keith 2009: 27). Privileging of color continues and shapes their community of scholars, business owners and politicians, to such a point that color has become symbolic of one's class position (Hughes & Hertel 1990; Keith & Herring 1991).
In her study of women using skin-lightening products in the Philippines, Joanne Rondilla (2009) links colorism to Spanish and American colonialism as well as the emergence of a Chinese and Spanish mestizo middle class. Analyzing ads in the Philippines and the US, along with interviews with Asian Americans and Asian immigrants, the study highlights the significance of regional, national and ethnic levels. Advertisements promote “a very specific kind of beauty consisting of extremely pale skin, straight jet-black hair, and large, double-lidded, almond-shaped eyes” (2009: 64). While many in the US attribute light skin to European influences, Rondilla notes that light skin is a marker of higher class between the Chinese. Dark skin among Asian immigrants denotes class because of working outside. However, in the US, tanning in the summer is related to the leisure class and vacationing. Rondilla illustrates the use of Asian European models who blend the desired Asian traits with European notions of beauty to create “a distinct and unique identity” that is globalized (2009: 69). Examining the interaction between intersecting race, ethnicity, class and nation systems of inequality is critical to understanding colorism in the construction of gender.
1 How does an intersectional perspective provide a more comprehensive understanding of the privileges and disadvantages of acting like a “lady?”
2 Using an intersectional framework, explain the privileges and disadvantages popular women athletes experience. Use the Rubik's cube as an analytical tool to discuss different sports, such as tennis, track and gymnastics.
At this point, I want to broaden the examination of gender and intersectionality by examining sexuality. Alternative gender performances emerge at the intersection of gender and sexuality; race and class will also be considered. In her study of gay identities and motherhood among Black women, Mignon Moore (2011) identified three gender identity representations in Black lesbian communities: “femme,” “gender-blender” and “transgressive.” Gender performance involves a selection of appearance, such as clothing, dress and hairstyles; and behavior, so that walking, gesturing and speaking take on specific meanings in the presence of other Black lesbians. Once the women select a style for public and private gender performances, they usually adhere to it. This presentation is not only an expression of gender identity but also a reflection of class, ethnicity and other group memberships. Moore explained the intersectionality of class, sexuality and gender as follows: “Middle-class lesbians avoid transgressive gender presentation because it interferes with their attempts to erect moral and symbolic boundaries that signify their class status and facilitate their assimilation into larger society. Working-class lesbians embrace nonfeminine gender display and use it as an act of resistance to social norms” (Moore 2011: 70).
Although femmes presented gender in feminine dress, hairstyles and accessories, they were not passive or submissive and had no problem being assertive. Since Black women have a different experience of femininity from white women, femmes do not perceive it as linked to a patriarchy framework that defines women as weak, dependent or frail. Gender-blenders emphasize neither femininity nor masculinity. Instead, they mix both gendered styles to create a different presentation. Transgressive women presented a non-feminine or masculine gender style. Moore (2011: 75) described this style as an incorporation of “Black social and cultural markers and Black aesthetic style with Black masculinity on their bodies – to display multiple identities while openly acknowledging their gay identity.”
Generally, research shows that gender and sexual identities of lesbians of color are frequently uniquely different from those of white lesbians. Sabrina Alimahomed's (2010) ethnographic study offered an examination of some unique features. Collecting data on queer-identified Latinas and Asian/Pacific Islander women in Los Angeles and San Francisco, Alimahomed found that white lesbians primarily focused solely on their gay identity. Lesbians of color did not necessarily choose to privilege one identity over the other and did not only identify as gay but rather had an intersectional identity. The lesbians of color Alimahomed interviewed recognized other identities that shaped their gender and sexual identities as well as the different social contexts involved in negotiating aspects of their identities. For instance, an interviewee explained that her Koreanness informed the meaning of being butch, which was distinct from performing white butch. These women encountered rigid definitions of gender identity from white women who rejected the notion that queerness does not have to be a western lesbian identity. However, not conforming to western lesbian gendered norms made them invisible in queer events and social spaces, while being a lesbian sometimes made them invisible as a Latina or Asian in other situations. Multiple identities of women of color lesbians “erased the authority” of their lived experiences (Alimahomed 2010: 161), which can be potentially harmful when seeking educational, health and social services. Reflecting on the Rubik's cube as an analytical device, one can shift the systems of inequality in various settings to observe the salience of one identity over the other, as well as the interaction of multi-identities operating when seeking healthcare or applying for family assistance for bilingual children or a monolingual Chinese-speaking elderly mother.
Geographically, it is fruitful to examine further complexities at the intersection of gender and sexuality identity with race, class and ethnicity. For instance, in the case of Puerto Rican lesbians’ gender performance, family and community pressure is more significant on the island than on the mainland. Marysol Asencio (2009) found that many migrant Puerto Rican lesbians in her study engaged in femme gender performance, particularly in social settings that included their families or their community. In Puerto Rico, these women felt enormous pressure to conform to feminine ideals and contrasted their lack of freedom with that experienced by males within their families, the community and the larger society. Retaining strong family and community ties, and keeping employment, required these lesbians to maintain a feminine performance in public. While siblings and parents might be aware of their sexual orientation, as long as they performed feminine, families did not inquire about their sexuality. As adolescents, many of these lesbians escaped parental and community scrutiny by appearing to lack interest in having a boyfriend. However, as they became older, the expectation of marriage and children defined the absence of a boyfriend as no longer gender-conforming behavior. Some middle-class lesbians who pursued higher education were able to maintain an adolescent behavior of showing lack of interest in men because they were studious and serious women. Puerto Rican lesbians reported relocation to the States allowed for more integration of sexuality and gender identities in public spaces.
Rural and urban geographies also change the norms of gender performance, by marking female masculinity differently. In her research on white rural lesbians, Emily Kazyak (2012) found that female masculinity was more normative than transgressive. Consequently, these lesbians’ gender performance as strong and hard workers, wearing practical clothes, linked them to the country rather than the city – which was no different from heterosexual women. They experienced a sense of belonging and acceptance in their communities. Research on white lesbians living in rural America suggests that geography plays an important role in understanding gender identity and gender representation. While, in urban areas, masculine appearance and mannerism are markers of lesbian identity, these same masculine gender practices in dress, work and mannerisms were common for women in traditionally non-female jobs, regardless of sexuality.
Women who are white, upper- or middle-class, heterosexual, non-disabled and US citizens possess the attributes required to obtain the ideal appearance, and to fulfill normative gender roles. Women are likely to engage in hegemonic femininity for power and status, as demonstrated in the choices Caitlyn Jenner made. The gender traits of upper- and middle-class white women being held as the norm for all women functions to maintain inequality and persuade “subordinated people that ideologies favorable to the ruling group are natural or common sense” (Cole & Zucker 2007: 1). Interestingly, families and communities of color that enforce norms of colorism, including rejecting potential marriage partners with dark skin or keeping their female children out of the sun in fear their skin will darken, face a conundrum. Working-class women who enter working-class-male-dominated occupations outside, such as construction, mining or firefighting, cannot escape the sunshine, thus are constantly having their gendered identity policed.
1 How does an intersectional framework further our understanding of gender performance among lesbians?
Just as the femininities of women of color and of immigrant and working-class women are marginalized social identities, not all men experience the same male privilege in our patriarchal society. Judaism, Christianity, Islam and other religious traditions sanction patriarchy as the natural order and offer patriarchal authority to high-ranking religious and political figures. History records the procession of clerics and kings the world over who held the most powerful positions and retained the most wealth. Victor Seidler (1988: 272) summarized the tradition as follows: “Within a patriarchal society our understanding of the nature of political authority has been tied up with our sense of the position of the father within the family.” Patriarchal societies tend to link masculinity with rationality, discipline, morality, independence and self-sufficiency, which serve to identify men from outside their social circle of power as weaker, less rational, immoral and dependent. The Anglo-Saxon history of colonialism further served to characterize non-European men as barbaric or more childlike, and in some cases, perceived them as less human. As Michael Kimmel (1996: 5) explained, “In large part, it's other men who are important to American men; American men define their masculinity not so much in relation to women, but in relation to each other. Masculinity is largely a homosocial enactment.”
This comparison to other men is evident in exploring the intersectional axis of disability and masculinity. The masculine characteristics of independence and strength are in conflict with being a disabled man. As Coston & Kimmel (2012: 101) wrote: “Disabled men do not meet the unquestioned and idealized standards of appearance, behavior, and emotion for men. The values of capitalist societies based on male dominance are dedicated to warrior values, and a frantic able-bodiedness represented through aggressive sports and risk-taking activities, which do not make room for those with disabilities.” Disabled men may distance themselves from hegemonic masculine images, reformulate these ideals to accommodate their physical or mental abilities, or completely reject these ideals (Gerschick & Miller 1994). These processes are dynamic and not mutually exclusive in everyday practice and in different social contexts (Gerschick 1998). Gender identity is not completely shaped by disability – needless to say, it includes the intersections of class, race and sexuality. More recently, researchers have considered the different impact that the various types of impairment have on gender identity, the effect of the time the impairment occurred, and the changes during different life phases. An example is an undocumented Latino day laborer in San Francisco, who, after serious job injuries, became disabled and was no longer able to meet his family and community gender expectations, which include working and sending home remittances. Many disabled male workers acknowledged that their parents, children and wives consider them failures (Walter et al. 2004). An intersectional understanding of disability and gender identity is the only approach that captures various power relations in specific contexts and life phases and moves “beyond a static understanding of disability and of masculinity” (Shuttleworth et al. 2012: 186).
I want to explore the intersectionality of gender, race and class in more detail, focusing on masculinity, to illustrate the social dynamics of multiple identities interacting within society's hierarchies. The next subsection highlights the institutional structures establishing opportunities and privileges for some groups of men, and constraints and barriers for others. The law and policing are areas that point to the different consequences in responding to the intersection of masculinity and race. Then, I turn to two other activities – sports and employment – which construct and socialize different types of masculinity based on race and class.
Central to masculine gender identity today were the early race and class legal restrictions that denied citizenship rights to non-white men, and denied the rights that were granted to white men with property to men without property (López 1996). The law marginalized men who did not conform to heterosexual masculinity or lacked the ability to demonstrate their independence. Examples are the laws that structurally marginalized Asian immigrant men through racist policies including immigration laws, land exclusionary laws, exploitation of labor, residential exclusion, and violence (Takaki 1993). One can trace popular-culture depictions of Asian men as effeminate to the exclusion of Chinese women and miscegenation laws, which forced the establishment of all-bachelor Chinese communities and their frequent employment in labor considered as “women's work.”
In today's media-obsessed world, East Asian men have three different stereotyped roles where western-perceived race and gender display intersect: (1) Fu Manchu, the inscrutable evil villain; (2) clever nerds who are perceived as effeminate; or (3) hyper-masculine action “good guy” figures skilled in arcane martial arts to battle crime. Compare Fu Manchu with George Takei with Bruce Lee. The original evil genius, Dr. Fu Manchu was popular before World War II when the Japanese became the “Yellow Peril.” He was a brilliant masculine villain. In The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu, the author, Sax Rohmer (1965 [1913]), described him thus: “Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan…one giant intellect, with all the resources of science past and present.…Imagine that awful being, and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the yellow peril incarnate in one man.”
Bruce Lee, like the other martial arts stars Jet Li and Jackie Chan, was hyper-masculine, capable of amazing physical feats and, unlike Fu Manchu, who was always thwarted, the Asian Kung Fu was undefeatable. George Takei, who began his acting career as Lt. Sulu on Star Trek, was selected in the multicultural environment of the Star Ship Enterprise to represent all Asians as the staff physicist. In that role, Sulu follows Charlie Chan (played by Anglos in “yellowface”) and a long line of Asian houseboys who served quietly in the background – mostly silent but super-smart. George Takei has become one of the most beloved internet sensations since he came out as a gay man with progressive politics, but he refused to allow Star Trek to do a new episode with a gay Sulu because it would be historically inaccurate. At the time of the original series, gay men had not “been liberated.”
The intersection of perceived Black characteristics with masculinity is portrayed distinctly differently from these portrayals of Asians; consider Moonlight (2016), Fences (2016) or Straight Outta Compton (2015). Hyper-masculine athletes and on-screen personalities like Richard Roundtree, Samuel L. Jackson or Wesley Snipes work in two directions, reflecting the deep ambivalence in US culture. On the one hand is the villain like Jackson reciting a made-up Bible quote before shooting a bunch of white boys too punk for the drug trade. Physically imposing, merciless and prone to violence – the Black man is a dangerous animal. They grow up in tough neighborhoods like Detroit or Baltimore – setting for The Wire (2002–9) – where one has to fight like a man to survive. (This is obviously emphasized by punk Black boys like Urkel in Family Matters, or Carlton on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (1990–6), whose upper-class Black masculinity is presented as not authentic in contrast to Will Smith's street smarts.) Even in Blaxploitation films, they are violent, large and hyper-masculine.
Along with perpetuating international images of Black men as dangerous and hypersexual, US popular culture contributed to negative images of Latino men. Like Black men, Latino men's masculinity is similarly cast as hypermasculinity – “the exaggerated exhibition of physical strength and personal aggression” (Harris 2000: 785). Popular culture characterizes Latino men's masculinities as static, defined by a “cult of exaggerated masculinity” that includes control over women, and other men (Chant & Craske 2003), referred to as machismo. A classic stereotype is the revolutionary social bandit based on mainstream culture, which reduced the Mexican–American War and the history of resistance and struggle against the dispossession of land and oppression to the image of a violent, barbarous and ferocious Mexican bandido. Latino male images have saturated the silver screen with images of gang members, drug dealers, wife abusers, prisoners and other violent characters (Romero 2001).
Latinos do not have to be physically imposing and are usually in a gang or “drug cartel.” As in Scarface (1983) or No Country for Old Men (2007), Latinos are capable of pitiless torture and murder. Danny Trejo and Robert LaSardo were the archetypal Mexican bad guys in more than a hundred westerns and drug-cartel movies. However, some of these recent films are meant to be read against the grain, which is to say the stereotype is meant to appear ridiculous. Robert Rodriguez’ El Mariachi (1992) series was firmly in this genre. Danny Trejo becomes “Machete” in crime comedies like Machete Kills (2010) and Machete Kills Again (2013). There is also a deconstruction going on, as Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003) and Pulp Fiction (1994) feature apparent intersections of racialized violence that are intended to be mocked. In other words, the stereotyped intersection of masculinity, race, ethnicity and violence has been revealed in fictional media.
In real life, nothing much has changed. A closer look at current legal restrictions and law enforcement practices that construct Black and Latino masculinity in opposition to hegemonic white masculinity further illustrates the intersectionality of race and gender. “News” media constantly repeat stereotyped images of Black men as hypersexual, dangerous, thugs, and criminals. The “stigma attached to their skin color, age, gender, appearance, and general style of presentation” results in the Black male being identified with criminality, incivility, toughness and danger (Anderson 1990: 163). Women and Whites lock car doors, cross the street, hold on to or hide their belongings when encountering Black men, an everyday reminder that US society fears their bodies.
The police use of lethal force in confronting a Black man suspect is so much a part of the daily news that parents with Black sons are irresponsible if they do not teach young boys how to stay out of harm's way. Responsible parenting for Blacks and racialized Latinos means having that difficult conversation with their sons about the way society views them as dangerous and parents emphasize everyday practices that might reduce irrational white fears (Bell et al. 1998; Greene 1992). The New York Times devoted an entire multi-media series to this discussion (Gandbhir & Foster 2015). Black and Latino parents correctly fear for their sons’ safety in police encounters (Fine & Weis 1998; Dottolo & Stewart 2008) particularly when they are driving. As Katheryn Russell (2009 [1998]: 61–2) explained:
They are subject to vehicle stops for a variety of reasons, some legal, some not:
These incidents are so common, we know them as DWB (Driving While Black or Driving While Brown).
Contrast the above difficult conversation to white middle-class parents instructing their sons about their rights to remain silent and resist warrantless searches. Their conversation is unlikely to emphasize how to appear less threatening but rather how to assert their rights, not to speak to the police without a lawyer, and not to be intimated into giving evidence. Here the focus is on their white, male and class privilege, which is a very different type of conversation.
Police use of racial profiling of male youth of color, dressed in attire defined as “urban” (e.g. baggy pants, T-shirt, baseball cap worn backwards, hooded sweatshirt) demonstrates the intersectional profile of race, gender and class (Meeks 2000; Wilson et al. 2004; Young 2004). Police do not suspect white suburban males dressed in similar clothing and listening to rap music. Police racial bias was the focus of the hoodie movement, which sparked the debate over race and justice. After the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, the media blamed wearing a hoodie as responsible for George Zimmerman's use of lethal force. Zimmerman was a neighborhood watch coordinator in the gated community where Martin was living. Although Martin was unarmed, Zimmerman claimed self-defense under Florida's Stand Your Ground statute, which resulted in his release. Protesters wore hoodies to demonstrate that fashion choices are not criminal. Among the most prominent protesters were Miami Heat basketball players who posed for a group photo wearing black hoodies, and Representative Bobby Rush (Democrat from Illinois) who addressed the House of Representatives on Capitol Hill wearing a hoodie. Police surveillance of male youth of color generates the belief that they are engaged in drugs and gangs, which not only places them in harm's way of the law but also results in them being perceived as unsuitable as co-workers, neighbors or acquaintances (Wilson et al. 2004).
Victor Rios’ (2009: 151) research on the criminalization of Latino and Black youth attended to the consequences of punitive criminal justice treatment that is reinforced through constant surveillance of youth activities and “stigma imposed by schools, community centers and families.” The school-to-prison pipeline operates in the context of high unemployment and few, if any, alternative opportunities. Rios examined structural practices – stopping, recording, policing, incarceration and probation – that result in youth developing gendered practices of hyper-masculinity that are shaped by the exchanges youth have with the police, probation officers, and personnel in detention facilities. Rios examined the intersection of race and class in the development of specific forms of masculinity shaped through repeated interactions with the criminal justice system. In these encounters, being a “real man” requires meeting gendered expectations to receive and maintain respect. The consequences of being disrespected, of not conforming to gendered norms of being tough and willing to fight, hinder the chances of survival on the streets and during incarceration.
In considering privilege, men of color's negatively perceived “hyper-masculinity” is replaced by a mainstream white “hegemonic masculinity.” Bethany Coston and Michael Kimmel (2012) addressed the role expectation of men as white, heterosexual and non-disabled. Notions associated with a “real man” include wealth, bravery, physical strength, emotional stability, and the ability to be rational. White heterosexual upper-middle- and upper-class men are in hegemonic positions of power and decision-making in economic and political institutions. Civilized, proper breeding and refinement are the traditional traits characterizing upper-class masculinity. Similar to the ideal womanhood of domesticity, meeting the standards of an ideal man's masculinity is difficult, if not impossible, particularly for men marginalized by race, class, sexuality status or disability. Even though “men of more disadvantaged backgrounds (for example, minority, working-class, gay) reap certain privileges…they lack hegemonic masculinity because the masculinity that they deploy cannot often be exchanged for the most dominant forms of power and capital” (Ocampo 2012: 451).
Men of color may use male privilege in interpersonal interaction within their families and communities; however, the privilege is unlikely to extend to spaces dominated by heterosexual middle-class white males. The meaning of “hegemony” is the presumption of dominance, the invisible power of ruling ideas that shape expectations generally shared by members of the society. Hegemony leads people to see Black and Latino youth as a danger, and a white man in a suit as just the opposite – even if a fountain pen is more likely to rob you than a switchblade.
Competitive sports are central to male socialization in the US and continue to be important sites for developing skill, physical power and aggression (Grindstaff and West 2011). This is evident by the parenting activity that fathers engage in when participating in sports with their children. Recent scholarship on masculinity identified two types emerging from fathers’ involvement with their children's sports: “ ‘Orthodox’ masculine traits include risk-taking, competitiveness, tolerance of pain, and injury; ‘inclusive’ masculinity is a nurturing practice of manhood in which fathers are ‘supportive of their children regardless of their performance, acting on the belief that this reinforcement is important for their self-esteem and confidence’ ” (Gottzén & Kremer-Sadlik 2012: 640). Inclusive characteristics are becoming more common among fathers of the white, middle-class male athletes and students observed on college soccer and rugby teams (Anderson 2009; Adams 2011).
The types of sports supported in different communities are largely class- and race-based, and are closely related to opportunities available in schools or those that parents can afford. Middle-class men have options to enter professional employment or to move into managing sports rather than pursuing long-term athletic careers. Working-class men and men of color tend to pursue athletic careers to gain access to education or seek celebrity athletes’ fame and wealth (Messner 1992). Professional sports are among the most sex-segregated institutions in terms of who plays, who owns teams, who coaches, and who reaps the greatest financial rewards (Walker 2005). Media coverage of professional sports is shaped at the intersection of race and gender identity when white male athletes are described by their skill, effort and determination, whereas similar talents embodied by Black male athletes are described as natural and sometimes compared to animalistic characteristics. Sports commentators repeat conventional racial stereotypes (Eastman & Billings 2001). By overachieving in specific sports, Black athletes are recognized as superior to white athletes; however, African Americans are underrepresented in managerial, coaching, administrative and related sporting occupations.
Basketball is a quintessential American sport, played and watched by millions. It is also a court where racial identity is played out. The role expectations for Black and white Americans is brilliantly expressed in the film White Men Can't Jump (1992). The basis for the film is a con game played out on the informal courts where games are bet on. Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson run a scam based on the perception that white guys cannot play B ball as well as Blacks. Snipes, the Black player, offers to play but is a man short. When Harrelson offers to fill in the stakes go higher because everyone thinks he can't play because he is white and they don't know he is an expert. The film only works by playing on the Black/white role expectations Americans hold about race, masculinity and the game.
Stanley Thangaraj (2010, 2012, 2013, 2015) researched masculinity formation among South Asian American basketball players in Atlanta. Historical background is important in identifying structures of oppression and opportunities. The first South Asian immigrants arrived in the late 1800s and early 1900s as agricultural workers and were racialized as “Hindoos” even though most were Muslim and Sikh. Like many terms used for immigrants of color, “Hindoos” was imbued with negative gender, race, sexual and social-class meanings. The South Asian American men Stanley Thangaraj researched were the children of immigrants who entered the US a century later to work in science- and health-related professions. The occupations re-created the stereotype of South Asians as nerdy. However, since 9/11, South Asian men now confront the opposite stigma of being “Muslim-looking,” which, unlike the “model minority,” now triggers excessive hate. In fact, the first target of racist violence post-9/11 was a Sikh man who ran a gas station and convenience store in my neighborhood in Arizona. He was shot and killed for wearing the Sikh turban that marks South Asians as forever-foreign (Thangaraj 2015), despite the fact that they were not involved in the attack on the World Trade Center.
Enter second- and third-generation South Asian boys growing up in Atlanta, Georgia. In this context, South Asian American basketball players had to construct masculinity in relation to African American, Asian American, and white masculinity. Growing up in the South, surrounded by the White–Black binary of race, Black aesthetics become class indicators and marked working-class masculinity for South Asian youth who lacked cultural capital to achieve the model-minority standard (Thangaraj 2010). Being racialized as “foreigners” placed the boys outside the boundaries of hegemonic masculinity “in relation to white, middle-class, heterosexual normativity” (Thangaraj 2015: 7). Creating an “Asian Ballers League” became an important “means by which South Asian American men socialized, navigated, and expressed their identities in 21st-century America” (Thangaraj 2015: 3). They constructed their own racialized masculinity and sense of belonging by embracing the popular American sport. Demonstrating skill on the basketball court challenged the portrayal of Asians as nerdy. Racialized muscular bodies that achieve skilled basketball maneuvers serve to present “themselves as strong, able-bodied, aggressive, respectable, and heterosexual men” (2015: 4). In the ethnically exclusive circuit of the Asian Ballers League, South Asian men's call to “man up” was a collective reshaping of racialized masculinity in the context of an American sporting identity. Yet their class differences, resulting from the different social, political and economic circumstances of their families’ migration to the US, create different resources available to “man up” as basketball players and as worker/professionals.
The case of South Asian men in Atlanta playing in the Asian Ballers League demonstrates the nuances of intersectional analysis. The presumed class, set by the “model-minority” stereotype, further complicates their racialized masculinity. In other words, South Asian men are presumed to be nerds or computer geeks, but not all are – some are working-class and risk failing to meet American notions of sport and masculinity. By creating their own league, they complicate the Black/White binary implicit in American sport discourse. The intersectional viewpoint is visible in another film that also takes place in the Deep South, Mississippi Masala (1991). In Greenwood, Mississippi, a South-Indian woman, expelled from the Uganda of Idi Amin, falls in love with Demetrius, played by Denzel Washington. Even though they have similar skin tones, both families are terribly upset by the relationship. The issues of his working-class status, race and social background are set against her ethnicity and refugee status and the presumption of upward mobility for an Asian American, making for a fascinating example of how race, class, gender, ethnicity and role expectations can play out.
Now I'll explore practices and norms of masculinity in employment. Using an intersectional paradigm, I consider social positions of race, ethnicity and citizenship status in constructing masculine identity in traditional male occupations.
Areas of employment and labor are important sites for the construction of gender identity, particularly in affirming, challenging and negotiating masculinity (Kimmel 2000; Padavic & Reskin 2002; Messerschmitt 2004). Construction, coal mining, policing and firefighting were working-class male-dominated occupations. As union jobs, these occupations provided workers with decent pay, benefits and job security. The histories of unionization among these trades document the fight to keep men of color out – aimed at holding on to white male privilege (Roediger 1999). One structural mechanism was “father and son unions,” where boys followed their fathers into the occupation and the labor union – essentially closing the shop to men of color and sorting occupations by ethnicity. This is how, in big Eastern cities like New York, there were Irish police and firefighters; there were German and Irish butchers in Back of the Yards, Chicago. Most unions, including the powerful American Federation of Labor (AFL), did not admit Blacks or women. However, in 1925, Black sleeping-car porters organized the first African American Union. It was a strong brotherhood on the US rails when there was a passenger service. While the social construction of masculinity would seem to favor working-class men for their physical strength, the occupational hierarchy placed them in vulnerable and precarious employment. They are perceived as “dumb brutes” or “working stiffs” with a career that was meaningful but limited. Unlike white middle-class fathers who hope to serve as role models for their sons, working-class fathers sometimes wanted more for their sons and frequently viewed themselves as negative role models (Coston & Kimmel 2012). In an oral history of western coal miners, one old Welsh miner said he'd scoop manure in hell before he saw his son go into the mines.
A memorable illustration of this point appears in Studs Terkel's (1974) opening interview in Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do. Terkel interviewed Mike LeFevre, a steel-mill worker, who told a story of hard work, tiredness, and being treated with little respect. After showing where injuries had left black and blue marks on his arms and legs, he says, “You know what I hear from more than one guy at work. ‘If my kid wants to work in a factory, I am going to kick the hell out of him,’ I want my kid to be an effete snob. Yeah, mm-hmm. (Laughs.) I want him to be able to quote Walt Whitman, to be proud of it” (Terkel 1974: xxxii). He described his dream of a 20-hour working week that would allow him time to be with his family and to go to college. This tension between a working-class life and an intellectual life is a theme throughout the interview: “If my kid ever goes to college, I just want him to have a little respect, to realize that his dad is one of those somebodies” (Terkel 1974: xxxv). Lefevre described an interaction with a college student who expressed surprise that he read books instead of just the sports page in the newspaper like the other workers. He criticized the student as “a nineteen-year-old effete snob” (Terkel 1974: xxxvii). Terkel called Mike's attention to the contradiction that he wants his own son to be an effete snob. Mike acknowledges the contradiction and explains that he does not want his son to work like him but dreams of a world in which college kids and steelworkers talk and interact respectfully toward each other. Mike describes his dream:
Where a workingman could not be ashamed of Walt Whitman and where a college professor could not be ashamed he painted his house over the weekend.
If a carpenter built a cabin for poets, I think the least the poets owe the carpenter is just three or four one-liners on the wall. A little plaque: Though we labor with our minds, this place we can relax in was built by someone who can work with his hands. And his work is as noble as ours. I think the poet owes something to the guy who builds the cabin for him.
(Terkel 1974: xxxvii)
In the 1997 film Good Will Hunting the character played by Matt Damon is an individual representation of the tension between those who work with their hands and those who sit at desks and work with their minds. While an unrecognized mathematical genius, Damon's idea of masculinity requires fighting, drinking and hanging in a male-dominated culture. At first, he resists Robin Williams’ attempts at “therapy,” but eventually comes to recognize alternative definitions of masculinity. The drama is a compelling “psychological reductionism” in focusing on the single character of Will Hunting, when this tension between masculine and non-masculine work is a big social structural chasm.
Richard Sennett and Jonathan Cobb (1973) referred to this loss of human dignity and inability to gain self-respect as the hidden injuries of class. Over the past several decades, white lower-middle-class and working-class males have experienced downward social mobility in both income and lifestyle. Factory jobs are being moved offshore where labor is cheaper; coal and metal mining are still being done in the US, but have become highly mechanized, requiring a much smaller workforce. Where miners used to be a powerful part of the labor movement, fighting for safety as well as wages and hours, much of the industry is now non-union. Construction jobs have also been mechanized – they cannot be offshored like manufacturing – but divisions of labor have reduced what used to be highly skilled jobs – such as those of plumbers, electricians, and carpenters – to jobs that unskilled labor can do. Declining employment in well-paid union jobs, previously dominated by white working-class males, has resulted in a perceived loss of white male privilege.
Much has been written about the role of white working-class men and women in the election of Donald Trump. Probably because Trump's opponent was a woman, gender as much as race and social class intersected in the 2016 election more than ever before in recent politics. Trump positioned himself as a hyper-masculine male in such a way that accusations of sexual harassment and groping women actually played in his favor as a “man's man” engaging in “locker room talk.” Race was also important, probably because the US president for the past eight years was an African American. Before the election, an article in the New Yorker put Trump's appeal this way: “The base of the [Republican] Party, the middle-aged white working class, has suffered at least as much as any demographic group because of globalization, low-wage immigrant labor, and free trade. Trump sensed the rage that flared from this pain and made it the fuel of his campaign.…And Trump has replaced it with something more dangerous: white identity politics” (Packer 2016).
In NBC's (2016) exit polling 63 percent of white voters without college degrees in the “rust belt” states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin voted for Trump. An intersectional analysis of social class, gender and ethnicity revealed a major shift of identity politics. Where previously Whites had been seen as “the norm” in US society, part of Trump's success was due to his appeal to these voters as another aggrieved ethnic group, much like Blacks or Latinos. In such times of crisis, white male workers scapegoat the “other” as the cause of the problem of declining jobs in these sectors of the economy – women, gays, immigrants or workers of color (Fine et al. 1997; Rodino-Colocino 2012). David Embrick and colleagues (2007: 757) found working-class men discriminated against gays and lesbians and in the process “constructed and maintained a form of White male solidarity, a collective practice directed toward women, People of Color, and non-heterosexuals that maintains racism, sexism, and homophobia in the local, national, and global context.” Marginalizing and devaluing masculinities of gays and men of color is one strategy to bolster properties of hegemonic masculinity that white working-class men do possess (Connell 2005). Cultures of hyper-masculinity, sometimes accompanied with gender and race discrimination, are responses to the lack of job security and declining union power. This point is evident in Kris Paap's (2006) research among construction workers who perpetuate sexist and racist behavior and whose attitudes to safety bolster a sense of being “man enough” for the job – but serve to put workers in harm's way.
Working-class masculinity among male immigrants working as construction workers and landscapers illustrates the intersection of race, gender, class and immigration on this topic. Reliance on stereotyping Mexican masculinity as machismo ignores the significance of intersectionality, social structure and social interaction. For instance, in their study of construction workers in Las Vegas, Leticia Saucedo and Maria Morales (2010) examined gender identity as central to defining male immigrants’ work experiences. When construction arrangements changed from hourly employment to independent contracting, women workers were more likely to complain than were immigrant men, and were critical of employers for not providing safety equipment or adequate tools to increase their efficiency. These workers, on the other hand, took personal responsibility for their own safety. Immigrant male workers took pride in their ability to endure, to be tough – to be manly. Narratives of masculinities promoted risk and ambition, and framed the worker as an entrepreneur. Employers viewed them as stepping forward and improving working conditions on their own. Consequently, masculine narratives perpetuated gender-based barriers by squeezing women out of construction work. However, their hyper-masculine narratives also served to place them at higher risk. As white working-class workers experience declining wages and fewer benefits, employers gain from the perpetuation of working-class masculinities in low-wage jobs. Immigrant workers’ employment options are limited. The working-class immigrant masculinity enables them to endure risks to fulfill their patriarchal obligations as responsible family providers. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration report that the leading causes of deaths in construction in 2014 were falls (39.9 percent), electrocution (8.2 percent), being struck by an object (8.1 percent) and being caught-in-between objects (4.3 percent). Latino workers accounted for 804 of these injuries, more than 15 deaths a week, or 2 Latino workers killed every single day in 2014 (NIOSH and ASSE 2015).
Hernan Ramirez’ (2011: 97) study of jardineros, or Mexican immigrant gardeners, in Los Angeles, examines working-class masculinity as experienced in the context of “racialized nativism and citizenship hierarchy in the United States.” After decades of out-migration, certain communities in Mexico develop a “culture of migration” that serves as a transition to manhood (Davis 1990). Once in the US, they devote their time to hard work, developing physical strength and calloused hands, which signifies masculinity, and is the path to acceptance among the other Mexican male immigrants. “Jardinero masculinity is centrally concerned with physically hard manual labor and embodied toughness, and it unfolds in a specific working-class occupational and regional context” (Ramirez 2011: 98). “ ‘Manly’ dirty work is how they can justify their presence in a hostile environment” and being away from their loved ones (Ramirez 2011: 106). Landscaping is dangerous work, as is evident from the use of loud, gasoline-powered leaf blowers worn on their backs, and the use of lawn mowers and weeders. Although employers provide gloves, facemasks and protective goggles, jardineros do not use protective equipment. Like the immigrant construction workers whom Saucedo and Morales wrote about, these jardineros placed themselves in danger by accepting personal responsibility, which reinforced a tough working-class masculinity. However, unlike white US male citizens engaged in manual labor, they encountered women homeowners’ complaints and supervision delivered with disrespect. Similar to women of color employed as domestics for white women (Rollins 1985; Romero 1992), they retained their dignity by finding non-confrontational strategies in order not to lose their jobs. Jardineros “occupy a place near the bottom of the social and economic ladder, where they are subjected to personal threats to their pride and restrictions on their authority, as well as limits to their ability to support and protect their families” (Ramirez 2011: 108). Understanding jardineros’ masculinity requires an intersectionality framework to understand “an ongoing ‘doing’ of a version of masculinity that is closely tied to their status as marginalized, working-class, immigrant men of color” (Ramirez 2011: 111).
However, not all working-class masculinity or cultures of hyper-masculinity include race discrimination. Mathew Desmond (2007) illustrates that in his study of firefighters that included a mixed-race crew of Native American, Latino, Black and white men from rural working-class backgrounds. Desmond linked hyper-masculinity with the organizational structure of the forest service. He argued that the firefighters’ shared “country-masculinity” prepared them with skills acquired while growing up on farms and in small towns; consequently, they embrace the risk-taking of wildland firefighting together. In this rural-life context, “country-masculinity” means being comfortable in the woods and the related activities of fishing, hunting, hiking, camping and just being outdoors. Their definitions of the “other” are people who prefer working and being indoors – in other words, city folk and environmentalists who threaten US forest firefighting practices. Resort hotels and campsites for city visitors decrease the forest area and change the small-town environment. Cities and urban areas represent crime and violence, as well as living next to strangers. The independence and love of the outdoors contained in country-masculinity provide the perfect bond for engaging in the hard work and risk-taking involved in wildland firefighting. Like mining and deep-sea fishing, firefighting is a tough “macho” occupation. Deaths and injuries are to be expected as part of the job and are the result of “human error” despite rigorous safety regulations. Desmond's analysis of firefighters’ masculinity demonstrates the significance of class and geography (rural) in a shared country-masculinity that cuts across racial and ethnic differences.
Intersectional approaches to the practices of masculinity in the male-dominated jobs of firefighting, construction and landscaping point to the ways in which the occupations not only are gendered but are class-based, racialized, and further subordinated by citizenship status. Where they rely on forms of hyper-masculinity, these jobs also serve to reproduce existing systems and power relations.
1 How does an intersectional framework analysis explain the disparities in policing in different communities?
2 How does the competitive world of golf tournaments reward masculinity intersected with race, class and age differently from professional football?
3 How do vulnerable male workers use hyper-masculinity to succeed in a competitive job market?
Another lens for looking at alternative gender performances involves examining the intersectionality of gender and sexuality, here through the analysis of race and class. During the twentieth century, popular media presented gay men as feminized and unable to succeed in traditional male occupations like sports (Anderson 2005; Anderson & McCormack 2010a) or the military. While social attitudes are gradually changing as more gay athletes and military personnel come out of the closet, in large part they remain stereotyped in unmasculine occupations such as those of hair stylists, interior decorators or professional dancers (Coston & Kimmel 2012). However, gender identities are much more fluid in the gay community and include both hegemonic and hyper-masculinity. Masculine sexual identities are only one axis of gay, bisexual and transgender experiences – race, class and disability are among others. Research on gays of color uses intersectionality to illustrate the fluidity of other identities and the contexts in which certain identities become more salient than others. Intersectional understandings of race, class, gender and sexuality illuminate the various power relations operating in spaces dominated by gays and those dominated by communities of color.
For instance, Lisa Bowleg (2013) examined the intersections of gender, race and sexual identity in her analysis of Black gay and bisexual men's life narratives. Their narratives highlighted the interconnectedness of their identities: while certain social locations acknowledge their male privilege, in other situations they were subjugated as Black men or as gays. Unlike race or gender identity, sexual identity can be invisible. Consequently, Black identity is more central in experiences of racial discrimination because LGBTQ discrimination can be avoided by “passing” in ways that race generally cannot. Similarly, rather than being embraced by the LGBTQ community, Black gay and bisexual men recounted experiences of racism among white gay and bisexual men who accepted their sexual identity but engaged in racial microagressions. Those practices served as reminders that their Black identity was not accepted. Other researchers report that Black gay men consider gay culture in the US “too white,” dominated by white middle-class men (Anderson & McCormack 2010b). This may also shed light on why 20 percent of gay citizens voted for Donald Trump, even though he disagreed with gay marriage (Lang 2016). In a related analysis of Black and gay male athletes in US sports, Eric Anderson and Mark McCormack (2010b) observed that gay men are constructed as white, and Black men are constructed as heterosexual. Gay culture is assumed to be a white space and Black men's race identity overshadows their sexual identity. Quoting the Black gay cultural activist and poet Essex Hemphill, Bowleg highlighted the salience of the intersection of race and gender for Black gay and bisexual men: “I can be gay in only a few cities in this country [the US], but I'm Black everywhere I go” (2013: 764). The sexual identity of Black gays is likely to be salient only in predominantly African American communities.
Black gay men are not the only gay men of color to view gay culture as too white. Latino gays report experiencing racism, as well as classism, in mainstream gay communities (Diaz 1997; Cantú 1999; Guzmán 2006). Like many other gays of color, Latino gays may decide not to come out of the closet in order to maintain ties with their ethnic and racial community (Moore 2010). However, in the case of Latino gays who are financially independent or maintain their position as breadwinner, they report an acceptance of their sexuality and their partner at family gatherings (Carrillo 1999). Expressions of gay Latino masculinities are not static but related to class and migration. For example, working-class Mexican men may dress in ranchero-style clothing to dance in Latino gay clubs in Southern California or baggy clothing with a shaved head in urban settings (Rodríguez 2006; Almaguer 2007; González 2007). In his ethnographic study of gay Latino men in Los Angeles, Anthony Ocampo (2012) examined the ways they negotiated masculine boundaries and their strategies for “doing” masculinity. His analysis did not lose sight of the fact that they are racialized men in the US and socialized in immigrant families and neighborhoods. Therefore, their strategies for “performing” masculinity reflect both their gender socialization in immigrant families and communities, and their interaction with mainstream gay culture. Race and class shape gender performance, which in this case requires avoiding a feminine or affluent appearance, and is in opposition to their perceptions of white gay men. This opposition was demonstrated when venues catering to Latino and African American gay men were changed into white spaces by placing clothing restrictions against “too urban” clothing or changing the music: “respondents’ understandings of the relationship between ‘appropriate’ gender presentation and public spaces reflected not only differences in cultural tastes between Latino and White gay men, but also illustrated how Latino gay men negotiate their gender presentation and racialization simultaneously” (Ocampo 2012: 458).
Unlike for African American and Latino males, popular culture does not stereotype Asian American men as hyper-masculine but as effeminate and non-masculine, regardless of their sexuality. Therefore, Asian American gay men face different stereotypes concerning their racialized gender identity, as explored previously in accounts of South Asian American members of the Asian Ballers League in Atlanta. Richard Fung (1991) argues that gay pornography erases the desires of Asian gays, who are stigmatized as effeminate. Racial domination in the gay pornography industry objectifies Asian gays as subordinated to white gay men. Some Asian American gays engage in hyper-masculine gender presentations to counter their stigmatized gender in the gay community. For example, Chong-suk Han's (2009) ethnography of Seattle's Asian and gay communities examined Asian gay men's gender presentation as a means to manage stigma on two fronts: sexual preference in the Asian community, and race in the gay community. Asian gay men present a hyper-masculine gender identity in gay communities in opposition to the feminine stereotype imposed on them. However, this gender performance had limited success in acquiring white gay partners, who many perceived as more desirable. In interracial couples, the white partner is dominant in these gay relationships. An alternative strategy among gay Asian men was using the racialized gender stereotype to their advantage and competing with white gay men in drag performances and presenting themselves “to gain recognition and notoriety” (Han 2009: 107). Other researchers (e.g., Wilson & Yoshikawa 2004) concluded that some Asian gay men respond to racialized gender discrimination in gay communities by avoiding situations that are hostile to any gay men of color regardless of ethnicity. The ethnographic studies cited above used intersectional analysis to see how sexuality and gender performances were negotiated in Black, Latino and Asian communities. They were able to capture nuances and subtleties of social interaction that previous one-dimensional approaches missed.
1 What social inequalities in LGBTQ communities become visible when one uses an intersectional framework?
It is not surprising that many feminist scholars consider intersectionality to be the major contribution to theorizing gender identity. Without considering age, class, race, ableness, and sexual orientation as social identities, gender exists as an empty signifier. Only by acknowledging the overlapping systems of oppression and privilege can one understand gender privilege or oppression. Returning to Caitlyn Jenner, her race, class and ableness were essential in her ability to construct a heteronormative feminine persona and gain public support and acceptance for her gender identity as a trans person. An intersectional approach is essential to capture nuances embedded in news coverage, letters to editors and opinion pieces related to Caitlyn's presentation of her new gender identity. Without knowing the different historical contexts of gender privilege and oppression experienced by white and Black women, Laverne Cox's and Caitlyn Jenner's choices of a hyper-feminine gender identity appear similar. However, as Cox's comments revealed, the purpose for her photo shoot was to create “racially empowering images of the various sides of my black, trans womanhood.” Gender privileges of femininity have traditionally been denied to Black women in the US, which is not the case for white women.
Male-dominated sports and occupations supervise, discipline and police gender practices. However, this is true for women as well. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (2015) drew attention to the racial inequality in the endorsement cost of not meeting certain female ideals of beauty. Even though Serena Williams beat Maria Sharapova in the two Grand Slam tournaments where they met in 2015 (Williams going on to win three of the four Grand Slam titles that year), Williams only earned $12 million from endorsements, less than half of the $29 million Sharapova earned. Women athletes have always had to struggle with performing heteronormative femininity but women of color are expected to reproduce an ideal that never included them. Thus, in 2014, the Russian Tennis Federation President, Shamil Tarpischev, referred to Venus and Serena Williams as the “Williams Brothers.” Attention to Black women not fitting the white ideal of femininity emerged in the 2015 summer coverage of Wimbledon that involved body-shaming Serena Williams. Even though she had just won her 21st Grand Slam singles title and the 4th in a row, New York Times sports writer Ben Rothenberg (2015) titled his article, “Tennis's top women balance body image with ambition,” concluding that Serena was non-feminine because she is muscular. Citing numerous coaches of other tennis players, he implied that Serena wins only because of her physique, which he argued places others who wish to stay looking like women at a disadvantage (Williams 2015).
One white player, Radwanska, claimed, “any gain in muscle could hurt her trademark speed and finesse,” and “she also acknowledged that how she looked mattered to her.” Other players recognized that strengthening their muscles contributed to being a better athlete. While some readers expressed outrage over the policing of women athlete's bodies, few could deny the racism. In Serena Williams’ case, this has been an experience throughout her career. Her friend and fellow tennis player Caroline Wozniacki imitated Serena in Brazil in 2012 to illustrate the lack of awareness of racism and sexism. She stuffed towels into her bra and shorts creating larger breasts and bottom to perform an impression of Serena. There is also blatant racism exhibited by floods of hate speech on Twitter after every win by Serena.
Controlling images of Black women's bodies is a constant in US sports. However, Black women experience similar rejection in other activities, including skating and ballet. Misty Copeland made history as the first African American women to be principal dancer for the American Ballet Theater. Previously a ballet academy had rejected her when she was 13 because she didn't have the right body type. In a commercial for Under Armour, she recalled what she had heard that day, “Dear candidate, thank you for your application to our ballet academy. Unfortunately, you have not been accepted. You lack the right feet, Achilles tendons, turnout, torso length and bust. You have the wrong body for ballet. And at 13, you are too old to be considered.” Yet 13 years later, she is principal dancer! Too often, Ms. Copeland encountered the stereotype of a Black woman being too muscular, too tall, too big, or lacking the flexibility to succeed.
For centuries, Black women and other women of color were denied entrance into certain activities because their physical presence of womanhood did not fit the white western ideal. In mass media and theater, they have often been cast as servants or in bit parts. When Michelle Obama appeared in a sleeveless dress, revealing muscular arms, “conservatives” attacked her relentlessly for revealing too much flesh for a first lady. On numerous occasions, she has been compared to a gorilla. Meanwhile, Mrs. Trump's photographs as a nude model were a mark of true beauty. “This seems to indicate that the conservative voters were only criticizing Mrs. Obama not because it isn't ‘First Lady-like’ or because it goes against their conservative, religious views, but simply because she is a Democrat and maybe even because she's African American and that in itself is not suitable” (Acuesta 2016). The particular way that Michelle's gender is racialized becomes invisible without looking at the ways in which systems of gendered and racial oppression intersect in the experiences of women and men of color.
I presented examples drawn from research and popular culture in this chapter to illustrate how gender identity is not fixed but socially constructed. This social construction occurred historically within certain socio-economic contexts, meaning that it can change in different settings. Racism, sexuality and sexism are not fixed but malleable. The ideal heteronormative femininity among middle-class Christian girls in New Orleans is not the same as for middle-class Muslim girls in Iran. Examples also demonstrate how, when social settings and circumstances are changed, there is a shift in one's social identity – for instance, race becomes more salient in some settings than sexuality, and vice versa. As a Mexican American woman academic from a working-class background, while listening to my heterosexual female colleagues discuss their college days in a sorority and summers at Martha's Vineyard, I felt my class and race differences more than gender. My economic circumstances framed summer breaks as opportunities for full-time employment, usually in jobs dominated by other women workers. Alternately, when in meetings with male Latino professors, it was the experience of gender that made me feel out of place – the only woman in the group. Like these colleagues, my experiences in college were class- and race-based ones. I joined political campaigns and organizations aimed at fighting for social equality. In those groups social class, or at least class solidarity, may be readily assumed, while gender and race were variously identified and may have seemed sites for conflict. These multiple identities – gender, race and class – are experienced simultaneously but differentially.
When intersectional relations are not examined, identities appear universal, as gender was in feminist theorizing in the 1960s and 1970s. Frequently, the absence of intersectionality results in confusion and blurring of social identities, which fails to capture lived experiences, such as those of immigrant male construction workers or landscapers. All too often, gender and sexual identities are confused and treated as one, particularly in everyday conversation. Being gay or lesbian is not the same as being cismale or cisfemale. Gay men do not all have the same gender identity, as described in Ocampo's ethnographic study of Latino men in Los Angeles or in Han's ethnography of Seattle's Asian and gay communities. What is feminine to an upper-class lesbian living in Manhattan is not likely to be the norm of femininity for a poor working-class heterosexual immigrant woman living in Los Angeles. Straights, lesbians, bisexuals and trans people do not all have the same gender identity. To understand lived experiences, one needs to examine the interconnectiveness of each marginalized or privileged identity. One can be privileged in one social setting and discriminated against in another. As the cases in this chapter have shown, an intersectional approach to gender identity provides tools to reveal existing systems of power manifested in social relationships of dominance and subordination.