Schedule – American Misogyny

UNIT 1 – POSTWAR MISOGYNY

WEEK 1

2/14: Introduction

Nina Renata Aron, “What Does Misogyny Look Like?” The New York Times, March 8, 2019, sec. Style.

Constance Grady, “The waves of feminism, and why people keep fighting over them, explained,” Vox.com, July 20, 2018.

Jude Ellison Sady Doyle, “It’s Not (All) the Second Wave’s Fault.” ELLE, January 22, 2018.

Roxane Gay, “Looking for a Better Feminism,” in “Twitter Sparks A Serious Discussion About Race And Feminism.” NPR, August 23, 2013.

Powerpoint: Course Introduction

2/16: Freudian Misogyny

Sigmund Freud, “Some Psychical Consequences of the Anatomical Distinction between the Sexes” (1925).

Kendra Cherry, “Freud’s Perspective on Women,” Verywell.com,   September 18, 2014.

George Dvorsky, “Why Freud Still Matters When He Was Wrong about Almost Everything,” Gizmodo August 7, 2013.

Marynia Farnham and Ferdinand Lundberg, Modern Woman: The Lost Sex (1947), excerpts.

Philip Wylie, “Common Women,” in Generation of Vipers (1942), excerpt.

Herman N. Bundesen, “The Overprotective Mother,” [reprinted from LHJ 67(March 1950), 250] in Ladd-Taylor and Umansky, ed., Bad Mothers The Politics of Blame in Twentieth-Century America (1998), 268-270.

Passages and questions for use in class

Discussion Questions: [1] [2] [3] [4] [post your own]

Powerpoint: Freud, Penis Envy, and Momism

WEEK 2

2/21: Gender, Race, and Misogyny in Postwar Popular Film

Prior to today’s class, please watch the 1959 film version of Imitation of Life (Douglas Sirk, 1959). A copy is on reserve at Davis Family Library. Middlebury’s copy also contains the 1934 black-and-white film version starring Claudette Colbert – DO NOT WATCH THIS! WATCH THE 1959 FILM!

Please read two of the following three essays:

Marina Heung, “’What’s the Matter with Sarah Jane?’: Daughters and Mothers in Douglas Sirk’s Imitation of Life,” Cinema Journal, 26:3 (Spring, 1987), 21-43.

bell hooks, “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators” in Black Looks: Race and Representation (South End Press, 1992), 115-131.

Here are some passages from hooks’ chapter that we might discuss in class.

Lucy Fischer, “Three-Way Mirror: Imitation of Life,” in Fischer, ed., Imitation of Life (Rutgers, 1991), 3-28. My apologies for the odd formatting!

“The Bad and the Beautiful” in Lucy Fischer, ed., Imitation of life, 216-218.

Powerpoint: Imitation of Life

Discussion Question [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [New question about black female spectatorship] [post your own]

UNIT 2 – SECOND-WAVE FEMINISM

2/23: Second-Wave Feminists Theorize Misogyny

Andrea Dworkin, “Misogyny,” in Mankiller et al., ed., The Reader’s Companion to U.S. Women’s History (Houghton Mifflin, 1998).

Kate Millett, “Theory of Sexual Politics” (1970), 23-58.

Redstockings Manifesto (1969).

NOW Statement of Purpose (1966).

Audre Lorde, “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House” (1979)

Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), Sections I-IV (Chapters 1-12).

Some passages for class discussion

Powerpoint: Radical Feminists Define Misogyny – Atwood Responds

Discussion Question [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [post your own]

WEEK 3

2/28: Antifeminist Perspectives on the Women’s Liberation Movement

From Antifeminism in America, vol. 3 (1997):

Marabel Morgan, “Excerpts from The Total Woman,” [1970], 51-73.

Anita Bryant, “Lord, Teach Me To Submit,” [1972], 73-80.

Phyllis Schlafly, “Excerpts from The Power of the Positive Woman,” [1977], 101-113.

Jerry Falwell, “The Feminist Movement,” [1980], 136-150.

Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale, Sections V-VIII (Chapters 13-23).

Passages from anti-feminist writers

Some passages from today’s reading in The Handmaid’s Tale

Powerpoint: Contextualizing The Handmaid’s Tale: Antifeminist Perspectives

Discussion Question [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [post your own]

3/2: Anti-Pornography Feminism and The Handmaid’s Tale

Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale, Sections IX-XII, 143-255.

Robin Morgan, “Theory and Practice: Pornography and Rape” (1974).

Ann Snitow, “Retrenchment vs. Transformation” (1983) — explicit version available here.

Powerpoint: Pornography and The Handmaid’s Tale

Discussion Question [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [post your own]

WEEK 4

3/7: “Denay, Nunavit”: Feminist Storytelling and The Handmaid’s Tale

Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale, Sections XIII-XV, Historical Notes.

Atwood, “What ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Means in the Age of Trump.” The New York Times, March 10, 2017, sec. Book Review.

Amanda Howell, “Breaking Silence, Bearing Witness, and Voicing Defiance: The Resistant Female Voice in the Transmedia Storyworld of The Handmaid’s Tale,” Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, (January 23, 2019), 1–14.

Passages on Storytelling in The Handmaid’s Tale

Powerpoint: The Handmaid’s Tale and Storytelling

Discussion Question [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [post your own]

3/7: Email Film Essays to me by the end of day on Monday, March 7.

UNIT 3: POST-FEMINISM

3/9: Backlash

Prior to today’s class, please watch Fatal Attraction (Stanley R. Jaffe, et al, 1987). A copy is on reserve at Davis Family Library.

Susan Faludi, “Introduction: Blame It on Feminism” and “Man Shortages and Barren Wombs,” in Backlash (1991).

Katha Pollitt, “’Fetal Rights’: A New Assault on Feminism,” in Ladd-Taylor and Umansky, ed., Bad Mothers: The Politics of Blame in Twentieth-Century America (1998), 285-298.

Powerpoint: Fatal Attraction, Fetal Rights

Discussion Question [1] [2] [3] [4] [pick a passage]

WEEK 5

3/14: Misogyny in a Post-Feminist Era

Kristin J. Anderson, Modern Misogyny: Anti-Feminism in a Post-Feminist Era (2015), 1-49, 74-105.

Powerpoint: Modern Misogyny, Embedded Feminism, Enlightened Sexism

Discussion Question [1] [2] [3] [4] [pick a passage]

3/16: Racializing Welfare: The Controlling Image of the ‘Welfare Queen’

Patricia Hill Collins, “Get Your Freak on: Sex, Babies, and Images of Black Femininity,” Black Sexual Politics (2004), 119-148.

Premilla Nadasen, “From Widow to ‘Welfare Queen’: Welfare and the Politics of Race,”  Black Women, Gender and Families, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Fall 2007), pp. 52-77.

Anonymous, “Having a Baby Inside Me Is the Only Time I’m Really Alive” (1965) in Harriet Siegerman, ed., The Columbia Documentary History of American Women Since 1941 (2007), 157-58.

Powerpoint: Images of Black Working-Class Womanhood

Discussion Question [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [pick a passage]

WEEK 6: Spring Vacation

Week 7

3/28: Stigmatizing Poverty

Vivyan C. Adair, “Branded with Infamy: Inscriptions of Poverty and Class in the United States.” Signs 27, no. 2 (2002): 451–71.

Jennifer A. Sandlin, Jennie Stearns, Julie Garlen Maudlin, and Jake Burdick, “’Now I Ain’t Sayin’ She a Gold Digger’: Wal-Mart Shoppers, Welfare Queens, and Other Gendered Stereotypes of Poor Women in the Big Curriculum of Consumption,” Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies 11:5(2011), 464–482

George Will, “Mothers Who Don’t Know How,” [reprinted from Suddenly: The America Idea Abroad and at Home (1990)], in Ladd-Taylor and Umansky, ed., Bad Mothers, 280-282.

Powerpoint: Stigmatizing Poverty, Policing Consumption

Passages from Adair and Sandlin et al.

Discussion Question [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [pick a passage]

3/30: Targeting Disabled Women

Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, “Re-shaping, Re-thinking, Re-defining: Feminist Disability Studies” (Center for Women Policy Studies, 2001).

Nancy Smith, Sandra Harrell, and Amy Judy, “How Safe are Americans with Disabilities? The facts about violent crime and their implications,” Center on Victimization and Safety, Project Vera [brief fact sheet]

Examined Life Judith Butler & Sunaura Taylor, Aug 27, 2011.

Wendy Lu, “I’m Disabled and I Get Sexually Harassed — Here’s Why That Matters —The two things are linked,” Teen Vogue, November 1, 2017.

Amy Kavanagh, Hannah Mason Bish, “As A Disabled Woman, I’m Harassed On The Street Daily – Where’s My #MeToo Movement?” Huffington Post, July 29, 2019.

Garland-Thomson passages for discussion

Powerpoint: Feminist Disability Studies Retheorizes Misogyny

Discussion Questions [1] [2] [3] [pick a passage] [ask a question]

WEEK 8

4/4: Misogyny and Settler Colonialism

Ashley Noel Mack, and Tiara R. Na’puti, “‘Our Bodies Are Not Terra Nullius’: Building a Decolonial Feminist Resistance to Gendered Violence.” Women’s Studies in Communication 42, no. 3 (July 3, 2019): 347–70.

Andrea Smith, “Sexual Violence as a Tool of Genocide,” in Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide (2005), 7-34.

Gloria Anzaldúa,”We Call Them Greasers” and “To Live in the Borderlands Means You” from Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987).

Please also peruse the following website: Murdered & Missing Indigenous Women (Native Women’s Wilderness)

Discussion Questions [1] [2] [3] [4] [pick a passage – pose a question]

4/6: Misogyny and War: Torture Porn

Mary Ann Tetreault, “The Sexual Politics of Abu Ghraib: Hegemony, Spectacle, and the Global War on Terror,” Feminist Formations, 18:3 (Fall 2006), 33-50.

Joanna Bourke, “Torture as Pornography,” The Guardian, May 7, 2004.

Powerpoint: Misogyny and State Violence

Discussion Question [1] [2] [3] [4] [pick a passage]

4/8: Post final project topic statement, research questions, and preliminary bibliography to your blog by the end of the day on Friday.

UNIT 4: MISOGYNY TODAY

WEEK 9

4/11: Misogynoir

Discuss topics, research questions, and preliminary bibliography for final project/essay. (See requirements page for details.)

Moya Bailey, Misogynoir Transformed: Black Women’s Digital Resistance (NYU, 2021), 1-34.

Kelly Macias, “Sisters in the Collective Struggle”: Sounds of Silence and Reflections on the Unspoken Assault on Black Females in Modern America,” Cultural Studies – Critical Methodologies 15:4 (2015), 260–265.

Crunk Feminist Collection, excerpts:

Brittney C. Cooper, Susana M. Morris, and Robin Boylorn, “Introduction,” 9-12

Aisha Durham, “Do we need a body count to count? Notes on the serial murders of Black women,” 22-24

Brittney C. Cooper, “Refereeing Serena: racism, anger, and US (Women’s) tennis,” 45-47

Brittney C. Cooper, “SlutWalks vs. Ho Strolls,” 51-54

Eesha Pandit, “Reproductive injustice and the ‘War on Women,’ or an ode to the intersections,” 145-148

Aisha Durham, “Sticks, stones, and microphones: a melody of misogyny,” 178-79

Passages from Bailey, Mosigynoir Transformed

Passages from Macias, “Sisters in the Collective Struggle”

Powerpoint: Misogynoir

Discussion Questions [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [pick a passage]

4/13: Trans-misogyny

Julia Serano, Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive (2013), chapters 5-6.

Serano, “Trans Woman Manifesto,” Whipping Girl (2007).

Discuss: transgender athletes

Powerpoint: Transmisogyny

Discussion Questions [1] [2] [3] [4] [pick a passage]

WEEK 10:

4/17: Post an important primary source to your blog on Sunday, April 17. Include a paragraph explaining its significance within the broader context of your project.

4/18: Trans-misogynoir

Begin class by discussing primary sources for final project/essay.

Elías Cosenza Krell (uses they/them pronouns), “Is Transmisogyny Killing Trans Women of Color? Black Trans Feminisms and the Exigencies of White Femininity,” Transgender Studies Quarterly 4:2(May 2017), 226-242.

Ashlee Marie Preston, “The Anatomy of Transmisogynoir,” Harper’s Bazaar, September 9, 2020.

Passages for discussion.

Powerpoint: Transmisogynoir

Discussion Questions [1] [2] [3] [4] [post a question – pick a passage]

4/20: Men’s Rights Movement

Paul Elam, “Why I don’t care what you think about my style,”  January 30, 2018.

Michael Kimmel, “White men as victims: The men’s rights movement” in Angry White Men (2017).

Passages from Kimmel’s work.

Alice E. Marwick & Robyn Caplan, “Drinking Male Tears: Language, the Manosphere, and Networked Harassment,” Feminist Media Studies, 18:4 (2018), 543-559.

Passages from Marwick and Caplan’s work.

Men’s Rights :: Advocating for the social and legal equality of men and boys since 2008 (r/MensRights)

Poweropoint: Misandry (?) and the Men’s Rights Movement

Discussion Questions [1] [2] [3] [4] [post a question – pick a passage]

WEEK 11

4/25: Online Misogyny

Bailey Poland, “Misogynist Movements,” Haters: Harassment, Abuse, and Violence Online (2016).

Emma Alice Jane, “‘Back to the Kitchen, Cunt’: Speaking the Unspeakable about Online Misogyny.” Continuum 28, no. 4 (July 4, 2014): 558–70.

Debbie Ging, “Alphas, Betas, and Incels: Theorizing the Masculinities of the Manosphere.” Men and Masculinities 22, no. 4 (2019): 638–57.

Passages from Poland, Jane, and Ging

Anita Sarkeesian, Tropes vs. Women in Video Games (online video series). Here is one example and another.

Powerpoint: Online Misogyny

Discussion Questions [1] [2] [3] [4] [pick a passage]

4/27: Misogyny and Electoral Politics

Caitlin Carlson, “Misogynistic Hate Speech and Its Chilling Effect on Women’s Free Expression during the 2016 U.S. Presidential Campaign,” Journal of Hate Studies 14, no. 1 (February 27, 2019), 97–111.

Petula Dvorak, “Hillary Clinton Is a 68-Year-Old Woman. And Plenty of People Hate Her for It,” Washington Post, October 6, 2016.

MSNBC Interrupts Hillary Clinton’s Speech To Complain About Her Voice

Moya Bailey, “Misogynoir and Kamala Harris,” October 16, 2020.

Cristina López, “Sexist right-wing smear against Kamala Harris moves from the fever swamps to Fox,” Media Matters, Jan. 1, 2019.

Kate Manne, “Warren succeeded because voters saw her as caring. That’s also why she failed,” Washington Post, March 6, 2020.

Vivian Kane, “Samantha Bee on ‘Unlikable’ Female Presidential Candidates,” The Mary Sue, January 24, 2019.

Powerpoint: Misogyny and Presidential Campaigns

Discussion Questions [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [post an example] [pick a passage]

WEEK 12 – #MeToo and Rape Culture

5/2: #MeToo, Rape Culture, Intersectionality

Please read the following chapters in Bianca Fileborn and Rachel Loney-Howes, ed., #MeToo and the Politics of Social Change (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019):

Fileborn and Loney-Howes, “Introduction: Mapping the Emergence of #MeToo,” 1-18.

Kaitlynn Mendes and Jessica Ringrose, “Digital Feminist Activism: #MeToo and the Everyday Experiences of Challenging Rape Culture,” 37-52.

Fileborn and Nickie Phillips, “From ‘Me Too’ to ‘Too Far’? Contesting the Boundaries of Sexual Violence in Contemporary Activism,” 99-116.

Angela Onwuachi-Willig, “What About #UsToo?: The Invisibility of Race in the #MeToo Movement,” The Yale Law Journal, June 18, 2018.

Gabriel Arkles, “Making Space for Trans People in the #MeToo Movement,” American Civil Liberties Union, April 13, 2018.

Graham Lee Brewer, “Where #MeToo Meets #MMIW,” High Country News, January 26, 2018.

Grace Huang, “How To Make Sure Immigrant Women Aren’t Left Out Of Me Too,” Huffington Post, June 30, 2018.

Powerpoint: #MeToo

Discussion Questions [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [pick a passage]

5/3: Post your project introduction and outline to your blog on Tuesday, May 3. We will discuss these in class on Wednesday.

5/4: Discussion of Leaked Draft of Supreme Court Decision on Abortion

We will begin by discussing project introductions/outlines.