The Global Sociology Blog

A very good article in the Guardian regarding gender and color stereotyping. Saussure and Levi-Strauss established long ago that signifiers are arbitrary, hence the variability:

The power of pink | From the Guardian | The Guardian via kwout

If I remember correctly, blue used to be the color of the Virgin Mary whereas pink was the color of angels. Bottom line: we divide the world into neat categories of signified supported by arbitrary signifiers that have very real effects. For instance, all this stuff about color and texture shapes gender socialization in ways that have been extensively studied by many scholars.

So now, pink is a girls’ color and blue is a boys’ color. In spite of such obvious arbitrariness, we still get this type of nonsense when evolutionary scientists who are always so keen on proving that everything gendered is encoded in our genes and innate:

The power of pink | From the Guardian | The Guardian via kwout

Oy. Right, because, of course, these women were absolutely not influenced by their socialization, and other socio-cultural factors, so it just HAS to be biology.

We see how strongly we use these arbitrary cultural signifiers and how much they organize our perceptions when they get questioned, as with the Pink Stinks campaign:

pinkstinks – Home via kwout

Cultural standards, especially those pertaining to gender, are not to be messed with. That kind of deviance gets attacked very quickly and nastily:

The power of pink | From the Guardian | The Guardian via kwout

Anyone who has taught gender has encountered that kind of aggressive resistance from students who feel personally attacked when the social and cultural logic of gender (and its oppressive effects) are exposed.

That is how social structures and cultural standards reproduce themselves: by being not only embodied in social actors, but by also shaping perception not just of “what is normal” but of the very self. Hence, any deconstruction is perceived as a personal attack. Social control mechanisms then get into high gear through a variety of (passive-)aggressive behaviors like the nasty emails above, or students providing anecdotal evidence that supposedly invalidates the point being made.

This is the same logic underlying the phenomenon of corrective rape or any type of gender violence whose goal is to force individuals back into the narrow yet socially and culturally-defined boxes of gender roles. They are at the roots of various forms of symbolic violence (which is no less real than interpersonal, physical violence) as ways to make deviance very costly to those tempted to step outside of the box (and encourage others to do so, as the Pink Stinks campaign ladies do).