Sociological Images blog by Abby Kinchy and adapted for our course.

Gender and the Environment

Gender is such a powerful way to categorize our lives that we often apply gender roles – a social category – in unexpected ways.  Animals are often assigned gender characteristics.  Cats are seen as feminine and dogs as masculine.  We even assign gender to non-living objects – from tools and cars to our natural environment.  This week, we’ll use a blog called Sociological Images to help us think about how much social ideas about gender influence the ways we perceive and interact with our environment.

Sociological Images offers a sociological analysis of advertisements and other aspects of visual culture. The blog has several reflections on the ways that ideas about masculinity and femininity are a part of historical and contemporary understandings of the environment. 

Review all of the blog posts below (they are short!) Select three to analyze.  uses the examples in the blog posts (and your own examples, if you wish), in combination with course readings, to answer the following question: In what ways have patriarchal ideas influenced cultural representations of nature, past and present?

• Little Helpers Links Women to Nature
• Nature as Friend and Enemy
• Why Do Firefighters Take Such Risky Jobs?
• Gender Ideology by Geico
• Gendered Marketing of Fuel-Efficient Cars
• Vintage Men’s Magazines and a Pre-Consumerist Time
• The Romanticization of the Old West

Initial Post:

Answer this question: In what ways have patriarchal ideas influenced cultural representations of nature, past and present?  In your answer, be sure to use concepts and as well as examples from the textbook from at least three of the blog posts above.  (You may also use your own examples if you wish.)