Gender & Women's Studies: Video

Explores how mainstream media contributes to the under-representation of women in influential positions in America and challenges the media's portrayals of women.

Five women, who worked in the shipyards and defense plants during World War II, recount their experiences at work and offer comments on society's expectations of them during the war effort and after the war. Their narratives are interspersed with sequences from war department films, newsreels, and Hollywood movies made during that time which concerned women working outside the home.

Looks systematically at the relationship between the images of popular culture and the social construction of masculine identities in the U.S. at the end of the 20th century. Jackson Katz argues that there is a crisis in masculinity and that some of the guises offered to men as a solution (e.g., rugged individualism, violence) come loaded with attendant dangers to women, as well as other men.

Simply put, this is the most profound, compelling, and thought-provoking documentary ever made on gender identity. It may also be the most entertaining. It provides extraordinarily honest and riveting portraits of six men who once were women. They are a diverse group: one gave birth to three children; another is a longtime mechanic and body-builder. Each has lived within a body he didn't accept; each has tried to adapt to social expectations he couldn't fulfill; and each has experienced devastating personal pain that could not be obscured by denial. All have embarked upon an enormous and transfiguring struggle to recover their dignity and an identity once denied to them. Michael, Ted, Stephan, Max, Loren, and James share the joy and the pain of their journey from female to male. Through their commentary and the experiences of their partners, friends, and family members emerges an unforgettable story of self-discovery. There also emerges a remarkable series of reflections on the differences between male and female sexuality, on social perceptions of gender, and on the relationship of one's personal history to one's present life. "You Don't Know Dick" challenges all of us to re-examine the foundations of our ideas and feelings about gender, personality, sexuality, and identity. It is not just a film about sex and surgical procedures; it is about knowing who we are and what we must go through to become that person.

This trenchant and provocative documentary essay will generate thought, analysis, and discussion in a wide variety of courses in women's and gender studies, psychology, sociology, and popular culture. It incorporates more than 200 powerful images from advertising, ancient myth, contemporary art, and popular culture to demonstrate how pornography (defined as the sexualized domination, degradation, and objectification of women and girls and social groups who are put in the demeaned feminine role) is in reality a prevalent mainstream worldview.The film illustrates how the pornographic worldview is a generally accepted discourse, a habitual mode of thinking and acting that underpins not only sexism, but also racism, militarism, physical abuse and torture, and the pillaging of the environment. As such, pornography appears not only in overt, "hard-core" forms, but also in virtually every aspect of everyday life.As the film illuminates, even though pornography is generally thought to be the opposite of religion, it actually is an irrational belief system analogous to a religion. Like much patriarchal religious tradition, pornography is shown to be misogynistic and homophobic, and defines sex as "dirty" or debased and the opposite of the mind or spirit.Pornography is also shown to support the worst tendencies of patriarchal religions by appropriating previously sacred and potent images of women, sex, goddesses, and the feminine principle, colloquially known as Mother Earth or Mother Nature, and then ritually profaning and defaming them. This works not only to demean women but to justify and legitimize male divinity and worldly authority.The film concludes by suggesting alternatives and by illustrating how visionary thinkers and artists resist the pornographic worldview by re-imagining and restoring respect to eroticism, female sexuality, and the female divine, and by calling for new understandings of sexuality, nature, and society.