Lisa Wade

The Incidental Orgasm: The Presence of Clitoral Knowledge and the Absence of Orgasm for Women

ABSTRACT Women report anorgasmia and other difficulties achieving orgasm. One approach to alleviating this problem is to teach women about the clitoris. This assumes that women lack information about the clitoris and that knowledge about the clitoris is correlated with orgasm. Using a non-random sample of 833 undergraduate students, our study investigates both assumptions. First, we test the amount of knowledge about the clitoris, the reported sources of this knowledge, and the correlation between citing a source and actual knowledge. Second, we measure the correlation between clitoral knowledge and orgasm in both masturbation and partnered sex. Among a sample of undergraduate students, the most frequently cited sources of clitoral knowledge (school and friends) were associated with the least amount of tested knowledge. The source most likely to correlate with clitoral knowledge (self-exploration) was among the most rarely cited. Despite this, respondents correctly answered, on average, three of the five clitoral knowledge measures. Knowledge correlated significantly with the frequency of womens orgasm in masturbation but not partnered sex. Our results are discussed in light of gender inequality and a social construction of sexuality, endorsed by both men and women, that privileges mens sexual pleasure over womens, such that orgasm for women is pleasing, but ultimately incidental.

Defining Gendered Oppression in U.S. Newspapers: The Strategic Value of " Female Genital Mutilation"

According to the logic of the gendered modernity/tradition binary, women in traditional societies are oppressed and women in modern societies liberated. While the binary valorizes modern women, it potentially erases gendered oppression in the West and undermines feminist movements on behalf of Western women. Using U.S. newspaper text, I ask whether female genital cutting (FGC) is used to define women in modern societies as liberated. I find that speakers use FGC to both uphold and challenge the gendered modernity/ tradition binary. Speakers use FGC to denigrate non-Western cultures and trivialize the oppressions that U.S. women typically encounter, but also to make feminist arguments on behalf of women everywhere. I argue that in addition to examining how culturally imperialist logics are reproduced, theorists interested in feminist postcolonialism should turn to the distribution of such logics, emphasizing the who, where, when, and how of reinscription of and resistance to such narratives.

The Emancipatory Promise of the Habitus: Lindy Hop, the Body, and Social Change

Existing research about the role of the habitus in social change emphasizes inertia. Individuals in new contexts are understood to face disadvantage, making disruption of a hierarchical status quo difficult. Recent theory regarding our ability to strategically change and use our bodily habits, however, suggests that the habitus may not be condemned to a purely conservative role. Here I examine a community of lindy hoppers who are re-shaping the collective body towards feminist ends. Control over bodies is essential to partner dance. However, these dancers revision the lead/follow dynamic. Instead of an active/passive binary, partners happily negotiate power. This negotiation is decidedly corporeal and cooperative and occurs spontaneously and constantly. My findings add empirical weight to theory regarding the role of the habitus in widespread social change, suggest that the habitus has emancipatory potential, and offer a template for how the habitus could be used by social movement actors.

Learning from “Female Genital Mutilation”: Lessons from 30 Years of Academic Discourse

At the intersection of feminism and postcolonial theory is an acrimonious debate over female genital cutting (FGC). I subject this debate to an analysis in order to separate productive from destructive discursive strategies. I find that both FGC and the literature about the practice are frequently mischaracterized in consequential ways. Especially prior to the mid-1990s, scholars frame FGC as an example of either cultural inferiority or cultural difference. In the 1990s, postcolonial scholars contest the framing of FGC as a measure of cultural inferiority. However, they often argue that Western feminist engagement with FGCs, writ large, is ‘imperialist’. I contend that both accusations of African ‘barbarism’ and of Western feminist ‘imperialism’ are empirically false and inflammatory. Furthermore, reifying ‘African’ and ‘Western’ perspectives erases African opposition to FGC and Western feminist acknowledgement of transnational power asymmetry. I conclude with a discussion of the role of outrage in academic scholarship.

Ruling Out Rape

Five experts, Lisa Wade, Brian Sweeney, Amelia Seraphia Derr, Michael A. Messner, and Carol Burke, discuss how institutions deal with sexual assault and whether or not policies really protect victims.

Sociological Images: Blogging as Public Sociology

Sociological Images is a website aimed at a broad public audience that encourages readers to develop and apply a sociological imagination. The site includes short, accessible posts published daily. Each includes one or more images and accompanying commentary. Reaching approximately 20,000 readers per day, Sociological Images illustrates the potential for using websites as a platform for public engagement in the social sciences. This report provides an overview of the site’s history, approach, reach, and impact. The authors also discuss some challenges facing academics interested in blogging for a general audience and some of the features that contribute to the popularity of the site.

Journalism, Advocacy, and the Social Construction of Consensus

Scholarship examining media coverage of social problems largely examines coverage of contentious issues. In this study, I contribute to our understanding of journalist practices by examining coverage of an issue over which there is a US consensus: female genital cutting (FGC). With an analysis of newspaper coverage supplemented by interviews and primary documents, I find that, in contrast to existing literature that shows that reporters must refrain from issue advocacy, when consensus is widespread reporters can and do collaborate with advocates, harmonize with opinion writers, and use their physical presence and access to newsprint to pressure the state. Journalists, however, do not simply respond to consensus. Instead, I find that they can actively construct consensus by offering unique frames that depoliticize advocacy. These findings contribute to our understanding of media coverage of social problems by illustrating how consensus is both shaped by and shapes journalist practices.

The function of balance in US news coverage of uncontested issues: The case of female genital cutting

Most research on reporter practices examines coverage of contested topics. These require reporters to demonstrate objectivity by counterposing authoritative sources representing opposing sides. I examine news articles about a topic uncontested in the USA, female genital cutting (FGC), to complicate our understanding of how reporters do their job. In contrast to the literature, reporters strike a balance, including the ‘general public’ of FGC-practicing communities extensively. However, because the balance is confined to non-authoritative speakers ‘over there’, the balance nonetheless serves to stigmatize proponents. This research shows that the negative portrayal of members of FGC-practicing communities is due not only to their erasure in news coverage. Instead, whether standing translates into influence depends on context, something reporters can manipulate when there is consensus. Likewise, the separation of topics into contested and uncontested erases the ways in which controversy is not a characteristic of issues, but a function of reporter decisions.

Secrets of a Feminist Icon

Rosie the Riveter wasn’t always a feminist icon. Her roots lie in inspiring Westinghouse workers toward the war effort, and it wasn’t until the 1950s and ‘60s that women’s rights movements reframed the way we see Rosie.

What’s So Cultural about Hookup Culture?:

Lisa Wade on the norms and practices that make up college students’ experience of hookup culture and its attendant pressures.