[Gendergap] Hardcore images essay - HELP!

[Daniel and Elizabeth Case]

> In any case, my thinking/concern is informed by evidence that 
> "stereotypical" masculine  > elements in an environment (e.g., even just 
> Star Trek posters and Mountain Dew cans!) > can affect a sense of 
> belonging and interest. (And I say that as someone who kept Kirk > and 
> Spock toys on my desk for many years.)

[deletia]

>    2). Objects can thus come to broadcast stereotypes of a group,
>    which in turn can deter people who do not identify with these
>    stereotypes from joining that group." \acite
>    {CheryanEtal2009abh}

And it is not just men who inadvertently create environments that project 
this kind of filtration, informally filtering based on gender. "Girlzones" 
can be created as well due to gender imbalance.

I have extensive close experience with a good example: yoga.

Visualize a typical (at least in the US) yoga studio that has been decorated 
(and perhaps originally designed) primarily for yoga. Most likely the images 
that come to mind are a small space resembling a dance studio with bare 
wooden floors, teak (or some imitation) furniture near one wall with some 
minimalist, Asian-art inspired floral arrangements in a ceramic vase or two, 
and posters of yoga poses and other related artwork on the walls, often with 
some Sanskrit (or, well, something in Indic letters) on them. You are 
probably also imagining soft New Age music from a small player (usually, 
these days, with an iPod plugged into it) near where the instructor sits, 
and perhaps the smell of burnt incense or something else meant to evoke 
India in the air.

This has some basis in reality. And if I asked you to imagine what the class 
being taught looks like, you will probably imagine a female instructor (I 
have never had a male) and a predominantly female class. Yes, a prospective 
male student would be welcomed if he expressed interest. But many will see 
the trappings of the studio and feel that this is not a place where they 
would be welcomed.

And this abundance of yoginis* creates postive feedback that reinforces the 
filtering in other ways. When proper studios aren't available, the spaces 
chosen are often physically small. In one class in a room at a former 
computer store smaller than my son's bedroom, I stood up in mountain pose 
(the very simple position that involves standing with your hands straight up 
over your head) ... and put my hands into one of the acoustic tiles in the 
ceiling, lifting it up over the frame holding them when I had fully extended 
my arms. That was *after* moving so I wouldn't put them into the wooden 
ceiling fan. I'm 6'4" (193 cm) tall, and the instructor, who like many yoga 
instructors has a dance background and was herself closer to 5'2" (about 158 
cm), apologetically told me it had never occurred to her that that would 
happen because she had never had a student so tall. Because, of course, she 
probably hadn't had that many male students, and generally the tallest women 
are not anywhere near my height.

It is also next to impossible to find yoga clothing designed for and 
specifically marketed to men. So much so that the New York Times ran an 
article about this two years ago 
(http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/29/fashion/29CODES.html) that goes into the 
subject far better than I could here. For myself I have found clothing fit 
for yoga from other manufacturers.

And this is not for lack of interest on men's part, I think. I am really one 
of the few men I know of who does yoga on a fairly regular basis who is 
neither Indian-American nor gay nor into yoga as part of a whole lifestyle 
(and yes, there are negatively-stereotypable men in yoga, or you wouldn't 
have the "Ogden the Inappropriate Yoga Guy" comedy videos on YouTube). 
Granted, I don't live in a large city; maybe the Manhattan or LA yoga 
communities are a little different, to say nothing of in the UK or Europe 
(in India, I believe, this is very different).

Last fall I went with my son to a New York Giants U.S. football home game. 
We came early enough to watch the Giants and the visiting team do their 
customary pregame workout on the field an hour or so before the game. When 
the entire Giants team, in full uniforms and pads, began their stretches, 
the first one they did was the common downward dog yoga pose ([[Adho Mukha 
Svanasana]] ... we use the Sanskrit names for our articles). That was not 
part of the standard American football stretches when I played; given that 
many NFL players have made no secret that they do yoga as a standard part of 
their conditioning and workout I'm pretty sure that came from that. I would 
also imagine that yoga classes are not unknown to the players in the UK 
Premiership, the Bundesliga or Serie A.

 [[Tara Stiles]], a somewhat controversial yoga instructor who posts a lot 
of short videos on YouTube as part of her effort to make yoga more 
accessible, says she gets lots of emails about those videos from men who 
enjoy doing the yoga routines in them but wouldn't be caught dead in a yoga 
studio. It wasn't discussed further, but I know why, and it often seems to 
me like the elephant in the room in the yoga community. (And I bet some of 
them would feel more welcome at Ms. Stiles' studio).

It is not my intention in posting this for this to be seen as a complaint, 
rather as an observation, constituting anecdotal evidence in support of the 
paper in the post I followed up to that a social subspace can become 
gendered without any overt signs of gender politics and that it is not just 
men that can do this. Followups should be limited in scope to this, or its 
bearing on the present discussion. Any responses specific to yoga should be 
directed to me personally via email, or brought up on yoga mailing lists or 
other fora.

*Perhaps because of the gender imbalance of yoga, many women who do it not 
only have no problem with the feminine form of the word ("yogi") but insist 
on it. This is about the only instance where I can think of this being so.

Daniel Case