Gender texts is a category I coined (I think!) to describe texts that make us think critically about gender, and/or show us something about how it works.^[1] Really, any cultural object can be a gender text, because gender is in everything — the point is to train your eye and brain to look for what it’s up to.

When I talk about texts, I mean more than books, although books count! I mean books, articles, songs, music videos, movies, TV shows/episodes, TikToks, zines, comics, graphic novels, outfits, looks… so almost any cultural object you can think of!

We will watch/look at a bunch in class. And periodically throughout the term, I’ll ask you to bring in gender texts that apply/relate in some way to the texts we’ll be reading, and we’ll collect that list on our blog as a public resource for others!

When you find yours, come up with a sentence or so of explanation that tells us how the text functions with respect to gender. I might ask you to share them in discussion or in the chat, and when you add your entries to the site, you can put it there, too!

Without further ado, add yours here!

Example:

BTS, “Butter.” Across their catalogue, BTS push on the restrictions western masculinity has created for itself with their lyrics, behaviors (they HUG), and androgynous fashion. “Butter” shows them using pretty standard boyband moves (with a clear debt to Michael Jackson) and pretty typically dudely, but … we’ll talk about the rest in class. 🙂

{Start here)

^[1] Judith Kegan Gardiner did use it in 2013 to talk about books about gender; my meaning is more materially expansive.

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