I have finished marking your midterm exams, and you can check your scores in the online gradebook. (Remember to use your student i.d. number as your password for the gradebook, rather than your password for the rest of this site.) I will bring them to class on Wednesday, of course.

I think I could have graded them faster if y’all hadn’t felt it necessary to re-write the question in so many of your answers.

Couples switching.

My afternoon class (CMST/WMST 419 – Sex, Sexuality, and Communication) watched this excerpt from the 1997 movie, In & Out, in the context of an entirely different discussion on Wednesday, but it’s also illustrative of some of the concepts we discussed this morning in Gender and Communication. It shows how gender is embodied and performed through kinesics, clothing, paralanguage, gesture, and other channels of nonverbal communication.

In case you missed it in class on Monday, or just need another copy, here’s a PDF the study guide.

Because of Leslie Knope/Amy Poehler!

In this famous scene, “I’m Just A Girl”, Leslie employs nearly every stereotype of femininity. (Sorry – you’ll have to watch a commercial first to see this clip from the second season of one of my favorite TV shows).

In class today, I mentioned some research on humor by Mary Crawford, and quoted specifically from a summary of women’s and men’s responses to different types of humor. Here’s a table that summarizes those findings [pdf], from her book Talking Difference: On Gender and Language (Sage, 1995).

Those of you who were particularly interested in our discussions on January 20 of neurological research on sex/gender and brain structures may want to keep an eye out for this new book: Neurofeminism: Issues at the Intersection of Feminist Theory and Cognitive Science. It’s a collection of essays by scholars from different disciplines about how recent neuroscience research affects traditional feminist issues. (Cordelia Fine, author of Delusions of Gender, is one of the contributors.) Here is the table of contents:

• Introduction; R.Bluhm, A.J.Jacobson & H.Maibom
• The Politics of Pictured Reality: Locating the Object from Nowhere in fMRI; L.Meynell
• What, If Anything, Can Neuroscience Tell Us About Gender Differences?; G.Hoffman
• In a Different Voice?; H.Maibom
• The Role of Fetal Testosterone in the Development of ‘The Essential Difference’ Between the Sexes: Some Essential Issues;G.Grossi & C.Fine
• Hardwired for Sexism? Approaches to Sex/Gender in Neuroscience; R.M.Jordan-Young & R.I.Rumiati
• Re-Queering the Brain; A.Kaiser & I.Dussauge
• Situated Neuroscience: Exploring Biologies of Diversity; G.Einstein
• Cosmopolitics and the Brain: The Co-Becoming of Practices in Feminism and Neuroscience; D.Roy
• Beyond Neurosexism: Is it Possible to Defend the Female Brain?; R.Bluhm
• Seeing as a Social Phenomenon: Feminist Theory and the Cognitive Sciences; A.J.Jacobson
• Linking Neuroscience, Medicine, Gender and Society through Controversy and Conflict Analysis: A ‘Dissensus Framework’ for Feminist/Queer Brain Science Studies; C.Kraus

We didn’t have enough time in class last week to watch this video excerpt, in which Judith Butler briefly explains her ideas about how gender is something that we do, rather than something we are or something we have.

In my morning news reading today, I came across this article about the role sex hormones play in how the brain’s neurotransmitters communicate chemical signals of pain, explaining why women and men feel pain differently and pain treatments often work differently for women and men.

While this isn’t technically a gender communication difference, Dr. Marcus says this indicates that women aren’t just bigger complainers: Research studies consistently show that women are more sensitive to pain than men. They show that women feel pain at a lower stimulus than men, and pain becomes intolerable to women sooner than men.