American culture bombards young men with sexist and misogynistic messages. In The Empathy Gap, he looks more closely at the ways these messages short-circuit men’s ability to empathize with women, respect them as equals, and take feminism seriously. Keith begins by exploring the main lessons about manhood that boys absorb from the culture – that they should be aggressive, acquire material wealth, suppress all emotion except anger, and sexually...

Communication scholar Sut Jhally applies the late sociologist Erving Goffman's groundbreaking analysis of advertising to the contemporary commercial landscape in this provocative new film about gender as a ritualized cultural performance. Uncovering a remarkable pattern of gender-specific poses, Jhally explores Goffman's central claim that the way the body is displayed in advertising communicates normative ideas about masculinity and femininity. The...

We've heard again and again that men and women are engaged in a "battle of the sexes," that we're so differently wired and so foreign to each other that we might as well come from different planets. In this powerful new lecture, renowned speaker and bestselling author Michael Kimmel (The Gendered Society, Manhood in America) turns this conventional wisdom on its head. With clarity and humor, Kimmel moves beyond the popular inter-planetary notion that...

The films in the Media Education Foundation (MEF) Collection encourage critical thinking about the social, political, and cultural impact of American mass media. With a special focus on representations of gender and race, and the effect these representations have on identity and culture, MEF films are especially well-suited for use in Women's Studies, Sociology, Race Studies,Communication, Anthropology, Education, and Psychology courses.

Like drawing back a curtain to let bright light stream in, Miss Representation uncovers a glaring reality we live with every day but fail to see. Written and directed by Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the film exposes how mainstream media contribute to the under-representation of women in positions of power and influence in America. The film challenges the media’s limited and often disparaging portrayals of women and girls, which make it difficult for...

In this new, highly anticipated update of her pioneering Killing Us Softly series, the first in more than a decade, Jean Kilbourne takes a fresh look at how advertising traffics in distorted and destructive ideals of femininity. The film marshals a range of new print and television advertisements to lay bare a stunning pattern of damaging gender stereotypes - images and messages that too often reinforce unrealistic, and unhealthy, perceptions of beauty,...

These four short documentaries explore the varied identities of trans and gender expansive youth and young adults. In Tomgirl we meet Jake, a confident and lovable gender expansive seven-year-old who invites us into his world of hockey playing and skirt wearing to explore the transformative power of love and support from adults. Next, experience the true story of a young Hawaiian girl who aspires to become the leader of her school’s boys-only hula...

To live in Barbie Land is to be a perfect being in a perfect place. Unless you have a full-on existential crisis. Or you're a Ken. "Barbie" is an impressive and original work of the imagination."--San Francisco Chronicle "This is a truly original work -- one of the smartest, funniest, sweetest, most insightful and just plain flat-out entertaining movies of the year."--Richard Roeper "The neatest trick is how Barbie, starring a pitch-perfect Margot...

Spanky and the gang call an emergency meeting of the "He-Man Womun Haters Club" after Alfalfa breaks the club rules by falling in love with a girl named Darla.

A woman passes as a man in order to work and survive in 19th century Ireland. Some thirty years after donning men's clothing, she finds herself trapped in a prison of her own making.