Stingray’s garish lunch. P. Terry’s Burger Stand, S. Lamar, March 2007.
I’ve been threatening for some time now to inaugurate a “Dear God, What About the Men?” section in the FAQ. I envision it as required reading for callow dudely proto-blamers, with the impossible-but-I-can-dream-can’t-I goal of keepin’em out of the comments section until they get a grip. This way, when what-about-the-men happens, I can post a single link, be done with it, and proceed, like any decent spinster aunt, with cocktail hour.
I continue to threaten rather than do, half because educating clueless dudes is not even remotely the focus of this blog, and half because if I wait long enough, other people will write it for me. Ilyka, you will recall, was kind enough to address the phenomenon of dudely blog commenters who get all worked up on the “hey, I wouldn’t ever rape anybody; you feminists are all just a bunch of hatas!” theme. Likewise has Mr. Shakes (formerly of Shakespeare’s Sister, now of the brand-new same old blog Shakesville) written a swell piece on the pathology of progressive male contempt of feminism. He takes a stab at re-branding feminism as a civil rights movement and at exposing patriarchy as a global oppressor, urging men to stick it to The Man for their own benefit.
Quoth Mr Shakes:
One of the greatest bulwarks against men accepting the feminist movement is that they seem to think that women gaining power must necessarily dilute their own exclusive powers and status. But in so holding onto this erroneous notion, they forget that they themselves are powerless in the face of the corporate plutocracy that now weighs down so heavily upon all of us. If they could get their heads around the fact that they too are powerless and insignificant and ignored, they would stop trying to beat up on the kids they perceive to be weaker and instead acknowledge their own weakness, ally themselves with them, and move forward with them in a new movement that would grant greater freedoms for all of us. It shouldn’t be about trying to maintain some illusory advantage over others [1]. It should be about trying to create concrete advantages for all of us.”
I imagine it would be a pretty fun party if the Blamers met the Shakers, especially if it were on a yacht somewhere. But I digress.
Anyway, because the guiding principle of my twilight years is to do as little as possible, I invite all blamers to submit suggestions, now or whenever you happen across them, for inclusion in the What About the Men page.
Allow me to assuage any anxiety by reiterating that this will just be a section of the FAQ; the blog proper will continue to espouse the same comforting revolutionary chick-centric fuck-patriarchy pseudo-Marxist anti-nuclear-family pro-choice anti-reproduction pro-liberation femininity-is-wack anti-religion anti-gender peak-oil anti-marriage impeach-Bush pro-skank ideology you love and deserve.
__________________________
1. I disagree that the advantage men have over women is illusory; what I think Mr Shakes means here is that the perceived natural right to this advantage is a mass hallucination.
Its a good step, though since this FAQ section won’t be front-and-center on the blog, I’m still afraid we’ll end up provoking some anxiety in the minds of thoroughly blameless and innocent men. How bout a name change: “I Blame The Patriarchy, But Not Necessarily The Men, Some Of Whom Are My Best Friends”?
I thought the Mr. Shakes piece was very good.
Thoroughly blameless AND innocent? What are they infants?
Jeewhiz, even I am not thoroughly blameless and innocent when it comes to the patriarchy.
The “Old-Fashioned Southern Gentleman” section:
(and if I may be sufficiently presumptuous to expound a bit–please use, abuse, or ignore at your whim, TF)
A sub-species of “the nice guy”, the OFSG thinks he promotes women to a status superior to men by elevating them onto a pedestal. The OSFG actually takes away a woman’s right to run her life by nicely making her decisions for her. The OSFG then feels insulted when the woman resists this treatment. See Chivalry.
In the words of Hedonistic Pleasureseeker, all this “elevation” does is allow everyone to “just looks up her dress anyway”.
(Side note: Twisty, thank you for the preview function. Now, we of the fumbley fingers can honestly screw up our HTML code.)
I read the whole thing. He never acknowledges that men, as a class, benefit from the oppression of women. He claims that only rich men benefit from patriarchy–this is why he claims that the notion of male privilege is an illusion.
Shakes: “What men need to understand is that their wives, the black guy across the street, the gay guy next door, are not the only ones toiling under the weight of a patriarchal system that doesn’t benefit all men, but instead a select few who hold all the power and all the wealth in their hands . . .”
Because non-rich dudes don’t benefit from patriarchy, non-rich dudes should unite with women to fight against the real enemy: capitalism.
Now, what exactly does this have to do with feminism again?
The lingo and concepts of blaming are essential for new blamers and while I know you don’t want to educate dudes, it might be helpful to send them along to some elementary reading on gender and privilege, such as:
Judith Lorber’s “Social Construction of Gender” (http://www.meac.org/Resources/ed_services/SG_WEB/SeeingGender/PDFs/SocialConstructionOfGender.pdf)
Kendall’s “Understanding White Privilege”
http://www.alumni.berkeley.edu/Students/Leadership/Online_LRC/Diversity_Center/Understanding_White_Priveledge.asp
Peggy McIntosh’s “Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”
http://seamonkey.ed.asu.edu/~mcisaac/emc598ge/Unpacking.html
Males, especially, need to learn the tools of blaming because we’re not subject to it and are therefore rather blind. But maybe these can help aspiring male blamers.
-A-
Some of my best friends …
ELLIPSES baby.
Oh let’s just admit it. We are all a bunch of hatas. I bet that burger Stingray ate was a man-burger.
“…comforting revolutionary chick-centric fuck-patriarchy pseudo-Marxist anti-nuclear-family pro-choice anti-reproduction pro-liberation femininity-is-wack anti-religion anti-gender peak-oil anti-marriage impeach-Bush pro-skank ideology…”
So THAT’S what this is! Excellent description! You ought to put it on a bumper sticker.
I’ll ponder the FAQ, although I feel certain that others will have much more brilliant ideas than I. I await, with great anticipation, the contributions.
Now, what exactly does this have to do with feminism again?
Shakes is acknowledging that feminism will be a tough sell to average white dudes. Or any other dudes, for that matter. He’s proposing that getting them to realize that not only will they not lose anything, but that they will probably gain in many respects, might act to break their deathgrip on the patriarchy and its illusory privileges.
We’re only psuedo-Marxists? How disappointing. I’m going over to that blog with all the puppies.
…where all the commenters know how to spell, and the ellipses run free.
I wish I had some useful ideas, but I can’t get past the idea of the yacht party. I think you need to get Phil on the phone calling up yacht companies to see how much it would be to rent out a yacht. Plus how much taco catering would cost. Open bar is a good idea too.
Well, I did come up with the, “But my boyfriend/husband/father/brother/boss is a really great guy and nothing like that.” I struggle with that one. I typically find it easier to debate issues of feminism with men I don’t know rather than my male loved ones. They always seem to defensively believe that any criticism of patriarchy on my part is a personal attack on them.
As for the What About Tha Menz FAQ, just please include a thorough smackdown of Evo Psych. I grow weary of debating the armchair sociobiologists as they attempt to school me in the Innate Differences Between Women And Men, and why they mean I should accomodate the disagreeable behavior of entitled asswipes. It sure would be nice to have a handy little link to cut and paste so that enlightened participants can move on with legitimate discussions.
stekatz:
I can’t remember the exact quote, but there was something back in the Firestone Theatre thread (I think) that ran something like this:
“It’s much easier to think clearly about the issues when you take yourself out of the center of them. In other words, it’s not all about you.”
I’m not sure why Mr. Shakes thinks that feminism is a tough sell to individual men. The entity known as feminism is based on a rational thought: men and women, as classes of people, are equal and morally entitled to be treated equally.
All else follows.
Thanks for the link to Shakes, I’ll have to reread it with some focus and comment over there. It suggests to me that there might be a use for a Patriarchy-blamers Running Dogs blog, where male blamer wannabes (like me!) can work it out without interrupting the genuine blamer discourse here. What’s going on here is tremendously compelling and resonant for me, but I can never escape the suspicion that I just oughta shut up my man’s trap. (The Silence of the Males might be a good place to start our own internal movement.)
So as a potential target audience member (and what man can say he is not one?) I think the best format for a Menz! Can’t Live With ‘em, Can’t Live With ‘em FAQ would be to list in short form key typical challenged-male reactions (biased *away* from the obviously lunatic), with a Twisty-rhetoric response/context for each. This would give the thing maximum rhetorical punch. I’d hope for plenty of Twisty input, because that’s what helps to roll back the dull fog in my male cranium.
Oh please, tell the librul menz how much we love it when they write things like this:
http://tbogg.blogspot.com/2007/03/first-couplethe-thompson-family-fred.html
And ooooh baby the comments the post inspired! Awe-sum! Makes a feminist chick feel like the blaming is all but over, coz we are so powerfully equal and shit.
Blamerella: “He’s proposing that getting them to realize that not only will they not lose anything, but that they will probably gain in many respects, might act to break their deathgrip on the patriarchy and its illusory privileges.”
I don’t understand this claim that men won’t lose anything as women gain more freedom. Just as owners as a class benefit from capitalism, men as a class benefit from patriarchy. As women progress, men lose their power to rape us, kill us, buy us, sell us, consume us through prostitution and porn, tell us what to do, where to go, who to marry, how many kids to have, etc.
Men know these privileges are real, and, regardless of how progressive their politics are, they don’t want to give them up.
There is a part of me that wants to respond with “Boo Fucking Hoo” when the What About The Men question arises. But then I think about my youngest nephew. My brother-in-law who cared so tenderly for my sister through end-stage lupus. My significant other who, while being a massive pain the in ass at least part of the time, is also funny, decent, fair-minded, and not unskilled in the arts of the boudoir. And how thoughtful TP’s posts are. So I feel mean-spirited for not having any sympathy.
But I like BubbasNightmare’s formula.
“We’re only psuedo-Marxists? How disappointing. I’m going over to that blog with all the puppies. …where all the commenters know how to spell, and the ellipses run free.”
Cass: That would be “psEUdo-Marxists.” Woe be unto those who disparage others’ spelling, for they their own selves shall surely misspell.
All honesty, I don’t think it’s a FAQ we can write, women I mean. They have to talk to each other about this and write that FAQ themselves.
I make no bets as to whether or not it will be worthwhile, though.
msxochitl makes a good point about how many men deny any advantage or benefit in patriarchy. I run into this all the time.
Bookstore dude: “how do I oppress women? I only make $8.00 an hour?”
They think without money or a fancy job that they are blameless.
I’m a vegetarian and that burger looks awfully tempting.
msxochitl :
Well, it ain’t about radical feminism, that’s for sure. It’s about opposition to patriarchy, which I own may be a useful place for the anti-feminist dude to begin his de-programming. I don’t personally subscribe to the gentle approach, mind you, but then again lard knows I’m no authority on convincing individual men to give up their asshole ways; there may be something in it.
Medbh,
Or better yet, “I make $8 an hour and Oprah is a gazillionaire,” to prove that real oppresion is based on class, not gender or race.
Oppression undoubtedly begins with sex (specifically, binary sex roles). But this sex-based model of dominance and submission is the basis for all other forms of oppression, and as a result oppression based on class, race, caste, sexual orientation, disability — they all intersect and collide and feed off of each other. It is not untrue to say that oppression is based on class. The wise among us know, however, that class oppression couldn’t exist without women’s oppression.
What msxochitl said: Even the bottom-of-the-totem-pole (straight) guys will lose the most important privilege of all. Sex.
Deep down, men know they don’t have the “right” to sex. Unfortunately, most don’t even think forcing a cash-for-flesh paradimn on women is WRONG. As my (now ex-) boyfriend used to say: “Women have the pussy, but men have all the stuff.” In his mind this is a fair trade. This is one of the big reasons he’s an “ex.”
He’s not alone, either. The liberation of women (worldwide) means there will no longer be desperate women willing to barter their bodies for safety, a handful of bills or a sandwich. The “price” of sex will go WAYYYYYY up, to an unacceptable level, i.e., men will actually have to make themselves sexually attractive, not to mention be considerate in and out of bed, to obtain what they consider a service commodity. No Fair!
Paradigm. Gah.
Naomi Wolf had a bit in her book “Fire with Fire” that I found very useful in talking with the menz (opinions about Ms. Wolf aside - and please excuse my bastardized remembrance from a decade ago). She said that Patriarchy is like a fun house mirror. Men have been looking at themselves and the mirror reflects back an image of men that twice real size, while to men, women look half of their size. Men need to acknowledge that in order to truly change the world, they must accept that they have to look away from the fun house mirror of Patriarchy and see themselves and women as their real sizes - equal. Men will have to accept a “decrease” in their power, as they have been granted an unequal level of power to begin with.
But honestly, I take each man on his own, but would never trust them as a group. Just as I would never expect a person of color to accept me as a white person, unless they knew me personally. There is no reason for a person of color to trust a white person unequivocally, the same as there is no reason for a woman to trust a man unequivocally. The menz must learn to NOT take blaming personally (as stekatz so clearly stated). It is a reality, and denying it will not make it go away.
Only honest, personal work towards change makes any difference in the world.
“What can men do to help?”
Pay attention, when the scales fall from your eyes stand up, speak up, listen up.
“Men suffer too”
This is true, but we are not talking about that right now. Get in line and wait your turn or go to Feminism 101 where they have the patience to put up with egocentric asshattery.
“Not my Nigel”
How nice for you. Are you comfy inside that bubble?
just a start.
Men have been looking at themselves and the mirror reflects back an image of men that twice real size, while to men, women look half of their size. Men need to acknowledge that in order to truly change the world, they must accept that they have to look away from the fun house mirror of Patriarchy and see themselves and women as their real sizes - equal.
I think that´s Virginia Woolf - not Naomi.
MzNicky: That was the misspelling, and I was the misspeller that I was alluding to.
I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before. I quote from Mary Poppins:
“Though we adore men individually, we agree that as a group they’re rather stupid.”
Sign along if you want.
I admire what Mr. Shakes was trying to do, but I also agree with msxochitl that it overlooks the fact that dudes at every level have privilege and status that is, in fact, threatened by feminism. If we got what we wanted, a dude would have to have some interesting accomplishments, or a really terrific personality, to get what they get automatically in the present system. That’s scary stuff.
What’s worse is I also agree with commenter Ted over there, who says that he finds a lot of the terminology condescending & therefore he’s not likely to embrace it.
The condescending thing is not really a problem with Mr. Shakes post, insofar as he was just chatting with the converted about “this is what we need to do.” It’s a huge problem in writing a FAQ that would actually be effective though. I have a hard time thinking about this problem without getting pissed off, because of course when dudes are condescending to women we shrug off a fair amount of it as just the way things are. For me, after living in Alaska so long, it has to be really egregious before I even notice it.
But if women take an attitude towards men that hints, ever so slightly, of, “okay honey, I’m trying to be understanding and wrap my mind around how you could manage to be so stupid,” well, that’s why the death threats come out, basically. And yet, what else can you possibly say to these people?
How about something like this: Wake up and smell the coffee. You need to understand feminism for the same reason you need to understand China. There are more of us every day, and we’re catching up on every front. Even if you don’t work directly for us in the future, you are going to work for people who expect you to know how to work with us. We are already among the rule-makers, so it’s too late to keep us out by changing the rules. Get used to it. And if you’re too set in your ways to get used to it, then at least you’d darned well better teach your kids to get used to it if you expect them to amount to anything.
To hell with telling these dudes not to be afraid. Let’s try telling them to be very afraid. In dude-world, telling someone to be afraid is seen as a form of respecting their intelligence. And if they believe you, it’s amazing how fast they will come up with reasons of their own to “independently” decide that they agree with the rest of your arguments.
What’s going on here is tremendously compelling and resonant for me, but I can never escape the suspicion that I just oughta shut up my man’s trap.
Word.
The desire to preserve their ability to exploit women in all the different categories of feminine roles is probably the main ingredient in any man’s resistance to radical feminism’s ideas. Exploiting women is a male privilege that is sugar-coated in countless cultural ways and usually proven by spurious and thoughtless appeals to a man’s ‘natural’ impulses or nature’s examples among the different instinctual behaviors of whatever beasts or lower orders man has found that appear to echo his sexist presumptions.
Example: Body image and femininity.
Men think that women enjoy their feminine roles and that it is natural for women to want to attract them by exhibiting feminine behaviors like dressing like a slut, using agreeable body language that signals submission like smiling, tilting the head, or simply suppressing their own voice in order to allow the privilege of male leadership in conversation and opinions.
Men learn from patriarchal culture that it is natural for them to dress in ways that diminish their own bodies, either by slovenly inattention, or by draping voluminous sports jersey and baggy pants over their bodies like colorful body-burkhas. Since men regard themselves as the default human being, and women as a separate and distinct state of being human, one they wouldn’t want to be, they see the feminine state as a natural example of the exaggerated cultural differences between the sexes.
Most men assume that women exist to please men through signaling sexual availability through clothing, body image and submissive demeanor, and men exist to please themselves by making themselves unattractive to each other, relieving themselves from the oppressive weight of the male sexual gaze that sees only scales of sexual arousal in appearances.
Only by rejecting the hyper-sexualized world of the adolescent male can a man start to understand the weight of femininity. That isn’t easy for any man, no matter how sympathetic he may be to feminism. Most men will violently defend their privilege to live in a world where women exist to titillate men in their dress and demeanor. It’s the last stand of the feminist man every time: They love looking at women who are doing every thing they can to solicit male approval.
Men feel, abstractly and without any overt emotional weight, that they too, are either attractive to women or not. A man who tries to dress himself and keep his body fit and signal sexual attractiveness to women feels a twinge of competitive despair as he ages, as he judges himself against other men. The fascination with big dicks comes in here; any man can understand the stress and anxiety of wondering if his dick is big enough.
If a man examines these nascent and inchoate anxieties he will be able to start to understand the huge burden that femininity and body image is to women. Because he can be shown that if you add the oppression of male dominance to the equation the burden increases to the point of hysteria. Men shrug off feminist revelations of this burden as hysterical because they refuse to allow themselves to feel oppressed.
Example: Reproduction and marriage.
Reproduction is the foundation of sexism. Though we are all human, and so similar that we are fundamentally identical outside of the tiny portion of our bodies intended to reproduce ourselves like beasts, we take this one function and on it men have built an entire world-wide oppression of the subset of humans who are capable of this quotidian miracle.
I can’t do better than Shulamith Firestone at explaining this. But we men have a set of issues with it that are based on the very sexist assumptions we cling to as if they didn’t harm us as often as they seemingly benefitted us.
Men are taught that masculinity is a pathological need to fuck every woman they desire, and as many as possible. This is supposed to be success, and is believed to make men attractive to women and manly to each other. Being a man is being a dog, attracting and discarding women in great numbers, keeping score and winning self esteem through avoiding the love and affection that is the only natural expression of sexual interest I can think of.
By accepting this idea, men have done themselves grave damage emotionally and intellectually. Some men have internalized this idea to the point of emotional retardation of tragic proportions. Is it any wonder that men like this are so angry? Women constantly wonder why men are so angry and depressed when men live in a self-made prison where love and affection can only lead to a diminishment of the essential selves, which they define as masculine according to the dictates of the culture as they understand it.
The abstraction of sex into a sensory pleasure that is derived from exaggerating differences between the sexes; and diminishing love, affection and reproduction to the point where they are specifically denigrated as unmanly. This is central to the pathologies that make reproduction and marriage the crucible of friction in so many male-female relationships. We all experience and internalize this unresolvable problem if only through our parents.
Men who decide to shake off the unattainable and untenable ideas of what is masculine and what is not can start to see women as fellow human beings exactly like them except for suffering oppression.
Radical feminism brings out the vast majority of ways we are all essentially identical rather than the tiny minority of ways that we are slightly different. If we could take bearing babies out of the human experience and make it into a more perfect organic-mechanical process outside of the female body men could start to see women as even more identical, as Firestone says.
Example: Sexual arousal and porn.
Any reasonable sexist man will grow quickly angry and confused by any threats to his ability to consume it, and defensive and hostile to any evidence provided to suggest that porn is deeply offensive to women who haven’t been brain washed into accepting their own degradation.
The radical feminist position that porn is overtly presented as glorifying women as abstractions and objects, as victims and as receptacles, as the objects of violence and existing outside of a normal human world of love and gentleness, is usually rebutted with the tired old idea that some women like being treated this way.
Porn is demonstrably degrading to women in almost every single example that a defender could choose to exhibit. And in most of these examples, an impartial observer can easily detect clumsy tricks like overdubbing and editing to hide the discomfort of the woman acting out her arousal. But they choose to ignore it, because they haven’t yet become so degraded themselves as to lust after actual images - readily available and probably enjoyed in secret by even some who deny that porn degrades women - of women not enjoying their degradation.
Men are understandably ashamed and defensive about their attraction to porn, and usually for unexamined reasons that they dismiss as residual prudery inflicted by our culture. They usually try porn-inspired sexual acts with women after much soul-searching and with the timidity of someone who desires something shameful. Underneath this shame is the repressed understanding that porn degrades women, and asking a woman to behave like a porn star is degrading.
Men can understand why it is degrading to women only if they are able to look at women as human beings exactly like themselves who are having sex in an oppressive sexual environment wherein men are the aggressors and women the victims of male arousal. Men have a very hard time doing this because women have sexual needs that can almost always only be met by acting as if this system works for them. And after a certain amount of sexual conditioning, they mostly do make it work, however imperfectly for them; if work for them is limited to things like achieving orgasm or gaining companionship and intimacy with a man.
The best tool for men to understanding the essential degradation of sex roles as they exist today is for a man to be raped by another man. I’m not sure how this works or if it would for a gay man, but for a straight man it is a powerful way to start to see how we are taught to pursue and coerce women into satisfying our arousal.
Because men usually make the simple mistake of thinking that it would be fun to be oppressed and degraded like a woman, since they seem to get off on it and even go so far as to make statements that excuse and defend their own degradation. But men make the assumption that men would like to be oppressed by women, when women oppressing women is a completely different power struggle. A man must think: “How would I like to have to do this to make a man aroused in order to get off? Would I enjoy this role? Or would it be just a stupid fantasy that I would hate to actually act out, because once it becomes real, the feeling is being debased, not aroused?”
Men avoid the male gaze directed at them and understand their own distaste for being subjected to male arousal if you make them understand that it is MALE arousal that oppresses, not female arousal. After this lesson, a man can start to see what colors the fundamental problems in a normal heterosexual relationship; the imbalance of arousal and desire.
Men can understand further that porn degrades men when they consume it, too. Their shame in admitting to it, their actions in consuming it in secrecy and in private, their vehemence in denying it is harmful, all this tells more about how men really feel about porn than any reasonable argument can refute. The hold that porn has over men is so strong that women laugh at it.
The state of porn today is so extreme and abstract, dealing with lust that has been exaggerated to the point of almost complete transgression, that it has desensitized men to normal sexual relations and inhibited their ability to enjoy the affection and love that sex was once thought to provide as a reward. Pornsick men, wanking almost uncontrollably for hours on end while watching women degraded in a hundred different ways, are training themselves through an almost hypnotic process into thinking of women as abstract creatures that exist to satisfy lust only. They defend their use of porn because they fear the loss of their hyper-exaggerated sexuality, as if it were natural and even enjoyable. Like any other addiction, it is only a waste of time, money and life.
Porn degrades men precisely because it has this unbreakable hold over them, and they are all, every one of them, deeply ashamed of their inability to control the desire to degrade women sexually in return.
I need to say right now that this is still and will always be a blog for and about what women think, not about what I think.
What I hope for and expect is correction and amendment by all of the women here who have taught me all I know about feminism, which isn’t much. So don’t think I fear correction, think I welcome it instead.
But I have to admit that as I embrace ever-more radical ideas of feminism, I find myself thinking of all the ways it has benefitted me, and what I would like to say to stupid men about it, from the perspective of a man who thinks feminism is just an oppressed class’s word for humanism. It’s humanism without sexism to me.
TP, fifth to last paragraph — I got confused by the sentence “But men make the assumption that men would like to be oppressed by women, when women oppressing women is a completely different power struggle.” Did I just totally fail to read this correctly or did you mix up genders somewhere?
Otherwise — pretty nice clear summary of a lot of things I’ve read here, although possibly a bit long for a comment box!
“Even the bottom-of-the-totem-pole (straight) guys will lose the most important privilege of all. Sex.”
How about this one: men are granted a world where every single message delivered to us tells us that we are wanted and needed, sexually and otherwise, even when we’re not.
To my way of thinking (which admittedly changes all the damned time), it’s the culture of male entitlement that is at the core of the problem. The sex component is a big part of it, but, I think it does often confuse the issue. The fact that there are tons of women who have come to not only accept, but relish the feminine role doesn’t mean that the culture of dominance and submission is somehow right or natural or whatever. It just means that many of us are used to it and can’t imagine a change making anything any better.
I’m no anthropologist, so, I couldn’t begin to offer any history or reason for how we got to where we are now. And, I’m not sure how we get better, either, though I am listening as much as I am capable.
I feel like a good first step for most of us blame-sympathetic males is to consider the times when we are given entitlements for no other accomplishment than being adult males. I would submit that this entitlement is so entrenched in our culture that it’s almost impossible to notice when it’s happening (not an excuse, just sayin).
If a guy can make that distinction at all (and most simply cannot), he may be on his way to having other revelations fall into place. I believe most of these guys are able to leap the hurdle of accepting that they are not entitled to sex-on-demand. But, they, like me, will have a harder time with the realization that maybe they are less wanted and needed than they have been led to believe.
-finn
Dear octopod, I went so far overboard I hesitated to post it, but I did it anyway, since this is the first time there has been an invitation to look at how to convince men that feminism just makes sense.
So I tried to compress the complicated idea of men assuming that women are as sexually privileged as men into that awkward sentence. White men have a hard time understanding what it’s like to be oppressed, especially if it challenges their assumptions, one of which is that women don’t feel oppressed by male desire.
By a man putting himself in a woman’s place, he can start to understand the oppression if he has any empathy at all, which is rare. Most men PROJECT their male assumptions in women when they imagine themselves in their place, and assume that being oppressed is being desired, and that being desired, for a man, is a very nice thing.
Mostly men imagine that being a woman is just like being a man, except men want to fuck you, which they, being men, think would be really great. “If I were a woman, I would love having everyone want to fuck me and I would use it to manipulate and control all the men around me,” they think. They think this because they are really projecting masculine desire into the woman they imagine themselves to be, and assuming that men would desire them in the submissive manner of an oppressed class.
So really it becomes a woman who is desired by women that they are imagining. They have no inkling of the very real differences in the way men exhibit desire to women and women exhibit desire to men.
I also have believed for quite some time that this is a reasonable explanation for men’s love of lipstick lesbian porn. Men easily project their desires into women and think it only natural that they should feel the same hyper-exagerrated lust that they have been taught to feel by our hyper-sexualized culture. The nicer ones who aren’t actually enjoying it because they have such contempt for women that the ultimate act of debasement is to make a woman submit to another woman, that is. That’s another reasonable belief about why men are so turned on by this kind of porn.
In terms of “what about the men”, a lot of people might not realise that probably many men feel very insecure as human beings because of what they’re allowed to get away with. It’s like the old notion of little Johnny who transgresses in order to draw his parents’ attention to him and make them set some boundaries. He wants to know that there are moral boundaries to his behaviour — what he is or isn’t allowed to do — because that makes him feel human and as if he belongs. In accordance with this feature of human psychology, I’d suggest that a society which allows men to get away with abusing women is a society which doesn’t particularly love men, either. It hates them. If no moral boundaries are set with regard to men’s behaviour, then the men feel not safe, but insecure, vapid, as if their actions do not really matter, and as if they might be torn apart by the winds because of their own moral vacuums. This is probably a secondary cause of misogyny — the feeling that many men have that neither women nor men will set any limits on their behaviour.
I’m watching my father get re educated right now, and it’s better than any reality TV! After 52 years of marriage, my mother died from cancer and my father is courting someone after some 60 years of not dating–he was attached to my mother for a long time. He’s from a latin american country, and has an incredible sense of male privilege.
He’s now going out with a woman fourteen years his junior, and although she’s latina, the relationship she had with her deceased husband is completely different from the kind my parents had. She has her own house, her own income, her own set of friends. There’s no dependency on him. She’s very quick witted, and when my father tries out some chauvinistic BS on her, she has an immediate response that’s for her own benefit. Oh, and she does it without yelling or screaming, so my father can’t even accuse her of bad behavior!
It’s very amusing to see my father so discombobulated, because he simply can’t get one up on her! The old dog has to learn new tricks if he wants to be with her.
Seconding BubbasNightmare’s “it’s not all about you” point. Love that phrase.
Seconding also Blamerella’s anti-Evo Psych policy, and Twisty’s mention of restrictive binary sex roles. Few things irk me more than smug scientists attempting to argue that I am naturally silly because of my ovaries. Especially if it’s “that” time of the month. Har har fucking har.
I find that this is one of the most common things I have to argue with non-feminists: that it is the view of many scientists that women and men, though they are obviously different in some physical aspects, are not consistently different. There is infinite variety in nature and generalisations about how women will feel, behave or look, based on biological constructs, are baloney. Unfortunately the following article is subscription-only, but the arch-patriarch source is impeccable for pointing out to such goons that even their own beloved establishment is coming round:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg17022905.000-the-gender-police.html
Another thing I seem to have to defend rather too often is the idea that women are still the victims of discrimination, and that tables have not in fact turned so that we may merrily stomp all over the men. Usually, a quick sprint through some arresting statistics is enough to point this out, viz:
- According to the United Nations, women do 2/3 of the world’s work, earn 1/10 of world incomes, and own less than 1/100 of the world’s property.
- NOW has plenty of stats on violence against women in the US: http://www.now.org/issues/violence/stats.html Some putzes attempt to trot out the “Butbutbut 80% of the victims of violent crime are men” argument, to which the answers are, obviously, that violence against women is seriously underreported and tends to be domestic; and that almost all violent crime against men is perpetrated by other men. Marvel at the patriarchy: it does not flinch from spoiling a man’s day, either (especially if he be non-rich or non-white).
- The only industries in which women consistently earn more than men (and this is, of course, at the level of worker rather than managerial) are modelling and porn.
- I could go on. But maybe such things aren’t even the point here. It depends just how low down the education ladder you want to aim the FAQ. And, anyway, there’s already http://finallyfeminism101.blogspot.com/
Speaking of which, I would also think it reasonable to point out in the DGWATM-FAQ, as I believe the existing FAQ does, that IBTP is not a primer. If the chap in question is unfamiliar with the classics of feminist literature and/or the basics of feminist thought, or he is only aware of such things through the medium of right-wing talk radio, his argument may appear, at best, charmlessly naif.
I really agree with Scratchy888 about men looking for boundaries.
Maybe this is also why it’s more common to meet women that are genuinely obsessed with freedom, rather than just with setting up a different kind of hierarchy with themselves a little higher up. Men feel somewhat oppressed by their freedom already as it is. Women are not in much danger of feeling like we have no limits. Not since we were toddlers anyway.
I appreciate TP’s comment, long though it was.
I wonder what experiences led to this kind of introspection. perception, and subsequent understanding of a subtle, pervasive, and complex problem?
TP: Very interesting. Thank you.
Finnsmotel said, “How about this one: men are granted a world where every single message delivered to us tells us that we are wanted and needed, sexually and otherwise, even when we’re not.”
Yipes! As a married woman I can honestly say that men may be needed because of the situation in which marriage/nuclear family places a woman. But wanted? Unfortunately, the needing kind of cancels out the wanting. And it IS unfortunate, because I think I can remember a time when there was true wanting–before the needing. The oppression really revs up when the needing starts.
TP, my jaw hung open as I read your post. It made me realise so many things about the way guys think that I could NEVER have imagined on my own. I have said before that I don’t believe in cheerleading guys who work for feminism’s goals, since I feel that’s the way all guys ought to be, but I have to make the exception here and give you a virtual stomach high-five for this well-thought-out and insightful post.
You said that “…The best tool for men to understanding the essential degradation of sex roles as they exist today is for a man to be raped by another man. I’m not sure how this works or if it would for a gay man, but for a straight man it is a powerful way to start to see how we are taught to pursue and coerce women into satisfying our arousal.”
I never thought about this in-depth before, but after reading this I am beginning to see exactly WHY straight men are so homophobic. Underneath it all, they DO realise the massive extent to which they oppress women, but instead of even admitting it to themselves their brain coughs it out to their conscious minds as “Gay guys are scary/gross.” Call me dimwitted, but I used to think that the reason for widespread homophobia was just that hetero men were raised to be selfish and didn’t want anyone going near their precious rectal orfices. Now I realise it’s so much more than that. Gay men are the scariest thing to straight men because they are concrete, unavoidable physical examples of the oppressive straight male’s sexual behaviour. The existence of gay men forces straight men to think about what it could be like to be on the receiving end of male behaviour. SCAAAAARY!
All I can say, TP, is “Word.”
Mearl, I’ve said it before: their way of thinking about sex is, “If I get my dick in you, you lose.” Gay men threaten to turn them into losers, when nature already thoughtfully provided men with pre-fab instant losers — women. They truly do think that if they get their dicks in you, you lose. The “nice” guys believe it and feel guilty over it (and usually accuse us of making them feel guilty, or else they are truly nice and just torture themselves over enjoying women’s bodies, and I don’t have an answer for that sort of thing). The assholes believe it and enjoy it.
“If I get my dick in you, you lose.” That’s sex, to their mind. Okay, 100%-epsilon, but once again I’m not interested in being told how enormous epsilon is, okay?
Thank you, mearl. My introspection, shallow as it probably is, led me to some of the guesses I’ve made about men.
I hesitate to admit what a tool I’ve been my whole life for fear of what you all would think of me. I know about homophobia because I was aggressively chased by gay men when I was a teenager in the 70s. When you’ve been whistled at by gay men, harassed and nearly raped, you have to use patriarchal privilege super-denial powers to refuse to understand what it feels like to be oppressed if you are a woman.
Men hate the very idea of the male gaze turned on them. Then they turn right around and say women must like it, because lookit that stripper up there sweating on that pole, she’s smiling, isn’t she? She likes it she likes it! Delusional fools! Beneath contempt, the lot of them.
I’ve got another insight about gay men seeing the right to collect alimony - also known as gay marriage - as an unacceptable infringement on their privilege to fuck poor young men and then kick their asses out in the street after finding a younger one to take their place. Male privilege serves gay men just as handily as straight men.
Oh GAWD, evo-psych. Otherwise known as “Just So Stories.” Otherwise known as a bunch of middle-aged paunchy ugly old bastards rationalizing that, if we lived on the veldt as our distant ancestors did and as Mankind[tm] was meant to live, all thsoe hot fifteen year lds in the neighborhood would be climbing over each other to get at his dick, so there!
Seriously. If one of those books says that evolution demands that fertile females naturally wish to attach themselves to up-and-coming males of the herd who challenge the established alpha hierarchy, it was written by a postdoc. If the book says that fertile females naturally wish to attach themselves to the older, established males who have builthierarchical status, it was written by a guy who got tenure. It’s so fucking transparent.
Oops. I conflated josquin and mearl. My apologies!
Few things irk me more than smug scientists attempting to argue that I am naturally silly because of my ovaries. Especially if it’s “that†time of the month. Har har fucking har.
Yes– that is indeed a strange notion that some people have. I find that at “That” time of the month my thinking is much more rigorous — incredibly and cuttingly perceptive. I can cut through a lot of fluff to get to the crux of things particularly at this intensively aware time.
TP-
Do you really believe that “women are oppressed by male desire”?
Or is it that women are oppressed by the way men in our culture express heterosexuality?
God, I feel like a troll. But it took me a long time to understand the difference between a critique of male sexual desires and a critique of the way men express their sexual desires. They are, I believe two different things.
TP– I love you. I printed out your long and beautiful blame. I’m still in high school, so I see patriarchy at the gross transformation from childhood brainwashing to when opressive thoughts become opressive actions.
I think it important to note that the inability to see one another—regardless the gender, age, race, intelligence, culture, or health— as fellow ‘beings of the human sort,’ travelers on the same journey is as much to fault as a societal system of entitlement or empowerment unfairly biased toward one gender.
Not to diminish the need to right THAT listing ship—–it’s only 4000 years later than it should’ve been. IF women were given political power in America, (an amendment demanding 50 Male amd 50 Female Senators and 218 Female and 218 Male Representatives in a special election) we could begin to seriously return egalitarian parity to where it ought to be: EVENLY divided. (Better still: 51 Female and 49 Male, etc. —but one step at a time.)
As long as the power remains in the hands of the men, the women will continue to be diminished by it, and our children exposed to it as “the prevailing order of things.”
In my experience, it is difficult to discuss feminism with men for many, many reasons, a particularly annoying one being that they so often derail the conversation into a what-about-the-men fest. I’ve also had (I’m sure we’ve all had) even more annoying experiences trying to discuss feminism with women who do the same thing.
Recently, on my blog, I wrote a post about being in situations in which I felt like I needed to explain feminist ideas to men and was frustrated because of it. I was specifically discussing doing so within a romantic relationship because my partner is a man. I’m sure other women currently dating, cohabitating with or married to men can relate to my particular frustration.
My post was basically a request for advice, and I was surprised by the different directions the thread took. Some of the ideas might be helpful for this discussion, and some of the experiences are infuriating.
As the thread developed, I was ranting to a friend of mine on gmail chat. I told her I was frustrated about one woman’s response, but more so that I felt like there wasn’t a good answer to the initial question I’d raised. I said, “I keep thinking that if I asked Twisty, for example, how to handle this, she would say, ‘this is why you shouldn’t date men.’” That might be a wrongheaded assumption (I hope not), but if any of you would like to check out the post/thread here’s a link.
Hi, Lisa. You are making a distinction between male desire and how men express that desire that I find too vague to agree or disagree with.
If you would be kind enough to expand on your ideas about this distinction it’s likely that I will find much to agree with, and certain that you will take me someplace that I would like to know more about.
I can tell you that I feel that I have been a typical victim of the hyper-sexualization of male desire myself. I’ve felt keenly the pressure to aspire to a grossly exaggerated ideal of constant arousal and frustration over the inevitable stifling of that desire.
My idea is basically that sex is not nearly as important to happiness throughout our entire lives as Freud and just about everyone in the world seems to think. I think it is rather a bottomless well of anxiety and mismatched expectations that fuel the friction between the sexes by exaggerating their differences by making these tiny differences central to their identities.
When your first and highest definition of yourself is of your sex, be it man or woman, then you have a sexist problem waiting every time you act or think. Woman is always the Other to you, she becomes an abstraction that stands for the frustration of your endless desires, and love and affection become remote and meaningless barriers to your need to quench your fathomless lust on every woman you see who you desire.
Twisty has been teaching me, in her offhand and entertaining way, for many years now, mostly on this blog, that this definition of yourself as a creature of unending desire is a burden rather than a pleasure. And age has conspired to prove her right.
I am a natural lurker, it’s hard for me to get involved in the discussions because I feel so woefully inadequate. But I have to say to TP: You bring a welcomed and honest voice to the comment threads I read everyday. It’s great that you have seen the light and I enjoy reading your comments.
Thank you.
TP-
What I meant was that if a man has a desire to have sex with a specific woman he can do nothing, or attempt to sleep with her. Doing nothing is not oppressive. He can go about attempting to have sex with her by attempting to talk to her and see if she would like to become friends or date and ask if she is interested in casual sex, and then continue to treat her with respect if she says yes OR no. I also don’t see how this is oppressive. Or he could be rude and agressive and make offensive remarks if she says no, etc. This is the problem.
Since most people on this board are not asexual (although I know some people identify that way, and that’s fine) we have sexual desires. I do not think these desires are inherently bad but I do think that the way our sexist society teaches men to deal with those desires is. I also don’t like the messages women get about sex either.
Bottom line - the erection a man gets from a wet dream about his secretary does not oppress her. The smack on the butt and harrassing comments do.
On the subject of evo-psych:
But the behaviours of men who oppress women are natural! Evolution makes men spread their seed/rape/etc!
Even assuming that this is true, what you’re saying is that past evolutionary pressures encourage certain types of behaviour. If this were the case, we should all be adjusting selective pressures to wipe out this trait forthwith. By making an evolutionary psych argument for the existence of a trait, you are necessarily arguing that said trait can be changed.
However, a great deal of evolutionary psych, especially as published in popular literature, is simply full of crap.
Jane Awake, I don’t think anyone here will tell you not to date men (though some of the nastier examples of abusive relationships have caused many of us to say DTMFA). We certianly won’t phrase it in a way that makes you seem at fault.
What you seem to be having trouble with is getting him to unpack his privilege long enough to listen to what you’re trying to tell him. tekanji’s “Check my what?†On privilege and what we can do about it at Shrub.com, as well as every post with the tag ‘Privilege in Action’ is chock full of easy to approach concepts on privilege, links to more information, and demonstrations on what it means to have privilege. Also, once he’s heard about his privilege, you can show him that you have common ground with him by exposing your own privileges (race, class, education) to demonstrate that neither one of you is bad for having them. Let him know that when you enter a discussion with people who have less access to privilege than you do, you check yours at the door, and he’s expected to try to do the same when you’re speaking to him about women.
Calm and reasonable usually works, at any rate. Hitting them with a rolled up newspaper tends to just make ‘em mean.
“Even assuming that this is true, what you’re saying is that past evolutionary pressures encourage certain types of behaviour. If this were the case, we should all be adjusting selective pressures to wipe out this trait forthwith. By making an evolutionary psych argument for the existence of a trait, you are necessarily arguing that said trait can be changed.”
Amen to that, sister.
“Calm and reasonable usually works, at any rate. Hitting them with a rolled up newspaper tends to just make ‘em mean.”
Or, you could dump them. Seriously. Why beat your head against a wall with a guy who won’t listen to you without a bunch of psychological manoevering, coddling, and cajoling? You don’t need a man. And even if you did, as the happily-paired-off straight girls around here are constantly pointing out, there are guys out there who already get it. Why not hold out for one of those?
I imagine an FAQ for men on this site would be much more on the completely-serious-but-still-laugh-out-loud-funny-in-its-way-of-pointing-out-the-truth side, but the FAQs on the blog Feminism 101 lay it out there pretty plainly if you don’t feel like going to all the trouble:
http://finallyfeminism101.blogspot.com/2007/03/faq-i-asked-some-feminists-question-and.html
The author over there starts out:
Yes, but not on a timescale that’s going to matter to you.
Twisty:
“And even if you did, as the happily-paired-off straight girls around here are constantly pointing out, there are guys out there who already get it. Why not hold out for one of those?”
Preach, sister! How many guys-who-get-it out there stand and watch good female friends endlessly struggle with recalcitrant knuckle-draggers?
Hedonistic:
“The liberation of women (worldwide) means there will no longer be desperate women willing to barter their bodies for safety, a handful of bills or a sandwich. The “price†of sex will go WAYYYYYY up, to an unacceptable level, i.e., men will actually have to make themselves sexually attractive, not to mention be considerate in and out of bed, to obtain what they consider a service commodity.”
Doubled, and redoubled!
To think of all those years I wasted wandering in a testosterone fog. Wish I had known some of you during my formative years.
Actually, Lisa, I would disagree about your distinction between desire and the expression of desire. I think one of the problems with “the world” is the fact that it’s a sexually romanticized marketplace. Men feel a right that is reinforced by almost everyone besides radical feminists to subject every woman they see to the heterosexual male gaze. Men are told by everyone, everywhere, from as early as they can listen, that they “think about sex every 4 seconds” that “their natural desire is to spread their seed” and that “men naturally have to look.”
I disagree with these statements that men will naturally evaluate women for f$#@!ability, and I resent it every time it happens to me. I think it is gross and creepy to be an image in some strange man’s head. I know it can’t be made illegal to look at people, but I think it’s possible to remove this learned behavior masquerading as a “natural compulsion.” The matrix of female submission and sexual availability makes it possible for men to feel a right to think sexual thoughts about any woman (or girl) they so choose. These constant sexual thoughts are unnecessary a hindrance to our species, as well as the possibility for extended life of any kind on Earth, at the rate humans are destryoing Her. There are too many humans in this world- period. All socialization of young humans should celebrate the individual, remove all encouragement toward heterosexually conjugal state-sanctioned unions resulting in a nuclear family unit, and begin to reinforce in everyone’s minds the non-priority that sexual intercourse is.
To Jane:
It’s not that hard to parse this behavior.
If a dude doesn’t respect your point of view, he doesn’t respect your point of view.
Straight up.
Are these or aren’t these your core convictions in life?
Do you want to be with someone who not only doesn’t get it, but only grudingly allows that some few of your convictions may be correct in a limited number of circumstances, and certainly don’t really involve him?
Believe me, there are few more miserable experiences than tying your life to someone for whom reality isn’t real.
Ultimately, you’re not real to him.
And there’s that Patriarchy-raised part that keeps thinking,”But if he loved me, he’s really get it. I’m sure he loves me, so if I keep trying, I’m sure he’ll get it.”
Which would be fine and good, except that you’re not real to him.
That’s what you’re knocking your head against, and believe me, there’s no win there.
BT, DT.
IBTP.
The oppression really revs up when the needing starts.
Word, honey. I know fellow SAHMs whose marriages have been corroded by the creeping spread of need into those marriages. Need does replace want — replaces it by way of fear, shame and resentment surrounding the dependence of one adult human on another. I’m not talking about the interdependence that’s normal in a healthy adult relationship. I’m talking about “he drinks too much but I couldn’t support the kids on my own,” or “he never does anything nice for me but I don’t have the job skills to get back into the workforce” or “our marriage is dead but I have nowhere else to go.” It’s great for the husbands in these scenarios — they act like selfish assholes and never face any consequences for it apart from the loss of love which, let’s face it, they probably never really cared about anyway.
How to avoid such a dreadful fate if you’re inclined to pair off with a fellow? The first and most important step is, as Twisty says, hold out for a guy who gets it.
“Yipes! As a married woman I can honestly say that men may be needed because of the situation in which marriage/nuclear family places a woman.”
Chicken or the husband.
I suppose if you are intent on having a nuclear family, you’re going to need a male daddy type.
I am one. Not arguing against it. Just sayin’.
What’s interesting, to me, lately, is the phenomenon of humans placing the value label of “purpose” on various types of behaviors. I would submit that a very large majority of the population is incapable of accepting the overwhelming possibility that everything we are or do is coincidental, accidental, incidental and has no purpose.
It’s a drag, because if we could accept that inevitability, it seems like we’d relieve ourselves of so much collective anxiety. Who knows where we might go with that kind of freedom.
-finn
kcb, preach, sister! Make sure that your guy gets it, and make sure that you know what’s in his heart. Even then, traditional marriage is a risk (in a no-fault divorce world), but you’ll have a better chance (and a more amicable divorce, if it comes to that).
Oh? So do you think that looking at and imagining other people, sexually or otherwise, serves no positive function either? And you think that the sight of people has no relation to sexual attraction except social conditioning? And you also think that sex drives are also environmentally determined?
“All socialization of young humans should celebrate the individual.”
Very true.
“You don’t need a man.”
No, but I do need a place to live, someone to care for me financially because I can’t work, and someone who will wheel my body around when I can’t control it anymore. Once upon a time I could do for myself, now I need the financial protection of someone else’s health care and paycheck. Wouldn’tcha know it, the patriarchy has decided that I can’t get that by marrying one of my feminist sisters (which, given my druthers, I might have done). Revolution is great, but it doesn’t pay for the doctor’s bills, so I make do by educating the one I live with.
But I’m not taking his frigging last name, if only as a small sign that I protest the entire system that makes me his dependant.
There is a time in life when we are going to have sex as a central hormonal force, and feminism has to deal with that at some point. Not me, though.
But I suspect we pretend that we are always the same age - post-pubescent hormone-rattled youngsters who have little choice but to wallow in lustful longing. I enjoyed not dealing with a hyper-sexualized world when I was a kid. Instantly after puberty I was filled with longing for the days of childhood when sex was a dirty joke, something to laugh about.
Instead of assuming that sex is always this constant force in our lives, I think it has seasons and different intensities. What do we see in our culture that examines or reinforces this feeling? Nothing! The culture says we are all horny youngsters ready to drop everything and fuck like bunnies whenever we want.
Men use porn to keep themselves in an artificially high state of arousal all the time, or else how could the porn industry be raking in 12 billion dollars a year? Not to mention all the other activities men engage in to keep themselves aroused, including looking at women with lust instead of love.
Since men rule the world, male arousal goes unquestioned and unexamined. I think men will never admit to being tired of being manipulated by constant signals of desire in the media and wherever they look. They’re all rats in a cage, and every last one of them thinks it’s fine.
Sure sex feels good. But it feels just as good without sexism. Whether women are oppressed by the male gaze is unquestionable to me. If you shave your legs, there’s a sign right there. Why any woman ‘needs’ to shave her legs is completely cultural. I’ve never shaved mine and I’m perfectly comfortable.
But both men and women are oppressed by male desire. Men are only rendered somewhat uncomfortable and frustrated, whiney little whiners! while women are routinely beaten, raped and murdered all over the world.
A man who is in love with a woman and desires her and never lets her know about it is oppressing himself in a way. We can’t help it, but the sad truth is that unrequited love is basically objectifying love. And loving someone who doesn’t love you is loving an image rather than a reality, a fantasy that will never come true.
I should know. I’m the sad sack king of unrequited love. Or was. Not any more, thanks to my beloved best friend and wife.
Amen, Mandos.
There’s understandably a lot of animus here against “evo psych,†but as a working scientist in a complex and related field (behavioral/psychiatric genetics) I’m here to tell you that the simplifications and elisions and sexist conclusions you read in the media are just that: simplifications. They were necessary at some level to get the article out there. They do not represent how the topics are discussed within the fields. In fact they piss us off, big time. (While I am of course speaking in generalities, so is everyone else here when they speak of men and women’s essential natures in the patriarchy without reference to how these things are not necessarily true for individuals, so I think y’all can understand.)
To point out that there are evolutionary constraints on our behavior is not to say that they are right and good and How It Should Be. The goal of the scientific method is to generate testable hypotheses, which the evolutionary perspective is capable of doing (indeed, the feminist perspective has been very useful in generating hypotheses as it opens up a whole new way of thinking which counters the limited perspective of white dudes: cf Hrdy’s work). Some people do the “natural means good and right” for their purposes, and likewise, WE can study the natural for OUR purposes: to combat the patriarchy. Even the white dudes acknowledge that natural is not necessarily good: physiological disease is natural too, and we seek to eradicate them through science–it’s up to feminists to do the same and try to eradicate the mental disease of patriarchy. When we berate journalists for making the error that natural is right, we are falling into their sensationalist trap.
I’ve been reading this blog for a little while and I have been wondering: why is there so little interest in interrogating the origins of patriarchy? The explanations seem to stop at the cultural level, but culture comes from somewhere–-our brains/bodies, constrained by their evolutionary pasts, draw its outlines and set its limits. RadFems acknowledge this when they wistfully imagine a day when gestation can happen outside the female body. It’s understood at some level that this will make equality between the sexes more likely. Why?
To put it in scientific terms, the fundamental imbalance that drives patriarchy is the plain fact that the burden of childbearing–that is, sustaining the species, every living thing’s biological imperative–falls on women disproportionately, and the related fact that human young take a very long time to grow up, so the investment does not end at childbirth. This constrains reproductive strategies (imagine species where the young need no care, and how differently their behavior is structured). Example: harems make brilliant sense for affluent men. All they have to do is pay for them and their genes are all over the place. But each baby is a massive investment for a woman, and the window they have to reproduce is shorter, so such a strategy (multiple men) is not too advantageous, and it’s harder to accumulate affluence (through hunting/gathering, war, etc.) when you are breastfeeding anyway. Being in a harem can even be a good idea for women, as your baby can get pretty good care which increases its chances of survival and therefore the number of babies you’ll have time to have. That’s where the traditional white scientist dude explanation ends: harems are the strategy. However, feminism has pointed out to these dudes that it’s not the only strategy that works: it can be shown that strong pair bonds and menopause also increase the likelihood of a child’s survival, and it’s a strategy available to a wider variety of men. Our clueful male breeder blamers use this strategy, instead of the “mate with a lotta women and hope some kids survive” strategy. I assume they do, anyway.
Another example, the shoe debate. Oh, it sure is awful that high heels are painful to women and men don’t have to deal with it, *wring hands*. But why would women hurt their fitness by wearing heels (or binding their feet)? Foot problems and lifelong pain (or induced crippling) are not to their advantage in raising children. Millions of women WANT to wear high heels, endure the pain and risk–why? To blame it on patriarchal brainwashing is facile in that it goes no deeper than the culture and doesn’t ask why the culture formed in that particular way. It makes it impossible to craft a solution. Maybe that’s not the goal of this blog/radical feminism (I’ve been meaning to ask that, actually, what IS the goal here?) But that’s the way I think, and so that’s where I can look to reproductive strategies. There is a biological imperative to reproduce and heels make women look attractive to men for reasons that the evo devos are working out, as it generates testable hypotheses. Here’s how: if, by sticking out the booty, the waist-hip ratio appears larger, and if that ratio affects people’s perceptions of attractiveness, and if it does so because it implies a wider pelvis, and if a wider pelvis increases a woman’s likelihood to survive childbirth, then you have four testable hypotheses, not just white-dude conjectures–and these hypotheses have been and are being tested.
There’s also a sense in which plain old nonsexual competition within sexes for money and power (it should be obvious how these increase reproductive success, in both sexes) shapes behavior. Look around an office with a lot of women at different social levels and note the lower heels of the white collar vs. pink collar women. Look around that same office and note the greater heights of the more successful men. More affluent women do not need the harem approach, they can support children themselves, thankyouverymuch. Shorter men earn less than taller men, and are seen as weaker. The patriarchy comes in at the heels-hurt-more-than-lifts and fewer-women-at-top-echelons level, but does not explain the desires on both sexes’ parts to change their appearances.
Sorry for the length, but as I say I’ve been reading the blog for a while now and have been itching to make these points. I offer them in the spirit of discussion and not combativeness and hope that they are so received. It seems that it’d be considered rude to post this on my blog and try and move ppl over there, but if I’m wrong and that’s more appropriate, I hope to work with Twisty to do so by shortening this post and replacing it with a link or something such.
Mandos: I think sexual imagination can be positive within the contents of an egalitarian pre-existing sexual relationship. I do not think it should be assumed as perfectly allright to utilize one’s sexual imagination to conjure fantasies about whomever one chooses- I think it’s an infringement on the privacy of that person. Perhaps it’s a big hangup of mine, but I find no pleasure in fantasizing about someone with whom I’m not currently in a sexual relationship. I began to feel this way gradually, as I grew into my role as a member of the sex class. First I railed against the catcalls, then I raged against the men in public who seemed to feel like the fact that we were existing in the same physical space and time was enough of a reason to begin to initiate some sort of dialog with me (a dialog they would not initiate with just any human being because they are just friendly guys, these are dialogs attempted specifically because of my sex); then my rage snowballed and the very idea that it was somehow okay for some dude to pluck my image from the public sphere and tuck me into some fantasy in which I exist to provide him pleasure seemed to absurd to me, that I felt like an utter hypocrite fantasizing about anyone other than current partners. That feeling of hypocrisy quickly became a lack of sexual interest.
Am I wrong? Is everyone totally fine with others picturing them doing things that they would never, in a zillion years, do? To put it in “guy” terms- Guy #1 says to Guy #2: “Hey fella! Last night I whacked off while thinking of your mom (insert latest pornographic male fantasy here).” Guy #2 proceeds to punch Guy #1. Somehow, those thoughts are not okay when about women forbidden from being objectified, i.e., Guy #2’s mom. So why are they okay to have about any other woman who is not currently enthusiastically participating in a sexual relationship with him?