Rebutting Rebutters and the Rebutters Who Rebut Them
Irradiated by LabRat
Peter’s replies to my reply are here, here, and here. I will warn anyone just joining us and anyone here on an archive trawl that this post won’t make a great deal of sense without that background.
Since addressing him bit by bit would be an exceedingly cumbersome format given the length and content, I’m going to try and boil it down to what I think the salient points that still need to be made are, or that I should have made originally. I was never very happy with the first post I wrote and am glad for the opportunity to refine and clarify my position.
The first thing I want to reiterate and clarify is that this issue is as much about perception as it is anything else. My original post was prompted by Peter wondering aloud why feminists have a problem with the traditional “real man” model of masculinity, and it was intended as a direct answer to that; it’s not “what’s wrong with traditional masculinity” so much as it was “this is what the “real man” thing can look like from outside, and they have some legitimate issues with it”. As I’ve noted before, men and women take a lot of their own intrasex experience for granted without realizing that the opposite sex isn’t nearly in on the same level of communication, or making the same assumptions, they are. There’s also a certain amount of intrasex ignorance; men and women largely do not experience the same kinds of negative behavior coming from their own sex that the opposite sex will. It’s usually relatively easy to ignore the worst of your own gender, while the opposite’s worst is keenly felt, because it’s directed at you and comes seemingly out of nowhere.
A very common response I’ve seen from men is that their role models, who gave them the idea of what it means to be a man, would never condone or even tolerate the kinds of abuse I’m talking about as stemming from the traditional gestalt idea of masculinity. That’s because they were role models; women don’t experience masculinity as just the role models of good men, but every man, especially those styling themselves “real men” and those that believe them and take those men as their own role models. To us, the Sumdood who kills his girlfriend because he suspected she’d been unfaithful- and the other dudes who inevitably make some kind of “yeah he was wrong to kill her, but she should never have…” half-justification of how he was perfectly understandable in enforcing his ownership of her are just as much “this is what manhood means” as our (hopefully) much-admired fathers, brothers, husbands, and friends who really DO embody the traditional ideal of a gentleman.
The second major point I want to make stems from a combination of Peter’s first and second reply. The explanation and clarification of African culture alone is very interesting, and he does make a solid point in both cultures: abuse of women is much, much more common in cultures where the social order has begun to break down, and they have far more power when it’s stable, although he acknowledges that in such cultures, women really are the property of men just as men are property of the tribe, and individualism is a very Western concept.
To which I’d reply: power you only have when your counterpart is content to humor you because things are going well is not power. It’s influence, to be sure, but when things break down the second someone decides he doesn’t care what the biddy down the bush thinks, one sex is getting the short and extremely pointy end of the stick, and the other is not. Things may be going badly for him, but one unfortunate human universal near-constant behavior is that in times of distress, people usually spread their unhappiness with a big shovel- to whoever is immediately down from them in status.
Peter makes the point overall in part two that a good deal of strife between the sexes can be traced to the breakdown of the original social order, and up to a point I agree: things are worse for women when things have broken down. My other points are thus:
1) I realize this is not at ALL what he meant, but this line of argument can be read as a threat: “Stay in your role and be happy there, at least you’re not being beaten and raped, because that’s what we’ll do if you don’t.” Again, I’m giving the feminist perspective on traditional manhood here- and this isn’t just me playing semantic games, this is EXACTLY the kinds of strain of comment that come out in news reports about rape and abuse of women*. There’s nearly always an analysis of what she did wrong, to deserve that kind of treatment.
2) It’s pretty easy to say the old order was working fine if you’re a member of the class that has all the real social power. “I’m happy, you all seem happy enough, what’s wrong with that?” The term for this is “privilege”.
3) Even when people are raised within a very traditional gender role structure and everyone has a clear idea of what’s expected from their gender, this does not actually protect women. It gives the illusion that everything is working fine that allows people to comfortably downplay and minimize evidence to the contrary. I originally linked to this article about clergy response to domestic violence to highlight the attitudes within traditional masculinity that lead to reinforcing an attitude of ownership and control of women, but read the whole thing, and if you have time, read the author’s archives in general. Dr. Tracy is an evangelical Christian studying and writing about abuse within evangelical churches- which I think we can all agree represent a traditional and strongly defined set of gender roles, as a rule- and two of the things he’s found are very pertinent to my point here: 1) Rates of physical and sexual abuse within evangelical churches are roughly the same as those among the unchurched, around 20-30%, and 2) The clergy within these churches believe it’s actually much lower. Women are getting as beaten and raped at the same rate as the rest of general (stable) society, but out of every good intention and faith in their own flock, the abuse is being minimized and dismissed.
Here’s another article by the same author, this time analyzing patriarchy and domestic violence within churches. It is specifically a response to charges by feminists patriarchy itself leads directly and inevitably to domestic violence, and aside from being a civil argument on the subject, contains a lot of analysis of men who batter: conservative Protestant men with traditional gender views who attend church regularly (and are presumably absorbing the full message) are among the least likely to beat their wives, but conservative Protestant men with traditional gender views who attend irregularly are the *most* likely to. Dr. Tracy theorizes that they are using their limited exposure primarily as a way to justify and reinforce their right to dominate their wives and children, and I would agree.
And that, really, is my point in a particularly specific nutshell: You can’t take traditional masculinity as only the good, the role models, the ideals. Unhealthy men always exist, and they will highlight and double-underline the ideas that involve authority over, and sexual control of, women. Those are legitimate issues, and the ones that feminists are concerned about, and they don’t go away when everyone is being good and staying in their place within the order.
All of that said, I actually do agree with a lot of what Peter said. The strong, gentlemanly role models of masculinity are good, and needed, and Daddy Bear encapsulated quite nicely what that should be, and gladdeningly often is, though still isn’t true quite often enough. We need to socialize children with a clear idea of virtue, and responsibility, and what it means to be a member of their gender, and of their community and larger society as a whole, and the modern fuzziness of the passage into adulthood and set of expectations is generally lacking.
If anything my complaint is that there isn’t anything NEAR approaching as clear and strong and idea and culture for womanhood as there is for manhood, and tends to be just as based on contrast- in order to be feminine, I must not be masculine- as Peter points out the current “being girly is the worst thing in the world” probably stems from. That’s a pretty huge problem when so many virtues that are generally virtues get defined as manly- which is how we wind up with girls and women that think being visibly competent and decisive is unfeminine and therefore to be avoided. When this is a set of ideals given from mothers to daughters as well as from fathers to sons, we won’t have eliminated abuse- that will never happen- but we’ll still be in a healthier place than we are now.
And we’ll still have metrosexuals. Who can change a tire, one hopes.
*Yes, I realize men get raped and abused too, but that’s not the subject of this post. Sadly the kinds of comment stories about rape and abuse of men draw, when they are reported at all, are much much worse. If you think people will come down on you as a woman for being victimized in a short skirt, you should see what happens when you’re a man and you get victimized at all by anyone other than another man that is much bigger and stronger than you.
March 24th, 2011 at 1:17 pm
I gave up and became an interior decorator two rebuttals ago.
March 24th, 2011 at 1:20 pm
What I try to explain to my daughter is that she should be as feminine as she wants to be, but should still be as capable and confident as she can be. I also try to show her, through how I raise her and her brothers, as well as through my own actions, what a good person who happens to be a man looks like. My wife says it best when she tells me that I am raising her to look for a man as good as her father. If I act like a controlling, selfish, abusive, twit, she is likely to get involved with controlling, selfish, abusive twits, and so will her daughters. If I can teach her to not accept anyone who doesn’t treat her well and act in a way that she approves of, then I will have done a large part of my job as a father.
March 24th, 2011 at 2:16 pm
North- yeah, I love how this now has essentially nothing to do with your original post.
DB- raisin’ a little girl, ur doin’ it rite.
March 24th, 2011 at 3:10 pm
LabRat that is the best thing about it! Then I don’t feel bad no longer being involved.
Not that I’ve really done much but observe, anyway.
But, yeah, I started it and it evolved. Cool.
March 24th, 2011 at 6:17 pm
I raised both my daughters to be self-sufficient, THEN go look for a man that could be their equals…
A point you made, “women don’t experience masculinity as just the role models of good men, but every man, especially those styling themselves “real men” and those that believe them and take those men as their own role models.”
I’d never really thought about in THAT light… That does definitely change the perception, as your POV has to be inclusive, because you encounter those every day. You don’t necessarily have the option of only dealing with a select group of males… Thanks!
March 24th, 2011 at 7:46 pm
Part of being a gentleman, I think, is refusal to tolerate the bad behaviour of “real men”. Not only should one model treating others with respect, but not tolerate those amongst you who don’t. I’m reminded of a friend who was a member of the UAW, a minor union official who filed a grievance when a member of his crew was disciplined for urinating on the carpets that were to be installed in cars.
Grieved it? I think his own workmates should have pummeled the jerk. Doctors should not put up with drunken surgeons, police should not tolerate abusive officers. Not for nothing is the honour code of West Point “A Cadet will not lie, cheat, or steal nor will he tolerate those that do.”
There may be no remedy in law, but peer pressure works very well-if actions aren’t tolerated, they happen a whole lot less.
March 25th, 2011 at 4:02 am
I’m reminded of a friend who was a member of the UAW, a minor union official who filed a grievance when a member of his crew was disciplined for urinating on the carpets that were to be installed in cars.
What the fuck?
I mean, damn. I know that some ostensibly human shaped animals which are capable of half-articulating speech like noises will do anything they can get away with, simply because they can get away with it, and when put in a scenario where they can get away with just about anything because they’ll have assclowns defend their privilege of getting away with just about anything without consequences, they’ll take that to an extreme, but again, WTF?
I mean, that’s not simply “something you don’t do to A.) the people who are employing you, and B.) to your customers”, that’s “something you don’t do if you’re a toilet trained first world entity”. Fuck that, even fifth world savages know not to urinate on the pile of hides, into the basket of grain, on the blankets you’re trying to trade.
March 25th, 2011 at 5:34 am
Labrat wrote:
The explanation and clarification of African culture alone is very interesting…I’d reply: power you only have when your counterpart is content to humor you because things are going well is not power. It’s influence, to be sure…
…but this line of argument can be read as a threat: “Stay in your role and be happy there, at least you’re not being beaten and raped, because that’s what we’ll do if you don’t.”
Tangentially, this reminds me very vividly of a fictional society H. Rider Haggard put in Africa in She, and I now wonder how much it was based on his observations of native society while he was there:
H. Rider Haggard wrote:
“Does the lady go with us, my father?” I asked of Billali, as he stood superintending things in general.
He shrugged his shoulders as he answered—
“If she wills. In this country the women do what they please. We worship them, and give them their way, because without them the world could not go on; they are the source of life.”
“Ah,” I said, the matter never having struck me quite in that light before.
“We worship them,” he went on, “up to a point, till at last they get unbearable, which,” he added, “they do about every second generation.”
“And then what do you do?” I asked, with curiosity.
“Then,” he answered, with a faint smile, “we rise, and kill the old ones as an example to the young ones, and to show them that we are the strongest. My poor wife was killed in that way three years ago. It was very sad, but to tell thee the truth, my son, life has been happier since, for my age protects me from the young ones.”
Labrat wrote:
…Sumdood who kills his girlfriend because he suspected she’d been unfaithful- and the other dudes who inevitably make some kind of “yeah he was wrong to kill her, but she should never have…” half-justification of how he was perfectly understandable in enforcing his ownership of her…
I’m curious how you think this does-or doesn’t-relate to the “false rape accuser” trope, and how it’s perceived across the sex aisle. In those cases when it’s legitimate and necessary to discuss it, it feels from the male perspective like it’s impossible to ever mention the fact that not all men accused of rape are guilty, because online and in-person forums always immediately fill up with posts responding not to the actual statement, but to years (hell, millennia) of rape-apologists refusing to take any allegations seriously. It seems like “maybe he was wrong to kill her but come on cheating bitches amiright” and “maybe a presumption of guilt and restrictions on cross-examination aren’t usually okay but do you have any idea how many women get raped every day?” are… Well, maybe not obverse sides of the same intrasex-perspective coin, but at least it seems like they’re in the same roll of quarters.
March 25th, 2011 at 9:54 am
“To which I’d reply: power you only have when your counterpart is content to humor you because things are going well is not power. It’s influence, to be sure, but when things break down the second someone decides he doesn’t care what the biddy down the bush thinks, one sex is getting the short and extremely pointy end of the stick, and the other is not.”
- The implication here is that, if status doesn’t protect you when somebody decides societal status doesn’t matter, then society is fundamentally unfair. How can society be unfair when this situation only applies to individuals who disregard said society?
Given that men are stronger than women, unhealthy men will -always-, regardless of culture, be more likely to successfully assault and/or batter women than unhealthy women to assault and/or batter men; they have better means to do so. This argument effectively frames any society which doesn’t actively encourage violence against men by socially healthy women as unbalanced.
An excellent argument for gun rights, but I’m not really sure it matters in the context of arguing against a society.
March 25th, 2011 at 9:57 am
elmo, in my experience the reaction to the ‘not all men accused of rape are actually guilty of it’ is generally a combination of two things: first, that in a lot of cases it isn’t actually a relevant point to make. When I see it, it mostly pops up on an otherwise unrelated discussion; if the innocence or guilt of a particular man isn’t the topic at hand, comments like that tend to come across as derailing. Second, that there’s often an insistence on dwelling on the fact that false accusations happen, as if that’s the most important part of any discussion on rape.
Gender is an issue, yes, but in the sense that men are a relatively tiny minority of rape victims; going by gender alone, they’re more likely to identify with the accused. That’s not always a bad thing, but it can be.
And some of it is an overreaction, yes. But, I think, an understandible one.
March 25th, 2011 at 10:35 am
How can society be unfair when this situation only applies to individuals who disregard said society?
When the societal consequences are trivial to nonexistent for the person of higher status for abusing those of lower status. Specifically in the case of battering, both there and in our own history, men who beat up their wives may have been looked down on, but as a rule they aren’t/weren’t stopped either. Disapproval != jail.
This is the difference between both parties being recognized as having certain rights that may not be violated even if you look down on them, and only one party having such rights and the other being property.
March 25th, 2011 at 11:09 am
In our own history, men who beat other men up weren’t stopped, either; violence was not quite acceptable, but overlooked, as long as it stayed within certain limits; indeed, women enjoyed more protection than men. (The levels of acceptable violence varied by class, granted, but within classes, women were more protected than men.)
I don’t think that’s a very good litmus test of social status, as it implies historically, men, who were universally subject to more violence, were the lower class, which I think other tests of social status would strongly conflict with. (Masculinists, indeed, sometimes try to use that very litmus test to prove men to be the greater victims.)
But as I understood it, the discussion didn’t even address functional societies, but areas in which everything had gone to shit, and society no longer mattered as such.
March 25th, 2011 at 11:21 am
aebhel,
I agree, hence my italicized note: in those cases when it’s legitimate and necessary to discuss it, the fact that the accused is innocent until proven guilty gets drowned out in spillover accusations of derailing and dwelling that would be appropriate in another context but are themselves “derailing” in the context at hand.
To me, this looks very similar to spillover complaints some men make about the horrors of feminine infidelity in cases where such complaints are inappropriate or trivial, such as the girlfriend-murder cases Labrat was talking about.
I think both are entirely understandable: the evil cheating bitch and the evil rape-dismissing man become totemic, and when somebody says something that reminds you of those totems, it can take conscious effort to get past the associations that come up automatically. Not to say that understandable means just hunky-dory, mind you. I agree completely that guys who imply that a cheating woman should expect to get killed are way out of line and are contributing dramatically to the kind of intersex communication breakdown we’re discussing.
March 25th, 2011 at 11:50 am
I remember you, Orphan. I recall distinctly that you were asked to leave, not just from my site, because of your habit of reframing any given argument until it was the one you wanted to prove, then arguing until any opposition collapsed in exhaustion or the owner of the blog ran out of patience, whichever came first.
I will have less patience for the second round if this is still your M.O.
In our own history, men who beat other men up weren’t stopped, either; violence was not quite acceptable, but overlooked, as long as it stayed within certain limits; indeed, women enjoyed more protection than men. (The levels of acceptable violence varied by class, granted, but within classes, women were more protected than men.)
This is just flatly inaccurate. For one, this discussion is not confined to America, modern or otherwise; it’s essentially global, but if you want to talk about the specifically Anglo Western culture, for the vast bulk of that history it was recognized as a man’s right to “correct” his wife and no one else’s business. For two, there weren’t laws specifically abrogating that “right” for quite awhile here, either. For three, they were very often unenforced specifically because those who were in the position to felt it was essentially none of their business. None of this history is difficult to access, and you are either making strong assertions from ignorance, which would be foolish, or being disingenuous.
I don’t think that’s a very good litmus test of social status,
It’s not a litmus test for social status. The litmus test for social status would be “for the bulk of human history in most cultures, women had fewer rights than men based on an explicitly patriarchal social structure”. This isn’t fucking guesswork, it’s a history of legal codes.
But as I understood it, the discussion didn’t even address functional societies, but areas in which everything had gone to shit, and society no longer mattered as such.
Then you understand incorrectly. Societies which have broken down were one small part of an overall discussion of the culture of manhood across place and time and the degree to which it has included attitudes of ownership and control of women, which have both very explicit manifestations like actually legally owning your wife and more subtle manifestations like why rape apology exists to the degree it does and why abuse may be dismissed.
Argue honestly, about the actual argument, or get the hell out of my comments section. I have no intention of wasting my weekend playing games with you.
March 25th, 2011 at 12:20 pm
You did ask me to stop arguing, you didn’t ask me to leave your site, as I recall. If that was your request I will honor it.
Regarding America, you’re arguing with a different position than the one I was proposing; I’m not arguing it wasn’t overlooked when men beat up their wives, I’m arguing it was overlooked when men beat up other men, as well. Violence was more acceptable on a broader basis; focusing exclusively on domestic violence, and ignoring violence that more broadly filled society, seems like confirmation bias to me.
Phrases like “Take it outside, boys” or “You want to take this out back” exemplify this concept: Violence as a means of resolving differences was to some extent socially acceptable. Women were not acceptable targets -except- by their husbands (within social classes, at least); this represents two social inequalities simultaneously, both an increased protection and a sense of ownership. The violence was not a special problem for women, the ownership was.
My issue was that you tried to use it as a test for the viability of these cultures; which I read as, “They have domestic violence, therefore their views of gender are fucked up.” If domestic violence is where a disproportionate expression of violence takes place, I think that’s a valid criticism, but domestic violence without a discussion of how violence is applied more generally within a society doesn’t say much.
I wasn’t criticizing your entire discussion, just a specific point, where I believe you were responding to a specific claim. (I believe this is the complaint you had with me last time, as well. I can disagree with you on one point and still agree with you on everything else.)
March 25th, 2011 at 12:35 pm
You did ask me to stop arguing, you didn’t ask me to leave your site, as I recall. If that was your request I will honor it.
No, I just got to the point where I was ready to if you didn’t comply, and even more fed up with you after encounters elsewhere. My mistake of memory.
Regarding America, you’re arguing with a different position than the one I was proposing; I’m not arguing it wasn’t overlooked when men beat up their wives, I’m arguing it was overlooked when men beat up other men, as well. Violence was more acceptable on a broader basis; focusing exclusively on domestic violence, and ignoring violence that more broadly filled society, seems like confirmation bias to me.
And it seems like derailing to me to take a conversation about patriarchal attitudes mixed up in the overarching culture of manhood and try to turn it into a conversation about violence period and then from there try to make domestic violence equivalent to two men deciding to beat the crap out of each other outside a bar.
Domestic violence has a context. This discussion is, in part, about that context. It is not about who wins and who loses overall. (“Sure, I may beat you up because I own you and I feel the need to reinforce that periodically, but I get into more fights than you too! Can’t you see this is really about my pain?”)
My issue was that you tried to use it as a test for the viability of these cultures; which I read as, “They have domestic violence, therefore their views of gender are fucked up.”
No. Stop making other people’s posts about whatever it is you want to discuss. It’s not about the viability of cultures, it’s about degrees and expressions of patriarchal attitudes considered as a whole of “man culture”, with various specific examples used to demonstrate the point.
It is not about violence overall. It is not about who has racked up the most total deaths and injuries. It is about gender roles, what culture we inherit with those gender roles, and how that dynamic can play out, sometimes in terms of violence.
March 25th, 2011 at 1:09 pm
I’m not trying to rewrite your post as something other than it is; when I tell you what I think you wrote, I’m not doing this to tell you what you wrote, but to tell you my interpretations. It’s a habit I’ve developed precisely -because- of these kinds of misunderstandings; it gives people an opportunity to correct my interpretation, rather than leaving us both arguing against imaginary straw men and wondering why on earth the other person is making these retarded statements that have nothing to do with what was just written. I’ve found that it usually makes arguments go smoother and prevents topics from getting derailed.
As far as I can tell the guy has basically said that the societies in question are fundamentally patriarchal (tribe owns men, men own women), so if you are indeed trying to argue that they’re more patriarchal, I think your argument is as misdirected as mine.
If you’re arguing that the patriarchy gives rise to domestic violence as an expression of that patriarchy, I think my criticism still works. My argument is not that men are victims, too (I just mocked masculinists for that very thing), it is that the violence may have nothing whatsoever to do with the patriarchy, and everything to do with societal attitude towards violence.
And if you’re make a different argument, please tell me. I’ll drop it if the third try is no better, because at that point it’s pretty clear we’re speaking different languages.
March 25th, 2011 at 1:55 pm
As far as I can tell the guy has basically said that the societies in question are fundamentally patriarchal (tribe owns men, men own women), so if you are indeed trying to argue that they’re more patriarchal, I think your argument is as misdirected as mine.
At this point I’m seriously wondering if you read what either of us wrote.
He acknowledged the tribal arrangement is explicitly partriarchal, which was part of my point, then went on to explain how that culture differs from our culture in more detail, which includes patriarchy but also includes values we’re less familiar with/a structure we’d find unacceptably collective. He made the argument that it works when the society is not in chaos, and I made the argument that when we take a society we’re familiar with, have statistics on, and also includes an explicitly patriarchal structure, rates of abuse remain high even though the society is not in chaos or collapse, i.e. undermining the argument that women have any significantly mitigating power in such an arrangement.
Where you got me arguing that African tribal culture is more patriarchal than Peter said, I have no idea.
If you’re arguing that the patriarchy gives rise to domestic violence as an expression of that patriarchy, I think my criticism still works. My argument is not that men are victims, too (I just mocked masculinists for that very thing), it is that the violence may have nothing whatsoever to do with the patriarchy, and everything to do with societal attitude towards violence.
Dude I honestly cannot tell when you’re making a serious argument and when you’re joking most of the time.
I’m arguing that aspects of that patriarchal dynamic feed into the domestic violence dynamic, not that it has a 1:1 relationship with it. As to that, read the second linked article; it’s a pretty intensive and heavily footnoted analysis of exactly that subject. Different forms of violence have different dynamics and happen for different reasons.
Sure, if you pull your view sufficiently far back violence is violence, but if you pull your view sufficiently far back pretty much no distinction is significant.
March 25th, 2011 at 2:44 pm
If your argument is that there is not a quantitative but a qualitative difference which means differences in other forms of violence can be ignored - I’m not really sure how to address that statement, except that I disagree.
March 25th, 2011 at 3:06 pm
Lab Rat
Perception is the key along with expectations. It is reactionary vs proactive. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a useful construct in viewing behavior; a criticism is that it’s based on individualistic society vs collective based society. That’s where Peter and you are hung up; coming from differen’t perspectives and expectations.
Noel
March 25th, 2011 at 3:22 pm
I’m not really sure how to address that statement, except that I disagree.
Nor am I. Why is making a post about certain attitudes and the ways in which they are used to justify and enable a certain kind of violence, and then keeping the ensuing topic restricted to that, “ignoring other kinds of violence”?
Again, if you want to have a different discussion, WRITE YOUR OWN FUCKING BLOG POST. Gender roles, the perception thereof, and the darker side of traditional masculinity is what this post is about. It is not about what cultures are better than what, it is not about violence as a whole, it is not about about whether men or women suffer more violence, I don’t know what the hell it is you want to talk about except that this is not it.
March 25th, 2011 at 3:36 pm
They disable a different kind of violence, something you seem to be insisting is irrelevant.
This is like a boss reprimanding me for having 20% of my sick days be on Mondays, and telling me I’m going off topic for pointing out this is normal for a weekday. You’re effectively arguing that we should focus only on the negatives of patriarchy, a position which seems ridiculous.
March 25th, 2011 at 3:39 pm
You have just demonstrated that you either did not read the post itself, or chose to read only those bits that reinforced whatever agenda you have. Prior to that you have demonstrated you read none of the linked material, and that you’re willing to essentially change arguments as long as you’re still arguing.
Get out, and stay out. You have wasted enough of my time and bandwidth and I am done with you.
March 25th, 2011 at 9:26 pm
Hey lady, can I buy you a drink?
I read “If” to my daughter’s third grade class a couple of weeks ago. I started out by explaining that these qualities were certainly ones that a father would want to see his son demonstrate, but also made clear that they would be something that I would want my daughter to display upon becoming a grown woman.
They liked “Yertle The Turtle” better.
March 26th, 2011 at 7:04 am
There is (as with most things) more than one thread involved in “masculinity”. Re-reading the first post here (the response to Peter and North), I grasp (I think) the objection feminists have to a patriarchy that considers them chattel. I would object to a matriarchy that treated me as chattel too. I think I can see “elimination of the patriarchy” as a laudable eventual goal. (But I’m a radical individualist anarchist, so, I would tend to think so. *shrug*) There is likely some question to be worked out about whether that’s something we can do now, since there will be some positive things a patriarchy might do better than a truly individualist society (war, probably), and in the world we live in we may need to continue to be able to do those things efficiently.
It’s a lot like the observation I had when reading Peter’s posts about Africa, that much like some Native tribal societies here in America, where a subsistence level existence required the full cooperation of the tribe. One person being an individualist might not lead to just the death of that person, but the death of the entire tribe. Of course this leads to taboos about individualist behaviour. Thus, in a world in which we need to wage violent war, patriarchal attitudes and structures may be of survival benefit in the short term.
I think the problem that North was trying to touch on was that the feminists who have sought to reform masculinity didn’t really understand what they were looking at, and threw the baby out with the bathwater. That there was (perhaps) a feeling of “Men smoke cigars and eat steak and swear and smell funny after they’ve been under the car for a couple hours and batter wives and rape and generally keep women in a subservient position, so if we get them to stop smoking cigars, eating steak, etc, we’ll get rid of the other things we dislike too.”
And what’s really needed is a renaissance of the medieval Knightly Virtues, only, with a uniquely 21st century bent of applying them to everyone and not indulging in the peasant girl rape and peasant slaughter that generally gets left out of the storybooks. Yes, from the historical lens we can see that those guys were generally a bunch of fucking bastards, but there are good parts of their philosophy which can be cherrypicked, basically. Defence of the innocent and the weak. Personal honor dependent on being honest, and brave, and true, and loyal. Scholarship. Stoicism. And of course, being the 21st century, we can recognize that there’s no reason not to instill some humans with these traits, simply because they have ovaries and breasts.
So, while I concur with the premise that there’s nothing inherently related to testes that calls for steak and cigars and whiskey, there’s nothing really wrong with those things either, and leaving them while excising the “ownership of women” mindset is a more valuable goal. Which I think is what you already said, so I suppose that means I’m just repeating back to you to demonstrate that I get your point. If I did.
March 26th, 2011 at 7:16 am
LabRat,
As an avowed individualist, laissez-faire capitalist, libertarian, and part-time Objectivist, I tend to avoid self-identified “radical feminist” sites like the plague; the groupthink and in-group jargon is like fingernails on a blackboard to me…
…and yet your recently-departed guest nearly actually caused me to use “mansplaining” and “but what about the menz?” in a reply. I feel dirty.
March 26th, 2011 at 10:43 am
Perl, that was an excellent and much shorter summation of what I was trying to say, yes. At the moment I’m strongly considering making it a post of its own just for its value as a distillation. With your permission.
Tam- I know, right? Admitting those people actually have a really valid point from time to time was kinda nauseating for me too.
Matt G- after they grow up it’ll be one of those childhood things they value mostly in the hindsight, since the concepts expressed are very adult in the nonsexual sense.
If we’re lucky, anyway.
March 26th, 2011 at 1:20 pm
Heh, I guess that means I actually grasped your point. You are more than welcome to use any portion of it you wish to quote, in part or whole, or just riff off of it to make another post.
March 26th, 2011 at 6:24 pm
“Admitting those people actually have a really valid point from time to time ”
Yes, asking you not to kill us, rape us, or deny medical care so we are forced into childbirth is so annoying for you to hear.
“The strong, gentlemanly role models of masculinity are good, and needed, and Daddy Bear encapsulated quite nicely what that should be, and gladdeningly often is, though still isn’t true quite often enough. We need to socialize children with a clear idea of virtue, and responsibility, and what it means to be a member of their gender,”
Strong nurturing role models are good and needed. We need to socialize children with a clear idea of virtue and responsibility and what it means to be human. Some men are weak, disabled, and need protection. Some women are strong. We should celebrate intelligence and strength, and raise children to use both with wisdom.
Because when we socialize them to be MEN then many of the grow up to RAPE AND KILL WOMEN. Which many women think is not good.
March 26th, 2011 at 7:34 pm
Just Saying,
“Because when we socialize them to be MEN then many of the grow up to RAPE AND KILL WOMEN. Which many women think is not good.”
Are you mansplaining to LabRat how things really are? Because that’s just fucking hilarious…
March 26th, 2011 at 8:32 pm
Just Saying-Implicit in your comment is that men growing up to kill men is just hunky-dory. Thanks a whole bunch.
March 26th, 2011 at 8:41 pm
There is a long HISTORY of this post EXCHANGE including PRIOR POSTS OF MINE that you very clearly have not READ, and I would like you to GO DO THAT because that is what the CONVERSATION is ABOUT.
Otherwise get the fuck off my PORCH and stop making so many ASSUMPTIONS.