“The media may not be the mainspring of misogyny. It can feed into it, but the school system is also important; it enables bullying as well as less coercive forms of peer pressure.”
Good point. Psychological violence (ridicule, name-calling) in schools is a serious problem.
]]>I suppose supportive parents can inoculate their children against some of the damage of sex stereotypes – those which support patriarchy as well as those which contradict it. And friends can do that for their friends. In my case, I had the supportive family but the wrong inoculations, so to speak, so I can’t really say.
The media may not be the mainspring of misogyny. It can feed into it, but the school system is also important; it enables bullying as well as less coercive forms of peer pressure. Later on there are job pressures. The media does push the cult of testosterone.
]]>“I think it’s safe to say for example, that when I was a boy, I was a lot more hurt by the bullies who constantly harassed and occasionally physically terrorized me over their perception that I didn’t live up to their notion of appropriate heterosexual masculinity, than I was by dumb gender humor perpetrated by ad men or bad sitcoms or stand-up comics. How about you?)
I mean, look, if this issue is your bag, go for it; but I hope you won’t begrudge it if I’m occupied with different issues.”
Personally I wasn’t bullied into a particular gender role when I was a boy. On the other hand, I recollect watching angry women on tv shows saying how awful men are and blaming them collectively for their oppression or watching that dumb gender humor. I was 13 and I was going between feeling angry thinking “women must hate men” and feeling guilty for being an oppressive male.
Our experiences may differ because we are different or because we grew up in different social settings, but this isn’t about you and me and our personal preoccupations.
It’s about the present Orwellian system, the social engineering methods it employs to its narrow benefit and whether libertarianism should have anything to say about them.
If someone is against patriarchy because they are only against what has hurt them personally, fine. But if someone is against the system, I’d expect them in addition to confronting patriarchy, to address the issues I’ve raised as well.
The totalitarian left certainly won’t. How about the libertarian left?
]]>To your heartwrenching replies, I can only say that it deeply saddens me that anything like what you’ve described actually goes on. I suppose that because I have no personal recollection of having been exposed to influences “teaching” either that (i)women were ONLY good for sex and procreation, or that (ii) there was no such thing as marital rape, I must have slid into the position that my experience was at least representative if not nigh universal in this regard. However, even assuming you’re right, that the death of these views has been exaggerated, I would still submit to you that they are contended with the more subtle (if still sinister) ones that I tried to sketch out.
Charles,
Thanks for your reply. I agree with basically all you’ve said here, except that these days (perhaps more than hitherto) the cultural pressures for women to do the things I mentioned are nearly-always framed in terms of the (i) occupational, (ii) sexual, and (iii)maternal/uxorial fulfillment of the women themselves (and no doubt there is some actual fulfillment to be had this way).
However, I think that the bosses are often the true beneficiaries of the first of these (because supposedly only participation in the cash-nexus is supposed to “count” as worthy); men, the beneficiary of the second (because they can easily take advantage of the norms coming out of this strand of the sexual-liberation encouraging availability and nonchalance among women when it suits their own purposes); and the fertility-clinic-pharmaceutical sector, the third (because women seeking to conceive in their late thirties and beyond give rise to something like 80% of medically-cognizable fertility issues).
]]>I agree that there’s a lot in the SCUM Manifesto that is really brilliant parody and satire. (The essay as a whole is extremely funny.) But, based on what Valerie Solanas said about it in later interviews, I don’t think that the entire thing can be read as satirical. A lot of the biological essentialist stuff is definitely reflective of her own views.
Araglin,
I agree with what Marja and Anonymous have said about how common misogyny, in its vilest and most explicit forms, is if you scratch the surface of politeness even a little (especially in all-male spaces).
I’d also like to add that (1) you’re right to suspect that the messages you’re talking about still have something to do with patriarchy. And (2) that when you listed four life-defining goals that you think malestream society suggests women can and must
do to have it all
and live a successful life, three of those life-shaping goals (2, 3, 4) are explicitly and directly about the woman successfully fulfilling the sexual and reproductive needs of men.
(So long as the lessons
being taught about sexual attractiveness, sexual adventurousness and availability, and mothering/wifing are being taught on the presumption that the woman is heterosexual. And in this heteropatriarchal society of ours, I think the lessons are pretty much always taught on that presumption.) So I don’t think that the lessons
you’re talking about, if those are the lessons being taught in malestream media and culture, are anything other than a slight variation on the same old lessons Marja was discussing.
Nicholas,
Do you think this is something to be taken lightly,
No.
or is the psychological damage inflicted on men and boys an important issue?
Sure it’s an important issue, but as psychological damage
goes, I can think of a lot of bigger concerns for feminist politics — including bigger concerns about how boys and men are bullied, browbeaten, traumatized, stifled, or terrorized into a particular gender role — than sitcom portrayals of men as doofuses or lechers. (I think it’s safe to say for example, that when I was a boy, I was a lot more hurt by the bullies who constantly harassed and occasionally physically terrorized me over their perception that I didn’t live up to their notion of appropriate heterosexual masculinity, than I was by dumb gender humor perpetrated by ad men or bad sitcoms or stand-up comics. How about you?)
I mean, look, if this issue is your bag, go for it; but I hope you won’t begrudge it if I’m occupied with different issues.
Me:
If your claim is that the portrayal of men these kinds of sitcoms, ads, etc. tend to subordinate men to women, or somehow reflect or express some kind of subordination of men to women, or that they somehow redound to the benefit of women as a class…
Nicholas:
No. I think they benefit the ruling elite who control the media to the detriment of middle class men.
O.K. Then I largely agree with you. But that’s why I’d consider this an example of classism, not an example of sexism against men
(if, again, sexism
is being used to describe a structured system of class power).