In this post, I briefly venture into the feminist toolshed.
lindabeth queries:
Feminism is a critical tool, that can be taken up by anyone…so why don’t any of you use feminism to critique how the production of masculinity by patriarchy harms men?
Like feminists, I believe that we live a system that harms people through gendered norms and practices. It was feminist analysis that originally made this system visible, and feminist analysis is a major inspiration of my analysis of that system.
Feminists created the critical tool of analyzing sexist images and stereotypes in the media, yet they only use that tool against sexist representations of women, while ignoring, trivializing, or excusing, sexist representations of men. Feminists asked “who benefits?”, but the only answer they seem to come up with is “men,” while I would say, “sometimes men and sometimes women, depending on the context, and depending on which men and which women we are talking about.” Another feminist tool is to analyze advantages assigned based on gender: they observed how certain types of power and privilege that are assigned to men, while ignoring the types of power and privilege that women are more likely to hold.
I love many of the critical tools of feminism; I wish that feminists would use them more often. It’s as if feminists developed these great critical tools, used them for a little while, and became convinced that they had found all the answers and didn’t need those tools anymore. So they threw them away, or continued to apply them only in a limited manner, when a more consistent and thorough application of those very tools would have led to more complex conclusions. I can pick up those tools where feminists dropped them, but then feminists won’t call what I do with them “feminism”… so I won’t either.
In what sense exactly is feminism a critical tool? From what I have seen it resembles literary criticism. Of what use is literary criticism in analyzing social structures? Wouldn’t sociological or anthropological tools be more appropriate? Or do you mean to say that feminism is a sociological endeavor?
I guess what I probably mean is a form of moral criticism (e.g. criticism of sexism, criticism of gender stereotypes, criticism of things which are said to be natural or innate to men and women but really aren’t). The point of this post is that some of the ethical standards that feminists use to judge society are correct, and the problem is not necessarily with the idea, but with the way feminists fail to apply it consistently.
Hugh,
Feminists are just over the top with their own legitimate issues (such as street harassment and date rape) and end up indirectly trivializing it…
I don’t think feminism is a critical tool. Gender analysis is toolset, which, properly applied, can certainly yield great insights into the status of men.
For example, as I’ve pointed out, more than 90% of those dying in the chaos of Iraq are men. There are several reasons for this. One of them is that Iraqi society, like our own, and perhaps even more so, puts great value on protecting women and children from physical harm. In order to do so, men must put themselves at risk, and literally take the bullet for their women.
Without the tool of gender analysis, one would not even think to ask the question, let alone answer it. But feminism can’t reach this answer. Feminism starts with its conclusion that women are the victims and men the oppressors. Inconvenient facts are ignored, suppressed, or interpretted away.
Feminism starts with its conclusion that women are the victims and men the oppressors. Inconvenient facts are ignored, suppressed, or interpretted away
In other words, Backwards reasoning.
Ahh, how wonderful “feminist analysis” must be. The answer is always known in advance and the only intellectual effort is in the part where you arrange all the interpretation around the conclusion. Sure, the interpretations may conflict in a dozen ways, but the answer never changes.
My Bible says the earth was created in 7 days. And yet there are dinosaur fossils… obviously, the dinosaurs were put there to test our faith. Because they drowned in Noah’s flood.
Hugh…i for one think you are dead on here.
I just had an odd experience on another forum. Basically, I was asking a question about an apparent double-standard within feminism, and I was replied-to with “You haven’t read feminist theory.” When I said that there’s a difference between READING feminist theory and ACCEPTING feminist theory, I was challenged to provide a list of which “feminist theorists” I have read. I commented that it’s like saying I can’t have opinions about environmental issues without having read an approved list of environmentalist’s books, followed by providing a list, along with the caveat that I fully expected to be dismissed because the list would probably be rejected as not being a good enough list or not containing enough “real” feminists.
The person who’d asked for the list of feminist theorists ignored the list in entirety, then dismissed me with a set of mocking statements because of something I’d said in a different post.
Really, now, apart from being a blatant form of evasion, is there any other point of demanding a list of “feminist theorists” and then ignoring the list once it’s provided? Are the defenders of feminism really so desperate to avoid debate that they’ll make you jump through hoops and find some other reason to run-off once you’ve jumped through them?
Ridiculous.
Really, that is the LAST time I am EVER going to take the demand “which feminist theorists have you read?” as a serious inquiry in the context of a debate.
Aych
It’s called “101-ing” (“Have you done Feminism 101, yet?” “You haven’t even done Prostitution 101, have you?” “What do you know about it, you haven’t done Astrology 101.”)
You may have noticed that the people doing the interrogating never reproduce all those killer arguments which are, apparently, to be found in the sacred texts. They’re great arguments, but only initiates can know what they are.
Feminists, however, are never challenged in this way.
Daran said:
This is a good point; I think that many feminists, especially non-internet feminists, are simply unaware of the excesses present in many feminist writings. They seem to be people who hear that feminist is for “equality” and against “sexism,” and they think, “wow, feminism is great! I’m a feminist too!” But these people have never read anything by a radical feminist, so when they hear criticisms of feminism, they are genuinely hurt and confused. It is a rare person, feminist or anti-feminist, who can provide an informed defense or critique of feminism.
If a feminist talks about a wage gap ask them what economic theorists they have read..
Actually, it depends on the feminist (wrt to the challenging thing)
aych,
Was that other forum at alternet by any chance???
beste: I barely read alternet. This was in a university discussion forum.
leta: that’s actually a pretty good one. On some level, I imagine that the more intelligent feminists must understand that the claim of the wage gap being caused by discrimination and no other reasons is hard to buy, seeing as how they’re not exactly advertising the next logical step, which is to loudly point-out that employers could save a lot of money if they only hired females. That would surely be a boon to women who are under-employed, women who lack job experience, women just out of college and so on. But saying the words “wage gap” can only be useful up to a certain point, I guess.
Aych,
I didn’t think it was you, but your story jogged my memory, so I had to ask.
I would say that how the feminists dealt with Q30 on the “My Pet Bimbo” thread almost matches your story.
They wonder why people generalize about feminists
As a whole I’m not overly impressed with the “Feminist Analysis Toolbox” it is very similar to literary criticism as others have pointed out, and in general I’ve never been too keen on that methodology either. So perhaps my disdain for literary criticism bubbles over into this.
The criticisms sometimes will tell interesting narratives, they may even be incredibly convincing, but I always found them to be lacking in falsifiability particularly when it comes to nebulous ideas such as the patriarchy. I see little difference between the patriarchy and a Marxist world view, and I see neither of them as particularly testable. I’ve always found methods such as rational choice (but not realism), game theory and statistical methods far more compelling.
But I’m willing to concede it might be because of my training as a political scientist and an economist. Which I guess would also lend me to have some belief in Institutional Power summed up as “Where people stand depends on where they sit”. For example that since I ‘sit’ with economists I am more inclined to ‘stand’ for rational choice theory.
But what would everyone else say in the competing ideas of political thought? I know rational choice is considered far fetched in many circles and institutional theory tends to be advocated almost exclusively by members of bureaucracies.
So I guess the “which feminist theorists have you read” question is just a scam and is done in bad faith.
I can’t help but wonder: does the person pulling this kind of cheap scam KNOW that it’s just a cheap scam?
“I don’t think feminism is a critical tool. Gender analysis is toolset, which, properly applied, can certainly yield great insights into the status of men.”
See, I disagree with this, because it is overly narrow of a tool set. Such a technique biases itself to some conclusions over others.*
For example when analyzing marriage/families, the gender analysis tool set seems predisposed to deciding that it is the result of a pressure on women to give up their job and a pressure on men to keep theirs.
By contrast if one was using game theory and economic analysis, one assumes that the people making the choices have thought them through, and the choice is indicative of their own preferences.
For example marriage might be worth more to women, and thus the benefit is more likely to outweigh the cost then it is for their potential husband. Alternatively women may typically marry someone older then them. Because the man is older he is more likely to be further along in his career. Thus the optimum for them is for the man to continue working because he is earning the most. The idea of societal pressure would be only one hypothesis amongst many instead of the primary hypothesis.
But beyond all this, the assumption of exogenous factors allows for a very disturbing trend. In economics it takes a lot of effort to begin accusing your subjects of being irrational, because the central assumption to most of this is just the opposite. By contrast feminist tools have led largely to browbeating of those who disagree, as hoodwinked or confused.
*Now if you mean roughly simply looking at differences between genders then I’d suggest that would be a subject, not a tool set. I assumed that you mean viewing things through the lens of a “gender system”, if not ignore this post
It’s as if feminists developed these great critical tools, used them for a little while, and became convinced that they had found all the answers and didn’t need those tools anymore.
Who are you talking about?
They’re great arguments, but only initiates can know what they are.
Oh come on, Tom. You know exactly what they are.
Feminists, however, are never challenged in this way.
It depends on the subject. If it’s transgenderism, sex work, stripping, modeling, etc… you may get ejected from the premises, let alone “challenged”…(You guys know Heart won’t let me post at her Women’s Space, right?)
Feminists challenge each other constantly. I think we could do with a lot less of it, actually.
Carol Gilligan
… was a real asshole to me on the phone when I was doing customer service. It made me wonder how academic feminists/feminist theorists treat women in their daily lives, as opposed to activist feminists (like, say, Hillary), who have ongoing contact with many types of women in the real world.
I heard Catherine MacKinnon had a tantrum at the U Mich library, with the (mostly female) staff, too, but that’s probably just wicked gossip…
No, Daisy, if someone tells me that there are arguments which would convincingly support their position, but that I couldn’t hope to understand them as my knowledge of feminist theory is inadequate, then there are but two conclusions to be drawn. (1) They actually have no arguments and play “101″ as a get-out-of-a-tight-corner-free card. (2) They are aware of having themselves accepted a theoretical justification for their position but have never had to actually reproduce it in front of a sceptical interlocutor before and correctly fear that it won’t stand up to rational scrutiny.
Tom: Or (3) they believe that men really cannot understand feminist theory anyway because it’s too difficult for our male pea-brains to grasp.
So, Daisy, do you think the people who pull-out this “101″ game as a cheap scam to avoid debate do so while fully aware that it’s a cheap scam to avoid debate?
About “101ing” — I think there are two things that happen there. I’m sure there are a percentage of jerks who are using it as an underhanded trick, sure. But I also think that in some contexts, feminists (or any other group) can reasonably ask that the 101-type discussions get redirected, in order to create a space for intra-feminist debate. There are many deep rifts in feminism, so feminists (especially online) often want to have feminist-only discussions where those longstanding issues can be addressed.
If you’re in a thread (or whatever) that’s open to the whole ideological spectrum, where the intention is for feminists to engage with non- and anti-feminists (like here at FCB), pulling the 101 card may in fact be a “cheap scam.” But, the vast majority of the times that I’ve seen comments like that made, it was in response to non-feminists commenters who were butting into feminists spaces and derailing important conversations.
F: Our society is a patriarchy in which men are valued over women.
FC: Where is the evidence?
F: Go take feminism 101.
FC: I now have been effectively shut up because the focus has shifted from challenging the assertion to sending me on a wild goose chase through the whole of feminist literature for proof of the original assertion. Unfortunately for me all feminist literature assumes but does not prove that assertion. Perhaps a better initial question would be:
What feminist literature proves that we live in a patriarchal society that values men over women?
Daisy Bond,
The majority of time I’ve seen 101 scam used is to deflect legitimate criticize. Same goes for “Check your privilege” scam.
Daisy, sounds like a somewhat reasonable take on it, but why is it that not buying-in to the feminist worldview seems to automatically exempt one from discussing it? It’s as if I were to say to you that not accepting Jesus as your Savior exempts you from being able to discuss Christianity.
If anything, accepting Jesus as your Savior will increase the chances that you’ll be less-capable of discussing Christianity with any kind of objectivity or even-handedness, not to mention taking notice of the stuff in the Bible which doesn’t make any sense.
typhonblue said:
Go read feminism 101 and you will know
Yes, but what if I did and… oh bother…
we live in a patriarchy thats why men are better off.
men are better off that is why its called a patriarchy.
Daisy:
A while back, I said:
I mean looking at the way gender assumptions influence the way situations are viewed and analysed. The phenomenon of male victim invisibility, for example, is exposed through gender analysis of the media.
Here’s another thing: I’ve noticed that one preferred method of discourse on some feminist blogs (does it count as an analytical tool?) is that when a dissident comment is posted, the comment will be misrepresented, perhaps misrepresented WAY beyond recognition, and then this misrepresentation will be treated as if it were the genuine item.
How did feminists ever get the impression that this wasn’t a childish thing to do?
Indeed. Here’s an example of precisely this pattern.
However I feel you’re doing the same to Hugh and myself with your uncharitable interpretation of the term “analytical tool”. Of course we are not referring to these modes of dissimulation when we use that expression.
C: God is a big, bearded guy in the sky.
NC: Where is the evidence?
C: Go read the bible.
NC: Nowhere does the bible *prove* there is a big, bearded god-man in the sky.
The only difference? Christians seem to be somewhat aware that their ‘facts’ are really articles of faith.
Thematic-Device said:
I share disdain for literary criticism. I don’t want to defend every tool in the feminist toolbox. I do want to point out that some of those tools developed (and then abandoned) by feminists are useful and worthwhile. For example, our discussion of misandry is intellectually indebted to feminist analysis of misogyny. If feminists had followed through on analysis of sexism, they would be talking about misandry, too, as an important concept.
But they aren’t, which is evidence for the theory of feminism as an initially positive force (at least in many ways), that, somewhere down the line, took a wrong turn.
Hugh Ristik:
But I’m not entirely certain its entirely useful either. For example, on the thread ‘Signal Confusion’ there were three separate analysis on the issue of privilege, one viewed it as an inherent misogyny, another as inherent misandry, and mine viewed it as generally neutral, and neither side having a privilege simply by the fact of who approaches who.
As it stands none of the sides can convince anyone else since everyone has their own take on it based on how they described it.
By contrast one could turn it into a game.
At the bottom node, “nature” as a player decides whether the date turns out well or not, if the woman accepted, if it was good, both benefit, if it was bad, both are penalized. One node up the woman is deciding whether or not to accept, if she rejects the guy, she takes small penalty (to signify the chance that it becomes really awkward) and the guy takes a larger penalty (both in hit to self esteem, and the chance that the girl tells all her friends what a loser he was), one node above that the guy is debating whether or not to approach, if he does not neither take any penalty, if he does then he faces the entire chain I just described.
Now we can look at a series of descriptions of misandry vs misogyny and I don’t think it’ll be very successful in convincing opponents, or we could look at a formula like the one above and figure out who is taking on the greater risk.
We could also model the decision making of numerous individuals, and use the statistics available to us to generate an accurate picture of the situation. Further it allows us to figure out what information would be most beneficial to the people in the bar. In general it allows us to look at the whatever issues we want, but I find it yields better results and doesn’t get bogged down in the debates of who is privileged, and who is oppressed. It keeps the language neutral.
Literary criticism– which is, incidentally, the discipline from which Women’s Studies emerged in the late 60′s– is not simply less than useful for social analysis, it is a methodology which encourages cherry-picking of information and working backwards to support predetermined conclusions. Really, I don’t see how “feminist theory” can even be called “theory” because it doesn’t predict a certain conclusion, it guarantees a certain conclusion.
The conclusion: Men are to blame for everything bad, women are a powerlessly oppressed group and are to blame for nothing, therefore men are guilty and need to be punished for centuries of oppression. The only intellectual task remaining is to arrange the evidence around the conclusion. It’s no more honest than painting a target pattern around a bullet hole and claiming a bulls-eye.
I think literary criticism – avowedly non-scientific but frequently illuminating – needs to be distinguished from literary critical theory: a jargonized, irrational development of certain strands in continental philosophy. Many of critical theory’s tricks and evasions do, indeed, flourish amongst certain schools of feminism.
Tom Nolan
Where do you make this distinction though? I don’t really see any distinctions between say:
Puar, Jasbir “Abu Ghraib: Arguing Against Exceptionalism” (Feminist Studies, Summer 2004)
Mason, Carol “Hillbilly Defense: Culturally Mediating U.S. Terror at Home and Abroad” (NWSA Journal, Fall 2005)
versus the ridiculous analysis of the show Firefly that was linked to a number of times. As a believer in critical rationalism, I just don’t see the usefulness in coming up with untestable theories. Can’t the same goals be accomplished more effectively with a different technique?
Can’t the same goals be accomplished more effective with a different technique?
You mean with scientific methods? There seems to be a kind of anti-science animus within some strands of feminism.
If you look-back at the so-called “Science Wars”, prominent feminists academics were among the coalition of “critical theorists” who assailed the scientific methods as being too “male” or “vertical” and therefore in dire need of women’s special “connected knowing” or whatever as a corrective measure. One favorite tactic was to criticize scientific terminology rather than the substance. Their critiques died-down by the late ’90s because it just got too ridiculous and didn’t go anywhere, I guess.
Scientific tools, since it is said that men came up with them, are simply no good, I reckon.
Literary criticism (George Orwell on Dickens, for example, or Edmund Wilson on Proust) can do without specialist jargon, and doesn’t usually claim the status of a “discipline”. Critical theory on the other hand can’t do without obscure terminology, resists rational analysis, and professes to be the product of a quite new kind of consciousness. Literary criticism is an ancient practice. Critical theory as an alternative to rational discourse is a relatively new phenomenon and, in my experience, interests nobody outside of academia.
Here’s Noam Chomsky’s devastating critique of “critical theory”.
Raymond Tallis is also very strong. His review of “Impostures intellectuelles” is even more powerful than the book itself.
Raymond Tallis:
I laughed out loud at that one.
Tom Nolan:
Ah I didn’t realize you were referring to literary criticism directed at actual literature. That does have its place, I don’t mean to imply scientific methods can take over there.
So… since, in some prominent feminist circles, it raises no eyebrows to 1. distort beyond recognition the words and deeds of someone who disagrees with you and then 2. attack them on the basis of things they haven’t said or done– thusly concocting mythical forms of opposition– why should anyone imagine that “feminist critiques” are going to be more trustworthy?
Why, hasn’t “patriarchy” become the ultimate form of mythical opposition?
[freud]What DO fluids want?[/freud]
Nobody knows, but they get very upset if they don’t get it.
“The personal is political” is a great analytical tool, and the one I use most often.
It also applies to any old-style lefty institution, like unions. Working with union benefits is better than working without them. If you want to argue with me about that, I demand to know your experience. Otherwise, you aren’t qualified to know if I’m right or not.
Arguing with other people who have the same experiences but have reached different conclusions, is the raw material of politics… i.e. we live in the USA (example) and therefore can argue rationally about whether we have had it better or worse under Republicans or Democrats.
That is largely an experiential argument, as the best (as in most effective) political arguments are.
I disagree. It is helpful to the extent that it can point out problems. However, beyond that the personal tends to muddy the waters. Should someone disagree with one’s conclusions, or worse yet disprove them, then rather than it simply being a discussion or debate it becomes a personal attack.
Using one’s personal experiences also results in making a series of emotional appeals. These can certainly win people over, but ultimately the arguments made are weak and do not hold up to scrutiny (like many feminist, liberal, conservative and MRA arguments). These also lead to forming narrow-minded conclusions and an unwillingness to even acknowledge other possibilities.
At best, “the personal is a political” is a good springboard, but it is not something that should be used to drive one’s arguments or to examine the totality of an issue or situation.
“The personal is political” is also selectively applied in feminism. Women’s suffering is political. Men’s suffering is merely personal.
True, but I think that is common with all groups that use “the personal is political” as an analytical tool.
But you can’t decide whether or not anyone is qualified. All you can decide is whether or not to listen to them.
Of course, Europeans, Asians, or Africans with a good understanding of American history can also argue just as rationally about the same topic.
We all share the same experiences and the same language on some level. We’re all capable of rational discussion, but this takes two willing parties. We don’t have the choice not to understand each other; we can only ignore others’ arguments if we find them inconvenient. And if we do, we have determined that force, rather than discussion, will resolve any differences.
All arguments are from experience, and all arguments have a rational form. The only question is whether arguments are designed to inform or deceive. The best (as in most informative) discussions take place between people who have had a wide variety of experiences and therefore hold different beliefs. The worst arguments take place only between individuals who already agree on most things; this is how dogmas and their resulting political movements are formed.
DaisyDeadHead
If its taken to mean that ones personal life is affected by political decisions, then this seems to be on its face useless. If a political decision did not affect the personal lives of individuals it would not be much of a decision. If taken to mean that we should analyze individuals experience then the power lies in rhetoric, but rhetoric without facts is hollow.
This will merely lead to a battle of anecdotes. Without statistics to show that those anecdotes are not merely outliers, then they’re all easily dismissed.
Actually, no I don’t think I could. Crime rates could be going down on a whole, yet I might be mugged. The fact that I personally was mugged is not an indication that the mayor has failed to decrease crime rates. By contrast even if I have never been the victim of any crime I could not rationally conclude that crime doesn’t exist.
In order to come to a proper conclusion I need to supplement my senses with more points of view then just my own, I need facts, and statistics, and a rough guide of how the rest of the world is operating. But in order to do this I need to keep some of it somewhat distilled and readily accessible. Everyone simply voicing their own personal anecdotes and the conclusions they’ve drawn from them quickly descends into a simple drone.
Daisy D
That makes no sense. Must one have fought in Iraq in order to support or oppose the American presence there? Must one have a personal stake in the sex-industry in order to have a valid opinion as to whether prostitution should be a legal or an illegal activity? Would the fact that I once had twin guinea-pigs, one of which tragically died, lend to my affirmation that “half two is one” a special authority?
Experiences lend force to our own convictions, no doubt, but – given that they can never be wholly shared by the people we are trying to persuade (for no two experiences are identical) – they are inadequate for the purposes of legitimate persuasion. Reason, on the other hand, is not a personal but a universal resource (it is the same for everybody) and allows us to make an appeal to any sane interlocutor.
Or, to put the matter more simply still:
To state that such and such is the case is argumentatively valid.
To state that I have personal experience of such and such (which is known to be the case) is an argumentative irrelevance.
Tom,
I’m not entirely sure how you’re using ‘argumentative irrelevance’ here, but on its face, your statement strikes me as a little too strong.
While it’s true that using personal experience as an argument is insufficient – and I’ve seen several statements on feminist blogs saying some version of, “If you, as a man, disagree with a woman’s experience, you’re wrong” – if I recall my lessons in logic correctly, argumentation starts from a premise, the truth value of which cannot be determined by logic alone. It seems to me that a middle ground between valuing experience and also subjecting that experience to logical rigor is what’s called for.
As to “the personal is the political” as an analytical tool, my understanding is that the statement was originally coined by Carol Hanisch in her essay of the same name: “One of the first things we discover in these groups is that personal problems are political problems. There are no personal solutions at this time.” That quote seems less like an analytical approach than a question of pragmatics, i.e., what to do with the results of an analysis that has already been completed.
Of course, concepts can drift in meaning over time, and so if at least some feminists are using it as a short-hand for valuing personal experience – a necessary reaction to the way women’s experiences have historically been marginalized, as it seems to me – then I’d say that it is a useful tool for gender analysis, with the caveats I’ve mentioned above.
And men’s personal experiences haven’t?
Not as specifically men, no. I’m persuaded by feminist claims on this point. Yes, there is marginalization of male experience, but in the context of racial or class dynamics, not gender, whereas I think women have suffered, and continue to suffer to a lesser extent (how much less is a whole other topic, of course) from sex-based disregard to their opinions and experiences. The point feminists often make about boys being called on more in school is one expression of this.
Having said that, I do think that feminists, as a sub-class within women, do tend disregard male experience. Of course, this varies depending on which feminists we’re talking about. But I also think this is an effect of reacting against the marginalization of female experience. The pendulum has swung too far, in other words, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t need to swing at all.
Not as specifically women, no. I’m not persuaded by feminist claims on this point. Yes, there is marginalization of female experience, but in the context of racial or class dynamics, not gender, whereas I think men have suffered, and continue to suffer to a lesser extent (how much less is a whole other topic, of course) from sex-based disregard to their opinions and experiences. The point feminists never make about boys being called bad more in school is one expression of this.
the point im making is you should be convinced by evidence and not by simplistic “claims”. Which means measuring the pro evidence against the con evidence and trying to come to a theory which explains everything in a logical and testable way. Everything else is just pissing into the wind.
“Which means measuring the pro evidence against the con evidence and trying to come up with a thoery that explains everything in a logical and testable way.”
On this point, at least, we’re in substantive agreement.
Men have/had to achieve a considerable level of success to see any interest generated in their _personal_ experience. Even so, much of their personal experience remains marginalized.
The minute number of men who have won some interest in their personal experience, have won so at considerable cost, in aggregate, to all men–for every Napoleon, how many men died brutal deaths in obscurity?
I suppose you could class this as ‘marginalization due to class’ but it seems to me that we may be dealing with two avenues of acclaim: personal success and inherited success.
For the second avenue, women have, throughout much of western history, potentially equal access to _inherited success_ by being queens, princesses, dutchesses and other noble women. The _personal_ experience of these upperclass women is definately of greater interest then the personal experience of peasants, men and women. And of comparable interest to their male counterparts.
As for personal success… it seems that personal success comes about through personal sacrifice, through investing physically, mentally and emotionally in a series of gambles which can lead to success but more often failure. This kind of risk-taking behavior arises more often in a group of people who have little to loose and a lot to gain by playing long odds. Men, who are not secure in their access to reproduction, have little to loose by playing the success game. Women, who are secure in their access to reproduction, have much more to loose(and relatively little to gain.)
Therefore men are more prone to play the game. A tiny, tiny number win. Most loose. All are compelled to play.
Welcome, Arkhilokhus. I took a quick look at your blog, and you seem to be coming from an interesting perspective, as someone who is interested in both feminism and seduction. A couple things I am curious about, that I would like to hear you discuss at some point:
1. You mentioned that you used to think that feminism was misandric, but then you started to move in a more feminist direction. Why?
2. What kinds of compatibility and conflict do you see between seduction and feminism? (Personally, I think that seduction actually works towards certain feminist goals; when practiced right, it has the potential to facilitate mutual and consensual sex and relationships between men and women. Nevertheless, many feminists can’t stand the notion of seduction, and many aspects of feminism are damaging to the development of a positive sense of male sexuality.)
I’ve never actually heard an argument from feminists that only women’s suffering and experience are marginalized on the basis of sex, but not men’s. I’ve never seen feminists weigh or measure any evidence on the subject, and the claim that men’s experience is not marginalized on the basis of gender seems like a purely theoretical proposition. Feminists typically don’t seem to have any interest in actually testing this proposition, and the theory it is derived from doesn’t seem to be a very good one. If you know of any actual arguments for this claim, I would invite you to reproduce them.
The notion that men’s experiences aren’t marginalized isn’t even a universal opinion among feminists; some feminists realize that it is total bunk, or have published work inconsistent with that notion.
Feminist sociologist Caroline New argues that men achieve certain types of power because they are dehumanized, and their human experiences and capacities are denied as either a cause or a consequence of them gaining that power. Francesca Cancian argues that in Western culture, there is a phenomenon called the “feminization of love,” where love and relationships are defined in a way that make feminine styles of loving normative, and masculine styles of loving subordinate.
For more example of the experience of males being marginalized based on gender, check out of the work of Adam Jones (who actually self-identifies as a “dissident feminist”) on gendercide. See his newspaper analysis of men’s victimization being disregarded in favor of women’s victimization, and his chilling essay on how male victims in Kosovo were effaced from media coverage. Jones writes:
While such atrocities may be towards men of a particular ethnic group, it is false to conclude that we are only witnessing racial oppression. It’s not just that the media only marginalizes the victimization of Bosniak men, we are seeing a generalized phenomenon of marginalizing men’s experiences of suffering and victimization.
Dehumanizing men and denying their human capacities, defining love in a way that makes female-typical preferences normative, and effacing the victimization of men (of various ethnic groups), are examples of gender-based marginalization of men’s experiences. I propose that these phenomena occur as part of the traditional gender system that feminists exposed and claim to want to dismantle.
Feminists are either cynically denying these phenomena, are explaining them away (such as by redefining them as merely race-based), or are genuinely unaware of them because the culture of feminism is so focused on women as victims and on men as perpetrators.
If feminists (with some exceptions) were using their analytical tools consistently, they wouldn’t be denying that men’s suffering and experience can be marginalized based on gender, they would be saying “I told you so!”
“The personal is political” is also selectively applied in feminism. Women’s suffering is political. Men’s suffering is merely personal.
Hugh, don’t know where you are getting that, since that is not my opinion AT ALL. Please show me where I have EVER said or even implied such a thing?
Daisy, I don’t actually believe that you have ever said or implied such a thing. I don’t believe that all feminists hold such as attitude, only that it is common in feminism and held by many influential and mainstream feminists (Michael Kimmel, for example). Sorry for the confusion.
Typhonblue,
As relates to what you call “inherited success”, I doubt your claim that upper class women are of comparable interest to upper class males. In most cases, the daughters of aristocrats were pawns for forming alliances, and little else. Sure there are exceptions – Catherine the Great, Elizabeth, Cleopatra and so forth – but these were exceptional women in exceptional circumstances. For example, consider Cleopatra. An immensely popular and able queen, but she was obliged to marry her younger brother to rule at all. In effect, she was ruling in his name. But was the reverse true? Would Ptolemy have been unable to rule if he refused to marry his sister? I doubt it.
As for your second point, I’m a little unsure of what you mean by “access to reproduction”. Could you elaborate?
Hugh,
Thanks for the welcome.
My original exposure to feminism was through selections from second-wave authors in college, most notably Mary Daly. They seemed at times to be chosen for their shock value, and I stopped paying any real attention to them. Having built up an image of what I thought feminism was – matriarchal under superficial rhetoric of egalitarianism – I was surprised when a friend of mine began talking about feminism and was in substantive agreement to my own ideas about political and social equality. So I began to reconsider my ideas about feminism. My explorations led to a sort of realization where, as it seems to me, I became aware of a good deal of sexism that was simply invisible to me. I know I’m being vague, but I’m speaking of a very intuitive, personal sort of experience that I don’t think I can articulate very well. This has been very recent by the way – in the past month or so. Anyway, despite finding that many feminist ideas have strong explanatory power, there are ideas that I’ve across in feminist blogs that concern me – the obsession with subjectivity, for example. I’m not sure if feminism necessarily entails these ideas though; if not, I’ll conclude that my complaint is with (some) feminists, rather than feminism.
As to the relationship of seduction to feminism, those interests developed separately, so I’m still working on relating them. I suppose at the moment, my basic idea is that I’m not so much interested in seduction, as in using some of the ideas of the seduction community as a springboard for developing a higher level of social skills. It does seem to me that women are taught to be better in social situations than men, but I don’t really see any concerted attempt outside of the seduction community to rectify this.
I’m certainly interested in how you think at least certain aspects of feminism are damaging to male sexuality. I think that issues surrounding sexuality are one of the major centers of gravity for the way males are socialized into their gender role, so it’s definitely an area of interest.
I’m going to hold off commenting on the rest of your post while I let it stew a bit; I’ll get back to you in a day or so. I do want to suggest, though, that we may be using “marginalized experience” to mean different things. As I used the phrase, I meant the way that the ideas and words of men are listened to in a way that women are not. The experience many women report, of having an idea disregarded and then accepted when a male in the group parrots what they just said, is an example of this.
Egypt is, perhaps, the wrong society to draw from to prove this point. (Which reflects the difficulties of lumping all cultures together.) Egypt’s throne was matrilinear, so, yes, ptolemy might well have had to marry his sister to inherit.
I misspoke when I said ‘equal access to success’, ‘equal interest in their personal experience’ is what I meant.
I believe now, and throughout much of christian history, there has been equal interest in the personal experiences of male and female aristocracy alike.
Aristocratic women might generate that interest through hosting social gatherings, salons, political intrigues, etc. And aristocratic men might through war and rulership.
It’s only a human foible that people tend to be more interested in those people who encounter dire and extreme experiences, thus history is filled more with men’s stories of daring rather then women’s stories of social mechanations and domesticity which can lack the same sense of life and death excitement.
Apparently an average of 80% of women contribute their DNA to the following generation, while 40% of men do not.
Women’s access to reproduction is far more secure, therefore they have everything to loose by risky, eye-catching behavior.
Men can only achieve access to reproduction by engendering the interest of women, which can often involve risky, eye-catching behavior–not necessarily physical stunts, but anything that involves an element of uncertainty.
Many women report this? Interesting.
In my experience the initial reception of a novel idea is negative. It takes time for people to mull it over and accept is as a good idea.
If you’re someone who commonly comes up with novel ideas you will notice this. Usually you will float out an idea and it will come back to you from someone else’s mouth-sometimes someone who initially rejected your idea. This process can take anywhere from minutes to hours to months.
The fact that women are viewing this as an expression of contempt for women’s ideas may be an effect of observer bias. The women may note it when it’s a man who says their idea back to them but don’t note it when it’s a woman. In my case it’s been mainly women, some men.
I’m interested in your experience of becoming aware of sexism against women. If you have time, please try to articulate it.
arkhilokus, I would like to respond at length, but for now I will point you to these threads where I explain how certain aspects of feminism may be damaging to male psychosexual development, so you can see where I am coming from:
Saint Nice Guy the Shy
When You Have Feminist Guilt, You Don’t Need Catholic Guilt
Typhonblue,
My apologies for the delay between posts; I’ve been unfortunately busy, and I’ve also been struggling a bit as to how to articulate the experience I spoke of.
For me, the issue is largely centered around the Male Gaze. I have a couple posts about this at my place, but they’re fairly personal and mixed in with trying to process my divorce and other things, so I’ll try to be more focussed and see what I can do.
Let me also emphasize that I’m not making an argument here; this is simply an experience that informs the direction of my studies, and not some revelation that provides a solid answer to anything.
The catalyst for this was reading an excerpt from Norah Vincent’s Self-Made Man, where she talks about the difference in how people look at her when they think she’s a man. Specifically, she talks about the feeling of intimidation created by constantly being appraised as a potential sex partner being replaced by a casual disinterest, which she describes as respect.
Reading this, I came to see, in a very sudden way, how it must be for women to constantly see in the expressions of men that they’re being assessed as sex objects – not always just sex objects, granted, but evaluation of their sexual desirability is a constant part of their interaction with men. It also became plain to me that I was participating in creating this environment which does objectify and, to some degree, intimidate women, which was and is unsettling.
Anyway, that’s really the gist of it. There’s conclusions to be drawn from that premises, of course, and I’ve been engaged in an experiment to change not only how I look at women, now that I understand that looking is an act which can be performed multiple ways, but also investigating on a deeper level how my attitudes towards women perhaps aren’t as egalitarian as I thought.
“Specifically, she talks about the feeling of intimidation created by constantly being appraised as a potential sex partner being replaced by a casual disinterest, which she describes as respect.”
I call that being ignored and being uninteresting for others. That’s the feeling I’ve had most my life. If I was of any interest it was because I was different (ie to bully me).
And you don’t think women also evaluate men?
I do evaluate most everyone, but I don’t get attracted physically, so when I look it’s mostly for the aesthetics, like looking at art, but with clothes and people instead. I never look at anyone for long though, being shy as I am, I’m always afraid of being seen as staring (and thus rude). I’ll look at someone, and if something caught my eye, I’ll look back. I usually observe things from where the person can’t tell, and it’s usually things people won’t pay attention to (hair details from the back sitting in a bus behind the person – and no I don’t pick my seat based on that, it just happens, sometimes).
I know my mom does evaluate men based on looks. I don’t know to what extent though.
[...] issues” in the gender system1. I couldn’t figure out why feminists developed powerful tools for examining sexism and oppression, and then only applied those tools towards half of the [...]