There is much both to lament and praise about the new women’s site, Double EX, but it does have the virtue of being readable. Yesterday, noted anti-feminist Christina Hoff Sommers, whose public career seems largely based on her willingness to peddle the theory that our society is at war with boys and all things male, offered up Are Men the Second Sex Now? It’s not nearly as reactionary as some of her other pieces, but it still serves Sommers’ larger agenda of delegitimizing the contemporary American women’s movement. Others will find plenty with which to take issue, but I wanted to note these paragraphs of hers:
In (Betty) Friedan’s day, women were clearly the second sex. Not so today. Yes, many women are struggling with the challenge of combining family and work. But men do not have it easy either. They are increasingly less educated than women. They are bearing the brunt of the recession. The New York Times recently reported that “a full 82 percent of the job losses have befallen men.” Reuters referred to the surging male unemployment rate as a “blood bath.” Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s “FastStats” show that men are less likely than women to be insured—and more likely to drink, smoke, and be overweight. They also die six years earlier than women on average.
Why are there no conferences, petitions, workshops, congressional hearings, or presidential councils to help men close the education gap, the health care gap, the insurance gap, the job-loss gap, and the death gap? Because, unlike women, men do not have hundreds of men’s studies departments, research institutes, policy centers, and lobby groups working tirelessly to promote their challenges as political causes.
Few feminists I know dispute that men die earlier, are more likely to commit suicide and engage in risky behaviors, and are increasingly less likely to seek out advanced degrees. This isn’t feminism’s fault, of course, and to her credit, Sommers isn’t saying it is. But she implies that boys and men are suffering because they are being overlooked by feminist thinktanks, and that’s a serious misrepresentation of the crisis.
In the first place, as feminists have been pointing out for decades, “the patriarchy hurts men too.” It is male-dominated culture that has set up unreasonable standards for masculine achievement, that has perpetuated the toxic notion that real men don’t express vulnerability. The risk-taking behaviors that cause men to die earlier — heavy drinking, smoking, driving too fast — are hardly the fault of women in general or feminists in particular. Men behave recklessly because of their own response to a male-created culture that praises an outer façade of manly insouciance. How many wives and mothers and sisters are forced to nag the men in their lives to go to the doctor when they don’t feel well? To read Sommers, one gets the impression that feminists are trying to discourage men from seeking the help they need — when the real cause of the male refusal to reach out for assistance (a stubbornness that indeed proves lethal) is the homosocial desire to live up to a masculine code that praises self-sufficiency, toughing it out, and “giving ‘em hell.”
I’ve written before about What’s In it (feminism) for Men? The feminist movement has, with very few exceptions, understood that real liberation for women will mean real liberation for men as well. As my daughter is learning, when you touch one little hanging toy on a mobile, all the other toys move as well; when you liberate one previously oppressed class (women) you offer new opportunities for men.
In the 1960s, women were legally barred from certain professions. Today, as Sommers points out, women are on the verge of dominating those professions. Whether this is really a problem or not is debatable, but let’s assume it is a crisis worth addressing. Feminists fought to get women equal access — but never to bar men from enjoying that same access. Are the law schools closed to men? Are boys, generations of whom proved perfectly capable of learning by rote, suddenly doing more poorly than their sisters because of some change in the law? Of course not. It’s absurd — and for a trained academic like Sommers, embarrassingly disingenuous — to compare the legal and institutional barriers to women’s equality which existed until very recently with the social and psychological barriers to young men’s achievement that apparently exist today. The former can be addressed through legislation; the latter need to be addressed by carefully dismantling the toxic code of masculinity that is choking so many of our sons and our brothers.
And who is doing the work to examine and debunk our myths about masculinity? Who is doing the hard work of offering an alternative to the straitjacket of traditional gender roles? Why, it’s those same feminists, men and women alike, whom Sommers sees as ignoring the plight of boys. I live in male flesh, and would not renounce my male sex if I could; I am quite happy to do the work of renouncing the ugliest aspects of masculinity, particularly the ones which limit my opportunity to be fully human. I learned how to do that as a feminist, and it is indeed within feminism that we will surely find the solution to the real (if not all the imagined) problems that Sommers notes.
Its fascinating to me how feminism is at fault for men’s failure to keep up with women, nowadays. People refuse to realize the fact that it is the restrains of masculinity and the fight to be anti-woman that is keeping men from reaching their full potential as human beings. They also refuse to acknowledge the positive aspects of feminism and how it indeed provides men the opportunity to break free from their “masculinity bondages”. You’re living proof of that, being a male feminist. Keep doing what you’re doing Hugo.
So well said. Thanks, Hugo, for disentangling these issues that so often get lumped together and distract from the core challenges at hand.
Same old Hugo. Same old senseless male-bashing, self-loathing garbage.
I dunno. How else are you going to get guys to work themselves to death to support a family–theirs–and several others through crushing taxation?
And if they don’t, where do the revenues come from?
And when somebody’s highly-evolved patootie is headed for the wood chipper, how are you going to get guys to go the extra mile and get themselves killed bailing you out?
Fact is, young guys are valued for what they can do because a lot needs to be done.
Those in the womb of state-guaranteed employment, surrounded by security provided by the Lower Orders may not recognize it, but there is some tough stuff needing to be done and somebody has to do it.
Unfortunately, just as Orwell described pacifism as, effectively, favoring fascism because the pacifist can have influence in the free society, if feminists succeed in depriving men of their chests, it would first be the guys who are taking care of business FOR THEM.
I noticed that Hugo allowed the post to go as far as the patriarchy hurting men, too, without going further and pointing to the plight of women in Muslim societies,which ought to get somebody’s attention. Apparently, he’s learned Theo van Gogh’s lesson.
Male-bashing and self-loathing? Talk about senseless garbage. If you had any knowledge of what true feminism is or any grasp of what today’s masculinity is really like, you wouldnt make such empty statements.
“Feminists fought to get women equal access — but never to bar men from enjoying that same access. Are the law schools closed to men? Are boys, generations of whom proved perfectly capable of learning by rote, suddenly doing more poorly than their sisters because of some change in the law? Of course not. It’s absurd — and for a trained academic like Sommers, embarrassingly disingenuous — to compare the legal and institutional barriers to women’s equality which existed until very recently with the social and psychological barriers to young men’s achievement that apparently exist today.”
That was brilliant, Hugo. I’m totally stealing it the next time I wind up in a debate with an MRA.
I’m not following, Marco. Hugo is merely pointing out that the barriers young men face are largely a product of an unwritten but widely understood “Real Man” culture. We’ve all heard it before, and having married a traditional, laconic guy, I’m up close and personal with the code.
Mercifully, the Better Half has mellowed in middle-age, (possibly due to the influence of our first grandchildren) and I no longer have to bludgeon him into oh…seeing a doctor, actually talking and sharing what’s on his mind, and most of all…Letting Me Help!
I think Marco’s right. You just have to realise that some problems aren’t caused by the Patriarchy and have nothing to do with feminism. Feminists have a knee jerk reaction when faced with men’s problems: say the patriarchy is the cause and then blame the victims being for insufficiently feminist. It’s insulting and patronising.
It’s also wrong most the time, you can say what you like about women’s educational success, but I don’t know how anyone can say this is caused by the social structures which result in the oppression of women. That’s crazy.
James - when those oppressive social structures define women’s work as inferior, any field where women visibly excel becomes effectively off-limits to men. Veterinary work is one example of how a field can go from being male-dominated to “girly” and inferior. When this extends to academic success being considered “girly” and becoming unattractive to young men, we have a problem.
That’s one possible mechanism. Sound less crazy yet? If we didn’t conceive of “women’s work” as being unworthy of a man’s attention, it wouldn’t matter that more and more things were falling under that heading.
(And for anyone who wants to argue biology, remember that men were the scribes, scholars, and priests for a long time - let’s not start arguing that men aren’t capable of sitting still and learning, or that their only possible contribution is manual labor and violence.)
Oppression-Olympics style infighting like this issue are one reason that I think we need to move beyond “feminism” and “MRAs” and towards a gender centrism that makes moderate claims about behavior and prescribes moderate remedies for injustice. (Yes, many past injustices were immoderate, even savage - but savage equalization will just create new wounds, not heal old ones.)
Life is hard for men and women alike.
Sexism doesn’t exist, except when it’s directed at men. Typical Sommers.
I think of it as a formula:
Patriarchy = Men are superior, women are inferior.
Patriarchy = Strict gender roles to enforce this system, ie, what is female and feminine cannot be male and masculine, and what is male and masculine is not female and feminine.
Patriarchy = Dichotomy: everything is one or the other, masculine or feminine. You can thus define things by putting them into a category, or saying that they do not belong in a specific category (which amounts to the same thing, since it essentially forces them into the second category.)
Note: Patriarchy is a mentality, not a reality.
Ergo, this is the conclusion that results from this mentality:
Women are cautious, therefore men (can) prove they are men by being risk-takers.
Women are concerned with their health and wellness, therefore men (can) prove they are men by not being concerned with their health and wellness.
Women are weak and easily admit to pain and illness, therefore men (can) prove they are men by being “strong” and disregarding pain and illness.
Women are good at school (*a new one! this is painful evidence that merely refuting previous stereotypes doesn’t create equality, it just reverses the stereotype*) therefore men (can) prove they are men by not trying to excel at school.
Many men, and particularly young boys, buy into this formula and this mentality.
And it is thus the fault of patriarchy that we have men that drive too fast, drink too much, refuse to go to the doctor, and have shitty jobs because of their lack of achievement in education. It is not women or the presence of women holding them back or pushing them down per se, but rather that they buy into this can’t-be-a-girl mentality, and so when girls start kicking some fucking ass (live longer, manage stock portfolios better, have cheaper car insurance, and better jobs) the response, if you buy into the patriarchal mentality, is to suck to prove you are not a women.
Of course, this causes a lot of cognitive dissonance because of the “women are inferior” premise is being refuted a few times in there, so it requires some mental gymnastics to explain why women doing better is school is BECAUSE they’re inferior. But don’t underestimate the power of the human mind to delude itself.
Does this sound like an “inherent superiority of women” argument? Yeah, it kinda does. Sounds kinda dangerously close to the arguments that blacks were just naturally not as good at *stuff* as whites, actually. Or that they haven’t succeeded because they “haven’t tried hard enough, they’re just lazy.” And it could easily devolve into that fallacious mentality, and for some feminists, it has.
But. The inherent superiority of women has arguably never been a core tenet of feminism (arguably because what ARE the core tenets of feminism? some people certainly believed in the inherent superiority of women at the dawn and peak of the feminist movements, so you could maybe get pretty persuasive about it being a core tenet since we still argue over what is and isn’t), and much more certainly is not a core tenet of feminism as it exists today. Show me a self-proclaimed feminist that believes in the inherent superiority of women, and I’ll show you an outlier.
My theory is that guys are used to not having to try to do well, or at least not try as hard as they do today, because the patriarchal system cut a lot of their competition out of the game: women (and minority groups as well). Once women were allowed to play, it took them a while to get their bearings, but then once they started to get the hang of it (education, professional ladders, etc.) they started to get good. Years as an underdog make you much more likely to keep trying after a failure, and the ability to keep trying after a failure is a large part of what makes people successful, paradoxically. Guys are not used to this much competition, or failing. So they’re not doing so hot right now, as a group. But at some point, they’ll get that this patriarchy stuff is stupid; you either can do stuff or you can’t, you either are a hard worker/good at something/someone who gets up after they fall down, or you aren’t. And spending a lot of time trying really hard not to prove you’re a girl, or have any tendencies that could even remotely be construed as girly, is a pain in the ass and a waste of time. Guys have better things to do than worry about not being girls. Seriously.
The big question for me as a feminist is, how hard do I try to explain this to them? If I try, am I just wasting my time over something they basically need to figure out on their own?
Both takes are kinda condescending. It’s difficult to decide which one to use.
James, are you suggesting that there is NOT an unwritten Guy Code of Manliness?
When did vetmed become girly? Damn. Off the distribution list again.
There is both an unwritten and a written code of manliness.
You wouldn’t want to live in a world where all of the guys on your side have given it up.
Thing is, see, and I know this is complicated, there are other guys out there who aren’t listening.
But, anyway, what’s to complain about? They die early and leave you their money. They work hard to do stuff you wouldn’t want to do. They pay the state more than their share of revenues. If they gave that up….
Recently, my wife has wanted me to go to a doctor when I turned back my thumbnail trying to fix a blockage in a culvert. Waste of time. It’s fine. Then to get a sliver removed. Waste of time until it got infected so I went and got some antibiotics. I got the first colonoscopy.
Sometimes I think about making up stuff that’s on my mind so I’ll have something to talk about. But that whole meme presumes there’s just as much and about the same on a guy’s mind as on a woman’s. Proof? Or is it a doctrinally-required assertion? That’s a rhetorical question.
For my father’s eighty-ninth birthday, I got a copy of the original Silver Star citation. Framed up and looking good. He was pleased to get it. Somebody want to tell him he and his friends should have allowed the Nazis to win?
Stuff has to be done. Guys get to do it. There’s a cost. Rocket science, I know.
Insisting that whenever stuff has to be done it’s the patriarchy’s fault gets you nowhere. Unless you want to make the case that Hitler was acting out of an excess of testosterone. Or the Norks in 1950. Or that Golda Meier (sp?) was such a stud that the Arabs couldn’t resist attacking Israel.
But, anyway, what’s to complain about? They die early and leave you their money.
NOT. EVEN. FUNNY.
Sometimes a real guy’s just got to take care of business, you know? Just roll up his sleeves, light up a stogie, and go berate people on the internet. YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH.
Hey Richard, I’m not too sure where you’re coming from with your latest post. Are you saying that things are wrong for men, but that’s not the fault of patriarchy? or that things are not always great for men, but that’s unavoidable because some things in life will always suck?
I hear what you are saying, or what I think you are saying! about the armed forces - it’s wrong that men should be expected to kill or be killed so much more readily than women. I don’t know if I could do it, and if I did, I know it would effect my life dramatically ever after. So I very much appreciate your father and the other soldiers who fought in the second world war. But having said that, women have historically risked their lives with every birth - and I’m petrified of that too!! even in this modern, medically advanced age.
If my husband died before me I would be lonely - not glad of any assets he may have left. I think that’s true of most women.
Patriarchy is not about testosterone or being ‘a stud’. It’s about one group of people asserting authority over another - much like, in an extreme case, white people did/do with black people. Or like the European aristocricy and land owning classes did with serfs. It’s about an imbalance of power in a relationship, which effects and inhibits both parties and has little to do with hormones.
Yes, stuff has to be done and there is always a price to pay, but who says it always has to be done in the same way?
Richard, no ones saying that we should do away with all hot-headed risk-takers in the world, or people who can lift heavy things and punch hard, etc. The claim is that we’re poorly served by a prescriptive model of masculinity that tells men they *should* be hot-headed risk-takers who punch real hard or else they’re girly, which is bad. (Or conversely, that tells women they’re not supposed to be hot-headed risk-takers who punch real hard.) There’s a diverse collection of human traits kicking around, and it’s silly to stuff such multidimensional difference into two dichotomous categories.
Golda Meir was pretty bad-ass though, wasn’t she?
The jump in male unemployment isn’t surprising. If I were a CEO choosing between two people doing the same job, and one of them is doing it for 76% of the other’s pay, I know who I’d lay off.
Similarly, more women at university does not equal oppression of men. I spoke to a woman from Kuwait (not someplace we’d probably consider a bastion of women’s liberation) who pointed out that there are a lot more women than men in Kuwaiti universities because young men tend to go straight into the family business and start making money right out of secondary school. Young women are not offered this opportunity, so they take the opportunity they can get, which is school. To talk about the enrollment rates in university for men and women, without talking about what they might be doing instead of university, and what incentives they have for choosing one or the other, presents an incomplete picture that makes it really hard to make judgments like Ms. Sommers’.
Actually, meta, they are.
meta.
And it’s not about being “girly” if you’re not a hard-punching, hot-headed risk-taker. It’s about being useful or useless. “Girly” has nothing to do with it. Saying which is probably going to be considered not feminist friendly.
A part of me knows that Richard should not be responded to, but…
Um, I thoroughly resent his suggestion that I am not paying taxes or that I am not helping to support families other than my own through the taxes I pay, or that I am not supporting my own family. I am doing all of those things. Because I am an adult, not because I am a man (which in case it’s not obvious, I’m not).
Will I volunteer to join the military? No. But I do think that if a draft were instituted it should include young women as well as young men. My feminism does not count being exempted from the responsibilities of adult citizenship as a “benefit” to women. It’s just a patronizing infantilization. I will fight for and support the right of women who volunteer to serve in combat to do so, and I think that is also a tenant of feminism.
When I was a paralegal I had a co-worker who would insist on doing the filing that had to go in the boxes on the top shelf, so that I wouldn’t have to climb/pull down heavy boxes, etc. And I had another co-worker who expected to divide up the filing equally, and knew perfectly well that I was capable of climbing and pulling down boxes to file on the top shelf. Guess which one actually thought of me as a competent adult human being, respected me, and in turn earned my respect.
Richard and the MRAs sometimes seem like they don’t really have a problem with feminists. They have a problem with the fact that not all women agree and expect the same things from male partners. The fact that SOME women still value men acting in accordance with traditional gender roles while OTHER women say they want equality, pisses them off to no end in a “there’s no winning with you women” sort of way. And to that, all you can say is, find someone your compatible with and quit whining, because women are individuals with different preferences, values and beliefs just like men, and nothing you can do will make all women want to fuck you.
Also, given how much of our economy is service-oriented, technology-oriented, and generally sitting at a desk oriented, the suggestion that people who can lift heavy things and do physically strenuous work are “useful” and anyone else is “useless” is just ridiculous and leads me to conclude that Richard is not here in good faith.
Emily - indeed, I find myself thinking again of all the men throughout history who have worked as philosophers, mathematicians, scholars, scribes, priests, politicians, etc. They certainly thought they were masculine - enough so that there has been a fight for women to enter each of those fields. So redefining non-physical work as “useless”…
Also, I quite like your point on the “there’s no winning with you women” argument. I’ll have to remember it for later.
Hugo,
I think that there’s a lot in (broadly defined) feminism (the justice part, not the bollocks epistemology and matrix patriarchy part), pretty much in the way you describe it above. That said, you’ll never get to the bottom of your questions if you keep ignoring female mate choice as a variable for masculinity.
I find it truly stunning that so many authors writing about a discipline devoted to studying the effects of men’s behaviour on women seems to believe that women’s behaviour has almost no effect on men, that they negotiatie masculinity all by themselves, in their matrix patriarchy in which women don’t count (and in which biology, eg testosterone, is a mere afterthought to being socialised by tv). I seriously don’t understand how that apparently doesn’t cause cognitive dissonance….
Of course women’s behavior affects men. The problem is when that bleeds over into blaming - women’s behavior is the only thing that affects men, and if men behave badly it’s some woman’s fault. (Or all women’s fault.)
As for the draft, somewhere I have a copy of a letter that some poor n00b in the US Attorney’s office had to send me when, at age 23, I wrote them a letter angry about their rejecting my Selective Service application. They told me, in essence, to take it up with Congress.
You know, the Congress that’s chock-full of women? Yeah. Oppressive.
Emily, et al.
We have a service economy, automated pixel-shuffling economy suited for people who are not in fabulous shape for two reasons:
Progress in mechanizing so much.
Outsourcing the mfg to other continents.
My point is not that muscles are necessary all the time. But when they are, it’s like needing a pressure bandage. By definition, if you need muscles or a pressure bandage, the situation is pretty dire.
And you’re either equipped or not.
My other point is that the traditional male role is actually correct.
And people can resent what I didn’t say all day long. Enjoy.
What I said–as is not at all foggy–is that if you’re going to get a guy to work himself to death to earn money to support his family and others–women earn less, remember, or do you need to forget that for this argument–you have to start training him that this is the masculine thing to do.
Now, if you don’t want to do that, don’t. If you end up with men who have, as C.S. Lewis said, no chests, then you have to hope you never need men with chests.
Problem is that the guys you can most easily and quickly de-chest are the ones who are the least threat to begin with. It’s those bad guys over there who aren’t lining up to take Hugo’s classes who are going to be the problem.
Here’s an anecdote Hugo didn’t like before, but I’ll try again.
Some years ago, there was a news clip about a rescue of a girl, about twelve, from a tree in a Texas flash flood. A National Guardsman got himself into the tree, from someplace, not explained. The rescue chopper hovered overhead and lowered a harness. The Guardsman got the girl into the harness and helicopter pulled away. The Guardsman was shown giving a triumphant fist-pump and that was the end of the story. The news was not interested in how or whether or when the Guardsman got himself out. To suggest that society thinks women and girl children are second class is nuts. If society thought that, the news have spent a bit more time on the guy who risked his life to save the girl. But they didn’t. He’d fulfilled his function and was no longer of interest.
mythago,
“The problem is when that bleeds over into blaming - women’s behavior is the only thing that affects men, and if men behave badly it’s some woman’s fault. (Or all women’s fault.)”
I don’t know. How common is *that* really in a serious debate? That would be the equivalent of the feminist patriarchy-”matrix”. We’re mutually affecting each other, and if we can admit that much, we can actually get on with trying to identify how we can improve that interaction in a way that helps both/all sexes and genders. But it would be great if it would be a more generally accepted thesis that women are an agent of change or stagnation in guyland. Probably the most important agent of change or stagnation in guyland.
“And it’s not about being “girly” if you’re not a hard-punching, hot-headed risk-taker. It’s about being useful or useless. ”
Are you seriously saying that only people with powerful arms, quick tempers and an inability to figure if a plan will work are useful?
Because I tend to regard them as the people who get impatient with planning, go off half-cocked, can’t work in tandem with anyone, and injure themselves or break things trying to show off their muscles.
Actually Sam…it is pretty common. The biggie? Women are responsible for masculine sexuality, because men cannot be expected to “restrain” themselves.
But it would be great if it would be a more generally accepted thesis that women are an agent of change or stagnation in guyland.
That’s crazy talk! Remember, “men behave recklessly because of their own response to a male-created culture that praises an outer façade of manly insouciance.”
Which creates some cognitive dissonance for me, because I’m also hearing from the same source that it’s us mossbacked conservatives who deny women agency.
It isn’t women who praise men for brave behavior, or find bravado stirring or attractive. It can’t be. That would mean women have some ownership over these “toxic” aspects of the culture.
(I guess all those stupid things I’ve done in my life to impress girls, I need to go back in time and correct myself, so that I realize the homosocial nature of my behavior. Apparently it was Bruce on the football squad I was trying to impress. Weird that I ended up having sex with Jane rather than the B-man, but someday I hope my grasp of deep feminist truths will allow me to understand this odd outcome. I think it probably has to do with whatever underlying truth makes it so that a drunk woman who has sex didn’t have the capacity to consent, while a drunk man who has sex does have the capacity to rape.)
Richard my friend, with all due respect, you sound like you just wandered off the set of a Chevy Truck commercial.
How common is *that* really in a serious debate?
You’re joking, right?
Emily,
“Richard and the MRAs sometimes seem like they don’t really have a problem with feminists. They have a problem with the fact that not all women agree and expect the same things from male partners. The fact that SOME women still value men acting in accordance with traditional gender roles while OTHER women say they want equality, pisses them off to no end in a “there’s no winning with you women” sort of way.”
I think there may be something to the rational of that argument, but I think there’s also another perspective to this - it’s not so much that some women want this and some women want something else. It’s *the perception* that most women say they want one thing and actually still go for the other, which leaves a lot of men confused.
That is mostly a problem of miscommunication, but there’s still *some* *perceived* truth to it. This is actually one thing Hugo has written about before in a rather insightful manner - he said that in his experience (sorry can’t find a link) a lot of those men who are trying to appeal to those women who are saying they want a “new man” will be faced with the problem of how to be assertive and sufficiently sexually aggressive to communicate their masculinity and sexuality at all.
Because if that doesn’t work, they will believe that the woman in question was using her feminism as a shit test to weed out those who appear to weak to just not care (see Richard Aubry’s statement above) while the woman may start blaming him for what she may have perceived as a “nice guy ™”.
And this realisation, I think, is also why the nice guy is pretty much the only dating related issue for feminists (online). Nice guyism/girlsm is probably mostly a personal issue, but there’s possibly also a more social dimension to it. Very interesting observation, Emily.
But I think we should note at this point that not only the female perspective is valid here. It’s not even more valid than the male perspective. So how do we reconcile this? It’s not gonna happen without a lot of painful inspection and self-improvement on both sides - and that may be even harder for women than for men. Most men will admit to not having too much understanding of women, any woman, while women generally seem to claim a much deeper level of understanding of the male psyche and experience.
Richard, about your story with the National Guardsman: you seriously think that, if the man had died or remained in danger, they would have left that teensy tiny detail out of the story?
Anyway, far more of us attend school, go to doctors, raise children, and seek employment than get stuck in trees during flash floods. While being female may be a total bonus in the tree, its value is questionable everywhere else.
a lot of those men who are trying to appeal to those women who are saying they want a “new man” will be faced with the problem of how to be assertive and sufficiently sexually aggressive to communicate their masculinity and sexuality at all.
Well Sam, since you prefaced your comments by admitting that this is a perception, I’ll answer from my perspective.
Gee, welcome to my world! Our world! You know, the female side of the world. A lot of the changes that are strictly attributed to feminism in the minds of these men—their perception, can actually be attributed to the changing economy that far predated feminism. I think the degree to which feminism is the natural reaction to a world in which the “traditional” (in quotes to reflect that roles are always mutating, never permanent) female role made women irrelevant is vastly underestimated. I think that’s part of why that perception exists—that “everything was so fine and now all you women had to go and change things!” We changed because the world changed. We changed with it.
So, I am sympathetic to men who say they feel as if they are becoming irrelevant. What I’m not sympathetic to is the refusal to change and make yourself more relevant. I mean, I didn’t have the option of pursuing the same life my great-grandmothers did. None of us do. Period.
And I guess what I’m failing to see here is why this is so hard a concept—the idea that yeah, you won’t follow the same path as even your close ancestors, but you’ll still have a path to follow. Because this isn’t a one-way street. Women have had to learn new ways of seeing and being to fit our new roles. Those of us (and I’m one) who’ve entered exclusively male environments have had to adapt.
So, I know I stand with a lot of other women when I don’t get the male hand-wringing of “how do I be soft and hard at the same time?” In my more cynical moments (and apparently this morning is one of them—haven’t had my coffee yet), I think, “WTF? I do it! This isn’t rocket science!”
It’s *the perception* that most women say they want one thing and actually still go for the other, which leaves a lot of men confused.
Hoo boy, there’s a lot to unpack in that statement. Most often, I hear this said when:
(1)some guy who has been previously dumped by a former girlfriend or wife, who then
(2)finds out later on about what a no-good SOB the guy she was with after him turned out to be, usually because
(3)the woman in question has divorced or broken up with aforementioned SOB, meanwhile, while the original brokenhearted dude thinks
(4)”why do women always go for the bad boy?!!!??”
Because what he sees is “i was such a nice guy/why’d she leave me for a SOB?”, while what most women see in that is: she left the SOB too. She didn’t go for the bad boy. When he became (or revealed himself as) bad, she left.
Sam, I’m not convinced that the women who say they want a “new man” aren’t going for them. I say this because almost all the men of my acquaintance fit what my crowd of girlfriends calls the “tough but tender” type (if that is indeed what you mean by “new man”—someone who has access to/expresses multiple sides of his personality, rather than being the stereotypical “tough guy” a la Stanley Kowalski*)
(*is it worth mentioning that media imagery of “tough guys” doesn’t exactly emphasize their relationships with women? That if the tough-guy character even has a relationship, it sure isn’t any picnic? And that these characters aren’t being written by women? yeah, I think that’s all worth some mention.)
Now where was I? Oh yeah, the “new man”. I don’t see any of the so-called “new men” I know having any problems getting or keeping female attention if that’s what they want. I guess you’d have to be more specific at telling me what the “one thing” women say they prefer is, and what the “other” that we actually go for is. My assumptions may be different from yours.
My daughter’s nine. She’s just now starting to get interested in boys as something more than playground buddies. Her curiosity is piqued. I suppose it won’t be long before she gets the grade-school version of a “boyfriend”. It isn’t something she seems to be concerned about; she seems to take the attitude of—-it’ll happen. When I was her age, it was something I figured would never happen. Not to me. I soaked in too many cultural messages about “what men liked” and what they didn’t, and I was pretty sure I fit in the “didn’t” category. Not from home—my family would crack the hell up at my preteen insistence that men didn’t like strong women, didn’t like intelligent women, didn’t like women who went fishing and could give a crap about ring around the collar…etc. I’m pretty sure the loudest laughs came from my grandfathers (you know, the WWII combat veteran tough guys that Richard thinks are so one-dimensional?), because they’d been down this road before (I have more aunts than uncles). Anyway, it was a delusion that I grew out of when faced with the ample evidence of those stereotypes not being true.
La Lubu,
my dog ate my homework, aka my long reply was eaten by the digital Nirvana. Hopefully I’ll be able to make my points as eruditely as I did before, if not, please just assume I did.
Apart from that, thanks for your thoughts. First off, I agree with you that most of the changes in gender relations we’re seeing are caused by fundamental shifts in the productive sphere. To a significant degree, I think that was even what allowed a feminist movement in the first place.
Well, I think for a lot of men it actually *is* rocket science. But you’re right, we *have* to learn this kind of thing. I think part of what people are taking issue with with respect to feminism’s role in this is that the male problem’s aren’t accepted as such (see Hugo above: apparently). So there’s a problem: Men would need to lobby to make this an acceptable point of view, in order to begin to “get help” to change, but they can’t really do that because right now there’s not much in it for them. They’re sitting between a rock and a hard place.
Actually, they may well want to go for “new man” but I think there’s a significant disconnect between men and women when it comes to communication about issues like this - which is not to say that there aren’t women who will always go for the SOBs simply because they’re a challenge and these women like to think that they’re the ones who will reform them (and make them emotionally boring).
But that’s personality issues and not the wider social disconnect I thought about when reading Emily’s comment. When men hear women want a “new man”/”nice guy” they will, in my experience, think she wants someone who is not sexually and geprobably not nerally assertive, pretty much in the way Hugo described pro-feminist men in the article he linked to a couple of weeks ago.
Of course that’s a strategy bound to fail more often than not, because in all likelihood that wasn’t what the woman was looking for and it’s not something he wants to pretend to be over time. She doesn’t want a pushover, but someone who can be - as you mentioned “tough and tender” - who can be sexually assertive, has his own opinions and doesn’t automatically defer to her - that’s what, I think, women are referring to when they ask for a “new man”, one that treats her “like a person”, while men will more often than not just hear: don’t be sexual, just be “nice”. And that most probably won’t work for either of them, and they will both take a different perspective with them: men may think that women who are saying one thing are still looking for another, and women may think that men who say they’re nice aren’t actually that nice and, possibly, turn to the original next time and thus contributing to the perception.
Reality is clearly more complex than simple ideas. But that doesn’t mean these ideas aren’t shaping people’s opinions, or behavior. Since you mentioned your experience while growing up, I’ll share mine (again), too. I’m not claiming it was typical in most respects, but I still think it ecquipped me in a special way to understand the general male (and to a lesser degree) the female perspective. I was raised by Catholics and feminists telling me that my sexualiy was dangerous as such (Catholicism) and to women (feminism). It was still there and I didn’t know how to productively deal with it. I was a virgin when I got my graduate degree, actually, I had never even French-kissed a girl until I was 25. And yet I was the “great on paper”-guy, I had everything a mother-in-law could possibly ask for, but I wasn’t able to express my sexuality at all. I thought I wasn’t allowed to, in a way. And, looking back, that was what made the difference between healthy relationships with women, even female friends, however brief, and lack thereof. My first kiss was more important to me than my years in grad school - and it was this kind of self-aware confidence that allowed me to empathize more, take a look back, and try to understand other perspectives, even feminism, without again feeling the need to apologize for my own feelings and perspectives, particularly my having a penis and liking women.
Richard:
If your point is that I Want You On That Wall and that I Need You On That Wall, I suggest you go find That Wall and perch on it to your heart’s content, since there’s nothing in your thesis that says I’d want you or need you in mny more of an up-close-and-personal capacity than that.
If your point is that I need you as insurance against disaster or catastrophe but not in any other case, please not that the nevessary outgrowth of your position is that it’s in your interest to make sure that my life is one unending series of disasters and catastrophes, because otherwise, what use do I have for you?
But if, OTOH, you turn out to have potentialities other than those which fit you out for the rôle of a lifeboat fashioned for the retrieval of persons unworthy of salvege, all the calculations entered into above go by the board and you and I can have a whole ‘nother different conversation.
That is Mr. Schwyzer’s position and it is mine. I know where Mr. Schwyzer is coming from. I think I know where you are coming from; I prefer Mr. Schwyzer’s direction because more possibilities inhere in it and because it is therefore more interesting.
Here’s hoping you find adequate nourishment for your chest. Sheesh.
Men would need to lobby to make this an acceptable point of view, in order to begin to “get help” to change, but they can’t really do that because right now there’s not much in it for them. They’re sitting between a rock and a hard place.
I think this is what I have trouble getting my head around, and my guess is I’m missing the point. What is meant by “not much in it” for men? What are the goals? The rewards?
The issue seems to be that men are withdrawing from spheres of productivity because women are participating, but I’m not clear as to why the rewards are lesser because women are sharing in them. What is this “it” of which we are speaking?
Wow. I think that’s a very erudite response; what the internet dog ate couldn’t possibly have been better.
One of the things I remember from seventies feminism was just how much time was spent by women trying on different roles and images—both in reality and on paper (books, short stories, film, etc). There was a lot of “working out” of who you wanted to be, what you wanted to be, and how you wanted to get there. Because literally—doors were opened that had previously been closed. Not metaphorically closed. So women jumped at those chances.
And part of the reason I see for men not doing the same thing is because of how masculinity has been constructed in recent times—we have the “strong, silent type”. There’s the inherent—”fear” probably isn’t the right word, nor “anxiety”—something more subtle than that—-that any move away from “silence” means a reduction in the “strength”. Concurrently, we have a construct of femininity that presents communication as the woman’s domain.
Another thing that women did in the seventies, and that continues today, is look for examples in history for inspiration. Where “herstory” was removed or obscured, it was searched for a revealed by women interested in what went before.
There are a lot of myths about who/what men and women were like in history. Especially popular are the myths about what men were like in the Victorian era, and myths about those hardcore WWII vets (I blame John Wayne movies). The actual history reveals portraits of men dealing with the same personal and societal complexities we deal with today. Multi-dimensional characters just don’t serve for myths, though. I can’t help but wonder why more men aren’t satisfied with the one-dimensional figures offered in the mainstream myths—or more accurately, why they aren’t speaking out about it or creating different imagery, exploring different ideals. Well, some are—I think especially within the pagan movement, there’s an emphasis on a masculinity that isn’t so truncated. I mean, en masse the way women did/do.
She doesn’t want a pushover, but someone who can be - as you mentioned “tough and tender” - who can be sexually assertive, has his own opinions and doesn’t automatically defer to her - that’s what, I think, women are referring to when they ask for a “new man”, one that treats her “like a person”, while men will more often than not just hear: don’t be sexual, just be “nice”.
Now I think you’re on to something. That “pushover” thing especially. Men interpret being seen as a “pushover” as a sign of weakness, but I don’t think that’s what women are seeing. Speaking for myself, I see that wishy-washyness not as being weak per se, but as childlike. I see a relationship with such a person as just another burden—and really, as forcing me into a motherlike role, which probably oughta go without saying immediately throws a wrench into the sexual attraction.
I do think that men don’t have (enough) models of how to be assertive without being arrogant, or sexually assertive without being seen as too aggressive, disrespectful, or even scary. Confounding that learning curve are (speaking strictly from the U.S.) cultural mores that maintain a certain amount of sex-segregation, so opportunities for unlearning any amount of misinterpreted “cues” aren’t what they could be (and I’m talking for both sexes now).
Because I think you are spot-on with the “nice guy” thing. I have always interpreted a lack of overt sexual assertiveness as disinterest—y’know, like the man has automatically slotted me into the “just friends” category. “Not my type”. Part of that is probably some level of residual lack of confidence from my younger years, and another part is the frank admission that in my particular geographic area, I’m not the preferred “type” (they’re not checking for the Sicilian women here, for the most part! I think a lot of that has less to do with physical appearance and more to do with the stereotypical image of the personality traits that come with that “swarthy” appearance, but it is what it is). So, when faced with that lack of assertiveness on the man’s part, I always made sure to offer plenty of cues that demonstrated that yeah, we’re just friends, and that’s cool, that’s ok. At the same time, I was very suspicious of guys who came on too strong, because of previous experiences with being “the substitute” (y’know—the substitute for the woman he really wants).
‘Nother words, I had my barriers up. And one of the things I don’t think men (especially younger men) “get” is how early those barriers go up. How well practiced we are with those barriers. I was an early developer, so I had grown men making really inappropriate sexual remarks to me as a child with breasts. As in, on my way to grade school. (I know I’ve mentioned this before on Hugo’s blog; it’s something that’s been on my mind as my daughter is moving into puberty). The learning curve on how to deal with that is very short—as with any literal survival skill. But it does tend to make a person overcompensate (not just me!). By the time I was actually dating as a teenager, I had already internalized the idea that immediate sexual overture meant the guy in question wasn’t a “nice guy”, but an experienced player.
So, along the way, I’m sure I missed the boat more than a few times. I’m sure I misinterpreted a lack of overt signals as disinterest when that wasn’t the case, and misinterpreted a “premature” signal as evidence of playership when it could just as easily been evidence of lack of playership—just inexperience at the dance of courtship (and not wanting to be that poor sap that always gets to be the “friend”).
So where do we go from here? I mean, I could cite all kind of examples of what women think the “new man” ought to be. What I can’t cite is what men think the “new man” ought to be. I know a lot of ‘em are putting it into practice the best way they know how, and having no small measure of success. But it seems (from my outside-looking-in perspective) to be perfunctory. I’ve never, ever heard a man describe himself anywhere near along the lines of “tough but tender”, and that’s the most frequent phrase I hear from women on the kind of man they want (we want. I’m in that mix, too). Why is that? Why aren’t we speaking the same language?
I can’t help but wonder why more men aren’t “satisfied” with the one-dimensional figures offered in the mainstream myths—or more accurately, why they aren’t speaking out about it or creating different imagery, exploring different ideals.
I’m guessing you meant “dissatisfied,” LL. Just got off the phone with the Lanky One, up at Michigan Morel Camp with Dad and brother, and he was unusually forthcoming:
Essentially, risk-taking is FUN, men struggle to define themselves within the masculine hierarchy, and this would be the case if women did not exist, and this is just the way it is.
He points to the rise of extreme sports. In his view, men will always seek to separate themselves from the “pack” within collective masculinity.
Essentially the Lanky One confirms James’ post. In my kid’s opinion…”some things just are.”
women are referring to when they ask for a “new man”, one that treats her “like a person”
I think that’s an unfortunately artifact of the training women have to be nice and not hurt anybody’s feelings with unladylike directness.
So: “treat me like a person” really means, think of me as a fellow human being with equal worth, not as a fuckhole, or a servant, or as someone who must be treated as an inferior in order for you to feel like a man.
Just got off the phone with the Lanky One, up at Michigan Morel Camp with Dad and brother
So, did they find any? (mmm…morels…)
Essentially, risk-taking is FUN, men struggle to define themselves within the masculine hierarchy, and this would be the case if women did not exist, and this is just the way it is.
Ah. See, I find risk-taking fun in and of itself, despite the fact of the sometime-stigma that results from being female and enjoying that adrenaline rush (oh yeah, trust me, there’s still a stigma. Especially if you’re Somebody’s Mother). There’s no competitive aspect to it for me, and no hierarchy involved. I think of that as a huge plus. For me, it just gets to be fun. If it was a proving ground, I’d probably experience it as more work than fun.
And I cosign to mythago’s translation of what “treat me like a person” means. Basically, “don’t patronize me.”
Hee…just so you know, LL…number 2 son is innocent. Mommy likes horses, and introduced all three cherubs to the world of ponies early in life. Ponies took with two of three…and our granddaughters are in Fat City…when the time comes.
Mythago,
This is probably a perfect example of what I meant above - when you say you don’t want to be treated “as a fuckhole” men will probably just take a “don’t ever be overtly sexual with her”, when you say “don’t patronize me” (as La Lubu said in the comment following yours) they will hear “don’t escalate the interaction”, just be “nice” and asexual. In a way, “treat me as a person” may sound like basic advice, but it’s actually quite advanced stuff when it comes to interactions with potential mating partners - in order to treat a woman I am interested in as the person she is I need to be able to read the woman she is (or pretends to be) sufficiently quickly to behave appropriately. Sure, treating him/her potential mate as the person he/she is will be probably be much more fun and get better results than anything else - it’s just not what most people are able to do. Most people struggle with basic body language and how to keep a conversation up. What are the odds that a guy can tell at least three signs a woman is attracted to him? What are the odds a woman can tell a guy is really into her?
I agree. It’s a problem. What’s your favorite role model in this respect?
Because we don’t talk about these things to each other but about each other. Because - and that is one area where I find feminism’s overall influence to be problematic in part - we publicly discuss gender relations as a team sport issue (power issue) even though we all (well, most of us) want to play in mixed sets and share power, we just can’t really admit it. And when we don’t talk publicly about sex and relationships as an expression of gender politics, we’re still privately scared of being hurt, and our lack of ability to communicate makes us careful, and partly appropriately so, because a lot of men lie to women about what they really want and a lot of women lie to men about what they really want. So we may want much of the same, but that way we’ll likely never find out…
But you asked for the “new man” from a male perspective. I’ll try to help out with mine, although I can hardly speak for “most men”. What can masculinity (and vice versa, femininity) mean in an age in which every person can do everything. Well, be that as it may, I think masculinity still starts with the ability to “make a woman feel safe” when she’s with you. That’s no longer about financial security, not even about actual physical security, but the feeling thereof - giving her the feeling that I don’t want and I don’t need to protect her physically, but that I certainly *would*, if I had to, but mostly about emotional security. The latter, of course, is also a feminine quality: making a man feel emotionally safe when he’s with you is certainly a feminine quality. But beyond that? I don’t know. It’s hard because masculinity and femininity are logically dependent on each other’s definition, if they’re conceptually overlapping there’s not much point in using them at all. And yet they are important to our identities. I started to feel like a man when I started having success with women, even though I am aware that that’s problematic standard for my masculinity. But as it is largely performative these days, what else could there be to define these terms but inter-gender interactions? This is a tough one… and I think not one we can solve without each other’s help…
Oh, forgot to mention that most of that comment is in reply to La Lubu’s last commment…
but it’s actually quite advanced stuff when it comes to interactions with potential mating partners
Not every woman in the world is a potential mating partner. Not even a minority of women are potential mating partners. If the point that “there is not much in it” for men…is simply about gratifying the libido…I’m not having much sympathy here.
And LL…re: risk-taking and inherent manlymaness, and being someone’s mother. You are absolutely correct that we view risk-taking mothers with a dim eye, and any mother who encourages it in her children is downright unnatural.
(And yes…the boys are having a good morel season. :-)
Thanks for the response, Sam. I’ll see what I can do with it. ;-)
Regarding the interpretation of “treat me like a person”: I can’t speak for mythago, but the examples she brought up (”fuckhole”, “servant” and “inferior”) roughly correspond to the top three roles women get assigned when we aren’t getting respect. When I read “don’t treat me like a fuckhole”, I’m nodding my head and thinking of all the times I’ve been treated and/or talked about along the lines of “yeah, I’d do her”—meaning, ‘I’ll fuck her, but I sure don’t wanna do anything else with her.’ Or what I said earlier—the substitute. “Servant”—well, this is one of those things that women immediately notice, and an inordinate amount of men gloss over completely. Think of oh, the magic coffee fairy that keeps the coffee urn running at work, or the magic cleanup fairy. And “inferior”—I think mainly “intellectual inferior”, though I’ve also had the experience of being assumed to not have the requisite “life experience”, usually from some dude who led a life more sheltered than mine by several degrees—and I think this happens to me because I am (1)female, (2) a small person, and (3) rather young looking (like Hugo, I celebrated my 42nd birthday too; most people assume I’m anywhere from 10-15 years younger than I am. I thank the same oily skin I cursed as a teenager.)
I used the term “patronize” to encompass all three of those images, plus a few more. And I use it because I make the assumption that a man knows what it’s like to be patronized as well (”lemme tellya kid, you don’ know nuthin!”) I’m trying to communicate, “hey, avoid shutting me down/dismissing me/giving me that ’siddown/shaddup’ attitude.”
And it never occurred to me that it could be interpreted as a request for a performance of asexuality. Why is that?
Is it because (and setting aside all arguments of nature vs. nurture vs. some combination of the two—I don’t want to get sidetracked) men are keyed to displays of dominance as indicators of sexuality and sexual interest—so they interpret the “nice” as “shut down the dominance displays—cool your jets!” Because I can see where trying to negotiate between those contradictory commands could leave a man thinking “well, what the eff do I do now?”
And I think part of the problem is the different interpretations men and women have of what “dominance” is, and when it’s desirable and when it’s not. (*warning up ahead*—I could be talking completely out of my rear end here, and I will definitely appreciate the contribution of others, even if it’s to tell me how full of it I am! I’m finding the conversation provocative, and it brings up ideas I haven’t thought about before. So, most of what is going to follow in the next paragraph or two is typing on my feet, and may be idiosyncratic. *enter at your own risk* ;-)
It has been my observation that the men who have the hardest time communicating with women are those who haven’t spent much time around women in non-sexual settings. My shorthand for it is “guys who’ve spent too much time in Guyland.” (I stole the word from Liz Phair; I’ve never heard the album. Not my type of music.) Men who don’t have sisters, who weren’t close to their mothers, who attended all-male schools, who work in mostly-male environments, who don’t have platonic female friends. It’s also been my observation that rarely is there a flip-side to this in women, because we don’t really have the option of avoiding Guyland unless we join a convent. Think about it—the workplace is still Guyland. Academia is Guyland. Joining any kind of gym, dojo, sports club, etc.—Guyland. Playing music—Guyland. The leadership of almost all religious institutions—-Guyland. Living life as a woman means learning how to negotiate your way around men and the male point of view, full-stop. Men have far more options for avoiding spheres dominated by women, even when they don’t want to. Like James Brown said…”It’s a Man’s World!”
So, I’ve seen men who are used to communicating mostly with other men, and especially with the types of dominance displays required (ok, “required” is an arguable term, but I’m going with the concept that this is a half-changed world and I stand by it) in that venue be completely out of their water with women, because they don’t have a framework of communication. What works with men doesn’t work with women. They have the “tough” down (or at least know how to pull “tough” out of the bag when necessary, even if they don’t particularly care for doing it), but have no idea what the “tender” is, because the framework for “tender” in that world is “weak”.
Now for what could easily be the idiosyncratic part: I’ll be straight up in admitting that any given man would have some degree of difficulty in getting around my (psychological/emotional) barriers in terms of showing enough of the “dominance displays” (can anyone think of a better term for that?) to indicate sexual interest, yet not so much that it either triggers my spidey-sense of danger (survivor of domestic violence) or is what I perceive as overbearing—trying to force me into a subordinate or submissive position (psychologically). Because here’s the thing—I find the psychologically subordinate or submissive position to be asexual. Or non-sexual. What I mean to say is, it kills my sexual interest.
Now, that sounds on paper like more of a fine line than what it really is in practice. but Sam, you said this: Most people struggle with basic body language and how to keep a conversation up.
And that is key. It’s the difference between the men who find that path a five lane highway vs. those who find it a tightrope.
Basic body language isn’t so basic. I’ve laughed at most of the books I’ve seen on it, mostly because they seek to give hard definitions to subtleties and avoid how situational body language is. I think I’m pretty good at reading body language, and I think it comes from growing up in a culture where body language is an damn near an art form (yes, I am that stereotypical sicilian that couldn’t talk if you cut off my hands!). All the nuances of expression were given full rein—different timbres in the voice, ways of phrasing, ways of moving the head and hands, the use of the eyes, relative fluidity or stiffness of movement—all that meant something, and I learned it like language without an accent. Once you learn those “basics” (not!) at the same age your relationship to language itself is forming—well, it becomes easier to “translate” the body language of different people/different situations in the same way a foundation in one branch of spoken language makes it easier to learn similar languages.
And conversation is important too. Men who’ve made me forget I have barriers have always started with conversation—and escalated it to a certain repartee—almost like a dance. There’s a certain rhythm involved, and both parties have equal time. And we look at one another. And before long we’re sitting closer and talking with the “intimate” timbre—sending signals to other folks in the room (if there are any) “do not disturb”. This advantages men who are good “talkers”. Now, I’ve read that “doubling” or that mimicry of body language (sitting in the same position, using the same gestures, etc.) is supposed to be a signal that everything’s really moving along—but I wonder about the chicken-and-eggness of that. Maybe the familiarity of using the same gestures (having the same “language” of body expression) is a pre-existing reveal of compatibility. I don’t know.
What’s your favorite role model in this respect?
I’ll be thinking about this all day while I’m out in the yard working. Nothing immediately jumps to mind.
ahunt? do you get any of those morels? I stuff them like squash flowers, sometimes I fry them with garlic to go with steaks.
(sigh) I’ve got a long comment stuck in moderation. But I did respond!
when you say you don’t want to be treated “as a fuckhole” men will probably just take a “don’t ever be overtly sexual with her”
Only if they’re being spiteful and petulant. I’m sorry, but I think most guys are not so stupid as to think the only alternative to thinking of a woman as a despicable tool to be used to masturbate into is “no sex at all”.
If I suggested that ‘women, don’t think of us as meal tickets’ would immediately be interpreted by women as ‘don’t ever depend on us for a dime and pay your own goddamn way’, you’d notice the overreaction.
mythago,
I wasn’t saying it isn’t an overreaction, and I wasn’t saying that using terminology that can create misunderstandings is helpful. There’s no being “right” when your message isn’t getting through. On either side. To be honest, if a women had ever used that phrase in a personal conversation (not tongue-in-cheek, in which case it may very well be interpreted as an invitation to think about planning, say, a mini-break), I’d probably not just have thought she’s not interested in any kind of sexual interaction, I’d have thought she’s not interested in interaction with a man (and thus with me) at all.
It may have been different if it had happened in a panel discussion about the difficulties of inter-gender communication, but if I had ever heard this from a woman in a club or any other venue where strangers can meet and talk, I’d have felt seriously insulted that she would have felt the need to emphasize that I should not see her as a cup to wank into, take it as a verbal slap and wish her a good life. Simple.
By the way, if I said “don’t think of me as a meal ticket” to a woman in a not tongue-in-cheek way (say while paying the bill) but as a serious reminder, I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d be insulted and walked off.
LaLubu,
thanks for your reply.
“‘I’ll fuck her, but I sure don’t wanna do anything else with he”
Personally, I’d say that a merely sexual relationship doesn’t mean disrespecting the other person. I may not want to have anything else to do with a woman, and she may not want to have anything to do with me apart from having sex. That, in itself, is not a sign of disrespect but a reminder that relationships are different. I don’t have sex with a lot of female friends, should they feel disrespected because I’d not want to do them, but would like to do other stuff with them? Not all relationships are fully emotional and physical at the same time. But focusing on one part of a person in a relationship doesn’t automatically mean disrespecting that person.
I can understand why you would assume you live in “guyland” and I’d probably even agree with most of what you say, but at the same I think I should mention that I believe you’d be surprised to which extent the men, say in the gym, are believing they live in girlland. And Neneh Cherry even wrote a song about how “it’s a woman’s world” a couple of years ago.
I generally agree with your theory about the appropriate amound of dominance markers, as it is pretty much in line with what I wrote about the need to make women feel safe as the basic prerequisite of masculinity. What we need to do is accept that we don’t automatically know everything we need to have success in a social environment, and that it’s ok to not be perfect and to allow oneself to make mistakes and learn. Personally, I’d recommend reading some books on body-language and mating psychology, they have served me well. And I have always been good with words, a talker, as you said above.
As for “mirrorring”, this works both the chicken and egg way, ie, it’s a natural thing to occur when the dance is going great, but it is assumed that it could also be applied consciously to try and make the brain of the person you’re talking to do a backwards rationalization… “oh look, we’re mirroring, seems like this conversation is actually going great.” Of course, it’s hard to tell if it actually works consciously, because usually when people notice mirroring their perception of the conversation is usually rather positive…
My estimate is that about 80%-90% of men will find it difficult. About half of which will find it very difficult.
Looking forward to hearing about your ideal role model…
There’s no being “right” when your message isn’t getting through.
And your message won’t get through if the other person really, really doesn’t want to listen to you.
But I guess I should be used to this little game by now: women should stop the mind reading bullshit and just say what they mean, but if they do, they’re strident bitches who could have put it in a much nicer way.
mythago,
exactly, I wouldn’t want to listen to someone who appears to insult me. So if you’re trying to make me listen, don’t do that. Simple, right? And if you can’t see that there’s usually a “nicer” way for people to say what they mean then I don’t know.
do you get any of those morels? I stuff them like squash flowers, sometimes I fry them with garlic to go with steaks.
Indeed yes. Way back before I was injured, it was a yearly family affair, and we would gather leeks with the morels, stuff the morels with the leeks, dust with Drakes, and fry them with venison saved for the trip. These days, I must content myself with hunting “blondes” and “earlies” on the property, but my boys make sure to bring home Mom’s spring fix.
Anyhow, what I’m finding most frustrating in the discussion is the implicit assumption that the only way men and women relate to one another is in terms of some sexual connection, and that men are simply unable to cope with evolving social norms. Remember, the discussion is, among other things, about “masculine culture” fostering disengagement from academic/employment participation and achievement now that women are present in the public arena.
ahunt,
“Remember, the discussion is, among other things, about “masculine culture” fostering disengagement from academic/employment participation and achievement now that women are present in the public arena.”
How would that not be supporting an implicit assumption that the only way men and women relate to another is in terms of sexual connection? But be that as it may, I don’t think that men and women only relate to each other in terms of a sexual connection, but I very much believe that sexuality is implicity present in whichever way we define masculinity and femininity.
That’s the problem with the term gender - you can’t leave the sex out, however much you try… What’s in-group compeition good for in the end? A better choice among potential mates. Of course that’s a very aggregate argument and not as relevant for every individual as it is for the system. The persons in question deal with the individual choices and communication problems outlined.
But I don’t think the discussion is giving the impression that men are unable to cope with evolving social norms, just that there is not much of a fair treatment of the problems they have in order to do that and not much social help at all. Of course men will evolve, and social norms will evolve, there will logically never be an equilibrium. The question, to me, is: how, and how to make this easier.
just that there is not much of a fair treatment of the problems they have in order to do that and not much social help at all.
But Sam…you yourself bring it ALL back to physical sexuality, when the reality is that you would have no sexual interest in the vast majority of the women you encounter on a daily basis. I think this is…limited thinking, if the goal is to actually address the problems.
ahunt,
sure I have no sexual interest in the vast majority of women I encounter on a daily basis. But that doesn’t change the social sexual dynamics, because SOME man will be interested sexually in a woman I’m not interested in who will in turn probably not be interested in women I may be interested in. And vice versa for women. The point, for me, is, that you cannot take this out of the equation because the potential of sexual interest alone is an important element in creating the social dynamics I’m thinking about. And I do realize that this sounds a bit like “When Harry Met Sally.”
OK Sam, the BH just noted that I’m pulling middle-aged maternal rank here, and I do plead guilty.
But again…”some” man is not really relevant here. It is disingenuous to suggest that the physical sexuality angle comprises anything more than an interesting subplot in the realm of social dynamics when the reality is that physical sexuality does not enter into the vast majority of our social interactions.
ahunt,
sure, PHYSICAL sexuality rarely is a part of out social interactions, but it is almost always on our minds, if only implicitly. It’s there in the very moment we decide whether we’re interacting with a man or a woman. And that is probably the very first mental decision we make about a person. The next one (and usually subconscious decision) will probably be if the person in question is a suitable mating partner, a person we may be sexually interested in, or not. This is split second stuff, and the fact that we don’t actually have sex like the Bonobos, the fact that we do have a cerebrum to work with in addition to our limbic system and can control ourselves in a socially appropriate way doesn’t mean that we can take sexuality out of the equation when it comes to the very few fundamental motivating factors of human beings. And it means, at least in my opinion, that this is the underlying dynamic for every social structure built on top of it.
It’s there in the very moment we decide whether we’re interacting with a man or a woman. And that is probably the very first mental decision we make about a person.
You cannot be serious.
ahunt,
well, male and female is a sex-based distinction. It exists because we’re reproducing sexually as a species. But I’m thinking we’re actually talking past each other, as I was very specific in the discussion with La Lubu and this is very, very general argument, and these levels of abstraction don’t go together well.
Yeah Sam, you apparently hang out in a Renoir “abstract” of young and startling beautiful people, while I divide my time between a town retail store, and an ag home operation, generally interacting with the regular folk.
Simple, right?
No.
When one doesn’t want to hear an uncomfortable message, it’s very easy to attack the delivery: it’s your fault I didn’t understand, because you were too vague, or too strident, or because I felt insulted, or because I took the meaning of what you said to extremes, or you said it in an ‘unladylike’ manner, or….or…..
You and I both know how that game is played, Sam. If you want to come up with constructive suggestions instead of “ooh, no, that’s not right, try again,” I’m all ears.
ahunt,
I really don’t see what this has to do with Renoir, what we do, or how the people we know look.
mythago,
women *and* men occasionally play games. I wasn’t suggesting that there aren’t men or women who pretend to misunderstand when they don’t. But that bit of statistical information doesn’t mean that the “sender” of information can just lean back and say “you’re unwilling to listen or mean spirited or you would naturally see the world from my perspective”. That’s just unfair.
Sam,
The phenomenon of ‘tone arguments’ and ‘derailing’ has been explained at length, by smarter people than I, in the context of other issues like race. People who don’t want things to change, or who don’t want to feel as though they are in the wrong, fall back on nitpicking about tone, or how ‘angry’ the speaker is, in order to ignore the content.
Heck, you see this outside of social issues, when one partner in a relationship wants to talk about serious wrongdoing by the other, who deflects it with “I can’t talk to you when you’re this angry.”
Disagreeing (’not seeing the world from my perspective’) is far different than playing the game of you-said-it-wrong. But, again, you knew that.
Personally, I’d say that a merely sexual relationship doesn’t mean disrespecting the other person. I may not want to have anything else to do with a woman, and she may not want to have anything to do with me apart from having sex.
And I’d certainly agree—merely having sex in the absence of any interest of having an exclusive relationship is not inherent disrespect. But. I’ve been the fly-on-the-wall for over twenty years in the building trades. Almost always the only woman present (I’ve been on two jobs in that time where another woman was on the job). It’s not uncommon in my world for guys to overshare about their sex lives. I have yet to hear any man speak of a one-night-stand with anything but complete contempt for the woman. Now, some of that is probably exaggerated for the male bonding element—bonding over the shared contempt for….women who have one night stands, women who perform certain sexual acts, their own sexual desire for women who don’t fit the mold of girlfriend-material, any number of things. I find it curious that this is such a common form of male bonding (Hugo’s certainly written about it before), yet it’s women who are tagged as being more sexually prudish. Anyway. I think you know this was what mythago and I were referring to in terms of ‘masturbating into a female body’, and not mutually pleasurable sex sans exclusive commitment where both partners actually like each other. (it’s probably also worth mentioning that this is a disconnect for me—I couldn’t imagine even wanting to have sex with someone I had contempt for or found so repulsive or unattractive.)
The point, for me, is, that you cannot take this out of the equation because the potential of sexual interest alone is an important element in creating the social dynamics I’m thinking about.
and
And that is probably the very first mental decision we make about a person.
are some pretty provocative comments, and while I think there is some truth to them, there’s more “truthiness”—in other words, the power of those statements as creating certain assumptions outweighs any pre-existing Bonobo-like flash across the synapses influence. (what’s my first mental decision I make about a person? Especially a male person? Is this person dangerous. Do I have to watch my back around this person.)
See, back to my first response—when women had doors opened to us that were previously closed, we went through them—but had to rapidly adapt. Adapt to an environment that wasn’t created by us, or for us, and in many cases was very openly hostile to our presence. And even then, we had to make do with less. We had to pave our way through. Prove ourselves.
And a part of proving ourselves meant consciously taking ourselves out of the “sex class”. Because women can’t be seen as sexy and competant at the same time (hey, don’t ask me. I didn’t make those rules. Ask some of the men who believe that). Women entering the professional white collar world pored through books and magazine articles on “looking professional”—shorthand for de-emphasizing sexiness, while still avoiding dumpiness. There were plenty of articles on etiquette, and carrying oneself, and asserting power without stepping too hard on male toes. A veritable plethora of information co-created by women on how to manuever through the minefields. Need I say, a changing collection of information, as our greater presence and growing participation in power changed our environment.
But those changes haven’t trickled down into changing assumptions about “sexy” vs. “competant”.
And why that matters is: that mindset is hard to shut down. Well, it’s hard for me to shut down, anyway (and I don’t think I’m alone). So, part of the narrowing of that communication highway as far as male/female relations (especially sexual relations, but this bleeds over into nonsexual relations as well) is that we (women) have to determine just how much we can present ourselves as sexual beings, without losing our credibility or having our sexuality be the overriding factor that we’re judged by.
To be more specific: as a young woman entering the trades, I knew that I could either be perceived as “cute” or “sexy”—or as intelligent and competant. There was no both/and. I consciously dressed down, didn’t wear makeup, spoke directly and in a low tone, made it a point to carry the heavy stuff when I was paired up with someone—in other words, I had to send obvious signals that I wasn’t there to scope out men, I was there to earn a living. As an apprentice, how much you learn is mostly dependent on the journeymen you work with. I wanted my journeymen to be teaching me, not flirting. But even after topping out (becoming a journeyman), my workplace culture hadn’t changed, so neither did my modus operandi.
So, I sometimes hear “you’re too independent.” To which my response is, “Why ‘too’? How much is ‘too’?”
‘Nother words Sam, while you mention that sexual dynamic being present in any male/female interrelation, you neglect to mention just how much that dynamic is culturally designed to benefit men to the detriment of women. Let me repeat: we don’t have the option of returning to the world of our great grandparents. I’ve illustrated the various ways women have collectively adjusted to the changing scenery. We didn’t do that because we’re “better communicators;” we did it because the alternative was untenable.
My thought is that men aren’t collectively co-creating those adjustments because their alternatives are not yet untenable. There are still enough vestiges left (and more memories of) the previous scenery that men like Richard above think that there’s nothing that needs to change (except maybe for women to take a few giant steps back). That isn’t going to happen. Neither men nor women are clamoring for a return to preindustrial feudal society (well, in any great numbers, anyway).
And what’s frustrating to me, when I hear men making critiques of the kind you are making Sam, is the extent to which the level of power men have in changing the current cultural tropes is ignored. Women did this when we had very little power.
I’m still trying to think of pop cultural references for role models of the “new man.” Can’t think of any. I can think of all kinds of real-life examples, but that wouldn’t mean anything on this thread. And I’m not sure that “new man” is the correct term. As I mentioned before, historically men were dealing with many of the same issues and difficulties they deal with today—this has been going on for awhile. The old paradigms don’t work. They stopped working for women before they stopped working for men, which is why there is an illusion of women making the “better” or more rapid adjustment. We (women) had more time and more negative consequences for not adjusting.
La Lubu,
will reply in detail later, but just one thing -
I find that stunning, I have rarely heard men speak with contempt about their one-night-stands, and I’m a tad bit surprised men would tell you about this. I wonder what their interest was in telling you this? Anyway. If there is one thing I hate it is this kind of slut-shaming. I’ve told a couple of men about this and while I generally don’t agree with terms like “privilege” I think this is one area where some men still assume that it’s normal to have this kind of double standard. But again, in my experience, this isn’t too common.
Sam, I think La Lubu’s point was not that her co-workers were telling her these things - but that they were saying those things to other men, and she happened to be present and in earshot.females whose op
La Lubu,
It’s a reaction to a perceived scarcity of heterosexual sex, withdrawing the element these men feel they have control over (the development of pair-bonding and the non-sexual elements of a pair-bonded relationship) as a form of agency. Sure, they’d f*ck her, but they wouldn’t marry her, or devote time and resources to her, because “promiscuous” women have children of doubtful paternity, making the relationship a resource-allocation problem, commodity vs. commodity. It’s a side effect of not experiencing oneself as a sex object, ever: the withdrawal of oneself as a relationship object, as an investor-in-progeny.
Yeah Sam, you apparently hang out in a Renoir “abstract” of young and startling beautiful people, while I divide my time between a town retail store, and an ag home operation, generally interacting with the regular folk.
Sam, I don’t see why feminism has to have anything to do with solving individual’s problems with understanding social interactions. Some people are good at it, and some people are bad at it. That’s their personal problems. Feminism is about treating women with respect as equal adult people. That doesn’t require you to accurately divine their innermost thoughts and preferences any more than you have to do so to treat other men with respect as equal adult people.
People get all obsessed with these “mating problems” and I while I think they are interesting to discuss in terms of personal growth and development, I don’t think they are politically significant. When I was a teen, I misread a lot of signals. I didn’t expect many guys to be interested in me, and so only the really obvious got through my “wall.” As I grew up, I grew more atuned to subtlety, and to how I could influence the interaction as well. Big f-ing whoop. This is what happens as people grow up and learn about people and the world. Some people get it quicker and easier. Some people never do. Some people seem to be born understanding it. And others get bitter about not getting it or about the fact that you can’t make any particular other person feel sexually attracted to you.
I don’t think there’s some dire situation out there where people are failing to communicate so we’re going to de-populate the world. Everyone I know personally (I am just turned 30 and have attended 4-5 weddings every summer for the last 4 years or so) has managed to negotiate these interactions with a reasonable degree of success. Even friends with somewhat non-traditionally “attractive” physical or personality traits.
In summary, on a personal level I think the discussion Sam and LL are having is interesting. But I don’t think it’s a societal problem on par with violence against women, pay disparity, continuing discrimination in employment, lack of support for parents in the workplace, etc. That’s what my feminism is about. Not whether everyone is able to find the sexual relationship they truly desire in their heart of hearts.
“In summary, on a personal level I think the discussion Sam and LL are having is interesting. But I don’t think it’s a societal problem on par with violence against women, pay disparity, continuing discrimination in employment, lack of support for parents in the workplace, etc. That’s what my feminism is about. Not whether everyone is able to find the sexual relationship they truly desire in their heart of hearts.”
What Emily said.
Sorry, so when La Lubu talks about having to deliberately appear nonsexual in order to ‘pass’ in an all-male workplace, you see that as an individual relationship issue, and nothing to do with (say) “continuing discrimination in employment”? You believe that the same men who come to work and openly discuss, and disparage, their female sexual partners never, ever let that attitude affect their behavior toward female co-workers or bosses?
Touche, mythago. I made my comment without really reading LL’s last response to Sam. And it is awesome! I’m glad you prodded me to go back and read it thoroughly.
I think all of the things she describes are issues for feminism. But I guess I don’t think that what LL describes as men’s failure to adapt successfully, at an individual level, to a changing world is really a feminist issue. Maybe I’m wrong and further thought would convince me of that.
My comment was mainly written out of frustration at Sam’s apparent idea that some interest group (and I interpreted to mean - like feminists have interest groups) should be out there advocating for changing in the “communication” abilities of individual men and women so that men will have a model of how to be a “tough but tender” man. Like LL, I can think of TONS of individuals in my life who meet that standard. And the ones who don’t have personal demons to contend with - it’s not that there’s no model for it, it’s that they have issues. So while it might be personally fulfilling for them to explore the ways in which they are failing to understand what it means to be in an equal adult relationship, it doesn’t seem to me to be a particularly fruitful political discussion. I don’t think you can politically teach social skills.
As for male role models - how about Will Smith or Usher? Or for that matter Obama? I don’t know much about Usher, but I saw him with his ADORABLE baby son on the cover of a grocery store mag (Ebony?). I didn’t read the whole article, but the photospread with him and the kid was really eye-catching and heart-warming.
Indeed Myth…LL’s distressing experiences tell me little has changed in the 30 years since I worked fabrication at GM.
But isn’t Sam describing a different dynamic, as in genuine sexual interest?