Inequality

[rowyn]

Every time I sit down to write something about this, I am either overwhelmed by the multitude of things I have to say and give up on trying to organize my thoughts, or I chicken out, or both. But it's Saturday morning and I have -- well, a dozen other things to do, but all I was doing was play Puzzle Pirates, so why not, I'll give it another shot.

I end up reading a fair bit about feminism. I am fascinated by the subject, by the myriad of little ways that gender differences continue to reverberate through my culture.

I am a feminist. To me, being a feminist means "men and women should have equal rights, opportunities, and choices". It means that gender should not be deterministic, should not be used as a stick to beat people into one role or away from another. This is not an especially controversial position any more.

But the topic of feminism remains touchy, because we don't really know how to get there from here any more, and to some it's not clear that there's a "there" to get to. Men can be stay-at-home dads, women can be CEOs, and pretty much no one over the age of twelve says "you can't do that because you're a GIRL" any more. So we're done, right? Gender roles are totally last century.

... Yeah, not so much.

One term that comes out of feminist theory that I dislike is "patriarchy". I have a strong distaste for most of the "privileged men vs oppressed women" rhetoric. For one, it makes it sound like gender roles are something perpetrated by men against women, for the explicit purpose of preserving male dominance and harming women. Like there is this vast conspiracy of men out there trying to keep the women down.

This is a beguiling notion, because human beings love nothing so much as a group to demonize, and it is entirely wrong-headed. Gender roles are perpetuated by our culture upon the members of our culture. It is all-pervasive. Women are not immune to enforcing stereotypes by virtue of being female. Men are not immune to being victimized by stereotypes by virtue of being male. It is not that simple.

In something of the same vein, I get very weary of articles talking about all the ways in which men are "privileged" and women are "victimized" and discounting the idea that there are any ways at all in which gender roles harm men. Yes, I get that men make more money and make up a much larger proportion at the top of the political and business class. Yes, this is a problem. But by portraying women as always victimized, always oppressed, they are saying "anyone who isn't at the top of this political/economic heap doesn't matter". They are saying that child-rearing, nurturing personal relationships, pursuing work-life balance, being a good follower, or seeking personal fulfillment are all trivial and irrelevant, because those things are not about ruling the world. The whole business is utterly galling. It buys into the very same notions of status and value that it's pretending to tear down. This isn't about equality: it's about deciding that A is good and B is bad and therefore if you do A you are good and if you don't you suck. That already the status quo, and it's mind-numbingly stupid. The problem with the world is not just that women don't get to be at the top of the heap: it's that we are all trained to think being at the top of the heap is so damn awesome. And it's not. Being at the top of the heap does not make people happier, smarter, or better human beings. I am not saying it's a crappy place to be, but pretending that achieving it should be the goal for every human being is just dumb. It is the way in which my culture has been making men miserable for hundreds of years. Making it the way to make women miserable is not, in point of fact, progress.

Now, if people want to ride this merry-go-round, that's cool. I am all for people of all genders becoming senators and CEOs and presidents and whatnot. But it is at least as important to recognize that this is not the highest and best use for every human being. That men need to be allowed out of the expectation that this is what they should want and strive for. Heaven knows it is not what I want for myself.

Comments

[alinsa.livejournal.com]

There are certainly things I do in life that I do for no other reason than that's what is expected of me. Even consciously being aware of it, it seems almost impossible to get away from -- so many things are just so damned pervasive in our society. (I'm not talking about gender roles specifically, mind you, though they certainly factor in.)


human beings love nothing so much as a group to demonize

This seems to be unarguably true, and would seem to be responsible for many many bad things throughout the history of civilization. What I never understood was... why. Is it just a societal thing, or something that's more in-built to the way the human mind works (or even the non-human mind, though I have no idea how you'd test for/verify that idea in a non-human)? From a purely evolutionary point of view, demonizing specific groups (e.g. creatures that want to eat you) seems reasonable, but in humans it seems to be more... just a need to demonize some group, which seems less useful. It's one of those odd things I've been curious about for a while.

[nanashi-jones.livejournal.com]

I've a sort-of answer, if you'd like.

Demonizing is a psychological tactic used by pretty much everyone to get what they want. While many people can and do have the ability to think complexly about subjects, this isn't true for everyone and the human brain shows a propensity in reacting to the "familiar" vs. the "unknown."

Remember being a kid. You knew your caretaker (mom, dad, whoever) and then there was the rest of the big, scary world that you hid behind large legs from. Your brain pretty much holds that pattern though it grows and gains complexity as you mature.

There's nothing wrong with that- it's a solid defense mechanism and inherent survival instinct. "Familiar keeps me alive, unknown might help or it could render me very dead. I will stick with the familiar, thanks, until it proves to be crap for me."

Thus, many people looking to gain ground in their opinion with the group their appealing to will "us vs. them" approach and distance, demonize and other-ize a group. Usually by something easy to spot or identify thus instilling that fear of the unknown and reinforcing the familiar that a group knows to be best.

It becomes reassuring then. You're not just holding to the safety of familiar, you're a hero for doing so and this creates a positive feeling- doing the Right Thing.

A lot of little things that add up to why people demonize, but at its core is because the person doing the demonizing feels unsafe and wishes to gather familiar around them because while there is safety in familiarity there is impressive safety in numbers.

[rowyn]

Yes, there's at least one study suggesting that even babies as young as 9 months (!) identify with those who have qualities in common with them (in the case of the linked study, this was 'preferring the same food'!) and enjoy seeing bad things happen to those unlike. Whatever the reason, this does seem to be instinctive behavior.

[rowyn]

Robert Ardrey posited a concept called "noyau", or social groups that exist pretty much solely for being aggravated by each other, mainly to advert boredom. Nanashi Jones' explanation is much less depressing, though.

[nanashi-jones.livejournal.com]

Agreed. Bravo!

We as humanity are complex and more than just being on top or bottom.

[rowyn]

Right! Humans get a lot of mileage out of generalizing -- it's a very useful skill! -- but it has its limits

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

I liked the way David Brin put it: instead of society being a pyramid, with most of the people at the bottom, it should be like a diamond, with most people in the middle class, and only a few people abjectly poor, and 20th century America took great strides toward that objective.

[rowyn]

I want to view society as more complex than something that can be reduced to the sum of one's financial/political weight. :/

Clustering the financial spread of people into a flattened oval would be nice, though. Not that I want this done by force of law ... I want it to move this way organically, just as moving away from the pyramid towards a diamond has been more 'this is what works best so we're doing it' than an ideal imposed from the top-down. Human beings are not very good at follow-through on things that have to be imposed from the top-down. :/

[telnar.livejournal.com]

One aside on inequality: Men are indeed a large majority of the CEOs, Senators, et al, but they are also a large majority in jails, and suicide statistics. Arguably, we have an environment which encourages men to take greater risks than women, resulting in more men both succeeding and failing dramatically.

[xyzzysqrl]

I've come to the conclusion that... I sort of don't know how any of this works? Like... gender and stuff. I don't understand any of that. I kind of want to be "neutral" or maybe "houseplant". Possibly "Helpful robot", I could -seriously- live with "helpful robot".

So... uh, I mostly just sort of shuffle away very quickly from conversations where that is happening. I'm aware that gender roles exist and are hurtful, and I'm hoping that people work out how to not make them so hurtful, but I think I can best help by staying out of the way of that.

[level-head.livejournal.com]

Very nicely stated.

This topic tends to engender (so to speak) more anger than thought ... when thought it what is most keenly needed.

===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle

[jorrocks-j.livejournal.com]

You are asking people to a) not demonize other groups and b) not think dominance is so great.

Unfortunately people are primates, and they do what primates do, which is to a) clot up into little cliques and fling poop at one another, and b) fight for dominance within the clique.

The day we stop doing this is the day we stop being primates.

Furthermore and in conclusion: The Kinks.



--Skarl the Drummer

[alltoseek.livejournal.com]

Well, that's an over-generalization of primates. I suggest you read Sapolsky and others who have studied bonobos and a whole variety of other primate species and culture.

Among other things that differentiate humans from other primates is that human communities employ a tremendously wide range of methods for arranging dominance and status in society. It's not clear to me that we have exhausted our ability to find variety in these methods or arrangements. Possibly in the future we won't be classified as primates, for this or some other reason (classification schemes change all the time).

But right now, yeah I'd agree humans take a throwing poop and fighting for dominance approach to society :-)

[rowyn]

Among other things that differentiate humans from other primates is that human communities employ a tremendously wide range of methods for arranging dominance and status in society. It's not clear to me that we have exhausted our ability to find variety in these methods or arrangements.


Yes! ♥ I can easily believe that we'll yet discover a system that works better for everyone.

[jorrocks-j.livejournal.com]

But dominance would still be dominance and groups would still be groups. We would still have status and power, and not enough for everyone, which implies conflict. Which implies us-and-them boundaries and social pyramids and campaigns to work them to our individual and group advantage..

I don't doubt we will have different tools for prosecuting these camapigns in the future: fifty years ago you couldn't bully someone to death on facebook if they weren't popular, or take down their website with a DDoS attack if you didn't like their worldview. But we primates are great innovators

We're so fond of pointing to the bonobos as if they held the answers to all our problems (poor things). But if our storehouse of behaviors includes their social mores--why haven't we used them yet?

--Skarl the Drummer

[alltoseek.livejournal.com]

But dominance would still be dominance and groups would still be groups.

Not if everyone's dominance extended only to themselves (so everyone's 'dominance' was self-determination and that's it - everyone's 'dominance' was equal to everyone else's) and the groups included everyone. Or rather, there would be all kinds of groups, but none would be more dominant than another.

Of course this is a utopian ideal and I don't know that we'd ever get there, or even close, but I'm not ruling it out. We are a very young species. We have shown a tremendous amount of diversity in an extremely small amount of time. I don't know what we might look like in a 100,000 or 1,000,000 years.

[alltoseek.livejournal.com]

My definition of feminism is "self-determination for women". More broadly, it would be "self-determination for everyone", because feminists typically assert the right of self-determination for men (which they mostly have already, which is why feminists don't talk about it much) and also the right for self-determination based on any other characteristic, such as sexual orientation, race, class, etc. Not to mention all the people who don't neatly fit into the binary categories of "men" and "women".

I disagree with your assessment of the notions of privilege and oppression. Men have a privilege in society by the virtue of being men, whether or not any one individual man wants it or asserts it. This is true of white people too, and hetero-normative people, and able-bodied people, etc. Blacks, gays, disabled people all face barriers and difficulties that are invisible to others. Yes this means that most people have privilege(s) in one sense, but may lack different privilege(s) in another sense.

The flip side of privilege is oppression and it certainly exists and yes all members of a society engage in perpetuating the status quo, to some extent. One reason is the internalized misogyny, homophobia, racism, etc. that gets drilled in by society from birth. Another is parents working to keep their children safe.

For example, one of the privileges that men have is that if they are assaulted while walking down street, they are not assumed to have been "asking for it" by being on the street. This is not true of women - often they are accused of having been in the wrong place (neighborhood/frat party/etc.), and the wrong time (at night), in the wrong company (alone/with men drinking/etc.) dressed the wrong way (which is also, btw, the way society says is attractive for women to dress). So men have this privilege of not being accused of creating their own victimhood. So then, as a responsible parent, how do you raise your daughters to keep them safe? You tell them not to walk alone at night in the wrong neighborhoods dressed in an attractive way. Don't go out drinking with men. You don't want to see your daughters hurt, so you tell them these things to keep them from harm. At the same time you are perpetuating the notion that women who don't follow these "rules" are responsible for getting themselves hurt if they are assaulted. But if you avoid giving this advice, teaching these lessons, your daughter may be more likely to be hurt, and you wouldn't want that. It's a very fine and difficult line to walk, and this is just one of them. There are lots more that apply to women, and also to gays, disabled, blacks, Latinos, etc.

Oppression is a vast conspiracy, but it is not universal on the part of oppressors (men, hetero-normative, whites, etc.) nor is it particularly well-organized. But once people have any kind of power they are typically loath to give it up. For example, men looking for employment are already having to compete against other men; having to complete against other women too would just double the numbers. This is a simplistic view but much of people's decision-making is based on emotional simplistic reasoning. And it can certainly be overcome, but that takes work. It's also like the stereotype of the man getting yelled at by his boss, he goes home and yells at his wife, she yells at the kids, who then kick the dog (I've actually witnessed some of this happen in families). It works on a societal level too - a man may be poor but at least he's not female, or black, or Irish, or gay or whatever is the bigotry flavor of the month.

Demonstrating to all of society that everyone sharing power/status doesn't mean anyone has to give any up is very hard work to do. Most people think of it as a zero-sum game, like money. If a rich person spreads all his wealth around so everyone now has the same amount, that (now no-longer-)rich person now has less. And he likely doesn't want that. (Not everyone feels that way, but plenty of people do).

[alltoseek.livejournal.com]

Part II:


All of this can be a valid way of understanding how society works and understanding individual motivations within it without demonizing anyone. Mothers who teach their daughters how to behave are just trying to keep them safe. Men who present themselves as more competent for employment than women or Latinos are just trying to maximize their chance of earning a living. Middle/upper-class people who don't want their wealth taxed to provide opportunities for lower-income people are just trying to hold onto their hard-earned cash. None of them are demons, they are all just human. Short-sighted, not inclined to take the big-picture long-view humans. But that's human nature. We can take a long view and see the big picture, but that's very difficult to get accurate, and much harder to do than look at how your life is being impacted right here right now.

There are lots of ways to work for a more just and merciful and peaceful society, and you don't have to buy into the privilege/oppression model if you don't want to, but it is a valid way of understanding human behavior, and one that really gets to some of the core problems in changing prejudicial attitudes - so that if you understand this model, you can be better equipped to find a way to change society, a method that takes into account these very human motivations.

Understanding the privilege really works for me - both for why I've felt so excluded and invisible as a women in society (in media typically the viewpoint is male, so that female characters are the "other", the "outsider", the something different); and also in understanding how gay people, or blacks, or the disabled, etc., feel. Even when there's no overt examples of discrimination to point to, there's this invisible (to the non-affected, us privileged folks) othering that occurs.

[rowyn]

I actually do agree that privilege is a real thing, and that men have a lot of privileges women do not in my culture (and likewise for white people, heteronormative, etc.) But I also feel like I have a lot of privileges men do not have: I can, for example, hug a person of any gender and not have assumptions made about my sexual orientation because of it. I can seek to be in a polyamorous relationship and not immediately be accused of forcing or bullying my partners into going along with my wishes. As a woman in geek culture particularly, it is far, far, far easier for me to find a romantic partner than for any man I know. (That last is not broadly applicable to women in other American subcultures, obviously -- it's in large measure a factor of women being comparatively scarce in my subculture). If I stay home to parent my children, I am not assumed to be a worthless leech incapable of working.

And these privileges are worth far, far more to me than a bigger paycheck would be. I recognize that not every woman has these privileges or values them, but they remain something of great value to me that I want everyone to have. When feminism focuses on the financial/political spheres to the exclusion of all else, trivializing the personal/social spheres as "irrelevant" and "unimportant" and "worthless", I feel like it's a disservice to the experience of being human.

I don't know how to explain this. I don't want to undermine the struggle for economic and political equality, because yes that's really important, and safety is an even bigger issue, and yes I absolutely want to see women be on a level playing field here. But ... it just really bothers me to see the things I value most about my own life being dismissed as meaningless because they don't have a dollar value attached. And it really bothers me that the men in my culture do not have my privilege. And I would like them to. That's pretty much all.

[alltoseek.livejournal.com]

I knew there was something I was forgetting, and that is your strange notion that the oppression/privilege model excludes valuing traditional "feminine" qualities/characteristics/interests equally to traditional "masculine" qualities/characteristics/interests. Oppression and privilege exist in all spheres, not just in economics and politics. I think about how difficult life is for women in fundamental Muslim countries as Sharia law is being interpreted - women are oppressed everywhere, in social and private life as well. There is no escape.

Even in America gains made in social and private spheres are not immune - I recently read about how the tradition of marriage was undermined long before the gay rights activists, by the sexual revolution defining marriage not as a stable institution for raising children but as construct for pursuing personal fulfillment and pleasure (which the more I think about, the less sense it makes, but that was their argument). Evidently the high divorce rate makes this person's case that we should go back to rigid traditional religious marriage for 'stability'. Never mind the vast amount of abuse that was (and still is) perpetrated in that model; the abuse that women won't put up with any longer, which is the real reason for the high divorce rate - women have higher standards for lives now, and won't put up with shit. And now they have the political and economic clout not to have to.

Your privilege to chose a polyamorous lifestyle is in part due to your ability to earn your own living, and not rely on your lawful husband. Also due to laws, or rather lack thereof, that would prosecute you for pursuing multiple loves.

The hugging people is a product of our particular age and culture - there are many around the world and in many times in which men are perfectly free to hug each other and do all the time. This has nothing to do with tolerance of non-heteronormative types or how constricted gender roles are or how strictly they are enforced. Yes I agree that feminism is working to expand tolerance of affectionate behavior of all kinds on the part of all genders, rather than having strict gender roles and manners that correspond to them.

Even within geek culture women have specific problems like being accused of slutty behavior when they dress up like their favorite (female) superheroes (since such female superheroes are naturally depicted in revealing costumes); or of not being 'true' or 'real' geeks, but just looking for men(?) (I dunno, I just see all this stuff on tumblr.) And don't get me started on the gaming culture and how women are depicted in them. Makes me glad I still steer away from that stuff, but that just reinforces the problem, as the lack of female perspective keeps the men in the industry right on depicting women as the 'other', some object to be won or desired or made fun of or whatever. So privilege and oppression are not economic/political issues. They are present in all spheres of life.

cont.

[alltoseek.livejournal.com]

Part II again:

It's so odd to me to hear you say that feminisim focuses on the financial/political sphere thus 'trivializing' personal/social as 'irrelevant', 'unimportant', 'worthless'. I'm only 2 years older than you - do you really not remember "the personal IS political"? That was feminism in the 70's. Making the social/personal spheres - right to control one's own body, right to divorce, right not to be blamed for being a victim of assault, the right to safety in one's own home - feminism MADE the social/personal spheres into the political/economic ones just so we could have more control, more self-determination, more respect in social and personal spheres.

You can only choose to stay home to parent your children if you can choose to work instead. Else it's not a choice.

And if women can work, then more men are free to parent and otherwise help around the house. So now there has been a much quieter, much happier revolution in men being more involved in parenting. Do you remember how much Dad was involved in parenting? Not much. I have like maybe a handful of memories of him parenting before I was 12 or so. He did more with the boys, perhaps. Maybe you had a different experience. But I contrast that with my husband and our boys, and the difference is HUGE. And my husband works full time, as well. He does both. There's a lot contributing to the contrast in these individual examples, but one is the expectation that men parent their children. That wasn't the case a generation ago. Feminism is a huge reason why - I'm not sure there's another explanation, really. Feminists may not have actively worked for it on a political/social scale, but I'm sure they did A LOT on a personal scale, for a whole bunch of reasons. But one is that feminists know better than to think money is everything. No, it's not everything, but it's a lot easier for you and me to say that since we have food on the table every day and a home to sleep in every night. You lose those things and money starts seeming important. The economic/political sphere may not be the only important sphere to feminism, but it is AS EQUALLY important as the social/personal sphere. Not to mention how closely linked they are. Marriage and sex are personal and social, but the law sticks its nose in marriage, and if rape isn't outlawed then women are a whole lot more vulnerable to it. Choosing not to marry, or who to marry, is only possible if women can earn their own living and own their own property. The economic and political spheres are intertwined with the personal and social. The differences between them are tiny compared to their similarities - they are aspects of How People Interact With One Another. Which is what feminism is all about.

[rowyn]

Demonstrating to all of society that everyone sharing power/status doesn't mean anyone has to give any up is very hard work to do.

God yes THIS. I feel so strongly that all of society benefits so much from equality, that it is NOT zero sum, that giving power to other people will INCREASE your own power and well-being in the long term. And the stubborn belief that no, it's zero-sum, whatever X gains must be lost by Y, is hugely problematic. Especially since in the short term trying to fix the underlying problems may be negative-sum, making it look like the naysayers are right even if they're not long-term. :/

[schpydurx.livejournal.com]

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