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Tatsuya Ishida creates the internet comic Sinfest. Sometimes his insight hits the proverbial nail on the head.
-“We harbor an ideological bias against the feminine voice, rooted in positive primal associations with masculinity.”
Some highlights from the JSTOR article On Men and Women’s Public Speech.
“Gunn uses speeches delivered by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in their 2008 contest for the Democratic nomination to illustrate how gendered norms about speech create a double bind for women.
Gunn argues that the field of public address is an important symbolic arena where we harbor an “[ideological] bias against the feminine voice,” a bias, he contends, that is rooted in positive primal associations with masculinity (and the corresponding devaluation of femininity, the voice that constrains and nags—the mother, the droning Charlie Brown schoolteacher, the wife).
Both Gunn and Campbell contend that masculine speech is the cultural standard. It’s what we value and respect. The low pitch and assertive demeanor that characterize the adult male voice signify reason, control, and authority, suitable for the public domain. Women’s voices are higher pitched, like those of immature boys, and their characteristic speech patterns have a distinctive cadence that exhibits a wider range of emotional expression. In Western cultures, contends Gunn, this is bad because it comes across as uncontrolled. We associate uncontrolled speech (what Gunn calls “the cry, the grunt, the scream, and the yawp”) with bodily functions and sexuality—things that happen in the private, domestic spheres (both coded as feminine). Men are expected to repress passionate, emotional speech, Gunn explains, precisely because it threatens norms of masculine control and order.
The notion of control also relates to the cultural ideal of eloquence. Eloquence is not just a Western value but is rewarded in many cultures around the world.”
[…]
““Eloquence” is, essentially, code for values associated with masculinity.”
Ouch. Yet another patriarchal societal barrier that needs to be brought to light and rectified with all due haste.
Clearing up some of the confusion about socialization and being ‘born that way’, Ruth Hubbard in this excerpt tackles the nature/nurture question head on. Read the whole article here.
“We can visualize this kind of interaction or transformation by thinking about the interplay between biological and cultural factors that affects the ways boys and girls grow up in our society. If a society puts half its children into short skirts and warns them not to move in ways that reveal their panties, while putting the other half into jeans and overalls and encouraging them to climb trees, play ball, and participate in other vigorous outdoor games; if later, during adolescence, the children who have been wearing trousers are urged to “eat like growing boys,” while the children in skirts are warned to watch their weight and not get fat; if the half in jeans runs around in sneakers or boots, while the half in skirts totters about on spike heels, then these two groups of people will be biologically as well as socially different. Their muscles will be different, as will their reflexes, posture, arms, legs and feet, hand-eye coordination, and so on. Similarly, people who spend eight hours a day in an office working at a typewriter or a visual display terminal will be biologically different from those who work on construction jobs. There is no way to sort the biological and social components that produce these differences.
We cannot sort nature from nurture when we confront group differences in societies in which people from different races, classes, and sexes do not have equal access to resources and power, and therefore live in different environments. Sex-typed generalizations, such as that men are heavier, taller, or stronger than women, obscure the diversity among women and among men and the extensive overlaps between them for all traits except those directly involved with procreation. Most women and men fall within the same range of heights, weights, and strengths, three variables that depend a great deal on how we have grown up and live. We all know that first-generation Americans, on average, are taller than their immigrant parents and that men who do physical labor, on average, are stronger than male college professors. But we forget to look for the obvious reasons for differences when confronted with assertions like “Men are stronger than women.” We should be asking: “Which men?“ and “What do they do?” There may be biologically based average differences between women and men, but these are interwoven with a host of social differences from which we cannot disentangle them.”
Think you’re immune to social constructs? Think again.
“Let’s examine that a bit. “Men don’t see dirt the way women do.” That’s a pretty common assertion. And it’s bullshit. Vision problems aside, we’re all seeing the same dirty house; we’re just interpreting it differently. You and your boyfriend both walk in, see the pile of crap on the kitchen counter, and have different reactions to it. You likely think, “Man, that pile of crap is really bugging me. I should really
clean it up a little.” He likely sees it and thinks, “Huh. Pile of crap. It’ll get taken care of.”
Why does he think that? Well, because we’re dealing with endless generations of social gender constructs that tell us that taking care of the home is “women’s work.” Whether you or your boyfriend or your parents or your peer group believe these constructs is largely irrelevant, though, because it’s so deeply ingrained in our society that it permeates every level of culture: You see it in TV shows, movies, commercials, in the workplace, in literature, and in almost every facet of life. There’s no escaping it.
So when someone says, “Men don’t see dirt the way women do,” what they’re actually saying is, “Men have been conditioned over generations to process the dirt that they see in a way that requires no further action on their part.” It’s not genetic. It’s learned. And it can be unlearned.”
The take away of this is in the last line. Learned behaviours can be altered over time. So no more weak excuses people. :)
“A therapist once said to me, “If you face the choice between feeling guilt and resentment, choose the guilt every time.” It is wisdom I have passed on to many others since. If a refusal saddles you with guilt, while consent leaves resentment in its wake, opt for the guilt.
Resentment is soul suicide.
-Gabor Maté. When the Body Says “No”. p.257
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