You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Patriarchy’ tag.
Women judged on their looks? Objectification? It just does not happen in our society. Really.
*sigh*
Thank you to Sociological Images for the find.
Extra points if you can spot what is wrong with this picture.
The Globe and Mail has a stinky carcass of an article entitled “Are men being robbed of their masculinity?” Zosia Bielski the author in this homage to misogyny tackles the tough issue of Men and the Emasculating Culture they face.
“The movie [Mr.Munday] is just the latest in a string of emasculating offerings in popular culture.”
The War on Maleness is a rising crescendo of hateful messages that Men have to deal with. How can the dominant segment of culture ever survive?
“With the “mancession” hitting men hard during the economic downturn and traditional gender roles mutating, there is rabid concern that men are being robbed of their essential masculinity. The debate heated up after the Pew Research Center reported in January that women have outpaced men in education and earnings growth: 22 per cent of husbands have wives whose income now exceeds theirs, compared to 4 per cent in 1970. The rise in women’s earnings corresponds with an upsurge in their education. (The women were quickly dubbed “alpha wives.”)”
Oh my FSM! We are being robbed of our ‘essential masculinity’? What the hell is essential masculinity? The term is never defined in the article but boy, it seems like this is turning into an apologists piece for patriarchy and the male privilege it grants to men in our culture. Like the the religiously deluded christians who cry ‘persecution’ while in majority status this piece reeks of persecution of the minority with regards to the privileged status men hold in our society.
What is the best way to prove Masculinity is in decline? Mention an Asian outlier subculture:
“An extreme illustration of the slide away from masculinity may be the asexual “herbivores” of Japan, young heterosexual men who are wholly uninterested in pursuing women, material goods or careers. Multiplying after the recession, herbivores live reclusive, uncompetitive lives dominated by the Internet.”
Yes menfolk run! Beware! The World of Warcraft is coming to steal your testicles and carve an indelible mangina into your psyche. The horror!
We do need to give the author some credit as he does mention some facts that are at least loosely connected with reality.
“Boys who resist macho behaviours such as aggression and “emotional stoicism” have better mental health and social relationships, according to Carlos Santos, an Arizona State University researcher who studied 426 middle school boys and presented his findings at the American Psychological Association’s convention in August.”
You mean not acting like completely privileged douche is good for your mental health and ability to work well with others. Go Figure.
“Men have more to gain than lose from the “down with macho” movement, says Jennifer Berdahl, an associate professor of organizational behaviour at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management.”
Another kernel of wisdom in this otherwise putrid article. It is amazing after so many years that people still deny the existence of the Patriarchy and Male Privilege. If people could actually be bothered to read a little about feminism we could avoid some the atrocious pap that regularly appears in the “life” section of newspaper.
Sociological Images always has something disturbing or depressing. Today is a little of both.
“This also nicely illustrates male privilege in the last panel, and how the worst problems with street harassment often don’t come from the men on the street harassing you – but rather from the prevailing attitudes among society/other men that it’s something you should welcome.”
*sigh*
One of the neat features of a model is that it allows you to strip down the gloss and inessential features that can sometimes clutter arguments and details about a particular topic; in the case of this post the prevalence of the Patriarchy. I am certainly not part of the Blamatariat yet, but I feel that I am moving across the spectrum toward a more informed, knowledgeable state of affiars.
There has been a furour on the Intertoobz as of late over the decision (now repealed) by Blizzard, the makers of World of War Craft, to attach players real names to their characters in game and while posting in the game related forum. The frantic typing and posting resounded across the Net, there are threads about this topic everywhere from Pharyngula to Shakesville.
The questions and concerns raised range from harassment on forums to IRL stalking and worse. A jumping off point in one of the threads took me here to a brilliant post by Nattie on a thread from MetaFilter. I suggest you go read the entire post with the idea in mind that this could be viewed as a primer for understanding Patriarchy 101. To the uninitiated the patriarchy can seem a little bit of a fuzzy concept due to the implicit and ingrained nature of how the P functions. In light of potential learning from this piece I have added hyperlinks to the Shakesville Feminism 101 section for those seeking more illumination than the limited scope provided here.
Nattie says [italics, underlining and links, mine]:
“* If you do post a picture (I never did) people either go nuts over how hot you are and won’t leave you alone –– and the guys that perv on you treat you in a condescending way because hot=stupid; having to hear that shit addressed to other girls on Vent was really infuriating and uncomfortable — OR they make a point of constantly telling you how ugly you are and won’t leave you alone. There is no middle ground. They either want to fuck you or deride you. And it actually doesn’t matter how hot or how ugly you are, either; the hottest girls will get called ugly (and FAT, ALWAYS FAT), and the ugliest girls still have to deal with lonely guys who aren’t superficial. Any time the girl posts something thereafter, people will comment on her appearance, even though it has nothing to do with whatever is being discussed.”
The italicized statements are nothing new to the advanced Blamer, but to the uninitiated parsing them out can be
No objectification going on here. We are most definitly not appealing to the male gaze.
very illuminating. For instance, the options faced in the the statement A)”oh I you’re sooo hot I want to frak you” or B)”oh you’re so ugly, you are not soooo not”frakkable”. Both “choices” revolve around the idea that the primary feature of a female is her beauty as viewed by how attractive she is to the male gaze. Not the content of her character, not her opinions, not her factual claims, but just how she looks. So female worth is judged by how good of a sexual object they appear to be.
This ugly fact has a one to one correspondence to the real meatspace world. Women deal with this 24/7,all the time, on all stations full on assault on their identity as human beings.
“* If you ask someone to leave you alone, you’re a stuck up bitch. That means you always have to be nice to everyone. This was both unfair and character-building, because now I’m really good at talking to and disengaging from socially ill-adjusted people without hurting their feelings.”
Again, the social expectations of women are quite explicit and when you go against them you get flayed to the bone because you are not properly performing your sanctioned role. Since when should a person have to ‘be nice’ or be anything all the time or be labelled a ‘stuck up bitch’ (insert your gendered insult here)? As a woman you get to deal with this as well, just because you happen to possess a double X chromosome. There are severe repercussions when Patriarchally sanctioned behaviour expectations are not followed.
* Some people think anything you do or say is attention-whoring, even if you never wanted the attention. If a guy makes a joke in a forum post, he’s a funny guy. If a girl makes a joke in a forum post, she’s an attention whore. If a guy makes a good argument in a forum post, he’s a smart guy. If a girl makes a good argument in a forum post, she’s doing it for attention. She’s ESPECIALLY an attention whore if people like her or agree with her.
* Similarly, people assume that the only reason anyone likes you is because they’re one of your fanboys. So people don’t genuinely think women or funny or make good arguments, they’re just fanboys. If other girls like you, then it’s because women form cliques — even if in the previous breath they were saying that women are all catty and hate each other.
Do you notice the pattern of choices that is become prevalent? Women are presented with two choices both equally shitty that do nothing to further her own autonomy or identity. You can choose either one patriarchally approved stereotype or the other, both damage you as a person.
“A sizable portion of [the population in general]gamers are racist. (Sexism, racism, and homophobia are what make me most uncomfortable about the gaming community; in a serious way I feel more connection to gamers than any other group, so this pains me. Plenty of gamers are none of these things and I love them to death, but I think those same gamers realize what a huge problem it is in the community in general.) An even bigger portion of gamers are just not very racially sensitive — they’ll use “nigger” or “Jew” a lot, for example, even if they don’t think they actively feel anything against those groups, because they think it’s funny. In the same way that saying stuff is “gay” is especially pronounced in the gamer community, even the people that say slurs ironically or by force of habit inadvertently make actual bigots in the gaming community feel empowered because they don’t realize other people don’t mean those things like they do. It is much more common and acceptable to express racist opinions in the gaming community than society at large.”
The quote really speak for itself, but the tacit acceptance of gendered insults and racist putdowns only reinforces the negative stereotypes that have such corrosive effects in our culture.
I have barely scratched the surface of all the issues that could be covered, just with the quoted materials. Frighteningly there is almost a 1:1 correspondence to what happens in the gaming world vs. what goes on in the real world, it is just a little easier to see in the gaming world because people are less constrained by social norms and morality in the mostly anonymous world of gaming. (or shorter the vile sexism and batshite crazy stupidity is easily observed)
A big thank you to Shakesville for having such a comprehensive FAQ for dealing with the multitudinous issues that this particular world of warcraft blip brought up.
How deep does rape culture go? How deeply ingrained is the patriarchally approved objectification of women in our ‘civil’ society?
Observe.
Unfortunately wordpress fails at embedded video. I need to redirect you to the Feminsting blog to watch the clips in question.
This scene is played a total of 4 times, with a white couple and a black couple. In each clip the women are made up to look as if they had been recently abused. The difference between clip #1 and clip #2 is that the women are dressed provocatively in clip #2. Nothing over the top, but what would, on a Saturday night out be considered normal attire.
This is not a particularly scientific experiment, but rather a useful (and disturbing) insight on how our rape culture operates.
Let me boil it down. When women are dressed conservatively, they are more likely to receive help and people coming to their aid. While dressed ‘provocatively’ the story changes completely. People do not come to their aid, they avert their eyes, they tell the wait staff or ask to be moved… but do they intervene as the woman is being verbally and physically abused? Not one patron in the restaurant lifts a finger.
How you are dressed determines if you are candidate for help.
The two middle aged women in the second clip, the ones that asked to be moved, speculate that the abused woman in question is a prostitute as they disdainfully glare at her. Well she is dressed slutty and therefore obviously she deserves what she gets is the subtext of their reactions.
There is much to digest and compare between the two clips, and most of it is quite disgusting and disheartening.
Women are still looked upon as objects in our society. They are not judged as human beings, but as mere objects. More to the point, objects that deserve the abuse they receive based on how they look.
I’m done for awhile with this post.
FGM: Never accetpable
Female Genital Mutilation just made the news again because the American Association of Pediatrics proclaimed in their article the following:
“There is reason to believe that offering such a compromise may build trust between hospitals and immigrant communities, save some girls from undergoing disfiguring and life-threatening procedures in their native countries, and play a role in the eventual eradication of FGC. It might be more effective if federal and state laws enabled pediatricians to reach out to families by offering a ritual nick as a possible compromise to avoid greater harm.”
Okay, so by tolerating ‘just a little’ female disfigurement we can make the problem of major disfigurement go away?
Unbelievable.
The level of dissonance from this article is staggering. It appears that the APP is speaking out of both sides of its mouth on the issue.
“FGC becomes a physical sign of a woman’s marriageability, with social control over her sexual pleasure by clitorectomy and over reproduction by infibulation (sewing together the labia so that the vaginal opening is about the
width of a pencil).”
We certainly cannot weigh in on the cultural norms being expressed here, that would be colonial and ethnocentric of us to do so… Horsepucky. Disfiguring women in order to control them transcends the bounds of the cultural-relativist argument. From a purely physiological standpoint here is what FGM does to women:
“Infibulation (type 3 FGC) is often associated with longterm gynecologic or urinary tract difficulties. Common gynecologic problems involve the development of painful subcutaneous dermoid cysts and keloid formation along excised tissue edges. More serious complications include pelvic infection, dysmenorrhea, hematocolpos, painful intercourse, infertility, recurrent urinary tract infection, and urinary calculus formation. Pelvic examination is difficult or impossible for women who have been infibulated, and vaginal childbirth can present significant challenges. Scarring may prevent accurate monitoring of labor and fetal descent. Although deinfibulation may facilitate delivery, women who have undergone deinfibulation are at increased risk of complications, including perineal tears, wound infections, separation of repaired episiotomies, postpartum hemorrhage, and sepsis.”
In other words, a fully loaded shit-bucket of ugly side effects that detract and can even take a woman’s life.
“Many anti-FGC activists in the West, including women from African countries, strongly oppose any compromise that would legitimize even the most minimal procedure.4 There is also some evidence (eg, in Scandinavia) that a criminalization of the practice, with the attendant risk of losing custody of one’s children, is one of the factors that led to abandonment of this tradition among Somali immigrants”
This is precisely the view that should win out. We do not accept barbaric acts of disfigurement in our secular society. It is something to be educated about, rallied and fought against. I commend the AAP for including a dissenting view in the corpus of their article.
What remains is the suggestion brought forth by the APP that FGM in some forms is an acceptable practice in our society. FGM in any form is, according the article, still illegal in the US. I think it is irresponsible to suggest that certain forms of mutilating women’s bodies becomes an acceptable standard practice in any context.
I work in a behavioural/special needs environment. The children I work with are predominantly from the lower spectrum of our society. One of the many observations that I have made is the presence of a persistent deeply ingrained streak of homophobia. I hear the word fag or faggot or “you’re gay” several times a day. I put a stop to it when it is in my presence, but it rages rampant for the most part unheeded and unchecked. Some say I take this issue too seriously, that I should ‘lighten up’ or that these kids are just being kids.
Bullshit.
The victim of a vicious assault in south Edmonton says it was a hate crime and questions how police are investigating the attack. […] Barry, who is a lesbian, was walking with five friends along 96th Street near 75th Avenue about 3:30 a.m. Saturday. Four men yelled at them from the other side of the street, calling them “dykes and faggots,” said one of the women […].
The language is not particular shocking, four young men raised within ‘acceptable standards’, just got a little crazy right?
“Barry, who was drunk, had stumbled and fallen to one knee. When she did, one of the men kicked her in the face.
“It was just like someone drop-kicking a football,” Gouchie said.
The force of the kick flipped Barry on her back and knocked her unconscious for almost five minutes, Gouchie said. The four attackers, who appeared to be between the ages of 16 and 20, quickly fled, she said.”
A yes, true patriarchal representatives through and through. Find a vulnerable target, spew your vicious hate if circumstance permits assault the member of the other group. Run away, safe in your privilege and cowardice to continue your aberrant socially acceptable behaviour next time. Would attention to hateful language have stopped this crime? Who knows, but here is the valiant Edmonton Police Service galvanizing into action:
“CBC News has learned the investigating officer did not file a report. He also did not call in the dog team or Air 1, the police helicopter, in an attempt to track the four young men.
That is standard procedure for such a serious crime, according to one veteran of the Edmonton force, who spoke on condition of anonymity. He also said department policy requires officers to file reports on the same day, especially in a case involving a serious incident, such as an aggravated assault and potential hate crime.
With no report filed, police would have nothing to work with if someone called in an anonymous tip to Crimestoppers, the veteran officer said.”
Underwhelmed? The victim certain is.
“Barry blames the attack on a mistaken belief that hate against gay people is no longer an issue. [ed. emphasis]
“I think in this day and age, we’ve become complacent and passive about educating the young to accept people’s differences,” she said, touching her swollen, bruised face.”Everyone’s under the assumption that we’re past all that, but it’s right here. It’s happening to people that you know, that I know and love, all the time.”
We have banished the hate from polite conversation and there was a great deal ballyhoo about that particular incremental change. Has the underlying set of assumptions changed? No, most likely not.
Being a woman and having a sexual identity that challenges hetronormative norms is still not acceptable in society. You will be verbally abused and physically attacked. The forces in charge ( H/T to the EPS for providing such a clear example) will not take you seriously and will deploy the appropriate amount of bureaucracy to make sure you are marginalized and dehumanized.
So, it is up to us to stop the hate speech wherever we hear it. Call people on it. It is a possible cofactor that enables people to build up the ‘courage’ to attack marginalized groups. Polite society is one small victory for human rights, lets push for more.
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
Your opinions…