Senate Misogyny, Entitlement, and Pop Culture

Vivec's brown, so Ender would kick him out. Maybe not of bed though.

 

Yeah it's been good to see how we can stop talking about gender issues. Any excuse to steer the topic away. If I recall correctly, SLG's thread "Let's talk about sexism" - to which most men uncomfortably didn't so much say "no" as "look, over there, another topic" - had the same issue.

That is, if we relish any excuse to not talk about the issue, then we don't have to examine whether our own view of "paynus and ribs = entitlement" is a problem or not.

So male! Such entitled. Wow.

 

So let's talk about it.

 

I agree with harpuah, Ender. Before your recent spate of posts, lots of people were discussing the role of sexism in our society, simply by posting their thoughts about and reaction to sexism in our society. You, on the other hand, have just spent a great deal of time decrying people's unwillingness to talk about the issue. They're trying to right now. If you have an interest in it, just shut up and join the ongoing discussion, like the rest of us have.

 

I'm happy to, but in a sense, I'm exactly part of the problem because I directly benefit from the male-centric view of society. I make an effort to be gender-blind as much as possible. The issue I think is that this culture is a very insidious force that feeds into the notion that men are victimised because women aren't behaving as they're "supposed to", which is as part mobile sex toy, part object to show off and have worship you in return.

Rodger might have been too far gone in terms of his personality to ever be "ok" - he had no friends either (I find it problematic that the media reports on his lack of romantic/sexual relationships with women, or lack of male friends, but whatever), and that's probably really the issue. But somehow he ended up at the conclusion that his isolation from society was mainly an issue because he was "denied" sex. Rather than being lonely and alone and lamenting his lack of closeness, he focused it in sexual ways. If that doesn't scream "we have a problem", I don't know what does.

The question is, harps, what's done about it? Like I said, I must benefit from it in ways I don't appreciate, so I'd rather hear from someone who can be more objective.

EDIT: Jabba-wocky, I didn't see your post when writing this, however on reflection I don't think I'd change the above.

 

To me, the arguments commonly being made about misogyny being a widespread, culturally ingrained thing due to women being treated as property and men thinking they are owed a hot chick are on point. What I wonder more about is how we can adequately address male society's problem in a way that's sensitive enough to that state of mind that the offending parties don't react by getting defensive. Nine times out of ten, I've found that if a man is already that misogynistic, telling him to check his privilege isn't going to do much good. If anything he'll become more entrenched. That's what's so unfortunate about all this; telling a woman-hating entitled pseudo nice guy exactly what he is doesn't benefit anyone realistically, despite being ethically 100% correct.


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Fair, so what do you propose?

 

I don't know. I wish I were that insightful


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I suppose better parenting would be a good start. Teach young boys to respect women equally (and teach young girls the same). Affordable parenting classes would be key. Generally, parenting classes are offered to people at low cost after the fact... after abuse or something else occurs. If such classes were offered in general, and not as punishment, that would help. I mean, there's no way to raise educated, compassionate, and open-minded kids if the parents aren't all those things. More resources could be made available to people who struggle with forming relationships with others. Social skills are a valuable asset, and we often don't arm kids with such things. Instead of arguing endlessly about gun control, some actual brainstorming could take place, and some programs and resources could be created and made available.

 

But I think you're onto something, it's definitely a valid point. But, what works if there's an unwillingness to deal with a problem? Leaving it alone creates the impression it's ok. It's not. But nor is trying to redefine the Rodger crime in the context of mental illness or firearms policy, because that conveniently shifts focus to a less threatening topic.

 

harpua - I had a similar conversation with my nephew this last weekend. He's 3. He wanted to tackle one of two girl twins and complained to me that "She didn't want to be tackled!"

So I explained to him that was a valid choice; she had a right to not want to be tackled, as he did were it reversed. So the other twin -- she wanted to be tackled and they told me so, so that was okay.

 

I think we're making entirely too much of this one incident. All these issues are vitally important to society, all of them are under-appreciated in public debate, and all of them are a valid aspect of what happened. We ought to lessen the anxiety that one discussion will crowd out the others. I haven't really seen that happen. And, with a few notably predictable exceptions (eg NRA) I haven't seen anyone trying to "redefine" in a way that shuts down discussion about any one issue.

 

The term "Boys will be boys" needs to ****ing die, and the adults who use it need educating.

Not picking a fight with the guy, but the crap moviefan said.... about girls wanting to be chased, etc, he learned that somewhere. Somebody said that to him. He learned to rationalize harassing a woman, instead of realizing that usually when a woman says no, it's because she's not interested. So he created (or recreated something somebody said to him) this imaginary game in which it's okay to push and cross boundaries.

 

I think everyone wants to be chased. The real villain here is that girls are being shoehorned into this world that's stopping them from chasing men.

OBJECTIFY ME DAMN IT.

 

^ you're a tool. there you go. an object

 

Its everything I've always dreamed it would be.

 

See, this is where I break off a tad.

There's mountains and mountains of studies, literature, etc. that indicates that boys and girls develop differently -- both in how they learn, in how they interact with other people, etc. This isn't to say teaching both sexes that unwanted touching and other behavior that needs to be curbed later on shouldn't be addressed, but when "boys will be boys" applies to consentual rough-housing, getting entirely dirty, playing war, etc. the term shouldn't necessarily be dirty.

But when it goes into sexual assault, unwanted touching, harassment, misogyny, etc. -- even at a young age where the differences may not be understood -- then, as Billy Madison would say: "That's assault, brotha..."

 

Slightly different turn here, but conspicuously absent from that article is any discussion of fathers or paternal role models as such. This, I think, is a misstep: there is a generalised blaming of the problem on "the culture". But "the culture" does not parent boys; women, and less frequently, men do. Ultimately I think men as a group unconsciously or consciously absorb their models for how to behave from their father, or from the closest analogue for a father figure they have in their lives. If that father figure isn't directly present in their lives, they will pick up the modelling from elsewhere. It's been long established that members of adolescent gangs (among a lot of other issues) tend to have a poor or no father role around, and that the gang turns to itself, or the older members of that gang, as a role for behaviour as the closest real analogue that's available. I mean, the author of that article speaks entirely about the effect of films like Revenge of the Nerds or Big Bang Theory as implicitly providing a model for how men ought to behave. I think the point being made is that because people identify heavily with the characters on screen in those shows, they orient their behaviour to reflect that expecting that reality will turn out the same way.

The question being: where is the mature, grounded father or father figure who ought to be sitting next to them, raising his eyebrows at borderline-rape scenes and saying things like "You do understand that the nerd characters are caricatures of reality designed to appeal to smart kids, in the same way that Rambo is a caricature of reality designed to appeal to Tea Party chickenhawks?"

I would suggest that grounded father figure in the kid's life is invariably (a) at work as much avoiding going home as "getting ahead" (b) in his toolshed ignoring or avoiding a son who thinks differently to him and who consequently he doesn't know how to deal with or (c) out playing sports with his similar-aged friendsand not making his son a part of that circle of friends, even if the son isn't inclined to sports. Or perhaps most tragically, it's (d): the father figure is present and cheering the nerds on for their reprehensible behaviour, trying to be his son's friend instead of his father. I think it also has a complementary effect for women: girls will receive their education for how men will treat them, or should treat them, from their fathers. Whatever their mother says about how men are or should be, actions speak louder than words: how their father deals with the women in his life will be the behaviour a girl unconsciously expects from the other men in her life.

This element is what I regard as the only legitimate concern the MRA movement has. One need not absorb some of the more misogynistic authors to get a gist of the problem. I've liked Steve Biddulph's Manhood and Raising Boys around these issues for a long time, and what we are seeing here is another strand of the same issue: the dearth of good fathers in the West, combined with a dearth of father figures able to cut through the adolescent nonsense that passes for entertainment in the West.

Here's another random thought, though this one I haven't thought through as much: as a culture we seem determined (or the more mercantile interests seems determined) to stay immature, to get out of childhood as early as possible but then never to actually become adults, to stay in a pre-to-never-post-adolescent world for much of our lives. (I promise I'm going to get back to the point here.) The outliers of this phenomenon on one end are the constant pushing of the market to make our youngest children "adults" exemplified by marketing bras to six years olds; at the other end, the pushing of what in the past would have been marketed as games for adolescents to supposed "adults". Fair enough this might just be an attempt to "broaden the base" for sales of products, but I think it also has the interesting side-effect of pushing back genuine maturation into an adult or indeed to the status of an "elder" -- and the marginalisation of the old in our society I hope does not need me to expand upon that. It's a movement which has the side-effect of keeping people less mature, less able to judge what's really important in life: if as a thirtysomething person you are still playing Cawadoody into the wee small hours with online "friends", the odds are on you are unlikely to ever have the requisite boredom, time, or curiosity to go seek out that dusty copy of The Odyssey that's been sitting on your bookshelf since high school. Or indeed go relate to real people in your community or your neighbourhood, or relate in a real way to your son or daughter in the ways they really need. I would hope people would take this observation in the general, wide-ranging view it's intended and not run anecdotal arguments against it; indeed if there's solid data against this proposition I'd be interested to see it. As promised, though, the point: geek culture in the manner of Big Bang Theory is ultimately adolescent or almost-adolescent culture. Our mercantile groups see that it's a culture that buys lots of stuff, so said mercantile groups would either like to see that culture expand or see that a person's departure from that culture is delayed as long as possible. Geek culture (EDIT: No, not geek -- Nerd Culture is a better term) in that respect is arguably not much different to the culture that would see women alter their bodies to look like a magazine model, or the culture that says you aren't a man unless you can bench 300 pounds and have a body that looks like a stockingful of walnuts for purely appearance reasons.

 

I find it amusing that the one problem issue that prevents, "real discussion," happens to be pertaining to someone's you disagree with politically.

 

Well, yeah. Elliot Rodger had no friends of either gender, platonic or otherwise. Somehow he found his way to the view that the issue was women denying him what he was entitled to. If you do a bit of googling, and can stomach the knuckle dragging stupidity you encounter, there's sites full of men's right advocates blaming women for all their shortcomings.

I also think moviefan's comment that "Many women feign disinterest as a method of finding out whether the man will chase them" is really terrifying and symptomatic of the issue. There's an underlying assumption of a base interest or the like, but they're playing hard to get. How often has that line crept into the defence of rape or pack-rape? That they brought it upon themselves, that they really wanted it etc.

 

Can we make being an MRA a ban-able offence?

 

I saw that comment as blatant projection.... translated, I think it means, "I will chase women to show them I mean business."

 

This.

Like, being a white hetero male is pretty much the easiest thing you can be.

Sure, it's going to change in the next 5-10 years as men actually have to work to get ahead, actually have to take on more and more of the parenting duties, etc. But now? Why get angry, the world is our oyster and women owe us sex!

 

Has that ever worked?

Aside from, you, clubbing them and dragging them to your cave (or the modern version, the roofie)?