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What is wrong with women?Joss Whedon posts a thunderous, prophetic rant.I mean wrong. Physically. Spiritually. Something unnatural, something destructive, something that needs to be corrected.
How did more than half the people in the world come out incorrectly? I have spent a good part of my life trying to do that math, and I’m no closer to a viable equation. And I have yet to find a culture that doesn’t buy into it. Women’s inferiority—in fact, their malevolence—is as ingrained in American popular culture as it is anywhere they’re sporting burkhas. I find it in movies, I hear it in the jokes of colleagues, I see it plastered on billboards, and not just the ones for horror movies. Women are weak. Women are manipulative. Women are somehow morally unfinished. (Objectification: another tangential rant avoided.) And the logical extension of this line of thinking is that women are, at the very least, expendable.
From the excerpted passage, I assumed this was going to be Joss' Dave Sim impersonation.
Jen, that has got to be the most disturbing idea I have read this year.
Jen, that has got to be the most disturbing idea I have read this year.
I saw one of the billboards for that movie. I thought the billboard was out of line, for advertising in public. So did other people; I heard of at least one complaint, in the San Fernando Valley, where one had been put up near a high school. (The movie itself sounds like it should be rated X.)
The problem isn't that we're evil. It's that we're property. And we keep forgetting that and behaving as if we're free. Worse, many men have forgotten. Entire societies are in danger of forgetting.
Violence is a tonic. It clears away the cobwebs and reminds everyone of the true status of the victim. Property.
Wow.
I agree with the idea of womb envy.
I'd also add "Caretaker Antipathy". A lot of "women's work" is based on taking care of others and being a resource and/or a "slave" for someone (usually male). Women are needed to such an extent that we can't be gotten rid of wholesale. (Just look at the gender skewing in the service industries.) When the caretaker bucks the flow of assumption or, in that poor woman's case, tradition, she's killed. Heavens forefend that what others expect and can obtain change on a "slaves" whim.
I just saw the rant about an hour earlier. Coincidentally, I had recently read Ehrenreich's For Her Own Good: Two Centuries of the Experts' Advice to Women and was discussing it with a friend. The book mentions the penis envy theory amongst many others that were propagated to "explain" women; during our discussion I had half-jokingly wondered if men had womb envy, then.
(And I was directly thinking of a Firefly quote, too: "Man is stronger by far than woman. But only woman can create a child. That seem right to you?" said by a male bounty hunter to Inara.)
Of course that thought is as demeaning to men as pushing for a penis envy idea is to women... and I prefer a worldview for myself in which neither is accepted.
But I have to echo Pat Greene in #1: Amen, Joss.
I've always thought that It's All About the Genes. Keep women subjected, and you (as a male) can be sure that it's YOUR genes that are being passed on, not the milkman's or whoever else might wander by.
Sucks if true, because that pretty much means we'll never get rid of the attitude. It's hardwired.
Janice in GA, that really just means that she'll tell you the kid's yours even if it is the milkman's. Seems more sensible, if we're really invested in knowing the parentage of offspring, that we have an environment that encourages honesty. "Well, honey, the mailman got this one, but I'm sure the next will turn out to be yours, okay?" ;)
I love Joss Whedon's female characters because they are strong enough to take care of themselves, but still human.
Janice, I've seen suggestions from some evolutionary psychologists that the attitude to which you refer has evolutionary benefit in the short term. However, in the long run, women do choose to leave men like that. Additionally, the offspring of men who are more involved in their children's lives tend to live longer. Assuming men who are more caring are also going to see their wife as more of a partner than a servant (which is generally the case), caring genes may have more of an evolutionary advantage over time. It may not be as hardwired as you think.
#5:
I saw one of the billboards for that movie.
I don't know what movie you're talking about. Title?
James at #12: I think P.J. Evans was talking about Captivity, the movie Whedon also refers to in his post.
James @12:
Captivity, apparently.
I admit it hasn't crossed my radar. I don't think I'm sorry about that.
I saw a review of that movie and would have thrown the newspaper across the room had I been reading a newspaper.
Whedon's rant is wonderful. I immediately connected it with the current Supreme Court decision regarding "partial birth abortion" -- no, this is not an invitation to get into a discussion about abortion, please let's not do that -- which essentially buys into the argument that adult women need to be saved by society from making poor decisions about their own sexuality.
*insert sputtering incoherence here*
I would quibble.
I don't disagree with anything Joss said in his rant, as far as I get the connection between honor killing and a movie to watch a pretty girl tortured and killed.
Yet my daughter watches television and watches the world today, new and fresh, without the context adults have and what she sees is, Girls are superior.
Yet as superior as girls are supposed to be they are also supposed to conform to a certain girly stereotype and think it's wonderful.
So she's sort of frustrated and stuck because she likes boy stuff, not girl stuff, and the stuff she likes is "bad" and the stuff she finds stupid, superficial or insipid, is "good."
The misogyny that shocked Whedon is only a subset of what humans have always done to to each other, and the brutality on display in that particular murder-with-audience is repeated on a daily basis, with a variety of victims of all genders and ages, all over the world. Think of the daily sectarian bombings and beheadings in Iraq, institutionalized torture at Gitmo, the civil meltdown in Bosnia, whatever goes on in our prisons (all those TV-show references must has some sort of basis in reality)--the list goes on. Statistically, it looks like men are responsible for most of this, but the question is not "Why do men hate women?" but "What is it that allows anyone to behave so?" And if you really want to deal with it, you have to also account for the very large numbers of men who would not only not harm a woman (or a child or a pet) but who are positively sickened at the thought of harming anyone.
Misogyny seems to me to flourish in cultures that separate men and women, so that, for example, after puberty the only women a young man is around are immediate family members and (eventually) his wife (who might have been chosen for him). Exposure to the full range of possible human traits in both sexes--strength, intelligence, stability, courage, humor, beauty--ought to supply some counter-force to all but the most insidious memes about what men or women "really" are. I think that's what formed my picture of the sexes, even in the dark days of the 1940s and 50s. (Anybody who had doubts about the existence of strong women would have had an interesting time with my paternal grandmother or any of my great-grandmothers.)
I am reminded of this article from Pandagon, which has my most recent reminder of how much I hate the extra constraints on my life imposed by my gender.
Hate it. Hate the year or so my parents took to teach me those extra constraints. Hate the fact that I'm going to have to do that to my daughter.
Ugh. But I'm glad of every guy who realises that it's a bad thing.
Okay, got the billboards. (Viewer discretion, as they say, advised.)
From the trailer: "The film they don't want you to see." And: "The movie so intense it was punished."
I guess that sounds better than "The film that stinks on ice" and "The movie so lousy we're making our excuses in advance."
I find myself wondering (like some of the commentators on Joss' piece and the posting here) if the core of this behavior isn't so much gender based as it is control based. A group attempts to maintain control, and singles out subgroups (women, minorities in the culture, other external groups) for repression.
Seems to me that if you can demonstrate your power over one group, other groups will tread lightly around you.
anaea #10: Why do you think that:
(1) Many cultures emphasise proof of the virginity of a bride;
(2)many of the same cultures practice honour killing, and
(3)FGM?
I've seen the promotional materials for the movie. They're quite nauseating, and I hope it loses a LOT of money, and what more is there is to say?
One of the many horrible things about Dua Khalil's murder-- I won't say "the most horrible", it seems that there's plenty of horror to go around-- anyway, one horrible thing is that there are about twenty men in her neighborhood who MIGHT have been able to take a better moral position on honor killings, before. Now they can't, because if honor killings are murder, they're murderers!
Worse yet, Dua Khalil's own mother is left with a choice: was her (dead, and beyond harm) daughter a sinner worthy of her fate, or are her (live, and presumably beloved) sons hideous killers? And it's so much *easier* to forgive the living and move on.
Since penis envy came up, it might be good to note that Sigmund Freud's first theory of neurosis was related to the child sexual abuse he found was common to his female patients. When he presented his paper to the psychologist's association he was exiled for seven-years until he returned with his concepts of Oedipal Complex, penis envy, and the interpretation of dreams, which the association (mostly men) found palatable.
As for the concept, "it's always been this way" there is evidence that goddess following cultures having been more egalitarian. Even in the time of the early christian churches, women played a significant roll, some owning the houses where the churches met. So this behavior hasn't "always been" or is "hard-wired."
#22 - time to find my "this demeans women" stickers again. The big 8 1/1 x 11 ones, I think.
Fragano Ledgister at 21, the general answer comes down to passage of property along paternal lines and the perceived need for the fidelity of that line, not so much a need for assurances of genetic relatedness - a fine distinction, but an important one. And everything I say following this is gross generalization for which counterexamples are available if you look for them. But we're talking big general issues here, so I beg forgiveness in advance.
1) This is one part to make sure the bride isn't already knocked up by somebody else, and probably two parts to make sure she's the kind who can keep her legs closed. (Assurances of paternity can be gotten in the case of a non-virgin through two months heavy isolation for the bride-to-be just to make sure she's not already pregnant. This practice is known in some cultures.) If we were worried about genetic paternity, husbands ought to have different priorities. Instead of a blushing virgin, you'd want somebody with demonstrated fertility (best done through prior successful pregnancy) and who's going to encourage your attentions to her. Current theory on the evolutionary motivations for female orgasm is that it promotes conception, meaning you want a bride who's going to enjoy the honeymoon. Virgins generally have no such indications.
2) Honor killings are very complexly motivated. Part of it is to encourage chastity and monogamy among women, another part is to ensure that the women, and the property accompanying them, stays in the family. If you'll note, the Koran was progressive in its time for the property rites it granted women. But do you want that sister who inherited part of Dad's farm running off with a guy from another tribe when if you marrying her and her farm off to your best friend he'll not only like you a lot, but show a little financial appreciation? If genetics are the sole concern, the practice would work more like the behavior you see in other primates where females who run off are forcibly brought back, their pregnancy terminated, and they're reimpregnated by an acceptable male.
3) FGM ought to just go down in the history books as stupid, excepting that most of places and times where it started can't have possibly known just how unproductive it is. Arousal and sexual desire starts in the brain and is expressed in the genitals. Fry the right part of her brain and you'll have a female with no libido. FGM removes the tissue generally required for the sating of that libido, not to mention introducing injury and wounds which can easily lead to infections that leave you with a sterile/dead female. It might reduce libido through the psychological trauma that tends to accompany sexual abuse, but then again that kind of trauma can also lead to acting out and reckless, self-destructive behavior potentially expressed in the form of promiscuity. Typically, with FGM, nobody wins.
Which all brings me back to my original point; if men are concerned about having their genes passed on, it makes more sense to create an environment where you can trust the female to tell you the truth, which means that deterrents for infidelity need to be limited to the male seeking out a different female with which to mate with negligible change to the female's living conditions. You can try to forcibly ensure fidelity, but that's a really good way to wind up a cuckold.
anaea #25: You're perfectly right (although 'property rites' sounds positively Confucian). It's all about property and lineage.
Interestingly, in matrilineal societies women have a great deal of social power, even if they don't necessarily have much political power (Kwame Appiah in Cosmopolitanism tells a fascinating story about his father deciding to get circumcised, even though this had not been part of Ashanti culture, because the young women of Kumasi started singing that they wouldn't marry uncircumcised men -- there's a layer of irony here, given that Joe Appiah married an Englishwoman).
In my opinion (YMMV) n most 'honor killings', which have also happened in U.S. cities, where, by the way, the family appears to be the one that instigates the murder. (Actually probably the father and brothers, I cannort imagine a mother wishing her daughter dead...)
They consider that something so demeaning has afflicted their daughter's persona that she must be obliterated to maintain their honor.
That's stupid and destructive and horrible. And wasteful. But it doesn't stop people from doing it, even in the U.S., where they end up in the penitentary because U.S. justice cannot possibly overlook the horror committed.
The true horror is in their home countries where girls are buried without comment or any fuss. Because they violated some invisible rule.
I don't know a way to make people who believe these kind of things are stupid and cruel. They believe because of some imam's preaching or somesuch. That can't be vaccinated for or educated against.
In my opinion (YMMV) n most 'honor killings', which have also happened in U.S. cities, where, by the way, the family appears to be the one that instigates the murder. (Actually probably the father and brothers, I cannort imagine a mother wishing her daughter dead...)
They consider that something so demeaning has afflicted their daughter's persona that she must be obliterated to maintain their honor.
That's stupid and destructive and horrible. And wasteful. But it doesn't stop people from doing it, even in the U.S., where they end up in the penitentary because U.S. justice cannot possibly overlook the horror committed.
The true horror is in their home countries where girls are buried without comment or any fuss. Because they violated some invisible rule.
I don't know a way to make people who believe these kind of things see that they are are stupid and cruel. They believe because of some imam's preaching or somesuch. That can't be vaccinated for or educated against.
In my opinion (YMMV) n most 'honor killings', which have also happened in U.S. cities, where, by the way, the family appears to be the one that instigates the murder. (Actually probably the father and brothers, I cannort imagine a mother wishing her daughter dead...)
They consider that something so demeaning has afflicted their daughter's persona that she must be obliterated to maintain their honor.
That's stupid and destructive and horrible. And wasteful. But it doesn't stop people from doing it, even in the U.S., where they end up in the penitentary because U.S. justice cannot possibly overlook the horror committed.
The true horror is in their home countries where girls are buried without comment or any fuss. Because they violated some invisible rule.
I don't know a way to make people who believe these kind of things see that they are are stupid and cruel. They believe because of some imam's preaching or somesuch. That can't be vaccinated for or educated against.
Fragano Ledgister @ 21
I would beg to differ, honour killings are NOT about the virginity of the bride (although it is known to be one of the excuses.) Honour killings occur when the girl or woman 'betrays' the family's honour going out with / being engaged with / marrying someone the family feels is outside the bounds of convention. (Outside the tribe if you will.)
Better posters than me have commented on this, but the truly mind boggling thing is that
1) the culture that value virginity in their young women, also
2) tend to expect their young men to prove virility by screwing any girl / woman that they can.
PS. Look up Purity Balls. Both Digby and Pandagon had article on this 'cultural' event.
I saw that article, and honestly, I'm not impressed.
First of all, even evolutionarily speaking, a lot of scientists would argue that men don't envy women--they envy other men (see Bateman's Principle).
I find that womb-envy arguments avoid the real problem: sexism has frighteningly little to do with biology and everything to do with power. I liked Amanda's response over at Pandagon:
My theory about the origins of misogyny isn’t that it goes back to womb envy or anything like that. I don’t think it’s that complex, actually. All you need to do to see how one group of people can demonize and hate another is to look at the history of American racism. White people’s desire for cheap labor preceded fear and loathing of black people. The hateful stereotypes about black people came about as post hoc justifications for slavery—if you dehumanize someone, it’s easier to justify your oppression over them because you think they’re either hateful and need to be controlled or inferior and need to be controlled, or some combination of the two.
I'm not saying that the same thing is at play here as in slavery, but I think it's clear why things like sexism and racism persist: they're convenient methods of dehumanizing someone for the purposes of exploitation. Let's also not forget that the symbol of penetration is a powerful one, and in that sense biology very much informs dominance structures. We're smaller and lighter, too, easy targets of violence. A perpetrator, through the demonstration of violence against others (particularly public), secures his own safety and dissuades competitors (of food, shelter, sex, whatever).
And sometimes "because I can" is as good a reason as any.
I see that I was late to the gate. Other posters were able to make the point in a more elegant manner.
Torie:
The thing that makes misogyny complicated is that it is a cross-cultural, ancient aspect of civilizations, civilzations as different as China under the Han, Greece during their Golden Age, Victorian England, and every other culture about which we have sufficient information to make educated guesses. Women's rights within those circumstances are different, but they are always second class.
We've had slavery as long, but slavery is a different problem, one that comes of the exploitation of other tribes, for the most part. While there are some analogies, it isn't close enough to dig out the reasons about misogyny.
Here's how I explain it to myself: One night in Indiana, I was listening to Republican talk radio while driving. It was contributing to my safe driving, although not to my blood pressure. It was open mike, just call and complain.
Someone called in and said, "When you're born, your mother nurses you, she gives you that mother's milk. I feel like women are denying me that. That milk I need to survive."
Read that again and feel your stomach go cold. What women gave as nurture as a child is expected as a commodity when you become an adult. Men can't live without us. We hold an important piece of their selves, which is, peculiarly, ourselves.
My last breakup I felt bad, cause I still loved him, it's just that we'd come to the end of the relationship. I kept on trying to make him feel better, which only made him feel worse. My psychiatrist said that it was no longer my job to try to comfort him. I'd removed myself from that role in his life when I'd told him I was leaving. He needed to find comfort for himself.
In this culture, and in many others, I think, there is an unwritten deal: women accept the nuturing emotional burdens of the men, and the men accept the aggressive emotions of the women. This makes it vital to control women. If they walk away, they will take a part of the man with them. And they will also take their own right of aggression. The fact that the woman has no use for the man's emotional weight and freight, and would gladly give it back, but will in the end simply shed it, isn't relevant to the sheer panic many men feel when their relationships are falling apart. And they'll do almost anything to prevent it.
None of this goes as far as honor killing. All I can think is that an "honor" killing must be the expression of a culture where women are completely devalued. I don't know what emotional trades they are making, but the amount of rage on one side and the amount of submission on the other suggests to me that the system has the two carrying each other's burdens.
Alan Dundes (freudian folklorist) interpreted the myth of Adam's rib as womb envy. If the first woman is born from the first man's abdomen, then men get preemptive credit for the birthing process.
Not much of a freudian m'self, but I'd buy that.
#16 Synova: man what in TV and the world today leads you to "Girls are superior"?
#17 Russell Letson: but the question is not "Why do men hate women?" In fact, the question very much exactly is "Why do men hate women." You look like a sleaze when you try to change the subject in the face of the horrible stuff we're discussing. And as for your attempt to dodge into "not me!" land with "Misogyny seems to me to flourish in cultures that separate men and women", maybe you missed it in the excerpt Patrick posted, but if you'd clicked through to read Joss's essay, I don't think you would have twice missed "And I have yet to find a culture that doesn’t buy into it. Women’s inferiority—in fact, their malevolence—is as ingrained in American popular culture as it is anywhere they’re sporting burkhas."
Every single discussion of sexism on the internet gets some man going "Oh they might be bad but I'm so not." Ok, sure, we've checked that box now.
For actually adding to the discussion, instead of derailing it into "let's pat this poor man on his head" territory, seems to me Lydia Nickerson's post at 33 is a good place to start.
abi @ 18... I hate the extra constraints on my life imposed by my gender. Hate it. Hate the year or so my parents took to teach me those extra constraints. Hate the fact that I'm going to have to do that to my daughter.
My friend Nicole up in Quebec was going thru something like that with her 16-year-old daughter, when I visited in 2004. For example, don't trust that the boy she's chatting with on the internet is what he says he is, and of course the young lady, who had never encountered the dark side of people, thought that mom and dad were exagerating.
Just want to throw this out, dunno what it means:
I live in Japan these days.
This place has very sharp distinctions between men and women. Gender roles are sharply limned. (skirted uniforms don't end with Jr.High)
Women are educated (through middle-school often better than men, after middle-school it deponds on their (and their family) decisions about continuing school) and legally equal.
The last 10-15 years has seen stunning decreases in the amount and acceptability of sexual harassment and overt sexism.
Most women don't seek careers outside the home (give or take a few hours a day at a part time job once the kid(s) are school-aged)
If you educate women, give them the full suite of rights, and tell them that they're women (and that women are different from men) most of them will become housewives? Japan isn't much like the rest of the world, is it?
It seems to me that the double standard linnen mentioned--virginity for girls, promiscuity for boys--also feeds into the need for cheap labor. If you have that kind of sexual double standard, you must have socially designated whores and sluts. These women in turn have sons and daughters--and these same societies generally put a heavy stigma on illegitimacy. That implies the existence of an entire underclass (though of course there could be many other reasons for one).
I've seen social conservatives write longingly of the day when people knew the difference between the kind of girls you married, and the girls of easy virtue who you went to for fun--and I've also seen them lament the loss of the Stigma of Bastardy. I don't think it's a coincidence that this is tied to authoritarian, hierarchical attitudes, the insistence that in all things there must be Higher and Lower and the Lower must know their station.
I think violence against women has many sources. Men, as a rule, are outer-reactive to stress and confusion and hurt. Our natural instinct is to find an external target for these feelings, and unfortunately that target is too often the women and children in our lives.
Which is why I think we need to bring back chivalry. And not the kind that cloisters women and forbids them from participation as full partners in society.
I mean the kind that basically says the following:
Males don't become Real Men without Service becoming the focal point of their identity.
Every boy should aspire to be a Real Man. Real Men are men who embrace Service. Perhaps the highest possible expression of Service can be found in serving a female. She could be your mom, or your sister, a cousin, a girlfriend, a wife, a daughter, a grandmother, etc. Through Service to our women we magnify ourselves beyond petty machismo and small-penis-syndrome. True masculinity does not lie in the domination of women, grinding them under foot, but in the exhaltation of women, the givers of life and the bringers-forth of our future as humans.
Alas, as men, without strong and dedicated examples to teach and lead us, we fall into corruption. We beat and we rape and we ravage and we never seem to be able to touch the core of our iniquity; though that never stops us from continuing the unhalted abuse.
I am grateful for my father, who has given himself in absolute Service to my mother for almost four decades. He is a kind and gentle man, whose obdurate and tested masculinity never centered on domination or coercion. I have tried to be worthy of his legacy through Service to my own wife, and my little daughter as well. Without them I would be next to useless; a purposeless creature. Through them I hope to prove my worth.
Everything else? All the pain and death we males inflict on women every year? It's a placebo. Snake oil for the shallow of soul and the destitute of spirit. We seek to make ourselves Big by behaving in the Smallest possible way.
IMHO men who rape and abuse face a special kind of damnation, when all is said and done. For in wrecking the lives of women, such men thoughtlessly trample that which is absolutely necessary to give the human male purpose and meaning and substance.
Sorry, I am waxing prophetic here. My wife has worked DV for years, as both a volunteer and a paid case worker. She's also a womens studies major and we're always discussing DV and other forms of abuse against females. I take this subject very seriously, and consider it an unbearable woe on our heads, as men, that we still inflict such misery on our women and our girls.
It seems to me that the double standard linnen mentioned--virginity for girls, promiscuity for boys--also feeds into the need for cheap labor. If you have that kind of sexual double standard, you must have socially designated whores and sluts
...unless, of course, the sanctioned male promiscuity is exclusively homosexual. Which I think is pretty rare, though I suppose some societies might have come close.
Surely many of us are reminded of Tiptree's The Screwfly Soution? For the person who despaired of Tiptree's feminism: if you are reading this, this is the reality that keeps these stories relevant and powerful. (Oddly enough, it seems likely that Whedon hasn't read that story.) As to the rest, it seems pretty plain that widespread violence against women is the result of both inherited ape behaviors and culture. As with other difficult ape-inherited behaviors, if we want it to stop, we will have to change culture. Perhaps now more than ever, we need to do this; if we do not control our violence, mostly perpetrated by men, we have no future as a species. As I've remarked in other contexts, it is amazing to me how much recent history can be explained by masculinity doubts. (And I am tired & my brain is fried. Hopefully, this post will keep its vowels and tomorrow draw interesting, thoughtful responses.)
Dear PRV -- I was following your post with sympathetic interest until I got to the last line. "Our women." "Our girls."
I know you absolutely mean well, here. Trust me, I am not nit-picking. Such words are important. Care to reconsider and/or rephrase?
I have other comments as well. But I await your reply to this one.
Lizzy L @ 42... I think we should bring back the time-honored tradition of shotgun weddings to protect our wimminfolk. (Did they have ballista weddings in the Middle-Ages?)
I think that misogyny is motivated by Womb Envy in roughly the same way that racism is motivated by Superior Dancing Skills/Athletic Ability/Sexual Ability Envy. Which is to say, it's a symptom, not the disease.
If you want to look for ultimate causes, I think Steve Libbey @ 20 got it right: Misogyny is primarily a mechanism of control. If one wishes to rule the human race, one must divide us against ourselves, and gender is a bright and obvious divide present everywhere in the world. It disenfranchises over half the world's population in one fell swoop, and gives you a sop to throw to the rest. "Sure, you may be a poor, mistreated, and ultimately powerless male, but at least you aren't a woman! Go kick her around to make yourself feel better."
Lydia Nickerson @ 33:"The thing that makes misogyny complicated is that it is a cross-cultural, ancient aspect of civilizations, civilzations as different as China under the Han, Greece during their Golden Age, Victorian England, and every other culture about which we have sufficient information to make educated guesses. Women's rights within those circumstances are different, but they are always second class."
Sexism is universal in a way that racism isn't because sexual heterogeneity is universal in a way that racial heterogeneity isn't. When situations of cultural/racial heterogeneity arise, you'd better bet that they're promptly used to exclude "different" groups from power--even when they are actually the majority.
Sexism is universal in a way that racism isn't because sexual heterogeneity is universal in a way that racial heterogeneity isn't.
That would explain why there is sexism in all cultures, but it doesn't explain why it only goes one way. There are no cultures, and to my knowledge (admittedly, I'm no historian) there have never been any cultures, in which men are systematically oppressed by women.
When I got to this part of Joss's piece:
There were security officers standing outside the area doing nothing, but the footage of the murder was taken – by more than one phone – from the front row. Which means whoever shot it did so not to record the horror of the event, but to commemorate it. To share it. Because it was cool.
I could start a rant about the level to which we have become desensitized to violence, about the evils of the voyeuristic digital world in which everything is shown and everything is game, but honestly, it’s been said. And I certainly have no jingoistic cultural agenda. I like to think that in America this would be considered unbearably appalling, that Kitty Genovese is still remembered, that we are more evolved.
...I thought that we should remember that in the U.S. we have a far deeper tradition of this than simply Kitty Genovese. For years photographs of lynchings -- with the faces of the perpetrators clearly visible, smiling, taken "to commemorate it. To share it," sometimes with police looking on -- were very common. They were made into postcards and sent around the country.
If you've never seen them, they're readily available on the web. Look here or here.
Racism rather than misogyny at work here, obviously. But it's worth reminding ourselves that we, as a culture, have done fairly similar things to that honor-killing video on a regular basis, not all that long ago. And not just in the movies.
Scott @ 37: "If you educate women, give them the full suite of rights, and tell them that they're women (and that women are different from men) most of them will become housewives? Japan isn't much like the rest of the world, is it?"
Really, it's quite the opposite: a significant percentage of women are opting out of marriage altogether, because Japanese culture makes being a working wife--much less a working mother--utterly untenable. If it seems like many are still becoming housewives, it's because previously they ALL became housewives. These days, fewer and fewer women are making that choice. Even many of those who do choose to get married choose not to have kids, because of the enormous pressure to quit and be a full-time mother that they know will be brought to bear against them. If you want a single-cause explanation of Japan's crashing population, look no further than Japan's unwillingness to let married women out of the house, and women's growing reluctance to enter the house in the first place.
Here I am getting out of my area of expertise, but I have heard that a similar trend is developing in Germany, where there is also a strong expectation that women with children will quit in order to parent full-time. Women are being forced to choose between kids and jobs, and unsurprisingly, many are choosing their job.
"That would explain why there is sexism in all cultures, but it doesn't explain why it only goes one way. There are no cultures, and to my knowledge (admittedly, I'm no historian) there have never been any cultures, in which men are systematically oppressed by women."
There are still a few matriarchal societies where men don't hold property rights, and have no formal status as husbands or fathers--the Mosuo are the only ones who come to mind right now--but I don't know enough about the culture to say whether or not the men would consider it a marginalization of their personal worth, a type of freedom from obligation, both, or neither.
The power to choose lovers and fathers for their children rests squarely with the girls, who pass into adulthood at age thirteen, while the boys are not "free" until eighteen.
I wonder if it's observer bias--I see England as a man and hear about America from women--but I do get the feeling that the USA is much more hostile to women than the UK.
Which maybe has something to do with the apparant shocked reactions of a certain little old lady who recently visited with Bush and Cheney.
PublicRadioVet @ 39: Your idea of men placing themselves in "the service of women" seems poorly thought-out. Women are not gods. They are human. They do not warrant worship. They will, as humans inevitably do, disappoint. And how will their worshippers respond when they do? No good will come of treating some humans as innately superior to others, no matter how good your intentions.
And why, why, why is it so hard to imagine a world where men see women as nothing more and nothing less than fellow human beings?
Lizzy, I've been around my DV-working super-feminist wife long enough to know where you're going with that. And really, what can I say? The greatest harm inflicted on women in the U.S. is always inflicted by boyfriends, husbands, and fathers. We, as husbands and boyfriends and fathers, are damaging OUR GIRLS. The ones closest to us and the most dependent on us to do right by them; and who suffer the most ill if we do wrong by them.
I'm not trying to disempower or make claims of proprietary, objectifying ownership.
I would also say that "our" works both ways.
My wife? "He's MY husband." My daughter? "He's MY daddy!" In fact, I'd dare say they have a greater claim on me than I do on them. But then, this is part of the Service ethos as well.
Anyway, I know you were not nitpicking. Well, okay, maybe a little? But I understand the sentiment was benign and that you're just trying to keep me honest. It's appreciated.
Jen Roth @ 45: "That would explain why there is sexism in all cultures, but it doesn't explain why it only goes one way."
Any conflict, if it cannot be solved any other way, will be solved by appeal to physical laws, i.e. by violence. Men have a substantial advantage over women when conflicts come to that.
I probably should have said "matrilineal," instead of "matriarchal." There are elements of both, but on the whole, the Mosuo seem more interested in a sort of balance between the sexes.
PublicRadioVet @39 -- Sorry, but your concept of chivalry gives me the creeps.
My cure for sexism can be summed up in three words: Women are people.
They're not weird aliens we men can never understand. They're not property to be cloistered away, or servants to be ordered around and beaten, or sacred icons to be placed on pedestals. They're people. They're our friends and relatives and co-workers.
I can't imagine how much poorer my life would be if I had to regard all my female friends through a window of exaltation-as-life-bringers.
Heresiarch @ #50: Allow me to expound a little further. The "Service ethos" I mentioned ought to also be grounded in humility. In this way the import or worth of the service is not necessarily tied to the "flawlessness" of those who are served.
When I exhort guys to "Serve women!" I am saying that I think men (all men!) need a mission in life, and that service to wives and daughters and mothers and grandmothers and sisters... This is a good mission, a worthy mission, a necessary mission. It harnesses the male and binds him to a higher purpose than his own selfish lusts, desires, wants, etc. In this way the male transcends himself and becomes something greater than he is capable of becoming all on his own; certainly greater than any stature attained through hurtful dominion or abuse.
Yeah, maybe things get a little worshipful at times. But in a good relationship I think the "worship" often goes both ways. I've been with a peer partner since 1993 and we really do complete each other, as cliche as that sounds. I really do worship her. And not because she is inhuman or flawless, but because I think she is perfect for me and I am grateful that she has chosen to stay with me in spite of all my shit. And she feels the same about me.
Does this make sense?
I don't see why PVR's idea of service has to be so very gender-defined. Why "Serve women"? Why not just "Serve"? If it is good for a man to serve a women in order to subsume his baser instincts into a cause higher than himself, then it is good for any person to serve another cherished person that way. It is not only women who are valuable, nor men who have baser instincts.
There's also a nasty little side-effect that comes into play with all this elevating of women to Fertility Goddess stature (the idea of serving *women* because they are the source of life). When we overvalue someone for a particular quality, we give the message this quality is *all* they are valued for, that their other qualities do not merit attention. I, for one, do not plan on bearing children. I hope that doesn't make me less valuable as a woman--or as a human.
Another quibble I have is that PVR does not seem to make allowance in his proposal for homosexual couples. It makes his proposal sound like another argument for the obvious natural rightness of the heterosexual norm, which I'm sure he doesn't intend.
PublicRadioVet, please, pretty please, don't serve me. That kind of behavior incites fits of violence in me. In fact, I find few things as insulting as a guy who won't hit women on principle, even if she took a swing first. A general policy of pacifism can be noble, but refusing to meet me on the same terms you would somebody else with non-metaphorical balls is disparaging, and since I don't pick fights I don't expect to win, might get your ass kicked, and by a girl. If you need something to subvert your inherent masculine foibles, save African children from war and starvation.
Every woman here who's argued that men have the upper-hand when a situation becomes violent is making excuses that don't count. Honestly ladies, a shot gun works just as well for you as it does for your abusive male whatever. Read the thread about guns and what it takes to be a good gun owner that was up here a while back, take the advice seriously, and then if your size is such an issue, hit a shooting range and find out what works for you. Better yet, if you really want to thwart male brutality, get yourself some training and learn how to make your size and weight work for you. I'm not going to say it's easy, but you've got a responsibility to do what it takes to take care of yourself and if you're afraid of violence, then prepare for it. The argument works historically, but it's not a justification for anything going on in the United States (or much of the western world I suspect) today.
I'm dreaming rather idealistically of the day when people are people, where women don't get to cite wonky cyclical estrogen levels for moodswings, and men don't get to cite testosterone for violence. There are inherent differences between the sexes that come down to the effects of different biological makeups, but on the grand social scale of this day and age, they don't matter much.
PublicRadioVet: but don't you also serve your son, your father, your grandfather, your brother -- what exactly is the difference? You are describing family love, and it's not split up by gender - do you really become a better person by loving and helping your daughter than you do by loving and helping your son?
(Your wife of course is a different case, because the dynamics in a romantic/sexual relationship are different, but we're not talking only about women in sexual relationships with men - that is half the point).
I have more reservations about this:
'Every boy should aspire to be a Real Man. Real Men are men who embrace Service. Perhaps the highest possible expression of Service can be found in serving a female. She could be your mom, or your sister, a cousin, a girlfriend, a wife, a daughter, a grandmother, etc.'
but I'm not finding the words to express them very well, and I think I'm joining a queue, anyway.
Dave @ #58: LOL! I had forgotten that cultural reference.
Nicole, lots of women never have kids, either because of choice or because of biology or because of lack of opportunity. My cousin is such a woman, and she's a fine woman IMHO.
As for childbirthing being given too much importance.... I dunno. What's the whole thing with "womb envy" then, if not placing overt importance on the fact that women (and only women, so far) can produce viable human offspring?
My wife thinks the womb and the ability to make children is an immense and sacred power that women enjoy. She's intelligent and multi-talented and educated, but when it gets down to the baseline stuff of survival and Why We Are Here, she typically sticks childbirth right at the top of her list. Notice, SHE puts it there. I don't touch it. This is her choice for herself. And it doesn't seem to shake her faith in the value of all her other talents or abilities. Nor would my appreciation of her diminish had we been unable to have our daughter. Heck, with how long we waited to have kids, it almost worked out that way anyway.
Now, as to the heterocentric nature of my comments, what can I say? DV is overwhelmingly a problem created by hetero males against hetero females. Obviously it's the hetero males with the problem, hence I am discussing a "solution" in terms of hetero males needing a mission for their lives and a way to change their paradigm and escape the shackles of misogyny.
PublicRadioVet @ 55: "It harnesses the male and binds him to a higher purpose than his own selfish lusts, desires, wants, etc."
Not getting any less creepy, PRV. I don't really think that males need to be "harnessed and bound to a higher purpose," certainly not a purpose like being someone's personal servant. Humility is all well and good, but let's give self-respect a chance too, okay?
I don't disagree that helping others is a worthy mission, but why confine it to inter-gender assistance? Why is helping women a more worthy goal than helping other men? And why aren't women in need of a similar life-structuring mission?
I don't mean to knock your personal experience. It seems like this philosophy has enriched your own life. Nonetheless, I seriously doubt its universal applicability, much in the same way I doubt the philosophy of women who go about exhorting other women to devote all their energy and passion to taking care of their husbands and children. If it works for you, then great, but it pretty much gives me the heebie jeebies.
Rad Geek had a good three part series on what men can do. Part II sounds pertinent.
Jenny: I think there is worth in all honest service. I'm not trying to say that men should serve women to the exclusion of all else. I am saying that if the majority of hetero men in the world made service to their wives, daughters, sisters, mothers, etc, a top priority, and turned the traditional me-first male paradigm on its ear, then the world would be a vastly different and vastly better place.
anaea: I think there is a lot to be said for context. For instance, if I am riding the train on a weekend and it's crowded and a woman gets on who can't sit down, my old-fashioned sense of decorum might kick in and I'll give her my seat. The same is not true if I am riding the same train and it's a work day and we're all headed either to or from work. The context has shifted and in the modern work world gender does (should?) cease to exist as a factor, so the minute I am in "work mode" a lot of my old-fashioned sensibility in this regard goes to sleep.
Also, I think it's important to note that I have intentionally mentioned the following: wives, daughters, mothers, sisters, yadda yadda. Notice, they are all close relations to the man doing the serving, if not a blood relation. I am not advocating "stalker" service, wherein a man picks a total stranger and then throws himself at her in a bizarre attempt to prove himself. No. I am talking about men doing more for the women and girls already in their lives, the people they are closest to and who (according to statistics) are the most likely to suffer DV or abuse at their hands.
Again, we're discussing women-hate and violence against women. My clarion for "Service to Women!" is my personal answer to women-hate and DV, and I practice it every day of my life.
And no, I do not believe when a man serves a woman, and does it humbly, he in any way is sending a message that he thinks she can't do things for herself.
Case in point. My wife hates to make the bed. Hates it, hates it, hates it. She leaves it a rumpled mess, which suits my bachelor instincts just fine. But you know what? I make the bed. Because as much as I know she hates to make the bed, she likes to get into a made bed at the end of a long day, and since I don't mind making the bed and she does... Well, that's a good, modest example of service. We both know she is CAPABLE of making the bed. That's not the point. The point is, I perform a service for her that she appreciates. And that's all I am saying really.
There's a huge heterosexual assumption in all this, and it's one that, 20 or 30 years ago, I might have shared.
The world has changed, and so have I.
It sometimes looks as though the whole male power business is driven by a general hunger for power, and the attitude to women is at its heart an effort to eliminate half the competition.
How much were lynchings about the purity of white women, and how much about the maintenance of power? It wasn't just "uppity niggers", it was people such as Ella Watson.
Yes, the current political inferences are obvious. And promoting the power of men over women lets the power-hungry give some politically insignificant power to those who support them.
Sexism has an overwhelming stench of fear in it. Violence gives false bravado and disguises the fear. Causing terror and fear in others to deny your own. Misogynists are cowards.
Scott @ 37 and Heresiarch @ 47
Pretty much zero pressure to be a stay at home mom is one of the major reasons the Icelandic population is actually growing (not super fast but I think it's currently at around 2.3 children per woman on average). Childcare is cheap compared to most places, i.e atleast half of what it is here in the UK. They also provide childcare and support (and more importantly no social stigma) for universtiy students with children so when I was studying there would occasionally be a sleeping baby with us in class because a babysitter had flaked out.
There isn't stigma either attached to single mothers. I mean yes having two parents is ofcourse recognized as being better for everyone, but there's not a taboo about being a single mother.
I grew up with not a single of my friends having stay at home mums (or dads) and thought the whole concept was just bizarre when I heard of it first.
Also children born out of wedlock are more common than in. On account of the population in general not being hugely religious and tending to get married when they have a 3-4 year old children that can then carry the rings up the aisle in the church.
Things are far from perfect over there but I've had a few culture shocks running into more conservative cultures.
anaea @ #59 - Er. Telling other women to carry guns and go out and get some training to protect themselves is all very well and good, but your post feels uncomfortably close to blaming the victim to me. Not all of us have access to/money for/the ability to use/want to use martial arts or guns, and in a hell of a lot of situations where men attack women, the women don't have a good reason to expect it - and not all attacks start out physical.
Was it my fault my second boyfriend berated and abused me until I felt like I should accept his physical abuse, too, because I didn't want to shoot him or beat him up?
Please tell me I'm reading your post wrong. I really hope I am.
#42: the point about "our women" reminds me of that Draco Tavern story about the language that has three different forms of the possessive, depending on whether it's "my leg" (intrinsic), "my car" (possessive) or "my sister ("relational").
Also Chesterton's "The Absence of Mr. Glass", which makes the distinction between a man's hat and a hat that is his. My hat is the one I wear. If I own a hat shop, there are hundreds of hats that are mine, but only one or two that are my hats.
English, as a language, needs improving.
Power structures and power trips are imposed on people from without: oppression is quite literally top down. And that can't be changed at the top, because the ones in charge are the ones who benefit most from the status quo. As a number of commenters have pointed out, a lot of oppression of women comes from giving men with little power themselves someone else to hold power over, to keep them content with the rule of those who really hold power.
Cultures always change in the long-term bottom up, because people start acting differently and ultimately make the old structures irrelevant and powerless. It's a matter of education in the largest sense: raising people who are educated to recognize as a fundamental part of their world view, not just intellectually, that the old notion of superiority/inferiority is unacceptable and undesirable.
That sort of education comes from being raised by and knowing people who believe it themselves: the people commenting here and their ilk. The idea that misogyny is a bad thing is not new, but it seems to be growing in acceptance, perhaps because it really does have survival value to the human race over the long run. It's clearly not time to pat ourselves on the back, or Dua Khalil would still be alive, and we would not be facing a presidential election in the US where the white electorate might actually vote for a black man because the alternative might be a woman. But it just may be that there is hope for the future.
As a personal example, I was raised in the Eastern US in the mid-20th century; as misogynist a culture as you'll find in Western civilization. The only reason I didn't assimilate that culture and its views completely is that I come from a family containing a number of strong women, including one aunt and one female cousin who were* among the best and most recognized in their respective professions, and several others who had successful professional and family lives.
This exemplar of strong women was what led me to marry a woman who is also strong, and our marriage has lasted 37 years for the simple reason that we are partners, we have each other's back. Neither of us would be alive today without the other, and that's a whole lot stronger a bond than any notion of proper station or a role in life received from above.
* before they retired; both of them are alive, my aunt is going to be 95 this year.
Stephen Frug@46: I had not previously encountered those pictures.
The first site you linked to has 100 pictures. I had to stop after 25. I simply could not keep going. I don't have the words to describe my feelings right now.
anaea at 59:
"I'm dreaming rather idealistically of the day when people are people, where women don't get to cite wonky cyclical estrogen levels for moodswings"
A woman's hormone levels can and do change radically from one day to the next, and it DOES cause mood swings. One of the treatments I'm on for my bipolar disorder is Seasonale, precisely because it evens out those levels to a large extent for months at a time. Since my hormonal cycle was making my bipolar cycles more severe, it's helped a lot. And when it's time for the week of sugar pills, I can d*mned well fall apart.
While yes, women use it as an excuse to be assholes and men use it as a way to put down women, and both of those things are wrong, it's still a very, very real phenomenon. Acknowledging that both men and women are people doesn't and shouldn't mean ignoring the very real physiological differences between us. It should instead mean that we treat one another with respect and compassion.
ajay @ 70
In "The Dispossessed" Ursula Le Guin describes a society whose language has no possessive form at all. Instead of saying "my partner", they say "the partner". As in the Draco Tavern atory, this leads to a different way of thinking.
If you think that the way you speak doesn't fundamentally affect the way you see the world, contemplate martial arts for awhile, and note how training is designed to make action automatic, to create correct habits. Speech is a collection of some of the most basic habits we have, and everything about it affects the way we think of, feel about, and react to the world. Speech about relationships is especially powerful because it describes those relationships to us.
Bruce Cohen @ 70:
On the other hand, it's worth noting that the problem of "honor killings" exists in societies that speak very different languages, e.g., Turkey, numerous Arab-speaking countries, Kurdish speakers like the Yezidis that Whedon wrote about, and Pakistan (several different languages). As a language, Turkish is arguably less "gendered" than English (for example, Turkish lacks gendered 3rd person pronouns like "he" and "she"), and certainly less so than French or Spanish (no grammatical gender for nouns and adjectives). This doesn't necessarily mean that Turkish society has more gender equality than the US or Spain or France, however.
Fiddling with minor bits of language like possessive pronouns sounds like an appealingly easy solution to society's ills, but I suspect it's like treating a minor symptom instead of the underlying disease.
D'oh. My previous comment was meant as a reply to Bruce Cohen's comment @ 74, not "70". (Although it was also a reply of sorts to ajay's original comment @ 70...)
Peter @ #75: In another example of your point, Mandarin Chinese also lacks a gendered personal pronoun. (I'm not suggesting here that language doesn't inform thought, but rather that monkeying with pronouns is unlikely to produce gender equality.)
Public Radio Vet: I do appreciate your attempt to oppose evil with good, but among the reasons your position makes me nervous are:
1. It prescribes "correct" behavior for a very large category of people
2. It assigns an active role to all men and a passive role to all women
3. It mandates that all men must be in relationships with women and vice versa
and
4. The attitude you suggest as proper for men is completely compatible with the obsessive, posessive, stalkery attitude my daughters and I have encountered in a few of our male acquaintances.
In short, I honor your intent, but no thanks. Given a wish, the behavior I'd most wish for from the men I know is either (a) treat me as a fellow human being, with due attention paid to my individual likes and dislikes, or (b) LEAVE ME ALONE! (Luckily, most of the men in my life are perfectly willing to do one or the other.)
There's a truly creepy moment in Deepa Mehta's film "Fire"; a woman asks her husband, who has become celibate in search of spiritual perfection, what HER reward will be for giving up sex and the hope of having children; his startled reply is along the lines of "the glory of having served me!"
#43 Serge, that would be "crossbow" weddings, ballista are hard to get inside the church. Although, I believe "at the point of the sword/spear/dagger" would also work. A traditional bow would be tiring to hold in the ready position for the whole ceremony.
All right, longer post that I've been trying to formulate. The odd thing about PRV's concept of 'service to the females in your life' is that it seems to mirror a traditional view of how women should behave. Just try reversing the genders...
'Every girl should aspire to be a Real Woman. Real Women are women who embrace Service. Perhaps the highest possible expression of Service can be found in serving a man. He could be your father, or your brother, a cousin, a boyfriend, a husband, a son, a grandfather, etc.'
... and watch the hackles rise.
Now, I think the notion of treating your partner (of whatever gender) with the consideration and kindness that PRV describes is a very fine one, and I appreciate his desire that men should behave well towards the women in their lives. But I object to this talk about what makes a 'Real Man' or a 'Real Woman': how about discussing the way a Decent Person acts? It's recognising the common humanity in others that leads us to treat them well -- not some idealisation based on gender, which can just as well swing the other way into a kind of contempt, or worse. (Actually I think that women who take the 'real-women-serve-their-menfolk' line sometimes do seem to have a kind of contempt for the male gender: 'oh, men are really very simple' etc., which I'm none too keen on).
Also, what about women who don't have a male partner/ close male relative/ whatever? Why should they be worse off without anyone to 'serve' them? What I envy about men is not any kind of biological equipment (ha!) but just the freedom to go your way about the world without the worries that stack up on you for being female. I've had male friends go out of their way -- with the kindest intentions -- to walk me home after a party (I've sometimes wondered if *I* should be worried about *them* walking back on their own), and I've walked home alone when there was no such offer forthcoming. I love walking alone at night. It would be wonderful to be able to do this without feeling like a prey species. (In fact it's fairly safe where I am, but I have been hassled sometimes, and I'm always aware there's a certain risk, even when I choose to take it...)
In other words, PublicRadioVet, I'd rather be on your work train than your weekend train -- though it's sometimes nice to be on the receiving end of a chivalrous gesture without sleazy undertones, I'd trade that occasional event very, very gladly for being seen as a human being first and foremost and as a female human being... let's say, only at times in my life where my private parts are relevant. I'm sure that on the work train you would still give up your seat to someone who was infirm, or had small children with them, or was physically uncomfortable standing for whatever reason, and that's what really matters.
Peter Erwin @ #75, I agree with you. I didn't know that about Turkish, but Hungarian also has no gender in the third person (which can lead to some odd effects in translation: I've heard a Hungarian speaking English consistently refer to his daughter as 'he', which gave me a real mental jolt!). I can't see any particular evidence that this has made Hungarians less sexist than their neighbours; I think it's only one facet among greater cultural forces.
Finally, Sica @#68, I am getting the increasing impression, from what I've heard and read, that Icelandic society is pretty awesome, and different/quirky in an agreeable way. I hope I get to visit there someday.
Heresiarch #47
For callibration purposes, I live in a "second tier" city (Fukuyama) which will be less cosmopolitan, modern, and expensive than the "first tier" cities (Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, maybe more).
In my experience, there are definitely women who are avoiding marriage, and housework. But it's far from a majority. I'm sure it's grown since whenever before. I wouldn't even blink an extra time if somebody told me that the number of women who don't want a family (different from don't want to be housewives) was the same as the number of Japanese men who don't want to join a company and start the last-job-they'll-ever-have (also an increasing number).
Another thing that is very different now than a few years ago for birth-rate is the number of 1-child families has positively skyrocketed. Women who want a child have one, but having 2 is a hassle or whatever. Japanese society, overall, seems to provide just about zero support to a mother. Some random newspaper article (in the Daily Yomiuri) I read said that Japan is still moderately hostile to men as primary caregiver for a child.
An electrical engineer I know is married and has 2 children, works the full run of insane Japanese working hours and still finds time to let her mother to complain that her cooking isn't up to snuff yet. I don't get it but I am in awe. This reminds me that I need to figure out how rude it would be to ask about her husband...
For contrast, at a 2-year college, there's a class of 23 IT/Programming students, 6 of whom are women (girls?) 3 of whom describe their future as doing office-work... maybe. Eh? I restate, I don't get this place.
PRV, have you read Anne Bishop's Dark Jewels trilogy? It's set in a society based on male service to female-- and sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. It's one of those worlds that says it's feminist, but sort of isn't.
Your Service does make me a little nervous, but not because of what it is. I'm often wary of unknown people declaring themselves to a cause. Add anything involving sex and gender and I'm going to stay well away until I know it's not going to cause harm. I can understand how someone who has encountered stalkery men would stay well away *period*.
Some of it is also the dichotomy between men (lustful, selfish, violent) and women (chaste, giving, nurturing) you seem to accept. Lately, it seems I'm been running into that a lot-- if men are X, women must be -X. Men only want one thing, so women have to be coaxed or coerced into it. Men are strong, women are weak. Men are good at numbers, women are good at words. Women form strong social groups, men must be solitary.
It's a stupid way to order the world because gender and sex aren't binary. And because the traits people often take as fixed-- men are lustful, for example-- are really, really not. Up until pretty recently, women were wanton and sinful and men had to protect themselves against them. Men had to guard and protect women against the female nature.
And the result was somewhat the same. Serve women or bad things will happen. If women don't have men to help out, they will be unhappy and the world will be worse off. Women cannot live without men.
I know you don't mean to suggest these things, and you live in a way that's right for you, plural you. It seems sometimes that everything I take in involving sex and gender tells me that the world is a messed-up place. I've learned to watch for the barbs past experience tells me are there. Stories, essays, manifestos on sex and gender are almost always bad news or worse news.
Jenny @#79
Gender equality etc. still has a way to go back home in Iceland, the average salary for women is still a fair bit lower etc. But the lack of taboo around working and/or single mothers is great.
I also like the fact that we still have a last name (patronyms) system that doesn't involve changing your name when you get married. That's another concept I found completely bizarre when I encountered it first and I still can't really get my heard around it.
As a side effect of that, children of a couple have get the same name, no matter if the parents are married or not which probably is one factor in the "lets not get married until we have a house and a few kids" thing that a lot of people do.
That's hardwired enough into me so that I went to a wedding in the UK where the bride and groom to be had borrowed a child the bride used to babysit to carry the rings up the aisle and it felt really *wrong* (in the truthiness place) to me, to have an intruder that wasn't a part of the core family fulfilling that function. It should either be their child or no child at all. Heh..
Anyway to be slightly on topic, I wonder if the lack of surnames has shaped the culture. I.e there isn't the concept of a family linage that hinges only on male children being born.
Some random newspaper article (in the Daily Yomiuri) I read said that Japan is still moderately hostile to men as primary caregiver for a child.
Unless you're talking about "Lone Wolf and Cub", of course.
To PublicRadioVet:
Every boy should aspire to be a Real Man.
Whenever I see something like that, it looks to me like "I'm trying to take your self-respect hostage. You don't get to like yourself unless I approve of what you're doing."
I've been told by men that the Real Man vulnerability is just built into boys. If that's true, of course I'd rather have a relatively sane and civilized standard of Real Manhood, but is this really necessary? Is it commonly accepted nonsense, deep psychological truth, or true for some temperaments but not for all?
In re making your wife's bed because she strongly prefers having a made bed but hates making it herself: Does this need an ideal of Service, or would reasonable (and probably reciprocal) kindness be enough?
Steve Buchheit... A few years ago, during a staff meeting, one of my co-workers announced that she was getting married. That took us all by surprise because we had no idea she was seeing someone. Everybody congratulated her. I, since my mission in life was to tease her, asked if it was going to be a shotgun wedding. People actually gasped, except for my co-worker because, being from Hong Kong, she didn't know what that means. I proceeded to explain. Which gave her nightmares from then until the actual wedding that she'd become pregnant, and visibly so, by the time of the ceremony. Heheheheh...
As a man, I'm a bit reluctant to jump in here. However, I think (and it's been stated above) that some (most?) misogynistic behavior is based on male fear. If you're afraid of something, you may react violently.
Misogynistic cultures seem to treat sex as something women have and men want, and go to great lengths to "protect" women from men. The whole point of the burqa is hide a woman's form, so that men don't get "carried away" by a woman's sexuality. Ditto Victorian female attire.
Ritual, violent and public deaths, whether lynchings or "honor killings," are a form of control. They are a symptom, not a cause.
I don't have the training or background in psychology to cite studies in support of this, so all of the above is my opinion, YMMV.
Paula Helm Murray #27: I would say that education is the one "vaccine" that will work against honour killings. That, and making clear that they are going to result in condign punishments for the killers.
#75 ::: Peter Erwin: Fiddling with minor bits of language like possessive pronouns sounds like an appealingly easy solution to society's ills, but I suspect it's like treating a minor symptom instead of the underlying disease.
#77 ::: Lila: (I'm not suggesting here that language doesn't inform thought, but rather that monkeying with pronouns is unlikely to produce gender equality.)
Agreed. But reading Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness is a very different experience from reading her short story 'Coming of Age in Karhide,' in large part because of her conscientious use of pronouns. These pronouns didn't change the world. They did, however, change my world a little bit.
linnen #30: Honour killings occur when the woman in question takes up with an 'unsuitable' man, that's true. The man is unsuitable precisely because he has not been chosen by the family (i.e., by the elder male or males in the family), so the 'dishonour' resides in the woman's sexuality being outside the control of her older male relatives. This is also why a woman 'dishonours' her family by being raped. Her virginity is a commodity to be prized because it can be sold, in essence, to a suitable man. Anything which brings that commodity into doubt is going to be treated as a threat to the stability of the family, the social order, and the natural order of the universe.
In the process, women are completely dehumanised.
Will A@ #88, I was musing the other day about whether or not The Left Hand of Darkness was a book that it would be possible to film...
heresiarch@47
It's not just happening in Japan.
The US Census Bureau has reported that the number of women in marriages (well, marriages in general) have decreased a lot from 100 years ago. IIRC the number is around 50% of the population now where before it was 90 to 95%. (I got the information second-hand and have no links or cites.) Reasons are listed as: Divorced (and not doing that again), Looking (without success), and Just Not Interested.
I also heard that there are various European countries where the birth rate is below replacement. Mostly in countries where mothers get paid to stay at home and can't have other work outside the home.
Chris @ #86:
The whole point of the burqa is hide a woman's form, so that men don't get "carried away" by a woman's sexuality. Ditto Victorian female attire.
Um, not exactly. Victorian female attire - which, incidentally, includes about half a dozen significantly differing styles - is made to emphasize female curves - bust, waist, hip. This is the precise opposite of what a burqa is supposed to do. It's not just a matter of covering up skin, though there are certainly people whose imagination doesn't extend far enough to process anything other than "showing lots of skin" as sexy.
You might want to read up on Victorian costume history and the preceding and succeding eras of costume before making sweeping statements about its "point".
As a woman, here's a question directed to the men: What is it like to grow up without the expectation that you are, at your very core, a nurturer?
When you were growing up, was there any generic message you got from society as a whole on what you were? Some kind of consensus from all the messages thrown at you?
I don't have much to add about what PRV said except that it seems well intentioned and that, as a gay man, I'm actually rather sick of being told who a Real Man is. (But this is a personal quirk which has nothing to do with PRV.) Like Niki, I wonder why it's "to serve women" rather than simply to serve and to engage in building a healthy community and society. I don't think PRV means it this way, but his manifesto reads to me like a first step people take as they work their way back to becoming healthy members of society. (i.e., you start off doing the specific case, then you work your way to the general case.)
#77: Written Chinese, OTOH, does have a gendered personal pronoun. I believe this is a comparatively recent invention. It drives me nuts. You end up with a language where gender-neutral speech is pretty simple, but gender-neutral written text is not. (e.g., you can't play the game of shifting into the plural because you indicate plural with a suffix, not with a different word. You wouldn't write "he or she" because "he" and "she" are written differently but identically.)
However, make of this what you will, whenever my Mom spoke, she invariably got "he" and "she" mixed up. (Of course, she also never really got the hang of verb tenses. Chinese has particles to indicate aspect, but none to indicate tense.)
PRV, no offense, but stay away from my feminism. Serving women is just as misguided as trying to dominate them. We're not objects, we're not goddesses, we're PEOPLE. See Avram's post. We're just like you. I want to be respected as a human being, not exalted for some parenthetical biological function (not all of us need or want children, and "bearing life" is NOT our greatest calling). You want a higher calling? Join the Peace Corps. Spread truth. Fund good causes. Do something with your life and your money that betters the lives of all people, men and women both.
As far as "innate" differences in the sexes go, whether physical, psychological, or emotional, science has proven again and again that while there probably is SOME biological difference, it's so small as to be negligible. Are women less capable of aggression? More nurturing? Less strong? The biological answer tends to be "Maybe, but not enough to make a difference." The rest is up to culture.
Does anyone else remember this awful book?
I am so sick and tired of throwback feminism that claims to be interested in "protecting" women from their own choices (thank goodness for Justice Kennedy! We can't be trusted to make informed choices about our bodies). Poor poor women who have the unimaginable burden of being 100% responsible for sex. The author says she did not discuss men because women are the "sexual gatekeepers." Yay for blaming the victim.
What really troubles me, though, is this total misunderstanding of the function of sex. To her and so many others, it's currency. She says she wants women to embrace dating and romance "the better to get to know each other" and "Guys will do anything for homemade baked goods." Worse, she claims that "Real power is not giving it away, but using it wisely. That’s when you’re liberated, really." Because liberation shouldn't be about the simple capacity to make sexual choices and not be stoned for it--it should be about using sex to purchase power. And this is in my own country. Is that really the solution? I sure as hell hope not.
Sica @82:
That's hardwired enough into me so that I went to a wedding in the UK where the bride and groom to be had borrowed a child the bride used to babysit to carry the rings up the aisle and it felt really *wrong* (in the truthiness place) to me, to have an intruder that wasn't a part of the core family fulfilling that function. It should either be their child or no child at all.
I've lived in the UK my entire life, and that sounds wrong to me, too. I don't think that's a cultural difference, that's just a bizarre wedding.
Jenny @90: Fun! Maybe. So long as it isn't filmed by idiots. The story does have a few dramatic, icy landscapes, and it could be fun to share Genly's visual misreading of gender cues.
Googles . . . okay, wiki claims that "a feature film is being developed for release in 2008," hopefully not by idiots.
"I don't see why PVR's idea of service has to be so very gender-defined. Why "Serve women"? Why not just "Serve"? If it is good for a man to serve a women in order to subsume his baser instincts into a cause higher than himself, then it is good for any person to serve another cherished person that way. It is not only women who are valuable, nor men who have baser instincts."
Absolutely - shouldn't one 'serve' one's parents, one's children, one's brothers and sisters and friends? Shouldn't one do so regardless of one's own sex?
But really, with the exception of actual dependents (and I wouldn't count a spouse as 'dependent' in this sense, regardless of whether they work outside the home), I think the ideal should be less one of service and more one of fellowship and partnership.
My wife works about the same hours that I do, so when we're home it only makes sense that I take on my share of the cooking, cleaning, helping our son with his homework, etc. Fair's fair, and don't partners and friends at least try to be fair to each other?
I find it hard to fathom those who think (and have felt free to say to one or both of us) that the woman should have to take on all these household chores while the man is free to kick back, regardless of the fact that both work hard outside the home. Now, if one or the other of us made enough that the other could afford to stay home, we'd have to reevaluate the division of labor, but by no means do I think that would result in the 'bread-winner' being let off of all household duties; frankly, I think there's probably more to do to keep a home and family running than there is to do at any job I've ever had, with the possible exception of teaching high school. And yet, unless the decision were made for us by who gets a better-paying job first, I think my wife and I would both be fighting to be the one that gets to stay home...
"In "The Dispossessed" Ursula Le Guin describes a society whose language has no possessive form at all. Instead of saying "my partner", they say "the partner". As in the Draco Tavern atory, this leads to a different way of thinking.
If you think that the way you speak doesn't fundamentally affect the way you see the world, contemplate martial arts for awhile, and note how training is designed to make action automatic, to create correct habits. Speech is a collection of some of the most basic habits we have, and everything about it affects the way we think of, feel about, and react to the world. Speech about relationships is especially powerful because it describes those relationships to us."
True enough, but I don't think by this token that PRV necessarily deserves to be jumped on about the use of the word 'our', given that the possessive is also used reciprocally by the ones we're related to; e.g., my wife says 'my husband', my son says 'my father', and so on.
Yes, the lack of different forms for different types of connection is a problem for English, but it doesn't necessarily reinforce one party's role in the relationship more than another's. Nor does it indicate equality, either; a slave could refer to 'my master', after all, without implying ownership. But to assume that the use of 'our women' and 'our girls' has the same inequality built in to it just validates the attitude we're trying to deconstruct.
So, I didn't find PRV's use of the possessive creepy - just the assumption that 'service' would be all or mostly one way and gender-based.
Torie at 95, I read an interesting post some time ago, possibly at Real Adult Sex, possibly just linked from there, that said that the reason "she's just giving it away!" is such a problem isn't that she is having lots of sex, but that she isn't charging for it.
I liked reading Left Hand of Darkness with the somewhat broken pronouns. I'm stubborn and dislike Messages in books, so being able to point to the pronouns and say, "Hey, that's imprecise," helped. Instead of perceiving a Message that may or may not have actually been there, I had a conversation with the book and my own preconceptions.
Serge @ 43
Steve @ 78
It's surpising how many medieval marriages ended in divorce (or the other way out, where the man repudiates the woman and the marriage.) From this far away in time, it's hard to tell what caused it, although I suspect changing political alliances and few sons explain many of them.
As for putting women on some kind of pedestal, as PRV advocates: that sounds like almost every male-dominated culture where women have few (if any) rights. Putting people on those figurative pedestals has two consequences: they're unable to do anything (constructive or otherwise), and the only exit is falling off.
#93 ::: mayakda When you were growing up, was there any generic message you got from society as a whole on what you were? Some kind of consensus from all the messages thrown at you?
Yes. Machismo. A flawed, reductive ethic whose ostensible goal is to stoically deal with crap (heroic crap, like getting rid of spiders or protecting the family from ninjas, or something--the annoying and mundane crap is for everyone else).
This is bad, but at least it isn't a paradox. Playing the machismo game is much easier than trying to simultaneously avoid the labels "prude" and "whore."
P J... That's the problem with pedestals. They don't give you much choice as to where you can go. And they can be wobbly.
As for marriages... It's kind of funny when someone talks about the sanctity of marriage, and how the institution is being devalued by our kind of people, especially when homosexuals are allowed to do it too. (I'm still waiting for the Gay Apocalypse that Governor Arnie warned us against when SF's mayor allowed 'them' to get married.) True, marriage has changed, but for the better. It used to be a function to regulate procreation. Now it becomes more and more what romantic ideals used to talk about, the union of two (or more) souls. What do they see that's wrong about that? A lot, obviously.
Susan... Still, both approches to female clothing are about physical control, aren't they? How much can one do while wearing a crinoline?
PJ Evans at 100-- in my bioethics class some time ago, we discussed sex selection via IVF and abortion. Some people, including me, thought that having a sex imbalance (too few girls) meant that the girls would be treated better, but historically, that hasn't happened. Societies with more boys than girls tend to keep the few girls they have safe and protected, which of course means keeping them away from the world. I think (and this is me making things up) the only way to get a society with far fewer, but more powerful, girls would be to start with one where women are equal to men. It's easy to go from protecting your daughters by keeping them hidden to protecting your one and only daughter by keeping her very hidden, as befits a precious rarity.
It was an interesting bioethics course, not least because it presented me with a group of my peers who didn't always agree with me-- usually, we'd just talk about other things, but I got weird looks for the strangest ideas. Most of my classmates were mystified that I wouldn't want to know the sex of my child until it was born.
Scott @ 80, about Japanese women and career goals:
One of the stranger bits of culture change in my small town is that the local Benedictine Abbey and College has, over the past two decades, become a place of foreigners learning English and western business administration skills. The large fraction of those students who are Japanese women (wearing Jimmy Choo's on the bus in western Washington mud, dressed to the nines in designer clothing, a sharp contrast to the Evergreen students in hiking boots and vintage hippie gear) are planning to work for Japanese companies, outside of Japan. The interviews I've seen have not addressed the matter of marriage and family directly, but it's notable that, unlike the other college graduates interviewed every spring, the Japanese women do not mention those items on their own.
@Serge #103
And how much ass-kicking can you do in an ankle length skirt? Oh wait... I did watch Chinese Martial arts movies... never mind!
If you want to talk about physically incapacitating clothes, your go-to-guy (girl?) is going to be the corset. Breathing is men's work!
Susan @ 92 - I don't know how much I don't know* about Victorian fashions, but what I was thinking of was the thrill Victorians seemed to get by seeing a flash of ankle, and how scandalized they were at bloomers.
Of course, Victorians were in general modest folks, so that does confuse matters.
*Rumsfeld was an idiot as SecDef, but he did know how to turn a phrase.
Hi all; I've read Making Light for a couple of years, but have never posted. I tend not to post unless I feel I have something to add to the conversation, and that's rare.
Now though, a couple of ideas on this topic. Chris in #86 stated something similar. The text that witch hunters used to find and convict witches, the Malleus Maleficarum, states that one of the signs that a woman was a witch was that she inspired lust in men. This makes me think in terms of power, and the reasons for subjugation. Obviously, not all women convicted as witches would inspire lust, but to me, it is a clear sign of power dynamics. And also hopefully obviously, I'm making sweeping generalities here and don't mean anything I'm saying to apply to all (or even most) men or women.
A woman who inspires lust in a man has some hold of power over him. This hold of power may threaten the man's masculine identity, by inspiring feelings such as fear of rejection, fear of looking a fool, by feeling threatened or angered that the man can't control his own thoughts and desires. He wants her so badly, and she might not care about him at all.
He may then, in order to restore his feelings of power, transfer that anger to the object of his lust. She, simply by being her, MADE him feel that way, SHE did that to him, he didn't do it. So women end up being manipulative, as Joss says, because the woman twists the man's emotions and makes him feel weak. A woman is a slut because she makes men feel lust. A woman was a witch because she still has power over men even though she does not have any property, political power, or education of her own.
Another thing; I'm not sure how well cited this might be, but I think it was Robert Graves who believed that a lot of societies in ancient Europe were matriarchal until sex was discovered to be the means by which women gave birth. After that, he believed, men were no longer in awe of the life-giving power of the female, since they had discovered they had a part in it as well, and they started taking power.
As a vocal feminist in a red state, I could talk myself blue (heh) on this topic. And I do, and tend to annoy people. I was at my mom's house watching television with her a few months ago and there was a commercial on tv. A man kisses his wife good-bye and leaves their home on his way to work by jumping off a cliff and getting into some fancy SUV. My mom said, "That commercial has always bothered me." I said, "Why? Because they show the man going off to work and just leave the woman to stay at home?" and she looked at me funny and said, "No, I just wondered how he gets back up."
Susan @ #92
Victorian clothing didn't just emphasize the female form, it also exaggerated out of all proportion -- partly so that the actual form itself wouldn't be seen. Not logical, but then, fashion often isn't. That cloaking of form also included furniture (which, as someone who once spent WAY too much time cleaning upholstery, I still resent).
Oh, you have just reminded me of Grey's Anatomy. Season finale, big prom dealy, two characters have an argument.
Woman: Stop looking at me!
Man: Stop making me look at you!
And these are presented as not only equivalent transgressions but *foreplay* and *romantic* and that is a great deal of why I stopped being able to watch the show without mocking it.
Will@ 97: I think it could be excellent - ice landscapes, very visually striking, and an exciting plot with danger and politics. I was thinking about casting - would you cast women or men, or both, for the Gethenians? How many actors/ actresses are there who could be convincingly androgynous and create the necessary gender vertigo - since, not just the leads, but every single person onscreen has to be gender unidentifiable except for Genly? And if I remember rightly the Gethenians look rather like Inuit, which narrows the casting pool further... On the other hand it would be an interesting acting challenge; maybe a bit of subtle CGI could help? And it would be really fun to design the costumes/architecture/material culture of that world.
I'll be interested to see what the 2008 film is like: I hope it isn't made by idiots.
Serge @ #103:
Still, both approches to female clothing are about physical control, aren't they?
You're laying a lot of meaning on clothing; it's not like anyone thought up these fashions as a deliberate plan. Modern trousers are "about" physically controlling the male genitalia, right? They make rather less sense than skirts for men. And modern neckties are "about" providing a convenient leash to lead errant husbands by?
The Victorian era was one of the most fetishistic fashion eras in history; one way or the other, women's outfits were as much "about" covert sexual display as anything else, which puts them right in line with (but considerably more developed in this era due to advances in construction technique than) the previous several hundred years of fashion. The burqa is the opposite of sexual display - it hides the face and form under a shapeless sack. Lumping these together suggests an inability to grasp any meaning of sexy that does not closely track with naked, but I assure you that the Taliban and co. do not suffer from this problem - they'd be quite ready to pop a burqa over my hourglass Victorian outfits, even if I'm already covered from chin to toe.
Actually, a rather notable change in fashion in the Victorian era was that men's clothing became less about display and standardized on boring, so the women's stuff stands out rather more by comparison. And one no longer gets to admire men's shapely calves.
How much can one do while wearing a crinoline?
Less than one can do while wearing a hoop skirt, which is one reason women welcomed the development of hoops - it enabled a fashionable silhouette while freeing up the legs and feet. (You do realize that crinolines per se are a brief fashion only at the very start of the Victorian era and not particularly representative of it, right?)
Welcome, Carri.
About the power of women being a threat to men... That reminds me of the scene in Lawrence of Arabia where Peter O'Toole and Omar Sharrif tell the sheik played by Anthony Quinn that he should attack a specific place. He isn't too keen on the idea, but they eventually 'seduce' him. He gives in, reluctantly, but says that the two of them trouble him the way women do.
My wife, being a writer, works at home so the woman staying at home didn't bother her. Or it may simply be that what bothered her the most was the same thing that bugged your mom. How does he get back up?
Scott @ 106
If you want to talk about physically incapacitating clothes, your go-to-guy (girl?) is going to be the corset. Breathing is men's work!
I know someone who wore a corset to a wedding and the reception following, where she was doing the twist, down to the floor and back up. It's a support structure by design, not a breath-stopping device. (For women of a certain build, it beats the alternatives.)
Serge @ 103 and Scott @ 106:
Victorian clothing (and this is a huge category, as Susan said) was not about restricting, cloaking, or punishing women (or at least no more so than beauty/cosmetics through the ages). It was a fashion choice. The same goes for Renaissance clothing. Queen Elizabeth I often wore dresses that revealed her breasts because it was a sign of purity and chastity. Victorian corsets aren't about preventing you from breathing but accenting your breasts and hips--the idea was to get a cone-shaped figure. No one said fashion made any sense. But the sometime costume mistress in me will argue that really, there was no oppressive male conspiracy going on--just oppressive, silly, illogical beauty standards (no different than today). How those beauty standards inform or reflect our attitudes towards women is a different story.
And for the record: if you're a certain body type corsets are way more comfortable than bras.
Susan @ 112... You're laying a lot of meaning on clothing; it's not like anyone thought up these fashions as a deliberate plan.
Oh, I know that, and I had intended my post to originally say something along those lines. If I had put that in, I'd then have had to elaborate on my own argument and say that, if it is indeed about physical control, how did the concerted efforts of fashion converge toward that goal. That'd have meant a longer post than I had intended. And it'd have forced me to confess that I don't really know much about much of anything. But I talk about things anyway because I like to learn.
Carri said (#108):
Another thing; I'm not sure how well cited this might be, but I think it was Robert Graves who believed that a lot of societies in ancient Europe were matriarchal until sex was discovered to be the means by which women gave birth. After that, he believed, men were no longer in awe of the life-giving power of the female, since they had discovered they had a part in it as well, and they started taking power.
Beware of taking Robert Graves too seriously... much of what he wrote was nonsense. Fascinating, ingenious, and even brilliant nonsense, mind you, but nonsense nonetheless.
I think I recall reading somewhere that anthropologists have never found a culture where people didn't understand the connection between sex and giving birth.
(Oh, and welcome, too!)
(cont'd from #116)
Drat... I had meant to write "...how did the UNconcerted efforts of fashion converge toward that goal..."
mayakda@93: What is it like to grow up without the expectation that you are, at your very core, a nurturer? When you were growing up, was there any generic message you got from society as a whole on what you were? Some kind of consensus from all the messages thrown at you?
The expectation I had was to succeed. To go out and find something to do and be the best at it. Better than anyone else, at least out to some circle of people. To win. To find some challenge I could win such that I could "prove" myself, whatever that means.
Was it thrown at me? I dunno.
I think there is some level that this comes from an internal source, hardwiring, genes, hormones, whatever, and then there is some level of what does culture do to direct it to something useful or something harmful.
Some time ago, I was reading this thing about a guy who had had testicular cancer and had to have them completely removed due to the cancer. And the interviewer asked him if he felt any different afterwards. The guy said that before, he would sometimes wonder how he would measure up in combat. (He was a middle aged, white collar worker, never in the military.) Afterwards, he said those thoughts never came up. I don't remember his exact words, but I do remember that I recognized the exact same thought.
I don't have the time to read in depth for the immediate future (Patriarchy, made someone NUKE the entire structure and social meme of it, COMPLETELY.... and extirpate for eternity Clorox Housewife and all other sociobiology bullshit regarding housekeeping and biology is effing DOMESTIC horseshit), however...
1. I have know SEVERAL non-biological fathers who are completely devoted to the children they have raised, who once again, are NOT their biological offspring, and in at least two cases went far out of their way to become the legal SOLE custodial parents.
2. Lies, lies, and more lies, and telling and spreading control freak slimeball lies does NOT make something Truth.... welcome to 1984.
3. The mythology of woman as Queen of the Night comes out historically in the oddest places--Chatres cathedral, for example, amidst the intense misogyny of medieval France, "Shabbat ha-Malkah" in Judaish (the Sabbath Queen, whatever-the-term-is for denoting the Sabbath as a person, referred to a Shabbat ha-Malkah, Sabbath the Queen), Britomart in the Carolingian cycle, etc.
Torie @ 115... Duly noted. Like I was saying to Susan, I don't know a damn thing about lots of things, but I am willing to learn, in spite of the risk that I'll embarass myself. This isn't the first time, and isn't likely to be the last.
Scott @ #106:
If you want to talk about physically incapacitating clothes, your go-to-guy (girl?) is going to be the corset.
Corsets are more comfortable for me than bras, and I regularly spend hours at a time in aerobic exercise while wearing one (most recently, Saturday night.) I'm guessing that's more personal experience with them than you have. The trade off in torso flexibility with a bra for me is in backaches and bruising (or maybe that's scarring - is a purple mark you have for decades a bruise or a scar?) Oh, and bras also better display my shape and make me more vulnerable and accessible to men, and more subject to random men's obnoxious commentary; is that supposed to be a bug or a feature?
In a corset I am comfortable going up and down stairs, walking, running, and dancing. In a bra, I am comfortable sitting still if the chair has good back support, but at least it's easy to tie my shoes.
Which is more physically incapacitating? It's not nearly as simple as people who have no experience make it out to be.
#121 - Serge
Absolutely! You didn't embarrass yourself. Bottom line is that clothing and fashion are mostly illogical, but we already knew that. I saw a woman this morning in a business suit wearing Crocs.
Peter Irwin says: I think I recall reading somewhere that anthropologists have never found a culture where people didn't understand the connection between sex and giving birth. and by doing so saves me from getting really wanky on the subject.
Archaeology has no means of reconstructing knowledge, belief or thought. Any statement one reads about what preliterate people did, apart from how they made and used tools, houses, and settlement systems, is bound to be compounded of eight parts wishful thinking, one part uncomfirmed assumptions, and one part strained analysis of physical evidence.
Without launching off on ten seperate arguments with ten seperate people, let me add a few more things to what I wrote last night.
1) In one of my posts I pointed out that the worth of service is not dependent on the "worthiness" of those being served. I did not at any time advocate putting anyone on a pedestal, did not say women were without flaw, nor did I attempt to make women "inhuman" objects for idol worship. All I said, and have been saying since last night, is that if more men in this world spent more time engaged in service to the women they are close to, the world would probably be a better place. I am surprised anyone could see anything sinister about that.
2) Several people have balked at the heterocentrism of my Service concept. Again, I don't know what to say, other than to point out that the topic of this whole thread deals with men being violent and terrible towards women. Homosexuality doesn't enter into it. Homosexual men being violent towards women is not the problem. We're talking about hetero men and hetero-dominant cultures needing a new paradigm that scuttles misogyny. Hetero men needing to find a new yardstick for self-worth and for feeling masculine. I'm not sure homosexuality comes into this kind of discussion at all.
3) Several women have said, in no uncertain terms, "No thanks guy, you can keep your creepy chivalry!" OK. Again, I did not advocate "stalker" service, as seems to be the impression some have gotten. My point was to be kind to and perform service for the women already in our lives; that we're directly related to or that we know on an intimate level somehow. My wife has several woman friends whom I am friends with as well, all professional and all highly-educated and all feminist, for whom I practice the Service ethos; and not a one of them has ever balked or said I was being "creepy" or that I disempowered them through my acts. And these are NOT mousy women. These are outspoken and headstrong and independent women. I think they'd let me know if I was bugging them.
4) This takes me to an IMPORTANT point I failed to make last night. And that point is: all Service is in the eyes of the beholder. What does this mean? It means that the Service ethos cannot, should not be blind to the needs and wants of those who are served. For women who are made uncomfortable with old-fashioned gestures like giving up a seat on a train, the best "service" in this case is to treat the woman as she wishes to be treated, and not give up the seat. Where my wife's friends are concerned, I don't just blindly do shit for them unasked or out of the blue. It's usually something as simple as just listening to them in normal conversation and picking up on something they gripe about and which I know I can do something about or which might help. I'm a computer geek by profession, and I can't count the number of times one of my wife's friends has said, "My stupid computer is all screwed up!" I offer to fix it for them, we make arrangements, I solve the problem, no-charge, and they're happy and I'm happy. If the problem is an easy or non-hardware related fix, I always try to show them how they can effect the fix on their own. Thus, next time, they won't need me. I think this is EMPOWERING, not devaluing.
5) People have pointed out, correctly I would say, that we should ALL server EVERYONE. And I agree. Last night I think I pointed out that Service to women is NOT an exclusive arrangement. But since our context is hetero male violence towards women, I don't think service to kids or the male side of the equation enters much into this. Again, we're talking about altering the current paradigm, and replacing it with something better. Because I truly believe that if we abolish the current paradigm and leave a vacuum, whatever rises to assume its place won't be what we want. We should try to replace the current paradigm with a new and clearly-defined paradigm that inverts the old women-serve-men reality. And in my experience there is nothing debasing or devaluing about being a man who serves women. Again, if your internal definition of your masculinity does not rest on power trips or domination of the female, but instead relies on service as a major component of becoming and being masculine, I don't see how anyone in that mindset can feel debased or otherwise brought low in service.
6) Some people here seem to be saying that we need to neuter our society completely and that only when gender has been absolutely wiped from human consciousness, as a factor in thinking, then we'll be making real progress. I think this is laudable on paper, but I don't think it will ever pass in reality. Because in reality we are NOT neutered. Men and women are physically and biologically different. We each have differing strong points and weak points and I don't think society can function well if we shave off the hills and fill in the valleys and force everything and everyone to be "flat." I think you an celebrate difference without placing emphasis on one sex being "better" than the other. And I think it's odd that in our modern times, when we as progressive people go out of our way to celebrate cultural and ethnic and linguistic and sexual-choice differences, some of us try to stamp out the gender difference at the same time. That trikes me as paradoxical.
Thanks Serge.
Yes, I often fall prey to my own rants. Women (or men) staying at home don't bother me at all, it's just the default image that bothers me. And the fairly subtle things, like the Grey's Anatomy episode Diatryma pointed out.
When I first met my husband he rarely paid attention to gender issues in the media. But I've run my mouth about it so much that he's noticing them now. We just got back from camping at Mammoth Cave, and had bought a dvd showing footage, among other things, of one of the more difficult cave tours that I am entirely too lazy to take. They interviewed about four men and one woman who they showed footage of taking the tour. The men they showed climbing over obstacles, talking about how it was hard sometimes, but they just squeezed through or climbed over, and no problem. The one woman they interviewed (and there were actually more women than men they showed taking the tour) was the one who was scared and had to be talked into climbing over a drop.
Now maybe none of the men were scared, or had any problems, on this particular tour that was taped. Maybe the other women on the tour declined to be interviewed. I'm not saying that certainly, there is no doubt, that there was a gender bias in creating this tape, but it was refreshing for my husband to point out the disparity to me.
There are also those Hardee's ads that show men not knowing how to make breakfast. Those bother me too. But I'll have to say, one ad that bothered me more than most was a print ad for a bicycle. It was a picture of a jeep, with a guy driving with his bicycle in the front seat, and his girlfriend or wife or whatever strapped to the bike rack on top of the vehicle. That was just a few years ago, here in the states.
Chris @ #109:
Susan @ 92 - I don't know how much I don't know* about Victorian fashions, but what I was thinking of was the thrill Victorians seemed to get by seeing a flash of ankle, and how scandalized they were at bloomers.
Right: sexual display. The game is "peekaboo", boys and girls. Nowadays men don't go all drooly when they see a woman's ankle; why should they, when people wear sandals all summer? The Victorians were past masters at the game of artificially-induced scarcity. Subtlety is an oft-lost art nowadays.
Of course, Victorians were in general modest folks, so that does confuse matters.
Take a gander at Victorian menswear sometime; you'll note the complete absence of display of skin in anything except bathing costume. I wouldn't want to do a lot of exercise while wearing the equivalent of a three-piece suit and a lot of fabric wrapped around my neck. Men seem to have a harder time at Victorian balls than women - they wear much hotter clothing.
reading through all the previous posts, I would say that I can recognize a flavor of PRV's idea of serving women in myself, though I don't know if I'd say it occurs at the same level in me.
Generally speaking, I show my wife that I love her by doing things for her. She, on the other hand, just loves me. I can't really explain it more than that because I think I have a sort of blind spot around it, and she's far better at it than me.
I lift heavy things for her and do dirty jobs for her and love her. And she simply smiles at me and loves me.
As it happens, we both love "The Princess Bride" (it might be our favorite movie), and we were watching the beginning one time where Buttercup asked asked Farmboy to fetch a pot she could have easily reached herself, and he said "As you wish" and gave it to her, and they both realized they loved each other, and ever since, I respond to honey-do requests from my wife with "As you wish, buttercup."
Torie @ 123... Thanks. There is this saying about a little knowledge being a dangerous thing, and I think I had stepped in it.
By the way, what are Crocs?
Re men's and women's fashions: there's a fascinating book called Sex and Suits by Anne Hollander (an art historian by training, I think), which deals with the evolution of the male suit and its subsequent uptake by women. Along the way, she provides what I believe is an excellent overview of European fashion over the last few hundred years (though this is about the only book on the history of fashion I've read, so I could be wrong).
One of the tidbits I remember is the curious fact that women's fashions -- prior to the 20th Century -- played all sorts of games with emphasizing, exposing, and covering up necks, bosoms, arms, and waists... but everything below the waist and above the feet was always concealed. In contrast, men's fashion frequently (though not always) emphasized legs -- but almost never revealed the throat or upper chest.
Also the fact that, prior to the late 19th Century, women's clothing was designed and made by women, not men.
Thanks Peter and JESR.
I haven't read much Robert Graves, or much about him. I did find it interesting, and wasn't sure how well supported it was, or how well reasoned his arguments are considered.
Regarding fashion, though it is highly unlikely that some man came up with different fashionable ideas to subjugate women, I wonder how often the fashions could be a symptom of the disease rather than one of its causes? It's almost like a class thing combined with a gender thing. Men and women both could wear elaborate clothes that showed off their wealth, restricted their mobility, and compromised their health, yet it wouldn't affect their ability to provide income?
Carri @ 126... You ranted? I didn't see any sign of that, unless talking passionately about what matters to oneself is a definition of rants.
As for that DVD... I bet you that some of the guys were just as scared, but there's no way they were going to admit to that. Weakness must never be acknowledged, after all. Me, I'd answer truthfully. I know who and what I am, as I said in another thread when we were discussing gender characteristics. Still, I am enough of a guy that I worked in the backyard in spite of my still recovering from a high fever. Thats's what happens when you grow up with role models like Indiana Jones or James Bond. Push yourself to the limit, that's the message for guys. Otherwise, you have no right to pass on your genes. Not that I ever tried to do that gene-passing thing.
I worked at a Sears Portrait Studio for about four years in college, and one of the things that irritated me more than anything else was parents enforcing their gender views on children. There were impulse items near the kiosk, of course at children's level, so they could grab one of whatever and drag it over for their parents to see. One of those was a big, floppy, cloth doll with big eyes and a plaid dress. Baby (crawling through about 3 or four years) boys went straight for that thing every time. It was soft and cuddly, and just the right size for hugging. I've got to say, Moms were way worse than Dads about taking it immediately away and saying "that's for girls."
Also, they often went straight for the feather boas in the studio, for much the same reasons-- "what..is that Thing? It's Soooooft." Talk about horrified, embarrassed looks from the parents. Girls who like Boy Toys are just tomboys, boys who like Girl Toys are in danger of being....embarrassing.
I happened across this story today, and I'm surprised I hadn't seen it before. It immediately reminded me of this thread, and was yet another reminder of how violence towards women is minimized or shuffled out of sight. The interesting part to this story is that there seem to be at least two female witnesses who not only came forward with their story but were responsible for getting the raped girl to the hospital. They received medals for their actions but are still speaking out, since they are shocked and horrified that no charges have been brought to the players.
As for the mindset of the perpetrators--in the words of one of the players, the seventeen year old victim "got drunk and did this to herself." I know we swim through sexism every day, but I'm still amazed that anybody can justify his behaviour to that extent by blaming it on the woman herself and her very existence.
JESR said (#124):
Archaeology has no means of reconstructing knowledge, belief or thought. Any statement one reads about what preliterate people did, apart from how they made and used tools, houses, and settlement systems, is bound to be compounded of eight parts wishful thinking, one part uncomfirmed assumptions, and one part strained analysis of physical evidence.
By and large I'd agree with you.
In case it wasn't clear, I was referring to anthropologists studying living cultures, many of them preliterate, not archaeologists speculating about the beliefs of past preliterate cultures. So, yes, we don't really know about past cultures; but if contemporary preliterate/stone-age cultures understand the connection between sex and giving birth, and if the oldest literate cultures seemed to understand the connection, then it's reasonable to guess that past preliterate cultures probably understood it as well.
I agree that the Robert Graves theory about prehistoric European cultures sounds unlikely. If they didn't realise that sex causes pregnancy from observing women's biology (human females don't have an externally obvious fertility period, very rare for mammals), you'd think they'd get the idea by analogy by observing that birds and animals have a mating season closely followed by rearing young. (I mean, heck, it's May here in Britain and I'm seeing pigeons going at it all over the place, even in the middle of a city!)
On the other hand the Trobriand Islanders reportedly didn't believe in a connection between sex and pregnancy, thinking that women were impregnated by spirits. I looked this up on Wikipedia (because if it's on Wikipedia it must be true) and found a link to the bizarrest travel article claiming a) that yams are contraceptive, hence the relation between sex and fertility not being clear in the Trobriands (yams being eaten heavily at certain points in the year); b) that during the yam festival in the Trobriand Islands, women rape men.
Have no idea whether to believe all this (surely lots of cultures consume large quantities of yams without fertility problems?), and am hoping that some anthropologist, or Trobriand Islander, will wander by and shed some light on things.
@several re: corsets
Sure, your experience is likely closer than mine. But I've been around enough corsets being unhooked and heard the gulp of air, and watched the face of relaxation erupt to form a meaningful opinion.
My point was never that corsets are intentionally uncomfortable. And perhaps, to people they are comfortable (which is not something I've ever heard before, and am very interested to have learned) but to the women I've known to wear them, they were worn out of an unsubtle preference for fashion/appearance over comfort... well into the land of pointed discomfort after a few hours.
(Not piling on PRV with this, just riffing on the conversation already in progress.)
The problem with the call to Service is that it's hard to buy into the idea that serving is its own reward. I think it leads, probably inevitably, to the Pete Seeger summary of "Greensleeves": I gave thee this, I gave thee that, and yet thou wouldst not love me.
I'd rather have friends, myself.
Count me in among the folks who get the wiggins at the phrase "Real Man." Complete personhood doesn't strike me as having much to do with the way your plumbing's wired, and I don't buy the thought that you need examples of your own gender to teach it to you. Speaking only for myself, I know I got the lessons associated with so-called Real Manhood mostly from the women in my family: how to be strong, how to be gentle, how to fight nice and make up afterwords, how to play fair and be a gracious winner and a good loser, how to be respectful of other people. They were the same lessons everyone got, as far as I can tell.
As others have noted, you get problems when you start from the notion that Wimmin Are Speshul. It's a thread that conservative culture and the loopier wing of radical feminism have in common, and I don't like it much in either case. (FTR, I am very much a feminist, just not a radical one, for various reasons; for one thing, I don't think gender oppression is the primary oppression, nor that solving it is the key to making all the other types of discrimination go away. But I digress.)
Honestly, I think we as men don't do much good trying to serve women. I think we do much better just trying to like them. Lots of men really don't; what they mean by "I like women" is "I like to f*ck women," which is not the same thing. The more men are really willing to hang out with women on their own terms, seek out their company for reasons that don't have anything to do with sex, and take care of those friendships in ways other than making them Honorary Guys, the further along we'll be in solving the millenia-deep problems of misogyny. Unfortunately, the fear of girl cooties runs deep.
#125:Homosexual men being violent towards women is not the problem.
The word game of "are you saying that it's ok for homosexual men to be violent towards women?" is irresistible. So there, now I've done it and you can ignore it.
It's clear you don't mean that. However, why is solving the problem of violence towards women by reinforcing heterosexism ok? Would it be just as ok to resolve the problem by reinforcing racism?
Again, I don't know what to say, other than to point out that the topic of this whole thread deals with men being violent and terrible towards women.
Not to mention Victorian clothing, the role women play in modern society, and men's fashions. I keep expecting the traditional knitting discussion to start up any minute now. (Every time one of them pops up, I feel the urge to learn how to knit.)
We're talking about hetero men and hetero-dominant cultures needing a new paradigm that scuttles misogyny. Hetero men needing to find a new yardstick for self-worth and for feeling masculine. I'm not sure homosexuality comes into this kind of discussion at all.
Are you honestly saying that homosexuality has nothing to do with how hetero men make themselves feel masculine? (e.g. the role of "the sissy" in cinema. Most of them were not overtly gay, but strongly implied. Certainly, movie watchers of the time took them that way. A friend of mine unironically claimed that THE EIGER SANCTION was an advance in cinema because the sissy villain was overtly gay rather than implicitly so.) Are you honestly saying that when you posit a standard for what a Real Man is in society, you should not take homosexuals into account? Are you honestly saying that male-dominated is bad, but hetero-dominated is ok?
The trumpeting of heterosexism is how we get to the notion that gay bashing is ok, much in the same way that saying the male dominated society is just the way it is leads to implicit acceptance of acts such as honor killings.
Surely there are better solutions for misogyny than substituting heterosexism in its place.
(This has been part of my continuing rant against the notion that heterosexism is normative. We now return you to your regular discussion... whatever it is.)
PRV, your 'Service' is my 'treating someone like a human being'. Phrased that way, yes, if more men were in service to women-- if more men treated women as people-- we would have fewer problems. It's a semantics issue on some level.
What do you do for male friends? Do you not listen to them or offer help when it's appropriate?
J Austin @133, there's a lot of external/ cultural pressure, still, even with quite tiny children. Have a look at an Early Learning Centre catalogue - it's unbelievable! Every single thing, even down to clothes and mats and towels for really small babies, is gendered pink or blue. And their imaginative play section is appalling. Costumes for a firefighter, police officer, knight, doctor, cowboy, nurse -- guess which one is modelled by a little girl? you got it. There's a page of dinosaur toys (boys only) and another of pastel-coloured fairy castles and little baby make-up sets.
I wanted to buy a toy piano for my god-daughter. They have separate pages in the catalogue for girls' instruments and boys': either blue with geometric designs, or pink with sparkles on.
I got her the blue one because I couldn't live with the practically glow-in-the-dark pink one. But I also reflected that it's quite easy to at least try to counteract the gender-stereotyped toys if you have a small girl. My god-daughter plays with trucks and toy drills and railway sets. No-one tries to prevent her, and she also loves pretty clothes and sparkly things (actually she would probably have liked the pink piano if I hadn't thought it was gross). I can make sure she gets to play with "boys' toys" as well as girls' -- but if I ever had a son? what sort of toys would he play with? I bet he'd get much more flak from parents and peers if he wanted to dress up in pink and play with the fairy castles... In some ways it seems like we've only loosened gender roles in the one direction.
Peter #130
When I was doing market research, I wound up calling at least one bra manufacturer. The facility was located in the Deep South, and the female phone receptionist said that the bras were all designed by -men-, because any female engineer wanted to be in some OTHER part of the USA than the Deep South textile manufacturing area, and all the women who were interesting in manufacturing engineering from there -left, and women from other parts of the country didn't want to go there...
This comment at the Pandagon article abi linked above, at #18, really struck me, as the mother of a "free, fearless, fun-loving girl toddler," as Serge has already noted elsewhere. My partner and I intend to do the best we can to make sure she hangs on to that as long as possible, and it's tragic that that's even an issue. It starts so early. She's obsessed with Thomas the Tank Engine right now, and just the other day I was struck by the fact that they only make Thomas underwear for boys. And, as there is a functional difference between boys' and girls' underwear, I don't see myself buying them for her. Though I could. She did show a great deal of interest in them.
To bring the post back to Joss, one of the things I'm definitely going to do is show her all 7 seasons of Buffy when she's ready. Assuming DVDs are still functional in 10 years or so...
Scott @ #137:
I am always fascinated when men tell me that their observations and guesses are more valid than women's actual experiences. You dismiss women who actually wear these things and work in them as "likely closer" than your experience. This dismissiveness is a good example of what women complain about in men. Could you give me a reasonable estimate as to how many hours a week you spend wearing Victorian corsets, on average? 'cause I think it's "likely closer" to zero, which pretty much puts you in the category of going on about things of which you have no firsthand experience.
And your argument about how it's nice to get out of a corset is just as valid as Justice Kennedy nattering on about how women are harmed by abortion.
Jenny @ #141;
I know. I liked "pretty" and flouncy and tea-sets when I was little, too, but I also adored going through my older brothers' trunk full of starships, die-cast cars, play guns, and other treasures. The first thing I ever wanted to be when I grew up was a pirate. My mom was sort of weird about things though--"Mom, he hit me!" was usually answered with "Hit him back," but one year (my husband still gets a kick out of how annoyed I still am about this) we all three got little remote controlled robots. My brothers' were blue and red with rayguns and sounds and flashing lights, and mine was pink and purple with a detachable broom and dustpan, and interchangeable mop. I'm not kidding. My mom no doubt just thought it was cute, and I was the most appropriate child to give it to, but for some reason that Christmas stands out above a lot of others.
My husband was so horrified the first time I made him go down the pink aisle in a toy shop--we always just skipped it and made for the action figures and Fisher-Price adventure sets (for us, we have no kids.) He just sort of turned slowly in one place and looked at all the kitchen sets, baby dolls and tiny plastic high heels and tiaras and then said, "No wonder the teenage pregnancy rate is so high."
He also came home the other day from a sports store and indignantly described to me how they'd just gotten in girls' La Crosse equipment (he played all through High School) and how the only thing he could tell that made them different was the color. Pink.
I have a big reservation about Hollander's Sex and Suits; I think she does an insightful job of describing how the West understood men's clothing during the rise of capitalism, but that she generalizes this to an innate meaning (!!) of the clothes way past what the evidence says. (One of the clangers I recall was the claim that, until capitalism/industrialism, fashion changed too slowly to drive trade and innovation. The city of Lyons would be startled to hear this; so would Heian Japan. Fashion has very often moved as fast as wealth would let it.)
Shorter Hollander: 'Weber was right, and these are his clothes.' Shorter rebuttal: Rowe on Hankow.
It's still an interesting book, but I think Marina Warner has even better ones, e.g. Monuments & Maidens: The allegory of the female form. In this she discusses why Belle Epoque Paris, for instance, used idealized female figures to represent almost all the virtues (even martial ones), and how this did the condition of actual women no good at all.
Diatryma@140: 'Service' is my 'treating someone like a human being'. It's a semantics issue on some level. What do you do for male friends?
I don't think its purely semantics in my experience. There is definitely a "Princess Bride" thing going on between my wife and I that follows the Farmboy/Buttercup pair. I don't have that kind of relationship with anyone else. With male friends, I go paintballing, go watch "guy movies", drink a beer, or something like that, which is more like Fessick/InigoMontoya. And I don't have many female friends that I do things with on a regular basis. Of course, my work environment is where most of my hanging out friends come from, and they're all guys. So, maybe its environment. Or maybe I'm a sexist pig and just don't know it.
kouredios... Has your very own Scout (aka Atticus's daughter) hit any more home runs since those photos were taken? By the way, there IS a lot of pressure to conform, but the tomboy doesn't always get lost. My wife never played with dolls, but she had action figures. Her only friend was a boy and they played out Star Trek adventures. Interestingly (but not that surprising), he always wanted to be Kirk, and she wanted to be Spock. She's still a tomboy and she's almost 50, but she hasn't done any ST-pretending in a long time. Just as well. She'd still want to be Spock, and I'd want to be Scottie, and there'd be nobody to be Kirk.
I don't want to be a killjoy on the topic of raising children to do what they like regardless of societal notions on gender but having an undefined, or underdefined gender role isn't all that great.
Gender and sexuality are not the same thing, but they do go hand in hand. Having vague notions of ones own gender can lead to a lot of ambivalence about ones own sexuality.
It's good to be independant and think for yourself. It's not good to have trouble finding yourself. Kids try to be whatever you tell them they are, if it isn't what they are, it'll be hard on them. But if you don't tell them what to try, it'll be hard on them too. When they're an adult, they can tell themselves what to try... but adulthood is a long way off for a toddler. I'm scared to raise children because every little thing seems like too fine a balance.
@Susan #144
Don't look now, your defensiveness is showing.
I was telling you why I felt I had a right to OPEN MY FAT GOB. And you're telling me that I'm telling you your wrong? Please, reread with the notion that I was trying to explain myself, not attack you.
Serge: she hasn't, but only because it's been rainy here for the past couple of days.
As far as giving her an undefined gender role--what I'm attempting to do, in this as well as all aspects of parenting her, is to follow her lead in areas where it's not otherwise incumbent upon me to force her to follow mine (in areas of safety, for example. I don't let her run into the street, regardless of how much she'd like to). I don't keep her from having baby dolls just as I don't keep her from having a train set. She has both because she wants both. And she's only recently showed any interest in baby dolls at all, I think, because her two closest friends have newish baby siblings. She's intrigued by the real babies, so she's interested in playing with toy babies. Just as she is with trains.
And if you haven't read the article at Pandagon yet, as well as the comments, I strongly suggest it.
Susan @ #144: I'm really not getting what you are from Scott; he seems to me to be saying quite explicitly that other women have reported experiences with corsets unlike your own reported experience. Taking their experiences as real isn't the same as taking only his experiences as real, and it isn't even the same thing as *not* taking *your* experience as real: it's just not taking your experience for the only kind.
There are plenty of women and some men who wear corsets to make their waists tiny, and those corsets are even less comfortable than brassieres. I have also known women who wore corsets as cantilevers to let their hips support their breasts, and these women all said about what you do; that, for their figures, corsets are more comfortable than bras.
Because knitting must be brought in, I have been trying to find my notes on a Victorian-era fashion book facsimile that had instructions to either knit or crochet a firm, supportive, and apparently fairly comfortable corset. It might have been Victorian Fashions and Costumes from Harper’s Bazar, 1867-1898.
Scott @149
I think I'm reading your post wrong, but here's what popped into my mind. Liking "boy" things didn't confuse me about whether or not I was a girl. Of course gender and sexuality go hand in hand, I think it's societal expectations of what is gender-appropriate that are the most confusing for children. When what you like is "wrong" or at least, something you'll grow out of, then it makes you wonder if your views of sexuality and gender are somehow wrong.
As for the balance of child-rearing, I don't worry too much about scarring any future kids by buying them that kitchen set, boy or girl. If anything, I'll probably be waaaay too understanding in an effort to be cool. "Oh, I don't like that black polish on you. Blue is better for your skintone."
149: Having vague notions of ones own gender can lead to a lot of ambivalence about ones own sexuality.
In what way, and why is this bad?
kouredios @ 151... Otherwise the Field of Dreams would be a field of mud, eh? Anyway, it sounds like your approach is a good one (sayeth he who has no human child). She is being given choices. Still, it looks scary, being a parent.
I just looked at the Pandagon article. I shake my head in disbelief at the comments he got just because those jerks thought he was a woman. I believe him. I'm simply shocked that there are people who behave like that.
Scott @ 106
Whether or not the corset is uncomfortable depends on if the corset fits the shape of the torso. Whether or not the corset binds to the point of incapacitation depends on the construction of the corset and how tightly it's laced. Yes, I have corsets, and no, they're not uncomfortable or any more binding than well-tailored clothes.
It seems to me that the reason it's socially acceptable for girls to play with "boyish" toys but not vice versa is that the "boyish" toys rank higher. And boys rank higher. It's like class, or colonial mentality. The inferiors are expected to emulate their betters. But vice versa is socially degrading.
It's the same thing with baby names. Evelyn, Madison, Leslie, Terry, etc. Names that used to be given to boys, once they start to be given to girls, are no longer acceptable as boy's names. They get girl cooties on them.
Scott:
I'm scared to raise children because every little thing seems like too fine a balance'
Oh yes, me too. I don't have kids (yet, anyway) and I'd be absolutely petrified that I was going to mess them up some way.
But I honestly don't think any child grows up without a million voices telling them what it means to be a girl or a boy. I just don't want them to be restricted by it: I'd want them to learn everything that's good or interesting or useful for them to know, not just what some idiot selling toys thinks they ought to like.
How's it going to give my god-daughter trouble 'finding herself' if she likes machines and has never been taught that that's 'boy's stuff'?
I'm not very handy with tools (interior decorating, saws and drills and the like): I think I probably would have absorbed more of this as part of my upbringing if I'd been male, and it would be useful. Equally, any son of mine is going to damn well learn to cook and sew (actually, I might have to outsource the sewing, since I personally am rubbish at it, but my sister likes it).
A lot of activities are just assigned to one gender or the other randomly; it would be good if everyone learnt them.
Gender and sexuality are not the same thing, but they do go hand in hand. Having vague notions of ones own gender can lead to a lot of ambivalence about ones own sexuality.
I can't comment on this because I'm not sure I understand it. If you're not a 'manly' man or a 'feminine' woman you won't be confident when it comes to romantic relationships with the opposite sex? Or playing with dolls will make a boy uncertain if he's gay or straight?
I'm pretty dubious about both propositions but I'm not sure which you mean.
I'll probably get hit on the head for doing this, but saying your defensiveness is showing is not the best way to put it. No, this isn't a I'd-better-protect-the-little-woman thing, which would be rather ironic considering the thread's subject. Susan can defend herself. But I'd do this if it were a man in her place. May I suggest a timeout? My apologies in advance for any offense caused by this post.
clew @146:
Thanks for the comments on Hollander. I'll have to go re-read Hollander on the issue of trade/innovation driven by fashion; I don't recall that bit.
Lyon: I know of Lyon as a medieval center of trade fairs, and vaguely as a sort of 17th Century banking center (thanks mainly to Niel Stephenson, I have to admit) -- when and what was its role in fashion?
As for Heian Japan: where, outside of Heian-kyo itself, did the fashion-related trade and innovation take place? (I have a hard time believing anyone in the courts of Korea or China cared what the Japanese aristocracy was up to...)
#143:
Home-made Thomas the Tank Engine images on girl's underwear == fanfic?
@J Austin #153 & kouredios #151
Perhaps I was drastically inflating small things into large ones? The thought, in my head but apparently not in text yet, is that gender roles are kind of important, even at the same time they separate us and allow for sexism. In a basically desexualized society I think we can do without them (and good riddance). I liked boy things and still had trouble. The issue isn't toys, it was my (probably mistaken) perception that the goal was eliminating boundaries between men and women by withholding gender identity.
@Dan Layman-Kennedy #154
A) Because we learn our sexuality from the people around us. Because those other people have gender roles which play into their sexuality.
B) Because having little or no idea ensures that you have no place in the sexualized parts of society. If you want to promote isolation from sex, you're in a very different mindset than I am.
None of this is supposed to imply that the current gender roles are what they should be. I don't think that stoicism should be layed unevenly on men, or that desire for the well-being of others should be layed unevenly on women (among other things).
@Jenny #158
(if you keep posting when I preview, I'm never going to post!)
I'm not sure I've kept my wording straight, and I'm sure that if I haven't it's made things confusing. What I think a child needs is Gender Identity (male, female). I don't actually know how a child forms their gender identity, but my guess is a comparison of their behaviors against the Gender Roles (Man, Woman, Tomboy, Sissy, Androgenous, whatever) they see around them. I guess my half-answer is, if you want your child to have a rare Role, you may have to role model it (clearly, I'm getting punchy now).
I certainly don't have meaningful psychological data on the topic, but I hope I've at least waved my hands in the direction of the Gender Identity/Sexuality connection, because I'm decreasingly coherent and need to sleep.
My goodness, this thread moves. In lengthy answer to quite a few things posted over the last 12 hours...
anaea @ 59: To everything you said about "never hit a woman" and all that chivalric rot whose premise is that women are fragile china vases that must be protected and given special treatment, and our conversational tendencies to blame things on estrogen and testosterone even where not appropriate: brava, brava, bravissima, encore.
PVR @ 61: You are mistaking me for someone who agrees with the whole "womb envy" thing. Don't. When I call out your over-emphasis on women's breeding capabilities, I am referring to this: "True masculinity does not lie in the domination of women, grinding them under foot, but in the exhaltation of women, the givers of life and the bringers-forth of our future as humans." [emphases mine] I don't want to be your Fertility Goddess, PVR. I don't even want to be fertile. That your wife raises fertility to the top of her Why I Am Worthwhile list should not be extrapolated to the general case.
(In light of your post @ 125, and your total shock that anyone thinks you want to put women on a pedestal, I would like to remind you that you said "exaltation of women.")
Now, as for this:
as to the heterocentric nature of my comments, what can I say? DV is overwhelmingly a problem created by hetero males against hetero females. Obviously it's the hetero males with the problem, hence I am discussing a "solution" in terms of hetero males needing a mission for their lives and a way to change their paradigm and escape the shackles of misogyny....that would be all well and good, except that you didn't stop at making Serving/Exalting Women be solution for domestic violence. You turned it into a General Good: "Every boy should aspire to be a Real Man. Real Men are men who embrace Service. Perhaps the highest possible expression of Service can be found in serving a female." This kind of language doesn't encourage the reader to see your proposal as simply a solution to domestic violence. It comes across like a Proclamation of General Good In Any Situation. I mean, it's not like you said, "Every man married to a woman whom he could potentially abuse." You spoke in terms of every boy, every man, everywhere. This is why the questions "Why so gender-centric?" "What about same-sex relationships?" "Is Serving/Exalting The Woman still the highest good for a gay man, even though the love of his life isn't a woman?" remain valid.
Also, in your 125, defending the idea of gender distinctions: "We each have differing strong points and weak points...." Good luck getting everyone to agree on which strong and weak points those are. I think the near impossibility of getting to that agreement points up the general uselessness of prescribing universal behavior based on gender distinctions.
Bruce Cohen @ 74: Your words about words are wise. Personally, I get uncomfortable when I hear people referring to women using terms that infantilize and sexualize them simultaneously: "babe." "chick." "hottie." (Or worse, ones that dehumanize: "hot little number," "nice little piece.") I used to point it out, but I backed down in the face of the usual "don't ask me to be politically correct" rebuttal. I wonder whether I should go back to a thoughtful vocal stance on these issues. There is room for contextual tolerance of some of these phrases, I shouldn't be too anal about it, but still: the way we talk about women is both a symptom of and a propagation of how we as a society treat women.
Or men, too! Another thing I get uncomfortable around: My mother telling me, after I've indulged in a little marital griping - "Honey, that's just men. Men do that." I want to say, "I don't believe that. I can't let myself believe that," but Mom's just gonna come back with "I've been around at least 25 years longer than you, I know what I'm talking about."
You remind me also that I need to be careful about what kind of marital griping I do, and to whom. Careless remarks I made to the barista the other night. Griping I do on the phone to Mom. There are so many ingrained ways of cutting spouses down in public. They sound funny. They sound like just harmless commisseration and blowing off steam. They're not nearly as harmless as they look.
JC @ 139: "I keep expecting the traditional knitting discussion to start up any minute now. (Every time one of them pops up, I feel the urge to learn how to knit.)" Oh, give in already! It's loads of fun! And we need all the male knitters we can get, 'cause as everybody knows, men don't knit. (Of course, come to think of it, the full stereotype continues, "and if any men do knit, they must be gay." Which your knitting wouldn't exactly disprove. But still--!)
Note that when I said "posts in the last 12 hours," I was necessarily excluding everything since Diatryma's 140. Stupid fascinating fast-moving thread.
I have a friend who went out of her way to follow her son's lead on toys. He has dolls and trucks. And the truck is pink.
I think that in matters of identity it's best to follow the child's lead. So much harm comes of telling the child "This is who you are" and leaving him or her no room to differ. I'd much rather err on the side of asking the child "Who are you?" and, if the child is a little confused on the matter, not panicking at his/her confusion. Heck, many of us don't really know who we are, sexually or otherwise, until our 20s or 30s. Or later. There's nothing inherently wrong with that. What's wrong is a society pushing us to decide, decide, conform, decide.
Slogan for the genderless era: "I'm OK With Your Ambiguity!"
Jenny @ 141
My mother made baby sweaters in colors like pastel orange, yellow, and green. Pink and blue - never. She figured the sweaters could be used for any kid, and wasn't going down the pink/girls and blue/boys aisle. (To my parents' credit, they didn't do that with us, either. We had non-gender-specific toys, outside of what other people gave us or we bought ourselves. Building blocks and construction equipment, yes; dolls, not so much.)
Heh, maydaka (157), that is rather unpleasantly plausible. Though you do occasionally get names that change the other way, feminine to masculine. Julian is one. Christian is another.
(slight riff/ tangent): I wonder if maydaka's theory is relevant to something that's occurred to me about riding horses. 300 years ago, riding = predominantly masculine; for a woman to ride astride, rather than side saddle, was incredibly indelicate, and I get the impression that being involved in horsey things was more typical of men than women (though correct me if I'm wrong, oh ye knowledgeable people of Making Light).
Nowadays (in the UK at least) riding is so much of a 'girly' activity that an adult man can have trouble finding a riding stables that keeps horses large enough to carry him. (The gender balance is the other way among professional equestrians; but see cook: chef for a similar pattern).
This seems very strange and I wonder if it's related to the fact that riding ain't exactly cutting edge technology anymore.
I wonder also if it means that say in a couple of hundred years time, riding and taking care of motorbikes, or aircraft, or the like, will be seen as an incredibly feminine pursuit.
(Though the boy-->girl = downslide in social class analogy doesn't work for riding, it's become more upper-class if anything).
right, I'm starting to speculate and ramble rather wildly, and have other things I should be doing... look forward to seeing where this thread has got to in 24 hours!
mayakda, sorry, I spelt your name wrong in the post above.
Scott @162
"The issue isn't toys, it was my (probably mistaken) perception that the goal was eliminating boundaries between men and women by withholding gender identity."
Not at all. To me, femininity and masculinity are important, it's just that the current ideals of what are masculine and feminine traits and roles have always made me uncomfortable. I guess maybe I feel like "feminine" and "masculine" shouldn't apply to societal roles at all. To me, gender identity has no bearing on what I'm capable of, only how I present myself. I like to look pretty, to dress up, to be attractive for both myself and so other people will notice. I don't think that's especially a female trait, only what goes into the presentation, which is dictated by fashion.
Wow, this is a hard personal thing to nail down, isn't it? The goal *is* eliminating boundaries, but not necessarily minimizing differences. It's not that gender identity is unimportant, I just don't think it has (or should have) a lot to do with any accepted gender role.
Scott @ 137
Corsets and bras are like shoes. Anything that fits closely and gives support also binds to a certain extent. That is part and parcel of "support". If that support becomes uncomfortable after a time, then the fit is wrong. If the women you know are in pain or discomfort after an hour or two, I suggest they go to a corsetiere and get properly fit.
There is math involved in getting the right fit, so buying off the rack if you don't know what you need is a hit-and-miss proposition.
I like Scott's comments in #149. I like them a lot.
Now, regarding the many comments on corsets...
IMHO the corset has an unfair reputation, based on the repression of the Victorian era. As a practical garment, I think the corset is seeing a resurgence with women for whom the bra can be torture.
So far as I can tell, it all comes down to engineering: wear points and the distribution of weight.
A woman who is substantially busted (like my wife) can find even a well-made bra murderous. I've literally seen my wife's shoulders bleed; and she's already got permanent dents in her shoulders because of twenty years of having the full weight of her breasts compressed down on the narrow points where her bra straps ride over her shoulder.
Now, one might argue she should just go bra-less. She does this inside the home. But when she goes outside? Beyond fashion, there is the practical problem that she doesn't want to be "swinging in the wind" as it were. She needs support and control.
The first time she wore a corset, it was a revelation for her. The corset did everything bras are supposed to do, yet it distributed the weight of her breasts across a vastly greater area; basically her whole torso. No more gouging shoulder straps. And the strain on her back was much reduced, in the same way my dad (who has a back injury) reduces back pain by strapping a sports "kidney belt" around his middle when he is doing construction or lifting, etc.
My wife liked the corset so much, she immediately put her seamstress skills to use and went out and bought additional boning, sewing it into the existing corset at specific points so that the support became even greater, where she needed it.
No, she does not wear the corset all the time. But as a foundational support garment, I think it was redeemed in her eyes. And I think this is true for many women. My wife has since become something of a "corset advocate" amongst her feminist friends and fellow students.
Perhaps the corset once did represent the possessive control over the female body that Victorianism exhibited. But I think modern feminists are taking the corset and revolutionizing it. New construction materials and fabrics and approach to design have rebirthed it. It's no longer the "fainting mechanism" it once was; though such extreme corsetry still exists for the fetishists and the connoisseurs.
The other thing to remember about supportive garments (be they bras, corsets, shoes, or stockings) is that one's person's comfortably strong, entirely necessary support is another person's unbearable constraint, and, conversely, one person's comfortable, barely-there-but-adequate coverage is another's useless bit of fabric that might as well not be there at all.
I can walk miles on little ballet flats that offer no support, and very little goodge. Don't even suggest I burn my bras for feminism—can't go downstairs without one. I have friends who can cheerfully wear those tank tops with shelf-bras, and not want additional support, but don't think of asking them to wear shoes without orthotics, or their arches fall halfway across the room.
Bodies don't come in off-the-rack sizes, nor do tolerances for support/constraint.
Also, having made and fitted corsets for several periods of historic clothing, I fell safe saying corsets are only seriously restrictive when they are used to significantly reduce the size of the waistline and severely compress the ribcage--the technical term for this is "tight-lacing".
A corset not employed for tight-lacing is not significantly more restrictive than a long-line bra--it is likely to support the breasts in different ways than a bra does, and especially does not put as much strain on the shoulders and back, which is very imporant to the full-breasted.
Think of it this way: corset = neutral undergarment vs. tight-lacing = extreme and potentially dangerous physical restriction, just as shoe = neutral footwear vs. old Chinese tradition of footbinding = extreme and dangerous physical restriction.
Most women who wore corsets in the Victorian era, or other periods, were not practicing tight-lacing.
Peter @ 160
Lyon: Silk fabric weaving, especially brocades. (Things I Learned reading the Lymond series.)
Scott, 162:
A) Because we learn our sexuality from the people around us. Because those other people have gender roles which play into their sexuality.
B) Because having little or no idea ensures that you have no place in the sexualized parts of society. If you want to promote isolation from sex, you're in a very different mindset than I am.
I think I understand where you're coming from with this, but I also think I disagree. Speaking only from personal experience, I think what you want out of sex will make itself known to you no matter what, with potentially very little to do with how you've been gendered; and a little ambiguity to start with isn't such a bad thing when those voices start manifesting.
jennie @ #171: well said!
fidelio @ #172: Also well said!
Nicole @ #163: a small quibble. My wife places childbirth at the top of her "Why Am I Here" list, not necessarily at the top of her "Why I am Worthwhile" list. Those are two different lists for her, the former deriving from external forces and genetics and biology and her religion, the latter being entirely self-defined and self-created by her. I think she does a good job balancing them.
As for the rest, you make valid points. I'm not going to rehash what I have already said, suffice to say we view things differently in some ways. Obviously not everyone is going to agree with my whole thing about service to women. I put it out there because that's how I feel whenever DV and misogyny comes up. You and others have rebutted, and I can see where you're coming from, even if I still retain my stance.
Greg London: you've put several posts in here that I agree with very much. Your "Princess Bride" story is actually touching IMHO. That's exactly the kind of thing I am talking about, in terms of the whole "Service to women" thing. To my mind a husband's service to his wife is essential to the health of the marriage. I, too, often find myself serving my wife, and in return I am content to simply have her love me. Maybe some people think this is weird, but I think in many healthy hetero relationships, you will discover the same pattern. And I think there is nothing wrong with it. Nothing at all.
JC @ #94 nailed it when he pointed out that, in any behavioral shift, you have to start SOMEWHERE. If we're specifically discussing misogyny and violence against women, and how to "solve" this problem, I think my suggestions along the line of service are a terrific starting point. I never meant to imply that service begins and ends with men serving women exclusively or to the cost of all else. It's a place to focus, a place where I think most hetero men, even abusers, can find an anchor and begin building a new self definition. From that initial sprouting can grow many branches.
All, regarding assigned genderism in child-rearing...
My general take is this. Too much control is bad for kids. Too little control is also bad for kids. As parents we have to walk this middle ground where we provide structure without stricture, allow freedom without floundering.
I only have a daughter right now. I think it's easier having and raising a daughter, as a father, than raising a son. Because I don't mind that she's a "tom boy".
Would I get uncomfortable if my hypothetical 3-year-old son liked to go into Mama's closet and put on her heels and wear a boa and had an affinity for pink stuff? Honestly, yeah. Would I take these things away from him? Tell him he is bad? Shove a baseball bat and a glove in his hand? No. I'd want to monitor the situation and see where he went with that. I myself grew up with an older sister whom I tagged along with all the time and so I was always playing with she and her friends and doing "girl stuff" from age 2 to about 6. It never "damaged" me in any way that I can recognize.
But I do not think it's a good idea to provide no direction at all for children. Kids, so far as I can tell, do best when they enjoy choices within boundaries. Too little choice, and they will backlash. Too few boundaries, and they will react similarly.
Jenny said (#79):
I didn't know that about Turkish, but Hungarian also has no gender in the third person (which can lead to some odd effects in translation: I've heard a Hungarian speaking English consistently refer to his daughter as 'he', which gave me a real mental jolt!).
I know exactly what you mean. I remember my (Turkish) girlfriend in grad school, referring to her mother as "he" -- and after I expressed my joltedness, she explained why it was difficult for her to keep track of gendered pronouns in English...
"Chief, we have a bit of a problem with the upcoming issue of Thrilling Space Yarns."
"Yes?"
"We were all excited about getting the latest serial from Ed Bangington, Corsairs of the Space Lanes."
"Indeed we all were. It's a rip-roaring tale. One of his best."
"We even got Margaret Bondage to do the cover art. Unfortunately..."
"Yesss?"
"Bondage and the typesetter both got a copy of the manuscript with a slight typo in it."
"How slight?"
"Well. They all thought the title was Corsets of the Space Lanes."
Dan @ #174:
I think what you want out of sex will make itself known to you no matter what, with potentially very little to do with how you've been gendered
It's held true for me. Born female, raised female with most of the usual baby-dolls-and-make-up roles pushed at me... finally figured out that I identified best as a female-bodied genderqueer pansexual, and if you really wanted to pin me down I'd just say 'androgynous' and be done with it.
I doubt my poor mother could have prepared for that. *grins* And I doubt making my experience of gender roles more rigid would have made anything easier; it was quite hard enough as it was being 'female' but not quite comfortable being one thing or the other and not knowing why. I would've gone completely out of my tiny little mind if I hadn't had a little leeway.
It hasn't made me isolated from sex, either.
I've yet to see or experience anything that leads me to believe children must be given one of two gender roles to emulate, lest they be lost in hopeless confusion. Gender, even moreso than physical sex, isn't binary.
Serge @ 177
ROFL! (I'd like to see that cover. Does the corset have a pocket for a blaster?)
My brother is a good cook; my sister and I get lost in hardware stores (ooh, tools!). We know what gender and orientation we are, but what we do outside the bedrooms is not usually a result of our gender and orientation.
Serge #177: Probably as exiting as the saga of Otto Titzling.
PRV, I'm not going to tell you that there's anything wrong with your relationship with your wife—not my business, and I've had my share of relationships the details of which others found bewildering, to say the least.
I'd simply like to note what happens if I regender the following part of your explanation of "service" in marriage:
You wrote,
I, too, often find myself serving my wife, and in return I am content to simply have her love me. Maybe some people think this is weird, but I think in many healthy hetero relationships, you will discover the same pattern. And I think there is nothing wrong with it. Nothing at all.
Let me regender that first sentence:
I, too, often find myself serving my husband, and in return I am content to simply have him love me.
If one of my friends said stuff like this very often, I'd be deeply concerned.
Again, I'm not questioning your assertion that the dynamic in your marriage is one that works for you and your wife.
I don't think it would work for me.
But, like bodies, characters and psyches do not come in off-the-rack sizes and shapes.
Re: Gender assignments and sexual identity:
My sister and I were raised to work alongside our very macho farmer/logger/construction worker dad, being his only children and the ones there when he needed someone to help tear the roof off the old chicken house he was converting to a cow barn, or bleed the brakes on the bulldozer. I got a wrecking bar of my very own before I started grade school, and learned to weave shingles at nine.
The result is that we grew up to be what a lesbian friend of mine has labeled "straight dykes"- we've always been attracted to males, are now in stable, long term, heterosexual marriages, but our affect and day to day dress is very guy-like. In many ways, we mess with the heads of heteronormative sorts more than we would if we were attracted to women.
Regarding gendering children: I don't know if anyone remembers the NYT article many months ago about a hermaphrodite, sexed at birth (hermaphrodites are nearly always sexed female because "it's easier to make a hole than a pole"), who is now a crusader against this procedure. The procedure itself is pretty awful--if the clit/penis (a growth that will develop into one or the other once puberty hits) is more than x number of centimeters, they make the kid a boy. If it's less, they make the kid a girl. Anyway this woman(?) has organized lots of people who were forcibly sexed as infants. Most parents are told by their doctors that if you don't do it to their newborns, the kid will wind up so confused, ambiguous, and distraught, they'll never fit in socially, etc. The reality is that most of these kids wind up feeling even more confused, ambiguous, and distraught, and because of horrible scarring and damn-near mutilation they can't enjoy sex with anybody. Most of them advocate for leaving the kid alone until he/she is old enough to make a choice about choosing a gender at ALL, and if they DO choose, it's their choice based on their actual life experiences. I remember doing tons of research about this phenomenon in college and let me tell you, it's pretty gruesome, and the suicide rate is extremely high...
In unrelated but relevant news: speaking of feminism in action...
Fragano @ 180... Probably as exiting as the saga of Otto Titzling.
Exiting? Has he got a... how to put it?... a bowel problem?
Scott:
Don't look now, your defensiveness is showing.
Don't look now, you're being a patronizing jerk in a typical male tactic when arguing with a woman - evade the actual topic and instead attack her personally. Brilliant!
I was telling you why I felt I had a right to OPEN MY FAT GOB. And you're telling me that I'm telling you your wrong? Please, reread with the notion that I was trying to explain myself, not attack you.
Let's see. I say I have an experience. You avoid answering the question as to whether you have any experience, and instead cite what you guess about what other people and use it to dismiss my experience as
Sure, your experience is likely closer than mine.
and
perhaps, to people they are comfortable
What, my word isn't good enough for you? Or I'm not a person?
Your experience with Victorian corsets - which you have once again avoided explaining - is somehow greater than mine? That's quite possible if you do the drag thing or the fetish thing, but I'm still waiting to hear your answer as to what exactly your experience is other than observing some women - how many exactly is that?
Sure, you have a right to open your gob and dismiss women's actual experiences as "perhaps" valid or "likely closer". And I have a right to tell you you're being patronizing and are right on the edge of calling me a liar.
And then we have
But I've been around enough corsets being unhooked and heard the gulp of air, and watched the face of relaxation erupt to form a meaningful opinion.
And you've never seen a woman take off her bra and go "ahhh!" or kick off her shoes and wiggle her toes happily?
You've done a dishonest little slide from your original position, which was that corsets are physically incapacitating, which is rubbish, to claiming that corsets are merely nice to take off, which is blitheringly obvious and hardly something which qualitatively distinguishes corsets from a number of other items one puts on the body. Like hair elastics. And tennis shoes.
If you want to argue from actual experience, feel free to explain your actual experiences actually wearing Victorian corsets (specify by decade please, since as you of course know the styles vary over time) and we can see if it's significant enough to give you anything like an informed opinion.
Or you can just re-open your gob and keep going about how "perhaps" I might know what I'm talking about.
Serge @177 - The Chief's solution is simple - tell Bangington to re-write so the story fits the cover!
P. J. @ 179 - why just one pocket for a blaster? The well-armed corset-wearer should always have a spare :-)
Serge #184: Perhaps, but nothing to get excited about.
P J @ 179... Does the corset have a pocket for a blaster?
Of course not. What do you think the cleavage of a Pirate Queen is for?
Coming soon... Corsages of the Space Lanes...
Gotta agree with the fear aspect. Here's what I posted in his comments:
Me, I think it’s fear. Too many men are afraid they are not strong so they bolster themselves by punishing the weak, just because they can. Too many men are afraid of how lust takes over their thoughts and makes them lose control so they subjegate what they see as the origin of that lust, either by punishing women for being attractive or by just raping them to get what they want. Too many men are afraid of how their friends and family will regard them if the women under their control try to defy orders and live for themselves. Too many men are afraid of life in general, and they banish the fear by becoming an object of fear themselves. And too many women agree with this and stand by as it happens.
I don’t think womb-envy answers it. I suspect Joss personally envies the womb but lacks even the slightest fear of women that would help him recognize it in others. This is a Good Thing, and should be spread around.
JESR at 182, you have just given me a perfect descriptor for a friend of mine. She's not terribly feminine in her day-to-day life-- loves to dress up, but daily wear? That's jeans and a T-shirt. Three older brothers gave her a lot of masculine body language to imprint on, and observing her father speaking at church gave her a somewhat minister-like public speaking manner. She has been confusing people for years because she is, as far as they can tell, one of the guys, often with one or two very strong female friendships... but is not gay. This has caused some problems in the past.
Dropping by again to add to the list of people who've worn corsets (in seventeenth century re-enactment) and think they're quite comfortable when not tight-laced, not to mention flattering. They improve your posture, too.
Also, long, heavy woollen skirts, with lots of petticoats under them, aren't such an encumbrance as you'd think they'd be. You have lots of freedom to move around inside them, they are warm in the winter and cool in the summer, you can use them to protect your hands if you have to pick up something hot. The only thing that I can remember that was a pain to do in skirt and petticoats was climbing a tree.
Women did heavy manual work in these kind of clothes, so they had to be practical and fairly easy to move around in. I guess it's pretty much the same as today, where the high fashion items are restrictive and can be quite painful to wear (stiletto heels, anyone?) but everyday clothes are more comfortable.
JESR @ #182: Hah! My wife is the prototypical "straight dyke" in a lot of ways. I think that does confuse a lot of guys. But gay women too. She's had lots of encounters with gay women who hit on her, then get mad when she demurs and says she's both straight and married.
"No you're not!"
"Yes, I am."
"But... But... NO YOU'RE NOT!!!"
"Sorry, I like dick."
"AAAUGHHHH!!!!!!"
Another funny part about that. My wife is pretty protective of me in certain situations. Like the gym. She thrives in the gym. I hate the gym. She is a jock. I am not. Once, we were at the gym, and the prototypical short-man-syndrome muscle-bound jerk came up to me and basically tried to intimidate me off a machine. My wife was there in a flash telling him to cool his jets.
He was this close (hold up thumb and forefinger ever so slightly apart) to throwing a punch at her. He didn't do it, mostly because I think he realized that picking a fight with my wife would have made him look even more small-penised and tawdry than he already looked.
I just smiled at him, and kept using the machine.
'Tis good to be married to a "straight dyke".
Serge said (#177):
"Chief, we have a bit of a problem with the upcoming issue of Thrilling Space Yarns."
This is one of those magazine about knitting in zero-g, isn't it?
Serge, I hope that blaster's padded. It's not a comfortable location to keep objects that are very solid or have projections. Why you want a pocket there...
Corsages of the Spaceways/em> ... orchids, perhaps?
Womb envy is, perhaps, a small part of it.
More of it is property and power = labor. Control of labor is necessary to accumulate property. Women are labor. They birth children, and children too are labor. Property benefit plus power benefit to males.
Additionally males NEED women for every unvalued labor there is. Most of that unvalued labor involves nurturing and cherishing and feeding and cleaning and caring and all that icky stuff that men can't stand to do for themselves, but can't function without. So they hate you, coz you're all mixed up in that icky stuff, whether blood and baby poo, or telling you how wonderful you are when you know you're a looser.
Like in caste systems: despising those who do the necessary labor of death, whether for food (butchering) or for clothing (tanning) or for funerals (corpse washers are also usually women). We are so much better than them that those who do that work HAVE to do all that icky stuff and we = powerful males (and our women) do not!
However, there is also some womb envy going on.
In many a male African secret society that I have men take the birthing thing away from women via ritual birthing of their sons. Sometimes it literally is the birthing of their sons, and sometimes it is a ritual re-birth into manhood, and sometimes they do both.
Constance
P J @ 194:
I hope that blaster's padded. It's not a comfortable location to keep objects that are very solid or have projections. Why you want a pocket there...
Solid round objects are okay. Veterans of distraction pool could make multiple billiard balls disappear into a corset. Pointy objects not so good.
Big post covering many points here:
PRV @ 65, if you want to give up your seat on the train and thing it's okay on weekends, go for it. But don't preach it, and don't think that what you're doing is anything other than misguided politeness. Making the bed for your wife is something you can do in any relationship where you have that kind of emotional investment, and is something you might do for a complete stranger if you took it onto yourself to help them out.
@ Greg London with references to Buttercup behavior, I highly doubt that things are actually so one sided. They might be, but then I'm going to raise an eyebrow at your relationship and suspect it's not as healthy as it might be. Sure, I ask for help reaching things in my relationship when I could climb on the counter, get a step stool, or just stop what I'm doing to get it, but then I tend to fix his collar, give him a second opinion about outfit choices, and a lot of other little things that make life easier for him and don't cost me much of anything. That's not service, it's symbiosis.
Renatus at 69, I think the issue here is that there are two victims, and I do blame one of them. Women as a whole are victimized by their own perceptions of their weakness, and that same perception reflected back to them by society. And every woman who accepts that social perception and lets it make themselves feel threatened and defenseless is a victim I blame because they're doing it to themselves. Abusers, like the boyfriend you mentioned, are responsible for their actions, not their victims, and I heartily wish all such abusers to get what's coming to them triple-fold. But I wasn't talking about DV or rape victims, I was talking about women as a population, and I hold them responsible for their tendency to victimize themselves by making excuses for unnecessary weakness.
If you want to learn to defend yourself, money, time, etc., are excuses. Make the time, and money isn't nearly the issue it's made out to be. If you don't want to do this, then that's a valid choice, but it's a choice you've made for yourself. Acknowledge it, and don't assume that the consequences of your choice apply to every woman.
Rebecca at 73, I'm not arguing that hormone levels in women don't change drastically from day to day. I'm also not arguing that these changes exacerbate preexisting conditions or can be so severe as to be a condition in and of themselves. But I absolutely reject the idea of a normal, healthy female using PMS etc., as an excuse for bad behavior. If women really are victims of their biology to the point that they spend five days out of the month uncontrollably grumpy and irrational then I don't see how we can claim to be just as productive and beneficial in the workplace etc., as the segment of the population that doesn't lose five days out of the month. The male versions of this myth attack their ability to peacefully resolve conflicts and to maintain fidelity - and that's just as feeble as an excuse for bad behavior.
Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers) @74, what you're talking about is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis which lots of people like to use to make grand arguments about the power of language, and which linguists have found to be based on faulty data, and in the strong form Whorf presents, false. Weaker versions of that theory talk about "framing" which does indicate that the way things are phrased affects how you interpret them and perceive them, but it isn't absolute and it's inescapable. I'm not aware of any data that indicates that ungendered pronouns will end misogyny.
Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little @ 163, *bows*
Finally, for the people discussing corsets - I tried one off the rack to see if it was better than killer bras and had disastrous fitting results. I'm considering getting one that's fitted properly, but I'm concerned about overheating. How much hotter (temperature wise, not aesthetically) is a corset than a bra?
Susan @ 196
I was imagining what a blaster might be like in my cleavage, and shuddering a bit. Speaking as one who has been poked by underwires that have escaped the end of the casing, that isn't fun. A billiard ball in the cleavage, on the other hand, would be considerably more comfortable.
P J, Susan... It's a small snub-nosed blaster, without any sharp edges. Just make sure the safety is on.
Bruce 74: Nitpick: it does have a possessive form, but it's rarely used. It's emphatic and usually insulting.
JC 139: Hear, hear.
Scott 162: I can't be understanding your theory of sexuality correctly. You can't possibly think people develop sexuality only from the messages that surround them. If that were true, there would be NO homosexuals in most modern societies, and I am a counterexample of that.
Nicole 163: YAY! And I say "Well, I find it unacceptable" in at least a couple of the situations you describe.
—, 164: BRAVA!!!!!
Peter 193: I will go out on a limb and state categorically that you cannot knit a corset. (I bet Susan could, but Susan can do anything.)
anaea 197: When I read the end of this comment I suddenly had a vision of a corset with cooling pipes in the boning...you'd pour cool water in one end, and half an hour later go to the ladies' and empty out the hot water from the other end, and refill.
Or, of course, you could become a human samovar, but that requires you to get hotter than is healthy for anyone other than Johnny Storm, who as far as I know never wore a corset.
And now I wish I could draw all my favorite superheroes in corsets. But I can't. I'm going home now.
mayakda @ 157:
I hang out on the message board at Baby's Named a Bad, Bad Thing, and the topic of using boys' names on girls comes up all the time there. You're right that when a name like Leslie goes to the girls, parents of boys shun it. What is perhaps even more infuriating is the reasoning often given for giving a girl a traditionally male name: "I want her to have a strong name." Because only boys' names are strong, of course.
Serge 199: P J, Susan... It's a small snub-nosed blaster, without any sharp edges. Just make sure the safety is on.
It's just a naïve domestic blaster without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption.
anea@197, the heat issue is one reason I don't wear a corset for non-vintage dance very often (not never, just not very often). I find those extra layers rather too warm for my liking. That said, one can obtain summer-weight corsets, made from lighter cotton, which might mitigate the problem somewhat. Possibly not enough for my taste (I am a creature of cool climes and wilt in his brutal southern Ontario heat we're getting).
jennie @ 203.. If you think that southern Ontario is too warm, where do you currently live? Next door to the Fortress of Solitude? (I wonder how the Postal Service knows when something must be delivered to Superman's Fortress of Solitude or to Doc Savage's. Maybe they are in different zip codes.)
Constance wrote at #195: "In many a male African secret society that I have men take the birthing thing away from women via ritual birthing of their sons. Sometimes it literally is the birthing of their sons, and sometimes it is a ritual re-birth into manhood, and sometimes they do both."
How many African secret societies do you possess? Or is it that you've studied them?
Jennie @ 203, thanks. I've got the same temperament. I keep moving north, and it keeps being much too hot for my comfort.
Jenny @ 166 : Quite a few things can be explained by girl cootie phobia. I'm waiting for it to show up in the DSM IV. Any minute now. (And no problem about the misspell.)
Constance @ 195 : I agree. I think a visiting alien anthropologist would conclude that humans generally have a caste system, with women forming a lower caste.
Jen @ 201: I've never seen that site before. Fun reading. Thanks.
Xopher 200:
You can knit a corset, but I think you'd have to be fairly small in the bust to get adequate support.
If you *do draw superheroes in corsets, please, PLEASE send the result to Girl-Wonder.org. They'd love it.
PRV's "be nice to your womenfolk" reminds me of Chris Rock's "N-----s versus Black People." Which is a bit iffy to riff off of, being as a lot of people took it as a license to be racists, but I think if you step back to the level of "there are some dumbasses, and they're screwing it up for the rest of us" it's widely applicable.
Anyway, the bit I'm thinking of most here is, "N-----s always want credit for some shit they're supposed to do. They'll brag about stuff a normal man just does. They'll say something like, 'Yeah, well I take care of my kids.' You're supposed to, you dumb motherfucker! 'I ain't never been to jail.' Whaddya want? A cookie?!"
"Serve your womenfolk because they're so different and awesome" ain't new. Every culture in history and the modern world has that. The burka supposedly protects women because they're so unsuited to deal with the harshnesses of the world. Dueling in the 1700s supposedly served women by killing people to recover their honor. Failing to fund women's football serves women who might otherwise get head injuries playing.
Only since women have started demanding everything men have have they gotten any equality at all. "Separate spheres but equal worth" has never once worked anywhere ever. "Serve with humility even when you're serving a jerk"? This must be where bigots get their baffling assertions that women want to "have it both ways"... By assuming that women are so different they'll never stop getting all the "perks" of being owned. As every other responder to PRV said, the only thing that works in the grand scheme of humanity is to treat everyone as a human.
And being nice to your womenfolk isn't even sufficient as a reply to Joss's post. I bet Mr. Courtney Solomon of the "Captivity" tortureporn billboards could point to his wife, daughters, mother, and sisters, and say, "Well, she doesn't think photos of tortured women on billboards used to sell a movie are bad, so they're not bad!" Creating his own little echochamber of warm relations isn't going to stop a man from treating everyone else like filth.
Hell, I'm pretty sure Jesus said something like "it's a piss-poor man who's only nice to his friends", but I'm not enough of a Biblical scholar to find the exact quote.
Am I the only one who thinks Thrilling Space Yarns ought to be about knitting with cosmic string? Or just the only one tasteless enough to mention it?
Madeline F #209: "Failing to fund women's football serves women who might otherwise get head injuries playing."
Somebody(ies) actually claimed this? I am gobsmacked.
Serge, I'm waiting for Coronets of Space.
Fragano, that's just silly. You can't even play a coronet in space; there's no air.
What?
It is?
Never mind.
[ Constance wrote at #195: "In many a male African secret society that I have men take the birthing thing away from women via ritual birthing of their sons. Sometimes it literally is the birthing of their sons, and sometimes it is a ritual re-birth into manhood, and sometimes they do both."
How many African secret societies do you possess? Or is it that you've studied them? ]
Typo, typo, typ.
"that I have familiarity with ..."
Obviously, I do not possess those societies.
But they have come my way, in many ways. Probably, more to the point for thpse men, and for the women who are in their families, and who have their own secret societies that deal with gender, members of those societies have studied me, and my relationships.
Constance
Thrilling Space Yarns is the pulp magazine for both knitters and crocheters (crochetiers?) and theoretical physicists, mostly of the superstring variety. The sister publication, Braniacs & Glitter Glue from Points Beyond never really caught on with the brane/scrapbooking crowd.
197: @ Greg London with references to Buttercup behavior, I highly doubt that things are actually so one sided. They might be, but then I'm going to raise an eyebrow at your relationship and suspect it's not as healthy as it might be.
Ya know, here's the thing. I never said they were one-sided. I was telling you how my wife and I are different. I do things for her to show her I love her. She just loves me, and I know when its there and when it isn't.
She's better at things that I suck at. I'm better at some things that are difficult for her.
She's got a huge heart and is great with people, I am socially deaf and blind. I'm an engineer, and she'd never turned on a computer until she met me. I try not to let her operate power tools, and she generally handles the shared relationships/friendships we have.
It's clearly not one-sided, but we are clearly an example of opposites attract. We are clearly different. Whether that translates to men and women as a whole, I dunno. I have a feeling that there are two different bell curves, one for men and one for women, and they probably overlap, but they're also probably got some unique spaces to them.
Not that I'm advocating "seperate but equal" between men and women, but I'm trying to figure out how to acknowledge some statistical differences without sounding like a sexist pig, or getting eyebrows raised at me from people thinking I'm in an unhealthy marriage. Women are generally shorter than men, live longer than men. Men are more likely to be the perpetrators of crime and the victim of homocides and assaults, women are more likely to be the victims of sexual assaults.
Is the goal to make the statistics turn out 50-50 down gender lines and to erase any differences between men and women? Or is the goal to separate the differences from the discriminations?
Because I was telling you about the differences between my wife and myself, and I don't think we'll ever be identical. We're more like inverted. But that doesn't mean its one-sided or that there's discrimination, or that there's something wrong with my marriage.
In re: male service to women:
I believe it was Peter Wimsy who said that chivalry is, at bottom, based on the desire to keep all the fun to oneself. Harriet let him do all the punting anyway, but it was understood that she was ceding her share of the fun to his better enjoyment, and to let him show off.
I object to the idea that men in general should serve women in general, or even in specific, because it's my experience that such service has high costs to the recipient. In a lot of cases, men expect that if they serve, women will be worthy of their service - whatever worthy means. It's often badly articulated. Unworthiness is punished - which brings us back to honor killings in a swift and vicious loop.
The free stuff is never actually free. It is my experience that when a male person offers me any extraordinary favor at no monetary cost, I am generally better off paying cash. In intimate relationships, the trade in extraordinary favors should run about even, so that everyone's needs are met and no one feels cheated.
To those of you who say that all you get from your female partners is love, and that's enough, I wonder what your female partners would say of that. It's actually a terribly unflattering statement you're making. I direct you to Tom Lehrer's comments on that issue. I have never seen a functional relationship in which one partner contributes nothing but affection, which makes me suspect that y'all are discounting some pretty significant contributions.
Constance #214: Typographical errors do get noticed here, but I really wanted to know if you were an anthropologist or a sociologist. I happen to know one of the pioneer scholars on West African men's societies, Douglas Manley, and wondered if you were engaged in that kind of research.
Xopher #213: The sequel, obviously, would have to be Kind Hearts in Space.
RiceVermicelli@217: To those of you who say that all you get from your female partners is love
(sigh)
I know that's what you read, but it isn't what I wrote. I don't know if you were reading my comments or not, but if so, you didn't actually read what I wrote, you read with some kind of yet-unidentifiable filter on.
I will try again.
When I feel the need to let my wife know I love her, I am often driven to do something for her, maybe do something on the honey-to-do list, or do something I think she might want done.
My wife can love me, not do anything, and I know it.
What is not asserted in any of what I just wrote and what you just read is the idea that "All I get from my wife is love" or any claim that "my wife never does anything for me". If you read that in my text, then the problem is in your reader, not my writer.
What is there is an idea that my wife and I are different, but what is not in there is that our relationship is one-sided.
If reading "different" automatically implies "one-sided" or "discriminating", then please let me know, and I'll just stop.
Actually, Fragano, we changed the title. It was indeed going to be Coronets of Space, but at the last minute it became Gigs in Space. (Yes, Xopher, it is about a cosmic G-string orchestra - how is that for tasteless?)
Greg @ 216:
Perhaps the confusion is caused by your calling it a "Buttercup relationship". If I recall properly, during the "As you wish" portion of the relationship, Buttercup didn't do dick for Westley except be pretty. This is the sort of thing that leads people to conclude either that the relationship is one-sided, or that the contribution of the woman lies in being pretty (which is rather a poor long-term goal, as we all stop doing that eventually.)
Serge #221: You certain it wasn't Gigues in Space? That, of course, would be a more musical work.
If I recall properly, during the "As you wish" portion of the relationship, Buttercup didn't do dick for Westley except be pretty.
...
Holy crap.
(shakes head)
If "Princess Bride" is a sexist movie, then I give up. If Farmboy and Buttercup are in a one-sided, unhealthy relationship, then the world is doomed.
And she didn't just "look pretty" for fikes sake, she loved him. It's just that she didn't fetch pots or plow fields or shine saddles for him to show him. She loved him and he knew it, even though she didn't do anything for him. It's actually spelled out for the viewers by the voice over. And "True Love" is sort of a recurring theme throughout the movie.
My head hurts now.
Greg London at #216, the issue actually stems from where you said, "I do things for her to show her I love her. She just loves me, and I know when its there and when it isn't." That right there says to anybody reading it that you're doing work, she isn't, and that's okay. If that's not what you meant to say, then accepted and let's move on, but I don't really see another reading of that.
And actually, while I wouldn't call Princess Bride a sexist movie in a million years, the relationship between Buttercup and her farmboy is based on the classic romantic chivalrous idea of courting and expressions of love. Just look at the backlash against PRV for his ideas of service which he initially throws back to the same chivalric ideal for an idea of how that would get perceived today. I'd say that Princess Bride isn't sexist because while their relationship starts that way, IIRC, Buttercup winds up having to prove her fidelity to the relationship and then work in order to beat the bad guy and marry her farm boy. It starts with farm boy (Was his name Wesley, or have I watched too much Buffy lately?) serving Buttercup, but ends with the both of them serving "True Love." Or we can ignore my rationalization for the film and just kick back to enjoy it, which I think is better. ;)
Greg @ 224, I am sorry to disappoint you, but Buttercup and Wesley do not have a healthy relationship. Maybe they eventually grow one - the movie is about the protracted process of the two of them getting together, so it's not impossible.
I get that she's supposed to be the most beautiful woman in the world, and that she supposedly loves Wesley very much. I like the movie too. I just don't think it presents a realistic picture of the way relationships are supposed to work. "She loved him," sure, but could she maybe have, oh, I dunno, ever done anything? Sail with him to the Americas, tell Humperdinck to sod off, yell "it's a trap!" at an opportune moment, say "thank you"? As it is, Wesley's love is demonstrated and Buttercup's is merely asserted. One of these is much more convincing than the other.
222 224: To be fair, it took Buttercup a while to realize that "As you wish" signified he loved her, and to realize she loved him in return (prior to that, she took advantage of her station to task the stableboy with a variety of trivial tasks because she could). I think all that was covered in less than ten minutes in the opening of the movie.
Greg @ #216: Word!
Madeline @ #207: Wow, I am trying hard not to be offended. But then, maybe that was your point?
I showed your post to my wife. She laughed. Then she said this has come up a lot in her womens studies courses at the university. Apparently there are some circles of feminist thought which view all male deference or service to women as simply a covert form of ownership, suppression, coercion, etc. She said I should probably move on from this thread and let it go, because nothing I say as a male is going to have any impact at this stage.
Before I duck out of this topic, I think we need to check ourselves a little. What I'm seeing happen is that people are cherry picking, apparently bound and determined to find something--anything?--to take issue with. People also seem to be ignoring or overlooking responses.
I'm all about arguing and debate and discussion. But when it gets to the point that people start talking past each other and looking for excuses to take umbrage... I dunno, the fun is gone and it doesn't seem like a productive exchange anymore.
Cheers, all. See you on the other threads.
I think the Princess Bride comparison is sweet. It's two different ways of communicating the idea of love-- Greg says he loves his wife by doing things for her (the "As you wish") and his wife communicates that she loves him in some other way that he picks up on without being able to point to how. Some of the confusion may come from its juxtaposition with PRV's service ideals, but it's not exactly the same-- it's communication of love, not service. Some people say, "I love you," some send Hallmark cards, some fix the brakes (and friends' brakes), some are physically affectionate.
Hmm. Wesley and Buttercup's dysfunction is also more clear in the book. Could that be where some of the confusion lies?
As much as I love "Princess Bride," it does bug me that Buttercup just sits around in the castle and waits for Wesley to save her. As one of the Good Guys in a movie with more derring-do per square foot than any I can think of, she should get to do more than simply whomp an ROUS with a stick.
Dave@49: Depends on time and place. I was repeatedly shocked by British attitudes, even attitudes in fandom, on my first independent visit (1979) -- but as I look back now, I suspect I could have seen the same in the U.S. as recently as the later 1960's (when I was mostly too young or too much a nerd to notice). Remember that the U.S. is much larger, and probably much more heterogeneous; I suspect it's much more extreme -- some urban centers less likely to tolerate any off-attitude, some rural/economically-deprived/... areas worse than anything you'll see -- but I wouldn't even guess where the relative medians are.
ajay@70: from "Useful phrases for the tourist in Locrine":
"Sir or madam, that is mine(intrinsic)."
"Sir or madam, that is mine(extrinsic)."
(Other parts are much stranger: "That is my companion; it is not intended as a tip.")
mayakda@93: Do you feel you were brought up specifically as a nurturer?
I've sometimes said that my father was too old (54 when I was born) to make a macho idiot of me, but not too old to act on an assumption that my sister couldn't fend for herself. That's obviously an outlier point; I think most of what I got from both parents was an expectation that I'd do well academically.
@Susan #185 (view all by) ::: May 23, 2007, 05:24 PM:
Why haven't I answered your challenge (question?) as to my personal experience wearing corsets?
Because it's irrelevant. Not only to my own justification to say what I said, but also to your ability to tell me that I was wrong. You don't need to be able to say, "You've never worn one, shut-up." You told me I was mistaken without knowing, and knowing doesn't strengthen your point at all. So, out of desire to keep the rhetoric ＜em>unconfused (clean is far beyond both of us now), I will continue to decline to tell you how much time I've spent in a corset.
For what it's worth, I don't know you from a rock, and if what you're saying matches with my understanding of the world, I'll probably take it as true. From the authority of personal experience you told me something which did not match any of my experience. So I responded to the effect of, "huh, that's strange, you're probably right in some cases, and here's what I based my comment on."
You are very upset at the adverbs of probability. Well, tough luck, your word isn't gold, I don't know you, a statment which has absolutely nothing to do with your gender.
For what it's worth, my explanation of the source of my mistake did bring out the reasons for the mismatch in our experience. Which, I will add as a vicious and unnecessary personal slight, was a lot more effective in clicking me over from adverbially-probable into generally-accepting than demands for the extent of my experience wearing a corset.
If you want to argue from actual experience, feel free to explain your actual experiences actually wearing Victorian corsets [...] if it's significant enough to give you anything like an informed opinion.
Perhaps you have encountered the human ability to learn things from their environment that aren't in contact with their physical body? Your desire to bludgeon me with whether or not I've worn a corset is (to restate myself) absolutely, positively meaningless. Please, help yourself to a couple more adverbs, this time I mean them in an angry, denigrating way, unlike before where I put in hedging adverbs while attempting to reconcile your (now readily believable and thoroughly believed) claim with my own knowledge (a reconciliation helped by (among others) Fidelio's #172 explanation of "tight-lacing" and the relative rarity of rib-compressing corsetry, but not by you. Thank the to everybody else for telling me what I wanted and needed to know based. Thank you Susan for showing me that my view was too narrow, maybe some day you can open people's eyes instead of getting angry at them because they don't see.)
PR Vet, you did a really interesting rhetorical thing, here. You've set yourself up to speak for women--and to essentially shout down the women on this thread who dare disagree with you--by telling us what your wife says. According to you.
Your wife is an authority why? Because she's a strong assertive woman. A feminist. A *gasp* dyke (although of course you're very careful to make sure we know she "likes dick.") Again, according to you.
Then, you use your wife--the voiceless, absent, supposed authority--to condescendingly dismiss another poster, an actual woman on this thread trying to have an actual conversation with you, with, "I showed your post to my wife. She laughed. Then she said this has come up a lot in her womens studies courses at the university. Apparently there are some circles of feminist thought . . ."
That very effectively put paid to any assumption of goodwill I could possibly ascribe to you.
Rhetorically effective silencing.
Intellectually dishonest in the extreme.
And if you'd be so kind, don't use the word "dyke" that way. It's ignorant and offensive.
Um, showing love to a partner/spouse...
My father came home from a business trip, many years ago, to find the house festooned with diapers on clotheslines, because it had been raining for two or three days (three kids less than four years old ... I'll let you imagine it). He said that he'd be back in a bit, and returned an hour later with a washer and a dryer. (The dryer was used for nearly forty years before it wore out.)
PublicRadioVet @ 39 you say:
Which is why I think we need to bring back chivalry. And not the kind that cloisters women and forbids them from participation as full partners in society.
I mean the kind that basically says the following:
Males don't become Real Men without Service becoming the focal point of their identity.
That's both inherently sexist, and reveals a complete lack of understanding about chivalry. You're not talking about chivalry, which was a warrior and horseman ethos, and not, at all, about women, except as prizes, and chattel. The "service towards women" meant convincing them to say yes to one man versus yes to another.
What you're talking about is courtly love, which essentially treats women as sexual objects with the right to say yes, but not the right to say no. If you actually look at it, it's about women as sexual chattel, woman as thing. I certainly don't want a spouse to "serve" me; that's an inherent contradiction of the whole idea of "equal partner" you ostensibly support.
Nor do I think that men who think I'm capable of taking care of myself without being, err, serviced, is in any way not "Real Men."
anaea@225: the issue actually stems from where you said, "I do things for her to show her I love her. She just loves me, and I know when its there and when it isn't." That right there says to anybody reading it that you're doing work, she isn't, and that's okay. If that's not what you meant to say, then accepted and let's move on, but I don't really see another reading of that.
please review the full post 216 that you quote above, and tell me how the laundry list of things she does and contributes to the relationship is unclear on the subject.
I can see a misunderstanding on first post because it was a passing comment. But 216 is about as clear as I can get that I never meant to say she sits on her ass and does nothing, and list a number of things she does do. Yet, you insist on your original assumption, cherry pick a quote, and tell me its right there to anybody reading it, and ignore everything else in that post.
If you want me to say she does what I do and I do what she does, and we're both just as good as the other at everything, save your breath and just call me a bigot if you must. My wife and I are different. Deal with it however you need to deal with that.
JESR @ #124,
Thank you - I'm printing that out and carrying it around with me. This fall I'll be a university student again (Certificate in Applied Forensic Anthropology, or How To Finally Use This BA To Get a Job That Pays More Than Data Entry). I've had to explain the whole we-don't-really-know stuff before, but not as eloquently as you just did.
And, from way back upthread:
Just what are Crocs? Besides reptiles I'd prefer not meeting in dark alleys? Obviously footwear, but formal, casual?
(Note: the commuter trains I ride advise wearing flats or athletic shoes while a passenger, since they sometimes have to stop fast - not necessarily emergency: I was on one with 'grabby' brakes one day - and they prefer that people not fall over and break parts.)
The only contribution I feel at all safe making in this thread:
Crocs are casual water-safe footwear. My (um, not the possessive form; associative?) spouse likes them for when we're out kayaking - you can wear them away from the beach, but they are really easy for walking your kayak down and then shuffling them off.
I prefer slip-on sandals.
RiceVermicelli@226: I am sorry to disappoint you, but Buttercup and Wesley do not have a healthy relationship.
Oh for the love of pete. The degree to which this boggles my mind is... mind boggling.
Dare I ask? Yes, I darest.
Why is the relationship between Buttercup and Wesley not a healthy one?
Was it because either one of them felt they didn't really love the other? Was it because one of them was using the relationship to fill some void left by a previous relationship, perhaps with their parents? Was Buttercup trying to marry Wesley simply to escape the farm? Was Buttercup somehow "settling" for Wesley when she really wanted someone else?
Was Wesley abusing Buttercup in their relationship? Did he drink? Beat her? Verbally abuse her? Was he somehow trying to control her to do something she didn't want to do?
Were they in any way unsatisfied with their communication of love for each other?
What I recall from the movie (sorry, book's offlimits since I was clear this was our favorite movie) is the following potential issues:
Buttercup may have abused her authority (though what authority she has is not defined) she had over Wesley by ordering him around. But we never get the impression that Wesley actually minded her telling him what to do. Assuming he was a paid farmhand, being told what to do sort of comes with the job description. If she was having him do things that were beyond his job description, it may have been questionable. If farmwork is sufficiently scarce, then perhaps Wesley might have felt the need to go along with it, rather than go unemployed. But that does not seem to be his concern. It would appear that her orders were not unwelcome by Wesley, which means it does not fit the definition of harrassment.
The story quickly moves to the point where both Wesley and Buttercup realize that everytime she asks him to do something and every time he says "as you wish" and does her request, they are both saying "I love you" in their own way. Such behaviour would be considered "unhealthy" if either Wesley or Buttercup wanted to hear or say the actual words but for some reason were unable to bring themselves to discuss it. However, both actually seemed content with their understanding, and neither had issue with it, therefore it doesn't qualify as unhealthy.
Next, Wesley goes off to get rich. Buttercup questions this at first, but after his assurances, she accepts the idea. Since people are able to maintain long distance relationships when one person is serving in the military overseas while the other is at home, it would seem to qualify as acceptable as long as both partners are satisfied with it.
Word comes back that Wesley dies. This is a questionable turn of events, but it wasn't planned by either one. It was an opportunity presented to Wesley after he was captured by the Dread Pirate Roberts. Wesley probably would have been put to death, but found a way to survive. For that he can hardly be blamed.
The questionable part comes when he becomes the new Captain Roberts and sails the high seas. Perhaps he could have somehow secretly gotten word to Buttercup that he was alive. Rather than let her believe him dead. It would have saved her a lot of grief, but then there wouldn't have been a story. But then again, given that travel was slow, and I can't remember how long he was gone before Humperdink chose to marry Buttercup, maybe he didn't have time.
Which brings us to Buttercup's engagement. I'll never love again, I believe was her words. Again, I'm a little fuzzy on how long after she'd heard Wesley was dead that she said this. People say all sorts of things during their grieving period that they can't really be held accountable for. Including agreeing to marry the king.
Should she have "moved on" and found a new love? Maybe at some point. But that she grieved isn't an indication of an 'unhealthy' relatioship.
Wesley returns to rescue her, but does not reveal his identity at first. He's hurt that she woudl remarry so soon after hearing he had died. How soon is still unclear, but buttercup does not argue it wasn't too soon, she argues that she thought he was dead. So, it was probably too soon to make rational decisions.
They then work together to escape Humperdink through the swamp. I think she even helps him fight off one of the RUS's. Seems pretty healthy to me. And she isn't just "being pretty".
On the other side, Humperdink surrounds them. And Wesley refuses to surrender. At this point, we know that he could probably defeat the handful of cardboard characters that have them surrounded, but Buttercup does not know this. She offers to return with Humperdink if Humperdink will let Wesley go. The female character sacrifices herself to save the male character. Hardly the stereotypical sexist tripe. Whether it is unhealthy or not depends on whether any person can sacrifice something for the love of their life or whether all such gestures must be unhealthy symbiosis. I'd say it's healthy, since both chose it. The circumstances were beyond their control, and they made choices inside fo those circumstances, and went with that.
A rather long story sequence ensues that is the result of this choice. Nothing new is shown about wesley or buttercup until after the wedding and Buttercup goes to her room to kill herself. I assume her thinking was Wesley was dead and she was now married to a murderer of a king. I suppose one could argue that she could kill the king before killing herself, that it would be more "healthy" that way. But again, she doesn't appear to have the thought to commit violence against Humperdink, so she chose not to resist. Certainly, the Princess Leia fans will be disappointed, but it doesn't actually qualify as unhealthy. It would seem that Buttercup doesn't have a violent bone in her body, and that is simply who she is. See earlier thread regarding war-is-never-an-option type folks to argue whether that belief is unhealthy or a moral choice.
So then we're left with the suicide attempt. An unhealthy act, but being attempted when Wesley fails to rescue her, so she might assume he's been killed, and after she just married the man who killed him or ordered him killed. Perhaps a hunger strike would have been a more appropriate non-violent response rather than suicide, but, hey, her true love had just died, she's in grief, and people can't be held too accountable for what they do in grief.
And then they kiss and live happily ever after. Wesley didn't even kill Humperdink, which was a nice change from the standard, all-the-bad-guys-die-in-the-end storyline. The lack of vengeance might even point to a healthy outlook on life on their part.
THe thing about whether a relationship is "healthy" or not is based on whether the two people in the relationship are choosing their actions freely and wanting what they're choosing, or whether they would rather be doign something else, but for whatever reason are choosing to do something they don't really want.
In every instance, both characters are choosing what they want to do given the circumstances they are in. It might resemble the stereotypical damsel-in-distress, swashbuckling-male-hero, but at no point does either character do some action that they did not choose to do given their circumstances. And by that measure, they are in a healthy relationship.
If YOU would have chosen something different, that's fine. That would be your choice. But they didn't do anything they didn't want to do in the circumstances they found themselves in. Which means they had a healthy relationship.
Greg London @ #237
The actual quote I pulled was, yes, from your second post on the subject, but it was practically identical to what you said in the first one and much easier to find. And all I really did there was explain where the miscommunication occurred and offer to leave it there. Now that I've corrected the second miscommunication, I'm going to once again say that since the disparity initially indicated isn't what you meant to communicate, then I have nothing to say about any such disparity and there's nothing to talk about.
Carri @ 108: "The text that witch hunters used to find and convict witches, the Malleus Maleficarum, states that one of the signs that a woman was a witch was that she inspired lust in men. This makes me think in terms of power, and the reasons for subjugation. Obviously, not all women convicted as witches would inspire lust, but to me, it is a clear sign of power dynamics."
I think you are dead on. From a patriarchal point of view, for a woman to ever hold power over a man is wrong. And yet, every woman holds a potentially enormous sexual influence over every heterosexual man. This power is an inherent and inseparable part of her womanhood, impossible to take away. And if your dominant, masculine role is being threatened by a woman's power over you, by her ability to make you want her, how better to reassert your dominance than by demonstrating your power over her via (profoundly masculine) physical violence?
Sexual attraction is the one sphere where women's power remains, despite patriarchy's best efforts, equal to men's. In games of attraction and seduction, men and women are on a uniquely equal playing field. Consequently, it is an area where women have focused their efforts. If the only influence you can exert over others is sexual, you'll put a damn lot of effort into getting good at it.
The reaction has been predictable: given that sex is someplace where women can compete on an equal footing, patriarchy has stigmatized its exploitation (use) by women as much as possible. Women are taught that being willing to be seen as a sexual being (that even being a sexual being) makes them dirty and unworthy, that only by hiding their sexuality can they be even approach cleanliness and worth. Women who use sex to get what they want are sluts, witches, succubi and vamps. Woman willing to use their beauty to their advantage are heartless manipulators--as though men never wield their sexuality as a weapon.
One of the most amazingly pernicious and counterintuitive ideas I have ever encountered is the idea that if a man sees a woman naked, it is he that gains power over her. It is so clearly the opposite.
When a man wants a woman
He says it's compliment
He says he's only trying to capture her
To claim her, to tame her
When he wants everything, everything of her
Her soul, her love, her life, forever and more
He says he's persuading her
He says he's pursuing her
But when a woman wants a man
He says she's threatening him
He says she's only trying to trap him
To train him, To taint him
When she wants anything, anything of him
His look, his touch, a moment of his time
He says she's demanding
He swears she's destroying him
Why is it
When a man whats a woman he's called a hunter
But when a woman wants a man she's called
A predator?
--Dory Previn
Seemed appropriate.
JESR @ 182
Oh, dear, I'm late to the party again. I wss about to make a joke involving a pun on the fact that the work that's kept me away for the last couple of days involved an electronic church organ design, but in this thread that might be somewhat more controversial than I'm willing to be.
Anyway, the upbringing you described reminds me of a friend I haven't seen in quite a long time. We worked together as software engineers for several years, then kept in touch at different jobs for a few years after. She grew up the daughter of a civilian engineer for the Army Corps of Engineers, with three older brothers who all went into technical professions and had military experience. So she knew how to change the brake pads on her car, and was an excellent pistol shot, dressed somewhat tomboy a good part of the time, but was quite definitely hetero.* She was also quite willing to return fire when some paleolithic male made remarks about her body or her dress and demeanor.
It seems to me that there are several axes of variation in that whole bag of sexual/gender/self-image indentification characteristics; trying to constrain it to who you want to have sex with, what clothes you like to wear, and whether "hand-work" means using a knitting needle or a crescent wrench misses the point. And I mildly disagree that we're all the same, male, female, straight, or gay. In fact, that's one of the things that makes the world and the people in it interesting. Biology does make some difference, and it's fascinating to try to learn what that is, as opposed to what we've been taught to think it is.
The real lesson to learn about gender and sexuality, IMHO, is that, as in most things, knowing the label on a person tells you very little about who that person is. It may be true that the average or mean of a given characteristic, say body mass index, for instance, or fine motor coordination for the entire population of males versus that for females may be different. This doesn't mean that all males have different values for that characteristic than all females, or even that there aren't some males way over on the other side of the female mean, and vice versa.
One of the positive aspects of growing older has been that over time, I've been able to take a skeptical look at how I think of myself: my public persona, sexuality, gender, etc., and decide that some of the stuff that was stuffed into me is pretty much useless baggage. Someone upthread asked how males feel being raised the way we are; my answer is, "largely cut off from my own emotions", because men are not really supposed to have (pr at least show) emotions except for (perhaps self-righteous) anger, and lust. These days I have less testosterone to drive my adrenals around, and a lot more interest in understanding how I'm feeling about things, because it matters to me. That also allows me to accept how other people feel about themselves more easily.
* I held the box of tissues and listened when she broke up with a mutual friend. Mind you, that's not something I was raised to know how to do, but it seemed like the right thing to do at the time. I likely wasn't very good at it, but then that time wasn't about me, so that wasn't terribly important.
I checked in this evening to find that I am a "sleaze" (or at least "look like" one), a topic-derailer, and some sort of dodger or denier of unpleasant facts.
So, Madeline F @ 35: I seem not to have expressed myself well. Perhaps I should have written, "The question is not *only* 'Why do men hate women?'"--and then added that the habit of framing the question in a way that implies universality amounts to a kind of falsification at the outset.
Violence against women--particularly the sort represented by a brutal and brazenly public "honor killing"--does not exist in a social or psychological vacuum. It takes a particular kind of personality to perform it and to accept it, and I believe that the lack of empathy or sociopathy or objectification-of-the-other or whatever constellation of pathologies enables it does not focus solely on women. (American lynchings have already been cited in this thread, and then there are Bosnia and Rwanda.)
The fact that not all men commit violence against women is significant, as are the facts that not all men commit any violence all, and that some women do commit violence. The fact that scenarios like this honor killing have played out elsewhere and -when with different classes of victim is also significant. (American lynchings have already been cited in this thread, and then there are Bosnia and Rwanda.) The fact that it is men who are overwhelmingly statistically responsible for violence-in-general is significant. But you cannot account for violence without also accounting for non-violence, and you cannot account for pathology without figuring out what makes for a healthy condition. If that's changing the subject, then we would seem to be engaged in different discussions.
(BTW, I did read all of Whedon's piece, and since you bring it up, his assertion that "Women’s inferiority--in fact, their malevolence--is as ingrained in American popular culture as it is anywhere they’re sporting burkhas" is a considerable exaggeration, even if "popular culture" is read in an extremely restrictive sense.)
*de-lurking momentarily -- lurking because several parts of this thread have gotten a bit too ... snippy ... for my tastes*
You can get knock-off Crocs at Payless Shoe Source for $15. And they come in much cooler colors than I've seen on people wearing "real" Crocs: I have a pair I wear all the time that are royal blue with psychodelic hot pink, pale blue, and yellow striping.
Just in case we have any more discussion of The Princess Bride:
Westley. (That's Westley.)
Humperdinck.
Greg @ 241:
Buttercup and Wesley don't have a healthy relationship because they barely have a relationship that we see in the movie. What we see in the movie is that they fall in love, Wesley leaves and apparently dies, Buttercup makes some questionable romantic decisions in the aftermath (no blame there - I can understand what she does), and then Wesley comes back, accuses her of faithlessness on the basis of decisions she made because she thought he was dead, and (rather than telling him that hey, he was dead, remember?) Buttercup collapses in remorse and flails helplessly while Wesley rescues her, rescues her, dies, is resurrected, and rescues her some more. Wesley gets a little speech about the immortality of True Love. Buttercup does not get a chance to explain about the difficulties of romantically disappointing a guy with his own enforcers, especially the absence of a compelling reason not to just lie back and think of the jewelry, or what life down on the farm was like in Wesley's absence. Buttercup is kind of a doormat, and the height of Wesley's ambition is apparently True Love... with a doormat. Maybe they both get better when they start their life together, but it's made clear in the book, if not in the movie, that they have a ways to go before they get to happily ever after.
This explanation of Pose Power seems to have the right motto at the foot of the page.
When discussing The Princess Bride, we must remember that we have not read the entire book, nor is the movie an adaptation of the original. We get the *abridged good-parts version* as edited by a father for his son-- probably not too heavy on the schmoopy. Can we assume that Buttercup's and Westley's reconciliation and string of heart-to-hearts is in the cut folder with the list of royal hats? I'm certainly going to.
We gave our daughter what we considered to be a non-gender-specific name because we didn't want bigoted people throwing her resume into the wrong pile.
Being ignorant, I picked a name usually given to black males.
On the bright side, she'll be able to make limited yet informed comparisons between discrimination against a white female and a black male. On the down side, she'll suffer from it.
As they say in the noir world: You play the black, and the female comes up.
mayakda@93: Do you feel you were brought up specifically as a nurturer?
I think "You are destined to be a nurturer" was the common message from society. (My parents had a different one for me -- they had the siblings all tagged and I was "the smart one" (or maybe it was the smart-mouthed one)).
Mayakda, I read in The Agile Gene (I think-- I may be misremembering) that social groups are like that. Little kids are mostly the same, with a few tendencies toward leadership or clowning, and the group organizes itself to reinforce those tendencies. I've experienced it in new social groups (yes, the plural of anecdote is not data) where I've gone from being the weird and brainy one to shuffled in among other people, including another weird one. There was tension until I left that group because both of us were used to being the oddball, and we'd unconsciously try to out-weird each other.
In my family, I came out tagged as Smart, Reads a Lot, then when my sister was born, she was Strong, Independent, Active. Since she'd taken those, I didn't become strong or active. Some of it's innate (Baby Sister was and is independent from the moment she could walk) but the strength? When did I decide that I was the weak one? Why didn't I define myself against my brother instead of my sister-- or is that where the quiet bookishness came from?
It goes back to the dichotomies, or the dichotomies go back to that. If men are X, women are -X.
RiceVermicelli@249: Buttercup and Wesley don't have a healthy relationship because they barely have a relationship that we see in the movie.
un.believe.able.
That you don't see it is a function of story telling. It isn't the focus of the story, so the story skips over a lot of it. I'm not sure how long they were on the farm together, but it seems like it could be long enough to establish a relationship. I wouldn't want to spend half an hour watching Buttercup telling Westley to fetch some water, fetch a pot, etc.
Actually, from a story telling perspective, it's pretty clear that how the relationship developed isn't the focus because they tell us, rather than show us. "Show, don't tell" is a rule of thumb, but it can be broken under certain circumstances. one of which being when you need to introduce informatino that would take way too long and be far too boring.
Westley loved Buttercup. Buttercup loved Westley. And the story begins from there.
Buttercup is kind of a doormat
You confuse her passivity with being unhealthy. You apparently would rather she strap on a sword and go swashbuckling with Westley, or kill the king herself after she finds out he didn't release Westley, or whatever. She made choices that you did not like, but for her character they were not unhealthy choices.
Which is actually sort of my point in the beginning. Is the goal to remove all differences between men and women and even remove all differences between women and other women, as well as between men and other men? That to fight discrimination we must eliminate all differences?
Or can you accept she made decisions that were healthy for her character, but you would not have made?
One of my few complaints about the movie The Princess Bride was the loss of the penultimate scene, where (SPOILERS) the four are onj the white horses, bruised, battered and bleeding, and the brutes line up in front of them only to have Buttercup stand them down ("I am your QUEEN!"). The one thing she actually did -- aside from being loving and faithful, which is no small thing -- and it had to be chopped out.
#197--anaea--most period corsets are made of fairly heavy, non-breathing materials--I've had some modern ones that were made of much lighter fabrics (hooray for cotton with 5% spandex!), including stretch lace. These were a lot cooler, and were wearable with street clothing in summer weather in Tennessee--to my relief, since I was coping with an inflamed nerve in my arm and shoulder, and didn't really want the added stress of a bra strap sitting right on top of a nerve that was already yelling very loudly.
#236--lisa--I find that confusion between chivalry and courtly love not uncommon--I don't know if it began with the Victorians, or not. It might be helpful for people inclined to this confusion to bear in mind that chivalry, in its better forms, was intended to keep the people with the most effective weapons from taking wholesale and brutal advantage of everyone who was weaker* than they were, by telling them that it was their duty, as a result of having the most effective weapons, to look after those weaker* than they were, and, ideally, not take shameful advantage of their weakness*. As a concept, it's not a bad way of trying to keep the heavily armed and physically stronger members of a society from running roughshod over everyone else. In practice, in its original period--well, not so much.
*for certain values of weaker/weakness, applying mostly to the ability to defend themselves and their property and look out for their interests by means of physical force.
#228 ::: PublicRadioVet
Madeline @ #207: Wow, I am trying hard not to be offended. But then, maybe that was your point?
I showed your post to my wife. She laughed.
So what? She married you, which doesn't seem to show an overabundance of good judgment based on your contributions in this forum....
Then she said this has come up a lot in her womens studies courses at the university. Apparently there are some circles of feminist thought which view all male deference or service to women as simply a covert form of ownership, suppression, coercion, etc. She said I should probably move on from this thread and let it go, because nothing I say as a male is going to have any impact at this stage.
Oh, look, the Parthian shot, "I am leaving but before I do I am going to piss all over you first and then run to avoid any retribution!"
Coward, intellectually dishonest bigot, etc.
Before I duck out of this topic, I think we need to check ourselves a little.
"I think we..." How magnanimous of you, how generous, how curfully condscending.... The presumption of telling other people what they should be doing, when you are in the process of doing piss and run, making other people wipe up after your dominance display....
What I'm seeing happen is that people are cherry picking, apparently bound and determined to find something--anything?--to take issue with. People also seem to be ignoring or overlooking responses.
I see wilful blindness and narcissism in this type of post, myself. Wanna try out to replace Antonio Banderas as the Puss in Boots voice actor?
I'm all about arguing and debate and discussion. But when it gets to the point that people start talking past each other and looking for excuses to take umbrage... I dunno, the fun is gone and it doesn't seem like a productive exchange anymore.
Aw thanks for the psych analysis.... {sarcasm}
Cheers, all. See you on the other threads.
Had to get that piss-on-and-run, didn't you.
(Too much personal acrimony for me here too, even though the original topic was already incendiary.)
Getting back to fashion, neither social ideals nor utilitarianism seem to have much to do with it. After all, Poiret the French designer whose "Grecian" gowns ostensibly freed women by making the more upholstered styles seem old-fashioned, *also* invented the "hobble skirt" [info from a New Yorker review of his museum show a few weeks ago].
On the bra-vs.-corset thing: It really does depend on what needs supporting. In my case, shelf bras in tank tops work fine, but the naturally -- or unnaturally -- well-endowed would have quite different requirements. (Underwire? Horrors! That's as bad as narrow shoes with high heels, i.e. torture, for me.)
fidelio @ #257, cool, thanks.
Faren Miller #259, it's my understanding that the unnaturally endowed among us don't really need much support, that's built in as part of the package. Possibly that's just a side effect of low end work done in the backwoods where the people who I know who've been enhanced got it done, but I don't see that as much of a downside.
#253 ::: mayakda
mayakda@93: Do you feel you were brought up specifically as a nurturer?
My experience was that that was the institutionalised societal directive and direction and inculcation was girls, to the degree that when I got to MIT, and one of my fellow first year classmates, a male classmate (87.5% of the class was male), was looking at me, I thought, "He's looking at me as if I were female!" Well yeah,, -duh-, I was... but emotionally I'd never been acknowledged by alleged peers as other than an "it."
I think "You are destined to be a nurturer" was the common message from society. (My parents had a different one for me -- they had the siblings all tagged and I was "the smart one" (or maybe it was the smart-mouthed one)).
It was. Be a nurse, or teacher, or clerical worker expected to be Motherly (and paid a pittance) or a Mother/Wife/Caregiver otherwise. there were exceptions for ornamental trophy wife artists and for would-be acting talent 9again, Ornaments.) Ooops, left out the damned Clorox Bimbo Housewife (no, the emphasis is "Clorox Bimbo" modifying "Housewife"... I think that my description of THAT abomination is elsewhere on Making Light, and it's something that was on radio and TV within the past three years or so.
Females were either to be scut labor support, or Ornaments, not -people-.
Greg @224:
Let me try this again.
During the "As you wish" portion of the relationship, Buttercup doesn't do dick for Westley except be pretty.
At the point at which love dawns, she not unnaturally stops ordering him around and he starts saying more than three words to her and so we're off for the rest of the (wonderful) movie. What I am trying to say is that "As you wish" describes only a very small part of their interaction, and really, it's not the good part. Getting all het up over ZOMG-these-crazy-feminists-think-it's-a-sexist-movie there's-no-speaking-to-us is far from the point. The point is that that particular dynamic - and as you justly point out, it's like ten minutes of the movie - isn't terribly convincing as a good model for a relationship.
Serge @ 204: I currently live in southern Ontario, where the temperature today is supposed to get up to 30 degrees celsius, which is about 10 more than I should prefer. I work in an un-air-conditioned office, live in a third-floor, un-air-conditioned apartment, directly under a flat, mostly black (except for the bits that are garden) roof, and dream of moving north, except that I'm also a big-city girl.
Anaea @ 206: my pleasure and apologies for the absent "a."
Greg London @ 216 Is the goal to make the statistics turn out 50-50 down gender lines and to erase any differences between men and women? Or is the goal to separate the differences from the discriminations?
My goal, my very personal goal, is to learn to examine the differences between people, and their similarities, without a false gender binary. Sure we can say that women show a statistical tendency to be shorter than men ... what does that tell us about any particular woman or man? What does that tell us about Teresa, or Susan, or Anaea, or me? Nothing. Statistics tell very incomplete stories, and make wretched shopping and deportment guides.
I want standards of behaviour that are the same for men and women. I want professional expectations that are standardized to mixed-gender groups. I want lovers who expect me to be me, Jennie, and who interact with me as a person, a lover, a friend, and a partner (among other things), not as a woman/mommy stand-in/object of courtly love and adoration/representative of womanhood/representative of statistical norms.
My goal is to teach people that women are people—nothing more, nothing less, nothing weirder than that.
The more I read this thread, the more convinced I become that human parthenogenesis is the technological wave of the future.
The point is that that particular dynamic - and as you justly point out, it's like ten minutes of the movie - isn't terribly convincing as a good model for a relationship.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
You just changed the subject. Lemme reintroduce you to the original post I made over here:
If Farmboy and Buttercup are in a one-sided, unhealthy relationship, then the world is doomed.
To which I got the following reply:
Buttercup and Wesley do not have a healthy relationship. ... could she maybe have, oh, I dunno, ever done anything?
The assertion is a simple, flat out, "they have an unhealthy relationship".
I see that this somehow got conveniently shifted into a slightly different idea:
Buttercup and Wesley don't have a healthy relationship because they barely have a relationship that we see in the movie.
Which you now try to reframe into further changes by saying:
The point is that that particular dynamic - and as you justly point out, it's like ten minutes of the movie - isn't terribly convincing as a good model for a relationship.
So, we started out with me saying my wife and I identify with Buttercup and Westley. The reply was a simple, flat-out assertion that those two characters have an unhealthy relationship. which someone then tried to shift to saying it was unhealthy because Buttercup didn't do anything, then you shift it further to it's unhealthy because you were not convinced that their relationship was healthy.
Sorry. subtly changing the assertion until you can find some sliver of truth doesn't fly.
The assertion was that they have an unhealthy relationship, end of story.
Some said it's because Buttercup doesn't do anything, which isn't actually unhealthy, it's just not what that person would have done. It would only be unhealthy if Buttercup wanted to do something but for some unhealthy reason did not do that. That is never the case in Princess Bride. Therefore her inaction is healthy for her character.
This is the first major problem people keep having. They confuse "unhealthy for Buttercup" with "unhealthy for them". If you were in Buttercup's position and wanted to DO something, but did not, then that would be an unhealthy relationship. But as I said, that isn't the case with Buttercup.
Now you're telling me its unhealthy because it's not a convincing model for a relationship? I wasn't arguing whetehr it was a convincing model, I was arguing whether it was healthy. I hope that not every story must have a number of Dr. Phil moments to stop and explain how while the relationship is working for these two characters, not everyone will be able to find a fullfilling relationship using their behaviour as a model.
I would hope that's a basic human assumption.
"Your milage may vary" is sort of assumed.
Basically, fiction and story telling is always about specifics. The author has to make choices, make the characters specific, make them real, make them individuals, make them unique.
You want a "convincing model for a relationship"? Then you need to start talking about stuff like "this works for some people, that works for other people", and stuff like statistically speaking, people who marry before the age of N are more likely to get divorced, or something.
Fiction isn't about statistics, it's about specifics. It is at best, anecdotal evidence, which isn't something you can develop a convincing model for a relationship that everyone can use.
The relationship between Westley and Buttercup as portrayed in the movie was healthy because both characters were choosing their actions inside whatever outside constraints the world was putting on them.
Whether you wanted Buttercup to "do something" or whether you were unable to extract some sort of "relationship advice" for you marriage, is irrelevant to the fact that the two characters had a healthy relationship for them.
Personally, my problem with Westley and Buttercup is that he appears perfectly willing to strike her across the face "because where I come from there are penalties when a woman lies," while his status as the Man in Black is one large lie.
And she's ready to be struck.
Apart from that, yes, it is a lovely storybook romance, and I can see where anyone would identify with it. Identifying with it, after all, doesn't mean subsuming the whole thing.
Personally, my problem with Westley and Buttercup is that he appears perfectly willing to strike her across the face "because where I come from there are penalties when a woman lies," while his status as the Man in Black is one large lie.
Yeah, me too. Good for Buttercup pushing him down the hill.
Plus didn't she jump off the ship? She did try to rescue herself. She also bargained for Westley's life; it wasn't her fault she was naive about Humperdinck keeping his end of it.
jennie@263: My goal, my very personal goal, is to learn to examine the differences between people, and their similarities, without a false gender binary. Sure we can say that women show a statistical tendency to be shorter than men ... what does that tell us about any particular woman or man?
OK. So, when someone says women are statistically paid less than men, should I dismiss the statistic?
If statistics can point to inequities between men and women, can they also point to differences?
Certainly, I don't use statistics to tell an individual how they should behave. But if statistics seem to invariably be the way to measure the problem (women statistically paid less than men, for example), then how do we measure when we've reached the solution?
Because I think statistically, there will always be some differences. So the question is whether the goal is 50-50, or whether the goal somehow takes into account possible differences that might statistically show up, even if there were no discrimination.
Certainly, women should get paid as much as men for the same job, but what if in a world of zero discrimination it is still statistically true that more women are stay-at-home-moms than men are stay-at-home-dads? Then if the statistics are used as a yardstick for determining discrimination, and 50-50 is the only acceptable goal, Then I forsee a problem.
Is it possible that in a world of zero discrimination, that more women than men choose to be stay-at-home parents while more men than women choose to work? I suppose it could be 50-50, but I don't see why it couldn't be 60-40 or soemthing else and still not be discrimination.
As far as talking about "particular" men and women, I was talking about some particular differences between my wife and I and seem to have gotten swamped with eye-brow raising and accusations of a potentially unhealthy marriage because my particular marriage didn't fit the statistics, or the ideal, or the expectation, or something.
So, I try not to take statistics and tell people how they should behave because they're a man or woman and statistically they should be doing this or that. But I'm finding it interesting to see just how difficult it is to tell some people that in my particular relationship with my wife, we aren't mirror images of one another, but we aren't in an unhealthy marriage either.
Just like the particular case of Westley and Buttercup is not an unhealthy relationship in their particular instance.
Those hinting and suggesting that I'm in an unhealthy marriage are doing so because it doesn't fit their notion of the ideal, and that ideal is something like 50-50 or something I can't quite put my finger on. And I'm just a little stumped.
Childrearing and gender roles. I have two daughters, 18 months apart, now 13 and 14. Daughter the elder never cared about dolls (though I do remember her carefully tucking her dump truck in with a pacifier), abhors pink, and has wanted to be a scientist since 3rd or 4th grade if not sooner. Daughter the younger always loved dolls, kitchen toys, and pink and purple frilly clothes (though she's also big on cars, trains, planes, etc.). They had the same parents, day care, etc., and are close enough in age that I have to think they had similar experiences. I really have to think that some of this was inborn. Though I do remember thinking that it would have been harder for me to wholeheartedly support a boy who wanted to play with opposite-gender toys than a girl, mainly because I would have feared I was setting him up for trouble down the road.
Greg London @ 268, I specifically avoided discussing your relationship with your wife, because your marriage is not my concern. I addressed one question you asked, in the general case. You and your wife may emulate Buttercup and Westley, Beatrice and Benedict, Harriet and Peter, or Ozzie and Harriet so long as you are both happy and fulfilled, and you won't hear anything from me about what you should or shouldn't do. Start pushing any of those models as models I and my partners should follow, and I'll push back, but that's not what you were doing.
I can't speak for others here on Making Light. It may be that the average Making Light commenter on this particular thread is statistically more likely to comment on the health of your marital arrangements, but I did not.
You asked whether "the goal" was to make the statistics turn out 50–50 and "erase" any differences between women and men. I was assuming you meant "the goal" in the general case. Since I don't speak for all women, or all feminists, or all people in relationships, I told you what my goal is. I can't erase differences between a given woman and a given man, nor do I wish to. I do, however, want get away from allowing a social construction of gender to tell me what those differences should be or how I should treat people. And yes, I do want a world in which, on any social scale, the distribution of people reflects the overall population. I want a world in which roughly 50 percent of engineers are women (or people identifying as women), and roughly 50 percent of primary school teachers are men (or people identifying as men). I want a world in which roughly 50 percent of stay-at-home parents are mommies and 50 percent of stay at home parents are daddies. I want a world in which roughly 50 percent of firefighters are women, and 50 percent of cleaning labourers are men.
Actually, I really want a robot housekeeper that does cat boxes. I'll settle for erasing the gender binary, though.
Faren, #259
Some well endowed ladies also have been blessed with the shoulders, ribcage and pecs to support the twins. Many do not. I was not. But I also have arthritis for other reasons so even flat chested I would still need the back support of a corset over a bra.
What pisses me off is getting non fetish functional corsets that fit correctly for less than a few hundred dollars, But my bras also have to imported specialty size and cost a fortune. Oddly enough for a culture that glorifies big perky busts there are few affordable support options for naturally endowed women in North America that don't double as armor. The assumptions that anyone over DD has a 38 inch ribcage, have self supporting plastic ones, is a nursing cow, is a porn pin up, or is a sagging granny really has an impact on selection.
Men get their undergarments design by those that wear them for comfort and function. Women get their undergarments designed by those that don't wear them for being looked at.
I'm feeling an urge to quote Mark Twain quote Disraeli. Yeah, I think I'm going to give into it; "There are lies, damn lies, and statistics."
Arguing anything from statistical data is tricky since statistical data is inherently troubled. Everybody seems to agree that, statistically, women are paid less than men for the same jobs. That looks bad. Most of the statistics I've seen break it down as an annual salary and that leaves me a bit skeptical. Does anybody have statistics that break it down by the hour? (Please link if you do, I'm curious)
And trying to make arguments about salary differences is easy. Statistics about women in traditionally male fields could indicate anything from latent/overt discrimination to a biological reason for women not going into those fields to cultural training pushing them in other directions etc. etc. And people use those statistics to argue whichever point they want.
Using data about perceived discrimination is tough too. There's a phenomena known as stereotype threat where an individual will perform less well on a test, compared to their own previous performances, if told that a group they belong to typically performs poorly on that test. They've studied this on populations of women, Asians and African-americans and found the same trend in all three groups. None of the subjects felt discriminated against, they simply had their performance undercut.
Then there are all the anecdotes about why female executives burn out and quit, and it being sometimes because they were discriminated against, sometimes because the situation was too cutthroat for them when they preferred to cooperate, etc. etc. It could be backlash from culturally taught gender stereotypes affecting their comfort level in a corporate environment, it could be that women biologically prefer cooperative problem solving, it could be that they were surrounded by a bunch of men who didn't want them there. There are too many variables to consider when making the statistical analysis. All you can say is that they quit - you can't argue why. Human society doesn't function as a controlled experiment.
I'm not touching the question about the ultimate "goal" since I've had enough verbal brawls with feminists to know I don't speak for them.
jennie@270: I specifically avoided discussing your relationship
Yeah, I noticed and appreciate that. I was more looking for what to do when someone's idea of a 50-50 statistics is what they look for in individual relationships, lest they call it "unhealthy".
I do, however, want get away from allowing a social construction of gender to tell me what those differences should be or how I should treat people.
Is it purely a social construction?
A quick list from wikipedia says the physical differences statistically between men and women include that men are more prone to take risks and are more aggressive than women. Women score higher in Agreeableness. men perform better in spatial and mathematical, women perform better in verbal and memory. Men and women have statistically the same average IQ, although men's IQ's span higher and lower ranges than women.
Certainly cultural/social pressures for gender roles should be removed, and any individual should be able to take on any job, regardless of gender, but I don't see how it must follow that removing the cultural pressure means the statistics of the population as a whole will automatically balance at a 50-50 point.
Maybe if the cultural pressure actually swings the other way and actually pushes for a 50-50 result, then statistically, there will be a 50-50 split, but that woudl be the outcome of cultural pressure again.
The problem I'm having is that the measure appears to be statistics, with the assumption that anything short of 50-50 must mean discrimination. And if men and women, statistically, have measurably differnt psychological traits, then that would seem to point to the idea that they would, statistically, make different choices.
And that wouldn't be a world of discrimination, but it wouldn't be 50-50 statistically for every job title, either.
How do the biological differences fit in with a 50-50 statistical expectation as a goal?
Anecdotally, I know someone on testosterone therapy, and they are noticably different when they're on testosterone and off.
Greg, I think that a great deal of the difference in genders-- risk-taking, agreeableness, et cetera-- is societally driven. We can't tell what's nature and what's nurture without doing our best to make the nurture part even. Yes, there are some innate differences-- I don't think they matter as much as you seem to think they do, but they're there. We just can't examine them as purely innate differences until we've narrowed them down to being purely innate.
As an example, you mention that maybe more women than men will stay home, even if everything's equal. We can't speculate on that, not now-- because even adjusting for having children, being married, all of that, women are paid less than men for the same jobs*.
We aren't anywhere near equal, and a lot of it's institutionalized. A man getting a prestigious job gets it because he's good enough. A woman getting the same job gets it because the company wanted to look gender balanced. A man is never (or not very often) asked if he plans to use his PhD or have kids; I know women who have faced that from their graduate advisor. Boy babies are complimented on their strength; girl babies are complimented on their cuteness.
At the moment, it's a pretty good assumption that most gender disparity is societal, not biological. We can't examine the biology because we can't get any sort of control group.
*I have this from an essay Bitch, PhD wrote at Suicide Girls-- I'm at work, so I can't link it. I'm also talking about the US; I don't know very much about other countries.
SNARL
A bias in the height of a population does not specify what any individual is going to be--it specifies that there is a greater or less probability that a member of the particular population is going to have certain characteristics, but does not denote that any given random individual is going to have the specific characteristic, unless the probability in that population is unity or very close to it, of that characteristic.
That is, in a population where everyone has dark straight hair, someone popping up with curly blonde hair is either a mutation or adopted or the result of a chance combination of recessive genes that are almost non-existent in that population!
However, talking about things like math and engineering skills, there has been a systematic suppression of women academically in those areas in western culture generally, with a few exceptions--Lady Byron nicknamed "the Princess of Parallelograms" and her daughter Ada, some astronomers who fought all sorts of prejudice, etc. However, that a look at the patterns in quilts, and tell me with a straight face that there is no math talent involved in making detailed complex pattern quilts. Tell me that with all the fancy patterns in handknit wear, and in crossstitch design. Academic math is not the only sort of math out there, but the other types tend to go massively ignore and deprecated.
Size, weight, shape, and dare I say gender, have nothing to do with intellectual ability or lack thereof. Social conditioning however, is quite another story. Susan Shwartz in her SFF.net newsgroup has written about how she deepsixed being erudite in math as a child to keep her psyche intact under the social pressure of what a girl where she grew up was supposed to be. One of my cousins who got Ds in math turned out to be anything but stupid in it--but she just wasn't interested, the cultural values she had picked up, despite having an engineer for a father, were that math didn't matter so why bother?
With the social "rewards" for being female and good in math and science tending to be ostracism, perpetual verbal and physical assault, and rejection, how many girls were going to persevere in the face of all that hostility and detriment?!
Paula Lieberman @ 275... how many girls were going to persevere in the face of all that hostility and detriment?!
I think it was Wendy Pini at Boston's worldcon of 1980 who said the art teachers tended to direct the boys towards drawing machinery, while the girls were encouraged to go away from that.
Meanwhile, based on what I saw here last week at Intel's International Science & Engineering Fair, lots of girls (many of them wearing a traditional middle-eastern scarf on their head) have decided that science is what they want, and not necessarily in those 'feminine' life sciences. In fact, the biggest crowd I saw was at a booth where a girl was talking about lightning balls.
Greg I was more looking for what to do when someone's idea of a 50-50 statistics is what they look for in individual relationships, lest they call it "unhealthy".
Well, if they're commenting on your relationship, thank them for their concern, and go about your business, knowing it's none of theirs.
If they're commenting ou your relationship with them ask them how they'd like you to treat them, and, if you can feasibly and honestly do so, treat them that way.
If they're commenting on their own relationships, I don't see why you need to comment any more than I see any reason for me to comment on your relationship. We all have different selection criteria for partners, based on our individual needs. No reason theirs should be the same as yours.
Thing about the whole "men are more prone to take risks" thing is that we've never had a control group that was free of ingrained cultural assumptions about what men do and what women do, what boys do and what girls do. Gender conditioning starts really early—in general, parents interact differently with sons and daughters from infancy. We've never had a statistically significant group of kids raised in an non-gender-coded setting. So all statistics can tell us is what things look like in any one of several highly gendered societies. Current psycho-social research can tell us only how things are and have been, not how they might be.
So, no, I can't say that, all things being equal, gender-coded behaviours would disappear, because I plain don't know. We've never had such a world. I'll probably never witness a world in which expectations are not, to some extent, dictated by societal ideas about gender, a society in which certain traits are not ascribed to women and others to men. I'll probably never really know whether 50 percent of primary school teachers would be male, if the job and the skills relevant to it weren't coded "feminine."
But I want to.
jennie... A boy is told he has to be Indiana Jones while the girl is told to be like... who? At least, she now has Starbuck, and numb3rs's Amita the scientist and Megan the FBI agent, but it's not exactly a crowded field.
Jennie, one thing we can do, however, is look at variation across culture to see which behaviors are consistently assigned to one gender or another, and which vary from culture to culture. Mead's Sex and Temperment started down that path, but later studies seem to have political or intellectual axes to grind which make them hard to compare to each other and to Mead's work.
#258
Contrary to Cheers, all. See you on the other threads. PublicRadioVet whosoeverth PublicRadioVet be, read my comment on #258 apparently: there was a missive in my email box ostensibly from that email address, indicating unhappiness with my commentary, and including a "the lurkers support me in email!" sentiment in it additionally.
I am not communicating this well, apparently, but I don't know how else to say it.
I think that a great deal of the difference in genders-- risk-taking, agreeableness, et cetera-- is societally driven.
I agree. A great deal. But I would say not all.
At the moment, it's a pretty good assumption that most gender disparity is societal, not biological.
I'd say there is a lot of obvious societal pressures, a lot of real discrimination that is pretty easy to demonstrate. Women should be paid the same amount for the same job is something that doesn't need to worry about biological differences, or biological control groups. Do the same work, get paid the same money.
We can't examine the biology because we can't get any sort of control group.
Well, that is probably the scientifically valid attitude to take, but there are certain things that are socially discouraged in both genders, but have a higher percentage of men. Serial killers, I believe are usually men. Men are more likely to be violent criminals and more likely to be the victim of violent crimes excluding sexual assault. Women are more likely to be teh victim of sexual assault. Is that societal? or is that biology?
In a world of zero cultural pressure on gender identies, will women commit half the violent crimes? Will women commit half the rapes?
That's talking about a fringe element, but I have a hard time believing that it is driven purely by cultural gender roles.
My experience, whcih is purely anecdotal, is that when discussing this with someone passionately active in addressing sexual discrimination, they either state it should be 50-50 or they withold giving any number. Maybe they're afraid if they give an inch, some bigot will take a mile. If they acknowledge there may be differences, they're afraid someone will argue that these differences justify discrimination.
That's not where I'm going. But there's something odd when people tend to either insist that the goal is 50-50 without a control group to show that be the case, or refuse to entertain the idea that it won't be 50-50 when a lack of data has not actually ruled it out.
Yeah, it might be 50-50, but since we don't ahve a real control group that is independent of social pressures, there's no reason to rule out some things might end up 60-40 or some other split.
Paula Lieberman @ 280... Pay no attention. He's not worth it.
Diatryma 251: You're kidding, right? You know that there never really was an "S. Morgenstern Classic" version, right? And that the guy who wrote TPB is the guy who wrote Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?
abi 266: I think he was as ready to strike her as Ralph Kramden was to strike Alice. I think he was genuinely angry, and thought he should hit her (which is fucked up), but couldn't bring himself to do it (which shows he still loves her). I think she flinched because she didn't yet know that it was Westley, and if she had, she'd have given him the same "yeah, right, like you'd hit me" stare that Alice always gave Ralph.
T.W 271: I wonder why some enterprising female designer/entrepreneur pair or group hasn't filled that market niche? There have to be thousands upon thousands of women in like case to yours. Maybe they're just not that easy to design?
I have to contend what you say about male underwear, by the way. I've never found any that are actually comfortable; fortunately I don't need a lot of support for ordinary walking around, and if I'm going jogging I have my choice of discomforts. Also there's a similar dynamic between comfort and display: for situations where support is called for, the display is (to my mind, as both a displayer and enthusiastic observer of male body-ness) ruint (I've never been able to cultivate a fetish for jockstraps, alas).
But then most men don't care about how their endowments are displayed, because most women don't care how men look (and by "care how they look" I mean "reject them utterly for tiny imperfections" the way men do women). Gay men are in another category, and clothing choices among us can be quite weird by straight-guy standards.
Myself I'm a stone nerd when it comes to clothes. I clean up pretty good (and own a tux), but normally I wear dumpy stuff when I'm not at work, and generic office clothes when I am. This is because I have given up on the entire idea of ever attracting a mate, not because dumpy clothes "work" for me.
Freeballing and going braless/corsetless are not at all equivalent, I realize. I've seen the deep grooves and even cuts on my friends' shoulders, and I can't imagine how they can stand it. Because they must, of course, barring breast-reduction surgery, and the same friends have told me that going without is even more uncomfortable. So here we are at "choice of discomforts" again.
So I'd say that people who design underwear are no good at making it comfortable and well-endowed people of either gender suffer most from this but also as in most things, women suffer more than men from the inadequacies of underwear.
anaea said (#272):
Arguing anything from statistical data is tricky since statistical data is inherently troubled. Everybody seems to agree that, statistically, women are paid less than men for the same jobs. That looks bad. Most of the statistics I've seen break it down as an annual salary and that leaves me a bit skeptical. Does anybody have statistics that break it down by the hour? (Please link if you do, I'm curious)
And trying to make arguments about salary differences is easy. Statistics about women in traditionally male fields could indicate anything from latent/overt discrimination to a biological reason for women not going into those fields to cultural training pushing them in other directions etc. etc. And people use those statistics to argue whichever point they want.
As a small example of how to (perhaps) do such statistics right, I can suggest this study by the American Institute of Physics on the participation of women in physics in the US (full PDF file of the report here).
They report the current fractions of women doing physics (or astronomy) at various levels (high school, bachelor's degrees, Ph.D., various levels of faculty), then work out whether that's what you expect, given the past participation at earlier stages in the career path. They find severe "leaks in the pipeline" between high school and college, perhaps between college and graduate school, but apparently not afterwards: in other words, the low percentage of upper-level female faculty in physics is what you would expect, given the low percentage of female Ph.D.'s several decades ago. But they also note that women in physics are paid less than men with the same amount of experience. (Unfortunately, there's little detailed analysis of the latter finding, though I can point out that faculty and other research positions aren't paid on an hourly basis, so breaking them down that way isn't possible.)
I should stress that this is purely a study of physics and astronomy, and only applies to the US (though there are some fascinating -- and clearly culturally based -- differences in what fraction of physicists are women from one country to another).
I think he was as ready to strike her as Ralph Kramden was to strike Alice.
Yeah, I never for a second thought he would actually hit her.
I was in a relationship with a woman who at one point got pissed at me and raised her hand like she was going to slap me. I said flatly "If that lands, we're through."
She stopped herself. and it was never an issue again.
I figure the frame story with The Princess Bride excuses any number of faults. I don't remember the nuances of Buttercup/Westley well enough to discuss them, anyway; I may as well derail the conversation a bit.
My experience with women's clothing is that no matter what shape she is, nothing fits well-- or one single brand does, and that one will be discontinued soon. I have yet to meet a woman who can buy pants without trying them on or who doesn't settle for 'close enough' most of the time.
I think he was as ready to strike her as Ralph Kramden was to strike Alice.
Yeah, I never for a second thought he would actually hit her.
Although I agree, the threat of violence is enough to give me a deep squick. I can think of no way that he should have raised his hand to his true love that fits with my definition of true love.
It's like my friends who make sexist jokes. I may know that they don't mean it, but I don't want them making them either.
JESR @ 279, this is true. It doesn't show us what a society in which females were not consigned by biology to be the child-bearers and rearers (or celibate) would look like, since it's only (comparatively) recently that women have had access to (relatively) reliable contraception. In most societies, gender roles are, to a greater or lesser extent, dictated by women's roles as mothers.
I'll add Sex and Temperment to the reading list.
Serge @ 278, I don't know what popular media shows girls these days, other than the Disney Princesses (gag). My childhood role models included Anne Shirley, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Lucy Pevensie, Meg Murray, sundry martyred female saints, and the Virgin Mary (at least, people told me I should emulate these last. I wasn't very good at it.) Other than Lucy and Meg, none of these survived the transition to adolescence, and Meg disappointed me by marrying and essentially subsuming her career to her husband's. I mean, yeah, valid choice and all, but not really exciting.
Much later, I adopted Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan.
The haterade Paula is serving is precisely why I bowed out of this thread.
I thought the ad hominem content of #258 was surprisingly unnecessary, so I addressed my concerns privately, thinking perhaps some kind of dialogue might be salvaged. When people get sideways with each other, sometimes a little one-on-one is all it takes to straighten the mess out.
Alas, I got silence. And then, when a third thoughtful e-mail from a non-lurker reached me this afternoon, I came back to the thread to see still more haterade.
No thanks. I'm not drinking.
on gendering babies:
i want to echo the sentiments above about feminism (& possibly other trends) encouraging us to encourage girls to do "boy things", but that boys doing girl things is still pretty horrifying. we can pat ourselves on the back for being tomboys or raising tomboys, but as long as we're still afraid of raising sissy boys, we haven't come all that far. personal anecdote: i was raised in a feminist household, half by a nurturing, stay-at-home mother. consequently, it seems, i am both a raging feminist & eager to have lots of kids as soon as possible. i was also raised in a religious jewish community, where there's a tradition/superstition among some not to cut a boy's hair until he turns three. & all the two-year-old boys had the most remarkable, beautiful hair (big chunky dark or fair curls, this being a mostly ashkenazic community). poignantly beautiful, maybe, cause you knew it was gonna get cut off soon & they'd never have hair like that again. i told myself, since childhood, "if i had a boy, i'd never want to cut his hair off. oh, but of course he'd be messed up for life & grow up hating me."
most of my thoughts on baby gender now are through my three-year-old niece & my eight-month-old nephew, my brother's kids. i remember shopping with my niece & my sister-in-law for shoes for the niece, & literally not finding anything that wasn't pink, sparkly, both, or for boys. it seemed like even at three years old, boys' shoes were built for more activity (hiking boots vs. mary janes) than girls'. proving that even the "cool-girls-are-into-boy-things" meme has not percolated down to the big-box stores.
my niece has always liked to hug & carry around her stuffed animals, which is normal for both boys & girls at that age. but only since her brother was born does she refer to her stuffed animals as her babies, & say that she's singing to her babies so they will go to sleep, or feeding them (& once, in a tone of joyful self-reproach, "i hit the baby!"). & it makes me wonder where she learned that from.
would grownups really, upon seeing a two-year-old girl with a stuffed rabbit, say, "is that your baby? do you have to feed your baby?"? telling a two-year-old that she now has to care for children seems.... perverse.
on the other hand, it seems natural that this toddler, staying home with her mother half the day, will model her mother's behaviour of talking to the baby, feeding the baby, etc. since these tasks seem to be the most important thing to her mother, why wouldn't the girl do them, too?
but i wonder if three-year-old-boys with younger siblings (i guess especially if they spend a large part of their day home with the sibling & a parent) rock their stuffed animals, feed them, & tell people they are the boy's babies. if not, why not? it seems weirder not to.
Although I agree, the threat of violence is enough to give me a deep squick. I can think of no way that he should have raised his hand to his true love that fits with my definition of true love.
I think it's a personal call. I didn't hold it against the woman who lifted her hand against me.
And, of course, Buttercup did push him down the hill right after that. Which I thought was pennance enough if Buttercup didn't hold any further grudge about it.
Although she then had to throw herself down the hill after him when he said "Aaaassss yooouuuu wiiisssshhhh!"
#289: The haterade Paula is serving is precisely why I bowed out of this thread.
Apparently, you have not yet bowed out of this thread. :)
No thanks. I'm not drinking.
Too late. You replied. You've drunk.
I'm not saying that #228 was a condescending, somewhat passive-aggressive way to save face by attempting to establish the Last Word, by fiat. However, when one says that one is leaving a discussion, it's unseemly for that person to continue to contribute to it.
miriam @290
i wonder if three-year-old-boys with younger siblings (i guess especially if they spend a large part of their day home with the sibling & a parent) rock their stuffed animals, feed them, & tell people they are the boy's babies.
My son certainly did. Watching him raise his shirt, grab his doll by the head (body, arms and legs hanging down free) and announce that he was "giving Baby milk" was...funny.
My daughter (no younger siblings) spends a lot of time in careful doll care. I think her nursery encourages it. I don't discourage it, but I wish that the gender balance didn't pressure her in that direction quite so much.
PRV,
I've seen this dynamic before.
Paula, and many of us, have spent a lot of time over the years getting a lot of crap because of our gender. Although we don't spend our days in red fury, it's still there, like a scab ready to be flicked.
Part of that is the frequent message that our opinions do not matter. That we don't matter, because we're female. Often that message comes from men. And most of the time, we suck it up, grin and bear it, because otherwise we get accused of overreacting, and confirm the bigots' prejudices. But sometimes it's a bit much.
So you come into this thread and say, basically, that we should not be angry. That you know women who aren't angry*, so why are we?
What we hear is yet another man telling us our opinions don't matter. That we're wrong to be angry.
It's not haterade. It's not your fault. But it's also not wrong or causeless. Whatever the lurkers say in your support.
-----
* Or aren't telling you they're angry. I don't discuss some of this stuff with my husband; he treats me as an equal, and I don't want him to feel guilt tripped by association with the people who don't.
JC,
If I had not gotten the mail I did, I'd probably not have come back to the thread at all.
But you are correct, it is unseemly to re-enter a thread once one has declared one's departure. My bad for not thinking ahead of my typing fingers in that regard.
Maybe I should have just declared that I was exiting the DV/misogyny meme? The corset and child-rearing memes, in addition to the Princess Bride meme, are quite interesting.
Oh well. Time to take my ladle back out of the punch before I poison myself.
For those few who wrote me e-mail with some thoughtful commentary, I thank you.
Xopher, #283,
At least guys can blame their fellow males for uncomfortable undergarments who should know better. Women however are stuck with men designing their undergarments who have no clue. The industry doesn't even use a universal measuring standard for sizes. And don't get me started on the whole size 14 is now the new 10 to protect our fragile egos and anything over 16 is a plus size for big girls. So my Belgium 32G($$)near perfect fit is an American 38DDD'ish sort of and fitting badly or a 34H maternity bra. Enough to make me want to strangle some folks. At least guys know 34waist/32leg always means that.
Strange that women designers wind up doing the exact same thing as the men despite knowing better.
Girls get their fitting needs met, adult women do not and that is even more telling.
abi,
My son certainly did. Watching him raise his shirt, grab his doll by the head (body, arms and legs hanging down free) and announce that he was "giving Baby milk" was...funny.
that sounds absurdly cute. there probably are parents who, fearing for his masculinity, would snatch the baby doll away.
but your kids seem to be in excellent hands, even though it seems frustrating that, as a parent, you're sometimes no match for nursery teachers, television, the toy store aisle, well-meaning grownups....
T.W. @297
Have you also noticed that a "c" cup now is what we would have called an "a" not too long ago? Suddenly the old "c" has become a DD. With padding. I was watching a morning news magazine not too long ago, talking about all the wonderful new lines of sports bras while models ran on treadmills. Size "A"--Cute, looks like a top you could wear by itself, red, smells like peppermint. "B"--pretty shape, supportive, flattering, a new material that's even more breathable. "C"--Racy stripes, y-back, black, all business but pretty sexy, too. "D". groan.
Gorgeous girl, what I'd call just shy of a "D," really, just running her butt off on that treadmill. White, unflattering, no decoration, no thought to detailing, and squished everything together into the dreaded uni-boob. While Katie Couric or someone is gravely reading the statistic that fuller a chest can experience up to four inches of bounce during vigorous exercise. So that means the bra equivalent of terribly sensible SAS granny shoes for her. Oh, and wear shirt, 'cause that thing's not attractive.
miriam @298
...there probably are parents who, fearing for his masculinity, would snatch the baby doll away.
And yet they'd let him play with action figures. Boys play with dolls, too - toy shops just call them something different.
But don't tell anyone.
One of the stupidest things my parents ever did to me happened when I was 5 or 6. I really was excited about my first baby sister and was very affectionate. Nothing inappropriate. That didn't stop the grownups from telling me I was too affectionate. For a long time, I thought that maybe there was something wrong about me. Oh well.
abi,
Boys play with dolls, too - toy shops just call them something different.
my boyfriend is a fanboy in the classic mold (i'm not kidding, he literally lived in his parents' basement before he moved in with me), & has a complete collection of kevin smith "inaction figures" lined up in our front hall. & yes, i do refer to them as his dollies.
I still don't understand why women put up with ill-fitting, poorly made, disposable crap for clothes. My wife does it all the time - runs out for a 6-pack of knickers, comes back with crap that deteriorates in 3 washings and then goes for more. There are quality alternatives, at a higher price. But if people stopped buying the shite, quality would improve. I have a hard time believing it's some conspiracy of designers to provide crap. I can believe that it's a piece of socialization that causes this purchasing behaviour. Who to fault for that one is much harder to determine.
J Austin @ 299
Haven't noticed that yet (the sizing still works for me). The resizing of other stuff, yes. What I hate is clothes being marked in 'S, M, L' with no indication of what number-equivalent or actual dimension it's supposed to fit. And then that's not standardized, so you have to try on the stuff to see whether that 'L' is really a large, or just a medium that thinks big.
PJ Evans #304:
The SML thing is one good reason (there are others) to buy from catalogs. They all seem to have a size-equivalency chart buried somewhere in the middle with the order form. What's fascinating is how upfront the mail-order process makes all the different companies be with the measurements, and with how each company has different sizing. (And different notions about which sizes are L vs which are XL.)
Serge@ 301
That sucks, and I'm sorry you remember it on the one hand, but maybe that's also one of the reasons you turned out so wonderfully (remembering it, I mean.) I think that's why those incidences at the studio always irked me so much--little boys have just as much capacity for demonstrative affection as girls, but they get conflicted about it because of what they're shown and told. It also pisses me off when a woman I work with will snort, "men!" anytime some guy's an ass at work. Whatever.
I bet you were/are still a pretty good brother--mine was too worried about trying to be his ideal image of the oldest brother, and 'man of the house." Bleagh. But the other one--middle child--got it right most of the time, and I still relate to him a lot better.
TW wrote (297);
At least guys know 34waist/32leg always means that.
I wish.
I wear a 29 inseam, or would if I could find khakis in my waist - 38 - 40 - without hitting specialty shops (check your average department store, and look at the waist sizes available in a 29 leg - not damn many, and usually none over a 36), which means usually wearing 30s.
Depending on the manufacturer, that can mean "30, but ought to be a 29, and fits pretty good" to "30, and should have been 32, and I'd better wear boots with this, because I'll need the heel length to keep from tripping myself."
Same with waistline - a 38 can range from "snug" to "if I don't exhale until the belt is cinched, I might be okay" or "jeebus!"
My only conclusion in all this is that the only way to get clothes that really fit well (for men or women) is to hire a gods-be-damned tailor, and have them make your clothes custom. Which, of course, is on the "step one: Win Lotto." list....
J Austin @ 306... Thanks. Of course, I remind myself that my parents were doing the best job they could, not having any previous experience at raising a family, and certainly not with someone like me.
J.Austin #299
I notice that for many the AA has been phased out all together. Even little breasts need some protection from activity otherwise in time they become two flatten fried eggs look.
Also a critical measure has been shifting around. The span, which in theory is the spacing, nipple to nipple, center point of cups to each other. The span has been increasing so large busts are facing outward instead of forward and wind up getting in the way of your arms but wider span also means straps are sitting further out on your shoulders and sliding down off them more often.
The will to make women's clothes fit is not there despite demand, so many excuses. After a certain point ladies give up pounding against the wall and just learn to be quietly miserable with crap.
Even some military gave up trying to make uniform issue bras for female members and gave them an allowance instead. However they underestimated how much they cost in the real world and overestimated their useful lifespan.
We can put men on the moon but can't make women's clothes fit. That should be a sarcastic throwaway line in some one's future scifi. The technological milestone of making women's clothes fit was a turning point in the history of mankind.
TW @309:
After a certain point ladies give up pounding against the wall and just learn to be quietly miserable with crap.
Or learn to tailor, and spend an hour or two retailoring every new pair of trousers. I do, because I hate looking sloppy.
Keeps my wardrobe small, though.
Serge;
My Mom, too. She was an only who got to do lots of "boy" things with my grandfather, as well as being pretty and popular with boys. I think she honestly had no idea what to do with a daughter, or what to expect from one.
Scott,#307
Sorry, always been my experience when I go with husband, relatives and male friends for clothes shopping that the size numbers match the numbers on the tape measure. Lots of hemming in your life I take it?
Now there's an imbalance. The cost of alterations between men's clothes and women's.
Hey did you know coloured bras always fit snugger than white in the same size and style. Why? I'm told that to save money they are all made out of the same base colour fabric and then some are separated out after construction for dying which shrinks them a little. Now that tells you a lot about how much manufactures care about accurate fit.
T.W.@309;
I haven't had the problems with them getting in the way of the arms yet, but they sure as hell aren't getting any more comfortable.
My poor husband cringes every time an underwire escapes, because he's knows I'm probably going to tear up at some point during the shopping trip.
Having worn the shoes, I can't imagine how bad a military bra would fit.
T.W.@309;
I haven't had the problems with them getting in the way of the arms yet, but they sure as hell aren't getting any more comfortable.
My poor husband cringes every time an underwire escapes, because he knows I'm probably going to tear up at some point during the shopping trip.
Having worn the shoes, I can't imagine how bad a military bra would fit.
P J Evans @ 235
returned an hour later with a washer and a dryer.
P J that's a really lovely story. I can't think of a better way to show you love somebody than to demonstrate concretely that you know what their problems are and are willing to help deal with them. Romanticism is nice, physical affection is always pleasant, but in the long run it's partnership that counts, and caring about the things that affect your partner.
My least favorite aspect of women's clothing sizes is that I currently have four pairs of jeans, same brand, same style, same alleged size, and there's three inches difference in the waist and four in the length (not evenly distribited, either, the shortest pants do not have the smallest waist). (Guys' pants are not made for the sort of hips I currently operate).
After a certain point ladies give up pounding against the wall and just learn to be quietly miserable with crap.
Anyone besides me remember wearing girdles, stockings, and garter belts? Yeah, I thought you did.
I gave up bras over 30 years ago. I wear an undershirt, often one with a bit of spandex in it -- and yes, I have large breasts. Bigger than a C cup, anyway. So what? I also have pectoral muscles. Does my bouncing trouble you? Tough. When I find a pair of pants, or shoes, or a top, that is comfortable, durable, and not ugly, I buy two or three of the same style. I haven't worn shoes with heels for as long as I haven't worn bras. Am I occasionally unfashionable, dowdy, even? No doubt. Wanna make something of it?
On the other hand -- I am fortunate, even privileged. I work for myself, not a corporation. I wear L. L. Bean size 10 jeans, and I can fit in a lot of standard M or L tops, depending on cut. I like my clothes loose, and I really prefer going braless. Some women find it monumentally uncomfortable. For women who don't come close to standard sizes -- and there are a lot more of them than there are of me -- the choices are more difficult. For women whose work requires them to dress fashionably, it can get very difficult, not to mention expensive.
But high heels?? I don't think they're sexy, I think they're revolting. Like foot binding. How can anyone even stand in those things?
T.W 309: I notice that for many the AA has been phased out all together.
People fall off the wagon all the time.
Lizzy L @ 318
Am I occasionally unfashionable, dowdy, even? No doubt. Wanna make something of it?
I'm hardly in a position to say something. People tell me I clean up nicely, but I just don't want to wear fashionable or dressy clothes. For a good part of my life that's been a lot easier for me than for most women I know, but that's in part because I made sure I'd live and work in places that wouldn't make a big deal of it. If I'd stayed on the East Coast and taken the customer engineer job I was offered a long time ago I'd have had to wear a tie and jacket all the time, and it just wasn't worth it.
I figure life is complicated and uncomfortable enough without all the extra chickenshit that fashion and dress codes dump on us, so if you don't mind the way I (don't) dress, I won't mind the way you do.
she should get to do more than simply whomp an ROUS with a stick.
Even better, she didn't really "whomp" so much as "poke", and even that wasn't terribly effective. Buttercup does a couple of useful things in that film, but hitting the ROUS isn't one of them.
Can we assume that Buttercup's and Westley's reconciliation and string of heart-to-hearts is in the cut folder with the list of royal hats?
Since the "good parts version" tells us exactly what's in the cut folder, nope. :) The Good Parts Version also tells us that Buttercup is, shall we say, not the sharpest knife in the drawer.
Joann @ 3305
Shirts with pockets, that don't assume all women want lace and ruffles and soft sheer fabrics. Slacks in something like gabardine or twill that won't snag on everything stiffer than a hangnail.
(Dropping things on the floor where they end up in the back corner under the desk ... you don't want to try retrieving things in the clothes usually meant as 'office dress' for women.)
Bruce at 320: I'd have had to wear a tie and jacket all the time, and it just wasn't worth it.
So who makes those rules? Not you. Not me. What if we all said, "No. Not gonna. Can't make me. Nope."
What if they gave a war and nobody came?
Bruce @ 316
Why they were married until death parted them.
Faren, #259, I had a lady come up to me at a restaurant today and say "I fit bras for large-size women, let me give you a card." I said "Thanks, but I like the company I'm using." Boy, that was weird.
T.W., #271, look at Decent Exposures.
Serge, #293, I think he meant haterade as a parallel to Gatorade (just finished mine).
she should get to do more than simply whomp an ROUS with a stick.
She attempts an escape by diving into eel infested waters.
She pushes the Dread Pirate Roberts down a hill. Unfortunately, she then discovers it's her sweet Westley.
She pokes the stuntman in ROUS suit with a stick. (Oh, to be able to have ROUS on my acting resume.) I don't think it harmed the ROUS, but I think it distracted it enough that Westley could escape it and get the upper hand.
She surrenders herself to Humperdinkt(SP?) to save Westley.
She uses the hydraulic loader to fight off the alien queen and save Newt, screaming "Get away from her, you BITCH!"
Oh wait...
T.W. @ 297: Women however are stuck with men designing their undergarments who have no clue. The industry doesn't even use a universal measuring standard for sizes.
Oh my yes, yes, yes, yes. If I had a dollar for every time I've wondered whether a bra manufacturer had ever seen an actual breast--I could afford to ship my lingerie in from overseas.
Every so often I visit the Victoria's Secret (or other brand) site and use their rubric for determining my correct bust size. They usually come out to about 38-40B, and then I laugh, and laugh, and laugh...
Other clarification on corsets (which I have worn and built, along with bras and underwired bras):
A lightly laced corset reshapes the lower ribcage from an elongated oval into a circle (place your hands just above your waist each way, then press in gently from the sides, and this will be obvious). This makes the waist look much narrower and by comparison, the hips wider, from the front.
Tight lacing continues to compress the ribs and is a completely different proposition.
Most women who hate underwired bras have never had one that was fit properly. It is somewhat easier (though a lot more expensive) to find a corset in ready-to-wear where the breast support comes from the waist stay, or better yet, from the pelvis.
Marilee, #325
Thank you.
I've worn those before when I was a couple of sizes smaller, gift from a friend, and they didn't work for me. Just not solid enough even in the firm support fabric. They did however make a nice sleeping bra for when I injured the soft tissue and need to keep things from shifting too much during the night. About the same effectiveness as doing binding with the tensor bandage. The best support I ever had was from a linen seamed cup halter style someone made and husband killed in the wash. Yes I forgave him eventually even though I could never get a replacement again. He meant well, trying to do the laundry for me.
More on corsets, bras, custom clothes.
I am a professional custom clothier. I can build a "bespoke" bra (underwired for larger cup sizes) or corset that will comfortably fit ANYone. I have, and have taught how to do it. It's too expensive for almost everyone. Mass production, even limited mass production, would get the cost down considerably. Here's why it hasn't happened.
We are up against the Walmart mentality. Sure, if everyone refused to buy cheap crap and were willing (back to the bras) to pay $75.00-$100 for ones that really fit, were comfortable, and would wash and wear well, then I as well as a number of others would gladly fill that market niche. But three devoted followers aren't enough to put several tens of thousands of dollars into development and marketing of such a line. The "despite demand" mindset tends to think a dedicated line can still come in around $20-30/bra, and that's not realistic. How many years do you want me to lose money making competetively priced bras that would fit you?
On sizing: yes, it's pathetic, more so in women's than men's, but true in both. The industry standard is roughly 1" of discrepancy between sizes, PLUS OR MINUS 1", and some sloppier manufacturers don't hit that.
Carol, #330
Do you take commissions?
I plunked down $260+tax just for one good German made bra. Made it last five years. If you got multi year lifespan on your product I will pay proper value for it. I just don't want to shell out hundreds of dollars for stuff that won't last me the year, like most of what I see out there. I swear I will kill the husband if tries to wash it.
Mayakda @93:
The impression I got growing up was that males are supposed to be tough. We're meant to endure a lot of wear and tear -- scrapes and bruises on the athletic field, cuts and black eyes from schoolyard fights, doing the chores that involve heavy lifting and dangerous power tools, and eventually going off to war.
And what advantage did we get in return for this? Precious little, as far as I could tell. When I was a boy I was oblivious to the ways women are disadvantaged in society. The only benefit to being tough that I could see was that men's clothing didn't have all the frills and lace that was delicate and difficult to keep in repair.
Besides unrealistic and unattainable expectations for myself, this also led to mistaken ideas about others. If men are tough in ways that women aren't, then this must mean that women are supposed to be fragile. What a lie that is!
I certainly didn't learn all this from my parents. Must have been peers and television.
As I matured, I learned that it was okay for me not to be tough or not to fit someone else's idea of what that meant. I still appreciate durable, easy to clean clothing, though.
The good thing about working in an industrial research lab -- nobody expected me to wear a suit. I was actually better dressed than some of the people more senior to me, because at least I relegated my jeans and teeshirts to gardening wear once they got even small holes in them.
The bad thing about working in an industrial research lab -- the need to wear clothing, including underwear, with no or minimal synthetic content under certain types of safety clothing. Turns out there aren't that many pure cotton bras out there...
Dan Layman-Kennedy, #138:
you fucking rock, sir. i hope that post doesn't get lost in the flurries.
This thread is occupying my thoughts in my free time.
Toys and their gender meaning. I just thought of the most egregious example. My god-daughter, three-and-a-bit, went camping with family and friends and loved it. Her parents wanted to buy her a camping lantern for her own. In the camping shop, there was all manner of child-size equipment. The stuff for girls was pink with flowers on, and the stuff for boys was military camouflague. lordy.
I was mulling this over. When I was three, I’d have probably preferred the pink one, as my god-daughter did. When I was seven or eight, I think I’d have preferred the camouflague. I wasn’t really what you’d describe as a tomboy (more a bookworm, which is kind of gender-neutral), but if you’re going to play a game about camping, you want it to be about adventure and wildness and having exciting kit that looks like grown-up stuff.
It’s not just what your parents tell you: the very objects that you hold speak gender roles to you. They’re both lanterns and they both do the same job, but, when you and your friends come up with the idea of building a make-shift tent in the back garden, and there’s that moment of creation where your game starts to shift into an imaginary world, if you have the camouflague lantern it’s right that it should be a war game,* and if you have the pink one, it’s right that it should be a palace or a tea party.
* the whole ‘how far do you go when allowing your children to play with military toys’ question is an interesting sideline. I fully appreciate the intrinsic coolness of knights in armour etc -- did you know you can get a Playmobile Roman legion nowadays?! -- but I am kind of disturbed when I see little boys (it’s always little boys) running around with incredibly realistic-looking replica machine guns.
-------
Re whether there is an innate difference between male and female psychology: I wrote a longer post about this, but my namesake with an –ie said more or less what I wanted to say in post #277. (Is the proliferation of jenny/ies on this thread at all confusing? Should I adopt a nom de blog?).
My general philosophy is that the commonalities between men and women far outnumber the differences, and I’m agnostic on what those differences really are, because I can’t see a way to untangle them from the mess of history. Bruce Cohen @#245 had a good recipe for dealing with all this in reality: ‘knowing the label on a person tells you very little about who that person is’.
Besides this, it seems to me that a lot of the things we view as gender-marked are absurdly arbitrary. To take a few from otterb’s list @269. what properties do – liking science, disliking pink, and eschewing caring for dolls have in common?
What’s essentially masculine about doing science? Well, there’s a long history of sexual metaphor gendering scientists as male, nature as female, but that’s just how our society has chosen to see it.
At any rate, the ‘women are good at languages/emotion, men at maths/logic’ thing annoys me, for one thing because it goes out of the window when we talk about men in literature. Until recently, it’s been a commonplace that only men could be truly great poets/ writers, and that women’s writing was by definition slighter, unable to attain the same grandeur and depth of human comprehension. I don’t see how in one breath you can portray men as some sort of super-rational, powerful, but morally frail species who can’t comprehend feminine subtlety and depth of feeling, and in the other talk about Shakespeare and Rilke. (I don’t think, either, it does men any favours to characterise them as semi-autistic by virtue of their gender -- poor things, they can’t help not understanding us vastly more emotionally literate women -- it both insults them, and makes excuses…)
Appearance: actually the convention that women wear brighter colours than men is only quite recent: look at C17th paintings to see men dressed up to the nines in lace-covered turquoise silk etc. I’m not sure where pink comes into it, but it’s probably fairly heavily culturally determined. Despite cultural pressures for women to be more concerned about their looks, I think the love of fine clothes/ vanity about one’s appearance applies to both sexes.
Dolls – ha, here it gets complicated – is there a wired-in instinct in women to be more concerned with children than men are? purely anecdotally I know women who abhor children and men with a strong parental sense… I think I’m going to leave that one to brew for a while, since I don’t have a fully formulated answer.
(I find plastic baby dolls creepy, and I did as a child as well, though I had a rag doll that I loved).
------
Relevant to this thread in general, here is the account of a ‘gender spy’, Norah Vincent, who spent a year living as a man and writes about her subjective experience of being viewed as male, what it was like to interact with other men as a man, etc. Some of her impressions support what Carri said in post 108 re lust, power and rejection. She thought that the dating part of the experience would be the easiest and most familiar. She’s gay, and she imagined she would have no trouble relating to a woman on a date in her identity as ‘Ned’. But she found dating and the sexual power relations between men and women to be altogether the most gruelling part of the experience, and she found herself, bizarrely and disturbingly, almost coming to be a misogynist herself. Troubles me: worth reading.
I hesitate to bring this up again, but it keeps bugging me.
Greg London @ 216: "Ya know, here's the thing. I never said they were one-sided. I was telling you how my wife and I are different.... She's got a huge heart and is great with people, I am socially deaf and blind. I'm an engineer, and she'd never turned on a computer until she met me. I try not to let her operate power tools, and she generally handles the shared relationships/friendships we have."
So you both contribute unique things to the relationship. Good. I think that's one of the best things about relationships, that you can fill in each other's weaknesses. I am in no way accusing your relationship of being abusive. But here's the thing:
@ 128: "Generally speaking, I show my wife that I love her by doing things for her. She, on the other hand, just loves me."
@ 216: "I do things for her to show her I love her. She just loves me, and I know when its there and when it isn't."
I don't get that--she never does anything concrete to express her love? The desire to express externally how you feel on the inside is something of a universal human urge, in my experience. It's the ultimate source of all art, music, and poetry. The desire to demonstrate to all the world (and to the object of your affection) the depth of your love is a big part of what being in love feels like. It's hard for me to believe that anyone doesn't feel that urge.
You freely admit that you both do things for each other all the time. Yet you are sure that, while your motivation for doing these things is to express love, hers is not? Then why does she do them? You know that she loves you; she must express it somehow.
The simplest explanation I can think for this paradox is just a difference of perspectives. You know your own motivations for your actions, but you don't know hers. You know that when you lift heavy things for her, this is an expression of love. You don't know that when she, say, does the heavy lifting in your shared friendships, she does this as an expression of love. But really, it probably is. How could it not be?
There's a simple way to test this, of course. Just ask her, "Do you ever do things to show that you love me?" I can't really imagine the answer being no. If this all strikes you as utter nonsense, then, well, sorry to waste your brainspace. But please do ask your wife that question.
P.S. In terms of requiring 50/50 gender splits in all professions in order to feel like we've reached "equality": I will be happy when every woman and man who wants to be an engineer is an engineer, and every woman and man who wants to be a school teacher is a school teacher, and whether that splits down 70/30 or 50/50 I couldn't care less.
J Austin @ 311... In my case, most of of my problems with my family stemmed not so much from gender behavior (although they did that too) as they do from something else. Let's put it this way. I am their eldest, and yet I am not their first. Their firstborn was stillborn one year before. If not that that child's death, I wouldn't have been born.
What I'm getting at is that, if I pointed this out to the rest of my family, even today, they'd all look at me and ask what my point is.
Marilee @ 325... I saw that, but, I wondered if there was another meaning for that word that I wasn't aware of. I realize now that it was probably his idea of subtly calling her a bad-tempered saurian.
Jenny@335 (Is the proliferation of jenny/ies on this thread at all confusing? Should I adopt a nom de blog?).
I confess I've been rather giggling about that. A while back another Jennie (capital J, -ie) was also posting here. A friend IMd me one Saturday to say that he'd commented on my comment at Making Light. I replied that I hadn't commented at Making Light that morning. This friend had utterly failed to notice the significance of the capital J.
Lest anyone be confused by the proliferation of Jenny/ies, I have re-denoted myself.
jennie1ofmany: I'm pretty sure you were here on Making Light before me, so perhaps you should be after me for copyright violation, or identity theft!
I am renaming myself in honour of a T.S. Eliot poem:
'I have a Gumbie Cat in mind
Her name is Jennyanydots
Her coat is of the tabby kind
With tiger stripes and leopard spots...'
and in memory of my striped and spotted cat, now sadly deceased.
Jenny #335
it seems to me that a lot of the things we view as gender-marked are absurdly arbitrary. To take a few from otterb’s list @269. what properties do – liking science, disliking pink, and eschewing caring for dolls have in common?
Answer - they are stereotypically male in our dominant culture. Doesn't mean they are inherently male or female. I hope I didn't sound like I thought science was inherently male. Part of my job involves ways to encourage women & minorities to go to graduate school in computer science & computer engineering, and it's both interesting and discouraging that the percentage of women is lower now that it was when I got a degree in CS almost 30 years ago.
In a book entitled "Women and Information Technology: Research on Underrepresentation" by Cohoon & Aspray, there is a chapter by Maria Charles & Karen Bradley on female underrepresentation in computing cross-nationally. I can't lay my hands on the book at the moment so I'm going by memory, but my recollection is that in countries such as the US that emphasize a free individual choice of career, women tended to gravitate toward traditionally female, lower-paying areas. In countries where the ability to continue to college was more controlled and more strictly according to demonstrated academic ability, there were more women in computing, even if the society wasn't much for gender equality.
Does anybody else here make frequent use of IMdb.com? One thing really annoys me about the site. A few minutes ago, I selected 'bio' and 'Diana Rigg'. The results listed the bios of all the men whose own bio contains a reference to Diana Rigg, then it lists the women.
Heresiarch@336:I don't get that--she never does anything concrete to express her love?
Oh my head.
When it comes to the "skill" of communicating love, I am generally unable to do so directly. Instead, I spend a couple hours getting my hands dirty fixing the washing machine. I do something.
My wife, on the other hand, has sufficient emotional skill that she can make me feel loved without doing anything.
I know this might be a difficult distinction to make to an audience who insists everything is 50-50, but I will refer you back to one of my first posts about this topic where I said something like "I have a blind spot around it, she's better at it than me."
That doesn't mean she doesn't do anything out of love, it just means that she is adept enough emotionally that she doesn't have to do anything to let me know she loves her.
I haven't bothered to keep a score card to make sure she's doing as much as I'm doing, or to make sure I'm doing as much as she's doing. I haven't made it an obsession to make sure our actions are 50-50. Because physical action is only about one-fifth of all there is.
Now, whether the individual differences between my wife and I map into statistical differences between men and women in general, I don't know. On some levels, my wife and I are fundamentally different, and there isn't anything unhealthy or wrong about our relationship.
And if statistically speaking, men and women fell into categories similar to me and my wife, there wouldn't be anything wrong with those relationships either. But to suggest that statistically there may be a non-50-50 split between genders on even a non-unhealthy scenario, we suddenly don't have enough data or the topic is changed.
Who gives a rat's patoutie if my wife never did anything to show me she loved me? Or that she does less than me? Or even if she does more than me? Action and emotion are two different things, different channels. If she's better at emotion than me, she won't need to go to other channels to tell me she loves me. She'll just love me.
And I've lost count of how many people have said "yeah, but..." to that on this thread.
I'm obviously missing something, and I don't know what the issue is.
I've been kicking around a story idea for a couple years now set in a world where men and women are different. statistically, men are better at some things, and women are better at some things, and it just occurred to me why I've never finished it. Because of this kind of response right here. And I don't know if I'm missing something, if I'm advocating discrimination, or if certain people here are unrealistic in their expectations between genders.
Same pay for teh same job seems easy enough. But if you remove all cultural pressures for gender roles, do you see an equal distribution of genders in every job position, for example?
Do men tend towards military careers because they're culturally pushed to that with camoflaged lanterns? Or are men more aggressive, statistically, than women? The thing is I don't think culture gave me some of my fundamental drives. I felt the need to find something to be good at and succeed at and win at. but I don't know if that need was purely cultural. I think a good chunk of it was internal drives, either born with it, or chose it, or whatever.
So, I'm actually trying to sort something out for myself here to figure out if I've got some kind of discrimnating attitude or not, because I don't want to write that into my story.
But so far, when I've brought it up, I got one person who said they thought the results would be 50-50, but didn't engage any further, and one or two people who said something like "there is too much cultural discrimination for me to worry about that now."
Well, the story is in a fictional world with basically no cultural gender pressures. Now what does it look like?
Jenny-with-a-y asks Is the proliferation of jenny/ies on this thread at all confusing? Should I adopt a nom de blog?
This is why I use my initials, although it's because I'm another Julia, not another Jenny/ie. Although I have thought of changing to my maiden name just for the giggles of having a Julia Smith and an Julia Jones posting at the same place.
PJEvans #322: (Dropping things on the floor where they end up in the back corner under the desk ... you don't want to try retrieving things in the clothes usually meant as 'office dress' for women.)
Been there, way done that. I actually found that long skirts were the best for this; you can lift them up above the knees as you kneel, and still be relatively modest in the back. I gave up on wearing trousers to work after the hardware store; I'd much rather have dirty stocking knees than dirty trouser knees.
OTOH, I think we've just identified what really bugs me about all the network, etc. cables, and why I love wireless: don't have to go crawling about under the desk.
(There was, of course, also the incident where I was trying to buy an interview suit, and most of the skirts came with slits. OK, but *up the front*? I finally told the clerk, "I'm interviewing for a job as an engineer, not a tart!" and found another store.)
joann... "I'm interviewing for a job as an engineer, not a tart!"
Sounds like what a woman applying for a job in the Engine Room would have said to James Kirk.
(As she climbed the ladder alongside the warp core, she looked down and said: "You guys aren't peeking up my miniskirt, are you?")
Serge, I didn't want to be seen as "frivolous". At least in the interviews. My true nature could (and did) come out later.
But if you remove all cultural pressures for gender roles, do you see an equal distribution of genders in every job position, for example?
Maybe look at real life cultures were a non-gender difference trumps gender difference, then compare same-gender professions across that line.
Going back to societies with caste systems, frex, or very stratified class systems, one could compare preferred occupations for women in an upper caste vs. women in a lower caste. (Or men, for that matter).
I think that's a similar idea to the study cited by otterb (#341).
But if you remove all cultural pressures for gender roles, do you see an equal distribution of genders in every job position, for example?
Maybe look at real life cultures were a non-gender difference trumps gender difference, then compare same-gender professions across that line.
Going back to societies with caste systems, frex, or very stratified class systems, one could compare preferred occupations for women in an upper caste vs. women in a lower caste. (Or men, for that matter).
I think that's a similar idea to the study cited by otterb (#341).
otterb said (#341):
I hope I didn't sound like I thought science was inherently male. Part of my job involves ways to encourage women & minorities to go to graduate school in computer science & computer engineering, and it's both interesting and discouraging that the percentage of women is lower now that it was when I got a degree in CS almost 30 years ago.
Yes, and it's oddly restricted to just CS -- it's not true of mathematics, or of engineering, or of any other sciences that I'm aware of. As this graph shows, the percentage of women getting CS bachelor's degrees peaked in the early 80s. That seems very mysterious; are there any clues as to what's going on (or what went on)?
On the "natural" tendencies, I am NOT femmy, never have been, never will be, and resent all the crap about sociobiology saying "female is oriented -this- way, male oriented -that- way.
There is no doubt whatsoever, as my medical records prove, that I am biologically female. NONE
However, I have detested pink as a color my entire like, look like something that should have been buried three days ago in anything with that's an orangey pink, played with chemistry sets and toy guns growing up, NOT dollies; DETESTED Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls and thought they there were ugliest least attractive things in existence as a small child and couldn't understand their appeal to anyone, never thought babies were "cute," never found anything appealing about interior life doing dishes and laundry and being domestic, have the domestic instincts of a cuckoo bird (no, I haven't given birth and sent out a kid for adoption or dropped it on a church step or such thing, but I have NEVER had a picture of myself as being a stay at home women doing child minding, -never-), the social graces of a troll (and resent that whole thing about women are supposed to be socially ept... I have all the social eptness of the typical MIT or Caltech grad, which is to say NONE!!! and I resent it enormously that it's socially acceded for MEN to be socially clueless, but all my life I've been shat all over for my lack of social grace when my male contemporaries weren't shat all over for it but humored and allowed the social ineptitude...)...
and those who call upon their wives for Social Clue in this forum, remind me of all that ....
otterb@341: in countries such as the US that emphasize a free individual choice of career, women tended to gravitate toward traditionally female, lower-paying areas. In countries where the ability to continue to college was more controlled and more strictly according to demonstrated academic ability, there were more women in computing, even if the society wasn't much for gender equality.
Intersting. And just a little odd.
Thanks.
resent all the crap about sociobiology saying "female is oriented -this- way, male oriented -that- way.
Yeah, the "snarl" in 275 sort of signaled that I may be treading on interesting ground.
I'm not looking for statistics to tell some individual woman that she can't go into, say, delta force, but I am wondering whether if all the social presures were removed, would more men than women still choose to do such a job.
all my life I've been shat all over for my lack of social grace when my male contemporaries weren't shat all over for it but humored and allowed the social ineptitude
Oh, I don't know if it's all humor. My wife sometimes gets frustrated with my social tone-deafness like I sometimes get frustrated with her lack of some basic computer skill. I still remember the first time I told her to double-click on something and she went click .....(long pause)..... click, and said "Nothing happened".
I assume you get shat on about social skills by people who have some social skills. The folks who don't have them probably don't give you a hard time about it. Which would say it is at least somewhat about people looking at you and expecting you to be like them.
There is probably some gender expectations too, I'm not saying there aren't. But there's something inherently human about looking at someone else and wondering why they don't know something that is completely obvious to you.
#341 (otterb): I think the difference is partly explained by whether a career is something you *are* or just something you *do*. US nerds widely think of math/CS/science as something you are, as a strong predictor of dress and social style and chosen amusements; and all of this is marked unfeminine (if not exactly masculine). Women in those fields challenge the self-image of both women and men.
I've been thinking about this a lot recently, as I was a math undergraduate 15 years ago; I was often the only woman in a class at a big public R1, though my little liberal arts college had a math dept. about 1/4 or 1/3 female. And now I've gone back to grad school, partly in math, and the big R1s are up to maybe 1/5 or even 1/4 female; but a *huge* proportion of that seems to be second-generation Asians (the largest sense of Asian), who seem to have a different -- a much more practical -- approach to what they study, even when they study it because they love it. But I don't know any of the undergraduates well enough to quiz them about their gender politics, so this observation takes a whole big quern of salt.
#343 (Greg London):
"The thing is I don't think culture gave me some of my fundamental drives. I felt the need to find something to be good at and succeed at and win at. but I don't know if that need was purely cultural. "
This pushes ALL MY BUTTONS REALLY HARD in this discussion, because you would not believe how strong the cultural taboo on women wanting to win is. I can hardly believe how strong it is, and I've been bloodying my nose on it my whole life. I was on the debate team, on the math team, on a crew team, I'm in grad school in an experimental science with a side of nonlinear mathematics, I had pretty much a great time working at MSFT, shouting and all; I know what it is to want to excel. And I have spent a huge part of my life being told that this is a sign of mental illness, because 'girls aren't like that' and 'boys won't like me'. Even my parents, who don't *consciously* believe this, felt it in their bones. (Well, for most of my youth, it was true: girls were rare and boys were annoyed.)
I have a bunch of coping mechanisms to fool people or wind them into their own inconsistencies, but am not going to detail them, because they're just contingent kludges to patch over the fundamental unrealism of our society.
I should add that physical sport was the least conflicted, in my experience, and that although I was a solitary anti-team-sports person until the crew team, I do now understand why girls' sports have the impressive outcomes they do.
I came back to this thread because it has been bothering me a lot that we started with a discussion of a woman being beaten to death, and devolved to what Anglophone tastes in underwear and flirtation mean. Yo: tacky. And I did it again myself.
So I'm forking over a chunk of my discretionary income, in an attempt at being useful: does anyone have a better group to recommend than RAWA?
Chew,#356
There are worse tangents.
Women endure the short end of the stick every day and in every thing. Folks will be all outrage at the big events hand wringing and such but then that drops from attention and it's back to being fired from your minimum wage job because you're not flirty, perky, bouncy, and smiling enough at the customers. Those constant little things add up over time and matter just as much. What, I should shrug off having my chest ligaments damaged constantly and be grateful because hey it could be worse I could be dragged out on the street and killed. Well I could be anyways it just won't have the same "Oh lord the humanity!" world news effect.
Paula @352:
and those who call upon their wives for Social Clue in this forum, remind me of all that ....
You'd love our house. My husband does a lot of the politeness and delicate negotiation stuff, because I have a foot-shaped mouth and tend to say...things. He's also more patient with the kids than I am, and a better cook.
Meanwhile, the kids know that all broken things go to me, because "Mom fixes things". I cut the grass, balance the checkbook, build small stone walls.
On the other hand, I am also the only one who sews, and I do the laundry. My husband maintains the blogs and the wireless LAN.
Stereotypes kinda don't apply around our place. Even if my daughter loves pink.
abi, your house sounds like a wonderful place! If I visit, can you teach me to build small stone walls?
Xopher,
I've only actually built one small stone wall, though I am (as you can tell) inordinately proud of it. It turned a corner of garden frequently covered in mini-landslides of tanbark into a viable* outdoor seating area.
I'd need to build a few more before I could teach it. But we could build one together, and learn from it. There is required reading before we start.
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* Well, viable for Scotland, anyway. No stonemasonry short of a new house could solve the weather problem.
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