by Doctor Science
Eric’s recent post talked a little bit about the imbalance in US policy between negotiation (and the Department of State) and force (and the Department of Defense). I’m pretty sure I read something about it on another blog, too, one with comments (i.e. not Sullivan).
In the past couple of decades — since the fall of the Soviet Union, at least — I’ve seen US foreign policy fall more and more into a stance of: “We don’t negotiate with … anyone, really. Negotiation, or even talking to people, is for wimps.” But even more, it’s for women, and the stink of anxious masculinity is all over this.
I can’t help noticing that the last time a white male was US Secretary of State was January, 1997. Meanwhile, both Secretary of the Treasury and Secretary of Defense continue their unbroken records of White Dudes Only (hair optional).
I’m not saying that the Secretaries of State and Defense should be drawn from the same pool. It would be reasonable and effective for State to be the “Good Cop” and Defense the “Bad Cop”, for instance, and that may be part of the dynamic Presidents are trying to evoke. And of course there’s issue of the “where can we put a woman to show that we Really Care about having women in government? I know! She can talk to people! Women are good at that!”
But I don’t think that’s all that’s going on here. I also see what I call subtractive masculinity: the only *manly* activities, the ones that give you masculinity points[1], are things women do not do, or not well — peeing against a wall, for instance.
If you’re using a yin/yang or complementary spheres model of gender roles, then the more things women do — and even the more virtues women display — restricts what men can do for those critical masculinity points. Which means that, now that women have been Secretary of State, it can no longer be a sought-after post for manly manly men. It may be an important, prestigious job — theoretically — but it’s not *manly*, so it just doesn’t have the cachet of a Real Man Job.
It doesn’t make a difference that, of all the candidates in the 2008 Presidential election campaign, Hillary Clinton was the toughest one with the most metallic metaphorical balls. She can talk to people, she can negotiate, she can be tough or nice as the occasion demands, because she has no masculinity dangling delicately on the line. A man — especially a white man — in the job might have to huff and puff like John Bolton, making sure that everyone knows he doesn’t really believe in this namby-pamby stuff.
So basically, I blame the patriarchy — and not for the last time.
[1] I do not personally know what these are used for, but there is some evidence that they enhance the size and functionality of some body part or another. Ask your email spam filter.
It occurred to me when you mentioned Bolton that altho this is considered the height of masculine behavior, his worldview is also basically premised on peeing yourself every time you see eg someone with a Koran board an airplane. Sort of a “Im tough enough to be scared sh1tless of a dangerous world” attitude, and I’ve never quite managed to work out that contradiction in my head.
I don’t disagree with the point you are making, but it is worth considering that having Condi as Sec State in some ways weakened the position and made it even more a ‘woman’s’ position. I’ve just had a snootful of cold medicine, so this is probably even more disjointed than usual, but it seems to me that there is a marked difference between Clinton nominating Albright or Obama nominating Clinton and Bush nominating Rice.
A number of risible comments here: we don’t negotiate? Boys run the pentagon, it’s the patriarchy? Please. Much less egregious generalizations (I used the word Jihadist here once) get generic conservatives skewered from all sides, yet this will likely pass with nary a glance here. FWIW, force has been deployed against Saddam twice and against Al Qaeda and its affiliates since Berlin Wall fell. No one else.
Few here, even, argue that Gulf War I was a bad idea. The Iraq Invasion has been beat to death here and need not be revisited, but you can’t say there weren’t furious negotiations in the run up, including an offer to Saddam to step aside. Afghanistan was a consensus war that has lasted too long. The fault here is bipartisan.
If there is a female gender specific antidote to terror, please share it.
“If there is a female gender specific antidote to terror, please share it.”
Well, I’m a guy, so it’s not female gender specific, but maybe a good antidote to terror is to not flip the @$!# out and turn your entire country and large parts of the world upside down because of threats from a few haters living in caves. The damage we have done to ourselves, economically, militarily, psychologically, morally, and to our ideals far, far outweighs even the greatest damage Al Queda has done or could ever do.
McT, do you have any female candidates you’d like to suggest for Sec of Def?
I’d say the woman right now with the most qualifications & experience is Olympia Snowe.
Not playing at being McT, but there it is.
Her Wikipedia entry suggests that she’s one generation away from being a Spartan.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
maybe McT doesn’t have a female candidate he’d suggest for Sec of Def, because he doesn’t care what gonads his secretaries possess, but rather what actual relevant qualifications they have.
turn your entire country and large parts of the world upside down because of threats from a few haters living in caves.
Nate, how would you have handled Al Qaeda post 9-11, understanding that you wouldn’t have invaded Iraq? Seriously, what would you have done and can you demonstrate that your approach would have dealt more effectively with the threats posed?
McT, do you have any female candidates you’d like to suggest for Sec of Def?
Not off the top of my head, nor do I have a particular male candidate in mind, although why gender trumps competence is beyond me.
I am so sorry I hadn’t been following you when you wrote your article on “subtractive masculinity” because to some extent, I have believed that for well over a decade: the definition of masculinity varies from community to community, but one requirement is that it involve something that women do not do in large numbers. This is not because women are not “human” but because they are not MEN.
And this is important because men are primarily hierarchical – what ultimately matters is who has to respect whom, and who can decide for others. I have no doubt that most women would shake their heads and not get it, but it underlies most male interaction. In some communities, the behavior tends to be very negative: getting women pregnant as a sign of masculinity. In others it tends to be more positive – defending those weaker than yourself, or mastering complex subjects. But in pretty much all cases, it seems to me, if women begin doing something in large numbers, how can it possibly be masculine?
The idea of the State Department as feminine is kind of interesting, although I never thought of Colin Powell as particularly effeminate. The problem is that negotiation is hard – especially when the department and administration frequently construct largely erroneous models of how those with whom we choose to negotiate think. If you assume that Western culture and Western priorities are necessarily universal, and try to measure every other culture according to those standards, interacting with non-Western cultures, who have their own unique histories, beliefs, and priorities will often be fruitless.
First off, let me repeat, once more: Iraq had NOTHING to do with Al Queda, or with 9/11, so asking “how would I have handled Al Queda post 9/11, understanding that I wouldn’t have invaded Iraq?” is flat out silly. Al Queda was in Afghanistan, not Iraq.
Second, there’s no guarantee that 9/11 would have happened the same way with a different Administration in charge, given the Bush administration pulled lots of FBI resources off Al Queda when they took office.
Third, after 9/11, instead of useless security theater that’s done nothing except hurt our economy, scare our people, and make flying a pain in the ass, give real resources to law enforcement to continue methods that worked to catch people, rather than illegal wiretapping and detention.
Fourth, if there was no other option besides invading Afghanistan, which there may not have been, by not drawing down attention, resources, and troops to go after Iraq, that would likely have been more successful. And if we were going to invade, then things would have differed greatly with a different crew in charge, and Bin Laden might not have escaped, at which point he could be tried.
Fifth, even if everything else had been done exactly the same ways, avoiding the greatest crimes of the Bush administration would have helped make us safer too. No torture, no invasion of Iraq, no indefinite holding in Gitmo, no spending the rest of the time making the economy worse.
Can I demonstrate it? Sure, look at the threats we faced from terrorists before, and now, and do you think our current level of paranoia is justified? If you do think it’s justified to claim we’re strong enough to wet our pants every time somebody says “Boo!” can you demonstrate how that’s more successful than behaving like a confident, mature, civilization?
men are primarily hierarchical – what ultimately matters is who has to respect whom, and who can decide for others.
I await the onslaught of comments calling out this sexist over-generalization. I feel horribly marginalized. SF SF SF.
if women begin doing something in large numbers, how can it possibly be masculine
Seriously? What upper-body strength neutral activity are you referring to? And even then, we see more and more women doing, e.g. , front line construction work.
“This is not because women are not “human” but because they are not MEN” Yet you go straight to describing normal human behavior as male behavior. Don’t you think women “respect” those who can “master complex subjects” or will “defend those weaker than themselves”?
Then it follows that as women get to do more in society, “subtractive masculinity” means that only those things that women are not yet allowed to do are sufficiently masculine for a man. And it is indeed a case of not being allowed. Do you really think that there has not been a single non-male (or non-white) qualified for Sec of Def. Gender trumps competence indeed.
Iraq had NOTHING to do with Al Queda, or with 9/11, so asking “how would I have handled Al Queda post 9/11, understanding that I wouldn’t have invaded Iraq?” is flat out silly. Al Queda was in Afghanistan, not Iraq.
Understood, which is why it is unnecessary for you to tell me you wouldn’t have invaded Iraq. I got that part.
Second, there’s no guarantee that 9/11 would have happened the same way with a different Administration in charge, given the Bush administration pulled lots of FBI resources off Al Queda when they took office.
Sure. Everybody knows this.
give real resources to law enforcement to continue methods that worked to catch people, rather than illegal wiretapping and detention.
Please specify the “real resources” you are referring to here.
if there was no other option besides invading Afghanistan, which there may not have been, by not drawing down attention, resources, and troops to go after Iraq, that would likely have been more successful.
Agreed.
avoiding the greatest crimes of the Bush administration would have helped make us safer too.
Can you give one example of a Bush crime that made us less safe? Seriously, how many terrorist attacks did the US sustain post 9-11?
Sure, look at the threats we faced from terrorists before, and now, and do you think our current level of paranoia is justified? If you do think it’s justified to claim we’re strong enough to wet our pants every time somebody says “Boo!” can you demonstrate how that’s more successful than behaving like a confident, mature, civilization?
Uh, Nate, there were like 8-10 direct attacks against US citizens and institutions prior to 9-11. None of what we were doing then worked. Can you give me an example of a confident, mature civilization that sustained the equivalent of 9-11 and all that preceded it and acted substantially different than we did?
MckTex – I think you forgot the Bosnia adventure (post-Berlin Wall use of force). Was Panama post-wall? Also, Somalia.
Having said that… I’m not sure I blame the patriarchy for the (alleged, though it fits with my view) decline of State.
I think it’s possible the problem is somewhat different:
Maybe it’s less about being tough guys (though I certainly think there is plenty of that going on) and more about impatience. Results, damnit! MAKE IT SO! Negotiation can take time and often fails at producing the desired result. Meanwhile, the fantasy of military action (as opposed to the reality) is that it will be quick and produce exactly what we want.
The alternative theory*, of course, is the feminine pool of candidates for the White Dudes positions is smaller because fewer women see themselves “wanting” those roles, from a career planning perspective.
With a pool that is predominantly men then the “first” woman to get the job takes longer.
*Please note that this comment is as detailed in its factual basis as the post in terms of pool size, desire of women for a job that ends up qualifying them to be SecDef, the size of the pool of Goldman ex-employees that are women and want to be SecTreasury, etc.
I am always uncomfortable with “this is the way it is so this must be why” arguments.
I see one major problem with the concept that “real men don’t negotiate.” Perhaps the most truly macho President we have had said “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” [emphasis added] T
Today’s would-be he-men are really big on the second part. But far too insecure (IMHO) to accept the first part. Teddy wasn’t insecure, so he could speak softly and negotiate. But God help anyone foolish enough to call him a whimp.
In reply to Marty
How many people “want” a job they know they are not going to get or, if they do get it, know are not welcome and will be told they only got the job because they are of group X.
I think you forgot the Bosnia adventure (post-Berlin Wall use of force). Was Panama post-wall? Also, Somalia.
Correct on Bosnia and Somalia. Panama was under Reagan.
the fantasy of military action (as opposed to the reality) is that it will be quick and produce exactly what we want.
Another fantasy is that the US resorts to military force as a default position rather than as the end product of negotiations, sanctions, public debate and, with the exception of Bosnia and Somalia, congressional resolution.
And, occasionally, military force is quicker and more productive than negotiations: Bosnia, Panama, Gulf War I and the early phase of Afghanistan.
I share McK’s discomfort with male/female used as a metaphor in this post.
I do think that there is a divide between those who have the intestinal fortitude to engage in real negotiations and to make reasonable risk assessments and those who indulge in war-like posturings and actual warlike behavior (usually toward those they assume they can defeat easily). It’s the difference between real strength and mere bullying. It is the difference between actual stregnth and the desire to appear strong.
I don’t think the correlation between these modes of operation are to gender any more. Fifty years ago the correlation to gender might have been more valid, I think.
But I think that gender role assignments have evolved enough now that there are plenty of female bullies around and lots of men who are strong enough to think and reason.
I do believe that at this point in history the thinking and reasoning mode of operation is more closely correlated to Democrats and the bullying and postering to Republicans, though.
I don’t really think it’s a case of male/female being a metaphor in this post.
It’s more a case of perceived/stereotypical male/female characteristics being implemented in policy in reality.
Apart from that, what wonkie said.
The idea of the State Department as feminine is kind of interesting, although I never thought of Colin Powell as particularly effeminate.
For some reason this springs to mind.
On a more serious note, it’s interesting to see how this thread is developing. The notion that there’s an extremely strong gendered aspect to the distinction between military force (masculine) and negotiation and diplomacy (feminine) seems blindingly obvious to me. Fascinating to see how such a banal observation can make people so uncomfortable.
“Fascinating to see how such a banal observation can make people so uncomfortable.”
Fascinating too how refusal to slice things along gender lines seems like discomfort to others.
Fascinating to see how such a banal observation can make people so uncomfortable.
UK, until the last 50 years or so, diplomacy and the military were both exclusively male undertakings. The subtext of Dr. Sciene’s post, seconded by FuzzyFace, is that men, more in the past than today, default to force because they have control issues whereas women, lacking those issues, employ reason and suasion. If there is even a general rule that applies to either sex, it is so riddled with exceptions as to be hardly worth noting in the first place.
And still, no one has hammered FuzzyFace for this patently sexist comment: men are primarily hierarchical – what ultimately matters is who has to respect whom, and who can decide for others.
OK, Slarti, I get it. There is absolutely nothing to be gained from a gendered analysis of foreign or defense policy, or the way it’s treated in the media. Doctor Science’s reference to “anxious masculinity” is just so much silly feminist posturing over nothing.
Bowing out now. Have fun.
“The notion that there’s an extremely strong gendered aspect to the distinction between military force (masculine) and negotiation and diplomacy (feminine) seems blindingly obvious to me.”
Even if this is blindingly obvious, see Slart above, then that it would follow that women would strive to be SecState and not SecDef would seem equally blindingly obvious. Not to mention how successful they might be, based on those tendencies, at each job.
Neither of which is blindingly obvious to me.
McKinneyTexas,
Fuzzyface’s entire comment is made up of sexist and silly statements so I think people are just ignoring it. I’m very puzzled on why you think any of the liberal posters or commentators would agree with Fuzzyface.
But sure.
Men are no more naturally hierarchical then human being are naturally hierarchical.
I’m with McKinney – this is a pretty tired, and essentially substanceless trope about women being better at “people skills” and men needing to whip out their penises when dealing with others.
Is there some data to back this up? Data about how various administrations, or Cabinet-level people actually view Defense and State? Or if State’s (or any department’s) influence noticeably wanes when there is a woman in charge, and resurges when there is a man in charge?
“There is absolutely nothing to be gained from a gendered analysis of foreign or defense policy”
I didn’t say that. I failed to make my point, so please, let me try again:
Some people don’t tend to divide issues along gender lines. Your equation of that failure to divide issues along gender lines to fear is unwarranted, I think.
I’m feminist, and I certainly like to play with archetypes, but I don’t think the gender issue – intriguing as the idea is – is really much at work here.
One could flip the gender stereotype, after all, and say that the female maternal instinct is so fierce and protective that it would a natural fit for a Secretary of Defense.
But trying to ascribe feminine principles of power to female Secretaries of State fails, I think, because a whopping 33% of the available study sample was almost a charicature of the non-negotiating, non-intuitive, non-female principle model: Condi Rice.
She was primarily concerned with hierarchy, and where she fit into it; and with the mechanics of corporate-type power maneuvering, which is why she disregarded the warnings during the Summer of Threat: Clarke wasn’t properly respectful of her place in the hierarchy or of the process she had developed for getting items onto the group agenda.
She had little understanding of, and less interest in developing understanding of, cultural or social structures other than the one which had nurtured her. This made her a lousy negotiator – which was fine with her, because she thought negotiating was a sign of weakness. Thus her dismissive “They know what they need to do” when speaking of Arab/Muslim leaders.
Condi was neither masculine nor feminine in her use of power archetypes. Not sure what she was, actually, though I’ve always thought of her as a Heather type of person: cultivating popularity, meanness, and just enough knowledge to impress others.
Eric’s recent post talked a little bit about the imbalance in US policy between negotiation (and the Department of State) and force (and the Department of Defense). I’m pretty sure I read something about it on another blog, too, one with comments (i.e. not Sullivan).
I think the post you are referring to is this from Jim Henley:
http://bit.ly/btaSnq
Discussed on this site here:
http://bit.ly/bnbnKN
That gender plays a role in how the departments are perceived or their power or prominence has nothing to do with whether any actual real person adheres to stereotypes.
It never has.
People have no trouble at all basing their actions on gender analysis that is disproved by the very people they know. It’s one of those infuriating things about sexism.
That Ann Coulter lives her life in direct opposition to the way the Republican party states is “moral” does not hurt her popularity or platform.
That neither Rice nor Clinton are stereotypes doesn’t mean that stereotypes aren’t an important factor in how the department and perceptions work.
I’m very puzzled on why you think any of the liberal posters or commentators would agree with Fuzzyface.
I am about half kidding and half serious. An occasional complaint of mine is that liberal/progressives at this site are quick to take others, particularly conservatives, to task for imputing to any group a common characteristic, yet are blind to analogous behaviors when the behavior fits the liberal/progressive narrative. Mainly, I am mildly chiding the frequent, left-of-center commenters here about having failed to instantly and vigorously take FF to task. As they would if it were me, GOB, Marty or BB under similar circumstances.
McKinney: The whole point of Bin Laden’s plan was to get us to overreact and waste lots of money in an expensive invasion of Afghanistan. Which we almost beat his plan, until we invaded Iraq. Violent lashing out isn’t a surprising reaction on the part of anybody, or any country, but that doesn’t make it the right or productive thing to do in every case.
Aside from Iraq, and the many dead from there who can tell you about how we’re less safe, the crimes like torture and abduction are the worst thing when you’re trying to deal with something like an insurgency, because it blows up the narrative of “we’re the good guys”, and makes you just another set of foreign occupiers. It’s also a giant propaganda coup for our enemies, because it takes the things they say about hating us, and provides proof, and reasons.
As for safer, do you think we’re any safer because of taking off our shoes, or scanners that can look through clothes, or standing in lines for an hour or more at an airport? Especially given how many times and how easily these have been foiled by journalists and amateurs?
Another fantasy is that the US resorts to military force as a default position rather than as the end product of negotiations, sanctions, public debate and, with the exception of Bosnia and Somalia, congressional resolution.
And, occasionally, military force is quicker and more productive than negotiations: Bosnia, Panama, Gulf War I and the early phase of Afghanistan.
I don’t really think it’s much of a fantasy. Exaggeration, perhaps, but not fantasy. The US military sure gets used a lot if it’s really true that it’s only used after “the end product of negotiations, sanctions, public debate and [in some cases] congressional resolution.”
Iraq – Congress yes (fools, jerks, etc). Public debate? Ignored, shouted down. There was no real debate in the halls of power. They were going in, facts be damned. The freaking inspectors told them there were no WMDs and it didn’t matter. Default = war.
Afganistan – public debate in the wake of 9/11? Yeah right. Negotiations… to this day I’m unclear on exactly what was and was not done on that score. I recall hearing that we tried to negotiate with the Taliban but were rebuffed.
Not that I think going in was unjustified, mind you. We had a valid casus belli, IMO, and the issue now is really mission creep.
Bosnia – as you noted, no Congressional resolution. “Debate” was stifled by the whole “NEVAR AGAIN” line about genocide. The part where we ended up backing/protecting a bunch of real jerks who then proceeded to beat up on the Bosnian Serbs? Oh, details. Just send in the USAF!
Somalia – as you noted, no Congressional resolution. Billed as a humanitarian intervention, no? Was there much debate? I honestly don’t recall.
I don’t think it’s “fantasy” to imagine that the US government does a piss poor job of looking at non-military solutions to problems in the international arena.
I do think it’s fantastical to assert w/o evidence that it’s because of “the patriarchy.” I honestly don’t buy that a world run by women wouldn’t be just as militaristic.
“men are primarily hierarchical”
Is this from someone who hasn’t met women?
Fuzzyface’s entire comment is made up of sexist and silly statements
wrong. Just plain wrong. Are people so angered by the generalization about hierarchy that they ignored the rest?
fuzzyface says
the definition of masculinity varies from community to community, but one requirement is that it involve something that women do not do in large numbers.
I don’t find this very novel, I admit, but it’s true, and it’s relevant to the notion of the feminization of occupations. On that I’ll say, fairly uncontentiously, that feminized occupations/professions/posts tend to be, to become, downgraded. But also, it may be — to pick up on doctor science’s post — that their incumbents both are allowed to display more “female/feminine” characteristics, and are expected to. (In nursing, primary school teaching, medicine in Soviet Russia. Maybe.)
What I doubt is the applicability of all this to State after one female incumbent! If Cameron/Clegg/Miliband are less macho than male PMs before Thatcher, it is not because she held the post,it’s because of a cultural generational shift of which feminism is but a part. Actually, they aren’t really more macho than all the previous PMs. But their range of permitted behaviour is wider. Because gender expectations have changed, as they can change because — and I’m sure fuzzyface agrees — gender is a social construct that varies within and between societies and over time.
now to fuzzyface’s generalization. I disagree with it, but am convinced it isn’t a statement that men are “naturally” hierarchical. It’s a statement about gender, about culture, about ascribed gendered characteristics. And it could be true.
I am not a frequent commenter here, I am Left. I am a feminist. I don’t endorse doctor scientist’s post in full, by any means, as I think it may conflate sex and gender. But I certainly will defend most of what fuzzyface says. Fuzzyface’s basic model is really pretty clear (“definition of masculinity varies…”) and not contentious in any way.
Arcininan — “That neither Rice nor Clinton are stereotypes doesn’t mean that stereotypes aren’t an important factor in how the department and perceptions work.”
This. What is at issue here is not the gender of the people involved, but rather the way that the duties and attitudes involved in the departments are coded in our culture. It’s not about whether or not Clinton or Rice have the balls to be SecDef, but rather the way that our language and culture default to masculine modes when talking and thinking about the organized use of force.
PTL, you find this to be a valid, non-sexist observation:
men are primarily hierarchical – what ultimately matters is who has to respect whom, and who can decide for others.
Seriously, how many terrorist attacks did the US sustain post 9-11?
Well, there was the anthrax attacks, and Nidal, and several failed attempts in between.
Can you give me an example of a confident, mature civilization that sustained the equivalent of 9-11 and all that preceded it and acted substantially different than we did?
I’m not sure what the criteria are on all fronts, but Spain has withstood big attacks, and hasn’t seemed to adopt the massive security state/theater we have. Nor have they lashed out recklessly foreign policy wise (or internally against ETA).
Can you give one example of a Bush crime that made us less safe?
If you believe General Petraeus, torture, Gitmo and Abu Ghraib all contributed to radicalization of potential terrorists, and led to direct attacks against coalition forces/swelling of insurgent ranks that undoubtedly led to the deaths of soldiers.
Dunno if Iraq is technically a crime, but I think invading Iraq has made us less safe.
I agree with Rob in CT’s point that the use of the military is more about impatience than gender roles. My guess is that such impatience is a natural reaction to (a) the 4-year election cycle, which rewards short-term actions over long-term results, and (b) the increased power given over time to the executive branch (where one person is “the Decider”) at the expense of Congress.
(I ran into problems posting this, had to cut it.)
McKinneyTexas,I’d have thought my comment answered your question. Let me repeat, though, that the generalization is in my view a cultural one, about ascribed/taught/learned behaviour and beliefs, that I don’t believe it, that it might though be true. It might, that is, be true that by means of socialization and milieu, men are more likely than women to be “hierarchical”. If so, it would not be sexist to point it out. It is not I believe sexist to posit the possibility.
Anyway. I’d like to address a comment of yours. You say
The subtext of Dr. Sciene’s post, seconded by FuzzyFace, is that men, more in the past than today, default to force because they have control issues whereas women, lacking those issues, employ reason and suasion. If there is even a general rule that applies to either sex, it is so riddled with exceptions as to be hardly worth noting in the first place.
Now if this is the subtext, I reject it. (It doesn’t seem to me to be what doctor science means.) I think there may well be a case for saying that women are more likely than men to opt for suasion, simply because fewer women than men are powerful in the conventional sense of the term, though also because of upbringing. But I do not think that makes women “better”. My take on Hillary Clinton, in this context, is that she is allowed, that gender stereotyping allows her, a broader range of behaviour than a man of the same generation doing the same job. And for that reason she could be better suited to State than a man who is shackled by expectations of proper male behaviour and masculine norms.
And that is what doctor science is saying, I contend. It’s about social expectations, about stereotypes. It’s about men differing radically from one another but possibly being forced into stereotypical “male” behaviour because of (many) people’s expectations of men. Because of course, stereotypes have power.
PTL says:
My take on Hillary Clinton, in this context, is that she is allowed, that gender stereotyping allows her, a broader range of behaviour than a man of the same generation doing the same job.
I agree with this.
PTL then says:
And that is what doctor science is saying, I contend.
I disagree with this.
Here is a snippet from the original post:
Negotiation, or even talking to people, is for wimps.” But even more, it’s for women, and the stink of anxious masculinity is all over this.
Anxious masculinity? Seriously, this is the difference between State and Defense? Is anxious masculinity the analogue of hormonal femininity? I don’t see a cultural component here. This is straight up “men have masculinity issues that direct them away from jobs that women do well.”
I am sitting here, with a woman as a law partner and with three out of four associate attorneys working for us being women, a daughter getting an MBA, a sister outearning me brokering insurance for offshore drilling companies (flying by helicopter out to rigs, inspecting, hanging with the roughnecks,etc.), a wife with a degree in microbiology, fluent in three languages, functional in two more and very accomplished professionally and I am wondering what work would be left for men if we only chose jobs that weren’t “for women”, as Dr. Science put it.
The conclusion is wrong: men routinely do work that women also do and the premise, that they won’t do certain jobs that are traditionally and stereotypically viewed as female positions is wrong in every instance I can think of except possibly one. Two of the few jobs that come to mind in which women predominate, pre-school thru elementary education and nursing, are a function of inclination, i.e. few men are drawn to working with small children day in and day out, a larger but still relatively small number of men are interested in nursing. The only job I can think of that is stereotype-driven is secretarial/office assistant, but even that is becoming a thing of the past.
“It may be an important, prestigious job — theoretically — but it’s not *manly*, so it just doesn’t have the cachet of a Real Man Job.”
How does this account for Bill Richardson?
The idea of the State Department as feminine is kind of interesting, although I never thought of Colin Powell as particularly effeminate.
I dunno, Powell is apparently into Volvo
Two of the few jobs that come to mind in which women predominate, pre-school thru elementary education and nursing, are a function of inclination, i.e. few men are drawn to working with small children day in and day out, a larger but still relatively small number of men are interested in nursing.
Actually, I believe that is not inclination but because of specific societal constraints related to women. Teaching is one of the few jobs, back in the day, that you could work while your child was not at home and you had time to get back and fix supper. But even if you claim that it is inclination, aren’t you presenting a gendered view?
Nursing is an occupation that arose as an assistant to (male) doctors, and was considered a useful contribution to the war effort in that women couldn’t fight (cf Florence Nightingale)
Service occupations have generally been considered women’s work (note the previous prevalence of stewardess and the next time you fly, count the number of men in the flight crew and what they do)
You’ve really gotten a head of steam over what you feel are un-useful generalizations in the post, which is fine, but fury and anecdata are not really going to convince. I may be particularly unreceptive to your argument living where I do, but how different is you citing 3 or 4 women you know to pointing to 3 or 4 successful African Americans and claiming that there is no racial component in the US?
How does this account for Bill Richardson?
what about the beard?
But even if you claim that it is inclination, aren’t you presenting a gendered view?
I am. My experience is that far more women than men are interested in working with little kids. There are plenty of gender differences. I can’t think of any, other than strength, that are qualitatively superior.
I may be particularly unreceptive to your argument living where I do, but how different is you citing 3 or 4 women you know to pointing to 3 or 4 successful African Americans and claiming that there is no racial component in the US?
What I find most interesting and amusing about this is the ease with which sexist statements go unchallenged here if they fit the dominant narrative. Most here, including you, get quite worked up over even the possibility of sexism or racism or homophobia on the right. Yet when it goes the other way, ho hum.
So, noticing that certain behaviors, disciplines, jobs, and attributes are coded as belonging to certain genders in American culture (in any culture!) is now “sexism?” I . . . think that is not the case.
That’s a big leap there. Sexism and racism have a long history that you seem to blithely dismiss and when it is pointed out that these may influence perceptions, you lose it. There are several others here who are not completely convinced by the thesis and are discussing it, but you want the whole discussion ruled out of bounds. You claim that ‘even I’ get worked up over the ‘possibility of racism or sexism or homophobia on the right’, but that is a statement without content. I’ve said on several occasions that I don’t think anyone is perfectly free of biases and prejudices, so if I am pummeling people because they hold them, you can point them out to me and I can say that I was wrong. I do think that I get worked up when people on the right claim that there is no prejudice when they propose specific policies that impact a minority group disproportionately. But absent any actual words I have written, I really can’t address that. And I am certainly not going to defend the words of others when they haven’t even been stated for me to read.
This isn’t to yank your chain in any way, and I’ve previously stated my appreciation for your participation. And I apologize if I wasn’t able to follow up on my previous query about a female SecDef, though I would have suggested that the inability to come up with female candidates suggests an asymmetry worth exploring.
As I said, I live in a country that probably has more blatant sexism, so I am a bit sensitized to it, but I don’t get the dismissal of the notion that there are feminine characteristics and masculine characteristics and masculine characteristics tend to be valued over feminine ones, such that women who want to be successful need to adopt a certain level of masculinity that can, if taken too far, backfire. It also means that men who adopt some feminine characteristics are also going to get burned. If you disagree with that, that’s cool, I’m not trying to pick a fight with you. But if you disagree and want to convince me, you are going to need to do better than what you have been doing.
So, noticing that certain behaviors, disciplines, jobs, and attributes are coded as belonging to certain genders in American culture (in any culture!) is now “sexism?” I . . . think that is not the case.
Phil, did you read the thread? Carefully?
This is sexist:
Negotiation, or even talking to people, is for wimps.” But even more, it’s for women, and the stink of anxious masculinity is all over this.
This is sexist:
the more things women do — and even the more virtues women display — restricts what men can do for those critical masculinity points. Which means that, now that women have been Secretary of State, it can no longer be a sought-after post for manly manly men.
This is sexist.
men are primarily hierarchical – what ultimately matters is who has to respect whom, and who can decide for others. I have no doubt that most women would shake their heads and not get it, but it underlies most male interaction.
I mean, even though we’ve had women in the military for decades now, the military is still so heavily coded as “masculine” that we a large proportion of the population can’t stand the idea of letting openly gay men serve. And their arguments against it rely HEAVILY on masculine/feminine gender dichotomies.
Professional sports are tremendously coded as masculine, so much so that it’s pretty much taken as an article of faith that any woman in any of the major sports (LPGA, WNBA, etc.) is a lesbian.
Fashion and hairstyling are coded as feminine, such that any man working in those fields is assumed to be gay.
etc., etc., etc.
Examples of particular individuals working in particular fields does not remove the cultural bias of those fields as being gendered one way nor the other.
Around the house, cooking, cleaning, doing laundry and taking care of the kids is culturally considered “women’s work.” Repairing appliances, fixing the car, etc. is considered “man’s work.” That’s how our culture views them, regardless of who actually does them. That’s why cleaning product commercials are targeted towards women, and that’s why the movie is called [i]Mr. Mom[/i] and not [i]Mrs. Dad[/i], despite [i]both[/i] characters undergoing “role-reversals” in the film.
This is gender studies 101 stuff, and it’s hardly sexism to notice it.
I read an article that discussed this in terms of approaches to dealing with sexism. In the US, generally, great efforts were made to guarantee equality of opportunity. Jack can be a CEO? OK, Jane can be one too! Eliminating barriers to women entering traditionally male dominated fields was what was important.
In Europe, what was emphasized was making sure that women could participate in the workplace while still retaining their traditional roles. Hence, the opportunity for women to take maternity leave, have day care options, etc, are greatly expanded, especially in Scandinavian countries.
To my mind, the European model has been much more successful than the American. My family has had a few foreign exchange students back in the day who are now in their mid 40s, and they have been able to achieve a balance between work and home that American women the same age would only be able to do with a much larger level of income.
That should be I read an article long ago that I have no idea how to find…
This is sexist:
Negotiation, or even talking to people, is for wimps.” But even more, it’s for women, and the stink of anxious masculinity is all over this.
The first sentence most certainly is not, and anyone American who has lived through the GWB administrations and the Obama/McCain campaign couldn’t really believe so.
The second sentence, you can possibly make an argument that it is, but you have failed to do so. You’ve merely asserted it and expected us all to be cowed. Epic fail.
This is sexist:
the more things women do — and even the more virtues women display — restricts what men can do for those critical masculinity points. Which means that, now that women have been Secretary of State, it can no longer be a sought-after post for manly manly men.
I disagree completely. I think, in fact, that it’s absolutely correct.
This is sexist.
men are primarily hierarchical – what ultimately matters is who has to respect whom, and who can decide for others. I have no doubt that most women would shake their heads and not get it, but it underlies most male interaction.
It might be sexist. It’s certainly wrong, as anyone who has witnessed or read studies on how women tend to treat other women in the workplace can attest.
This same issue came up a week or two ago with regard to the “servant” thread.
liberal japonicus: My family has had a few foreign exchange students back in the day who are now in their mid 40s, and they have been able to achieve a balance between work and home that American women the same age would only be able to do with a much larger level of income.
Would that be because European women are still tasked with those duties, whereas in America, the larger level of income could have afforded “servants”?
Phil: “Around the house, cooking, cleaning, doing laundry and taking care of the kids is culturally considered ‘women’s work.’ Repairing appliances, fixing the car, etc. is considered ‘man’s work.'”
Again, revisiting the previous thread, if Phil’s list of “women’s work” is outsourced, it is to “servants” and is considered exploitative. Outsourcing “men’s work” is to laborers, and is morally neutral.
I think that Doctor Science’s point is that when women, in large numbers, assume a task, the task itself gradually becomes something that society somehow considers to be beneath “real men”. It’s certainly true that in today’s economy, women have the opportunity to achieve positions traditionally held by men, but the question Doctor Science raises is whether the value of the task is somehow diminished when it is associated with women. The fact that McKinney lists women he knows who have various jobs, traditionally associated with men doing them, proves that these women are considered exceptional, and that they’re doing work that, in his mind, is traditionally male.
Oh, puh-lease, McKinney Texas and the others who are getting all bunched up about this. Spend some time in the military and in the State department–as I have–and you will INEVITABLY hear aggressive action referred to as manly and negotiators as “pussies.” This is a common trope. The frantic denials here not only fly in the face of the evidence, but also miss the point. No one said there was a gender-specific way of handling terrorism. No one said a world run by women would be more peaceful. Doctor Science did say that in our current male-dominated society, war is stereotypically seen as male and negotiation as female. That is all.
The fact that McKinney lists women he knows who have various jobs, traditionally associated with men doing them, proves that these women are considered exceptional, and that they’re doing work that, in his mind, is traditionally male.
I listed the 7 women with whom I work and live most closely, not as examples of how exceptional women can overcome horrific barriers, but as examples of jobs women now do routinely yet men still continue to do them as well. I also intended to demonstrate how commonplace it is for women to do all kinds of work that was, until recently, predominantly male. I did this not to make some point about how far women have come, but to show, contra Dr. S’ thesis, that women doing traditionally male jobs doesn’t “feminize” the work and make it unattractive to men. The idea that it does is just wrong, whether its law, business, SecState or what have you.
Mckinney, those jobs are still predominantly male. I don’t think there will be an immediate diminishment of the value of those jobs as more women do them, but how many people who post on this list are bragging about their nurse sons, elementary school teacher husbands, child caring nephews, etc.? These women’s jobs, just like domestic “servant” jobs, are not considered prestigious. Maybe noble. Maybe wonderful. Maybe generous. Not prestigious.
Hi guys. Sorry for the delay getting back to this — I spent part of today with my eyes closed and mouth open, mediating upon the future of dentistry to distract myself. Soon I shall have a new, expensive crown! Isn’t that *exciting*?
Yeah. Anyway, when PT said:
I had to LOL. You must remember high school (and junior high or middle school, even more so) very differently than I do. If there’s a difference between males and females (in our culture) in this regard, it’s that girls are trained more thoroughly in social skills, so the girls’ hierarchies are more solid and harder to escape.
“I mean, even though we’ve had women in the military for decades now, the military is still so heavily coded as “masculine” that we a large proportion of the population can’t stand the idea of letting openly gay men serve.”
I’m not sure if it impacts the argument, but actually 70% of the population thinks that gay men should be allowed to serve openly. So few things get that much consensus in US politics, that it is deeply vexing that the legislature hasn’t made it so.
“actually 70% of the population thinks that gay men”
Just gay men? Just sayin’
Would that be because European women are still tasked with those duties, whereas in America, the larger level of income could have afforded “servants”?
That’s a good question, and I’m not sure what the answer is. But ‘still tasked with those duties’ is a loaded way of putting it. One could say that European nations made more allowances to women to help extend themselves rather than forcing them to choose between one situation or the other. And one of the backlash effects of the American style seems to be a weaker integration of women into various spheres of public life. Where the social democratic system is strongest, in the Nordic countries, the number of parliamentary seats held by women is 42%. here in the US, it is about half of that (22.5%) If I get time later, I’ll try and get some links to other stats.
That’s why cleaning product commercials are targeted towards women
99% of *all* tv commercials are targeted at women, since they make 80% of the buying decisions.
I just went to check Sebastian’s figures, and was surprised to see that this is not a terribly recent development, either.
But what you do see is that there’s a big gender gap — men are much more opposed to repealing DADT than women are, and since the media, Congress, and the military are mostly-male, what men — especially Southern men (who are way over-represented in both the military and the Senate) — want is what we all get.
David:
Exactly! Yes, that’s precisely what I’m talking about.
David, do you think this kind of talk has been constant for decades, or has it gotten more so recently? (for whatever value of “recently” you like)
@McKTx:
Correct on Bosnia and Somalia. Panama was under Reagan.
Actually, no. It was under Bush I. However, if you want to discuss whether it was “post-Wall”, I’m not sure I’d count it as such since it came, what, 40 days after the fall?
liberal japonicus, it’s my understanding that the European means of allowing women to “extend themselves” has been to offer them support through socialist programs for the “second shift” that most American women have to figure out for themselves. I am, as a matter of policy, in favor of the European model.
I’m not really arguing for or against that right now – I just think it’s ironic that we just had a discussion (the one started by Jacob Davies about servants) which touched on how certain positions in society become, because of gender identification, more “untouchable” than others. This is probably far afield of what Doctor Science was getting at, but it does seem that, all of a sudden, a macho would-be future president might want to build his career as Secretary of Defense rather than Secretary of State – because Secretary of State is for weenies or women.
Once women become strongly identified with certain job categories, those jobs become less prestigious. I argued in that other thread that employment as a household helper (cleaning, child care, etc.) shouldn’t be morally different than employment as a “mr. fix-it” or a landscaping person. For some reason, the whole thrust of that thread was that domestic work (women’s work) shouldn’t be outsourced because people shouldn’t have “servants” – servants, of course, being surrogate wives.
Sorry sapient, I glossed over your point about servant and linking it back to the other thread. I wasn’t in that thread so much, so I can’t really speak to it, but I don’t remember the notion of surrogate wives coming across so strongly. I’ll try to go back to it if I have a chance. I see a difference with hired-help that has job specific equipment versus using things around the house, in that your sunk costs in buying various equipment can be a problem. But that plugs into the power-tool culture as well.
Anyway, when PT said:
men are primarily hierarchical – what ultimately matters is who has to respect whom, and who can decide for others. I have no doubt that most women would shake their heads and not get it
I had to LOL. You must remember high school (and junior high or middle school, even more so) very differently than I do.
fuzzyface said that. My memories of primary school and grammar school tell me men are a lot more hierarchical (primary school male head, female teachers), women are a lot more hierarchical, men phenomenally egalitarian and relaxed (grammar school female head, only three male teachers). But that’s a male sample of three in a feminized profession, in a mixed primary school but a girls’ grammar school, so I wouldn’t generalise. Perhaps your memories are more valid?
(OK I am being sarcastic. I’m afraid I think that’s justified.)
Though I didn’t say it, I thought it could be true. My experiences, not my school experiences alone, my experiences over many years, in various institutional and non-institutional settings, do lead me to think there may be something in the generalisation. Let me add that I have always believed, for example,that women are every bit as competitive as men, we simply have competed, characteristically, in different ways and in different milieus. But it is, I think, a difference that makes a difference.
It could be “hierarchical” is similar. If we look at formal and informal hierarchies and define hierarchy loosely, it probably is. I do though still think there may be a difference, not a sex difference, a gender difference, a cultural difference, in who can decide for others. Why was the early second wave feminist movement so resolutely non-Leninist? (E.g.)
> Can you give one example of a Bush crime
> that made us less safe? Seriously, how many
> terrorist attacks did the US sustain post
> 9-11?
Ah, once again the anthrax attacks flushed down the memory hole…
Cranky
Seriously, how many terrorist attacks did the US sustain post 9-11?
well, using Bush’s definition (any attack on US interests, anywhere in the world, for any reason = terrorism), we’ve experienced hundreds and hundreds.
Sorry, late to the party.
Nate, how would you have handled Al Qaeda post 9-11, understanding that you wouldn’t have invaded Iraq?
Take Afghanistan seriously. Take our own heritage of civil rights seriously.
Thanks for the softball.
Can you give me an example of a confident, mature civilization that sustained the equivalent of 9-11 and all that preceded it and acted substantially different than we did?
The UK and Spain, in the face of direct Al Qaeda attacks in major cities, which killed a lot of people.
There are a lot of countries in the world that regularly experience acts of political terror without totally losing their sh*t.
I would say that we are the exceptions.
Regarding the original post, I think it’s fair to say that State focuses on negotiation and the DoD is more about blowing stuff up.
You can also sell me on the idea that human nature and consciousness runs a gamut from gentle and yielding to assertive, forceful, and dominating.
IMO it’s pretty problematic to connect all of that to the physical gender of whoever is running the shop.
And since we’re in these deep waters already, I’ll add my thought about “the patriarchy”. They will be worth approximately one nickel.
Institutions arise and exist because they serve a function. They go away when the function is no longer needed.
Purely off the top of my head, my intuition is that “the patriarchy” existed because it served a function. That function is likely now obsolete, so the institution is fading out.
I’m not sorry to see it go..
I put “the patriarchy” in square quotes not because I don’t think it’s a real thing, but because it covers so many different things.
The original post opined that State, having now been headed by a woman, would no longer be seen as appropriately male work. That is silly. There are countless jobs that both men and women do and men haven’t left any particular line of employment because women have begun participating in it. Finally, apparently it’s fine to generalize about men, or women, if the generalizations fit the narrative.
Often, the restatement tells us a lot
The original post opined that State, having now been headed by a woman, would no longer be seen as appropriately male work.
Dr Science wrote
Which means that, now that women have been Secretary of State, it can no longer be a sought-after post for manly manly men. (emphasis added)
So, “appropriately male work” is only “manly manly men” stuff. Must suck to think that.
“Spend some time in the military and in the State department–as I have–and you will INEVITABLY hear aggressive action referred to as manly and negotiators as “pussies.””
I bet you could inevitably hear that the iPhone is better than a Blackberry and the camo fatigues are much better thann the old ones, what generalizations should I draw form those?
I would be willing to bet(mind reading alert)that everyone here has heard those characterizations, and Dr. Science’s brass balls description of a woman. I just don’t belive that having a woman be the CEO of HP made it a job “manly” men would not want. The generalization is just to broad.
We may need some remedial gender studies info unleashed in here, since “masculine” and “feminine” do not necessarily have to do with “men” and “women” as such.
Seriously, how many terrorist attacks did the US sustain post 9-11?
Others covered the anthrax attacks, but let’s not forget the suicide attack via airplane on the IRS building and the assassination of Dr. Tiller. Or the fact it wasn’t invasions or security theater that stopped the underwear bomber or the shoe bomber, it was alert civilians on the flights they were on,
Hmmm. Invading Iraq made approximately 4500 servicemen way less safe, in that they’re dead (their number exceeding by a third the terrorist attack that brought on the war hysteria). Total wounded Americans number approximately 32000. As to the horrific number of Iraqi dead, wounded, etc., not sure how to correlate that with “our” safety, but I wouldn’t bet that it’s positive. And the money we spent? I’d much rather be in debt, as a country, because we were taking care of infrastructure, old and sick people, housing, the environment, etc. than because we waged war against a country that didn’t pose a threat to us. In other words, the financial fallout of Iraq certainly makes us “less safe.”
Once women become strongly identified with certain job categories, those jobs become less prestigious.
Really?
At the risk of arguing for a single specific instance, consider this: In California, both Senators are women. And it’s about even money that the next Governor will be a woman. (We may or may not change one Senator, but since both major candidates are women, that doesn’t impact the discussion.) And yet lots of men routinely struggle thru expensive primary campaigns, trying to get those jobs.
This is a loss of prestige? Funny way to show it?
This is a loss of prestige? Funny way to show it?
I have a feeling that it will be awhile before women find themselves in the majority in the Senate, or that the position of Senator is strongly identified with women. The percentage currently stands at 17% (the same as in the House, interestingly.)
Certainly as gender barriers are broken, the idea of one gender being “strongly identified” with a particular job category will diminish, and probably the associated stereotypes (and possibility of loss of prestige) will diminish with them. But if you’re arguing that there’s no correlation between the relative prestige of traditionally women’s jobs versus traditionally men’s jobs, you’ll lose that argument. And it’s pretty obvious that, historically, the job categories have lost prestige as women became dominant in those jobs. Think secretary, for example.
Right, secretary lost prestige when women came to dominate it . . . half a century ago. How about some examples from the last couple of decades?
Cultures, after all, change over time. Part of the discussion here is whether our (American, in this case) culture has changed in this regard or not. That means we need to look at jobs which have become dominated by women in the past few years (say 20 years, to be generous) and see if they have lost prestige. Or, if there have been any, jobs which have changed from being dominated by women to being dominated by men, and see if they have risen in prestige.
wj, that’s setting the proof bar kind of high, don’t you think?
wj, I can’t think of any profession in the last 20 years that has become dominated by women, can you? Sure, there are a whole lot more women in the workplace, and the workforce generally comprises a larger percentage of women, but I don’t know of a job category where women dominate. For example, as of the year 2000 (according to the ABA), 27% of lawyers were women. That’s a lot more than in 1980, when 8% were women, but women hardly can be said to dominate the legal profession. And even if the current percentages are roughly equal, and even if the percentage of women is slightly higher, women certainly don’t dominate, and certainly aren’t represented equally in the most powerful echelons. So your turn: where do women “dominate”?
Besides, I think it’s unrealistic to be able to identify a shift in prestige over a recent period of time. There’s no way to “prove” that the shift has occurred – you and I would have to agree that it has. Just as you apparently don’t agree that there’s been a change in the perception of Secretary of State as not quite as “manly” a job as it used to be, I doubt you’d agree that there’s been any other shift.
But sure, cultures change, and as I said in my last comment, there are a lot of gender biases that are mellowing, thanks to the numbers of women in the workforce, the lgtb rights movement, etc. Probably more women are employed than men at this moment. But that doesn’t mean that the attitudes about gender have disappeared or don’t exist. You can argue about how damaging they are, or how significant, but you’d be hard pressed to say they’re not there.
Perhaps my difficulty with the Secretary of State argument is that I am hard pressed to remember a Secretary of State (other than perhaps Kissinger) who served for any length of time and who was not regarded as insufficiently hard and aggressive (or whatever “manly” characteristic you want to suggest). At least by a significant portion of the population. (Admittedly, my personal memory only runs back to the late 1950s or early 1960s, and may well be flawed since.)
And that applies even when the Secretary of State was a decorated retired general (e.g. Powell). So I think it goes with the job description, not with the gender of the holder.
That’s fair, wj.
wj:
This is probably true, now that I think about it. What that means is that, essentially, Sec. of State already was somehow “feminine”, and that’s why it’s been so easy for Presidents to put women in that spot. Powell is an interesting case, because as a black man he, like the women, is not competing for exactly the same stakes a white man might be.
wj (and others):
When I think of jobs losing prestige when women do them, I think of stuff like The Atlantic’s very dumb “End of Men” article, where “men no longer dominate across the board” somehow gets translated to “there’s no purpose to men at all!! OHNOEZ!!!”
More realistically, among many young people it can seem that as girls do better (in high school and now in college), a lot of boys seem to lose interest in the very idea of academic success. Marion Burton Nelson describes the phenomenon as The Stronger Women Get, the More Men Love Football — and for most men in the US, war is like football: a violent spectator activity.
> So your turn: where do women “dominate”?
>
> Besides, I think it’s unrealistic to be
> able to identify a shift in prestige over a
> recent period of time.
Primary care physician.
Cranky
So your turn: where do women “dominate”?
Perhaps not dominating yet, but the trend is clear in pediatrics and maybe in the long run in medicine generally. In pediatrics the 50% line was reached around 2005.
Thanks, Cranky and ral. These physician are among the very lowest paid – pediatrics being the lowest paid specialty; internal medicine and family practice being even lower. Hmmmmm.
http://www.merritthawkins.com/pdf/2010revenuesurvey.pdf
Yes, but primary care physician (family practice) was much lower paid than specialists long before there were significant numbers of women doctors. Unless you are trying to argue that women go into those types of medicine because they are lower paying/lower status. Which seems like a real stretch.
There’s a current in US (at least) hypermasculinity that classifies diplomacy and negotiation as girly/faggy stuff.* That current runs more strongly at some times than at others, and post-9/11 it’s been running very strongly. (Probably the post-WWII Red Scare was another such time.) That black men and white and black women are now regarded as eligible for the Sec of State position probably has more to do with how recently they gained access to career tracks that made that position something they could reasonably aspire to. I just wonder how long it will be before we see another female Attorney General.
* Reminds me a bit of Principal Snyder: “My predecessor, Mr. Flutie, may have gone in for all that touchy-feely relating nonsense, but he was eaten. You’re in my world now. And Sunnydale has touched and felt for the last time.”
Historically there has been a shift back and forth on some professions. It was at the time seen as a scandal that Florence Nightingale went to the Crimea. Nursing the wounded was no job for delicate females. On the other hand you can go back at least as far as Euripides finding female complaints about the ridiculousness of the female=weak&men=strong or to the Biblical Book of Judges to find females accepted in ‘manly ‘ positions (unquestioned).
Cultural perceptions are imo more often than not originally based on actual differences between males and females but culture works as a disproportionate and often distorting multiplier.
Still waiting for the small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri weighing in on the subject.
This blog really needs more genderless elementals posting on the front page.
and for most men in the US, war is like football: a violent spectator activity.
I now know that in Progressive Land, this is not a sexist statement, merely an accurate description of a condition as it actually exists.
Now, if we were to rework this statement to describe “most” Muslim men, would we be crossing any forbidden lines?
There’s a current in US (at least) hypermasculinity that classifies diplomacy and negotiation as girly/faggy stuff.
Since there are 300mm of us, there is probably someone somewhere who holds this view. But if this is directed at people who question whether diplomacy alone is likely to be effective with, e.g., Iran, then really it’s more of an ad hominem slam on people who disagree with ‘diplomacy only’ approach.
and for most men in the US, war is like football: a violent spectator activity.
I now know that in Progressive Land, this is not a sexist statement, merely an accurate description of a condition as it actually exists.
What’s your counterstatement? That for most men in the US, war is an activity in which they actively participate? Because we all know that’s manifestly untrue.
Since there are 300mm of us, there is probably someone somewhere who holds this view.
300mm hypermasculine people? That seems on the high side.
But if this is directed at people who question whether diplomacy alone is likely to be effective with, e.g., Iran, then really it’s more of an ad hominem slam on people who disagree with ‘diplomacy only’ approach.
Maybe I’m wrong about this, but it seems to me that there isn’t much of a “diplomacy only” push. I thought it was “let’s do diplomacy” in opposition to the previous administration’s “no diplomacy at all” stance. Even if you oppose sanctions, I don’t think it makes you a “diplomacy only” advocate.
Even if you oppose sanctions, I don’t think it makes you a “diplomacy only” advocate.
What else would there be, if sanctions are not on the table?
What else would there be, if sanctions are not on the table?
It is hard to know. We can’t recall our ambassador or expel theirs, because there are no such people. We can’t impose our own sanctions or freeze Iranian assets in the US, because we already did that. The position we’re currently in comes out of a continuing refusal to engage in the usual practices of diplomacy. I’m not sure how continuing that refusal leads to a good outcome. And I’m not sure how an effort to find out whether there’s anything Iran wants from us that it won’t hurt us to give them that will lead to a worse place than where we are now.
What else would there be, if sanctions are not on the table?
I guess it would depend on how broadly you define diplomacy and sanctions. Off the top of my head, there’s intelligence gathering, propaganda, economic pressures that don’t involve actual sanctions and which might be positive or negative. I’m no foreign-policy expert by any stretch, and I managed to come up with some stuff. Imagine what someone with actual expertise could manage.
The position we’re currently in comes out of a continuing refusal to engage in the usual practices of diplomacy.
Assuming, of course, that had we been more diplomatic earlier, all would be, if not well now, at least better. That’s a bit of a leap. Some people can’t be reasoned with. However, making the attempt is worth the effort, because, at a minimum, if it fails, at least that question will be resolved.
I now know that in Progressive Land, this is not a sexist statement, merely an accurate description of a condition as it actually exists.
link
Yeah, nothing to see here…
I am completely baffled how saying “for most men in the US, war is like football: a violent spectator activity” is sexist. Most American men aren’t in the military; most don’t play football. Both activities are violent. Where do we disagree?
But if this is directed at people who question whether diplomacy alone is likely to be effective with, e.g., Iran,
Disagreeing about the uses of diplomacy in any particular situation is not the point. The point is that there’s a great deal of rhetoric that calls diplomacy or anything nonviolent “girly” or “faggy”, and that equates the use of military force with masculine prowess. Is this something you don’t see?
It might help if diplomacy is not just seen as onerous but alas mandatory kabuki before fire can be opened. It was obvious to anyone willing to take an even casual look that Chain-Eye/Bush’s ‘diplomacy’ was just that.
That might also play a role in the discrediting of the diplomatic profession. “We want to whack them next Monday. Could you keep them occupied until then? It would also be nice, if you could provoke them to say something to justify or Monday whack in the eyes of the rubes.” Good faith negotiation has become quite a rarity these days it seems. (Yes, I am aware that there is nothing new about bad faith negotiation since the Romans made it the central element of their foreign policy).
I am completely baffled how saying “for most men in the US, war is like football: a violent spectator activity” is sexist. Most American men aren’t in the military; most don’t play football. Both activities are violent. Where do we disagree?
We disagree that most men view war as a violent spectator sport. We disagree that you or anyone can make this kind of a broad, all encompassing statement about most men in the US and be anything but sexist. Your observation isn’t value-neutral or descriptive of common physical characteristics. I could say “for most women in the US sex is like money, it is a means to an end.” Would you be offended if this was a commonly held view of women? I would.
But if this is directed at people who question whether diplomacy alone is likely to be effective with, e.g., Iran,
Disagreeing about the uses of diplomacy in any particular situation is not the point. The point is that there’s a great deal of rhetoric that calls diplomacy or anything nonviolent “girly” or “faggy”, and that equates the use of military force with masculine prowess. Is this something you don’t see?
Admittedly, I don’t stay plugged in much to the daily news, and if what you describe is in anyway widespread, I’ve managed to miss it altogether. I’ll be on the look out for it. My sense, though, is that what you describe requires a lot of mind reading and subtext analysis.
HSH–your points make sense. It seems to me, though, that what what we are talking about is a discrete foreign affairs/national security issue with a specific country–most likely Iran–in which one school of thought is that Iran with a nuke cannot be tolerated and the other school is that it can. Within this broad debate, you have one extreme calling for an invasion. The other would limit any US activity to “diplomacy only”. A subset of this faction, to the extent it can be identified, has a historical link with the nuclear freeze movement, unilateral disarmament and a variety of other semi and outright pacifist activities that, to the more historically realistic comes across as weakness. I am not aware of any reputable strategic or military school of thought that equates pacifism with sexual orientation or femininity.
I’m kind of with McKinney on the question of men viewing war as spectator sport.
The John Birch Party that is about to take the House of Representatives has done a good job of recruiting women as well into the ranks of war spectators.
On the other hand, if Christine O’Donnell should make it to Congress and have her way with legislation to establish the illegality and unconstitutionality of masturbation, this could sharply reduce the number of spectators, mainly of the blogging variety; ie at Redvermin (incentives being what they are) of both sexes who, let us say, have been afforded the ability to grasp the nettle of war with only one hand.
I think we can all agree, can we not, that given biological differences in most men and women (forgive my generalization) that men who spectate from war’s sidelines, tend to be ready to spectate the slaughter again and again and again at 20-minute intervals, while women can go days or weeks between skirmishes.
Although the fascist FOX blondes seem to be a more lively bunch.
We disagree that most men view war as a violent spectator sport.
Ah, I think I see the problem. DocSci didn’t say that most men in the US *view* war as a violent spectator activity (“sport” is your word); she said that for most men in the US, it *is* a violent spectator activity, in the sense that they’ve never engaged in combat on official behalf of the US. They’ve read about it and watched filmed representations of it, but they haven’t actually done it. In that sense it is pretty much a common physical trait, or at least a condition over which they have no control (enlisting is not a guarantee that you will ever see combat). I didn’t read her as saying that not having been in combat makes them worse or better persons.
Hogan–this may be a distinction that one could draw if the purpose was to find a non-sexist meaning in Dr. S’ post. However, the post taken as a whole displays a clear “men have issues with women doing certain jobs and once women encroach on ‘men’s work’, it ceases to be manly”. This is in the context of the unstated but clearly intended thrust that feminine negotiations are superior to masculine war making. This is sexist in two ways. First, it holds that men prefer war to peace, which is simply wrong. Second, it implies that women lack the intelligence or insight or ability to act forcefully if circumstances require.
The larger point I’ve been trying to make from the outset is that Progressives have their own issues when it comes to bias and prejudice. It’s an insidious process. Not very many commenters here are actually agreeing with Dr. S. Rather, they aren’t saying anything or are trying to find a non-sexist take on her position. Mainly, it’s the deafening silence I find fascinating.
If someone wrote about Muslims or any ethnic group the way Dr. S writes about men, the high moral dudgeon here would be off the charts.
McKinneyTexas: “We disagree that most men view war as a violent spectator sport. We disagree that you or anyone can make this kind of a broad, all encompassing statement about most men in the US and be anything but sexist.”
“As” does too much work in that first sentence, and is problematic. People view things in many ways simultaneously and in different contexts. Most men do distinguish between the risks of professional football and the risks of being in the infantry in Kandahar.
However, war games are highly popular with many men (and some women), and quite obviously aspects of war, if not war itself, can and are seen as spectator sports in a sports context (a shooting tournament, running, jumping, etc.).
I’d write more about this, but I have to try to squeeze in some Modern Warfare 2 time to see if I can finally get to some Company of Heroes, which I haven’t played in months.
“We disagree that you or anyone can make this kind of a broad, all encompassing statement about most men in the US and be anything but sexist.”
Computer and other war games, including first person shooters, are played far more heavily by men than women: true, false, or sexist observation?
Also, you slipped “all ecompassing” in there to describe a non-all-encompassing statement, which doesn’t strengthen your argument.
To recapitulate: Dr. Science writes: “…for most men in the US, war is like football: a violent spectator activity….”
You write that “We disagree that most men view war as a violent spectator sport.”
But Dr. Science never said that most men view war as a sport. Would you perhaps like to try again to identify the disagreement?
One last paw, back to Dr. Science: “Which means that, now that women have been Secretary of State, it can no longer be a sought-after post for manly manly men.”
This does little to explain Richard Holbrooke, and seems difficult to support as a factual claim. Is it a serious claim? Surely not? Hyperbole?
I’d also have to note suggesting that negotiating is wimpy and wussy diplomacy, versus the manly virtues of war and threats, have hardly needed an actual female Secretary of State for this imagery, and set of bureaucratic conflicts at times, to have existed.
On the flip side of that, it’s not been infrequent for the Secretary of War and State to flip jobs, so the distinction can’t be overwhelming, either. Traditionally, after all, it’s Ministers of State who threaten war, not Ministers of War, who merely run them.
In short, I’d say that there’s always been something to the vague premise that “Defense[/War] is to State as masculine is to feminine.”
On the other hand, to be blunter, I’d suggest that the statement “Which means that, now that women have been Secretary of State, it can no longer be a sought-after post for manly manly mens” goes sufficiently far in over-statement as to be demonstrably false.
Lots of men, although I have no measure of how manly they may be, very much desire as their life’s goal to be Secretary of State. Seriously, William J. Burns doesn’t want to be SecState? John Kerry didn’t desperately seek to be Secretary of State? Richard Holbrooke hasn’t been lobbying since Bill Clinton left office to be Secretary of State? Bill Richardson wouldn’t like to be?
I also am going to go out on a limb and theorize that neither the first nor second women SecDefs are going to cease causing men to desire the job.
I’m not taking issue with Dr. Science’s general theory. But the single sentence that “Which means that, now that women have been Secretary of State, it can no longer be a sought-after post for manly manly mens….” doesn’t seem accurate.
“First, it holds that men prefer war to peace, which is simply wrong.”
Where do you get your stats from on that?
“If someone wrote about Muslims or any ethnic group the way Dr. S writes about men, the high moral dudgeon here would be off the charts.”
As always turns out to be the case, definitionally those in more powerful positions are not in mirror positions with those in less powerful positions.
These sociological “If only X were treated like Y” analogies fail when it turns out that X and Y are not, in fact, in similar positions of power.
“If someone wrote about a tiny group of weak and powerless persecuted people in a country the way Dr. S writes about the majority with the historic power, who until recently kept the others literally enslaved, or without the right to even own property, sign legal documents, or vote, the high moral dudgeon here would be off the charts.”
Yeah, maybe.
Or possibly you’re imagining an equivalency in history, and to a lesser degree in the present, that is fantasy.
These sociological “If only X were treated like Y” analogies fail when it turns out that X and Y are not, in fact, in similar positions of power.
Gary, when you have to parse as heroically as you have done here, you make my point. Further, the subtext in the quoted portion above holds that prejudice is invidious only if the victim is relatively powerless. This gives progressives a big pass on prejudice simply by defining those they lump together and vilify or demean as historically powerful. That works fine inside the cocoon but undercuts the hell out of the high moral ground progressives ascribe to themselves for those of us on the outside looking in.
“Gary, when you have to parse as heroically as you have done here, you make my point.”
I’ve been making it constantly since 4th grade, when I observed it, so I think you owe me a cup of coffee or something for such nearly-lifelong heroic support of the notion that the false mirror analogy is a fallacy.
Maintaining that all relationships pre-exist as equal mirrors is absolutely crucial to refusing to examine any and all power relationships in society, though.
Which isn’t to say that one need be immensely willful if one swims in a sea of privilege. By nature, privilege tends to be invisible, or at least not accorded significance.
Insisting that all relationships are mirrors of power is to beg the question of whether there are unequal power relationships between people in groups when treated as groups.
And to insist that to recognize that people can exist in groups is to insist that they only exist in groups, and not also as individuals, is simply a straw man.
Your statement: “If someone wrote about Muslims or any ethnic group the way Dr. S writes about men, the high moral dudgeon here would be off the charts.”
One doesn’t have to parse at all heroically to observe that in American society in 2010, men are not regarded similarly to Muslims.
Huge crowds have not been assembling to protest places of worship being built by men near places where people were killed by other men. Large numbers of Americans are not convinced that men are out to spread maleness at the point of a gun. Naming a project is not generally taken as a sign of men’s desire to signal triumph in war over women.
There are, it turns out, quite a few ways in which being a Muslim and being a man cause you to be treated differently in American society.
You say I “have to parse as heroically as you have done here” to make these observations.
So, please, could you explain how it is that “Muslims” and “men” hold equal power in American society, must be spoken of as holding identical power, and perhaps explain why one would have to parse particularly heroically to simply disagree with your assertion that “men” and “Muslims or any ethnic group” must be written of as if they hold identical amounts of political, economic, cultural, or any other kind of, power in American society?
“First, it holds that men prefer war to peace, which is simply wrong.”
I would still interested in your source of statistics on that, please.
“The larger point I’ve been trying to make from the outset is that Progressives have their own issues when it comes to bias and prejudice.”
For what it’s worth, this is simply too vague for me to address; I’m not ignoring it. I’m hardly going to defend any and every statement made by anyone self-or-otherwise proclaimed a “progressive” on any subject, nor would I deny that every human being is a mass of prejudices and biases, and neither would I deny that there are liberal/left/progressive biases and myths, but where does that acknowledgement leave us if we don’t bother discussing, in the case of anyone’s prejudices, specfics?
I’m curious: would you agree or disagree with the statement that there is still enough sexism in general American society to make life as a woman noticiably more difficult, more often than not, than for a man?
Note that I’m not asking such other questions as if women are disadvantaged in every way, or there aren’t some advantages to being a woman, or that being a woman is not a crippling disadvantage, or that a woman can’t succeed nowadays in most endeavors, or if women aren’t in fact a majority, or any of a series of other questions that might be vaguely associated in someone’s mind with the question I did ask.
this may be a distinction that one could draw if the purpose was to find a non-sexist meaning in Dr. S’ post.
I thought my purpose was to figure out what she meant, but OK.
Let’s suppose that a description of masculinity is not necessarily intended as a literal description of the psychology and behavior of most men, but could be meant as a description of a normative model (“how a man is supposed to act”), one of many such in circulation (along with normative models of femininity), variable along dimensions such as history, geography, class, and profession. Let’s further suppose that those models show many different degreess of formal elaboration (written vs. unwritten, say), and that they get into circulation in different ways (some are taught in schools, others are picked up on street corners). It would make sense that these models would compete as well as cooperate with each other, and might even take to differentiating themselves both from each other and from corresponding models of femininity through binary oppositions (butch/femme, Athens/Sparta, Rocky/Ivan Drago). (It’s probably also true that these models compete within individuals as well as across them, since different models provide different guidelines.)
If all that is true, then a description of one such model as “manly manly men” or “hypermasculine” is even less intended to characterize all or most men, but to identify that model as an outlier, an extreme point along a continuum. It guides a certain number of men’s behavior at a certain number of times, but it probably doesn’t guide most men’s behavior most of the time.
“Hypermasculine” indicates, to me, a clearer concept than “manly manly men,” whose degree of irony/jargonality/exaggeratedness/realism/generalness/narrowness I couldn’t easily judge.
If all that is true, then a description of one such model as “manly manly men” or “hypermasculine” is even less intended to characterize all or most men, but to identify that model as an outlier, an extreme point along a continuum. It guides a certain number of men’s behavior at a certain number of times, but it probably doesn’t guide most men’s behavior most of the time.
This works until you consider her statement about “most men in the US . . . ”
Thank you, Hogan. Yes, when I say “masculine” or “feminine” I’m referring to a role or image: e.g. how to walk “like a man” instead of just “being a man and walking”. “Manly manly men” was meant to be a humorous exaggeration: men will still want to be SoS, but it won’t have that panache, the aura that says, “This is a job for … A Man!”
McK, for an example of the rhetoric I’m talking about, see A Hug Too Far: Obama-Emanuel Embrace Is a Sign of Weakness — by Laddy Kudlow, *not* The Onion. Or you can read some of the coverage of G.W. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” flight suit — and if you read Maureen Dowd’s description of how Bush had an “ejection harness between his legs” right the first time, you definitely have a cleaner mind than mine.
In addition to the points Gary brought up, I remember that drinking games were invented within the first day or so of Desert Storm, when the whole world was watching a war — with real people being really killed — in real time.
So, please, could you explain how it is that “Muslims” and “men” hold equal power in American society, must be spoken of as holding identical power, and perhaps explain why one would have to parse particularly heroically to simply disagree with your assertion that “men” and “Muslims or any ethnic group” must be written of as if they hold identical amounts of political, economic, cultural, or any other kind of, power in American society?
I made no such assertion. You read too much and see too little in what I am saying. My point was simply that generalizations about Muslims bring, at this site, immediate and widespread condemnation. Not Muslims in the US, but Muslims in general, worldwide so to speak. Not a power issue, simply a matter of generalizing about a class held by progressives in a different regard than “men in the US.”
“First, it holds that men prefer war to peace, which is simply wrong.”
I would still interested in your source of statistics on that, please.
You ask me for a cite to prove a negative? Sure, I have plenty of those. Lacking a cite to prove a negative, consider this: if men generally preferred war to peace, then war would a constant state, a constant condition, not just in isolated locales, but virtually everywhere. It isn’t.
Dr. S, it is fine to talk about macho men and false bravado, essentially a caricature of being a man, but if that was the point of your post, it was a subtle point indeed. Anytime anyone writes, “most men in the US . . .” have this or that attitude or viewpoint, unless it’s concluded with something self-evident like “prefer pants to skirts” or “like women” or “enjoy sports”, the author invites a charge of sexism.
Your general premise was in error. You misapprehend men if you think they care whether women can do the same or similar work. Some men do, some don’t, and most who are fathers are glad their daughters have the same opportunities as their sons.
And sure, some people glory in violence. We have this barbaric “ultimate fighting” or some such. Why it’s even legal baffles, but that’s the product of having so many people–get enough people, and even the outliers become a sizable group. The error lies in confusing visibility with commonality. They are manifestly not one in the same.
Like it or not, drinking games are constantly being invented (and destroyed, sometimes) while people are being killed. I’d have said also while people are not being killed, but I’m not sure there is any such time.
“My point was simply that generalizations about Muslims bring, at this site, immediate and widespread condemnation.”
Well, no, you had a good number of other points I’ve responded to, and which you’re now ignoring.
Specifically, you wrote here at 1:05 p.m.
I asked you to support this claim. Your response is that:
But, as we see, your claim wasn’t that men are so war-crazy that they’ll engage in it at all times. Your actual claim was that it’s sexist to suggest that “men prefer war to peace” compared to women.
Again, I’d ask for a source of stats on that from anyone. Me, I don’t know what most men and most women think, nor what circumstances might change their thinking on a given issue. But I’m not the one making assertions here.
However, I will go out on a limb and suggest that there are unlikely to be a majority of statistical surveys demonstrating that women tend to favor going to war more often than men do. I may be wrong, and therefore I’m making a sexist assumption.
However, you directly stated to Dr. Science that you “disagree that you or anyone can make this kind of a broad, all encompassing statement about most men in the US and be anything but sexist.”
And you’ve said that “This is sexist in two ways. First, it holds that men prefer war to peace, which is simply wrong.”
I have now also suggested that men may be more likely to support going to war than woment tend to be, and that men tend to play war games more than women tend to. Am I saying something significantly different than what Dr. Science is saying, or can I be nothing but sexist in these suggestions?
Please pick one? Thanks.
And to return to an unanswered point: You wrote that “We disagree that most men view war as a violent spectator sport.”
But Dr. Science never said that most men view war as a sport. She wrote:
You responded:
This is non-responsive, since you’re not disagreeing with what she wrote. Few activities are “sports.” It’s just not what she wrote.
So, to repeat: would you perhaps like to try again to identify the disagreement, since it’s not that she wrote that “most men view war as a violent spectator sport,” because she didn’t write that. So: actual disagreement?
Also, again:
Silence I haven’t the least engaged in. Moreover, I find most things written here on the weekend meet with silence, but drawing conclusions from that might be unwise. Really, if I started listing all the questions I’ve ever asked you that you’ve responded to only with silence, we could be here for quite some time, but my assumption is that you have more important things to do than answer all my questions or show up here to answer anyone’s questions, or show up here all the time, period.
Again: you’re drawing a direct equivalency here in saying that Dr. Science is making sexist statements about men in a way that if anyone here wrote about “Muslims or any ethnic group, the way Dr. S writes about men, the high moral dudgeon here would be off the charts,” BUT, your “point was simply that generalizations about Muslims bring, at this site, immediate and widespread condemnation” but in no way is it appropriate or accurate to say you’re drawing any equivalency between the sets of “men” and “Muslims or any other ethnic groups.”
Do I have that right?
You wrote that there’s no “power issue” between the classes of “men” and “Muslims or any ethnic group”, but “simply a matter of generalizing about a class held by progressives in a different regard than ‘men in the US.'”
There’s no power issue? Did I miss a rally in downtown Manhattan the other week declaiming how men can’t be allowed to build a building project because they’re men?
A position that, if there’s no power difference, means that a huge portion of the U.S. population agrees?
Anytime anyone writes, “most men in the US . . .” have this or that attitude or viewpoint,
Well, yes, but that’s not what she wrote. What she wrote is that most men in the US don’t have this or that experience. Which is literally and provably the case.
if men generally preferred war to peace, then war would a constant state, a constant condition, not just in isolated locales, but virtually everywhere. It isn’t.
Harumph. Please name all the years since 1946 in which the US military was not actively involved in shooting someone, someplace. Show your work.
Still, it’s nice to see you sticking up for men here. They’ve been the underdog for way too long.
Perhaps next time, we can discuss why there’s no White History Month.
Well, the deafening silence over the past twelve hours over what I wrote is obviously entirely telling! And fascinating! Yes, it’s the the deafening silence I find fascinating. It really proves something, doesn’t it?
Something?
The lack of high moral dudgeon is just fascinating!
If I just keep repeating this, it’ll be true eventually!
Look how fascinating this deafness is! It hasn’t ended yet!
Clearly we can draw many conclusions from the fact that it’s been over 18 hours since I asked McKinneyTexas if computer and other war games, including first person shooters, are played far more heavily by men than women: true, false, or sexist observation?
And the silence has been deafening!
So obviously he’s wrong and I’m right.
Or something. But this whole “silence = proof” reasoning is great stuff.
This is for McKinney Texas, albeit he seems to have gone away.
First a conciliatory note. I think I misread fuzzyface somewhat, I’ll backtrack on supporting that comment.
Now. The data, the data, show and have shown for decades, a “gender gap” in support for war, going to war, the use of “war” to resolve disputes; a gap in the US and elsewhere. The US gap is small and narrowing, and there are (somewhat isolated) findings that suggest it does not anyway show women are more peaceable than men. But it is there. “Most men”, well, I lack the time even to try to check the data properly. Sorry. But “men rather than women”? Without a doubt. I assume something like this lies behind doctor science’s football/men/war comment, though I can’t be sure.
and for most men in the US, war is like football: a violent spectator activity.
Hogan, this is what Dr. S wrote.
Gary–you parse far too energetically for me. “Like” and “as” are synonyms. Football is a sport. Dr. S compares football to war. She describes football as an activity. Activity and sport in her sentence are synonymous. I don’t have a cite for the proposition that men prefer peace to war. I don’t care that young men play war games on their Play Stations or whatever they are called.
So obviously he’s wrong and I’m right.
Or something. But this whole “silence = proof” reasoning is great stuff.
My bride and I are hosting a small group away from Houston. I had and still have other committments.
A position that, if there’s no power difference, means that a huge portion of the U.S. population agrees?
Honestly, I am not following you. Maybe not enough coffee yet.
The data, the data, show and have shown for decades, a “gender gap” in support for war, going to war, the use of “war” to resolve disputes; a gap in the US and elsewhere. The US gap is small and narrowing, and there are (somewhat isolated) findings that suggest it does not anyway show women are more peaceable than men. But it is there.
This comports with my understanding as well.
I am completely baffled how saying “for most men in the US, war is like football: a violent spectator activity” is sexist.
Late to the party, but I’m generally with McKinney here.
If the point is that most men in the US have no direct experience of war, then it’s sufficient to just say that.
There are miles of daylight between “no direct experience” and “spectator activity”.
A “spectator activity” is something you engage in deliberately, because you wish to. While the literal meaning doesn’t require it, the usus loquendi is that it’s something done as a form of entertainment. And I’m sure Doctor Science is aware of the normal usage.
I don’t have numbers, but my intuition is that the number of men in the US who deliberately seek out images of war – real war, not war movies or first person shooter games – for entertainment purposes is significantly short of “most”.
Last but not least, there is, amazingly enough and all too sadly, no lack of bloodthirsty women in the world.
With regard to the original post, I remember reading an article a while back that discussed the sociological changes that had come along with women achieving positions of high executive responsibility. The article focussed on executive responsibility in business, but IMO the same phenomenon appears in other contexts as well.
The thrust of the piece was that, rather than “big business” being made a kinder, gentler place by the emergence of female executive leadership, the women had simply acquired (or, perhaps, been selected for) characteristics that we normally think of as being “masculine”.
Tough, assertive, willing to use power to achieve their goals.
Maybe it ain’t people’s physical plumbing as much as the structural power relationships that create the attitudes and behaviors.
If you want to call that “patriarchy”, that’s your call, but women appear to be quite good at it, too.
It is the natural function of the DoD to use or threaten the use of force, and (hopefully) the natural function of the DoS to prefer to not use force if it can be avoided. If you like, you might see parallels between those two functions and qualities that we think of as “masculine” and “feminine”. It really is, at least IMVHO, a yin and yang world.
IMO, however, it’s problematic in the extreme to go from there to very broad statements about the 150 million plus people who live in this country who happen to be of male gender.
I’m not sure if Dr. Science is writing directly from a viewpoint informed by feminist writings on war and hierarchy, and it would be useful to ask. I still think that McT is, for reasons only known to himself, wants to make this a question of progressive hypocrisy rather than trying to understand where Dr. Science is coming from. And if you are interested in why a progressive like myself rejects this criticism, it goes to the questions of power differentials that have been mentioned a number of times. To point out these things against a group that has or tends to enjoy to upper hand in power relationships is not the same as pointing it out against some minority that has always had the short end of the stick. Thus there is a functional non-equivalency between making an observation about men in general versus making one about Muslims or whatever. If you don’t see this asymmetry in power, I’m not sure what I could bring forward to explain.
At any rate, the question has morphed from the relative desirability of State Sec v. Defense Sec to questions about combat, and desire for war as related to gender. While bloodthirstiness is not a male specific trait, one wonders if an organization that were majority women would be different than one that merely has women go into to replace men at certain visible points.
As far as the questions of combat, I strongly recommend two books, Hedges ‘War is a force that gives us meaning’ and Shay’s ‘Achilles in Vietnam’. Neither of these is offered as evidence that men are more or less whatever than women, but I do like the books for the explanation of how war is a basic part of human nature. I’m not as sanguine as Russell is about the percentages of American men who might seek out watching or participating in violence, but then again, the Ultimate Combat that McTex feels should be illegal, I’ve dabbled various versions of that, and at a certain point, it is learning about your own limitations rather than imagining how much pain one can inflict on other people, though I knew folks who were interested in the latter, though that wasn’t my cup of tea. But I don’t have stats to back that up, that’s just an observation, based on the people I’ve met and hung out with. But the US has a pretty unique history in terms of dealing with the actual possibility of combat here or very close, so I wouldn’t dismiss it as impossible that US men could be equally susceptible as partisans of one of the various sides in Bosnia or doing something more forceful in a place like Rwanda.
thank you, McKinneyTexas. The question then is perhaps whether
for most men in the US, war is like football: a violent spectator activity
could justifiably be based on that. My major problem is, I don’t really know what it means, beyond the obvious (more men are active followers of football/rugby/soccer, more men, too, support wars) so can’t begin to assess it. It is however, in my view, a stretch to think codes of masculinity and femininity have no effect.
russell
Maybe it ain’t people’s physical plumbing as much as the structural power relationships that create the attitudes and behaviors.
there’s also, crucially, cultural meaning and learning (“gender”). Our attitudes and behaviours are variously influenced and produced, but have been subject to or judged by a largely dichotomous model of gender. I suppose someone here may be talking about “physical plumbing”, I’ve seen no sign, though, of that.
As usual, Russell gets to the nub (albeit of a virtually meaningless disagreement, but such is the nature of the internet and family dinner table conversation after the second glass of wine) of the matter, particularly in the area of executive leadership, and I would expand that to any old supervisory position.
Some random thoughts — I’m fascinated by the similarity in attire in professional settings shared by men and women. There’s a kind of uniform which erases physical differences, which has an upside I suppose, but at the same time, as in the military, brings everyone into the mood of a male-seeming atmosphere, I mean, besides the identically male-tailored uniforms, everyone (males and females) talks the same and by that I mean a barking kind of monotone, the voice in the lower male registers — you don’t see anyone during a GI inspection responding as Blanche Dubois might “I prefer the delmarvia blue for my M-16 clips” and spinning a parasol above their heads, though if there was more of that sort of stereotypical feminization in all cultures, maybe there would be less slaughter, or maybe the slaughter would take longer because you had to stab the other folks with the end of your parasol, instead of wiping them out with more efficient weapons designed mostly by guys who marveled at the engineering elegance of the Gatling gun while watching old movies in their bathrobes as kids.
Instead, men and women are off to the front lines for the slaughter and some of them return to sing drinking songs which contain (unless everyone is Irish) no high harmonies.
I’m always struck by the professional way of talking — deep down in the throat, monotone — “we need to reallocate those resources to their optimum logistical areas of maximum efficiency, blah, blah, blah, blah blah …” and my reaction, even when I’m the one droning on, is to want to shout out a Jerry Lewis “Klaven!” to break the ridiculous self-importance of the moment.
But I guess that’s not a male-female deal — it’s vaudeville and I missed my time and calling.
At any rate, if the business environment could be feminized (I’m all for it, even if it is a stereotype) I’d expect to see unemployment drop to zero (in days) as people raise their hands in corporate board meetings and suggest in a normal conversational tone that the private sector ought to hire EVERYONE on a per-capita basis (those last two words intoned in a businesslike drone), big corporations hire lots of people, little companies hire a few according to their means —-
— but instead we get Carly Fiorina storming around Hewlett Packard bellowing “Off with their heads!” like the Queen of Hearts or General Patton and then running for Governor with orotund promises of many more heads to roll — and I think to myself I could have that from any old bullet-headed sh*thead who overestimates the size of his d*ck.
How bout we all have cupcakes instead and do what is nice and right for a change instead of what is practical and maximizes profitability.
Don’t answer that or explain it and then wonder why gummint needs to ameliorate the situation. In fact, shut up, he barked, because I’m not in the mood, being recently unemployed and feeling very male about the whole effing situation.
Fiorina is running for Senator — Meg Whitman is running for Governor.
Both probably very capable men who have never once thought the alternative to “let them eat cake” is to make smaller but more numerous portions for everyone — cupcakes!
McT, you’re inventing subtext in the post.
For most women in the US war is also a violent spectator activity. I can’t imagine Dr. Science would disagree with this statement. That wasn’t relevant to the point she was making, which was about men’s perception but yes it is also true.
Russell — I don’t have numbers, but my intuition is that the number of men in the US who deliberately seek out images of war – real war, not war movies or first person shooter games – for entertainment purposes is significantly short of “most”.
Not sure that the distinction between real war and entertainment is warranted here, not because there is no difference, but because the group you are talking about realizes that there is a difference but has a very shallow understanding of what those differences are and is unsure how to acquire better knowledge. I know this because I’ve got a classroom full of them right now talking about this very thing.
Other relevant data point — of the 20 people in the class about half of them play military shooters, the class is about 60/40 male/female and of the group who play (or have ever played) shooter games only one of them is female.
Ask any of them what real war is like and you will get answers based on media images or you get the answers they have been given by friends who were in the military. More often than not those friends compared combat to either movies or video games in talking about the experience.
LJ — While bloodthirstiness is not a male specific trait, one wonders if an organization that were majority women would be different than one that merely has women go into to replace men at certain visible points.
I’d go farther and say that it’s not enough to compare majority numbers. Instead we have to go to institutions that are culturally coded as male or female and specifically to those which are traditionally coded that way vs those that have undergone a change in coding at a particular point in the culture’s history. Nursing is probably one of those. Teaching is likely another. Maybe auto repair…
State sanctioned violence is absolutely one of these.
Like the book recommendations that LJ made. I’d add Leo Braudy’s From Chivalry to Terrorism into the mix. It’s not flawless, but it does do a good job of tracking the ties between culture, gender, and public attitudes towards war and soldiers.
Not sure that the distinction between real war and entertainment is warranted here
I make the difference between watching a war movie and watching actual footage of warfare for entertainment to be something akin to the difference between watching a movie in which a character is killed and watching a snuff film.
I make the difference between first person shooters and a real experience of war to be more or less the difference between going to the zoo vs, frex, meeting a lion or polar bear in real life, on their turf.
Haven’t actually been in a war myself, so I could be wrong about all of this. But that’s my take.
Look, I actually agree with (what I take to be) Dr Science’s point that American foreign policy is stupidly and unnecessarily aggressive.
I also think it’s not unreasonable to see a correlation between male and female gender and human tendencies toward aggression and forcefulness vs gentleness and a more conciliatory approach to life. And allow me to emphasize, bold, and underline “not unreasonable” and “tendencies”.
But I think it’s really reductive to see a strong correlation, let alone cause and effect, between those things and the fact that the Sec of Defense is a guy, and the Sec of State is a woman.
Further, I actually think that making arguments like that only encourages and strengthens the kind of gender bias that the post is nominally opposed to.
I have a lot of respect for Dr Science’s point of view generally, I just think “blame it on the patriarchy” is, in this case, weak sauce.
If we had a woman Secretary of Defense, my money says we would still have an aggressive foreign policy. It was our first female Secretary of State, Madeleine Allbright, who famously asked “reluctant warrior” Colin Powell what our wonderful military was for if we weren’t going to use it.
There are other, and IMVHO larger, things at play here than gender politics.
Russell — If we had a woman Secretary of Defense, my money says we would still have an aggressive foreign policy. It was our first female Secretary of State, Madeleine Allbright, who famously asked “reluctant warrior” Colin Powell what our wonderful military was for if we weren’t going to use it.
There are other, and IMVHO larger, things at play here than gender politics.
I think this is more a matter of paradigms than actual disagreement. I agree with most of what you are arguing here, but I think your understanding of what ‘patriarchy’ means is different from the way a lot of us are using the term. It’s not that an institution is patriarchial because it is dominated by men, it’s that in a patriarchial system individuals are empowered by acting in a way that has been culturally coded as masculine. The sex and gender of those individuals is secondary.
It’s not that a woman cannot be a good SecDef. It’s that a culturally typical female — one that hits all the cultural markers for what it means to be feminine — does not fit the set of traits we look for in a SecDef.
I’d take Allbright’s statement as evidence that she understood how to operate in a patriarchial system and not be dismissed as being too soft for the job.
“I agree with most of what you are arguing here, but I think your understanding of what ‘patriarchy’ means is different from the way a lot of us are using the term.”
A patriarchy means men in charge, there are no gender “models” associated with the term.
or from Merriam-Webster:
: social organization marked by the supremacy of the father in the clan or family, the legal dependence of wives and children, and the reckoning of descent and inheritance in the male line; broadly : control by men of a disproportionately large share of power
I am not sure how youy can be appropriately using it in this way
What does Merriam-Webster have to say re: facepalm?
(Oh, Marty. Never change. Pls.)
Marty: “A patriarchy means men in charge, there are no gender ‘models’ associated with the term.”
Marty, there’s an entire topic here. It’s a major field of academic studies, and gender studies is not an insignificant topic, either.
It would be helpful to read a few books on feminist theory before discussing feminist theory, and I’m afraid there’s just no two ways about that, if one wants to avoid deliberately having no idea what one is talking about.
To be sure, your interest certainly may not extend to reading a book on the topic, let alone five or six or more. I’m simply suggesting that doing the equivalent of coming to a discussion of critiquing the design of a proposed 50-story building and jumping in by announcing that bricks are made of straw and you see no mention of “bricks” involved in this building, so obviously everyone else doesn’t know what they’re talking about as regards gender studies or use of the term “patriarchy,” might perhaps not be the best approach.
That’s the equivalent of what you’re doing here by announcing that you have absolutely no idea what anyone means by “patriarchy” beyond what you find when you look the word up in a dictionary.
You don’t have to agree with anything you read about feminist theory — goddess knows that feminists have no trouble disagreeing like mad — but if you want to talk about a topic, a bit of knowledge of the terminology, context, and history of the origin of the terminology, is very useful.
Thanks for the update Gary, but I have read a few books and, going back to Doc’s “I blame it on the patriarchy”, and “most men”, I think she clearly referenced the power structure in the dictionary definition.
The rest of these comments have been basic goalpost moving to defend the point.
As fascist John Birch Republicans take over the U.S. Government, I expect more “masculine” behavior like this ….
http://www.alaskadispatch.com/dispatches/news/7186-breaking-alaska-dispatch-editor-detained-at-miller-event
… from both the male and female vermin recruited by Sarah Death Palin, Erick Erickson, Moe Lane, and the rest of the subhuman, anti-American Republican establishment to become the norm in what was once the United States.
Reporters really should arm and defend themselves with AK-47s at Republican events.
Maybe reporters and citizens will get that chance at Republican events next year, if Republican filth have the courage to appear in public as they murder Americans.
I wish I had been that reporter. I wish I had been the reporter who Carl Paladino had threatened to take out.
I think she clearly referenced the power structure in the dictionary definition.
Next thing you know, Marty will tell us that because he knows the alphabet and as every argument consists of various arrangments of those elements, he’s got it covered.
Shorter Marty at 10:37 PM (ET):
“I am aware of all academic traditions.”
This tedious digression does seem to prove one thing: Apparently many right-leaning individuals, long and proudly scornful of feminazism, still have a simplistic, toddler-esque appreciation for gender (which, btw, is a social construct, hence Doc’s point re: agents of patriarchal oppression not requiring (cis)man-bits).
Is absolutely precious to witness.
See, the question I have is not why traits that are socially coded as masculine are rewarded. Or, maybe, vice versa.
The question I have is why *stupid, destructive* traits are rewarded.
Also, it may be interesting to talk about Masculinity and Feminity as abstract, theoretical social constructs, but what I would submit is that doing so is just participating in the same game of “coding” that you’re objecting to.
To me, it’s sufficient to just say that an unnecessarily aggressive foreign policy is stupid and unproductive.
You don’t change unjust power structures by enshrining them in a theoretical apparatus, complete with academic cottage industry.
You change unjust power structures by changing people’s attitudes and behaviors, starting with your own.
And to some degree, power structures are inevitable, and are invariably unjust to somebody or other. Life’s a moving target, at best we are going to have to settle for a continuing game of fine tuning.
My two cents.
What we ought to be about, IMVHO, is encouraging people to be who they are.
Some people are inclined to be gentle encouraging nurturers, and some people are inclined to be full-on viking warriors. Most people are some kind of blend. Physical gender is, really, kind of orthogonal. It is, at most, a contributing factor.
Seriously, if women (physical gender) ruled the world as it stands right now, the issues and dynamics would not be very different.
And, if we lived in a wonderful non-hierarchical egalitarian non-violent world ruled by consensus, we’d just have a bunch of other issues of power and its use to sort out.
Last but not least, I would also point out that the wonderful non-hierarchical etc. world is *invariably* “socially coded” as matriarchal, not least by scholars of gender studies.
How come the nice world is the “girl” one, and the crappy, violent, competitive, brutal, and real one that we all have to wake up and live in every day is the “boy” one?
I think I see an unjust social construct at work here. Just saying.
If you don’t want to live in a world warped by bias-inducing social constructs, don’t engage in them. If you want to live in a world free from the limits of constricting gender categories, put aside constricting gender categories.
I appreciate the contributions of feminism and gender studies, but if they’re just gonna be another lens that lets some folks say “mine’s better”, I’m not sure any progress has been made.
concerning real war vs. war as entertainment:
I think for quite some time the difference has been deliberately blurred as just another means to make war more acceptable. One could say it started long ago when it became less and less necessary to face the enemy directly due to the development of efficient long range weapons. It’s easier to pull the trigger on a blur in the sights than beating the same person to death with a club. Then it was dropping bombs from ever greater height or firing rockets while keeping out of range of counterfire. Now it’s people sitting in comfy chairs in front of video screens killing people thousands of miles away by drone strike. I heard (no first hand experience, so it might not be true*) that the interface is deliberately styled like a shooter game.
From the other direction video games increase in realism up to giving physical feedback to your controls.
The media also have a tendency to display combat footage in a videogamey way. the public reaction would likely be different, if we had to witness US soldiers hacking Iraqis/Afghanis to pieces with medieval gear in all details.
—
In this context one should mention that there are attempts to re-heroize the drone warriors demanding that they also should be awarded with ‘bravery’ decorations (because it is not their fault that they are out of reach of any enemy that could harm them).
Combat has to be heroic to be valued (otherwise it is just killing or even murder/slaughter) and warrior heroism is traditionally associated with males.**
*the dialogue in the infamous Iraq helicopter video seems to imply that the pilots feel like in a video game.
**Female warriors in literature (and reality) were always considered to be the exception, as females taking the role of males.
You seem to be wrestling with straw-feminists, russell, rather than engaging with what has actually been said here.
Who claims that any hierarchal power structure, matriarchal or otherwise, is going to be “better”, rather than different? It’s patriarchal thinking (and, quite frankly, insulting) to presume that feminists want to ‘replace’ or take over the current system, especially with an “academic cottage industry” (hide the children — the gender studies professors are coming!)
Now, perhaps I’m mistaken, and russell is in fact well-versed in actual feminist theories, rather than those touted by bitter anti-feminists ever-eager to demonize the hairy-legged bra-burning set. But regardless, it should be clear that the point isn’t to replace the patriarchy with another system of oppression, pink and beflowered — it’s to smash patriarchy, “if I had a hammer…”, etc.
Social constructionism is simply a lens to highlight the fact that certain things (like gender norms) are not, in fact, set in stone, but can indeed be changed (as you prescribe). It’s not meant as the method, nor the means, merely a message.
The hard goddamn work comes after that.
Look, if you believe that any alternative to the status quo is destined to merely be patriarchy in a gingham dress with Ani Difranco as a soundtrack, well, hey, give the angry strawfeminists in your head a fist-bump for me.
Methinks by singling out the right I made the mistake that McKinneyTX has been bemoaning throughout his earnest threadjack: giving progressives a free pass for epic fail. Considering what tends to occur whenever feminism, much like race, is introduced to the very male-dominated environs of ObWi (ie, apologia and outright ignorance), I should indeed have known better.
Always start with 101.
How come the nice world is the “girl” one, and the crappy, violent, competitive, brutal, and real one that we all have to wake up and live in every day is the “boy” one?
because of a simple boring empirical observation that it has, historically, been men who held positions of social, economic and political power. Because therefore, most of those observed encouraging or even encouraging others to engage in brutal behaviour have been men. Because women have traditionally been raped as an act of war and conquest. Because “sissy” is a term of abuse. And so on.
And because having tried “we’re equal/the same” and found it wanting, many feminists — not all — emphasized the “nice/nurturing” instead.
That’s a bit basic but then, compressing decades of feminist work and struggle and writing into this space is a bit difficult…
because of a simple boring empirical observation that it has, historically, been men who held positions of social, economic and political power. Because therefore, most of those observed encouraging or even encouraging others to engage in brutal behaviour have been men. Because women have traditionally been raped as an act of war and conquest. Because “sissy” is a term of abuse. And so on.
Pshh. That’s crazytalk. You crazytalkin’ sexist, you.
Now, perhaps I’m mistaken, and russell is in fact well-versed in actual feminist theories, rather than those touted by bitter anti-feminists ever-eager to demonize the hairy-legged bra-burning set. But regardless, it should be clear that the point isn’t to replace the patriarchy with another system of oppression, pink and beflowered — it’s to smash patriarchy, “if I had a hammer…”, etc.
My exposure to feminist theory is pretty much only in places where that intersects with other things I’m interested in. In other words, it’s extremely limited.
Net/net, I’m not really responding to feminist theory, as much as I’m responding to claims people are making for it here.
Look, if you equate eliminating unjust or oppressive power structures with smashing the “patriarchy”, then you’re saying there is some connection between being male and the unjust acquisition and use of power.
You can say it’s really not about being male per se, the gender aspect is just a social construct. To me, that’s equivalent to saying anything bad is kinda male, and anything good is kinda female.
In other words, *you* are applying a gender-based “social coding” to certain kinds of human behavior, and doing so complete with a value hierarchy attached.
You can’t have it both ways. Either the negative stuff you don’t like is a function of actual human maleness, or it’s not and you just want to ascribe maleness to it, for whatever reason.
Both just seem like additional exercises in sexism. I don’t see that any useful ground has been gained.
My two cents, nothing more and nothing less.
I don’t mind taking a look at your 101 stuff, maybe it will open my eyes to a world of considerations that hadn’t occurred to me.
because of a simple boring empirical observation that it has, historically, been men who held positions of social, economic and political power.
That’s certainly true of the political and social tradition we live in. It’s less true of others.
What I’m arguing is that virtually all historical forms of human political organization tend toward unequal distributions of power.
The fact that, in our particular culture, men tend to hold positions of power and authority is, as you note, clearly and obviously so.
The conclusion that the unjust use of power is somehow a function of the gender of whoever is driving the bus is far less clear to me.
There have been a lot of power-hungry, bloodthirsty women in history. You could make the argument that they only behaved as they did because they were required to function in a male-oriented power structure. I’d counter that when people, period, are required to function in inequitable power structures, it f**ks them up.
I’m not sure all that much is gained, in either understanding or usefulness, to attach “gender coding” to all of that.
In other words, I’d like feminist theorists to either show their work, or else consider that gender is less of a determining factor in social inequity than they might think.
I’m all for a less competitive, more cooperative, less hierarchical, more egalitarian society. I’m all for not rewarding stupid human tendencies like aggression, greed, and violence.
I just don’t see anything inherently male or female about it. And I’m not sure there’s a lot of value in ascribing “male” or “female” gender categories, whether physically based or culturally determined, to any of it.
Doing so just seems like a perpetuation of the exact kind of sexist thinking folks object to.
That is the sum and total of my point here, nothing more, nothing less.
The conclusion that the unjust use of power is somehow a function of the gender of whoever is driving the bus is far less clear to me.
Russell, you are doing something here that the people you are trying to respond to are not doing. You are equating biological sex with gender. Feminists don’t equate the two.
It’s not about biological bits or natural tendencies, it’s about the way that, historically, people have built narratives about sexual difference and build cultural niches into which people are supposed to fit in order to justify or explain these inequalities you point to as somehow natural. It’s not that men = bad, it’s that men + unequal structures built around cultural myths of natural difference = raw deal for *not*men. Men see this as an attack on them because they identify with the privileges that they enjoy due to their position in the system.
Attacking patriarchy does not mean saying that men are bad. It just means that we need to find better ways to build a culture so that being female isn’t an automatic disadvantage and having the corresponding advantages that accrue to (some) males is seen as a natural outcome.
You get it when it comes to class warfare. Why is this any different?
it’s about the way that, historically, people have built narratives about sexual difference and build cultural niches into which people are supposed to fit in order to justify or explain these inequalities you point to as somehow natural.
Noted.
I’ll do some homework before making (further) assumptions about what feminists / gender theorists are trying to say.
I will say that arguing that US foreign policy is a species of “insecure masculinity” seems, to me, overly reductive. There are a lot of factors at play, historical meta-narratives about gender roles do not, I think, get at the heart of the matter. My opinion only.
That’s certainly true of the political and social tradition we live in. It’s less true of others.
I’m not convinced, russell, that that’s so, but as I don’t equate biological sex and gender, am in fact something of an extreme non-reductionist, there’s no great need to argue about it.
– I think nous has said what needs to be said on the general issue.
On the specific one
I will say that arguing that US foreign policy is a species of “insecure masculinity” seems, to me, overly reductive. There are a lot of factors at play,
there certainly are a lot of factors, I agree entirely. I read the post as saying “masculinity” and “femininity”, cultural expectations of men and women politicians, were relevant to styles of foreign policy implementation. I don’t actually agree with everything in the post, but that’s another story.
I will say that arguing that US foreign policy is a species of “insecure masculinity” seems, to me, overly reductive.
I agree. But I don’t think that noting that at least some public discussion of US foreign policy is driven by insecure masculinity, or the manipulation of insecure masculinity, is overly reductive.
I’m not convinced, russell, that that’s so
You might find the Iroquois or Haudenosaunee worth a look. They’re kind of a footnote now, but in their prime they basically ruled most of northeast North America.
No small feat.
Marija Gimbutas would say that gender equity was the norm in northern Europe through the Neolithic. It’s a controversial point, lots of folks disagree, but she makes a reasonable case.
Damned Kurgans.
Not looking to further an argument here, just thought you might find either or both topics of interest.
I don’t think that noting that at least some public discussion of US foreign policy is driven by insecure masculinity, or the manipulation of insecure masculinity, is overly reductive.
You’ll get no argument from me on that.
“Now it’s people sitting in comfy chairs in front of video screens killing people thousands of miles away by drone strike. I heard (no first hand experience, so it might not be true*) that the interface is deliberately styled like a shooter game.”
I don’t know what that means. It’s not as if points and scores are run up.
The more realistic First Person Shooter games, wuch as the Modern Warfare or Call of Duty franchises, have tended to strive for as much realism in presentation as is practical within the limitations of fulfilling the primary goals of game-playing (e.g.., not being realistic to the point of being boring.)
Video otherwise mostly looks like video. Decide for yourself.
I’m tending to back away from the general discussion in this post, which I’ve not addressed in the first place, because while I have a lot of interest in discussion of feminist theory, and a lot of interest in discussion of foreign policy and defense theory, I also strongly tend to prefer to focus on specifics, and I’m not sure where the general discussion leads to many specific, say, policy recommendations, or graspable insights as to what questions should be asked at confirmation hearings, or something similarly practicable.
On the other hand, just because I tend not to be a Big Theory guy in many things doesn’t mean I think other people shouldn’t do that necessary and valuable work, so y’all go to it.
I’m not sure where the general discussion leads to many specific, say, policy recommendations, or graspable insights as to what questions should be asked at confirmation hearings, or something similarly practicable.
It doesn’t; it’s much more meta than that. It leads more towards reflections on how we evaluate policy options, and wondering why, when people say “What would John Wayne do?”, they always mean John Wayne in The Searchers, not John Wayne in Fort Apache.
Men see this as an attack on them because they identify with the privileges that they enjoy due to their position in the system.
Or they don’t – because some of us are fully capable of acknowledging and criticizing such meta-narratives, which is why lumping all “men” together in yet another meta-narrative called “gender” is a tad annoying.
Novakant said it much better than I did.
You might find the Iroquois or Haudenosaunee worth a look.
I should have said, sorry, “in advanced industrial societies”. Anyway. I didn’t know about the Iriquois, who inspired, I see, Lucrecia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Thank you. I’m looking up Gimbutas, I’m familiar with that kind of view (Goddess culture, peaceful matriarchy/matricentrism, superseded by warlike patriarchy) though it’s Lerner I know, but I’ve never known the material well.
Or they don’t – because some of us are fully capable of acknowledging and criticizing such meta-narrative…
Or you assumed that ‘men’ in that sentence was a categorical rather than a simple plural. Not that reading ‘some’ vs. ‘all’ is likely to change your blanket dismissal.
Scalzi: Things I Don’t Have to Think About Today.
McKinneyTexas:
Exactly. Thus my point that conclusions drawn from “silence” in response to something written here are meaningless.
Having said that, let’s go back: I’m curious: would you agree or disagree with the statement that there is still enough sexism in general American society to make life as a woman noticiably more difficult, more often than not, than for a man?
Note that I’m not asking such other questions as if women are disadvantaged in every way, or there aren’t some advantages to being a woman, or that being a woman is not a crippling disadvantage, or that a woman can’t succeed nowadays in most endeavors, or if women aren’t in fact a majority, or any of a series of other questions that might be vaguely associated in someone’s mind with the question I did ask.
Or you assumed that ‘men’ in that sentence was a categorical rather than a simple plural.
Well, in the absence of any qualifiers, there is no other way to read this.
Well, in the absence of any qualifiers, there is no other way to read this.
Well, if you didn’t read anything else nous wrote in the thread. Or in the same comment. But really, wasn’t the whole It’s not about biological bits or natural tendencies, it’s about the way that, historically, people have built narratives about sexual difference a big enough clue?
But really, wasn’t the whole It’s not about biological bits or natural tendencies, it’s about the way that, historically, people have built narratives about sexual difference a big enough clue?
I suspect this is deep water in which I should stop trying to wade, but that’s never held me back before.
With respect:
Speaking purely as a male, by which I mean not the social gender construction, but a human with male bits, I have to say I find the distinction between Social Gender Male and Biological Male hard to discern in a lot of feminist, or nominally feminist, discourse.
Again, with respect, I’ll also offer that in the process of noticing that common human attributes like aggression, competitiveness, and violence have historically been given a “masculine” coding, a lot of feminist discourse seems to embrace that very encoding.
Which seems, to me, kind of counter-productive. In a couple of ways.
Just a couple of thoughts from a sympathetic participant in the conversation.
I doubt there’s anyone on this list who disagrees that women have had, and often still have, the short end of the stick, and I doubt there’s anyone on this list who thinks that’s a good or acceptable thing.
Maybe it’s sufficient to just say that women should be treated with respect and fairness.
In the context of the original post, maybe it’s sufficient to say that our foreign policy is stupidly and unnecessarily unipolar and aggressive.
Sometimes it’s useful to understand the deep historical roots of why certain screwed-up things are they way they are.
Sometimes it’s more useful to just freaking roll up sleeves and make them better.
I can’t tell you which is which in this case, but it’s good to note the options.
would you agree or disagree with the statement that there is still enough sexism in general American society to make life as a woman noticiably more difficult, more often than not, than for a man?
No, I don’t. I think that was true 20 years ago and certainly prior, but today, no. Control for cultural, economic, etc. status, and yes, you will find subdemographics where imbalance is fairly widespread. But even there, the change is palpable and fast.
I am pretty much with Russell and Novakant.
If it’s not about biological bits but purely about narratives and power structures, then one should criticize those, and the aggressive attitudes that come with them, as opposed to criticizing “men”. Instead, women who achieve positions of power within those structures are often hailed purely on the basis of their biological bits, even if they embrace the same aggressive attitudes as the men that have historically occupied these positions. (cf. the initial post – it’s hard to imagine anybody more hawkish on, say, Iran than Clinton…)
Sometimes it’s useful to understand the deep historical roots of why certain screwed-up things are they way they are.
Sometimes it’s more useful to just freaking roll up sleeves and make them better.
Sometimes knowing how something got screwed up can give you useful insights into how to fix it.
If it’s not about biological bits but purely about narratives and power structures, then one should criticize those, and the aggressive attitudes that come with them, as opposed to criticizing “men”. Instead, women who achieve positions of power within those structures are often hailed purely on the basis of their biological bits, even if they embrace the same aggressive attitudes as the men that have historically occupied these positions. (cf. the initial post – it’s hard to imagine anybody more hawkish on, say, Iran than Clinton…)
I agree (one point, addressed later, apart). But perhaps you overestimate the extent to which women politicians are lauded for anything other gaining a post rarely held by a woman. Thatcher was, grudgingly, lauded for that, we can also see she may have broadened the options available for “British femininity” (being “bellicose, uncompromising, uncaring and harsh”). Just one feminist group, as I recall it, supported Thatcher, and that was a small and somewhat eccentric one. Though US culture is somewhat different, and though Clinton is no Thatcher, not only did many US feminists not support her campaign for the Democratic nomination, a significant number strongly opposed her.
(That is my recollection of US feminist discussion at the time, but I checked before writing this.)
sorry. My “one point” concerns as opposed to criticizing “men”. but of course applies to criticizing women too. If we can only criticize “narratives and power structures”, and the attitudes we think accompany them, we run the risk of adopting too determinist an analysis and letting people off the hook.
But my point is probably not relevant to the discussion here.
No, I don’t. I think that was true 20 years ago and certainly prior, but today, no.
The constant battle over reproductive rights alone makes this statement somewhat questionable. What’s the state that’s considering a law where, if you get pregnant as the result of a rape, but didn’t report the rape and the rapist’s name (if known) within 72 hours, you can’t get an abortion?
How many states now have “We don’t have to give you birth control or the morning-after pill at the pharmacy, because of the Jesus” laws?
Do men as a group have to put up with *any* of that crap?
If it’s not about biological bits but purely about narratives and power structures, then one should criticize those, and the aggressive attitudes that come with them, as opposed to criticizing “men”.
novakant, you may wish to look at who has commented and when. Given that nous came in towards the end, aren’t you making the mistake you are accusing everyone else of? At any rate, if the narratives and power structures arise because of gender roles, shouldn’t one criticize the roles that give rise to them?
If we can only criticize “narratives and power structures”, and the attitudes we think accompany them, we run the risk of adopting too determinist an analysis and letting people off the hook.
Sure, it’s Kant vs. Hegel – we need both.
if the narratives and power structures arise because of gender roles, shouldn’t one criticize the roles that give rise to them?
I don’t think power and its ideological dressing-up can be sufficiently criticized on the basis of gender roles alone and you’re running into a hen and egg problem there, but that said, I’m all for it.
Me:
McKinneyTexas:
Please forgive me that I may not answer coherently if I don’t write quickly enough before the Ambien hits, but let me start on the most nitty-gritty of grounds.
You and a woman equivalent to you in your work area get in in the morning, and get ready to go to work. Which set of chores to make yourself properly pretty and attractive for the office would you prefer to engage in: yours, or the woman’s?
Which will take more time? More effort? More care? More effort around that effort, as in learning the skills of applying makeup, where to buy it what to buy, what styles to engage in?
How much more time will you need to spend, in short, on appearance in the workplace, then an equivalent woman in you position, on a daily, weekly, monthly, and more or less permanent basis? Who do you think has it easiest there, men or women?
I said I’m starting from the ground floor up.