I’ve been reading Caroline New’s 2001 Sociology article about oppression (pdf link).1 New argues against the idea that “oppression” requires a clear-cut division between “oppressor class” and “oppressed class.”
I do not believe we need to identify a clear-cut agent/beneficiary to speak of oppression. Sometimes there is one, sometimes not. I propose the following structural definition, which subsumes zero-sum conceptions when they are applicable, and allows us to recognise the very different, yet related, oppressions of women and of men.
A group X is oppressed if, in certain respects, its members are systematically mistreated in comparison to non-Xs in a given social context, and if this mistreatment is justified or excused in terms of some alleged or real characteristic of the group.
The key phrase, “systematically mistreated,” implies that as a result of institutionalised social practices, Xs’ human needs are not met, they are made to suffer, or their flourishing is not permitted, relative to other groups and to available knowledge and resources.While human needs are culturally mediated, some basic conditions for human well-being can be specified independent of social context. We recognise these as needs because undesirable consequences arise from a failure to meet them, though the severity of the price paid may range from death to discomfort.Unmet needs may result in forms of development that preclude ‘flourishing’, the term used by ecological feminist Cuomo (1998) in her feminist ethics. For Cuomo, knowledge of a thing’s nature can give rise to knowledge of what it is for it to flourish.
‘In comparison to non-members‘ means that Xs are disadvantaged in relation to non-Xs on some particular dimension or in a specific context – non-Xs may themselves be oppressed in other respects, which may sometimes result in similar (or more severe) disadvantages than those suffered by all or some Xs. ‘Justified … etc.’ refers to the tendency to legitimise oppression by treating the oppressed group as different, less than human or actually malign, and therefore not morally requiring the treatment appropriate to one’s own group.
‘Oppression’ is a value-laden term which implies that, ceteris paribus, an oppressive state of affairs should be brought to an end; this definition is clear enough to allow such states of affairs to be investigated and identified. It recognises that oppression is rooted in power relations,without reducing it to formal relations of power. Treating agents’ accounts as evidence rather than essence, it can encompass complicity and denial on the part of the oppressed. It can embrace, as relevant sorts of harm, the ‘hidden injuries’ of class, ‘race’ and so on which fall through the net of purely formal definitions. ‘Systematic mistreatment’ covers not only material inequalities but also the deprivation of ‘recognition’ and other forms of inclusion necessary for groups and communities to flourish (Young 1990). By not making identification of the agents and beneficiaries central to that of oppression, the proposed definition allows us to recognise the oppression of fat people, disabled people, children and other groups where the agents are not always the same and the question of benefits is unclear.
[…]
The proposed definition in no way denies that men are frequently – most frequently – the agents of the oppression of women. In a minimal sense this is inevitably true, since oppression is relational. If Xs are oppressed because on some dimension they are systematically disadvantaged in comparison to Ys, Ys can be seen as oppressing Xs as long as they merely accept the status quo or act in ways which
tend to maintain their relative advantage. In gender terms, such a stance would be part of what Connell calls ‘complicit masculinities,’ which accept gender privileges but keep themselves distanced from direct displays of power (1995:114). Men undoubtedly oppress women in more direct ways than this. The maintenance of the power differentials between the genders requires regular belittlement of women, continual discrimination against them, and a stream of misinformation about their capacities and liabilities. From various motives, men carry out the bulk of this work. They also oppress women by killing, beating, raping, harassing and sexually exploiting them, and by appropriating their unpaid work.Gendered power relations make such behaviour normal, in the sense of expected and intelligible, even though most of it is deplored and some of it is punishable. My contention is that men’s agency in this regard is the result of their positioning within oppressive structures. It is not caused by, and does not express, the intrinsic nature of male humans, nor was the gender order erected by men in their own pre-existing interests. Gendered interests, including those of oppressors, are constructed within gender orders, and cannot pre-exist them. Men’s agency is part of the explanation of women’s oppression only in the context of a sex-gender system which also involves the oppression of men.
I’m curious to know what “Alas” readers think of New’s definition of oppression, and of its consequential inclusion of “men” as a class that can be oppressed. My (possibly self-serving) tendency is to agree with New.
New’s analysis recognizes complicity in gender oppression, without having to argue that bullied boys, men rounded up for imprisonment or murder in war zones, and men killed at workplaces are not being oppressed as men, even though in all these cases their being male is essential for their selection for mistreatment.
Once criticism I anticipate is that the “oppression” of men cannot be oppression because their “oppressors” are male. This seems to me a dubious response, because it only makes sense if oppression is defined based on who the oppressor is, rather than on what the oppressive acts and barriers consist of. Imagine if a group of masked commandos took over the government and began rounding up and imprisoning cartoonists; would we say that whether or not this could be called “oppression of cartoonists” is contingent on unmasking the commandos, since if the commandos are themselves cartoonists no act by them can be oppressive of cartoonists?
* * * PLEASE NOTE * * *
Comments on this post are open only to feminist, pro-feminist, and feminist-friendly writers.
Curtsy: Feminist Critics.
- Caroline New (2001), “Oppressed and Oppressors? The Systematic Mistreatment of Men,” Sociology Vol.35, No.3, pp.729–748. [↩]
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I think it’s dishonest to say that men are oppressing men, and therefore men are oppressed.
Are men oppressed? Sure. Some men “oppress” some other men, but unlike men oppressing women, the objective is the creation of dominance hierarchies within “men, as a class”. The schoolyard bully asserts his position as King of the Schoolyard, and his victims may or may not be able to group together and establish themselves as the new King.
To the extent that women participate in this — complicity in gender oppression — women’s status is revocable, unlike men’s which is based on the power they, as members of a class, weild over women, as members of a class. A woman can be disempowered without having to be beaten up in the schoolyard — the new bully decides that the girlfriend of the old bully no longer has her status. The new bully’s girlfriend has derived power, not power in her own right.
The same property of derived power applies to other power-down minorities when they are complicit with class-based oppression. The real power remains at the top of the heap — Stephen Colbert’s Black Friend (I love Colbert — I want him to run for President :) ), only has power so long as he remains Stephen Colbert’s Black Friend.
I am not sure how to work these things out but I think the intersectionality approach helps, and helps keep in mind that there are oppressors as well:
men oppressed by being drafted/enslaved/masacered in war are opressed as men, but usually simultaneosly opressed as members of the oppressed working class or an oppressed nationality.
bullied men are being oppressed on gender grounds, as men, but in a way which requires us to understand multiple and changing rather than two genders, and often, also by age. men and women, it seems to me, can perpetrate this kind of gender oppression.
How about:
Comments should not express overtly anti-feminist sentiment.
Amp, I think New sort of addressed your question, unless I’m misreading:
Men can certainly be oppressed in other dimensions – physical weakness, marginalized heritage, financial disadvantage, etc. – but then we’re talking about bullying, racism, or economic oppression, and the “maleness” isn’t isn’t the specific trigger. Even in primarily male-centric contexts (schoolyard bullies, for example), it’s the ‘being puny while male’ rather than just ‘being male.’ For women, no such modifier is required; ‘female’ is enough.
Male as a ‘class’ aren’t encouraged by society as a whole to express positive emotion, would that count since it stunts the group regardless of qualifiers emotionally?
I’m not sure what you think my question was?
With all due respect, I don’t think you can reasonably claim that schoolyard bullies beat up the puny students, so it’s only puniness that’s being oppressed, as if it’s irrelevant or a coincidence that it’s mainly puny boys being beaten up.
If a firm discriminates against black female employees, but not against blacks or women generally (and there have been such cases in real life), we don’t say “well, her blackness was the trigger, so she wasn’t being discriminated against as a woman” or “her being female was the trigger, so this wasn’t anti-black discrimination.” A real understanding of intersectionality means understanding that it’s not woman-plus, or black-minus, or whatever; it’s both at once. So I don’t think the analysis you’re suggesting here — which I guess is “puny-plus” — goes along well with a good understanding of how interrelated discrimination operates.
An even clearer-cut case is in Iraq, where militia groups sometimes go into a town and select the men for arrest and/or murder. In those cases, there really is nothing at issue but that they are male.
I don’t really follow how that last sentence fits in with the previous sentences. It seems to come out of left field. I’m talking about this:
Unless she’s arguing that oppression is inherent in the concept of masculinity then I can’t get with that last sentence.
My personal reactions (however, contradictory they may seem) are:
1) By only focusing on one type of opppressive system this is extremely oversimplified.
2) This is bordering on the men’s pity party.
3) Maybe individual men are oppressed because they are not part of the hegemonic definition of masculinity, but it is much harder to argue that men as a class are oppressed without discussing intervening variables. Unless one starts to think of gender as a compilation of multiple dimensions.
4) Is this Amp or Daran?
5) The author needs a theory of power.
6) And now I’m back to point one–way over simplified.
7) Would you make any similar argument about able bodied people, Christians, heterosexuals, whites, the wealthy?
8) This takes us down a very dangerous slippery slope, and I feel find those examples war, workplace, and bullying troublesome.
I agree with Rachel S.’s points, particularly 1, 2, 3, and 5.
I actually kind of feel like we’ve had this discussion, in the comments for the privelege lists. The fact that a member of class Y has experienced the oppression class X has experienced does not mean that class X doesn’t face that discrimination as systemic oppression.
Male and part of a target population in a civil war. Surely “target population in a civil war” is a pretty relevant category to that sort of oppression. It is a form of oppression that I, as a man, have essentially no chance of facing.
Within intersectionality, I think it makes sense to talk about the way in which categories that are not themselves categories of oppression become important to the character of the oppression of the individual or group. Certainly the oppression of black working class men is different than the oppression of black working class women (and not necessarily lesser along all dimensions of oppression), likewise the oppression of black upper class men is different than the oppression of black working class men (and not necessarilylesser along all dimensions). Being a member of two oppressed groups creates certain specific forms of oppression, but being a member of only one of those groups combined with being a member of an oppressor group also creates specific forms of oppression, and along some dimensions that oppression may be worse. This is part of the reason that oppression comparisons (this group is more oppressed than this other group) can be very unproductive.
So men (oppressor group) who are low on the in-group gender hierarchy (oppressed group) face specific forms of oppression unique to their situation, as do men (oppressor group) who are members of populations targeted during a civil war (oppressed group). These forms of oppression are specific to men, but they do not make men as a class an oppressed group.
AW’s example of stunted emotional development being expected of men comes close to being an example of a harm that is inflicted upon all men, and not simply men intersected with a category of oppression, but I am hesitant to describe that as oppression. It is certainly a harm caused by the system of gender, but I’m far from convinced that equating harm and oppression is productive.
While it is possible to imagine that a group is oppressed purely by its own members, I think that this is essentially never the case in actuality. I think that in actuality oppression fundamentally operates on an in group-out group basis. So that if the regime that oppresses cartoonist turns out to be made up of cartoonists, it is likely to be either an expression of a larger oppression of cartoonists primarily by non-cartoonists (members of oppressed groups can certainly participate in the oppression of members of their own group), or it is likely to actually resolve to within-cartoonist oppression (indeed, in the given example, it must trivially resolve to cartoonists in power and cartoonists out of power).
It seems to me that this concept of oppression would mean that a purge of a particular faction within the Communist Party in the USSR (in which party members were tried and executed for belonging to the wrong faction) could be described as oppression of party members (since non-party members were not targeted) rather than oppression of the particular faction. Likewise, when a particular cult decides that the time has come for all of them to die, and the majority commit suicide and a few hesitant members are killed by their fellows, this concept of oppression means that the members of the cult can be properly described as oppressed. In both these cases, this seems to be an inaccurate description of what is happening.
Additionally, I think that a definition of oppression that rejects the relevance of in group – out group dynamics is unproductive because it obscures the importance of in group – out group dynamics.
Certainly (standard use of PHMT aside), it is important to acknowledge and highlight the ways in which systems of oppression harm the oppressor class as well as the oppressed class (and can selectively particularly harm subsets of the oppressor class), because
(1) they do
and
(2) recognition that they do encourages members of the oppressor class to work against the system of oppression, which is usually an important part of ending a system of oppression by means other than violent revolution (and it helps in the case of violent revolution).
I just don’t think that calling that harm ‘oppression’ clarifies the situation.
Being a man in the system of gender oppression harms me, but it does not make me oppressed. Recognizing and talking about, and working to stop that harm is useful, but I don’t think reconceptualizing oppression so that it labels any harmed category as being oppressed is the right way of highlighting that harm.
Rachel, can you be a bit more specific about why you find these examples troublesome?
I’m … just confused. Haven’t we already said as much with “patriarchy hurts men too”?
If not, then I don’t think I agree with the proposed definition. I don’t really think that men as a class are oppressed, at least not for simply being men; for being men of colour, or gay men, sure, but not for simply being men, at least not on the scale or degree that women as a class are oppressed for simply being women (regardless of whether they’re also of colour and/or lgbt).
Although this isn’t in the bit quoted in my post, New explicitly denies that men are oppressed on the same scale or degree as women. She argues “that both women and men are oppressed, but not symmetrically,” because men are positioned to act as systematic oppressors.
While it is possible to imagine that a group is oppressed purely by its own members, I think that this is essentially never the case in actuality.
Doesn’t pretty much everyone expect that of men? I know times are a’changin’, but I don’t think they’ve changed that much emotional-expectation wise. If there’s expectations of a group of people that other groups agree with the expectation wouldn’t be purely by its own members, I don’t think.
Charles, point well taken regarding the relevant category.
I don’t think the “if Charles isn’t potentially a victim of it, then it can’t be oppression” metric is very useful. There are many specific instances of systematic acts against an oppressed group could be dismissed with an argument similar to this one. For instance, that there is virtually no chance that a Palestinian living in the US is going to be subject to an Israeli checkpoint, but that doesn’t mean that Israeli checkpoints cannot be considered part of how Palestinians are oppressed.
I don’t think anyone is arguing that harm and oppression should be fully equated (“I stubbed my toe! Oppression!”). However, the question of when systematic harm to a group because they are in that group should and should not be considered oppression is thornier, and I’m currently agnostic about it.
How are you defining the word “oppression”? I’m trying to imagine a definition of “oppression” that would be meaningful and yet have nothing at all to do with systematic harm, and I’m drawing a blank. So, unless I’m missing something there, there must be some connection between oppression and systematic harm.
As expressed, this argument is circular. But that’s not a problem in this discussion, since I fully accept the importance of an in/out-group dynamic to understanding how oppression works. That said, however, I don’t agree with your implication that New’s approach requires rejecting the idea of in/out group dynamics as relevant; it just rejects it as the be-all and end-all.
In the end, the distinction between “women and men can both be direly harmed by sexism, but only women can be oppressed” and “both women and men can be oppressed along gender lines, but the oppression is not equal and symmetrical” (which is how I’d summarize New’s position) strikes me as more semantic than meaningful. I can pretty happily sign on to either statement. Clearly, you cannot. Why do you think the difference is more than semantic?
AW,
Your last post seems garbled. Are you saying that the emotional stunting of men is enforced by the expectations of both men and women? I don’t siagree, but I think that it is primarily men who require other men to be emotionally stunted, while some women are complicit in requiring the emotional stunting of men.
But I think that this is better described as part of the harm done to men by being part of the oppressor class in the system of gender based oppression than it is described as gender based oppression of men.
I don’t know, I think I’d have to see what useful theoretical results this definition of oppression produces before I could accept it. I’m just not seeing the utility in this definition, but I can definitely see ways in which “oppression without an oppressor” muddies the conceptual water in unproductive ways. Having just last week gotten (quite correctly) dinged by several people for over-extending my definition of rape to the point where it started having similar problems, I am wary of accepting a definition of oppression that seems to muddy the water without producing clear theoretical benefits.
I don’t mean to sound garbled, but it’s late and the idea of men’s oppression is, I think, a touchy issue so m’trying not to offend anyone by odd word placements that mistakenly brings to my mind destructive connotations wrt feminism as a whole. That and I’m falling over in my chair, dead tired, so I’ll try again tomorrow, hopefully I’ll be clearer. In other words, for the love of god please take an iou ’till tomorrow
While I’m mostly interested in listening to the ongoing discussion, I do think one benefit of this definition is that it matches up with some of the self-reported experiences of oppression that certain men discuss.
Just like finding a definition of rape that doesn’t end up telling women “I know you feel like you’ve been raped, but let me tell you how you’re wrong . . .” is is valuable, I think that matching experience to words is an inherent good.
I think that the second version obscures the in-group/ out-group dynamics of systems of oppression. I waffled earlier on whether I thought those dynamics were fundamental or not, but thinking further, I believe that they are. My working definition of oppression is in-group/ out-group + systematic harm.
Now, New’s definition also involves an in-group and an out-group (since the systematic harm must be done to one group and not the other based on the existence of the two groups), but it removes the requirement that the in-group must be involved in causing the harm to the out-group. To me, removing this requirement from the definition of oppression makes the majority of systems of oppression into a special case, and makes it easy to obscure the actual dynamics of oppression by making it easy to over generalize (or to generalize along the wrong axis).
Men are not oppressed as a class. Specific men are oppressed in particular ways as a result of the intersection of sex and some other axis of oppression (some of which are also part of the system of gender oppression). New’s definition focuses on the fact that men and women suffer different expressions of this other axis of oppression, and calls that difference oppression of men as a class (as well as oppression of women as a class), but this obscures the source of the oppression. If aliens arrived and began executing men, would it be more useful to focus on the gender oppression or more useful to focus on the alien-human oppression? New’s definition makes it equally valid to focus on the gender oppression, while a traditional definition requires us to focus on the alien-human axis of oppression because it requires that oppression be described as occurring along lines of agency, not along lines of difference. I think the traditional definition is more useful.
Men are not taken out and shot en masse for being men, they are taken out and shot for being men + something else. Men are not bullied for being men, they are bullied for being men + something else. Etc. The oppressors in each case do these things because they are not the something else. If we talk about the oppression as being along the in-group out-group lines, if we look at the oppression and say, “who are the oppressors here, and why are they engaging in oppression?” then we are asking useful questions that can lead to a meaningful response. If we say, “not all oppression has a clear oppressor group, and certainly not one distinct from the oppressed group,” then that doesn’t lead to us asking “who is the oppressor?” or it gives us an easy out answer of “everyone or no-one, or just themselves.” This doesn’t take us somewhere useful, it doesn’t show us anything about the system.
Both men and women can be oppressed as part of gender oppression, and both men and women can be harmed by the system of gender oppression, but men who are oppressed as part of gender oppression are oppressed because they belong to specific categories of men, and are oppressed by other categories of men on the basis of those categories (gender is not binary and not 1 dimensional, it is a complex structure). Being bullied is a way that some categories of men are subjected to gender oppression, but the relevant category differences are intra-gender differences within the category of men.
Men can also be oppressed in ways specific to their status as men that are not part of the system of gender oppression, but are dependent on their status as men. Men being preferentially hauled off and shot during war time is an example of this. Men are viewed as more valuable and more dangerous, so killing them is a higher priority during war. Being a preferred target for killing is a result of the intersection between gender and being part of a target population, and it is certainly related to the system of gender oppression, but it doesn’t need to be expressed as gender oppression oppresses men, any more than the fact that upper class blacks face specific forms of oppression that lower class blacks do not means that class oppression oppresses both the upper class and the lower class. Race intersects with class in complex ways, targeted population status intersects with gender in complex ways, and the fact that we should not doctrinally ignore any aspect of that intersection does not mean that we will benefit from saying that any axis along which one class does worse than the other in any situation means that that class is subject to oppression.
————————————————————————————————–
The only benefit that I can see to New’s redefinition of oppression serves is that the rejection of it requires paying a lot of attention to intersectionality.
What do you see as being the benefit of New’s definition?
AW,
Totally fair. It is a difficult topic to discuss, particularly if you are taking the “men are oppressed” side but trying to make it clear that you are not taking the “men are oppressed worse than women” or the “men are oppressed by women” or the “men are oppressed by feminism” etc sides.
Myca,
It seems to me that individual men can be oppressed (obviously) and that men can be oppressed by the gender system, but that men as a class are not oppressed by the gender system. The gender system is not monolithic, it has subsystems, and some of those subsystems are based around oppressing men who don’t do their required part in the gender system.
Amp,
On re-reading, I’m not sure either :/ The non-question I was responding to, I guess, was:
I’m not sure if my answer ended up following, though.
You’re right, and I wasn’t claiming that it’s only the puniness that’s being oppressed; it very specifically is ‘puny while male,’ not just puny. Jumping off from the extra text you posted at #13:
I think it’s fair to say that male oppression of females has at least some basis in physical strength; in support of that, we’ve fetishized strength to a certain extent, and especially in men (I wouldn’t say that strength is the only such dimension, but I think it’s the easiest to draw examples from, so I’m going with it). Puniness in women tends to be rewarded, at least in our current social climate; it’s only considered problematic in men, which we see play out on the schoolyard when the smaller boys get picked on.
We can also see this emphasis on male strength in terms of racial oppression: in our culture, ‘black’ comes with inherent oppression, but it plays out somewhat differently between the sexes. Only black men face the stereotype of being dangerous and violent (see: busted chiffarobes, modern drug law enforcement, etc.), whereas in your example of a firm’s unfair hiring practices, it’s unlikely that any perceived attribute that relates to physical strength is setting off the discrimination. Where it intersects with the racial dimension, we can see the strength expectation systematically harm those who are black plus male. Of course, there are many, many more factors at work, and it doesn’t seem worthwhile to argue that any particular group is more oppressed.
In the militia example, we can draw a female parallel to ‘comfort women,’ rape-as-genocide, and other manifestations of sexual slavery that often turn up in times of war. So in terms of oppression, male plus ‘in a war zone’ generally means being either forcibly recruited or preemptively killed (i.e. commandeering or destroying potential strength); female plus ‘in a war zone’ tends to mean a commandeering of the perceived inherent sexuality of women. I’d conclude that ‘in a war zone’ is an oppressive state for anyone to be in, and it might be one of the starkest examples of how these gender stereotypes can play out. I think war can also reasonably be seen as an extension of those “practices which construct men’s capacity to oppress women” (see: ‘diplomacy is for girlie-men,’ circa late winter, 2003), for what it’s worth.
Interesting analysis.
I don’t think this is a men’s pity party, exactly. It’s more of a PHMT kind of thing.
What this short piece (haven’t had time to read the pdf yet) makes me think is:
1) Yeah, men are sometimes oppressed. Because they’re men. This is factually true, as noted most easily by the “kill the men!” shit in war.
2) So what? As the article notes, that men are oppressed does not mean that men are more oppressed (it’s pretty obvious that on a large scale they’re not).
This doesn’t seem ground breaking, Rather it seems to be throwing the obvious bone of logic: Yes, there are situations where men are oppressed because of their sex. All power imbalances, from sexism to racism to agism, probably have subsets of the world where–temporarily or permanently–things are “reversed.”
And, as above: So what? Does the PHMT? Sure. Doesn’t change the OVERALL claim of power imbalance at all: PHWM (patriarchy hurts women more).
Denying that exceptions exist is, in my experience, almost a guarantee that opponents will come out of the woodwork. Allowing for such exceptions means that we can discuss the overall trends without constantly debating whether there exist ANY situations where (oppressor) is actually (oppressed).
Statistical significance is not clinical significance.
Can men be oppressed as a group? Absolutely. There is nothing about men that makes them inherently immune to being oppressed. Whites can be oppressed. Straights can be oppressed. Protestant Christians can be oppressed. But, in current society in the US none of those groups IS oppressed as a group. Yes, patriarchy hurts men too–anything that limits what a person can be based on an irrelevant characteristic hurts that person. Racism hurts whites too, heterosexism hurts straights, etc. But the prejudices involved hurt women, minorities, and gays far more. Which makes any complaining about men/whites/etc being hurt by sexism/racism/etc feel like whining.
Nonetheless, as far as specific problems: There is no draft in the US so it is not oppressing men or women. The registration requirement for men is odious and I–and I think most feminists–agree that if a draft or registration is required it should be required for all fit people of a certain age. On the other hand, women face risks in the military that men don’t as frequently (ie being raped by their fellow soldiers). So is an equal requirement really equal?
As far as bullying goes, I looked this up once before for a post at fem critics. While boys are more likely to be physically bullied, girls are as likely to be bullied overall. And in adulthood women are more likely to be bullied at work than men. Bullying of any sort of any person is unacceptable, but I’m underwhelmed by it as evidence of male-specific oppression.
I’m not sure about Iraq. One could make a case that men are being specifically oppressed there, in some ways. However, women are being oppressed as well. An article on the problems of childbirth in Iraq mentioned, almost in passing, that female doctors are being preferentially kidnapped and murdered. And it’s hard to deny that women’s opportunities have contracted even more than men’s under the American occupation. So, not clear cut there either.
Finally, supposing that I’m absolutely wrong and men are being oppressed as a group. Then what? Should men receive affirmative action? Role back title IX? Relegalize marital rape? Recind women’s right to vote and own property? What is needed to balance out the “men’s oppression”?
To add some data to my claims about bullying, above:
This study of bullying in minority populations found that girls and boys were equally likely to be victims of bullying, but that boys were more likely to be physically bullied.
This study of workplace bullying in Italy showed that women were more often the victims of bullying.
This study of adolescents in India showed that boys were more often the perpetrators or (presumably non-intervening) witnesses of violence, while girls were more often the victims of violent bullying. So maybe my initial claim that boys were more likely to be physically bullied isn’t so true. In India, at least.
Again, for whatever reason, the perception may be that boys are more often the victims of bullying, but the reality appears different. In a way, the fact that boys appear more likely to be bullied is an expression of male privilege: people notice when boys are getting beat up or harrassed. When the same happens to a girl it is just expected behavior and no one gets excited. Or even notices.
Dianne, don’t you think it’s possible that the reason people think boys are beaten up more often is that most of the people in the discussions you’ve witnessed are not from India?
I’m not convinced that the difference between being beaten and being bullied in other, non-physical ways is as insignificant (“the same happens”) as your argument implies. My reflex would be to say that both phenomenon are important and should be opposed, but that doesn’t mean we have to treat them as if they are identical phenomenons, or that the fact that boys get beaten more often is of no significance for a gendered analysis.
I don’t want a zero-sum game, where we have sympathy for either girls or boys rather than both; but I also don’t want to erase complexity and ignore that some experiences, on average, are different between the groups.
Finally, I’ve read quite a few studies of bullying in the US/UK, and my impression is that most of the studies with large samples do in fact find that boys are bullied more often. (See here , for example). I can provide more references later, if you’d like; I have to run to work now.
It’s looking as if the reason behind males being bullied, beaten or targeted for specific action goes beyond gender. In an oppressive society, those who don’t conform for one reason or another are subject to punishment for that non conformity. For females, conformity and non conformity alike are punished and the oppression is systematic. If you conform, thats oppression, if you dont, then what happens is as well. Specifically because of gender.
For males, it seems to be non conforming males who are punished via oppressive action. “Puny” males become stand ins for females, get viewed as females and punished for their “femaleness”. Males in wartime represent a threat. If there was a sudden onset of women as a group replacing men as the threat during wartime, they’d be targeted in the same manner (though rape wouldnt be excluded ).
Males can be oppressed- anyone can, but it looks like they’re being oppressed over more than gender. Females are oppressed simply for being female, males are oppressed because they are threats to the oppressing group, either directly (as in can take up arms and fight) or indirectly (as in not conforming to standards or being percieved as having female traits).
Charles writes,
Yes, the first sentence was what I was trying to say, thank you. But I’m not sure one way or the other that both sexes on the whole don’t encourage emotional stunting as much as they’re able in their own socially accepted spheres of influence.
Not equal when contrasted, because the male side has more physical power to enforce it, but through words and other actions that aren’t of the physical beating persuasion, both sexes don’t seem to encourage the range of men’s emotions (or women’s for that matter) when enforcing what’s acceptable behavior, which, I think, starts when children are born based on what a gender is allowed to feel, with what they’re allowed to feel encouraged by how they’re allowed to act. I think women’s emotional ‘allowing’ has broadened a bit, but that men’s has stayed right where it was.
I’m honestly suprised it doesn’t seem to have moved, I kind of thought it would, at least a little, because women’s sphere’s of influence have broadened. For lack of better phrasing, I hoped territory issues wrt acceptable emotions would be lessened with that, so I’m sort of at a loss.
I’ve written posts on raising feminist daughters–but I’ve got a son, too.
I haven’t noticewd a whole lot of differebce between the sexes w/r/t my kids. Anecdotally most men AND most women seem to treat all my children in accordance with ‘normal’ gender roles, often against my protests.
Because my daughetrs would be oppressed by someone saying to them “girls aren’t good at math” (IMO that’s oppression) I don’t see that it’s not also oppression if someone tells my son “boys don’t cry.” Different things but same category.
Amp, you say it’s only semantics above. But semantics are a huge part of the political landscape.
“women are oppressed” is a different soundbite from “women are usually oppressed much more than men.” (just like, say “POC can’t be racist” is different from “everyone is capable of being racist, but white racism is much more powerful and prevalent than any other type”)
The problem is that much of the disagreement with the extremist** position of “only ___ can _____” comes from folks who believe the underlying truth is OPPOSITE to the position claimed–MRAs think men are more or equally oppressed; skinheads think whites are more or equally oppressed, etc etc.
(**extremist in this context means logically extremist–e.g. pretty much anything which includes “only”, “always”, “never,” etc without qualifiers. Those statements are very rarely correct as stated.)
It puts many folks in a bind: I don’t agree with the vast majority of extremist statements. But I agree with MOST of it, just not the extreme part. So I get lumped in with all the other nutjobs who disagree with 100% of the claim. I’d be happy if the root definitions of oppression were a tad less extremist, so that folks like me could sign on more easily; I know I”m not the only one who feels this way.
I think this article is an attempt to reclaim a bit of the middle ground. Which is IMO a good thing.
Not sure those two analogies are comparable. On the surface I suppose they could be, but when white racism is practiced it’s to the benefit of the people that can make concrete use of it, as opposed to emotional stunting, which I think is practiced by both groups to their detriment with the consequences far outweighing the short term benefits to the two groups that are viewable. With emotional stunting at the current time leaning on men, since feminism is doing a nice job of breaking down female stereotypes.
For the ‘who’ that would be oppressing men, I’d say both sexes, but in a bit of an odd way, because the oppression starts and is enforced by both groups onto children that, when they get older, will in turn continue the cycle, both as being oppressed by societies expectations on their group’s emotions with what they can and can’t express, and as enforcing the same oppression on others. But I think what someone is allowed to feel (expressing and acting on emotions invariably, I think, leads to action) in this society is based on their gender, which is why I’m leaning toward oppression by the emotional stunting of men.
-A note, the definitions I’m using of oppression;
Oppression is the negative outcome experienced by people targeted by the arbitrary and cruel exercise of power in a society or social group.
The absence of choices, the experience of being systematically limited and restricted by intentional, external forces.
I sense Sailorman is right on here; yes, the patriarchy hurts men too. No, it doesn’t target men. (I often think of some men as being “collateral damage” in an ongoing struggle against women.)
We tend to assume that an oppressor is happy when he is oppressing, and that when someone feels trapped, despairing, or victimized, he is in no way participating in or benefitting from the oppression of another. And I think that’s a false dichotomy.
But something like emotional stunting… is fascinating, but not. Hmmm.
I guess I wouldn’t go so far as to call it oppression.
What are we talking about here? The range of emotion one is allowed to express, yes? It’s a cultural tradition that men are allowed to express less emotion than women, and I get that that’s frustrating, but it is per se stunting? Men don’t *feel* less, if I remember the psychological studies well enough. They *express* less.
And some of the psychological studies I remember inidcated things like the fact that men are enocuraged not to dwell on bad emotions may contribute to the fact that fewer men that women suffer symptoms of depression.
It’s a gendered cultural norm, but is it oppressive en masse?
Also, it’s one of those things where emotion has been defined as female (irrationlaity, hysteria, nurturing), and where therefore emotion is defined as not-male. This hurts men in the collateral damage way, but it’s a direct result of the oppression and minimizing of women.
*
I really like the new Yes, I’m a Feminist! click box for the limited threads. Good idea.
Hugo,
There is another false dichotomy that is very common (let me just minimally change your description of one false dichotomy, here we go):
We tend to assume that someone who is an oppressor is not oppressed, and that when an oppressor feels trapped, despairing, or victimized, agreeing that he is oppressed would mean denying that he is participating in or benefiting from the oppression of another. And I think that’s a false dichotomy.
Most of us are both oppressor and oppressed.
I don’t think that any of the examples Barry gives are best described as showing that men are oppressed (as New’s article seems to), but it is not the fact that men are an oppressor group that determines that men as a class are not oppressed, it is that the oppression of men always manifests as part of some other oppressive structure (either an oppressive structure that is completely unrelated to gender oppression (life during war time), or more specific than gender oppression as a whole (gender non-conformity)). All of the specific groups of men who are oppressed differently because they are men than they would be if they were women (black men, gender non-conformist men, gay men, working class men, men in the middle of a civil war) are both members of an oppressed class and members of an oppressor class. The fact that they feel trapped, despairing, or victimized is directly related to the fact that they are oppressed but it doesn’t stop them from being part of an oppressor group as well.
The false dichotomies of “I feel oppressed, so I must not be an oppressor,” and “You can’t be oppressed because you are an oppressor,” seem to be matching sides of the same coin. They are both related to another false dichotomy: “because I am part of this group, and you are not, and I face oppression for being part of this group, then you must not face oppression for being part of that group.”
I think that New’s definition is an attempt to get past all three of these false dichotomies, but I think that it goes about it in the wrong way. We need more sophisticated ways of talking about the structures of oppression (that recognize these false dichotomies as false dichotomies), and how groups function as oppressors (who are the oppressors of disabled people (one of the groups where New feels that the oppressor group is unclear)? how does that oppression function? what does fighting that oppression look like? how do the specific characteristics of the oppressor group affect the two previous questions?) , but New’s definition instead says, “Maybe there isn’t really an oppressor group?”
The problem is that from where I stand, “men are encouraged not to dwell on bad emotions,” comes out in the wash to be more like, “men aren’t allowed to publicly express and cope with sorrow, grief, fear, and depression.” And I think the fact that men aren’t taught that it’s okay to cope with these emotions and resolve them in a positive manner may contribute to the fact that fewer women than men commit suicide.
—Myca
Also, in reference to my last post, I think this is a situation where conforming to patriarchal gender roles harms men. I bring it up because there have been suggestions earlier that one difference in oppression is that women are oppressed whether they conform to patriarchal gender roles or not, and men are only harmed/oppressed when they differ.
Actually, come to think of it, it’s sort of an “I win, you lose” situation, isn’t it?
If a man goes against the patriarchal gender norms and is harmed because of it, that’s not oppression because he’s just being punished for differing from the system, he’s not being punished as part of the system. On the other hand, if a man conforms to the patriarchal gender norms and is harmed because of it (as in the post about more men than women dying on the job), that’s not oppression because hey, you chose to back up the patriarchy, so it’s your own fault.
It’s somewhat maddening.
—Myca
Men may grow up emotionally stunted, but they then in turn use that supposed stuntedness as an excuse to hold women down. In a binary gendered hierarchy, the women become responsible for both men’s lack of emotion and, by proxy, the expression of that stunted emotion. Currently, women’s roles in society are based primarily on the lack of male emotional expression and confidence rather than the age old standards of “economic need.” Women stay home and cook and clean, women raise the children, women teach elementary school, women are nurses rather than doctors, etc., etc., not because that is the natural outcome of our economic systems, but because men claim that they lack the emotional expression to do these things well or consistently.
Men’s lack of emotional expression or men’s emotional stuntedness becomes women’s inherent/essential depth of feeling and “natural” expression of all that is too feminine for the male to approach.
“I think the fact that men aren’t taught that it’s okay to cope with these emotions and resolve them in a positive manner may contribute to the fact that fewer women than men commit suicide.”
But I think more women attempt suicide than men.
One could interpret this as meaning that more women are “crying for help” as oppsoed to serious about suicide, but I always sort of felt it had more to do with the ways in which suicidal women are, once again, acting out their gender training.
The line I remember was that women were more likely to take passive or feminized methods of suicide, like slitting their wrists or swallowing pills, which allow more room for medical interference. Men are more likely to use active or masculinized methods, such as a gunshot to the head, which give little room for last minute mind changing or rescues.
*
Men are hurt by patriarchy. The system of patriarchy stresses men. Men show many of the symptoms of stress that we associate with other minority groups, such as lowered life expectancy and higher rates of suicide.
I took an anthropology seminar on sex and sexuality a few years ago , and one student, one of I think only two males in the class, took those figures and used them to formualte the hypothesis that men are oppressed by sexism. I can’t say anyone agreed with him. I guess I still don’t.
I do feel like this is arguing that straight people are oppressed by homophobia — I mean, look at the limitations on straight male sexuality. Straight men can’t… ugh, I don’t know, wear skirts, but drag queens do. Sure, drag queens get flak for it, but straight men who wear skirts get lots of flak for it, too. It is a range of behaviors that is denied to straight men — directly as a way of creating and bolstering male privelege within the sexist system.
Women get flak for showing emotions — we’re told that doing so invalidates our intellects. It makes you “unreliable” and “untrustworthy,” cute but ruled by the heart not the head. This placement of the emotional in the realm of the female is a direct part of creating the systems that invalidate women’s participation in the public sphere. Indirectly, it proscribes men’s lives in other ways — but as I see it, that’s a byproduct not of oppression, but of *privelege.*
When men and women are asked to occupy separate spheres, the women relegated to the home, and the men taking no or exceedingly little part in raising the children — this is a system that sucks for men who want to raise children, who are nurturing. And yet, it is still the women who are suffering from seclusion. The hurt that the men are receiving is a byproduct of the way they’ve created their privelege on the backs of the women.
I feel the same way about the other thread in re: construction workers. Men have created a system in which they are the strong ones. As a consequence, they have a monopoly on those kinds of risky, strength-oriented, slightly higher paid than pink collar, jobs. They, as a class, have benefitted from *that very construction*. It also damages them, but the damage comes *from the privelege.*
*
(By the by, I realize my experience may be abnormal, but I have always had a strong feeling that I, as a female, was expected only to show negative emotions on a very limited, passing basis. I can be upset, but only if I trivialize my emotions — “I’m just being silly” — and only if I’m OVER it by the next time. I, personally, can’t be stamp-my-foot angry, but I’m sure if I were more babalicious, stomp-the-foot angry would be cute from me. But real anger? Real grief? I don’t think either of these things is acceptable for me to show.
I feel a strong pressure to put on a pretense of being cheerful — and when I’m not feeling cheerful, to make my emotions more acceptable to the listener by widening my eyes and dumbing down my speech. These are tactics I’ve developed over a long period of time to deal with talking about politics in pubic, or dealing with my depression.
The dichotomy that women are able to “show their emotions” and “men are not” is just really not borne out in my experience. Women are more able to cry in an immediate but passing crisis fashion, but I personally see more tolerance for existential angst in men. Men are certainly more able to experience flares of temper and have other people shrug it off.
So what are we talking about here? A freer access to laugh and hug and smile, and cry once in a while? If my google search abilities were better, I’d link to the post on Pandagon about smiling as a submissive behavior.)
Also, ditto QGrrl.
amp: In reference to the bullying issue:
First, I apologize if it sounded like I was making light of boys’ experiences in being bullied or implying that physical bullying was not a serious problem. That wasn’t my intention, though I see that what I wrote may have implied that. No, sympathy is not a zero-sum game and there may be average differences between boys’ experiences and girls’. I have personal experience with being bullied, both physically and emotionally, and am not always calm, rational, and fair on the issue.
I also wondered whether I should include the link to the article about bullying in India, but in the end decided to do it because India is, in my mind at least, fairly culturally similar to the rest of the ex-British empire. Maybe Rachel could make something out of that belief. I don’t know. In any case, yes, bullying behaviors may be different from one culture to another and one could argue that men are more oppressed in US/British culture than Indian, I suppose. And yes I would appreciate citations of other articles that you’ve found if you have time. I’m always in favor of more data.
But if you don’t mind going back to anecdote for the moment, I also wonder if the data stating that boys are bullied more isn’t biased by a differential definition of “bullied.” When a preschool or grade school girl is bothered, harassed, or even physically attacked by a boy, her teachers and parents often do not describe this behavior as bullying but rather as love. If you don’t mind me citing a cartoon as evidence, think about how Moe’s behavior towards Calvin is described versus Calvin’s behavior towards Susie. It is never suggested that Calvin is bullying Susie, even though he harasses and sometimes physically assaults her. Instead, Hobbes asks Calvin if he is “in love” with Susie. I had a similar experience in real life. When I was in first grade, a boy about my age started harassing me, physically and otherwise. When I complained to the teachers they simply told me, “Oh, that just means he likes you.” None ever called it “bullying” and none ever tried to stop it. I doubt that that would have happened to a boy. He might have been told to “stand up for himself” or “stop complaining and solve the problem” himself, but I doubt he would have been told that his attacker loved him and (implicitly) that he should be complimented by and grateful for the attention. So I have to question the studies of bullying: is physical bullying of girls less common or is it simply called by another name and therefore not identified.
Sorry I haven’t had time to get back to this, but I will soon.
You mean this one? Good call.
(btw, cool check box)
A group X is oppressed if, in certain respects, its members are systematically mistreated in comparison to non-Xs in a given social context, and if this mistreatment is justified or excused in terms of some alleged or real characteristic of the group.A group X:: Male College Applcants
non-Xs:: Female College Applicants
Social Context:: College Admissions Process
Its members are systematically mistreated in comparison to non-Xs in a given social context:: Women are classified as minorities, when they are 60% of enrollees and applicants and graduates. This status lowers admissions standards for women and requires higher ones for men. This treatment is systematic and is a pervasive part of the admissions process of nearly every college and University in the U.S.A.
This mistreatment is justified or excused in terms of some alleged or real characteristic of the group.:: This ‘Affirmative Action’ or ‘Remediation’ is justified based upon the alleged or real characteristic that men oppress and have oppressed women, that men have ‘held back’ women in the past, that men have an inherent advantage over women in most aspects of life, work and career. Thus this is justified based upon this alleged or real characteristic of male privilege, male bias and male prejudice.
“Its members are systematically mistreated in comparison to non-Xs in a given social context:: Women are classified as minorities, when they are 60% of enrollees and applicants and graduates. This status lowers admissions standards for women and requires higher ones for men. This treatment is systematic and is a pervasive part of the admissions process of nearly every college and University in the U.S.A.”
What? I thought the OPPOSITE was happening in colleges. Weren’t there a bunch of posts on how men were getting bonuses to their college apps?
*
“You mean this one? Good call.”
Thanks, defenestrated! BTW, I appreciated your comment in the other thread a few days ago, I just got embarrassed and didn’t respond. :-P
Hey Lee, do you consider yourself a feminist poster? Do you believe Amp would regard you as a feminist poster?
I ask because I’d be surprised if he did, and there’s this little check box you have to check when you post a message that indicates that you believe he does.
—Myca
Lee,
Women are considered minorities because they still don’t have equal opportunity. Affirmative action is used to ‘encourage’ people to do the right thing. Further, sixty percent isn’t a gaping hole. I imagine admissions would be a little higher or lower depending on when one looks, as nothing is completely equal 24/7/265 for various reasons, some unsavory.
-Question, due to my own curiosity,
Did you have a change of heart with regards to feminism, or is there something I’m missing? From what I spy, it doesn’t seem like you had a change of heart. I ask because the box at the bottom says ‘Feminist and Pro Feminist only’. By your own admission you’re neither, so what gives with the posting? Just curious.
Seriously, Lee, I just noticed it, but your name is a link to a ‘don’t marry because women are all gold-digging whores’ website, which makes every feminist molecule in my body recoil in horror.
Not to take away from the discussion of real problems, some of which are particularly bad for men, but I couldn’t resist posting this link. Apparently some men* believe that they are being discriminated against because women won’t date them. And they believe that discriminating against women in the workplace is a fair response.
*Or, at least, one man believes…
We tend to assume that someone who is an oppressor is not oppressed, and that when an oppressor feels trapped, despairing, or victimized, agreeing that he is oppressed would mean denying that he is participating in or benefiting from the oppression of another. And I think that’s a false dichotomy.
Most of us are both oppressor and oppressed.
Charles, good food for thought, especially after the last few weeks, in which, starting from unemployment and the despair of ever having a job again, I worked at a gas station for a few days and realized that I was hated by one of the people there, probably for reasons having to do with subconscious class cues: cues which I’m sure will eventually help me break into better work. I am oppressed by the results of the oppression in which I participate. And I’m a snake head eating the head on the opposite side.
There’s going to be a post about this in my blog.
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I believe in complete equality of responsibility for both men and women.Isn’t that what Feminism is all about?
‘don’t marry because women are all gold-digging whores’
The phrase ‘women are all’ or ‘all women’ does not appear in my page at all.
You assume that the word ‘Women’ means ‘All Women’.
Do you also assume that when I write ‘Apples taste good’ that I mean ‘All apples taste good’?
Uh, yeah. I mean I’d assume that you’d allow for some exceptions, like rotten apples or bruised apples. But it would only be reasonable that you were asserting that the vast majority of apples are good – and more importantly, that the essential “appleness” of the apples is good.
You say “Women are gold-digging whores,” and sure, when pressed, you admit that not all women are gold-digging whores. But that doesn’t turn your statement into “There are some women who are gold-digging whores.” Which would still read as “I’m bitter and lonely,” but less strenuously so.
Also, why are you clicking the “feminist” box when you’ve said:
?
OK, and before I get nitpicked over it, I know that the ‘gold-digging whores’ phrasing was Myca’s, but you didn’t recoil from the offensive statement as whole, just the “all.” Even without your site to back it up, that alone would more than imply your support for the rest of the assertion.
Pingback: “Architects of our own adversity”: a long post about men’s complicity in their own oppression, and the difference between self-acceptance and self-love at Hugo Schwyzer
“Women are classified as minorities, when they are 60% of enrollees and applicants and graduates. ”
Pay careful attention to d
mi·nor·i·ty
a-The smaller in number of two groups forming a whole.
b-A group or party having fewer than a controlling number of votes.
c-racial, religious, political, national, or other group thought to be different from the larger group of which it is part.
d-A group having little power or representation relative to other groups within a society.
e-A member of one of these groups.
THAT is why women are considered minorities. Please please tell me you arent actually equating being the majority of college enrollees with minority in society. Because I will have to sit here and laugh for a good hour, and I just dont have that kind of time. Women are classified as minorities though bigger criteria than ” how many enrolled in college”.
For fucks sake.
Also, Lee, the box says to only post if you think the author of the post would regard you as a feminist.
Since I don’t think anyone . . . and if we’re being honest, not even you yourself . . . regards you as a feminist, I would think that that settles it.
Wow, that’ll teach me to go out shopping.
Lee, all you had to do was remain reasonably polite and respect the rules of this board and you could have been posting here forever. You just can’t stand the idea of treating other people with even that minimal level of respect, can you?
Banned.
See, Amp, the internets are trying to remind you that in the 21st century we can shop online. Eventually, our computers will feed us through tubes. A series of feeding tubes.
/what topic?
closer to the original topic, at least –
What are the consequences of a man publicly expressing sorrow or fear? I agree that the social norm that encourages a stoic exterior is unhealthy and harmful, but to my knowledge it generally isn’t backed up by material threats. There is no sorrow wage gap. A man can show grief etc. and not find himself having less access to legal protection or becoming the victim of hate crime targeting male depressives. I’m not sure that it’s useful to extend the meaning of oppression to things that suck but are rather voluntary (both in what parents teach their kids and what grown men decide to do with their emotions).
I think that the problem, though, is that that tends to wash out things like body-image pressure, which I believe is a very real form of oppression for women, especially (though, god knows, not exclusively) young girls.
“I think that the problem, though, is that that tends to wash out things like body-image pressure”
Are you implying that failing to comply with social norms of what women’s bodies are supposed to look like carries no material threat? Cuz I really, really disagree with that.
Only in the same sense that failing to comply with social norms of what men are supposed to act like carries no material threats and is ‘voluntary’.
Part of what leads to young boys being beat up/teased/bullied is a perception of them as ‘weak’. Bullies gravitate towards easy prey. If you are a boy who is easy to make cry, IMHO you are far more likely to be bullied and abused physically. Thus boys make the ‘voluntary’ choice to stuff their emotions in order to avoid physical and emotional harm.
Also, I think my larger point is that even if something isn’t reducible to a wage gap, it can still be a real, actual problem.
I think anorexia is a problem. I think depression around body image is a problem.
I think that this would be true whether or not it affected the employment prospects of the women in question.
“I think that this would be true whether or not it affected the employment prospects of the women in question.”
Though, markedly, it does.
Yes, true, but is it not oppression when it’s a 13 year old girl?
I’m not sure that it’s fair to keep drawing parallels between what grown women face and what little boys face, Myca. I might be missing something, but I haven’t heard of grown men getting beaten up for crying.
The thirteen year old girl (#63) is told and shown every day by society that if she doesn’t grow up into the “right” body type, she will be shamed, devalued, and demeaned. When you go through a supermarket checkout, do you see see five magazines crowing about male celebrities’ displays of emotion, or five magazines speculating on who’s anorexic, who’s bulimic, and zomg look at tyra in that bathing suit? I’ve never once heard a male public figure criticised with “He seems sad,” but “She’s fat” is fair game to throw at even supermodels, and, moreover, is somehow considered to be valid, substantive criticism.
Again, it sucks that boys grow up being taught to stifle their emotions. It probably does make it harder to express emotion as an adult, but that doesn’t mean that expressing emotion as an adult carries the same threat as it does on the playground.
” I’ve never once heard a male public figure criticised with “He seems sad,” but “She’s fat” is fair game to throw at even supermodels, and, moreover, is somehow considered to be valid, substantive criticism.”
Well, in fairness, wasn’t it McGovern who basically lost the presidency because Nixon made him cry?
To clarify my long-winded argument above, I guess my feeling is that the pains to men (as men) in patriarchy are not a symptom of oppression, but a byproduct of privelege.
Therefore, I dont’ believe men are opressed as men.
However, I still believe in broadening gender roles as a good for boys who are chafing. I believe in sympathy and all that jazz. I don’t want to minimize anyone’s pain.
I just don’t think it’s part of systematic opression aimed toward men, but rather part of the way the system that priveleges men also confines them.
Mandolin:
I wanted to point out that this, about suicide, isn’t true:
White people are more likely to commit suicide than non-whites (only American Indians even come close). In fact, the most likely person to commit suicide in the USA is a white man; and the least likely is a black woman. (Source is this pdf document (warning: over 500 pages), table 46 starting on page 247).
My take on that is that suicide is more about how we respond to misery than it is about what the source of our misery is, or how bad our lives are. In other words, I don’t think that white men are harmed or oppressed more than black women; but I do think that white men are more likely to respond to being harmed by committing suicide.
Sorry I haven’t been paying enough attention to this thread, in general. I’ve really appreciated a lot of the discussion here (especially Dianne’s #38, although not solely that one).
[Edited to clarify my wording.]
“My take on that is that suicide is more about how we respond to misery than it is about what the source of our misery is, or how bad our lives are. In other words, I don’t think that white men are harmed or oppressed more than black women; but I do think that white men are more likely to respond to being harmed by committing suicide.”
Okay.
Just to explain why I said what I said — I was describing something that I’d been taught in a social science classroom. I believe there is some kind of index, on a very basic level, of how you detect how much stress a group is under, and that one of the criteria on that list was the suicide rate.
Easy to believe that it’s since been debunked, or that the criteria were controversial or too simplistic in the first place.
I think there is an obvious answer to the white guy suicide phenomenon. First off, my understanding is not that men attempt more suicides, but they tend to be more “successful” when they do attempt. So women are trying , but not succeeding.
On race and suicide, part of the answer to this is related to the notion of system blame. When an individual is in a less powerful group, he or she can reasonable observe that it is the system that is working against them, and it is not something internal or personal. Members of the dominant group cannot easily use system blame as a strategy for emotional preservation. Some researchers have argued that this is why African Americans have consistently higher levels of self esteem and lower levels depression, which can easily be related to suicide.
Women are reluctant to kill themselves via a gun. We dont want to look all fucked up and we dont want anyone else to have a huge bloody mess to have to clean.
So we pick more considerate, yet less effective means of suicide.
I agree, and that’s why I’ve tried to specifically draw parallels between what little boys face and what little girls face.
See my comments #58, #61, and #63.
—Myca
Boys aren’t beaten up because they’re puny. They’re beaten up for acting queer. You’ve all been making a distinction between sexism and homophobia, but in the context of gendered hierarchies, the two are inseparable. On a related note, there’s also been a huge hangup on the notion of contingency: when men are harmed by gendered hierarchies, it is because of some femininity they acquired by osmosis, whereas when women are harmed it’s femininity qua femininity. Granted, but so what? All around us, the most pervasive victims of gendered hierarchies are gay men, so even second hand femininity gives you a full dollar’s worth of oppression.
It just seems we’re straying a bit too close to intrinsic properties and Platonic ideals and all that nonsense by emphasizing that contingency. We could easily make up a property called fhgaewr-ness that happens to be shared by most women and some men, which encompasses all the ‘feminine’ thing. Then, it’s not femininity, but fhgaewr-ness that’s the problem, and women become victimed simply as collateral damage.
There is a way to re-emphasize the feminist position on the PHMT issues, and that is the numbers game: more women are oppressed than men. A man singled out for being effeminate is not intrinsically less harmed than a woman singled out for being a woman, but in all contexts the latter occurs more frequently, to a greater extent, or even both. Semantic games and denotional tug-of-war with the word ‘oppressed’ seem the wrong ways to go, though.
For the interesting topic on the way emotion is seen as a weakness, that has large overlaps with but is not completely enclosed within the concept of femininity, IMO. This may be a case of an oppression intersection (though the fomer is oppression of a concept, not real life people), though then that would mean we’d be back to playing semantic games when I exuded so much righteous indignation denouncing them. Good fun, though.
OK, but in the context of are men oppressed as men, it’s important to note that a lot of the shit that little girls deal with follows them at equal or greater strength throughout adulthood, in a way that doesn’t equate in what little boys deal with. For one example, there’s a much more vocal contingent of women seeking “sensitive men” than men who prefer “BBW.”
sylphhead writes:
But this is a thread titled “Are men oppressed as men?”, not “Are women more oppressed than men?”
There exists a group of men that are oppressed “as men”, and I think most of us can agree that “effeminate men” are oppressed AS MEN. Does this mean “all men”? No.
My response to “Men are oppressed through bullying” is SOME MEN are oppressed through bullying simply because bullying is not something all men, as a group experience. It’s unique to a sub group of men — men who aren’t gender normative, or who don’t support patriarchy. It’s certainly not the “Boo, hoo, all us poor menz is oppressed!”
Plus, as sylphhead pointed out – effeminate men are oppressed largely as female stand-ins. Can’t hit a girl, but you can sure hit a ‘girly-man.’
Effeminate?
Also:
nerdy
smart
musical
well spoken
educated
and so on.
Are you using “effeminate” to mean “anything other than the pinnacle of society’s gendered male archetype?” If so, i suppose you’re right about men being targeted because they’re effeminate, but it doesn’t have a lot of practical meaning.
Or are you trying to claim that doing well in school, say (which gets a lot of kids beaten up) or playing an instrument (likewise) or having an interest in reading (likewise) are somehow “feminine” traits? I think that’s a stretch.
OK, boys getting beaten up are still getting beaten up as a byproduct of privelege (a very bad one!).
Women, being not real people, are weak. Women, being not real people, are not able to take care of themselves.
You don’t hit a woman — or girl — for the same reason you don’t punch an infant or shoot a puppy. They aren’t real people. They don’t have agency.
Boys do. Therefore you can beat them up.
Boys are taken seriously enough to be considered strong and have moral agency. This leads to some bad results. Yes! Very bad results. But it’s still part of the system that dehumanizes women and constructs men as inherently better than women.
Men are not dehumanized by the system. They are not constructed as inherently lesser.
Is this a semantic distinction? Are we having some problem agreeing on the definition of “oppression” within the context of a discussion about society at large? I feel like this argument is between people saying “sexism hurts both sexes” and people saying “sexism is designed to hurt women and prievelege men, which it does, and along the way the system is unfair to men — but the primary function of the sytem is still to privelege men over women.”
But I may just be totally misreading things; I don’t feel like I can get a handle on what the argument is.
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Both sexism and homophobia are based on traditional masculinity, more specifically, what is not masculine. Patriarchy is the upholding of traditional masculinity so feminism should be the goal of both men and women.
May I submit that it’s dishonest for Feminist Critics to copy/paste the sections of their posts that appear to support a feminist position — with the purpose, I assume, of luring the Alas audience?
Childhood only last so long — middle schoolers and high schoolers who are band nerds, AV nerds, computer nerds, or who compulsively set the curve in all their classes, will eventually graduate school and become adults.
At which point in time they join the ranks of Privileged Males.
It’s the persistence of the abuse against feminine men that makes “Men are oppressed” a reality — not that for 3 or 4 years in their late teens, boys who play the flute get taunted.
And I want to take issue with the claim that feminine men and boys are punished as proxies for women. No, they are punished because they bring shame and disgrace to men.
Lately I’ve been reminded of an battered woman, so eager to please the one who abuses her that she willingly becomes complicit in furthering her own abuse. She sympathizes that her abuser himself suffered from misfortunes of one kind or another, and allows that pity to justify his continued mistreatment of her.
Regardless of what the man is suffering from, it is wise to remember who has the most to lose in an unstable relationship, and who has the responsibility to examine and change their own abusive behavior. It is not the responsibility of the one who has been abused.
This thread, and some others remind me of that. Incidently, once before I thought that the mra’s possessed all the attributes of an abuser. Turns out I’m not the only one.
Just in case you haven’t.
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Feminist Critic writes:
I’d considered responding to the post by mAndrea, but hadn’t formulated my response by the time I forgot all about it …
The problem I have with Caroline New’s definition of “oppression” isn’t that it is wrong, per se, but that it appears to assume a homogeneous experience of being a man in ways that are true for women, but not for men.
It is true, and I hope most here agree, that there are groups of men who can fairly be said to be “oppressed”, and those are the kinds of men that have been described here — feminine men, men perceived as weak, etc.
What bothered me about mAndrea’s post that I wanted to respond to is that there is, I think, a need for a “men’s rights movement” for men who are legitimately targets of oppression. Unfortunately, the two words “men’s rights” have already been taken for evil purposes (“selling mynahs across state lines for immortal porpoises …”), so much so that all discussions about “men’s rights advocates” are immediately suspect, and discussions about “men’s rights” instantly come under fire, regardless of the rightness or wrongness — and I’ll admit that “wrongness” is in the majority — of the arguments.
To suggest, as some here have done, that “war” is an example of “men oppressed as men” ignores that it’s more an example of “combatants oppressed as combatants”, also known as “people who carry guns get shot at in wars, and that applies to people who might carry guns, too.” It’s more fair to say that “men of color” and “underclass men” are oppressed by wars involving countries that have volunteer armies because it isn’t men, as a class, who are prosecuting the war, it’s people of color, or the underclass.
The assertions that it is men, as men, who are oppressed ignores the intersection of class and race, just as “men are victims of bullies” ignores the intersection of sexual orientation and gendered expression with gender. It is not men, as men, who are being oppressed when boys are bullied, it is a subclass of men whose only commonality is a Y chromosome.
What bothers me about these discussions, and especially these discussions on a feminist blog, are the “this sounds like a men’s pity party” and “(rolling eyes) Yes, we know, Patriarchy Hurts Men Too” comments. This — this very sort of comment — behavior is part of how patriarchy DOES hurt men.
If there is a way in which male socialization hurts virtually all men, it’s the “Don’t cry”, “Quit whining”, “Shut up and deal with it” messages that pervade boyhood, which is why I think “this sounds like a men’s pity party” and “PHMT!” remarks are triggering. And since “suicide” was raised up-thread, why I think men are more prone to commit suicide than attempt suicide, why men are less likely to partake in psychotherapy and register as “less depressed” than women, why men haven’t gotten around to men’s shelters, and why a lot of things happen — cries for help, in general, are strongly discouraged in men.
Thank you, Julie. You’ve summed up my perspective really very well.
I think that part of the difficulty in discussing this stuff comes down to personality . . . in that both the women and the men who are most likely to embrace feminist thought are those who don’t fit neatly into the gender normative boxes that the patriarchy has made for them.
For women, this often means that they’re strong, outspoken, and blunt . . . they reject, in other words, the teachings about what women are ‘supposed’ to be.
For men, this often means that they’re perceived as weak, soft-spoken, and empathic . . . once again, rejecting the teachings about what women are ‘supposed’ to be.
It’s the clash between these two personality styles, each telling the other ‘you need to communicate more like me’ and each side hearing ‘you need to fit more closely into your patriarchial box’ that lies behind a lot of this.
I saw it in the kerfluffle over Amp’s moderation style, where he was saying “Look, I need to be able to have civil conversations, for me,” and women were hearing “I want you to shut up and stop confronting intolerance.”
I see it here, where women are saying “I don’t want to focus on the harms done to men, because it runs the risk of eclipsing the rights of women, which should be feminism’s focus,” and I hear, “why don’t you stop crying, you fucking crybaby?”
I swear, by the way, every single time I see someone use the phrase ‘fee-fees’ for ‘feelings’, I react physically with revulsion. I think feeling are important, because mine have been shit on so often . . . but I also understand that feminist women are tired of being called on to be the caretakers of mens emotions . . . but also on some level I think we should all be the caretakers of everyone’s emotions, because depression, anger, and despair are emotions.
I don’t have a solution, I’m just saying that I don’t think anyone is being a jerk behind all of this, I think that they’re rejecting their gender training and it’s causing conflict.
—Myca
Sorry, guys, we’re going to have to split the perceptiveness prize this morning. Good work, you two (could I add anything less substantial? Yes. Cookies are yummy.)
Myca, do people really say “fee-fees”? If so, I’m not sure that you wouldn’t be justified in letting out your physical revulsion all over their shoes ;D
OH MAN how I wish I could say they didn’t. I think it’s sort of the text equivalent of saying in a patronizing baby voice, “oh, did I hurt your widdle feelings?”
And yeah, it sets me a widdle bit on edge. ;-)
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As an addendum to my comment #85, I’d like to quote something that one of my ex-roommates wrote about Unitarian Universalist young adults. Although it was written specifically about UU’s, I think a lot of it holds true for feminist communities and leftist communities in general.
The other thing I wanted to post was about how folks react to instances of oppression or harm. I’m a straight white male from a solidly middle-class background. I was born, if not on third, at least on second, and I’ve really been trying hard all of my life not to assume I hit a double.
When I get angry, offended, or upset about the harm done to women, gay people, transgendered people, children, black people, the poor, etc, by our culture, I have that reaction because I care about the people around me. Whether transphobia affects me directly or not, I feel it. God knows, I don’t experience it like actual transpeople, but still, it makes my blood boil. I want to fix it. I want to do what I can. There’s a strong and vocal part of my brain that says “wow, it’s really fucked up that that happened.” I feel empathy.
I really really really am not invested in whether or not the harms done to men by the patriarchy are ‘oppression’ or not. My views change from day to day, and I think I could be convinced either way. If they are oppression, it’s important to note that the patriarchy benefits men (as a class) far more than it hurts them. If they not oppression, it’s important to note that the patriarchy harms many individual men in really fucked up ways. It’s complex, not black and white.
What bugs me, though, is that in many situations, when a man brings up an instance of the patriarchy harming him, whether it’s a boy who’s been bullied or sexually molested, or a man who feels like his ability to express emotion has been systematically crushed, or a man who feels like he’s been told incessantly that he’s less of a man because he doesn’t make much money or because he’s not good at sports or whatever the hell it is . . . almost inevitably there will be someone who comments with a “I don’t care. You’re a man. Fuck off,” kind of comment.
What bugs me about it is that . . . it costs nothing to say “wow, that sucks.”
We’re not talking about the allocation of resources here. I believe that the hugely overwhelming majority of funding and concrete action and activism should go to women, because women are far far more oppressed and harmed by our culture than I will ever be. I think that that’s right and good and true, but still, it still sucks for the guy whose wife beat him up and who doesn’t know where to go.
What bugs me is that in a situation where it would cost a commenter nothing to express some cheap sympathy to someone online, that commenter would choose to express instead contempt or dismissal or whatever. It’s not most commenters, but it’s reliably one or two every single time it comes up. And it’s not just about men. It could be about transfolk or black folk or whatever.
It makes me think that these people were born without the part of their brain that triggers empathy. I mean . . . how can you not care?
I just don’t understand.
—Myca
Myca, I think that in this particular instance, there’s something to be said for having had the experience of living on the opposite end of it. There’s a reason that there’s a Nice Guy ™ moniker, and it’s not because women don’t dig actual kindness.
From the young UU woman’s perspective, there’s this guy hanging around her (or, more likely, multiple guys doing the exact same thing), pretending to only be interested in friendship when, from your description of the situation, it’s clear that his interest doesn’t end there. Even if the attraction is painfully obvious, since it’s never stated the woman can’t very well come right out and turn the guy down for something he hasn’t asked for. If she does, trust me, she’ll get torn to pieces for being so full of herself (after which the guy will probably resume the kicked puppy pose).
The specific male quandary you’ve described stems from a belief that by hanging around and being “nice,” a man is entitled to female affection. I have a lot of sympathy for a lot of situations that hit men, but being upset by not getting what they won’t ask for (and will thus often try to extract through manipulation, like pretending to be a friend when the friendship is treated as a tedious and insulting means to something else) isn’t one of them. Also, many – by no means all, but enough to make it a more than reasonable concern – of the kinds of guys who make this particular kind of complaint are only a step or two a way from outright stalking the object of their desire. The use of the word ‘object’ isn’t accidental.
I sympathize with the frustration and confusion, but that’s not the same as sympathizing with the reasoning behind the complaint. When I hear one of my own male friends voicing these kinds of concerns (or other anti-feminist thoughts that since we’re friends I know don’t come from malice or any intentional disrespect) I’m happy to help him see the opposite side of his experience and understand why things are that way. What I won’t do is agree that he gets to complain that his female friends aren’t all over him for being so cooperative and friendly. Especially if it comes along with a blanket disparagement of the judgment and tastes of said women (who says the men they date are “bad”? The men they don’t date? Is there a bias there?).
That doesn’t make me an unempathetic person. It makes me a person who knows that to actually relieve this form of “harm” against men without them changing their own behavior would have to mean taking the right to choose one’s own partners away from women. It’s empathy that makes me more interested in pointing out and clarifying the communication disconnect than commiserating about how selfish these independent women are for not being available for every man’s every whim. It’s also empathy that makes me understand that the situation you describe is also difficult for the woman involved, and likely provokes a (well-founded) fear that the man in the equation probably hasn’t faced, and usually doesn’t register.
A shorter, perhaps snarkier version of that last comment might be:
The thing with these lessons is that they tend to result in not getting everything one wants. So, the flip side of expecting sympathy when not in possession of everything one wants is that it includes or comes off as expecting a dispensation from ‘remember[ing] that sex and power are not entitlements.’
Yeah, that probably reads as snarkier, which it’s not really meant to be. It’s definitely shorter, though.
A few comments.
First off, realize that I didn’t write the quoted portion. it was written by a woman I used to live with, Sharon Colligan, who’s spent a lot of time in UU circles . . . so it’s absolutely not an analysis coming from a man. Not that that means it’s absolutely right or anything, but just don’t assume that this analysis comes from “The men they don’t date.”
You can actually find her entire thing here: http://www.circlemaker.org/cdt.html
The portion immediately before the part I posted earlier:
Second, the second bit of my post wasn’t a direct reference to the first. Sweet God I don’t consider “she won’t date me” a form of harm or oppression! It was more in reference to the personality clash issue I posted on earlier, where I do see people posting on actual, specific harms and have watched time and time and fucking TIME again as they get insulted and dismissed. Hell, a while back, we actually had a fairly well respected feminist web person explain that she didn’t give a shit about male victims of child abuse, because “hey, they’re men, it’s not my job.” My point was that it’s pretty free to say “Wow, that’s awful,” and if you not only don’t say that, but go out of your way to explain how you don’t care, I think that there’s probably something wrong with you.
Third, yes, the vast majority of people who publicly wear the aggrieved ‘nice guy’ mantle are full of shit misogynists, but I also think that you’re assuming negative intent where none is necessary. Sharon’s passage wasn’t about how these guys deserve to be dated or anything, it’s about how men who are worried about their own power, and who try as hard as they can to avoid abusing it, can be left in a weird social situation when dealing with women who are encouraged to seize their power. It’s the personality conflict I talked about in post #85, in other words.
I can totally see how you would conflate the two parts of my post and think it was a whiny “why, oh WHY won’t people date meeeee” post, but I promise you, it wasn’t. Read the two parts separately.
Did you ever stop to think that he gets that response because he’s looking for women to solve his problem? If he’s hurt by the patriarchy, he can buck it up like the feminists do, and start fighting it himself. Feminism isn’t here to cure the harm that the patriarchy does to men. In fact, feminism points out that it has historically been women who nurse these particular wounds in men and were damn sick of men needing nursing and then once they’re better they go on participating in and benefiting from the damn patriarchy.
So quit bitching about feminism. Get of your keister and get angry at the patriarchy. Getting angry at feminism because the patriarchy hurt you is childish. And selfish.
No, sorry, this is one time you’ll have to look beyond your blinders and assumptions.
I’m talking about men who post about how the patriarchy hurts them and get told, “well, I don’t care how the patriarchy hurts you, because blah blah blah . . .”
Actually, I even posted specifically that I wasn’t talking about ‘fixing’ the issue, but rather the freeform hostility and insults that crop up almost any time a guy says “Hey, this happened, and it really sucks.”
It’s interesting that your response was actually addressed in my original post.
Of course, I’m not surprised that you responded the way you did. Have fun rereading!
Ahh, I see, you think I’m angry at feminism. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
I’m angry at insensitive people who minimize the suffering of people who are not like them, whether that’s you trying to explain how transfolk don’t count for some reason or another or someone else posting about how abused kids had it coming because they’re men.
I believe in feminism, I just don’t think that this is part of it.
I think that a major part of the reason so many feminists have a knee-jerk reaction to men talking about how patriarchy harms men is because of guys looking to women (or to feminism) to solve their problems. For me the ultimate example of that is MRAs who demand that domestic violence shelters take resources away from female victims in order to devote more resources to helping male victims.
So to that extent, I think you’re right.
But I also think that, as Myca says, men who do no such thing also get the same knee-jerk reaction. That’s understandable, but it’s still wrong.
I’m not looking for women to solve my problems, for example – far from it, I’ve always felt that men have to become feminists so that women aren’t the only ones fighting the gender system. But when I post about the way patriarchy harms men, I inevitably get at least a couple of comments along the lines of Rachel’s comment #8 on this thread: “This is bordering on the men’s pity party…. Is this Amp or Daran?”
That’s by no means the only reaction I get, of course. But it’s pretty much always one of the reactions I get.
Hey Myca, I knew as soon as I posted that I’d used “you” wrongly. Mine was a more universal “you” and did not mean you specifically. Sorry for being unclear.
Right, that’s actually something I was going to specifically address, because it’s such a freaking ridiculous demand, but I ended up folding it in to the bit where I said that I believe that the hugely overwhelming majority of funding and concrete action and activism should go to women.
Heck, I think in terms of ‘people helped’ if it came down to it and resources were limited enough, it might make more sense to ONLY fund woman-only clinics . . . I just care about people getting help, and if that will help more people, then that’s that. I just don’t think that it’s necessary to also talk shit about the abused men.
—Myca