At the blog “Feminist Critics,” Hugh — whose view, if I’ve understood it correctly, is that both women and men are oppressed by the gender system, but women are oppressed more — writes:
This post shows that some of the objections to the notion of the oppression of men also serve as objections to various examples of what feminists consider to be oppression of women. My Double Standard Detector is going off. Either feminists should admit that men are oppressed, or they should relinquish some of their claims of the oppression of women. What feminists can’t do (rationally at least) is employ a broad conceptualization of oppression in characterizing harms towards women, while simultaneously constricting that conceptualization of oppression to exclude harms towards men.
Are women actually oppressed? Are men? I don’t know, and the answer depends on how we conceptualize “oppression.” Yet however we conceptualize it, we need to use the same standard for both sexes, rather than switching standards whenever it is politically convenient.
I agree that inappropriate double-standards should be avoided. However, I think that Hugh’s argument is based on his misunderstanding of how feminist theorists talk about “oppression.” (Hugh is by no means alone in this; feminists often discuss concepts like “oppression” in sloppy and imprecise ways, too. I certainly have. Most of us aren’t academic theorists, after all.)1
Hugh writes:
I only bring up the term “oppression” because feminists use it to characterize harms to women, but not harms to men.
Note that Hugh consistently talks about “oppression” as if it’s another word for “harm.” But I don’t think that’s how feminist theorists use the word. Marilyn Frye, in her essay “Oppression,” writes:
When the stresses and frustrations of being a man are cited as evidence that oppressors are oppressed by their oppressing, the word “oppression” is being stretched to meaninglessness; it is treated as though its scope includes any and all human experience of limitation or suffering, no matter the cause, degree or consequence. Once such usage has been put over on us, then if ever we deny that any person or group is oppressed, we seem to imply that we think they never suffer and have no feelings. […] But this is nonsense. Human beings can be miserable without being oppressed, and it is perfectly consistent to deny that a person or group is oppressed without denying that they have feelings or that they suffer.
Frye could not have more clearly stated that suffering (which, as Frye uses it, is quite similar to how Hugh uses “harms”) in and of itself is not oppression. Similarly, in his book The Gender Knot (pdf link), Allan Johnson writes:
…If we say a group can oppress or persecute itself we turn the concept of social oppression into a mere synonym for socially caused suffering, which it isn’t.
My point isn’t that I agree with every aspect of Johnson or Frye’s discussion, but that they clearly argue that oppression is something significantly different from suffering (and also, I think it’s reasonable to infer, different from harms). If I’m correct about that, then Hugh’s argument seems inapplicable to what these feminist theorists are really arguing.
If I say “both this glass eye and this hammer are hard surfaces, but the ocean is not,” it doesn’t make sense to respond that I’m using a double-standard, merely because the marble, the hammer, and the ocean are all blue. Yes, they are all blue; but since “color” isn’t the metric I’m using to make distinctions, the accusation of a double-standard merely shows that my critic has failed to comprehend my argument.
I think the best way of thinking about “oppression” is that the word refers to systems of determining who gets to comprise the dominant or controlling class, not to specific instances of harm.2 Specific harms are not oppression in and of themselves; they are part of systems of oppression. (Since the same harms can be simultaneously part of the system, and results of the system, the system of oppression is a vicious cycle).
In this view, someone who says “X is an example of the oppression of cartoonists” is mistaken. X might be a result of the oppression of cartoonists, but X is not oppression.
Hugh writes:
One example is the argument that men cannot be oppressed by themselves. Yet there are many examples of women harming women (e.g. female genital mutilation) that are considered by feminists to be oppression. If women can oppress women on the dimension of gender, then men can oppress men.
The gender system is perpetuated by both women and men, and both women and men suffer under it. However, that doesn’t mean that the relationship of women oppressing women within the system is identical to that of men oppressing men within the system.3
When women perpetuate the system of oppressing women, such as in FGM, the conflict (if there is any conflict at all) is not over which woman gets to dominate the society. Neither woman will get to dominate the society; the gender system guarantees that virtually all members of the dominating class will be men.
In contrast, most examples of men contributing to the oppression of other men are instances of men attempting to become dominant, or to ensure that other men don’t become dominant. To quote from Adam Jones’ essay “Gendercide and Genocide”:
…In gendercides against men… the wider collectivity is “culled” and “sifted” to isolate a minority considered threatening, according to the blanket application of diverse variables (usually gender and age). Furthermore, the “challenge” and “threat” to “the dominant group” captures something of the competitive and belligerent character of intra-male politics, the principal challenge of which has always been to suppress perceived male rivals or competitors.
What makes the gender system one of oppression of women is that, even though both women and men act in ways that perpetuate the system, the system’s effect is that the dominating class will be nearly all male.4
Note as well that viewing oppression as a system of dominance does not make any claim about who is hurt more, or who suffers more. Suffering and harm are among the results of oppression, but they are not the metrics by which oppression is measured.
What’s unsatisfying about my own analysis, so far, is that a definition of oppression must refer not only to dominance, but also to injustice. Otherwise, we’d have to conclude that even holding an election — which is, after all, a means of determining who will be in a controlling class — is perpetuating a system of oppression.
We can, however, incorporate the concept of injustice into a conception of oppression as a system of dominance. For instance, swiping aspects of Caroline New’s definition of oppression (pdf link) (which I quoted in an earlier post) and combining it with the view that oppression is about systems of dominance and control, I came up with this definition of oppression:
Oppression is a system whereby a group “X” is systematically mistreated in comparison to non-Xs in a given social context, and in which members of group “X” are effectively prevented from joining the dominating or controlling class of society in significant numbers.
As I think I’ve demonstrated, it is possible to create a feminist definition of “oppression” which does not rely either on double-standards or on denying that men experience harm and suffering as a result of the gender system.
(This post is a cleaned-up version of a comment I left on Hugh’s post; Hugh has since replied to me there. There’s also a related post by Hugh here, which I responded to in Hugh’s comments here.)
(I’ve decided not to make the comments for this post “Feminist only.” However, I will be moderating closely whenever I’m online. Rudeness will not be tolerated, personal attacks will not be tolerated, and snide implications that feminists are man-hating bigots — even when delivered in “civil” language — will not be tolerated.)
- I want to add this disclaimer: My thoughts on “oppression” are actively in development. Therefore, my views stated today may well be inconsistent with views I’ve stated in the past, or the views I state an hour from now. [↩]
- Although I didn’t reread any works by Catharine MacKinnon while writing this post, I want to point out that this post — and, indeed, any feminist discussion of oppression and dominance — doubtless owes a great debt to MacKinnon’s work. [↩]
- I don’t think Hugh disagrees with me on this specific point. [↩]
- To be clear, I am claiming that the members of the dominating or controlling class will be nearly all male; I am not claiming that all or most men get to be members of that class. [↩]
Um, I realize this tread has moved way beyond this, but I just wanted to say, Amp, that you had a very good response to my concerns.
Pingback: Feminist Critics
Daran, would anything at all convince you that the world is not run for the benefit of women? Or are you so resentful at those neurotypical high-powered career bitches giving you lip that no proof at all could ever be enough? I’m genuinely curious, because your hatred of a theory you admit you know nothing about goes way beyond the rational.
“I think the best way of thinking about “oppression” is that the word refers to systems of determining who gets to comprise the dominant or controlling class, not to specific instances of harm”
I think this is the crux of the disagreement. The concept of dominant or controlling class is a relative one and is subject to multi-dimensional analysis.
In binary mode (in the US) black people are oppressed by white people.
In binary mode some upper class white people oppress lower class white people.
The problematic areas come when you mix possible classifications and try to analyze oppression. Can an upper class black man oppress a lower class white woman? Depending on the situation, the answer is clearly “YES”. If the situation is such that class or gender (or both) is more important than race, she can definitely be oppressed by him.
The typical problem is that any particular theorist gets stuck on single variables of oppression as if they were the only (or principle) one. This makes sense because they spend a lot of time studying that one thing. They then sometimes have trouble admitting that in a multi-variable world, the subject of their study of oppression along one dimension might be the oppressor along other dimensions–even so far as to negate the dimension of their study in the situation at hand.
So a gender-specialist may correctly identify that a man has oppressed a woman in some situation. That same man and same woman may potentially be in reversed situations of oppressor and oppressed along the racial divide.
Daran writes:
Sure.
Access to sex.
Which is maintained by keeping women in terror of rape. But you knew that already, or you wouldn’t have excluded it as merely a “feminist-theoretical interest”.
Dworkin wrote extensively on the subject, but you’d have to have read Dworkin to understand what she’s saying. Heck, I don’t know of any feminist author who wrote more brilliantly on the subject. She and Susan Brownmiller saved my life 20+ years ago (for values of 20 pretty close to 10 + 10) with what they wrote on the subject.
You’d also have to understand that, as Dworkin put it (more or less — I’m in a Dworkin mood and may well botch the paraphrase …) men seem to fear what would happen if y’all quit it with all the stupid games you play get get sex, when the most likely result of ending the rape culture would be women being less afraid of men and more willing to engage in that which you constantly harass us into giving you.
Correction to the trackback: As Amp has pointed out in the comments here, I havn’t been banned. I was given a final warning. My apologies to him for the misreading.
Nevertheless, I won’t post to this thread again. I may reply in the thread at FCB to some of the comments made here and the thread is in any case open to anyone who want to discuss any of these issues with us, or otherwise to be free of the restrictions here.
Amp
I cop to the point-scoring – sorry, I should have point-scored at FCB.
Julie
Can you think of any kind of privilege which does not accrue more to a millionairess than to a homeless man?
I’m thoroughly puzzled by this follow-up:
The question is not whether a man is privileged over a woman of “similar class” but whether he is privileged over a woman who is incomparably wealthier than he is. What are you suggesting? That because men are more privileged over women of their own class, they are privileged over women of any class?
I don’t want to be unfair about this: perhaps you can reconfigure what you’ve said into a more cogent argument for me?
Tom Nolan writes:
Yes, male privilege. That’s the entire point. All things being equal, a homeless man and a millionairess walk into various sorts of stores, and the homeless man is treated better. A homeless man and a millionaires, all other things being equal, the homeless man gets the job and the millionairess doesn’t.
Oh, you mean, a millionairess walks into a store waving around $100 bills and a homeless man walks in smelling of urine. Why didn’t you say so!
That’s a scenario that’s not being discussed because a millionaire walks into the same store and is treated better than the millionairess and a homeless man walks in and is treated better than a homeless woman. THIS is the scenario feminists talk about — all other things being equal, a man receives better treatment than a woman.
It’s the “all other things being equal” aspect that you and others keep ignoring. I think most feminists (except for the intentionally dense ones …) understand how class, race, religion, ethnicity and sexual orientation all intersect. And we can probably tell you that, for example, all other things being equal, whites are treated better than blacks, Christians better than Jews and Moslems, Western Europeans better than Eastern Europeans or Middle Easterners, and straights better than big queers like moi. We’re not ignorant about “class” and all the different classes. We (me and my tapeworm) believe that “all other things being equal” is how one determines power-up / power-down relationships.
There’s a lot to be gleaned from this, and a lot of stuff that, if men would just stop resisting this approach to things, could be beneficial to men.
All other things being equal, tall men are favored over short men. All other things being equal, masculine men are favored over feminine men. All other things being equal, stay-home dads are treated worse than work-for-pay dads. And so on down the line.
Feminism, and feminist analysis, is NOT the enemy of men. So … quit treating us like we’re your enemy. Unless your the machoest dude going, feminism has something of value to offer you.
I disagree. The pertinent question here, in my opinion, is whether the male gender role dispenses a type of power unavailable to those in the female gender role. I would assert that it does; and with this power, those ascribing to the gender role of male have the responsibility to demonstrate that said power is not being abused.
I feel that this responsibility has not been met by the assertions thus far; furthermore, I find the examples by Q Grrl and others of exploitation based on gender roles compelling. Those inhabiting the male gender role can certainly point to certain patterns of behavior in it that they find personally destructive, but to assert that this means that the role itself cannot be considered oppressive ignores the inherent culpability of the dominant interactant.
The dichotomy of gender has helped to create a superior and a subordinate class structure- demonstratively debasing, in my view; but one that must be acknowledged to be rectified.
If you inhabit the role, then assume the inherent complicity in its destructive actions; find the courage to change it instead of discrediting those who demonstrate its abhorrent nature.
Julie
What does “all things being equal” mean? Do you mean that if the homeless man and the millionairess appeared to be equally rich he would be treated better? That is a very unlikely scenario, but even if it were to come about it would rest on a simple misunderstanding. As soon as it became known that he was a pauper and she was a millionairess her treatment would be in every conceivable way superior to his. In other words the privilege accruing to her financial position would massively outweigh the privilege accruing to his masculinity.
Yes, if people didn’t know that she was a millionairess she wouldn’t enjoy the privilege due to a millionairess. So what? If people didn’t know he was a man he wouldn’t enjoy the privilege due to a man. Given that neither of these things is usually a secret, in what way is a homeless man privileged over a millionairess?
Or do you want to beg this question by repeating that being a man is synonymous with enjoying male privilege?
I don’t consider you or feminists in general to be my enemy , Julie. On the other hand, I do consider faulty reasoning to be the enemy of feminism. Really, you would do better to consider my arguments that to make – quite false – assumptions about my motives.
Tom Nolan writes:
Well, since most women aren’t millionairesses and most men are homeless, it has the advantage of dealing with real-world situations. That’s the answer to “So what?”
Feminism, and feminists in general, is very comfortable dealing with class privilege. Of course the woman with a bazillion dollars gets treated better than a man with smelly clothes and no money. Point conceded. But how many dollars, or how much wealth, or whatever, does a woman have to have before being treated like a man’s equal? If you think the answer is $0.00, you’re really mistaken. And if you acknowledge that the answer is greater than $0.00 you have to acknowledge that our reasoning isn’t the least bit fault.
The first part is perceptive. They do tend to blame feminism for absolutely everything currently considered wrong in society, do they not? If you read their blogs, a certain pattern quickly emerges. They want women to stay home, put out, and shut up – anything other than this rouses their ire. This point is especially easy to see by reading the less popular mra blogs; the more widely known sites are similar in viewpoint but more careful in their accusations.
The last bit Diane mentioned, though, doesn’t explain why the mra’s are “whining”, or why some feminists take offense. It’s a given that, for whatever reason, some mra’s simply cannot differentiate the apparently subtle nuances between systematic patriarchal oppression done to others for their benefit as a class, and isolated harms which “blowback” to all men in general as a result. For these mra’s: they simply don’t “get it”, their lives are not going as they intended, they’re unhappy and looking for a scapegoat.
For other mra’s, however, Diane is most likely willing to assume benevolent reasons for their complaints against feminism; I am not so convinced. History again, I’m afraid. Just as there have always been men working hard to convince other men of woman’s basic humanity, there have always been others working hard to maintain women’s subjegation.
Anyone can say anything at all, but when asked what it is that they really want changed, the mra’s will propose what ultimately amounts to legal restrictions on women’s safety.
I’m confused as to why anyone would examine their rhetoric, and take their concerns at face value. They cannot display even basic comprehension of what systematic oppression actually means. They think there’s a giant cabal of feminazi conspiratores plotting their downfall. Every fact and study cited by them eventually proves fictious or duplicitous upon examination.
I know why I don’t take them seriously; now somebody tell me why you do.
“Every fact and study cited by them eventually proves fictious or duplicitous upon examination.”
I’ve been thinking about doing a very long blog post about this.
This one in particular: http://www.csulb.edu/%7Emfiebert/assault.htm and it looks like the author finally removed all the duplicate studies (there were at least 30 when I counted) and put it in alphabetical order. One night I looked up the first 10 studies which were available in full on line. None of them claimed what the author asserted, and one study didn’t exist anywhere at all. I even looked up the reseacher’s name – nope, nada.
“But how many dollars, or how much wealth, or whatever, does a woman have to have before being treated like a man’s equal? If you think the answer is $0.00, you’re really mistaken. And if you acknowledge that the answer is greater than $0.00 you have to acknowledge that our reasoning isn’t the least bit fault. ”
This is way too binary. My guess is that the difference in wealth necessary to get to equal is about $5,000 per year for the lower class, $10,000 for the middle class and somewhere in the range of $50-75,000 in the upper class. That is to say that if you are only doing SAME CLASS comparisons, the woman needs about that much to get to equal with a man.
If you are doing cross-class comparisons, an upper class woman is often in a position to oppress a lower class man.
So the reasoning is “the least bit at fault” because it fails to adequately look at how cross-class oppression can be stronger than male-female oppression. One of the key problems in this thread is that a number of commenters reduce everything to rape situations, when so far as I can tell, most male-female cross-class interactions do not actually involve rape or the threat of rape. Many of them involve things like purchasing goods and services from the lower class man.
Julie
Thankyou for that.
What do you mean “our reasoning”. I was arguing against your claim that male privilege outweighed any amount of a woman’s financial privilege, not against feminism’s claim that, all things being equal, men are privileged.
Tom writes:
There you go again, assuming the “privilege” we’re talking about is like a bank account. A “bank account” sort of privilege goes away when the bank account is empty. Class privilege is something that doesn’t go away.
Glad to oblige.
-title IX legislation
-affirmative action for women
-health insurance funding for the Pill
-health insurance funding for Viagra
-rape shield legislation and other rape law changes (given that men are the primary rapists and women the primary victims, any changes in rape laws tend to affect one group more than the other)
-divorce law w/r/t assignment of alimony and/or $$$ based on ‘home contributions’ (see note above re rape)
hey that was fun! i could think of them as fast as I could type! And of course there are more.
Could you really not think of a single example of that type of issue? that seems surprising to say the least–especially as I’ve listed some of these in recent threads in which we have disagreed.
What is this clarification for? “generally don’t coincide” already covers the examples where their interests are not dichotomous, but merely quite different with some overlap.
Hey, nice one. You managed to exclude (in the second half of your sentence) one of the most major areas relating to the subject. Are you conceding the discrimination in that area? Because if not, I don’t see why you should be allowed to make your “general” point while ignoring it.
Anyway.
What’s our “universe” here? if its’ worldwide, it is extraordinarily easy to list. (again: are you literally incapapable of thinking of a single example? or are you deliberately being obtuse? You have been on Alas for a while, how could you have missed this all?)
Amp, you ask:
I was thinking mostly of the threads here where I dissect our rape culture. Also my threads about women-only space (it’s interesting that while MRA’s like Daran suggest feminists are fear mongering and not doing anything, they are also the most likely to take umbrage at women-only space. Go figure).
And yes, I have brain obtusity, amongst many other ailments.
(And it’s for this reason I hate WordPress …)
Tom Nolan writes:
As I wrote in “My Reply, Version 1.0”, “bank account privilege” is not like “class privilege” in that “bank account privilege” goes away along with the bank account, but class privilege only goes away if one someone loses membership in the class =and= loses the internalized messages associated with that class membership. Because one is often unaware of all the internalized messages, losing those attitudes and beliefs, or even becoming aware that they exist and what they are, is just very difficult.
That’s what male privilege is in feminist discourse — the privileges, which include the internalization of those privileges as somehow “deserved”, perhaps because they were “earned” through great personal effort and not simply bestoyed upon the individual due to their class membership, that are granted due to being male.
What you’re arguing is that because “bank account privilege” exists, class privilege either doesn’t exist or doesn’t matter. Sebastian acknowledged that there are class differences between men and women — all other things being equal, men are privileged over women. The feminist argument is that because, all other things being equal, men are privileged over women. That if you lined up men on one side, and women on the other, ranked by “power” (or perhaps “bank acocunt privilege”), straight down the line, all those men would be privileged, one for one, over all those women. And, furthermore, that this is how male privilege, as a set of internalized messages and attitudes, is constructed. He is more deserving, more entitled, more worthy, more everything good, than women.
Julie
That’s axiomatic: the privilege which accrues to me as a member of a class can be lost only through my membership of that class. Likewise: the privilege which accrues to me as an owner of wealth can be lost only through the possession of that wealth.
It is agreed that loss of membership to the male sex (you know a lot more about this than I do, obviously) is generally speaking more problematic than the loss of a lot of money. But that has no bearing on the dispute at hand, and which I thought you had actually conceded: that, as a matter of fact, a millionairess enjoys way more privilege of every kind than a homeless vagrant.
Do you now wish to resile from your concession and say that, because it’s harder for him to lose his membership of his sexual class than it is for her to lose her money, he in fact enjoys more privilege than she does?
Why, by the way, do you think that when I refer to privilege I am exclusively referring to money? I take it for granted that money can buy lots of privilege, but I do not make the mistake of thinking that they are one and the same.
No, I’m not. I challenge you to quote anything I have written which would support such an accusation.
Me
Not wordpress: just me being dumb.
That should read
Sorry.
I wouldn’t call Daran an MRA, just somebody who irrationally hates feminism and seems to blame women for the disadvantages caused by his disability.
“Sebastian acknowledged that there are class differences between men and women — all other things being equal, men are privileged over women. The feminist argument is that because, all other things being equal, men are privileged over women. That if you lined up men on one side, and women on the other, ranked by “power” (or perhaps “bank acocunt privilege”), straight down the line, all those men would be privileged, one for one, over all those women. ”
But since the question is akin to “can men be oppressed” in a feminist context, the answer is clearly ‘yes’. Since oppression is a multi-faceted evil, it is possible for women to oppress men–along a different dimension of oppression. White women can oppress black men. Upper class black women can oppress lower class white men. Etc.
Tom Nolan writes:
… and they are orthogonal and therefore shouldn’t be mixed and matched.
That’s why … all other things being equal, men are more privileged than women.
“Money” buys a kind of privilege. It cannot buy the kind of privilege that is meant in terms like “male privilege”, “white privilege”, “straight privilege” or any of the other class privileges, besides “class privilege”. OJ Simpson, for all his wealth and access, was instantly reduced to a black thug by someone who decided to darken his photo on a magazine cover. That’s the lie that money buys privilege — it doesn’t.
Yes, of course the rich white woman is treated better than the poor black gutter occupant who smells of urine. But take that man out of the gutter, give him a bath, haircut, manicure, and put him in a suit and tie, and he’s got more “privilege” than her. Her money means nothing because short of changing sex, she’s a she and he’s a he and the he’s win just about every time they stand on equal footing.
Julie, I agree completely on the ‘equal footing’ point. I mean, duh, right?
My only quibble is that I don’t think the privilege that comes with wealth necessarily goes away when the money does. Being upper-class includes a host of social connections, manners, knowledge and culture about how to dress and act, knowing the right restaurants, the right wine, and so on. Although money can come and go, people with those traits have an easier time regaining money when it’s gone, and will often find themselves treated better in general . . . they’ve got privilege, in other words.
Of course, I think that this may come down to the difference between ‘having money’ and ‘being upper class’. I think you can have a hell of a lot of money without being a member of the ‘class’ “Upper Class People”. I think membership in that class is both a cultural and a money-based thing.
—-Myca
Actually, that’s why we have common cultural markers for things like The Nouveau Riche, and The Genteel Poor.
The Nouveau Riche = Money but no upper-class culture.
The Genteel Poor = Upper class culture, but no money.
Both would ‘kinda-sorta’ be members of the class “Upper Class People,” I think.
Okay, just one more comment. Dammit, I just keep thinking of stuff.
I completely 100% agree.
I think a lot of the pushback here though is because there’s also no group I can go to and say “Hey, I’m a white guy . . . can you give me a bunch of money, because I may be poor, but I’m really, really male and really, really white.”
I don’t think that privilege in one area cancels out lack of privilege in another. I don’t think there are trump cards.
—Myca
I think a lot of the pushback here though is because there’s also no group I can go to and say “Hey, I’m a white guy . . . can you give me a bunch of money, because I may be poor, but I’m really, really male and really, really white.”
How about a bank? In other words, would a bank be more likely to lend money to a “high risk” client if said client was white and male than if same were black, female, foreign, or otherwise obviously “other”? (This is a question, not a claim. I don’t know of any particular evidence one way or another.)
Oh, almost certainly they’d be more willing to lend to a white guy than a black woman, all other things being equal.
But still, I think that their primary determinant of lending status would be financial solvency, and the fact that someone’s white/male/straight won’t help them much in getting a loan if they’re also dirt poor.
—Myca
Banks do not generally grant loans to high-risk clients of any description. You want high-risk capital, you’re looking at a credit card company, a venture capitalist, or a loan shark. Credit card companies are racially neutral in their policies; it’s usually a computer making the decision. VCs and loan sharks are as racist as other people, so there you would probably see a difference.
That’s pretty much my definition of an mra. Except they also are trying to rollback the gains of equality and safety for women.
I have been looking specifically for mra sites which do not do those things you mention, and I have only found two. In both of these cases, the site was careful to stick to one very narrow topic, didn’t mention proposed changes to existing law, didn’t mention women at all, and so it was impossible to determine how the author perceived women. These two sites were among a couple hundred I have read.
The pattern is obvious.
There are lots of wonderful men who aren’t like this, though, and I would be much more interested in hearing their thoughts, what they think needs improving or topics they think needs discussing – men like Amp perhaps, or Charles who posts here, and some others. The mra’s, on the other hand, simply can’t be trusted to give an accurate perspective. Unfortunately, those are the shouty ones who post every other second.
Another article on gender and loan approval.
Julie
But OJ Simpson was a man, wasn’t he? So, obviously his male privilege no more protected him from racial vilification than his wealth privilege. So why are you claiming that the privilege which results from wealth is fundamentally dissimilar from the privilege which comes from sex? Neither provides a hundred percent protection if one is disadvantaged in some other way.
Can you show me how wealth-derived privilege differs in quality from sex-derived privilege or race-derived privilege? If I get served first in a shop on account of my wealth, as opposed to my sex or my skin colour, how is that any less of a privilege? If the jury takes my word more readily on account of my wealth, as opposed to my sex or my skin colour, how is that any less of a privilege? If I get admitted to a hospital on account of my wealth, as opposed to my sex or my skin colour, how is that any less of a privilege?
Privilege can proceed from many sources, but its quality doesn’t change according to those sources.
Sorry, Julie, missed this first time round.
Not true at all. A man (as the result of some “Pygmalion” style experiment, say) who wore a tailor-made suit, who boasted the most perfectly manicured hands and who sported the best coiffeur that money could buy, but who was known to be a pauper would enjoy very little privilege in comparison to an ill-kempt, foul-mouthed and generally obnoxious woman who was known to be a millionairess.
Take the slovenly but well-known millionairess and the well-presented but notoriously broke man into Bloomingdales and see who gets the best service.
As to this
I know precisely as much as you have chosen to make public on this blog.
Tom wrote:
I think your argument conflates “the effects of privilege can overlap and be identical in many cases” with “the quality of privilege never changes, regardless of the source.” But the two aren’t the same, and although I think the former is true, I don’t think the latter is true.
There’s a lot that being in a privileged class has in common, whatever that class is. The primary thing, in my mind, is that privileged classes are always considered the “norm” for whatever society they’re in. A generic, unmarked person in US society is male, is white, is upper-middle-class, is ablebodied, is straight, is cisgendered, is thin, and so on.
But there are also differences. For example, one important difference between wealth-derived privilege and male-defined privilege is that the disadvantages of wealth-derived privilege are so few, so infrequent and so inconsequential. (Relatively speaking). While I think men in general are significantly advantaged by male privilege, I would qualify that statement with many exceptions, such as workplace deaths, estrangement from families, lack of services for male rape victims, mass killings of men in many wars, and so on. Although there are some Gasby-like poor little rich people out there, and the very rare instances of Patty Herst like targeting, on the whole the disadvantages of being rich are minor compared to the disadvantages of being male.
Amp
I think that Q Grrl was maybe right when she called me (amongst others) dense.
I cannot for the life of me see how what you have written – much of which, I hasten to add, is unobjectionable – is in any way at odds with what I have written. The gender role associated with the privilege one enjoys as a man may well bring with it all sorts of drawbacks which the wealth associated with the privilege one enjoys as a millionaire does not. That does not, however, imply a difference of quality between the privilege one receives as a man on the one hand, and the privilege one receives as a millionaire on the other. Does it?
My statements and yours seem “orthogonal” (as Julie would no doubt phrase the matter).
Tom, I’m glad if our disagreement is merely a matter of semantics.
I think we are probably using different working definitions of the word “quality.” I was assuming you meant quality as in the oft-heard contrast between “quantity and quality”; quantity refers to amount, quality refers to type, or to details. There are differences in type and in details between how class-based oppression operates and how gender-based oppression operates, in my opinion.
Tom Nolan writes:
There are too many instances in which well-known people — the genuine rich and famous — have been arrested or hassled because of their race or sex to believe that what you’ve described exists anywhere except rhetorically.
The exception of the rich white woman and the poor black man doesn’t prove that male privilege is some fiction. It proves that race and wealth are other forms of privilege. The important thing, that you don’t seem to grasp, is that people in classes which are power-down (women, people of color, GLBT, non-Christians in Christian countries, etc) cannot buy their way out of group membership.
The important thing about wealth is that it’s not immutable.
The supreme court has, wisely, noted that there’s a huge difference between discriminating on the basis of an IMMUTABLE characteristic versus a changeable one.
Women and POC just… are what they are, in respect to their status as such. Wealthy people can become non-wealthy, and (admittedly harder but possible) non-wealthy people can become wealthy. certainly, small changes in wealth happen all the time to many folks, while very few change sex and essentially nobody changes race.
So it’s not that wealth privilege doesn’t EXIST. Of course it does. But it’s not worrisome in the same way as gender (or race) privilege, because it’s, hmm, more ‘neutral.’
It goes back to what i wrote above: “the ability of the oppressed to escape the oppression.”
If you are nasty to a woman because she is a democrat, that’s not gender-based oppression. If she doesn’t like it, she can become a republican. OTOH, if you’re nasty because she is female, what’s she supposed to do? Get a sex change?
You keep talking about wealth as if it’s equivalent to gender. It’s not.
Julie
Yes, one can be racially and sexually harrassed and discriminated against despite being rich. It is perfectly true, that is, that wealth does not necessarily immunize against all the effects of racial and sexual prejudice (although it immunizes against many of them). But that shows only that privilege derived from wealth is no more impregnable than privilege derived from gender (remember: OJ Simpson was racially denigrated despite the fact that he was a man) or privilege derived from colour (who is going to be treated better in an altercation with the law: Oprah Winfrey or a white homeless woman?).
Julie, what I said about a dishevelled and foul-mouthed woman known to be a millionairess being assured better treatment at Bloomingdales (and in many other situations besides, naturally) than a well-presented man known to be a pauper was correct. No general statement that money is not an absolute guarantee against the effects sexual and racial prejudice can undermine the observable fact that the possession of wealth frequently does neutralize those effects.
This is something you need to take up with somebody who believes that no privilege accrues to membership of the male sex. Disputing it with me will be a frustrating exercise, as I believe no such thing.
It is you who are failing to grasp something, Julie: something you could have grasped long ago if you had paid attention to what I was actually writing rather than spent your time debating against positions I do not hold. I have never suggested that the mere possession of wealth allows people to buy their way out of group membership (though as a matter of fact wealth could be used to change a person’s apparent gender and colour). All that I have said is that wealth is a source of privilege, and that such privilege can and often does outweigh the privilege which derives from other sources (membership of sexual or racial groups, say). If you had grasped this (to me self-evident) truth you would never have been able to write
in the first place.
Sailorman
I refer the honourable gentleman to the reply I gave in comment 119.
The supreme court has, wisely, noted that there’s a huge difference between discriminating on the basis of an IMMUTABLE characteristic versus a changeable one.
That’s not accurate. The Supreme Court has noted that there is a difference between discriminating on the basis of certain categories that are Constitutionally suspect vs. ones that aren’t. It is true that race isn’t mutable, but the distinction isn’t “aw, they can’t help being that way.”
Tom,
I went back and re-read virtually every word you have written in this thread, and my earlier response —
is my response.
You appear to be hear to set us poor feminists straight in our reasoning — and you said as much upthread, that faulty thinking (what you’ve accused us of here) is the enemy of feminism.
Feminism is not a “Theory of Everything”, in that it attempts to address all manners of oppression in some unified theory that can accurately predict if a gay black man in suit and tie and turban (signifying, perhaps, being non-Christian) has more or less power than a straight white woman in country garb (signifying some rural class membership) wearing a crucifix (signifying being a member of the dominant, Christian for the USofA, religion).
Your complaint with feminism seems to be that it either isn’t a “Theory of Everything” or that it isn’t paying attention to things other than gendered power structures, which is pretty much the same thing, only less expansive. Instead of not being about a bazillion things, it’s not about some shorter list. Somewhere in there is this complaint that because some men, under some set of circumstances are power-down, relative to some group of women with some set of attributes, feminism is illogical, or feminist thinking is faulty. My only response is that women in those same circumstance as the men who are relatively disempower still have more power than women in the same situation, and men in the same position as this hypothetical powerful woman have more power than her. That’s the validity of feminism to me — all other things being equal, men have more power (and men misuse that power) than women.
Julie
No, not “us”. You. I meant that you, Julie, are not doing any favours to the movement you love by defending it with what are, to say the least, problematic arguments. That is the second time you have tried to turn my debate with you and your arguments into a debate with feminism and its tenets. You seem determined to see our dialogue as an episode in the war between feminism and its enemies, but that isn’t how I see it.
That depends on which feminism you’re referring to. Some feminists believe that the oppression to which women are subjected by men is the cause and support of all other kinds of oppression. That is the view of Heart, for instance, and also the view of Twisty Faster – and of many of their followers (amongst which I do not count you, naturally). For them feminism is quite definitely a theory of everything.
Perhaps that’s true. And there is nothing wrong with concentrating on ameliorating the effects of one kind of privilege, one kind of unfair disadvantage. But your arguments in this thread have been of a different kind. You have suggested that the privilege that results from belonging to the male gender is somehow incomparable with the privilege that results from possessing wealth. And though you are willing to admit the fact that, yes, a man stinking of urine and dressed in rags might be somewhat less welcome in a shop than a very wealthy woman, you persistently suggest that wealth privilege can trump male privilege only in such extreme cases. But that’s nonsense. A man does not have to be an outright vagrant to find himself outranked by a woman in terms of privilege: once people know that she is wealthier than him they will take care of her needs before they take care of his. I, for example, don’t go into Harrod’s these days smelling of piss and dressed in rags the way I used to to but I still won’t be welcomed like Brittney Spears or Angela Merkel.
So why all that effort to minimize or deny an obvious truth? In my view, because you have categorized women as an oppressed gender and therefore find it difficult to face the fact that there are millions of women in the west who are very privileged indeed in comparison with millions of men. That’s an uncomfortable fact, but it isn’t to be wished away by invoking an inalienable “male privilege” which no woman can share.
Just think about it: the vagrant has forfeited all the other sources of privilege that he might have aspired to – wealth, professional success, community prestige etc. What privilege he has must derive from his being a man rather than a woman. And nonetheless he will still be the most shunned of creatures. Our millionairess cannot aspire to male privilege and may be, like the vagrant, without the talent necessary to achieve other kinds of privilege. But she won’t, of course, be despised like him. To have nothing but male privilege is a disaster, to have nothing but the privilege which derives from a lot of money – well, it’s a rather less dramatic predicament. Doesn’t that make you wonder if you are perhaps exaggerating the value of male privilege while underestimating wealth privilege?
Your thinking in this thread has, in my view, been faulty. That doesn’t mean that all feminist thinking is. You say that my supposed complaint against feminism is “somewhere in there”. Since you’ve reread my comments on this thread, might I ask you to produce a supporting quotation? This is not the first time I have asked you to back up your accusations against me with quotations, by the way.
A lesson in opression from 753 B.C. to 2000 A.D.
Read that, and then try to argue that oppression of women is a fluke.
Seriously, try. This is a challenge, a dare, a duel, handbags at dawn.
Loser has to lick my shiny boots.
ps – oh nevermind, the narcissist has run away, too many unrefutable facts.
I’m not sure why arguing the differences between class oppression and gender oppression is a fruitful exercise. Sure they overlap, but who cares? Economic status can be changed through hard work, – biology, not so much. That is why gender discrimination is so much worse, regardless of how much or little wealth someone has.
In someone’s mythical heiress example, she is still subject to her equally wealthy boyfriend’s misogyny – that same old “woman is teh evil and needs to be controlled for her own good” mindset which has existed for millenia. I’m kinda tired of it.
No more excuses.
Please remember that personal insults are against the rules of this blog. Thanks!
I probably shouldn’t have used that word, even though [edited by Amp.]
I apologize for abusing Amp’s posting policy.
lol
Sorry!
Tom,
I’ve defined my terms repeatedly — all other things being equal, women are power-down relative to men. Comparing wealthy women to poor men isn’t “all other things being equal”. The female vagrant has less power than the male vagrant, and the female millionaire has less power than the male. Can you at least agree with that? You’re free to reject that approach, but to the best of my knowledge, that’s how class analysis generally works.
We don’t compare highly educated women to uneducated men to determine if women are denied employment opportunities — we control for education. Nor do we compare millionaire women to vagrant men to determine if women are denied access to credit — we control for the factors that are supposedly used to determine credit worthiness. This is why your repeated “uncomfortable truth” is just irrelevant.
Nor is “wealth” an absolute immunity to such things as women not being used equally for medical research as men, resulting in medicines and treatments being focused more on men than women — a wealthy woman is no more assured that the medication she is taking, or the treatment she is undergoing, has been tested on others like herself.
Wealth, social status, education attainment, beauty, physical ability, race — none of these things are protection against living in a woman-hating society. They aren’t protection against being a victim of domestic violence or rape. And while they may protect her, to some extent, from legal attacks on her rights, such as the right to reproductive health care, her “protections” are limited to paying a sort of “tax” to escape draconian laws that seek to control her body.
None of those things — violence against women as women, ignoring women’s medical needs because women aren’t men, interfering with a woman’s control over her own body, et cetera, ad nauseum — are things that any vagrant man will ever experience. They are unique to women. Just as “white privilege” doesn’t include a history of African Slavery and Jim Crow Laws in this country, “male privilege” doesn’t include being a target of the rape culture that exists in this country. Those experiences, while the may overlap on individuals, are unique experiences of those CLASSES of individuals.
The female vagrant has less power than the male vagrant, and the female millionaire has less power than the male.
Hmm. I certainly agree about the millionaires. Not so sure about the vagrants.
Hi Amp,
great post! sorry, I haven’t read all the comments, just the first 50 or so. I’m not going to engage with the discussion here, since I haven’t read it all, I just wanted to respond to the original article.
I too use Frye’s “Oppression” as the basis of how I think about the subject, and I also think that “oppression” has two distinct parts: subjugation and privilege. Where oppression exists, there is a simultaneous privileging and subjugating of two classes which are constructed as binary opposites. It seems clear enough to me that an oppressed class, having less power as a class, is unable to oppress as a class the group that is privileged by the oppression. If we accept that oppression is a system of institutionalized subjugation and privilege, it is pretty clear that those who are subjugated don’t have the power necessary to construct such an institutionalized system.
Saying that men are oppressed as men by patriarchy (which is the term I use for oppression as a system that privileges men and subjugates women) is illogical if we accept that oppression is a system of institutionalized subjugation and privilege. Patriarchy is set up to subjugate women, to disadvantage women as members of a social class called “women,” so that the very act of existing as a woman is disadvantageous to any member of that class. There may very well be other kinds of oppressions that accrue privileges to individual women (intersectionality), but those systems do not include patriarchy. Patriarchy is set up to accrue privileges to men, to benefit men as members of a social class called “men,” and conversely, if some men experience oppression, it is not due to patriarchy but to other forms of oppression.
Naturally, so why did you say
All things are not equal in this example – she is immeasurably richer than he is, but you are still insisting that he can expect better treatment than she can. That is: you have not argued that male privilege prevails when all other things are equal, rather you have argued that it prevails in the face of any amount of wealth privilege. If you had not done so, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
Do you not see that the “all other things being equal” says nothing at all about the balance of privilege? If I compare a man and a woman and eliminate all differences in privilege between them but male privilege, then it’s an analytical truth that his privilege prevails against hers. If I compare a man and woman and eliminate all differences between them but wealth privilege, and she happens to be wealthier than him, then it’s an analytic truth that her privilege prevails against his. It’s not a matter of “all other things being equal male privilege prevails.” Rather it’s a matter of “all other things being equal any given privilege prevails”.
Now, if you want to combat the deleterious effects of male privilege on the grounds that one cannot fight all evils at once, then that’s fine by me. But it’s not a good idea to justify your choice on the “all other things being equal” argument, because that argument could just as easily (and just as fallaciously) be used to justify prioritizing wealth or race or national or age privilege as the main problem.
That wealth privilege does not counter all the effects of a lack of privilege in other areas is not in dispute. What is in dispute, apparently, is the notion that this is true of wealth privilege alone. But as I have repeatedly pointed out, and as you have repeatedly failed to acknowledge, no form of privilege offers immunization from a lack of privilege in other areas. The millionairess, despite her wealth privilege, cannot get the drugs she needs; the homeless vagrant, despite his male privilege, cannot get food without having to dig it out of rubbish-skips, cannot get adequate shelter, cannot get a job, cannot get medical coverage of any kind, cannot piss in private.
No, that’s very true: a male vagrant does not, as you say, suffer from violence directed against women as women, nor does he have his medical needs neglected on the grounds that he is a woman, nor need he fear that his body be subjected to the interference which is reserved for women. But then does a female millionairess suffer from the violence directed against the homeless man just for being a homeless man, does she have her medical needs neglected because of poverty and vagrancy, does she risk institutionalization or incarceration on the grounds that her mere existence is an outrage?
Ahem
There should be a paragraph break between “…having this discussion.” And “Do you not see…” in comment 151.
It’s a small matter, but could you fix that for me, Ampersand?
[Fixed! –Amp]
Then, either a) there is some other gender-based system of oppression other than patriarchy which exists side-by-side with it which explains the very real feminine privileges which currently exist (lower casualty rates and presumptive non-combatancy in war, lower rates of death and injury at work, no requirement to internalize violence and consequently superior emotional health, etc.), or b) your definition of ‘patriarchy’ is grossly inaccurate.
Frye’s discussion of ‘oppression’ suffers from a similar defect.
Tom, I can’t figure out what you’re trying to say and I wish you’d quote the comment you want to respond to. Assuming Amp didn’t already address this in #88 (the one that starts everyone read this). See also Amp in comment 50, since you keep ignoring Julie’s version.
I think Julie’s made a dubious comment or two in this thread. But instead of addressing any actual flaws you appear to be fighting a straw-feminist of your own creation.
ballgame, is “presumptive non-combatancy” worth much if, in practice, women are currently in combat? To me, it looks like a disadvantage: all the danger, none of the combat pay. Oh yeah, and all that intra-unit rape that the male soldiers don’t have to worry about. Just saying.
defenestrated: it is true that women are in combat. It is also true that men are raped (yes, even on occasion by women). Saying that since a small percentage of Western combat casualties are female, we can therefore conclude that male combat casualties are not a predominantly male gender issue, seems no more valid to me than saying that since a small percentage of rape victims are male, rape is not a predominantly female gender issue.
I said I was going to stay out of this thread, but I just couldn’t let this pass.
Defenestrated:
Ignorance of the facts in the face of media misrepresentation is one thing. Wilful denial after having had the true facts drawn to your attention is another thing entirely.
Women do not have “all of the danger”. Women in Iraq face one eighteenth of the danger that men do. That’s right. For every woman killed in Iraq, eighteen men are killed. For every woman injured, eighteen men.
This is not to suggest that Iraqi women don’t face horrendous levels of violence. They do. But the violence faced by Iraqi men is off the scale.
And they’re not combatants, and they’re not getting combat pay. They’re just ordinary men trying to get on with their lives, make a living for their families, and rebuild a ruined country. Some of them are just looking for work. For example, from the UNAMI Report for November-December (my bold):
Including a woman. In other words, killed four men and a woman. And the other incidents likewise mainly or solely men. Labourers, construction workers, people waiting for busses. or buying and selling food in a market.
And there’s nothing exceptional about that paragraph. Download any of those reports and its the same story, over, and over, and over again. (mAndria in particular is invited to examine “every fact” cited by me about Iraq or anything else, to verify that they are neither “fictious [n]or duplicitous”.)
Your “combat pay” remark is precisely the kind of sexist presumption that ballgame was talking about.
mAndrea, not mAndria. Sorry about that.
Daran, it seemed obvious to me, reading Defenestrated’s post, that the group she had in mind was American soldiers, not Iraqi civilians.
(You, on the other hand, seemed to think she was talking about Iraqi civilians. Maybe she can clarify which she meant.)
Daran, ballgame said:
and then said:
[bold mine]
I’m not discounting the experiences of Iraqi women by responding to an argument that doesn’t factor them in.
hf
hf, do you see those white boxes I’ve included in my comments? They’re the bits of Julie’s comments I’m responding to.
I have no clue what you’re talking about. My debate is with Julie, not with Q Grrl: everything I have said since comment 106 has been a reaction to something that Julie has written. Hence the absolute plethora of quotes from her in my comments.
Now, how about some quotes from what I’ve actually written which might back that accusation up?
Ampersand
If if you feel that I have argued unfairly against Julie, if you feel I have misrepresented her views, if you feel that this whole topic should be taboo, in fact if you have any reason at all for wishing me to desist from commenting here, then just say the word and I’ll stop. I have no wish to abuse your hospitality.
mAndrea:
Seeing as you’re so concerned about factual accuracy, you might like to know that the “rule of thumb” reference to domestic Violence is a myth (my bold):
Tom:
I don’t wish you to stop commenting here.
I do think that your arguments against Julie here sometimes are using too fine a comb for what is, after all, a blog comments discussion. For example, I thought that her point in saying “clean that homeless man up, give him an expensive haircut, etc…” was to try and get at the idea of trying to hold all things equal, and your response to her has mainly been to point out how taking care of all those surface elements falls far short of actually holding all things equal.
On what I see as the essential point, my guess is that both you and Julie would agree with this:
If I’m right (and maybe I’m not) that both of you would agree with that, then you and Julie are more in agreement than disagreement. But I’m not sure that you’re perceiving the extent to which you and Julie are in agreement.
oops, that should read Iraqi men and women. It helps if I include my point while making my point, no?
Daran, what about the “rule of thumb,” specifically, do you claim is a myth?
It’s a myth that the phrase “rule of thumb” has its origins in a law saying that husbands can beat wives with a stick so long as the stick is not bigger around than a thumb.
It is not a myth that husbands were long legally allowed to “chastise” their wives physically, including by beating their wives with sticks. It is not a myth that more than one pre-20th-century judge believed that there had been a common-law rule that husbands were allowed to beat wives so long as the whip or stick was not larger around than their thumb. Nor is it a myth that for centuries, it was in effect legal for husbands to physically chastise their wives, so long as no great physical injury was done to their wives.
So in many substantive ways, it’s not a myth. Only from the narrow and (from a feminist perspective) relatively unimportant issue of word origins is it a myth.
The Fennick article referred to in Daran’s comment (not by Daran himself, but by the person he quoted) can be read here. This article by Jack Stranton, about how feminists came to be mistaken on this question, is also worth reading.
[Edited to soften my claim a little, and to add in the final paragraph.]
Well, in fairness to Daran, Amp, the relatively unimportant word origin of “rule of thumb” is often what feminists talk about when they mention it. “Sexism is so pervasive and entrenched that we even our idioms derive from the mistreatment of women, like ‘rule of thumb’, the ancient rule that a man can beat his wife…” etc.
Also, you should cut the guy some slack. He’s getting married, and that’s distracting.
It is not a myth that husbands were long legally allowed to “chastise” their wives physically
The use of the past tense is not wholy justified. Admittedly, this particular ruling did not stand. However, I strongly suspect that similar rulings in other places have.
ballgame,
I’m rather put off by drawing a parallel between ‘lower casualty rates and presumptive non-combatancy in war,’ and rape. Military enlistment is (for the parties relevant to ‘Western combat casualties’) voluntary; rape, by definition, isn’t. Your original argument included workplace death rates, which also only pertains to a voluntary choice of employment. I hope you understand that the ‘superior emotional control’ you mention is, apart from being a somewhat dubious claim, in no way comparable to rape.
Your comparison implies that women are in some way asking for rape by being women – I doubt that’s what you mean to say, but that’s the implication.
Amp (and Julie, if you’re reading)
I agree with this
100%.
In fairness to me, that’s not at all how it was used in the link Daran provided. If Daran wants to object to specific instances that use the term “rule of thumb” in the way you describe here, that’s fine; but to apply that specific criticism in the way he did was not, in my view, very substantive.
Daran’s getting married? I had no idea.
Moziltov to you and your fiance, Daran!
That’s ridiculous, defenestrated, and more than a little insulting to me and the intelligence of the readers on this thread.
My point stands. The tiny fraction of women who suffer combat casualties does not negate the fact that war is hell … predominantly hell for men. While it is true that the American army is volunteer (or was volunteer until the various stop-loss programs were put into place), it is nonetheless an outcome of a highly gendered indoctrination which is not voluntary. Women, by and large, are exempt from the requirement to internalize violence. Men (boys), by and large, suffer serious consequences — emotional and physical — if they try to avoid it. This is a significant feminine privilege.
BTW, I didn’t have actual figures before, but as of early February, less than 3% of American fatalities in the Iraq war were women. (Go here and click on the “Graphical breakdown of casualties”, then click on “Gender” for source.) Just to be clear: on an individual level, the sacrifices made by women in this conflict are no less meaningful than any man’s; their deaths are no less tragic.
as of early February, less than 3% of American fatalities in the Iraq war were women.
What percentage of American troops in Iraq are women? What percentage of combat or front line troops are women? (Or maybe, what percentage of troops that go out of the green zone are women since officially the percentage of women in combat is zero.)
Pingback: Feminist Critics
Tom Nolan writes:
No, a wealthy woman does not experience the violence that is directed against a man who lives in the gutter.
However, and this is the key point here, the man in the gutter is not experiencing violence on the basis of being a MAN. A woman who lives in the gutter, and I’m sure you saw women when you were homeless, is no less likely to experience violence, and far more likely than a man to experience rape, both by people who don’t live on the street and those who do, including those who live in the miserable hell-holes called “Homeless Shelters”.
This is why … all things being equal — wealthy or destitute — women are power-down relative to men. Even on the street, women have less power, are subject to more violence, including more sexual violence, than men.
Is it a tragedy that men and women who live on the street are subject to violence? Yup. Should we, as a society, work towards ending the causes of these problems? Yup. Is “Alas, a Blog” a feminist blog? Yup.
ballgame writes:
This is why I have a hard time categorizing intra-class violence as “oppression”. Violence by men against women is … oppression. For women to stop being beaten and raped by men, men need to stop. However, for men to stop beating up and killing other men, men, well, need to stop as well.
Hmmm.
Feminine privilege or men behaving badly? I’m casting my vote of “Men behaving badly.”
ballgame, I’m not sure what you mean by saying that males have to “internalize violence.” Does ‘to internalize violence’ mean to: Join the military? Support war? Engage in physical violence? I’m not sure what emotional and physical consequences come to men who don’t engage in any or all of the above. You may well mean something else, and if so I’d appreciate it if you could be clearer on that. I’m not saying that life necessarily isn’t harder for the weak pacifist on the playground, but for adult men (which is the properly valid parallel; young boys and girls are, AFAIK, equally likely to be molested, so rape as a “predominantly female gender issue” mainly pertains to adult women), I see no such impact upon the nonviolent-male population.
There’s still a false parallel between the consequences you argue hit men “if they try to avoid [internalized violence]” and rape, which hits women no matter their socialization, no matter their internal thoughts and feelings, no matter what they try to do. I can see a closer parallel between your point and the ‘slut-shaming’ that women often get when they try to get around the conditioned fear of rape that includes not walking alone or wearing a certain style of clothing.
Take that last paragraph to mean that I’m not saying that men don’t necessarily deal with what you describe, but that in my opinion it’s a much more variable and subjective harm than your comparison would suggest.
Robert writes:
I don’t spend a lot of time reading studies about the homeless. What I do know I know from working directly (one-on-one) with the homeless up this end of town, as well as down the interstate highway corridor. One of the things I used to do (still do — just the target group has changed …) is take out sack lunches to homeless people in the area. And anyone here who’s ever been homeless can rest assured that I’m not taking out cheese crackers …
In speaking directly with several dozen homeless men and women, as well as countless dozens more during time at soup kitchens, the one thing I learned that really shocked the snot out of me is the amount of crime that takes place at shelters. I was also shocked by the amount of rape and prostitution (which I think is really rape since it’s situationally forced) that occurs. Based on that, and again, not a study, just what I’ve learned on my own, I’d say that homeless women are significantly more disadvantaged than homeless men. The only group that might approach homeless women is young gay men and trans women who often find themselves forced into sex work as their only means of survival.
If someone has some kind of study that would be great.
The ad hominem aside – how is it ridiculous and insulting for me to point out that bringing up rape in order to make a comparison to voluntary situations (enlistment, employment) is irrelevant, misleading, and rather demeaning to rape survivors?
Based on that, and again, not a study, just what I’ve learned on my own, I’d say that homeless women are significantly more disadvantaged than homeless men.
Thanks for the personal insight. You may well be right.
In post #177, Julie, Herder of Cats said:
Then in #178, Defenestrated said (and I’m truncating her quote to focus on the relevant bits):
I just wanted to say that much of the time, the choice of enlistment or employment is precisely as situationally forced as prostitution. People do what they need to do to survive.
No, I’m not saying that ‘working in a coal mine’ is exactly like being a prostitute (at all, at all, at all), just that it’s sort of unfair to write one off as “she was forced to do that just to get by” and another as “don’t bother me with the things men choose to do.
Robert writes:
One thing I didn’t share, was that when I first started being involved I used to tell homeless people where the shelters were, how to ride the bus there, etc. After a while, and I guess it was us getting to know each other (if the light is red and someone is flying a sign, almost invariably I roll my window down, make small talk, and fork over a dollar), I learned that shelters are a really bad scene. Some of the complaints, like that couples are split up, seem sketchy — maintaining housing for mixed sex couples would be extremely difficult. But learning about the crime that occurs in and around shelters was just a huge shock. These are the “reputable” shelters, too — Salvation Army here in town seems to be no better than any others, not that I know of any others by name.
The other thing I learned, which also rocked my perceptions, was that there are people who view living on the street as a way of life. They can’t deal with the stress of a more traditional (“socially acceptable” might be a better term, I dunno) lifestyle. While low income housing might be a workable solution for those people who are in poverty, I don’t know of a solution for the ones who aren’t mentally up for living in a house or apartment.
If, by “situationally forced,” you mean that women choose to engage in prostitution because they need the money, then that’s an example of an advantage homeless women have that homeless men don’t. It may not be pleasant, but they clearly prefer it to the alternative, or they wouldn’t do it. Men don’t get to make that choice.
I’m not saying that the advantage of being able to make money through sex work outweighs the disadvantage of greater risk from violence, but it is an advantage.
I was also shocked by the amount of rape and prostitution (which I think is really rape since it’s situationally forced) that occurs. – Julie
Prostitution is a job. Rape is a crime that requires intent, and at least one unwilling participant. For the homeless it’s no more situationally forced than shoveling slag, or getting arrested so you can mule. The reason prostitution is a preferred means of earning income is because it generates the most for the least.
I’d say that homeless women are significantly more disadvantaged than homeless men. – julie
Random homeless shelter photo. Where are all those significantly disadvantaged women hiding?
It varies from place to place, but in North America there are generally about 9 men on the street for every woman. Here is a list of homeless deaths in the month of June 2004 in Toronto. Thanks to the nomenclature of Jane and John, we can determine the gender of the dead. It’s more or less proportionate to the estimated gender populations on the street.
Myca,
I haven’t said anything along the lines of “don’t bother me with the things men choose to do.” I was pointing out the error of the logic in comparing them to what some women are forced to do, period. My discussion with ballgame (and Daran, when an omission he’d been fine with til then suddenly became objectionably ‘sexist’ in a feminist’s argument) has been entirely separate from Julie’s remarks re prostitution.
I don’t entirely agree with Julie’s assessment of prostitution as rape largely because I share the reasoning behind what you said. I understand and relate to Julie’s reasoning as well, but I think it’s important to keep the two semantically separate in order to avoid just this sort of conflation. By all means, there’s a strong parallel between the cultural drives that lead men into dangerous jobs and those that lead women into prostitution. In my view, both are outcomes of economic oppression and would be most accurately described as gendered expressions of the same harm. Neither is, in my opinion or my previous comments, the same as rape.
btw – in “I share the reasoning behind what you said,” I meant:
Truncating to focus on the relevant bits too, here and above.
Julie, Herder of Cats said:
Hmmm, I’m wondering… What about woman-woman violence? Is something like female genital mutilation not oppression since the primary perpetrators are women?
Oops, the second paragraph shouldn’t be a blockquote. I’ve been back for so little time, and already I’m making a mess.
[Fixed! –Amp]
[Comment deleted by Tom’s request. Please note that I only do this if I get the request before anyone has responded to the comment in question. –Amp]
*sigh*
Me: Combat casualties are a male gender issue.
You: No they’re not. Some women are casualties too.
Me: Vastly disproportionately male, so still a male gender issue. Otherwise, if a small percentage of ‘other gender’ folks automatically means an issue is now a ‘human’ issue and not a particular gender’s issue, then the small percentage of male rape victims would mean that rape is a ‘human’ issue and not a feminist issue.
I categorically disagree with your characterization of my comparison, but I don’t want to belabor a tertiary aspect of this discussion, so I’m moving on.
Your earlier question, defenestrated, is far more germane:
But it’s there. One can see evidence for it in the higher rates of male suicides, the lower levels of emotional spontaneity, and the generally more shallow (and oft-times non-existent) relationships men have with their friends (particularly their male friends). These can most easily be explained by the need to develop emotional armor — to display non-vulnerability — during a boy’s childhood, when the threat of violence from other boys is pretty omnipresent. Boys who fail to do this can get pounded.
By the phrase ‘internalize violence’, I am referring precisely to this process whereby a boy is compelled to assume responsibility for the violence in his environment, especially the violence which others inflict on him. He is forced to develop the capacity to inflict pain on others, to internalize the values of the violence-based hierarchy he lives in, to shut down or compartmentalize his capacity for empathy for others (which is a liability), and in general to eschew emotionally-based relationships for power/performance-based ones. The impact of this process lasts a lifetime.
The best description of this impact was in an article I like to cite by Elizabeth Gilbert. She penned a piece for GQ (“My Life as a Man,” Aug. 2001) about spending a few days literally living as a man. She discovered among other things that merely being playful could risk eliciting a violent response when you’re a man. I quoted a small part of her story in a comment at Happy Feminist’s.
To me, this process is clearly oppressive and not chosen, and to dismiss the impact of this as ‘not oppression’ because a tiny minority of its victims end up dominating society is grossly misleading and inhumane.
Cool. Me and you? On the same page.
Oh, I also wanted to say, Defenestrated, that I wasn’t gong after you specifically or thinking that Julie’s logic was yours, just that these are both arguments I’ve seen a lot.
Is the only humane response to unchosen harm to label it oppression, and any other response is by definition “inhumane”?
You and the other folks from “feminist critics” — along, I admit, with many feminists — seem to put a lot of stock in idealogical purity, and in the word “oppression.” I don’t care that much. I personally tend towards the “women and men are both oppressed by the gender system” view, but I don’t think it matters much if people disagree with me about that.
The vast majority of people I’ve encountered who think men are “oppressed” are essentially conservatives who oppose any substantial change and are more interested in attacking feminists than in helping men. (I’m speaking in general over the last fifteen years, not about anyone who has been part of this current discussion.) This has made it difficult for me to believe that most people who believe men are oppressed are likely to be agents of positive change. There are individual exceptions, but the vast majority of the time, a huge focus on men’s oppression is congruent with being against change (except for freeing men from paying child support, of course).
I’m more interested in what the practical policy options people favor are, and in general, what social changes they call for. From what you’ve written here, someone who thinks that standard gender roles do terrible damage to boys and men, for the reasons you’ve mentioned and more, and who favors those roles being changed, is “inhumane” unless they agree with your precise definition of “oppression” and no other. If that’s really your view — and I hope it’s not — then your view seems overly stringent and doctrinaire to me.
Pingback: Feminist Critics
ballgame, OK, I see where our disagreement has come from. I’ve said elsewhere around this blog that I’m not really down with rape being framed as a “female gender issue.” Prison rape and sexual violence towards transmen come to mind as predominantly male issues and exactly the kind of experience I don’t want to downplay. That female soldiers are predominantly the soldiers getting raped isn’t contingent on a female-centric framing of rape, but since many of my fellow feminists would disagree with my view, I can understand why you would have assumed that I was presenting a contradiction.
Thanks for clarifying that. Your comment makes a lot of sense to me, but I still dispute its relevance as a ‘feminine privilege’ in this context for several reasons, chiefly that a woman is also expected “to assume responsibility for the violence in [her] environment,” albeit in different ways. What is a predominantly female issue is the expectation that women can’t walk home at night, can’t drink around other people, can’t be alone with a man etc., without at the very least those decisions being questioned if violence does occur (and sometimes even if it doesn’t).
I disputed your use of ‘presumptive noncombatancy’ as a feminine privilege, which wasn’t to say that all the men (of any race) who’ve died in war are in any way unimportant. By the same token, I don’t see ‘not getting raped’ as necessarily a male privilege, because, unfortunately, some men are raped. The surrounding cultural expectations are another story, but aren’t really relevant to the discussion as far as I can tell.
Myca – That’s what I thought, since we’ve tended to find ourselves on the same page, but thank you for clarifying.
Myca writes:
I knew this was going to get brought up.
I think there are a lot of different levels of “survive”. When I think about survival, I look to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. “Physiological needs” are the basic survival needs, without which someone is much more likely to die from starvation, exposure, disease, illness or injury.
I worked in one of the shelters that was set up here in town (it was the biggest — I think it had somewhere between 6,000 and 8,000 people at the peak) after Katrina. I spoke with a man who smashed a hole in the wall of the Superdome kitchen to start the stoves and ovens to cook pallets of chicken wings and other food that was there. Had he and others not done that, people would have been hungrier than they were. That’s survival at a pretty basic level. I also knew people who engaged in raids on warehouses to get unroasted coffee beans. We then roasted, ground and brewed the coffee so we could have fresh coffee. We weren’t going to die without coffee (some here will dispute that, but work with me, okay?), so this isn’t a basic survival need. We had food, water and shelter, we just wanted fresh ground coffee in the morning before heading out to gut houses.
When I say forced, I mean the former and not the latter.
If, by “situationally forced,” you mean that women choose to engage in prostitution because they need the money, then that’s an example of an advantage homeless women have that homeless men don’t.
You assume, naturally, that there is no comparable task that homeless men are more likely to be able to do than homeless women.
Surprized to see this thread still breathing, I only came back for a footnote.
That anyone familar with feminist theology needs discussion in order to distinguish sytematic oppression and “collateral damage” from that oppression, is a sad indicator of something not-quite-right in the head. In my mind, that incomprehension disqualifies future dialogue between persons as equals.
You are either seeking truth, or you are seeking justification for non-truth. You are either seeking to enlighten, or you are seeking to obfusciate.
Amp has graciously allowed a middle ground – general ignorance – hence his continued efforts to educate, but I am not so patient. Ignorance only works as an excuse ONCE. Failure of each successive elucidation merely highlights either intellectual limitations, or WILLFUL disregard.
“Let’s Define Oppression” might be considered basic feminist theory, but when you need a never-ending debate about the definition of oppression, the whole thing becomes downright retarded, an exercise of poking at shadows with sticks.
Requiring eternal discussion of whether a problem exists is an excellent technique for avoiding constructive work.
Three things. First, patterns of past behavior are important indicators of future behavior. Identifying repetitive traits of individuals and groups helps to simplify that process.
Second. The attributes of the various men’s rights groups as a whole display amazing similarities to the attributes of what is considered abusive personality disorder in individuals.
Third. It is neither productive nor necessary for anyone to deconstruct every single argument or debunk every single invalid study of the angry men’s movement in order to prove the irrefutable truth: that their current thinking process only allows for the continued domination of women.
It is only necessary to prove: pattern.
I would be more than happy to further explain all these ideas. My only problem is finding the concise words and sound-bite phrases that appeal to a certain type of person – what Dr. Altmeyer refers to as “right wing authoritarian”.
no more excuses
lol, that’s hilarious, thank you!
You are correct, of course. Women DO get a “extra” – because men will pay for sex with skanky, possibly disease-infested, homeless drug addicts, – while women will somehow manage to satisfy their libido without resorting to such risky behavior. It’s not fair!!!!
If men weren’t so ready to jump in the sack with just anybody, perhaps more women would pony up the cash for such a delightful opportunity?
Spin it like a record, baby.
But seriously, I thought the reason there were less women living on the streets was because they tended to wind up dead quicker. Wasn’t there a study or two which found women have a higher risk aversion? Women have a greater propensity to seek out help before circumstances get that bad.