Continuing a conversation without the "call out" of other DUers

[lukasahero]

This was what I was writing in response to ThomCat's analysis of the male "group-think" that happens in the world today. (Note - This is not about DU or the male members therein. It is about trying to discuss violence against women and how we can learn to begin to talk about it without alienating those who might otherwise be inclined to help us.)

So here's what I was writing:
"I'm not "debating" either. Like I said, I'm trying to process. Your post definitely got me thinking and I'm planning to grill my husband on it tonight. ;) (FTR, he is SOOOOOOO not a sports guy and is totally baffled by the whole sport mentality - I'm curious to get his take on it.)

I am leaning towards hashing out the difference between being on a team (ie - drawing one's identify and value from the team's success) to team building (and drawing one's value from the cooperative nature it requires/implies). I think there's something here. Women (speaking in gross generalities but I feel like I can here and folks will get it) want to be liked. Men want to win. Is there validity here that can help us understand how to talk to each other better?

Excellent stuff to ponder, ThomCat. I'm glad you're in our "group" here."

And, yes, I was very interested in continuing the conversation before we couldn't so I'm taking a risk that we can actually have a conversation without it getting locked - especially since it's not about DU or it's male members - it's about violence against women and how we can begin to address it simply by learning how to talk about it.

Editing for a glaring spelling error in the subject line that would keep me up at night.

[ismnotwasm]

1. Thomcat rocks!

As do you.
My two cents:

Women organize themselves in social hierarchies, within a cultural norm, as do men. The focus can be different. Recently I was describing a female co-worker to someone "you know about my age, red head, petite" When the co-worker figured out who it was "Oh, you mean the one who wears all the makeup" Now, I hadn't considered this as part as her attributes nor did I consider her makeup so excessive as to be noteworthy. Not my business,anyway.
Women need to learn to hang together.
To quote Inga Muscio again (Once I read a book it takes a while to get it out of my head) "We are all raised under the influences of negative standards set by our culture. We naturally fail to note that all the women around us are dealing with the exact same things, in extremely different ways If you want to find out how your oppression infringes on your freedom, walk into the bathroom, stare deeply into your eyes and face your pain without blame. Don't go felling sorry for them ladies in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan until you do this first. Don't sneer at women from a class or ethnicity from your own, at lesbians, bi-women, straight women, fat women, skinny women, old women or young women until you do this first"

Neither sex is good at bucking what is considered the "norm" And we tend to be quick to judge and/or gossip "We" as in males AND females, not one sex more than another.

I agree with Thomcat. Violence in men is an accepted standard of behavior. The words men use, those powerful tools, the way words are used or can be used as a standard for "manliness". If a male is very articulate and soft-spoken, he's often targeted as "gay" therefore, somehow less of a "man" I've watched man-friends joke around, that quasi violent horse-play they engage in. "I can kick your ass" stuff. In sports, you see it. When your average male is confronted with an atrocity like child rape, the verbal solution is often violent in nature, although women go there as well. I wonder who would be more likely to actually carry out this stated violence? How many women are in prison for killing an abuser? More than most people think. For a female, when violence is your last resort, or all you have left to work with, we tend to be thorough, at least. And we do get punished for it. Oh yes.

Anyway, many of the group think non arguments-they keep up ugly cultural myths. (I won't think independently, therefore I can't, rather than the other way around)

I think violence toward women has many factors-- fear of emasculation, fear of not having sexual access, fear of not being manly etc. and blah blah, leading eventually to a true hatred of women. Or worse a de-humanizing. Women aren't considered actually human, but a type of animal. A pet, a slave.
I don't forget to toss in as a significant contributor homophobia, which I think should be considered a mental illness. Stick it in the DSM-IV, where homosexuality used to be. Develop a treatment for it. It's destructive force can't be overstated. IMO

And to steal the title of a great website, I Blame The Patriarchy. Something ALL of us are a product of. Most people after all are very small fish in a great big pond. Very few of us learn how to feel important in and of ourselves. Those on the bottom, which would be a poor woman of color tend to have the worst time of it.

Then you have the cultural uber male, a tough, strong, hard-working fucking machine. The fuckee's aren't even the point. They don't matter. Tanning salons, fake titties and diets? Go right ahead ladies, it doesn't make you more valuable in this scenario, whatever it does for your self esteem. Males encouraged to fuck-- are also encouraged disrespect those they fuck. Date rape? She shouldna be in that bar. Her fault. There is no "sacred sexuality" here.

Joke: How long does it take for a woman to have an orgasm? Who cares! haha!
Fun times, getting "laid".

And thus in a nutshell the tie between sex and violence is made, one of the grossest perversions that exists in our culture. Promoted by popular culture. Brought to you by major male owned corporations.

Another thing perpetuating the violence cycle is the lack of historical hindsight. We live in the now. The moment. There are those who see a woman fire fighter and think we've arrived. That women firefighter no matter how strong, is at risk for being raped or abused, and I can guarantee you knows woman who has been. We all do.

And that lack of the sense of history, herstory whatever, this infuriates me more than almost anything else, when I think of the women who have fucking died or suffered untold humiliation and shame, who lost their children, who were mutilated (In THIS country dammit) so I could be safer, so I can have choices so I have a voice. So "Women's" issues are on the front page, if for only a day.

Ok, maybe my ten cents. It would be great to get a discussion going.

[ThomCat]

2. Your points about history are important.

(and thank you for the complement, btw) :)


This is going to be a little round-about so I apologize for that.

History has stopped being important. People don't know the intimate details of their families and communities going back generations any more. We certainly never learned and will not learn an accurate history of our nation unless we struggle on our own to find it. History has been co-opted by a corporate sense of "right now."

That focus on right now benefits corporations, who more and more dominate culture. They more people focus on short term shallow perspectives, the more they can be sold short term shallow products and solutions. The more we get into a shallow immediate culture the more we mistake products for culture.

The side effect of this is that people don't know about struggle, progress, things that have been fought for and still need to be fought for. If they don't see slogans in a comercial then they don't know about it. Feminism has become Girl Power, and that's all a lot of people know.

Because we have been turned into a 30 second comercial culture, and because people learn only the shallowest corporate version of movements and history, people don't realize how fragile and vulnerable our positions are in our society.

People also cannot easily develop detailed and nuanced understandings of society, subcultures, movements and trends so they end up sticking to simple stereotypical positions. The more comercial we become the easier it is to be sexist or racist or homophobic because those simple cultural messages can easily fit within the 30 second comerical society.

[raccoon]

7. AMEN, RAMEN, etc.!

"Males encouraged to fuck-- are also encouraged disrespect those they fuck. "

I believe we'll ALWAYS have the double standard with us.


"Joke: How long does it take for a woman to have an orgasm? Who cares! haha!"

My guess is a lot of men don't care, especially when you're talking about casual sex.

[ThomCat]

3. Sports as a metaphore

I am absolutely not a sports guy either. I have never had any interest in sports and just don't get the point of it. How can a game be so important that people obscess over it while ignoring important things that are really affecting their lives?
:shrug:

But, even those of us who don't have any interest in sports can understand it as a common metaphore, so that's why I use it. Though, I'm certainly open to other metaphores that explain the cultural differences better.

I'm glad I'm welcome in the group here. It's nice to have serious discussions away from the disruptors in GD.

[ismnotwasm]

4. I like certain sports

I know several non-sports guys, and one or two who pretend just to fit in. My son, 25, isn't particularly interested-- he's a cynic about many things, and while he likes skill and talent, he doesn't like the sports world.

I had a recent conversation with a co-worker about feminism that actually started with him mentioning women's boxing. He went to a bout because he had a friend participating in it, but he didn't like it, kind of sneered at it a bit. He's actually an open minding person on the topic, more so than I am. To me, women's boxing is nearly a par with women's mud wrestling, despite the fact these women are talented and in good, muscular shape--I wonder if skill is what attracts the fans during these bouts? Boxing is of course violence. Legal and with rules. As are certain martial art bouts. When women enter the arena, can that link between salacious sex and violence be broken, and skill be appreciated despite physical gender?
I wonder. I wonder a lot, which is why I found I DO NOT have an open mind about it, and I need to think on it some more. (See what one little conversation can do?)

What came out of the conversation was the inequities of value between women athletes and male athletes. Pay, to be specific, as well as Fan base. I've watched women's basketball and absolutely was stunned at the talent, the grace that can come out of those games. I take for granted that men are going to be skilled in sports to make it to professional sports, women are equally skilled, but women's sports are not the money making proposition that men's sports have come to be.

Now going out an a limb here, is it partly because some don't WANT to see strong, kick-ass women? Messes with the stereotype.

I wonder, I wonder a lot.

[ThomCat]

5. I have the opposite opinion

I think the reason women's sports haven't caught on is because the mass media (men) don't take an interest in it and hype it. And the reason men don't take an interest and hype it is because it DOESN'T corelate to salatious activities like mud wrestling, not because it does.

In women's sports, including boxing, the women are clearly expressing skill, confidence, strength, and ability. It isn't titilating. So most men are threatened by it.

The vast majority of men are certainly not athletes. But it's okay for men to be far let capable than a male athlete because the couch potatoes identify vicariously. But they can't do that with women athletes so there is an intimidation factor instead. "Oh God, look how much stronger/faster/better than me she is."

I think the Olympics demonstrate the point. This is the only time that men typically pay attention to women athletes, and that's because they can identify through the issue of nationalism. Only when male audiences are provided with some means of identifying with the athletes do they rally and support those athletes. There has to be a reason for the male audience to identify the women athletes as "us."

Sexism is very clearly the divide that prevents that identification on a normal basis. So we arrive at the same conclusion, but from different directions.

[ismnotwasm]

6. Ah! Good point!

I have puzzled over it in my mind, I knew I wasn't thinking quite right about it. I think so much from the women being objectified standpoint, I can easily lose track of the fact that women athletes are just that--athletes. (Which is funny, because I stay in very good shape myself) I used to work security at college games. One time we had a famous women basketball player signing autographs. There were at least a hundred young women waiting for her autograph. They were as excited as if she were a rock star, instead of a very, very good basketball player. I remember thinking how cool that was, these young women weren't admiring a half-dressed music video diva whose best message is sex sells, but this awesome ball player, who made it on the basis of skill and talent and hard work.

I worked the women and men's basketball games, softball, gymnastics, volley ball. (Football games as well for the men) The skill of these women was undeniable, and sometimes incredible--(one of the reasons I DO like sports of some types, also the place I lost every vestige of prejudice against college cheerleaders--they work their asses off)

In women's games, since they have less monetary value, it seemed to me that skill rather than off-season shenanigans, or grandstanding, or who is trading who when or what coach is getting fired is at the forefront-- Front and center there isn't anything else but the game.

It's too bad really women's sports aren't appreciated more, and I can totally see your point about men being intimidated by women who *Are* stronger, faster, more skilled. Again, messes with the stereotype as well as the expectations. What is "female"? What is "femininity"?

My men friends aren't necessarily intimidated by my "buffness" but I still get the "I can see you kicking so and so's ass" kind of comments even as I grow older and am certainly not interested in that kind of behavior. I do run into a type of male who appears challenged by my physical fitness, especially since I'm 46 and not 22. They generally run to the very creepy kind--the type who categorize all women as either fuckable or not fuckable. Blech. It pisses me off.


I think you're right. As long as women remain chained to sexism, women's sports will continued to be devalued. As well as women themselves of course, which ties right into the original topic of violence.

Let's continue the conversation, shall we? This is interesting.

[ThomCat]

8. The more I think about this...

I am used to thinking about sexism through the lens of Power Dynamics. But through discussions here at DU I am coming to a slightly different conclusion that makes Power Dynamics the symptom, not the cause.

I think there is a strong issue of how people identify in-groups, us vs them. To what extent do women have to identify with men simply because men "own" our common institutions? And to what extent do men not reciprocate that group identification?

In the example of the family, we know that men tend to identify with the group less than women. Women tend to do the work to maintain the family, while men tend simply take advantage of what the family offers. Women, I think, tend to identify as a member of the family more strongly. Men identify as Individuals first, and members of the family second. To the extent that some men identify very strongly with the family it is often as the head of the family, or with the paternal legacy of the family (the family name).

I know that GLBTs identify with straight institutions (the family, the state, the community) while being ignored by those institutions because they do not reciprocate. People with disabilities experience the same outsider status in the institutions that we supposedly belong to. I think in other examples we may see something similar. These are generalizations, certainly. But any discussion of prejudice and discrimination is a discussion of what is generally true.

Then, to take this issue a bit further, if men (including myself) tend to identify as individuals rather than with the group, or if we identify with the group without fully including the women in that group, then women are never one of "us." Given that gender identification starts very young and gender segregation in peer groups also happens very young, then this sense that girls are not "us" to young boys can be a serious issue as privilages are given to those boys.

I think it may also be true that girls don't identify boys as "us." But because male privilage is given to the boys that is a less powerful issue. This become a chicken and egg question. Is the male privilage given to boys because of boys identify separately as "us," or do boys identify separately as "us" because they are given male privilage? I think the identification sustains male privilage, so I think it comes first.