Mar 29 2013: Talita, you do not seem to have understood my point. "baby boys are stong and baby girls are pretty"as a bad thing is a catch phrase from old line feminism that teaches that we are absolutely nothing but socially-molded sexual play dough, with no particular bias or anything. This ideology predates the modern understanding of genetics. We now know that a lot of things are hard wired into people, and the "nature versus nurture" argument is swinging in the opposite direction from mid 20th century.
Am I apprehensive personally? Yes. The USA seems to be more sexually maladjusted and socially dysfunctional than it used to be, not less. Sexual violence against women is up, not down, in our politically correct age.
You see the world in terms of haves and have nots; privileged and underprivileged, as if everything can be reduced to some kind of zero-sum political power equation. You take it as a given that women are an underprivileged class, without even testing that assumption. Firstly, there are plenty of traditional, old fashioned (what you would probably consider backward and misogynistic) societies where women playing very traditional roles are the key political players in the clan structure. There are also modern, 'liberated' societies in Europe where a female CEO feels extremely insecure trying to take the train home at night. I don't know what a proper balance is, but I suspect that we are not a well balanced society today, and it is because we have intentionally forgotten about a little thing called human nature.
Your idea of detracting from one group to give to the other is classic Marxism, and it is wrong. MLK believed in civil rights for his people, but not in trying to detract from white people or achieve some kind of vengeance. He was correct in that idea; detracting from someone else does nothing to empower yourself. Only bullies think otherwise. A healthy society wouldn't be counting men or women's TV air time, the best would be up there irrespective.
Mar 6 2013: Yes, I am indeed making assumptions (which I have indeed investigated). I do know a lot about Malcolm X as well; I am simplifying and boiling things down to be understandable in a very short format. Essentially, his and MLK's disagreement more or less boils down to what I indicated. Empower your people or try to do to the oppressor what has been done to you.
I really hope you are wrong about YOUR extremely important assumption however. You assume (A la orthodox feminism circa 1970 or so) that gender roles are nothing but social constructs. We are basically all play-dough and shaped by society to fit gender roles which just happen to randomly apply for no particular reason. First, this doesn't fit the historical and anthropological facts we know of tremendous similarities in such roles across vast stretches of time, distance, culture, language, and civilization. Certain patterns emerge when you look at human societies across all time periods and all geographical locations. It is likely that there are indeed some things "hard wired", and my mention of a social pecking order is one such anthropological observation.
I also hope you are wrong about the "play dough" thing because if you are right then heterosexuals should indeed fear homosexuals for fear of homosexuality "spreading". See; if we have no set identities at all, then even our gender constructs are open to a culture war over who controls the stimuli that are "constructing identities". In any case, all my homosexual friends tell me that their gender identity is NOT a construct, but is in some way "hard wired", and, considering my own gender identity, I have to agree with them.
Anyway; yes, I am aware of my assumptions and yes, I have reasons for making all of them. Are you and do you?
Mar 2 2013: Yeah, I really don't know what the "answer" is. I have a firm sense that violence against women is not getting better, but seems to be getting worse in today's world. As far as assault and rape; I am pretty sure that it is the kind of act perpetrated by basically a coward; it's an outgrowth of (much more extreme obviously) bully type patterns of behavior in my opinion, which is always a guy with a very small sense of self worth and massive inferiority trying to prove his own worth by hurting someone else. My sense is that a guy who felt "superior, stronger and deserving of gratification" would probably fall into the "womanizer" category, not rapist. Of course, I don't know, since I don't study abnormal psychology or anything.
My dilemma here is that growing up in the San Francisco Bay area I think our public education systems are out of balance and somebody needs to "teach manhood" as the title of this talk implied. I personally feel that in the debate between MLK Jr and Malcolm X; our current educational system has gone Malcolm X. I mean; instead of empowering a formerly persecuted group; the intent is to make the other groups suffer. "Do to them what they did to us". I really feel that masculinity as a topic is nearly taboo in many areas of academia and as a state of being it is regarded with disdain by society. I personally side with MLK Jr in this basic conundrum; empower people who have not been empowered, but it doesn't help your case to denigrate everyone else. In fact; that is identical behavior to the bully; a massive sense of insecurity leading to persecuting everyone around him (them).
I just find a lot of things in our culture and sex relations troubling. I hope you are right and things are getting better; the personal experiences of women very dear to me would indicate otherwise. In my opinion, as far as an "answer" I would definitely start by acknowledging the fact that boys and girls are different and that is not a bad thing.
Mar 1 2013: Sorry to create a wall of text here... I just want to lay out a hypothetical. I'm not saying I know the answers, I am not saying I am qualified to work this out definitively, but let me lay out a hypothesis and tell me what is wrong with it. -Hypothetical- We know that rape is not very much about sexual drive or attraction and a lot more to do with feelings of control, dominance, and wish to hurt someone else (lash out?). We also know that obviously men do most of this particular despicable crime and always have. What if we have a boy in a social system; say a public school. In this particular public school, everything female is celebrated. "Sensitivity" is taught, social activities that maximize cooperation and have no winner or loser are the norm. The boy's inherent drive to compete and win is not just quashed, but regarded as inherently wrong and dangerous. Girls, more geared to succeed in non-competitive, collaborative and politically correct games, are held up as the example the boy continually fails to live up to. The boy, like all boys, engaged in rough competition with his male peers to establish a social pecking order; as boys do by instinct. This is punished. No pecking order of any kind is allowed to grow organically out of the student body; instead, an artificial pecking order based on brownie points from the teacher -female, and based on games and interactions that favor success by females- is enforced. The boy grows older and learns more of the differences between the sexes; and also learns that things regarded as masculine -to which he is genetically inclined- are bad. "Patriarchy" becomes a bogeyman and he slowly learns that through no fault of his own except an accident of birth; he SYMBOLIZES that hated bogeyman in his society. Now... I'm not saying this is any kind of excuse; I am not saying this is even accurate; but don't you think it might be possible that we are breeding resentment in these boys? That this resentment is unhealthy? out of space
Mar 1 2013: Why yes, yes I think she would. In fact, I think she did in many cases. There are a lot of stories from small town America from the turn of the century of clergy from the local church, or even the neighbors intervening in domestic disputes. In those days, in small communities, support networks were very interwoven and it actually WAS considered the community's business if a husband was hurting his wife in many cases. We can read about these kinds of incidences; everything from the next farm owner's "man of the house coming over to take the husband behind the barn for a little talk about the physical consequences of continuing his abuse, to a community even driving out an abusive man from the midst of the town. You can read about this kind of thing in the old West. At the time, it was very normal for people to do a lot more talking with neighbors and fellow church members, and the social universe occupied by people was very small. Even given the predisposition to cover for an abuser, word would and did get around. I don't think the formal statistics we have going back very far are extremely accurate, but I think we can use them as a rule of thumb. It's pretty uncontroversial to say that rates of violence against women are actually higher now than they have been for a very, very long time in the USA. I am just saying; given the MASSIVE and CONTINUAL efforts to denigrate masculinity in our schools which is now more widespread than ever; why do you suppose this is?
Feb 27 2013: I'd like to point something out in this thread; it is started on a false dichotomy between "social justice" and "capitalism", neither of which the originator of the thread seems to understand. He states that wealthy people are the product of a long tail of poor people contributing to that wealth; that is simply absurd. Wealthy people benefit from a capitalistic exchange with poor people, who in turn benefit, though they benefit less than the wealthy person. What does this mean? Capitalism is a benefit to everyone involved. It simply benefits those with more to invest more.
Let me throw out some food for thought. For people crying about the state of the gap between rich and poor today under "capitalism"; I would point out to you that the gap between rich and poor has been growing at about the same rate as state control over all economic activity and hyper regulation around the globe. Since I worked on Capitol Hill, I have a theory about this; big corporations and certain vested interests lobby for ever more and ever more complicated regulation to strangle any would be start up businesses in the cradle in their own sectors. The net result is excessive government control over the economy (anti-capitalism) and, since newcomers can't ever get over that initial road block to build a new business, a growing gap between rich and poor. Ironically, it is the people lobbying for "social justice" who scream loudest when any of the hyper-regulation now rampant is to be rolled back. It doesn't help that nobody seems to know what capitalism even means anymore. It is very simply the natural default of human interaction that benefits all sides. Capitalism is not an ideology; it goes back beyond ancient Babylon. It has existed under every political system ever. Those that allowed for it's existence thrived in direct relation to their tolerance for it and those that tried to quash it LITERALLY starved.
Feb 26 2013: I had two major problems with this talk. Firstly, as he himself admits, popular culture has a rather dubious connection to societal violence, and he brings no facts to bear to assist his preordained, orthodox feminist conclusion.
Secondly and more importantly; the logic of his entire presentation falls apart in the face of historical analysis. He thinks modern movies have too paternalistic a focus. He thinks they teach boys conflict, violence, and one surmises based on what he says; to be social predators. His solution is obviously to have a more feminist and less paternalistic dominant narrative in popular culture.
I humbly submit the fact that todays society, which he very correctly points out has a truly shocking amount of violence being perpetrated against women (in fact, historically unusual and extreme levels of such violence compared to other eras) is the most feminist-friendly culture that America has ever had. How is it the case that boys today undergo sensitivity training at schools their grandparents would have been baffled by, and then grow up to perpetrate vastly MORE violence against women than their forebears who watched bloody, two dimensional westerns in black and white? The facts argue the opposite case to what he proposes. The more we try to "sensitivize" our boys, the more violence our society suffers. I'm not making an all or nothing argument to try to acculturate them as modern day viking warriors or something; but that we should be aware of the nature of masculinity and not see it as something to be ashamed of, hated, vilified, or stamped out, and yes, masculinity does include an appreciation for the narrative of the heroic (violent) quest striving for some reward. Boys are simply NOT girls, ok? That is NOT a bad thing, that is life. If we want to start doing something about the level of violence we see now, maybe we should reverse course on what we have been doing more and more and more since the academic institutionalization of feminism.
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A comment on Talk: Colin Stokes: How movies teach manhood
Am I apprehensive personally? Yes. The USA seems to be more sexually maladjusted and socially dysfunctional than it used to be, not less. Sexual violence against women is up, not down, in our politically correct age.
You see the world in terms of haves and have nots; privileged and underprivileged, as if everything can be reduced to some kind of zero-sum political power equation. You take it as a given that women are an underprivileged class, without even testing that assumption. Firstly, there are plenty of traditional, old fashioned (what you would probably consider backward and misogynistic) societies where women playing very traditional roles are the key political players in the clan structure. There are also modern, 'liberated' societies in Europe where a female CEO feels extremely insecure trying to take the train home at night. I don't know what a proper balance is, but I suspect that we are not a well balanced society today, and it is because we have intentionally forgotten about a little thing called human nature.
Your idea of detracting from one group to give to the other is classic Marxism, and it is wrong. MLK believed in civil rights for his people, but not in trying to detract from white people or achieve some kind of vengeance. He was correct in that idea; detracting from someone else does nothing to empower yourself. Only bullies think otherwise. A healthy society wouldn't be counting men or women's TV air time, the best would be up there irrespective.
A comment on Talk: Colin Stokes: How movies teach manhood
I really hope you are wrong about YOUR extremely important assumption however. You assume (A la orthodox feminism circa 1970 or so) that gender roles are nothing but social constructs. We are basically all play-dough and shaped by society to fit gender roles which just happen to randomly apply for no particular reason. First, this doesn't fit the historical and anthropological facts we know of tremendous similarities in such roles across vast stretches of time, distance, culture, language, and civilization. Certain patterns emerge when you look at human societies across all time periods and all geographical locations. It is likely that there are indeed some things "hard wired", and my mention of a social pecking order is one such anthropological observation.
I also hope you are wrong about the "play dough" thing because if you are right then heterosexuals should indeed fear homosexuals for fear of homosexuality "spreading". See; if we have no set identities at all, then even our gender constructs are open to a culture war over who controls the stimuli that are "constructing identities". In any case, all my homosexual friends tell me that their gender identity is NOT a construct, but is in some way "hard wired", and, considering my own gender identity, I have to agree with them.
Anyway; yes, I am aware of my assumptions and yes, I have reasons for making all of them. Are you and do you?
A reply on Talk: Colin Stokes: How movies teach manhood
My dilemma here is that growing up in the San Francisco Bay area I think our public education systems are out of balance and somebody needs to "teach manhood" as the title of this talk implied. I personally feel that in the debate between MLK Jr and Malcolm X; our current educational system has gone Malcolm X. I mean; instead of empowering a formerly persecuted group; the intent is to make the other groups suffer. "Do to them what they did to us". I really feel that masculinity as a topic is nearly taboo in many areas of academia and as a state of being it is regarded with disdain by society. I personally side with MLK Jr in this basic conundrum; empower people who have not been empowered, but it doesn't help your case to denigrate everyone else. In fact; that is identical behavior to the bully; a massive sense of insecurity leading to persecuting everyone around him (them).
I just find a lot of things in our culture and sex relations troubling. I hope you are right and things are getting better; the personal experiences of women very dear to me would indicate otherwise. In my opinion, as far as an "answer" I would definitely start by acknowledging the fact that boys and girls are different and that is not a bad thing.
A reply on Talk: Colin Stokes: How movies teach manhood
A reply on Talk: Colin Stokes: How movies teach manhood
A comment on Conversation: Is capitalism sustainable?
Let me throw out some food for thought. For people crying about the state of the gap between rich and poor today under "capitalism"; I would point out to you that the gap between rich and poor has been growing at about the same rate as state control over all economic activity and hyper regulation around the globe. Since I worked on Capitol Hill, I have a theory about this; big corporations and certain vested interests lobby for ever more and ever more complicated regulation to strangle any would be start up businesses in the cradle in their own sectors. The net result is excessive government control over the economy (anti-capitalism) and, since newcomers can't ever get over that initial road block to build a new business, a growing gap between rich and poor. Ironically, it is the people lobbying for "social justice" who scream loudest when any of the hyper-regulation now rampant is to be rolled back. It doesn't help that nobody seems to know what capitalism even means anymore. It is very simply the natural default of human interaction that benefits all sides. Capitalism is not an ideology; it goes back beyond ancient Babylon. It has existed under every political system ever. Those that allowed for it's existence thrived in direct relation to their tolerance for it and those that tried to quash it LITERALLY starved.
A comment on Talk: Colin Stokes: How movies teach manhood
Secondly and more importantly; the logic of his entire presentation falls apart in the face of historical analysis. He thinks modern movies have too paternalistic a focus. He thinks they teach boys conflict, violence, and one surmises based on what he says; to be social predators. His solution is obviously to have a more feminist and less paternalistic dominant narrative in popular culture.
I humbly submit the fact that todays society, which he very correctly points out has a truly shocking amount of violence being perpetrated against women (in fact, historically unusual and extreme levels of such violence compared to other eras) is the most feminist-friendly culture that America has ever had. How is it the case that boys today undergo sensitivity training at schools their grandparents would have been baffled by, and then grow up to perpetrate vastly MORE violence against women than their forebears who watched bloody, two dimensional westerns in black and white? The facts argue the opposite case to what he proposes. The more we try to "sensitivize" our boys, the more violence our society suffers. I'm not making an all or nothing argument to try to acculturate them as modern day viking warriors or something; but that we should be aware of the nature of masculinity and not see it as something to be ashamed of, hated, vilified, or stamped out, and yes, masculinity does include an appreciation for the narrative of the heroic (violent) quest striving for some reward. Boys are simply NOT girls, ok? That is NOT a bad thing, that is life. If we want to start doing something about the level of violence we see now, maybe we should reverse course on what we have been doing more and more and more since the academic institutionalization of feminism.