Again, your experience is more extensive than mine. Where did you come across this behaviour? — Amity
My perspective on it is that patriarchy is dying for women (which is great!) but it's currently dying less for men (boo!). A large part of that comes from there not being anti-patriarchy men's political organisations, and some of that large part comes from that addressing "men's issues" in feminist spaces is either a hard sell or justifiably seen as entitlement and entryism. — fdrake
Regardless of the reason, however, the interpersonal norms that "make men men" are dying in some sense, but those expectations of traditional male conduct still show up interpersonally quite often. Like I imagine they do for women. — fdrake
We've all heard the term "boys will be boys" banded around as an excuse for male behaviour. Well, 26-year-old Char Ellesse is challenging the phrase and its meaning through her platform "Girls Will Be Boys."
Frustrated with the barriers that solidify around gender norms and binary boxes, Char hopes to liberate minorities from their labels and expand the meaning of what identifying can be. The platform exists to blur the lines between gender roles through content creation and exciting visuals that challenge as much as they do inspire. — Girls will be boys - Vogue
Do they think that an attack on patriarchy is an attack on males by females? — Amity
I don't know what such discussions tend to do or how they end. I get the impression that Moliere has lost interest. Perhaps, for him, his questions have been answered adequately... — Amity
Do they think that an attack on patriarchy is an attack on males by females?
— Amity
I see there being two tendencies which result in this impression, one which is silly and unjust and one which is worth considering. The first tendency is equating feminism with man hating. Which is silly. And unjust. — fdrake
[ emphasis added]In her introduction to the recently published anthology Feminists Don't Wear Pink and Other Lies, curator Scarlett Curtis refers to the stereotype of feminists as not wearing make-up, or shaving their legs or liking boys.
These stereotypes have persisted through the ages. In the 1920s, feminists were often called spinsters and speculation about their sexual preferences was rife. Almost a century later, these views still hold some sway.
[...]
Having interviewed a diverse group of young German and British women for my research,I found associations of the term "feminism" with man-hating, lesbianism or lack of femininity was a key factor in rejections of the label "feminist".
The majority said they did not want to call themselves feminist because they feared they would be associated with these traits. This was despite many stressing they were not homophobic and some identifying as lesbian or bisexual.
So, how could the image of feminism be improved?
Arguably, as a society we should do more to challenge narrowly defined expectations of how women should look and act.
Working harder to make this movement more inclusive could mean that feminism speaks to the experiences and concerns of diverse groups of women.
Nevertheless, whichever label women choose to adopt, the indication that the vast majority of people now support equality - and acknowledge it has not yet been achieved - is heartening.
— BBC News - Why so many young women don't call themselves feminist
Almost one in three people from the top social grade ABC1 - those in managerial, administrative and professional occupations - called themselves a feminist in a 2018 poll. This compared with one in five from grades C2DE, which include manual workers, state pensioners, casual workers, and the unemployed.
But those from lower income backgrounds are just as likely to support equal rights. Eight out of 10 people from both groups agreed men and women should be equal in every way, when asked for a 2015 poll.
This may suggest lower income groups support the principle behind feminism, but aren't keen on the word itself.
Behavioral reinforcement.
Edit to add: ...and 'evolutionary success'. — wonderer1
I can see I would need to start a new thread to fill in the details, and while I might be up for that, it would be a sciency explanation of how I see humans as existing within a system, and most affectingly, within a system of their fellow humans and the universe at large.
It would help motivate me to take on such a project, if I had confidence it wasn't going to feel like a waste of my time. So how interested are you? — wonderer1
So long as a space of relative equality can be created between men and women, these things can be talked about and acted upon. In the conditions where that cannot happen readily - a workplace, a boardroom, a hiring decision -, you need advocacy and collective action. That's why ideas are never enough by themselves. — fdrake
The determination Okwonga showed is a quality we see in the old boys who have climbed the greasy pole of politics: "No one here ever tells us out loud that Etonians are natural leaders, " he writes. "That's what the architecture is for."
Okwonga's "mask" – Watkins's "coldness" – is one thing that many old Etonians can agree on. Actor Damian Lewis said in 2016: "You go through something which, at that age, defines you and your ability to cope. There's a sudden lack of intimacy with a parent, and your ability to get through that defines you emotionally for the rest of your life." His belief that Eton enables pupils to "compartmentalise their emotional life so successfully that they can go straight to the top" may explain that extraordinary proportion of our political leaders who went there.
[...]
For Musa Okwonga, what Eton tells us about Britain is "the lack of scrutiny you get if you're a certain type of person." He refers to the busts of old Etonian prime ministers in one room of the school and the risk of "revering power without context." It also speaks to what he calls "the funnel effect", where people who are "interpersonally really nice, really friendly… can nonetheless go down a particular funnel where there's a lack of empathy for people who haven't had your lived experience." This sounds like another aspect of the emotional distance mentioned above. — The school that rules Britain - BBC Culture
Where things, I think, get dicey is if you grant that men have unique vectors of oppression from patriarchy and try to organise men to fight them in solidarity with feminists. Some of that might be against, what might be called, "the emotional objectification of men" - the kind of thing that excuses men's suffering in war, our predominance among the homeless, and what can be the emotional core (so to speak) of being expected to be an ideal protector/caretaker - a limitless, stoic repository of material support. — fdrake
Moreover, self-objectification processes have been taken into account to explain drive for muscularity, excessive exercise and steroid use in men (Daniel and Bridges, 2010; Parent and Moradi, 2011). In sum, a great number of studies grounded in objectification theory have elucidated links between self-objectification processes and relevant psychological outcomes both in female and in male populations.
Fewer studies have driven the attention to the potential antecedents of self-objectification. Most of them emphasize the role played by mass media: literature has clearly demonstrated the relationship between viewing objectified media models and both men and women’s self-objectification (e.g., Groesz et al., 2002; Tiggemann, 2003; Grabe et al., 2008; López-Guimerà et al., 2010; Rollero, 2013; Vandenbosch and Eggermont, 2014). The internalization of the objectifying messages from the media leads individuals to self-objectify and guides the perception of their worth (Thompson and Stice, 2001; Vandenbosch and Eggermont, 2012; Karazsia et al., 2013). — Self-objectification and Personal Values - an exploratory study - Frontiersin
Eton is the crucible for generations of political leaders, with 20 of Britain's 55 prime ministers educated there, including the first, Robert Walpole, and the latest, Boris Johnson?
It's this material relationship between one's personal identity and the goods of life which makes a critique of gender relevant -- gender and property have always gone hand in hand. — Moliere
Before 1870, any money made by a woman (either through a wage, from investment, by gift, or through inheritance) instantly became the property of her husband once she was married, with the exception of a dowry. The dowry provided by a bride's father was to be used for his daughter's financial support throughout her married life and into her widowhood, and also a means by which the bride's father was able to obtain from the bridegroom's father a financial commitment to the intended marriage and to the children resulting therefrom.[3][circular reference] It also was an instrument by which the practice of primogeniture was effected by the use of an entail in tail male. Thus, the identity of the wife became legally absorbed into that of her husband, effectively making them one person under the law.[4]
When did women get the right to inherit property and open bank accounts? How long did it take until women won the legal right to be served in UK pubs? Our timeline traces women’s financial rights from ancient societies to the present day. — Women's rights and their money - Guardian
Helen Mirren says that seeing men with their arms slung around their girlfriends’ shoulders shows “ownership”. But there are far worse methods men use to control women.
[...]
What is protectionism, and what is control? And is chivalry someone else’s chauvinism?
Despite claims of equality, the reality is that women in every part of the world (yes, even the West) are still considered the property of men — either directly in the home, or indirectly by governments still led by men.
[...]
Countless anti-violence campaigners say that violence against women is not about anger, it is about male abuse of power and control, in addition to men’s sense of entitlement. In her eye-opening book Unspeakable Things, writer and activist Laurie Penny points the finger at traditional masculinity, which, like “traditional femininity, is about control.”
She writes that in reality, “most men have never been powerful. Throughout history, the vast majority of men have had almost no structural power, expect over women and children.”
“In fact, power over women and children — technical and physical dominance within the sphere of one’s own home — has been the sop offered to men who had almost no power outside of it.”
— Why women are still the property of men - Daily Telegraph
And to help you along the way, I want to share a few rules that I picked up during my life of disasters and triumphs. I call them “Helen’s Top 5 Rules for a Happy Life.”
Rule number one: Don’t need to rush to get married. I married Taylor a lot later in my life and it’s worked out great. And always give your partner the freedom and support to achieve their ambitions.
Number two: just treat people like people. A long, long time ago, an actress friend of mine did the most simple thing that taught me a huge lesson. We were in the backseat of a car being driven to the location where we were filming, and she was a smoker, in the prehistoric days when you could smoke in a car, and she got her cigarettes out and before she lit up, she offered the driver one. So simple, but, you know? Thoughtful. To her, he wasn’t a “driver person,” but a “person person” who might want a smoke. Today she would probably be arrested for attempted murder but that’s a lesson I never forgot, and I am grateful to my actress friend to this day. So, remember that every single person, whether they have dominion over your life or not, deserves equal respect and generosity.
And an addendum to rule No. 2. No matter what sex you are, or race, be a feminist. In every country and culture that I have visited, from Sweden to Uganda, from Singapore to Mali, it is clear that when women are given respect, and the ability and freedom to pursue their personal dreams and ambitions, life improves for everyone. I didn’t define myself as a feminist until quite recently, but I had always lived like a feminist and believed in the obvious: that women were as capable and as energetic and as inspiring as men. But to join a movement called feminism seemed too didactic, too political. However, I have come to understand that feminism is not an abstract idea but a necessity if we — and really by “we,” I mean you guys — are to move us forward and not backward into ignorance and fearful jealousy. So now, I am a declared feminist and I would encourage you to be the same.
Oh, and addendum to the addendum — never again allow a group of old, rather grumpy, rich white men define the health care of a country that is 50.8% women and 37% other races. — Tulane University - Helen Mirren speech
First of all, I have to make an apology to wonderer1 for my earlier, flippant dismissal... — Amity
Where were most of the Tory male leaders educated? — Amity
[...] citing Boris Johnson as an example of what you get...the ability to say things that have a convincing ring to them, even if you're making it up.
Britain, she claimed, is run by men very good at sounding like they know what they're doing, but who in fact have only the most superficial grasp of policy. — Srap Tasmaner
[...] When I returned to the university, I was furious, and I asked my chairman whether I was one of their best graduate students and he said, “Of course!” And then I said, “Why wasn’t I on the list, then? Didn’t you know I am looking for a job?” He said “Oh, well, since you had a baby, I didn’t think you’d be interested in a job.” He had never consulted me about it but just assumed that, like all the other women he knew, I’d naturally want to stay home.
[...] The interviewers always downplayed the importance of a professional career for a woman and told me I should be happy to have a part-time position. These were the early years before any affirmative action or non-discrimination policies were in place. — Interview with Charlene Haddock Seigfried - Open Edition journals
In 1991, Charlene Haddock Seigfreid asked, "Where Are All the Pragmatist Feminists?"[1]
In their Introduction, Maurice Hamington and Celia Bardwell-Jones answer her call: "We're Here, We're Here!" (1) They have produced a volume that is as valuable as it is overdue. For a very long time, Seigfried received no response.
[...] what this volume makes abundantly clear is that pragmatists and feminists are necessary partners, partners that have slowly forced their way back into mainstream philosophy and aim to make it genuinely world-ready. As one of the contributors, Erin McKenna, stated almost a decade ago, the diverse voices of feminist pragmatism express a common concern, namely to "develop theories that are informed by experience and used to guide action." (2)
[...] Claudia Gillberg makes some of the strongest philosophical points of the volume. In "A Methodological Interpretation of Feminist Pragmatism," Gillberg suggests that feminist action research is a way of expanding pragmatism's scope of inquiry, along the lines that Lisa Heldke has set out in her work on John Dewey.
For academic philosophers who don't know what action research is (and I was one of them before reading Gillberg's selection), it is a form of experimental method that focuses on the consequences of a researcher's direct actions on a participatory community in order to improve the performance of said community or to ameliorate a problem that its members are experiencing.
Gillberg is right in suggesting that early feminist pragmatists such as Jane Addams, Ellen Gates Starr, Ella Flagg Young, and Alice Dewey were all pioneers in this sort of inquiry. What is powerful about her analysis is the way that she anticipates the criticism of those that would claim that such a methodology lacks coherent standards or measurable objectives.
This is, not coincidently, a criticism that is often leveled against pragmatism on the whole.
In response, Gillberg puts forth a set of validity criteria (229) for feminist action research that might very well serve feminist pragmatism as it gains momentum in the coming years. Additionally, she articulates the goal of feminist action research as combatting the "bureaucratization and simplification" of knowledge claims. (233) — Contemporary feminist pragmatism - Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
But I really wanted to highlight how the material conditions of our lives are, in fact, wrapped up in gender, because so far I haven't made that very explicit, especially when the original conversation concerned an incredibly practical question -- what to do about gendered bathrooms? — Moliere
In any case, I'm not going to present much (if any) of a case for what people should do. That's way above my pay grade. At best I'd hope to present some stuff that might spark some recognition of what you can do with some degree of effectiveness. — wonderer1
Is 'Pragmatic humanism' or a version of it, the best way to critically challenge the established status quo. — Amity
For me, it's not a matter of such making sense, it's more that we will never 'grow up' as a species, until we do fully and irreversibly accept, that we (all humans) and we alone, shape our local/national/international and global lives. Scapegoating gods has always just been a subterfuge and a delusion.Does it make sense to take responsibility for the way the world is shaped? — Amity
Yes!We all live in it and have a stake in its and our well-being, no? — Amity
Organise, debate, discuss, protest, direct non-violent civil disobedience, educate ourselves, advocate for secular humanism, democratic socialism, a united planet, freedom from the money trick, resource based economics, no governance via party politics (vote for a person, not a party,), pragmatic humanism (the best that feminine and masculine can muster, working in co-operation and not competition.)The question is 'What can be done, if anything?' — Amity
Masculinity isn't something males have a monopoly on. Women have the same characteristics, though they may be sanctioned for broadcasting it. That's why criticizing the way some males behave doesn't contribute much to understanding the animus. — frank
[emphases added]I desperately wanted to be liked at school,” recalls Corbin Shaw. “I was always trying to fit in with this group of boys, which is where a lot of my work stems from.” Explorations of what is expected of young men permeate much of the 24-year-old’s work. Utilising textiles, flags and slogans, masculinity runs through its core. Take the selection of reimagined St George’s flags: “Soften Up Hard Lad” reads one; “I’m Never Going to Be One of the Lads” reads another; the Burberry check backdrop of one has the words “Sweet and Tender Hooligan” hand-stitched on to it.
Shaw’s upbringing on the outskirts of Sheffield, and his exposure to football terraces, boxing gyms and pubs, informs much of his work. His dad encouraged him to be a footballer or a boxer but neither took. “I just wanted to be creative,” he reflects. “I didn’t match up to the expectations of what he wanted me to be as a man. There’s a lot of things I’ve never said to my dad that come out in the work.”
[...] Then, in 2022, Shaw collaborated with Women’s Aid in a powerful campaign to highlight spikes in domestic abuse during the World Cup with a St George’s Flag that read: “He’s Coming Home”.
[...] “Something I’ve been continuously obsessed with in my practice is exploring spaces where we don’t expect love and tenderness among men. We tend to paint football with this brush of being hypermasculine, violent and segregational but there are moments where things happen that are really gorgeous, such as all these men singing together. It unites people.”
[...] Moving forward, Shaw has been deeply motivated by working with groups of year 8 boys back in Sheffield. “We did a flag-making workshop about modern masculinity,” he says. “It was quite scary because there’s these really toxic figureheads such as Andrew Tate who are influencing what they’re saying and doing – they were all talking about the self-made man and the alpha and sigma male. If I can try to combat that with my work, that’s what I need to do. I want to work with as many people as possible in communities to get a message across. I think that’s where my work really shines.” — Corbin Shaw - How masculinity inspires his work
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20140203-beautiful-game-is-football-artThe aesthetics of football are now on display at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where a new exhibition examines the world’s most popular sport. Fútbol: The Beautiful Game features the work of 32 artists who look at the sport through the lenses of celebrity, nationalism, commerce, spectacle and athleticism.
[...] Lyle Ashton Harris’ Verona #2 looks like a political demonstration with fists raised in protest but is actually a depiction of rioting football fans. (Lyle Ashton Harris)
This photograph, titled Pieta, reinforces the idea that football is practically a religion in much of the world. (Generic Art Solutions)
[...] Not every component about the beautiful game is so beautiful, of course. Football is very big business, and, not unlike the unregulated art market, offers prime opportunities for money laundering, tax evasion, insider trading and other financial shenanigans.
Football can lead to massive, glorious celebrations, as in Stephen Dean’s film of a wild Brazilian crowd that undulates like an anemone. Or it can lean to hooliganism and worse, as recalled in the paintings of Wendy White, whose Curva series takes its name from the Italian word for the part of a football stadium behind the goals where the ultra-obsessed fans have their seats. — The beautiful game - is football art?
Male domination banned women's football for decades:
After the "first golden age" of women's football occurred in the United Kingdom in the 1920s, with one match attracting over 50,000 spectators,[4] The Football Association instituted a ban from 1921 to 1970 in England that disallowed women's football on the grounds used by its member clubs.[5]
In many other nations,female footballers faced similarly hostile treatment and bans by male-dominated organisations.
[...] It has been suggested that this was motivated by a perceived threat to the "masculinity" of the game.
Players and football writers have argued that this ban was due to envy of the large crowds that women's matches attracted,[29] and because the FA had no control over the money made from the women's game.[28] Dick, Kerr Ladies player Alice Barlow said, "we could only put it down to jealousy. We were more popular than the men and our bigger gates were for charity". — Women's Association Football - wiki
And while I don't think it's the traits or characteristics that make up a gender-identity, so that men and women can share characteristics, I'm not sure I'd go all the way and say women are the same -- some are the same, sure, and they are definitely sanctioned for not conforming to expectation in those cases, whatever that expectation happens to be in the particular cultural milieu. — Moliere
Are we in a position at all to speak of a post-patriarchal masculinity, while the old family laws are still in place? — Moliere
Are there characteristics we associate with masculinity (I'm talking gender identity here) that women never have? — frank
There's scarcely a sentence in the quoted sections that isn't overtly sexist.
Note how Mirren literally says that men are 'offered their families as sop'.
Disgusting.
And what's worse is that, apparently, there are people with a functioning(?) brain who see nothing wrong with a statement such as that one. — Tzeentch
No, she doesn't. Perhaps read the whole article. — Amity
I understand your sentiment, but can you make the argument that connects Mirren's statements with a hatred of men? — Moliere
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