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Patriarchy Jumping the Shark

Tue, 2008-01-01 13:21 — figleaf

When you think about how loathed and despised both women and men actually are in the Patriarchy, no matter how much actual happy talk about male “superiority” or “honor” and “respect” for women by conservatives, traditionalists, and anti-feminists, you begin to realize it’s not some giant conspiracy by men (quoth separatists) or women(!) (quote MRAs) but 4,000 or 6,000 or 10,000 years of The Office.

The merit of the show, of course, being that The Boss (whether the English version’s David Brent or the American succor’s Michael Scott… or, no doubt, France’s Gilles Triquet and Germany’s Bernd Stromberg) piles his employers with misery upon misery, and also upon himself and his own employers, on the passionately-held misapprehension that he’s doing his best to make everyone’s lives easier and better. And that they all love him for it.

Let’s just say that on TV it’s funny, but in TV a) we can turn it off when it overwhelms us and b) the actors can go home. But in real life? Fucking hell has that show ever jumped the shark!

Tue, 2008-01-01 17:10 — 1850 (not verified) #permalink

This reminds me of Scott Adams’ defense to accusations that “men run the world:”

(Paraphrased.)

Yes, that may be. But those are other men. Not me. I am not involved in the running of the world. And while men may get the longer end of the stick in most cultures, the world is not run solely for their benefit. If you want proof of this, think about the things men want, and then think about whether the world is set up to provide those things to men or to withhold them from men.

Well, for instance, men want sex.

If the world was run by men, for men, you’d get sex (if you wanted it) every time you filled up your gas tank at a “full service” station. Your pizza would be there in twenty minutes or you’d get a coupon for a free blowjob. I don’t see a lot of this sort of thing.

Other analogies for the things that men seem to like, at least on average, can similarly be made. Most of the things most men like are becoming less and less socially approved every day.

No, the world may be being run by a few men, but it is not run “by” men or, more importantly, for men.

I personally (this is me again, not SA) think that we’d all be a lot better off if men and women stopped worrying about which sex has the better side of it and realized that we’re both getting screwed, and not in the pleasantly forbidden way, by the people who are running things. The War Between the Sexes is just another in a long line of distractions used by the Pink Conspiracy (which is pretty much what you refer to as “10,000 years of The Office“) to keep us all from breaking out the tar and feathers.

M

P.S. The captcha for this post was “gratifying duration,” which is so ridiculously appropriate for a blog about sex that I just had to note it.

M

[I agree that quibbling, as we do, about who’s better off is problematic, but only because like you and others I think the real question is who’s getting screwed worse. Because we are all getting screwed. That said, there’s no argument that women are screwed over worse. There’s no argument either that the intended structural beneficiaries of that screwing are men. But, as you, Adams, and others hint, and I especially like to harp on, is that even the marginal benefits to men don’t outweigh the appreciable costs to men, let alone the enormous cost to women. Consequently, objectively speaking men have every bit as much reason to support feminism as women since by every measure we’d all be better off. Sure, women would come up farther than men but so what, they’re currently sunk deeper. Thanks, Marc. —fl]

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