men's studies

Amanda Hess On the Dour Expectations of the 101st Fighting Keyboardists vs. Genuine Male Utility

Posted by figleaf | Tags:

Mon, 2010-04-12 14:25

So the other day I spoke with blind optimism (tempered with a great deal of anticipatory pragmatic despair) about a “male studies” program founded by the usual anti-feminist suspects. At least so far nobody I’ve read has had more to say about the program than Amanda Hess. And evidently as a result, as far as I know nobody I’ve read has gotten more anti-feminist whining in comments on her blog at Washington City Paper.

In the link above Hess directly answers most of the dozen or so tropes that make up the entire core of male discontent with feminism. (That would be another reason a legitimate “male studies” curriculum would spend no more than eight minutes of class time on feminist oppression of men since virtually all damage done to men is collateral and/or self-inflicted damage upon ourselves and each other.)

I wanted to call out one particular instance because it speaks to an instance of male oppression that has nothing at all to do with “feminist oppression” but instead illustrates perfectly why men’s and/or male studies should focus instead on the impact of anti-feminism on men.

In the exchange below, the commenter calls on the anti-feminist expectation that men sacrifice their lives for women and children.

If you think you have it so hard why not trade places? Have the guys sit at home and play housewife while you get marched off to your death for god and country? Have the guys get in the lifeboats with the kids with you go down with the ship?

Amanda Hess carves that little conceit into giblets (emphasis mine)

... I’m afraid that if we actually traded places, I would be forced to sit at a computer and file nonsensical blog comments expressing outrage at outmoded gender analogies that I am unwilling to work to deconstruct, for I am an anti-feminist blog troll, in this scenario. So yes, in this case, women do have it better.

Read the quotes in context here.

At the end of the day, in even the most disaster or war-torn countries (say, England during the World Wars) or subcultures (say, inner-city America) or regions (say, post-Katrina Louisiana or post-tsunami Sumatra) the vast majority of men live natural lifespans.

And, as Hess points out, instead of “theirs is not to question why / theirs is but to do or die”-ing it in the Charge of the Light Brigade, most men, and certainly most anti-feminist trolls sacrifice nothing. Except, evidently, their dignity, less-evidently but no-less certainly, their self-esteem.

That contrast between men’s acquired social expectation on the one hand, and men’s lived experience on the other, would be something else a real “male studies” program could really dig into. Unless, of course, it tried to somehow tie that scrutiny to some kind of criticism of feminism — because as Hess points out feminists are almost dead set against men sacrificing themselves in general, and against men self-selecting themselves for violent sacrifice for “womankind” in particular. And consequently trying to find any negative links with feminism would be a colossal waste of time.

I ought to point out that another, less overt resentment embodied in the commenter’s remark is the anxious middle-class male certainty that “when the big one hits” men like them will be completely dispensed with, as “alpha males,” (often “big black” African Americans in these fantasies) take all the food, property, and (white) women for themselves, leaving NiceGuys™ like themselves to die isolated and alone.

When, in fact, even in the most war-torn and catastrophe-ridden places that still doesn’t happen: strong, healthy men tend to be sent to the front lines, and when they return the heterosexual ones still tend to enter into relationships with at most one woman and, of course, the homosexual men “take” no women at all.

So again, if I were embarking on an inquiry into “male studies,” and the “enormous relation between … a person’s biology and their behavior” Professor Tiger claims he’d like to examine, I’d definitely want to take a look at the disconnect between the roles men imagine they’re supposed to fill vs. the roles they actually fill. I’d further examine the source of that intense, and intensely irrational, indoctrination that leads perfectly average men to believe they serve no purpose and that they’re neither desired nor desirable to the very partners that… they are married to by the tens and hundreds of millions.

Again (and again, and again) these are the guys who imagine feminists hate men. And imagine that anti-feminists are on their side.

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Let's Hope These Pains In the Asses Represent Birthing Pains of an Authentic Men's Studies Program. Because Otherwise...

Posted by figleaf | Tags:

Sun, 2010-04-11 10:45

Summary: Even assuming there was any merit in bashing feminism, men’s studies initiatives will make no progress unless and until participants stop celebrating anti-feminism and start assessing its impact on men.

Via Echidne of the Snakes it looks like there’s yet another effort to open a gender-studies program focusing on men and masculinity.

On the face of it I could stand up and cheer. Contemporary gender studies is ready for it because it’s becoming obvious that understanding men and masculinity is critical to completing the picture.

So what could possibly go wrong?

Echidne quotes Jennifer Epstein of the online journal Inside Higher Educations

Lionel Tiger, a professor of anthropology at Rutgers University, said the field takes its cues “from the notion that male and female organisms really are different” and the “enormous relation between … a person’s biology and their behavior” that’s not being addressed in most contemporary scholarship on men and boys.

M’kay, we’re getting off on a really excellent foot here. It’s true that there really are some differences between “male and female organisms.” But these differences are not at all well-understood. And so I really appreciate Prof. Tiger’s choice of terms: taking cues “from the notion“ of those differences.

If he’d stopped right there I’d be happy. He didn’t. And so it gets worse.

“I am concerned that it’s widespread in the United States that masculinity is politically incorrect,” said Christina Hoff Sommers, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and author of The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men.

And worse

The culprit, said Tiger, is feminism: “a well-meaning, highly successful, very colorful denigration of maleness as a force, as a phenomenon.”

And finally

Paul Nathanson, a researcher in religious studies at McGill University and co-author of a series of books on misandry — the hatred of men and boys — conceded that “there is some critique of feminism that’s going to be involved” in male studies. “There are some fundamental features of ideological feminism over the last 30 or 40 years that we need to question.”

He also decried “the institutionalization of misandry” which, he said, is “being generated by feminists, [though] not all feminists.”

Read the quote in context here.

I’m going to be generous to Prof. Tiger and assume that the reporter, Jennifer Epstein, misrepresented the focus of the program he’s trying to start. (I’ll be generous to Epstein and say based on the quotes she used it’s an understandable mistake.)

But really, based on this article it sure sounds like Tiger is interested in starting an anti-feminism studies program, not a men’s studies program at all. This is a shame, of course, because

a) virtually all the problems that beset men, including virtually all those enumerated by Tiger and those cross-linked endlessly on angry-men websites, predate anything even remotely like feminism, and

b) virtually all the criticisms leveled against men by feminists are informed by prevailing narratives about men. (Anybody going to tell me the first person to say “women need a reason to have sex, men just need a place” was a feminist? I don’t think so.)

So while I think it’s all well and good, if also dreadfully whiny, to carp about feminism if that’s all it’s going to be about — and that’s the impression Epstein leaves in the article — then it’s going to be a very, very short program. And one that leaves virtually everything interesting that could be studied about men and boys behind on the table once they’re done killing off all those bad old feminist ideas. (Or, for some of the really angry-sounding participants and commenters on the Higher-Ed post, actually killing those bad old feminists.)

In a lot of ways it’s too bad Tiger and his colleagues seem so dead set against learning from the history of the feminist movement, women’s studies, and gender studies because there are actually a lot of parallels, and consequently a number of mistakes that could be learned from.

For instance this whole “stay angry” business so many men seem bent on emulating was a bit of a catastrophe for women’s groups back in the late 1970s and 1980s, yet the Glenn Sacks and Paul Nathansons of the movement are hell-bent on repeating them. (The irony, of course, being that they probably have hairy legs too, don’t shave their armpits either, and, wear the humiliating Birkenstocks equivalent, Crocks, as well.)

I think a strong case can be made that the “stay angry” phenomenon is an embarrassing but necessary stage in the maturation progress of any movement or field of social research fueled by its own subjects. New movements usually are pioneered by the crankiest of cranks. And very often they’re encouraged and even enabled by the worst sort of condescension. (Seriously, what self-respecting man lets Christina Hoff Sommers pat his head and say it’s ok that he’s a rapist because a big, strong hunk like him just can’t learn to control his impulses?!?!?!?) For instance just as Warren Farrell and Leonard Sax have been influential in men’s studies, Mary Daly and Andrea Dworkin really were influential in the early feminist movement — even though in the 21st Century they’re being largely superceded by more sophisticated, and far more affirmative feminist activism. It’s also true that feminism in the early 1960s really was nurtured by insultingly condescending individuals and organizations like Hugh Hefner, Helen Gurley Brown, Bill Baird, and the manufacturers of Virginia Slims. But as the fields have matured the participants have largely matured as well. And even if it isn’t this one, sooner or later, we can expect an attempt at original male, masculinity, and men’s studies to finally grow into something useful, productive, and mature. The way feminism, women’s studies, and gender studies did years ago.

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Illustrative Women's Studies Joke

Posted by figleaf | Tags:

Tue, 2008-01-15 19:23

Ok, so here’s a joke. It’s about the women’s studies class I’m taking. It’s quite an old joke considering how relatively new the field of Women’s Studies is. Here goes.

So there was this old hillbilly lived way back in the woods and made his living chopping firewood and selling it to the flatlanders who drove up on the weekends. His real name was Howard Jackson Oliver but everyone called him Uncle H’aird for short. Well one day Uncle H’aird rode his mule wagon into town to get a new axe since his old one had been sharpened so many times it had gone out of balance.

Well, there Uncle H’aird was looking at axes in the hardware store and a new salesman came over and said “Uncle H’aird, you still cutting firewood with an axe? Why don’t you buy one of these new chainsaws?”

Well, Uncle H’aird said he thought he did pretty good with his axe, like he’d always done, and so he didn’t think he needed any new chain saw. The salesman asked “Well how many cords of wood are you able to cut a day with one of your axes?” Uncle H’aird allowed as to how if his axe was sharp and balanced he could cut twelve to fourteen cords a day.

“Twelve cords a day?” Said the salesman, “Why if you bought a chain saw you could easily cut twenty a day!”

Well, it didn’t take long after that for Uncle H’aird to buy a chain saw, load it onto his mule wagon, and head back home up in the woods.

Two days later, though, he showed back up in town with the chainsaw on his mule wagon and he told the salesman he wanted his money back. The salesman asked why and Uncle H’aird said “Yew said I could cut twenty cords a day and I barely cut eight! I want my money back.”

“Now calm down, H’aird” says the salesman. You got to give it a little time to get used to it. You might get eight cords the first day but you just need practice. Give it a week and then we’ll talk.”

Uncle H’aird figured that sounded like there must must be some sense in it so he got back on his mule wagon and headed back up to his home in the woods.

A week later there sat the salesman and wouldn’t you know it, here comes Uncle H’aird on his mule wagon looking awful! His hair all stringy and his hand blistered and raw, his clothes in tatters and his hat stained all the way to the brim with salt from sweat. And he gets down off his mule wagon and he picks up his chain saw and he limps over to the salesman and drops it at his feet and says “Ah gave it time like you said, and I practiced, like you said, but try as I might I never was able to cut more than fourteen cords in one day and that’s just about kilt me. I want my money back and I want my old axe back.”

Well the salesman felt pretty bad but he also felt like maybe something was wrong with the chain saw so he bent over, picked it up, set the switch, checked the spark, primed the fuel, grabbed the starter cord, tightened the fuel trigger with his index finger and did a perfect drop pull.

Well the chainsaw started right up with a roar and Uncle H’aird stepped back, scared to death, and said “what’s that noise?”

Now that might not sound like a women’s studies joke… and truth be told as far as I know no one else ever has, and maybe ever will claim it is. Except me. Because every day when I come home there’s something else I’ve learned — a new concept, new vocabulary, word about research, or new-to-me ideas that keep making me want to say “what’s that noise?!?!” Because I feel like I’ve been sitting at home reading and blogging about stuff for years, and, like Uncle H’aird, I do ok — I can recognize right from wrong, I can see directions society could go in that would defuse tension, increase truth, justice, liberty, and equality, and I can think of maybe fun ways to think about it. But it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that human factors researchers and instructional designers long ago demonstrated that individuals gathering information mostly on their own tend not to choose the, um, most direct path through the material. And that’s fine, really. Seriously! But then when you do get someone to point out prominent landmarks and answer questions it really helps pull a lot of stuff together.

Update: Anyway, I happen to think I’m not alone in this — sure, it’s possible for people to figure out a lot of stuff on their own, and when you look at some of the work that, say, Betty Friedan or Germaine Greer produced with very little formal infrastructure to support them it’s not like you can’t do anything. But check out this post and conversation in comments about why the allegation that men won’t ever take hormonal contraceptives for themselves because, in effect, it would be so easy to just lie instead. Again, chances are you could separate wheat from chaff in their on your own, but a solid foundation in, oh, say, women’s studies, would give you not only critical skills (which you might get elsewhere) but also an informational infrastructure and a rich theoretical framework in which to question whether the effect of predominantly anti-feminist narratives about men and women merely enable men to behave irresponsibly or whether they actively coerce men to select dishonesty over integrity.

In other words I’m not the only man, let alone the only person, who might react with the same startled “what’s that noise” when someone actually fires up women’s studies instead of just wearing you out with how you heard you’re supposed to use any other kind of saw.

I’m starting to love that joke about Uncle H’aird.

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