Signatures and Sexism

[Mortis]

Let us love dogs, let us love only dogs! Men and cats are unworthy creatures.
- Maria Konstantinova Bashkirtseff

I only really noticed now how nobile's seemingly innocent quote is actually dead sexist. I know you guys love your cats, but let's brush that facet aside for a while and ask ourselves are more interesting question first: I often find myself wondering why it has become increasingly acceptable, in the current gender climate, to paint men in the media as dumb, inept and brutish? How come "equality", instead of providing equal treatment for both men and women, has come to denote such a grave difference regarding how the features and personalities of men and women are treated publicly and in the media?

Judith Levine offers us three handy, primary misandric stereotypes:

• Infants: the Mama's Boy, the Babbler, the Bumbler and the Invalid;
• Betrayers: the Seducer, the Slave, the Abandoner and the Abductor; and
• Beasts: the Brute, the Pet, the Pervert, the Prick and the Killer.

All these stereotypes seem to pervade our society: If a woman kills his son, she is a victim - if a man kills his son, he is all of the aforementioned Betrayers and Beasts. If a woman rapes a man, she is misguided; if a man rapes a woman, he is all of the Betrayers and all of the Beasts. And more. I recall a headline from the local newspaper, something along the lines of "This Girl Beats Guys!" Just imagine this headline reversed! The paper's mailbox would have been flooded by a tremendous backlash. What's worse, the article was about a high school girl being good in mathematics - why would this be news, anyway? Is the average woman dumber than the average man for it to be special for a girl to excel in maths? I think not - instead, the (female) author of the article had unwittingly submitted herself to the very values she was trying to "fight" against.

These very values, then, could be easily condensed into something like a Feminist Conspiracy: Despite complete "equality", men are still intentionally painted in the media as aggressive wife-beaters and idiotic rapists in order to repress and make them servile and submissive by utilizing their dependency to sex and sexuality all the while shaming them for having such a dependency (as well as the historical baggage of "sexual oppression") in the first place!

Similarly, what of the "sexual oppression" of women (rape, violence), then? Let me ask you! Is not the natural position of the weak to submit in order to survive? Women are still utilizing their seemingly inherent sex appeal to provide them with men-based affluence and security like previous generations have, only now they are, perhaps for the first time in human history, free of the responsibility and constraint of actually providing both sex and offspring to men. We could argue that men have willingly awarded them the advantage and power of sexuality but demanded zero responsibility in return.

The bottom line is, I don't understand how it came to be that men, increasingly dehumanized and diminished by these stereotypes, accepted their current situation. The scorn and ridicule is met with no resistance, which requires me to ask you: Have we really drifted so far away from our biological origins that women as human beings have ejected themselves from the very constraints of being human as well as treating men as such?

In the past quarter century, we exposed biases against other races and called it racism, and we exposed biases against women and called it sexism. Biases against men we call humor.

Okay, so, this post is clearly the ramblings of a misogynistic Beast of a man... that's why I'd like to hear your two cents Have you ever been subjected to ridicule only because of your maleness or status as a part of the male gender? Is nobile's signature really misandric?

[Armand]

Well, I should probably make this into a long and ponderous post just as yours is... alas, it's late and I'm tired. However, I refused to just postpone replying because in such cases it can take weeks for a reply to happen >_> from me, that is. So, the few things that came to my mind when reading! Firstly, I'm sorry nobile, but I've always disliked that signature, and you've had it for a long while too -_- Although I do like being provocative like that as well, so it's only fair I get provoked back

Otherwise, I do agree with just about all of what Mort's saying this time. Men are getting the shit in the Modern Western World (see how that's WWW with the first W inverted? duh) at least, sure. However, I see the situation as psychologically more useful for us, as well, and most of the time too meaningless to actually bother. Maybe I'm just lazy. So I tend not to make an issue out of it, unless a particular situation or whim insists otherwise (the latter being somewhat often ). In the real life side of the world, men will still be more directly capable (generally, generally) when need be. Power based on constructs, institutions and conventions - that is, nothing that would have any value outside that which you give them - becomes meaningless when facing the harder core of reality.

Consider this excerpt from the Team America script:

[Gary is drinking his depression away]

Gary Johnston: I'm a dick!
Drunk guy: Well, being a dick ain't so bad. See, there's three kinds of people: dicks, pussies, and assholes. Pussies think everyone can get along, and dicks just wanna fuck all the time without thinking it through. But then you got your assholes, Chuck. And all the assholes want is to shit all over everything! So, pussies may get mad at dicks once in a while, because... pussies get fucked by dicks. But dicks also fuck assholes, Chuck. And if they didn't fuck the assholes, you know what you'd get? You'd get your dick and your pussy all covered in shit!

[Gary pukes]

[Armand]

Today while driving the mail car my mind wandered as always, and also lingered on this issue here. I guess I gotta add a few more things. Firstly, I wouldn't consider myself misogynistic, despite what I said in the previous post. To further elaborate my view, I do think that women should be treated as equals, specially by the authorities and the system. I also personally treat women with more courtesy than men, and believe most men do the same. I like women, they're often hot, more suitable for many things than men, and men generally need women. However, what I meant earlier is that I don't see gender equality (or racial equality, for that matter) being a result of any kind of "natural rights", or being realistic. There are differences between people, genders, races, religions and world-views, and these differences aren't balanced out by some left-wing law of nature "just because it's right, fair and makes people feel more secure". Generally I do try to treat everyone equally in most matters, even more so than most people, but this is my own choice. It is my choice even though I acknowledge that in reality, people are not equal.

Have you ever been subjected to ridicule only because of your maleness or status as a part of the male gender?

Forgot to answer to that - yes, I feel that we are often almost routinely ridiculed in ways that would make most women in similar situations react much more worse than we do.

One more important point to mention: I believe that the way women are treated with silk gloves contributes greatly to the whole "problem". That's the flipside of what I said earlier about the situation being psychologically better (better as in more useful and healthy, not necessarily pleasant) for men. It's a vicious circle! I think Mort's point is about this - in order for feminism to actually "work", women should no longer be treated "better" even out of courtesy. At the moment they (not all, though, but apparently most) are eating bread buttered on both sides.

But don't worry Mort! They can try to push us down, but when push comes to shove... you'll still have your manly edge! At least 50 cm and IQ points of it, among other things

[nobile]

hahahh I've only kept that sig, because i'm too lazy to change it, and never really knew you guys didn't like it ;P
I'll change it asap :PPP

[Armand]

I like that sig, although it's a bit less spirited, and there's a typo btw ^_^;

[nobile]

ah yes, the d >_<*

[nobile]

Hah, maybe not signature, but just a little while ago i got this spanish chainmail that says exactly what mort was describing... badly translated, the story goes something like this:

One day a man and a woman get in a car accident, both cars are destroyed completely, but none of them were harmed. The woman gets out of the car and surprised says "Oh my god! look at our cars, completely trashed, but we're safe, this must be a sign that we must meet and do wild sex until we can't get enough!". The man, noticing that the woman wasn't ugly at all, agrees. a while later she takes out a bottle of wine saying that they must celebrate that moment, because they were unharmed. The man quickly takes the bottle and drinks half of it, then offers the woman the rest to which she replies: "No thanks, i rather wait for the police, since you already have alcohol taste in your mouth."
The lesson of the story is that women are smarter than their beauty, while men are hornier than their brains.

Not that i agree with that, but seemed to fit into the topic

[Nickelplate]

Let me just add to this:

Homer Simpson
Peter Griffin
Al Bundy
Pretty much any dad anywhere on TV

[Mortis]

Pretty much any dad anywhere on TV

That's really close to nailing it The current TV father figure is often defective and lacking in some way or another, be it socially, physically or mentally... an article from the Washington Post by Todd Wasserman, "Father Figures", puts it very bluntly: "Let's just get real and stop these stupid portrayals of Dad, which can be so insulting that they aren't so amusing anymore." Way back when I wrote the first post of this thread, one of the articles that was on the surface at the time was "It’s no joke: TV dads get short shrift" from MNSBC.

The points outlined in these two articles are pretty good observations in terms of the representations and portrayals of the male in society. To quote Farrell again (from my first post), "In the past quarter century, we exposed biases against other races and called it racism, and we exposed biases against women and called it sexism. Biases against men we call humor."

Dads, you see, are the last subculture in America whom it is permissible to bash and malign with impunity.

While it's arguable whether we're talking about a "subculture" here, I find it necessary to narrow the Dad to being a white American, middle-class, middle-aged father here... A major factor for including the word American is the prevalence of the aforementioned sitcoms and US pop culture in the Western world. A large portion of the TV we watch today is produced in the United States, and this is hardly anything new! The US was unarguably the most important influence on the development of the Western world during the previous century...

A moderately topical research paper I discovered, called "The Fluctuating Image of the 20th Century American Father", somewhat agrees upon the topic. I've included the paper in question as an attachment.

The Fluctuating Image of the 20th Century American Father.pdf

Ralph LaRossa, Betty Anne Gordon, Ronald Jay Wilson, Annette Bairan and Charles Jaret
Journal of Marriage and the Family, Vol. 53, No. 4 (Nov., 1991), pp. 987-997
Published by: National Council on Family Relations

(1.89 MiB) Downloaded 1167 times

Much has been written on the glorification of motherhood in 20th century America (see, for example, Bernard, 1974; Friedan, 1963; Margolis, 1984). Little, however, has been penned on the diminution of fatherhood.

[Nickelplate]

I for one,have noticed this for a long time. I always thought the "reverse discrimination" started in kindergarten. When i was little, I was graced with a female cousin about 2 years younger than myself. When we were old enough to play together, my father taught me the lesson that I think every little boy learns: "You must never hit a girl, even if she hits you." However, when I went to school a couple years after I noticed that there were plenty of girls hitting boys and getting away with it not only in the capacity that these boys rarely if ever hit them back, but also that among the authority figures, there seemed to be a preconception that girls were not strong enough to hit a boy and actually hurt him. If a boy would tell the teacher that a girl hit him, he'd be shamed into either "admitting that a girl hurt him" thus taking away from his masculinity, or into agreeing that the hit did not hurt and he should just drop his complaint. But the fact remained that violence was done to one person, and that justice was NOT served because of the prejudices that dictate women as the weaker sex. Not only was a boy ridiculed if he complained of this, but if he complained about the reverse discrimination in general, he would be shamed with that sort of "white liberal guilt" that says "well people like YOU shat on people like THEM for long enough! You should just leave them alone already and let them do what they will do!"

Armand is right. People are different. And some different TYPES of people are different from other types in the same ways. Black people have darker skin than whites. Asian people have the epicanthal fold on their eyes where white people do not. It's not "racism" to say that these people have these differences, and yet it's perceived so. The same way goes with sexism and admitting that women are weak where men are strong, but not admitting the reciprocal statement.

I don't like the fact that being an "equal opportunity employer" is a touted thing in this country. This means that when they are hiring for new positions in a company that they make sure to meet certain government-mandated quotas of women and minorities. Even if a man is more qualified for a position, they will hire a woman for it to meet the quota so they can keep their "equal opportunity employer" status.

I wrote a poem back in my poetry days. It was my only free-verse that I wrote, and I didn't really like it, but its the one i get the most compliments on.

It's a Man's World. By Nickelplate

My Father Always Taught me to
Treat them differently than
The way I would treat Men.
He Said "lay down your coat
in the Mud for Them, and always open Doors
for them." I Always did what was polite.

Now i open the door as
a common courteousy and no one
notices and some get mad
Never hold the door for a
feminist
We let them vote cuase it was wrong
not to
i applied for a job. I asked the results.
"we gave
it to another, a woman with no schooling or degrees.
We would have given the job to you, you
are by far the most qualified but
you see we have a fear of lawsuits.
They wonder why the pay bracket is lower.
they blame men when ones like this
are responsible.
When you are forced to hire someone without
experience for fear of lawsuits,
you can pay them as much as the man with the PH.d
if you feel like it.

In the quest to be equal
few have destroyed what
many wanted. they sue america's store
because the men's facility has more urinals
than thiers does. Makes sense, give them some
urinals on the wall.

I was on the street walking from my job at the
Hamburger joint, when the woman who had taken my job at the
Finance firm, stopped for me to throw down my coat
i hung down my head
It's A Man's World.

(typos not omitted, for originality)

[Darkelth]

About Nickelplate's poem.

Yeah That's curel. All the polite things nowadays can be construed that you don't see them as equal beings. The feminist world has come to the place, when we should have some guys holding our side. One thing is that, we should be treated €qually, not that the women get the job and so on

And, no matter what people say, male != female. We are different. That's the reason why we have two sexes. We don't have one. We have two. And we can't be totally the same, but we can be treated quite equally, though not extremely equally.

[Nickelplate]

This is what i try to explain to so many people and they look at me like i have a swastika on m forehead.

people are different and its the differences that make the world go 'round. by trying to homogenize these differences until everyone is the same, we are destroying our heritage, not only as whatever group we belong to, but as humans. I am unique (whether that makes me special or not) and there really is no one JUST like me. Why should I let anyone in on that simply because they envy it? I am me, you are not. I am male, some are not. I am white, some are not. Those people who aren't me have different needs, different history, and even a different body type. Why is there so much emphasis on making sure no one points out the difference, or gives different things to different people based on their inherent needs?

[Darkelth]

That's the way to put it all Nickelplate!

Perhaps the need for making everything and everyone the same, is because it's really harded to understand different people, their different needs, and their different mind. But yeah, it's all.. Nonsense. We are different. And as a such matter it will remain!