As I mentioned in Tuesday's We Resist thread, the razor brand Gillette released an ad challenging toxic masculinity, which naturally prompted misogynist shitwheels to prove the very point yet again by responding with heaping fuckloads of toxic masculinity.
I've written a whole lot in this space about the harmfulness of toxic masculinity to every gender, and how vile its defenders are — but something else occurred to me as I watched (or rather could not avoid seeing) defenders of toxic masculinity rage endlessly over days.
IT'S SO GODDAMNED BORING.
Defending one very specific and limiting and impossibly rigid notion of masculinity is like arguing that there shouldn't be greyhounds or dachshunds or keeshonds or mutts because EVERY DOG SHOULD BE A LABRADOR. AND NO HORSES, EITHER!
Why would anyone want that kind of world? And the assholes who do don't even have the sense to realize that it's their fiercely guarding an oppressively stifling set of dehumanizing rules that makes them aggressive and resentful and cruel.
The evil of banality makes them vicious.
Stop being boring. Be creative. You don't have to be a labrador! Go be a poodle!
(My apologies to labradors, who are very accepting.)
An Observation About Toxic Masculinity
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today...
Hillary Clinton's emails! (I will have a dedicated post about this later, so save discussion for that thread, please.)
[Content Note: War on agency; anti-LGBT bigotry] "Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump will meet in June with conservative religious leaders, including those from anti-choice and anti-LGBTQ organizations, in a closed-door 'conversation.'" Where, presumably, he will reassure them that he promises to be just as heinous on abortion access and queer rights as they want him to be.
[CN: Transphobia] "Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton will announce a lawsuit against the federal government on Wednesday over the Obama administration's guidance on transgender students." Because of course he will. And, once again, I will note: The next time you hear some asshole saying that elections don't matter, that there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans, remind them of how a Democratic president is doing everything he can to protect transgender USians, and one of the biggest organizations from which he has to try to protect them is Republicans.
[CN: Descriptions of sexual assault; rape culture; racism] This is an absolutely horrifying story, and incredibly difficult to read, about a black disabled teenager who was raped by his white teammates on the high school football team. Toxic masculinity meets white supremacy meets sports culture. I am absolutely sick about every aspect of this heinous attack, part of an ongoing and escalating campaign of bullying and assault that was not sufficiently addressed by the adults ostensibly charged with the care of these students, and I take up space in solidarity with the victim.
[CN: Eliminationist racism; gun violence; death; white supremacy; death penalty] Dylann Roof is a killer whose vicious white supremacist mass murderer whose actions probably test the convictions of many death penalty opponents. But here is "Why We Must Stand Against the Death Penalty, Even in the Case of Racist Murderer Dylann Roof."
[CN: Misogyny] Tsai Ing-wen was sworn in on Friday as Taiwan's first female president, and already she's the subject of a widely criticized opinion piece, published by the Chinese state media's Xinhua news agency, claiming that she has exhibited "erratic behavior" because: "As a single female politician, Tsai Ing-wen does not have the emotional burden of love, of 'family,' or children, so her political style and strategies are displayed to be more emotional, personal, and extreme." Sounds legit!
[CN: Racism; patriarchy] "Young Black and Latino men need trusted pathways to skills development and mental health resources to succeed, according to a new report. Market research firm Motivational Educational Entertainment Productions drew from the results of nine focus groups to develop 'Heard, Not Judged: Insights into the Talents, Realities, and Needs of Young Men of Color.' The groups featured Black and Latino men ages 18 to 24... 'BMOC are extremely stressed out, taken off task by distractions and temptation, don't believe in the American Dream, and can barely see beyond surviving. They feel trapped at the bottom of the ladder because of a lack of resources, negative peer pressure, and racism. They are afraid to fail and lack awareness and trust of resources currently available to help them.'" Fucking hell.
[CN: Discussion of homophobia] "How an Ad Campaign Made Lesbians Fall in Love with Subaru." Love. P.S. Iain and I totally own a Subaru, and that is not a coincidence!
Hahahahahahaha! "A stealthy, stronger line of female salamanders are skipping sex and stealing DNA from males instead." TEACH US YOUR WAYS.
And finally! "Is This the Most Beautiful Horse in the World?" PROBABLY!!!
Man Assaulted for Defending Women from Street Harassment
[Content Note: Violence; harassment; misogyny; objectification. Please note video may begin playing automatically at link.]
Fucking hell:
A man who police say tried to defend a group of women from catcallers landed in the hospital after he was brutally assaulted in Philadelphia's Rittenhouse Square early Saturday morning.I hope the man who was assaulted has access to the care he needs to recover, physically and emotionally. And I hope that the men who harmed him will be identified.
Police say the 39-year-old man who was visiting from Texas was walking along 18th and Walnut Streets around 2:45 a.m. when he observed several men inside a Black Nissan pull up next to a group of women.
The men inside the Nissan began taunting and catcalling the women, according to investigators, prompting the victim to get involved.
"The male victim took offense to something that the guys were saying to the girls and said 'hey, watch what you're saying,'" said Philadelphia Police Captain George Fuchs.
Police say one of the men inside the Nissan then got out of the car and punched the victim once in the head. The man was knocked unconscious after he fell and struck his head on the concrete
The suspect then ran back into the Nissan which fled west on Walnut. The victim was taken to Hahnemann Hospital where he is currently in stable condition.
"This is a tragic, tragic story," Captain Fuchs said. "Here's a guy trying to stick up for these girls and he gets victimized."
This story exposes as rank garbage a few of the most pervasive narratives around street harassment and gendered violence against women:
1. Telling women that we should just ignore street harassment, that it's no big deal, is bullshit. Street harassment is a very big deal, because it's underwritten by an entitlement so aggressive that some men will physically harm another man who tries to stop them, in even the most benign way.
2. Telling women that we should push back against street harassers is bullshit. This is what we're risking. Of course not every street harasser will react this way, but we don't know until it's too late.
3. Anti-rape initiatives that disproportionately or exclusively focus on intervention (vs. prevention) put people at risk. Not everyone can safely intervene. Not every intervention will be successful. Sure, it's valuable to have public conversations about not averting one's gaze at the sight of someone being harmed, because there are people who can and do safely and successfully intervene. But that cannot be considered a primary solution, for various reasons, including the threat of retaliation against the people who intervene. We have to focus on preventing harassment and gendered violence in the first place.
[H/T to Shaker MMC.]
Assvertising
[Content Note: Misogyny; patriarchy; gender essentialism; gender policing.]
Spudsy sent me the heads-up about this abysmal advert, the latest in the "Hail to the V" series produced by Summer's Eve:
A thin, young, white woman stands at a vanity in the bathroom, applying make-up, while a thin, young, white man is in the shower, lathering his body.Every single thing about this commercial is fucking terrible.
Woman: Did you know Summer's Eve Cleansing Wash is PH-balanced and gentler than soap, which makes it perfectly formulated for a woman's V?
Man: Huh?
Woman: Did you know you're using it?
The man freezes, terrified, and looks at the bottle of soap in his hand, which is labeled "Summer's Eve." Guitar music. Cut to a montage of the man doing Very Manly Things: Splitting wood in the backyard, cracking a raw egg into a glass and drinking it, playing drums in the garage, punching a speedbag, belly-flopping into a pool, karate chopping wood planks suspended between two cement blocks, pulling a roped car with his teeth, welding a helmet, mowing the grass on a riding mower while wearing the helmet, drinking beer and crushing the can.
He flops down on the couch beside the woman. "That was close," she says.
Images of the line of Summer's Eve body washes, accompanied by text reading: "Hail to the V."
Once again, I will note how it is women who are called "the weaker sex," and yet the patriarchy defines men's masculinity as so delicate, so fragile, so easily compromised, that even using a soap intended for women necessitates putting one's body through painful demonstrations of masculine strength in order to protect it.
Feminism 101: Helpful Hints for Dudes, Part 9
Following is a primer for men who are genuinely interested in learning about how to be a more feminist-friendly dude. Most of the information in this piece is, as always, generally applicable in terms of being decent to the people around you, but this has been written to be most accessible for men in keeping with the objective of the series, which is responding to commonly emailed questions from privileged men (here, generally meaning straight cis men) seeking advice on how to interact with the women in their lives.
[Content Note: Misogyny.]
The thing about living in a patriarchal culture that privileges "traditional" masculinity and polices men who don't conform to its prescriptions is that it severely limits men's acceptable spectrum of expression. To visibly like or enjoy anything that is coded feminine is to make oneself vulnerable to potential retribution from the enforcers of the patriarchy, which might be one's own father, or brothers, or friends, or boss.
One of the ways that many straight/bi men partnered with women find to safely explore feminine-coded things that bring them pleasure is through the safety of a different-sex partnership, within the boundaries of which one can attribute, say, watching Real Housewives or attending a fancy cooking class or shopping for home interiors to the desires of one's female partner.
It can be easier for female-partnered cis men to say, "I'm just going along with this because I love her," than to admit something coded feminine is actually their own preference.
Especially since being the guy who indulges his female partner's preferences tends to get you lots of cookies from women.
And, you know, all of that is okay, when it's done out of a real need for self-preservation and following an honest conversation with your partner about this issue where her consent and understanding is sought. Most of us, at one time or another, have to be a little circumspect about ourselves to maintain our safety, to avoid physical or emotional harm, professional retribution, and/or ostracization.
But it gets messy, and harmful, when the reattribution of one's own preferences segues into a reliance on misogynist narratives. It's very easy to slide from "I watch So You Think You Can Dance with my wife because she loves it" to "I watch So You Think You Can Dance with my wife because YOU KNOW HOW WOMEN ARE." Wink wink nudge nudge. Bitches, amirite?
I'm doing this with her is one thing. I'm doing this because she's making me is quite another.
The latter invokes ancient misogynist narratives about women being nags, harpies, selfish ballbusters. They are narratives so ubiquitous and persistent that it's incredibly easy to greet some dude harassment about liking a "girl thing" by blaming one's female partner.
At that point, you're no longer just using your partner for cover. You're throwing her under the Patriarchy Express.
Ideally, if you like something that's coded feminine, you will just like it, without apology, because fuck the patriarchy. But facing a real threat of harm (and, by the way, potential embarrassment is not a real threat of harm), using your partner as cover, with her consent, is an understandable survival mechanism.
What's not understandable is blaming her. (Even and especially when she's not there.) What's not acceptable is relying on misogynist tropes, thus entrenching misogyny in some futile attempt to avoid misogynist bullying.
It's self-defeating. But, even more than that, it's a shitty way to pay back the person who makes space for you to safely be your whole you.
Don't be that guy.
Recommended Reading
[Content Note: Patriarchy.]
This piece by Lisa Wade of Sociological Images about the dearth of friendships among US adult, white, heterosexual men, as a result of masculinity policing, is so important and powerful.
Routinely, there can be found articles penned by conservatives about "the war on men" or the "war on boys" in the US, raging about the supposedly deleterious effects of "feminizing" male people. The thing is, there is a war on male people in this country, but it's not being waged by feminists. It's being waged by the enforcers of the patriarchy.
And About the Menz...
[Content Note: Patriarchy narratives; homophobia; misogyny; abuse.]
The proposal thread put me in mind of another thought that's been rumbling around my brainpan recently, another one to be filed under Patriarchy Ain't a Picnic for Men, Either.
I was recently watching an episode of Chef Wanted with Anne Burrell, and one of the cheftestants was talking about his parents, and how they'd been happily married until his mother died, and how all he wanted was the same kind of happy relationship.
He reminded me of some of the men in my life for whom a happy partnership is a priority, either because it was modeled to them by their own parents, or because they never had a stable, functional, safe family life growing up and want very much to create one in adulthood.
These are men we don't often see represented in pop culture.
There are slightly different narratives that disappear these sorts of men, depending on whether we're looking at representations of men partnered with women or men partnered with men.
Men partnered with men who prioritize a happy and enduring equal partnership are disappeared beneath the metric fuckton of homophobia and heterocentrism that means gay/bi men's stories are rarely told, unless they are tragic; beneath stereotypes about promiscuity, men who just want to fuck and have no emotional life; beneath stereotypes that equate gay men with stereotypes of damsels awaiting their rescue—blushing virtual-girls who just want to be swept off their feet.
Men partnered with women who prioritize a happy and enduring equal partnership are disappeared beneath similar stereotypes about promiscuity, often intersecting with stereotypes about men who fear commitment and/or men who refuse to grow up, and beneath narratives about men who will do anything to keep a woman, deceitful and manipulative and creepy and harmful and violent things, because we are meant to imagine the only sort of man who actively wants to share his life with a woman must have something wrong with him.
Men who want to be in a stable and happy relationship with a specific person whom they adore are disappeared by the presumption that romance is the purview of women, and women want to be rescued, or fix a terrible guy, so let us make eighty-seven biebillion romantic comedies with the conceit that love begins with stalking, or the tragedy of incompleteness, or a jerk who needs to be tamed, none of which have wide appeal among men (or women) who want to see people who look something like their emotional selves projected back at them, so then let us conclude that men hate romance.
Men are dogs, who don't want to settle down. Or: Men are weirdos, who want to control women.
The man who is a human being in search of an egalitarian relationship with a woman who doesn't need him to complete her doesn't exist in pop culture.
He's too boring, I guess.
But those men exist. The men who want to be happily married to/partnered with a specific person with whom they've fallen in love. The men who say that their wives are their best friends, even though they know other men will sneer at them. The men who think it might be kind of neat to be proposed to by their partners, rather than doing the proposing. The men who are romantic.
Iain is about eleventy times more romantic than I am. In every sense of the word. He is dreamy by nature, and prone to sweeping fantasies. He wanted the romantic proposal. I have given him thoughtful and personal and terrific gifts; I have written him songs. But he is the one who sent me a half-smoked cigarette. He is the one who, after twelve years, still gazes at me in a way when I'm not looking that made my friend Ari stop mid-sentence while we were chatting about nothing in particular and say, "Look at how he looks at you."
There are men who love their partners hard, who didn't rescue them and didn't have to be tamed. There are men who want to spend their lives with someone in a way that only women are supposed to want (and that all women are supposed to want, women who are disappeared, too, in equal measure, for the same reason if by different methods). And no one is more hostile toward these men than the Patriarchy, which demeans anything that suggests women are not prizes and property.
And anyone who might suggest the same, in words or actions.
If women are encouraged to want the Grand Gestures to feel like they matter, men are encouraged to make the Grand Gesture to feel like they matter, too. That they are men. That they know how to give a woman what she wants, irrespective of what they may want themselves.
It is another pernicious trick of the Patriarchy. Men are not meant to love women, not really. They are meant to make Grand Gestures in order that they may own them, may win their prize. They are meant to fuck women, and any man who may be less interested in sex than love is broken. Hardly a real man at all.
And men are not meant to be loved, either. Obeyed, feared, fucked, served. But not loved.
The love of an equal does not exist in the Patriarchy. Men are not supposed to love each other, and women are not men's equal. The Patriarchy doesn't care about love; it cares only for dominion.
So it disappears men who want more, to give more and get more. Who feel capable of love, desirous and deserving of it.
Love and dominion cannot exist in the same space.
You Don't Even Know How Hard It Is to Babysit Your Kids
[Content Note: Sexism; gender essentialism.]
Did you know that men have to learn how to parents, unlike women, who are born with the innate knowledge of how to take care of a baby? It's true! That's why there are no books for expectant or adoptive mothers, and why lactation consultants are just one example of the many things that do not exist in the world for new mothers, because they are unnecessary, due to our natural gift for all things parenting. Which men don't share. Obviously. Because they are men.
Another thing that's hard for men, besides the terrifyingly steep learning curve of being responsible for a new life which is something women definitely do not experience, is finding a good work-life balance. That is really hard for male parents. Who, by the way, also don't get enough credit for all the work they do.
I mean, why are we even giving women credit for parenting at all? When you really think about it, women are born to parent and men have to work at it, so giving women credit is like congratulating someone on continuing to breathe or take a dump. Women are just doing what they're hard-wired to do, but men are overcoming millennia of EVOLUTION to change diapers.
It's called science. Look it up.
And then get busy baking some cookies, ladies.
Two Facts
[Content Note: Misogyny; patriarchy.]
1. David Brooks is still being employed by the New York Times to write a garbage column.
2. This week's garbage column is like a trophy to garbage.
You really have to read the whole thing, including his extended opening waxing romantic about the John Wayne movie The Searchers, to fully comprehend the scope of the garbagosity of his latest masterwank on the plight of male unemployment, because I'm only going to quote two bits:
The definitive explanation for this catastrophe has yet to be written. Some of the problem clearly has to do with changes in family structure. Work by David Autor of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology suggests that men raised in fatherless homes, without as many immediate masculine role models, do worse in the labor force. Some of the problem probably has to do with a mismatch between boy culture and school culture, especially in the early years.Ha ha that sounds familiar! Except I'm not so
But, surely, there has been some ineffable shift in the definition of dignity. Many men were raised with a certain image of male dignity, which emphasized autonomy, reticence, ruggedness, invulnerability and the competitive virtues. Now, thanks to a communications economy, they find themselves in a world that values expressiveness, interpersonal ease, vulnerability and the cooperative virtues.
Surely, part of the situation is that many men simply do not want to put themselves in positions they find humiliating.This is a particularly interesting observation, given that Brooks' "communications economy" is really a service economy. And women are entrained to serve, while men (at least privileged men, which are the only ones about whom Brooks gives a shit) are entrained to be served, so naturally taking a service job after the Patriarchy has assured you your whole life that you are entitled to service, to be expected to provide it instead, is humiliating.
Women, on the other hand, who have long filled service roles, while patriarchal forces conspired to keep women out of manufacturing, construction, and other traditionally "male" jobs, are not meant to find that work humiliating, but instead the natural outgrowth of a biological imperative.
As Erik Loomis notes here, the terrible irony is that the offshoring of traditionally "male" jobs is thanks to the politics of conservatives like Brooks: "The reason why male employment hasn't recovered is because the jobs men used to have no longer exist. That the 20th century economy was inherently sexist cannot be questioned. Men had industrial jobs that became high paying after decades of union organization. The middle-class of salesmen, middle managers, etc., was also dominated by men. Women were in service positions. Now you tell me, which jobs still exist in the United States in 2013? ...What remains is a service economy, with jobs long defined as female. Housekeeping, nursing, child care, entry level office work, Wal-Mart—these are jobs that are available."
Whoops.
Cultural Reproductive Coercion: What About the Men?
[Content Note: Reproductive coercion; hostility to consent.]
Since I wrote about cultural reproductive coercion last week, I've gotten a number of emails and linkage from people Very Concerned about the men who are victimized by women who get pregnant without their male partner's consent. So let's talk about that.
First of all, that happens. And it is no less shitty or unethical when women deceive men into parenting against their wills than when men deceive women in the same way. Full stop. No caveats.
There are, however, some related issues that warrant further discussion.
1. The perception that female coercion is more pervasive is almost certainly based on the fact that narratives of female reproductive coercion are more pervasive. We are all socialized with stories of desperate or vindictive women who "get themselves" pregnant to "trap" a man (or to enrich herself some other way, i.e. "welfare queen" tropes), but there is no equivalent archetype in mainstream culture of the man who sabotages a partner's birth control and/or coerces her into pregnancy. To the contrary, a man who puts pressure on his female partner to have a baby is often celebrated as a rare specimen. "Isn't she lucky to have a man who wants to be a father?" These disparate gender narratives about coercive partners act in service to the perception that women are predominantly the perpetrators of reproductive coercion.
2. Contraception user error, which is the primary cause of contraception failure, is frequently conflated with birth control fraud. These are not the same thing. A woman who is taking a daily birth control pill, for example, might undermine its efficacy because she doesn't understand the importance of taking the pill every day. One of the effects of contraception-averse sex ed is leaving young women with less knowledge about how contraception actually works. A woman who lacks information, or who has the right information but is careless about taking her pills daily, is not malicious. (Also note that trouble with maintaining self-care is a feature of some very common neurological disorders and mental illnesses.)
3. Women are not exclusively responsible for pregnancy prevention. Sexually active cis men who don't want to become fathers can wear condoms. And should. Condoms they take the responsibility to purchase and unwrap and put on before engaging in PIV intercourse. Taking no active role in pregnancy prevention, and simply trusting that a partner will be wholly responsible for contraception—using it at all, and using it correctly—is lazy and irresponsible garbage. Men can (and should) empower themselves to be part of pregnancy prevention. Put a raincoat on your dick, fellas.
4. Finally, we need to acknowledge the disparity in reasons why men and women tend to engage in reproductive coercion. Generally, men engage in reproductive coercion to control partners by making them dependent, not explicitly (or at all) because they want to be fathers. Generally, women engage in reproductive coercion because their value as humans is deeply tied to their reproduction—they explicitly want to be mothers. That doesn't make one less problematic than the other, but it's an important difference to understand, because they require some different solutions.
Dismantling cultural reproductive coercion is important in both cases. It condones and abets the pressuring of partners, and it is a key tool in conveying to girls and women that they are only worth as much as their willingness and ability to birth babies.
What about the men? Well, the patriarchy and its culture of systemic cultural coercion is bad for them, too.
Quote of the Day
[Content Note: Gender essentialism.]
"I'm so used to liberals telling conservatives that they're anti-science. But liberals who defend this and say it is not a bad thing are very anti-science. When you look at biology—when you look at the natural world—the roles of a male and a female in society and in other animals, the male typically is the dominant role. The female, it's not antithesis, or it's not competing, it's a complementary role."—Fox News Contributor and Tenured Professor of Gender Geniusology at Soundslegit University Erick Erickson, on the Pew Research report which found that women are the sole breadwinners in 40% of US households with children.
[See also.]
Everything Happens in a Void!
[Content Note: Sexism.]
From Peggy Drexler's "When mom earns more, it's tough on dad" at CNN:
But the answer, of course, isn't for women to revert to their traditional roles of cooking, cleaning and tending to the children while the man of the house is off bringing home the bacon. As more and more women rise to powerful positions in the workplace, the incidence of female breadwinners will continue to grow.Ha ha perfect. Often, what's causing female-partnered Western men to feel shitty when they're making less than a woman is not ancient, patriarchal, gender-essentialist narratives about men with which they've been socialized since birth and the unearned privilege that can engender feelings of deep insecurity at the merest hint of that privilege being threatened or eroded, but the possibility that their female partner is somehow failing them.
Husbands of these wives who may be experiencing feelings of depression and low self-esteem would be wise to have an honest conversation with their spouse, and themselves, to find out what's really bothering them. Oftentimes, it may not be the fact that their spouse earns more, but that their spouse may have less time to spend at home, or may be neglecting other areas of the relationship.
Amazing.
And yes, of course, sure, certainly, sometimes in relationships someone works so hard, by choice or necessity, that it can take a toll on the relationship. But let us not pretend that the primary source of all this male angst is neglect by female partners, especially when what is often called "neglect" is in reality "failing to come home from earning more money and act sufficiently submissive by performing traditionally female tasks in order to reassure a man earning less money that he is still the boss of you."
Film Corner: Grown Ups 2
I have written, somewhere between ten and one hundred biebillion times, variations on the following:
Implicit in feminism/womanism is not only the belief, but the expectation, that men are not brutish nor infantile—nor stupid, useless, inept, emotionally stunted, or any other negative stereotype feminists have been accused of promoting—but instead our equals just as much as we are theirs, capable not only of understanding feminism (and feminists), but of actively and rigorously engaging challenges to their socialization, too.Exhibit A: The trailer for Grown Ups 2, a film written, directed, produced, edited, scored, and cast by men, starring four extremely rich, influential, successful men who can write their own paychecks by making whatever kind of material they want for themselves.
Feminists, of course, have the terrible reputation, but it isn't we who consider all men babies, dopes, dogs, and potential rapists. The holders of those views are the women and men who root for the patriarchy—which itself, after all, takes a rather unpleasantly dim view of most people.
Video Paraphrase: Montage blah blah fart with male voiceover reminding us that Grown Ups was a real film in the world. Mother-in-law joke. A deer pees on Adam Sandler in his bedroom. They've all moved back to their hometown because it's a great place to raise a family and their kids can ride their bikes to school because nothing terrible ever happens to children in small towns. Grown-ass adult David Spade rides through traffic inside a tractor tire, narrowly avoids death. His pals Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, and Kevin James bicker over who gets to go next. Adam Sandler doesn't want his daughter to have breasts when she grows up. "They're not growing up without a fight," says the voiceover, about FOUR ADULT MEN, THREE OF WHOM ARE MARRIED AND HAVE CHILDREN. They go to a cliff over a lake from which they used to dive when they were kids and get into a confrontation with four frat boys whose leader is Jacob Twilight. Montagery of so much blah fart stupidity: Fighting with lacrosse players, boobs, shooting at each other from go-karts, a "secret table" that replaces beer with juice when a wife shows up. Good grief. Back to the cliff, where Jacob Twilight tells them, inexplicably, that they have to jump in naked. Which they do, because THEY REFUSE TO GROW UP. They are heroes, you harpy! Adam Sandler jumps off the cliff, screaming. Chris Rock jumps off the cliff, screaming. David Spade jumps off the cliff, screaming. Kevin James jumps off the cliff screaming. Splash! Splash! Splash! The crowd gasps. SPLAAAAAAAAASH! HA HA KEVIN JAMES IS FAT! He lands on David Spade, who screams, "I was inside you! AHHHHHHHHHH!"
I rest my case, Your Honor.
Quote of the Day
[Content Note: Gun violence; racism.]
"[T]he marred bodies of black boys and men who've been hit by police officers' guns are more than representations of precarity. They are targets of the myriad projectiles aimed in the direction of black life. And no matter the class of the black man, his age, his neighborhood, his sexuality, his swag, his swish, or lot, 'bullets' will surely fly his way in NYC. Space shapes. In fact, masculinities, including black masculinities, are performed partially in response to the various external conditions present within the geographical spaces, like NYC, where they emerge. In other words, masculinities are shaped by skewed conceptions of gender, a sexist culture, and the range of structural conditions that impact black men quite negatively. Consider, for instance, what type of black masculinity might emerge in response to a city funded teenage pregnancy prevention ad that pretty much tells black teen [girls] that black boys ain't shit in a city where police use tax-payer funded guns to shoot its residents?"—Darnell L. Moore, in "The Shapings of Black Masculinities" at The Feminist Wire.
This is a stunning piece, a devastating indictment of the kyriarchy. I really encourage you to read the whole thing.
If The Feminist Wire isn't already on your regular reading list, make it so!
Epic Win
by Shaker BrianWS, who may or may not become a full-time contributor someday, depending on how that whole Mayan doomsday prophecy thing turns out.
As I continue to learn and continue to grow up, I keep finding things in my life that speak truth to the point that the patriarchy isn't just an enemy of women, but a true enemy of men, too.
When I was younger, playing goalie in soccer was my life. I started playing at the age of 5, and around the age of 11, I began to play more competitively, and that meant that between the ages of 11 and 18, I would play soccer anywhere from 4-6 days a week, 52 weeks a year, between travel club teams and eventually my high school team during their season.
I always loved soccer, and, more importantly, I loved what it meant about my relationship with my dad. I didn't have many positive male role models growing up, and the one man who was always present in my earlier years was my dad. He played football when he was younger and came from a long line of macho, hyper-masculine military and sports men. All that he understood to be important was the competition and the winning.
By nature of his being my father, all I knew about soccer was that it was a game that was meant to be won.
* * *
I was very good at doing my part to make that happen on my various soccer teams. I wasn't a Big Deal, but I was a big deal, starting on one of the best club teams in the Midwest and winning several awards during my high school years. I really only understood the strategies and complexities of the game through the lens of winning, and it wasn't truly until this past weekend that I figured that out.
When I was playing when I was younger, winning in soccer and being hyper-competitive about it meant that I would receive attention and affection from my dad (and in turn, from a long line of demanding and hyper-masculine coaches I had along the way – though many of those men were much better role models to me in the big picture. Their only job at the competitive level I was playing was to make us winners – my dad's job was to be my dad). He was proud of me when I was a winner, and I was involved with quite a bit of winning – I loved it. That skewed my entire view of the sport to my dad's view that it was a game to be won and, crucially, that there was no other conceivable reason to be playing.
That still follows me to this day. A friend of a friend once told me during a game of Scene It that I'm not a sore loser, but that he had never met anyone in his life who loved the act of winning as much as I did. What struck me as something of a compliment at the time now haunts me. That shit pops up when I play Uno – the need to win trumps the experience of playing a fun game with friends, and that's because my dad instilled a winning-is-everything mentality at a young age, because winning was the point of competition, competition was the point of all games, and being the best in a competition proved one's manliness and worth.
The thing that strikes me as one of the most unfortunate parts of the whole thing is that there is no endgame to this continuous cycle of competing and winning. There is no point at which I was done proving my worth. As I mentioned above, I played on some really good soccer teams in my life, and losing was not something I had much experience with. But there was always another game to be won. Always another tournament to be won. Always a 4-1 win that wasn't quite good enough because it wasn't 4-0, and that meant I had failed to fully live up to my role on the team and my role as my father's son.
There is simply never a "good enough" with the way the patriarchy works, having instilled a mentality in my father that winning was everything and the more you won, the better man you were.
* * *
In the last year, I've begun playing in a local, mostly non-competitive over-25, co-ed league. We keep score, and yes, everybody on every team knows what their record is for the season even if we don't officially track standings, but the general mood of this league is a bunch of people just wanting to go out and have some fun and get some exercise while playing soccer. People apologize when they knock someone down, there is always a helping hand back up, and people of all kinds of skill levels are constantly encouraging one another across team lines.
So here I was on Sunday night, playing indoor soccer in this league, and I had one of the best experiences of my life.
I was asked to sub for another team following my team's game, so I played in two separate games. My team won our game 6-1, and the team I subbed for lost by the same score in the second game. Yet it was in the middle of that 6-1 defeat in the second game that I had this amazing moment.
I was watching players of all skill levels crisscross the field, finding the best angles to receive and distribute the ball, people shouting "whoa, NICE save!" to the other team's goalie, and generally just watching 20 or so men and women of all colors, sexualities (hello!), and sizes just enjoying themselves and enjoying the game of soccer for what it was – a superbly complex and intricate game that offers so much potential for beauty. The beautiful game.
What I realized was that I have loved the game of soccer my entire life, but that I had been loving it for all of the wrong reasons.
I still see value in competition, and even in winning (which makes fun those tournaments where the objective is to win), but now I recognize that I had never actually loved the game of soccer for any reason other than its ability to give me something else at which to win. Even though I understood all of the dynamics of gameplay and the intricacies of the game when I was younger, I had never seen the sport as something that could bring people together and lift everyone's spirits regardless of the result. All I'd seen was just a game that pits one set of players against another in a quest to win.
And because of what had been communicated to me by my dad (and reinforced by a patriarchal culture) about winning and masculinity, I'd seen that as a quest to win at being a man, too.
It was a moving and profound moment for me after more than 20 years of playing this game to see it in an entirely new light. A light that doesn't encourage hyper-masculinity and winning above all else. A light that allows for someone wearing a different color shirt during the game to still, in the end, be a part of a team with me that's bigger than the ones we represented while competing for an hour. A light that says there is more to being an important and valued man than simply my ability to win.
And sure, I still love winning—that may take some time to break down. But what I love even more is to take this one extra piece of patriarchal bullshit that I've been carrying around in my soccer bag for almost my entire life and throw it away, to never be worried about again, because there is more to me and more to this game than the final score.
I Can Barely Keep Track of All My Wars
[Content Note: Misogyny; gender essentialism; heterocentrism.]
It's tough being a feminist warrior these days. There are so many wars to fight to juggle all at once! There's the War on Christmas, on which I'm already SO BEHIND this year—I will probably leave all my warring until Christmas Eve again!—the War on Families, the War on Marriage, the War on Christians, the War on Tradition, and, of course, the War on Men.
At least, even with all that going on—I Don't Know How She Does It!—I haven't dropped the balls on the War on Men. (Multitasking! Amirite, ladies?) The War on Men has, in fact, been so successful, that Fox News contributor and feminist concern troll Suzanne Venker is sounding the alarm that marriageable women are doomed if the world is not rescued from the evil clutches of man-hating feminists!
The battle of the sexes is alive and well.Ha ha that's the actual first line of this actual article that was actually published. PERFECT.
Venker then goes on to quote some stats (SCIENCE!) about how women want to get married and men don't. Actually, she cites stats indicating that 8% more women than men "ages eighteen to thirty-four that say having a successful marriage is one of the most important things in their lives," which doesn't at all axiomatically translate into "women want to get married and men don't," but that is the entire premise of her garbage article, so don't look at the numbers behind that curtain or whatever!
Believe it or not, modern women want to get married. Trouble is, men don't.Ha ha I DON'T believe it! Not at all!
As the author of three books on the American family and its intersection with pop culture, I've spent thirteen years examining social agendas as they pertain to sex, parenting, and gender roles. During this time, I've spoken with hundreds, if not thousands, of men and women. And in doing so, I've accidentally stumbled upon a subculture of men who've told me, in no uncertain terms, that they're never getting married. When I ask them why, the answer is always the same.First of all, I'm sure those books are great. They SOUND great. So they're probably great. Secondly, as someone who has authored zero books on the American family and its intersection with pop culture, but has definitely talked to some number of humans in my life, maybe dozens or possibly millions, I have also accidentally stumbled upon a subculture of men who don't want to get married. And WOMEN who don't want to get married! I call them—wait for it!—People Who Don't Want to Get Married for a Variety of Reasons. Because I'm a fucking genius.
Women aren't women anymore.
Among those people are definitely men who say things like, "I'm never getting married because women aren't women anymore," or, sometimes, "I'm never getting married to an American woman when I can buy a woman from another country where I imagine women enjoy being treated like second-class pieces of trash or, as I call it, being treated LIKE A LADY."
But those are men who are terrible, and should be given a stern lecture about not being dehumanizing misogynist fuckheads, instead of elevated as paragons of masculine virtue whose anachronistic belligerent patriarchalism is alleged evidence of feminism's failure.
Anyway, blah blah. More tiresome crapola about how feminism is the worst and the patriarchy is SO COOL, with the usual gender essentialist and heterocentrist claptrap. And then Venker presents her closing argument.
Fortunately, there is good news: women have the power to turn everything around. All they have to do is surrender to their nature – their femininity – and let men surrender to theirs.CASE CLOSED, YOUR HONOR!
If they do, marriageable men will come out of the woodwork.
The most amazing thing about this article being published in the year of our lord Jesus Jones two thousand and twelve is that these are not even new ideas. Ever since a woman got an idea in her head that maybe she deserved to be treated like a full rights-bearing human being, there has been public hand-writing about how men are petulantly checking the fuck out in response.
See?
And yet somehow humans continue to get married. Indeed, in many parts of the world, the institution of marriage is being opened up to people to whom it has previously been denied, in no small part because of men who want to get married very much. To each other.
There has always been a certain percentage of retrofuck straight men who grump and harrumph about straight women who want marriages that are not defined exclusively on men's terms. But the majority of men in the US have gotten over not getting a fucking dowry with their blushing brides, and I'm sure the majority of men will get over women who want possession of their full humanity, even inside a marriage, too.
That is something of which I believe men to be capable, because I am a feminist and thus believe men to be capable of change.
Unlike the defenders of Patriarchy, who are the most intractable man-haters on the planet.
[H/T to everyone in the multiverse, and thanks to each and every one of you.]
More Assvertising
[Content Note: Rape culture; misogyny; gender essentialism; dehumanization.]
It's garbage adverts day at Shakesville! Wheeeeeee!
Shaker Joey emailed me about some remarkable PSAs about spaying and neutering pets. They are part of a campaign launched by the Best Friends Animal Society, which I regret to report has apparently decided to give the Animal Rights Group That Shall Not Be Named a run for its money in using gross, dehumanizing, misogynistic imagery to raise awareness on behalf of non-human animals.
The campaign is called Fix at Four, designed to encourage people to fix their dogs and cats by the age of four months to reduce the number of "surprise" (unwanted) litters of kittens and puppies. This is an important campaign! And Best Friends is capable of running a serious, adorable, and memorable ad as part of it that is not contemptible. Here is one!
Tinkly music. Images of adorable kittens and puppies. A male voiceover says: "This is your new kitten. Or your new puppy. Every day, 70,000 puppies and kittens just like them are born in the US. Cute, right? Well, what's not cute is that half of all litters are accidents. And when a kitten has a litter of oopsies, and a puppy has a litter of uh-ohs, pretty soon you have thousands and thousands of OMGs. And that leads to millions of pets being killed in shelters every year. But if 80% of pet owners say they believe in spaying and neutering, then what gives? Well, it turns out those sweet little fuzzballs can get pregnant sooner than you think. A lot sooner. But here's the good news: You can stop the accident before it happens. You just have to remember one number. Four. As in four months. When you bring home Maggie or Ruby, or Puddle or Clyde, get them fixed at four months—it can be old enough to get pregnant, and it's definitely young enough to make a difference. Prevent more. Fix at month four."I'm sharing that ad first in order to put into context what follows, and to underline that there is every reason to expect more from Best Friends.
I'm not sure if the following ads are currently being run anywhere on television, but Shaker Joey saw them at Hulu, so there is at least one major internet placement at the moment.
While the Dawson's Creek theme plays, a white tween girl and a white tween boy sit on the front porch of a suburban home, holding hands and shyly preparing to kiss for what looks like the first time. Suddenly, the porch light comes on, surprising the tweens. The boy hops over the porch railing and runs away. White middle-aged different-sex parents come out onto the porch. Dad, hands on hips, says, "I was afraid of that." Mom says, "Well, I guess it's time to get you fixed. The camera angle changes, and the tween girl is now a kitten. A female voiceover says: "Your pets will start fooling around sooner than you think." The male cat is shown running across the lawn, and Dad says, "Go on—get outta here!" Voiceover: "Accidental litters lead to millions killed in shelters each year. Help prevent more. Fix at month four."
Wacky piano music. A white man takes his white tween daughter for a stroll along a suburban street. They pass a fenced-in yard with a "Beware of Dog" sign behind which a white tween boy is jumping up and down trying to get a look at the daughter. Dad pulls her closer. At the next house, another white tween boy is using a corded edger to do yardwork. He spots the daughter and runs for her, but jerks back when the cord length runs outs. Daughter looks at him interestedly and Dad drags her along, saying, "Come on—let's go." At the next house, another white tween boy jumps at his screen door and then the living room window as they pass. At the next house, another white tween boys runs to the fence at the edge of his yard and says, "Hi! What's your name? Do you live around here? You're pretty! Where you guys going? Where you going? Where you going?!" Daughter smiles at him and Dad drags her away, then sighs. "I guess it's about time to get you fixed, sweetie," he says. The camera pans down and the tween girl is now a puppy. Dad scratches her head. The camera pulls back and the last boy is now a barking dog. A female voiceover says: "Your pets will start getting noticed sooner than you think. Accidental litters lead to millions killed in shelters each year. Help prevent more. Fix at month four."There are a lot of problems with these PSAs, and I will leave you to parse them all in comments. I just want to make three quick observations:
1. The "dad needs to police daughter's sexuality" shtick is a rape culture trope that subverts female sexual agency. Conflating it with pet guardians' actual responsibility for controlling their pets' reproduction to curb overpopulation is problematic on myriad levels, but is especially disgusting given the current war on agency in which this nation is embroiled, which has seen tween girls increasingly denied comprehensive sex education, access to contraception, access to abortion, and access to reproductive healthcare.
2. The "teenage boys are dogs in heat with no control of their sexual impulses" is also a rape culture trope. Conflating human young (straight) men, who need to seek and respect consent, with dogs, is not merely insulting to young men; it's dangerous for young women.
3. Note that in both adverts, it is the female animal who needs fixing. I'm sure that's just a coincidence and not yet another nod to rape culture narratives that suggest women are uniquely responsible for preventing unwanted sexual advances and pregnancy. Ahem.
If you would like to contact the Best Friends Animal Society and ask them to please stop running advertisements that uphold rape culture, especially considering that many, many women involved with animal rescue are survivors of sexual violence, you can find contact information here, or leave a message on their Facebook page here, or tweet at them here.
Assvertising, Part Wev in an Ongoing Series
[Content Note: Rape culture; gender essentialism; hetercentrism.]
I have seen this Brut advert half a dozen times lately, and I don't normally watch programming for which it's a natural fit, so it must be in heavy rotation:
A young, thin, traditionally attractive white woman and a young, thin, traditionally attractive white man stand at a bathroom vanity getting ready to go out. She's in a little black dress; he's in a shirt and tie. "You better hurry up," she tells him, as she walks out of the bathroom. "We don't wanna be late." He splashes some Brut cologne into his hand, then slaps it on his cheeks. We hear her scream from the other room. She walks back in and is now in an advanced stage of pregnancy. "What the heck did you just do?" she asks, cradling her belly. Grinding guitar music as he picks up the bottle of Brut and lifts an eyebrow with a devilish grin. A male voiceover says, "Let your man out. Brut. The essence of man."In the version I've seen running on television, which doesn't appear to be available on YouTube, not only is the man's female partner shown to be pregnant, but their dachshund is shown to be pregnant, too. Yeah.
Now, obviously, this isn't an ad designed to appeal to feminist women, and it might hardly be worth my time, except for the fact that I want to point out how deeply contemptuous of men this advert is, too, despite the fact it's ostensibly meant to appeal to them.
Men, per Brut, are all straight. All cis. All aggressively hypersexual. Their masculinity is centered in their genitals, and proven by their capacity to reproduce. They are all hostile to consent.
MRAs routinely complain about the "feminization" of our culture and assert that it's ruinous for men, but the humanization of our culture, which seeks to expand definitions of manhood, is hardly more offensive or contemptible than this gross, reductive, rape culture upholding characterization of the "essence of man."
And it ain't feminist women who are the primary gatekeepers of that bullshit. It's other men. About the last place on earth you'll find active feminists is in the executive wing of any advertising firm. These disagreeable stereotypes of men brought to you by The PatriarchyTM.
The Patriarchy Kills People
[Content Note: Self-harm; bullying; misogyny.]
Reading this profoundly sad and enraging article about a 7-year-old boy who hung himself as a result of bullying, I was already heartbroken, and then I got to this part:
The mother told police that her son "had been depressed due to her recent separation from his father; the fact that he had been bullied continuously by the children at school, in addition to the constant teasing that he had endured because he was the only boy in the home of eight females," a report says.And that's when I burst into tears. Because the world hates women so much that little children bullied a male classmate just on the basis that he lives with eight of them, and subjected him to so much (probably homophobic and transphobic) bullying on that basis, on simply being a boy among women and girls, that he killed himself.
And obviously there were multiple factors at play here, but his father's absence was what made him the only male person in the home, and the constant bullying about it was a reminder of his father's absence, so it was a vicious cycle centered around gender, each issue exacerbating the other.
The Patriarchy makes an absolute fucking trainwreck of the lives of so many boys and men, too. Feminists are stereotyped as man-haters, but I am a feminist because of this story as much as any woman-centered story I will ever write about. As long as women and men are not regarded as equals, no one is truly safe.
My sincerest condolences to his family and friends.
[Via Andy.]
Seen
Seen last weekend, while Iain and I were out and about: The Man Game. "May the BEST MAN win! WARNING: Women can play...but they better not win!"
