Understanding men

[cailindana]

I've had some interesting conversations with DH lately (who has recently got into feminism in a big way) about how patriarchy has affected him. It's something I'm interested in as I think it's part of the bigger picture and worth knowing in terms of combatting the effects of how our society is structured, both on women and men. As a woman of course I have limited insight into how men see the world and so would appreciate views specifically from men.

What DH has said to me is that he has been trained by his upbringing to overvalue what men do and undervalue what women do.
He says he has found it extremely hard to be in any way honest about his feelings as he has learned that it is not acceptable for him to share how he really feels.

Both of these things have contributed in large ways to the problems in our relationship and now that he's recognised them and tried to overcome them things have changed. I have to admit though I am a bit discombobulated by the change almost as though he doesn't quite fit my expectation of how men should be (indoctrinated in me by my sexist asshat of a father). So I've also had to change my attitude.

Any thoughts?

"I agree with Buffy. Who decided that history is about the footprint of an individual person? Why does it have to be that way? Of course there are notable people in history who changed things dramatically and it's worth knowing about them but why discount every other person who also ran the world, just not on such a large scale?"

Florence Nightingale had more of an impact on the world than some bloke who swept chimneys, but you think we should celebrate the chimney sweep more?

my husband is over 50 and doesn't think like this. And nor does my father who is over 80 and was brought up in a somewhat dysfunctional family.

but I do read a Times article this weekend (with appropriate pinch of salt) that a large number of male students regard women as 'holes for goals'.

being a dinosaur is not related to age. The important thing is to make the dinosaurs extinct by not breeding with them.

As for what I'd like to see in history books, I'd like to see women mentioned in more than one page/paragraph/sentence. But there's nothing to say about them because nothing was recorded about them. An alien reading purely history books would be forgiven for thinking women basically did nothing or were simply victims of men.

"WW2 military deaths = 22 - 25m
WW2 civilian deaths = 38 - 55m"

As I said it depends on the conflict and also the region.
More civilian deaths in France than USA for obvious reasons.

Buffy your quite right in that the way we record and write about history has a very top down bias, in that we tend to examine the people at the top, and right again in that produces an immediate bias in favour of the contributions of men.

Whereas social history can help redress this somewhat, in that we can examine broader cross sections of society, but I still think that doesn't address the problem entirely, as even in the traditional top down view of history a lot of women have made huge contributions here, and that is traditionally ignored, unless it is impossible for history to get away with ignoring it (a study of Elizabethan England for example).

Florence Nightingale had more of an impact on the world than some bloke who swept chimneys, but you think we should celebrate the chimney sweep more?

At what point did I say we should celebrate someone more or less? I said and you quoted me, but I will repeat it because maybe you copied and pasted without reading: "of course there are notable people in history who changed things dramatically and it's worth knowing about them."

History isn't about celebration. It's about knowing how our world was shaped. And that wasn't done single handedly by any individual man or woman. So it's worth knowing something about everyone who built our world, NOT INDIVIDUALLY - this is bolded and large for your reading convenience - but as a general record of how things were.

OK, fair enough. Well there are different types of history books.
There are obviously the "greatest people with the greatest achievement" type books which mostly ignore women (and every normal man too).
But there are also the social history books which focus more on what every day life was like for normal people, which certainly covers the working man and woman more.
I prefer the latter myself but the former are obviously more mainstream.

Social history books that have any detail about the day to day lives of women are very rare. We know some things about how women's lives were from a few diaries etc but there is a massive lack of understanding of how women actually felt or managed in the world they were born into. Granted there is also not a great amount of detail about men but at least there are work records, military accounts, diaries, fiction written by men about men, etc and so overall the detail is greater.

Even Florence Nightingale who is celebrated, was made into a feminine lady ministering to the sick. That is not the reality. She was actually known to the soldiers as the Lady with the Hammer. Because when she got to the Crimea she found that many of the medicines were locked away only to be used on Officers. She was outraged at that, broke the lock with a hammer and used the medicines on all soldiers.

Florence Nightingale's lasting contribution was to the use of statistical analysis in medicine. She was a gifted statistician.

Well said Buffy. Earlier in the thread we had Mephistopheles defining who gets to have a statue. He said it there must be personal sacrifice, greater good, etc. He stated this as fact. However, statues are simply something dreamed up by society, they are not things that exist independent of our culture. Someone at some point decided that statues are a good thing and then decided who gets to have a statue. It is not a cosmic fact that you have to be a certain thing in order to get a statue. And yet there was Meph stating with confidence what you had to do to get a statue. And oops it just so happens that, sorry, what women do doesn't fit. Oh dear, nothing we can do about that. Game over.

What both and I and Buffy are saying is that these things aren't in fact set in stone, they are not in fact natural and normal. Society was dominated and run by men and men decided what counted as history, they decided who should get statues, they decided to erase women because what women do is of no consequence. And that is presented as "how things are," so here we have kind, decent men telling us that how we feel about it just doesn't fit with reality. Sorry women, you're just wrong. We own what's right. Move on.

"And that is presented as "how things are," so here we have kind, decent men telling us that how we feel about it just doesn't fit with reality. Sorry women, you're just wrong. We own what's right. Move on."

I don't think that's true, I'm just having trouble understanding (I want to) how to address this in a practical way.

Yes, I thought everyone knew those things about Florence Nightingale but perhaps not.

This loops back around to the original point of my OP actually. Something I have noticed in my interactions with most men, especially when it comes to fraught topics like feminism is that men seem to be very confident in stating "how things are," up to and including actually telling women how they feel. It seems to me that men feel they have ownership of reality and if women state something different then the response isn't "oh that's interesting, tell me more," it's simply "no, you're wrong, I know how it is and it's this way."

A question for the men therefore. Do you accept the idea that women's experience of the world is quite dramatically different than yours? And that they may view things in an entirely different, but equally legitimate way?

Ok let me see if I'm anywhere near the mark in understand what you said Buffy:

Is it like language is a computer program, which informs thought, discussion and the very way we communicate ideas to one another as well as assigning weighted values to certain ideas and indeed the very mechanisms by which ideas are expressed?

Oh and the programmer didn't like women very much.

I don't think I've been stating "how things are", maybe "how things were" but then we were asked our opinion.
I don't want it to turn into the "what MrN thinks" thread, I'm hear to read & learn, not tell people how it is or change people's minds.

The point about language being male-centric is kind of new and interesting to me, although I'm aware of default masculine concepts.
Do you think language has deliberately been constructed in this way? Were no women involved in the formation of language?

Language concepts have been constructed by men. I often find in feminist discussions we don't literally have the words to describe our nuanced experiences as women, particularly around male violence.

"Isn't exploring what you think one of the best ways to learn? Perhaps rather than telling people how it is or changing our minds, you might find that your participation in this dialogue raises your own consciousness?"

Yes that was my hope, but I don't want it to be interpreted as me (men) telling you (women) what to think as cailindana hinted at 11:22.
I really don't think any man in this thread has implied "no, you're wrong, I know how it is and it's this way."

OK, I apologise for that FN comment Buffy, it was flippant.
I guess I was having trouble understanding how we can acknowledge and celebrate the important contributions that haven't been made by elite males. I'm all for it, but struggling to think how.

Your second comment. Hmm. I think that any discussion involves someone saying how they see things and another person putting their point of view across. I find it hard to see how I can give my opinion without it being perceived as saying what's really going on. I wouldn't even give my opinion if it hadn't been asked.
The only reason I was thinking of leaving the thread is that OP wanted the opinion of men, only for men to be told they were telling women what they should think. Which made me question whether OP really did want to know the opinion of men.

I always question myself, it's in my nature, regarding all things, but I know most people aren't like this. I know I'm wrong about a lot of things and I know there are a lot of things I haven't even considered I might be wrong about.
I'm all for raising conciousness, I just wish more people were :)