Why do I get so irrationally angry at all these "poor men" threads?

[ImSoNotTelling]

In the last couple of days there have been a few threads about how difficult life is for boys, how our whole society is weighted against them, how they are set up to fail academically by a system weighted against them, how they are victims of violence, how no-one takes them seriously.

I understand that a lot of the protagonists on these threads have sons and are naturally worried about how things will play out for them in their lives, That is a given when you have children I think. You also want the best for them, for them to have all the advantages in life.

However this business about men being done down all the time, I just don;t see it.

For every one ad on teh telly with a man being incompetent at cleaning, I see 10 with a man in a sharp suit being successful, with loads of adoring women gazing at him.

I see images of men doing exciting physical activities, being powerful, swishing out of expensive cars, glanching at their expensive watches, exuding authority as they sweep down the road.

Most of our politicians are men, in the papers the vast majority of "experts" consulted are men.

Men will on average earn a lot more money than women over the course of their lifetime, even if the fact that many women go part time is factored out (sorry I've got no links). In fact women on average are earning less than men, in the same jobs, before they have even started their families. In my old industry the women earned 40% less than men.

So are boys and men in our society really having a terrible time, and we need to redress the balance? If we redress the balance, what does that actually mean? What do people who call for this want? For men to earn even more money than women in the same job? For more men to be decision makers?

I just get when I think about just how shit it is for women and girls, still, here and around the world, and yet we are all supposed to ignore that and accept that yes, men have it worse, let's forget abotu the girls (again) and concentrate on making everything even better for men.

I don't get why people say the education system is disadvantaging boys.
The entire education system in this country has a long history but was invented by men to educate boys.

After many centuries girls were allowed into schools, and when they weren't taking mondays off to help mother with the washing and were taught something other than needlework it became apparent that girls were able to read and write as well as boys could, and it didn't cause their brain to overheat as some (male) people said would happen.

Schools used to be quite brutal, you did as you were told and got beaten for disobeying. Whielthis was happening boys were still achieving best academically.

In the last 20 years something has happened somewhere which means biys are getting less good results in exams. This is not because boys have had teaching wihtdrawn from them, they and the girls turn up at the same places and take the same lessons. But somehow girls get better results.

If anything is disadvantaging boys it is the boys, the system has not changed to deny them anything that the girls get.

However, the system that keeps men higher paid and with better pensions is still there and so boys are not being disadvantaged by the education system.

Girls achieve more but will go on to be paid less, do more unpaid work, and get a lower pension.

How is the education system disadvantaging boys? They get better outcomes from it than the girls do.

"Why would you look at your ds as if he was itching to rape when he grows up. I've already said that masculinity (male dominance) is socially constructed. Teach him to respect women and see them as fellow human beings. Someone who has those attitudes won't want to harm women."

So will my son not be 'masculine' then? If feminism is structuralist and there is an 'absolute' masculinity which I am going to teach my son to avoid, what will he be instead?

I understand your point about the difficulties confronting 'amorphous' masculinities, although I think I would answer this by saying that, from my perspective, what you are referring to is a patriarchal masculinity, which is pretty easy to challenge.

Eh up, don't be so ready to diss Foucault. He provided some bloody good tools to think with for feminists about the social construction of gender. The problem post-structuralism presents to feminism is that by exposing gender as a social construction, the basis for identification upon which a social movement depends disappears, so I can see why this strand of thought has been criticised: it lacks any clear idea of how oppressed people can resist that oppression. That's my understanding of it anyway, but it's complex stuff and I may be interpreting it too simplistically

Real life yes I remember that

I have a wonderful DH who would happily work part time so that I could work full time, he loves being with the children, he doesn't go out with his friends any more (as much as I urge him not to neglect them), he cooks etc. He is fabulous. But then with my personality and views I am sure ending up with someone like that was no mistake. Of course men can be warm and loving and thoughtful and kind.

However, elsewhere in my real life, we know that one of his friends has raped someone. Everyone knows about it. Is he shunned? No. People just quietly ignore what he has done.

We also know a woman who says she was raped. She reported it to the police and so on. Is she shunned? Yes. She is viewed as an unstable troublemaker.

And so it goes on. The reason that I think as I do is because of the things I have seen, heard and lived, in my real life.

"And no I wasn't telling you you should only resonate with female thinkers mrsbean. What I said, and what you twisted, was that women who actually challenge the patriarchal status quo are generally excluded from the academy or mistaught e.g. there are thousands of women's studies professors teaching that the second wave were "anti-sex". A much more subtle and politically important point which you chose to ignore in favour of a strawman retelling of my argument. "

Dittany, no need to be personal. I am fairly out of practice with discussions like these and as I said, I can't remember quite a lot of what I learned. It is many years since I even thought about this, as my 'academic brain' has been very heavily engaged in learning how to be a speech therapist, about a million miles removed from all of this, and, as I said, I'm just arguing particular hazy thoughts as they arise.

molesworth I don't understand a word you said there!

i thin this is getting a bit out of my dpth...

No, it'll be me failing to express myself clearly, not you getting out of your depth ISNT!

I didn't say that Foucault invented the idea that gender is socially constructed, dittany, and I'm sure that you're right about certain truths being silenced (Foucault made this point too ). Anyway, I don't want to sidetrack this excellent and thought-provoking discussion by quibbling about Foucault.

ISNT:

Funnily enough, I think one of the things that has brought me to revisit/begin to rethink gender/politics etc is that my own life is very 'cushty' in terms of equality etc. In my own home, our domestic partnership is very equal, our emotional partnership is very equal etc. I grew up in an all-female household, my mother holds a very prestigious position in her own profession, I work in an all-female environment where I could ask for pretty much anything I want when it comes to flexible working etc and get it, I don't have to raise my voice at work to have it heard..

My eyes have been shut, dittany.. I thought feminism had come further in the western world than it has and I am waking up to this. So rather than get angry/annoyed at the discussion, view it as exploratory?

"My eyes have been shut, dittany.. " I a wondering if mine have been too. I work in all-male environment and generally experience no overt sexism and DH is now working part-time while I am full-time. I suspect my life has been a bit 'cushty' too. I tend to view sexism as something that happens to other people so it's easier to think of it dispassionately. Not always good.

Andrea Dworkin was.. not sure about the others.. but as I said, it's a long time ago.
(To be honest, I did a lot of medieval texts, like Margery of Kempe and Catherine of Siena.. and 18th century female travel writers.. and also looking for the missing voices of women in the canon.. so I don't think I had such a narrow education really).

Men's claim to victimhood is a straight attempt to re-assert patriarchy. No question about that.

isnt: the argument about 'socially constructed' gender roles is roughly this ...
Gender roles at any given time in any given society are so tightly constructed and reinforced that they appear in fact to be real, natural and immoveable.

Feminists who think gender roles are not 'naturally' fixed begin to think about the ways in which this apparently immoveable and harmful set of roles can be dislodged, unpicked, destabilised etc.

The danger is that we descend as Dittany suggests into a moral relativism where patriarchy, having being identified, simply refuses to stay and fight fair. It disperses itself through 'masculinities' so many and varied that feminist energy is diffused and defused. Patriarchy remains.

That danger is quite real and there are plenty so-called feminists in the academy and outsdie it who are playing happily into this trap.

But essentialism is a trap too: the belief that men are naturally dominant means that women will always be disadvantaged and sets all feminist practice as doomed to fail anyway.

But the discovery that gender roles are socially constructed rather than fixed does not have to provide a dead-end to feminist practice.

We can still use the notion of men (collective group with shared interests, characteristics etc) and women (ditto) when it suits us politically: to pull women together, using a 'strategic essentialism' of the kind Spivak talks about.

What doesn't help women is real essentialism of the kind that leaves a son unguided and unsupported in his bid to establish a gender identity that is genuinely positive.

Joanna Bourke's work on masculinity and war is very interesting by the way ...

Crikey [boggles]

Thanks lentil, I think that makes sense.

I wonder if we need a beginners thread, where I can start with basic principles, and learn more and more until eventually I can construst sentances like molesworth's which sound v v clever

problem is if you want equal prominence to female thinkers, that the majority of the greatest thinkers have been men (not for any better reason than they are the ones who have had the opportunities - after all, if Xanthippe had anything to say about the nature of things, it sure as hell didn't make Platos final cut..)

Interestingly theories about what people are either being innate/learned pre-date the Greeks...i always go for a bit of both myself. no point denying women/men are diferent - however here is a great deal of mileage in getting fair tratment for individuals...

You'd hope to see the balance turning round...however i don't think it great if women only get mentioned WRT womens issues - femininity is not a minority group!

Femininity is not a group at all - it is a set of character traits. Women are a minority group.

I was actually asking genuinely e.g. is it viewed as 'non-feminist' to cite a male thinker etc.

I wasn't actually saying that, I stated it but was asking a question - rhetorically so to speak.

You know, dittany, your tone towards me seems really quite aggressive and patronising. I find that quite interesting. I've been quite clear that I am only arguing from the point of view of challenging my own perceptions - devil's advocate style - and that I'm a bit out of touch with all of this. RedLentil and Morloth have broken it down on the basis of this: I am sensing you feel more affronted by questions.

The reason I challenged the point about Foucault was that, at the point I mentioned him, you made an assumption about my education. Not because I have any issue whatsoever with the need for female thinkers to be better represented.