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.

Orm

I refuse to quibble about Foucault any further on this thread

Instead of quibbling about Foucalt would you all like to look at the WaterAid website which (as well as other stuff) works to liberate manual scavengers in India. 95pc of manual scavengers are women. If you've ever bridled against cleaning your husband's poo out of the loo with rubber gloves and a brush then this is the cause for you!

Manual scavengers are people whose job it is to clean human faeces with their hands and a brush and no protective clothing from dry latrines and toilet areas. They put it in a tin, or a basket they carry on their heads, to carry to disposal areas. They are trapped into a lifetime of this terrible work and they and their children are prey to horrible ill health and a filthy rotten shitty life.

Quibble about Foucault too , but please take a look and take an active step towards liberating some very oppressed women. Even just by being aware.

I'm going to quote myself here, dittany, as you are so determined to cast me as the anti-feminist villain of the piece:

"I'm just problematizing it from long-distant perspectives I was presented with at university. Postmodern/cultural studies stuff... it's very hazy to me now, and I'm not saying I necessarily believe it, just throwing it out there.. If I had been a good little student I could probably say all sorts of clever things about Foucault, but I was lazy and it is a long time ago "

So from the start, I said I didn't really remember it. What I do remember - the thing that resonated with me - is discussion of how we are not as free as we think we are: how power makes people by themselves behave in other ways than they else would have done if that power system didn't exist.

You have said that argument was stolen from feminists, fair enough. I didn't know that when I posted.

I was 18. I knew nothing about Foucault's relationship with the Ayatollah's in Iran or what have you. But the thing I remember - the thing that was a lightbulb flash for me - is surely not incompatible with anything you or anyone else has said about power or patriarchy. About how it is all around us etc.

I think we have established that I have some fossilised memories of arguments from university that may or may not have given me prejudices about feminist thinking. So?
I am constrained to that, am I?
The end of a discussion needs to be the same as it's starting point? Why would anyone in the world discuss anything if their positions had to be immutable from the beginning? Something is not a discussion if it cannot contain digressions, diversions or developments.

You are reading what I have said about masculinities in a very specific, academic way. I am simply saying I truly believe it is possible to be male-as-distinct-from-female (which is masculine) and non-oppressive and aware of and opting-out-of the patriarchal system. I don't read 'masculine' as necessarily oppressive, but I do take seriously the point made here that it's important not to distract from the oppression of patriarchy by fragmenting the type of oppressive masculinity you refer to so that it can't be confronted.

There is a theoretical argument here, and the issue of the real world. You say it's not impossible to care for real world men and talk about them as oppressors. Yet
I am still uncomfortable with absolutist language. I am as uncomfortable with reading the statement 'men are oppressors' as I am with reading 'women are teases/weak/hysterical/woolly thinkers' etc.
That is not to say that I don't believe that there are a whole load of oppressing men out there, and men who love the status quo and prop it up. If I didn't believe that, why would I even concern myself with thinking about any of this? I would assume that all men were great and all women were safe. I'm not saying that. But the fact that there are still rapists and domestic abusers and men who would never consider a woman for a promotion or bank managers who would never give a woman a loan does not make me comfortable with talking about 'men' as one entity, all out to get all us good women.

I think, ultimately, the key to eliminating oppression is about respect, but to respect another person, you need to respect yourself. So as in the example about racism, you can teach a boy that oppression does/has existed without resorting to telling them that they can't be a man without being an oppressor. You can be a feminist and recognise that not all men are oppressors. You can even remember a few things about Foucault without it meaning you are desperately trying to undermine the whole of the Women's movement.

"I also want to say thank you to blackcurrants. You have explained beautifully and far more eloquently than I could ever attempted to, just exactly how I feel about feminisim and patriarchy. Unfortunately, if I had even tried to say any of that stuff, I'm sure I would've managed to fill a bloody bingo card and ended up feeling even more shite"

Exactly wubblybubbly!

Just because we don't know the lingo/ have only the bingo language to discuss what we think doesn't mean what we write should automatically be distrusted as anti-feminist.

Oh God, and not only do I use bingo language, I've just now noticed I used an it's instead of an its in my long post.

Maybe we're trying to do the whole topic in one thread. I think a reading group is an excellent idea. Maybe we should have 5 reading groups ... But people don't need to be in one to contribute here.

I had a friend over this week who was talking about her marriage and her sons with me. The woman has never read and will never read a feminist book. We had our conversations with no direct reference to books of any kind as she would be sceptical of any kind of 'theory'. Yet her views had clearly been influenced in different ways by ideas that were 'theoretical feminism' twenty or thirty years ago.

There is room in the world for quibbling about Foucault and Butler. I cook spaghetti bolognese happy in the knowledge that elsewhere Heston Blumenthal is doing his thing, and altering the way I might think about future bologneses (sp?).

I don't want to talk about feminist theory on every thread, but to just give another take on the Nussbaum article: Butler's level of innovation is lower than she claims says Nussbaum. Well, every modern academic's level of innovation is lower than they claim. You get published and promoted by playing the originality game.

Nussbaum is interesting on Butler's style and wrong on other things: Butler deals directly with the way justice gets hijacked in two places at length. Firstly she talks about how legislation for free speech has been used by the Klu Klux Klan because burning crosses are allowed as 'speech acts'.
Then, in the opening pages of Excitable Speech she talks about how, when she talked about abusive terms with students in a liberal way (at a law school?) the students saw it as a kind of permission to use those terms in a campaign of abuse against each other.

That frustrating problem of having your words turned against you (in a class, on a mumsnet thread or whatever) is what Judith Butler is interested in: because patriarchy too misfires, fails to control what it sets out to control and can be subverted.

No more Butler from me on this thread, I promise.

"The impression I'm getting from you here is that you think I shouldn't respond to you saying incorrect or untrue things about feminists or feminism or else somehow this isn't a discussion."

Then you are still misunderstanding me.

RE: "Postmodernism often uses the "words can mean anything I say they mean" argument but it doesn't actually further the discussion in any meaningful way."

I have 0% understanding of how the 'academy' defines masculinity in 2010 because I don't read academic cultural texts (or very much at all that doesn't pertain to my own field of study). Perhaps I completely misunderstood it..

Ah, misunderstandings. Let me tell you as a speech and language therapist and student of human communication that there are always differences in how individuals perceive abstract language, and it is always predicated on their own experience. That's not some cultural mumbo jumbo, it's fairly clear and obvious. Think of a word like "love" for example: means something totally different if you have experienced it to if you haven't. Compare that to a word like 'cat' or 'brick'. There won't be quite as big a distance between one person's understanding of 'cat' and another's as there may be between their understanding of love.

My desire to be precise in explaining my meaning has nothing to do with abstract academic tussling, it is to do with the fact that if you want to have a discussion or communicate with someone with different ideas to you, the simplest way of doing it is to be as clear and transparent as you can. And yet this is anything but simple!

I thought some thoughts. I presented them in a particular way that I felt was clear at the time. You received them in a particular way based on your understanding of the words I used. You had a different understanding and so we had a communication breakdown.

So, I needed to do something about that, represent my original point in a different way.

So, it makes perfect sense that I started by saying one thing, and as it was not received as I intended it to be, I tried to trouble shoot that based on what I thought might make my meaning clearer to 'repair' the breakdown.

However, it hasn't worked. You are repeatedly reading what I am saying in a way that I don't intend to, based on your understanding of my intention through the words I used.

I am telling you that really my understanding of the terms that is not the same as yours. Not because it's what the academy has taught me or because I am desperate to undermine you, because I am trying to find where we might have a common ground.. but I sense that's anything but what you want so I am going to bow out.

RE: "The key to eliminating oppression is ending violence. All oppression is predicated on violence. "

And violence is borne out of hatred, lack of love, self-loathing. IMO, all are best dealt with through teaching love, positivity, respect. So my point remains.

probonbon - didn't want you to feel ignored; I will certainly have a look at the wateraid website.

Re: Judith Butler - I'm reading Gender Trouble now (I confess I'm not very far into it yet, but I haven't seen any feminist bashing yet) and will read the Nussbaum article later. I might be brave and start a thread about it

I'm sorry to see the way this thread has gone tbh. I find your posts informative and interesting dittany - clearly you are much better-informed about feminism than I am and I respect that - but I also feel you've given mrsbean an unwarranted bashing on this thread. You have a clearly defined position, but some of us haven't and we're here to talk, to listen and to work some of this stuff out. As I said before, it seems to me that it's pretty easy to identify the aggressive antifeminists: I've certainly seen at least one on mn in the last few weeks. Mrsbean clearly isn't one of them.

I'd just like to thank Blackcurrants for her posts which are very useful to someone who has never read any feminist theory at all and which I think will encourage me to look into some. Could someone list some starter texts preferably written for a general audience rather than academics as am seriously sleep deprived atm.

Also, I've read Dittany's posts and think I more or less follow but don't understand the refs to the 'academy'. What is this? Is it the name for a body of feminist literature or something else entirely?

Tummytime an excellent thread about feminist reading has just been revived here

"And tbh I felt pretty bashed when she assumed that I'd be advising her to talk to her young child about rape in a discussion about feminism or women's rights, or that I'd think she ought to tell her son that men oppress women. "

Which is why I mention communication breakdown. I seriously thought this is what you meant with statements about there only being one type of masculinity and it being oppressive.. I was genuine in wondering how you would teach a boy son that being masculine was wrong.

"I'm just going to say it again, the conversation with MrsBean started off by her telling me that there was more than one type of masculinity and that patriarchal masculinity was easily dealt with."

And here is another example of misunderstanding.. when I said that it was 'pretty easy to challenge' a patriarchal masculinity, I didn't mean that it was easy to challenge on a day to day basis in RL but that it is so patently wrong/sexist/oppressive whatever, that is pretty easy to tear the validity of its existence to shreds.

I have done my best to explain my understanding of the term 'masculinity' and will say no more about it.

I am aware of academia Dittany and indeed work in it, just usually have it referred to as academia/ academics rather than 'in the academy'.

Thanks redlentil. Will have a look through that thread.

I'm familiar with the idea of 'masculinities' and 'femininities' from my studies, but I can fully see what you're saying dittany, in that these sorts of perspectives can be understood as strategies for not only obscuring the reality of women's oppression but for removing the basis for political action (I hope I have understood you correctly on this, anyway!). This doesn't go unacknowledged in academia though, not even in pretty basic texts aimed at undergraduates like me. Not that I'm saying everything's tickety-boo, only that other perspectives haven't been entirely silenced.

tummytime, glad (should I say amazed?!) to have been any help. I really, really like the FAQs on "Finally, a Feminism 101 blog" - they're really good at questions like "What is male privilege" and "Isn't the patriarchy just some conspiracy theory you can blame everything on?" - which might be slightly pertinent to this thread. But in general, it's a really handy resource and I use it a lot (when bored at work, ahem ;) ) so I offer it to all here.

Going by my own experiences as a student, I think you probably would be marked down if in an essay you referred to 'masculinity' or 'femininity' without acknowledging that a singular, homogenous concept of gender is problematic. But I don't think you'd be marked down if you insisted on the political necessity of maintaining a singular notion of gender.

I think you make a very important point which has caused me to reflect on the absences and silences in the material I've studied, and to resolve to seek out some of the stuff I haven't had the opportunity to read yet because it's not on the syllabus.

The best student I have ever taught I disagreed with entirely. I rewarded him with fantastic marks because I had to admit that while his arguments didn't seem right to me, they had as much evidence to back them up as mine did. He has gone on to be a stellar figure in his field, deservedly so. Now he makes his cases better and he has changed my views.

I take your point that academia has marginalised feminism and I hugely respect the work you do raising feminist consciousness on mumsnet, but you are the only person on this thread sneering at views different from your own.