In the very first women’s studies course I took at Cal, more than two decades ago, the very first novel we read was Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s famous utopian fantasy, Herland. (Parenthetically, we live three blocks away from Gilman’s home in Pasadena, now a registered historic site.) The novel, published in 1915, tells the story of a country of women in which men have become entirely superfluous — and of the three men from “our” civilization who, thanks to a hot air balloon ride, stumble across the society. The three males represent three different visions of masculinity, with the poles represented by the violent, hyper-masculine Terry and the gentle, chivalrous Jeff. Jeff, we’re told from the start, has women on a pedestal — he thinks them incapable of wickedness (or much strength). Part of the fun of Gilman’s novel is the way in which she exposes the myths to which both Terry and Jeff cling.
I thought of Jeff’s character yesterday when I read the remark in the thread below this post which suggested:
Or, you can believe, as I think Hugo does, that women are some higher order of humanity. That if only we could free this half of humanity – the innocent half, the half that lacks Original Sin – from dependency on us broken souls that they will be like a light unto the Gentiles, and show us the way.
That’s Gilman’s Jeff, all right, but it’s not Hugo Schwyzer – or any other feminist, man or woman, with whom I’ve worked. In the tired compendium of anti-feminist bromides, there are a few classic slurs which re-emerge again and again: pro-feminist men are gay; lupine sexual predators in sheep’s clothing; filled with intense self-loathing; convinced of the innate superiority of women and the innate inferiority of men. The misogynists can’t go out the front door to come up with any new arguments, so they return to these again and again — and it’s the last of these to which I want to — briefly, I promise — respond this morning.
I do not believe for a second in the innate moral superiority of women over men. As someone committed to the sound principle that most of our beliefs about sex difference are rooted in cultural constructs rather than in immutable physiological truths, I take it for granted that both men and women are capable of kindness and cruelty, sexual aggression and passivity, courage and cowardice, homicidal rage and extraordinary empathy. One excellent feminist first principle is that there is no human emotional or intellectual capacity that does not belong in equal measure to both men and women. I’ve been a card-carrying member of the National Organization for Women and the National Women Studies Association for years — and I’ve yet to meet a colleague of either sex who expressed in public or in private a conviction that females were, on account of their biology, superior to men.
On the other hand, there’s a monumental difference between capacity and action. The fact that women have the capacity to be violent in intimate relationships doesn’t mean that they are as frequently the agents of that violence as men; the fact that women have the capacity to commit sexual assaults on the vulnerable of either sex doesnt mean that they do so as often as men. Ours is a culture which condones and encourages and excuses male violence — which means that from a feminist standpoint, I want men to be more like women in that I want them to rape and beat and injure other human beings considerably less often. (And please, I know the specious statistics floated by the “National Coalition for Free Men” and other groups, the sort that make the outrageous claims that women initiate more domestic violence than men. These folks are like Holocaust deniers, unconvinced by staggering amounts of evidence. They are not welcome to comment here, and all such remarks in support of their David Irvingesque positions will be deleted.)
The goal of the feminist movement is not to make women as violent as men, of course. But feminists often point out that the two feelings the expression of which women are most consistently denied by a sexist culture are anger and lust — not coincidentally, that same sexist culture permits young men to express few feelings besides these two. Helping women learn to express anger, and challenging men to stop defusing women’s anger, are two key feminist tasks. Both men and women often have a hard time in our culture developing a clear vocabulary for expressing honest, righteous indignation without either resorting to physical violence or repression. In the same way, acknowledging women’s sexual agency and encouraging women to take ownership of their own bodies is a vital feminist task.
No feminist I know believes that women are “sugar and spice and everything nice” while men are “snips and snails and puppy dog tails.” We are human beings whose capacity for love and rage, desire and empathy are in no way circumscribed by our hormones, our genitalia, or our chromosonal structure. The feminist project is about identifying the ways in which kyriarchical structures have deprived men and women of the full range of their humanity, forcing us to be “half people” looking desperately for completion in heterosexual relationships. The feminist project acknowledges the male capacity to nurture — and the female capacity to embrace darkness.
At the same time, we know that far more women are doing the nurturing in our world — and far more men are lost to one form of darkness or another. As a result, it is no wonder if in the search for a truly egalitarian world, we who call ourselves feminists are particularly eager both to empower women — and to challenge our brothers to do what they too seldom do, which is to choose love over rage.
I’ve yet to meet a colleague of either sex who expressed in public or in private a conviction that females were, on account of their biology, superior to men.
Losing the bolded weasel phrase, what would be the answer? Nobody’s accused you of thinking women were better than men because of their genes.
As someone committed to the sound principle that most of our beliefs about sex difference are rooted in cultural constructs rather than in immutable physiological truths…
If the principle is sound, then why does it need your commitment? If the empirical evidence supports the idea, it supports the idea, and your emotional resonance with it is immaterial. If the empirical evidence does not support the idea, then your emotional resonance with it is a commitment to irrationality.
And why MOST beliefs? If some of the beliefs ARE rooted in biology, then wouldn’t the feminist project to equalize those behavioral aspects be similarly nonrational?
The world is what it is. The strongest element of the feminist worldview, in my experience, is that its descriptions of the world are very often true. (My quarrels with feminists usually come down to disagreements about the prescriptive elements.) It sounds to me like you’re committing to feminist principles regardless of the evidence.
Which is certainly your prerogative – everybody has elements of their belief systems that work that way – but would seem to indicate that feminism is a religious, rather than an ideological/intellectual, system of belief for you.
(My quarrels with feminists usually come down to disagreements about the prescriptive elements.) It sounds to me like you’re committing to feminist principles regardless of the evidence.
I’m not quite following, Robert. Modern “evidence” demonstrates that there are greater differences within the sexes than between the sexes, so I’m pretty convinced that while biology may influence cultural beliefs…it is still the culture that shapes and define beliefs.
Am I missing your point?
Robert, I can’t speak for Hugo, but I accept the idea that most of our beliefs about sex difference are rooted in cultural constructs because of evidence; I’m committed to the idea because I think that, faced with such evidence, we must change many of our cultural beliefs and behaviors in order to have a just society. It’s that last part — adapting to new(ish) information about sex and gender — that requires action and therefore commitment. One accepts or rejects a postulation based on its merits (that is, evidence of its truth); then we must decide what to do about it.
Presumably because some of our beliefs about sex differences – such as that men produce sperm and women produce eggs, or that women can breastfeed and men cannot – are obviously not rooted in cultural constructs.
such as that men produce sperm and women produce eggs, or that women can breastfeed and men cannot – are obviously not rooted in cultural constructs.
These are not beliefs…they are facts.
Weeell, (though this is a total tangent) technically they can be considered more beliefs then facts. Are women no longer women after they stop producing eggs? Or if they never did? The very concept of ‘women’ and ‘men’ are culturally constructed and the binary division of the human species looks more like a continuum if you actually chart out such things as height, strength, breast size and yes, even penis size.
A little less tangential, yes! to the post. I’ve often thought that while less violence all over would be ideal I expect to see more violence on the part of women as we achieve better equality. It’s a price I’m perfectly willing to pay.
Not to mention that on an individual level there are tons and tons of men for whom violence is completely foreign and it is ridiculous to have them absent from our cultural ideas of who men are.
Totally tangential, but related to the comments: isn’t it true that men can breastfeed too? I think Victoria’s point here is valid. The duality of male/female works for 99% of the population, but there is a “spectrum” here to consider.
As a feminist, I agree with almost everything you say, Hugo. But there’s one idea promoted by many feminists that has never made sense to me: the assertion that we women feel lust to the same degree that men do; we have just been repressed in expressing it. As probably most here know, testosterone is the hormone responsible for sex drive in both men and women. While normal men have a river of testosterone coursing through their veins (300-1,000 nanograms/deciliter), normal women have a mere trickle (20-80 ng/dL) flowing through their bloodstream. So, at the risk of sounding anti-feminist, it follows logically that women have less sex drive than men do. Though I realize I speak only for myself, my personal experience bears this out as well. I don’t doubt that there are women with very strong sex drives as well as men with not very strong sex drives. It just seems that men, on average, have stronger sex drives than women. And science backs this up.
So, why is there so little engagement with the concept of a “partnership” movement…why not take your web-based audience and capacity as an academic and explore what the world looks like if men and women work as a partnership. It may just be a name change for what the feminist movement has been doing in progressive waves…but in the current world good PR really helps.
What always fascinates me is how much some people have invested in the idea that the sexes are profoundly and unchangeably different. I have noticed a strong correlation between this belief and either:
a need to excuse some perceived fault or flaw in themselves that is a fault commonly culturally attributed to their gender, or
justify a hatred of the opposing gender based upon poor treatment by one or more members of that gender that that person has received when the treatment is a behavior stereotypically assigned to the opposing gender.
Or sometimes both.
Hugo,
“classic slurs”
I think the main point in this respect (with respect to you) would, in my perception, be that you’ll find a way to make men responsible for their own problems, the problems of women, and the problems of the universe. Maybe this is about the way you see the world – patriarchy – rather than the way you see women, but still.
Assume you write a post about some guy who’s been badly hurt by a woman who has, by all means, been violent and mean, and explolitative and wrong individually. You would explain how sorry you are for the poor man in question and then quickly move on to explain how men are usually responsible for driving women into the corner so they do stuff.
If you believe there is female agency, you should occasionally allow for it. And you should occasionally allow the assumption that a male perspective (other than yours) can in fact be right, and a female perspective can be wrong.
Of course, this is my perception, but I can’t believe you won’t be able to see why even a well meaning male reader would think of your writing as usually a priori biased against males.
I think it’s so true. I don’t know wether you’ve heard of a spanish movie called “Mujeres al Borde de un ataque de nervios”(Women on the verge of a Nervous Breakdown). This movie i would not say that it’s specifically a “feminist movie”(thier is supposebly a “feminist” in the film she is not) , but it’s just very different to see how women are protrayed in the cinema.
Forget feminism; that’s just bad science. Do you also believe that since men have larger brains than women, they must also be smarter?
mythago,
I don’t doubt that your claim about commenter “Gigi” is correct, but it would help to do more than just win by comparison. Clearly you’re implying that there’s more than one root cause here: in the case of sexuality, testosterone isn’t the only thing that makes a person desirous of sex. So please bring on the GOOD SCIENCE (so to speak) and link us to articles that suggest alternative roots to sex drive (i.e. – what makes us want to do the dirty deed OTHER THAN testosterone?).
Mythago: No, I don’t believe that men having larger brains makes them smarter. That’s a totally different issue. But I stand by my original argument there is a strong correlation between the amount of testosterone in a person’s system and their sex drive. If you can provide evidence to the contrary, I’m all ears.
SamSeaborn:
even a well meaning male reader would think of your writing as usually a priori biased against males.
Thank goodness that you’re here so loyally to point that out. What a cross I, as obstinately committed to error as I am, must be for you to bear.
And Gigi, testosterone is ONE factor in sexual desire, but hardly the only one — that’s a classic argument of reductio ad absurdum. Desire is immensely complex, and lust, so shaped as it is by culture (does testosterone crave boob jobs with tiny waists, defying nature at every turn?), that hormones are at best only one of many factors that contribute to disparate sex drive. No question that it’s one factor, mind you, but a mammoth leap to assign it primacy.
Hugo,
lol.
Hugo,
“Thank goodness that you’re here so loyally to point that out. What a cross I, as obstinately committed to error as I am, must be for you to bear.
”
Ah well, errare humanum est. I can deal with that, and I’m sure you’re aware
. Let me add that your willingness to question yourself mitigates my annoyance about the your perceived priori bias.
Hugo,
I agree that desire is complex. And no, I’m not saying that testosterone craves tiny waists or boob jobs. A hormone, obviously, cannot in and of itself crave anything. I’m not saying that testosterone determines WHAT a person craves. I’m saying that testosterone does have a great impact on HOW MUCH a person craves whatever it is they crave sexually. I don’t think it’s a mammoth leap to say that testosterone is one of the primary factors in the amount of sex drive a person has. And, frankly, I think it’s silly to suggest otherwise. But, I guess we disagree on that point.
Thank you, Sam.
Gigi, I don’t think we disagree — if you’re willing to concede that, as you yourself say, testosterone is “one of the primary factors” I’m with you completely. I just don’t want to give it pride of place among all others; desire is a many-legged stool, and testosterone is, one presumes one leg.
Hugo,
Fair enough. I also think there is a subtle difference between sex drive and desire, so you and I are probably talking about two different, but closely related, things. But, I don’t really feel like parsing what that difference is right now.
On a totally different note, I’m a Mennonite and I was pleased to discover that you (sort of) are too. (: It doesn’t seem very Mennonite to talk about sex drive, does it? lol
I come from an Anabaptist background myself.
Okay, so there’s been a lot of talk about what factors into sexual desire. Let’s continue since with Hugo’s many-legged stool metaphor (since it’s a good one). Here’s my issue:
- we can clearly state that testosterone is one of the legs.
- no one has said, with any level of certainty, what the other legs would be. I can take a stab at some of them (most of them, I assume, are on the “nurture” half of nature vs. nurture), but I am no expert.
Can anyone help me here? I obviously agree with y’all that desire IS complex, but I’d like to see as much of a “simplified breakdown” as is possible without betraying the nature of the beast (so to speak).
I recall a section in Natalie Angier’s book Woman (I don’t have it front of me, so I can’t cite it specifically — sorry) discussing studies showing that, in women, estrogen is actually linked to both libido and aggression. It’s a great book for a whole lot of reasons, not least of all Angier’s skilled decimation of the very widespread, very simplistic, very misguided interpretations of sex differences. Anyone here who hasn’t read it certainly should!
Gigi-
Good observation about the testosterone. That’s why depo-provera, used as “chemical castration,” can be such a good thing for sex offenders. It reduces the drive to re-offend by taking testosterone to pre-adolescent levels. In women, it is extremely effective as birth control. It lowers the hormone output of the ovaries (one of the hormones produced there is . . . . testosterone) My doctor friends joke that it’s 100% effective as birth control, “cuz you can’t get pregnant if you ain’t doing it.”
Testosterone also affects aggression, strength, and a whole host of mental factors. It’s not the whole story, but it’s a significant part of it.
The difference between male and female college athletes on a Div 1 team is not due to the fact that men have a better work ethic or “more heart.” Rather, it’s due to the fact that men have a large quantity of natural steroids produced in the testes.
Here’s the key. The fact that someone may be faster, stronger, more flexible, or smarter than me doesn’t matter!!! It doesn’t make me any less a child of God.
“’m saying that testosterone does have a great impact on HOW MUCH a person craves whatever it is they crave sexually.”
Which makes perfect sense to me, a 100 lb. woman who has been quite sexually active to the point of being called a slut and a nympho for most of my life by the multiple men I’ve had sex with who have all not been able to keep up with my hyper libido…
oh wait…
Sigh. No, *science* (good heavens) does not back this up. You admitted you spoke only for yourself, Gigi. Testosterone is not the sole arbiter of lust or the sex drive, just for a start. I won’t even address the idea that men producing more of it (on average) than women do indicates that they’re *naturally* just more lusty or whatever it is you’re implying, since that’s been debunked already.
OC-
At least in male sex offenders, a reduction in testosterone via “chemical castration” makes a HUGE difference in recidivism rates. There’s quite a bit of research on this.
One abstract here: http://sax.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/18/3/303
If I recall correctly, while it’s true that women’s testoterone level tends to be lower than men’s, it also varies over the course of the menstrual cycle, as does oestrogen level (which, despite the binary we’d like to impose, is not a nurturing hormone), and some scientists suggest that women are more sensitive to testosterone. That is, there’s less of it, but you need less for the same effect.
“At least in male sex offenders, a reduction in testosterone via “chemical castration†makes a HUGE difference in recidivism rates. There’s quite a bit of research on this.”
And if you lower the level of estrogen in a woman’s system, her sex drive will be drastically reduced as well. Testosterone is not the only hormone linked to sexual desire. It’s just believed to be by many because most of the studies done on sexual desire have focussed on men…not to mention that they have often been done by people (mostly men) who already had a biased belief that men just have naturally higher sex drives.
I’m surprised you dealt with my supposition by just making a claim about yourself. From what I understand of your academic area, when you’re called on to analyze whether a person exhibits sexism or bias, the least significant evidence on the matter is what the person says about their views. You take it as axiomatic that biased people will always profess a lack of bias in their views of people. If you are trying to determine if someone is a homophobe, for example, conclusions are drawn from 1) their cultural background – you assume, all things being equal, that some cultures are intrinsically homophobic, and 2) a pattern of activity. Do they seem to focus excessively on gays, maybe something they don’t like about some supposed “gay culture?” Do they always seem take the heterosexual persons side? 1) Carries more weight than 2), and 3) – their claim: “No I really do care about gays, and like gays” – counts for nothing.
So I’m surprised that you dealt with my supposition by just making a counter-claim about yourself, as if that should somehow settle the matter. How would you grade a student who concluded: this person isn’t a sexist because they unequivocally say they are not?
I don’t know you as a person. All I know is what you write: what you choose to write about, what you think is important, and how you explain the world to others. And, to me, there are some clear patterns in your view of the world.
1) You only make an ethical judgment about women when their behavior hurts other women. Women are never shown at fault when their behavior hurts men.
2) When women are shown at fault, you go to great pains to find an external cause, usually Patriarchy.
3) You take particular delight in taking something that most people might see as a positive thing that some men might do – like protecting their family, providing for their family, and demonstrating that it is really motivated by a selfish will to power.
4) You never do that to women. The good things they do are never viewed with any such cynicism. The good they do is clear evidence of their fundamental value as people.
5) In the post in question, you completely and ignored the possibility of greed as a motivation for the female half of humanity. More generally, when proposing changes to society, you completely discount and ignore entirely any moral hazards women might face.
6) When you point out the suffering of men you always, always locate the ultimate source of that suffering among men.
So as a practical matter, when thinking of real women, the possibility of sin is never considered. To do something plainly wrong, completely by their free choice. You have no problem whatsoever characterizing men that way, and repeatedly finding particular men as examples. I imagine your thought process is something like this: men often sin, and while women might, as a purely theoretical matter in some hypothetical world, commit sin it is almost certain that are driven to sin, and not drawn to sin and attracted to sin like men are.
I’ve read many, many of your posts and have never seen any anything along the lines of: “You know folks, I’m sorry, but what this particular woman did to this particular man in this particular situation was just plain wrong. There’s just no excuse for it.”
So that’s how I see the pattern of work, which I point to first. For the second part, the cultural part, the community you belong to: the feminists. You’re forever enjoining men: “Stand up for women. When you see men acting hateful, call them on it!” But you fully and enthusiastically embrace the feminist blogsphere, your culture. Tell me honestly you’ve never seen evidence of just simple, exultant hatred in their rants and vendettas. Tell me honestly you’ve never felt that some feminist has gone over the line generalizing about men. So your community, your chosen culture has many extreme elements, and I am justified in drawing conclusions about your views from your silence, just as you teach your students to draw conclusions from silence.
Your claim that no feminist you work with believes in the moral superiority of women is just that: a claim. The best evidence of the truth of that claim would be examples where these same feminists have taken a position about a real, particular, non-hypothetical situation, and have said that this particular woman has, with full agency, done something unethical to this particular man. I wouldn’t expect many examples, since their passion is advocacy for women. But a claim should be backed up with at least some examples.
I don’t think your work exhibits bias or bigotry in the conventional sense. When I read your stuff I don’t see evidence of hatred. So I try and square your claimed Christianity, and your claimed feminism. I try and understand why you seem partial to extremism, but you seem to have none of the hatred of an extremist. So I conclude at the outer edges of your thinking that, while you don’t hate men, you just think women are, in a theological sense, less sinful in nature.
I don’t study gender for a living. I don’t teach others how to reason about gender, and so I have no analytical framework for the study of bias in men. But I’ve read enough of your stuff to qualify as a student of your discipline in some sense. And so I’ve used your reasoning techniques to consider the question: what is Hugo’s real view of men? I know you teach male students that they ought not to take personally a classroom observation of sexism, and so I’d ask your to consider that question, when focused on your work, as something other than a slur.
Any Kyriarchy? It is just another Ptolemic wheel added to the leftist world view. Don’t get me started…
Gigi, arguments don’t work this way: you present a hypothesis and it’s deemed true unless I disprove it. There needs to be a little more evidence for “men have greater sex drive because they have more testosterone” than a simple comparison of testosterone levels. (For example, anabolic steroids actually can lead to a decrease in sex drive.) This is exactly what I mean by bad science; taking a perceived Difference Between The Sexes, and working backward to find a biological reason that sounds good on the surface.
Pat Califia has an interesting essay about this; many people deeply eroticize exaggerated sex differences, and then go on to project those differences as ‘natural’ or ‘innate’ rather than treating them as, oh, the way you or I might treat a preference for curly hair.
On the one hand, it seems entirely possible to me that men do, in fact, on average have a higher sex drive than women, given that this proposed difference does line up with the on average differences in behavior between men and women. And, given that testosterone is linked to sex drive, and that men have more testosterone, it even seems plausible that men on average have a higher sex drive for inherent biological reasons linked to hormones.
Where it breaks down: Men have a lot more testosterone than women, pretty darn consistently, but the observed gap between men’s and women’s expressed sex drive isn’t nearly as sharp or consistent as the hormonal difference. There seems (as with other differences between the sexes) to be more variation within each sex than between the sexes.
I often read that the difference in sex drive is sharp. There was that conservative male columnist a while back who got feminist bloggers in an uproar by insisting that women should have sex with their husbands whether they wanted it or not because women, left to themselves, only want sex once a month anyway. Or there will be some article telling me that men think about sex practically every minute while women can go all week without thinking about sex. But these claims don’t seem to me to reflect the real world; women I know tend to want, think about, and talk about sex a lot.
If testosterone levels were really the one overwhelmingly most important factor, then, it seems to me, we’d really live in the world where women showed, not just less on average interest in sex, but really dramatically less interest on sex, to the point where the on average sex difference almost totally overwhelmed individual variation within each sex. Since we don’t live in that world, then, it seems to me, women must either be more sensitive than men to the sex drive boosting effect of testosterone, or be getting sex drive from other hormones. And, in fact, both estrogen therapy and testosterone therapy are used in women to increase sex drive, so it would seem that testosterone isn’t the only hormone implicated in women’s sex drive.
That doesn’t mean that there are no innate differences between men and women in sex drive, or interest in sexual novelty, or whatever. Just that, whatever difference may be there, and whatever the mix of culture and biology that shape it, the difference isn’t that men and women are opposites, here, and that there is, at the very least, a huge amount of individual overlap, not just a small number of individual outliers that overlap.
(Of course, “a huge amount of individual overlap” does not mean that every individual woman would approach sex “like a man” if she just shed her cultural baggage.)
In my observation men and women are both pretty horny most of the time. But despite that I also observe that men go after sex more than women do. There are a lot of cultural AND biological differences that play into that, but the one Giant Factor that hasn’t been addressed is that (potentially procreative) sex has greater consequences for women.
My wife and I both like to play WoW. Sometimes I want to play more than she does, or the other way around, but we both like the game and like playing together. It isn’t hard for me to conceptualize a hypothetical situation, however, that would make one of us play less than the other. Maybe on her computer, every time she plays WoW there’s a 1% chance the whole machine will bluescreen and she’ll have to reboot from scratch. Not the end of the world, but I’ll bet you a dollar that if this were the case, you’d see a downtick on the graph of my wife’s WoW playing time.
Wouldn’t mean she didn’t want to play; would mean that sometimes she doesn’t feel like running the risk of having to reboot.
Robert: Or if you were required to play specific character types, and hers was a lot less satisfying than yours, you’d see the same effect. (Not making any claims about your particular relationship, of course; just generalising.)
Now that would be an interesting set of numbers: when their sex drive is clamouring, what are the differences in how the genders react? What proportion of the time do they seek sex, masturbate, and ignore it? How do these numbers change with the proportion of time orgasm is reached, and the expectations placed on a sexual encounter? I can’t predict what we’d find out, but I’d very much like to know.
Oh, and Sweating Through Fog? From my point of view, Hugo is pretty fair in his expectations of men and women. He tends to focus on men, but that’s because his blog is more about what men should do differently that what women should.
Readers can be biased as easily as writers, and I do not accept you as an objective observer.
STF, I don’t know if anyone whom I’ve never met has devoted as much time to analyzing my work as you have — flattering, to be sure, but not likely to move the conversation forward. I’ve made clear that I’m a feminist, that I’m a man deeply troubled by the way in which masculinity is constructed in our culture, and that I am committed as a father, a husband, a mentor, a professor and a follower of Christ to doing everything I can (within my capacity) to transform the world.
Three divorces and four marriages have left me with few illusions about individual women’s capacity to be unpleasant on occasion; living and working and studying have left me with even fewer illusions about the toxic misogyny of the very culture itself.
Sorry, but STF has a valid point. Reading Hugo’s blog, we see examples of men’s bad behavior attributed to men’s moral failings, men’s “good” behavior attributed to a subtle display of men’s moral failings, and women’s bad behavior attributed to … Patriarchy. Which is then taken to be the product of men’s moral failings.
Individually, any of these arguments may be well-presented and defensible. But the presentation of them with little or no instance of attributing fault to women inevitably suggests a cognitive bias. It is one that Hugo might defend as a valid bias-and is probably necessary to maintain credibility. (A male feminist criticizing female behavior without greater criticism of male behavior would not be received well.) But it’s nigh impossible to reach the conclusion that Hugo’s first instinct is to find how a man is responsible for X.
Yes, Hugo, you hate men. You hate yourself. You’re a tool of the Vagina Oversoul. Admit it!
Correction: “nigh imposible not to reach.” And, like I said, one may certainly argue that this bias is valid on the grounds that this is a feminist blog designed to advocate for issues X and Y and Z … but it shouldn’t be denied.
Oh heck, you’re all on to me.
Yes, I am a tool of the Vagina Oversoul(tm). I am filled with extraordinary self-loathing, probably rooted in my relationship with my mother, who probably made some remark to the effect that she wished I were a girl when I was, oh, about three. As a consequence, I’ve been repenting of my maleness ever since. I went into gender studies work as a form of intellectual castration, and take great pleasure in taking a (verbal) scalpel to the genitalia of other men, all in the hopes of winning approval from my Bewombed Overlords.
The shame was killing me, and I had to let the truth out. I feel so much better.
and women’s bad behavior attributed to … Patriarchy…
…But it’s nigh impossible to reach the conclusion that Hugo’s first instinct is to find how a man is responsible for X.
Delurking, to be fair, “patriarchy” is not synonymous with “men”. “Patriarchy” is the social set-up we’ve got right now that negatively influences and affects both men and women. I think Hugo pinpoints patriarchy, and not men, for the men’s issues he talks about.
The gendered root words of “feminism” and “patriarchy” do seem to suggest that it pits women against men, but that’s simply not the case. Hugo seems to 1) speak to men about how they can do their part in casting aside patriarchy (read: harmful societal expectations) and 2) about how these societal expectations are hurtful to both men and women. We have a lot of female feminist role models speaking to us women about how we can do our part in casting off the patriarchy, Hugo’s simply a male voice who speaks to men about the same thing.
That was awesome.
Hugo,
my former radical feminist flatmate would say “why so defensive?”
B,
“Hugo’s simply a male voice who speaks to men about the same thing.”
Hmm, I don’t really think that’s the case. I think Hugo mainly speaks for himself and his experience and thinking, which is fair enough. And I think it is definitely necessary to read through the archive to better understand where he is coming from and understand his thinking. I remember I had a Heureka moment when I read a post about how he had a pattern of liking brunette “bipolar” girls. There is no denying that what we are is influencing what we think and vice versa – that’s true for everyone on this planet, which is why I find it entirely reasonable to assume that a rather unusual way of writing and thinking like Hugo’s is assumed to have some roots in individual history and psychology. The terms used may differ, the phenomenon remains the same.
We’re all in this discourse because we have, one way or another, problems with gender, our gender, the others’ gender. Certainly socially, but as the political is occasionally actually personal, occasionally also personally. There’s nothing wrong with that, to the contrary.
But there is one problem. And that’s the axiomatic structure of the discourse – individual experiences are appreciated to the extent that they can be employed to back up the – not even definitionally accessible – axiom itself – “patriarchy”.
So Sam, I’m just sorta making this up? Is this the old canard that gender studies is about emotion and experience but not about evidence? (And you get to answer that, but no tidal wave of MRAs gets to come in and launch into anti-feminist diatribe?)
And what on earth does the fact that my type in my younger years was “brunette bipolar” women mean, other than I was a sick puppy there for a while? Personal narrative isn’t the sole source of our intellectual positions; President Obama didn’t become successful to compensate for an absent father, and I didn’t become a feminist because of some pathology.
Jeepers, I need to stop feeding the trolls.
But, Hugo, much of what you write is inherently about emotion and experience rather than evidence. Your posts on age differences in relationships, sex, etc. typically aren’t statistical analyses, but personal stories or theorizing. Nothing wrong with that per se. But are you denying that now with the “old canard” remark?
B – I understand that Hugo focuses on talking to men about men’s attitudes. It’s that the way he talks about male failing – not Patriarchy, but male failing – is generally quite different tgan how he speaks of roughly analogous female failing.It’s hard to see that and not infer a certain personal bias.
Hugo,
“So Sam, I’m just sorta making this up?”
Making what up?
“Personal narrative isn’t the sole source of our intellectual positions”
sorry? Isn’t that what I just said? Being and thinking are influencing each other?
“President Obama didn’t become successful to compensate for an absent father, and I didn’t become a feminist because of some pathology.”
I really have no idea what was the true motivation of President Obama and I have no idea why he decided to pursue the Presidency. Do I think there’s an ego thing involved. Definitely. Do I think that your past is relevant for your writing? Sure. Is it exclusively relevant? I don’t think so.
Quite frankly, I think even in my own case, I would be hard pressed to say what was the reason (or the the web of reasons) that drove me in one direction or another at one point or another.
The thing is, we’re all speculating here with respect to our motivations for individual positions and fundamental motivations – you’re having your own speculation with respect to my motivation right no, after all, that’s the first time you refer to me as a troll, which I don’t appreciate, but I guess that was the point.
I understand that it must s**k to be confronted with suggestions about your “real” motivation and be unable to get this out of the way of the once and for all, as repeating it will not make the statement itself more credible. Just like there’s hardly any way for me to convince feminists that I’m interested in social dynamics and not purely motivated by my painful early experiences with feminists and an assumed inability to get laid. I can only say it ain’t so, and you, and others, will still have doubts about it.
We’re both in the same situation here, and that’s an epistemological problem as well as a limitation of the medium.
We have to live with that or we have to stop talking, remember Wittgenstein.
Delurking, I teach gender studies — I blog as Hugo Schwyzer. This blog is about personal opinion, indeed, but it is not divorced from fact; I spend all damn day in classes offering a great deal of evidence. I wrote a bloody doctoral dissertation with so many footnotes and cites they outweighed the rest of the work — and all of that exhausted me. I love blogging for its wild imprecision, the freedom from the very weighty academic obligations that I have as a professor.
But both my teaching and my blogging are rooted in conviction and evidence — you are welcome to take a course from me should you want lots of statistics! Here on the blog, you get my musings; take ‘em or leave ‘em.
So if it’s not OK for a man to talk to other men about men’s failings, is it OK for a woman to do so? Or is the problem that nobody is allowed to blame anybody but women for sexism? (SOMEbody hasn’t read The Handmaid’s Tale, apparently.)
Personal narrative isn’t the sole source of our intellectual positions
not the sole source, but I think it’s much, much more important than we’re willing to admit to ourselves. A huge proportion of our intellectually justified world view is a defense mechanism of one sort or other agains the true irrationality and insecurity of our emotional committments. A lot of psychoanalysis is about this.
President Obama didn’t become successful to compensate for an absent father
Read Dreams From My Father sometime.
MQ, I blogged about Obama’s book here:http://hugoschwyzer.net/2008/12/02/of-dreams-and-fathers-barack-obama-growing-up-abroad-baseball-cricket-and-daddies/
Read closely, it is clear that Barack Obama senior had an influence on his son — but that is not at all the same thing as saying that the younger man’s success was part of a compensation strategy. We tend to reduce everything to pop psychology all too quickly.
The shame was killing me, and I had to let the truth out. I feel so much better.
It’s the first step, Hugo. You’ll earn your Man Card and your pass to the He-Man Women Hater’s Club and Patriarchal Conspiracy Beer and Sushi Bar back in no time. We’ve missed you at the meetings.
When a woman’s monthly cycle governs her sex drive so much, how could anyone suggest testosterone is the only hormone which governs sex drive? A flood of estrogen usually takes most women through the roof. Also, the idea that women only want sex once a month – well – in certain relationsips I have found this to be true of myself, but only because the relatioship is sexually redundant/lost and once a month I become overwhelmed and availablity and familiarity make it easy for standards to drop to the floor.
Gonz, wouldn’t it be a Patriarchal Conspiracy Beer Bar & Steakhouse?
Baby steps, Nav. Baby steps.
Good grief. Is “Holocaust denier” now the default comparison for any statement or position deemed unpopular?
What? I don’t have a problem with my gender, or anyone else’s gender, really. That’s like saying anyone who participates in a discussion about ending racism has a problem with their skin color. The issue isn’t gender; it’s the power structures built around it.