Comment by belorn
8 years ago
> Can you point exactly where I did that?
Easily: "our society was built on the needs and wants of men" - dguaraglia
Blaming men for the creation of gender roles and gender expectations holds no anchoring in reality. When it is used as an excuse to explain all negative gender roles for both women and men as "toxic masculinity" then I will call that bubble out for what it is. A untestable theory with nothing to support it, but that is instead used as an term of abuse.
Gender roles and gender expectations is ancient, and if someone is honestly interested in whom caused those to exist then we have to follow research from archeology, anthropology (with its many subfields), sociology, and others. To explain why "women need to look like barbies" and "men need to look like providers" we got to do better than say that its because of men.
> Blaming men for the creation of gender roles and gender expectations holds no anchoring in reality.
Again, using that word: blame. Where did I blame anyone? Stating something is very different from blaming.
How can you claim "it holds no anchoring in reality" when to this day there are huge swathes of the world where women are considered second class citizens or even property? Explain how female genital mutilation or how "honor killings" are done with the woman's welfare in mind. To this day, most religions don't accept women in positions of power. Even in our secular institutions (like Congress) men are overrepresented by a huge margin. The best example of how lopsided the whole thing is was that famous "Senate health panel" that was in charge of redrawing the whole healthcare policy for Trump... not a single woman in sight. Until very recently women couldn't vote, work or even make decisions over their own health.
Heck, if you want to get whacky, read on the "men rights" movement. You'll realize there's a substantial number of males in our own country that think women should be subservient to men and stop asking to be treated equally. Just look at the crap published by sites like Breitbart talking about "setting limits on how many women should be allowed to study STEM".
I could buy the argument that gender stereotypes evolved together with us, blah blah. But that doesn't explain why in a society like ours where food and shelter are no longer a concern, people are still so reactionary. Seems like a fear of losing power, if you ask me.
> To explain why "women need to look like barbies" and "men need to look like providers" we got to do better than say that its because of men.
What's your working theory? For someone so reluctant to accept that men might have something to do with it, you present very little in terms of alternatives.
In classic scientific method you propose a theory which lead to testable predictions. Gravity is a force that pull objects towards each other, this predict behavior and experimental tests validates it.
If men created gender roles and gender expectations then a few predictions should be made, so I will state three. 1) During war women should be drafted into the military and put in the fire line before men. 2) gender roles should change during historical time when a queens hold power. 3) as creator of gender roles they should be able to change gender role as is seen fit.
Through history its common that those in power draft proportional from subjugated groups during war. Slaves, criminals and unwanted was put forward as cannon fodder in many wars, Africans was the majority of the fighting forces during the colonial times and African-Americans were often disproportionately drafted in the US between the period of first word war and Vietnam. Slave labor is also a common theme between the powerful and the subjugated and used in almost every place in the world
An other prediction is that we should expect to see changes when the gender of those in power are changed. The Victorian era is strongly associated with gender roles. The era is named after Queen Victoria's reign and there is nothing to imply that gender roles was somehow reversed during this era. There is no identifiable pattern in history that the gender of those in power has an impact on gender roles.
The third one is rather long story but I will describe a anthropology writing about a famous African tribe that managed to stay fairly isolated and static until the 90s. Children of both sex stayed with their mother until around 10 years, after which they were split into male and female areas. The boys had their genitalia ritualistic cut by the elder men during which if they made any sound they would cast great dishonor on their family. The researchers were not allowed in the female sections but reportedly similar rituals was held by the elder women. After which the boys was group into semi-similar age groups and teached the way of the warrior, ending with a test where they went in alone in the forest without anything except a spear and was only allowed to return if they killed a lion. If they survived the trial they where given the title warrior and a wife that the female elders selected. The warriors then regularly raided every few years with machetes and spears and died usually rather young.
Now setting aside which life was worse, who held power in this culture? Could a man dictate who married who? No. Could a man decide that he was not going to get ritualistic cut or that he choose not to enter the jungle? No. Could a man decide that he did not want to go and raid? No. Could he dictate who married who? No. Similar a woman could not decide to go hunting. A woman could not decide to eat meat. A woman could not decide to not get ritualistic cut. The roles was laid out with almost a literal line in the village between women and men. The elder men held power of the men and the elder women held power over the women.
Then during the 90s a change did happen. The elder men changed the details about what the men in the village would do. A civil war had killed a massive number of the men, and later tourism started to compete as primary source for food. This resulted in a stop in the warrior culture and boys were no longer required to go into the jungle and kill a lion or raid. The elder women also change their side a bit, primarily by putting children of both genders into school. genital mutilation is still common for both genders and it is still the elders that decide who should marry who, but slowly those things are eroding through cultural homogenization.
Which gender held a position of power in that village in the past, and which gender holds one today? A major part of gender roles is that they split power along gender lines where crossing them is forbidden. Taking a historical perspective, the feminist movement spearheaded the movement to abolish gender roles but it sadly gave up on those around the 70s and is today more focused on who holds positions of power. This has resulted in very little progress to eliminate gender roles in the last 50 years. "Men rights" movement is both young and split with parts that is competing with the feminist movement about positions of power and the other that tries to take up torch against gender roles which the feminist movement abandoned. Examples of the later is those that fight for more women in the military, equal rights for adoption (and the right to start a family), the elimination of alimony and child support, and gender neutral efforts to reduce gender segregation.
> What's your working theory?
The two cores in gender roles is that women raise families and men support the raising of families. We see this in dating and in studies of inter-sex competition. A prediction of this is that we see exaggerated gender role behavior when a individual is among their own gender. Since it is about social rank we should expect to see the behavior starting at very early age and much earlier than puberty. Dating statics also show a identical correlation along those gender roles, where male success is about showing how they can support the raising of families (job, wealth) and female success is about showing how they can raise a family (hip size and so on). If we want to stop those gender expectations then we have to eliminate those gender roles, and I would predict it would cause a huge change for gender segregation in the work market.
> If men created gender roles and gender expectations...
I'm actually kind of surprised by your ability to misreading the same thing over, and over, and over again. You are still pushing this idea that "men created gender roles" and throwing a wholehearted defense against it. Why don't you try "society normalized gender roles around the needs of the physically stronger sex" and see if that removes the edge?
> ...then a few predictions should be made, so I will state three.
I could come up with 20 predictions that do match the hypothesis. In fact, I did in my earlier post, just make my statements into predictions: "in a society that revolves around the needs of men, women wouldn't be allowed into positions of power", "in a society that revolves around the needs of men some form of genital mutilation that discourages women from exploring their own sexuality could be used as a method to subjugate them", etc. etc.
It's also hard to follow your example of "disproven predictions", as sometimes their link with the topic at hand is very tenuous. But let's take for example your first two:
1) You claim women were not used as warriors, so that's proof "men" don't control the narrative. There's plenty of arguments against your point:
a) maybe that's more to do with the fact that women as property are valuable, whereas sending a street urchin to war doesn't hurt the powerful people at all?
b) in modern societies being a "warrior" conveys power and a social position; just think about how many men in power come from a military background and connect that with the constant conservative movement to keep women out of the military
c) a battle might be won by brawn, but war at large is won by logistics; I'd recommend you read about the "home front" and how women have always played a major role in keeping the war machine humming along while the "warriors" kill each other. Maybe the "laborious home maker" gender stereotype serves its purpose better than sending women to the frontline?
2) You claim that gender roles didn't change during Queen Victoria's reign. And yet, that's exactly the timeline of her reign matches almost exactly the timeline for the Suffragette movement in the UK: https://www.bl.uk/votes-for-women/articles/womens-suffrage-t.... The Suffragette movement wasn't just about putting pieces of paper in a box, but largely about recognizing that women were equal citizens and as such should have the same rights as men.
3) I can't for the life of me identify where your long exposition about this African tribe intersected with your third point.
> "Men rights" movement is both young and split with parts that is competing with the feminist movement about positions of power
Again, our Congress is largely male. How are these "men rights warriors" trying to "regain" terrain, when they are still winning by a solid 30 to 40%?
> and the other that tries to take up torch against gender roles which the feminist movement abandoned. Examples of the later is those that fight for more women in the military, equal rights for adoption (and the right to start a family), the elimination of alimony and child support, and gender neutral efforts to reduce gender segregation.
I really can't follow what you are saying here. Are you saying that all those are feminist positions and now the "men rights" movements are trying to destroy them? I guess I have issues with some of those points being actually feminist positions (right to adoption? The elimination of alimony? When were those feminist issues?) If so, what do you think is the motivation for the "men rights" movement to attack those positions?
> If we want to stop those gender expectations then we have to eliminate those gender roles, and I would predict it would cause a huge change for gender segregation in the work market.
How so? You are saying that removing the stereotype somehow will broaden the breach that extends along the stereotypes? Sounds very, very far-fetched to me. It's like saying "letting black people work in desegregated workplaces will generate even more segregation".
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