A brief response to Dr. E

One week until the start of school...

Rather late, I'm following up on a question from "Dr. E", a regular commenter and Men's Rights Advocate.  In a recent comment, he quoted from my June 2004 post entitled "Men":

About 1998, it finally hit home to me that much of my academic interest in women's studies was rooted in my own fear and dislike of my fellow men.

Dr. E asks:

I am curious about this "dislike of my fellow men." What was it you disliked?

In high school and college, I was one of those boys who felt more comfortable hanging out with women than with other males.   I felt I had very little in common with most guys in high school; though I was moderately interested in sports, I was very nonathletic.   I was teased by the "jocks", and most of the male "nerds" were into things that bored me to tears, like Dungeons and Dragons.  (I have no patience for role-playing games).  I was interested in things like poetry and relationships and talking a great deal about feelings, and found that while few of my male peers shared those enthusiasms, a very large number of my female peers did.

But of course, most of my dislike of my fellow men was not based on my own "feminine traits".  Rather, it was rooted in an intense dislike for the ways in which masculine hierarchies functioned in high school (and beyond.)  I remember well the teasing and the ridicule which greeted (and probably still greets) any boy who fails to live up to the standards of "jock culture."   I disliked the way the guys I knew talked about girls; the boasting and the bravado and the objectification bothered me intensely.  I found I could join in in the guy talk (though I was invariably making up whatever it was I bragged about), but it left me feeling ashamed and dirty. I realized that if talking about women in a certain way was the admission price to a feeling of brotherhood and camaraderie, that was too high a price to pay.  Of course, sometimes a desire to fit in drove me to saying things I didn't really believe, but it left me feeling fairly miserable.

What I loved about women's studies was, and still is, something very simple.  My first courses in the field taught me something that I've never forgotten, and it's something I always try and pass on to my students.  It's this:

The greatest lie in gender relations is "that's just the way things are."

Though I was raised by a feminist mother, my culture and my peers and my elders all told me essentially the same thing:  "Men are a certain way, and women are a different way, and you just need to accept that."   This "myth of inevitability" -- also known as gender essentialism --  is the single greatest obstacle that any of us doing gender work must overcome.  In those first classes I took at Cal almost two decades ago, I became convinced that all that I had been taught about men and women was simply a social construct.  More importantly, I began to realize that my own dislike of my fellow men was not a loathing of all males as they truly were, but rather a hatred of what our culture has done to shape what it means to be masculine!  Doing gender history and cross-cultural comparison showed me that there were myriad ways in which gender could be constructed, including ways that were infinitely more egalitarian and joy-filled than what I had been raised with!

My feelings about men began to change as soon as I began to realize that what I really disliked and feared was not men themselves, but the cultural standards to which they were trying so hard to live up.  That realization took years, and its last vestiges weren't stripped away until about seven years ago.  Today, as I've written, I have both male and female friends whom I treasure, and my closest ties -- beyond my fiancee -- are with other men.   As I've aged, my own anxieties about proving myself in the eyes of other guys have (blessedly) faded; as a result I can welcome men in to my heart and love them in a way in which I had once imagined impossible.

But though I do acknowledge that in a very real sense men and women are "different", I can't think of any uniquely masculine quality that I prize in my male friends that I don't also honor in the women in my life.  I've seen courage and competitiveness and compassion in both sexes, and though cultural pressures often dictate that these virtues be expressed differently by men and women, I'm convinced that at the core, they are indeed the same.

Comments

[Dr E]

Thank you for your response Hugo.

It seems that you are saying that your realization that masculinity was a social construct was instrumental in shifting your perceptions of the men around you. Yes? This leaves me wondering something. If you are now blaming and hating the culture for "shaping" men to be the way they are then you are still disliking the men's actual behaviors. Is this correct? You now see these behaviors as a social construct rather than a personal fault. If so, how does one love someone that exhibits behaviors that you dislike to such a degree? Is it that you are now more forgiving? Is it that you ignore those parts that you find repugnant? How does this work? Maybe I am getting something wrong here but it seems clear that you still find the masculine behaviors offensive, you have simply shifted the blame for those behaviors onto the culture rather than holding the men and boys personally responsible. Right?

[Hugo]

I think it's possible to advocate personal responsibility while also understanding the power of culture. Culture/society, what have you, influence our behaviors -- but they don't control them. Indeed, one of the most valuable things we can do as men is to empower young men to resist the damaging cultural messages that are foisted onto them. Here, I think pro-feminists and MRAs are in complete agreement. Pro-fems may be more concerned about messages that encourage violence and objectification; MRAs about messages that reinforce myths of male incompetence and disposability, but we are united in seeing one of our key tasks as critiquing the dominant culture and offering alternatives.

[Dr E]

I do agree that we have some common ground in our distaste for the misandrist/chivalrous messages our culture pumps into our young men. Yes, you can advocate for personal responsibility but there is a difference in advocating something for a group that you admire and love as compared to a group who exhibits behaviors that you feel are unacceptable. From what you have said so far it seems clear that you find the behavior of men and boys generally unacceptable and you have simply passed on the feelings of blame for these behaviors to the culture at large. Though you may hold the men and boys less culpable for their behaviors you still have disdain for their ways of being and doing. This is a critical point and one I hope you will help me in understanding. From what I have heard so far it seems likely that you have a distaste for men and boys that could conceivably be described as misandry. Perhaps you can help me see that this is incorrect?

[Hugo]

Dr. E, I dislike violence and objectification. That's not the same as disliking boys and men in general, unless you think that thuggish behavior is all there is to masculinity!

[Dr E]

Hugo - You were the one who clearly stated your "dislike for your fellow men". You didn't say violence or objectification you simply said dislike. Maybe now you can qualify this statement and make it clear what you like and don't like about men and boys. It seems I have been asking this question now for some time. Also you have indicated that you had a change in heart some years ago. You have described now how this change was related to a shift in blame towards the culture rather than the individual men and boys. Have you changed your dislike? Is it still there but now the blame is shifted to the culture? Do you like some of the things you previously disliked or have your dislikes remained?

Also you indicated you had a fear of men. Frankly the word "homophobe" literally means fear of men does it not? Are you still afraid of men?

Are you left-handed?

[djw]

Hugo, I think you've got someone trying to get you to admit to something that would be incriminating in his book. Your answers are quite forthright, I don't know what he's looking for. And furthermore, this...

Are you left-handed?

Makes me wonder if you don't have a serious crackpot on your hands here.

[Hugo]

Dr. E, I've answered this question as well as I think it can be answered to this point.

"homo" has many meanings; in its Latin origin, of course, it has a double one: "man" in the sense of all humans, not just males. The Latin word for "man" in the sense of male is "vir" (from whence "virile"). The other meaning of "homo" is "the same" or "alike" as in "homogenous".

I am right handed.

[BritGirlSF]

If Hugo were in fact left handed, what would that mean to you, Dr E? And how does that relate to his opinions about men?

[*Christopher]

Hugo, these thoughts were helpful as I was writing some thoughts about homosociality. I think your thoughts highlight how some of these cultural constructions constrain us in ways that make us less than human.

[metamanda]

Dr. E, Hugo specifically said he didn't like the "teasing", "boasting", "bravado", and "objectification" of women that the males at his high school engaged in. He was very specific about *which* behaviors he didn't like.

Are you therefore suggesting that those objectionable actions are intrinsically male "ways of being and doing"?

Because to suggest so would seem, I dunno, kinda misandrist?

[sophonisba]

Good god. Dr. E - Homo- in homosexual is not from anything Latin. It's from the Greek 'homoios', 'same' (as in homeopathy, homophone, homonym, etcetera.) Hence all the jokes about the word homosexual being

'- half Latin and half Greek-'
'- That sounds about right.'

Ha ha ha, you know. They got a lot of milage out of that one in the early 20th century, when people were more easily amused.

The Latin word 'homo' does not mean 'man'; it means human (as Hugo said.)

[Dr E]

Britgirlsf - I read some research a couple of years ago (I looked this morning and couldn't find a cite :>( ) that hypothesized that men who were left-handed had brains that were physically more similar to what is being called a "female" brain and that women who were left-handed had brains that were physically more like the "male" brain. Since then I have enjoyed during discussions such as this to hear if people are left or right-handed and have often found that left-handers of both sexes seem to have a different sort of insight into these issues.

[Dr E]

Thank you Hugo and others for pointing out my error in thinking that the combining form "homo" referred to men. You are correct that it does not, that it refers to mankind in general not just to men. My bad. This of course would make my example a poor one since Hugo only dislikes and fears the birth group known as men, not mankind in general.

[Dr E]

Who among you would hesitate labeling me a misogynist if I were to write in a post that I disliked and feared women? The door swings both ways and Hugo has made that statement about men. It seems pretty fair to me to assume from his quote that this is misandry but I have taken the trouble to come and ask questions to try to understand what he meant prior to passing judgement. So far his answers have left me unconvinced.

[mythago]

Well, you can lead a horse to water, but if its political identity is dependent on its not drinking....

In addition to a poor grasp of Greek, you don't seem to be understanding English tense very well. Hugo's stated that his "dislike and fear" of men was in the past tense, that the 'last vestiges' of his conflation of dislike of sexist values with dislike of men ended about seven years ago, and that his closest friends are now men.

And you'd do well to look up that study again; it's kind of silly to take a single study that 'hypothesizes' a relationship, and then treat it as solid, established fact.

[Mr. Bad]

metamanda wrote: " Dr. E, Hugo specifically said he didn't like the "teasing", "boasting", "bravado", and "objectification" of women that the males at his high school engaged in. He was very specific about *which* behaviors he didn't like.

Are you therefore suggesting that those objectionable actions are intrinsically male "ways of being and doing"?

Because to suggest so would seem, I dunno, kinda misandrist?"

Actually, I interpreted it as Hugo suggesting that those qualities are intrinsically "masculine," not Dr. E. doing so. Thus, I share Dr. E.'s concern that Hugo may essentially be misandrist at heart, although I assume that this is unintentional.

Further, the traits of "teasing", "boasting", "bravado", and "objectification" are found in female humans as well, it's the specific manifestation of them that are different. Thus, it seems to me that Hugo was/is more comfortable with the 'female version' than he is with the 'male version' and therefore is taking a decidedly selective stand against "teasing", "boasting", "bravado", and "objectification." In other words, Hugo seems to be approving of it (or at least not objecting to it) when girls/women engage in it and disapproving of it when boys/men do so.

Hugo, do I have this correct? If not, could you please identify when and if you've objected to females when they engage in "teasing", "boasting", "bravado", and "objectification," and if so, how you've done this? It seems to me that in general our culture is a lot more tolerant of these behaviors in women than it is in men, demonstrating another double-standard that men must endure.

Or would that be more of the elusive "male privilege" I keep hearing about?

[Dr E]

Mythago states: "In addition to a poor grasp of Greek, you don't seem to be understanding English tense very well. Hugo's stated that his "dislike and fear" of men was in the past tense, that the 'last vestiges' of his conflation of dislike of sexist values with dislike of men ended about seven years ago, and that his closest friends are now men."

You are correct but are leaving out an important bit of data. Hugo has never said that his dislike and fear of men has ceased only that he now blames the culture for the traits that he disliked. I am still waiting to hear that he has indeed ceased disliking men. He has not said as much. My ealier question about what Hugo liked in men was asked with the hope of showing that he had indeed stopped disliking men and was now in a state of "liking" men.

Mythago states: "And you'd do well to look up that study again; it's kind of silly to take a single study that 'hypothesizes' a relationship, and then treat it as solid, established fact."

I think you are misrepresenting my interest. I have made no claims of what is or isn't fact only trying to explain to Britgirl the source of my interest. My own father was a researcher and he taught me to use my own experience to test a wide varieity of hypotheses each day. It is with that spirit that I ask folks about it, simply to gather data and marvel at the world, not to claim facts or prove anything.

[Dr E]

My apologies for not turning off the italics in my last post. The last paragraph is my own. ugh.

Mr Bad has touched on something I wanted to bring up. In earlier threads and posts many here including I believe Hugo, have stated that positive traits exist in both men and women and therefore cannot be assigned to one sex or the other. If this is the case for the positive I would guess that it would also be the case for the negative. If so, do women have these traits that Hugo seems not to like? I think someone said they were, "teasing", "boasting", "bravado", and "objectification." Why would Hugo only not like them in men? If women do indeed have these traits do you also say Hugo that you dislike women? I would bet not. Seems like you have a different standard for men than for women? Can you help untangle this a bit?

[djw]

END IT.

[Antigone]

Dr. E: not to harp on a point, but what if one is amidextrious (as I am)?

Dr. E and Mr. Bad:
I sometimes feel that the bullying that females do is more vicious than what guys do. Recently in a Time magazine article talked about cyber-bullying, and claimed that females more frequently are the agressors. The writer was stumped by this phenemonon.

What the writer and lots of people don't realize, is that females ARE normally worse bullies than guys. It's just easier to hide female bullying than male's, and many don't consider what females doing as "all that bad". Male bullying seems highly obvious... textbook harrasment, physcial agression, textbook intimidation.

Female bullying is subtler and more hurtful. Their bullying includes exclusion, insults disguised as a compliment, invasion of privacy, and harrasment that is not textbook. But, many people chalk this up to "name-calling" and "you can't force people to like everyone". And it's also very difficult to prove, aka, the insult designed as a compliment:

Student: "Cindy's being mean to me"
Teacher: "What did she do?"
Student: "Well, she said that she was so jealous of how I didn't worry about how I looked. She would be horrified to come to school in thrift store clothes, and it was so cool that I was my own person"
Teacher: "That's not an insult. She said you were you're own person. Go back to your work"

What the teacher didn't see is how and when this tirade went. Cindy probably adressed this student in front of a bunch of other girls. Cindy meant this to be insulting, and her tone of voice and body language conveyed this much better than the words did. But, this is not considered bullying, because little Cindy didn't come right out and say "Cindy, you're such a slob and I wouldn't be caught dead in non-name brand clothes".

Guys, in my study, routinely phsically harm and insult each other, even friends, in something that I think is an attempt to establish dominance. Being one of those girls that had many many more guy friends than girl friends growing up, (the guys with tits phenomeonon) I was routinely subjected to and subjected guys to the punching fighting, and insulting that is so oft to do in male-centered groups, and hated girls for the longest time because of their subtler form of bullying. Bruises eventually fade away, but you always remember that burniing humiliation of exclusion.

So yes, those traits are not male or female. The ways they manifest themselves are, where males are encouraged to express their more harmful tendancies bodily and females are encouraged to express them through emotions. (This is a theme that gets repeated in other things as well). This is not good: a) we shouldn't be trying to hurt our fellow humans, and b) we shouldn't be pidgeon-holed into gender norms that are really not ours. I think we can agree with this.

[Dr E]

Good post Antigone. I would hesitate to say that one sexes violence was worse than the other but I go along with your main point that we are both violent but often in different ways.

Here's a link to an interesting article about women and violence.

Here's a quote that I found interesting:

Research Shows Women Not Gentler--They're Aggressive Like Males

Recent meta-analyses show very small differences in aggression between the genders. Men may be more physical, while women often use taunts and barbs, but the level of aggression is similar.

Women even tell themselves they are gentler than they really are. In one study, women playing a computer game dropped fewer bombs on their opponents than men when they knew people were watching. But when they thought they weren't being observed, they dropped more bombs than the males did. Even so, they described themselves as being much less aggressive than they actually were.

[yami]

augh the italics!

[Antigone]

Well, the part about which violence is worse is definately a matter of oppinion, and I suppose I should have been more clear on that portion.

Women are NOT "naturally" gentle. Women are mean, agressive, protective. Women are forced to be less agressive. Now, whether or not that means that women should throw off cultural norms and be violent or we should raise guys to the standard we raise girls and make sure that neither side is violent is a matter of oppinion. I personally go with the everyone should be raised equally and women should be more agressive until that happens, but that might be biased: my ancestors were Vikings; women in those tribes were formidiable. And it just kinda stuck.

[metamanda]

This is long... sorry.

>Actually, I interpreted it as Hugo suggesting that those qualities are intrinsically "masculine,"

Hmm. I think we had very different interpretations then. I read it as him stating that for a certain period in his life (high school and college) most of the boys and men around him behaved in ways he found distasteful, which the girls and women did not. And for a while maybe he thought those qualities were intrinsically masculine because that's just all he saw, but then he realized that they were not. Presumably, this realization was reinforced by him meeting and befriending some men who did not behave in those ways. I noticed he was really careful not to generalize his negative statements instead talking about male hierarchies in high school or boys that he knew.

>the traits of "teasing", "boasting", "bravado", and "objectification" are found in female humans as well, it's the specific manifestation of them that are different

Oh, I'll totally agree with you there. I'm guessing that a lot of male teasing at that age is primarily focused on other boys, and female teasing may be focused on other girls. Maybe the girls Hugo was hanging out with weren't saints, but their hostility wasn't aimed at him.

It just seems to me that you *want* to find some underlying misandry in Hugo's post here. As a mental exercise, let's reverse the genders.

"When I was in high school, I had more male than female friends. I just didn't share many interests with them. I wasn't into fashion, I didn't have boobs, I was more interested in science and building things, and guys seemed to share those interests more than girls. I really didn't like the way the feminine hierarchy functioned in high school, the teasing, backstabbing and gossip that greeted any girl who didn't live up to the standards of the "beauty culture". I disliked the way that girls I knew talked about other people. I could participate in the gossip, but it always left me feeling ashamed and dirty. As I got older I realized that those behaviors are tied up with how our culture shapes what it means to be feminine. My feelings about women began to change as soon as I began to realize that what I really disliked and feared was not women themselves, but the cultural standards to which they were trying so hard to live up. Now I have a lot of close female friends."

If I said this, would you accuse me of permanent misogyny? Or would you accuse me of trying to excuse girls' and women's bad behavior by blaming society?

And also... high school just sucks. Let's admit it. I came out of high school not as a misogynist or misandrist but just an equal-opportunity misanthrope because I had a hard time with both genders. Somehow, I have managed not to permanently hate everyone. Mostly. ^_^

Also... Dr E. and Mr Bad especially, I am really curious about how you define masculinity. It seems to me that you're talking primarily about American men? But it's hard to tell because much is implicit in your statements about masculinity so far. I really do think that masculinity and feminity are constructed differently in different cultures. A lot of my family is Thai, and having been there a few times I think men there tend to be much more soft-spoken than here (but not the women somehow, at least not the ones I've met). My friend who grew up in India says it's routine for straight men to hold hands in public and be more physically affectionate... in fact perhaps even *more* acceptable than for women. Even in the US, if you look at WWII era photography and advertisements there are many depictions of straight male physical affection that you wouldn't see today. Standards of acceptable masculine dress and behavior vary even in different parts of the country right now. Are you defending some kind of monolithic model of masculinity? Are you defending your perception of masculinity, but not the perception of a bunch of men in India? Do you think there is room for multiple interpretations of what it means to be masculine? Or is there something universal underlying them all and if so what is it?

[NYMOM]

"If not, could you please identify when and if you've objected to females when they engage in "teasing", "boasting", "bravado", and "objectification," and if so, how you've done this?"

NYMOM said: It seems quite a few men on this post do not LIKE being men or resent their role or something.

Too bad because evolution, God, Buddha whatever, has assigned these roles to each and it's worked FINE in every species and civilization, including our own, up until now.

So in spite of the many, many complaints men in western civilization have, I predict we will continue on as we have been, since life first crawled out of the primal mists, with no significant changes.

"It seems to me that in general our culture is a lot more tolerant of these behaviors in women than it is in men, demonstrating another double-standard that men must endure."

NYMOM said: Yes, as EVERY cultures is more tolerant of this behavior in girls and young women, EVERY culture. Young boys or men would be punished if they did this, as it would be seen as a sign of aggression against women. Some one told you all on your own boards why this was so. Why do you ignore him? He told you that this teasing young girls and women do is probably like a testing mechanism to see how young boys and men respond.

Obviously since they are larger and stronger then women, we need to see their reactions to provocation. It probably works to ensure young women that a young man is not dangerous to her and to any future children they might have. As young boys who respond in kind to girls (or inappropriately) probably wind up spending a lot of time alone with few women wanting to be around such angry, dangerous boys/men.

So as with most things men do or are told to do, it comes down to men wanting to attract women. For if they act as they do with each other, they'll be spending a LOT of time alone.

So it's a privilege men have gotten from nature really that they are treated with more sly deference then women with this teasing business.