Men do, women judge

Over at GendErratic (an excellent feminist-sceptic blog), blogger Typhonblue has been ploughing a distinct furrow - that mainstream feminist thought is misogynist because, in defining women as passive victims of  "The Patriarchy", it denies their agency: i.e. their capacity to act and effect change. It's persuasive, but I think it's missing something - what women get out of this arrangement. On one of her threads I left the following comment:

Something that occurred to me relating to Typhon’s “agency” thesis. Wasn’t sure where to put it, but here seems as good a place as any.

I think there’s another to wrinkle to this. It’s not just that men act and women don’t, or men act and women are acted upon – there’s also the cultural belief that men act and women judge. It’s part of the mating dance, and a huge part of mating-dance-reinforcing fiction, that men must prove themselves before women will judge them worthy by bestowing their favour. It’s even there in action moves – the female lead “rewards” the male lead with her favour after he’s been sufficiently heroic (feminists notice this and describe the female characters as “prizes” being given to the male characters as a reward, but that denies the agency of the female characters awarding themselves as prizes based on their approval).

We can see it in the infamous “white feather” campaign in WWI – and how many “oppressed” people throughout history have had the power to shame their oppressors into throwing themselves into hell with just implied disapproval?

I see it in my day job working for a housing authority, in the disdain and horror of unemployed women at having workmen in the house to do repairs, walking dirt into their nice clean carpets with their nasty dirty work boots, and generally getting work all over the place.

Women are rewarded, or reward themselves, for their abdication of agency with the belief that they are above acting. Men, collectively, accept women’s authority to judge their actions, without asking if the women judging have walked a mile in their moccasins. That’s why feminist propaganda that paints our identity and sexuality as inherently abusive and selfish has been assimilated into mainstream thought with so little opposition. It’s also why men often react to feminist scolding by, instead of opposing them or telling them to shut up, trying to get them to see our point of view – and also why feminists call that “man-splaining”.

We want women’s approval, because we believe that will validate us as men, and we are distraught when we receive their disapproval instead. Feminists, as bullies do, respond to our approval-seeking behaviour by teasing but ultimately witholding approval to manipulate us into doing what they want (see, for example, Tom Matlack). That’s also why they’re so mean to “nice guys”, because “nice guys” are basically approval-seekers.

I see some encouraging signs that some men are waking up to this – the latest round of feminists attempts to define a “real man”, or a “good man”, are meeting with some resistance from men who, rightly, say that defining men is for men to do, and women can butt out.

Since I wrote that, my attention has been drawn to an article at Scientific American, by Jennifer Ouellette, about the supposed "chilly climate" for women in science. At one point she says:

If a woman calls you out on your behavior, instead of getting angry and defensive, just say, “Wow, I never thought of it like that. I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable. It wasn’t intentional.” Cop to the behavior, and we can all move on.

It reminds me of a storm in a teacup in November 2010, when cartoonist Kate Beaton complained on Twitter about a fan who had said he wanted to have her babies, saying it was a "shitty, disrespectful ‘compliment’" as well as "uncomfortable, sexist and unfair". Some people, rightly to my mind, argued that she was taking it the wrong way, to which Scott McCloud, author of Understanding Comics among other books, said:

It may be true that men and women have traditionally adopted different styles of communication and there are some men who might have reacted differently if roles had been reversed, but now that you know it’s offensive to say such things, it’s kind of ridiculous to argue the point.

Two people, one female, one male, demonstrating the assumption that women have the right and the authority to judge men's actions, and that men have no choice but to accept that judgement. It's an astonishingly sexist attitude, one of the many unexamined sexist double standards favouring women, and when held by a woman, such as Ms Ouellette, incredibly entitled. Imagine being able to say "I object to that. I don't need to justify my objection, you just need to shut up", and have society agree and back you up.

Feminists deny women's agency, and women accept that and play up to it, because it gives them covert power. It's a power they've had since "Patriarchal" times, that allows them to dictate to men and to society, and to escape responsibility for their actions, all the while insisting they are powerless.

I mentioned the White Feather Campaign in my comment on GendErratic. In case you're not aware of that, during the First World War, the government mobilised women to hand white feathers to any man not in uniform who appeared of fighting age, to shame them into signing up. It led to teenagers lying about their age to enlist, and to honourably discharged wounded soldiers reenlisting. Emmeline Pankhurst's Suffragettes were enthusiastic supporters of this campaign. Even before women had the vote, they had power.

Domestic violence against men on TV

Here's a couple of interesting examples from British TV cop shows - one a comedy, one a drama.

The first is a 1996 episode of The Thin Blue Line, Ben Elton and Rowan Atkinson's sitcom. Inspector Fowler discovers that CID have planted evidence on a suspect, and collaborates with the defence barrister, the Mayoress, to throw the case. His girlfriend, Sergeant Dawkins, hears a recording of their discussions and gets the impression that Fowler is cheating on her with the Mayoress. So far, so farce. Then Fowler arrives home. Dawkins asks him to remove his cycling helmet, and picks up a rolling pin. Laughter. End credits.

The second is from a 2007 episode of The Bill. A young man is hospitalised with head injuries. After investigating race and gang-related angles, the cops discover he was attacked by his girlfriend, who has a history of violence against intimate partners, and who hit him on the back of the head with a brick when he turned his back on her in an argument. She justifies her behaviour on the grounds that her authoritarian father and brother always ignored her. He refuses to press charges against her, swears he's nothing like her father and brother, and promises he'll listen to her.

I shudder to think what we would have made of either of these if the gender of the abuser and the abused were switched. If it was implied a man hit his girlfriend because he got the impression, wrongly, that she was cheating on him - and that was the punchline of a joke? If a man hit his girlfriend because she wouldn't listen to him, and the matter was resolved with her promising to listen to him in future?

Now here's a couple of stories from real life.

A former co-worker of mine once came into work with a cut on the top of his bald head. Everybody thought this was rather amusing. Eventually another co-worker wheedled it out of him that his wife had hit him on the head with a cast iron frying pan. He told everybody, and everybody thought this was hilarious. I bit my tongue. A few years later, after he'd retired, the incident came up again, and everybody laughed. This time, I spoke up. A frying pan was a very heavy weapon - would we find it funny if he'd hit her with it? That brought people up short. One female co-worker recalled how she'd once hit her husband with a frying pan. He'd been stuck in traffic and was desperate for a pee, and had rushed past her rather than explain why he was late home from work. She didn't really connect, so no real harm was done, but she was horrified at what she'd nearly done, and taken it as a sign she needed to control her temper.

A friend of mine had a string of medium-term girlfriends in his twenties. He told me they'd all asked him early on the relationship if a man should ever hit a woman, and he'd said no, not under any circumstances - and they'd all hit him. Nothing serious, just slaps, "playful" punches on the arm, but regular and systematic, and designed to get points across. Until one girlfriend asked him, and he said maybe, if she hit him first - and she never did.