The Whedon Effect

Why is it that male feminists so often treat women badly? What they're thinking: I have the right beliefs, therefore I'm the good guy, therefore I can rest on my laurels and pay no attention to how I treat the actual women in my life.

"I'm pro-choice (and I swear not just because it leads to more sex)." "Okay, let's have sex. Do you have a condom?" Of course not. He doesn't like condoms. I guess I can get an abortion. And pay for it myself. 

His feminism means asserting his dominance over non-feminist men. It doesn't mean that he feels any heightened obligation to women, or that he even bothers to notice women's feelings. Examples: the male feminist who proposed an open relationship to me, where "open" would mean he got to have sex with anyone he wanted, and I got to have sex with...him. Or the one who somewhat horrifyingly told me he knew I wanted to have sex with him because of the color of my dress. Isn't that...rape culture? I did want to have sex with him, but that's irrelevant.

What if, instead of going around knowing you have the socially acceptable beliefs, you knew you had the wrong beliefs? What attitude would you have? My theory is that this might inspire you to be more careful and courteous with others. You can't assume you're the good guy, you have to prove it. This is the type of guy I've had success with. Of course, an alternative theory is that non-feminist men are actually motivated by chivalry more than courtesy, so that I am benefiting from the kind of sexism I object to. 

Against masculinity

The list of things women are not allowed to do has gotten much shorter over the years. Although lots of good things are still coded masculine, if a woman engages in a masculine-coded activity, she is likely to be praised for it. I have often been praised for drinking whiskey, something which is neither difficult nor particularly praiseworthy. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I was criticized for acting like a stereotypical man, except for the occasional creep telling me to smile.

Partly, of course, this is because I am a bachelorette and childless. As soon as a woman starts trying to get pregnant, there are hordes of people eager to tell her what to do. Mothers (or even potential mothers) can’t drink, smoke, eat what they like, exercise, use public transportation, have careers, use formula, use childcare, or pursue their own goals in any way. And there’s no getting out of it: women who allow their children’s fathers to take custody are told they are abandoning them, and if you have a miscarriage or a child dies accidentally, you may be imprisoned. That is terrible and unjust--but I suspect that, comparing childless adult women to childless adult men, the women actually have more freedom from gender roles.

From various sources, we hear that men cannot: eat brunch, talk about feelings or relationships, drink non-whisky-based cocktails, clean up after themselves, go to plays, use certain toiletries, watch TV shows or movies with female characters, be in a committed relationship, wear colors other than black, brown, white, gray or blue, appreciate fiction or poetry, do yoga, care for children, do laundry, be interested in fashion, exercise self-control, do well in school, read between the lines of what people say, or be vegetarian. It sometimes seems like Esquire magazine is solely concerned with telling men what is and is not sufficiently masculine.

Now, different groups have different motivations for furthering this “men can’t” trope. Sellers of consumer goods have an incentive to convince us that men and women can’t possibly use the same products. Gendering clothes, shoes, bags, foods, drinks, cell phone cases, bandaids, shampoos, pens and whatever else you can think of ensures that men and women will buy different ones. Just think about how similar men’s and women’s bodies really are--and how different their clothes are. Or consider the human foot. On average, women have smaller and less hairy feet. Other than that, there is no difference. All feet work the same way. Yet how dramatically different our shoes are! Even those women who have the willpower to avoid wearing heels wear women’s flats. Either the world is sexist, or every Western man other than the ones I have dated is a foot fetishist.)

I often  hear complaints about the unflattering portrayal of men in sitcoms and other comedy. (Solution: don’t watch sitcoms. They are all bad.) But seriously, this happens for a fairly innocuous reason. You have to make fun of someone, and since we are in a weird world which is both sexist and post-feminist, few writers know how to make fun of women without being sexist. That leaves the man, ideally the straight white man, as your figure of fun.

Ordinary men themselves do a lot of the grunt work of spreading the belief that men are incapable. It’s a useful excuse for men who are behaving badly and want to continue doing so without consequences. Their strategy is to try to convince us that asking an individual man to change his behavior amounts to attacking masculinity itself. Is my wife asking me to do the dishes, talk about our relationship, or refrain from cheating on her? Probably because she hates men.

Similarly, the man who thinks men can’t control their sexual impulses is probably a harasser or rapist. The man who thinks that men can never be as good at parenting as women “naturally” are didn’t want to get up for that midnight feeding anyway. Meeting women and asking them out can be stressful, but it gets a lot easier if you can convince them that men can’t be expected to understand the body language, tones of voice, facial expressions and the other types of implicit communication which human beings are constantly engaged in. That way, whenever hard communication is necessary, it’s the woman’s job; and if she has taken too seriously the social belief that women should be passive, quiet and unselfish, she may never successfully get her message across.

These excuses are more palatable since they often come packaged in flattering-sounding essentializing descriptions of women. A woman who knows she hated breastfeeding and had to be taught how to hold a baby still enjoys being told her “maternal instinct” “naturally” makes her a better parent than her husband could ever be. And it would be tactless to question your boyfriend’s belief that women are “naturally” monogamous.

Stephanie Coontz, a scholar of marriage, agrees with me:

One thing standing in the way of further progress for many men is the same obstacle that held women back for so long: overinvestment in their gender identity instead of their individual personhood. Men are now experiencing a set of limits — externally enforced as well as self-imposed — strikingly similar to the ones Betty Friedan set out to combat in 1963, when she identified a “feminine mystique” that constrained women’s self-image and options. Although men don’t face the same discriminatory laws as women did 50 years ago, they do face an equally restrictive gender mystique...Now men need to liberate themselves from the pressure to prove their masculinity.

Maybe we should stop asking “is he gay?” every time a man bends the rules of masculinity.

The mother's fault

When a child dies, for whatever reason, people want to punish the mother.

In 1996, Kristin Bunch was 21, pregnant and living in a mobile home with her three year old. A sudden fire engulfed the trailer, killing her three year old. The police said it was arson and claimed she went into her son's bedroom, doused it with a liquid accelerant like kerosene or diesel fuel and set it on fire. She was charged and convicted of felony murder and arson and sentenced to 60 years in prison. Arson investigators testified at her trial that burn patterns indicated the fire was arson...There was no direct evidence at Bunch’s trial that she set multiple fires in the mobile home through use of an accelerant. No one saw her set the fire or heard her refer to setting the fire, there was no evidence she had purchased a liquid accelerant, and there was no motive offered for her to intentionally set a fire.

A similar example is the case of Hannah Overton. Her four-year-old foster son, who had physical and emotional problems and suffered from pica (according to the defense) died of salt poisoning after having consumed large amounts of salty seasoning from the pantry. But the prosecution decided that his foster mother had fed him the seasoning in order to punish him, despite the fact that there was no evidence that she had ever used such a bizarre punishment with her many other children, and that she had no record of child abuse or indeed any other criminal conduct. In this case, the prosecution practically admitted they were prosecuting her because of public feeling that when a child dies, someone has to be punished.

And this is only one of dozens of cases I've read about where mothers have been sent to prison for accidental fires, accidental poisonings, or medical conditions which caused the death of a child. Even when it is clear that a third party harmed a child, the mother is blamed. And yes, always the mother.

For instance, the disappearance of Madeline McCann, a small girl, from her English parents' room in Portugal. Still unsolved, but never any plausible theory that it was anything other than a stranger abduction. But the mother, Kate McCann, was vilified in the tabloids for having left her daughter alone in the room for a few minutes. The father did so too, but no one mentioned him. After the disappearance, the mother was stalked by paparazzi and stories were run criticizing her for such crimes as wearing earrings, brushing her hair or smiling. The fact that the mother had a prestigious job was used against her.

Or the Cleveland, Texas rape case, in which dozens of men raped an 11-year-old girl, and some of her neighbors suggested it was the mother's fault for letting her daughter out of the house.

But I think my point is clear. If your child dies, get a lawyer.

Talking about single women

Most societies fear, hate and suspect young women. Therefore, talking about young, unmarried women is linguistically problematic. This is true in several languages.

• It's especially clear  in French: garce, originally the feminine of garcon, came to mean 'slut', while garcon continued to mean simply 'boy'. After garce became contaminated, fille, the feminine of fils, came to be used. But soon fille fell victim to the same contamination. Finally jeune fille was expanded from its original meaning of 'young girl' and came to be applied to young woman, similar to the English 'girl'. Jeune personne (young person) is another euphemism used in the past to avoid facing the uncomfortable fact of a young woman.
• In English, the word 'woman' came to be used only to refer to lower-class women; the words 'lady', 'young lady' and 'girl' replaced it,and in the early 20th century English even borrowed the French 'young person' to mean an unmarried woman.
• In modern English,'lady' or 'young lady' is less often used, but the discomfort with the word 'woman' persists. A new development is the use of the word 'female', which is military and bureaucratic jargon as well as giving a helpful air of pseudo-scientificity to one's speech. When you are making unsupported allegations about the difference between men and women, it's a lot easier to call them 'males' and 'females'. It makes you sounds objective, like a farmer talking about his livestock. On the other hand, using the term 'woman/women' is so unusual it actually tends to make you sound like a feminist.
• In a Language Log post which is more comprehensive than I will do justice to, the same phenomenon is shown to appear in Chinese.
  

  
  When I started to learn Mandarin nearly half a century ago, it used to be that xiǎojiě 小姐 ("miss") was a polite way to refer to or address a young, unmarried woman. You could also extend xiǎojiě 小姐 ("miss", lit., "little elder sister") to convey other, related meanings, such as lǎo xiǎojiě 老小姐 ("old maid / miss"), xiǎojiě píqì 小姐脾气 ("petulant; flirtatious; coquettish"), and so forth. Gradually, however, xiǎojiě 小姐 ("miss") evolved to the point that it often came to be used in a jocular or facetious manner.  Furthermore, when used by itself, xiǎojiě 小姐 may be applied to prostitutes, so one must be careful when referring to someone with this word.  It seems that there is no longer a broadly accepted, relatively respectful term of address for a young, single woman.

Abominable women proposing marriage

The offer of herself by a woman to a man is, to us all, a thing so distasteful that we at once declare that the women must be abominable...But the man to whom the offer is made hardly sees the thing in the same light.

 --Trollope, The Eustace Diamonds

Barely 150 years since this sort of attitude was mainstream. And we already hear men complaining that women don't take enough initiative. They can't imagine any reason why a woman would be reluctant to make the first move.

Pseudomutuality in relationships

How will we ever achieve an equal society if we can’t even live in equality with those whom we love?

--Maria Sveland

Heterosexual women and men in our society often describe their relationships as egalitarian and fair while also reporting relationship patterns that are objectively unfair.

For instance, they may report that they both do housework--but measurements of how much time each spouse puts in almost always reveal that the woman does more (on average, 80% of the work). One man said that his wife did all the cooking, but he did the dishes. By “doing the dishes” he meant putting the dishes in the dishwasher, leaving his wife to notice when they were done and put them away.

Or spouses may say that they are both responsible for childcare--but often, the man’s contribution to childcare is playing sports, going on outings, and watching TV with the kids, while the woman remains in charge of cleaning up after the kids, nagging them to take a bath, going to doctor’s appointments, and other boring stuff. Even when spouses sincerely attempt to share the burden, often the woman remains the manager, in charge of the family schedule, remembering what needs to be done, and reminding her husband to do it.

Couples may talk as though they are peers, but behave in ways that unintentionally promote invisible male power. Research in  the ‘90s that examined couples’ shared work and family decisions found that even though both partners reported that their decisions were mutual, outcomes tended to favor the husband’s needs and goals more than the wife’s.

One reason this “pseudomutuality” exists is that, when you ask women whether their relationship is equal, they don’t compare the relationship to an ideal of equality; they compare to an imagined “evil man” scenario. I know my husband is not a wife-beater or crude cartoon misogynist. He helps out more than my friends’ husbands. So I have nothing to worry about, right?

This cultural narrative of evil men trying to control women appears very important to women as something to avoid and to men  as unacceptable behavior. Although this discourse appears useful as a negative model of what to stay away from, it also seems to be applied to individual men in a sort of all-or-nothing way. Some men dominate and control; others don’t. The more subtle ways that male power is embedded within normative gender discourse and social structures did not seem to be part of the story. When men do not fit the dominating male pattern, couples can have a false sense of security about the existence of male power in their relationship and are less likely to look for or recognize the more subtle forms of male power built into the gender-differences discourse.

Within heterosexual relationships, and, the research suggests but does not prove, especially within marriage, even women who believe in equality are often pulled towards traditional gender roles. They may find themselves feeling that the condition of the house reflects on them--a feeling that husbands are unlikely to share. Or, with the modesty our society teaches women to feel or pretend to feel, they may say that their husband’s careers are more important than theirs (this tends to occur even when he makes less money). This leads to lives structured to accommodate the husband’s career.

Francine Deutsch describes two couples she encountered. In one couple, he was a college professor and she was a physician, and in the other couple she was the college professor and he the physician. But in both cases, both the husband and wife claimed the man’s job was less flexible.

There is no happy ending to this post, but I will leave you with a hilarious anecdote from Linda Hirshman . A female professor of her acquaintance decided to drop out of the workforce. When Hirshman asked her why, she said she had no choice: commuting 300 miles every weekday was driving her crazy. Hirshman asked the obvious question: why in the world had she chosen to live 150 miles from her university? The answer, equally obvious, was that she lived right next to her husband’s office.

The serious point here is that one traditional choice tends to lead to another traditional choice. In most marriages, the husband makes more money, so it might seem reasonable to value his career more. But for this woman, that seemingly innocuous choice led to locating near his workplace, spending most of her free time commuting, and, ultimately, housewifery.

I’m not going to bother precisely attributing these quotes, but here is my essential bibliography:

Couples, Gender and Power, Carmen Knudson-Martin

Gender Vertigo, Barbara Risman

Wifework, Susan Maushart

Get to Work, Linda Hirshman

Fiction and memoir:

An Unconventional Family, Sandra Lipsitz Bem

Bitter Bitch, Maria Sveland

We Need to Talk About Kevin, Lionel Shriver

Update: more quotes along the same lines.

Some research suggests that men cope with such uncomfortable inequities by denying that housework matters--or that it even exists! Male respondents to a time use study frequently tried to draw the interviewer into a collusive dismissal of the significance of housework and child care. Male partners were sometimes unaware that cleaners were doing some of the work. All they knew--and all they needed to know--was that it was getting done, and by someone else. One man admitted that he did no cooking, but claimed it was because he wasn’t interested in cooked food. When a wife suggested they might alternate responsibility for bed-making, the husband said he didn’t believe in bed-making. Or male respondents implied that their attitude toward housekeeping was tolerant and their wives’ obsessive. To most men, the suggestion that there might be a right and a wrong way to vacuum or fold a nappy or hang out the laundry inspires eye-rolling, or even disbelief. This is another way in which we betray the very deeply held assumptions that what men accomplish matters, and what women accomplish doesn’t...a women who persists in framing housework as skilled work, and who cares about the results obtained, is routinely stigmatized as too fussy or a control freak.

The persistence of marrying up or hypergamy is one of the most serious obstacles to achieving genuine equality within marriage today.

 

"Glamour" magazine

We all know Glamour as the magazine which led Americans to start misspelling “glamor.” But did you know it also teaches many terrible life lessons?

To the best of my recollection, all of these wonderful quotes were in the same magazine:

“Engagement eyeliner” worked for me!

(“Carrie’s” boyfriend complimented her electric blue eyeliner. Less than 24 hours later, he proposed. Glamour helpfully provides the brand name, but I will not. It sounds dangerous.)

Reading comprehension hint: when you see the word “hardwired”, know that whatever you are reading is probably bullshit.

Like most women, I’m hardwired to try to keep everybody who counts on me at the office and at home happy. There are weeks, not just days, when I feel like I’m cheating on him—with my work.

(Real women never displease others. Also, men need constant supervision. Whatever will he do if you go out and he doesn’t get sex for a whole eight hours? Probably stick forks into the electric outlets and pee on the floor.)

A dumb celebrity hopes her daughter will never develop sexual desire:

Jamie Lynn Spears says: “It’d be dumb to sit here and say that [my daughter] isn’t going to like a boy one day and she isn’t going to have a boyfriend. I’ll just have to handle that the best way that I can. Both her daddy and me will caution her about having sex, and I would hope that she would not want to do that at all, but I have to make sure that I’m realistic too.”

A woman who is boring in bed feels insecure about it:

Maybe everybody is kinkier than you are. So what? Having standard-issue sex in private is my fantasy, and that’s the last I’m going to say about it.

(Kinky sex is something other people do. Not Glamour readers, who are too busy with magic eyeliner and keeping everybody happy.)

Another dumb celebrity (Amanda Seyfried) says she doesn’t want to have sex when she doesn’t want to have sex, and also women never want to have sex:

I’m terrified of being promiscuous. I don’t like the feeling you get when it’s not something that you truly want to do, and I hate the emotional abuse you give yourself afterward.

I will spare you Glamour’s advice on yeast infections, but it is also bad.

Women and cooking

I have finished a book called Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century.

Fascinating to learn that in the last years of the nineteenth century, foods were thought healthy in proportion as they were easy to digest. Vegetables and fruits were thought to be near valueless, and when vegetables were served, they were boiled into submission; the authorities recommended that cucumbers be boiled for twenty minutes, celery for half an hour, green beans for one to three hours! and beets for twelve hours. After which, vegetables were nearly always served covered in a white sauce made of flour, milk, butter, and usually no other flavorings. This is the dainty, aspirational cuisine of Edith Wharton.

The female authorities on cooking were not exactly feminist rebels--although they tried to introduce scientific and businesslike methods into the kitchen, they showed no resistance to certain common prejudices--for instance, the belief that women don't really know what it's like to be hungry--if not reminded to eat by their husbands and children, they might go for days without nourishment. Even female cooks bragged about the smallness of their appetites.

Even today, although women would seem to be associated with food, too often they have kept themselves apart from culinary hedonism. Recipes in women's magazines are described as cheap, low in calories, and most importantly, simple and easy to prepare. Most often women are given snacks rather than full meals. Men's magazines, on the other hand, offer us flavorful, spicy dishes with exotic ingredients and generous amounts of meat. Men's cocktails are made of expensive whiskey and arcane kinds of bitters. Women's 'cocktails' are pomegranate-mango juice with--if you must--a 'splash' of vodka.

And, while articles on restaurants and bars are a staple of men's magazines, there is no suggestion in women's magazines that these establishments even exist--well, except the constant warnings that a woman who drinks will probably get herself killed. How annoying.

There is also classism to laugh at; for instance, the bizarre assertion that, when people have different tastes in food, it shows that they have "not enough other interests besides that in eating and drinking". If people were enlightened and exercised enough, all personal preferences would disappear, and the Southerners, Negroes, Irish and Italians would all adopt the diet of bourgeois Bostonians.

6 things to hate about Feminism

--at least mainstream feminism, specifically the kind in this article:

http://community.feministing.com/2009/09/on-beauty-and-its-consequences.html

1) It exaggerates the benefits of being male.

"Men are presented with an endless supply of female flesh as a reward for good capitalist behaviour..."

Hmm, do I know anyone who has "an endless supply of female flesh"? And when I think about men who get a lot of female attention, it doesn't really seem like society is awarding women to them in little gift bags. In fact, women seek out rich or confident or otherwise attractive men--but that sort of formulation makes it seem like the women are acting freely, clearly an unacceptable implication.


2) It exaggerates the disadvantages of being female.

In this worldview, just as men get everything they want, women get nothing they want. Should you seem angry about being accosted or harassed on the street,

"society will look at you with great alarm, and declare you a man-hating, ugly hairy bitter feminist."

Any woman who has ever rejected a man is then excluded from society if not shot--I couldn't make this up, people:

"Should you reject your would-be suitors, you are a bitch and risk getting shot in public or private places. At the very least you will be ostracized, you will be considered difficult, or you will be ridiculed on some other account."

3) Like many liberal theories, this sort of feminism is utopian. We plow straight ahead trying to change the basics of life, without considering that it might not be possible. This is rebellion against nature itself; for instance, when woman's status as a sexual being is described as tyranny:

"...this purpose which was created for you, without your consent, without you getting a vote on the subject, well before you were born."

4) Sexist tropes in the media are considered more revealing than the trends of actual life. For instance, the author ignores a long list of female heads of state, leaders of opinion, and intellectuals in the real world in order to criticize Hollywood.

"Whatever else you achieve - intelligence, education, talent, saving the world, etc. - must be done in heels, with long flowing hair, and a surgically-enhanced figure like the one on Lara Croft, because otherwise: well, poor you."

This person has been watching too many movies! Actual women in power aren't subject to the standards of blockbuster movies--rarely do they have long hair or wear revealing clothing, and if Hillary Clinton isn't the leader of the free world, well, the problem was not her cup size.

5) It's fucking depressing! "You are not in control", "you have probably been harassed, groped or assaulted", "you have no right to your own beauty", "whatever joy you may have felt at being pretty evaporates", "society declares you an awful person", "being angry and depressed is logical and lucid", "men will consume and destroy you", "you are a chicken in a slaughterhouse".

Is this really what young women new to the world and to men need to hear? This just makes me afraid to leave the house. Maybe that's the idea.

6) Men are the enemy; they are not vulnerable or well-intentioned like women; they never worry about the right thing to do, never feel guilty, and never apologize. Any sympathy for them is misplaced. They must be humiliated and CRUSHED:

"Remember the men who do these things to you are not playing fair, they will never consciously apologize of their own volition, and they will never hesitate to crush you if you threaten them. You must give yourself the right to do the same to them. Never feel sorry for them, never apologize, and never look back...You will have to reject and humiliate men, without mercy, very loudly, in front of as many people as possible, when you don't want men looking at or touching you if they are doing this. Of course, this will make you look like a bitch, which is a daunting prospect, but as a woman you have those two choices: bitch, or victim."

(I kind of like that last line. Although why 'consciously apologize'? An unconscious apology is a priori impossible.)

"Should this scenario happen in the office, you may be told you are disturbing the workplace peace and atmosphere and you may have to come out kicking and screaming against this injustice, which will probably get you fired, and will force you to go to a Human Rights Commission which may or may not award you a few thousand dollars after five years of litigation and blacklisting during which your career is completely destroyed."

That's right, a woman who rejects a coworker's advances will be reprimanded, fired and finally blacklisted. This wasn't true even 80 years ago.

It's painfully clear that the author has had annoying experiences with men on the street and coworkers. I sympathize--well, contra her claims, most people of either sex sympathize with women who are harassed by clueless men. The author's arrogance and blindness comes in when she assumes her experience and female experience are congruent. Would you say that you don't mind being complimented or hit on? Or that you think you have power over men? Or that your male coworkers are kind and professional? Or that you've never been raped or assaulted? Just wait, says the author. My terrible experience is the Truth of women's experience, and if neither you nor anyone you know experiences it this way, you should probably feel guilty about being privileged.

The universality of literature

This article on women's writing is surprisingly unobjectionable--until I got to this! Near the end we find a single isolated sentence: "Great Literary American Novel Syndrome is a surprisingly persistent condition, despite the increasingly obvious likelihood that no work of art can sum up a nation as heterogeneous as ours without neglecting somebody."

Note the implied idea that a great writer can never speak for someone who is different than him. What the hell. This is Chinua Achebe's obscenely obtuse critique of "Heart of Darkness" all over again. Am I only to read heterosexual female Polish/Scottish 22-year-old authors? If I can find part of myself--not my Eastern European features or my sex, but the most important part of myself reflected in, say, a middle-aged gay French man, then other people should be able to do the same. If they can't, it's their own damn fault.

For a great author--no, even a good one--doesn't just write about the superficial. His characters have hair colors and ages and nationalities, but they have other, more important, characteristics--their personalities are what we identify with--or even more deeply human characteristics.

This said, I do admit that the superficial qualities of characters and authors can make it easier or harder for us to appreciate them. It was, for instance, a strikingly bad idea to make my sophomore language class (a class of mostly female 20-year-olds) spend all year studying old men (Lear and Oedipus). Some of us may be able to reach past the different superficialites--just like some women can reach past the annoyance of an author who assumes all his readers are male. But the fact that there are women and non-white people who write makes it easier for a lot of us to find literature from which to learn.