Feminism and the Disposable Male (by girlwriteswhat)

I found this interesting. It problematizes the idea that “sexism=misogyny.” Can one go so far as to say, “It queers sexism?” That, even here, there is more diversity than one previously thought? I think so….

My one, initial critique of the entire piece is a glaringly obvious one: the orator’s repeated reference to “feminism” as a monolithic ideology. In point of fact, there are multiple feminisms and not all of them so callously disregard “male needs,” although I will concede that most mainstream (read: bumper-sticker) feminisms at least seem to do so quite readily.

Closer to home, I’d argue that “sex-positive feminism,” or at least those veins of the sex-positive movement embracing a queer social context that questions gender binarism and accepts the implicit challenge to see people complexly in its own discourse, does not so easily succumb to the dynamic described by “male disposability” as presented here. On the other hand, “sex-positive” feminism and many other feminisms still suffer from a binarism in which people’s salient hermeneutic characteristics are categorically defined, a tragedy in which no opportunity exists for the same thing—be it a personality trait, facet of sociosexual identity, or one’s way of thinking—to hold two “true” meanings simultaneously. What obscures this fact from, say, the BDSM community, is that the characteristic given primacy in determining a person’s “disposability”—how valued or devalued they are—is not gender, but rather role orientation: domism is not sexism, but the two lean on one another both inside and outside of BDSM Scene-State societies and subcultures. What I’m most personally interested in is the experiences of men when these two things intersect.

Anyway, a transcript of the video’s speech is below. Please note that the links in the text are my own additions intended to connect the pieces of the text with ideas that they spawned in my own mind as I was listening to them. They are probably not the author’s original intent and are not presented here with the intention of making them appear that way. Rather, the links are a hypertextual record of my own multi-threaded thought processes for later bisociative analysis. That being said, emphasis in the transcript reflects emphasis in the orator’s speech.

Not too long ago, I headed out with a feminist who had come into a male-safe space from a feminist blog, just to scoff at the idea of male disposability.

She she went there and basically said that the entire concept was a myth, that men’s lived experiences were completely wrong, that they were just a bunch of whiners who were complaining over nothing.

Yeah…. Anyhow, that got me thinking about the concept of male disposability and how that interacts with the feminist movement.

Male disposability’s been around since the dawn of time. And it’s based on one very, very straightforward dynamic: When it comes to the well being of others, they come first, men come last. This is just the way it has always been. Seats in lifeboats, being rescued from burning buildings, who gets to eat.

Really, society places men dead last, every time. And society expects men to place themselves dead last, every time.

* * *

Humans have always had a dynamic of “women and children first,” and that has not changed at all. The 93% workplace death gap has to be evidence of this, if only because nobody with any kind of importance or power is interested in changing it, at all.

In fact, I remember reading an article in the BC paper not long ago that described the increasing proportion of female injuries on the job as a huge problem. And in the insane thing was that the change reflected a decrease in male injuries rather than an increase in female ones. Men’s injuries on the job had gone down because the economic downturn had put so many men out of work in the resource sector that there just weren’t as many trees or pieces of heavy equipment falling on men as there had been before. Yet, this was framed as a huge problem for women that required immediate actions to solve.

It’s just crazy! It’s like, if men aren’t dying at work at twenty times the rate women, are we must be doing something wrong as a society.

* * *

Back when we were still living in caves, that attitude was necessary for human survival. Nature’s a really harsh mistress, especially when you think of all the animals that never, ever get to die of old age. Things were a lot different for humans through most of our history on this planet than they are now. Life was dangerous, human settlements were small, isolated from each other, and [so] one big disaster that took out a lot of women pretty much meant the end of the entire shebang for that group of people.

So, really, the level of importance that a human settlement placed on the wellbeing of women and children reflected, almost always, how successful that settlement was. And that can be expanded to encompass entire societies.

I keep hearing from the feminist camp that femaleness has always really been undervalued by society and that maleness is preferred, but I have always contended that it’s the exact opposite. The feminine is intrinsically and individually valuable, simply because females are the limiting factor in reproduction of any species. When it comes to producing babies, every woman counts, whereas (biologically), one very happy man could probably do the work of hundreds in that regard. So, the level of instinctive importance we humans place on the safety of provision of women and their children—it’s one of the main reasons why we’ve been able to be so successful that we come to really dominate this planet.

And while I will concede that this drive to keep women safe from all harm has often resulted in extreme limits being placed on women’s mobility, their agency, their power of decision to direct their own lives, all through history in many cultures, and in many cultures even today, I think it’s telling that those cultures tend to be the most backwards.

* * *

When you consider the restrictions placed on women in places like Afghanistan, and then you consider that, if we bomb them into the stone age, it would be progress, I think you can conclude the most successful societies had a really good balance between allowing women freedom and the ability to choose and direct their own paths in life, and the need to protect them and provide for them.

However, feminists will insist that these kinds of restrictions in those kinds of societies are the ultimate form of objectification. You lock up your possessions to make sure they will never be lost, or stolen, or harmed.

Honestly, if I were a guy on a battlefield, I might appreciate being objectified in that way. I think if I was going to be an object, I’d rather be a sexual one, or somebody’s prized possession, than an object that can simply be thrown in the trash or smashed into pieces in the service of somebody else’s purpose.

* * *

It was that last segment that struck me most strongly. Could there be a parallel between the idea of “male disposability” and the devaluation of male submission? It seems likely.

Back to the video:

Feminists also have a very simplistic idea that our willingness to absolve women of their crimes, slap them on their wrists, spare them punishment, comes from a deep disrespect society has for their personhood. Not seeing them as full human beings capable of looking after themselves, that we see them as children who don’t know any better. And, yeah, while there are parallels in our desire to protect women and children from not only their own poor decisions but the full consequences of their shitty behavior, it’s really not as simple as they try to make it out to be.

I mean, seriously, even today—even today, in 2011—we fully expect that, if it comes down to a man and a woman in a burning building and you can only save one, the expectation is that you choose the woman, every single time. So honestly, whose humanity are we placing above whose here? We’re not talking about going to work, we’re not talking about getting an education, we’re not talking about having freedom to decide what you want to be in life, and we’re not talking about getting to take Taekwondo. We’re talking seats and lifeboats here. The person in the lifeboat is going to survive no matter how capable or incapable they are of managing their own life, and the person who went down with the ship is going to die no matter how independent, self-sufficient, and awesome he is.

That’s the equation. One life, more valuable than another, and the woman wins every time.

So, honestly, is there any argument, anywhere, that women’s humanity has always been held in higher regard by society than men’s?

* * *

To be important to society, a woman merely has to be. A man has to do in order for his life to have any meaning to anyone other than himself.

Ah ha, here I begin to see the parallel: I was once asked what a sexually submissive man has to do to stand out from the throngs of other men a dominant woman could choose to spend her time with. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the question itself betrayed the problem. My answer was surely similarly unhelpful. In contrast, dominant women are valued simply by being present, albeit harshly tokenized.

Well…sexism may not be misogyny, but both of those things still sucks for everyone involved.

Okay, once again, back to the video:

I think it was Man, Woman, Myth who said, “Our society reduces men from human beings to human doings,” and I really think that’s an apt analogy. We measure a man’s worthiness to where the title of man, and therefore the title of human, through how useful he is either to society or to women. And one of the most useful things a man can do, even now, in the eyes of society is to put women and children before himself.

And while I think there’s plenty of argument that this attitude is at least partly innate, the way most survival traits are, even collective ones, if it starts in the chromosomes, we really do everything we can as a society to reinforce this dynamic. Studies have shown that even though baby boys tend to cry and fuss more than baby girls, parents are quicker to attend to or console a baby girl than they are a baby boy. Even just the level of acceptance of infant male circumcision in our culture when female genital mutilation was banned pretty much the first afternoon we all heard it existed, really says a lot about the differing expectations we have for males and females.

I mean, speaking as a mother, the last thing I would have ever wanted was to hear my child cry, especially when they’re at an age when they’re completely helpless, completely at the mercy of outside forces, and utterly dependent on the adults in their lives for every last thing. And yet, even knowing how painful that cut is, we expect baby boys—only days old, for fuck’s sake—to just suck that up.

* * *

And just think about what these very first interactions and experiences, these differences in how we nurture our babies depending on what gender they are, what this teaches them.

What do we teach baby girls when we attend to their crying so quickly? We teach them to ask for help because their needs are important. We teach them to let us know when they’re afraid or in pain because it’s important for us to know when they’re sick or in danger or hurt, so we can do something about it! We teach them that when they’re sad, or lonely, to summon comfort and comfort will be there. We teach them that they’re important, their needs and wellbeing, both emotional and physical, are important, just because.

And what are teaching baby boys when leave them to cry? We teach them there’s not much point in seeking help because it will be grudgingly given, if at all. We teach them that they should become self-contained in their ability to deal with emotions like fear, helplessness, loneliness, sadness, pain, distress. We teach them stoicism. We teach them to suck it up. We teach them that their fear and their pain are things that are best ignored. We teach them that their emotional and physical wellbeing are just not as important as other things.

I mean, given all of that, is it any wonder it’s like pulling teeth to get a man to go to the doctor when he’s sick‽

* * *

What we’re teaching that baby boy is all the things a man needs to know and feel and believe about himself if he’s going to stand in front of a cabin with a rifle while his wife and kids hide inside. We’re preparing him for the day he has to fix a bayonet to a rifle and charge a hill under enemy fire, and we’re preparing him to make a decision to resign himself to an icy fate while women and children escape in the lifeboats. We are really teaching him to internalize his own disposability.

And baby girls? By attending to her crying so quickly, by letting her know she’s inherently important to us, we’re preparing her for the day she has to think of her own safety first, even if it means the man she loves is left standing alone with a rifle in front of a cabin. We’re preparing her to take that seat in the lifeboat. We’re training her to not allow guilt or empathy or acknowledgment of a man’s humanity, or any sense that he might just maybe deserve it more, to convince her to give her seat to him, because for millennia, the human species absolutely depended on her feeling 100% entitled to that seat.

* * *

And that brings me to feminism.

You know, the patriarchy smashers, those righteous avengers of equality, dogged dismantlers of every single gender role. What exactly is feminism doing to dismantle this traditional role of the disposable male?

Feminism’s greatest victories have only reinforced in everyone that society still owes women provision, protection, help, and support, just because they’re women. In its collective dismissal and abandonment of male victims of domestic violence, it only reinforces in men that it’s pointless for them to ask for help because men’s needs are of no relevance, and their fear and pain don’t mean anything to anyone.

Feminism teaches us to put women’s needs at the forefront of every single issue, political or social, whether that issue is domestic violence law, sexual assault law, institutional sexism, social safety net, education funding, homeless shelters, government funding for shovel-ready jobs that didn’t stay shovel-ready once feminists got wind of them. Everywhere you look, everywhere you look, there are feminists pushing their way to the front of the line demanding women’s “fair share” of all of the goodies, the good stuff, the loot, the booty, the cookies. Even if women don’t need it, even if women don’t deserve it, and even if somebody else needs it and deserves it more.

And they get it, because we give it to them.

* * *

Feminism has done nothing but exploit this dynamic of the expectation on men to put everybody else before themselves, especially women. Women’s safety and support, women’s wellbeing and women’s emotional needs, always come first. This is the most stunning piece of society-wide manipulative psychology I think I have ever come across.

Feminism has been on the down-low with old-school chivalry right from the start. And they might seem like strange bedfellows for sure, but they’re not, because both concepts are built on a firm foundation of female self-interest.

* * *

We made our way as humans through a really harsh history, and we became the dominant force on this planet, and one of the reasons we were so successful is because we have consistently put women’s basic needs first. Their need for safety, support, and provision. It was in humanity’s best interest for women to be essentially self-interested, and for men to be essentially self-sacrificing.

But we don’t need that dynamic anymore.

I mean, our species is in no danger of extinction. I mean, we’re 7 billion people, clogging up the works here. What’s the worst that could happen if we all just collectively decided that men were no more disposable than women and women were no more valuable than men?

In fact, the greatest danger I see to us right now is that in our desperation to bend over and give women everything they want and everything that they say they need, we’ve unbalanced society to the point where we’re just in danger of seriously toppling over.

And really, the only difference I see between the traditional role and the new one for men, with respect to disposability, is that maleness—manhood—it used to be celebrated, it used to be admired, and it used to be rewarded, because it was really fucking necessary, and because the personal cost of it to individual men was so incredibly high. But now?

Now, we still expect men to put women first, and we still expect society to put women first, and we still expect men to not complain about coming in dead last every damn time. But men don’t even get our admiration anymore. All they get in return is to hear about what assholes they are. Is it any wonder they’re starting to get pissed off?

* * *

Anyhow, that’s not all I have to say about this subject, but it is all I have to say about it today since my kid is about to walk in the door home from school, so I am going to sign off and hopefully I will see you all again.

For now, I’m GirlWritesWhat, ciao.