Guyland
So I am watching the Today Show and they have this book by Michael Kimmel from SUNY-Stony Brook (my local Uni growing up) and it turned into that weird thing where men are supposedly "disadvantaged." I am tired of hearing how hard it is to be a man in America. I am sure it is hard, but being a man doesn't provide some special disadvantage. It provides all the advantages. Luckily Hoda Kotb pointed out that she looks around society and sees men everywhere in charge of everything which is completely true and isn't changing very rapidly at all despite the whining from men and their apologists.
They had a woman man-apologist on the show for the second go round of this issue and I think she might be that woman who wrote the book about poor neglected boys in school, an idea which is a ridiculous oversimplification. She complains that we have been rooting for girls too much in society. (And Kathie Lee Gifford made the silly remark that it is a pendulum that has swung too far to girls.... funny enough a pendulum implies that it was a cycle, but I challenge her to find in history where is swung back and forth because honestly it was slanted towards men for pretty much all of human history. It's not a cycle at all. The metaphor is faulty.) Well the funny thing about this is that they discussed about remembering our 'strong, protective, providing' father which of course is one of those stereotypes that also didn't reflect reality for the majority of families despite the myth. Don't believe me? Well look up statistics on marital abuse, child abuse etc from the 1950s and you'll find these were all higher than they are today, if less reported. This is the subtle strike back at feminism to roll back the clock to when women stayed home perhaps even 'barefoot and pregnant.' The problem with this woman is that since she is a woman her anti-feminist proclivities seem more legit. Boys are being neglected in schools she contends. Boys are being held back. blah blah blah. Certainly there are special problems with minority boys, but white boys still seem to be doing quite well even if their grades and test scores are lower than white girls. Spoken or not, this simplistic analysis is blaming women for men's problems again. The woman even said, "women have to take reponsibility for their low expectations of men." This is a valid point for sure and one which I complain, but it again lets those men off the hook. Men don't behave badly entirely because women let them though it reinforces their bad behavior, but because other men encourage them to behave badly, or they saw their fathers behave badly.
How about defining the problem as one of setting low expectations of fathers rather than mothers. Mothers are often the providers as much as men, which the woman argued is part of the problem, but it isn't. Women have often been the provider. If in ancient times men hunted wel then women gathered which is still "providing." This is even if such a division of labor really existed. I still don't know exactly how the man was ever the "protector" of the family when he worked 8 hours or more per day and even more hours before 1938. This is hardly time at home "protecting," but basically we are stuck with these sex role myths which obscure a lot of relevant discussion. We just retreat back to stereotypes when we starting to unpack our expectations and problems. If boys are being neglected by their mothers which they might be, it is the change from when moms neglected their daughters, but this all ignores the fact that no one has stood up and said fathers need to be there to do the role that mothers did, or that we've created teaching as a woman's job with all the control, complaints and dominance problems that women face in society. (By means of comparison, our economy is falling apart, but nobody is demanding higher standards and extra tests before we let someone become a business leader, or demanding that someone pass various subject tests to run for political office. Politicians are often ignorant of facts, lacking in basic theories of governance and economics and yet Teachers who are mostly women are treated like crap in our public discourse while politicians who are mostly men are allowed to give themselves pay raises and the most generous perks package of any career in America)
Two parents raising the family means two parents raising the kids, not this divided "protector, provider" BS for dad and "nurturer" for mom. In fact, if women are helping provide then men should be helping to raise and nurture. If men were involved as nurturing parents and we demanded this of them, then this men problem might very well go away because the mom could nurture and encourage her daughters to be strong, successful women, and fathers could encourage their sons to be strong successful nurturing men. Of course this is not necessarily just about mothers and fathers, but this is about two parent households regardless of gender. Of course though, this reading of the problem would blame today's adult men and Baby Boomer men for their numerous shortcomings but they run our society so nary a word, and never a real discussion of their bad parenting. It is easer to blame woman teachers in Elementary School, or absent Black men fathers (though there are plenty of absent white men fathers, absent even if physically there, who escape the societal scorn). There might be a point about neglected sons, but the neglect is not of their well-being or chances for success since the Country Club is still the seat of deal-making and power and so those "games" which we are told are keeping men from growing up are actually the means by which they will still find their way to power and wealth. It might not be deals on the Golf course, but it very likely could be deals on the latest MMORPG. "I met this Night Elf on World of Warcraft and his printing company is going to do our flyers." The true neglect of sons is in our unwillingness as a society to help them to recognize that strong confident women allow them to break out their prescribed roles as men and allow them to be more fulfilled themselves.
However the discussion seems to be about men's inability to live up to the stereotype of men rather than of men empowered to transcend the stereotype. This is the problem. Women are encouraged to transcend feminine stereotypes, but men are considered neglected because we are not encouraging them to simply fit into the stereotype as well as we used to do.
Labels: gender sex boys girls neglect Kimmel Guyland
posted by travellinguist @ 7:48 AM
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