The Chance of Being Kind | Gender Relations of Domination
Disclaimer: "Man" and "woman" in the following text refer to the atribute of biological sex, while "masculine" and "feminine" assign to gender expectations on how people with the respective male and female sex should behave.
I have a pretty bad memory, and, while I can recall the general events and phases I was passing through in any given past time, it's rare of me to record specific, punctual details. So, when I have a memory of this kind, I imagine it was something impactful and important for me, even when I don't understand quite why. For many years now I have kept this small interaction in my mind, and I guess just recently I've began to perceive what was happening there. It was during the very first days of my sixth grade. I studied in this same old school since forever with a big group of small kids, we had all grown up together. I guess this didn't make everyone close friends, but for sure we were all very acquainted and comfortable around each other.
I was this nerdy, kinda chubby, silly kid who would rather read books than play sports (like probably you were also, since you're in such a place as a neocities website). Art made me very sensitive and I was into cats and rabbits and stuff. I would often avoid conflicts or fights – any sort of violence, really. And, in the few times I did end up fighting, I always got beaten pretty bad, despite being the tallest kid in class. My point is: I was a boy, but I didn't really feel like a powerful and boy-ish blue-coloured force of nature. That in a very patriarchal and sexist countryside of a country with profound social issues. So I wasn't really getting much consideration from my fellow classmates. When we got to sixth grade, though, we'd all go to this other side of the school campus which we shared with high school kids and stuff. It was segregated by the lower classes by a wall. So, you see, it was something big, going to sixth grade. It was time to become a man.
That's what I decided to do. I became class rep and I went to the swim team. And that's also why, in the very first days of the school year, as I have said, two kids who studied with me since forever came talking to me. I thing we started talking about exams, assignments or whatever, since I was the rep. But then they started asking things about me, about how I was doing and what I was doing. That was strange, because, while I knew then from the very first year of kindergarten, we never really had much in common and were never really friends. Then one of them said to me:
"You see, we noticed you are changing. You are doing a lot of things. You are becoming less of a faggot".
And they meant that as a big compliment, of course. And I felt complimented, to be honest. Nowadays I understand this was a particularly explicit contact I had with gender policing, a haunting I started noticing a lot in my existence as I not-so-masculine man in a super pro-"macho" environment.
I also remember telling my mom, not much later, "I am straight, but I don't feel like it". Poor me as a kid! Nobody should perceive themselves like this, unauthorized to live out their gender/race/sexuality as they seem fit. Probably that's why I took an interest in gender studies. And, oh boy, that put so many things of my past in context. It also made me perceive how the sexual division of labour (and the division of sexual labour) still orchestrate much of our lives, despite the advances made by feminism in the official discourse like in law and in politics. And also how this division is still exploited, even disguised as a particular form of feminism, for the purpose of its self-preservation. It's about this last issue I'd like to talk today.
I. The Male as the Non-Female & The Female as the Non-Male
One of the first concepts instrumental to feminism critical analysis was that of "sex role", which was later abandoned by later feminist thinkers in favor of a more complete and refined language of gender relations, as described in this here article by Michael Messner. He quotes some influential papers that took the endeavor to describe the male sex role. 1959's "Sex-role pressures in the socialization of the male child" by Ruth Harley, for example, says in it's ninth page:
On the one hand, he is told that he is supposed to be rugged, independent, able to take care of himself, and to disdain "sissies" [emphasis added, as all following this].
And, three pages later, it states:
For many, unfortunately, the scramble to escape takes on all the aspects of panic, and the outward semblance of non-femininity is achieved at a tremendous cost of anxiety of self alienation.
So the male sex role clearly has a relational definition. That is, it's defined only in relation to another thing, that being the female sex role (or femininity, in general). This thesis is supported by plenty of writings on the topic. According to the same Messner article, 1976's "The male sex role: our culture's blueprint of manhood and what it has done for us lately" by Robert Brannon gave a really popular definition of the male sex role (one that was even made into a score scale, for anyone interested) based in 4 points, the first of which is literally "No sissy stuff". Also, French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, in his book Masculine Domination, asks: "[W]hat is manliness, ultimately, but a non-femininity?"
So we may think that, to better understand against what masculinity is being defined, we should study femininity, it's apparently symmetrical counterpart. What a surprise we get, then, when we read, right in the introduction of Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, the following lines:
The categories masculine and feminine appear as symmetrical in a formal way on town hall records or identification papers. The relation of the two sexes is not that of two electrical poles: the man represents both the positive and the neuter to such an extent that in French hommes designates human beings, the particular meaning of the word vir being assimilated into the general meaning of the word “homo.” Woman is the negative, to such a point that any determination is imputed to her as a limitation, without reciprocity [...]. Humanity is male, and man defines woman, not in herself, but in relation to himself; she is not considered an autonomous being.
Beauvoir, writing further down in the text the chapter on psychoanalysis, also talks about how Freud characterized women's formation through a lacking: a woman, for Freud, is a mutilated man, and her sexual development comes about recognizing her castration. Furthermore, women's model of the Electra and the castration complex are merely an inversion of the Oedipus complex men go through according to Freud, who first studied boys development as the "neutral", "normal" model of sexuality and then simply adapted his theory to fit girls, but taking them negatively: women's specificity is in missing something, in being less. Bourdieu, in the same book quoted above, also writes about how a surgeon from the Middle Ages describes in his medical writings the vagina as an inverted phallus.
Now this puts us in an awkward position. So masculinity is defined in relation to femininity, but, in a circular logic fashion, femininity is also defined only in relation to masculinity. What does this tell us about the relationship between these two elements?
Maybe we ought not to think as masculinity and femininity as two separate entities opposing each other. We could try instead to picture them as two fields of a dynamic spectrum in which terms are often changing sets, going from masculine to feminine and vice versa (think about things like the colours blue and pink, high heels, stockings, etc). This spectrum may be superimposed on each individual subject, who freely moves along it depending on the context. For example: Sandra Lee Bartky writes here, starting on the last paragraph of page 11, how, in groups of men, those of lower or subaltern status adopt a posture and a body language analogous to that enacted by women: they smile more at their superiors, are less prone to initiate eye or body contact, sit in a rigid manner as opposed to the loose demeanour of the superior, etc. So if, when in a position of submission, men immediately know how to portray themselves as women, can women's manner be natural? Shouldn't we rather say it's learned through a lifelong process of submission?
II. The Masculine-Feminine Spectrum
This spectrum model seems useful to me for more than one reason. First for being so dynamic: as said above, both the terms that compose it and the individuals it apply to may go from one field to the other (from masculine to feminine and back again and there again ad infinitum) in a situation-dependent manner. It takes it account the permanence of the sexual division of the world (which is not an a-historical process, according to Bourdieu, but the product of a constant historical labour) and the flexibility of its categories, that change following historical, political, economical and social conditions. On the other hand, this model doesn't give us the impression that masculine and feminine are polar opposites positioned in a symmetrical manner in relation to each other: they are part of a continuum with many points of interface and communication.
The symmetry was exactly one of the problems Messner attributed to the sex role terminology. This theory presented a somewhat strict and narrow, somewhat constant and unchangeable notion of masculine and feminine, each serving a different and equally important ("instrumental" in the case of men, "expressive" in the case of women – this division can be traced back to the sociologist Talcott Parsons) role in the social sphere. A family in which the parents performed well their respective roles would raise kids who would grow up to do the same, thus keeping with the social norm and becoming "stable adults". Furthermore, the sex role theory, beyond its conservative origin in Parsons' functionalism, was largely a-historical. It was way too focused on the individual and its performance of certain "male" or "female" attributes. It didn't question the institutional and social causes for the consolidation of such roles and it didn't focus on the symbolical domination of one of the groups (the masculine) over the other (the feminine). Not surprisingly, it was exactly this "male sex role" language that was used in the inception of the Men's Right Movement in the late 70s: people like Warren Farrell and Herb Goldberg started out as pro-feminist scholars of sex and ended up writing seminal works for the ideology that men are the actual victims of society, oppressed both by the economic conditions which deny them power or leisure time with family (for they have the social obligations of being breadwinners) and by the "feminazi" anti-men movements that supposedly tries to blame them for everything. It's easy to see how this bizarre inversion makes use of the false symmetry between male and female sex role rigidness*. Despite what they say, the true intention of these improbable victims isn't to make things fair and equal between genders, but simply to give official sanction to the previous inequality that already existed.
Way before being adopted and misrepresented by Men's Rights associations, though, sex role theory was being cheerfully wielded by early feminists despite its narrow and individualistic approach. And, while this terminology was eventually abandoned in favor of studies on gender relations, this doesn't change the fact that feminism still has major modalities way too focused on individuals and commodity consumption. That feminism itself, actually, was extensively transformed in a commodity from the 90s on. This doesn't really apply to most feminist thoughts in current academia or in serious gender studies circles, though, but this kind of neoliberal "girl power" feminism is extremely popular with the overall population – maybe mainly because of being so dear to commercial markets – despite not really serving to give them girls any powers in these last 30 years.
III. "You Go, Girl!" Going Nowhere
David beating the life out of Goliath makes a great story, but in the context of gender relations we might say some giants are way too big for too small a rock. There is no sense in empowering women individually if the men who impose on them the masculinist view of a submissive object are empowered as a class. A rich CEO and a impoverished freelancer, a black or a white dude, a Christian or a Muslim, they all feel entitled to objectify women through the male gaze, to criticize women seen as unfeminine, to protect the allegedly "frailty and vulnerability" of women, etc. Liberal feminism, meanwhile, still feels pretty comfortable advertising individualistic ideas. They say, for example, that being a feminist woman is being free to live merely according to one's own choices. But how free can a choice be? The economically vulnerable woman who has no choice but to go out and work even when she has 3 or 4 kids to take care of at home can never be considered a feminist, by this logic. It should come as no surprise that this kind of "feminism" is written and theorized by white, middle-class, college-educated women (also mostly heterosexual ones) that universalizes their troubles as that of all womanhood. There is no space for class or race discussion, no: that's out of the scope of feminism, for neoliberals. After all, feminism is simply about "the individual quality of confidence". A woman who failed in being respected and in feeling empowered, then, was simply lacking in her own confidence. No need to investigate the institutional and political contexts that denied her respect and power. The search for the Holy Grail of confidence, instead of collectively encouraging women to think critically on their surroundings, fairly easy took the form of an incentive to consumption – as Bauman famously prescribed, individuals in liquid modernity are reduced to the status of consumers: being feminist was about wearing this brand, using this lipstick, eating in these places. You can see how this girl power trend became popular.
But, apart from increasing the forces of consumption, what else does this quest for confidence brings about its searches? In a consumer society, material possessions transmit ideas of lifestyles and believes, this much is true. But confidence is all about attitude, so what changes in behaviour is liberal feminism preaching for young women? Since it can't really oppose the status quo, it isn't allowed to propose new ideas of power dynamics – or, even better, of relations between genders based in no power relation at all! The best it can do is teach women interested and able of adopting this lifestyle (yes, that's white, middle class, college-educated women for you) to act like "man". That's the individual woman's path to power, without disturbing the domination of the masculine over the feminine: internalize the domination and mimic the dominators to pretend you aren't among the dominated anymore (it's a process of identification of the oppressed with the oppressor, just like Paulo Freire writes about). So the idea here is women should adopt (in an extreme manner, to compensate their female figure) such behaviours as violence, impulsiveness, aggression, career success above all else, etc. It's women succeeding by means of manliness: they become big and powerful by reproducing the masculine domination, not by defying it. That's why we shouldn't celebrate any individual achievement of women as a victory for women as a class. I mean, just think about Margaret Thatcher in the UK. Or Sanae Takaichi in Japan just recently**.
IV. Nobody Gets the Chance of Being Kind
The usual idea of a male-female binomial consisting of opposing poles displays two misconceptions that are blatantly false: first, that these poles are symmetrical somehow (in importance, function, symbolical power, etc); second, that this opposition is diametrical. When we think about the terms opposing each other, they seem to reproduce these attributes: the man is active and impetuous, the woman is passive and discrete; the man is practical, the woman is emotional; the man is social, extroverted, political (Aristotle famously said: man is by nature a political animal), the woman is introspective, introverted, domestic; the man is rigid and intransigent, the woman is soft and gentle. These oppositions, actually, hide a balance that always tilts to the masculine side of the equation: our capitalist production system applauds efficiency and pragmatism typically associated with manliness (one may ask here what is cause and what is effect) while women's supposedly emotive heart clouds their good judgement and leaves her inclined towards neurosis and hysteria; the house is the small kingdom of petty occurrences and the worries surrounding it are trivial and egoistic, while public spaces, dominated by men, are the pages where the book os History is written; activeness is seem almost as an end in itself, while passiveness is usually disregarded as a flaw – even though the golden mean theory should teach us that the true virtue is alternating between these attributes with restraint (this asymmetrical relationship of active and passive is more clearly seen when taken as sexual terms. Think about the anecdote of Caesar being "every woman's man and every man's woman").
So, even though in name and in theory men and women participate in supposedly diametrical oppositions of terms in such a symmetrical way, in practice what we see is the feminine side is always devalued. This devaluation can't really happen openly and explicitly though (as we can see with all the care for a symbolical representation of symmetry) because the masculine domination takes a somewhat ambiguous relation with femininity. For one side, men (and women following the non-threatening liberal feminism) are educated to disregard anything feminine (or "sissy", as Ruth Harley and Robert Brannon have put it). But, at the same time, they depend on this sissiness coming from women or from non-masculine men to keep their symbolic domination happening: that is, they need to somehow convince women and effeminate men to agree with this sissiness they so much scorn***. That's why the devaluation of the feminine can't take on the form of actively aggressive repudiation, at least not on the "official" realm of words and symbols. So they say things like men are strong and women are delicate, but what is really meant by "delicate" is actually something closer to fragile, weak, defeatable. The delicate that applies to women pretends to be the same word delicate that is used as in exquisite or pleasant – and it really is, in writing and in reading, but not in meaning. They say men are serious and severe while women are receptive, like it's just two alternate attitudes with equal value. But actually what is implied is this receptiveness expected of women should translate as subservience and obedience. Now this is the opposition I detest the most: men are said to be assertive while women are kind. The oh-so-Christian, oh-so-splendid virtue of being kind, in the relationships of power between sexes, is turned into a flaw of the weak, for this kindness here is simply a facade for being docile, submissive, we all know. Meanwhile, men and women all over the world are taught that what they need to be successful and powerful is this said assertiveness that actually translates as being inflexible, brusque, rude, aggressive, violent. And, in the end of the day, nobody gets the chance of simply being kind.
And all of this is really a shame, because, weren't we so caught in a game of power and domination, all these qualities attributed to women/to the feminine sound so much like virtues to me. It's sad seeing these words used to mask vulnerabilities inclining their bearers to submission. Is this what we really value, as a society, a strict and rigorous (masculine) power who dominates anything soft and understanding through impetus and violence? Is this what we think should be preached and practiced as virtues, an affirmation of oneself through storm and stress? Wouldn't we have a much more benign, soft, easygoing and carefree world if we could invert this relation, if we could really hail the said feminine qualities as true distinctions? Wouldn't we be better off if happiness and success were more about being open, tidied, tranquil, sensible? Wouldn't society be more fair and equal if we could understand vulnerability and frailty as qualities of the epic hero?
Notes:
* The Men's Right Movement make such a vicious case for their false victimization that they go as far to claim, backed by more than a hundred of scientific papers, that there is a gender symmetry in domestic violence: women and men are victims of it in an equal rate. This statement is of course absurd, since the brutality and fatalities of domestic violence among women is so obvious that it almost put this claim out of the realm of science. Michael Kimmel made an amazing analysis of the methodological and analytical distortions that made possible such a result being obtained by so many papers. In consonance with my previous text on mainstream media, in which I commented about how science is a method with no compromise with truth as its product, this unfortunate example goes to show the kind of unfounded absurdities can be supported by scientific analysis when it is done by people in bad faith.
**It's common to say, in relation to this gender dynamic, that there is a domination of men over women in our patriarchal worldview. As you may see, however, terms in the fields of masculine and feminine in the spectrum model can be freely borrowed by anyone with any gender. Thatcher and Takaichi, just mentioned, are for sure women, but they usually transmit their images of success and power by adopting masculine attributes and qualities. I'd say, then, that actually what we see in the world is a domination of the masculine over the feminine. Always keep in mind that /, by these definitions, being "masculine" has not much to do with belonging to the male biological sex.
***The role of men in women's historical oppression has been the reason of much discussion inside and outside of feminist circles. It has been noted of course that women's domination couldn't help without a oppressor, and most of the times this role had its most violent and intransigent embodiments in the figures of men. However, it is also clear that vast majority of men aren't actively haters of women putting actual conscious effort into perpetuating their domination. I can't claim to have the solution for the characterization of men's dubious situation, but I think things get clearly when we look at them this way:
Most people, men and women alike, seem to believe that being misogynist must be an active state: it's actually you consciously and willingly do. The "neutral", passive state of people who don't define themselves as sexist would be, by this logic, that of non-misogyny, of establishing no discrimination of people based on gender or sex. What we actually see, however, is the symbolical power that perpetuates the submission of women along so many centuries is deeply ingrained in the cultural landscape of basically every society. Simply reproducing a-critically patterns of behaviour and speech seem as normal and acceptable means also reproducing their sexist qualities that sneakily reinforces the position of women as dominated objects. So we were wrong in our initial assumptions: actually, the neutral, passive state of people embedded in a sexist society is that of sexist agents. Misogyny isn't simply what happens when you actively hates women. It's the neutral, normal state of every individual acting without the proper consideration of the cultural and historical basis guiding their actions. Being pro-feminist and anti-sexist, in the other hand, is the true active state: one needs to put actual conscious effort not to be a misogynist. So men may indeed be to blame for women's domination insofar as they are not willing to put on this self-policing: they are at fault when being neutral and are redeemed only through being actively pro-feminist.