In the latest issue of Parents Magazine, there was a long article about how to bridge the growing achievement gap between boys and girls. If you haven't been keeping up with the research, this time boys are being left behind at alarming rates.
Even a cursory view of the actual research shows us that boys and girls brain structures are virtually identical. How can this be? After all 58% of college graduates are now girls, and girls are outscoring boys on all standardize tests, except in math and science where the they are neck and neck. It seems to be the conclusion of much of popular culture that our educational system is letting boys fall behind by expecting them to sit down and learn. Parents Magazine seemed to assume that the wetware, the actual brain, is different in a boy than in a girl. But of course, if that were true, then no amount of tricks or strategies would be able to undo boys inherent inability to compete now that girls had been liberated.
How short does our memory have to be to have forgotten that boys used to outperform girls?
Boys weren't allowed to go around playing games all day because they were just naturally active. To the contrary. Through the course of human history, boys have been doing better than girls by simply going to school and sitting through hours upon hours of drab and dry Latin classes, and lectures on algebra. In 1950's America, teachers weren't allowing boys to get involved in their learning by being more active. In fact, boys were expected to sit quietly and listen to their teachers without having any breaks until recess. So how could it be that in today's school environment, where children are more engaged in physical movement while learning, and play to teach, and everything else, suddenly boys brains have become incapable of focusing for the relatively small portion of the class period that they are expected to sit still.
The right blames feminism for all this. They see a conspiracy; an attack on boys. But if there is an attack on boys, it is from the right. By rewarding boyishness in boys, we are doing terrible damage. Americans have told boys that what it means to be a boy is to play wildly and with abandon. Boys play sports and watch TV.
According to the actual science, boys and girls learning abilities and styles are nearly identical until puberty. Whenever a child focuses on one activity for an extended period of time, they are developing executive function and attention span. Executive function is the single biggest factor in academic success, not any magical brain chemistry that is gender specific. And executive function can be learned, just as throwing a baseball or counting to 100. Going to a ballet, playing house, playing tea party, and decorating your dolly's play area are all ways to exercise executive function. Playing sports, playing video games, and watching cartoons are not. In the traditional gender roles, girls have a lot of executive function practice, while boys have a lot less.
In a way, forcing kids to sit through those long boring classes in the 1950's actually was good pedagogy. We now know that they didn't learn what they were supposed to be learning, but they were learning something far more important. They were learning the ability to sit through a boring lecture, a board meeting, a long exam, or a grueling all nighter before a deadline. They were learning executive function.
Childrens clothes today are more gendered than ever. Girls shirts are more pink, and if they are not pink, they always have frills and poofy sleeves (trust me, I've looked). Boys shirts are mostly about sports, military, or (for some reason) dinosaurs. Parents today seem desperate to make sure their children are identified with their proper gender, and if parents are desperate to make that identification, than their children will sense that desperation and do what they can to make their parents happy.
It is time to break the cycle before another generation of boys is lost to gender expectations.
Boys already commit violent crimes in far higher rates, and they already die young because of risky behavior at rates so high that even befriending a boy in early pubescence increases a girls rate of dying from risky behavior also. I am anxious to see what this hypergendered generation of boys is going to do. Hopefully, they will follow in the footsteps of so many generations before them and they will rebel. But this time, they will rebel from the WASPy gender roles that are being foisted upon them by their parents who are so terrified of themselves that they have spent the last decade hiding behind makeup and football helmets instead of trying to liberate themselves.
I write this with my 14-month-old son on my chest. My son is wearing a red and orange striped shirt, a pair of brown sweat pants, and a small pony tail sticking off the top of his head. He is asleep right now, but he will wake up!
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Mothering: My Day in Drag
The difference between mothering and fathering tell a significant story. A couple of weeks ago, I dressed in a suit in order to make a contact about a possible job, and I experienced that difference first hand.
People looked differently at me when I was in my man drag. They avoided my gaze. Normally, when people see my 13-month-old, they smile, laugh or stick out their tongues at him. But that day, they were far less likely to look at him at all, much less play with him. On the rare occasion that someone did look him in the eye, they conspicuously looked away when I turned towards them. I was an entirely different person than the tee-shirt and jeans wearing mop headed, Dad. I was a Father.
Mothering
According to Sara Ruddick, the author of the 1989 book Maternal Thinking, "Anyone who commits her or himself to responding to children’s demands, and makes the work of response a considerable part of her or his life, is a mother." The most common definition of mothering emphasizes caring for someone, usually a child. Sometimes we say it derisively to indicate that someone cares so intensely that they have lost their boundaries.
Fathering
Fathering, on the other hand, is (as Webster's dictionary puts it) begetting. It is a place of origin, as in, "He is the father of the social welfare state" or, "He fathered that child." A father need only make a woman pregnant and then walk away. However, fathering has also come to mean earning money for the household, like a conveyor belt in a factory. The role of earning money fits well with our traditional view of a father as someone who is there at the beginning but doesn't see the parenting role through to completion. The father is there in the morning, all the parenting happens, and then the father comes home at night for a glass of beer and maybe some disciplining of the kids.
From Dad to Father
While I was on that subway wearing a suit, to the people around me I was a father. I was an originator, not an actively engaged participant in my son's life. I was not a dad who responds to the needs of someone I love, but just a father probably taking him to daycare. It was a sad experience for me. There was a presumed distance between me and my son. It felt like I wasn't getting credit for my "mothering."
But there was also a moment of realization of how far we have come. Whenever I am dressed as Dad, people do see me as a mother. They acknowledge Ms. Ruddick's statement that mothering is not female specific. They look me in the eye and talk to me about my child. When I go to playgroups and reading circles with my 13-month-old, I see other Dads who are met as equals by the mother's in the group. I am heartened to see that the traditionally female skill of child rearing, not just child begetting, is becoming a human skill shared by men and women alike. This barrier is falling as quickly as the workplace gender barrier was to fall in 1961. We men are taking what should rightfully be shared with all of us.
Parenting?
As described in earlier posts, the stay-at-home mom is a recent invention made available to more than a handful of extremely wealthy women only through the invention of technology. Before the early 20th cetnruty, most but the wealthiest women had to work even as they were raising their children, and the wealthiest women had servants that raised their children for them so it would be a teeny bit ridiculous to even call them stay-at-home moms.
The real question is not whether we should all do what Judith Schafley tells us to do and have the women stay home with the kids while the men go to the office, but that we should all be able to find a combination of "mothering" and "fathering" that suits our individual talents, skills, and desires. Perhaps for most people, we all want to mother and to father. We all want to find a meaningful job where we can challenge ourselves and engage with other adults, and we all want to cuddle with our kids once we get home.
Certainly, daycare can make that available to a larger swath of people, just as having one auncle stay home with all the cousins can free up the family to go to work. But part time work is another option, where parents can trade off between one another. In that world, perhaps a man in man-drag on a subway car with a stroller will be assumed to be as much a mother as a woman in sweat pants.
Recently, Sara Ruddick passed away, and we all lost a great mother who spent her life caring for us and trying to introduce us to the satisfaction of being great mothers ourselves. And perhaps, for those women who want to be fathers, they can find equal satisfaction in being great fathers. When it comes to parenting, Sara Ruddick showed the world that gender roles are artificially confining unless we can pick which parts of which gender role we'd like and which we wouldn't.
We won't be able to pick and choose our gender roles until we start valuing the woman's role as much as we value the man's role. As long as the emphasis on gender equality remains on the importance of giving women a place in the office, we will always be valuing traditionally male priorities. And it is not enough to smile and say, "Isn't that wonderful that he's a stay-at-home Dad," or "It sure is nice to have a man in the classroom." We need to actively advocate for men in pink collar jobs and the home, and while it is good to have women allies, the impetus needs to come from men.
One example of this kind of liberating gender traitorship is the active and full engagement of a man in man-drag in mothering. I felt deliberately defiant and a terrific rush of liberation when I sang songs with my kid the whole way home. For some, the melody of liberation is "We shall overcome," for others it is actually, "Twinkle twinkle little star."
People looked differently at me when I was in my man drag. They avoided my gaze. Normally, when people see my 13-month-old, they smile, laugh or stick out their tongues at him. But that day, they were far less likely to look at him at all, much less play with him. On the rare occasion that someone did look him in the eye, they conspicuously looked away when I turned towards them. I was an entirely different person than the tee-shirt and jeans wearing mop headed, Dad. I was a Father.
Mothering
According to Sara Ruddick, the author of the 1989 book Maternal Thinking, "Anyone who commits her or himself to responding to children’s demands, and makes the work of response a considerable part of her or his life, is a mother." The most common definition of mothering emphasizes caring for someone, usually a child. Sometimes we say it derisively to indicate that someone cares so intensely that they have lost their boundaries.
Fathering
Fathering, on the other hand, is (as Webster's dictionary puts it) begetting. It is a place of origin, as in, "He is the father of the social welfare state" or, "He fathered that child." A father need only make a woman pregnant and then walk away. However, fathering has also come to mean earning money for the household, like a conveyor belt in a factory. The role of earning money fits well with our traditional view of a father as someone who is there at the beginning but doesn't see the parenting role through to completion. The father is there in the morning, all the parenting happens, and then the father comes home at night for a glass of beer and maybe some disciplining of the kids.
From Dad to Father
While I was on that subway wearing a suit, to the people around me I was a father. I was an originator, not an actively engaged participant in my son's life. I was not a dad who responds to the needs of someone I love, but just a father probably taking him to daycare. It was a sad experience for me. There was a presumed distance between me and my son. It felt like I wasn't getting credit for my "mothering."
But there was also a moment of realization of how far we have come. Whenever I am dressed as Dad, people do see me as a mother. They acknowledge Ms. Ruddick's statement that mothering is not female specific. They look me in the eye and talk to me about my child. When I go to playgroups and reading circles with my 13-month-old, I see other Dads who are met as equals by the mother's in the group. I am heartened to see that the traditionally female skill of child rearing, not just child begetting, is becoming a human skill shared by men and women alike. This barrier is falling as quickly as the workplace gender barrier was to fall in 1961. We men are taking what should rightfully be shared with all of us.
Parenting?
As described in earlier posts, the stay-at-home mom is a recent invention made available to more than a handful of extremely wealthy women only through the invention of technology. Before the early 20th cetnruty, most but the wealthiest women had to work even as they were raising their children, and the wealthiest women had servants that raised their children for them so it would be a teeny bit ridiculous to even call them stay-at-home moms.
The real question is not whether we should all do what Judith Schafley tells us to do and have the women stay home with the kids while the men go to the office, but that we should all be able to find a combination of "mothering" and "fathering" that suits our individual talents, skills, and desires. Perhaps for most people, we all want to mother and to father. We all want to find a meaningful job where we can challenge ourselves and engage with other adults, and we all want to cuddle with our kids once we get home.
Certainly, daycare can make that available to a larger swath of people, just as having one auncle stay home with all the cousins can free up the family to go to work. But part time work is another option, where parents can trade off between one another. In that world, perhaps a man in man-drag on a subway car with a stroller will be assumed to be as much a mother as a woman in sweat pants.
Recently, Sara Ruddick passed away, and we all lost a great mother who spent her life caring for us and trying to introduce us to the satisfaction of being great mothers ourselves. And perhaps, for those women who want to be fathers, they can find equal satisfaction in being great fathers. When it comes to parenting, Sara Ruddick showed the world that gender roles are artificially confining unless we can pick which parts of which gender role we'd like and which we wouldn't.
We won't be able to pick and choose our gender roles until we start valuing the woman's role as much as we value the man's role. As long as the emphasis on gender equality remains on the importance of giving women a place in the office, we will always be valuing traditionally male priorities. And it is not enough to smile and say, "Isn't that wonderful that he's a stay-at-home Dad," or "It sure is nice to have a man in the classroom." We need to actively advocate for men in pink collar jobs and the home, and while it is good to have women allies, the impetus needs to come from men.
One example of this kind of liberating gender traitorship is the active and full engagement of a man in man-drag in mothering. I felt deliberately defiant and a terrific rush of liberation when I sang songs with my kid the whole way home. For some, the melody of liberation is "We shall overcome," for others it is actually, "Twinkle twinkle little star."
Friday, March 11, 2011
Two Opposing Articles on Feminism Make the Same Mistake
What is the commonality between militant isolationist feminism, and regressive pro-masculinity movements?
Fewer isolationist feminists exist now than in the 2nd wave, but I recently stumbled on an article by a woman in Mumbai that argues that men should just get out of feminism altogether. Men, she argues, are determined to conquer feminism and make it their own in the same way that they conquered India (and the Americas). She gives as an example the fact that men look like "good-samaritans" when they simply call themselves feminists, while women look "cantankerous."
In a total opposite corner of the world, a man in Boulder makes the same point that men should stay out of the feminist enterprise in a badly written rant on why we should be "strict" with our women. Oddly, the rant is posted on a wedding photographers website. That's right, some guy in Boulder believes that such a rant will get him business. And he's probably right. There are enough men out there whose cowardice has them quivering in the corner over feminism that he's probably making bank even in Boulder.
They are both saying essentially the same thing. They are both saying that men have no place in feminism. They are both saying it for the same reason. They are saying it because they fail to see what men have to gain from valuing traditional women's work and traditional women's roles.
They both think that men are getting together to talk about feminism and how to break free of traditional gender roles as a way of manipulating women. The radical isolationist thinks men are doing it in order to continue patriarchy (the title of her article is "Another Patriarchy: Feminist Men"). The radical regressive thinks that men are joining feminists because they are attempting to placate their wives and partners. But neither of them can think of any motive that could possibly be genuine.
Surprisingly, they both give tons of reasons that men might want to be free from masculinity. The feminist rants about the causes of "violence; Patriarchal stereotypes, male insecurity, male ego, male frustration, male fear over female sexuality." While the regressive points out that men work longer hours than women, and often do more dangerous jobs. These reasons that men may want to break free of masculinity's maniacal amoral mores slap both commentators in the face, but they willfully refuse to notice. Why?
The feminist is confounded that men would be able to solve anything by sitting around in a room and discussing "oppressive behavior." Instead of violently and vehemently resisting something, she is upset that men are taking credit for discussing how best to tackle the problem. One of the things that men have to learn from women is how to sit around in groups to discuss "oppressive behavior," as well as how to let go of "male insecurity, male ego" and see spending times with their families as more important than working long hours at dangerous jobs for a little more money. Believe it or not, and neither of these commentators do, in some ways feminine methods of approaching life are actually BETTER than masculine ways of approaching life. Sitting in a circle to talk about things is BETTER than violent and vehement reactions in some situations. Working less and earning less in order to spend more time with your family is BETTER than earning more and seeing your family less for most men and women.
But in a society where our values have been defined by traditional masculinity for so long, even radical feminists default to thinking that masculine values and systems are superior. Until we have a society wide wake-up call that shows regressive and progressive thinkers alike that we are all thinking way too masculine, equality will only be a pipe dream.
Fewer isolationist feminists exist now than in the 2nd wave, but I recently stumbled on an article by a woman in Mumbai that argues that men should just get out of feminism altogether. Men, she argues, are determined to conquer feminism and make it their own in the same way that they conquered India (and the Americas). She gives as an example the fact that men look like "good-samaritans" when they simply call themselves feminists, while women look "cantankerous."
In a total opposite corner of the world, a man in Boulder makes the same point that men should stay out of the feminist enterprise in a badly written rant on why we should be "strict" with our women. Oddly, the rant is posted on a wedding photographers website. That's right, some guy in Boulder believes that such a rant will get him business. And he's probably right. There are enough men out there whose cowardice has them quivering in the corner over feminism that he's probably making bank even in Boulder.
They are both saying essentially the same thing. They are both saying that men have no place in feminism. They are both saying it for the same reason. They are saying it because they fail to see what men have to gain from valuing traditional women's work and traditional women's roles.
They both think that men are getting together to talk about feminism and how to break free of traditional gender roles as a way of manipulating women. The radical isolationist thinks men are doing it in order to continue patriarchy (the title of her article is "Another Patriarchy: Feminist Men"). The radical regressive thinks that men are joining feminists because they are attempting to placate their wives and partners. But neither of them can think of any motive that could possibly be genuine.
Surprisingly, they both give tons of reasons that men might want to be free from masculinity. The feminist rants about the causes of "violence; Patriarchal stereotypes, male insecurity, male ego, male frustration, male fear over female sexuality." While the regressive points out that men work longer hours than women, and often do more dangerous jobs. These reasons that men may want to break free of masculinity's maniacal amoral mores slap both commentators in the face, but they willfully refuse to notice. Why?
The feminist is confounded that men would be able to solve anything by sitting around in a room and discussing "oppressive behavior." Instead of violently and vehemently resisting something, she is upset that men are taking credit for discussing how best to tackle the problem. One of the things that men have to learn from women is how to sit around in groups to discuss "oppressive behavior," as well as how to let go of "male insecurity, male ego" and see spending times with their families as more important than working long hours at dangerous jobs for a little more money. Believe it or not, and neither of these commentators do, in some ways feminine methods of approaching life are actually BETTER than masculine ways of approaching life. Sitting in a circle to talk about things is BETTER than violent and vehement reactions in some situations. Working less and earning less in order to spend more time with your family is BETTER than earning more and seeing your family less for most men and women.
But in a society where our values have been defined by traditional masculinity for so long, even radical feminists default to thinking that masculine values and systems are superior. Until we have a society wide wake-up call that shows regressive and progressive thinkers alike that we are all thinking way too masculine, equality will only be a pipe dream.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Radical Regressivists Attack the Stay-at-Home Mom
In a book review of "The Flipside of Feminism," a regressivist author claims that the feminist push for universal childcare is an attempt to "simply transfer women’s dependence on men to dependence on Uncle Sam" and create more government interference in the lives of good hardworking Americans. The author of the article uses Superman and Lois Lane as an example, saying that the children of that duo would likely grow up maladjusted because they would be tragically neglected by their parents.
- First of all, he's Superman. He can stay home with the kids if he wants. He was never as good a reporter as Lois Lane in the first place, and he doesn't even need a baby monitor because he has super hearing. Besides, the kid might be able to fly, depending on his genetic makeup, and then he could just join Superman on his crime fighting adventures, albeit in a supporting role.
- But despite the ridiculousness of this bizarre and troublesomely wholesome example, the authors ignore the simple fact that most moms have been working moms since history began. It was only in the last century that the idea of a stay-at-home mom was able to enter the American ideal, and even that ideal was false. While some upper middle class American women were staying at home with the children in the 1950's, most women, especially women of color, still had to work even during the hey day of the stay-at-home mom myth.
- Additionally, it was because of the social welfare state that the stay-at-home mom was even possible. Women in the tenement factories of the lower east side of New York stayed at home only because the deplorable conditions of their factories were in their own living rooms. They weren't spending their time raising well adjusted children because they were too busy sewing together shirts. If the factory wasn't in their home, they were traveling to the dangerous conditions of the Triangle Shirt Factory, or attempting to find milk that was unadulterated with bleach because there were no FDA regulations. The women on the prairie weren't taking care of the kids while they waited around for their husbands to come back in from the fields. They were growing vegetables, milking the cows, feeding the chickens, and doing the household repairs because how else were they to live before the price controls created in the New Deal. In the stockyards in Chicago, there was no minimum wage, so wives went out to find work along side their husbands. Oh yeah, and the absence of OSHA legislation meant that the men in the stockyards were often home for months at a time unable to work because of injuries. The bosses didn't mind, because they could just replace them if they were injured. After all, there were no unions.
- Meanwhile, during the 1950's (unquestionably the era of the regressivist's ideal stay-at-home mom), American union activity was at an all-time high, NASA was putting men into orbit, the federal government was crisscrossing the nation in freeways, and every dollar that an American earned over $1,000,000 was being taxed at 85%. The regressivists want the benefits of the 1950's with the tax rate and deregulation of the 1890's. But of course, it was the regulations and the taxes that made the 1950's what they were. So maybe, it is the radical regressives who are truly trying to end the era of the stay-at-home mom if ever it actually existed.
- So lets talk about the true flip side of feminism. When progressive policies created the conditions that made the stay-at-home mom an economic possibility, we neglected to recognize that we could have broken the mold of maleness and femaleness, instead we liked our hand and we doubled down. Now that the regressivists feel that they are under attack, they are doubling down again. Only this time, they are afraid that their dream of regression is never going to be possible. In essence, they are bluffing. They want America to abandon feminism. They want us to abandon our search for a better family, a better life, and liberation for men and women.
Monday, February 21, 2011
What to Expect When You Already Know What the Heck You're Expecting
Are boys inherently criminals who are uncaring, unloving, and unable to be empathic? An overwhelming majority of criminals are male, all American executioners are male, and (as discussed last month after the shocking shooting of Rep. Giffords) most American assassins are males. And reading "What To Expect in the First Year" when my son entered his 12th month, it's not very hard to see why.
A reader asked the authors of the book about her 11-month-old boy who, instead of bonding with a baby doll, was throwing the doll against a wall. What to Expect (hereafter WTF) responds, "Sexual equality is an ideal whose time has come, but sexual sameness is an ideal whose time never can come..."
Oh the sexism... Let's start at the beginning.
Be on notice... we men who are liberated will walk into burning buildings to stop people from making the assumption that our sons are inherently violent, and you can either join us by helping to liberate a man (or boy) in your life, or you can get out of the way.
A reader asked the authors of the book about her 11-month-old boy who, instead of bonding with a baby doll, was throwing the doll against a wall. What to Expect (hereafter WTF) responds, "Sexual equality is an ideal whose time has come, but sexual sameness is an ideal whose time never can come..."
Oh the sexism... Let's start at the beginning.
- This woman's son doesn't know what a doll is, much less that he is throwing it at a wall. These are experiments in gravity and physics, not some kind of rejection of fatherhood. By insinuating that the son's throwing of this doll at 11 months is proof that he is already gendered as a traditional masculine boy, the authors of WTF are showing us how eager they are to protect traditional masculinity. As the stay-at-home dad of a 1-year-old, I can assure you that he would just as soon cuddle with a soccer ball as throw a doll against a wall, and the girl 1-year-old contingent is equally likely to commit violence on their dolls as my son.
- The impossibility of what the authors call "sexual sameness" is a statistical mirage. While it is true that there is a difference between AVERAGE boys and AVERAGE girls, any individual boy is as different from other boys as girls (see Elise Eliot's, "Pink Brain, Blue Brain" for overwhelming evidence of this fact proven by an MIT professor of neuroscience). At the high end, the differences between boys and girls on any given trait is a five to three ratio. So while this is impossible to calculate, at least 30% of all boys are more caring and loving than 50% of all girls. Just as Lindsey Vonn can ski faster than (say) all of the guys on the slopes who think they are the fastest thing to hit snow since an avalanche, it is equally true that your son can may be able to cuddle and kiss any girl baby on the block. The gender differences that we encounter on a day-to-day basis are so unremarkable as to be almost entirely impossible to notice. Think about it, for every 5 boys that you meet who are aggressive, you will meet 3 girls who are also aggressive. Dr. Eliot points out that this is not enough of a consistent difference to make decisions about our children's lives, but...
- unfortuantely we do make decisions about our children's lives based on exactly these loose statistical likelihoods everyday. In fact, WTF is stating clear as day that I should assume that my son is not one of the 3 boys who is more loving than 5 girls, but one of the 5 boys who is more aggressive than 5 girls. The statement seems like nonesense because it is nonsense.
- But worse than being nonsense, it is downright offensive! Fifty years ago there was a common belief (unbacked by actual science) that girls were bad drivers. If this 11-month-old were a girl who repeatedly crashed a toy truck into the wall, the appropriate correlation would be to say that girls are just bad drivers from birth and there is nothing that you can do about it. The very idea that my 11-month-old son already knows what a baby doll represents and is determined to commit violence upon that doll is remarkably disturbing and a flat out lie. Boys as well as girls are being trained to be parents. Fathers are important parts of our society and they all come (quite naturally) from baby boys. Fathers do not throw their babies' against walls and they do love them so much that they would happily walk into a burning building to try to keep them from feeling any more pain than is utterly necessary. What to Expect, an otherwise excellent resource when kept in context, is unfortunately an agent of pain for parents who are being told that violence is an inherent part of being a boy but love, kisses, and cuddling are not.
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| Difference between boys' and girls' math scores. |
Be on notice... we men who are liberated will walk into burning buildings to stop people from making the assumption that our sons are inherently violent, and you can either join us by helping to liberate a man (or boy) in your life, or you can get out of the way.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Super Bowl Junk Food
I have tried to defend the Super Bowl with lines like, "It's not that masculine" or "It's just once a year," but no reason that I have found really excuses it. The only thing that I can say for it was that it made me feel good to be American, and to be a man.
Some masculinists out there think that means that it's harmless, but it clearly isn't. Domestic violence notoriously increases during football games, especially against women living in households routing for the losing team. Drunk driving deaths go up, especially in states where there are no blue laws. Drinking deaths also increase, as well as murder rates. Child Psychlogists have proven that children who watch football and other aggressive sports actually start to act more aggressive, especially boys. Overall, America during the Super Bowl seems like a hellscape.
But, of course, it isn't. The Super Bowl is a celebration of the traditional gender roles that have been running our society since the great shifts of the 19th Century with roots dating back to Abraham. One might conclude that if we enjoy the Super Bowl, and the Super Bowl is a celebration of traditional gender roles, than traditional gender norms can't be all that bad. But notice the leap in logic from enjoying something to that thing being not all that bad. A 500lb man can enjoy the two pound, bacon covered, cheese slathered hamburger that is the difference between loosing a limb and keeping it. A pedophile enjoys lots of things that are bad.
The Super Bowl is not a good equivalent to statutory rape, but it is a good equivalent to the massive cardiac attack inducing foods that they serve in the stands. Sure, not all of us are 500lbs, but those of us who are will be the most damaged by continuing our path towards hyper genders. In an era when Disney princesses have made a powerful resurgence, and the GI Joe movie was more violent than Schindlers List (but then again, many so-called PG-13 action movies are), perhaps we look more like the 500lb men in the wheelchairs and less like the 400 lb men on the field; more like the pedophile than the 14-year-old with a crush.
We have to get on in a world that is full of the hyper-gendered, and so we have to give cultural significance to gender celebrations like the Super Bowl. There was a time when the entire country celebrated the Miss America Pageant in a similar way, but the partial liberation of women has dulled the popularity of beauty pageants except among the most gendered segments of society. The Super Bowl is our annual celebration of masculinity. Just as a marathoner is free to eat a bucket of fried chicken every once in a while, a liberated society won't need to get rid of such masculine celebrations, just put them into context.
Hopefully, occasionally, rightbedone can provide that context.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Dirty Objectives
An old friend recently sent me this article showing how teaching girls to play in the dirt is necessary for building resistance to germs as adults. Similarly, I think we can all see how teaching boys proper hygiene (for goodness sake men, wash your hands after you pee) is a goal with which we can all agree.
Much of this blog has been dedicated to showing how simple things like hygiene are tied to gender, and that therefore gender as a construct can be both powerful and harmful.
The problem with gender is not that boyness or girliness is bad as a whole, but rather that they are invented, not deliberately, but by tradition and history. Maybe most of the things that we bundle in with masculinity are terrific, but that doesn't mean that we should unquestioningly accept the entire bundle.
We should pull the bundle apart, trait by dirty trait, and keep what we like from both traditional genders, and learn from the dozens of non-traditional genders that have erupted in direct response to those traditional genders.
We should teach boys how to enjoy being clean and made up, and we should teach girls how to enjoy being covered in mud. A healthy person can do both, and the more we learn about the world through modern science, the more we learn that it is impossible to be healthy without a little soap... and a little mud.
Much of this blog has been dedicated to showing how simple things like hygiene are tied to gender, and that therefore gender as a construct can be both powerful and harmful.
The problem with gender is not that boyness or girliness is bad as a whole, but rather that they are invented, not deliberately, but by tradition and history. Maybe most of the things that we bundle in with masculinity are terrific, but that doesn't mean that we should unquestioningly accept the entire bundle.
We should pull the bundle apart, trait by dirty trait, and keep what we like from both traditional genders, and learn from the dozens of non-traditional genders that have erupted in direct response to those traditional genders.
We should teach boys how to enjoy being clean and made up, and we should teach girls how to enjoy being covered in mud. A healthy person can do both, and the more we learn about the world through modern science, the more we learn that it is impossible to be healthy without a little soap... and a little mud.
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