Snippet

[liv]

I know you shouldn't eavesdrop, but the group at the table next to me this lunchtime weren't speaking quietly or confidentially. They were having a loud, cheerful discussion of how difficult it is for a man to mention any of the fundamental biological differences between men and women. In fact, the way that is is hard for men to have a voice in feminist circles is just like the way that certain topics to do with race are taboo for white people. It's a big problem for feminism, this unwillingness to listen to men and to put the movement on a sound, objective scientific basis rather than just clinging to victim identity and unempirical but ideologically sound political theories.

These are Swedish men, a sociologist and a couple of ecologists I think, the sort of people who would be deeply offended if you implied they were anything other than staunch feminists. They knew all the right buzzwords, they talked about the difference between sex and gender, and decried essentialism. They rather deplore the fact that women are under-represented at the senior levels they belong to, though they expect it's probably mostly a matter of time lag and the fact that so many women choose family over career in spite of all the opportunities available to them.

I suppose I shouldn't complain, perhaps a generation ago a similar group of middle-ranking academics would have bonded by means of loud conversations about the fuckability of their secretarial staff. And they really do mean well, they really do seem to feel hurt about not having an equal voice in feminist discourse. It's extraordinarily unlikely that they were having this discussion with the deliberate intention of making female colleagues feel unwelcome. It's just sad that people who have lived most of their lives in a remarkably egalitarian society, people who strongly believe in principle that women and men are absolutely equal, people who by the sound of it are better versed in feminist literature and theory than I am, just so fundamentally don't get it.

Comments

[robhu.livejournal.com]

I read this post, and then got to the end where you said they don't get it.

Obviously I don't get it either.

What is it I don't get?

(this is not trolling - this is a serious honest question)

[kake]

The people that livredor is talking about are offended because they're not being automatically listened to in the way that they're used to being in the other spheres of their lives. They're viewing their gender (and class) privilege as normal, and hence invisible.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

Perhaps this is what I don't understand. I think that people's ideas should be judged on their merits - people ought to be listened to if what they're saying is (objectively?) useful and interesting, not on the basis of their gender.

I didn't read their comments to say "We should be listened to because we're male" (if that's what you mean), but rather "We should be listened to because we are intelligent well informed people with objectively useful things to add to the discussion".

ISTM that this is the ideal which feminist thought ought to approach - an equality - where people's ideas are judged to be worthwhile regardless of their gender.

[kake]

I think that people's ideas should be judged on their merits - people ought to be listened to if what they're saying is (objectively?) useful and interesting, not on the basis of their gender.

Yep, exactly. They're not saying "we should be listened to because we're male", they're saying "we should be listened to because we're smart and well-informed" — but smart and well-informed people are often ignored because they're not male (or they dress "wrong" or have the "wrong" accent). The fact that these people find it surprising that they're not being listened to is a sign that they have a certain amount of privilege; and given that they seem so well-informed, they really should be aware of this.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

I'm getting really confused here.

So you're saying that what they're upset about (that "it's hard for men to have a voice in feminist circles") and that "It's a big problem for feminism, this unwillingness to listen to men and to put the movement on a sound, objective scientific basis rather than just clinging to victim identity and unempirical but ideologically sound political theories." are reasonable and correct ciriticisms that 'feminism' need to fix, but your issue with them is their surprise over this?

I didn't read any surprise in to [Bad username or site: livredor' / @ livejournal.com]'s account.

[kake]

I don't think I can help you any more, I'm afraid; I've said everything that I think might help. I hope other people's replies are useful to you.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

Thank you for your comments, but you didn't really help me at all because when I tried to ask if I understood what you were saying you've just said you can't help me (I'm not sure if I'm supposed to read that as a kind of 'you're still not getting it' comment -- and if so then I don't know what it is you think I'm not getting).

I strongly suspect that a lot is being read in to what the male academics said that just isn't there (at least based on this post).

[kake]

You might prefer to view my comments as an interesting sidetrack rather than a telepathic view into exactly what livredor meant. I'm sure she will explain when she gets the chance.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

OK :-)

I hope that [Bad username or site: livredor' / @ livejournal.com] does get the chance. I enjoy her posts and value her thoughts.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

I didn't get the impression from livredor's account that the men were surprised, either -- the report sounds more like genuine confusion to me. But I'm assuming that they were having this loud discussion in the middle of a busy mixed-sex cafeteria. That's at the very least insensitive, and given that they are in a place where they have the opportunity to talk to (and, as others have said, listen to ...) actual women about the thing they're confused about, it's depressing (and insulting to the women in earshot) that they don't.

[liv]

They weren't surprised exactly, no. A bit annoyed, maybe, but pretty resigned to the fact that feminism is mean and unfair to men.

They were almost explicitly male bonding, which is quite odd, because most of the time that's a slightly mocking way that women describe men's behaviour, not something that men think of themselves doing. But the context of the conversation was that it's really nice to get the chance to have a heart to heart with other men and be able to say the things that aren't PC in mixed company. But as you say, it definitely is a problem that they were doing this bonding loudly in a public place. So they actually were in mixed company, and still chose to say things that are really quite disrespectful of women.

[liv]

I also can't telepathically interpret nou for you, but I think this interpretation is slightly skew. I think it is somewhat true that men in the feminist world have some negative assumptions to overcome, and it's somewhat fair to be upset about this. However, the whole point of feminism is to deal with massive negative assumptions against women in most areas of society, not to make men feel more comfortable and valued!

Also, it's not at all true that men, who are respected in their own field and generally intelligent and so on, but not particularly well-informed about feminism, are naturally objective and scientific, and it's not true that women who are experts in feminism just want to be victims and care about ideology more than empirical facts. Some feminists may be stupid and ill-informed and overly ideological, but that doesn't mean feminism as a whole is flawed. Their criticisms of feminism are not reasonable or correct, but based on hidden sexist assumptions that they're not aware of.

The privilege and surprise thing is about expectations and lack of empathy, I think. It's not the natural order of the world that middle aged, middle class white men should always be taken seriously and everybody else should have to prove themselves impeccable in every way in order to get any positive acknowledgement at all. But if all their experience is in a world where this is the case, they may have a hard time imagining what it's like not to be top dog. They might not even know that their experience isn't universal (or that they themselves are holding women as a group to a higher standard than men as a group). Hence, the mild bias of some feminists against men is very visible to them, because it affects them negatively, whereas the huge bias of sexists against women isn't visible to them so they assume it isn't important.

[naath.livejournal.com]

people ought to be listened to if what they're saying is (objectively?) useful

Ah, but commonly (in all cases I have witnessed) men saying that feminists don't listen to men are saying things that anyone who has spent a long time in feminist circles has already heard umpty million times, and quite likely something that someone has done research on and shown wrong. For instance most "innate" difference (other than the statistical variation of purely physical things such as height) have been shown to be basically rubbish by Reputable Scientists (some of whom are male) - I don't think that Joe Random pontificating on it being "natural" that women like cooking and men don't is a useful contribution to, well, anything really.

Many men have made important contributions to feminism and feminist thought, they were listened to because they had new things to say that could be shown to be correct.

[liv]

Yeah, exactly, all the stuff they were complaining that men aren't allowed to say in feminist circles was stuff that they're not "allowed" to say because it's stupid and has been debunked millions of times, not because they're men.

[liv]

Totally agree that people's ideas should be judged on their merits. However, the idea of hey, maybe all those years of research are wrong after all and the main reason for differences between men and women is that women are just biologically unfortunate, has no merits at all. That idea doesn't get ignored because the person proposing it is male, it gets ignored because it's a stupid and offensive idea. I think it is true that a man proposing an unoriginal and wrong idea which has sexist consequences is likely to be assumed to be deliberately sexist, whereas a woman presenting an equally stupid idea may be given more of the benefit of the doubt. You could argue that's unfair to men, but generally if men actually make useful contributions, they are taken just as seriously as a woman would be.

I don't think the scientists I overheard explicitly believe that they should be listened to because they are male. But because they are male, and have a high social position, they have spent their lives in a world which defaults to the assumption that everything they say is intelligent, well-informed and objectively useful. So when they encounter a small enclave where they don't have that sort of power, they are upset, and they attribute this loss of social status to the fact that feminists are biased against men. In fact, feminists are just a little tiny bit less biased towards men than most other people.

So, in normal life: men who say stupid things get listened to, because most of the people they encounter have a strong instinct to try to win the good opinion and protection of the dominant animals in the pack. Men who say intelligent things get listened to as well, but they can't use the reaction of their social inferiors to judge whether what they said is intelligent. In feminist circles, men who say stupid things get mocked and criticized, because the feminist context makes it less risky to do that. Men who say intelligent things however do fine.

[liv]

This is entirely true, and thanks for backing me up. But I think you're expressing it in a slightly jargon-y way which might not make sense to someone who doesn't know a whole lot about feminism.

I do agree, though, part of the problem is that they're used to being taken seriously because they have significant social power. So they're really upset when they get into a situation where locally, the power is held by people who actually know something about feminism. The problem is not so much that they're unaware of their privilege, but the fact that instead of developing empathy and thinking, now I know what women feel like when people won't pay attention to their ideas just cos they're female, they conclude that there's something wrong with feminism for creating certain very limited situations where the hierarchy is different from the standard one.

[redbird]

They are assuming, and asserting, that if someone doesn't agree with them that the differences between genders are fundamental and important to feminism and to the ongoing problems of sexism [1], it's not because they the speakers might be mistaken, it's not because the person has considered the claim and rejected it on sound grounds, it must be because they-the-male-speakers are being ignored on the grounds of their gender, or because the person who disagrees with them is clinging to "victim identity." While loudly bemoaning that they aren't getting the respect and attention they are used to taking for granted.

Somehow, none of the men who complain that feminism--by which they almost certainly mean specific feminist women they know or work with--won't listen to them, get around to writing up their "sounder" and "more empirical" feminist theories and sending them to a newspaper or book publisher.

I'm a white woman. I might well be talking to other white people about some aspects of race and racism as they exists in the U.S., which is where I live (and always have). If one of them started complaining about how fundamentally unfair it was that black people wouldn't listen to us, I would point out that the entire history of this culture involves white people getting to speak, and be listened to, far more than black people do. These men are in a similar situation: they are so used to be listened to, with at least the pretense of respect, that they assume it as a right. They take for granted that they are entitled to women's time and attention, whenever they speak up, and regardless of whether, by doing so, they are interrupting women who are already speaking, and presenting important information and ideas.

[1] This complaint never has to do with the visible and/or statistically significant differences between the genders, such as that men average taller than women and none of them can bear children, while some of us can. Because "men can't bear children, poor us" or "men can't bear children, and thus need not worry about contraception" aren't where they want to take this.

[friend-of-tofu.livejournal.com]

I think this is very instructional, yes.

[liv]

Thank you, this is such a clear explanation of what was wrong with this conversation! I'm really glad you contributed a rebuttal, because I'm still figuring out how to put this point across without dropping into circular arguments that rely on a basic acceptance of feminism.

[redbird]

Another piece of this: they're ignoring that only women are expected to choose between family and career. A male academic who wants children isn't seen as "choosing family over career," and rarely delays his education or career in order to care for those children. Yes, women bear all the children: most childcare does not take place in the months between conception and weaning, and if the baby is bottle-fed (formula or pumped breast milk), fathers are as capable as mothers of taking care of the children from the very beginning.

[liv]

The thing is, this is Sweden, where it seems to be generally accepted both socially and legally that childcare is a shared responsibility. Most men do use their legal right to paternity leave, usually taking a significant chunk of time off work in the second year of the kid's life, though some couples have other ways of dividing things (eg both working part time on different days of the week). So these guys know that men can and do take career breaks for childcare.

The choosing they're talking about comes in at a later stage. A common pattern I've seen is that a couple start out completely egalitarian, and for reasons that genuinely are biological, they agree that the mother should take the first part of the leave period. So she'll be at home with the kid for the first six months or year of its life, then as previously agreed the man will take over. But the man turns out to be completely overwhelmed by suddenly having to do full-time childcare, and the woman forgets that she was equally overwhelmed when she first started out, and has a year of experience that he doesn't have yet, so she can easily fall into the assumption that men are "naturally" less competent at childcare. When it comes to the end of the official leave period, which is usually two years total but there are ways of fiddling that, many women say, actually, I don't want to go back to my old hyper-competitive, more than full-time job, I want to make sure I have time with my family. So she drops to part time or moves to a less competitive job, or has a second kid. The man feels he's done his bit (though he may take another six months to look after the second child), and returns to the career track he was on before they had a family.

So yes, on the individual level, many women are choosing family over career. But there's a context in which they are making these choices; the sexism they face at work probably makes them more reluctant to carry on having to be twice as good as their male colleagues to get half the credit. They have to deal with far more brainwashing that it's a woman's duty to give her child the best upbringing possible, so they are far more likely to feel guilty about packing a young child off to full-time daycare (an option which thankfully does exist in Sweden), or doing the housework less than perfectly because they're too busy at work to have time. Many women even feel guilty that their husbands aren't as dedicated parents as they would be.

[liv]

Thank you for asking honestly; I'll see if I can explain my reaction in more detail. They claim that not listening to men enough is a big problem for feminism; I'd suggest that it's a bigger problem that many women can't ever get their views listened to at all, because they're assumed to be emotional / hysterical, or lying to manipulate men into giving them more stuff, or if they manage to exactly duplicate expected male behaviour, they're not real women, they're ball-breakers and scary dykes who are destroying traditional families and generally perceived as highly threatening.

It's simply not true that feminists refuse to listen to men just because they are male; feminism is very heavily influenced by male theorists and writers, not to mention all the men doing the thankless, painstaking work of sociological research to establish systematic disadvantages to women in our society. A man who breezily declares that sexism is over, and the only disadvantages that women have are due to fundamental biological differences that can't be helped, might well genuinely believe that that's the case. But there's a fairly sound reason for suspecting that he is just trying to protect the advantages he has or at least make excuses for not doing anything about sexism.

Besides, there's a huge body of objective evidence that "innate" differences in ability between men and women are tiny, and certainly not enough to account for the vast gulf between outcomes in our society. People seem to have a strong tendency to falsely attribute differences to gender, like if they have two children, a boy and a girl, and the boy plays with trucks while the girl prefers dolls, they leap to the conclusion that it's absolutely natural and unchangeable that all men have an affinity for mechanical things and women for communication and relationships. In any other case, any half-way intelligent person would think, hm, sample of two, not really very strong evidence here. Also, the media tends to do things like report a study where dozens of characteristics are compared and the differences between the genders are smaller than the experimental error for all of them but one, with banner headlines declaring that that one characteristic proves that men and women are fundamentally different.

They assume that men shooting their mouths off about feminism and gender are objective and scientific, while women who have spent years studying feminist issues just want to be victims and put ideology ahead of empirical facts. Which might just possibly be a sexist assumption, dontcha think?

OK, this is just a start; I have to go to work now, but will try to expand on this later.

[liv]

The other problem I have here is the fact that they were contributing to a women-unfriendly working environment by having that conversation in a public place. I have emphasised that I don't think they did it deliberately in order to be sexist, but it still has that effect. I also don't think they should be banned from having this kind of conversation, I just wish they didn't feel the desire to!

A young female scientist (eg me) who hears this kind of conversation gets the message that senior men in the department think women are innately less good at science than men, and even if they are equally good they choose to have babies instead of pursuing a high level career, and if they ever try to do anything about any unfair treatment they may encounter, they're just clinging to victim identity and obviously not being objective enough. Of course, no woman who has got this far is going to give up entirely just because she overhears one sexist conversation. But she knows that this kind of attitude, basically egalitarian but annoyed at feminism for not listening to men enough and not willing to do anything active to prevent discrimination, is about the best she can hope for among the men who will be making the decision whether to hire her, whether to promote her and so on. In my opinion, men who sincerely believe in the equality of all people should be doing better than this.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I had about this problem in a class way instead of a gender way recently. Eventually I just gave up trying to explain because the very nature of the problem meant they weren't even going to understand what I meant, never mind want to fix it, and I had better things to do.

[liv]

Well, in this case I wasn't in a position to explain or argue, because I would have had to interrupt what was at least nominally a private conversation.

I can just imagine a similar problem around class, because it's sort of marginally socially acceptable to assert that upper middle class people are in fact superior to others. And people have really odd beliefs about "class war" and a huge dollop of defensiveness about any possible criticism of any middle class outlook. I'm glad that at least you knew when to give up, but that sounds a really, really annoying conversation.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

It had spin-off benefits in reassessing people I previously liked too much for my own good. But yes, it was very annoying.

[syllopsium.livejournal.com]

The problem I have with this, is that there are so few well publicised resources[1] to show people exactly why their viewpoint is flawed. This I also believe is a fairly universal issue of one group who is possibly more privileged not wanting to see the situation of another group - it's not limited to feminism.

It is not the job of any single feminist to take onboard all viewpoints, educate and inform. However, it is a responsibility of the community as a whole, and the lack of rebuttal to viewpoints leads to assumptions. Assumptions hurt the feminist (or any other) cause.

I went round this route a while back and eventually someone brought up a feminist website - I must find the post and post the link, sometime. However, the fact that finding or being pointed at the information is not straightforward helps no-one.

Of course, even if such a resource did exist, change would still be slow. I know from direct experience that reasoned argument only works when the recipient(s) are ready to change; it's more than a little frustrating to get someone to admit that your argument is valid, but that they still won't change their mind because of their emotional response/background/baggage/whatever.

[1] This may well be an inflammatory comment.. However, note that a google on feminism is mostly extremely unhelpful. Feminism FAQ returns Feminism 101 (http://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/) on page 2 which appears to be quite good. Referring people to literature is a complete non starter. Any cause has to provide a basic rebuttal to myths, even if the initial answer is somewhat simplified i.e. If explaining bisexuality the Kinsey scale is used first, as introducing the Klein grid and gender into the mix tends to make the uninitiated's head explode..

[liv]

As I mentioned to you last night, I think this an interesting point. Even though feminists may get a bit impatient with men who have failed to notice that the feminist movement has been around for a hundred and fifty years plus, and need to go back to square one all the time, it is extremely necessary to have basic, accessible resources available. I think many feminists, particularly early feminists, decided that persuading men one at at a time to support their cause was too slow and inefficient, and if they wanted change they were going to have to fight for it themselves. While this is still true, there is some value in convincing men who are well-intentioned but clueless, in addition to all the other activities of feminism.

With these particular guys, though, they weren't complaining of being frustrated because they couldn't find out anything about feminism. They were complaining that they already know everything about feminism and it's boring and intellectually sterile, but they're kind of sympathetic to the idea of women's rights anyway. They're also academics themselves and wouldn't go looking for a simplified overview or FAQ, they are quite capable of reading scholarly articles, especially the guy who's actually a sociologist himself! You can't really convert someone who thinks they're already feminist, I think. If you tried to present them with basic resources, they would probably be offended that you assumed they were ignorant "just because they're male".

[curious-reader.livejournal.com]

I think they live in the wrong century. Even during their time or whatever time they think about women did not choose to live as houswifes and look after children. It was what the society and especially men espected from them. Every woman is different. Even people men at my age think that it is natural for woman to want children themselves. They are those who actually never took any responsibilities for children. I work (volunteer) in a nursery which is in completely different environment then in a private house. I would not be able to deal with them myself and especially in non-children-save environment. People who talk like that have no idea what they are talking about.

[liv]

This is absolutely right; they see women "choosing" to leave their jobs in order to be full-time mothers, but they don't see the social pressures on these women to take that option. I don't know if their age can be blamed, though, they're in their 40s and 50s and have grown up in a world where at least in theory men and women have equal rights. And they probably did contribute to looking after their own kids, cos most Swedish men do. But even so, they have exactly the problem you say of assuming they can make generalizations about all women, without considering individual differences or the society context women are in.