Gender & Identity in Online Culture

[Rachel Swirsky]

Explain to me why men having "the power in the situation" makes it okay for women to insult and offend them? That then victimizes men, AND drags women down to the level of being insulting and offense because they're "striking" back at the white male. Completely undermining the idea of equality.

No, it doesn't victimize men.

I don't tell jokes about men. I'm not into them. I don't think jokes based on stereotypes are funny, generally.

However, I don't think jokes about men harm men. Men as a class are not in a position to be harmed by women as a class. Men are not systematically oppressed because of their gender. Women are. Women, as a class, are continually hurt and oppressed through stereotypes promoted through jokes. Men, as a class, aren't.

It's the difference between "in bad taste" and "contributing to the systemic oppressio of a large group of people." You're not going to convince me that's not an important distinction.

*

By the way, I'm leaving the comptuer for a while now. I will respond to everything I feel I need to respond to that has been said up to this point in the day. I'm not ignoring anyone, just dealing with class stuff.

[slic]

No, it doesn't victimize men.

I don't tell jokes about men. I'm not into them. I don't think jokes based on stereotypes are funny, generally.

However, I don't think jokes about men harm men. Men as a class are not in a position to be harmed by women as a class. Men are not systematically oppressed because of their gender. Women are. Women, as a class, are continually hurt and oppressed through stereotypes promoted through jokes. Men, as a class, aren't.

And this is where you lose me.  I get that you are using Men as the group name and not men as in me -and but this sounds like "You're bigger and stronger than me, so if I hit you in the knees with a baseball bat it won't hurt as much, so it's ok to hit you with the bat."

[Anarkey]

As to where it was meant to go - no where really - just something to mention.  However, as has been pointed out, cultural-bias comes long established practices. As far as English culture goes, French and Italian (Spanish to a certain extent) have had a significant impact. I know that the Angles and Saxons were there first, but I've never studied the influences they left.  Overall, though, I'm just as curious as you on how European feminists address this - have they invented words like hir to cover this?

Aha.  Then I shall stop trying to force it to go places if it was not meant to go somewhere.  Thanks for clarifying.  And yes, now would be a great time for some European feminist, or someone knowledgeable about European feminism to come in and tell us what exactly they do about "man" in Germany, and what they do about "ellos" in Spain, etc.  I'm not personally aware of any attempts to modify language to be more inclusive in anything other than English, but that's likely to be my own ignorance, not necessarily what's happening in the world. 

English tends to be highly malleable, other languages, not so much (though of course all living languages change and grow).

[Anarkey]

But if we're treating everyone as equals - no one should say that, so yes, I still think they have equal rights - none at all.

Explain to me why men having "the power in the situation" makes it okay for women to insult and offend them? That then victimizes men, AND drags women down to the level of being insulting and offense because they're "striking" back at the white male. Completely undermining the idea of equality.

I'm not crazy about hypotheticals in debate, so I don't really like addressing these nebulous women who have the gall to insult and offend these hazy non-existent men, but I do sense that you're conflating a goal of "equality for all" with a yardstick of holding everyone to the same standard.  And that, further, there's a good foot and a half missing from the yardstick we're applying to the non-dominant, non-default members of the society.

I actually don't hold equality in such high regard, myself, with the exception that I sure would like to make a dollar for every dollar a man of my abilities and experience makes, and I'm not going to do that unless I'm a car mechanic.  However, let's pretend for a moment that I think equality for all is the highest aim of American society, and that we mean to get it.

Equality as a societal goal means that all people are treated equally in economic and legal situations.  So your race doesn't affect your guilty verdict in a court of law, and your socio-economic status doesn't prevent you from gaining an education, and your gender doesn't prevent you from doing jobs you are otherwise qualified for.  It does not mean that every individual treats every other individual the same way, reciprocally, and I find it strange that you think it does.  Equality doesn't have anything to do with jokes, or offense, or insults.  Palimpsest's use of jokes as an example is merely an illustration as to how power can operate relatively invisibly, harming one group while not appreciably damaging another group.  And she's talking about groups.  She says "men" and she says "women".  She's talking about a sociological phenomenon here, not a specific person's actions.  That you took it to mean specific interaction between given individuals...and that it made you so angry...and that you took it so personally...well, I think that says stuff about your personal life experiences, and not much about sociological phenomena at large. 

I was quite surprised when you said you were angry, actually.  We all have our buttons (mine are large and all too easy to push) but I think your reaction  could not have been related solely to what palimpsest was saying, as it wasn't in proportion to her tone.  It's an abstract conversation, largely theoretical.  You can feel free to disagree, firmly even, without call for anger.  By and large people have gone out of their way to be restrained.  There's no penalizing outcome to anyone from this conversation and no real negative effect is likely to arise from it.  I understand emotions are often difficult to control, but I also understand that anger is yet another in that long line of tools that men often apply against women.  I realize, too, that pointing this out after the fact may have a chilling effect, similar to what Steve expressed after he reacted in a way that followed the dialog pattern that palimpsest expected, and she pointed it out to him.  I can only say, in my defense, that any such chilling effect is not my intent.  I have to call them as I see them. 

[fiveyearwinter]

My anger in these sorts of instances is largely a product of people I see being what I view as especially irrational. Ironic and hypocritical, I'm sure. But I feel as though some of the things said in this conversation have just a tinge of a sort of conspiracy-level paranoia. Then again, being the majority in virtually every sense of the word (white, male, european, protestant, republican, etc.), I can imagine I'm simply talking from what will be perceived as ignorance.

Based on your post, it seems as though you believe individual instances do not represent the whole of sociological interaction between the sexes. I would like for you to clarify that, if you would. I see personal interactions as a microcosmic version of the group's general views and attitudes at large. If stereotypes fail us (and they do on so many levels) then we are FORCED to take into account the actions of individual. If individuals do not represent, at least on some level, the actions and attitudes of the group as a whole, then I firmly believe our assessment of the group must be flawed.

For example: Equality. Equality is so much more than dollar-for-dollar pay and verdicts being declared independent of skin color and the like - (though it is all these things). Equality is also a measure of the way a group of people is viewed in a society by the other members of this society. People are lamenting within the realm of Sci-Fi, within the society known as the Internet, and within human interaction at large the fact that women are being "othered" - this, to me, demonstrates that they are being perceived as inequal. It may be a semantic argument, in which case I will simply drop it. But to me, it seems as though the idea of equality is intimately tied to treatment on ALL levels - between the groups of the sexes as WELL as between individuals in society. Much as slaves longed for equality - not merely in pay or voting rights, but as being viewed as human being worthy of the same and having all the same rights and respect as a white person. It was a matter of being seen as "black" (a member of the group) on a general level by whites, but also about being treated, specifically, by individuals, as human beings. And that, to me, is equality. I firmly believe people should be treated the same on a fundamental human level. If you disagree, I am curious to hear why.

I find your need to point out what you view as my personal issues as largely irrelevant, actually - especially the mention of men using anger as a tool against women. We could get into women constantly criticizing every single thing men say and do - but that would be a stereotype, wouldn't it?

I mentioned I felt sudden and admittedly knee-jerk anger. I didn't utilize that anger in any way - in fact, I stopped myself from posting what I was intending to say. I realize I can come on strong - to some extent, that was my admission of it. That could well have been the end of it. Let's not digress into ad-hominem.

[Birnam Wood]

. . . As far as English culture goes, French and Italian (Spanish to a certain extent) have had a significant impact. I know that the Angles and Saxons were there first, but I've never studied the influences they left.  Overall, though, I'm just as curious as you on how European feminists address this - have they invented words like hir to cover this?

. . . now would be a great time for some European feminist, or someone knowledgeable about European feminism to come in and tell us what exactly they do about "man" in Germany, and what they do about "ellos" in Spain, etc.  I'm not personally aware of any attempts to modify language to be more inclusive in anything other than English, but that's likely to be my own ignorance, not necessarily what's happening in the world. 

I minored in the linguistic study of Spanish.  I only speak a smattering of German, less Italian or French.  And I don't claim to be a European feminist. . . But I have some familiarity with the question and have heard it posed in Spanish language classes.  My best understanding is that, even if there are movements to neutralize the gender in languages that assign gender to nouns and use the male gender as the general term, it is such a deeply ingrained part of the languages grammar that change is extremely unlikely. 

It might be interesting to talk about other cultural explanations for this, but I'd really be shooting in the dark.  I think the changes in English to make it more gender neutral are far more grammatically superficial.  I cannot offer reference specific papers to back this up, but my impression is that it's easier to change the lexicon.  Words enter the language and change meaning often.  Grammar does change, too, but it would take a very strong social movement indeed to make such a sweeping change like neutralizing the gender of nouns in languages like Spanish.  Our sense of grammar (or syntax), which is believed to be innate, tells us if something sounds right or not.  If you neutralized the gender in those languages completely, I think that this would just not sound right to most speakers.  At least, that is the case today.

As evidence to this point, I think it is interesting that Filipino has adopted some of the grammatical gender markers of Spanish along with the Spanish words that became part of the lexicon through 500 years of Spanish rule.  However, words of indigenous origin did not take on this genderization (to my knowledge).  In fact, there is only one gender neutral word for he and she in Filipino: shiya.  You will often hear native Filipino speakers use the incorrect third person pronoun when they speak English due to this.

[Birnam Wood]

When I said that "white men suffer, too", this is kind of what I was talking about.  I don't think anyone needs to feel sorry for us, but give some of us credit for agonizing over this stuff, and for understanding that it needs to change more quickly.
. . .
Now, I would like to share, as a humorous aside . . .

Tad, I'm totally failing to keep up with the pace of this discussion, but I loved your humorous aside. About you being a PG fan, I say, So.
(Would you believe I have PG album in German?)

I've been wanting to comment on the White Man's guilt issue, however.  Actually, I'd rather broaden it to Oppressor's Guilt, because it is not really limited to either white people or to men.  It may be important to go through a certain amount of that guilt.  However, at some point I do think you have to move beyond it.  I do see guilt as something that can be counterproductive, especially in large quantities.  Also, I make a clear distinction between guilt, blame, and responsibility.  Blame and guilt are emotions that dwell negatively on the perceived cause of a problem.  Responsibility is forward looking and seeks a solution or remedy.

Let me also go back to Palimpsest's story of how she discovered some of her own unintentional racist attitudes.  I think we have to come to terms with and accept that it is a tendency of all people, no matter our culture or gender, to abuse power.  Depending on how narrowly you define things, there are not many, if any, peoples of the world who have not been oppressors at one point in history.  Neither being a man nor being white gives us a monopoly on oppression, especially when you view things historically.  It's something we're all capable of.  Accept that, and move on to the next step.

What is important, then, is taking responsibility for one's own behavior.  Try to become more self-aware of how you are using and abusing power and learn how to relate to others more fairly. Learn how you can be an instrument of change and promote social equality.  Learn how to better appreciate diversity and where others are coming from.  Learn how to connect with people on a more personal level and overcome the differences between us, hopefully, even to better appreciate those differences.  Responsibility is the key word for me.  I try to let go of the blame and guilt and concern myself instead with how I can act in the present and move forward positively.

I'd also like to add how much I respect how willing people have been to engage in an honest discussion of these issues which are emotionally sensitive on all sides.  If not for that, the conversation simply would not have happened, and I really think it's a valuable one.  Perhaps the forums offer a level of safety that we would not feel if we were all face to face at a party in someone's house one day. 

I see this as one positive effect of the distance and anonymity that Internet communication brings.  I usually have seen this aspect of electronic communication to be a negative thing that leads to people behaving badly- after all, the social sanctions are less.  You can leave the forum and maybe none of your off-line friends will know.  Maybe your on-line friends in other forums won't know.  However, this technology has also given us a way to insulate ourselves emotionally a bit so that we can have a truly valuable conversation on emotionally charged issues which is an opportunity for our own personal growth. 

Wow!  I was never so optimistic as to believe that would actually work in a positive way.

[Tango Alpha Delta]

What if we convinced George Lucas to let Lois M. Bujold re-write those three terrible movies?

Sounds good to me, but good luck with Lucas's ego. 

*sigh*  A boy can dream, can't he?

So can a girl, of course!  (Got to consider the thread.)

Oh, and since it's Bujold: Betan hermaphrodites can dream, too.

 

[hautdesert]

Nice posts, Birnam! And would your German PG be PGIII/Melt, or Security?

The topic of jokes about men being "acceptable"--personally, I find derogatory jokes about men to be loathesome.  First of all, I don't get behind mocking a whole class of people on stereotypical grounds.   But second of all.

Second of all, those jokes don't function socially the same way jokes about women do.  Jokes about men very often re-inforce the status quo. Let's take the most visible, most flagrant version of the "it's acceptable to mock men"--the household product commercial.

He's so stupid and thoughtless!  He tromps mud on your beautiful kitchen floor and never notices, and what are you going to do? Oh, when he tries to take care of the kids, whatta maroon, it's mess all over and the kid's covered in food!  And for the sake of all that's holy, don't let him near the laundry!  He's as bad as the kids!  (He is classed as a child in these scenarios, in a real way.)  This is offensive just on the face of it, and yeah, I think it's crap.  But what's the underlying message?  "He's not going to grow up ever because he's a man--you're just going to have to do all that for him because you're better at it, you're smarter so you have to do all the scutwork."

Yeah, I can see that really hurts men's interests.  That really shows how oppressed men are in our society.

I say this not meaning to dismiss personal offense--I totally understand being personally offended by derogatory jokes about men. Like I said, I find them loathesome. But truth is, the reason they're generally acceptable is that they serve the purpose of re-inforcing sexism against women.

[hautdesert]

Dang it, walk away from the computer and have another thought.

Those jokes are consolation prizes.  "Oh, sorry little girl, you weren't born with the right genetalia, so you won't be winning our grand prize, but we have some lovely parting gifts:  a lifetime supply of Pinesol and the right to publicly mock those who did end up with the right set!  So now you don't feel too bad about losing, right?  Right?"

[fiveyearwinter]

My problem with palimpsest's attitude concerning gender-based jokes is that I feel it glosses over the potential damage they can have towards women:

-Why would a man suddenly decide to take a woman seriously if she thinks it's okay to mock him? Maybe men as a whole don't take women seriously enough as is, but I can't imagine this improving the situation.

-It is possible to be sexist against men. I know this shocks people, but it's also possible to be racist against white people. Just because a minority is in the position of victim doesn't mean they are incapable of also victimizing the majority. Sexism is bad - or is it only bad when it actively harms a member of a particular gender? So men can tell sexist jokes at work if their boss is a woman - since she's in the position of power? Or I can say the 'n' word if my supervisor is black? It's okay for a black guy to call a white woman a "cracker b*tch" (I'm not especially offended by racial slurs against white people) because he's the minority and she isn't? Just because someone has (possibly justifiable) anger about their position in society does not make a certain behavior acceptable - it just makes it understandable. If a child has a terrible home life and becomes a hoodlum, it's not okay for him to vandalize houses and steal cars just because he was dealt a bad hand. We're still responsible for our actions.

-There is a right way and a wrong way to express discontent about social injustice. Making women aware of the fact that they shouldn't be considered second-class citizens, actively going after/boycotting/etc. businesses that practice gender discrimination, making education available to everyone - these are positive methods of creating social change.

-If something is wrong it is wrong. Telling a sexist joke is sexism. Telling a racist joke is racism. Talking about "context" means you will have to prove the correlation between women being an oppressed gender (I can agree about that) with jokes being a contributing factor to that oppression (prove it). All the men who think that telling a sexist joke is "harmless" feel the same way you do, EVEN IF they agree that women are oppressed. They most likely feel that it's no great social injustice to tell a joke. And to say that half the population has the right to do something that is sexist just because "it's not harmful to men" is willfully blind to the fact that sexism isn't only wrong when it victimizes someone. Being sexist against a rich woman who can do whatever she likes and can afford anything she wants is STILL SEXISM.

This is why I think any kind of stereotyping joke is actively harmful - not only to those that are the "butt" of the joke, but also to those revealing their ignorance through it. This is not some sociological guerilla warfare. Women are not being nobly subversive by openly mocking men (not that I'm accusing all women of this - the vast majority of the women in my life are very sweet, kind people) - they are propagating the STEREOTYPE that women are angry, shrewish, and overly critical. I know it sounds like I'm blowing this whole thing out of proportion - but I feel that it does a disservice to all the women struggling to be viewed as equal contributing members of society to gloss over these sorts of attitudes.

[SFEley]

-Why would a man suddenly decide to take a woman seriously if she thinks it's okay to mock him? Maybe men as a whole don't take women seriously enough as is, but I can't imagine this improving the situation.

...Hmmm.  Now I'm trying to picture what my marriage would be like if neither of us ever mocked the other.  Probably not as healthy.  >8->  (I'm very much in the "keep each other amused" school of relationship building.)

I'm not sure I can agree with where all this anti-joke stuff is going.  Jokes have a place in society.  They distort the truth, yes, but they're also a pressure valve for tension.  Personal and cultural.  Believing everything you hear in jokes is dangerous -- but so is never laughing at anything.  Especially oneself.

[fiveyearwinter]

My girlfriend and I definitely believe in the idea of teasing one another as a viable means of communicating affection. I'm not arguing the idea that jokes are bad - even tasteless, offensive jokes are funny, to me.

What I'm arguing against is the idea that it would be okay for one group to make these sorts of jokes while condemning the other for it.

[Anarkey]

But I feel as though some of the things said in this conversation have just a tinge of a sort of conspiracy-level paranoia.

Can you be specific?  I have heard all or most of the things said in this conversation before, so they aren't all that jarring to me, or all that paranoid sounding.  A conspiracy requires conspirators, and my understanding of the main thrust of much of palimpsest's and haut's argument is the oppression is systemic, unconscious and sometimes unintended...the exact opposite of a conspiracy.  They hope that shifting people from unconscious and reflexive to thoughtful and conscious might change individual behavior, and possibly even society as a whole, for the better.  Everyone here has said "I do it too.  We all do it.  It's not right, but it's hard work to train yourself out of it." which again, negates the idea that this is being framed as a conspiracy.

Based on your post, it seems as though you believe individual instances do not represent the whole of sociological interaction between the sexes. I would like for you to clarify that, if you would.

Absolutely, that's how I see it.  No seeming about it.  I very much like the way you've phrased it, and would be hard put to improve on it with clarifications.  Though I suppose I can try, with an example.  I have interactions with my partner, and he has interactions with me.  These interactions cover a fairly wide gamut (we argue, we have sex, we enjoy conversations, we sleep next to one another, and so on), but they do not represent the whole gamut of interactions between men and women.  I have never broken up with him, he has never given me an STD.  Those two interactions are not represented within our context, but they are very well represented within the general context of interaction between the sexes.  We are not a self-sufficient all-encompassing example.  We can't be.  Any single interaction, or set of interactions, that I have with an individual of the opposite gender represents only a small fraction of the totality of gender relations.

That said, there are threads, documentable tendencies, in gender relations.  For example, statistically, a pregnant woman is at a higher risk of being murdered than a non-pregnant woman (citation of the study I'm referring to here).  That means something in a larger societal sense, even if it doesn't mean anything directly to me or you, because you (presumably) have not murdered anyone pregnant, and I have not yet been murdered at all (pregnant or otherwise).

For example: Equality. Equality is so much more than dollar-for-dollar pay and verdicts being declared independent of skin color and the like - (though it is all these things).

It may well be more than that, but if we could just get some concrete action on those lesser bits, I for one, would be thrilled.

Equality is also a measure of the way a group of people is viewed in a society by the other members of this society.

Sure, yeah.  You're right in line with what palimpsest is saying here.  I disclaimered about equality because I'm not completely in line with what palimpsest and haut think on this.  I place a premium on plurality, and so we end up saying a lot of the same things, but I'm not quite as convinced as they are that turning the small wheel of social interaction ultimately turns the big wheel of power and economic change.  It's positive, in that it's something you can do as an individual, and I totally respect their approach, and most of the time we probably sound like we think exactly the same things because our opinions dovetail nicely but, shockety shock, not all feminists are the same.

But to me, it seems as though the idea of equality is intimately tied to treatment on ALL levels - between the groups of the sexes as WELL as between individuals in society. Much as slaves longed for equality - not merely in pay or voting rights, but as being viewed as human being worthy of the same and having all the same rights and respect as a white person.

Sure, but I would argue that if the law had seen them as the same, not as property, say, then the rest would follow from that.  Unfortunately, the law still doesn't see them the same, and thus, we still have inequality.  I guess it's kind of a chicken and egg thing, and of wondering where the fulcrum is.  I don't think the fulcrum is linguistic (except perhaps in true hate speech, which is a different animal), though like I said, I value inclusivity.

I firmly believe people should be treated the same on a fundamental human level. If you disagree, I am curious to hear why.

Oh hell no, I don't believe people should be treated the same.  This is where I step decidedly off the equality train.  Treat a blind person the same as a deaf person?  Treat someone 6'2" the same as someone 5'2'?  Treat a ten year old boy the same as a sixty year old woman? No, no, and no. 

The only "sameness" values that are worthy of every individual human are basic courtesy and respect.  Trick is, this is not the same for all people. If I may circle back to Steve's "evolving mental model", this is where we get into the treating of people as to how they indicate they want to be treated, and not as any of the stereotypes that let you shortcut, and avoid thinking about them as human.

I found it very touching, for example, when TAD chose a gender neutral pronoun to refer to palimpsest (even though she clarified that she doesn't mind being referred to with the traditional feminine pronoun), because he was open, he was listening, he wanted to treat her the way she indicated that she wanted to be treated.  Respect.  Awesome.

I find your need to point out what you view as my personal issues as largely irrelevant, actually

Yeah, me too.  I have no idea why you thought it was salient to bring your anger into the conversation, but since you did, I addressed it.  You didn't explain your anger, and I came up with what I thought of as a charitable interpretation, that the locus of your anger was actually elsewhere, in your past, or in something tangential happening to you outside of this conversation.  I was not applying the less charitable interpretation to you (that you were trying to stifle the conversation with a show of anger) but I thought you ought to know that given what you presented (not much beyond GAH this makes me soooooo mad) the less charitable interpretation could easily have been applied.

We could get into women constantly criticizing every single thing men say and do - but that would be a stereotype, wouldn't it?

I sense there's some bait you're trying to get me to rise to here, but, really, I got nothing.  You want to talk about "women" or more specifically me constantly criticizing every single thing "men" or more specifically you say, then do it.  My buttons are large and easy to push, but that's not one of them.

I mentioned I felt sudden and admittedly knee-jerk anger. I didn't utilize that anger in any way

You expressed it.  That's using it. 

Let's not digress into ad-hominem.

I have tried to explain that I was not attacking you ad-hominem.  I was, perhaps, not as delicate in my original post as was necessary to get my point across.  Unfortunately, delicacy is not one of my strong points, despite my being a woman, and I did try (both then and in my subsequent explanation).  However, I think if you truly feel that ad-hominem attacks are out of place, then you might refrain from using really loaded words such as irrational and paranoid to describe your fellow forum members.

[Anarkey]

I minored in the linguistic study of Spanish.  I only speak a smattering of German, less Italian or French.  And I don't claim to be a European feminist. . . But I have some familiarity with the question and have heard it posed in Spanish language classes.  My best understanding is that, even if there are movements to neutralize the gender in languages that assign gender to nouns and use the male gender as the general term, it is such a deeply ingrained part of the languages grammar that change is extremely unlikely. 

Wait, I'm not with you...are you saying that feminists would move to degender nouns and make them all male?  That seems totally backward to me, and not feminist at all.  Or is that a hypothetical?  Please explain further.

As evidence to this point, I think it is interesting that Filipino has adopted some of the grammatical gender markers of Spanish along with the Spanish words that became part of the lexicon through 500 years of Spanish rule.  However, words of indigenous origin did not take on this genderization (to my knowledge).  In fact, there is only one gender neutral word for he and she in Filipino: shiya.  You will often hear native Filipino speakers use the incorrect third person pronoun when they speak English due to this.

Wait again, are you saying that Filipino genderizes words it imports from Spanish?  Or that it genderizes words more generally because of Spanish influence?  Or both?  What about in the other direction, do Filipino words imported into Spanish acquire gender markers?  Examples, please.

[Anarkey]

My problem with palimpsest's attitude concerning gender-based jokes is that I feel it glosses over the potential damage they can have towards women:

fiveyearwinter,

I think you're arguing about something you think palimpsest was saying, as opposed to what she actually said.  What she actually said was that she pretty much doesn't find any jokes based on stereotypes to be funny.  Her funnybone is elsewhere.  She doesn't make jokes that stereotype men and doesn't make jokes that stereotype women (and presumably, doesn't laugh at them).  It's not her thing, not her bag.  She's said this several times. 

Palimpsest did say that jokes that stereotyped men are not equivalent in their level of oppression as jokes that stereotype women.  And yes, this is true.  As hautdesert pointed out, even jokes that on the surface appear to stereotype men, often really just serve to reinforce subservience in women.  They also both said that they think jokes that stereotype men are bad for men.  Not as bad, but damaging, yes, and not cool.  I'm not sure what else you want from them.  They've already conceded a bunch of the points you're arguing against which makes your post look a little straw man.

Also, I think it would behoove you to notice when posts are from palimpsest and when they are from hautdesert.  They are not the same person, AFAIK.

[slic]

...Palimpsest did say that jokes that stereotyped men are not equivalent in their level of oppression as jokes that stereotype women....  Not as bad, but damaging, yes, and not cool.

No, it doesn't victimize men.

It felt like she did to me - hence my earlier reply.  And that is what I took out of fiveyearwinter's comments.  He agrees with most everything palimpsest says, except for the part of "my pain is greater than yours" or maybe more precisely "Your pain is insignificant because of your position of power, so it doesn't count". 
Regardless if a joke about how fathers are such bad parents reinforces "subservience in women" is true or not, being a great Dad (I have the mugs to prove it ), it still offends me and pisses me off that my parenting skills are questioned because of my gender - just as some idiots question a woman's writing ability for her gender.  My annoyance isn't lessened and shouldn't be dismissed due to my societal position of power.

And I would like to thank fiveyearwinter for coming back and posting his views, and maintaining the civility of this discussion.

Oh hell no, I don't believe people should be treated the same.  This is where I step decidedly off the equality train.  Treat a blind person the same as a deaf person?  Treat someone 6'2" the same as someone 5'2'?  Treat a ten year old boy the same as a sixty year old woman? No, no, and no. 

The only "sameness" values that are worthy of every individual human are basic courtesy and respect.  Trick is, this is not the same for all people. If I may circle back to Steve's "evolving mental model", this is where we get into the treating of people as to how they indicate they want to be treated, and not as any of the stereotypes that let you shortcut, and avoid thinking about them as human.

Here, here - I agree completely.

I mentioned I felt sudden and admittedly knee-jerk anger. I didn't utilize that anger in any way

You expressed it.  That's using it. 

Utilize or express is a semantic arguement.  For this I still go back to - it's better to know, regardless of why he was mad, than just let him fume quietly. 

[SFEley]

Free association time.  I'm not quoting anyone because don't think this applies to any particular statement from any particular person, but it just came back into my head and I think it's relevant to the discussion as a whole.

It's my personal definition of evil.  Taken directly from Terry Pratchett, from Carpe Jugulum, from Granny Weatherwax.  Who said:

"Evil begins when we start treating people as things."


I've started spinning off in my head how this might apply to Internet culture.  That it's harder to see people on the Internet seems to be both a blessing and a curse in this regard.  On the one hand, you have a strong degree of control over the extent to which personal traits, ones which may lead to cultural "thingifying" in the real world, are revealed.  You can reveal yourself, conceal yourself, lie about yourself, whatever.  Unmapping cultural assumptions online may not be the same as removing them from the world, but it does give you choices about the way you're treated -- at the cost, possibly, of being other than you are.  Am I right about this?

On the other hand, everyone on the Internet gets treated as a "thing" to a greater extent than the real world.  We don't see people; we see words, mostly, and it's an act of will to remap those words back to people.  One mistake I've frequently made is to begin arguing with words I see, and forget I'm arguing with real people.  In the past I've gotten really really nasty in flamewars, just for fun, using cleverness to slice people down -- and been proud of it.  I'm not proud of it now.


...All of which leads to a question I have, and it's primarily for women: to what extent has your choice of how you present yourself online been shaped by choices of whether to reveal your gender?  Is online life more of a pain in the ass for women, less of a pain in the ass, or is it difficult to compare?

Followup question: do you think things are getting better or worse?  Does MySpace factor into your assessment?

[Anarkey]

I appreciate Steve's attempt to move this conversation in a new direction, and I figure it's probably about ready to go there.  However, I also get the sense that slic is feeling a little ignored, from the number of "that's what I've been saying" posts.  I can't speak to anyone else, but I haven't been consciously ignoring you, slic.  I nodded my head all the way through your bike rider helmet example, but I didn't have anything in particular to add to it.

However, I think there's still a misunderstanding about what we mean when we say "oppression" and "victimization".  I am worn down on trying to explain this and completely ready to talk about something else, but I want to give it one more pass and hope it sticks.  This is all I'll say, because even I am sick of my name in this thread.  (Sorry, Steve, it will have to be one of our other women who answer your questions).  That doesn't mean I won't read replies, by the way, I'm not shouting my last word and running.  More like I'm taking a  (temporary) vow of silence on this topic.

Whether a joke supports or does not support oppression does not directly correlate to how much it hurts the individual who is the subject (or the perceived subject) of the joke.  It may be that jokes that are biased against men hurt slic's feelings WAY more than jokes that are biased against women hurt palimpsest's feelings.  She's not talking about her personal pain, and she's also not talking about slic's personal pain.  She's not denying anyone's right to anger or upset or whatever when they personally encounter an offensive stereotype.  She's not minimizing that. 

If you'll note from hautdesert's very fine example, the joke she deconstructs is not aimed at a specific woman.  It's on public media, it's aimed at all women.  That commercial, and other media offerings and locker room jokes and plenty of other examples that have come up in this thread already, feed into a system that denigrates women, that assigns them as a class lesser status than that given to men.  Men can't be victimized this particular way, because there is no such corresponding system at work against them. 

It's not dismissive of us to say, "Oh but you aren't being oppressed", because as a class, you're not, regardless of how you feel individually.  The same way I am not oppressed because of my race, no matter how many dumb cracker jokes a person of color makes.  Even if they direct those jokes at me, to my face, I'm still not oppressed.  I may be angry, I may be hurt, but I'm not being oppressed.  The person of color can make jokes until the cows come home, I (and people of my race) are still going to (likely) be wealthier, have greater opportunities and enjoy better health.  Thus, I am not oppressed, no matter how annoyed I am.  I'm not saying the person of color has the right to make those jokes, or that it would be humane of them to do so, or that I deserve to have to listen to those jokes, or anything like that.  Still, the person of color's jokes aimed at me don't fall under the rubric of oppression, though it can fall under plenty of other headings, including headings that deplore such actions as mean-spirited.

*Phew*.   Ok, that's my best go.  I'm done.

[Birnam Wood]

Anarkey,

Sorry, throw the Strunk & White at me for ambiguous and overly complicated sentences.  I was just saying that languages which assign gender to nouns tend to also use masculine nouns and pronouns as the default pronoun in the following cases:

• If they refer to a person of unknown gender
• If they refer to a group of people with unknown gender
• If they refer to a group of mixed gender

I am talking about the scenario where feminists might move to strip away gender from nouns and use gender neutral forms in these languages.  I really don't know of such movements in the Spanish speaking world and know less of other such languages.  The response I have always heard, even from professors who are women, is that Spanish speakers just don't see it that way.  Regardless of the merits of such a movement, I don't think it would be successful.  The reason being that the structure of language is so intrinsic that it is less likely to change than the words found in the language.

In Filipino there are nouns of Spanish origin that refer to people and indicate gender.  While Filipino lacks a genderized articles (like el, la, los, las, un, and una) the ultimate o (masculine) or a (femanine) that commonly appears on Spanish nouns also indicates gender.  For example, my wife is a Filipina, my brother-in-law is a Filipino, my brother-in-law and his wife are both Filipinos.  These noun forms, and others, made their way into the Filipino language, but the accompanying articles did not.  To my knowledge, there are no indigenous words that use this method of indicating gender, but if they are they must be few.

I don't know of any Filipino words that were imported into Spanish, but there may be some.  However, there have been words of foreign origin that have been encorporated into Spanish.  All nouns have a gender in Spanish.  There might be some differences as to which gender has been assigned to a Spanish word of foreign origin, though.  (I think I've heard both "el troque" and "la troca" for "truck").

So, this suggests to me that the syntatical or grammatical function of gender is intrinsic to the languages structure, and that this trumps the symantec value of genderized nouns.  I think that it might be possible to introduce a set of neutral pronouns in Spanish, as people talk about in English.  One good candidate for this is the indirect object third person pronoun, se.  There is a convention in Spanish to use se also as a direct object pronoun when it refers to a person or people of any gender, known or unknown.  I choose to comply with this convention, myself.  I believe the practice is called seismo (or se-ism)

For those not familiar with the different types of pronouns, here's an example:

I_{(subject pron.)} threw it_{direct object pron.} to them_{indirect object pron.}.

I'm not sure how to use the table tool in the forum post, so here is the list of pronouns:
me, you, him/her, us, you, them  (English uses the same set of pronouns for both direct and inderect object)
me, te, lo/la/(se), nos, os, los/las/(se) (Spanish direct object pronouns)
me, te, se, nos, os, se (Spanish indirect object pronouns)

Substituting a gender neutral pronoun that is added to the language or adapted from another area of the language sounds to me like something that is possible to achieve.  The gender neutral form could then be used when gender is unknown or where the parties referred to are of mixed gender- i.e., the default.  I think this approach is possible becuase it is more like adding a word to a language than changing the structure of the language.

Still, I'm not convinced that using gender neutral pronouns in Spanish could get as much momentum as it does in English because there is so much genderization in the language and Spanish speakers generally seem to think it is not meaningful.  In English genderized forms stand out in contrast to the bulk of the other words in our language.  

Also, the explanation I was given for seismo in Spanish had nothing to do with gender politics.  It was a way to elevate the terms used for people as oppoosed to the terms used for things.  I think its usage confirms this.  As I said above, it is used even when gender is known, so it is not really being used here as a default term when gender is unknown or in mixed gender cases.

To sum up, I think it's possible to replace a few words like gender specific pronouns with gender neutral forms, especially in English, but I think it is less likely to occur in Spanish.  Far less likely would be neutralizing the gender of Spanish nouns in general.  

I hope that doesn't just bring up more questions than it clarifies. . .

Wait, I'm not with you...are you saying that feminists would move to degender nouns and make them all male?  That seems totally backward to me, and not feminist at all.  Or is that a hypothetical?  Please explain further.
. . .
Wait again, are you saying that Filipino genderizes words it imports from Spanish?  Or that it genderizes words more generally because of Spanish influence?  Or both?  What about in the other direction, do Filipino words imported into Spanish acquire gender markers?  Examples, please.

[slic]

I can't speak to anyone else, but I haven't been consciously ignoring you, slic.

Thanks for the comment, Anarkey. I do love being noticed, but don't worry, I've enjoyed the discussion, and happy with my contributions.

[Tango Alpha Delta]

Tad, I'm totally failing to keep up with the pace of this discussion, but I loved your humorous aside. About you being a PG fan, I say, So.
(Would you believe I have PG album in German?)

Yes, I do believe it!  I have both, myself.  "Blood of Eden" was the wedding song my wife and I chose for our first dance (neither of our families noticed the lyrics).

PG (and Paul Simon) were "gateway drugs" for me, leading into more adventurous territory, such as Kate Bush and Laurie Anderson, as well as a wealth of fantastic musicians showcased on his Real World label.

Now here's a thread I'd like to see develop, and maybe you all can help.  Who are your favorite sci-fi musicians?  I've heard of the folk bands that sing Star Trek ballads, and Steve has featured some great stuff on EP from time to time.  I was fond of Peter Schilling ("Voelig losgeloest/Major Tom" is still pretty awesome), and there's always Parliament's Mother Ship flying around; but who really evokes that Sense of Wonder for you?

[Birnam Wood]

Nice posts, Birnam! And would your German PG be PGIII/Melt, or Security?

Yes, I do believe it!  I have both, myself.  "Blood of Eden" was the wedding song my wife and I chose for our first dance (neither of our families noticed the lyrics).

PG (and Paul Simon) were "gateway drugs" for me, leading into more adventurous territory, such as Kate Bush and Laurie Anderson, as well as a wealth of fantastic musicians showcased on his Real World label.

Now here's a thread I'd like to see develop, and maybe you all can help.  Who are your favorite sci-fi musicians?  I've heard of the folk bands that sing Star Trek ballads, and Steve has featured some great stuff on EP from time to time.  I was fond of Peter Schilling ("Voelig losgeloest/Major Tom" is still pretty awesome), and there's always Parliament's Mother Ship flying around; but who really evokes that Sense of Wonder for you?

HautDesert & Tad!

I have Security, a.k.a. Deutsches Album.  My favorite on this album is "Kon Takt!".  I think it's harder hitting than the English version, "I  Have the Touch", which I love, too.

I really loved "Don't Give Up" (and other songs Kate Bush collaberated on) and thought "This is the Picture (Excellent Birds)" with Laurie Anderson was pretty cool.  I didn't really get into those other two artists, but I like some other stuff by Kate Bush, too.  I understand where you're coming from with Paul Simon, too.

Wow, Sci-Fi music- there's a challenging question.  There's a few that pop right out, of course- I'm totally with you on "Major Tom"!  God I love that song!  I've had trouble getting my hands on a copy of it, though.  A friend gave me a 12" version recorded on CD- audio quality was OK, but at the end of the song there was a skip on the record!  I still listen to it though.  It's really long and combines both English and German versions.

"Blood of Eden," huh?  You're hard core!  We just went with a favorite Crowded House song.

Of course there's the other Major Tom song, "A Space Oddity" by David Bowie, and Elton John's "Rocket Man" is ok.  Can I count John Williams Star Wars scores?  I don't sit and listen to them on my iPod, but the Star Wars theme gives me chills when I hear it.  (Laugh if you will).  I think my wife feels almost the same way about the Superman theme, but she won't admit it.

How about A Flock of Seagulls's "Space Age Love Song"?  The instrumental song at the end of Buckaroo Banzai?  Weird Al's "The Saga Begins"? I like those. 

I don't care for Duran Duran's Electric Barbarella- and now I'm stretching.  I can't think of anything else I'm really familiar with.

[ClintMemo]

Tad, I'm totally failing to keep up with the pace of this discussion, but I loved your humorous aside. About you being a PG fan, I say, So.
(Would you believe I have PG album in German?)

Yes, I do believe it!  I have both, myself.  "Blood of Eden" was the wedding song my wife and I chose for our first dance (neither of our families noticed the lyrics).

PG (and Paul Simon) were "gateway drugs" for me, leading into more adventurous territory, such as Kate Bush and Laurie Anderson, as well as a wealth of fantastic musicians showcased on his Real World label.

Now here's a thread I'd like to see develop, and maybe you all can help.  Who are your favorite sci-fi musicians?  I've heard of the folk bands that sing Star Trek ballads, and Steve has featured some great stuff on EP from time to time.  I was fond of Peter Schilling ("Voelig losgeloest/Major Tom" is still pretty awesome), and there's always Parliament's Mother Ship flying around; but who really evokes that Sense of Wonder for you?

I'm not sure if this counts, but I have several of the Babylon 5 soundtrack albums, by Chris Franke.  They're really good in an electronic, symphonic, space-opera sort of way.

[Swamp]

I think the sci-fi music idea is great, but you reaaly should move it to a different thread.  It is distracing from the point of this one.