The Responsible Man and the Injustices of Sexism
Recently, I've been consuming several feminist writings. Most of the views that I've been consuming on feminism are what I remember learning (but have largely forgotten) from studying gender issues in my early years in college. Having been exposed to these ideas in the past, I find that there are few barriers for me in re-approaching them now. There is a pay gap, the legal system and current legislation don't allow for adequate remedies for women who are victims of violence or discrimination, and everyday sexism on the part of men towards women seems rampant in our culture everywhere.
Despite the controversy that seems to surround these issues in our culture, I accept that these ideas are true. They make me extremely uncomfortable, and I wish that they weren't true in our world, but I don't struggle to accept and acknowledge them as facets of our reality. I'm comfortable accepting the discomfort, because comfort breeds apathy, and I'm interested in escaping apathy into exploring further what could be done to further the cause of feminism.
I've briefly touched upon the writings of Camille Paglia. I struggle to makes sense of and accept her ideas, because they fly in the face of what I know of feminism. For that reason, I've decided to touch upon them here. I'm less interested in parroting what others have said than I am in exploring the ideas around this issue that I'm struggling to understand, and find a way to reconcile them to what I know, wherever possible.
I'm not sure I've consumed enough of what she's written to really do justice to her points, but her overall point seems to boil down to this: feminism is about individual responsibility on the part of each woman in this world.
She talks a great deal about this idea in the context of rape. Women should be properly educated about the dangers of the world. Now, rape is a broad term, and she clarifies that some situational awareness is required to understand what she's talking about with her ideas. In the case where a man jumps out of the bushes and assaults a woman at night in a dark alley, that's clearly a situation that the woman could not have done anything about. The man should be caught and prosecuted for the criminal that he is.
Her own opinion on the matter is about a different kind of situation. I'll use this one as a simple example: if a woman meets a man at a college party, she's been drinking, and he invites her up to his room, she should be aware of the risk here and recuse herself from the situation. Each woman should take responsibility for her own safety. If you don't want to end up at risk, then don't go out drinking and partying in an environment where you would expect sexual violence to be happening.
Paglia takes the rather libertarian viewpoint that we, as a society, simply cannot instill enough rules and laws to completely regulate male sexuality. Her point may be alarming or unsettling, but I think the argument does require consideration. Perhaps feminism can err too much on the side of idealism, believing incorrectly that we can move to a world where all men have learned the difference between right and wrong, to control all their sexual urges to the point where they're appropriate, and sexual assaults against women simply never occur. It's a wonderful ideal, to be sure, but can we actually attain it? It's important to remember that you can only make strides towards any ideal if you temper your thinking with realism. It seems to me that most feminists understand this; perhaps Paglia's argument is geared towards the minority that doesn't.
I'm not a woman, so I should not be telling women what or how to think about these kinds of issues. I simply don't have the understanding or perspective required. The very reason I'm reading about these issues is simply that I'm trying to become more empathic to other perspectives that I don't fully understand.
I can, however, speak to men.
I've spent enough time in the company of men to understand what they are like, and what kinds of attitudes they often have towards women. They are not always as enlightened as I would personally prefer. There are sexist attitudes that flourish, and jokes made at women's expense. Thankfully, in all my experience, I've never heard of or personally encountered a situation in which a man I knew did something non-consensual with a woman. The side effect of this is that my experience has failed to teach me that jokes and attitudes cause any real harm. I wonder now: did they? Did they contribute to something that I simply never witnessed? The data points in my head might merely be labeled incorrectly.
So the jokes and attitudes among men don't necessarily lead to immorality, but what I do understand is that they exist in a social context where all of the men are seeking status with one another. If one man makes a joke that is sexist or inappropriate, another man that stands up to him, he risks rejection. He risks losing social standing with his peers. Psychological experiments tell us that social rejection is one of the more painful mental experiences an individual might face in everyday life. This kind of rejection activates the same parts of the brain that get activated if you experience physical pain.
I'm going to say that again, just in case it slipped by unnoticed: social rejection activates the same unpleasant neural circuitry in our brains that the experience of physical pain does. In the experiments I referenced above, it made no difference that the people rejecting the test subject were total strangers. In a group of men making sexist jokes and comments, can one single man who knows better be forgiven for not speaking up and objecting when he feels that something being said is sexist? Perhaps not, but if this conclusion from psychology is true, perhaps this helps explain it.
And in this case, I'm merely talking about an inappropriate comment or joke. What about standing up to inappropriate action? If a man objects to a verbal comment he feels is sexist, risking the rejection from his friends in doing so, in most cases the man who made the joke can simply shrug off the objection. If a man is rebuked for something that he said, he's far less likely to get defensive about it than if he is rebuked for something that he did. If a man rebukes another man for doing something inappropriate with a woman, it's very likely that he'll be dismissed or ridiculed himself. The man who stands up against his peers to stop inappropriate behavior must do so in the face of certain mental anguish, loss of status, and a blow to his own self-esteem.
So what incentive do men have to stand up to these kinds of things? It's a difficult question. My only answer, and the reason that I hope I have the courage to stand up to these kinds of things if (or, God help me, when) I encounter them in the future is that I don't want to leave behind a world in which these things are passively tolerated or completely ignored. Social injustice, by its definition, never occurs in isolation. Such injustice can only be fought when an individual voluntarily chooses to take this mental anguish associated with social rejection upon themselves.
And besides, as a man, isn't taking some measure of neural mental anguish upon yourself worth it to stop physical anguish against another human being? Isn't that reason enough?
Men will continue to make sexist jokes and comments, and alas, this will continue to create social contexts in which sexual assaults against women will occur. It is easy for people in these social contexts to turn a blind eye, to passively go along with what is happening, rather than object and risk rejection from peers. Just as we cannot expect men to do what is right, we cannot expect women to look out for themselves in every situation. An individual woman might understand that she's safer at home on any given evening than at a house party or bar, but if all of her friends are pressuring her into coming with them, then she might very well go along to avoid the same sense of rejection that men avoid by refusing to stand up to injustice.
Camille Paglia's point about individual responsibility on the part of women in avoiding sexual assaults is a prudent one. I believe it's only valuable as preventative advice and not as consolation for victims. Telling a victim of sexual assault that they were in any way at fault for what happened doesn't seem like the correct thing to do, ever. But at the risk of sounding diminutive, if you are a woman, I'd say you're stronger than our culture might lead you to believe. Know this, and take care to look out for yourself.
And as far as the individual goes, it is the same for men. Onto each of us falls the individual responsibility of standing up to sexism and its associated injustices when we encounter them. At the risk of sounding diminutive, if you are a man, you are capable of acting with more humanity than our culture might lead you to believe. Know this, and take care to do what is right.
Despite the controversy that seems to surround these issues in our culture, I accept that these ideas are true. They make me extremely uncomfortable, and I wish that they weren't true in our world, but I don't struggle to accept and acknowledge them as facets of our reality. I'm comfortable accepting the discomfort, because comfort breeds apathy, and I'm interested in escaping apathy into exploring further what could be done to further the cause of feminism.
I've briefly touched upon the writings of Camille Paglia. I struggle to makes sense of and accept her ideas, because they fly in the face of what I know of feminism. For that reason, I've decided to touch upon them here. I'm less interested in parroting what others have said than I am in exploring the ideas around this issue that I'm struggling to understand, and find a way to reconcile them to what I know, wherever possible.
I'm not sure I've consumed enough of what she's written to really do justice to her points, but her overall point seems to boil down to this: feminism is about individual responsibility on the part of each woman in this world.
She talks a great deal about this idea in the context of rape. Women should be properly educated about the dangers of the world. Now, rape is a broad term, and she clarifies that some situational awareness is required to understand what she's talking about with her ideas. In the case where a man jumps out of the bushes and assaults a woman at night in a dark alley, that's clearly a situation that the woman could not have done anything about. The man should be caught and prosecuted for the criminal that he is.
Her own opinion on the matter is about a different kind of situation. I'll use this one as a simple example: if a woman meets a man at a college party, she's been drinking, and he invites her up to his room, she should be aware of the risk here and recuse herself from the situation. Each woman should take responsibility for her own safety. If you don't want to end up at risk, then don't go out drinking and partying in an environment where you would expect sexual violence to be happening.
Paglia takes the rather libertarian viewpoint that we, as a society, simply cannot instill enough rules and laws to completely regulate male sexuality. Her point may be alarming or unsettling, but I think the argument does require consideration. Perhaps feminism can err too much on the side of idealism, believing incorrectly that we can move to a world where all men have learned the difference between right and wrong, to control all their sexual urges to the point where they're appropriate, and sexual assaults against women simply never occur. It's a wonderful ideal, to be sure, but can we actually attain it? It's important to remember that you can only make strides towards any ideal if you temper your thinking with realism. It seems to me that most feminists understand this; perhaps Paglia's argument is geared towards the minority that doesn't.
I'm not a woman, so I should not be telling women what or how to think about these kinds of issues. I simply don't have the understanding or perspective required. The very reason I'm reading about these issues is simply that I'm trying to become more empathic to other perspectives that I don't fully understand.
I can, however, speak to men.
I've spent enough time in the company of men to understand what they are like, and what kinds of attitudes they often have towards women. They are not always as enlightened as I would personally prefer. There are sexist attitudes that flourish, and jokes made at women's expense. Thankfully, in all my experience, I've never heard of or personally encountered a situation in which a man I knew did something non-consensual with a woman. The side effect of this is that my experience has failed to teach me that jokes and attitudes cause any real harm. I wonder now: did they? Did they contribute to something that I simply never witnessed? The data points in my head might merely be labeled incorrectly.
So the jokes and attitudes among men don't necessarily lead to immorality, but what I do understand is that they exist in a social context where all of the men are seeking status with one another. If one man makes a joke that is sexist or inappropriate, another man that stands up to him, he risks rejection. He risks losing social standing with his peers. Psychological experiments tell us that social rejection is one of the more painful mental experiences an individual might face in everyday life. This kind of rejection activates the same parts of the brain that get activated if you experience physical pain.
I'm going to say that again, just in case it slipped by unnoticed: social rejection activates the same unpleasant neural circuitry in our brains that the experience of physical pain does. In the experiments I referenced above, it made no difference that the people rejecting the test subject were total strangers. In a group of men making sexist jokes and comments, can one single man who knows better be forgiven for not speaking up and objecting when he feels that something being said is sexist? Perhaps not, but if this conclusion from psychology is true, perhaps this helps explain it.
And in this case, I'm merely talking about an inappropriate comment or joke. What about standing up to inappropriate action? If a man objects to a verbal comment he feels is sexist, risking the rejection from his friends in doing so, in most cases the man who made the joke can simply shrug off the objection. If a man is rebuked for something that he said, he's far less likely to get defensive about it than if he is rebuked for something that he did. If a man rebukes another man for doing something inappropriate with a woman, it's very likely that he'll be dismissed or ridiculed himself. The man who stands up against his peers to stop inappropriate behavior must do so in the face of certain mental anguish, loss of status, and a blow to his own self-esteem.
So what incentive do men have to stand up to these kinds of things? It's a difficult question. My only answer, and the reason that I hope I have the courage to stand up to these kinds of things if (or, God help me, when) I encounter them in the future is that I don't want to leave behind a world in which these things are passively tolerated or completely ignored. Social injustice, by its definition, never occurs in isolation. Such injustice can only be fought when an individual voluntarily chooses to take this mental anguish associated with social rejection upon themselves.
And besides, as a man, isn't taking some measure of neural mental anguish upon yourself worth it to stop physical anguish against another human being? Isn't that reason enough?
Men will continue to make sexist jokes and comments, and alas, this will continue to create social contexts in which sexual assaults against women will occur. It is easy for people in these social contexts to turn a blind eye, to passively go along with what is happening, rather than object and risk rejection from peers. Just as we cannot expect men to do what is right, we cannot expect women to look out for themselves in every situation. An individual woman might understand that she's safer at home on any given evening than at a house party or bar, but if all of her friends are pressuring her into coming with them, then she might very well go along to avoid the same sense of rejection that men avoid by refusing to stand up to injustice.
Camille Paglia's point about individual responsibility on the part of women in avoiding sexual assaults is a prudent one. I believe it's only valuable as preventative advice and not as consolation for victims. Telling a victim of sexual assault that they were in any way at fault for what happened doesn't seem like the correct thing to do, ever. But at the risk of sounding diminutive, if you are a woman, I'd say you're stronger than our culture might lead you to believe. Know this, and take care to look out for yourself.
And as far as the individual goes, it is the same for men. Onto each of us falls the individual responsibility of standing up to sexism and its associated injustices when we encounter them. At the risk of sounding diminutive, if you are a man, you are capable of acting with more humanity than our culture might lead you to believe. Know this, and take care to do what is right.