"The women of Bikini Kill let guitarist Billy Karren be in their feminist punk band, but only if he's willing to just "do some shit." Being a feminist dude is like that. We may ask you to "do some shit" for the band, but you don't get to be Kathleen Hannah."--@heatherurehere


Thursday, September 06, 2007

What to Do With Stereotypes of Masculinity?

Over at Feministing the other day, Jessica submitted this video, with the title "No Comment Necessary":



Of course, there were a few comments about it, mostly ranging around how people weren't at all surprised by the results, and a few about how the video was obviously edited to show that all men think about are their penises and all that women think about are their brains. It's a wee little clip, and as such, we can take it at face value as just an amusing little piece of culture.

But of course, as a guy who finds meaning in even daily comic strips, I think that some comments are definitely necessary.

When Stereotypes Are True
Thing is, while we have no idea what the general response from men and women is represented in the video from any information they give us, we do have some good intuitions based on our own experience in this culture that they are probably somewhat representative. It would be great if we were given some statistics, but that wouldn't make for a very entertaining video, perhaps. (Ok, it would make it more interesting to me.) There's some circularity going on here--people who pay attention to culture understand that men are taught to revere their penises, to worry about them, to think about doing violence with them, to focus on them, to be insecure about them, on and on, ad infinitum. Men are taught that what is important about them is centered on their cocks, which is part of why, when asked by a person on the street about bionic parts, lots of men respond with 'penis'.

What do we do when we suspect that a stereotype (in this case, that all men think about are their dicks) actually represents the reality of the situation? How do we change the world so that the stereotype doesn't ring true?

Some Possible Paths
One way to ask such questions is to simply post a video like this without comment. People who understand that patriarchy hurts men will sort of automatically know that these guys are being played by the system. They do think way too much about their cocks, but we all know that's because (in part) it's what they've been trained to do, and to give up doing that involves rejecting traditional male masculinity (in part) and patriarchy. But I think that there isn't enough recognition of how patriarchy hurts men in general to make this assumption very often, even in feminist spaces. So, instead of people reacting to this video with "yep, men get trained to be penis-worshiping jerks, doesn't that suck," we get "this needs no comment and isn't it funny that men are penis-worshiping jerks!?" I think simply posting this thing without acknowledging some of the complexities involved is like posting the video of the beauty show contestant spouting racism and then laughing because all white women are so like that, when obviously they're not.

Instead of simply implying/acknowledging that men are stupid cretins who can (obviously!) only think about their penises, I would love some questioning about why it is that (some? most?) men are so penis-focused. Why not bring some questions along about why men even joke about smacking somebody upside the head with their bionic penis? How does living in patriarchy contribute to such things? And why is it that we don't (often?) think that women would respond in a similar way? In a more egalitarian culture, one in which men weren't encouraged to participate in traditional male masculinity and to focus on their cocks, or one in which women were taught to revere their pussies in some of the same ways that men are taught to revere their penises, would the men not be so prone to cockfighting references? Or would women be more prone to violence-by-vagina references?

Changing Things
I think that men are taught to be penis-focused. No doubt. I also have no doubt that lots of men would respond to the question in the video with 'penis'. Maybe even most men. What I want to know is: How do we, as feminists, work to change things so that shaking our heads and laughing at the men who embody (so to speak!) the stereotypes isn't the only response we have? And I think that putting up a video like that without comment doesn't do any of that work--rather, it reinforces the stereotype without giving any explanations as to why, or without giving men a path toward understanding how they're trained by being part of this culture to want bionic cocks.

Note
: To be clear, I'm not saying that it's Jessica's responsibility to do this work: I think in general that there is a lot of room for feminist men to recognize that there is work to be done in this regard and to do it. I'm am a bit disappointed that the commentors on Feministing, who are so often full of vocal and varied voices, didn't see anything complex that needed some discussion. But maybe that just reflects that more feminist men need to do more work in getting the message out that patriarchy hurts men, too.

5 comments:

Mollygrrl said...

I wonder sometimes about this and the comic stuff you post. On the one hand it raises our awareness of gender stereotypes, and on the other, by making us aware of them, it reinforces a concept of "normal" in which these kinds of behaviors set the par.

And yet there's this whole discourse in Psychology including Freud, Irigaray, and even to some degree Kristeva in which the phallus (even the "cultural genital" which Susan J. Kessler and Wendy McKenna talk about in their book "Gender, an Ethnomethodological Approach") has this undue importance linguistically for male self-definition and differentiation from the female.

I wonder what an alternative would *look* like on the one hand, and on the other, I stand by people like Halberstam that claim that masculinity (and even these components of masculinity) is not the sole property of men.

Still, I think that this is one of those cases where knowing a thing, in this case, about masculinity, does not necessarily help us to imagine alternatives. Creating awareness, without critical investigation into it, as you pointed out, may be reinforcing it.
-m

Jeff Pollet said...

Molly--
Are you saying that posting the comics with little jokey comments reinforces the concept of normal, or that the comics themselves (say, when seen in the paper) do that? I'm not sure what you mean.

I like thinking about what an alternative would look like. In a silly way, it makes me think of a world in which lots of women answer the question with 'vagina' and lots of men answer with 'brain'. Among other things.

Anonymous said...

::missing the point::
What came to mind for me was bionic fingers for better typing and video game playing. What the heck is a bionic brain anyway? Considering how far we haven't gone in making smart computers, I don't think I want to accept one. On the other hand, most body parts of most people do tend to work about as well as we want them to, with the male reproductive organs being a notable exception - their inherent limitations can be frustrating.
::/missing the point::

I wonder if the question was phrased as "What body part would you most like to enhance" you'd get some percentage of women answering "breasts"...

Mollygrrl said...

Jeff,

Quite the opposite actually. I'm saying that these comics require critical attention: simply drawing them and publishing them in a paper does two things: 1) it raises our awareness of the stereotypes and 2) it lumps those stereotypes into all of the other information we utilize when we construct what we believe to be normal.

By criticizing them, I think you're helping to de-construct that "norm." However, in posting them without commentary, without explanation: you assume that there is a singular meaning to the comic that should be obvious to everyone.

My point is that we know that patriarchal power, as the norm, operates invisibly: we're accustomed to it so we *don't* necessarily see it. Assuming we will is tantamount to targetting a specific audience of already well-honed feminist thinking and I don't think we can do that.

As for imagining a different world: eek! What is all of psychology and our linguistic construction of the world were vagino-centric. I'm sure someone out there has written a sci-fi novel of an alternative universe like that...but probably one written by a man like Robert Heinlein or something.

I need to noodle on this more before I comment again about it.
-m

Jeff Pollet said...

"My point is that we know that patriarchal power, as the norm, operates invisibly: we're accustomed to it so we *don't* necessarily see it."--molly

I'm with you on this, and that's partly why I put up something that seems very simple and harmless--daily comic strips--which lend toward patriarchy and the like.