I'm easing back into reading some feminist blogs, and one of my favorite feminist bloggers, Jill of Feministe, has a great post up today where she reflects on a new study that shows that (gasp!) adolescent boys think of adolescent girls as more than just sex objects. My favorite part of Jill's analysis:And this is another “thank feminism” moment. The idea that boys just want sex (and girls don’t) is at its heart conservative and essentialist — and it’s a stereotype that lays the groundwork for requirements of “femininity” that inevitably involve refusing sex until a big fat diamond enters the picture, and bartering virginity for financial and social security. It’s not feminists who argue that boys are mindless animals only interested in sex; no, that argument comes from your anti-feminist social conservatives, who manage to inject it into abstinence-only sex education...
5 comments:
No offense, Jeff, because I generally enjoy our conversations, but you have a degree in philosophy, and you can't tell the post is riddled with faulty reasoning and logical fallacies?
Especially the part that you quoted.
Actually, it's because of my degree in philosophy, and subsequent experience in (briefly) teaching informal logic, that I take claims that something is riddled with logical fallacies with a grain of salt (though if you want to point out where you think her reasoning goes astray, knock yourself out). Great logicians like Russell, Whitehead and Wittgenstein eventually figured out that there are some huge problems with 'simply' mapping experience into some logical form.
It's not that I think some training in logical fallacies isn't helpful with reasoning--it's just that calling something fallacious ought to be the beginning of a disagreement, not the end of a disagreement (otherwise, it's something akin to poisoning the well...heh).
That said, I think there are several claims that Jill makes that could be buttressed by more evidence, but aside from that, I think her reasoning is pretty solid.
But did I mention my degree is from a California State school, not a University of California school?
For starters I want to say, upon thinking about it and seeing your reaction I shouldn't have taken a cheap shot at your credentials. That was unfair of me. Sometimes I like throwing around rhetorical flash without thinking about how it might affect the other person's feelings. So I'm sorry.
And this is another “thank feminism” moment.
She implies causation for the results here with no actual evidence, that feminism is somehow responsible for these boys taking an interest in the girls they are dating. If you feel I'm misreading her statement I would be more than interested to hear your take. But that's how I read "thank feminism."
In actuality, all we know from what is reported is that boys are interested in girls, beyond being mere sexual objects. I could've told you that long before the study and I'm certainly no feminist. However, there is no evidence that feminism is the cause for this occurence. Boys could've been this way long before feminism.
In fact, one of my objections to feminist interpretation of men has always been this major disconnect between their accusations and the mass social monoliths of men that they forge in their discourses from what most men/boys are actually like. So I find it ironic that Jill wants to give credit to feminism for this.
In fact, there is a lot of evidence pointing in the other direction that this behavior predates feminism "proper." One need only be familiar with major literary works: parts of the Bible, Jane Austen (post-Wollstonecraft), certain Shakespeare plays, etc. to see what I mean. Although there are plenty of examples of men treating women as sexual objects (which of course begs the question how old this conservative ideology actually is), there are also plenty of examples of men showing general interest in females as people, as intellectuals, as soul mates.
So I'm ultimately left wondering what the hell feminism has to do with any of this? It's just a declarative statement without proof. She tries to make the link a little further down in her argument.
The idea that boys just want sex (and girls don’t) is at its heart conservative and essentialist — and it’s a stereotype that lays the groundwork for requirements of “femininity” that inevitably involve refusing sex until a big fat diamond enters the picture, and bartering virginity for financial and social security.
This is a blatant strawman. Do conservatives actually believe boys just want sex and girls only want romance? If they did why would they spend so much time trying to "control" female sexuality. If they believed the above statement to be true, it seems to me they wouldn't worry about young girls having sex.
Furthermore, are you really going to tell me all those married conservative men and women pushing "traditional family" values believe that their entire marriage was based on the principle of, "Me, Tarzan, Uncontrollable Horny Man, you, Jane, Romance loving sexless being who need big diamond ring for teh sex!"
I certainly wouldn't argue against the fact that many conservative types believe that men are more interested in sex by nature (notice that physical attraction does come in as second in the study, by the way, and that forty percent of the boys were sexually active), but that doesn't equal ONLY interested in sex. She overstates the conservative position (as if there is only one) and misrepresents it, then tries to knock it down in a couple of sentences. That's always a bad sign.
This a feminist distortion of what conservatives are actually saying, not what conservatives are actually saying.
It's a blatant strawman.
It’s not feminists who argue that boys are mindless animals only interested in sex
Oh really, I am pretty sure various radical feminists have made the argument that boys are mindless sex hungry animals, even if they blamed "social construction" rather than "nature" for it.
In the conservative heyday that never actually was, women had to trick those over-sexed, brutish men into marriage by withholding sex.
She openly admits this never was. Too bad she doesn't also openly admit most of the conservatives I know or have heard don't go around believing that women have to trick men into marriage by withholding sex. Another strawman.
Now, boys are expected — and perhaps more importantly, allowed — to have feelings. That certainly isn’t universal, and there’s still a whole lot of poisonous rhetoric around masculinity, but feminism has created a slightly larger space for boys and men to be people instead of masculine charicatures.
Can she point to a time where boys/men weren't allowed to have feelings or express them? With real evidence? Again, the great wealth of Western literature suggests she is wrong.
One need only read Homer to see men expressing their feelings and sorrows, along with some forms of masculinites I imagine she'd find repugnant.
Isn't a great deal of the "poisonous rhetorical around masculinity" coming from the feminist camp? Isn't it also many feminists who often paint men as masculine caricatures? Again, this corresponds to some of my main objections to feminism in general that I mentioned earlier. Am I somehow fundamentally wrong in my portrait? I don't think so; I think that characterizes a great deal of feminist discourse, if not all of it.
Interesting, how she also believes that feminism has opened up this whole world for men when I recently just read another article by a Pro-Feminist woman that said feminism hasn't done enough to help men. I know there are other feminists who hold similar views.
Is it any shock that dads like these are raising sons who see women and girls as human beings instead of sex objects or servants?
This is where she tries to tie it all together. This is her stunning proof that the first study is related to the second book that she quotes.
But again, it never actually shows that feminism is the CAUSE of boys acting this way. Or even that dads with more interest in their children are resposible either. She just assumes this must be so.
It is simply a declaration. Feminism has done this, thee end, without any real evidence that the two have correlation much less causation.
There’s still a long way to go, but hopefully studies like this will serve as reminders of who actually has the interests of human beings in mind, and who is solely dedicated to a dogma that doesn’t fit into most peoples’ realities or ideals.
Wait, so it was a feminist who performed this study?
This is a ridiculous statement, building off her ridiculous strawmen.
It doesn't take a stretch of the imagination to see that conservatives could easily champion this study.
Hypothetical Conservative blogger post:
A new study shows that 10th-grade boys are more interested in getting to know a person than having sex with them. This helps to dispell the false notion of males as sexual predators that feminists have been writing about for decades. The study shows that boys are far more innocent natured than the malovolent portrait feminists like to paint of all men being potential rapist. It has been this sort of attitude about mens and boys that has led to an astounishing rise of sexual harrassment accusations in all levels of grade school, even kindergarten, for fairly innocuous acts like a hug.
This further throws a monkey wrench into the feminist belief that the attitudes of boys are entirely socially constructed. The study highlights that despite all the violent media and oversexualized images young boys are bombarded with daily due in part to the sexual liberation movement of the 1960s that has been so damaging to American culture, young boys are still interested in making an intellectual and spiritual connection with their partners rather than engaging in the crass sexuality championed by the Left. This bodes well for the future of the family and traditional values.
We are seeing that young boys are resisting the modern progressive impulses that oversexualize our youth today. This is a sign that they are turning to traditional Christian values ingrained in our Western society (even if not actually religious) that emphasizes treating people as people instead of as sexual objects whose only purpose is quick physical gratification. This study only goes to show how effective Christianity and the Right's emphasis on traditional values has been in giving young boys a sense of themselves in a so-called "progressive" world that tries to force them into engaging in sex before they are ready for it.
In all fairness, the study also suggests that at least forty percent of the young boys have engaged in sexual activity. I need not remind all of you that there is still a lot work we need to do to protect our children and teach them proper values.
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I do not endorse or necessarily believe any of the views above other than simply pointing out that Jill's argument is weak, and your taking a lot for granted.
What does the study actually show: that a bunch of teenage boys want real relationships, and not just sex. That the stereotype that boys ONLY want sex is a myth, or a partial myth (since I'm not sure they actually disprove boys want sex and think about it more than girls). Who is responsible for that myth and what is this studies implication is of course a matter of where you stand.
I'm curious Eric, since you don't state what part of the example that Jeff quoted you view as "riddled with faulty reasoning and logical fallacies", what is it specifically?
Because I'm reading the analysis provided by Jill as entirely accurate in how this culture sets up the dynamics of sexuality as they apply to men and women not at all equally.
Sorry Eric I didn't see your latest entry when I posted the above. I'm going to take a look at your response.
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