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Everywhere and nowhere: on masculinity and breaking the rules
Submitted by Mastodon on Tue, 2013-07-23 17:26
Article here. Excerpt:
'It's commonplace in our culture — and cultures around the world — to simply accept the fact that most crimes are perpetrated by men; we call them "attackers," "assailants," "suspects" and "accused" (and mayors and senators and chiefs of staff ...) and talk about their deeds and their punishments, but the thing that binds them together — their masculinity — remains invisible because it's excluded from public discourse.
Feminism quite rightly identifies the ways in which men hold a disproportionate amount of power in the world, be it financial, professional, corporate, political, religious or familial. However, men also make up about 95 per cent of Canada's prison population. Men account for 97 per cent of Canadian workplace deaths. About 70 per cent of Canadian homicide victims are male. Men are about two-and-a-half times more likely to die in a car accident than women, and 82 per cent of impaired driving charges are laid against men.
What is going on? Why are there so many more men than women located in places of physical risk? The silence that surrounds this reality is reflected in men themselves, whose reluctance to admit weakness and vulnerability has dire health consequences: higher rates of disease, earlier deaths and three times the suicide rate of women.
...
Almost two years ago now I was in the kitchen, absently listening to the radio, while my six-year-old son ate his breakfast a few feet away. A reporter was relaying the story of a Toronto man who beat a family of baby raccoons with a shovel, and was later led away in handcuffs. I didn't realize my son was listening too until he asked, "Mummy why is it always the boys who are going to jail?" My six-year-old son could ask the question. Why can't we?'
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Comments
familial power?
"disproportionate amount of power in the world, be it financial, professional, corporate, political, religious or familial."
Disproportionate amt. of familial power? Umm, really? The cards are soooo stacked in favor of men in places like "family courts"? Or really, do men have reproductive rights? What typically happens to men after marriage, esp. after they become fathers? Reduced quickly to au pair status. That's "familial power"?
And power in the workplace? Tell me, if he's accused of anything by a female colleague, what happens to him? Powerful? He's powerful?
I'm glad the author brought up the various points she did, but sometimes I really wish I could give a woman (esp. a feminist one) the option of living as a man, body and all, for just a month. Just to see how she'd feel about the notion of "male privilege" after that experience.
My response
"whose reluctance to admit weakness and vulnerability has dire health consequences: higher rates of disease, earlier deaths and three times the suicide rate of women."
I think the real problem is how men are treated. For example, I grew up in the Vietnam era when we drafted young men to fight a war for dubious purposes in very unwise ways. At 18, a young man was expected to go fight a war he may or may not believe in, risk life and limb, see his friends die, deal with horrors no horror movie can equal--in short, to directly face the worst humanity has to offer, and then come home and be called a "baby killer." Even today, with a voluntary army, men are sent on so many repeat tours that more men die of suicide than die in battle. No wonder so many homeless are veterans suffering from PTSD or chemical dependence or whatever--what hell could be worse than what a lot of these men went through at an age when they're barely adults? And the men of my generation had no choice in the matter.
And the problem is men aren't vulnerable enough? Give me an effing break. War has dire health consequences, honey. Try being vulnerable when you're under siege for two months, knowing each day could be your last. What was it Troutman said about Rambo? "What you call hell, he calls home."
Fast forward to marriage. A man does the responsible thing and works to support his family. One day mama bear decides she wants out. The judge gives her the kids because dad was out working all day and thus couldn't be the "primary caretaker" of the child. So dad is punished for being responsible. And if dad misses a support payment, he is punished for being irresponsible.
What women call hell, men call home.
Gee, I wonder why that is?
One thing she totally overlooks is how often women who commit crimes don't even get charged for it, or for some reason the victim decides to drop the charges. With a bias like this, it is even really possible to fairly consider which gender commits crimes more often? It could just be society lets women get away with stuff far more often than men. I have trouble believing this occurs simply because men are inherently more reckless, immoral and absent-minded than women.
Or it very well could be that the reason more men are charged with crimes is the same reason why men make up ~90% of the homeless, and why women live longer, get more college degrees, and outearn their male counterparts up until they rear children. That is, there is so much concern for just the female half of the population, that it's nearly gotten to a point where society is set up to make failure nearly impossible for girls and women. If you have nothing but support, especially by virtue of just being female, obviously, you'll be less desperate and thus, less likely to commit a crime.
My comment, broken into two
My comment, broken into two parts.
It needs to be said that one of the reasons women don't appear in the papers doing wrong is because they are protected, even from their own actions. You see it all the time, people trying to explain away women's bad deeds. "Oh, she killed those children, she must be sick and needs help, but that man killed children in exactly the same manner, for exactly the same reason, he's a monster and should be shot". When someone dares to challenge the bad behavior of women in power, they are then accused of doing so "because she's a woman" and claims "no man would ever be treated like this" and attacked as a misogynist (even other women aren't exempt from this accusation, though it does tend to be used more cautiously against other women).
Cont…
But the real problem comes up when, despite women doing bad things being kept out of the media spotlight by media outlets, those media outlets then proceed to use their own censoring of women's bad behavior as evidence that women don't behave badly, and that it is masculinity that are the problem.