The Politics of Masculinity
The Politics of Masculinity: An overview of contemporary theory
Mick Leach
[Citation: Leach, Mike. (1994). The Politics of Masculinity: An Overview of Contemporary Theory. Social Alternatives, 12(4), January, pp. 36-37.]
The political and theoretical challenges issued by contemporary feminism have provoked a range of cultural responses about men, and about masculinity. The dominant reaction is typified by the media-sponsored reassertion of tough male roles in popular drama, mirroring in style, if not extent, the narrow constrictions of the female beauty myth.
By contrast, the last twenty years have witnessed a small but growing concern with the limitations and oppressive nature of conventional masculinity. This article seeks to describe the current ‘state of play’ in research which examines the politics of masculinity, arguing that the quality of theory is dependent upon its treatment of power relations.
The Politics of Masculinity
Like femininity, masculinity operates politically at different levels. At one level, it is a form of identity, a means of self-understanding that structures personal attitudes and behaviours. At another, distinct but related level. masculinity can be seen as a form of ideology, in that it presents a set of cultural ideals that define appropriate roles, values and expectations for and of men.
Most importantly, masculinity is not ‘natural’. Unlike the biological state of maleness, masculinity is a gender identity constructed socially, historically and politically. It is the cultural interpretation of maleness, leamt through participation in society and its institutions. The social and cultural character of masculinity is evidenced by cross-cultural variations in masculine styles, and by historical changes in the dominant definitions of manhood. For instance, the notion of the male ‘breadwinner’ or ‘sole provider’ emerged in the late-nineteenth century with the rise of industrial capitalism, replacing pre-existing conceptions of family based income production.
This example is an instructive demonstration of the ideological nature of masculinity. Conceptions of identity such as ‘breadwinner’ or’housewife’ operate to support and legitimate structures of social inequality, such as the sexual division of labour between men (public/productive) and women (private/domestic). The primary ideological function of these definitions is that of naturalising unequal power relations. The ideological strength of gender identity is that masculinity is easily (and deliberately) confused with biological maleness. Ideologically loaded assumptions are thereby bestowed the uncontestable status of ‘the natural’.
Unmasking the politics of ideology involves an examination of the issues of power and interests. Using the example of the ‘breadwinner’, it is possible to identify at least two interests served by its definition. The first reflects industrial capitalism’s need to mobilise a responsible, compliant workforce The ‘breadwinner’ notion not only legitimates the sexual division of labour, but also operates to limit resistance to this organisation of work by transforming social expectations into issues of responsibility and self-esteem. The second reflects men’s interests (and advantages) in sustaining the economic subordination and dependence of women.
A similar analysis reveals the ideological role of conventional masculinity in sustaining the sexual oppression of women. To the extent that masculinity is defined by sexism, the objectification of women, misogyny, homophobia, aggression and the suppression of emotion it maintains and renders acceptable patterns of sexual and domestic violence against women. The extent of these patterns of sexual violence in westem societies cannot be dismissed as deviance. They need to be understood as structures of power, as social practices that maintain forms of male dominance. This is not to say that all men are rapists. Rather, it is to argue that dominant modes of masculinity are integral to the maintenance of sexist cultures which benefit most men in some way. The logic of sexism is ultimately one of objectification and dehumanisation. If rape culture is an exaggeration of sexist culture, then it is a slight one.
Understanding the political significance of masculinity, then, involves an examination of how masculinity is implicated in structures of power. An adequate theory of the politics of masculinity should be able to account for questions concerning power relations. For instance, how does masculinity operate to structure or maintain patterns of gender relations? How is masculinity implicated in, or structured by class relations under modern capitalism? Where do the dominant forms of masculinity come from, and whose interests do they reflect? How may we account for resistance against, and changes in, dominant forms?
Most theories which have attempted to produce a political understanding of masculinity have had difficulty producing a coherent analysis of power relations within and between genders. Sociobiological accounts, for instance, attempt to account for masculine nature and power with reference to biology and physiology. This approach cannot account for cultural differences or historical redefinitions of masculinity. The relatively more sophisticated sex-role socialisation theories suffer from similar theoretical shortcomings. Sex-role theorists dominated theoretical work on masculinity in the twentieth century, focussing on the ways in which people are socialised into male or female ‘gender personalities’. This school of theory, exemplified by the work of Talcott Parsons, approached masculinity as a socially institutionalised role, learnt through the family, and as having certain functions within that context. This approach is superior to that of sociobiology because it treats masculinity as social rather than natural, and examines its functions within a structure (the family). However, the structure of the family itself remains unquestioned by sex-role theory, treating it as the given framework for analysis. Consequently, the power relations and interests that produce the structure remain untheorised.
Furthermore, sex-role theory provided little analysis of power relations within the family structure, as its framework focuses on gender differences, rather than gender relations. Consequently, it tends to assume a relationship of complementarity between masculinity and femininity, as opposed to one of power. [Jessica Benjamin shows how 'complimentarity , as opposed to 'mutuality' IS a relationship of power, just like "separate but equal" was in regard to segregation. -SG]
Carrigan, Connell and Lee address the issues of power and gender relations in their conception of ‘Hegemonic Masculinity’. Their broad sociological approach focuses on the historical production of social categories, particularly upon how the dominance of white, heterosexual masculinity is maintained and reproduced. Utilising the concept, they argue, involves ‘a question of how particular groups of men inhabit positions of power and wealth, and how they legitimate and reproduce the social relationships that generate their dominance’.
Using the insights of feminist and gay liberation theorists, they argue that the dominant mode of masculinity constructs a hierarchy in sexual politics with white, heterosexual men at the top. The subordination of other forms of masculinity, such as homosexuality, is related to the overall logic of the subordination of women to men. Homosexuality is defined as feminine, or ‘other than’ masculine, and thus as inferior. Homophobia is crucial to the definition of masculinity, as it rules out men as potential objects of emotional or sexual attachment. Consequently, homophobia operates to reinforce oppressive heterosexual themes, such as male competition for legitimate sex objects (women). Moreover, homophobia is essential to defining family structures which benefit men as a whole, but which benefit ruling class men the most in the construction of a sexual division of labour (in which women are unpaid private labourers who sustain male workers).
Connell argues that hegemonic masculinity can be seen as a masculine strategy for maintaining the economic, political and sexual subordination of women, and an ideological process of articulating that strategy. Evidence of this strategy is visible in phenomena as diverse as the mass media, wage structures, welfare policies, the design of housing, and judicial attitudes to rape cases.
One further theoretical development is worth noting. Post-structuralist theorists, such as Foucault, argue that power relations are visible not only through the direct repressive actions of polihcal actors, such as the state, but also through the construction of particular forms of personal and collective identity. Masculinity is a good example of this. Policed by the state through laws, moral codes, medicine, psychiatry and science, individuals may ultimately become self-policing, in that their actions significantly reflect the political interests implicit in dominant constructions of male identity.
Conclusion
The advantages of these approaches lie in their ability to adequately theorise the role of power relations in the construction of masculinity. Masculinity is crucially defined by the structural facts of male dominance over women, and the hierarchies of the capitalist economy. These theories also permit an understanding of the ways in which dominant forms of masculinity change with other shifts in gender relations and economic organisation. Importantly, they allow for different styles of masculinity such as homosexuality, to be considered as resistance, rather than deviance.
[FOOTNOTES have been omitted from this reprint of the article.]
Iguana:
With drivel like this, is it any wonder that domestic violence hysteria has lost sight of reality?
16 May 2005, 11:47 pmStan:
Iguana won’t be posting here again, and neither will the misogynist, Tom, who posted an anti-woman “joke” after him. The Iguana post is left here to show exactly why we need to have this conversation about gender, and how violently (verbally and physically) men will protect their prerogative.
Bye, Tom. Bye, Iguana.
17 May 2005, 7:30 amPerry:
“so can we say a women wants to be reponsibal for their choise to give berth and be a single parent. Do women want to support their child on their own without forceing a man to pay child-support?”
17 May 2005, 12:41 pmpeggy:
Hi Stan. Hope you’re well. Here is a thought I have expressed to you before. It sits uncomfortably with just about every person I know who is seriously concerned about gender inequalities and wants to do away with those inequalities. But I have never seen a reasonable refutation of this idea that I have. Anyway, here it is. (Btw, do *not* confuse this idea with sociobiology, because it is not that). Given that masculinity is a social and cultural construct, or set of contstructs that are different among different people in different times and places, still, “masculinity” is not constructed out of nothing. It is constructed out of the biological fact of maleness. For this reason, although constructions of masculinity vary widely, they still are all bound together by the fact that they are constructed out of the same raw material, so to speak. Thus all masculinities have certain things in common, just as all objects made out of clay have certain things in common, because of inherent limitations and possibilities in the material. That being true, is it not also true that wherever you go in the world, whatever the culture, men will be more violent than women? Whether the culture promotes violence or abhors it, ninety percent of the killing of people by people will be committed by male people. Therefore, ***maybe*** there is something biological going on here. Not to say that all those born male are forced by their hormones to act violently, because clearly they are not, and in the end culture in combination with individual will trumps hormones, I think. But would it not be reasonable to suggest, in all seriousness, that those born male are *inherently* handicapped (or advantaged, depending on how you look at it) by their excessive capacity for violence?
17 May 2005, 5:22 pmStan:
Hi Peggy,
I guess I’ll just preview the book a bit to answer this one. This is something I struggled with, and my editor De Clarke tends to lean more in your direction on this question than mine. This was actually good for me, because it forced me to defend my own position (which is to not try and diasggregate biology from social construction, but to be mindful that these are in fact only extricable as analytical categories) Hope this at least begins to address your question, at least my own thoughts on it (from “Sex & War”:
I need to preface the discussion of post-modernism, gender, and the state, by picking up some pieces from earlier chapters. I want to begin with biological determinism, and one of its alternatives, biological foundationism.
The argument of biological foundationism is different from biological determinism. Biological foundationism, according to Linda Nicholson , is a “coat-rack†theory.
“Here the body is viewed as a type of rack upon which differing cultural artifacts, specifically those of personality and behavior, are thrown or superimposed†(pg. 41).
Biological foundationism attempts to reconcile the obvious fact that we exist as a biological body with the equally obvious fact that our behavior is overwhelmingly a consequence of socialization. The problem with this approach is that it is still highly reified. Concrete context is withdrawn and replaced by abstraction and generalization. Human behavior is yanked out of social history, and that history is replaced with a Dawkin-esque history of the genes… which is then qualified by an element of equally unspecific social constructionism.
The implication is one of mutual autonomy – autonomy of the biological and autonomy of the social, with some simple and linear causal interactions, like billiard balls bouncing off one another and not changing the essential shape of each ball.
It is the failure of this autonomy in real life that makes this analysis unconvincing. It also sets us up for other fallacies that begin with this unquestioned premise of autonomy.
There is an argument that animals, even ‘higher’ mammals and primates exhibit certain sexual and-or apparently sexualized behaviors, implying an element of biological causation. Counterposed to this is the (social constructionist, but also Marxist) claim that human behavior is not determined by these kinds of predispositions. Counterposed to the constructionist argument is the claim that denial of the biological ‘element’ (like a billiard ball) is a reversion to biblical separatism between ‘human and beast.’ This is a non sequitur.
The rejection of biological determinism, and of biological foundationism, is not based on assumptions of divine intervention and religion’s species discontinuity. It is based on both the empirical evidence provided by the social sciences that demonstrate, through diversity, the inextricably social character of conscious human behavior, and on the assumption that socialization is interfused with every conscious behavior past infancy.
It is also based on the recognition that these behaviors are cognitive. Social construction and cognition are not mutually exclusive. They exist apart from one another only as an analytical category, not ontologically.
Note, I do not say the ‘social content’ of behavior, because I believe this implies some quantity; our behavior is 80% social and 20% biological, for example. This is a decidedly non-dialectical understanding. So is the false dichotomy between the determinative influences of “social being†(from means of production through epistemology) and “consciousness.†These are interfused.
The arguments of constructionists and foundationists (I am dismissing plain biological determinists out of hand… sue me.) inevitably lead us to the issues of both science and ‘essentialism.’ Since these are so central to every debate on gender and militarism, as we have seen, it seems appropriate to address the relation between science and essentialism here.
A bit earlier, I accused Cynthia Enloe of “essentialism.†I said that she at least implied that (a generic) militarism grows out of some inhering essence of the male. I countered with my own hypothesis that a sexual division of labor that predated organized warfare created the social conditions for male exclusivity in organized militaries, and that military values growing our of military practice then came to be associated with certain masculinities. I went on to counter that even the concept of the military and its ideological appendage militarism should not be reified. There is a huge difference between, say, a Spartan military organization and the bureaucratic behemoth of today’s U.S. military, based on very real differences in the world system, and the politico-economic goals supported by these military formations. (Yeah, yeah, there are similarities, too.)
Alas, however, I need to further complicate this argument by critiquing the whole notion of essentialism as it is currently used by academics… even though I just used it.
‘Essentialist’ has become an epithet, and as such implies the moral and-or intellectual superiority of the ‘anti-essentialist.’
The desire of many people to rebut essentialism is the desire to break down the rationale for oppression based on categories like ‘race’ and ‘gender.’ This is laudable. The Marxists and radical feminists stand in opposition to dominant interpretations of race and gender as natural because they want to expose the systems of power embodied in race and gender. The post-modernists see their liberation as liberation from oppressive ideas, the liberation of individual identity, which struggles against oppressive social ‘narratives’ (racist ideas, sexist ideas) that attempt to curtail the individual’s ‘freedom.’
One obvious goal of both camps is to struggle against racial and sexual stereotypes that are used to justify oppression.
The two strategies of rebuttal against ‘essentialism,’ according to philosophy professor Ron Mallon , are “skeptical non-essentialism†and “constructionist non-essentialism.â€
Skeptical anti-essentialists will use the ‘scientific’ argument – induction – that there is no such thing as race, because as soon as you try to define it, there are exceptions. All people we consider to be Black do not have dark skin.
Constructionist anti-essentialists will de-naturalize. Being Black is not a ‘natural’ phenomenon, but the result of being perceived in society as being Black.
Both these approaches ignore the fact that in everyday life, we readily recognize Black people, even those who do not conform to every single characteristic that might be associated with black-ness. White people recognize Black people, and Black people recognize Black people. To my mind, neither of the arguments above (admittedly over-simplified) is particularly convincing to the average person who knows damn well when she sees a Black person.
This also applies to gender. Even if there are transgendered people, men who are more fem, women who are more butch, etc., our initial registration about whom we see (or hear on the phone) about whether that person is biologically male or female is overwhelmingly accurate. Pointing to exceptions to dismiss generalizations, or reducing the generalization to a ‘construction’ does not articulate with the day-to-day experience of most people, and not merely based on their prejudices, but often on a preponderance of evidence from their own experience.
It is only the most reductionist view of science, billiard ball science, which supports the kind of absolutism that demands conformity by each individual instance of a phenomenon to a set of quantifiable criteria. Science does not consist only of the application of absolute laws of nature, and purely inductive generalizations. Generalizations for which there are exceptions can still have very strong predictive and explanatory power. Nature and society embody tendencies as well as iron laws. And, as Mallon points out, there can be “kinds†without “essences.†One does not have to deny the kind to refute the essence.
The trouble with essentialism is this notion of ‘essence.’ But it is perfectly possible for someone to exhibit a set of real characteristics that mark that person as Black or female without implying any kind of “core-essence†whatsoever. There is such a thing as being African American, and it is more than a mere socially constructed narrative, and it exists even if it does not display some sharply inductive boundary. There is such a thing as being a woman.
Essentialism implies that each woman, or each African American shares a set of individually necessary characteristics to qualify for ‘membership;’ that these characteristics are intrinsic; and that the actions of ‘members’ of a group can be explained by a set of shared properties that might not be directly unobservable. This is obviously false.
Yet the anti-essentialisms, both skeptical and constructionist, do not do an effective job of rebutting this falsehood.
One can not attack the notion of Black-ness simply because all those who are considered and consider themselves Black do not have dark skin. No one uses one single individually necessary criterion to make such an assessment. My youngest daughter is very light-skinned, yet most people readily recognize her as Black based on both phenotypic and cultural characteristics, and on her context (Raleigh, NC). A ‘kind-group,’ such as Black or female, is characterized by a constellation of features, which are recognizable as a pattern, without any individual necessarily having all those features – features that are morphological, geographic, and-or cultural. If my daughter lived in a Puerto Rican neighborhood, she would blend in quite well and be mistakenly thought to be Puerto Rican… the exception to a rule that would generally work.
The problem is not the existence of kind-groups, from the point of view of a politics of liberation. It is breaking down false assertions that the kind-group is responsible for its own oppression based on an intrinsic defect or the idealization of a kind-group based on some mythical intrinsic property. Acknowledging that women and Blacks exist as women and Blacks is perfectly possible while at the same time rejecting racist and sexist essentialism.
Moreover, how do Blacks and women and their allies fight for social remedies aimed at women and Blacks (I use these two categories not to exclude others, but as examples), or for self-determination, once we erase these categories? The liberal politics of anti-essentialist ‘equality’ has already led us into this swamp, and it’s where we met David Horowitz screaming reverse-discrimination. He does not claim Black people are genetically inferior. He says Blacks are culturally inferior.
The other anti-essentialist strategy, of breaking with ‘nature’ and substituting the socially constructed narrative, is equally ineffective, and dangerous. The error of naturalization was covered earlier in the book at some length. That’s not the problem with the constructionist critique. The problem, with post-modernism generally, is its pig-headed rejection of the ‘metanarrative,’ that is, an analysis of the systems of power that contextualize oppression. Showing that racism can not be justified, because race is not ‘natural,’ has proven ineffective. Horowitz and his ilk have rather effortlessly redefined their racism in cultural terms, and mooted the constructionist argument against naturalism. And by reducing everything to identity (which is plain philosophical consumerism), post-modernists have surrendered any possibility of coordinated, collective struggle against oppressive systems… because they deny the existence of those systems.
In a real sense, the post-modernist constructionist critique of essentialism itself falls back on skeptical anti-essentialism, because its fallback position is based on pointing out exceptions to generalization as a way of ‘proving’ the generalization doesn’t exist.
This sounds scientific, but it is bad science. Newtonian physics loses its explanatory power if we are trying to understand a quark, but it works perfectly well to make most machines.
Gender, race, and other categories are both explanatory and predictive a good deal of the time, just like Newtonian physics. These realities do, however, change over time and in relation to other changes, global and local.
If we want to avoid the pitfalls of racism and sexism, anti-essentialism is not the most effective strategy. Anti-reification is.
17 May 2005, 5:54 pmMyles:
Very interesting and insightful article. It is hard to overestimate the importance of internalizing ruling class ideologies which foster self-policing.
17 May 2005, 5:56 pmI am a college student and a Marxist. At the university it is amazing how course after course deals with gender and sexuality without even mentioning the affects of capitalism on those concepts! I guess many “enlightened” profs self-police as well, thats hegemony for you.
On a positive note, I find this powerful conglomeration of theories quite liberating and useful, and it is popping up more frequently these days.
Some good introductory videos on this topic have been done by the Media Education Foundation, theyre worth checking out.
Glenn Goldman:
Let me start by stating that I think that the way in which the left addresses questions of gender is crucial. The rightwing has successfully been able to manipulate mass psychology through the fear-based organizing it has done around precisely these issues. Caricatures of communistic lesbian witches and hedonistic homosexual demons haunting the hallowed halls of (what should rightfully be Christian) academia abound in the collective unconscious of middle America, primarily as a result of right-wing propaganda work. These demons, they tell us, are intent on destroying all that God gave us that is good. This includes, primarily, sentimental notions of motherhood (sexless purity and nurturance), fatherhood (strength and protection) and home (infantile security).
But simply identifying the deep emotional hooks that right-wing ideologues organize around is not enough. Until we understand HOW and WHY the rightwing is successful at painting us as the destroyers of all that is good, we will not be able to build a mass base. I would argue that much of the responsibility rests with us.
While I think it’s fine and necessary to develop theories about gender, it also has a dangerous potential that we need to be aware of. Deconstructing something as deeply rooted as the gender system separate from a healthy, non-authoritarian revolutionary practice leaves normal people on very shaky ground. When the foundation that people are standing on starts shaking, they will either join in the movement that is shaking up the foundation because it obviously embraces deeper truth, beauty and justice than that which already exists, or they will run for familiar ground. When the former does not exist, all that’s left is the latter in the form of reactionary religiosity.
Besides the abstract notion of the search for truth, the work of radical analysis should serve to nurture a revolutionary movement. Such a movement has to address the social functions of that which is represented by “motherhoodâ€, “fatherhood†and “home.†Our families, groupings, collectives and communities SHOULD be nurturing (mama principle), protective (papa principle) and sensitive to the normal desire of people to feel secure (“There’s no place like home!â€). Further, these functions and qualities should be consciously identified and promoted as necessary and good, with the simple understanding that whereas in the past, these functions were rigidly gender based, modern conditions have freed them up, so that now men can be nurturing and women can be protective. This is a wonderful, not a fearful development! It’s also simple to explain.
Personally, I believe that there is a biological basis for the gender system that gets expressed (or exploited) differently in different cultures. For example, there appears to be a correlation between testosterone and what is generally categorized as aggressive behaviors:
http://www.mesomorphosis.com/articles/bahrke/bahrke05.htm
http://www.psychosomaticmedicine.org/cgi/content/abstract/42/2/253
This is not an attempt to rationalize aggression in males. Rather, I think that it helps explain the “raw material” that the gender system and imperialsim exploits. I don’t see any value in attempts to explain this reality away. In fact, I would categorize such attempts as “vulgar†dialectics. A true liberation movement can withstand these facts. The problem is not the reality of biological differences. The problem, as was correctly pointed out, is the tendency for these differences to be cast into stone in the form of a rigid gender system that ultimately serves the interests of the ruling class. For example, the problem is not rambunctious boys with “phallic personalities” but rather an environment of misogyny and repression that keeps boys from maturing into men with “genital personalities.” (Basically, the “phallic personality” is strutting, arrogant, aggressive; the “genital personality” is loving, kind and has nothing to prove). Imperial armies require phallic personalities.
I find the distinction between “kind†and “essence†to be helpful. Perhaps another way of understanding “kind†is through the Jungian concept of archetypes. Archetypes exist abstractly as enduring forms and qualities of human consciousness. The archetype of the warrior again comes to mind. The left should not be attempting to annihilate the warrior archetype (as if it possibly could). Rather, we should embrace the “righteous warrior†archetype (which is far different from an imperial pawn) because 1) it’s a real presence within the human collective unconscious and 2) a revolutionary movement needs to have a healthy fighting spirit. Further, we should not be attempting to flush gender-specific archetypes down the toilet, but rather consciously embrace them as part of the landscape of human consciousness and fully honor cross-gendered manifestations of this embrace. Men who identify with the goddess principle and women who identify with the warrior principle should be loved and welcomed into our circles.
I know that some of this post may sound a little “out there†but I’m used to feeling like I’m from outer space.
19 May 2005, 12:03 pmbill:
Stan,
19 May 2005, 3:01 pmI’m a fan of your writing and I’m always interested to hear what you have to say, but I think the manner in which you express yourself often makes it difficult for you to be understood. Your recent article about Galloway is perfectly intelligible. But some of your other stuff is a pain in the ass to decipher. Robert Fisk had a recent article decrying “academics and their preposterous claptrap of exclusion”; Chomsky often criticizes the language academics use; and Orwell wrote “politics and the english language.” What is your response to such criticism?
Stan:
Giving voice to anger is a fairly straightforward affair. Ditto the exposure of hypocrisy or the mobilization of human pathos. But when one is challenging How We Know — dominant epistemology, dominant ideology — then all the axioms and premises that we count as comon sense are disguised, cloaked in precisely that “sense.”
To uncloak these hidden premises, we have to replace them with new ways of knowing. This implies new concepts and the new language that represents those concepts. I’ve never subscribed to the idealization of the oppressed that tends to support talking down to people, or dumbing down what we have to say. It not only fails to challenge either those who need to know, it fails to challenge the forms of “knowledge” that bewilder the masses. Ignorance that supports oppression is not merely the lack of access to facts, it is the unavailabilty of alternative interpretive tools.
Gender is particularly difficult in this regard. Almost everything we think we know about gender is actually layer upon layer of ideological mystification. Certainly there is a species of academic discourse that is designed to further mystify, and to exclude. But it is the content of that discourse, and not its “difficulty” that determines whether it is ultimately liberatory or exclusionary.
Moreover, there is a certain type of discourse that is not for the masses. That does not make it somehow wrong or even exclusionary. If we are talking about social theory in terms that are accessible to those who have studied social theory, that is no different than a physician studying microbiology or the dynamics of fluids and electrolytes. Not a lot of people have the time or inclination to study these things, but the subject matter requires discipline and study, and it is surely important.
19 May 2005, 3:50 pmbill:
Thanks for replying. I don’t think complex topics require complex language. I also don’t think that speaking to someone at a level they can understand necessarily means that you are dumbing down the content. I didn’t say that “difficulty” determines whether the content is ultimately liberatory or exclusionary. My point is that in my opinion most of the “difficulty”, is unnecessary. I’m also going to have to disagree with you about the analogy between “social theory” and microbiology. As far as I know, there aren’t a lot of unnecessary polysyllabic words in microbiology textbooks.
19 May 2005, 5:53 pmJessica:
Bill, I have the same problem as you. I suggest you read slowly and use google to look up words. You’ll be surprised at how easy it is to understand once you get past the innitial shock of reading a sentence like this:
“In a real sense, the post-modernist constructionist critique of essentialism itself falls back on skeptical anti-essentialism, because its fallback position is based on pointing out exceptions to generalization as a way of ‘proving’ the generalization doesn’t exist.
This sounds scientific, but it is bad science. Newtonian physics loses its explanatory power if we are trying to understand a quark, but it works perfectly well to make most machines.”
Stan, a bit of comradely criticism… I am not a professional writer and I know that my own writing can be a little less than clear at times… I agree with your thing about scientific language… but when your writing starts resembling an advanced physics text written by Monty Python it is time to do some editing (or cut down on the caffein and bongs?). Microbiology texts tend to be concise, use short sentences and avoid double-negatives.
19 May 2005, 7:10 pmpeggy:
Just a footnote on Stan’s idea of “kind” versus “essence.” I think Wittgenstein addressed this issue well, and solved it, with his idea of “family resemblance” – which can be applied equally well to the meanings of a word as to a racial category such as the one Stan’s daughter is seen to belong to in the community where that family lives. Basically, the idea is this: let us say a “family” consists of twenty attributes (blonde hair, blue eyes, buck teeth, bushy eyebrows, high forehead, and so forth). A recognizable member of this family will have several (let us arbitrarily say minimum of seven) such attributes. Then you can look at two people and say, “That girl is obviously an Owens and that other girl is also obviously an Owens” even though the two girls do not share a single Owens attribute. They just participate in the same gene pool, which people of the community will have identified as distinctively Owens. Moreover, the gene pool is open, fluid and changing, so that eventually, even if the concept of Owens is maintained, the attributes will completely change from what they were before.
Sex, however, is essential. Either you have two X chromosomes or you have an X and a Y. Those chromosomes determine what sex you are. Of course it is a mistake to go beyond that and say that biology dictates behavior and social roles. But it is also a mistake to ignore biology altogether and assume that power differentials among human beings have nothing biological about them. On the matter of domestic violence, or violence between intimates, I think it is hard to deny that biology is involved along with social and cultural stuff.
19 May 2005, 7:27 pmwhi5p:
Refute Peggy. I think there might be biological underpinnings to “male” violence. But its not a clear cut and dried thing usually to discuss such things, even when they can be demonstrated as genetic/biologic. The problem is alot of unclear thinking around the subject of maleness and masculinity. It is dangerous to start spouting off about biological underpinnings. There is no hard data that I know of, and even then, we would have to wait and see what and how it operates in a psyche and a society. Analyzing the power relations tends to doubt the self interested pseudo science. what you propose is a testable hypothesis (I suppose here) but is not conclusive, and so cannot really elucidate the theoretic understandings of masculinity with any reliability.
For instance, the males might just engage in the “showy” kind of violence. Females might exhibit violence, but it would be attributed to somthing other than a biological condition like “maleness”. There may be a confluence of factors, male and female, that lead to violence, and males might predominate on the factors they have. This last one tends to break the “maleness” = “masculine” hypothesis, and it is worth our keeping our thinking clear on this point in expectation of what we will actually be able to find in the way of evidence. masculinity may be a social construct that males have a biological tendency to like, because its in thier self interest, same with violence. Self interest becomes the stimuli that biology apparently drives toward as the “proper” one. All these explanations could be true to some extent, as well as your basic sketched out hypothesis that does not indicate a particular biological underpinning.
19 May 2005, 8:57 pmStan:
Just recapping my main point; the biological and social construction of human behavior is only extricable into these two categories as analytical categories. There is no social behavior that happens in a non-biological entity, nor is there any biological behavior amolng humans that is not socially conditioned. The way to resolve this dilemma is to recognize it as a false one (a dualistic fallacy), and begin all analyses with concrete instances and work out from there. Dualism is the epistemology that has us trapped here.
19 May 2005, 9:04 pmJessica:
http://songweaver.com/info/bonobos.html
19 May 2005, 11:50 pmhoward:
On the exchanges re: hard-to-understand language. I am 51 years old. When I was in my 20s I quit grad school just shy of a PhD because I couldn’t take what I saw as the insufferable b.s. of the post-modernists and didn’t want to spend the rest of my life either fighting them or sucking up to them. I wouldn’t say I’ve exactly come full circle since then, but I have arrived at something that perhaps resembles a kind of dialectical synthesis: some stuff is hard to talk about, some other stuff isn’t. There. Now, of course you can make easy stuff hard and hard stuff harder by an injudicious use of language. If we think something is harder than it needs to be, but it still seems to us to be worthwhile, a good exercise would be to try to “translate” it into ordinariese. Such an exercise would be good for the discussion, I think. Perhaps this already goes on in the form of comments such as “if I understand you correctly….” and so forth.
BTW is anybody familiar with Genevieve Vaughn’s book For-giving: A Feminist Criticism of Exchange? (It’s published by Plain View Press in Austin Texas where I reside, so I have no idea how wide a distribution it’s had). The reason I bring it up at this juncture is because it discusses many of the themes I’ve seen in this and other postings on this site. She gets complex when necessary, but stays down to earth as much as I think she can, as well. And, Stan, you said somewhere else on this site that semiotics “makes [your] head hurt.” The book definitely gets into issues of language and meaning, but it’s pretty clear (even though she does have her own set of special definitions for a few words).
20 May 2005, 12:17 amJanie:
Dear Stan,
I came across your writing looking for contact information for Genevieve Vaughn, author of “For-Giving, a feminist criticism of exchange” . . .and was very heartened to find your writing. I appreciate what you are saying.
I consider myself a feminist spiritual warrior–I’ve done a lot of reading and writing on the subject of what life was like before the patriarchy. I’m also a programmer on radio and have interviewed Riane Eisler, author of many books, including the international best seller of 20 years ago, “The Chalice and the Blade.” Her research, along with many others, both women and men, collaborates your own writing.
I have also been on a profound spiritual journey for the past 20 years, creating music and art and sculpture–all of a single theme . . . the reemergence of the sacred Feminine.
I want to say, too, as a mother of three and the grandmother of four–that without any question the little boy baby comes into this world with the same heart of love that the little girl baby has.
If we were acquainted with our “prehistory”–(it has been snuffed out, of course, by the patriarchy of the past 5,000 years) we would realize that we have lived in peace and harmony on earth for many thousands of years. . . .living in an egalitarian way–with no signs of violence in the culture–no warfare. . . .Neolithic and paleolithic times . . Grateful to the Great Mother for the gift of life.
Thank you for helping to educate us.
Blessings, Janie
21 March 2006, 2:19 am