I know you don’t want the job of Feminism Police. AnI didn’t intend to “summon” you—hence the ? after you name—but I did request help. And it seems you’re offering it—via IM—and I appreciate it.
Let me do some more simmering, and then maybe we’ll chat in IM.
In the meantime, I look forward to seeing if anyone else can provide some insight.
It was the “on the basis of Sayeth the Girl” that I objected to more than the mere fact of the summoning. If you’d summoned me on the basis that I am the most karmalicious female poster or something, I wouldn’t have remarked on it except maybe to verbally preen.
For feminist blogs that aren’t horribly ideological echo chambers, I recommend Clarisse Thorn and Ethecofem.
I’m a big fan of Finally Feminism 101. It shows how badly certain feminist arguments fall down when actually articulated. For instance, good luck parsing the argument for why male privilege exists, but female privilege doesn’t:
No, what is commonly called “female privilege” is better described as benevolent sexism.
If I understand this correctly, FF101 would look at “women and children first” situations like the Titanic, HMS Birkenhead, and Srebrenica Massacre and say that women disproportionately being protected is not “female privilege,” but rather “benevolent sexism.” And keep in mind that by “benevolent sexism,” FF101 means sexism towards women, not towards men. Even though it’s the men who end up dead.
Because it’s so much more sexist to be patronized with a spot on a lifeboat, rather than being left to die. For some reason, men getting disproportionately assigned to death doesn’t count as sexism (towards men) or as a lack of privilege in the eyes of FF101. Something is very wrong with their moral philosophy.
So, why do women lack privilege?
Also, it should be noted that, while men have what’s called male privilege that doesn’t mean that there must logically be a “female privilege” counterpart. This is because, although many strides towards equality have been made over the years, women as a class have not yet leveled the playing field, much less been put in a position of power and authority equivalent to that which grants institutional power to men as a class.
FF101 seems to argue that a group must have institutional power as a class to have gender privilege. Why? Because FF101 says so, evidently. (I won’t even touch the sophistry enabled by the words “institutional” and “class” for now.)
This claim is not at all obvious. In the case of my above examples, the people in charge with “institutional power” were indeed male (officers on the ships, or both the Serbian and U.N. decision-makers in the case of the massacre). Yet these elite men did not behave as if other men were in the same “class” as them. Actually, they used their “institutional power” to throw other men under the boat (literally, in the case of the Titanic and Birkenhead), and into mass graves (in the case of Srebrenica).
Institutional power being held by people who are male does not seem to stop women from being massively advantaged over men in lifeboat situations, and in surviving conflict zones. Not calling this sort of advantage “privilege” makes it look like FF101 is defining it in an exclusionary and self-serving way. I’m quite sure that if the doctrine was “men and children first,” FF101 would consider it to be sexism towards women, and an example of male privilege.
The other curious assumption by FF101 is that women would have to level the playing field for female privilege to exist. This assumes a unidimensional analysis of power, where one group (men) just hangs over another group (women) in all areas. Yet if in certain domains, women indeed experience unjust advantages while men experience unjust disadvantages (see examples above, for instance), then why can’t we say that women are privileged in some domains while lacking privilege in others?
It’s as FF101 thinks that there is a unidimensional hierarchy with men over women, and while that hierarchy exists, women can’t have privilege… even in areas where they have advantages that would get called “privilege” if possessed by men. First, FF101 has not shown that such a unidimensional hierarchy exists, or that men occupy the dominant position in this hierarchy. Second, even if it did exist, I suppose we could define privilege to only be held by the “dominant class”… but why should we define it that way, when it’s rather counter-intuitive (e.g. defining protection of female lives over male lives as “not privilege”), and when it gives at least the perception of double standards? Given multiple ways of conceptualizing oppression, why pick the one that is least inclusive, and most alienating to people you are trying to turn into allies?
I believe that inclusive conceptualizations of privilege and oppression are not only more accurate and humane than the FF101 conceptualization, but also potentially more effective for getting more groups involved in social justice without making them into the bad guys. As I suggested to you in my other response, recognizing women’s advantages could make it cognitively easier for some men to recognize their own. With more inclusive concepts, social justice would actually live up to its name rather than be “social justice for me, but not for thee.”
Of course, if FF101 isn’t just concerned with social justice, and is also trying to maintain power over the terms of gender discourse, while self-servingly brushing harms towards women and advantages of men with a conceptual secret sauce that makes it more special than the reverse… then their language makes more sense. Another plausible explanation is that they are simply uneducated about all the harms towards men and advantages of women they call “benevolent sexism,” in which case their theories are based on highly incomplete data (and we have to wonder how much feminism contributes to that lack of education).
I agree with you completely that being put on a lifeboat is better than not being put on a lifeboat. Full stop. The men are clearly getting the raw end of this deal. They’re being treated as disposable while the women and children are identified as precious. That is sexism, it’s against men, and it’s bad; the 101 FAQ is just wrong about that.
However, that doesn’t preclude the conceptualization of “women and children first” from being sexist against women (although a mere conceptualization does not actually, here, get any women killed and therefore is not as bad as the above, that doesn’t mean it’s not there or does not provide an example of a certain kind of generally propagated sexism-against-women that might call for investigation). The story about the Titanic encourages us to view the men as making a noble sacrifice and interpret the women who were saved as being, yes, precious, indispensable, but vaguely weak and pathetic. Being seen to make a noble sacrifice is inadequate recompense for discriminatory lifeboat assignments, but it is not zero, and the people who wrote the FAQ aren’t hallucinating, they just have tunnel vision.
However, that doesn’t preclude the conceptualization of “women and children first” from being sexist against women
I completely agree, There is plenty of sexism to go around for everyone. The notion of sexism only effecting one gender comes from feminism, and I don’t share it. So by pointing out sexism towards men in one context, I am in no way precluding sexism against women.
However, that doesn’t preclude the conceptualization of “women and children first” from being sexist against women
This is a classic move, first dissected in Jean Curthoys’s “Feminist Amnesia”.
When you are losing the debate about real human beings, when people start to point out pesky facts like the death gap, the homelessness gap, the conscription exemption, the violence gap, the infanticide gap, then change the subject to the concepts of man / women. Abuse Pythagoras for making up a list in which “male” is preferred to “female”. And ignore all the ways that female is preferred to male (nurturing, cooperative, caring, nice, sharing, etc etc).
The trouble with this move is that whatever we may conclude about the relative merit of concepts, the dead men are still dead.
It would be more honest to do a scorecard and see if, on average, men have it better than women. Not the top 0.01%of men, but men in general. According to the OECD’s analysis, in most countries they do not. http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/#/11111111111
Even better, one could analyze how well off people are, and try and work out the factors that contribute to that. It may well be that the usual suspects are not the most important. As long as we stick to crude and prescientific techniques like picking out some semi-random characteristics as important, we are not going to get very far. A case in point: should Barack Obama’s (obviously black, female) daughters qualify for affirmative action and preference getting into college, over a white male who was brought up in poverty?
Out of curiosity: is there any actual evidence that the “women and children first” trope actually does preferentially get men killed due to discriminatory lifeboat assignments (or equivalent) on any kind of significant basis? Or is this more of a cultural trope attached to some suggestive anecdotes?
I mean, I understand how in theory it would have that result if in real emergency situations people actually behaved that way.
And I understand how this can make the aggregate situation worse for men than women, if it is the strongest factor influencing people’s behavior rather than just countering other equally sexist factors (e.g., socially conditioning women to not aggressively seek their own lifeboat seats).
I’m just wondering whether it in fact does so in the real world.
Short version: Men really were more likely to have died on the Titanic, partly because the captain’s order of “women and children first” was interpreted to mean “men not permitted on lifeboats” rather than as “men get remaining seats”. However, in most shipwrecks, men had the advantage. Also, captains typically didn’t go down with their ships.
Note that this study deliberately excluded shipwrecks where it was known women had survived at higher rates.
My reading of the evidence is that, where time exists for an orderly exit, women did better. In exigent circumstances, where it was everyone for themselves, men fared better because they are stronger, better swimmers, etc.
It is interesting that on the Titanic, women survived at much higher rates than children.
I fixed the link, thanks.
I know you don’t want the job of Feminism Police. AnI didn’t intend to “summon” you—hence the ? after you name—but I did request help. And it seems you’re offering it—via IM—and I appreciate it.
Let me do some more simmering, and then maybe we’ll chat in IM.
In the meantime, I look forward to seeing if anyone else can provide some insight.
Cheers.
It was the “on the basis of Sayeth the Girl” that I objected to more than the mere fact of the summoning. If you’d summoned me on the basis that I am the most karmalicious female poster or something, I wouldn’t have remarked on it except maybe to verbally preen.
AIM: Alicorn24; MSN: alicorn@elcenia.com; GTalk: elcenia@gmail.com
(Anyone IMing me should identify themselves early on so I know you are not a random stranger.)
Thanks.
I’m making the rounds on the feminist blogs again. This one is particularly useful, in addition to those you linked to.
For feminist blogs that aren’t horribly ideological echo chambers, I recommend Clarisse Thorn and Ethecofem.
I’m a big fan of Finally Feminism 101. It shows how badly certain feminist arguments fall down when actually articulated. For instance, good luck parsing the argument for why male privilege exists, but female privilege doesn’t:
If I understand this correctly, FF101 would look at “women and children first” situations like the Titanic, HMS Birkenhead, and Srebrenica Massacre and say that women disproportionately being protected is not “female privilege,” but rather “benevolent sexism.” And keep in mind that by “benevolent sexism,” FF101 means sexism towards women, not towards men. Even though it’s the men who end up dead.
Because it’s so much more sexist to be patronized with a spot on a lifeboat, rather than being left to die. For some reason, men getting disproportionately assigned to death doesn’t count as sexism (towards men) or as a lack of privilege in the eyes of FF101. Something is very wrong with their moral philosophy.
So, why do women lack privilege?
FF101 seems to argue that a group must have institutional power as a class to have gender privilege. Why? Because FF101 says so, evidently. (I won’t even touch the sophistry enabled by the words “institutional” and “class” for now.)
This claim is not at all obvious. In the case of my above examples, the people in charge with “institutional power” were indeed male (officers on the ships, or both the Serbian and U.N. decision-makers in the case of the massacre). Yet these elite men did not behave as if other men were in the same “class” as them. Actually, they used their “institutional power” to throw other men under the boat (literally, in the case of the Titanic and Birkenhead), and into mass graves (in the case of Srebrenica).
Institutional power being held by people who are male does not seem to stop women from being massively advantaged over men in lifeboat situations, and in surviving conflict zones. Not calling this sort of advantage “privilege” makes it look like FF101 is defining it in an exclusionary and self-serving way. I’m quite sure that if the doctrine was “men and children first,” FF101 would consider it to be sexism towards women, and an example of male privilege.
The other curious assumption by FF101 is that women would have to level the playing field for female privilege to exist. This assumes a unidimensional analysis of power, where one group (men) just hangs over another group (women) in all areas. Yet if in certain domains, women indeed experience unjust advantages while men experience unjust disadvantages (see examples above, for instance), then why can’t we say that women are privileged in some domains while lacking privilege in others?
It’s as FF101 thinks that there is a unidimensional hierarchy with men over women, and while that hierarchy exists, women can’t have privilege… even in areas where they have advantages that would get called “privilege” if possessed by men. First, FF101 has not shown that such a unidimensional hierarchy exists, or that men occupy the dominant position in this hierarchy. Second, even if it did exist, I suppose we could define privilege to only be held by the “dominant class”… but why should we define it that way, when it’s rather counter-intuitive (e.g. defining protection of female lives over male lives as “not privilege”), and when it gives at least the perception of double standards? Given multiple ways of conceptualizing oppression, why pick the one that is least inclusive, and most alienating to people you are trying to turn into allies?
I believe that inclusive conceptualizations of privilege and oppression are not only more accurate and humane than the FF101 conceptualization, but also potentially more effective for getting more groups involved in social justice without making them into the bad guys. As I suggested to you in my other response, recognizing women’s advantages could make it cognitively easier for some men to recognize their own. With more inclusive concepts, social justice would actually live up to its name rather than be “social justice for me, but not for thee.”
Of course, if FF101 isn’t just concerned with social justice, and is also trying to maintain power over the terms of gender discourse, while self-servingly brushing harms towards women and advantages of men with a conceptual secret sauce that makes it more special than the reverse… then their language makes more sense. Another plausible explanation is that they are simply uneducated about all the harms towards men and advantages of women they call “benevolent sexism,” in which case their theories are based on highly incomplete data (and we have to wonder how much feminism contributes to that lack of education).
Regarding “women and children first” etc.
I agree with you completely that being put on a lifeboat is better than not being put on a lifeboat. Full stop. The men are clearly getting the raw end of this deal. They’re being treated as disposable while the women and children are identified as precious. That is sexism, it’s against men, and it’s bad; the 101 FAQ is just wrong about that.
However, that doesn’t preclude the conceptualization of “women and children first” from being sexist against women (although a mere conceptualization does not actually, here, get any women killed and therefore is not as bad as the above, that doesn’t mean it’s not there or does not provide an example of a certain kind of generally propagated sexism-against-women that might call for investigation). The story about the Titanic encourages us to view the men as making a noble sacrifice and interpret the women who were saved as being, yes, precious, indispensable, but vaguely weak and pathetic. Being seen to make a noble sacrifice is inadequate recompense for discriminatory lifeboat assignments, but it is not zero, and the people who wrote the FAQ aren’t hallucinating, they just have tunnel vision.
I completely agree, There is plenty of sexism to go around for everyone. The notion of sexism only effecting one gender comes from feminism, and I don’t share it. So by pointing out sexism towards men in one context, I am in no way precluding sexism against women.
This is a classic move, first dissected in Jean Curthoys’s “Feminist Amnesia”.
When you are losing the debate about real human beings, when people start to point out pesky facts like the death gap, the homelessness gap, the conscription exemption, the violence gap, the infanticide gap, then change the subject to the concepts of man / women. Abuse Pythagoras for making up a list in which “male” is preferred to “female”. And ignore all the ways that female is preferred to male (nurturing, cooperative, caring, nice, sharing, etc etc).
The trouble with this move is that whatever we may conclude about the relative merit of concepts, the dead men are still dead.
It would be more honest to do a scorecard and see if, on average, men have it better than women. Not the top 0.01%of men, but men in general. According to the OECD’s analysis, in most countries they do not. http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/#/11111111111
Even better, one could analyze how well off people are, and try and work out the factors that contribute to that. It may well be that the usual suspects are not the most important. As long as we stick to crude and prescientific techniques like picking out some semi-random characteristics as important, we are not going to get very far. A case in point: should Barack Obama’s (obviously black, female) daughters qualify for affirmative action and preference getting into college, over a white male who was brought up in poverty?
Out of curiosity: is there any actual evidence that the “women and children first” trope actually does preferentially get men killed due to discriminatory lifeboat assignments (or equivalent) on any kind of significant basis? Or is this more of a cultural trope attached to some suggestive anecdotes?
I mean, I understand how in theory it would have that result if in real emergency situations people actually behaved that way.
And I understand how this can make the aggregate situation worse for men than women, if it is the strongest factor influencing people’s behavior rather than just countering other equally sexist factors (e.g., socially conditioning women to not aggressively seek their own lifeboat seats).
I’m just wondering whether it in fact does so in the real world.
Research on men, women, and children in shipwrecks
Short version: Men really were more likely to have died on the Titanic, partly because the captain’s order of “women and children first” was interpreted to mean “men not permitted on lifeboats” rather than as “men get remaining seats”. However, in most shipwrecks, men had the advantage. Also, captains typically didn’t go down with their ships.
wikipedia
Note that this study deliberately excluded shipwrecks where it was known women had survived at higher rates.
My reading of the evidence is that, where time exists for an orderly exit, women did better. In exigent circumstances, where it was everyone for themselves, men fared better because they are stronger, better swimmers, etc.
It is interesting that on the Titanic, women survived at much higher rates than children.
Thanks for the info!