In the discussions around gender we have gotten used to feminists making sweeping statements about men and men’s proclivities and tendencies – essentially claims to understand men’s psychology. You’ll see statements about how porn makes men rape, or how men commit DV as a means of maintaining patriarchy, or how men only want equal custody of their kids to get out of paying child support (although somehow that doesn’t explain why women want custody), how men cannot possibly ever have anything like real post-partum depression, on and on and on.
And the standard excuse given to support this mind-reading is that as the oppressed class, women have to know men better than men have to know women. There are a couple of factual problems with this; for one thing people don’t suddenly appear in the world as men or women, they come in as infants, and if power differentials are what drives who learns what about whom, then men who grow up under the thumb of women, both at home and in school, are going to know a lot more about women than girls will ever know men. But as a piece of theory the contention has a certain common-sense plausibility. The problem is that facts are stubborn things and they intrude again:
孫子曰 : 故曰知己知彼百戰不貽不知彼而知己一勝一負不知彼不知己每戰必貽
Sun Zi said: So it is said: If you know the enemy and know yourself, in a hundred battles you will not be defeated. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory you will suffer a defeat. If you don’t know the enemy nor yourself, in every battle you must be defeated.
In other words, if X knows so much about Y, then Y will always prevail over X, and X can never oppress Y. This leaves feminism with a conundrum: either women understand men and men are therefore unable to oppress them, or men do in fact oppress women, proving that women do not understand them. This is the other factual problem with the contention.
And it’s no good to claim that you need numbers to prevail, that a minority may know its oppressor thoroughly yet never have the power to prevail. The first problem with that si that womenare not and have never been a miniorty, in any sense of the word. The second is that minorities rueel the world and have always ruled societies. We call them elites, and they know us to a fare-the-well, and have always been able to play us. After all, the 1% are only 1% of us.
So in fact you do see a lot of clueless guesses on the part of women about men. Of course men do the same WRT women, but this is the difference: the conventional wisdom is that women are inscrutable to men, the opposite of this meme we are discussing.
The Grass Is Always Invulnerable and Privileged On the Other Side – Here’s one that commenter Clarence alerted us to:
“I’d probably go out dancing at a bar — hoot and holler, have fun, dance, flirt, etc. Kiss and make out with someone and decide later if I wanted to have sex. This is something I don’t feel like I can do now — have to be on the lookout, for safety’s sake … make sure to leave before anyone gets too turned on or goes too far.”
(There’s some serious ignorance in that thread about trans people having “swapped genders”, but luckily none of those comments are pertinent here.)
We should all recognize this one from discussions on male privilege, how one aspect of male privilege is that men can just go anywhere without having anything to fear at all. The violent crime stats tell a different story, but apparently “lived experience” trumps everything, even when it’s not your experience and you haven’t lived it.
And here’s another.
No Homo – Do you know that insurance commercial – I can’t remember which company; it’s not very effective at getting me to remember that pretty important piece of information – the one where the guy is on the phone with his insurance agent or whoever the guy is and he’s asking if he can get this and that and the agent answers:
“Any time, day or night”
“Any time? Because that how I need it.”
“Any time, any way.”
“Yeah, that’s how I need it.”
“That’s how you’ve got it.”
“Hey, we just had ourselves a little moment there, didn’t we?”
“We sure did.”
And the guy switches suddenly to talking about some place crawling with chicks. By this time he’s wandered into the passage between the kitchen and the family room, where his wife is sitting, and she hears this and scowls.
The conversation sounds like phone sex. Did you see how the guys recovered just in time?
ATTN: Various commenters – thank you, debaser andDaisy – helpfully pointed out my complete muffing of a Journey reference. These guys are having a “Journey moment” (which to my mind just conifrms the need for the no-homo maneuver, but anyway…) But as dungone points out:
The two guys, realizing they accidentally stepped out of their rigid gender roles, start trying to reaffirm their masculinity. But the wife interprets it as womanizing behavior. And it doesn’t really matter that she just doesn’t get it, until she tries to imagine walking a mile in a guy’s shoe and imagines the bar scene out of Urban Cowboy.
He also agrees with me that they are so young that they probably don’t have a Journey moment to have together. That’s not the only thing the writers muffed; the bar they talk about is supposedly in Fresno. I admit Fresno has changed a lot in the last couple of decades, but they don’t look very plausibly Fresno either.
So anyway, my mom – 85 years of living with and among men, loves and respects men and has never had the slightest problem moving easily in all company – hates this commercial because she thinks the guy is being disrespectful to his wife, and he is. But she is missing the whole subtext of the conversation, the one that leads the guy to talk about the place swarming with chicks. (And I am quite sure she would not see the similarity to phone sex!)What do you do when the dreaded g-word is hanging in the air? You hurry up and say the straightest thing you can think of in that moment. Well, not everyone, apparently
It’s not obvious to my mom, and therefore probably not to very many women at all, because she has never had to worry about her femininity being challenged for looking like she was a little too interested in women. That’s not the kind of thing that makes you any less feminine or female in this culture, and the wide availability and demand for lesbian-themed straight porn shows that. Maybe women really do worry about that kind of thing, but their behavior doesn’t reflect that. What is a spectre that haunts every little boy well into old age has just never registered on her screen.
I just have to wonder how much women really know about what being a man is, what living as a man entails, what men really think and feel, why it’s a particularly big issue, big enough to fabricate some myth of superior insight about.
I don’t mean to say that we are walled off from each other in those bunkers of ignorance we call our egos. I do insist though that we respect our limits and not indulge in arrogantly assuming we know each other through and through, that we regard each other not as puzzles to be cracked and solved, but as mysteries to be experienced.
- The Woman Card - May 2, 2016
- Frat boy bachelorettes and the invasion of gay bars - April 15, 2016
- “Not my kid….” - February 22, 2016
by 
I know that commercial but I don’t know what you are trying to say about it.
For me, they do a Journey song, silly stuff, then the one guy says something about a concert back in ’86 or something and the place was crawling with chicks. This is why the wife scowls. Any “no homo” stuff was completely lost on me…granted I’m surprised I even know the commercial you are talking about.
That “had themselves a little JOURNEY moment” , and then they play the band Journey. He then says “I saw them in Fresno in 19– [forget year] and the place was crawling with chicks”–this is to assure you he is NOT homo.
Then his wife gives him a look, and properly chastised for talking about his former single days, he quickly adds, “I gotta go.”
I just saw it, so its fresh in my mind. Also, I admit to liking Journey, so I noticed. 😛
“Any time, day or night”
“Any time? Because that how I need it.”
“Any time, any way.”
“Yeah, that’s how I need it.”
“That’s how you’ve got it.”
I think you missed the fact that these are the lyrics to the Journey song that is playing in the background, what he is referring to as “having ourselves a little Journey moment”.
Damn Gingko, though you were as old as me, you oughtta get 80s references!
More META… the guy talking is a big masculine guy. Journey was often considered “gay” music by the tough guys of the era, who preferred heavy metal or punk.
Tony Soprano getting assassinated to Journey made Journey officially safe for masculinity. But it wasn’t always like that… was considered girlie rock… “the place was crawling with chicks” is a reference to that.
Obviously they are counting on us old people to buy insurance, LOL.
Wow, guys, I muffed that. Thing is neither of those is old enough to get the reference either, so it sort doesn’t work. They sounded like they were having phone sex – maybe just my wishful thinking… I forgot to point that part out.
The commercial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jriGDrB41nA I think it’s hillarious…
Most relevant YouTube comment: “What do you want to bet there’s already a slash fiction about this commercial somewhere?”
Also, an observation – those actors look too young to have seen them in ’83 in Fresno.
Gingko makes a good point. The two guys, realizing they accidentally stepped out of their rigid gender roles, start trying to reaffirm their masculinity. But the wife interprets it as womanizing behavior. And it doesn’t really matter that she just doesn’t get it, until she tries to imagine walking a mile in a guy’s shoe and imagines the bar scene out of Urban Cowboy.
In another “Journey Moment,” here’s the Double Rainbow guy on Kimmel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pu49zfbG8fY&feature=related
And here’s a guy who sadly forgot to add that he also likes girls: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lutNECOZFw&feature=player_embedded#!
“I just have to wonder how much women really know about what being a man is, what living as a man entails, what men really think and feel,”
Not very much.
And it’s not because men aren’t willing to say anything. Its because a lot of women will really bend-over backwards to not hear it, even when the message is made plain in VERY SIMPLE LANGUAGE.
Like, for instance, when I said to one ex-girlfriend: “Stop hitting me, that hurts.” She was very quick to insist that it didn’t hurt when her fist ran into me. Maybe I wasn’t expressing myself clearly enough for her, so I said again: “No, really, that hurts. Stop it.” Then, she was quick to exclaim that I was lying and trying to make her feel bad. As you can imagine, I dumped her pretty quickly.
Incidentally, she considered herself to be way smarter than most men. Just as long as you didn’t ever point-out the long list of stupid decisions and easily-avoidable fuck-ups that she’d made throughout life. (Those were the fault of other people, naturally.)
Editor’s note:
@Ginko:
You are mis-using the “meta” category. It is intended for posts that are about the blog (for example, explaining down time, or notifying users of changes to the blog and/or blog policies, etc.). For example, if this comment were a post, it could be filed under “meta” since I am discussing the blog.
Not a big deal, but just fyi so we can keep things organized. Most of the categories are much more wishy-washy, and you can use them as you please. But I’d like to keep the meta category strictly defined.
Women who think they understand male thinking, the male living experience, and male ideas are a major obstacle to clear communication between the genders.
I have yet to meet a woman who didn’t consider herself an expert in all things male–and who didn’t follow such declarations with a prompt demonstration of how little she understood beyond the most shallow and superficial of stereotypes.
“We know how men think. We know what male rapists are feelings. We know how little men care about children. We know why porn is popular.” etc. etc. ad nauseam. And they’re always wrong, every time. Feminist armchair-sociology goes on at great length explaining why men behave the way they do, why male psyches are damaged or misguided, and what’s drives men to be so awful–but the one thing they never do is actually ASK any men. Because they already know the (wrong) answers.
“Those aren’t pillows! How about them bears! Love the bears!” planes trains & automobiles.
A classic movie.
Being an individual male, I am not sure I know what men think.
If you want to know what men think, you have to know men closely. Now many feminists know a lot of men, it’s just that their male friend’s are very atypical men and hence not at all representative for mankind. (I think similar things can be said about male geeks’ image of women.)
While there are women who seem to understand pretty well, how the men aroung them think, those women are usually part of the boys club; this exclusive club into which many male feminist are not accepted and for which they don’t seem to care much.
“While there are women who seem to understand pretty well,….”
And they are probaly the least likely to lump all men into baseless generalizations. It’s a matter of knowing enough to know what you don’t know. Because as you say, this goes even farther:
“Being an individual male, I am not sure I know what men think.”
For instance, Xakudo never fails to astonish me.
Gingko: Thing is neither of those is old enough to get the reference either, so it sort doesn’t work.
Right! One of my pet peeves, TV characters who are supposed to be parents and grandparents… and you do the math and figure out they must have had kids when they were, what, 12?
Why can’t they cast people who ARE older instead of impersonators? Another form of blackface, if I may say so… just as offensive as casting able-bodied muscular actors as supposedly-disabled people with cerebral palsy or whatever. There IS an actor (old or disabled) somewhere who really could use that job! Why don’t they actually try to FIND one? I am impressed the “Glee Project” show actually has a disabled wheelchair-user on there, and not a fake. (Likely because there is a fake one on the show “Glee” and it as been rightly criticized for that.)
(/rant)
“Why can’t they cast people who ARE older instead of impersonators? Another form of blackface, if I may say so…”
I’m so old…. How old are you?….. Why, I’m so old that I remember when you could see shows on TV that weren’t all about 20-somethings.
Daisy, that’s all that sells. The public is always to blame.
Well, it looks like two of my latest comments were deleted at The Good Men Project.
Now I regret ever getting involved with them in the first place.
I “watched” Glee for like 10 seconds and I was instantly confused. I could not tell who was supposed to be a student and who was supposed to be a teacher. I turned 41 last week.
Eagle,
They raised a lot of people’s hopes but turned out to be a mirage.
debaser, Glee is all about who’s hot and who’s not. It has very little to do with who’s a teacher and who’s a student.
Gingko: Daisy, that’s all that sells.
Nope, I disagree. Ever heard of “The Golden Girls”? Meryl Streep? The Real Housewife franchise is all about women in their 40s (and some in their 50s, if the age of their kids is any indication) and is madly popular. Give me choices, I will watch em. So far, there just aren’t very many.
Which reminds me, here is my review of the lackluster and disappointing “Political Animals”: http://daisysdeadair.blogspot.com/2012/07/political-animals.html
The media moguls are so far removed from everyday people’s preferences, they have to copy every popular thing to get a clue, otherwise they don’t have any idea at all. That’s one reason I think reality TV has taken over.
Debaser, LOL… yeah, they’ve been in high school for several years now… lots longer than most of us!
Eagle, what did you say that got deleted? That comment system, whatever it is, drives me crazy. All of my comments go directly to the spam filter, and I just gave up… on NSWATM also…
Another thing that might play into the misunderstanding of men by some women is male stoicism and men hiding their vulnerabilities. To quote myself quoting Clarisse Thorn in the thread about rape culture:
Clarisse:“I tried — believe me, I tried to discuss our sex life, in a hesitant and confused way — but he found ways to shut me down, every time. Sometimes the shut-downs were blatant and aggressive and involved shouting.”
Her interpretation of this sentence (as well as the one of many of her readers) is so different from mine. She doesn’t seem to consider the possibility, that people might read it, as a guy feeling cornered and therefore getting defensive (because he can not admit his vulnerability), while this seems to me to be the by far most plausible explanation.
For another I refer to the movie “Once upon a time in the West”, I think the last line of text in this movie is Cheyenne saying: “Go away, I don’t want you to see me die.”
I wonder how many of the good feminists at the good men project (with all their talking about support for people in trouble, like for example cancer), get men with whom this sentence resonates strongly, like me; if I would ever be diagnosed with a deadly disease, I would prefer to not have people who actually care about me around or even knowledgable of my condition.
@Jupp:
I loved the first season of Breaking Bad for precisely this reason. I think it did an excellent job of portraying it, and doing so in a sympathetic way.
If I was diagnosed with a terminal disease, I’m not sure how I would deal with it. It’s certainly possible I would just keep it to myself and not tell my friends and family, at least not until the disease progressed further. Then again, I might feel like I needed support. I’m really not sure. I can see both tendencies within me.
@Ginkgo:
Ha ha. I once had an instructor in college that told me I was the strangest person he’d ever met. And he frequented some really atypical crowds. It took him a year of classes with me to figure it out, though. I’m subtle. 😉
@Jupp, that Clarisse quote was quite simple: it’s her side against his and we don’t get to hear his. You never hear a feminist complain that her boyfriend couldn’t take her incessant nagging anymore. It just doesn’t sound that way when they describe what happened. On the other hand you’ll hear them talk about how men who supplicate their girlfriends for sex are part of rape culture.
When I hear someone say that they repeatedly kept pushing an idea onto another person to the point where it caused the other person to start shouting, I get suspicious. I tend to think that one, or both, of the people are being manipulative and it’s not the shouting that’s the core of the problem, but the manipulation. And I’m intimately familiar with women who treat men like a utility, with the negotiation tact of a gambler at a slot machine. They seem to be impervious to anything that you’ve said to them before, approaching each discussion from the same exact assumptions they had going into every discussion before that. And if it’s a woman going into a discussion about sex with deeply held feminist biases into a discussion about sex, and does so over and over without being able to grasp the other person’s perspective, then increasing levels of anger is the natural outcome.
Daisy: “Eagle, what did you say that got deleted? That comment system, whatever it is, drives me crazy. All of my comments go directly to the spam filter, and I just gave up… on NSWATM also…”
In this article’s commentary section: http://goodmenproject.com/families/the-good-life-boys/
And this paragraph: “I hope my boys don’t buy into the silly socialized clichés others have defined for what it means to be male or female. I want them to play and interact with girls and see them as partners and comrades working toward common goals, to not think of pink as a yucky “girl” color, to cry if they feel like crying because boys cry and girls cry—because humans cry. We have a long way to go, especially living in a society that gives mixed messages to boys, teaching them to drive their feelings underground, while at the same time encouraging anger and bravado as suitable traits for boys and men to show in public.”
I posted a response asking whether the author she was also going to encourage girls and women not to think it’s okay for them to hurt boys as well because I pointed out her earlier assumptions about boys and men contributed to boy and male victims not being heard when they’re hurt, especially by female perpretrators. I even included a link to my own article http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/bullied-by-girls-and-women-one-mans-account/ and asked her to read it so she could understand where I came from.
It was put into moderation and deleted.
Secondly, in this article’s commentary section: http://goodmenproject.com/families/the-good-life-un-defining-manhood/
I posted a response critiquing this paragraph: “Men especially cling to bachelorhood as a defining chapter of their lives. But becoming a husband, a father, is much more defining than being single could ever be. Because ultimately it is not about the self, it is about the incorporation of others into our lives. It takes a new level of maturity in our lives to be able to do that, which is why commitment comes to men at various points in our lives.”
I challenged this view, telling him he’s still reinforcing the expectation that men should marry and raise a family and pointing out fathers are still criticised for raising their kids no matter what they do.
My response was put under moderation then deleted.
I don’t mind the second response disappearing. The first one, though, where I even spread the word of my article I wrote THAT THEY ACCEPTED AND PUBLISHED WITH PRAISE being deleted, just goes to show they don’t want me to say anything anymore related to that. As if Lisa assuming I’m pushing an agenda wasn’t an alarm bell itself.
Well, Lisa and everyone there can take their claims of pushing an agenda and shove it up their rear ends. After all the attention I brought to male victims at that worthless site and how I collaborated with the people of the magazine to create a forum for egalitarian feminists to talk without being assumed the worst, it’s a smack in the face.
Sorry if this sounds egotistical but…oh never mind. I don’t want waste my time with them anymore.
Edit: I meant bringing attention to the plight of Male Victims through that site. Sorry.
You know what I always found funny? In Hannah Rosin’s End of Men article… not once (to my recollection, admitedly it’s been a while since I read it) did she ever actually talk to any men. She interviewed plenty of female college students about their views of the “downfall” of men… but no actual men. Oh! Except for the scientist that discovered the process for separating sperm by gender. She talked to him… but only about the fact that couples are selecting for girls now.
How can you do that? How can you write an entire article about men and not actually *talk* to any of them about it? And yet it happens ALL THE TIME.
incidentally Eagle, there is a comment up by you on that “un-defining manhood” article
“Nope, I disagree. Ever heard of “The Golden Girls”? Meryl Streep? The Real Housewife franchise is all about women in their 40s (and some in their 50s, if the age of their kids is any indication) and is madly popular. Give me choices, I will watch em. So far, there just aren’t very many. ”
Sells, Daisy – present tense. Golden Girls is back in a golden past.
And that Housewives trainwreck – now that is some hideoulsy classist shit. they take a bunch of new-rich housewives – no problem with that, bless them – and have them all act like the most bigoted stereotype of working class women. It’s so far from working class reality you probably don;t even recognize it as a parody. But believe me, it’s basically the equivalent of a minstrel show. No thanks.
Give you choices and you’ll watch them. And so will I, but that’s just two of us.
If I want to watch dram, I watch olf Star Trek re-runs or the Chinese channel. I shit you not. i can’t follow half of it but it is still more mature and interesting than all the network tripe. Oh, wait; I like Big Bang Theory.
Paul: Michael Kimmel wrote a book all about young men a few years back. ‘Guyland,’ I think? He respects men about as much as any other feminist does. In it, whenever he interviews his subjects, he dismisses their words and, with a few disapproving tut-tuts, handily provides his own creative interpretations of what they actually mean. Of course, his own interpretations are a hell of a lot more brutal and more accusatory.
Standard fare, really. Also standard is the hand-wringing lament about men not expressing their emotions often enough, which exists comfortable alongside the dismissals of men’s emotions when they do get expressed.
This video is going around the manosphere….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYOxhWiX7zA&feature=player_embedded
anyways….
While I understand her point that she wants to be loved and respected, there does seem to be a sense o entitlement towards the beginning when she says something along the lines of guys not approaching fat girls are @$$holes….
Who the hell is she to tell me who I should be attracted too and also whom I should approach if I decide it is even worth the risk to approach….
I can’t help but thinking if the genders were reversed and a man was complaining that women weren’t attracted to him because he was
“low status” that Amanda Marcotte would be writing back with a hate filled rant….
@SWAB, I wish you had posted that on the Rape Culture thread, although other parts of her video could be relevant here.
I don’t mind her wanting for wanting guys to be attracted to her and in spite of what she says, I think that girls like her probably end up taking risky initiatives far more often than fit girls.
What I do find sad about her video is that she’s very confused about what “confidence” means. Time and again she focuses on raising her own sense of worth, which is about entitlement, and ignores the thing that will really get her some confidence – taking the initiative. So here is an individual who could actually benefit in her own life by learning a little bit more about men’s perspectives, but instead she is stuck trying to survive using a feminine approach that obviously isn’t working out well for her.
SWAB: I love how she still expects men to approach her.
This isn’t because she wants affection. It’s because she wants a wider variety of men to choose from. Hopefully, one of them will be a hunky test-pilot who is secretly a European count.
Haha, see what I did there?
I over-wrote her stated words with my own cynical interpretation 😉
In all seriousness, in the past, I _have_ dated women who might be considered hefty.
Guess what? They still expected men to be the ones who did all the asking.
If your complaint is that men aren’t asking you out often enough, as dungone pointed-out, the very EASY solution to that is to start asking some men out yourself.
If I have clothes to be washed, do I look-around for some woman to do the laundry for me? No. If I’m hungry, do I look for a woman to cook something? No. Okay, so would it kill this woman if she were to approach a man she liked and ask him out? No.
That could be the opening line for every feminist piece online or in media: “What’s wrong with men today? Let’s talk to some women and find out.”
WRT that video: As far as I understood, the vlogger is actually quite happy with her dating life/sex life and wants to give larger women (or rather, girls) who are unhappy with their sex lives some advice how to improve it; and honestly, telling them not to get heartbroken when they get rejected for being fat because they wouldn’t want to get with those kind of guys anyways is not that indefensible an advice.
Apparently she gets by without having to approach men, and the thought that a woman could approach a man she’s interested in to get dating started isn’t on the top of the list of what large women can do to improve their chances in the dating world. That’s an oversight because of a lack of experience, not a crime.
Eagle, my constant comments on feminist blogs about age (by gum, looky! I made one RIGHT HERE TOO in this thread! and its still here!) have also been deleted. Its like they got tired of me saying it. And this is what I think they are doing to you too: “Oh not THAT again!” I think they see us as having a particular axe to grind… what’s that called? Moby Dicking? When you bring up one subject over and over?
Thing is, you see that in the subjects matter and I see that in the subject matter. Are we not supposed to? The fact is that whatever they have said made us think of it. It is connected, or we wouldn’t have thought of it. Yes, these ARE our hobby-horses (my preferred nonsexist term, I don’t like the term “Moby Dicking”) –and so what? Notice some hobby-horses are acceptable if they concern (example) race, disability, transgender… why? Because they have already been shamed for exclusion and they are afraid to accuse those people of “moby dicking”. Therefore pseudo-trolls like Pheenobarbidoll (don’t get me started) can hijack every single thread. But if you or me say, hey, is this more stuff about KIDS? (i.e. This subject isn’t important when you are 50, as you will discover) or… “what about boys getting bullied?” (i.e. why are we forgetting that boys are more often the targets of bullying?) then we are seen as hijacking because we are TRULY representing a minority view.
I am getting so tired of “approved” commentary being allowed in and others not… this is why you get all these damn boring threads where everybody is just “great post!” … I now only comment on certain blogs if I truly believe it is a “great post” since that is the only such commentary allowed. I figure it has greater significance now when I say it, since I rarely comment on these blogs now… if I say its great, I have made a point in saying so. (Last one was Zuzu’s post about Maeve Binchy on Feministe, which was awesomeness.) But that is the first time I have commented there in a long time except for the Sunday linkage posts, since I do enjoy hitting all the other blogs out there.
Ideological lockstep = bad.
Gingko, I recommend SONS OF ANARCHY, oddly enough, for a very good selection of women’s roles of all ages. Katey Sagal’s husband is the producer/writer, so she was guaranteed a good role for a woman of her age. (Is THAT what is necessary to get a good part for an older woman? Being married to the producer?) That is why I was so disappointed in “Political Animals”–damn, if you can’t write good stuff for Sigourney freaking Weaver, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.
MAD MEN, of course, always has good roles for women of many ages. I also recommend Glenn Close in DAMAGES… but I think that’s IT. Lord have mercy.
Lots of roles for older men, few for older women. I am sick of movies where Clint Eastwood (or somebody of that stature) is 80 years old, married to a 35-year-old. Or “King of Queens”–regular overweight guy married to a young Hollywood hottie. Fuck that shit.
Its one of the last bastions of sexism.
Aych: In all seriousness, in the past, I _have_ dated women who might be considered hefty.
Guess what? They still expected men to be the ones who did all the asking.
Speaking of TV and movies, there is a new stereotype brewing: sex-hungry fat girls, who DO take the initiative … and HORRIFY men as a result. Lots of these in commercials and cartoons… has now spread to the mindless teen comedies. I never remember the names of these (since I usually come across them while channel surfing, I don’t actually watch them at length) or I could give real examples.
The idea seems to be: we wanted women to take the initiative, but …(shudder) not THOSE women. Older women are also sometimes cast in this role, but the preferred jokey-joke is fat girls. This might be inhibiting those girls even further, and I’d like to horsewhip the guys that write those scripts.
And not in fun way! 😉
“Its one of the last bastions of sexism.”
Did you see where he came out for Romney? Oh, well – who cares about his politics, he’s still a pretty hot ass even at his age.
How’s that for a little sexism?
“Ideological lockstep = bad.”
It’ s called groupthink and it’s generally recognized to be bad, except in the denizens of “safe spaces” never got the memo.
SWAB,
“sense o entitlement towards the beginning when she says something along the lines of guys not approaching fat girls are @$$holes….”
I think oyu just invented a new MRA trope:
“Women who don’t approach are assholes.”
Aych,
“Paul: Michael Kimmel wrote a book all about young men a few years back. ‘Guyland,’ I think? He respects men about as much as any other feminist does. In it, whenever he interviews his subjects, he dismisses their words and, with a few disapproving tut-tuts, handily provides his own creative interpretations of what they actually mean. Of course, his own interpretations are a hell of a lot more brutal and more accusatory.”
I remember an op/ed in the Guardian by Hugo Schwyzer where he did the exact same thing. Ally Fogg ripped him open on it, calld his way of directly contradicting what the young men he interviewed said and spinning it the worst possible way “intolerable” and strange to say, I haven’t seen anything more from him there. It may have something to do with Ally’s being on the editorial board for CiF. He apparently really meant he wouldn’t tolerate it.
Daisy, on the business of writing good roles for older women, I blame the youth fetish in producers when it comes to hiring writers. I think the same thing is happening at those blogs where it’s so hard to say the unwelcome truth.
Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth on Turner Classic Movies!!! “Lady from Shanghai”!!! (((fans self)))) Now, there is a bisexual fantasy we can all enjoy.
Goodness mercy… I wish they had stayed married, for the sake of my own fantasy life. (sigh) Apparently, Welles like to visit brothels and Rita wanted to marry a sheikh, so that was that. Their marriage only lasted as long as my first one.
What about the THE REST of us? Didn’t they care about their FANS???
See you later, I have only seen it 5000 times and time for 5001. 🙂
Daisy said, “and HORRIFY men as a result.”
It’s worse than you think. Try watching Teen Nick or Disney. It’s not limited to fat girls either. Maybe more common than gross fat girl is loser dork boy.
@Daisy, with men what you have is that all men approach women, even the hottest of the hotties, yet when the unfortunate unattractive guy does that, he’s looked down on as a pariah.
OTOH what happens in certain social circles is that guys are approached exclusively by fat, unattractive girls. There is nothing wrong with these girls approaching guys. Nothing at all. The only thing wrong with fat girls asking guys out is that they’re the only ones doing it. So that’s where the “sex-hungry fat girls” stereotype comes from. It says far more about other women than it does about fat girls, but it gets twisted around because it’s the fat girls who end up having to be rejected. Yes, it’s fucked up. But the solution is for fit, attractive girls to get off their asses and realize, “wow, these fat girls who are almost certainly to be rejected can ask guys out, why can’t I?”
Well one reason they can’t/won’t is that approaching guys is now stigmatized as fat-girl behavior.
“Speaking of TV and movies, there is a new stereotype brewing: sex-hungry fat girls, who DO take the initiative … and HORRIFY men as a result.”
HORRIFY – the exact parallel to the “creep” who approaches women and creeps them out.
While it’s reassuring to know we’re both getting the short end of the stick in places, it still isn’t justified.
Yeah, I noticed the second comment I made was re-instated. But that’s nothing, NOTHING, compared to what they did with my first comment about being bullied. Lisa et all want to go on about pushing an agenda and hijacking a thread or whatever.
What they forget is that there are commentators who march on in, mainly gynocentric “Feminists” and women who have no faith in men whatsoever, spewing their viewpoints which is, to me, blatantly pushing a one-sided agenda. Do any of those comments go into moderation or get removed? No, they’re still up there.
Meanwhile, I express an issue that is really serious (if they don’t think so, they can point to an area where boys being bullied by girls, men being bullied by women, is getting attention. Until then I’m calling them out on their bullshit), link to the article since I feel it really needs to be read, and THEY DELETE MY EFFORTS!
What do they call Hugo Schwatzer (I don’t give a damn about spelling his last name right) and Amanda Marcotte’s motives in their writings when the place was quick to kiss the ground they walked on? And they have the nerve to lump me in with people like that who are blatantly pushing an agenda?
If I can’t even bring attention to an issue that deserves it then why bother? I’m just going to stick to places like Genderratic.com and even Feminist Critics. Hell, even Toy Soldier doesn’t call my posts “Agenda pushing”.
“If I can’t even bring attention to an issue that deserves it then why bother? I’m just going to stick to places like Genderratic.com and even Feminist Critics. Hell, even Toy Soldier doesn’t call my posts “Agenda pushing”.
Push your agenda here all you want. It’s a contribution.
GMP didn’t like you pushing your agenda? On a men’s issue site. Oh fuck them. and some admitted feminist made that call? Absurd.
Look for an email.
Dungone:
“@Jupp, that Clarisse quote was quite simple: it’s her side against his and we don’t get to hear his.”
The point I was trying is that I don’t need his side, that indeed although we look at the exact same words Clarisse and I come to so very different interpretations.
Eagle34:
The irony is remarkable; the post you linked called “The good life boys” is about a woman dealing with her misandry and using her sons as therapists, which has very little to do with the stated purpose of the site. Putting your comment, which was rather rerailing then derailing as it refocused on boys, in moderation is an example of: “Quiet boys, a woman is talking about her feelings.”
Daisy:
Before I read online feminists I always imagined feminists to be more like you or Typhonblue (meaning strong and independent), rather then those fun feminists, who use feminism to defend and promote their lifestyle choices.
“I am sick of movies where Clint Eastwood (or somebody of that stature) is 80 years old, married to a 35-year-old.”
Well, Clint Eastwoods wife is 35 years his junior, so that scenario isn’t that far away from reality and shouldn’t movies reflect the real world.
“Or “King of Queens”–regular overweight guy married to a young Hollywood hottie.”
The hottie face isn’t very pretty, while the overweight guy seems rather good looking, if we don’t count his weight.
I had no idea that initiating courtship behavior was 1. now stigmatized as the domain of fat women and 2. is portrayed as horrifying (creeping-out?) men.
I’ve asked women about this, why they refuse to ask men out, and they all seem to have a different reason. And sometimes, when you keep probing, they finally get frustrated and blurt-out “It’s the man’s job!”
So I guess I should wait for my woman to come home before the laundry can get done, right? I’m hungry, so she’d better make a sandwich too.
I’m just wondering why, after 40+ years of women being told that women can do everything a man can do (and do it better) women still can not do something that men are expected to do pretty much all the time.
And this is particularly mystifying I _have_ had women initiate romance with me in the past, and you know what? They were amazing women. They lacked something which is extremely unattractive in a relationship: an entitlement mentality. And, no, they weren’t chip-on-shoulder gender-warriors who out to prove a point. They were cool.
Well, actually it’s not all that “mystifying” at all to me.
@Daisy: Complaining about the “fat husband – hot wife” trope and then complaining about Welles and Hayworth not having stayed married? I know, we’re talking late 40’s Welles here, looong before he had to LOSE weight to play, like, *Falstaff* in “Chimes at Midnight”, and one could argue that the mass of his body was simply catching up to the mass of his genius and charisma. But still, it looks like you would have been okay with that “fat charismatic genius – sexy charismatic wife” pairing in real life and cinema.
Also, I guess I should finally go out and watch “Harold and Maude”, to see the kind of romance on screen you approve of 😉
@Eagle
I believe they have posted you comment now, but that really isn’t the point. Seriously, do yourself a favor and just stay away from that site. It’s pretty much garbage now. I’d wager AT LEAST 80% of their readership is female, and I think they know it. You’ll notice very, very few stories about men (most of them are stupid pop-culture pieces. Seriously, they had THREE articles about photographing the asses of female volleyball players.) of those that ARE about men, are written by a woman, from a woamn’s perspective, and then there’s the remaining six or so, that actually fulfill the sites purpose.
@Aych: I’ve had the “female initiator” conversation before too. My favorite is when they say “well, guys don’t like being approached.” and then you ask how many men they’ve tried asking … the answer is rarely more than a half-dozen. /facepalm
Paul: “I believe they have posted you comment now, but that really isn’t the point. Seriously, do yourself a favor and just stay away from that site. It’s pretty much garbage now. I’d wager AT LEAST 80% of their readership is female, and I think they know it. You’ll notice very, very few stories about men (most of them are stupid pop-culture pieces. Seriously, they had THREE articles about photographing the asses of female volleyball players.) of those that ARE about men, are written by a woman, from a woamn’s perspective, and then there’s the remaining six or so, that actually fulfill the sites purpose.”
I’m just going to limit my postings to articles written by people who I know online and won’t allow such censorship to happen over there. Jacobtk has an article “The Masks We Wear” and my comment didn’t get moderated or deleted. So I’ll just keep my postings to a minimum. Besides, there are other places and people I’ve known who are better at listening and supporting like here.
@Daisy:
Agreed.
Although I think it can be tricky to avoid. Most people are attracted to places where they feel comfortable, and one of the most comfortable things is being around people who don’t threaten your worldview. So people typically congregate and associate with people they already agree with. So even without explicit bannings, censorings, etc. places still often become echo chambers.
I think about this with respect to Genderratic a lot, actually. I’m really afraid of it becoming an echo chamber. It’s one of the reasons I really appreciate (and encourage) your participation here, Daisy, is because I feel like you bring other viewpoints to the discourse. When I disagree with you, I actually consider that a good sign. I do wonder how we can help to attract a more diverse commentariate, though. Even now, I feel like there is a bit too much agreeing going on. 😉
I think one of the trickiest things is keeping discourse respectful and productive. A flame chamber is no better than an echo chamber. People need to feel trusted and respected, I think. And that can be a difficult kind of environment to foster.
Anyway… it’s an ongoing thing that I think about, and I don’t really have any good answers yet.
@ Xakudo
“I’m really afraid of it becoming an echo chamber.”
I disagree.
I don’t see much danger of an echo chamber here. Clarence and dungone and TB disagree often and productively, dungone and Daisy are having productive discussions, and I do what I’m told when it comes to the categories for articles. So far so good.
Ginkgo: Yes, it is refreshing. I know I’m cantankerous. I think I’m getting better, though.
Last week, I was on vacation. I really enjoyed myself a lot more than I thought I would. Really, it was a blast, far and away more enjoyable than reading misandrist crap online. I think I was a happier person before I started reading all this gender-issue stuff. I would be a happier and less-cantankerous person if I’d never come across it.
I’m wondering if I should be offline as much as possible from now on.
Dunno. Gynocentric feminists disagree with each other all the time too, it’s just that to us outsiders it seems like they’re disagreeing over quibbles, whereas to them it probably seems like substantial disagreements. In fact, IIRC, this is a common in-group/out-group sort of bias.
Having said that, though, I don’t think we’re an echo chamber. But I would like to see even more varied voices here, if possible, to keep injecting us with new blood.
I can’t really engage in this discussion because I’m currently in the middle of one last tour of Japan before returning home to Boston for the new school year (have you ever tried to use a laptop in a tatami room? Not fun), but I’d like to give my experience anyway.
I have never encountered any woman who wrote about the experience of being a man as such and even got into the ballpark of anything I have ever seen or felt. I see a lot of women online writing about what men experience and I’m forced to read a lot of papers by esteemed feminist academics who write about what men think and feel, and not a single one of them is even close. I have plenty experience with trying to communicate what I feel, only to be told that I don’t really feel that way, don’t really like the things I do or don’t do it for the reasons I give. I’m sick of it. I’ve decided to shun the people who do that to me and ignore the works of the people who put it in print. There’s nothing active I can do to them, so I’m going to hurt them passively as much as I possibly can.
On a related note, much ado is made about male authors who produce extremely inauthentic female characters, but the average female author is no better with her men. It is a rare hand indeed that can spin both authentically, and the possessors of such talent generally do not stoop to generalization.
“On a related note, much ado is made about male authors who produce extremely inauthentic female characters, but the average female author is no better with her men. It is a rare hand indeed that can spin both authentically, and the possessors of such talent generally do not stoop to generalization.”
Yes. There are exceptions and they are treasures. Jane Austen’s male characters ring pretty true. Cao Xueqin’s female characters basically carry the whole Dream of the Red Chamber, and obviously they have to be pretty accurate for the novel to be so treasured.
OTOH the character of Genji in Genji Monotagari is a bodice-ripper fantasy.
“Gynocentric feminists disagree with each other all the time too, it’s just that to us outsiders it seems like they’re disagreeing over quibbles…”
Haha! Daisy and dungone disagree pretty fundamentally on some pretty fundamental issues. He has called her a Maoisit, and since I swing that way too, I can see how it’s got some truth to it, while he is in the financial industry in NYC. They are working toweards an understanding that they see a lot of the same things but call them by different names, at least in some significant areas.
Part of learning to approach people is getting used to rejection. I wonder how many women are mentally and emotionally equipped to deal with something like that… they sure haven’t gotten any preparation from our culture.
GMP has been a womens’ magazine from the outset. It has always been about what constitutes a good man to women. This misses the point. Women are irrelevant to any notion of what constitutes a “good” man. The good man WILL be good irrespective of the people who are around him.
GMP is serving it’s purpose in providing women with an opportunity to tell men what men are supposed to be and to judge all men against that standard.
To GMP men like Eagle are exotic opportunities for a bit of anonymous psychobabble and social voyeurism which their female audience will lap up like cream. Their attention is fleeting however. They never really understood the pain no matter how eloquently expressed. The real man gets over those things. Eagle should be all better now. After all they allowed him access to their hallowed environs and gifted him with their superior emotional intelligence.
How dare he suggest otherwise!
Gwallan,
The whole thing at GMP is sad. It’s the perfect example of why there has to be an MRM.
First – Amanda Marcotte said the solution to men’s problems is more femnism (Maybe, but “that’s not your feminism”, Marcotte. Your particular feminism is toxic to men. See also Duke Lacrosse Three.) Well GMP has been the best effort yet, I have seen, and it’s hard to imagine a better. And this is all the better it can do.
Not good enough. Must try harder.
Second – we see at GMP what happens when a man cmes ot a woman with his pain. We have seen it time after time at GMP. Think of how many male commenters have drifted away. The women there make all the right noises, but they can’t stand to look at a man’s pain. That’s because they need men, but not for that.
Third – the point you make about the basic premise of the magazine is accurate. It is a women’s magazine for women. That explains a related premise, that i tis a ll about making a good man for women, regardless of whether or not that is good for men. That is objectifying and sexist.
Fourth – that requires and leads to something else you see there – lots of articles celebrating men, lots of articles laying men’s stories of pain, but how none of them ever indict any women. This is about providing cover and plausible deniablity for the misandry noted in the point above.
You know how foreigners can’t own land in Thailand, how foreigners have to go in as partners with a Thai citizen who serves as a front for tiier foreign ownership? That’s Tom Matlack’s and Steven Greene’s role there.
My mom was a 2nd wave feminist, has copies of the Female Eunuch and all those other tomes of misandry….
I think she did more damage to me then any other single person, yup, dear ole dad wins second place in this one…..
interestingly one of the last times I spoke with her, I basically laid out that I was MGTOW/Grasseater and that I wasn’t going to let a woman hurt me or get emotionally close to anyone. She accused me of not having “empathy”–yet she never emotionally abused me she claims…. I call bullshit.
It’s funny-as in disgusting how these feminist have “men” like Hugo Schwyzer and David Futrelle saying that men like me aren’t entitled to our emotions and that we are misogynists for not putting women first. (Yet somehow it is okay for women to putt themselves first.)
Elementary:
@Daisy: Complaining about the “fat husband – hot wife” trope and then complaining about Welles and Hayworth not having stayed married? I know, we’re talking late 40′s Welles here, looong before he had to LOSE weight to play, like, *Falstaff* in “Chimes at Midnight”, and one could argue that the mass of his body was simply catching up to the mass of his genius and charisma. But still, it looks like you would have been okay with that “fat charismatic genius – sexy charismatic wife” pairing in real life and cinema.
I don’t care if he is/was fat. Einstein either.
I would have died for Orson Welles. There, I said it. DIED, do you hear me?
Don’t care what you all think of that. Jimi Hendrix too.
When men say they will die for genius women, regardless of their appearance, we will have equality.
For this reason, I am partial to men who gush over Maggie Thatcher (politics be damned) and say they loooove her. Susan Sontag said that was a feminist trend, and I agreed with her.
I also thought it was cute when hippie-nerd guys used to gush over Sontag, same way. 🙂
You might all enjoy this article and the comments on this Christian site. It is making the rounds on another venue I participate in.
http://www.crosswalk.com/family/singles/why-what-women-wear-matters.html
About the importance of women being MODEST in dress. Blah blah blah, you know the drill. But I thought you all might especially enjoy the first comment:
As a woman, I understand the desire to look alluring. In fact, I have struggled with it most of my life (UGH! the microskirt I wore in college!). However, I am old enough to have discovered that men might leer and drool on the sex objects, but they will lay down their lives for the angel, the lady, the gentlewoman. Oh they will still see her as pretty, and will be attracted to her, but she will bring out their noble masculine side, not their base carnal side. While the base carnal is fun, the noble masculine is a higher plane of existence, where the man feels like a hero and the woman feels like a queen.
The men who will approach the lady generally do so out of courage, as opposed to the easy sex object whom the men know is easy to get by the way she dresses. If she dresses herself as disposable, men will treat her as such.
Ladies it is possible to feel beautiful AND look beautiful AND be modest. Indeed, the hidden, the secret, the protected is much more desireable for good men.
Guys, don’t do that. ROFL.
http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/the-good-life-ladies-demand-what-you-want/comment-page-1/#comment-265526
This is as close as I’ve seen the GMP to being honest about who their real audience is. Incidentally, if you regender this article, (which I did) it sounds exactly like some of the beginner PUA stuff, yet almost none of the women seem to find it “creepy and assholish” when it’s them being told to do it
@DD. Not sure what this means. It’s not like those lifeboats on the Titanic were filled with beauty queens… Perhaps you don’t mean “die” literally?
It’s easy to pick the Einsteins and Hendrix’s of the world and claim a moral superiority of sorts for being attracted to them. They’re celebrities because of their skill and intellect. Guys don’t just go after beautiful women who are famous for their good looks, they go after any pretty girl right down to the girl next door. And the genius guy next door is probably getting the cold shoulder from the ladies.
@DD, gender relations within traditional Christianity is something that I’m neither prepared for nor willing to deal with. Let it rot and decay until it comes undone, is what I say. That comment is a gem, though.
I do want to point out one thing – her use of the word courage. It’s a dog whistle for men who are willing to put women on a pedestal and do whatever is asked of them. You can infer as much from her own usage of the word.
DD: And the genius guy next door is probably getting the cold shoulder from the ladies.
Speak for yourself. I have been married to one for nearly 25 years. 🙂
Dungone, your comments towards me on this forum, always feel like you are trying to shut me up or just shut me down. This usually works and I disappear for awhile, feeling totally overwhelmed, singled out and hung out to dry. Is this a correct assessment? Is this deliberate?
Jim and Xakudo have repeatedly assured me I am welcome here, but whenever I post (about ANYthing), it seems that you immediately zero in on me and try to make me feel as unwelcome as possible. Again, is this a correct assessment? Can I ask about the reasons for this? Because I have said I am feminist? Do you want me to go away? Is this your intention?
Tired of dealing with it, so I thought I would just ask. I waited until you did it, like just now. I am sorry if you think my comments unworthy, but you are not the only person here. However, it DOES seem that when you dismiss me (like just now), other male posters follow your lead. Perhaps due to the constant references to your sexual experience/being a Marine, you have established the “Alpha” role here, and your dismissive comments signal I am not to be seriously replied to? Because that seems to be the net result. There are a few exceptions (like Hiding and Debaser) but others here seem to take your lead; when you dismiss me, and my comments/questions therefore go perpetually unanswered by others here. Because Dungone has spoken.
That is how it feels to me.
The comments you made about my personal life, and how I “had my husband” (with my magical hypnotic sexual abilities, of course) adopt our child, still stick in my craw. I felt those insults were very personal, sexist (against men, asserting that my husband has no will of his own) and out of line, since you know nothing about my personal life. I find it interesting that that nobody defended me or my husband (ain’t he a man, too?) … but when I left the forum, I realized this was likely your intention (making me leave), or at least, it felt that way. Is this a correct assessment?
TB, Clarence and Eagle do not seem to dislike me as much as they did, so this leaves you.
I do not like to participate in forums where I feel under constantly under siege. I need to ask: Why do you target me in a way that you do not target other people here? Could you explain? Because it does feel that way. I have countless examples, although the nasty remarks about my husband were the worst.
Asking seriously. Rather than disappear again, from a forum in which I am learning important things, I figure I will man up (giggle) and just ask you outright. I asked you this question on NSWATM (where you also targeted me), and you abdicated all responsibility for your actions and acted like I was imagining things. Clearly, I am not. Why this concentrated attention? Why me? What’s up? Would you rather I not post here? Is this as deliberate as it appears?
Just be honest, so I can understand what is happening. I do not want to run away again.
Thank you.
I did speak for myself. I’m not exactly dumb, so I have a pretty strong sense that girls attracted to men’s intellect just isn’t a very common thing. I don’t deny that some women find intellect attractive in a way that overcomes some other nice-to-have traits, but it seems like a far cry from the sort of thing where it could reasonably be claimed that men have some catching up to do. Personally, I’m normally used to hearing about just how admirably intelligent I am when a girl is telling me that we’re breaking up. That’s not exactly the right time to start telling a guy what his redeeming qualities are.
At times I’ve been quite frustrated with you, but rest assured that this is not one of those times. Your most recent comments have been made in extremely good faith. I didn’t think I was shutting you down just now, but adding my own perspective knowing that you would take it into consideration.
@Daisy, if you look at the cow thread, I specifically even thanked you for your comments there. I thought they were thought provoking and funny. I am literally starting to think that you’re one of the “good guys” here, in spite of my original impressions.
What do you make of men like Harlan Ellison having so many, um, relationships, and with Hollywood hotties too? (in his youth). His current wife is MUCH YOUNGER than he is, as all of his wives have been. Although he claims to be 5’5″, I met him and he is even shorter than I am (5’3″). Moderately handsome when he was young, it was his animated personality that made him “handsome”–otherwise he would have been fairly nondescript. He always had really dark circles under his eyes, he claimed he never slept and I believe him.
He is mouthy and unpleasant, and notably lecherous (made a pass at me), although highly amusing. And a genius.
He once wrote that he hated the fact that women loved him for his talent, not for “himself”–as if they were separate entities. He capitalized Talent, and said “This makes me jealous of The Talent.” I thought this was actually a fascinating concept.
Re: Christianity and Gender Roles
I grew up Mormon, and still exist in the “atheist closet” – I’m living at home through college and have been required to attend 3 hours worth of sunday meetings every week. (Even in that my migraine yesterday was described to me as a “choice not to go to church”) — I’ve seen time and again and had it repeated at me too many times to count.
Women are in charge of men’s sexuality by virtue of how they act and dress – it’s sexist both ways, in that it’s a pretty unfair task of women to do that, and it denies men any agency.
Further more, it also pushes the idea that sexual desire in men is something corrupting. Some churches now are even stating that about the only reason a man should avoid pre-marital sex is to avoid “soiling” some other man’s wife. Not his own chastity, because men by nature are sinful and unchaste – they must not taint the girls. Even in the deepest of male dominated relationships (Ultra-conservative and “Quiverful” movements), men have to rely on women to be pure.
It’s often a joke in the mormon church I grew up in that you can tell who the bishop (compare to “pastor” in terminology) is the husband of the most righteous person in the ward (meeting group). A man is dependent on a woman for purity and ‘goodness’. Women are longsuffering saints, men are their children they’re trying to purify. This is part of the Church Lady version of toxic femininity – holding spirituality as something easier to obtain for women and that women are inherently more pure. Priesthood is a wannabe version of Motherhood to churchgoers.
But Church Ladies must tut-tut the next generation of girls into becoming church ladies themselves, otherwise they lose their role of Guardians of Morality.
Skidd, you poor thing! It all sounds dreadful in the extreme.
Big-assed scandal in fundie-dom. Threatening to bring the house down… well, one wing anyway. (Hyles-Anderson College/First Baptist of Hammond, a fundie empire.)
One little 16 year old girl sends some dirty pics to her, um, pastor, and all hell (giggle) breaks loose.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/02/jack-schaap-confesses-to-_n_1732732.html
The newest development, they have outed the girl and published her name, claiming she is a naughty Jezebel who tempted Rev Schaap. *Poor fella!* Thing is, he was one of the main perpetrators of the philosophy you describe above; wrote books about dating and suchlike. He is now painting himself as helpless to sin, the woman tempted him and he did eat, pardon expression.
Anyway, that link was provided in that context also. Blaming-the-kid is now proceeding on schedule.
“…And a genius. ”
Geniuses and especially genius artists certainly do get a pass, (and they probably need one.) And this is not just in our society. Do remember the uproar in France when California authorities were prosecuting Roman Polanski for child rape? The idea that a genius of his stature should be subject to the law was just a barbarous affront.
Skidd, welcome to the blog. Permission to lift your commentinto a thread?
Jim, I was just pointing out to Dungone that lots of women love genius men for being genius men.. this does not seem true for men and genius women. (Perhaps it happens more often than we think, and it just isn’t talked about?) In the same way there are not as many “male groupies” as female groupies, or at least there didn’t used to be.
I find that interesting. I think the genius MAKES the man more attractive to women. But this does not seem true in reverse. What reasons might there be for that?
And Polanski is a good example. He has been married to a series of sexpots, and he is a mousy, rat-bastard-looking sort of person. He even got women when he was BROKE–so it isn’t just that! Ditto Orson Welles, Iggy Pop… they got lotsa sexy women even when they had lost all their money through their own infamous intemperance. Neither is conventionally attractive. (Iggy was cute once, but as he famously bragged in a song, he was only 5’1″.)
And Polanski? “Where’d you get the midget?”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9y2y-Tkn7eg Not exactly handsome; proudly creepy… AND short.
But damn, willya watch that movie? Damned incredible.
He’s only 5’1″ and he’s gotta pain in his heart.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHC6QRaq6d0
Admittedly, he always found a reason to take off his shirt. 🙂
Hollywood screenwriters are similar to roadies, I reckon. If you’re a man who works in an industry where a lot of young ladies would do just about anything to get a part, and you write the parts then you probably hold a lot of power.
A few days ago TyphonBlue (I think?) mentioned there having been an experiment with ostriches where they took a male ostrich that had been previously rejected by the female ostrich and they surrounded the male with a bunch of dummy ostriches that were staring at him. And then the female ostrich that had rejected him before actually accepted him. Similar experiments have been done with humans; it’s a well known observation that women find married guys more attractive, but it could also be that if you’re already surrounded by beautiful young starlets, then other women will find you desirable as well.
Yeah, Daisy, and that’s a totally valid point and I think it goes oot the heart of the issue:
“I find that interesting. I think the genius MAKES the man more attractive to women. But this does not seem true in reverse. What reasons might there be for that?”
Power, and perceived power. Try this one for size – the general traditional male role is about projecting an image of power, and the general traditional role is about projecting an image of being able to harness male power.
It’s very general but I think it explains and integrates a lot of our observations. For one thing it integrate the woman-as-permanent child pose witht the Home and Heart Seh-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed archetype that dungone asked about on my woman-child post. Both rely on harnessing and directing male power, not about having personal power of one’s own.
Of course you can, Ginkgo! I’m flattered. I used to kick around a little at NSWATM a long while back (Last spring, I think), and I’m just sort of poking my nose back into the manosphere stuff. Lately I’ve taken to kind of snickering at tumblrites. Tumblr loves hyper-reactive Social Justice Warriors.
“In the same way there are not as many “male groupies” as female groupies, or at least there didn’t used to be.”
You don’t think this has anything to do with the idea that sex gives value to men and takes value from women. As such a groupie is offering to give something to the male artist while the male groupie is asking to take from the female artist.
Dungone: A few days ago TyphonBlue (I think?) mentioned there having been an experiment with ostriches where they took a male ostrich that had been previously rejected by the female ostrich and they surrounded the male with a bunch of dummy ostriches that were staring at him. And then the female ostrich that had rejected him before actually accepted him. Similar experiments have been done with humans; it’s a well known observation that women find married guys more attractive, but it could also be that if you’re already surrounded by beautiful young starlets, then other women will find you desirable as well.
So you have an essentialist view of gender, that it is biologically based? How can we change it, in that case? Why bother to try, if we are just dumb male and female ostriches?
Ellison was not always a screenwriter of course… he was a scifi writer first (well, a porn writer first, to be fair) and met his current wife at a scifi thing in Scotland, if memory serves.
You are still assuming the genius-factor is all about opportunistic, gold-digging women trying to have access to goodies, and I am arguing that women actually find such men sexually attractive… Orson Welles and Iggy Pop, my two examples, were not in any position (at several down-and-out points in their lives) to offer ANY such goodies, and women loved them anyway, often supporting them financially and extending them endless credit… Sheilah Graham supported F Scott Fitzgerald when he was drinking himself to death and penniless. Etc.
JE: You don’t think this has anything to do with the idea that sex gives value to men and takes value from women. As such a groupie is offering to give something to the male artist while the male groupie is asking to take from the female artist.
Hmm, so success doesn’t change this equation at all? A rich, successful woman is still subject to this rule?
If one believes gender is biologically based, that might fly… but I am not an essentialist. I am somewhat surprised at the biological-essentialism I am reading here.
Aside, check this video clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWtAZwxK5H0
One of Welles’ lovers (an extremely famous one, at that) tells him how it is. Talk about your pessimism!
I find it just so fascinating that he has HER tell him this. It is what he thought about himself, but has a whore (note: Welles loved whores) tell him instead.
“Why don’t you go home?”
“Hmm, so success doesn’t change this equation at all? A rich, successful woman is still subject to this rule?”
it seems to me a matter of male sexuality being dirty and therefore women are tainted by sex. Hence why adult male virgins will be assumed to become sexually deviant. (not that there’s anything wrong with that if you don’t harm anyone, but society thinks so). Nothing about her will change how dirty he is and that’s what decides how dirty she get’s by being with him. Lie down with the horndogs, get up with the fleas and all that jazz.
“women are tainted by sex” And men cleansed, sorry without that part the next sentance makes no sense.
I disagree that rich women are tainted by anything, since rich people are the ones who decide what “taint” is and how it is practiced.
Giving my red self away again. 😉 Sorry about that.
Seriously, though… Paris Hilton has put out a porn DVD (more than one?) and been in jail, and men still think she is hot and it hasn’t harmed her at all, that I can see.
Perhaps the only thing that can harm a rich woman is getting fat… nonetheless, it does not hurt her income, and I bet Oprah still gets plenty of anonymous marriage proposals.
I am talking about the genius factor, and everyone keeps changing the subject.
Where is the older, penniless female genius that men line up for? Where is the Marlene Dietrich or Sheilah Graham equivalent for these women? Answer: there isn’t any.
I think this means women have learned to be more refined in our tastes than men have learned, since I love geniuses and think every smart woman would do well to find one.
Thus, I can’t help but think men would benefit from women-geniuses as well. 🙂
In fact (I mentioned Susan Sontag upthread), we could argue that lesbians appear to be attracted to women-geniuses too, which would prove my point about female-refinement of tastes.
“Seriously, though… Paris Hilton has put out a porn DVD (more than one?) and been in jail, and men still think she is hot and it hasn’t harmed her at all, that I can see.”
Hasn’t it? People think she’s hot, but they generally also think she’s an idiot and a lot of other not very flattering things. Less so than if she was poor, but still. The whole basis of the groupie mechanic is the idea that the woman is giving something to the man, as long as sex is viewed as the man taking something from the woman you can’t really have male groupies.
“I am talking about the genius factor, and everyone keeps changing the subject.”
You’re the one who asked why male groupies aren’t a thing.
Daisy:
I think the answer is not in who is attracted to the genius, but in who the genius is attracted to, and the difference is female hypergamy. Women’s attraction to men is based on status far more than men’s attraction to women. If a man is successful or brilliant, that raises his status, and his sexual attractiveness to women, but his expectations of a potential partner’s status are not raised so much, at least not for one night stands and short-term relationships, so his sexual opportunities increase. If a woman is successful or brilliant, that also raises her status, but when a woman’s status rises, so do her expectations of the status of a potential partner. She may get more offers than before, but she’ll rule out most of them for having lower status than she does.
For me, when someone asks me about someone’s sexual attractiveness I assume t hey mean looks, and how they sort of carry themselves. Personality, intelligence level, creativity, etc are irrelevant.
Now if you ask me what I look for in a woman. Now it’s time to talk about personality and things like that.
So, to me, on a purely physical level, why do woman (in general) still insist on talking about personality traits?
So Daisy, who is just outright hot? Just looks?
Here’s an interesting song on YouTube that I think is relevant to this discussion. Funny? I think so. But try flipping the genders. If a male singer made a similar song about a female writer, he’d never work again.
@Daisy, WRT that Orson Welles clip: I think it’s pretty much wisdom in hindsight to see that clip reflecting on what Welles thought of himself at that time; I mean, he’s no more Hank Quinlan than he was Charles Foster Kane (the usual role people tend to see as prophetic of Welles’ further life).
Welles made great movies between Kane and Touch of Evil, and he made great movies after Touch of Evil (among them his favourite one, “The Trial”); his future in 1958 was no more used up than it was after the first word of Citizen Kane was heard, making William Randolph Hearst angry enough to use all his immense power to make Welles an outcast in Hollywood. Welles himself, at least, didn’t feel like his future was all used up, or else he wouldn’t have worked on projects like said Trial, Chimes at Midnight, The Dreamers, The Other Side of zhe Wind or his never-ending Don Quijote project.
Anyways, as you want to talk about attraction to genius, may I say that a) Hedy Lamarr (just checked, she’s the one without an “l” in her first name) was a genius woman to suffer, be blinded and die for (as aptly demonstrated by Victor Mature) (and okay, I’ll admit that most people would find her extrmely attractive even without knowing of her genius), and b) … I guess there are more men whose (attractive to the targetted sex) narcissism gets fed by their intellect than there are women? Welles’ huge ego was backed up by his comparably huge genius, but maybe he wouldn’t have been as attractive to women had he been a genius who was less larger-than-life (think, for example, of the reclusive author of “The Perfume”, Patrick Süskind – or ask your husband how many groupies he has 😉 ).
After some rambling here and then deleting those passages, I find that I consider your question to be problematically gynocentric: “Why aren’t men attracted to the same things in women that women are attracted to in men? They totally should be, and until they are, NO EQUALITY!” I’m doubting whether the fact that a man can be an insufferable asshole to evreyone around him and still have women fall at his feet because he’s a genius (women’s attraction to genius in men) is that much less problematic than the fact that a woman can be an insufferable asshole to everyone around her and still have men falling at her feet because she meets the cultural norms for sexiness (men’s attraction to physical beauty).
Maybe you missed the point. First of all, if we were indeed as dumb as ostriches then my argument would be that we must work twice as hard to overcome it, all the while recognizing the underlying motivations that drive us. Just because something is biologically driven doesn’t mean it’s in our best interest to obey it, as in the case of some deep-sea animals that seem to be attracted to bright sources of light. The ostrich example was meant as a funny example of how, as animals, we can be done in by our own nature when it comes to mating.
That’s not really true; it just so happens that your examples, besides yourself which is I accept, are all easily explainable by fame, wealth, power, or some combination thereof. I’m not saying that women can’t be attracted to intelligence, I just don’t think it’s very common. I only take issue with your original statement, “When men say they will die for genius women, regardless of their appearance, we will have equality.” I do think that men and women are attracted to one another’s intelligence either at equal rates, or else we don’t really have a good measure of it anyway to say anything about it one way or the other.
Yes, I admit that someone like Iggy Pop might have been borrowing money from one of his groupies while he was washed up. But it also wasn’t like he went from Britney Spears to Carmen Diaz to Jessica Biel while he was at it. Undoubtedly some women would date even a fallen rock star, but that doesn’t mean that we’ve got to rule out everything but his genius, if indeed he even had any (it’s debatable).
Overall there are three factors that we have to account for. 1) Power/Fame, 2) Access, and 3) Money. I think we already get 1 and 3, so let’s briefly discuss access. As it turns out, a smart English major in a class full of beautiful girls is going to have more chances with a beautiful girl than a truly genius engineering student will. But access works both ways. I happen to have come across some women who go for washed up creative failed-at-life types and yeah, I really do think there is a sort of “ostrich effect” that’s adding up to a very ill-informed mating choice. It’s almost like a female version of Injured Doll Syndrome where women make themselves believe that if they support this washed up person then he will go somewhere and make them his Yoko Ono. I can’t express how exasperating it is having to witness these sorts of people fumble their ways through life.
Perhaps we need to look at why some men are seemingly threatened by smart successful women. (I’m a tomboy and that didn’t help, but I think my aspirations to education and my status as being a “smart person” in the eyes of high-school and college society made me a bit of a pariah when it came to dating. I have ended up asking out my own geeky, chemistry-loving rocker boy and we are attached at the hip)
I think perhaps this is more about men feeling useless in a relationship? The male gender role is so dependant on men being the breadwinner that even having a partner who makes more (due to education and/or natural mental skills) is threatening to masculinity. I know it drives my dad crazy that my mother makes more than him (he’s going through unemployment issues that come with being retirement age and looking for a job). It’s not her fault necessarily – it’s that he’s looked at as a failure at masculinity for this.
Debaser – Funny that you talk about sexual attractiveness that way – now, maybe I’m an odd duck for being in the ace spectrum sort of thing – but I look for intelligence and humor as my most attractive features then followed by body type and physical looks. But then again, I don’t experience sexual attraction like the majority of people do, I think. Personality must click first.
Skidd, you look at some random person and there’s nothing? No attraction, at all. Ever. Until you get to know them?
Me, I think most people are attractive…or at least attractive enough. Then, yeah, it all depends on personality after that. So in a way, for me, physical attractiveness is the first step (but this step is fairly easy to pass my personal filter) but passing my personality filter is super hard.
Just because I may find someone sexuality attractive in a pure physical sense that’s not enough for me to want to get to know them better. I do not have casual sex. And I would never have intimate relations with anyone I wasn’t serious about or who I didn’t genuinely like.
I’m married, happily, so not much of this really applies to me anymore. But even when I was younger. I was the opposite of what people call “easy”.
@debaser:
Ditto here. Most women are at least somewhat physically attractive to me. And then personality, world view, interests, talent, tastes, intelligence, sense of humor, etc. come into play, which can increase or decrease their attractiveness depending. Being a decent human being is paramount, of course.
Incidentally, if someone has positive traits (e.g. intelligence, talent, physical attractiveness), that can actually make me dislike them more if they are also a shitty human being. It’s like otherwise positive traits reverse their effect on me when the person sucks as a human being. I think it’s because some part of me resents them for possessing positive traits when they’re a shitty person. Like they’re cheating karma, or something. I have the urge to rob them of their positive traits and redistribute them to people who deserve them, like a positive-trait Robin Hood or something.
So, yeah, “decent human being” is really important. But that’s just me.
@Skidd:
I’m a pretty egalitarian guy, but even I fall prey to this one. And for me it’s two-fold:
1. It’s hard for me if I feel like I’m the one being “supported”. It’s less to do with a woman supporting me, and more to do with anyone supporting me. It’s about feeling like I have to support myself to be worthwhile as a guy. The icky feeling I get when I feel like I’m being materially supported by my partner is the same icky feeling I get when I feel like I’m being materially supported by my parents. It’s about being “strong” and “independent” and “able to support yourself”.
2. My ability to support, and my possibly superior traits (e.g. intelligence, talent, etc.) are what I feel make me valuable to a partner. It can be hard to realize on a gut level that there are other things that make me sufficiently (or even more-than-sufficiently) worthwhile to a partner.
An anecdote related to point #2:
My girlfriend and I were laying in bed together, and I was feeling particularly insecure about her feelings for me. I don’t remember exactly how the conversation went, but I do remember that at one point she said something to me that (super paraphrasing) essentially amounted to, “You inspire me to be a better person.” And that absolutely floored me.
Our culture has a really strong message that it is women who are the civilizing force, that it is women that inspire and educate men to be better people, and that this is one of the big values that women have and one of the valuable things that women bring to a relationship. And it never, ever occurred to me that I could be valuable to my partner in the same way–that I am also valuable in that way. And I’ve felt a lot more comfortable in my relationship with my girlfriend ever since then, even when she’s supporting me rather than the other way around. It makes me feel valuable to my partner in a different way.
Daisy:
Margaret Atwood makes a passing reference to this about halfway through “Oryx and Crake” (no page number, sorry; I’m sharing a little room in Asakusa with three other people and most of my stuff is already either back in the states or waiting at Narita). I don’t know if you’ll agree with Crake or not, but it’s an opinion to consider.
As usual, I can’t really comment on the relationship stuff. I find most people attractive to look at (often regardless of sex, even though I’m straight), but it’s personality that really makes me attracted to someone (it generally overrides looks: I find a person whose personality I’m attracted to particularly sexy regardless of their body). I can’t really relate to the whole groupie mentality thing. I feel like I would be demeaning both myself and the object of my admiration by saying things like that and I imagine it would feel unsettling and possibly threatening to be on the receiving end of it. There are definitely a lot of men like that in Japan, though. That’s the whole idol culture. Of course they very definitely aren’t going after genius (even there are genius idols, they certainly wouldn’t let it show in their public persona; Japan is even more obsessed with youth and virginity than the West).
“Skidd, you look at some random person and there’s nothing? No attraction, at all. Ever. Until you get to know them? ”
I look at some random person, and I might find them aesthetically pleasing to the eye. But not attractive. I find most (all) people unattractive sexually.
Their personality is what makes me attracted. If they have some sort of trust vibe, I’m more likely to be initially intrigued. But it doesn’t have to do with looks.
Hey, Skidd, welcome!!!
“Perhaps we need to look at why some men are seemingly threatened by smart successful women. (I’m a tomboy and that didn’t help, but I think my aspirations to education and my status as being a “smart person” in the eyes of high-school and college society made me a bit of a pariah when it came to dating. I have ended up asking out my own geeky, chemistry-loving rocker boy and we are attached at the hip)”
In other words you just missed a lot of heart-ache and went straight fior the gold, probably from a level of self-knowledge that can take decades for some people to develop. Congrats to you, well done. I was unlucky, twice, in that department, so I am in awe a bit.
“I think perhaps this is more about men feeling useless in a relationship? The male gender role is so dependant on men being the breadwinner that even having a partner who makes more (due to education and/or natural mental skills) is threatening to masculinity.”
I think this is true as far as it goes, but it does not get to the heart of the matter. What it is for men, I think, is the reality that any kind of dependency or subordination leads to doom for a man. It’s not just threatening to his masculinity, it’s threatening to his humanity, Dependency and subordination are permited to women – encouraged and required in fact, which is a sexist issue in itself – but for a man it destroys his value as a huamn being, as we can see for the disparate acceptance and treatment in society of needy men versus needy women.
@Skidd, hi. I agree with Gingko that it’s true as far as that goes. I wouldn’t know much about being threatened by a successful woman because I haven’t met enough women in my life who were more successful than me, or even successful at all. Yesterday I pointed out where I live to a girl who immediately asked me if I had a dog so that she could be my dog watcher – and she has a master’s degree. I’ll accept your word for it, though, that some men find successful women intimidating. One of my ex girlfriends found my success intimidating; in fact she told me that she was “afraid” of becoming dependent on me because everything was “easy,” all of her needs were being met without her having to do anything, and no matter what happened, I could fix it and make it all okay. And then she left me.
Let me ask you something. Is there something wrong with you asking out a guy “on your own”? Could that possibly have something to do with your impression that men are intimidated by female success? That wouldn’t be surprising to me at all, since I’ve long had the impression that successful women wish to forgo traditional female gender roles, but expect men to uphold traditional male gender roles as if nothing else had changed.
Elementary, always nice to meet a Welles fan… have you read the Bogdanovich book? Welles was always pretty fatalistic and felt fucked by Hollywood (and he was), and I was going by that. If you have never read it, check it out: http://www.amazon.com/This-Is-Orson-Welles/dp/030680834X
Debaser, Welles is hot on the cover of that book I just linked, but yes, the fact that he is ORSON WELLES cannot be separated from that. Also, the video from Iggy that I linked, I believe is terribly hot (he also looked great on the cover of RAW POWER) , but I can’t separate the fact that he is, you know, Iggy. But he always looked great when he took off his shirt, even deep in junkiedom.
I consider Bruce Lee, James Dean and Richard Gere (all in their prime) to be the sexiest men ever. Ever, ever, ever. I dunno why. I cannot separate who they are from their hotness, except when I first saw Bruce Lee he was in GREEN HORNET and he was not known as BRUCE LEE at that time. I thought he was wonderful, but then, I was about 9 years old. 🙂 I also admit to still loving my teen idols, David Cassidy and David Bowie. (They have both aged wonderfully, and they both took every drug in creation, its really quite amazing. Go figure!)
I adore Vincent D’Onofrio and belong to an online group known as Vincent’s Vixens. He greatly reminds me of my husband, too… I do think its interesting that smarter women tend to lust for an actor that is smart and usually plays smart guys (and the occasional serial killer, of course). It is quite noticeable in the group, that we are somewhat offbeat gals; I guess that stands to reason.
Continuing the “Law and Order” fixation, I like Ice-T a lot and think he is hot hot hot, but I wish he was not married to such a bimbo. (Okay, there, I said it.) It just makes me doubt his overall judgment.
(((waits for artillery fire)))
Patrick: If a woman is successful or brilliant, that also raises her status, but when a woman’s status rises, so do her expectations of the status of a potential partner. She may get more offers than before, but she’ll rule out most of them for having lower status than she does.
This is changing… successful and attractive women like Julia Roberts and Jennifer Aniston are now with men who are lower-status than they are. I think that is a very good sign.
Courtney Cox took considerable heat for that, even as recently as 10 yrs ago… “what is she marrying HIM for??” but now that is subsiding. But these high-profile women had to go there first. Lets hope others follow their example.
Dungone: Yes, I admit that someone like Iggy Pop might have been borrowing money from one of his groupies while he was washed up. But it also wasn’t like he went from Britney Spears to Carmen Diaz to Jessica Biel while he was at it.
I was gonna say Nico is hotter than all those girls put together, but apparently I have my chronology all fucked up. They were together very early on, during FUN HOUSE. He was not yet famous at all.
Some fun reading about Nico giving Iggy the clap, including some beautiful photos of Nico: http://thisrecording.wordpress.com/2008/05/14/in-which-nobody-is-allowed-in-the-practice-room-especially-a-woman/
“I consider Bruce Lee, James Dean and Richard Gere (all in their prime) to be the sexiest men ever. Ever, ever, ever. I dunno why”
Oh, honey I do – they are three hairless. You like smooth guys.
I do, but that ain’t all. They are sweeeeet!
My three husbands have all been hairless, though, now that you mention it.
I dunno if this link will show up here?:
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=4402576508120&set=p.4402576508120&type=1&theater
I even made a pilgrimage!
Okay, if that doesn’t work, here is a link that might:
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=4402576508120&l=fd23ba8a32
Thirty years ago, I don’t exactly look like that now… haha.
@Daisy: Why am I not surprised that you like Vincent d’Onofrio? 😉
Elementary, I wondered if you would catch that!!! 😀
He also looks and acts like my man, the major difference being that my guy is all concerned about his health and jogs and stuff.. and consequently weighs less than I do.
If you think that’s an easy cross to bear, think again! 😉
And speak of the devil, a photo of Iggy with Justin Timberlake (in case you were wondering who to attribute that string of girlfriends to). And yeah, I’d say Nico was hot, if you consider the clap hot. According to the link, Nico was already over the hill as a model. All I’m insinuating is, if your relationships come with as more downsides than a Manhattan apartment, you’re probably not on top your game.
I’d say that “lower status” is a rather arbitrary term here. These men are successful by any measure. If anyone else in Hollywood marries the small cadre of “it” men such as Brad Pitt, it’ll be incestual.
Well, Daisy, I am not married, but I’m seeing, from time to time, a woman who wheighs more than I do. I wonder what her reaction would be were I to ask her if she’d feel better about herself if I was heavier than her …
I guess a woman can be miserable in both kinds of situations, either feeling bad about being the less attractive (heavier) one of the couple, or feeling bad about being coupled with an unattractive (less heavy) man.
Dungone, you might argue that about Justin Theroux (but he is NO WAY as rich and famous as Aniston)… but can you remember the name of Julia Roberts’ husband? I can’t. He’s some cameraman.
I was impressed she married a (relatively) regular guy, I admit.
Meanwhile, back at the Batcave:
Something that’s been bugging me lately are complaints about “straw feminists”. Particularly, the insistence that everyone with a negative impression of feminism got it from television. I don’t know about you, but there haven’t been a whole lot of characters like this on television in my lifetime. The only ones I can think of off the top of my head were a character in one episode of a British horror series and a few unnamed joke characters in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, none of whom were identified as “feminists”. There’s also this bizarre obsession with unshaved legs and bra burning. No one in my generation is old enough to remember feminists who did those things and no one would care if they still did them now (I actually think they really dropped the ball when it comes to shaving and makeup and stuff; they could have given women my age so many more socially acceptable options if they’d been willing to go about it less incompetently than their predecessors). They just aren’t shocking or threatening. Hell, if I saw people burning bras I’d think they were either hobos or modern performance artists and I associate hairy legs with cool indie music a lot more than any feminism that’s around these days. There’s also the “we’re not all fat, angry lesbians” thing, (it’s been featured more than a few times on the GMP) which is so insulting and out of touch that it makes me almost physically ill. I don’t hate people for being fat, I don’t feel threatened by lesbians (I went through high school playing D&D with a couple of them and half the lesbians I know aren’t even feminists), and the whole idea is rooted in preconceptions held by people over fifty. Everything else “straw feminists” do and say is obviously rooted in real problematic actions and words of influential second wavers who had a kind of media penetration that their successors ever really managed. Honestly, the whole thing just makes me think that the feminists putting this idea forward are extremely self-centered and living in the past.
But I’m not surprised it was someone who had access to her (someone from the industry). It’s still indicative of men doing the traditional courting, and like I said, it’s an insular industry. Celebrity women limit their own options by being passive. If you look at celebrity men, they pursue a much wider variety of women than celebrity women do, including women of much lower status than themselves. A Hollywood cameraman is still a high status profession versus a struggling model/waitress, let’s say.
At any rate neither of these men are geniuses, and neither are the women, and neither is Iggy Pop for that matter. It’s incredibly rare for any artist or writer to rise to the level of “genius.” Clever, maybe. Just go give you some idea, it’s commonly held that a genius is someone with an IQ of 160 or higher, which is a full 15 standard deviations higher than average on the bell curve for intelligence. Maybe 1 out of 30,000 people are really that smart and it’s more likely to be men. Even if women were attracted to this, there is nothing “egalitarian” for men to start being attracted to it at the same rate – men would have to become un-attracted to the vast majority of women in order to reach this level of “equality.” But to really get a sense of whether or not women are attracted to this in the first place, you should really try to take a representative sample of these men and see whether or not they really do as well with the ladies.
So check out this small experiment of how a woman who put inserts into her shirt went from 13 approaches to 44 approaches in one night by going from an A cup to a C cup. http://books.google.com/books?id=SMp4GhepfeoC&lpg=PA139&ots=M5qEiPi2w3&dq=One%20of%20these%2C%20subsequently%20described%20in%20his%20paper%20%E2%80%98Women%E2%80%99s%20Bust%20Size%20and%20Men%E2%80%99s%20Courtship%20Solicitation%E2%80%99%2C&pg=PA139#v=onepage&q&f=false
Do you seriously think if you were to test women’s attraction to men in a similar fashion, that you’d see an efffect even remotely similar when men go from a 110 IQ to a 160 IQ? And let me be clear, girls with size C cup size are far more common than genius men. Less than 1% of people have an IQ higher than 130, which would sort of be the equivalent of a double D cups size. A 160 IQ should be the attraction equivalent of a Playboy bunny if your theory were to hold up. So let me ask you to think of a couple bright computer science majors and ask you if you believe that they’d manage to light a fire in the hearts of 99% of the female population.
“Something that’s been bugging me lately are complaints about “straw feminists”. Particularly, the insistence that everyone with a negative impression of feminism got it from television. ”
Ha! My negative impresion is from reading on-line feminists on feminist sites, the very people complaining about “strw feminists.” Before that I had a much more positive opinion of feminists.
“Clever, maybe. Just go give you some idea, it’s commonly held that a genius is someone with an IQ of 160 or higher, which is a full 15 standard deviations higher than average on the bell curve for intelligence.”
I thought the standard deviation was +/- 15 (as in 85~115 is within 1 standard deviation) for IQ. With genius counted as 130 and above (Big Bang Theory people are supposedly way above that, at least Leonard and Sheldon who are supposed to have like 173 and 187 IQs…they also happen to delve into the depht of their field to a degree quite rare indeed, yet their actions seem to betray a much lower intelligence, especially Leonard’s begger-like behavior with regards to Penny, which got a bit better over time).
130 would be 2 deviations above, 160 would be 4, 175 would be 5, and Sheldon’s 187 IQ likely makes him unique in California (no one else with same IQ there).
@Ginkgo:
Ditto. I actually had a very positive view of feminism prior to getting into the feminist blogosphere. It is mainstream online feminism itself that has given me the negative impression. (Well, that and my crazy radfem ex.)
Having said that, though, online feminism (and I’d also throw in academic feminism) is not all of feminism, either. Most self-identified feminists I’m aware of having met in real life don’t actually pay much attention to the feminist blogosphere and are far more reasonable (more along the lines of e.g. April from Ethecofem/PaperRevolution).
@Schala, you’re right. I just wrote down the wrong number that was in my head. At IQs of 160 and above, they consider 16 IQ points to be 1 standard deviation. 159 and below it’s 15. So 160 IQ is considered 3.75 standard deviations away, which is pretty huge. The main difference between 15 and 16 is what percentile you end up falling under. 4 standard deviations is the equivalent of the 99.997th percentile. And no, 130 wouldn’t be genius. 1 in 50 people have a 130 IQ or higher. 1 in 30,000 have an IQ of 160. Just to show you how huge the difference is… (sorry for the off topic background-info)
@Dungone: “Let me ask you something. Is there something wrong with you asking out a guy “on your own”? Could that possibly have something to do with your impression that men are intimidated by female success? That wouldn’t be surprising to me at all, since I’ve long had the impression that successful women wish to forgo traditional female gender roles, but expect men to uphold traditional male gender roles as if nothing else had changed.”
Well, there was always the impression to me that men were intimidated by intelligent and sucessful women. It’s always been pushed to me that as a “smart cookie” in a marriage-obsessed culture (Hiya, Utah, where you’re an old maid if not married by 25), that I was Different and too much of a critical thinker and being kind of one to avoid the Mormon Housewife role set out for me.
Doing the actual asking? Not so terribly hard, once I had peeled back all the guilt and stuff from years of indoctrination and basically giving up on romance (I somehow got coded as lesbian during high school, I think — I didn’t like makeup and was not exactly “demure”. I was also the weirdest middle schooler – I loved hawaiian shirts for some reason or another). It probably doesn’t help that our relationship is generally odd – I’m four years older (almost 23 to his 19, we are long distance, and other things). He told me afterwards he had been crushing on me for ages from afar (we met in a roleplay group of all things), and that he was afraid that I’d reject him due to age differences. So when I first asked to be more than friends, he was pleasantly surprised (read: giddy). We’ve been together a year now.
I figured that my general gender role breaking meant that I couldn’t expect men to follow the stupid initiator role to ask me out. Granted, I sort of read like a mini-version of a cougar in this scenario. Oddly enough, he’s the one who acts a little parental to me in this relationship, though.
“Having said that, though, online feminism (and I’d also throw in academic feminism) is not all of feminism, either. ”
Yeah. I was so relieved when I realized this is what was happneing. More reasonable? Yes indeed. Daisy is much more what I think of as a feminist, and she gets thrown off feminist blogs right and left. That is very much to her credit They can’t stand her honesty basically.
Skidd, now I remember you. You have a special perspective on a lot of things we discuss, Thans very much for participating here; you enrich the oconversation.
Daisy:
Wasn’t aware of that. Here’s hoping its a trend. I suspect she may be an outlier though.
Skidd:
That’s the received opinion, and there’s some truth in it, but I suspect not quite in the way it’s usually understood. Faced with a woman who’s intelligent or successful, many men will assume, based on experience or advice, that “she’s not going to be interested in the likes of me”, won’t pursue her, and even if she flirts with him won’t believe she means anything by it.
Dungone, as Chevy Chase famously said, impersonating Gerald Ford in presidential debate:
“It was my understanding that there was to be NO math!”
” And no, 130 wouldn’t be genius. 1 in 50 people have a 130 IQ or higher. 1 in 30,000 have an IQ of 160. Just to show you how huge the difference is… (sorry for the off topic background-info)”
I’m not talking about Einstein-level genius. Just the kind who doesn’t think reality TV is the best thing since sliced bread, who can think critically, who isn’t easily brainwashed into following an ideology (can reasonably see the crap for what it is, without having someone guide you towards this). The complete opposite of the stupid population in Idiocracy. The main character has a 100 IQ. He passes for a genius compared to them (who have developmentally disabled IQs, due to overbreeding of the stupid and underbreeding of the intelligent, in the US).
“One usage of the noun “genius” is closely related to the general concept of intelligence. One currently accepted way of attempting to measure one’s intelligence is with an IQ test. The label of “genius” for persons of high IQ was popularized by Lewis Terman. He and his colleague Leta Hollingworth suggested different scores as a cut-off for genius in psychometric terms. Terman considered it to be an IQ of 140 on the Stanford Binet (about 0.4% of the population), while Hollingworth put it at an IQ of 180 (theoretically extrapolated at 1 in 2 million).[17]
In addition to the fundamental criticism that intelligence measured in this way is an example of reification and ranking fallacies,[18] the IQ test has also been criticized as having a “cultural bias” in its interpretation despite assurances that these tests are designed to eliminate test bias.
Anders Ericsson argues that generally (with highly demanding fields like theoretical physics as the exception), after a person’s IQ surpasses 120, success is determined more by other qualities. In other words, there may be general decreasing return on raw mental power. Ericsson proposes social skills as an example of other qualities that are then more relevant to success. He also warns that IQ does not measure what many would consider “creativity” — sometimes measured by looking at an individual’s Latent inhibition instead of IQ.[16]”
from wiki on Genius
I haven’t passed an “official” MENSA test ever I think. I passed one as a young kid, but it doesn’t count for adulthood, and I don’t know the score. I estimate it at 130, down from what online tests usually say.
I wonder how much “amassing lots of information, longterm and detailed (about one subject)” matters, to IQ. Because it sure matters for productivity.
@Schala, try to look at it from the perspective of someone who actually is very intelligent. When Daisy says that women are attracted to “geniuses” and we start defining “genius” by standards such as being in a band we like or having similar television preferences as we do, the discussion not only stops being meaningful but erases the actual experiences of intelligent people. It’s really, really important to have some common understanding of genius besides “things I like” and “things I don’t like,” or “stereotypes that I believe about people I’ve never even met.” If we want to discuss whether or not women are attracted to intelligence, it helps not to come up with tautological definitions that beg the question.
I took an IQ test in the US after living there for a year and speaking English for just as long. I received the top score it was designed to measure after which point the psychologist stopped the test. Highly intelligent people won’t be constrained by culture. I see the cultural criticism as potentially having an impact for average IQ or for people who lack adequate creativity and social skills.
No, the main character is immeasurably more intelligent than everyone around him. His IQ is incredibly high. The movie is a pretty decent analogy to what it’s like for very intelligent people in the present day and age, much better than, say, Big Bang Theory. The movie isn’t about the future, it’s about today.
Which doesn’t make them any less intelligent. And it wouldn’t surprise me if women’s attraction to men’s intelligence followed a similar pattern.
And it doesn’t mean that intelligent people lack social skills or creativity per se, nor that their intelligence is useless. It’s just as likely that they are surrounded by other people who do not recognize intelligence correctly and who also lack the social skills required to deal with highly intelligent people (such as, for example, simply hating it when another person is nearly always right about everything). Intelligent people become far more successful when they’re surrounded by other intelligent people. I’ve even seen a seminar offered by MIT once that purported to teach business leaders how to work with people who are smarter than they are. It’s a two way street.
Dungone: ,,,and we start defining “genius” by standards such as being in a band we like …
No, this is not my standard and I did not say it was. Once again, Dungone puts words in my mouth instead of asking for a clarification.
I WOULD define a genius as single-handedly inventing a whole genre of music like punk rock. That is why Iggy Pop is (was) a genius.
And if you are implying Orson Welles was *not* a genius, please study the history of film and get back to me.
“Once again, Dungone puts words in my mouth instead of asking for a clarification.”
I didn’t read that bit of his as attributing that to you. It sounds more liek a general astement about how people decide what is and isn’t genius.
Intelligence comes in many forms.
There’s musical intelligence, or creative intelligence, analytical intelligence, social intelligence, etc. You can be a savant in one and poor in another. (Few people are Leonardo Da Vinci), but the world at large promotes some kind of intelligences over others. How many charming and witty socially intelligent celebrities do we see in the media? How about the representation of sciences? How many nobel laureates can you name? Not many, I’d think. Society simply doesn’t recognize scientific achievement like they do sports or media achievement. You could solve the world’s bee crisis and you might get a few rare people to remember your name.
Skidd, true… truly intelligent celebrities are few (David Bowie and Ed Norton come to mind, but I had to think a minute). Being “charming” might be a type of social intelligence; charisma is its own thing. Lots of preachers, con men, politicians, etc.
I was just reading about the blind guy who invented cruise control; he was tired of being jerked around in the car.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Teetor
I was thinking, if he hadn’t been blind (making it an especially interesting story), we probably wouldn’t know about him at all.
For me, (and speaking very generally) I’m sensing the same thing with woman saying someone is HAWT! YEOW! then going on to describe personality traits. But here it’s women saying YEOW GENIUS and going on to describe things other than raw intelligence. Like talking about skills they have and accomplishments they’ve made.
I agree that ‘musical genius’ means something but when one is talking about ‘genuis’ (without a qualifier) then, to me, they are talking intellect, like IQ. Test taking. Learning systems. etc.
Language is fuzzy, it’s all good to me. I am not intending to be harsh. I’m just a lazy writer.
Debaser, so it has never happened to you, where you see a woman and think “hawt!” and then you talk to her and suddenly she seems very UNattractive… her hawtness itself, even seems toxic somehow? (My husband is the first person who ever described that phenomenon to me!) …. how is that different from thinking personality traits are “attractive”? We can all look at a picture and judge people on a scale of 1-10, but it is the way a certain body is “animated” (by the soul, spirit, brain, personality or whatever we want to call that indefinable thing that individuates us) that draws us to them.
Many men in this thread agree that personality traits matter greatly and that they make a big difference in who they find attractive, and that is very heartening to me. 🙂
In that case, more men need to talk about this stuff and change the one-dimensional, damaging stereotype that only appearances matter to men.
“but it is the way a certain body is “animated” ”
I know quite attractive people who have rather plain faces and their expressions are what make them attractive.
Debaser: But here it’s women saying YEOW GENIUS and going on to describe things other than raw intelligence
I do tend to think of innovation as genius, specifically, someone who thinks of something no one else has and executes it all while people tell them they are crazy. (and maybe they are crazy) Someone who decides to tear up ceilings and floors to shoot their movies at totally unconventional angles (conveying cinematically that this person is LOOKED UP TO or LOOKED DOWN ON, etc), when nobody had ever thought of that before (and now it is commonplace) was a GENIUS… but perhaps he would not score highly Dungone’s tests.
Innovation and creativity are hard to measure on tests.
We should all recognize this one from discussions on male privilege, how one aspect of male privilege is that men can just go anywhere without having anything to fear at all. The violent crime stats tell a different story, but apparently “lived experience” trumps everything, even when it’s not your experience and you haven’t lived it.
But call them on it and what will they, “Yes we know that being privileged doesn’t mean that your life is automatically easy.” and then go back the regular programming of dismissing the things that keep men’s lives from being automatically easy.
Daisy:
When men say they will die for genius women, regardless of their appearance, we will have equality.
It’s not just genius but I think that stuff is happening right under your (as women in a collective). I’ll say from the highest mountain that if CCH Pounder is has much of a commanding presence in real life as she does on screen I’d match your willingness to die for Welles. In my experience guys just disagree with me on this stuff, women stay silent and continue declaring that men are only in to women for their looks.
I’ve commented on how attractive Michelle Yeoh is as well commented on how attractive Kirsten Dunst is. But for some odd reason the Yeoh commentary is just magically ignored.
@Daisy, the gist of my comment was that we need some objective measure, similar to what IQ tells us, or else we will just be going on random personal standards and biases. I do feel that you and I have talked past each other Because we weren’t on the same page with what constitutes genius, but my comment was much more general and you never specifically said that we shouldn’t use an objective measure,
Regarding your combination of criteria, it sounds to me like you are attracted to a sort of well rounded balance between intelligence, personality, and success. But I’m afraid that’s not really enough to call it genius… It’s like saying I want a beautiful woman who graduated college and cooks up a great meal and calling her genius as a result. I am okay with being attracted to either one but I think if we are to say that intelligence all by itself is attractive to men or women, then we have to really isolate intelligence all by itself and remove as many of the other variables as we can. I think that you don’t really disagree with me here, that it’s not enough for a man to just be intelligent. So someone like Steven Hawkins isn’t going to have his pick of the most desirable woman just on account of his vast intellect. Even if he is famous as hell and rich, to boot. All it ever got him was a hellishly abusive wife. Turns out that even one armed drummers are more attractive than an astrophysicist.
@Daisy, indeed, innovation and creativity are hard to measure. Thats because each one of those is mostly luck, opportunity, and socialization. Some people are taught to value money or art or science more than one or the other and this has a huge effect on which people we spend up recognizing as intelligent – it tends to be people socialized similarly to ourselves. But rest assured, tearing up ceilings to shoot film from odd angles is a very insignificant level of creativity versus, say, figuring out the way a black hole probably works. And as it turns out, the level of IQ tends to have a lot to do with the sheer intellectual difficulty of a task that one is able to achieve no matter how a person had been socialized.
Steven Hawkins
Who? Do you mean Stephen Hawking?
Part of respecting geniuses is spelling their names correctly.
But rest assured, tearing up ceilings to shoot film from odd angles is a very insignificant level of creativity versus, say, figuring out the way a black hole probably works.
Totally disagree.
Excuse me, but I am talking about ORSON WELLES.
Dramatizing and illustrating the meaning of the Bible verse, “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” is a HUGE contribution to art and philosophy.. one that can be communicated even to children if you are using film.. and as an atheist you should appreciate that it was important to take that question out of the realm of religion, to present it as THE modern-day conflict/contradiction of modern capitalism. AND incidentally, questioning the accompanying oppressive male role, as presented and accepted within modern capitalism.
The single scene where Susan leaves him, is more feminist than lots of feminist theory. The line where she says “Oh I see, its YOU this is being done to” is one of the most hard-hitting feminist scenes in all of drama and literature. And in one line. And then he destroys her room, sees himself reflected back unto infinity… by one action–her simple departure–bad-singer/floozy has the ability to destroy one of the most powerful men of Earth. (Perhaps in your great wisdom, you already knew that was possible, but most of us mere mortals really didn’t know that until it was dramatized for us. Certainly, when I first saw this dramatization at age 13, I had no clue.)
I think the emotional and artistic ramifications of that film, aside from giving birth to the whole French auteur movement, started the entire “interrogation” of male emotions that would be continued by people like Philip Roth, Norman Mailer, John Cheever, John Updike… bringing us to this blog we are now posting on.
I am stunned a sympathizer with the MRA movement doesn’t see that. Black holes are way out there, but Welles helped birth the movement(s) that concern us here on earth.
@Daisy, spelling is so passé. Unfortunately I am on vacation with just an iPad which loves to spell things out its own way. Either way, I think that recognizing what sets a smart person requires a lot more than spelling their name, especially when you go on to equate their work with someone who thought up using camera angles for symbolic representation. You may disagree about what is genius, but thats why we have standardized measures for it. I also believe that you gravely misattribute the influence of celebrities and philosophers.
You also underestimate the importance of scientists. And when it comes to men’s issues, the very fact of how our culture undervalues someone who devoted a lifetime to the pursuit of science is a men’s issue that has drawn many to the current iteration of the men’s gender studies. It’s all part of Apexuality and it’s all part of why we are currently weighing men’s social prominence, esp. vis a vis women’s appraisals thereof, versus his actual contributions. The “ranking” of social darlings above or equal to scientists and the dismissal of measures of intelligence which clearly place the scientists on top in terms of intelligence is, I think, a pretty serious men’s issue. It’s similar to, in many ways, the bias towards tall men and the dismissal of short men as having Napoleonic Complexes when they accomplish socially dominant feats.
Dungone, something is happening here but you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr Jones?
Have a nice day. 🙂
I’ll admit, that as a scientist myself and as a very… non-fictional type of thinker (I’m very much an ENTP — I am all about figuring out the world), I honestly admit that things such as philosophical issues in film isn’t terribly interesting to me. And it just isn’t that interesting to everyone. I fawn over David Attenborough documentaries over drama films (though I love superhero movies as a comic nerd).
But not being interested in classic film doesn’t make one intelligent or unintelligent. It’s just an interest thing. I personally don’t get why people avoid non-fiction books myself, but hell, I’m reading Origin of Species for kicks and giggles. And I sure as hell don’t get why sports icons are revered over scientists, but I think that’s just another way that society maintains it’s definition of what masculinity is.
Deja Vu all over again, I have this argument at least once a decade with intellectual snobs. (sigh)
I honestly admit that things such as philosophical issues in film isn’t terribly interesting to me
Mass media (such as film, music and TV) is what influences culture, and culture influences the masses. Films are mass media that directly influence millions, unmediated by anything… the things you and Dungone describe are intended to be understood and appreciated by a very educated, elite few, and must be endlessly explained. Sports are for the masses, science is not. We can argue science makes ordinary life better for the masses, but that would be science in the form of, say, medicine, not black holes. 99% of people can not tell you what a black hole is, but they probably know who William Randolph Heart or Donald Trump is, since those are the lives held us as the ideal to strive for.
Which effects more people–striving all their life to be rich, or a black hole?
There are at least 25 cable TV channels with nothing but rich-people porn/propaganda on them, advertising furniture, houses, clothes, cars, food and vacations waaay out of reach for ordinary people. Trying to attain this STUFF has become the new religion. You think that doesn’t deeply effect MEN? What planet are you on? Millions watch that stuff. I am here as a retail worker to assure you, millions of people replace expensive top-grain leather sofas every year, and if they have to buy them “on time” (expensive payments to finance companies, mortgages on furniture, if you will) then they will. Ditto clothes and all the rest of it. Where did this fetishism of STUFF come from? Mass media, and then, their friends who are driven by mass media propaganda. Its the new indentured servitude
Astounded at the dismissal of culture… but then… I am having another Second Wave flashback! (((screams! Its happening again!!!)))) If the men’s movement wants to talk over the heads of the masses of men and their everyday experience, you will be regarded as some ephemeral blip in history that is not speaking to MOST men, but only an educated few… do you want lasting cultural change or to be a flash in the pan? Then please understand the importance of mass culture.
And I sure as hell don’t get why sports icons are revered over scientists, but I think that’s just another way that society maintains it’s definition of what masculinity is.
You really don’t? Well, duh, because most people understand sports and most people do not understand scientists, and scientists are usually not interested in making themselves understood to the unwashed majority. The ones who did (Carl Sagan) can become almost like rock stars if they know how to work it.
If you continue like this Dungone, your movement will be marginal. Come down off the mountain and interact with us regular people, who communicate in ways the mass culture has taught us, using the symbols we understand… But then again, maybe atheists cut themselves off from the language of symbols and archetypes? Explains a lot, and why people seem turned off by atheism and instead prefer just calling themselves agnostics.
Otherwise, simply put, nobody will understand you or care about understanding you. And that is what my comment meant, and its pertinent you probably didn’t get it. 😉
Hearst, not Heart.
As we know, Hearst had no heart.
“As we know, Hearst had no heart.”
He didn’t need one to cripple the Southern Pacific and free California.
“Well, duh, because most people understand sports and most people do not understand scientists,”
People understand whatever they put the effort into to understand. In the case of sports, it’s not all people, it’s mostly men, and the reason is that sports is a drama of manhood and striving. It is men’s equivalent of the soap operas, romance novels (although the real parallel to romance novels is on-line porn) and all that rich-porn Daisy mentions.
Science is not as emotionally gripping. Scientists will often tell you that is exaclty what they found attractive in science in the first place. When scienc gets perverted with emotional appeals, as to for instance comfortable religious myths, it turns into “race realism” and “intelligent design” and crap like that.
Well, people want stuff that is emotionally gripping to invest their awareness ina dn to learn about.
@Ginkgo
“Science is not as emotionally gripping. Scientists will often tell you that is exactly what they found attractive in science in the first place. When science gets perverted with emotional appeals, as to for instance comfortable religious myths, it turns into “race realism” and “intelligent design” and crap like that.”
In other words, the majority of what the humanities have devolved into. They tried to take over science and became “false sciences” with the veneer of science (women’s studies get singled out, but I actually think the _key_ offender is economics). A lot of good could be done in Western Universities(tm) if these departments were seriously scrutinised by outsiders if not shut down entirely.