Soc. 3251W Race, Class, and Gender

After reading your post, I agree on some points of yours, but I disagree on the part that Men are supperior, and have to wear the crown. I dont think that voilence is the way to stay on top. Nor do I think that men, always have to be constantly on gaurd. Yes voilence will always exsist but do we have to encourage it? As for should women be trained to take on voilence or militaristic burdens, dont some women take on those roles now??? But if more women were to take on this roles then maybe our society would be different. The next issue of whether a boy should never to play with guns and learn the idea that violence is acceptable, I think there is a time and a place. I think that kids learn throught thier different ages about war, or about what consquences that violence has.

Respone posted by Jessica Stiffarm

I think you're misunderstanding a few of my points. Let me address each of your comments in turn:

I. "I disagree on the part that Men are supperior, and have to wear the crown. I dont think that voilence is the way to stay on top."

I'm not saying that men are superior, and I'm not saying that violence is an acceptable way to maintain social status. I'm saying that in our society, men happen to be the ones on top (not because they deserve it but because that's the way it has been and what we've been told is "right"). Also, violence is not an acceptable tool for social control, but it is an effective one. Regardless, I don't think that violence is often used to this end in America (for the vast majority of the public). Rather, I'm arguing that the potential for violence and the assumed role as "protector" contributes to keeping men in a dominant position, because protectors as a concept are to be respected and feared (necessarily).

II. "Nor do I think that men, always have to be constantly on gaurd."

In what sense do you mean? If you're saying that men do not have to prove their manhood on a regular basis to maintain their social standing with other men, then I flat-out disagree with you. Observe any average group of college guys while they interact over the course of an evening. I'd bet you on good odds that you'll hear one of them call another an emasculating name at some point in the evening.

Granted, guys don't always feel like they have to be on guard. That is true. But I would also argue that that's because defending yourself is an internalized part of the structure of masculinity in America. We're used to it. It's no big deal. That's why I don't care when I'm trading insults with my friends, because it's really a ritual in which we're reaffirming our masculinity.

III. "Yes voilence will always exsist but do we have to encourage it? As for should women be trained to take on voilence or militaristic burdens, dont some women take on those roles now???"

I think we do need to encourage violence in some sector of our society, for precisely the reasons I explained in my mini-essay. It has historically been men for us, and tradition is a good a reason as any to continue internalizing violence in men.

As for whether women should be trained to internalize violence and whether some do take military roles, some women do choose to take on those roles. I'm not saying they shouldn't. But they aren't viewed as the norm. Why do you think we don't draft women (we might, these days)? Still, violent behavior in girls is largely discouraged. It's not lady-like.

So the women who choose to shoulder some of the burden of the protector role by training themselves are choosing to divert from what's considered their normal role, which is only stressful if they have strong internalized feelings of the American "idea" of a female.

IV. "The next issue of whether a boy should never to play with guns and learn the idea that violence is acceptable, I think there is a time and a place."

Thank you for bringing this up, because it highlights a very specific mindset and burden that is placed on men in America. Look at your last comment. 'There is a time and a place.'

We DO value violence in our society, and we expect the men to display it to an extent... but only when they are "allowed to". Only when they are told to. When the time comes though, we expect them to be capable of acts of violence for the good of our nation.

I'm just pointing out that it's hard to have your cake and eat it too.

I reposted this entry on my personal blog, and one of my friends brings up a very interesting point to the discussion:

"Men frequently are negligent in developing their proverbial capacity for violence but attempt to reap the benefits of their status anyway."

My response to that:

Agreed. However, I wonder if many modern men perceive economic standing as an alternative substitute to developing their role as a protector. This could be where the "I'm the breadwinner, I make the rules" mentality comes from partially, even if the man isn't the sole breadwinner. They might feel that if they are not powerful, they aren't upholding their half of the bargain and worry that other men and the women they love (or would like to love) will see that and dismiss them as valued members of the society.

Even still, you see men attempting (and succeeding) to reap the benefits of power that being the "sole breadwinner" has gotten them historically, even if the woman is the sole breadwinner. That's why you still see imbalances in domestic life and women taking on dual roles in the home resulting in less free time for themselves and increased stress. I'm reminded of one time when I jokingly said something sexist about how women minded their proper place back in the day to my Grandma, and she was quick to remind me that back in the day many of the men were also working 10 or 12-hour shifts in the factories to provide for their families.

Having power is very firmly embedded in what our society views as an "ideal man." Experiencing powerlessness can be very emasculating. If a man doesn't have physical potential for power/violence, and he doesn't have economic power, he wouldn't fit the common idea of the American man very well at all. It's much harder to find a man willing to do all of the housework and care for the children while the woman works than it is to find the reverse (I would argue). It's because it takes a lot of the "deserved" power away from the man. If he has strongly internalized societal feelings of masculinity, it's going to cause a great deal of stress for him to be in that position.

After reading your post, I agree on some points of yours, but I disagree on the part that Men are supperior, and have to wear the crown. I dont think that voilence is the way to stay on top. Nor do I think that men, always have to be constantly on gaurd. Yes voilence will always exsist but do we have to encourage it? As for should women be trained to take on voilence or militaristic burdens, dont some women take on those roles now??? But if more women were to take on this roles then maybe our society would be different. The next issue of whether a boy should never to play with guns and learn the idea that violence is acceptable, I think there is a time and a place. I think that kids learn throught thier different ages about war, or about what consquences that violence has.

Respone posted by Jessica Stiffarm

Posted by: Jessica Stiffarm

... why did you repost your original post?

I appreciate your honesty and your expressive prose form of writing.

However, I am not sure how to feel about the ideas you brought up. I agree that violence exists and is relevant to our culture, our society, and our global community in general.
When you refered to men as the protectors of our nation or families...
I believe you were feeding the hegemonic idea that men are acttually that. Men are not my leaders or protectors. They should not have to be. It is unfair to raise someone to be anything other then themselves. Men are the majority. Last time I checked that still rules. This does not rock my world. It really actually makes it crazy. Women are half the population, actually often more then half. I did not ask for men to wear the crown. I am not saying that you support this social order of "doing gender". I just believe that when approaching the way things are in our social systems; it is important to aknowledge the false and unfair portrayals that are occurring.
Do we need violence? Emotion is natural. I believe this to be true.
Are we always going to be marking our territory? Maybe.
Is it entirely necessary? Probably not.
Did any of these articles or anything i have read this semster in this class come up with an alternative to this unequal world we live in? No. but It has in fact made it perfectly clear that race, class, gender, and sexuality are huge parts of how we identify ourselves and others. It has also brought into light how unhealthy this can be to our ability as a people to connect with ourselves and others.
Our idea of what we are and who others are creates and feeds our social institution.
What is this time and place to be violent? If we are to really step away and evolve from this rape culture; we need to stop pumping these socially institutionalized opressive idealogies. As Suzanne Pharr brought up in our reading for today, our gender roles are maintained through violence, economics, sexism=, and violence. She refers to these role creating factors as, "weapons". Clever.
These identity issues are so apparent, so very relevent. What now? Is there really anything to do? Absolutely. Believing in voilence as protection seems like a backwards action. Wow, I have gotten caught up. My point is...violence is not necessary. I say throw your gender out and be Cam. I will be Ann. I know it is not that simple to change a social stratification system. I just don't feel like making offerings to the thousands of battle heroes standing around our world. Bronze and marble for the big tough guys! What fun is it to have to be an idea rather a person. I guess I will end with this quote, " Social order is not part of the 'nature of things' and cannot be derived from the 'laws of nature'. Social order exists only as a product of human activity. We learn we are female, black...through social interaction" (Pete Berger, Thomas Luckmann).

I think that's a very fair point to make, Ann. As we've slowly moved towards a more balanced society, many people recognize the inherent absurdity of the idea that a man is better able to protect himself and his family than a woman in an era when the primary tool for violence (a gun) is not connected to physical strength, and individual violent confrontations are in fact quite rare.

For the vast majority of people in our society, we're not confronted by regular physical threats originating outside of the home. As the articles mentioned, most violence (including rape) takes places among people, especially men and women, who know each other. There isn't a need for a "protector" role, necessarily, but yet... so many men have internalized some aspect of that by consuming pop culture and pop media, reading books, social interactions at a young age, and listening to "traditional" family values and religious institutions.

As for violence being unnecessary, I'm not sure I agree... But I'm also not sure I know what you mean by violence being unnecessary, since you did acknowledge towards the top that it, or threats of it, has a place in a global community. I don't have much time to respond now, but I'll think about this and come post again later...

I am going to disagree with you in the way that you use the word violence. Violence is necessary to win wars. But that doesn't mean that all other forms of violence must be accepted with it. The implication of that would follow that if I were to pull a gun and shoot an old lady in the foot, you're response would lead to be, "such is life in a successful country." I disagree. We can train an army, navy, etc. and win wars without murder, rape, lynchings, etc. The two are practically unrelated, and to say that we need one to have the other is faulty reasoning.

We should still attack the immoral forms that violence takes in the world of today and do what we can to end it. Whether violent people do good in certain circumstances or not isn't the question. It is about when they do bad.

Unless you were mentally unstable, you would not shoot an old lady in the foot without a reason. My response would not be "such is life in a successful country", but would rather be to examine why you did what you did because it's clearly a breakdown of accepted norms by any measure.

I want to stress again that I'm not condoning violence between people, but more having an open discussion where I'm developing my ideas about what violence is and what its place is in our society.

I'm having a really hard time responding to your post, because I'm not sure I can see where I made those claims, and I certainly agree with you that acts of violence can and should be separate from maintaining a standing army.

I discussed in my original post about men needing to assert their power to each other and to themselves. Your example of shooting a woman in the foot strikes me as an example of someone being unable to assert control or power in his life and resorting to extreme measures to "correct" the perceived imbalance between what he thought he was supposed have and what he felt he lacked, similar in nature to a crime of rape as discussed in class this morning.

I think that we should definitely and necessarily attack such immoral acts of violence, but in order to do so I think we need to address the root cause of the problem instead of the results or the symptoms (such as when the focus of a rape is exclusively on the victim, and not the perpetrator except as a demonized caricature of a "rapist"), which is this initial feeling of powerlessness described by the men who primarily perpetrate these crimes.

My initial hypothesis, clumsy and lengthy though it was, was that men are taught that they "deserve" and are expected to have power, so it creates some cognitive dissonance when they feel that they are powerless or that others do not recognize the power they have been socialized to believe is their "due". As a response, they resort to rape or violence (shooting an old woman for example) as both a last-ditch manifestation of power and a chilling symbolic "warning" to the woman (perhaps a representation for other women who may have emasculated them) they harm (in the case of rape) that they *are* more powerful than her and will prove it by physically overpowering them. I think that this sense of entitlement to power that I would argue most men have to some degree can cause enormous societal problems and tremendous personal stress.

Getting back to Ann's comment...

You question what this time and place is to be violent. As others have mentioned, violence is necessary when our society is presented with external threats to our continued existence or way of life that we value, as happens from decade to decade.

There definitely IS a need for a protector role in society, although being a man is in no way a requirement for fulfilling this role except through tradition. As I mentioned, in an age where bombs and handguns are our swords and spears, physical strength means little. A woman can shoot a gun as well as a man, and neither can do it well without proper training.

This is why I believe that there is a necessity to maintain a level of accepted and controlled violence and teach responsible use of violence, instead of viewing violence as a bad and taboo thing. Growing up, I wasn't taught that hitting people is bad. I was taught that hitting someone is acceptable only when they attack me first, after which I was given "permission" to defend myself, and since I had been taught how to throw a punch was able to do so should the situation require it. Judicious use of violence is necessary as a self-prevention tool, and should be fostered in men as well as women. When I have children someday, I will also teach them how to defend themselves against physical violence and instruct them in the moral application of it, whether they are male or female. Both genders can be confronted with violent threats, and I feel capable of defending myself in an extreme situation should it arise. I want my children to be similarly prepared.

Violence is not moral when be used as a coercive tool. Any martial arts class you take will likely stress that, as well. But I think violence and education about violence IS necessary. We live in an unpredictable world. You might feel safe right now, but you never know when you might have to protect yourself. I would rather be at least somewhat prepared than trust in providence to keep me away from danger.

Further elaborating, what about the points that were raised in lecture this morning? Prisons and police agencies are inherently and necessarily violent institutions, and yet we encourage and even celebrate their presence in our society because we recognize that force can only be met with equal force if we wish to overcome it.

Umm...an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind...

That is about all I got and I am not the one who came up with that.

Like I said in my original post: I agree that violence exists and is relevant to our culture, our society, and our global community in general.
I just refuse to believe it is ever good or ethical. Ever. I really actually believe this. As for protecting and defending yourself from violence. I think that sounds pretty smart. I am just not going to except that we are incapable of being a peaceful society. I know that sounds like the impossible dream. Where else can we start?

In response to prisons and police...putting handcuffs on a violent person does not remove violence or prevent it. It only puts it in a box, or cell if you will. Then people pay for protection from these "bad" people by housing them with food/water and stripping them of their rights. I have no alternative to prison in mind, but lets come up with something better right now.

Ha! Alright I just wanted to respond to your last post. I have to actually think this through more thoroughly. I will get back to you all. Thanks for the time. I know i didn't say much.

Take your time. If nothing else, the point of all of this is for all of us to hear these different viewpoints and get us thinking. I think it's way more fun and interesting when people actually comment back and forth like this and are passionate about what they're saying. :)

Anyway, I'm not arguing that violence is good or ethical. Violence brings pain and suffering to someone, always. Unfortunately, the grim truth is that we live in a violent world. If we try to ignore the violence and pretend it doesn't exist, we allow ourselves to be victims of the people who have no moral qualms about using violence to take what they want.

Have you ever read The Once and Future King by T.H. White? It's an adaptation of Mallory's Arthurian legend, but a central idea to the book is whether Might is Right, and if it's not, then how do you prevent the strong from taking advantage of the weak? Incredibly interesting, if you don't mind slogging through the fictional trappings. You can skip the first 4th and not miss much (the Sword in the Stone by Disney was based on the first 4th).

As for prisons and police, putting handcuffs on a person and taking them to prison doesn't prevent their violence, but it does quarantine it and give them time to reflect on their actions. Will they, necessarily? Maybe, maybe not. But the alternative is to let them roam free, if you aren't willing to kill them (and I'm not a big fan of the death penalty), or possibly exile, although where do we send them? And how would we prevent them from returning? And why would we want to inflict our criminals on another country?

Finally, I always found the phrase "And eye for an eye makes the whole world blind" amusing, because you have two eyes. If someone gouges one out, to follow the metaphor, and you don't retaliate somehow, what is to stop them from taking your other eye? They know they can do so consequence-free. Respond in kind, however, and you're both left with one eye... but odds are they won't be coming back for yours, since they'd probably like to keep theirs.