Male Oppression

This discussion of "male oppression" took place on WMST-L in March 1998.
Files on related topics include Male Alienation in Women's Studies Classes,
Men in Women's Studies Classes, and Men in Women's Studies Classes II.  For
additional WMST-L files available on the Web, see the WMST-L File List.

I'm wondering what folks think of "male oppression"  Several of my intro
Women's Studies students had already taken a men and masculinities course
taught by a dean at the colleges.  I took the stance that men aren't
oppressed, though certainly they are harmed in important ways by gender
stereotypes and I used the typical definition of oppression (see below).
It seems to me that the definition of oppression offered is not well
supported by the claims that follow in the post below.  Perhaps there are
better analyses than what I found on the web?  I found the experience
frustrating since these students seemed to interpret me as being
unconcerned about men's lives and this is so far from where my feminist
politics lie that I was taken aback.  Any thoughts, corrections, comments,
words of wisdom on teaching about gender oppression?  (The course is over,
but I wanted to bring it up now as I'm reflecting on the course and what
worked and didn't work.)
 
Kelley Crouse
Department of Sociology
Hobart and William Smith Colleges
311 Trinity Hall
Geneva, New York  14456-3397
kcwalker  @  syr.edu
 
Male Oppression
 
REMEMBER: Oppression is the systematic mistreatment of one group of people
by another group of people or by society as a whole; with institutional
power as a means of asserting that mistreatment.
 
 
HOW MEN ARE OPPRESSED:
1. Men are treated as inherently aggressive and violent. Men are not
allowed to be flexible; they are forced into a narrow definition of MALE.
When they do not fit in to the definition they are labeled "wimp", "sissy"
or "girl".
2. Violence against men is more condoned than against women. Despite the
growing societal awareness of violence against women (which is very good)
it is still acceptable to harm or kill men if the reason is "justifiable".
3. Men are treated as if they do not feel pain or experience the full range
of emotions like women. If killing or risking of life and limb is involved
men are chosen for the job. When they get hurt at work or play they are
expected to shrug it off and continue as if nothing happened; the work or
the game is considered more important than their feelings. Men are looked
upon as expendable.
4. Boys and men are not expected to need closeness, reassurance and
attention, which is thought to be harmful to their sense of place and
importance in the world. If a boy or man asks for help they are seen as
weak and needy and then put down for being like a woman.
5. Men are treated as inherently compulsive in their sexuality. It is a lie
that men cannot help the way they think, feel, look or act in a sexual
context towards anyone.
 
THE TRUTH ABOUT MEN:
1. Every man has always done the best he could to fight the oppression that
was placed upon him; even when he acts oppressively towards men or women,
he is still fighting against the oppression as hard as he can and as much
as he knows how to.
2. All men want, need and require close loving relationships with men and
women. It is the effects of oppression that lead men ever to act otherwise.
If it is difficult to see this then it is where YOU have bought into Male
Oppression.
3. Every man is capable of recovering his humanness completely. No man is
ever too far gone, too out of reach, or too damaged. AGAIN: Not seeing this
clearly is part of Male Oppression. It may take resource but every man is
worthwhile to love.
4. Tenderness, closeness, and softness are all inherent male traits.
Therefore it is 100% masculine to have these qualities. It is oppressive to
consider that masculinity is only "tough," "rough" and "strong;" just as it
would be sexist to view women only as tender, close, and soft creatures. It
is 100% feminine for women to be tough, rough, and strong . By definition,
men are not feminine, just as women are not masculine.
 
 
POSTSCRIPT:
It is true that men hold predominantly all of the power and privilege in
the current oppressive society. Although women do not hold near as much
power and privilege they still play a part in oppressing boys and men in
society by holding the above lies about men as true. Certainly men do this
too as well.
  
 
Men Against Racism & Sexism
517 Sacramento Drive, Austin, Texas USA
E-MAIL: mars  @  ccsi.com - Phone-Fax: 512-326--9686

Kelley Crouse wrote:
 
> I found the experience
>frustrating since these students seemed to interpret me as being
>unconcerned about men's lives and this is so far from where my feminist
>politics lie that I was taken aback.
 
I am very interested in this point as related  an incident in my own Women's
 Autobiography class. As the semester progressed, I found that students
 continued to refer to men and men's autobiographies, leaving discussion on
 women and women's autobiography to discuss issues surrounding male
 authors/masculinity, not wanting to leave men out, etc. I personally find this
 troublesome as it refocuses a class designed to discuss women, on to men, thus
 returning to a patriachal focus of men as more important, even in a discussion
 of women. I pointed this out to students and our discussions ahve been less
 male oriented since but I am wondering have other people had this experience
 and how have people handled re-directing the discussion?
 
Amy
 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
Amy L. Wink, Ph.D.
awink  @  sfasu.edu
Department of English and Philosophy
PO Bx 13007, SFA Station
Stephen F. Austin State University
Nacogdoches, Texas 75962-3007
(409)468-2007
 
 
"A Letter always feels to me like immortality because it is the mind alone
 without corporeal friend. Indebted in our talk to attitude and accent, there
 seems a spectral power in thought that walks alone."
 
                                        Emily Dickinson
                              _Selected Letters_ (#330, p.196)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Kelly -- I'm confused by your post.  You say you took stance that men aren't
oppressed, but the definition attached seemed to suggest that they were???  I
think you're raising some interesting questions -- in particular about how we
define "oppression" and about "men as a group" -- but I'm not sure how to
respond because I'm not sure what you are trying to say.

--
Glynis Carr
Associate Professor of English
Bucknell University
Lewisburg, PA  17837
gcarr  @  bucknell.edu
http://www.facstaff.bucknell.edu/gcarr

On Fri, 27 Mar 1998, Kelley Crouse wrote:
 
> 2. Violence against men is more condoned than against women. Despite the
> growing societal awareness of violence against women (which is very good)
> it is still acceptable to harm or kill men if the reason is "justifiable".
 
 
While the other "oppressions" you list have some validity to them
(although I would hardly call them "oppression" since oppression requires
someone with greater power than you enforcing such rules, and men *are*
that greater power, and those rules benefit them in lots of ways - I'll
get to that in a  sec.)
 The one above is false. While it's true that there is a general view that
men like to fistfight (in some cultural groups, anyway) or what have you,
implicitly, violence against women is much more tolerated than violence
against men.
    A better phrasing might be "men are more expected to be violent"
which IS true - but those against whom they are violent are largely women
and children. Now, when a man is violent against a man, he may be
prosecuted or not, depending upon other factors like race (if they're both
black, probably not, if they're both white, than class comes into play -
is one richer than the other, than probably, if they're both working
class, probably not, and so on). If a woman is violent toward a man, she
is almost sure to be prosecuted -and to go to jail, because it's not
women's place to be violent. Her violence shows that there's something
wrong with her. Note how this works to men's advantage, particularly in
cases of battering. On the other hand, when men are violent against women,
prosecution is relatively unlikely, even now, and even when there is
prosecution, jail is an iffy outcome. Partially, that's why women are in
so much more danger if they try to prosecute. Again, note how this work's
to men's advantage.
 
>
> THE TRUTH ABOUT MEN:
> 1. Every man has always done the best he could to fight the oppression that
> was placed upon him; even when he acts oppressively towards men or women,
> he is still fighting against the oppression as hard as he can and as much
> as he knows how to.
 
Nonsense! There are men who do work to fight oppression, sure, but there
are plenty who either don't care or don't think about their lives in
terms of oppression, or else who are aware that they benefit from the
status quo, and wish for things to remain as they are.
 
Not to mention that men who batter, for example, are hardly fighting
oppression. How is contributing to oppression fighting it.Or how about the
religious right? I'm sorry, I find that just too ridiculous.
 
> POSTSCRIPT:
> It is true that men hold predominantly all of the power and privilege in
> the current oppressive society. Although women do not hold near as much
> power and privilege they still play a part in oppressing boys and men in
> society by holding the above lies about men as true. Certainly men do this
> too as well.
 
I see, so women oppress men, by doing their best to survive under the
rules set up by those who benefit by those rules?
 
Your definition of oppression is way too loose, here. 
 
Alana Suskin
alanacat  @  wam.umd.edu

Marilyn Frye's article "Oppression" might be helpful with this topic.
(It's in _Politics of Reality_)  One of her points is that men are not
caught in what she calls a 'double-bind,' while women are.
 
If a man acts in accordance with the norms of masculinity, he will not be
penalized but will gain privilege (or there may be some harm, *but the
harm is outweighed by the privilege gained*).  Serious penalty for men
comes only when they stray from the norms of masculinity (or other
norms). But, then they aren't oppressed because they are men, but because
they are not meeting a particular standard.
 
A woman who acts in accordance with the norms of femininity *is*
penalized for her conformity.  Eg., women who are indecisive are acting in a
stereotypically feminine manner, and are mocked for being indecisive,
are turned down for jobs, etc.  And a woman who is decisive is also
penalized for her lack of femininity.  Women experience social
sanctions for both conformity and non-conformity to the norms of
femininity.
 
Frye says it much better and with more detail and argument, but this
gives what I take to be much of the general idea.
 
Jennifer McCrickerd

Am wondering if 'we' might unpack the terms "men/man": might we mean white
men, heterosexual men, black men, asian men, female-to-male men, gay white
men, black gay men, transsexual men, transgendered men, disabled men,
male-to-female 'men', working class men, men without dicks ...
 
am troubled by how 'men' is being used without specificities in these
conversations. surely we would not use 'woman' in such a way, right?
 
Jean Noble
Graduate Programme in English
York University
Toronto Canada

I second Jennifer McCrickerd's suggestion to read "Oppression" by
Marilyn Frye.  Another of Frye's points is that you can be miserable
without being oppressed.
      In my courses, I do clarify that certain men are
oppressed, such as men of color, gay men, working class men, etc.
But they are oppressed because of those categories.  I do not believe
men, as in the category men, are oppressed.  They set up the
system, and apparently they did not do a perfect job.  But I
do believe that ultimately even those things seen as oppressive,
(male violence, not being able to cry) benefit men.  Men "can't"
cry, but that lack of emotional expressivity is seen as positive and
as showing reason (allegely the opposite of emotion).  Men
use violence, which hurts men as well as women, but it is a visible
means of control and power.
     Christine Smith
Lewis & Clark College

Hi all,
 
There is an excellent article (cited below) that I think indirectly
speaks to the issue of men being "oppressed" on the basis of gender
by addressing some ways white middle/upper middle class men
enact the privilege that comes with that social location.
 
It has been some time since I read it but I remember being very
*very* impressed with the way that the authors get at the issue of
power/privilege/oppression as it relates to men from two different
social locations (the sophistication of the analysis isn't fully
apparent until the end, FYI, though it is excellent throughout). I
think it also may have a section specifically on the mythopoetic
men's movement, which seems to be a source of some of the ideas out
there about men being oppressed on the basis of gender (by the way I
think that men cannot be oppressed on the basis of gender, though men
can and are oppressed on the basis of race, class, etc -- and those
oppressions are themselves gendered).
 
Anyway, here's the cite:
 
Hondagneu, Pierrette and Michael Messner. 1997. "Gender Displays and
Men's Power: The 'New Man' and the Mexican Immigrant Man," in_
Through the Prism of Difference: Readings on Sex and Gender_, Zinn,
Maxine Baca, Pierette Hondagneu-Sotelo and Michael Messner, eds.
Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.  pg. 58-69.
 
I think this is one of the most useful articles I have read on men
and gender in some time, and I remember being so impressed by the end
that I immediately called a white male friend of mine (who trys to be
an pro-feminist ally) and had a long discussion about it. He
subsequently read it and found it very powerful.
 
Best,
 
Michelle
mgolden  @  emory.edu

Nearly all of my work relates in one way or another to male violence
prevention/intervention, including workshops/ programs with males. The
notion of "male oppression" is a red herring in these groups. When the
issue of "male oppression" comes up, I usually confront it immediately.
 
I borrow from Marilyn Frye, bell hooks, Mary Daly, Erich Fromm, Paulo
Freire, and others, the idea that the oppressor is in a death loving mode,
and hence dehumanized. I found two basic cases. In the first case, the term
'oppression' is being substituted for for a feeling of dehumanization.
While males may be generally rewarded for violence and punished for crying,
and one might look at this as a cost-benefit equation, I think there is a
deeper point here. Folks in positions of priviledge must be convinced into
maintaining priviledge by believing that their position is, in fact,
superior. But these positions are death loving, empty. There is an
obscession to seize life from others. So when women decide to separate from
males, there is some deep fear of starvation which is used to justify
aggression against women. Being this way is not life affirming. When I have
taken an approach based on this with males in prevention workshops, the
effect is powerful and creates a space where males can more accurately
locate the impact of male violence on women and children. Sticking with the
term "male oppression" in these cases is a tactic to avoid dealing with the
real issues and their impacts.
 
In the second case, males may be operating from a premise that there can
only be one dimension of oppression. So if such a male experiences
oppression along a different dimension such as race, sexual orientation,
class, education, etc., he concludes that he is oppressed. Since there is
only one dimension, he concludes that he is oppressed by what someone else
is calling the oppression of sexism. This may be reinforced by the notion
that when someone talks about male priviledge, he does not see himself as
experiencing that set priviledge. The underlying assumption here is that
sexism ought to benefit all males equally, which is clearly not the case.
I've found that being upfront on issues of racism, classism, homophobia,
etc. and talking about the intersections really helps.
 
Peter Hovmand

The problem with discussions of who oppresses whom, in very borad general
terms, is that it is very alienating to claim that men, as a group,
oppress women, as a group, when an individual man may feel much more
oppressed than oppressing.  Though many of Alana's objections are founded in
some truth, the bottom line truth is that men do not oppress women -- many
individuals in positions of power oppress those with less power, in a
variety of ways.  Very often, and granted, more often than vice versa, that
ends up being an individual man oppressing an individual women, on the
basis of his socially constructed power *as a man* -- but it can also be
the other way around (though I'd agree that the woman's oppression of a man
would usually not be on the basis of her socially constructed power *as a
woman* but on something else.
 
I don't think it's very helpful to confront men who feel aspects of their
experience as "oppression" by becoming angry and denying that interpretation:
"You're not really oppressed -- *we* are the ones who are oppressed!"  Whose
oppression is worse is a fruitless argument.  Besides, men who acknowledge
male oppression are usually developing their consciousness of gender roles,
which leads in the direction of feminism.  The author of the piece Kelley
appended acknowledges that women suffer more from gender roles.
 
To discuss the nature of oppression with an open mind, and with willingness
to listen, can really create the teachable moment.  That will backfire,
however, if the point becomes to show the guy who thinks he's oppressed how
wrong he is.

Kelly,
Is this organization where the list of oppresstions & "truths" are from?
Please clarify, as I see it important to how some reading your post are
responding.
Trudy
tmercer  @  sprintmail.com
 
>Men Against Racism & Sexism
>517 Sacramento Drive, Austin, Texas USA
>E-MAIL: mars  @  ccsi.com - Phone-Fax: 512-326--9686

Kelley:
 
If you are interested in providing your students with some writings on
male oppression written by self-identified male feminists there are
several useful essays that address this concern in the volume edited by
Tom Digby entitled "MEN DOING FEMINISM", with a foreword by Sandra Bartky.
Published by Routledge in 1998.
 
I am currently assigning "Male Feminism as an Oxymoron" by David J.
Kahane and "How Feminism Made a Man Out of Me: The Proper Subject of
Feminism and the Problem of Men" by Patrick Hopkins in my undergraduate
feminist theory course so that we can discuss what oppression means to
men who claim feminism as an intellectual and political space.
 
Also Susan Bordo has an excellent essay in this volume "My Father the
Feminist".
 
F. Winddance Twine
U of California - Santa Barbara
 
******************************
If it can be imagined, it can be done.
 
France Winddance Twine
Assistant Professor of Sociology
2834 Ellison Hall
University of California
Santa Barbara, CA 93106
Phone: 805-893-3118 FAX: 805-893-3324

Dear Kelley:
    Both men and women suffer from class oppression and black men
suffer physically, tdo the point of death, from racial oppression, perhaps
more than women, who are not usually lynched.  Ruby Rohrlich
rohrlich  @  gwis2.circ.gwu.edu

This point of Michelle Golden's
 
>  men
> can and are oppressed on the basis of race, class, etc -- and those
> oppressions are themselves gendered).
 
seems pretty critical to me. Men can be oppressed on the basis of race,
for example,  but this oppression is also gendered. Here are two
examples:
 
In the US, African-American lower-class men have been dehumanized and
conceptualized as "violent" -- they are treated as significantly different
from either African-American women or white men.
 
During the colonial period in India, British discourse portrayed Bengali
men as "soft" and "feminine" in order to undermine their position in
Bengali society.
 
Are these men then oppressed by their gender? Or by the way people in
power use the interaction between gender and ethnicity to oppress them?
 
In essence, then, I agree with several other posters, in arguing that we
need to take these intersections seriously -- and not discount the
*gendering* of men's oppression.
 
Joya Misra
 
Please note! My email address has changed to joya  @  arches.uga.edu!
 
**********************************************************************
Joya Misra
Assistant Professor
Baldwin Hall
University of Georgia
Athens, Georgia 30602
 
email: joya  @  arches.uga.edu
phone: (706) 542-3190
fax:   (706) 542-4320

>I personally find this
> troublesome as it refocuses a class designed to discuss women, on to men,
thus
> returning to a patriachal focus of men as more important, even in a
discussion
> of women. I pointed this out to students and our discussions ahve been less
> male oriented since but I am wondering have other people had this experience
> and how have people handled re-directing the discussion?
>
>Amy
 
Hi Amy,
 
One thing I did was include a sentence in the syllabus which said:
Academic feminism is not about 'male bashing'  While men's participation in
social change is important, this course is focused on feminist knowledges,
bringing them from the margins to the center(s) of our scholarly concerns"
And continued on with a discussion of feminism as part of the larger
project of critiquing ad re-creating knowledge production.
 
But I too found that the discussions were really animated when discussions
of men came up for whatever reason.  Whereas, discussions of women and
gender stereotypes were not only less animated but often accompanied by  a
lot of objections about whether this was "really true," how old is the
research?  when was this written anyway?  Things like that.  In part, this
was because about 6 women (out of 30) had taken the men and masculinities
course and their instructor had been adamant that male oppression
exists--that men are oppressed as men.  Because this particular professor
is a dean and I'm an adjunct, I think they found it easier to take him
seriously and ignore my insistence that they go back to the Frye article
which we read early on in the course.  And, while the course was
constructed from the perspective of an intersectional analysis, they still
objected when I tried to point out that most of their examples of men
oppressed as men were really examples of men oppressed in conjunction with
racial, ethnic, sexual, and class oppressions.
 
Anyway, I allowed them to dwell on the topic for awhile, but I didn't come
right out and point out that they were reinscribing gender oppression.  I
just gently tried to steer the conversation back to women.  I don't know
how to deal with these issues because we're in the classic double bind:  if
we're forceful in our positions we're seen as bitchy feminists and, if
we're not, then we end up not being heard.  I guess the thing that I kept
trying to remind myself of was that it took me quite a few years to embrace
feminist analyses, so I shouldn't expect them to be transformed in the
course of a ten week term.
 
Kelley, humbled at every turn

First, some points of clarification:  I didn't create the list defining
male oppression.  I found it on a web site, Men Against Racism & Sexism or
MARS   I noted this in my post though clearly I wasn't explicit enough
since a number of responses thought otherwise.  The web site on male
oppression was interesting to me because it used the typical definition of
oppression (also implicitly used by Frye and Gloria Yamamoto and others)
but went on to provide examples that didn't hold up to that definition of
oppression as some posts have pointed out.
 
With regard to my students, their examples of male oppression ended up
being about male oppression as it intersects with race, ethnicity, class,
and sexuality.  But I didn't include all this in my initial post because my
question was about 'male oppression' and the validity of the notion of male
oppression and whether anyone could more adequately defend the claims of
'male oppression'  I was particularly interested since I was curious as to
whether the Dean who teaches the course on men and masculinities might have
a more theoretically adequate ground to stand on.
 
By the way, I agree that engaging in a 'more oppressed than thou' debate in
class is pointless in the end.
 
Second, it's not entirely clear to me why folks felt it necessary to assume
that I don't teach from the perspective of an intersectional analysis of
race, ethnicity, sexuality, class, and gender.  Why this assumption--and
why were *some* of the posts accusatory in tone?  I find it rather
troublesome that this assumption was made given the nature of the
technological beast we're working with here and the limitations of space
and time.  I guess I could have droned on about my social location (white,
rural, working class, single mother and I continue to live in a working
class community, and engage with and love working class friends and family.
 And,I'm an adjunct still and so as far as I'm concerned, not quite yet a
white, middle class professional).  I guess I could have gone on about my
feminist politics and theoretical preferences (early on not particularly
enthused by and feeling quite alienated by what I say as a feminism
concerned mostly with the concerns of white middle class women and later
being radicalized by the likes of hooks, Anzaldua, Spellman and Lugones,
and other).  And I guess I could have included the texts I used in the course:
 
Dorothy Allison, Bastard out of Carolina and Three things I know for sure
Kesselman, McNair, Schniedewind, Women, Images and Realities  a
multicultural reader
(very intersectional thank you very much)
Frye, Oppression
Tokarczyk and Fay, Working Class Women in the Academy
Taylor, Gilligan, Sullivan, Between Voice and Silence, Women and Girls,
Race and Relationship
Findley, Listen Up  Voices from the Next Feminist Generation
 
All of this would have clarified my position and prevented
misunderstandings--maybe.  It also makes for a long post which people don't
always read or send to the trash before they get to the question or concern
that motivated the post in the first place.  I guess I'm wondering why the
impulse to NOT given someone the benefit of a doubt in these forums?
 
Third, for those who did offer constructive advice on teaching about
oppression: Yes I did use Frye's article.  It's still a wonderful piece to
work with and the bird cage metaphor came up over and over again in our
discussions.  Many used it in their essays and especially when they
analyzed Allison's Bastard our of Carolina.  I updated it in order to
include an intersectional analysis, talking about how the bars of the cage
were different depending on the social location of the person inside. (made
of different metals, more or less of them, spaced closer or farther apart,
etc)  It really seemed to work and the students' imaginations were clearly
animated by the analogy.  I recommend it to folks on the list.  I even
managed to find some birdcages in a second hand shop which I use as
props--fun to work with!
 
Finally, thanks for the other refs on the social construction of gender,
male privilege, and the intersections of CREGS.  Like Amy, though, in this
particular course I wanted to focus just on women and to do so from an
intersectional analysis.  Generally, I take seriously the claim that we
also need to understand how privilege is constructed and to analyze
oppression in conjunction with an analysis of privilege (CREGS as the
acronym goes) and so I prefer to teach women's studies by also talking
about men and CREGS.   But, of course, ten week terms aren't conducive to
this sort of breadth of analysis and so I ended up limiting the readings to
an intersectional analysis of women's experience and how class, racial,
ethnic, and heterosexual privilege operates in women's lives.  The course
is also, unfortunately, called "The Female Experience" which we did
problematize throughout the course.  But, I fear that half of the students
still walked away with the sense that problatizing the title of the course
means that there is no such thing a a singular female experience (now
that's progress I'd say) and, instead, there are an infinite variety of
female experiences (and that is not progress I fear)
 
Kelley, repeating to herself the mantra:  "It took me a couple of years to
'get it'"

I believe the facts about male oppression should not be hidden or diluted.
But when I taught the anthropology of women, before I retired, I started
off
by discussing the meaning of patriarchal culture, and pointed out that men
-- working class, "color" groups, religious and ethnic groups --
accepted the fact of their own oppression more readily as long as their
control over women is not altered.  Ruby Rohrlich
rohrlich  @  gwis2.circ.gwu.edu

I am happy to see the discussion on male oppression enlarged by rorich and
others to include economic oppression (class), racial and ethnic
discrimination (lynchings, and today, the unprecedented number of black males
in our prisons), together with gender issues.  If we deal primarily with
gender issues focusing on the problem as seen through the prism of white
middle class women's issues, we miss connecting with many potential allies.
It has long been pointed out that women of color are triply oppressed on the
basis of race, class and gender.
 
I recommend to the reading list:  "Race, Gender and Work, A Multicultural
Economic History of Women in the United States," Teresa L. Amott & Julie A.
Matthaei,South End Press, Boston, 1991.
 
Yolanda Hall
Women and Labor History Project
yhall  @  aol.com

I wonder if the same sort of explanation offered below also helps explain
many women's apparent acceptance (as so much feminist writing bemoans) of
their own oppression.  What kind of control or payoffs do they get that
work comparably to the payoffs Ruby rohrlich articulates below?
Daphne Patai
----------

> I believe the facts about male oppression should not be hidden or diluted.
> But when I taught the anthropology of women, before I retired, I started off
> by discussing the meaning of patriarchal culture, and pointed out that men
> -- working class, "color" groups, religious and ethnic groups --
> accepted the fact of their own oppression more readily as long as their
> control over women is not altered.  Ruby Rohrlich
> rohrlich  @  gwis2.circ.gwu.edu

    I think Kelley Crouse's dilemma around "male oppression" is
rooted primarily in the definition she used for 'oppression.'  Since
oppression is about dominant and subordinate relations between groups,
a society cannot oppress a group.  To say that it can hopelessly
distorts the meaning of both 'oppression' and 'society.'
        On another level, it's also important to be aware of the
circumstances in which the assertion that men are oppressed is made.
It's typically a defensive reaction offered as a kind of balancing
"counter-suit" to assertions of women's oppressed status under
patriarchy.  In that way, it's similar to the mythic "male bashing"
claim.  It's usually not said as a call to action since the vast
majority of men show little interest in actually changing the society
that they say oppresses them.  Instead, the claim serves as a way to
silence women and draw their sympathetic attention away from women and
back to men which, in a male-centered patriarchy, is where women's
attention properly belongs.
        There is no doubt that men are in considerable pain as a result
of patriarchal dynamics.  But 'oppression' isn't the word for it.
        The middle portion of my book, "The Gender Knot: Unraveling Our
Patriarchal Legacy" (Temple University Press, 1997) is devoted to the
many ways that the reality of patriarchy is obscured and denied,
including the claim that men are oppressed.  It might help male
students to hear about it from another man.  For more, see
http://mail.hartford.edu/genderknot.
 
--
Allan Johnson
Sociology & Women's Studies
Hartford College for Women
agjohnson  @  mail.hartford.edu
(860) 768-5605

With regard to the thread on male oppression, Gina Oboler wrote:
 
 Besides, men who acknowledge
>male oppression are usually developing their consciousness of gender roles,
>which leads in the direction of feminism.
 
I think it's important to acknowledge that this is often not the case.  The
self-understanding of many white supremacist men is of their own (male)
oppression or victimization, and this self-understanding, far from being
conducive to the development of a consciousness about sexism, racism, or
hatred of lesbians and gay men, fuels their ideological rage and
resentment.  For an excellent treatment of this theme, see Jesse Daniels'
_White Lies: Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality in White Supremacist
Discourse_.  Daniels also emphasizes the close connections that exist
between "extreme" white supremacist discourse and "ordinary" political
discourse (connections that are surely relevant to the discussion of male
oppression underway on the list).  Needless to say, I've found that most
undergraduate political science students are not receptive to discussions
of texts/ideas such as these.
 
 
Cynthia Burack
Department of Political Science,
Cntr for Women's Studies & Gender Research
3324 Turlington Hall
PO Box 117325
University of Florida
Gainesville, Florida 32611-7325
cburack  @  polisci.ufl.edu
phone: 352-846-2835
fax: 352-392-4873

It seems to me the point is not to reach the One Correct Interpretation of
what oppression is and who is oppressed, exactly, and how.  We have all been
discussing whether men can be oppressed (which turned out actually to mean
whether they can be oppressed *as men*), what the bases of disadvantage that
produce oppression are -- race, class, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, sometimes
language and religion, etc. -- whether this is a group or individual
 phenomenon,whether the pain patriarchy produces for men can rightly be called
oppression, whether the whole question sidetracks consideration of women's
oppression, etc.  These are interesting questions, and the conversation leads
us to deeper thought, whether we end up with a single interpretation or not.
 
The point seems to me to be to get students, in so far as possible, to
reproduce this conversation in the classroom.  FWIW.

There are at least two gratifications women get from accepting their own
opression:
first: They are in the place society has provided for them and living
according to (their) society's standards, which makes them feel accepted
and ok.
second: Living according to patriarchal standards ensures that a woman
will not be responsible for her own fate. Whatever happens to her will
be her husband's (father's, brother's, bosses ...) fault.
and after all: *if* the husband earns enough money, the marriage is ok,
the kids are at school, the neighbours are nice people, the sun is
shining etc being a traditional housewife is not that bad....
 
Jutta
 
----
Daphne Patai wrote:
 
> I wonder if the same sort of explanation offered below also helps explain
> many women's apparent acceptance (as so much feminist writing bemoans) of
> their own oppression.  What kind of control or payoffs do they get that
> work comparably to the payoffs Ruby rohrlich articulates below?
> Daphne Patai
> ----------
 
**************************************************
Jutta Zalud
Deublergasse 48/5
A-1210 Vienna
Austria
 
Phone (home):    ++43-1-272 99 02
Phone (office):    ++43-1-712 10 01 ext. 76
Fax:        ++43-1-713 74 40
email:        a7400819  @  unet.univie.ac.at
        jutta.zalud  @  magnet.at
**************************************************

<< Living according to patriarchal standards ensures that a woman
will not be responsible for her own fate. Whatever happens to her will
be her husband's (father's, brother's, bosses ...) fault.
and after all: *if* the husband earns enough money, the marriage is ok,
the kids are at school, the neighbours are nice people, the sun is
shining etc being a traditional housewife is not that bad....<<
 
I find this difficult to accept, primarily because a major feature of
accepting patriarchy for women involves accepting fault for everything that
happens. If a husband fails in business, it's the woman's fault for not
providing him sufficient emotional support. If he fails sexually, it's his
wife's fault.
 
Being a traditional housewife is "not that bad" only when things are going
well. She is considered to be a "good wife" because she is properly supporting
her husband emotionally & by providing the creature comforts he needs to
fulfill his role. However, when things go bad, *SHE* is responsible. It is
*HER* responsibility to "set things right."
 
Georgia NeSmith, Phd
Writer, Editor, Photographer & writing coach
Adjunct faculty, Rochester Institute of Technology
gnesmith  @  aol.com

Forgive me for jumping in a little late on this thread, since I just
got back from a few days away.
 
I wanted to second this reference, since my friends (and co-editor)
Messner and Hondagneau-Sotelo frame the issues in powerful ways.
 
I confront this question constantly, both as an academic writing
about men from a profeminst perspective, and as an activist as
Spokesperson for NOMAS.
 
I think the original post had some enormous value in sorting through
the question of oppression by maintaining the social, aggregate,
analytic framework for situating the discussion.  Oppression is a
social, aggregate level of analysis, a phenomenon that occurs between
groups, not something that individuals necessarily feel.  Men _as
men_ are not oppressed, but privileged.
 
Men MAY be oppressed, of course, but not as men.  They are oppressed
by race, class, sexuality, age, ethnicity, region, physical
abilities etc.  (Just because we raise a gender analysis ought not
mean that we ignore the other categories by which people develop
access to status and power.)
 
As men - as a group - we are privileged, vis a vis women.
 
This doesn't mean, though, that we feel like oppressors - we
typically do not.  So it might make sense to provide some
distinction.  I think of my life as painfully impoverished by sexism
(or racism, hetreosexism, classism, etc.), my vision distorted, my
world diminished.  I have no idea what it would be like - how rich my
experience could be - if I lived in a world in which women were equal
to men.  So for men - as men - I say our lives are distorted, our
experience impoverished by the very same processes that oppress
women.  But we are not oppressed as men.
 
I have the same discussion about "power" all the time.  Men are "in"
power, but men don't "feel" powerful.  I've found that it does not
reach men at all to simply assert that since men as a group are
in power, they, as individuals, must feel powerful.  They look at you
as if, for once, we were from different planets.
 
Michael Kimmel
 
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Michael Kimmel
Professor
Department of Sociology
SUNY at Stony Brook
Stony Brook, NY 11794
 
phone:  (516) 632-7708
fax:    (516) 632-8203
 
email:  mkimmel  @  datalab2.sbs.sunysb.edu

Ruby Rohrlich wrote:
>
> Dear Kelley:
>     Both men and women suffer from class oppression and black men
> suffer physically, tdo the point of death, from racial oppression, perhaps
> more than women, who are not usually lynched.  Ruby Rohrlich
> rohrlich  @  gwis2.circ.gwu.edu
Ruby,
 
Instead, black women are raped, sterilized, economically oppressed,
stigmatized as welfare "witches," etc.  African American girls receive
less emphasis in school and social programs because they are viewed as
less oppressed, even though their drop-out rate, pregnancy rate, etc.,
greatly inhibit their growth.  Black women *do* suffer physically.
 
Robin
rmurray  @  sosu.edu

Mary Schweitzer's weekend post about the AK shooting is very timely for
the "Male Oppression" thread.
 
   The 13-yr-old and 11-yr-old boys have demonstrated to the world the
message of patriarchy they have absorbed from their society - that
females should fear for their lives if they do not satisfy the wants
of the dominant male -- and any female may have to pay the price for
the 'shortcomings' of another female.
 
 
   You may be interested in Linda Hasselstrom's essay, "Why One Peaceful
Woman Carries a Pistol".  It is available in two books:
 
Hasselstron, Linda.  _Land Circle:  Writings Collected from the Land_
   CO:  Fulcrum Pub., 1991.  ISBN 1-55591-142-0
 
Jordan, Teresa & James Hepworth, eds.  _The Stories that Shape Us:
    Contemporary Women Write About the West_.
    NY:  Norton, 1995.  ISBN 0-393-31451-0
 
 
  (Interestingly, Hasselstron, an established writer, had trouble
   getting this essay published.  It just doesn't 'fit' what our
   society wants to know about/hear from women about the reality of
   their lives.)
 
Betty
 
 
_________________________________________________________
Betty Glass, Humanities Bibliographer
Getchell Library/322
University of Nevada, Reno
Reno, NV  89557-0044
 
 email: glass  @  admin.unr.edu
 
office: (702) 784-6500  ext. 303
   FAX: (702) 784-1751
 
   "Don't laugh, oh, please don't make me laugh."  Andy Warhol
                           June 3, 1968

Back at the beginning of the discussion of oppression, Kelley provided a
definition from the website of Men Against Racism and Sexism.  I deleted it
and can't remember what it was, but it didn't seem unreasonable.  I just
checked a number of statification and inequality texts in anthropology and
sociology to see what definitions of the term they offer.  The fact is that
the term "oppression" is rarely defined, or used.  There may be a good reason
for this.  Obviously, discussion here has shown that it is a term that
is variously understood.  It is also emotionally loaded, which makes it a
valuable tool of political rhetoric.  But is it an equally valuable
analytic tool, as things now stand?
 
Personally, I am uncomfortable with taking the experiential element that people
I know have always used prominently as a part of the meaning of "oppression"
out of the mix.  For example, in the 60s many of us were involved in
consciousness-raising, often for very extended periods of time and often
well into the 70s, and sometimes beyond.  The goal of this process, I
thought, was to define our oppression -- and hence the axiom, "People have
a right to define their own oppression."  I have been told very clearly by
African feminists that Western women have no business thinking that pro-
natalism and bearing many children is part of African women's oppression,
though certainly the mandate to be a mother creates desperate unhappiness
for women who can't conceive, and though the same African feminists
certainly see *other* institutions in their cultures as functioning to keep
women as a group in a secondary condition.  In the women's center I worked in
in 1970, a huge argument erupted over whether wearing jewellry was an aspect
of women's oppression as part of the mandate that we be decorative.  In
these cases, how people felt about the experience that allegedly "oppressed"
them mattered powerfully.
 
It seems to me that "oppression" means something like the constraints that
function to keep a group of people in a lower position in a social system.
Men are "oppressors" when they act directly to prevent women from doing
things they wish to do *because they are women.*  But women can also act
as oppressors of other women in this way.  Though people may sometimes be
the "oppressors," for the most part it is the cultural and social system
that creates the oppression.
 
Now, are men not oppressed because overall, when all things a person wishes
to do but is denied the right to do because of gender are weighed in the
aggregate, it ends up usually being women who are disadvantaged?  Is it
argued, therefore, that men are in the higher position in the social system?
Still, there are ways that men are systematically disadvantaged *as men.*
Throughout history, men (though usually primarily men of the lower classes)
have been subject to a military draft that required them to kill and risk
being killed.  Though it is not operative in the US at this moment, it could
be restored at any time.  That seems like a powerful systematic disadvantage
to me, and other examples could be offered.  Certainly, though, all these
areas of experience in which men are the disadvantaged ones do not add up
overall to the number of ways women are systematically disadvantaged as
women.  Is that why women are oppressed and men are not?
 
I am not trying to argue.  I am genuinely trying to be clearer about what
the precise basis would be upon which we deny that a man is oppressed as a
man, if he really feels himself to be (for example, because he is as risk of
being drafted while women are not.)  It seems much more sensible to me to
say that this is an example of the way in which the cultural system
oppresses men, while pointing out that there are vastly more ways women are
oppressed by the system and men are privileged by it than vice versa (which
was in fact a point directly made in the website excerpt Kelley provided).
 
And yes, there are (at least) two threads of discourse about male oppression.
One is highly misogynistic, found among anit-feminist men's groups, e.g.
several support groups for divorced fathers seeking custody of children.
In this discourse men become oppressed by being denied access to children
(or alternatively, unreasonably drained of resources) because they are men.
And women are the "oppressors."  And I certainly agree that most of the claims
made in this line of discourse are bogus.  However, that is not the position
that my male sutdents are usually coming from, or that I assume the Dean who
taught the course on Men's Roles Kelley referred to was coming from.
 
I've always thought that oppression is complex, and more than a matter of
counting up advantages and disadvantages.  And that if a person's situation
feels like oppression to her/him, that sense of the situation at least ought
to be given serious consideration.

     There's a very good essay by Susan Stanford Friedman in _Tulsa
Studies in Women's Literature_ that conceptualizes exactly the conflicts
raised by this issue.  She suggests six perspectives, or discourses of
identity, as a "geographics of identity."  They are cultural formations
that she describes as the discourses of
multiple oppression; multiple subject positions; contradictory subject
positions; relationallity, situationality; and hybridity.
 
     The context is feminist literary criticism, but the idea of
positionality is relevant to many disciplines.
 
     Here's the citation: "'Beyond' Gynocriticism and Gynesis: The
Geographics of Identity and the Future of Feminist Criticism," _TSWL_ 15.1
(Spring 1996), pp. 13-40.
 
 
Sandy Donaldson
 
English & Women Studies
Univ. of North Dakota
Grand Forks ND  58202

Kelley Crouse asked:
 
>I'm wondering what folks think of "male oppression" [snipped]
 
This notion is frequently espoused among 'men's liberationist' and 'men's
rights' wings of men's movement activity, and criticised by pro-feminist
wings. The latter tend to acknowledge areas of male pain and disadvantage,
but to put them in the context of men's power. There is a useful
feminist-informed literature on this area, which I've listed in The Men's
Bibliography (under "Good reading"), at the internet address below.
 
One useful overview can be found in the following work: Messner, Michael A.
1997 Politics of masculinities: Men in movements, University of Southern
California: Sage Publications
 
Messner offers three themes which organise his discussion of men and
masculinities;
 
(a) Institutional privilege - "Men, as a group, enjoy institutional
privileges at the expense of women, as a group." [5]
 
Institutional privilege and gender inequality still characterise US
society. Gender is a system of unequal, but shifting and sometimes
contested, power rel'ns [5].
 
(b) The costs of masculinity - "Men tend to pay heavy costs - in the form
of shallow relationships, poor health, and early death - for conformity
with the narrow definitions of masculinity that promise to bring them
status and privilege." [6]
 
The promise of public status and masculine privilege comes with a price
tag, of poor health, shorter lives, emotionally shallow relationships, etc
[6]. Ie, conformity with narrow definitions of masculinity can be lethal
for men [6].
 
(c) Differences and inequalities among men - "Men share very unequally in
the fruits of patriarchy; hegemonic (white, middle- and upper-class, and
heterosexual) masculinity is constructed in relation to femininities and to
various (racial, sexual and class) subordinated masculinities." [8]
 
Ie, while 'men, as a group, enjoy institutional privileges at the expense
of women, as a group', men share very unequally in the fruits of these
privileges [7].
 
And he gives examples of groups of men facing economic, political and legal
constraints arguably which overshadow whatever privileges they may have as
men [7].
 
-----------------------
 
Another piece that tackles this question is: McLean, Christopher 1996 "The
politics of men's pain", in McLean, Chris, Carey, Maggie and White, Cheryl
(eds) Men's ways of being, Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press.
 
I've written a piece on "Responding to men's rights", which includes
material on how to incorporate recognition of 'men's pain' into a
feminist/pro-feminist politics. (It's being published in the Australian
pro-feminist magazine XY: Men, Sex, Politics.) I'll happily send a copy to
anyone to asks.
 
Cheers,
 
michael flood.
 
E-mail: Michael Flood <michael.flood  @  anu.edu.au>
Phone: [02] 6279 8468 (w). PO Box 26, Ainslie ACT, 2602, AUSTRALIA.
 
-- XY magazine: http://www.spirit.com.au/gerry/XY/xyf.htm
(e-mail: (Ben Wadham) benwadh  @  tafe.sa.edu.au )
-- The men's bibliography:
http://online.anu.edu.au/~e900392/mensbiblio/MensBiblioMenu.html
-- Pro-feminist men's FAQ: http://online.anu.edu.au/~e900392/pffaq.html
-- Pro-feminist men's mail list: http://coombs.anu.edu.au/~gorkin/profem.html
-- Women's Studies Web Page: http://www.anu.edu.au/womens_studies/
-- Homophobia and masculinities among young men (Lessons in becoming a
straight man): http://online.anu.edu.au/~e900392/homophobia.html

Just another comment. Kelley's reprinted list on 'male oppression' reads
exactly like the material I've seen from Re-Evaluation Co-counselling. I
know that RC is big in the US, and it has a substantial influence in men's
movement circles in Australia too. RC is one of the main sources for the
understandings of 'men's oppression', as well as more anti-feminist sources
such as Warren Farrell. (I've also written a critique of RC, which I can
send.)
 
Cheers,
 
michael flood.
 
E-mail: Michael Flood <michael.flood  @  anu.edu.au>
Phone: [02] 6279 8468 (w). PO Box 26, Ainslie ACT, 2602, AUSTRALIA.
 
-- XY magazine: http://www.spirit.com.au/gerry/XY/xyf.htm
(e-mail: (Ben Wadham) benwadh  @  tafe.sa.edu.au )
-- The men's bibliography:
http://online.anu.edu.au/~e900392/mensbiblio/MensBiblioMenu.html
-- Pro-feminist men's FAQ: http://online.anu.edu.au/~e900392/pffaq.html
-- Pro-feminist men's mail list: http://coombs.anu.edu.au/~gorkin/profem.html
-- Women's Studies Web Page: http://www.anu.edu.au/womens_studies/
-- Homophobia and masculinities among young men (Lessons in becoming a
straight man): http://online.anu.edu.au/~e900392/homophobia.html