Ladies of the Dope: What do you think of this article?

In My Humble Opinion
1

We’ve got a discussion brewing here about a recent Cracked article by David Wong,Five Ways Modern Men are Trained to Hate Women.

To summarize:

  1. We were told that society owed us a hot girl
  2. We’re trained from birth to see you as a decoration
  3. We think you’re conspiring with our boners to ruin us
  4. We feel like manhood was stolen from us at some point
  5. We feel powerless

This seems to have caused something of an uproar on Cracked. I’m curious what women are thinking about the article, and about the current men’s discussion thread. (I’m utterly fascinated by the discussion in that thread and I don’t want it to be hijacked.)

My own impressions to come.

2

While Wong made a few good points (the anger directed toward unattractive public figures, for example), I feel like this article quickly stumbled into WT everloving F territory.

I have always assumed that men who espouse ideas like ‘‘women have made us powerless’’ are misogynists. I have a very hard time accepting that this is a mainstream representation of men.

Especially because the men I know who are like this are the ones I avoid. I am surrounded by good men. The notion that most men are purely motivated by sex is asinine. It strikes me as some kind of twisted caricature of manhood.

As for ‘‘our manhood was stolen from us at some point,’’ rolly eyes to the max. Every woman remembers a time (or, you know, a million times) when her femininity was called into question, so this is hardly specific to men, and seems a week excuse for misogyny.

I doubt Wong did this intentionally, but he basically just validated every sexist asshole out there.

3

I read that article, and I largely agree with his arguments. Please note: Most of his arguments destroy the header points. You have to realize that the authoer came up with the header points after reading Freeper comments.

In other words: I do not believe that Society “owes” me a hot girl, I can see how really stupid people can feel that way. And you know what? It sucks to be that stupid.

4

I have no idea why, but I read the thread title as “Lefties of the dope.” Please feel free to ignore my testosterone enhanced remarks.

5

He does have some good points and some bad ones. For each of the five sections, there is a corresponding female reaction to them.

  1. We were told that society owed us a strong, sensitive man. A ‘prince.’
  2. We’re trained from birth to see men only wanting women as a decoration
  3. We think you’re conspiring to have sex with us and that’s all you want
  4. We feel like we have to pretend to have manhood to be accepted
  5. We feel powerless
6

I actually spent a whole lot of time reading that going “Ohhhhh, that makes a lot of sense.” Well, some of it. I don’t think he was trying to talk for all men, and certainly most of the men I know don’t really fall into the category of “hating women” in general, but I’m lucky; and I do think he was exaggerating for effect.

The things I was all “Huh, you have a point” were a) Elena Kagan. It really does burn me when people criticize the looks of female figures in the spotlight (Hillary Clinton gets made fun of for her dress sense, let’s not even start with Monica Lewinsky), but no one ever does the same with men. I mean, the only male political figure I can think of whose looks have been discussed is John Edwards, and that’s because people made fun of his spending too much time on his looks. b) George R. R. Martin’s writing of breasts. That was hilarious… and really does serve to prove his point; the sad thing is that I wouldn’t even have noticed it had he not pointed it out, that’s how much I take it for granted that, well, guys will write like that; and c) his dissection of “both people think they’re the powerless party” – that really explains a lot about both sexism and really any number of circumstances where, as an outside party, it seems obvious to me that one party has the power and the other does not, but that’s not what it feels like to them. That was very interesting to me.

The things I need to think more about: a) the hot-girl point; I’m not sure that I quite agree, but I do feel you see way more of nerdy/ugly guy with hot girl in movies/media than nerdy/ugly girl with hot guy, so there’s that. b) the “powerless” thing as a whole (see WTF, below).

The things where I was “WTF?” included a) the manhood-stolen thing. I sort of get what he’s trying to say, but I don’t think it was a separate point from the “powerless” point; and b) um, some people like to create or build separately from their sexual organs, both men and women. Just saying that I reeeeally don’t think skyscrapers are just sublimated sex.

Note that my husband, and the vast majority of the men I know well, don’t, for example, make fun of Elena Kagan or any other female in the news; most of the article doesn’t apply to them. But I certainly see that kind of thing all the time online and sometimes in random comments from people in everday life whom I don’t know well (or have chosen not to know well, probably partially for those reasons).

7

It reminds me of when I was in middle school, and read a book with a unicorn on it, and really liked it. It was by Piers Anthony and about some kind of “Game” (with a capital G). Then I read another book by the same author and in the 2nd book, there was a whole section about how girls always are confident and know things and boys have no clue and the girl gets the boy. This did not jibe with my experience at all! I was outraged and rather offended. (For preteen value of offended and outraged.)

Anyway, that experience opened my eyes to seeing this particular strain of sexism a few decades ago, and I’ve seen it many places since. This is just a latest one where the author is pointing it out to more people. =D

8

Fat men take a ton of shit for being fat. The three that come to mind immediately are NJ Gov. Chris Christie, Rush Limbaugh, and Michael Moore. (Now, I personally find Limbaugh to be a complete and unredeemable douche, but his body shape has absolutely nothing to do with that.)

Anyway, my take on the article is that most of the points are things that many-to-most men experience, but the way each individual man handles it is going to be pretty wildly variable, i.e. some are going to just ignore it completely, while some are going to make it a fundamental part of their worldview.

9

I appreciate posts by people of all chromosomes and with all types of hormones buzzin’ around :slight_smile: even if we have to have separate threads

10

Well, there is this.

11

That’s a good point. (And I also think this is stupid.) And yet… how many governors, famous talk-show hosts, or famous directors are fat women?

I do still think there’s a bit of a double standard; fat men may get made fun of, but fat women get made fun of and become automatically ineligible to be taken at all seriously in a public context.

12

I’m not a “lady,” but any time I see an article in some throw-away magazine that has in its title: “Five Ways,” “The Ten Most…”, “The Top 20…”, etc., plus the word “men” or the word “women”…

…I know that somebody at that publication had a deadline with no ideas, and just decided to dredge the usual batch of pop platitudes for something to submit at the last minute.

13

Cracked has shitty headlines as a rule. Their articles, however, range from completely stupid to really good. You won’t know which are which unless you actually bother to read them. Which, okay, maybe that isn’t worth your while, but then maybe it would also not be worth your while to post in a thread asking you to read the article (not just the headline) and give your reactions to it.

14

Interesting that those are the examples you choose - those men are, to be frank, very fat; if I were to compare them to women, I’d list women like Roseanne or Rosie O’Donnell.

In the media/public perception, women like Kate Winslet have been mocked for being “fat” when they are, in fact, less fat than someone like Rick Santorum, and no one talks about his weight.

A woman who is slightly overweight is “fat”. A man who is grossly overweight is “fat”. The same word is used to describe very different things, based upon the sex of the person being discussed. It’s an interesting double-standard - it seems that men can let themselves go much more than women ever could and still be considered respectable and even desireable.

15

I wasn’t trying to draw an equivalence between popular-culture treatment of men and women. I agree with all of you that women experience far more objectification and criticism of their appearance than men do. I’m just saying that men are not 100% immune from this sort of thing.

16

I would just like to say that I’m so glad to have a “Ladies of the Dope” thread without a “TMI” in the thread title. :slight_smile:

17

[quote=“raspberry_hunter, post:6, topic:617148”]

The things I was all “Huh, you have a point” were b) George R. R. Martin’s writing of breasts. That was hilarious… and really does serve to prove his point; the sad thing is that I wouldn’t even have noticed it had he not pointed it out, that’s how much I take it for granted that, well, guys will write like that;

[quote=“raspberry_hunter, post:6, topic:617148”]

Actually, I thought that point was something of a misfire. Wong describes the passage as being written from the point of view of the woman, but really, it wasn’t. It was the narrator’s point of view depicting how the woman looked and moved. If it was written from the woman’s point of view, it would’ve been written, “She could feel her small breasts moving freely…” Then Wong would’ve proved his point about how men assume women think about their own bodies the way that men see them. But with the passage he chose, he doesn’t

18

Oh, I agree completely with you. :slight_smile:

I just think it’s interesting that the point where the line is drawn - the pont where criticism/objectification starts - is very different.

In general, it seems that:

An average looking man is average-looking. An average looking woman is ugly.

A poorly dressed man…not even discussed. A poorly dressed woman is ugly, doesn’t care about her appearance, can’t be trusted with important tasks, etc.

A slightly overweight man isn’t even talked about. A slightly overweight woman is fat. A grossly overweight man is fat. A grossly overweight woman is disgusting and obese.

A man who has had many sexual partners is successful. A woman who has had many sexual partners is a slut.

Where we, as a culture, draw lines to describe characteristics is very different for each sex.

19

This is the sort of article that makes me glad I’m married and don’t have to be concerned about that stuff anymore.

20

I’m amused by the number of men in the first Dope thread who are saying ‘Well, jerks are like that, but most guys aren’t, and certainly not me.’ They’re missing the point that the article is describing overall societal undercurrents that are hurting people. It’s there. It’s damn unavoidable, and the female corollaries are just as strong. (Men are taught to see women as decoration? Yes, and women are taught to be decoration.) Part of being an adult is learning to deal with these kinds of pressures in a civilized way.

This kind of stuff obviously doesn’t rule all men’s minds at all times, or even most minds most of the time, but it is a part of our society and we need to talk about it if we’re going to get rid of it. I think the article does a good job of that, though it does veer into excuse territory a couple of times, and people seem to have a hard time dealing with the hyperbole that the article uses to make its points.

Part of the problem with saying “well, I’m not like that” is that it’s usually followed by “so why should my opportunities for getting dates be limited because other men are jerks?”. That quickly leads to “I understand that women don’t like being approached by strange men in public because sometimes they’re jerks, but I’m not a jerk, so I should be able to approach women whenever I want” which is exactly the jerkish attitude that women were complaining about in the first place. If you deny that the influences are there, then we can’t do anything about ameliorating them and finding a healthier balance.

I propose we start untraining ourselves by running fewer ads that focus on a woman’s torso but cut her head out of the picture. Think we can get advertisers to sign on? :dubious: