Tag Archives: patriarchy

Dominance and Dworkin

There are a fair number of studies in the field of American Undergraduate Looking For Intro Psych Credit Studies (also occasionally known as “psychology”) which purport to establish that (straight) women are more attracted to dominant men. (Here’s one, selected because it’s fairly typical of the genre and not behind a paywall.) Generally whenever these come up in Internet gender discussions it’s because someone wants to talk about how women are chasing after alpha male bad boys and not nice guys like him because women are terrible and therefore sad panda boners.

–I’m going to interrupt myself here to head off two kinds of comments that will make me sad. First, the dominance they’re talking about here isn’t BDSM dominance, it’s the “strong, rugged, competitive, tough, thinks they’re better than other people” kind. Second, blog posts like this always attract somebody who wants to tell us that they/their partner/their best friend/their pet hamster doesn’t like Trait X. Which, okay, but when you average the sexual desires of 3.5 billion women 11 million female American undergraduates, you’re going to inaccurately describe the desires of a lot of people. Maybe the majority of people.

Sad panda boner dude has made the unfortunate mistake of conflating “dominance” and “agreeableness” and “high status.” In all the research I’ve read, women have been fairly consistent about not liking assholes, in the sense of cruel, mean, or aggressive men. (In fact, there’s a whole subsection about that in the article I linked.) Also, I’m not sure what “attracted to high-status men” even means: am I attracted to high-status men because I tend to like guys who are smarter than me? Does this mean that men who like women who are smarter than them are attracted to high-status women? Is there any way of defining “status” so it doesn’t mean “anyone who is awesome in any way whatsoever”? Ugh I hate the word status so much you don’t even know.

Anyway, straight women as a class (or at least straight female American undergraduates) do appear to be more interested in men who are competitive, socially dominant, strong, tough, etc., etc.

…And this doesn’t reflect the predictions of feminist theory how?

I mean, on a very basic level, those results show that straight women as a class tend to be more attracted to men who successfully perform masculinity. Just like cultural influence tends to lead to straight men being interested in women who are conventionally attractive and perform femininity in the socially-approve-of way, cultural influence tends to lead to straight women being interested in men that properly perform masculinity. (Cultural influence has a huge effect on sexuality. I have a truly marvelous demonstration of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain.)

Or wander off to the radical feminism. As Dworkin’s Intercourse talks about, under patriarchy, violence, coercion, and the subordination of women are eroticized and constructed as inherent parts of sexuality (to varying degrees given how patriarchal the situation we’re talking about is). Crucially, those things are eroticized by both men and women.

So of course there are more women than men attracted to a socially dominant person; the entire patriarchy is screaming at them “You! Woman! Your subordination to a dude is totally sexxxeh!” The only surprising part about all of this is that women as a class are only attracted to socially dominant men and not outright assholes. Presumably this is because social conditioning can only go so far before the human urge not to hang out with douchebags triumphs.

The fact that feminist theory can explain this data doesn’t mean that the feminist explanation is necessarily right, of course. But I find it amusing that I can theoretically explain the whole “women like alpha males” meme with Dworkin.

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Up-Goer 5: Social Justice Edition

So this is nifty. For those of you who are too lazy to click links, it’s a challenge to explain something complicated using only the top thousand words in the English language. So of course, me being me, I immediately started explaining social-justice-y things with it.

Privilege: Some groups of people get bad things other groups of people don’t get. Men who want to marry men or women who want to marry women can’t marry them; some people think black men will hurt them even though the black men are nice; some people won’t listen to people who have brains that work different when the people who have brains that work different say something is hurting them.

Because some people have never had to deal with these bad things, they don’t know that other people have to until they have a chance to learn that. Even if they learn it they still might not know all about what it’s like to live with the bad things, so it is a good idea to listen to the people who have to deal with bad things.

Ally: Some people think it is bad that some groups of people have bad things happen to them, even though they are not part of the group that has bad things happen to them.

It is good to not want bad things to happen to people. But sometimes people think it makes them very very very good to think that bad things shouldn’t happen to people and to not do bad things. They are sad when people don’t tell them that they’re very very very good all the time. But really trying to stop bad things is just normal good and people should not tell you you are good all the time just because you are not bad.

Patriarchy: Many people think that men should tell women what to do without women getting a say and that women should try to make men happy. They think that women who don’t make men happy, or make men happy in the wrong ways, are bad women, and that men who can’t or don’t want to lead are bad men. The idea that men should lead women makes lots of bad things happen to women and men.

Because most people for a very long time thought men should lead women, there are lots of things that people believe and do that help the idea that men should lead women still live, even if the people don’t mean to do that.

Othering: Some people think of other people as being very very very different because they are part of a different group. They might think that people from a different group don’t think the way they do or feel the way they do. They might believe that other people will do bad things for no reason, just because they’re part of that group. They might think it’s hard or not possible to understand someone who’s a part of that group.

But all people think and feel in ways that are more like each other than not like each other. When people do bad things, they do them for reasons that make sense to them. And people can understand other people most of the time if they really try. It makes people sad when you think of them as not thinking or feeling the way that both you and they do, just because they’re part of a different group.

Objectification: Sometimes people act like other people are things they can use, rather than people. They might not recognize that other people feel things too and that it is bad to hurt them. Or they might know that other people can make them happy but not believe that those people might want to do things other than make them happy.

Some groups of people more often have people act like they are things. People who bring food to people’s tables are often yelled at when the food is bad, even though it is not their fault and yelling at people makes them sad. Some people act like it is wrong for women not to be pretty; because they like to look at pretty women, they think, all women should want to make them happy by being pretty.

Internalization: Sometimes if you act like someone is a thing or very very very different from you, the person will start to believe that they are a thing or very very very different from you. Sometimes if you hurt people, they will start to believe that being hurt is a good thing or that they should be hurt.

There are lots of ways people can act if they believe bad things about themselves. If you act like a kind of person is a thing, they might think they are only good if they are good at being a thing: because so many people act like women must be pretty, some women think they are only good if they are pretty. If you hurt someone, they might think they should be hurt because they’re bad: some men who want to fuck men believe God hates them because they want to fuck men.

Some people can become mean if they believe these things. It is bad to be mean and hurt people, even if you’re doing it because you believe something bad about yourself. But it is still sad that people believe bad things about themselves.

Cis: Most people think that people are either men or women. They look at someone and decide “you are a man!” or “you are a woman!” Even when someone is a little baby, they decide that the person is a man or a woman. But some people that people think are men are women, and some people that people think are women are men. Some people are even both men and women, or not men and not women. If when you were a baby people thought you were a man, and you are a man, you are ‘cis’; the same thing is true if they thought you were a woman and you are a woman.

Tone Argument: Sometimes we say or do things that hurt people without meaning to. If you have been hurting someone, they will often get mad at you for hurting them, even if you did not mean to. It hurts when people are mad at you, even if it is because you hurt them.

Some people think that if other people get mad at them for saying or doing something, it means that the thing they said or did was not bad. They think, “I have been hurt, and they have been hurt, so it is even.” Sometimes they don’t realize that the other people have been hurt at all, and just think the other people are getting mad for no reason. But just because it hurts you when other people are mad at you does not mean they are wrong to be mad or that they have nothing to be mad about.

Other People’s Makeup Use: None Of Your Business

The New York Times asked a bunch of people to comment on whether makeup empowers women or hurts their self-esteem. Unaccountably, they didn’t ask me for my opinion, but I shall give it to them anyway.

Some might find this odd from a makeup-hating hairy-legged radical feminist, but the pro side is not wrong. Some women get a self-esteem boost from feeling like they’re presenting their best selves to the world. Some women think of makeup as armor they put on before battle. Some women consider makeup to be three minutes of self-care, time they take for themselves. The key word there, however, is some women.

I don’t understand why so many people have trouble with the idea that different people can have different opinions about things. “BDSM makes some people happy” and “BDSM makes some people feel violated” are not contradictory statements. Neither are “sex work makes some people feel raped,” “sex work is a job some people love and would rather work than anything else in the world,” and “sex work is another mildly unpleasant thing some people do to put food on the table.” And neither are “makeup makes some people feel empowered” and “makeup hurts some people’s self-esteem.” In a perfect world, people could be left to wear or not wear makeup, have or not have kinky sex, do or not do sex work, as pleases them.

As the anti side points out, however, we don’t live in that world.

Job discrimination against women who refuse to wear makeup is real, as are romantic partners who feel entitled to a partner who always wears makeup. Women who wear makeup tend to be considered more likeable, competent, and attractive, which is rather unfair, given that the application of crushed rocks to the face has exactly zero effects on any of those things. Not wearing makeup can, in some circles, make people wonder what’s wrong or worry that you’re not taking care of yourself. All of that adds up to a lot of fucking coercion.

For that matter, look at the way this debate was framed! The discussion was between “women must wear makeup” and “women should be free to wear makeup or not wear makeup.” Apparently “women should not wear makeup” is entirely unthinkable, since the New York Times could not find even one person to argue it. I’m not saying that women shouldn’t wear makeup (of course not), just pointing out that the asymmetry is telling.

Partially, of course, the pressure for women to wear makeup is a side effect of makeup companies trying to keep their business. The set of people who believe makeup is fun is much smaller than the set of people who can be convinced that if they don’t wear makeup they are ugly and horrible and a failure as a woman. But makeup companies’ best interest is also to convince men that they’re ugly and horrible and failures as men if they don’t wear makeup, and they have so far failed to do so. What gives?

It’s fucking patriarchy again. Women are supposed to be Beautiful because they must be Pleasing to Men, and specifically Pleasing to Men’s Boners, because if you aren’t Pleasing to Men’s Boners then you will never get to marry Mr. Bingley. On the other hand, men do not have to be Pleasing to Women’s Boners, that’s what money is for.

On the other hand, a lot of anti-makeup sentiment– particularly anything that starts talking about how “frivolous” and “shallow” makeup is– is also misogynistic and femmephobic. Makeup is a form of visual art. If making your face beautiful is shallow, so is making a canvas beautiful or a block of marble or a hunk of plastic. If you understand why someone would feel satisfied and happy when they make a gorgeous print, you understand why someone would feel satisfied and happy when their makeup looks perfect. I do not think it is accidental that the form of visual art almost entirely practiced by women is the one that gets accused of frivolity and where the talent exhibited by many of the artists is ignored or denigrated.

A final note: if makeup is so damn empowering men should have a chance to put it on too.