I promised a while ago that I’d write a piece on The Woman Question, that is, my approach to gender in historical (and fantasy) fiction. And I will. Very soon. It’s something that I’m actively engaged with as I write Hild.
But this is Life Beyond Keyboard week. (Yes, I do have friends, neighbours, a sweetie, social and community obligations, and responsibilities to/for a couple of organisations. Hey, it’s not *all* about the writing–just mostly.)
So for now I’ll leave you with this, as true now as it has been throughout history (and all cultures, as far as I can tell):
“Men are afraid women will laugh at them. Women are afraid men will kill them.” Discuss.
Nicola Griffith 
SocioImages bring the quote to mind?
From @willingthrall on Twitter: “I can see that as a corollary of patriarchy. People in power do fear ridicule. People out of power do fear physical violence.” I think it's true. It's more a function of power than sex.
Gender *is* a hierarchical system in which sex is the class marker distinguishing those with power from those without.
What's interesting to me is the response I get from men when I drop this quote (it's Gavin deBecker, isn't it?) into a conversation. Immediately they derail the conversation into one about how they suffer, as individuals, from women treating them with suspicion and how wrong that is. How wrong women are to prejudge them as possible threats, when they've never done anything to justify it.
ide, well, yes. But my point (sloppily made, I'll grant you–perhaps so sloppily that I didn't actually make it) is that power difference occurs beyond that between the sexes, and therefore the laugh/kill dichotomy obtains in other circumstances. Of course, then there's almost always gender difference in the room, too, between those, for example, of the same race, same sex, same religion…
kai, deBecker may have used it, but I heard it somewhere else, a long time ago–in the 70s or 80s, I think. (Ooof. So I had to go look it up. The earliest quote I can find is this, from Margaret Atwood.)
And, yep, women are so *mean* to think badly of boys sometimes…
It's a very important question, one I'm still thinking how to answer…
I should also try not to tie a noose around my neck, but I can't find another way right now to phrase the other question I've been asking myself for a long time: “Why, if women give birth and women play perhaps the most relevant roles in the nurturing, upbringing, and education of children, why why why do our societies continue to bear violent men and abused women?”
We probably all agree, as women, that we don't like to live in fear of rape and violence, we don't want to be abused at home or at work or on the streets; so, why isn't this message being imprinted in our children in such a way that it becomes impossible or at least unlikely that a boy who grows up to be a husband will raise his fist against his wife, or corner a strange woman in an alley, or decide to pay his female employees half of what he pays the males for the same job?
Coming from Mexico, a country with a very matriarchal culture that paradoxically produces abusive macho men by the million, I can't help but ask where things got broken, and why do they continue to fall apart, and what can we do to find and deal with the root of these issues rather than having to rely on the legislation of sanctions to keep rotten adults from doing harm — and I'm not saying here that laws that protect women are or should be unnecessary, no, those laws are vital; I'm just asking, trying to figure things out because this matters to me, and to many.
Okay, here's more. So if it is about power, which it is, I'll go crazy and get all Freudian and propose a game/model where boys feel that women — their mothers and teachers — hold positions of power. The boys brew resentment towards the figures of authority and, when they're old enough, go up in arms and cry out, “Off with their heads!” in various sometimes little, sometimes major, and always morally unjustifiable ways.
According to this game, women will remain in danger until the day men are the ones doing the birthing and nurturing and upbringing. A very simplistic model, but still food for thought and something we've seen throughout history and its many wars: the idiotic need to hurt the other, the one we perceive as different and/or better off than us, and how we justify it by delusionally calling it “Independence” or “Revolution” or “God's Will on Earth”.
So, who wants to kick the chair from under my feet?
Not untrue, but probably over-simplification.
And I keep coming back…
Is it one of those vicious cycles? There's more violence towards women because we are perceived as weak and therefore are brought up and socialized to be afraid, submissive, passive, paranoid? Men, on the other end, are expected to be brave, dominant, aggressive, confident.
I've seen enough women kick the hell out of men who tried to abuse them to know first hand that we're not physically powerless. Most of these women grew up with older, somewhat messed up brothers and absent parents; so, as girls, they learned to fight back in order to survive, fear does not paralyse them. Given the current climate, fighting back is probably suicidal, but, also given the current climate, it is necessary that we fight back, that we refrain from standing down and in the process contribute to the self-fulfilling victim prophecy/propaganda.
When gangs, serial killers, and so on have targeted men, they've shown us that males are just as easy to bring down as women if one wants to. But the fact is that most people don't go there. It is us, women, who are perceived as being easy to threaten, subjugate, rape, beat up, kill; it's too unfortunate (should I write fucked up? yes) that women are almost programmed to readily slip into the victim role, while men meant to be protectors allow themselves to embrace the role of predators at the slightest chance — because it'd be inaccurate to call a 'chance' a 'provocation' or an 'invitation', as many have done.
Such is the gloom reality we've continued to promote in every channel, from the home to the media. I'm glad it's being challenged by brave women and some men, but I wonder if it'll ever be enough to balance the scales. I hope it is.
“Men are afraid women will laugh at them. Women are afraid men will kill them.”
Actually, men don't like to be described as being afraid of anything and what they are sure of is that women will and do talk about them. Women, on the other hand, are afraid that men won't notice them and at times seem driven to make men mad with the noticing.
None of this justifies the actions of men towards women nor women towards men. It appears from our current cultural vantage point to be deeply ingrained and in most cases strongly supported by just about any religion you might choose.
For me it goes to what actually might be our purpose here on Earth. Procreate and thrive. This meme is one twisted M'F'er. All men don't take sex to mean “let's have children”. All woman neither. But enough have and do that whole cultures have been built around the graveyards of little birthstones it takes to keep us going. We humans apparently can't help but romanticize this. But history bears a more brutal record.
I think women would also be afraid of being laughed at if they didn't have to worry about getting killed.
I am aware of men and their potential of 'snapping' and killing people for little or no reason. Or just being a serial killer, in which case that has become their entire internal identity, and their motivation for living is killing. Why are most killers men? They're weak, they can't cope. Being laughed at is part of that, since that falls into the whole 'I was disrespected' line of BS excuses. Men are emotionally weak and unable to cope because our society has stripped them of their emotions. They're supposed to be so ridiculously stoic and unfeeling that they may as well be cardboard cut outs propped in the corner. Nobody can be expected to live that way and not go nuts.
I like what karina said, that women would also be afraid of being laughed at if they didn't have to worry more about getting killed. There's probably even fairly solid evidence to that effect, if you look at the concerns of those among the well-off suburban teenagers who haven't (yet, anyway) had any significant scares.
Karina and Jen,
Only a fool doesn't worry about being killed these days. After all, only the paranoid survive.
But saying that “Men are emotionally weak and unable to cope because our society has stripped them of their emotions. They're supposed to be so ridiculously stoic and unfeeling that they may as well be cardboard cut outs propped in the corner.” is as sexist a response as one could imagine. “Some men” are that way. So are some women.
But men weren't “stripped” of their emotions. After all what is anger or fear? Society demanded that that they disguise themselves in stoicism in order to defend society (the women and children). You are what you pretend to be however.
Meanwhile, I'd be willing to bet that there have been many men who were taught from the cradle that this was their drone like role in life before there ever was such a monster as society. “Oh, and don't forget to lift the toilet lid” with nothing being said about remembering to put it back down until society noticed “Hey, I am getting my butt wet.”
Not that I'm proud, but first time ever, and probably correctly so, I've been called 'sexist'. Right you are, on all counts, rhbee, the driving emotions for men are fear and anger, and I shouldn't discount these, because they are also the most obviously destructive. These feelings society allows for men, and indeed nurtures in them. Fear of strange men, suspicion of women, anger toward anyone that challenges you…You don't perhaps think that we can do better?
“Only a fool doesn't worry about being killed these days. After all, only the paranoid survive.”
This is seriously overstated, you are less likely to be a victim of violence now than any time in history.
Also, men afraid of other men too. From the DOJ site: “Males were almost 4 times more likely than females to be murdered in 2005. In 2005 rates for females reached their lowest point recorded; rates for males increased slightly from the low point recorded in 2000.”
Yes, better will, I think, always have to be our watch word. We are a work in progress that discussions like these can only make better.
I want to point out two things here. If one makes general statement about 'men' and 'women' in a comment, one can't then, reasonably, turn around and say 'no no, only *some* men do this'. Also, it's good to assume that the generally stepped upon party (the queers, the women, the people of colour, the cripples) has just a bit more leeway, just a bit more credibility, in discussion of their oppression than those who are classically seen as belonging to the oppressing class.
Just a general rule of thumb.
In my experience, men are no more afraid of being laughed at than women are; and weaker men are no less afraid of being hurt (killed?) by stronger men than women are afraid of being hurt (killed?) by stronger men.
I think that some people are missing the point. For example, I agree that “men are no more afraid of being laughed at than women are”, but we're talking about what men have supposedly said they fear from women, not in general; and about what women have said they fear from men, in general, and of course all such generalizations must be qualified appropriately. But what women say they fear from men, for example, is a datum about women as much as it is about men.
Mockery by other men is one way that men keep each other in line, after all. Fag discourse, which I wrote about here, does a lot of things, but among them is teasing/scaring other males into line. Violence is there as a backup, of course.
Men are also, I've observed, scared of women's anger. Just as whites (remember, this is a generalization) are afraid of the Angry Black Man, unless he's Bill Cosby attacking other African Americans. Anger is so unfeminine, and women often help in the task of keeping angry women in line. Judith Halberstam wrote, in Female Masculinity, about women policing other women's gender conformity. These are all things we need to be aware of, I'd say.
The same sentence could be used for any two groups in a power dynamic. For example, Nazis and Jews in 1930's Germany; Whites and Blacks in 20th century America. It may certainly have been a lot more true in the past, when women were thought of as possessions, and had no rights.
Personally, I'm a lot more comfortable (less afraid) as a woman than I was as a man.
The last time I was beaten up, I (as a man) stepped between a woman and her abusive boyfriend (thinking that if I showed her how violent he was, she'd leave him). Instead, when I called the police and tried to have him arrested for assault, the woman claimed I had attacked the b/f (even though he was an athlete and had 30 lbs on me).
DianneorDi-
Slaveowners in America were pretty scared of slave revolt (i.e., death) and little, if at all, concerned with what the slaves thought of them. I'm not sure about your examples of Nazis/Jews and 20th century whites/blacks, either. In both cases, I would argue, the oppressed group was *so* dehumanized that the oppresser wouldn't even have registered the laughter. Or at least in the case of Nazis/Jews.
Sorry, N, of course you are right.Generalism are contagious.
DianneorDi, oh, I think if a slave had dared to laugh at an owner, in public, he would have killed the slave out of hand. In private, eh, I don't know–slaves were valuable, after all, and the laughter thing is all about face and position–in-public based commodities.
rhbee, yeah, sometimes I like to throw them around to see what happens, but I forget other people's sense of play isn't quite the same as mine. Sigh. Still, we're all playing nicely so let's just see where it goes…
Nicola- Yes, but in the general case of a slave, is it really that the owner is afraid of the laughter, or is it just that the laughter is a sign of rebellion that cannot be tolerated? With gender-sex(taking as granted that the premise of the original quotation is a correct description, for the purpose of this discussion), I think it might be different—that it is the laughter and mockery *itself* that the one in power fears, instead of its symbolism as a signifier of rebellion. Women and men, historically, have obviously had to have a closer relationship than owners and slaves have—for the simple reason that populations need to reproduce and only recently have alternative technological methods. This proximity makes mockery and laughter cut deeper than it would when experienced at a psychological distance (as an owner would experience a slave's laughter at a distance), and makes mockery something to be feared in and of itself.
I guess, really, that my argument is that the laughter thing is *not* all about public face and position—that when two groups are intimately tied together and one has power over the other, an individual in power especially fears even private mockery from the oppressed for reasons of personal ego and insecurity.
(Of course, my argument about the slave/sex dichotomy mostly just applies to societies with an emphasis on family or societies where women are afforded some degree of humanity—when male owners mate with female slaves, it does not apply so well.)
Yeah– I've thought about this, & decided it is bullshit. I mean– the language is strong, but it is little more than inflammatory rhetoric. Other pithy quotes– like off the top of my head “Men are afraid of being laughed at by women, women are afraid of being laughed at by women” would get a similar strong reaction, but less credibility.
Though Men-as-Threat isn't crazy or wrong, I don't think it is accurate or useful to posit the two as equal.
Everybody is afraid of men, and rightly so. They are brought up to think that they should be strong and fix everything and not give in to fear. If that doesn't work, throw it away or kill it.