Gendered images, the history of marriage and bromance

[greenie_breizh]

A couple of serious links for tonight:

Jean Kilbourne's Killing Us Softly 3 about images of women in advertising - it's worth watching even if there are no groundbreaking points that are being made in there, and there's some funny. :)

The one quote I really liked was one when Jean was talking about the fact there's been a rise recently in images that objectify men, as well. And how sometimes that's used to say, look, men are treated just as badly as women.

The problem? Apart from the fact it doesn't happen with as much frequency, it is that the structure doesn't work the same for men and women. "There are no consequences to men for being objectified." The images that we circulate that perpetuate an image of masculinity as necessarily violent and unemotional have much more power, and are much more dangerous.

--

An interesting post, An exegesis on same-sex marriage, in particularly because it goes over the history of marriage as an institution.

--

And I'll throw a lighter link in there, Nathan Fillion and Joss Whedon being adorable together. RL bromance FTW. :D

Comments

[terra-placidus.livejournal.com]

Actually, it's not at all true that men are more frequently the ones who assault women, not by a long shot. (To clarify, I'm talking about domestic violence here, not sexual assault.)
Remember my agonizing forensic class last year? Domestic violence 101? It really blew apart a lot of stereotypes I thought were fact. (single redeeming feature of the whole domestic violence term! :P )

The single most common kind of domestic violence in North American samples is minor bilateral violence (they assault each other) followed by minor violence perpetrated by the female partner on the male. These differences only show up in interview or self report questionnaire - it's certainly true that women sustain the most serious injuries due to the size/strength differential, and this is what emergency room data show - the men being the most abusive, when in fact it's the other way around if you're counting the number of violent acts! Men are also less likely to seek medical or police intervention for injuries, and when police are called, it is very very rare for a female perpetrator to be arrested when compared with male arrests, even when you control for the severity of the injury, etc - police discretion being informed by sexist assumptions of course.
So it's actually overwhemingly couples assaulting one another, followed by women assaulting men, at least in domestic situations. (My prof also did a study of gay and lesbian pairings and found the violence in those couples to actually be slightly more prevalent, but I think that study needs to be replicated)

The difference between binge eating disorder and bulimia is that with binge eating disorder the person does not try to 'compensate' for the binge. With bulimia, people vomit, use laxatives, exercise excessively, sharply restrict food intake, etc to compensate for a binge. With binge eating disorder, there is no compensation after a binge. (That's not to say people with binge eating disorder don't experience the shame/guilt/anxiety/distress that people with bulimia do, though.)

[terra-placidus.livejournal.com]

One statistic (I think it's from eating disorder research at Harvard Medical school?) estimates that 25% of adults with eating disorders are male. I'm not sure if they include binge eating disorder and compulsive overeating in that. But yes, I have to agree, three quarters of sufferers are female. But men are impacted a lot more than we tend to think, and 25% is a figure that we can't ignore. Just like signs of heart attacks are/were missed/ignored in women, because the norms in terms of symptomology were male norms.

[greenie-breizh.livejournal.com]

I would be curious to read more on the topic of domestic violence, though I was talking about violence at large, because these findings are definitely counter-intuitive to me. I would be interested to see what are the stats for sexualized violence, which is even more central to what we're talking about here... when I read this I also think we have to be careful about what we consider violence, and the problems around limiting the definition to physical violence. But you know that. ^^

And so what's difference between binge eating disorder/compulsive overeating and bulimia? ^^ (Yes, I want to know! ^^)

[greenie-breizh.livejournal.com]

Just wanted to add (I was thinking about it last night before going to sleep because I'm THAT much of a dork):

I find it automatically suspect when the dominant group (here, men) claims to be just as much of a victim as the oppressed. Hence my reluctance when I hear about these stats and sort of a red flag that goes up when you tell me this. Numbers - even when they debunk an assumption we make (that women are physically abused more than men) - can lie, or rather, can misrepresent a reality. In those couple who mutually harm each other, who's getting physical first? Why are they getting physical? What's the context in which violence takes place?

I'm having trouble articulating this without feeling like I'm ignoring the fact that there are men who get abused and I don't want to deny their reality, or the importance of the way they're abused. At the same time, I do think it would be a mistake to say "violence is violence is violence" and interpret it in the same way whether it's a man doing the attacking or it's a woman. Is the violence being perpetuated as a way to assert power, dominance over someone? Is it a way to protect oneself, to react to a (perceived) threat?

Stats and numbers are sort of suspect to me in general, because they tend to erase meanings. But they're specially suspect when they tend to reinforce a message that "favors" the dominant group - or rather, here, that minimizes the oppression that the dominated group suffers by saying really, everyone suffers equally. I feel like I really don't know enough to make the argument I want to make correctly... dammit. ^^

[terra-placidus.livejournal.com]

Hmm
A few things to add....
First of all, I, personally don't believe that in mainstream Canadian society, it is accurate to call women and oppressed group and men a dominant group. Certainly, there are a few remaining areas where women are treated with less preference, or yes, even discrimination (fewer women CEOs, administrators, managers, some political offices, a small but still lingering wage inequality for women etc) but there are so many more arenas where equality has been established firmly enough ( for example more than 50% of post secondary students, even in areas formerly considered male-dominated - ie med school etc - are female.)
Oppression, to me, is a much stronger word that speaks to widespread daily injustice, and a limiting of basic freedoms, and it has been years and years since this was the case. I do not consider women in Canada as an oppressed group, and I do not consider men a dominant group.

Now, the problem with seeing women as aggressors is that such behaviour does not fit with the stereotype of women that many of us hold however unconsciously - that is, women are the weaker of the two genders, passive, gentle, easy victims etc. Numbers asserting that women are about as aggressive as men are questioned because it's contrary to what we expect, or counter-intuitive. Why is it counter-intuitive? Because it's against the stereotype. Why else are we so eager to find excuses for the women, with questions like, 'well, who started it,' 'why did they start it', 'self defense' etc. Things like this look dangerously like victim blaming, and would be unthinkable if directed towards situations where the victims is female.
It's actually been well documented and well understood by experts in the field since the mid seventies that women are just as violent as men. There are huge longitudinal studies in several countries, including the US and New Zealand. Why isn't it common knowledge than women and men are equally violent? To quote Dr Dutton (my prof last year, an internationally recognized expert on domestic violence)

'[The last chapter] reviewed data that have been troubling feminists since the first US National Survey of 1975: women are as violent as males. Because this findings contradicts feminist theory, it has been suppressed, unreported, re-interpreted or denied. The female violence rates have been portrayed as self-defensive violence, less serious violence, or a result of reporting differences. In fact they equal or exceed males, they include female violence against non-violent males, and they have serious consequences for males.'

These self- labeled feminists who are supposedly activists for the belief in equality, seem to want women to remain in the victim role, vilifying men as the perpetrators of severe unilateral violence, which is at best, self serving, at worst, actually intends slander and hate towards men.

The idea that men are more violent than women, and any arguments about dominant men abusing oppressed women, are just blatantly false. There is a robust body of research on the topic, and anyone who claims otherwise is either uninformed, (which is excusable) or, like certain radical feminists, has a political reason to deny scientifically evaluated behavioural data (which is inexcusable).

There are only two types of violence that men use more than women, and those differences are generally less then one percent. Men are more likely to 'batter' a woman (by .2 percent in one study), it's true, but women are more likely to use a weapon (only by .5 percent though) and, perhaps most surprisingly, women are most likely to hit, kick punch, bite, slap or otherwise strike a man than the other way around. The difference with hitting is a full ten percent.

If a couple is violent towards each other, and say, each partner slaps the other across the face, the intent to cause harm is the same, the violent act is strictly the same, but if the man is larger than the woman, the same action will leave and brief red mark on the face of the man, but possibly a bruise or black eye on the face of the woman. Who was more violent in this situation?

I would definitely recommend you take a look at the chapter of my textbook from last year about the domestic assault of men. It is an eye opener.

[terra-placidus.livejournal.com]

It made me cut off some of my words! I didn't know that lj responses had a maximum character response limit. :P

[terra-placidus.livejournal.com]

The last couple things I wanted to add were that domestic violence is an interaction pattern. You can't have an interaction with only one partner. Both partners are responsible for the way they relate to one another. An author (whose name is probably in my notes) who wrote a number of books about violence against women was embraced by the feminist community until she wrote a book about the dynamics of violent relationships, talking about these interaction patterns. She was totally shunned by the so called feminists, because she suggested that both partners have a role in the patterns that lead to violence. Never once did she say that violence was an acceptable response in any way - all she said was that abused women were not passive entities in these relationships.

Stats and numbers do not, to me, erase meaning, they erase bias, and they erase excuses.

Also, it's important to note that over many studies, gender is not a predictor of violence. Personality disorder is the main predictor of violence, and overall, I think the gender rates are similar. There are gender differences for specific personality disorders - men are more likely to have anti-social personality disorder, whereas women are more likely to have borderline personality disorder, but in sum, they're pretty equal.

Okay. Off to the lab.

[greenie-breizh.livejournal.com]

Woah woah woah. Just quickly - I don't have time to really get into the other stuff - women are not equal to men today in Canadian society. They graduate in greater numbers but they are still HIGHLY segregated in female-dominated fields such as education or nursing. Forestry and engineering are two examples of fields that are extremely male-dominated still despite efforts to improve female improvement. If I still have the table at home, I'll show you tonight. I also don't have the numbers with me, but: there's still a salary gap that disadvantages women; women still face vertical segregation (the lack of women in positions of power) but horizontal segregation as well, by being concentrated in fields that are less well-paid; women are also disproportionately likely to be the single head of a household (single-headed households do less well in almost every socio-economic aspect for the obvious reason that the remaining parent has to take on everything) and compared to male-headed single household, they are worse off. I know for sure in France the sharing of household tasks still greatly disadvantages women as well, and I don't see why Canada would be excluded from that. And these few things are only the most obvious aspects, a little bit of poking around data would probably show other variables I didn't think to mention. I'm not even going to go into the fact that we still value female qualities less, thus generally making the category "woman" less valuable than "man"; a very simple example of that is that it's a compliment to say of a girl "oh, look her climbing around like a boy" while to say "stop acting like such a girl" to a guy is about the most offensive thing you can say.

[terra-placidus.livejournal.com]

Wait a second. I think you misconstrued my meaning. I certainly did not say that women were treated equally. I know that there are still many biases, unfair division in household labor in a lot of countries, (I know there is data on this for the US, not sure on Canada, but surely they are similar), and I also mentioned several inequalities in employment. Also, like I mentioned above, women receive poorer health care, because signs and symptoms are normed on men. Higher education, in terms of its organization is also organized in a way that makes it easier for men to achieve advanced degrees (with childbearing age getting in the way for women and all). You are right, there are inequalities, and I'm certainly aware that there's a great deal of sexism both ways as you alluded to in the last few lines above with the compliment/insult thing.
It's unfair and unjust, and our society would be much better of without these things. There is certainly discrimination, and there is certainly inequality, and it would be a mistake to think otherwise. The point I am trying to make, however, is that I think it's wrong to call this 'oppression'.
Oppression, to me is, women being forbidden from holding certain jobs, not having the right to vote, or to have property rights, or the opportunity to attend school, or even being subject to draconian laws and practices (ie, stoning a girl to death because she was raped, female genital mutilation, etc). This is simply not the case here. If Canadian women are oppressed, then how do we describe Afghan women under the Taliban? There is a clear difference here.
I am not trying to minimize the injustices that women still face here in Canada, but I think using the word 'oppression' to describe these injustices cheapens the experience of women both historically in North American culture and in other cultures today. I suppose it's really just semantics in the end, but I certainly believe that it's inaccurate to call women in this society victims of oppression and men in this society dominant from my understanding of the meanings of these words.

[greenie-breizh.livejournal.com]

Sorry I misunderstood :)

For oppression, you make a good point that it's probably a difference in the way we understand the meanings of the words. I'm going to try and find a way that explains what is oppression to me. Of course the idea is not to imply women in Canada are not better off than women under patriarchal authoritarian regimes, but it doesn't take away from the fact that men are still a dominant group today in society, just like white people, people from the middle and upper class, and heterosexuals are all dominant groups that gain privilege from the simple fact that they belong to these categories. But! I will be back with an attempt at a definition when I'm not about to go to class. ^^

[aislingtheach.livejournal.com]

Hi Terra,

There is something I would like to know:

1- How is it, in concrete terms, that you define violence?
2- How is it, concretely, that you would distinguish a perpetrator of violence from someone who is using violence to defend him/herself?
3- How is it, concretely, that you would consider violent acts in a couple to be symmetrical?

[terra-placidus.livejournal.com]

Hello,
1) Violence: kicking, hitting with palm or fist, biting, hitting with an object, threatening with a weapon, using a weapon, choking, strangling, battering, pushing down stairs, destroying personal belongings, etc.
2) I would say that there are no easy answers on this one, concretely or otherwise. I would say that one who is using violence to defend oneself could range from the extreme we see in the courts in Battered Person's Self Defense (which is accepted in Canadian courts even if the defendant's alleged abuser was asleep at the time of the murder) to an incident in a relationship where generally the violence is bilateral but in one specific case, one of the partners aggresses without the relationship's general interpersonal pattern of build-up, and the person who was just hit then strikes back. I think this involves knowledge of relationship dynamics.
3) I'm not sure what you mean by this question. I consider violent acts equal regardless of the chromosomes of the person perpetrating. Like I said above, if the act is the same, and the intent is the same, the act is symmetrical. If a woman strikes first and a man strikes back, I call that symmetrical. I call it symmetrical if the man strikes first and the woman strikes back. How is it, concretely, that you would consider violent acts in a couple to be asymmetrical?

[terra-placidus.livejournal.com]

Sorry, that should have read -
'If a man strikes first and a woman strikes back, or a woman strikes first and a man strikes back, I consider those symmetrical.'
The key here is that gender of the aggressor is irrelevant. Hitting first would not be symmetrical with hitting back.

[aislingtheach.livejournal.com]

1) Violence: kicking, hitting with palm or fist, biting, hitting with an object, threatening with a weapon, using a weapon, choking, strangling, battering, pushing down stairs, destroying personal belongings, etc.

- How did you proceed to get to that definition?

2) I would say that there are no easy answers on this one, concretely or otherwise. I would say that one who is using violence to defend oneself could range from the extreme we see in the courts in Battered Person's Self Defense (which is accepted in Canadian courts even if the defendant's alleged abuser was asleep at the time of the murder) to an incident in a relationship where generally the violence is bilateral but in one specific case, one of the partners aggresses without the relationship's general interpersonal pattern of build-up, and the person who was just hit then strikes back.I think this involves knowledge of relationship dynamics.

- What you said is too vague. You have not answered my question. How is it, concretely that you would distinguish a perpetrator of violence from someone who is using violence to defend him/herself?

3) I'm not sure what you mean by this question. I consider violent acts equal regardless of the chromosomes of the person perpetrating. Like I said above, if the act is the same, and the intent is the same, the act is symmetrical. If a woman strikes first and a man strikes back, I call that symmetrical. I call it symmetrical if the man strikes first and the woman strikes back.

- Unless I am mistaken, you claimed that there are instances where there is no perpetrator-victim dynamic, but rather a perpetrator-perpetrator dynamic. If that is indeed the case, how would you determine, concretely, that you are in front of such a dynamic?

How is it, concretely, that you would consider violent acts in a couple to be asymmetrical?

- You are responsible to back up your claims. You claim that violence between men and women who are in a relationship is equal (same rate). In order to make such a claim, you need to have a sound operational definition of violence, and then you need to have established criteria that would help you determine who perpetrates that violence and who is a victim of it. This operational definition, and the criteria that you use to determine who is a perpetrator and who is a victim is decisive in collecting data about battering and being able to judge whether men or women are more victim of it - or whether it happens at an equal rate.

[terra-placidus.livejournal.com]

Um, wow.
You know what? I have absolutely no desire to argue the point with someone who already seems completely set against any argument I may have. I claim the violence between women and men is equal, and should you actually be interested it looking at evidence I refer you to the following:
Magdol et al 'Dunedin Cohort Study'
Capaldi, Kim, Shortt 'Oregon Youth Study (OYS)'
Archer '' Archer Meta-Analytic Study'
as well as
Rethinking Domestic Violence by D.Dutton.
I had a bit of a preview of your argument last night with Helene (at least the ideological framework for it) and it's certainly a waste of my time (as well as yours) to have any meaningful argument with someone whose basic beliefs about how to reach truth are so different from my own. If you believe that behavioural science is an ideology and is hopelessly biased from the beginning, then of course you will be conveniently able to dismiss anything it contributes.
Sorry for the hijack of your entry Helene. I am finished.

[aislingtheach.livejournal.com]

I realize I have hurt you. If that is the case, I apologize. I offer another angle, which might make it easier on you. Feel free to answer it or not.

1) Has your professor provided you with an operational definition of violence?

a) Did he say what process he adopted to get to his operational definition of violence?

b) Did he contrast it with other operational definitions offered by different authors (feminist as well as anti-feminist authors)?

2) Has your professor given you criteria for determining who is a perpetrator of violence and who is a victim?

a) Did he say how he got to select these criteria?

b) Did he contrast it with other criteria offered by other authors (feminist as well as anti-feminist authors)?

3)If he indeed did contrast both the operational definition and the criteria, and did indeed say how he proceeded to select his own, what made you prefer his over some of the other authors'?

If you do not want to answer to me, I urge you, at the very least, to try to answer those questions for yourself. It is important that you do so for all of these sakes:

1 - Owning up to rationality and «facts» claims. It is not sufficient to claim that research results or that particular approaches (behaviorism, critical theory - or constructivism, say) are scientific, rational and sound in order to prove them as such. One day you will get asked by someone else than myself to back up what you are saying. Being prepared will help you.
2 - Learning the tools of critical thought is extremely precious. It makes the difference between caving in to ad verecundiam fallacies (appeals to authority) and gradually making our own minds about things. Do we believe things because an authority figure said them or because we have had the opportunity to compare and analyze all other perspectives, finally concluding that what that authority figure said made indeed more sense?
3- Since this issue is highly important on a human level, it is critical to be able to solidly back up whatever we claim about it - or recognize where we make leaps of faith.

So here goes, best of luck!

[greenie-breizh.livejournal.com]

I get the idea that the working/operational definition for a perpetrator of violence here was someone who gives a blow to someone else. Is that not concrete enough, and if not, why?

The scientific method means those numbers have been obtained using control groups and controlling for all kinds of aspects (I would assume that means gender, obviously, age, race, sexuality, ability). How is that not rational and/or truth?

(I'm mostly asking because I'd just like to understand more about what you're saying.)

[terra-placidus.livejournal.com]

Hi there,
No, was not hurt by your response, I'm just really puzzled by the arguments you're using. (I suspect, as I said before that there is an irreconcilable difference in the methods and ideas we hold as truth.) Your last reply however did come across as pretty condescending, and although I'm quite sure that wasn't intended, I thought I would bring it to your attention. Now, I am pretty hesitant in responding as I'm aware that the ideas I'm presenting somehow go against some pretty core beliefs, and I'm clearly in the minority in this environment.... but here goes.

Violence, here, is not operationalized as a theoretical construct, which is what you seem to be suggesting? It is operationalized as a number of discrete, measurable, quantifiable and distinct acts, as I stated when I replied to your first question above. This rests on the Law of Parsimony: if an idea or theory rests on a number of other theories, it is rejected as a poorer idea than one the rests on no corroborating theories. This is how we operationalize concepts in psychology. Here is an illustration: when we operationalize something like depression, we don't use a description of what we think depression is (this person has been suffering from low mood for the last six weeks, the mood disturbance is accompanied by changes in appetite and sleep patterns as well as a lack of interest in sex, etc), rather, we give it an operational definition: we make it measurable: this person scored XX on the Beck Depression Inventory, this defines them as depressed. Acts such as hitting, biting, kicking, threatening with a weapon, etc - define what we call violence.

In terms of victimization, numerous studies look at statements given to police, input of a therapist in court-mandated marital therapy, self-statements, witness statements, etc. In couples where the violence is bilateral, generally both partners are considered both victim and perpetrator. Regarding theories from other disciplines, again, we use the law of parsimony: if you can't quantify a theory of violence or victimhood, you cannot falsify it and if you cannot falsify it, you cannot prove it and if you cannot prove it, it has no persuasive scientific value. (This is not to say it has no value, I'll come back to that shortly.)

I prefer the methods of psychological science because they are scientific - they are testable, and falsifiable, and don't rely on politics or ideology. Scientists themselves, of course, as humans are potentially biased, but the scientific method is not. I prefer the scientific method not because claims of psychology are essentially claims mad by an authority, but because they are logical, falsifiable, testable and provable. I evaluate the scientific method as superior because it looks at ideas equally: any idea has to open itself to falsification before it will be taken seriously.

(cut off for length, continued below)

[terra-placidus.livejournal.com]

Feminism is an incredibly powerful political ideology, and as a woman, no, as a human being, I would be ungrateful and idiotic to pretend it has no value and is not important. However, it just that: a political ideology, not a tool of science. If feminism wishes be seen as a science then the onus is on it to express its tenets in an falsifiable way and then actually do the testing in order to prove itself. It is inappropriate and dangerous for feminism to dictate how and when scientific arguments are valid. As you said, this issue is of huge importance on a human level and that is why I find it deeply troubling that so many people are unwilling to consider facts established by the behavioural sciences based on feminist ideology. Ideology, not science.

I would invite you, in turn to consider why there is such a huge resistance to these ideas. Both you (I'm sorry I don't know your real name) and Helene, in response to my argument wherein I introduced the idea that men and women may be equally violent, you did not bother to engage with the idea itself, instead you attempted to undermine the source of the idea, a logical fallacy in and of itself. I agree critical thinking is of utmost importance, so why is it that you are using this discussion to criticize, but, and do correct me if I'm wrong, but not to think about the idea that these findings might be correct? What is so threatening about the possibility that there is equality in this sphere? What fundamental beliefs are so threatened by the notion of equality in violence?

Ideas of violence have a huge impact on that violence, and it's important that we get our concepts right. Right now, court mandated treatments of domestic violence are largely informed by feminist doctrine (ie, the Duluth model) and that is a horrible mistake. Psychology is able to examine, evaluate and predict behaviour, and when you look at studies of recidivism when treatment methods are compared, treatment based on psychological principle are far superior in combatting the problem. That is because psychology looks at what works and what doesn't and it adapts its approach to the problem.

The idea that male and females are equally violent with one another, should have a huge impact on how we treat violence, both legally and societally. That is, we are operating under an unproven and sexist concept of how domestic violence works, and that should be a problem to anyone who places any importance at all on the idea of gender equality.

[greenie-breizh.livejournal.com]

I want to (re)state that my problem is not with the idea that men suffer minor domestic abuse from women as often as women suffer minor domestic abuse as men do, or that domestic assault are often both partners exchanging blows. I want to find out more about the finding (which is up to me to do) because it is automatically suspect to me when a group that possesses privilege gets cast a victim, but I certainly have no problem with the idea that women can be just as violent as men. It would be pretty essentialist to believe differently. My interest is in what we make of that knowledge and how we understand it to fit into a greater framework of men-women relationships.

(Didn't you say that women do more often suffer greater harm as a result of abuse? I think it's important to distinguish between equality of intent and equality of actual harm caused. Not that I have a particular opinion on that topic as I haven't thought about it and the implications, but it does strike me as an important distinction?)