livius drusus
11-15-2004, 02:41 PM
We've touched on gender analysis in several threads now, and I thought it might be useful to look at a sociological gender study in action. I haven't gotten the book yet, but here's (http://www.alternet.org/election04/20343/) an interesting interview with Stephen Ducat, psychology professor and author of The Wimp Factor: Gender Gaps, Holy Wars, and the Politics of Anxious Masculinity (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0807043443/qid=1100479695/sr=8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/102-8611658-6521763?v=glance&s=books&n=507846) which gives us something to sink our teeth into.
Ducat's basic thesis is:
The underlying premise of my book is that the most important thing about being a man is not being a woman. This imperative to be repudiate everything feminine – whether it's external or internal – is played out as much in politics as in personal life.
In politics – where there is an enormous potential for personal gain or ruin – what this leads to is a concerted effort on the part of candidates to disavow the feminine in themselves, and to project it on to their opponents.
He suggests that the prevailing notion of masculinity is one grounded in relational dominace: you're a man if you dominate the non-man (who might not necessarily be a woman).
Manhood for the ancient Greeks – just as it is for us – was a difficult and transient achievement. It wasn't the gender that you had sex with that determined your masculinity, but what position you occupied in a relationship of domination. If you were penetrated, you were rendered essentially a woman. If you were the penetrator, then you were the man. In a way, we still hold that definition.
An example of how this dynamic plays itself in the political arena is the equation of aristocratic mannerism with effeminacy; something Bush Sr. struggled with when his "Wimp Factor" made the cover of Newsweek, although the phenomenon is far older than GHWB.
In American politics – both in the 19th century and in the present – it is a short step from seeming gilded to looking gelded. So there is an effort to adopt a persona of primitive masculinity. And the important thing to remember is that this is a makeover of style and not of substance. These are still wealthy members of the ruling elite, but their class is now camouflaged by virtue of this re-masculinization.
Intellect - as demonstrated by careful thought and articulation - is somehow feminine (the irony is huge given how thousands of years of philosophy associated female with body and male with brain), particularly when compared to the extreme physicality of the hyper-masculine, so stereotypical notions of the hard fightin' "working class" are applied to candidates in order to make them come across as "one of the guys". Kerry's late hunting expeditions are an example of this, I think: an attempt to depict the smart guy as the man of action (complete with shotgun phallus ;)).
This is where his inarticulateness actually becomes an advantage – because in American culture, there is a disdain for intellectuality. And that disdain is a gendered disdain – men who are intellectual are seen as somehow less manly. And so if somebody speaks too well, or too articulate, his masculinity is called into question. That is why Kerry’s demeanor and facility with language has been problematic for him, while Bush’s dyslexia and inarticulateness and graceless use of language has actually been an advantage.
Ducat then moves on to the gender gap and how the emergence of a difference in male and female voting patterns has led to the gendering of certain issues. The examples he uses are of environmentalism being seen as a female issue, while an anti-regulatory position is a male one. Not that women are predominantly environmentalists or men predominantly anti-regulatory, mind you, but that the issues themselves become gendered. The environment is girly; small government is manly.
He notes that the gender gap appears not only in the decade following the feminist push for equal rights, but also following the defeat in Vietnam, an event of such cultural impact - particularly on the political stage - that the media even coins a term for it: Vietnam Syndrome.
We can understand the Vietnam Syndrome as a kind of wounded male self-esteem suffered by those who identify with a militarized nation-state and thereby feel humiliated vicariously in the defeat of the military in Vietnam.
Of course, in Vietnam, we weren’t just defeated by any enemy. We were defeated by an enemy that was largely viewed as somehow effeminate – you know, these little unmanly guys in black pajamas. They were constantly being derided in those terms, and yet they kicked America’s ass. And that was experienced as a profound humiliation.
It's a revved up, more Rambo than Rambo, version of this syndrome which descends upon the post 9/11 landscape.
So for a brief period of time, there’s this kind of humility that comes over the country, but it quickly produces a kind of hyper-masculine backlash. It’s the revivication of a kind of primitive masculinity – the numerous kind of Chippendale-style calendars of firemen and policemen, the kind of conventional male heroes, which of course politicians wanted to appropriate.
[...]
You had all kinds of over-the-top, gushing encomia to this sort of post-9/11 revivified manhood. There was this special issue of the American Enterprise titled, “Real Men, They’re Back.” There was this article titled, “Return of Manly Leaders and the Americans Who Love Them.” There was even this contest where they had a chart of how Republicans and Democrats measured up and their conclusion was that to be a man you had to be a Republican.
That in turn feeds into the Bush administration's refusal to admit to error in Iraq. Admitting error is weak, collaboration or dependence is weak; real men neither eat quiche nor ask for directions, so clearly the administration's choices are manly, not obstinate.
To acknowledge a mistake, especially a mistake that involves failure to listen to advice – the proverbial refusal to ask for directions – imperils their manhood. And so, instead of this kind of behavior being pigheaded arrogance, it’s framed as manly resoluteness.
All in all, I found this an illuminating perspective and gender a useful prism through which to view politics both contemporary and historical. When I get the book I'll be better able to deal with methodological questions, but until then, I'd like to know what y'all think about Ducat's analysis. Does it ring true for you? Does it present something you've already encountered in a new light? Is it old news? Do you agree or disagree with a specific point or points?
Ducat's basic thesis is:
The underlying premise of my book is that the most important thing about being a man is not being a woman. This imperative to be repudiate everything feminine – whether it's external or internal – is played out as much in politics as in personal life.
In politics – where there is an enormous potential for personal gain or ruin – what this leads to is a concerted effort on the part of candidates to disavow the feminine in themselves, and to project it on to their opponents.
He suggests that the prevailing notion of masculinity is one grounded in relational dominace: you're a man if you dominate the non-man (who might not necessarily be a woman).
Manhood for the ancient Greeks – just as it is for us – was a difficult and transient achievement. It wasn't the gender that you had sex with that determined your masculinity, but what position you occupied in a relationship of domination. If you were penetrated, you were rendered essentially a woman. If you were the penetrator, then you were the man. In a way, we still hold that definition.
An example of how this dynamic plays itself in the political arena is the equation of aristocratic mannerism with effeminacy; something Bush Sr. struggled with when his "Wimp Factor" made the cover of Newsweek, although the phenomenon is far older than GHWB.
In American politics – both in the 19th century and in the present – it is a short step from seeming gilded to looking gelded. So there is an effort to adopt a persona of primitive masculinity. And the important thing to remember is that this is a makeover of style and not of substance. These are still wealthy members of the ruling elite, but their class is now camouflaged by virtue of this re-masculinization.
Intellect - as demonstrated by careful thought and articulation - is somehow feminine (the irony is huge given how thousands of years of philosophy associated female with body and male with brain), particularly when compared to the extreme physicality of the hyper-masculine, so stereotypical notions of the hard fightin' "working class" are applied to candidates in order to make them come across as "one of the guys". Kerry's late hunting expeditions are an example of this, I think: an attempt to depict the smart guy as the man of action (complete with shotgun phallus ;)).
This is where his inarticulateness actually becomes an advantage – because in American culture, there is a disdain for intellectuality. And that disdain is a gendered disdain – men who are intellectual are seen as somehow less manly. And so if somebody speaks too well, or too articulate, his masculinity is called into question. That is why Kerry’s demeanor and facility with language has been problematic for him, while Bush’s dyslexia and inarticulateness and graceless use of language has actually been an advantage.
Ducat then moves on to the gender gap and how the emergence of a difference in male and female voting patterns has led to the gendering of certain issues. The examples he uses are of environmentalism being seen as a female issue, while an anti-regulatory position is a male one. Not that women are predominantly environmentalists or men predominantly anti-regulatory, mind you, but that the issues themselves become gendered. The environment is girly; small government is manly.
He notes that the gender gap appears not only in the decade following the feminist push for equal rights, but also following the defeat in Vietnam, an event of such cultural impact - particularly on the political stage - that the media even coins a term for it: Vietnam Syndrome.
We can understand the Vietnam Syndrome as a kind of wounded male self-esteem suffered by those who identify with a militarized nation-state and thereby feel humiliated vicariously in the defeat of the military in Vietnam.
Of course, in Vietnam, we weren’t just defeated by any enemy. We were defeated by an enemy that was largely viewed as somehow effeminate – you know, these little unmanly guys in black pajamas. They were constantly being derided in those terms, and yet they kicked America’s ass. And that was experienced as a profound humiliation.
It's a revved up, more Rambo than Rambo, version of this syndrome which descends upon the post 9/11 landscape.
So for a brief period of time, there’s this kind of humility that comes over the country, but it quickly produces a kind of hyper-masculine backlash. It’s the revivication of a kind of primitive masculinity – the numerous kind of Chippendale-style calendars of firemen and policemen, the kind of conventional male heroes, which of course politicians wanted to appropriate.
[...]
You had all kinds of over-the-top, gushing encomia to this sort of post-9/11 revivified manhood. There was this special issue of the American Enterprise titled, “Real Men, They’re Back.” There was this article titled, “Return of Manly Leaders and the Americans Who Love Them.” There was even this contest where they had a chart of how Republicans and Democrats measured up and their conclusion was that to be a man you had to be a Republican.
That in turn feeds into the Bush administration's refusal to admit to error in Iraq. Admitting error is weak, collaboration or dependence is weak; real men neither eat quiche nor ask for directions, so clearly the administration's choices are manly, not obstinate.
To acknowledge a mistake, especially a mistake that involves failure to listen to advice – the proverbial refusal to ask for directions – imperils their manhood. And so, instead of this kind of behavior being pigheaded arrogance, it’s framed as manly resoluteness.
All in all, I found this an illuminating perspective and gender a useful prism through which to view politics both contemporary and historical. When I get the book I'll be better able to deal with methodological questions, but until then, I'd like to know what y'all think about Ducat's analysis. Does it ring true for you? Does it present something you've already encountered in a new light? Is it old news? Do you agree or disagree with a specific point or points?