On Boys and Patriarchy

[redqueen]

http://www.achilleseffect.com/2012/04/on-boys-and-patriarchy/

(snip)

Our culture teaches boys that physical strength and dominance are the most valuable traits a man can possess. Just look at the average animated superhero, like Hal Jordan here, or listen to the language used in a typical sports broadcast, where athletes are valued for being “tough” as much as for having any skill. In cartoons targeted to boys, action is often delivered in the form of violence, reinforcing the link between male heroism and physical dominance.

At the same time, children’s pop culture trades on stereotypes of both sexes and often relegates female characters (if they are present) to small, supporting roles. Rarely are female characters protagonists or heroes. Those females who are considered heroes, like Wonder Woman, are never the star of a program. They are part of a team, not leaders or solo heroes, and they tend to be highly sexualized. In short, kids’ pop culture reinforces many aspects of patriarchy–men are shown as dominant and women, when present, are diminished and devalued.

Even children who watch little television or film are not immune to the influence of popular culture. Its tentacles extend beyond television and cinema to book shelves, toy stores, and clothes. It is then shared through conversation with peers. To wit, a 5-year-old girl who visited our home last week told me that she couldn’t believe my son “plays with girl toys.”

Children learn some of their most important gender lessons in the home and from family members, but our culture can influence parents’ and caregivers’ attitudes as well. Here are some examples from my experience. I once read a parenting “advice” column that referred to boys who cry “too much” as “wimps.” I was recently party to a conversation about a young boy who wasn’t interested in sounding out the words in his introductory reading book. A well-educated parent who calls herself a feminist chalked this up to “boy laziness” and noted that boys typically cannot sit still long enough to read. And I was once told by a father when an older boy was swatting and shoving a younger boy on his baseball team that it was “the law of the playground.” In other words, this boy was not misbehaving or being a problem, he was just being a boy.

More at link.

[undergroundpanther]

1. Boys

Boys will be boys is a euphemism for boys will be assholes and thats OK!.

What gets me is how some mothers with boys,they baby them,who make excuses for when their precious boy is an asshole..never teaching the boy how to wash a dish,do laundry,or cook for themselves. And these mothers instill an entitlement and a selfish self pity streak in their boys so that any girl they get serious with has to take care of him. Men like that never grew up so they seek mommy#2 and a maid and a sex toy. Some men always feel superior to her in subtle ways or some men think she is a servant or worse abuse her.

Sometimes men get a minor problem like a short lived case of the runs. He moans and complains,and all plans are interrupted because HE has a minor discomfort..but to their female partner get to stop cooking&cleaning if they have the runs? For some adult-child men,the woman cannot stop,because the male would not do any housework~ever~.He assumes the drudgery of cleaning,cooking,doing laundry is womans work. has been raised by his mom to be patriarchal.

Mothers need to teach their little boys to cook,clean, give them the message he's special like everyone else,and not to be an asshole.

[redqueen]

2. It takes a village.

Mothers do need to stop reinforcing gender norms, but so do fathers, uncles, aunts, grandparents, teachers, doctors, etc.

Whatever the excuse (feminism isn't hip and cool, the boy will be teased by gender-norm enforcing peers, tradition etc.) it all has to stop.

[madmom]

3. It's funny, I did exactly that. My son cooks, cleans, changes dirty diapers and all

the other "women's" work. (At times if he hadn't, his kids would have gone hungry, but that's another story) Yet he was and still is called a "momma's boy"!

Oh and he does this while holding down a full time job, and taking on-line classes to become an accountant! (was accepted into honors society fraternity)

[Iggo]

5. Actually, it's a euphemism for...

..."we teach these boys to be assholes, so fuck you!"

My mom, perhaps realizing she wasn't going to knock down ages and ages of gender role indoctrination, instead used reverse psychology to good effect when teaching me and my bro to cook, clean, and do our own laundry. She told us, "Any man who believes in 'woman's work' is a momma's boy." In other words, if you expect a woman to clean up after you, you're a child, not a man. And it worked, too.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

4. Russell Baker

“Eternal boyhood is the dream of a depressing percentage of American males, and the locker room is the temple where they worship arrested development.“ Russell Baker

[redqueen]

6. That is fantastic.

Thank you.

[Iggo]

7. I like that.

I like it a lot.

[Warren DeMontague]

8. I don't think Russell Baker's ever been in an actual locker room.

Usually, the idea is to put the shorts on, pee, and get out.

[Odin2005]

12. I was viciously bullied in the high-school locker room because...

...I was a "nerd" and a "sissy sensitive guy" and therefore I was assumed to be gay, even though I am totally straight. It got so bad that the school let me change into my gym uniform in the coach's room

[Warren DeMontague]

13. Good grief.

Thankfully I think schools are taking that sort of thing much more seriously. When I was growing up Middle School seemed to be the locus of most of that kind of crap, by the time everyone got to High School things had mellowed out.

But my comment on the quote in question pertained to adult men, of whom I don't think spend a whole helluva lot of time in "locker rooms", certainly not engaging in typical male locker room behavior, like enabling the patriarchy or conspiring to oppress women through porn or whatever it is that we're supposed to be up to in there.

In my limited adult experience pertaining to locker rooms, most adult men want to spend as little time in there as possible (even in the cushy athletic club ones) mostly because we don't want to get some kind of foot fungus.

[Warren DeMontague]

10. "Eternal complaining is the dream of a depressing percentage of American Females, who seem to

think that meaningless gibberish and endless amounts of navel gazing and cultural grousing will suffice to compensate for the glaring lack of meaning at the core of their existence" -Warren DeMontague

[Warren DeMontague]

9. The "average animated superhero"?

You mean, SpongeBob?

[Odin2005]

11. It seems like the majority of my fellow guys have the emotional maturity of a 12yo.

It's the big reason most of my friends are women, women of my generation seem to be lot more emotionally mature than the men. It seems like among men being smart, educated, and polite makes you "un-cool".