Thursday, May 12, 2011

Another Inanity From a Male Feminist

Ever since Hugo Schwyzer came to this blog to inform me that he's had it with me daring to have my own opinions about his writings, I tried hard to abstain from commenting on his articles. It's difficult, though, because he often writes things that make me think that I'd rather have no male feminists at all than ones who write this kind of stuff. See, for example, a recent post from somebody who, let me remind you, teaches about body image on a college level:
When I ask my female students, as I do every semester, “How many of you would say it’s easier to get along with guys than with girls”, invariably over half the young women in the class raise their hands. The reasons they give are always the same: “girls are so competitive”, “boys just have less drama”, “guys aren’t as critical.” Of course, not every woman feels this way – but plenty do. So it may surprise you to know that the research on eating disorders shows that critical comments from boys are much more likely to lead young women to start to diet or purge. In a major 2008 study called Family, Peer and Media Predictors of Becoming Eating Disordered researchers found that the hurtful remarks of male peers were more damaging to girls’ self-esteem than comments made by other women of any age, including peers and female relatives. Only the media had a comparable impact on young women’s self-esteem.
Leaving  aside the fact of how annoying it must be to shell out a huge sum for a college education only to end up in a classroom where you get your time wasted on condescending kindergarten-level questions, it is mind-boggling that anybody would honestly believe something as silly as this. Self-esteem is something that is created on the basis of one's very early childhood experiences. After that, nothing short of extensive therapy can influence one's self-esteem in any significant way.

A person with a high self-esteem can watch media images of skinny women and ripped men all day and every day for decades and remain completely unaffected. A person with a low self-esteem can go into a major bout of depression because s/he thinks that somebody might have looked at them in a critical way. If your self-esteem is high and you know for a fact that you are stunningly gorgeous, nobody will even try to insult you with nasty remarks about your appearance. Let's say you want to annoy, offend or bug a person for whatever reason. Will you come up to them and say, "You have three heads"? I don't think you will because something that is so patently untrue is not likely to offend.

When I was little, I was always surrounded by a group of adoring adults who would exclaim, "Here comes our beauty!" in unison whenever I would enter the room. Today, 30 years and many pounds and wrinkles later, I still hear this admiring chorus whenever I appear in public. I just took a walk around the block and tried to remember a single instance when "a girl or a guy" made a nasty comment about my appearance. I came up with nothing. So if you have little kids - or are planning to have them - just make sure they know that they are beautiful. If you do that for them, neither the scary media nor condescending male feminists will scare them. 

11 comments:

el said...

I agree that self-esteem is very important and influences how people treat you. However, imo you take it too far, probably partly because Autism prevents you from reading nonverbal clues, which in non-Autistic people are where a lion's share of communication happens (and negative messages are received) and from caring a lot about what not close to you people think. [I didn't mean it as a hurtful comment or as a bad thing. That's what I understood from your writings on Autism and it has its' good and bad sides, depending on the situation]. We have evolved as social animals (I am not religious and see us as biological species) and in group animals you have to pay attention and react to what others think, to try to rank high enough in the group. Seeing yourself rejected, criticized is bound to be hurtful. With our large brains the system is quite complicated. Of course, nowadays we can use those brains and understand that it isn't that important how you rank at school, unless you're bullied, it isn't your "real group" you need. Still if a person sees his body type constantly criticized in mass culture, it can provoke anxiety.

Today, 30 years and many pounds and wrinkles later, I still hear this admiring chorus whenever I appear in public.
But you are good looking. I liked that picture, where you sit smiling very much (more than the current serious, somewhat sad one).

There is also the disconnect of:

1) thinking Hugo talked of women with your weight, while it was about obese;

2) different social circles and culture. You are a university professor and in your circles people are valued for their intelligence, like you and Pagan Topologist do. In other social cultures, like high-school girls (often with not very good grades) or modeling, there is a huge emphasis on appearance. Your friends will be interested in your latest publication and this great book you read, their friends will gossip about 1 kg she gained or lossed. You can't honestly say no such differences exist.

el said...

When I ask my female students, as I do every semester, “How many of you would say it’s easier to get along with guys than with girls”, invariably over half the young women in the class raise their hands.

I "love" how over half, which means most, women think their gender is the worse one. It can't be anything except patriarchal cultural propaganda, otherwise how come those "unusual" women don't find each other? They're more than a half, after all, hardly a white sheep in a black herd cases.

The reasons they give are always the same: “girls are so competitive”, “boys just have less drama”, “guys aren’t as critical.”

Ha-ha-ha! The only overtly competitive and hurtfully critical people I saw at school were boys.

Case_1:

Scene1: End of middle school. A classmate I felt moderately friendly about (not close friends, but nicely talked a bit) gives me a lecture how he is going to some special high school and I go to the high school in the nearby building we see from the class's window, thus he needs (don't know the word) this piece of paper, which says you were the best (in class / among all 9th graders this year) more than I do. You understand, of course, I wasn't choosing who will get the paper! The best thing about it was that the talk was given during free lesson, when we stayed in class with a teacher, but did what we wanted, and we were sitting in front of the teacher's desk. Our desks (almost?) touched each other and she clearly heard every word. Then I listened seriously without feeling anything, quite indifferently, now I wonder how the teacher prevented herself from laughing! Wasn't it dramatic and insulting to himself to talk thus? I would've been ashamed and in front of the teacher too.

Cut to Scene2: End of year celebration for 9th grades in school auditorium. I get the paper, he doesn't. Music, I try to put the paper on the chair and dance a bit. He passes near me and gives a push with his shoulder. I am a bit surprised, but quite indifferent. Tell relatives of this interesting development.

Case_2: Nothing funny this time, just somebody who was competitive.

I told of the 1st case since I think it's very funny. You would write about it funnier, but still. Wasn't it?

Clarissa said...

" However, imo you take it too far, probably partly because Autism prevents you from reading nonverbal clues"

-I don't think Hugo's post was about non-verbal clues. It was very specifically about comments people make.

"Seeing yourself rejected, criticized is bound to be hurtful."

-Only by people whose opinion matters.

"it isn't that important how you rank at school, unless you're bullied, it isn't your "real group" you need."

-The most popular kids are always the most self-assured ones. They can look or weigh anything as long as they are secure. The kids who get bullied are always the ones who were victimized at home in some way.

" if a person sees his body type constantly criticized in mass culture, it can provoke anxiety"

-I don't see non-skinny body types being necessarily criticized in mass culture. They are not shown but that's not direct criticism.

Clarissa said...

' It can't be anything except patriarchal cultural propaganda, otherwise how come those "unusual" women don't find each other?'

-I also only had problems with girls when I was little. I think this is a result of which parent you get along better with. If you have trouble getting along with the father, you will have difficulties finding common ground with boys. If a relationship with the mother is problematic, you will perceive girls as dangerous. I don't think that it's patriarchal propaganda, as much as I like seeing that propaganda everywhere.

Clarissa said...

"I told of the 1st case since I think it's very funny. You would write about it funnier, but still. Wasn't it"

- :-) :-) :-)

V said...

Re original post, not the comments:
I do not think there actually is a contradiction between your view and Hugo's. Yes, some lucky people (good to know you are among them) probably get enough positive interactions in their childhood to make them forever immune to any kind of messages aimed at lowering their self esteem and thereby manipulating them.

But most of the people are not that lucky. And the majority of people does indeed fall prey to various beauty myths. And to advertisements, which, far from just informing the public about available goods and services, use all legal means to convince people to buy. They really do teach stuff called "psychology of advertisement" in some universities. And it is exactly about how to manipulate people and get an edge over other makers of similar products/services/ideas/lifestyles which require those products and services.

Of course one can argue that low self esteem is "primary" and the industry is just merely trying to satisfy the needs people have due to low self esteem. But imagine what would happen if all those people suddenly got their self esteem repaired - quite a lot of industries will get bankrupt - beauty, dieting, pharma, cosmetic surgery, and most of the advertising, to name a few. Thus, all those industries have vested interest in keeping everybody's self esteem low. Do you really believe they have vested interest in something and do nothing?

OK, maybe Hugo deals with the problem not in the best possible way. But at least he admits the problem exists AND something should be done about it.

Clarissa said...

The something that Hugo keeps proposing to be done about the problem is that men should be compassionate towards poor little fragile ladies. This understandably annoys me to no end. Women's self-esteem has absolutely whatsoever nothing to do with comments that any men can make to them in adulthood.

As for advertisement, I blogged recently about the indisputable fact that long before the advertisement industry even came into existence people still impoverished themselves by accumulating stuff. Primitive tribes engaged in all kinds of self-mutilations to improve their appearance.

el said...

Women's self-esteem has absolutely whatsoever nothing to do with comments that any men can make to them in adulthood.
Hugo talked about teenage girls and their peers in the quoted post.

V said...

Re: What Hugo proposes. My impression is that he does not propose men be compassionate per se. I'll give an exaggerated example: Suppose a boy thinks certain girl is fat. In my opinion, Hugo does not just propose that the boy has to be compassionate towards girl and not tell her she is fat or otherwise do anything which may lower the girl's self esteem. He proposes that the boy should examine his ideas about what is and is not beautiful and where those ideas come from.

Re: absence of advertisement in prehistoric times. Yes, you are right about advertisement in its modern form not existing in prehistoric times. But I believe modern advertisement merely occupied (and maybe expanded) the nish which always existed. In prehistoric societies people could be osracized for not following the customs of their tribe. Now advertisement essentially exploits the same wish (and respective fear) - to be accepted, to fit in - except the society which may ostracize one is partially imaginary. But psychological mechanism is the same.

Clarissa said...

"He proposes that the boy should examine his ideas about what is and is not beautiful and where those ideas come from."

-And if that's feminism, I'm ready to eat my big pink hat.

Let's say that somebody keeps saying that Russian-speakers are stupid. Will your response to that person be to ask them to reexamine their understanding of intelligence?

The guy is fixated on beauty and weight. That's his business, of course, but he actually teaches this junk at a college level. And then we wonder why Gender Studies have become such a joke.

Of course, the very idea that comments by men have any influence on female self-esteem is extremely disempowering. Where are the classes and articles exhorting "girls" not to harm male self-esteem with comments about male fatness? Or, alternatively, we can just publish an article saying, "People, please don't say mean stuff to each other." This is a useful suggestion but it will bring in no blog hits because it provides no space to feel sorry for women.

Melissa said...

I know I'm waaaaay late to the party on this one (I'm catching up on a month's worth of blog!) but this statement

"Women's self-esteem has absolutely whatsoever nothing to do with comments that any men can make to them in adulthood."

could not be more untrue, for me anyway. In fact, the single comment that has shaped my self-esteem more than any other in my entire life was made to me in adulthood by a man.