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(This is an alpha of an idea. Some thoughts are not fully-formed, others are missing essential components. This version is may also say Six Offensive Things Before Breakfast, intentionally or not. Feedback is solicited on all aspects of the entry and its idea to improve it.)
I've been thinking a bit about Traditional Roles (usually defined by the Past That Never Was), mostly due to the awesome comment squad following Ana Mardoll's Twilight deconstruction. I've been wondering about how the advent of women into the work places and social places that were Men Only (some of which are still male-majority, but which there are enough women inside to not be Men Only) have been changing those roles.
Are there such things as male-only spaces any more? And how does that affect the psyche of men raised in an environment where they are both told they have to Be Men, requiring Male Bonding/Initiation without women anywhere nearby, and that it is a good thing for women to be in places that were Men's Spaces?
[Also, somewhere: the role of QUILTBAG in all of this, because it helps to provide alternate interpretations from the cis-hetero-norm of What Men Are and What Women Are. Going to need lots of help there.]
[Brain, we have to be able to articulate this better. We are in favor of breaking glass ceilings, girl gamers, and equality. What do you mean and what sort of examples can we give of a space that would be male without running afoul of all the problems of misogyny? Do they even exist? Is your frame of reference wrong? How, in fact, could Men Be Men in the past without going into bad territory?]
I guess I can try to articulate this by imperfect analogy. In the past, the barber and the salon were separate places for hair care (and surgery, if we're going by the barber's historical roles) - one is "Shave and a haircut", the other a place where one went to get coiffed and primped. Serving different roles based on the societal expectations of different genders' hair styling, the two places semi-segregate based on gender, creating a space for men to talk about things with other men, and for women to talk about things with other women.
I'm not sure that many places exist any more that do that kind of segregation by gender. The existence of unisex hair salons, for one, and for another, most places that do hair of one sort or another will do both genders without blinking.
In any case, like most other forms of segregation, the obvious and public declaration that "this building is only for men" is highly Frowned Upon in modern, progressive society (with exceptions as noted above). I think some of that has to do with the history of men and privilege, some of it has to do with men and misogyny, and some of it has to do with the fact that women are pointing out that they, too, participate in and enjoy things that were once thought to be solely the domain of men, like contact sports and strip clubs. (Makes me wonder whether women are better tippers to the dancers or not.)
Anything that's talking about "men only" stuff becomes more difficult to discuss, especially because of people who believe that Men's Rights should be reverting all the changes that feminism has brought, making accusations that women now have special rights and have turned the courts and society against the proper male role, and otherwise behaving like The Past That Never Was is the example by which our modern society should live.
Or, worse, people think that "male only" spaces are now only the hordes of video gamers who want only cis hetero stories of male virility with lots of combat and no plot (which draws from astute reasons who a woman commenting on what women might want from the video games industry brought forth a cesspit of misogyny and lack of brains) and comics worlds and artists that fetishize impossible female bodies, place them in even more impossible poses, and then barely cover their bodies in impractical costumes. (And then complain about being uncomfortable if the situation is run in reverse.)
Even without that additional aggravation, it's a very delicate place to be in, because if you want to talk about these kind of things, you're running into the possiblity of seeming like you're anti-woman or anti-feminist. [Alpha of an idea - point out those spots where it happens, please.]
So what's left, these days? About the only physical places I can think that still gender-segregate usually have something to do with nudity, although not always. Locker rooms and Boy Scout meetings, for the most part. The Boy Scouts are their own brand of problematic, from appropriation of native ideas and rituals, through the BSA's staunchly anti-QUILTBAG stance and their insistence that monotheistic, Abrahamic religion is an essential part of life and growing up to be Men. They're not exactly who I would want to use as a role model.
Which leaves the locker room (and perhaps it's geeky equivalent, the RPG table). As stereotyped, it's one of those places where crude jokes, sexual boasts, misogyny, and anti-QUILTBAG sentiment run rampant, when the men aren't needling one of their own about any qualms they might have about joining in or about being naked around other men. (Kind of weird, that, actually - you're never supposed to look at another man's penis, that's unacceptably manly because other men will think you're gay, but at the same time, anyone who isn't necessarily comfortable showering with other men is apparently not manly enough, either.) There's a lot of talk about what men are supposed to be, and sport and celebrity are used as shorthand to describe what it is...or what it isn't, depending on which sports figures and celebrities you're talking about. But the constants of what Being A Man is in such spaces tend to revolve around your behavior toward sex and your behavior toward not showing unmanly emotions such as sorrow, depression, or fear.
So what would the modern, progressive "men's space" be like? To be honest, I have no f[BLEEP]ing clue. It has to be able to discuss QUILTBAG issues and be friendly. It has to be able to call out misogyny from the inhabitants. It has to have an environment that is intrinsically okay with things like feelings and uncertainties, with men who don't want the societal role of Tough Guy and Provider, with men who want to challenge that media role, find new role models, and to forge a new path. We also have to have some space for people to..."rehabilitate", for lack of a better word, the image that the Past That Never Was wants to project (or that the Boy Scouts want) into something that can coexist with the gains that feminism has made over the years. It has to be able to guide Nice Guys(TM) to better places.
What would such a space look like? Not just on-line, but what sort of place would that look like physically? What would that kind of space look like mentally?
...it says something about the progress of things that I can't even make a conception of it. Anyone else have an idea? What am I missing here?
And, actually, am I being gender-binarist when talking about men's spaces and women's spaces? Obviously, we need spaces for those who are genderqueer, agendered, fluid-gendered, and otherwise exist outside the binary (or tell the binary to go f[BLEEP] off.), especially if we want to have places like women's spaces and men's speaces. Should we be working toward a unified space where everyone is welcome? Hell Yes! The question past that is whether we also need spaces for those who identify a particular way so that they can talk about issues that arise from that identification...
(This has been an entry for Shadow Idol: Prompt 16 - Reinventing The Wheel. I don't know if this idea is doing that, but it very well could be retreading a discussion that's already happened in all sorts of other places.)
I've been thinking a bit about Traditional Roles (usually defined by the Past That Never Was), mostly due to the awesome comment squad following Ana Mardoll's Twilight deconstruction. I've been wondering about how the advent of women into the work places and social places that were Men Only (some of which are still male-majority, but which there are enough women inside to not be Men Only) have been changing those roles.
Are there such things as male-only spaces any more? And how does that affect the psyche of men raised in an environment where they are both told they have to Be Men, requiring Male Bonding/Initiation without women anywhere nearby, and that it is a good thing for women to be in places that were Men's Spaces?
[Also, somewhere: the role of QUILTBAG in all of this, because it helps to provide alternate interpretations from the cis-hetero-norm of What Men Are and What Women Are. Going to need lots of help there.]
[Brain, we have to be able to articulate this better. We are in favor of breaking glass ceilings, girl gamers, and equality. What do you mean and what sort of examples can we give of a space that would be male without running afoul of all the problems of misogyny? Do they even exist? Is your frame of reference wrong? How, in fact, could Men Be Men in the past without going into bad territory?]
I guess I can try to articulate this by imperfect analogy. In the past, the barber and the salon were separate places for hair care (and surgery, if we're going by the barber's historical roles) - one is "Shave and a haircut", the other a place where one went to get coiffed and primped. Serving different roles based on the societal expectations of different genders' hair styling, the two places semi-segregate based on gender, creating a space for men to talk about things with other men, and for women to talk about things with other women.
I'm not sure that many places exist any more that do that kind of segregation by gender. The existence of unisex hair salons, for one, and for another, most places that do hair of one sort or another will do both genders without blinking.
In any case, like most other forms of segregation, the obvious and public declaration that "this building is only for men" is highly Frowned Upon in modern, progressive society (with exceptions as noted above). I think some of that has to do with the history of men and privilege, some of it has to do with men and misogyny, and some of it has to do with the fact that women are pointing out that they, too, participate in and enjoy things that were once thought to be solely the domain of men, like contact sports and strip clubs. (Makes me wonder whether women are better tippers to the dancers or not.)
Anything that's talking about "men only" stuff becomes more difficult to discuss, especially because of people who believe that Men's Rights should be reverting all the changes that feminism has brought, making accusations that women now have special rights and have turned the courts and society against the proper male role, and otherwise behaving like The Past That Never Was is the example by which our modern society should live.
Or, worse, people think that "male only" spaces are now only the hordes of video gamers who want only cis hetero stories of male virility with lots of combat and no plot (which draws from astute reasons who a woman commenting on what women might want from the video games industry brought forth a cesspit of misogyny and lack of brains) and comics worlds and artists that fetishize impossible female bodies, place them in even more impossible poses, and then barely cover their bodies in impractical costumes. (And then complain about being uncomfortable if the situation is run in reverse.)
Even without that additional aggravation, it's a very delicate place to be in, because if you want to talk about these kind of things, you're running into the possiblity of seeming like you're anti-woman or anti-feminist. [Alpha of an idea - point out those spots where it happens, please.]
So what's left, these days? About the only physical places I can think that still gender-segregate usually have something to do with nudity, although not always. Locker rooms and Boy Scout meetings, for the most part. The Boy Scouts are their own brand of problematic, from appropriation of native ideas and rituals, through the BSA's staunchly anti-QUILTBAG stance and their insistence that monotheistic, Abrahamic religion is an essential part of life and growing up to be Men. They're not exactly who I would want to use as a role model.
Which leaves the locker room (and perhaps it's geeky equivalent, the RPG table). As stereotyped, it's one of those places where crude jokes, sexual boasts, misogyny, and anti-QUILTBAG sentiment run rampant, when the men aren't needling one of their own about any qualms they might have about joining in or about being naked around other men. (Kind of weird, that, actually - you're never supposed to look at another man's penis, that's unacceptably manly because other men will think you're gay, but at the same time, anyone who isn't necessarily comfortable showering with other men is apparently not manly enough, either.) There's a lot of talk about what men are supposed to be, and sport and celebrity are used as shorthand to describe what it is...or what it isn't, depending on which sports figures and celebrities you're talking about. But the constants of what Being A Man is in such spaces tend to revolve around your behavior toward sex and your behavior toward not showing unmanly emotions such as sorrow, depression, or fear.
So what would the modern, progressive "men's space" be like? To be honest, I have no f[BLEEP]ing clue. It has to be able to discuss QUILTBAG issues and be friendly. It has to be able to call out misogyny from the inhabitants. It has to have an environment that is intrinsically okay with things like feelings and uncertainties, with men who don't want the societal role of Tough Guy and Provider, with men who want to challenge that media role, find new role models, and to forge a new path. We also have to have some space for people to..."rehabilitate", for lack of a better word, the image that the Past That Never Was wants to project (or that the Boy Scouts want) into something that can coexist with the gains that feminism has made over the years. It has to be able to guide Nice Guys(TM) to better places.
What would such a space look like? Not just on-line, but what sort of place would that look like physically? What would that kind of space look like mentally?
...it says something about the progress of things that I can't even make a conception of it. Anyone else have an idea? What am I missing here?
And, actually, am I being gender-binarist when talking about men's spaces and women's spaces? Obviously, we need spaces for those who are genderqueer, agendered, fluid-gendered, and otherwise exist outside the binary (or tell the binary to go f[BLEEP] off.), especially if we want to have places like women's spaces and men's speaces. Should we be working toward a unified space where everyone is welcome? Hell Yes! The question past that is whether we also need spaces for those who identify a particular way so that they can talk about issues that arise from that identification...
(This has been an entry for Shadow Idol: Prompt 16 - Reinventing The Wheel. I don't know if this idea is doing that, but it very well could be retreading a discussion that's already happened in all sorts of other places.)
