Gender Can Lick My Snatch
I am sick of gender. I've always been resistant to arbitrary gender rules, broad GENDERalizations as they say, but this week, in light of the furor surrounding Christopher Hitchen's extremely interesting if factually questionable Why Women Aren't Funny article in Vanity Fair, an argument I had with a woman about menopause vs. the male mid-life crisis, and this film showing a woman punching a male comedian (acquaintance of mine) for being offensive, I just cain't stands it anymore. I've been agonizing over this post for some time now. I wanted to put together a cohesive, persuasive, and humorous article, but I'm discovering that I'm too close to the issue. It makes me too angry to properly organize my thoughts and have any sense of humor about the subject (Just to give you some perspective, I would remind you I made jokes while eulogizing my beloved grandmother). Just thought I'd warn you: this article isn't particularly funny or well organized.
Christopher Hitchen's Why Women Aren't Funny article was interesting. I agree with many of the elements of his argument but not necessarily his conclusions. The article itself is not nearly as interesting as the responses from several bloggers. Self-acknowledged not-funny women were pouring out of the woodwork barking about how women were too funny and how dare Hitchens suggest otherwise. The fact is that comedy is about perception, and the manipulation of thought. Like stage magic, there are tools one uses to manipulate the thought processes of the audience and those tools were originally invented by men for men to use in the interest of making men laugh in a male dominated society. This is not to say that women can't be funny--a great many are--but to say that women don't face a particular challenge in using the male tools of humor is like saying lefties don't have trouble using right handed scissors or that I look good in drag. The only "funny" woman that I heard sound off about it was Nora Ephron, who had the most appropriate response I could think of: paraphrased "Chris is a blowhard, yes comedy is difficult for women in a male dominated world, and yet I'm funny, so there."
I think the argument I had the other day regarding menopause vs. the male mid-life crisis was frustrating mostly because it was interrupted. Had we been able to finish, I think we could have come to some agreement. Where we got to was that she thought I was making light of menopause by comparing it to mid-life crises and I was saying she was unreasonably dismissing the male experience by refusing the comparison. Had we been able to continue debating I think we would have got to an important feature in the battle of the sexes: both men and women, at least in western society, are brought up with contradictory messages about themselves. Men are supposedly in charge. This is what I have been told from day one. At the same time, all of popular culture seems to be promoting the idea that anything a man can or will go through is at its core laughable. All men are buffoons. Just look at any sitcom. The man is a fat, stupid, lout and the wife is perfect in every way and a saint for putting up with him. Conversely, women are second class citizens subject to glass ceilings and sexual harassment, constantly fighting for equal treatment. At the same time they are held up as the givers of life, the bearers of children, the only truly important function in society. Plus women get a triple shot: they're told that giving birth, is not only the most important thing they can do, it's the ONLY important thing they can do, and if they don't, they are not real women and are relegated to buffoonland with us guys. Every single one of these messages we get is a lie. No man is always in charge, nor is he always a buffoon. No woman is always powerless, nor is she necessarily a saintly mother goddess. If we can just let this shit go and accept all people as flawed, complex, changing people without these prejudice, maybe menopause can be dealt with with the humor it needs and mid-life crises can be given the gravity and sensitivity men secretly want.
I can't speak to the experience of being female, but there is no good information out there on how to be a good man AND be happy being male. In my life, I can't think of a single instance when I was given any option other than 1) thoughtlessly push people around or 2) feel guilty about being male. The party line is this: men are in charge, men oppress women, by being male you automatically have done this, a good man would never do this and therefore no men are good and you can either feel guilty about your gender or just enjoy being one of those "bad" man. That is no more or less than a complete load of crap and I refuse to carry that around anymore. I have never been in charge of anything, I have never oppressed women, I have never unfairly profited from my maleness except for some upper body strength. Some men have done some things to harm women for which they should be ashamed. But I didn't, and the women who lump me with those men are bigots.
In dealing with gender, I find it immensely useful to imagine them reversed. It helps me get a perspective beyond one's normal perceptions. Never hit a woman. We all know that. But what about women hitting men? Take a look at this film. It's not a very funny stand-up set, but look at it with reversed genders. If it were a man walking on stage and punching a female comedian, even if the man were smaller than the woman, the cops would have been called. The guy would have ended up in jail on an assault charge. But somehow, it's okay for a woman to hit a man. My ex-wife (sensitive topic but you're nice people) hit me all the time, especially when we were about to get divorced. One day, she hit me one time too many, and I yelled "Stop fucking hitting me!" and kicked her. The only time I have ever struck a woman. Suddenly, despite the fact that she had been wailing on me and honestly trying to hurt me all day, I'm now an abusive husband. At least in my own guilt ridden mind and her shocked anger at me. But no one ever called her a husband beater. The image of the woman hitting her husband with a rolling pin was a mainstay of comedy for generations (not so much anymore), but reverse the genders on that. It's now a tear-jerker Lifetime movie of the week starring Valerie Bertinelli. Call me a hippie, but I think hitting others is a bad thing, no matter who you are.
The reversal of gender works for other things too. Objectification is a good one. Submitted for your perusal: A woman is standing alone in front of a car. A man comes out of nowhere. He pushes her down on the hood of the car, tears her shirt off, holds her down and has his way with her. Rape scene. A man is standing alone in front of a car. A woman comes out of nowhere. She pushes him down on the hood of the car, tears his shirt off, holds him down and has her way with him. Cologne commercial. Something is wrong here.
In conclusion, I would like to restate my original point. Gender and our perception of it is at least 95% bullshit. Within that remaining 5% are things like has-a-uterus/doesn't-have-a-uterus, deep-voice/high-voice, bleeds-monthly/doesn't-bleed-monthly. But beyond that, we have more in common as humans than we have differences. It's tough to be a woman. We all know that. It's tough to be a man too. Some people grudgingly acknowledge that. One final point that most people don't talk about is that no woman really knows what any other woman is going through, and no man really knows what any other man is going through. We say we do, but we really don't in any substantial sense. That's why pain management is such a difficult area of medicine; we do not have a reliable mechanism to relay to another person our internal experience of something. If you are going through a bad patch in your life, for all you know, that could be how everybody else feels all the time. The real basic truth is that it's tough to be alive, and no one knows just how tough it is to be you but you.
Christopher Hitchen's Why Women Aren't Funny article was interesting. I agree with many of the elements of his argument but not necessarily his conclusions. The article itself is not nearly as interesting as the responses from several bloggers. Self-acknowledged not-funny women were pouring out of the woodwork barking about how women were too funny and how dare Hitchens suggest otherwise. The fact is that comedy is about perception, and the manipulation of thought. Like stage magic, there are tools one uses to manipulate the thought processes of the audience and those tools were originally invented by men for men to use in the interest of making men laugh in a male dominated society. This is not to say that women can't be funny--a great many are--but to say that women don't face a particular challenge in using the male tools of humor is like saying lefties don't have trouble using right handed scissors or that I look good in drag. The only "funny" woman that I heard sound off about it was Nora Ephron, who had the most appropriate response I could think of: paraphrased "Chris is a blowhard, yes comedy is difficult for women in a male dominated world, and yet I'm funny, so there."
I think the argument I had the other day regarding menopause vs. the male mid-life crisis was frustrating mostly because it was interrupted. Had we been able to finish, I think we could have come to some agreement. Where we got to was that she thought I was making light of menopause by comparing it to mid-life crises and I was saying she was unreasonably dismissing the male experience by refusing the comparison. Had we been able to continue debating I think we would have got to an important feature in the battle of the sexes: both men and women, at least in western society, are brought up with contradictory messages about themselves. Men are supposedly in charge. This is what I have been told from day one. At the same time, all of popular culture seems to be promoting the idea that anything a man can or will go through is at its core laughable. All men are buffoons. Just look at any sitcom. The man is a fat, stupid, lout and the wife is perfect in every way and a saint for putting up with him. Conversely, women are second class citizens subject to glass ceilings and sexual harassment, constantly fighting for equal treatment. At the same time they are held up as the givers of life, the bearers of children, the only truly important function in society. Plus women get a triple shot: they're told that giving birth, is not only the most important thing they can do, it's the ONLY important thing they can do, and if they don't, they are not real women and are relegated to buffoonland with us guys. Every single one of these messages we get is a lie. No man is always in charge, nor is he always a buffoon. No woman is always powerless, nor is she necessarily a saintly mother goddess. If we can just let this shit go and accept all people as flawed, complex, changing people without these prejudice, maybe menopause can be dealt with with the humor it needs and mid-life crises can be given the gravity and sensitivity men secretly want.
I can't speak to the experience of being female, but there is no good information out there on how to be a good man AND be happy being male. In my life, I can't think of a single instance when I was given any option other than 1) thoughtlessly push people around or 2) feel guilty about being male. The party line is this: men are in charge, men oppress women, by being male you automatically have done this, a good man would never do this and therefore no men are good and you can either feel guilty about your gender or just enjoy being one of those "bad" man. That is no more or less than a complete load of crap and I refuse to carry that around anymore. I have never been in charge of anything, I have never oppressed women, I have never unfairly profited from my maleness except for some upper body strength. Some men have done some things to harm women for which they should be ashamed. But I didn't, and the women who lump me with those men are bigots.
In dealing with gender, I find it immensely useful to imagine them reversed. It helps me get a perspective beyond one's normal perceptions. Never hit a woman. We all know that. But what about women hitting men? Take a look at this film. It's not a very funny stand-up set, but look at it with reversed genders. If it were a man walking on stage and punching a female comedian, even if the man were smaller than the woman, the cops would have been called. The guy would have ended up in jail on an assault charge. But somehow, it's okay for a woman to hit a man. My ex-wife (sensitive topic but you're nice people) hit me all the time, especially when we were about to get divorced. One day, she hit me one time too many, and I yelled "Stop fucking hitting me!" and kicked her. The only time I have ever struck a woman. Suddenly, despite the fact that she had been wailing on me and honestly trying to hurt me all day, I'm now an abusive husband. At least in my own guilt ridden mind and her shocked anger at me. But no one ever called her a husband beater. The image of the woman hitting her husband with a rolling pin was a mainstay of comedy for generations (not so much anymore), but reverse the genders on that. It's now a tear-jerker Lifetime movie of the week starring Valerie Bertinelli. Call me a hippie, but I think hitting others is a bad thing, no matter who you are.
The reversal of gender works for other things too. Objectification is a good one. Submitted for your perusal: A woman is standing alone in front of a car. A man comes out of nowhere. He pushes her down on the hood of the car, tears her shirt off, holds her down and has his way with her. Rape scene. A man is standing alone in front of a car. A woman comes out of nowhere. She pushes him down on the hood of the car, tears his shirt off, holds him down and has her way with him. Cologne commercial. Something is wrong here.
In conclusion, I would like to restate my original point. Gender and our perception of it is at least 95% bullshit. Within that remaining 5% are things like has-a-uterus/doesn't-have-a-uterus, deep-voice/high-voice, bleeds-monthly/doesn't-bleed-monthly. But beyond that, we have more in common as humans than we have differences. It's tough to be a woman. We all know that. It's tough to be a man too. Some people grudgingly acknowledge that. One final point that most people don't talk about is that no woman really knows what any other woman is going through, and no man really knows what any other man is going through. We say we do, but we really don't in any substantial sense. That's why pain management is such a difficult area of medicine; we do not have a reliable mechanism to relay to another person our internal experience of something. If you are going through a bad patch in your life, for all you know, that could be how everybody else feels all the time. The real basic truth is that it's tough to be alive, and no one knows just how tough it is to be you but you.
posted by John McKenna at 2:24 PM
1 Comments:
Good thoughts, as usual, John. I would add one thing, though -- the reason woman standing/male approaching is a rape scene is that men and women are different. The male homo sapiens is typically considerably stronger than the female, and this difference has been accentuated by sapiens society, both in allowing females to develop physical strength, and in allowing them to use it without losing a diaphanous aura of "femininity." I'm not saying this is right, but it is present, and must be considered.
I agree fully that I'd like this perceived difference to go away. There's no reason for a woman to put up with that shit if she doesn't want to, just like there's no reason a man should. As much of the block is exerting the will to say "no" and punch the idiot in the balls as it is the physical strength a woman needs to do damage to a man.
As usual, another excellent post (and I can finally comment! Thanks Google).
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