My First Rant

What's a 'blog without a good rant? So in that vein, here's my first.

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I’m still not entirely sure what this guy is trying to say:

http://www.claremont.org/writings/crb/winter2003/moore.html

When I first started to read the article, I figured it would be simply and assuredly of the same vein as this article: http://www.newswithviews.com/news_worthy/news_worthy.htm where the only message I can walk away with is, “Wah, wah, why won’t a man do it for me?”

However, the Claremont article starts off screeching, and by the time it’s over, I’m not sure what I’ve read. I had to read it more than once.

My gut reaction is that this guy is just another breed of bigot, labeling anything he doesn’t understand or agree with as wrong, but he goes on to say some rather insightful things amid the absurdist ramblings about ‘real men.’

He advocates shame as a viable method of discipline in spite of the psychological evidence that it is damaging to a child, leading to other self-destructive behaviors. Yet buried in this bizarre recrimination of both ‘barbarian’ and ‘wimp’ there are a few moments of understanding.

I’ve read enough pop psychology and been male long enough to realize that I see and experience things differently than most women, yet that same body of knowledge has shown me that gender tendencies are just that: tendencies.

There is a reason psychology uses the terms masculine and feminine rather than male and female.

In my opinion, his biggest mistake is stating categorically that men and boys need X, and women and girls need Y. This is patently and provably untrue, yet it IS true that masculine and feminine psyches develop differently and respond differently to stimulus and environment. The problem is that the issue isn’t binary and never was.

Ultimately his thesis implies that men are incapable of competing on a level playing field socially, academically, or fiscally, yet it is apparently a pro-male piece.

Gender roles, as I understand them, are mostly arbitrary these days. They are the product of our evolution and the progress of our civilization. Many of the things we regard as gender roles grew out of a biological imperative that no longer holds the power it once did.

Technology and advances in our understanding of psychology have made spaces for people once marginalized. Women warriors are more acceptable due to technological and societal advances and male caretakers have shown that women are not inherently better suited to providing emotional support to children.

What radical feminists and these chest-beaters seem to miss consistently is that there is common and middle ground to be explored that doesn’t trivialize gender or overly homogenize us.

Gender issues are things I think about regularly, and I don’t claim to have all the answers, but the attitude taken by many that we re-discover our gender identity all too frequently come with the added baggage of denigrating our counterparts. In the Claremont article, he advocates the use of such language as, “You throw like a girl.”

The implication of a statement like that should be clear: girls don’t throw well or more generally, you (as a boy) are expected to be better than a girl.

This is dangerous thinking because it sets in place divisions that are not governed by what is, but by what the speaker believes ought to be. It encourages the arbitrary gender division of activity and capacity making opponents of us. It demeans over half the race.

Research makes it clear that we have tendencies given our genders, and that methodology for dealing with each must vary, but it also makes clear that these tendencies scale and as human beings, we all reside at different points in the spectrum of potential. All men do not occupy a single coordinate any more than all women occupy another.

In any event, I don’t know it all and I won't claim to. Feel free to disagree. If you do it civilly and convincingly enough, I might even modify my stance.