From Octoberish:
For permission to chat with Pamy:
http://www.jacksonkatz.com/pub_interview.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/magazine/23Women-t.html?_r=3&emc=eta1&pagewanted=all
And for supplemental—and lively—discussion, we thank Missy:
The crux of Katz: we can deal with “women’s issues” (i.e. rape, domestic violence, etc.) by making them men’s issues. In his succinct words: “name the problem as men’s attitudes and behaviors in patriarchal culture,” so that we can move beyond “just cleaning up after the fact.” Forward thinking and paradigm shiftacular (thanks, Pamy, we expect no less from you) as this is, we began by working backwards—I blame patriarchy—by discussing semantic devices and the consequent creation of a Great White Male Anonymity, popularly known in my head as GWMA. Classy as its acronymystical moniker is, GWMA’s employment of the passive voice to discuss “women being raped” and crafting of curricula to inform women that to wear a short skirt is “asking for it,” among other things, has shifted much culpability for sexual violence onto females and given GWMA free reign at aggressing sexually and suppressing instrumental reform. We felt it necessary to briefly muse over the origins of femaleness; apparently there’s no better way to clean up than find where the bomb went off.
The crux of us: what had relegated women time and again to passive and objectified roles? A turn to the Standard Social Science Model helped us feel confidently lost. Joseph provided insight, explaining how it is that reinforcement schedules and environmental contingencies combine to create a powerful set of reactions within a person. When mastered, these principles can control behavior. In a word on this line of reasoning, the most powerful source of behavior control is our environment. Though some of us have the question; what if [feminine nurturing] [female tenderness] [passivity of the girl] is an instinct and, if so, what role does cognition play and what is its interface with the environmental factors? Couched in the abstruse? Yes, it is. Fortunately, a function of the honesty that this interdisciplinary club demands, Pamy’s subsequent story muddied the waters and illustrated that we have a long way to go before we solve the world’s problems. She told of a woman who suffered a miscarriage and, when her three year-old daughter found out there wouldn’t be a baby anymore and started crying, she asked her daughter why she was so upset. The daughter asked if it was her own fault that the baby had died. We all took a breath at that and kind of moved on, most likely because none of us feel confident in understanding how to begin understanding the dynamics of this situation, let alone spell it all out. Shame on us.
A comment popped out about seeing less machismo in our generation. The hope is that we’re not as chauvinistic as the characters we see on older television programs. The following situation is a common motif, common to many elder-younger interactions.
The story goes that a cross-generational gathering comes about and a conversation between folks with common socio-economic or religious background arises, usually between folks who don’t know each other all too well and need to rely on a set of cultural values that had already been established in previous meetings of similar groups (oh, bless this transparent mess). An older gentleman might say something to catch the attention of the younger members of the group, who are usually slow to speak up for any number of reasons (desire to establish rapport, desire to avert upsetting the man providing some sort of financial nourishment, etc.). Instead, looks are shot to the ground and oblique language is employed in order to cope with what is happening.
This scene does more than just quantify the amount of male chauvinism that we find in our societies, it raises topics of linguistic pragmatics, seniority scripts, faith that unwanted pasts are indeed being shed, and even intracultural us/them mentality.
Boom. We started talking about the actual paradigm shift from blaming the women to blaming the men. Accepting now the need for action and potential remedies as proscribed by Katz and co., we became interested in the shock factor that comes. Often an older generation would be jerked too greatly by a complete polarization of values (as this regard for tradition continues to evoke transparency, bwaa ha ha).
To rationalize our position to the ghosts that be, we discussed how rape isn’t about sex. It sits on a different line along with involvement in pornography and masturbation. These activities utilize the convention of stimulation-orgasm-habit to teach folks that sex is about power and domination, not love and selflessness. Such a contradiction is harrowing, though very accessible to cultures of self-service and relativist spin. Perhaps the key to accepting Katz’s ideas in their fullest deals with viewing sex as a medium through which people can display respect for peoples’ agency of choice. Certainly a good creed to place in a utopia’s constitution, this conclusion may be accurate, though it must be supported by coping methods for the interim.
Joe suggested some kind of an inchoate research model regarding social contingency introduction. The method would give reforming perpetrators (or those who simply harbor attitudes) choices rather than questionnaires. The hope would be that looking for answers to questions like “why did you hit her?” that run deeper than “I was mad” might reveal what the perpetrators are seeking and provide them with socially acceptable alternatives for them to take control of and work towards.
Love, ya’ll. Here’s some more ideas that may or may not have come up and may or may not be possible to integrate into the conversation:
“No, no, no don’t read the us/them here. He’s inclusive.”
“Relapse is inevitable. Polarization will occur.”
“Take it too far and you’ll turn people off.”
“Paradigm shift is to A=B=C life, just so you can later remove the lines.”
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