A trio of completely unreleated posts has got my brain whirling this morning. First I read Mark Morford's latest column (fatphobia-free, hoorah!) about how there's Just Too Much Out There for modern folk (read: mostly well-off, mostly white, mostly urban Americans) to keep up with. Then I perused Dwight Meredith's patient explanation directed at those who would argue logic with anti-choicers (a daunting proposition at best) that, basically, men can't have abortion rights because men don't get pregnant (in legal parlance, they're "not similarly situated"). And then I noted that Cheryl Lynn is perplexed that, as a woman, the only kind of spam she seems to get is about erectile dysfunction.
And so I concluded that all three of these posts were, in the end, really all about the culture of male privilege and entitlement, and how so many, particularly in this country with its hyper-emphasis on individuality (which makes sense if the people in power don't want the folks without power who far outnumber them to engage in collective action against them, but that's another essay) are raised to believe that to be a man is to control your own destiny and, by extension, everything around you. And how all these things that Mark and Dwight and Cheryl talk about involve a lack of control that's interpreted as a loss of control, and to lose control (of your time, of your bodily functions, of the people around you, of your war) therefore implies that you're a failure as a man.
Never mind that women are (and ought to be) autonomous beings. Once they are impregnated, the above logic dictates that they are defined by the men who impregnate them, and who therefore have rights (both personal and legislative) over their incubators. Never mind that one can choose to turn off any electronic entertainment device at any time; one Must Keep Up to remain in the know! Never mind that the human body is a complicated and mysterious thing - if it doesn't obey one's every command at will there's something obviously wrong with it.
It's almost like a child believing that if he closes his eyes the world disappears. "Of course it's All About Us. We're told over and over again that we're the masters of our own fate!" And for an overwhelming number of these men, a lie repeated often enough becomes gospel. Because the alternative - the facts that they're not the center of their universe, that collective and cooperative action is often preferable to and accomplishes more than individual endeavor, and that there are just some things that one (male) human being cannot and never did control - is just too frightening to contemplate.
And so I concluded that all three of these posts were, in the end, really all about the culture of male privilege and entitlement, and how so many, particularly in this country with its hyper-emphasis on individuality (which makes sense if the people in power don't want the folks without power who far outnumber them to engage in collective action against them, but that's another essay) are raised to believe that to be a man is to control your own destiny and, by extension, everything around you. And how all these things that Mark and Dwight and Cheryl talk about involve a lack of control that's interpreted as a loss of control, and to lose control (of your time, of your bodily functions, of the people around you, of your war) therefore implies that you're a failure as a man.
Never mind that women are (and ought to be) autonomous beings. Once they are impregnated, the above logic dictates that they are defined by the men who impregnate them, and who therefore have rights (both personal and legislative) over their incubators. Never mind that one can choose to turn off any electronic entertainment device at any time; one Must Keep Up to remain in the know! Never mind that the human body is a complicated and mysterious thing - if it doesn't obey one's every command at will there's something obviously wrong with it.
It's almost like a child believing that if he closes his eyes the world disappears. "Of course it's All About Us. We're told over and over again that we're the masters of our own fate!" And for an overwhelming number of these men, a lie repeated often enough becomes gospel. Because the alternative - the facts that they're not the center of their universe, that collective and cooperative action is often preferable to and accomplishes more than individual endeavor, and that there are just some things that one (male) human being cannot and never did control - is just too frightening to contemplate.
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