Well I'm glad the problem could be worse, better, or the same. Super important to point that out.
Young South Korean Men Revolt Against Feminism in South Korea
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I'm sure you'll make all manner of false equivalences; I would expect nothing less.
I needed to take a break from this, so er.. this is gonna be a slow process of catching up.
I think, on a personal level, it is reasonable to feel threatened by and afraid of men. I think everyone kind of knows that. It does not escape my notice, for example, that if this were an argument about transwomen being allowed in women's changing rooms, most of the people getting defensive at me would not be questioning why women can't feel safe to change with men present, or demanding that they be allowed to go into women's changing rooms because of course they're not going to creep on or assault anyone. They don't have the potential, you know!
We all have the potential to rape someone, just as we all have the potential to murder someone, or to commit any crime imaginable. It doesn't mean we secretly want to do these things, it only means that we could. The only thing that separates us from doing these things is actually doing them. It doesn't really matter what someone wants or doesn't want to do, it matters what they actually do. Rapists are typically not the people who sit around jacking off to Irreversible because their brains are messed up, they're just ordinary people who crossed a line, often a line they didn't clearly see or which they were able to make excuses for.
The question is not "why are men psychologically driven to rape", the people who ask that question tend to be on the other side. The question is "why do men seem to find it particularly hard to see or appreciate the lines they shouldn't cross". I don't think the answer to that question lies in individual psychology. I think you have to look at the whole environment.
My problem with the toxic masculinity discourse isn't that I don't think there can be any cultural component to problems like sexual violence. The patterns of sexual violence in our society make it very obvious that there is a cultural component to it. What I disagree with is the idea that cultural expression is important, that the way a person acts, talks or behaves is necessarily indicative of how safe they are.
Toxic masculinity tends to assume that masculinity is a static typography of rigid social codes. Essentially, it's the idea that there's a bunch of different "types" of masculinities which denote distinct cultural expressions: behaviour, norms and values. I don't think this holds up, I don't think it matches the body of empirical research on men and masculinities and I think it's theoretically complacent. If the social problems associated with masculinity (such as men's sexual violence towards women or men's inability to deal with mental health) were simply the product of one particular "type" of masculinity among others that men could choose to freely accept or reject, then these problems would have vanished decades if not centuries ago, because men (and masculinities) are extremely culturally adaptable.
The society we live in has been, broadly speaking, male dominated for basically all of its history. I don't think that's a random chance or accident, I don't think it's that one particular culture of "toxic masculinity" took over thousands of years ago and never changed. The specific cultural expression of men has always changed. Men have not always hidden their feelings, avoided intimate friendships for fear of homoeroticism or watched porn, what has not changed (and still hasn't changed as much as anyone likes to pretend) is the underlying cultural association between masculinity and power. Masculinity in this culture is all about power, and that's been true for as long as the concept has existed.
The instrumentality towards sex and relationships that I described is something that I know a lot of men share, because it is the only way to explain how they behave. My particular slutty manifestation of that attitude is entirely down to me and my insecurities and the things that got me there, although I see similar (though very seldom identical) attitudes in men. It crops up in research, in popular culture and in people I meet.
Generally, a lot of men use women for security, or to plug holes in their lives. Not all of them are sluts who need sex to fill that hole. Some men need women to look after them. Some men need women to love them. Some men measure the respect of other men via things like marriage, children, being a "good" husband, being a successful man or a provider.
All of these needs can become the basis of a need for control.
I don't think it implies that at all.
I think, on a personal level, it is reasonable to feel threatened by and afraid of men. I think everyone kind of knows that. It does not escape my notice, for example, that if this were an argument about transwomen being allowed in women's changing rooms, most of the people getting defensive at me would not be questioning why women can't feel safe to change with men present, or demanding that they be allowed to go into women's changing rooms because of course they're not going to creep on or assault anyone. They don't have the potential, you know!
We all have the potential to rape someone, just as we all have the potential to murder someone, or to commit any crime imaginable. It doesn't mean we secretly want to do these things, it only means that we could. The only thing that separates us from doing these things is actually doing them. It doesn't really matter what someone wants or doesn't want to do, it matters what they actually do. Rapists are typically not the people who sit around jacking off to Irreversible because their brains are messed up, they're just ordinary people who crossed a line, often a line they didn't clearly see or which they were able to make excuses for.
The question is not "why are men psychologically driven to rape", the people who ask that question tend to be on the other side. The question is "why do men seem to find it particularly hard to see or appreciate the lines they shouldn't cross". I don't think the answer to that question lies in individual psychology. I think you have to look at the whole environment.
So, I see the tension here, but you're overstating my point.
My problem with the toxic masculinity discourse isn't that I don't think there can be any cultural component to problems like sexual violence. The patterns of sexual violence in our society make it very obvious that there is a cultural component to it. What I disagree with is the idea that cultural expression is important, that the way a person acts, talks or behaves is necessarily indicative of how safe they are.
Toxic masculinity tends to assume that masculinity is a static typography of rigid social codes. Essentially, it's the idea that there's a bunch of different "types" of masculinities which denote distinct cultural expressions: behaviour, norms and values. I don't think this holds up, I don't think it matches the body of empirical research on men and masculinities and I think it's theoretically complacent. If the social problems associated with masculinity (such as men's sexual violence towards women or men's inability to deal with mental health) were simply the product of one particular "type" of masculinity among others that men could choose to freely accept or reject, then these problems would have vanished decades if not centuries ago, because men (and masculinities) are extremely culturally adaptable.
The society we live in has been, broadly speaking, male dominated for basically all of its history. I don't think that's a random chance or accident, I don't think it's that one particular culture of "toxic masculinity" took over thousands of years ago and never changed. The specific cultural expression of men has always changed. Men have not always hidden their feelings, avoided intimate friendships for fear of homoeroticism or watched porn, what has not changed (and still hasn't changed as much as anyone likes to pretend) is the underlying cultural association between masculinity and power. Masculinity in this culture is all about power, and that's been true for as long as the concept has existed.
I don't think anything I have said requires my experience to be shared, certainly not shared universally.
The instrumentality towards sex and relationships that I described is something that I know a lot of men share, because it is the only way to explain how they behave. My particular slutty manifestation of that attitude is entirely down to me and my insecurities and the things that got me there, although I see similar (though very seldom identical) attitudes in men. It crops up in research, in popular culture and in people I meet.
Generally, a lot of men use women for security, or to plug holes in their lives. Not all of them are sluts who need sex to fill that hole. Some men need women to look after them. Some men need women to love them. Some men measure the respect of other men via things like marriage, children, being a "good" husband, being a successful man or a provider.
All of these needs can become the basis of a need for control.
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Can these exact same things not be said of women, and would these things therefore actually have very little to do with with "masculinity?"
If you basically reduce masculinity to power, then your argumentation does indeed make more sense. Then powerful women suddenly are unfeminine and men are driven to pursue power not just because of the benefits of power but because they need it for their self-image as men. And that would obviously include power over women who would be expected to not pursue power.
That is at least coherent, not that i necessarily agree to the underlying assumptions.
Humans are pretty good at finding likeminded individuals and adapting behavior to their in-group. Not to mention how humans are not that perceptive and don't have that good a memory and are prone to fit everything they see into their worldview. It is not only that our personal experiences don't match at all, the behavior og everyone we see around us is as contradicting.
You see a lot of men share that instrumentality in your bubble, i see none in my bubble. And this is not even unreasonable.
Or maybe we just don't share a culture and should stop talking about masculinity in our culture.
Right, and in the UK virtually all rape committed by women is done by trans women. This isn't to make a TERF-y "trans women are just men in dresses looking to prey on women" point but rather that rape in the UK is defined in such a way as to require the perpetrator have a penis, and this consequently excludes cis women by definition.
The "by every metric we've used to measure it" is key. Let me suggest something crazy - perhaps the metrics used aren't exactly neutral and perhaps cultural expectations can color how events are remembered in the fullness of time (aka if you keep telling males they cannot be victims eventually they internalize that and reframe whatever has happened to them such that they were not victims at least not in any meaningful way).
I'd argue a great demonstration of both is visible in NISVS 2010 numbers, where lifetime rates show what you say but previous 12 month rates show women being raped in similar numbers to men being "made to penetrate" (defined in essentially the same way as rape but with the victim being the one penetrating rather than being penetrated) - both defining away the offense more likely to happen to men into a subheading of "other" to make it less visible and men re-contextualizing things over time because they've been told time and again that they are unable to be victims and thus older offenses ceasing to be recalled as offenses leading to the previous year number being something like a fifth of the lifetime number as opposed to the similar ratio for women being about 1/20. Unless of course the takeaway should be that women sexually assaulting men via "made to penetrate" is massively on the rise.
For another example, I could point you to an interview in which Mary Koss acts incredulous at the very idea of a male victim, asks how it is even possible for a man to be a victim, and when given an example in which a man is drugged into compliance before being made to perform sexually says that she wouldn't call that rape but rather "unwanted contact". You might ask why I'm invoking this particular individual here if you aren't familiar with her work, but she's the source of that "1 in 4" stat, published the first national study on rape, coined several important terms like "date rape" and worked with the CDC regarding sexual violence. As a consequence her work has a fair bit to do with what metrics we use to measure it and how we go about trying to do so.
All that said, I wouldn't be surprised if it's still more common for men to perpetrate than women, though I doubt the ratio is as extreme as is currently presented.
How you systemize them matters though, hence my pointing out Koss because much of the work in that topic descends from her work, and much of it carries the same biases whether directly or indirectly.
I suspect if I tried to apply that to race you'd sing an entirely different song. Just looking at FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Table 43 and who is noticeably overrepresented in things that are hard to simply blame on poverty, like rape and homicide.
More specifically, it is defined out of existing. Prejudice operating against whites is simply defined not to be racism because it is against whites. Because, you see whites have privilege and only racial prejudice directed against non-privileged groups is racism, because racism = power + prejudice. Note that I am not suggesting that anti-white racism is remotely as common as anti-black racism, however it does exist and is usually simply defined out of the conversation.
More specifically, it was judged nearly impossible for anyone to rape their spouse (in either direction) except in the very most extreme of cases, as presumed consent to sex was considered part of the social contract of marriage. Terrible rule, glad we tossed it aside, but it did run in both directions.
Also not limited to men, but colored by how the topic is treated. For example, consider the double whammy of engaging in sexual activity with someone underage who you are in a position of authority over (two things I think we'd both agree count as lines you shouldn't cross), for example a teacher engaging in sexual activity with an underage student. When it's a male teacher and a female student, no one hesitates to call it rape. When it's a female teacher and a male student however, it's often described as a "sexual encounter", "relationship", "romp" or "affair" - anything to avoid making it sound like the woman did anything seriously wrong.
You missed what I was getting at entirely. I wasn't saying you couldn't build a hierarchy based on how James Bond you are on a scale of 0-Bond, James Bond. I wasn't saying that hierarchies have to be stable and fixed. I was saying that you can't build a hierarchy without members knowing where they currently are on said hierarchy relative to others because that ordering of people is the core function of a hierarchy. It's like saying you can make a pie without a crust or filling.
There's a reason I said "sexual predation", and not rape. Sexual abuse of various kinds, including manipulation and other abusive behaviour, is studied and measured. You widen the definition, and men still make up the overwhelming majority of cases.
Sure, we all, to some extent or another, use other people to meet our emotional needs. That wasn't meant to be a hot take, and it's not the bit that's the problem. The bit that is the problem is the way we deal with that.
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That was the point... you're explaining Shadrach's argument over again and believing it to be a counterpoint.
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Why do you think I did that?
I mean, what I'm saying is true, isn't it? James Bond in the movies kills a lot of men (and a few women). He also has sex with a lot of women (and absolutely no men). These are observations that are completely true. They may not be what you consider to be the most important things about the character or the fantasy he represents, but I didn't claim they were.
Okay, so if you're trying to claim that all the sex and violence is completely gratuitous and incidental, why is it there? Why does it take so much of the time and attention of these films? Couldn't you just as easily have a film where James Bond saves the world without killing anyone or having random hookups? Maybe you could have a film where he just does intelligence work and sits around in an office going through data and emails, which ends up exposing a dangerous terrorist plot. Sounds exciting huh. If you need an interpersonal dimension, maybe he meets someone and starts a serious relationship. Maybe he has to face up to his own sexual history and why he was always compelled to have random sexual encounters without ever forming genuine connections to anyone. Maybe he has to deal with his partner's judgement and fear about his ability to commit to a real relationship. Fun!
The funny thing is, I say this as a joke but what I've described is just another common fantasy we find all over the place in our culture. It's the midlife crisis story. It's about an adult man realising he never actually grew up and then having to do so.
James Bond isn't a murderer.
James Bond has a license to kill. The fact that he kills a lot of people isn't murder, it isn't even a crime at all. It's something he's explicitly allowed and authorized to do. James Bond is a legitimate authority. He represents a government, an actual source of institutional power, in whose interests he's allowed to kill people. That's what "saving the world" actually means, and why I don't buy that it's some gratuitous, incidental feature of the character or the fantasy.
Real governments are allowed to kill people. They're allowed to authorize their representatives and agents to kill people. The ability to legitimately kill people on behalf of a state isn't just how our society imagines power, it's a very real feature of state power in the society we live in.
I like how, to avoid acknowledging that James Bond is a masculine fantasy, you've just described how James Bond is propaganda for authoritarian policing and the legitimacy of state violence, as if that's a separate (or better) thing.
You're not wrong, it's just funny.
Context matters. You entirely decontextualized the killing and has adventures as if they existed in a vacuum. This totally misrepresents the character. Surely you will agree that someone who you are told "killed people" will be judged differently than someone who you are told "Had to kill people to save his family". You can't just leave out the underlying motivation and claim it doesn't matter and doesn't impact how people view someone or judge the action. Idealizing a killer is not the same as idealizing someone who has to kill people to save the world.
I am not claiming the sex and violence is completely gratuitous and incidental. I have contextualized it.
The sex is clearly secondary due to how little space it takes compared to the full length of a James Bond movies (and the fact most people who enjoy James Bond also enjoy other action movies which do not involve a Don Juan Hero). It's what makes him even better, he's not only the best field agent but he's also irresistibly charming. Who wouldn't want to be charming and attractive?
The killing just makes his exploits even bigger, everybody knows killing is hard and should only be done when truly necessary. The fact James Bond is willing to face death all the time, needs to kill and is able to do so when necessary just makes his exploits even more extraordinary. If James Bond saved the world by pressing a button people would probably feel he isn't special at all because anyone can press a button.
Oh and also; entertainment.
What you described afterwards is the kind of plot i'd avoid because I don't want movies to be re-enactments of real life. If I want real life plots i'll watch documentaries or speak to people in the real world. The real world is "boring", imagine a police movie that actually matches real life? (well let's take European real life, because in the US it does seem to involve a whole lot of shooting) How boring would it be to watch someone spending 30 minutes waiting at the police station just to than have a police officer spend more than an hour typing in your complaint and here comes the plot twist: the police officer has to start over because his PC bugged out? (Entertaining) Movies are supposed to take us out of our routine. That's why action movies involve extraordinary action, romantic movies involve extraordinary romance, science fiction involves extraordinary science, police movies involve extraordinary cases, psychological movies involve extraordinary psychiatric cases, horror movies involve extraordinary horror. (do mind extraordinary does not always mean "unrealistic")
No it's not gratuitous, off course, it has to fit the plot and context and as a field agent he's expected to be willing to kill, I am not denying that.
And yes it is indeed how society imagine power, however said power can be interpreted as both negative and positive. A dictatorship which uses this power to kill gratuitously is not going to be considered as an ideal. On the other hand a democratic power which uses this power to stop murderous and cartoonishly evil people to take over the world or kill millions will be idealized. That's why (until the last James Bond?) MI6 was very often presented as a (perfectly) moral organization in James Bond. It's not the real MI6 which is also involved in a lot of dodgy operations, it's the James Bond MI6 which is continuously trying to save the world from evil by only targeting bad people.
If you don't think a masculine fantasy and propaganda for authoritarian policing are two different things you need to get your head out of the gutter. They can go hand in hand but most definitely don't have to. And i am not necessarily saying that every message sent out by James Bond movies is good, one can indeed have complaints about how it idealizes the MI6 and what it does. But that doesn't change the fact people don't idealize James Bond just because "he kills and has sex" and that you cannot leave out the most obvious virtue James Bond has; that he fights for good and saves the world.
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Tedious liberals and conservatives want to make any conversation about racism about (and only about) personal interactions and etiquette. Racism=Prejudice+Power may be a reaction against that tendency (and its attendant tedium) that is supposed to center the conversation on racism as a method of domination that shapes, reinforces, and is reinforced by numerous features of a racist society, not just a series of disconnected instances of impoliteness that are the mere expression of corrigible personal attitudes that can be addressed only at an individual level. On the other hand, it may only go halfway to that. I'm not sure.
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I'm not sure you understand what a fantasy is.
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A character who kills people and has sex with women describes both James Bond and Patrick Bateman, but I'm going to assume people view one of those significantly more favorably than the other because context for both the killing and the sex is important.
James Bond is a field operative; the things he does come about primarily because someone else has already done the reading and analytical part of intelligence work and it has been determined that correct course of action is the sword and not the pen. In fact Bond and Q have a conversation along those very lines in
Skyfall before Bond is sent to Macau. It’s also a very pertinent part of the Select Committee hearing that M is required to defend her actions to. Remember, it’s the bit where Judi Dench quotes Ulysses.
According to some cop, the sex after having gunned down an innocent is the best in the world, so... Is it really that important?
It's an example. Hence the bits about NISVS, Mary Koss and how we talk about teachers preying on students depending on gender later. If you define and systematize things in a way meant to exclude certain results or certain perceptions of results, it is unsurprising that you don't find those results.