Sunday Times article

Thu Nov 18 14:45:15 UTC 2004

Hi,

I would just add two points:

First, the article is essentializing the gender
identity: it's claiming all (middle-class) white men
have equal social power and they all share the
responsibility for gender-based social injustice (or
not). It does not recognize that being a middle-class
white male is a cultural and social construct rather
than a biological reality.

Second, the article implies (if not outright claims)
middle-class white males are no longer privileged in
society; that is, they no longer have the social power
and material means that they had once enjoyed (before
feminism came around and changed things).

This article does sound like a good exercise for
undergraduates.

Best wishes, Lutfi

--- "Scott F. Kiesling" <kiesling at PITT.EDU> wrote:

> Hi Emma-
>
> This kind of argument is a prominent thread in men's
> studies
> literature of the non-feminist or anti-feminist
> variety. It
> is most prominently articulated in Warren Farrel's
> (now
> republished in 2001) "The Myth of Male Power." Of
> course,
> there is a grain (boulder) of truth to the fact that
> WC
> men get a lot of society's ills and get to die in
> war.
>
> Generally, people who use these arguments against
> feminism
> (not all of them do) don't understand the arguments
> feminism
> is making -- they confuse group privilege with
> individual
> power (although I'm guilty of making some gross
> generalizations here). The way I argue against this
> is
> twofold:
>
> 1. The current gender order is not bad for women
> only, but
> for everyone. It materially threatens specific men
> and women
> alike. This powerlessness that individual men feel
> is very
> real. (I would argue that *most* men often feel
> powerless,
> but I'm not really in a position to make that
> argument, so I
> don't.)
>
> 2. But, in most important domains (e.g., pay, time
> spent on
> unpaid domestic labor) men generally get something
> just for
> being a man. This power is holds more for some men
> than
> others, because gender is not the only way cultural
> discourses order identities. In the article you
> cite, class
> is central.
>
> The most important thing to notice is that cultural
> discourses do rank identities, and that there is one
> that
> most western societies rank at the top, even though
> most
> people (men and women) in that society don't reach
> it. Yes,
> here comes hegemonic masculinity.
>
> So, it is these ideals of masculinity that are
> hurting these
> men. I think he's right about class prejudice, by
> the way,
> which seems to be OK or at least not discussed in
> the US
> anyway.
>
> BTW, IMHO this all comes from not being able to
> think critically
> about social patterns, of being to think about an
> abstract
> argument about a group of people as opposed to a
> single
> person. I'm sure by now your students do not have
> that
> problem!
>
> Best
> SFK
>
> On Thu, Nov 18, 2004 at 11:42:45AM +0000, Emma Moore
> wrote:
> > From: Emma Moore <e.f.moore at NTLWORLD.COM>
> > Date: Thu, 18 Nov 2004 11:42:45 +0000
> > To: GALA-L at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
> > Subject: Sunday Times article
> >
> > Dear all,
> >
> > I found the following article (published in last
> week's Sunday Times) pretty alarming. I don't quite
> know where to start with my critique, so have given
> it to my 3rd year language and gender class to
> deconstruct!
> >
> > I'd be interested to know what other people think.
> I think it provides an excellent example of the
> dangers of abstracting social categories.
> >
> > Best,
> > Emma.
> >
> >
>
***********************************************************
> > Dr Emma Moore
> > Lecturer in Sociolinguistics
> > Department of English Language and Linguistics
> > University of Sheffield
> > 5 Shearwood Road
> > Sheffield
> > S10 2TN
> > UK
> >
> > Phone: +44 (0)114 222 0232
> > Fax: +44 (0)114 276 8251
> > E-mail: e.moore at sheffield.ac.uk
> > Webpage:
>
http://www.shef.ac.uk/english/language/staff/emmam.html
> >
>
***********************************************************
> >
> > Comment: Rod Liddle: Everyone hates the white
> working-class male
> >
> > White working-class British men are fighting a war
> on two fronts. The first and most obvious is out
> there in Iraq where they are doing the dirty ? and
> rather dangerous ? work of a government that seems
> to loathe and despise them.
> > The second is back here at home where their
> adversaries are pretty much everybody else in the
> country. Civilised polite society has it in for the
> white working-class male. So it is with laudable
> self-awareness and chutzpah that the Millwall
> supporters sing down at the Den: ?No one likes us,
> we don?t care.?White working-class males are the
> almost exclusive recipients of antisocial behaviour
> orders, which seem to have been created with them in
> mind. The government berates them for their
> homophobia and racism, for their loutish behaviour,
> for their slovenly diets and sexual incontinence.
> They are useless at school.
> > There is also a fervent determination in
> government circles to stop them enjoying the
> pleasures of nicotine, of which they are the
> country?s most resolute aficionados ? and they are
> perpetually upbraided for getting drop-dead drunk
> every night. The clock is therefore ticking on most
> of their preferred pastimes.
> > Meanwhile, they have middle-class and toff social
> commentators with whom to contend. It is perfectly
> okay to sneer at the white working-class male with
> his predilection for garish clothing in man-made
> fibres and tattoos, his rude grammar and utter lack
> of social etiquette and refinement. No quango or
> pressure group will censure you for a spot of
> chav-bashing. There are plenty of people happy to
> earn a living kicking the hell out of the white
> working-class male. And why not? It?s risk-free
> journalism, after all.
> > Bad enough, then, to have the fourth estate and
> the polity slapping you around the head; but maybe
> we ought to draw the line at the judiciary and the
> police.
> > I wonder if the name Harry Stanley rings any bells
> with you? Harry was shot dead by two Metropolitan
> police officers for the crime of walking down a
> street while carrying a table leg in a plastic bag.
> You will probably be aware that the Met?s armed
> police officers went on strike recently following
> the suspension of the two officers in question, but
> the name of Harry Stanley was scarcely mentioned in
> the press reports, all of which focused on the
> industrial action taken by the armed policemen in
> support of their trigger-happy colleagues.
> > Harry was, of course, a white working-class male.
> If he had been black or gay or female or, for that
> matter, a barrister or a newspaper editor, I think
> it is fair to say the events would have been
> reported differently. There would have been voices
> expressing outrage at the killing of someone deemed
> to hail from either an oppressed minority group or a
> ?respectable? profession.
> > The clamouring for prosecution of the officers ?
> rather than their mere suspension ? would surely not
> have been resisted by the Crown Prosecution Service.
> But Harry?s killing has resulted in no prosecution.
> And there has been no great clamouring. Be honest:
> you can?t recall even hearing the name Harry
> Stanley, can you? The name Colin Stagg may be more
> familiar to you. He murdered that pretty girl Rachel
> Nickell on Wimbledon Common, didn?t he? Well, no he
> didn?t, it would seem.
> > It?s true that in 1993 he was arrested for this
> horrible crime and spent a year in prison on remand
> ? but the court threw out the prosecution because
> quite clearly he?d been ensnared in a crude police
> honeytrap.
> > Now, again at this point if Stagg had been
> anything other than a rather thick chav, a white
> working-class male par excellence with dubious
> habits and an unengaging personality, we might have
> witnessed
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=====
Lutfi M Hussein
lutfi_hussein at yahoo.com
http://www.public.asu.edu/~lhussein/