Sunday Times article

[judith baxter]

Hi all,

Just to say that Rod Liddle is famed for his ironic, tongue-in-cheek
articles which take subjects that no self-respecting, PC journalist would
dare touch. He'd be mightily amused by the fact that a bunch of academics
like ourselves (another abstracted social category!) would waste tax payers'
money (etc, etc) discussing it!

Judith Baxter


> 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
> === message truncated ===
>
>
> =====
> Lutfi M Hussein
> lutfi_hussein at yahoo.com
> http://www.public.asu.edu/~lhussein/