Manufacturing Masculinity: Privilege, Paradoxes, and Power

1 Manufacturing Masculinity: Privilege, Paradoxes, and Power Tyler Swanson Senior Thesis Fall 2016 Acknowledgements This project would not have been possible without the guidance and thoughtfulness from my advisor, Dr. Susan Peppers-Bates, and the invaluable input from Dr. Melinda Hall. Both of whom have impacted my intellectual and emotional development, and I am forever indebted to them for the courage they have instilled in me. 2 My purpose in this paper is to examine how societal conceptions about masculine culture contributes to an atmosphere that prizes overt displays of hyper sexualized attitudes and aggressive traits, which systematically oppress women, disenfranchise the majority of men who are forced to conform to this way of being, and allow dominant male power structures to be mistakenly seen as “objectively” true and desirable. These male norms, in turn, perpetuate the insidious myth that men are inherently sexually aggressive and afflicted with uncontrollable violent tendencies. I have broken this paper down into three major sections: Privilege, Paradoxes, and Power. The first section, Privilege, integrates Feminist interpretations of epistemology and social construction from Sally Haslanger and Catherine Mackinnon, who provide a critique of the objectivist1 framework that is used for allegedly neutral, scientific and philosophical classification, which disproportionally places men as the unwitting producers of biased knowledge. The second section, Paradoxes, integrates Jackson Katz’s account of bystanders and porn, with William Ian Miller’s understanding of humiliation to examine why men do not speak out against sexist acts and which keep men in a perpetual state of fear of having their manhood challenged. The last section, Power, draws on the work of Michel Foucault to show how sexual discourses surrounding gendered bodies have been shaped, and attempt to integrate a pathway of meaningful resistance to the objectivist conclusion that power relations have produced. 1 When I use the term “objectivist”, I am referring to Haslanger’s usage: to describe a mindset which (1) is geared toward discovering the nature of an object and (2) in looking for those supposed natures, assumes a position of alleged investigative neutrality and base our knowledge around those observed “truths” 3 Privilege I have entitled the section Privilege because male privilege is both the cause and an effect of a particular way of thinking. It is a cause, because of the epistemic position that men take in understanding their own and others’ place in the world (according to Haslanger and Mackinnon’s theories which I will discuss here). Privilege is an effect due to the social extension of this epistemic, male-centric mode of being, i.e. sexism in the workplace, the epidemic of men’s rape, laws attempting to regulate women’s bodies, etc. As privilege extends socially, a type of veil has covered the eyes of men, which distorts their reality and blinds them from realizing the injustices that are produced by this epistemic dishonesty. Before describing her account against “gendered” objectivism, Haslanger defines gender as constituted, “…not by virtue of ones’ intrinsic features (for example, body type), but by virtue of one’s part in a system of social relations”2. Gender consists of the social categories and expectations that are assigned to particular sexed bodies, often starting at birth3. Haslanger is tentative to endorse a universal theory of gender construction, due to cultural differences, but she examines the common features that create the grounds for the possibility of gender, similar to those conditions that give rise to race and class.4 The construction of gender necessitates prescribed roles, which men and women are conditioned to strive for in pursuit of the perfection of their respective roles. Socially constructed ideas of femininity (being soft, passive, sexually submissive, over emotional) and masculinity (sexually aggressive, strong, dominating) have been, as Haslanger believes, the underpinning of societal thought and are products of our alleged 2 Haslanger, Sally Anne. "On Being Objective and Being Objectified." Resisting Reality: Social Construction and Social Critique. New York: Oxford UP, 2012. 40-41. Print. 3 Gender assignments for newborns (blue for boys and pink for girls) is continued through adolescence, where boys are typically given more masculine toys (trucks, guns) and more feminine toys for girls (makeup, dolls). This dichotomy is continued through the rest of their lives, as they have been constructed to desire objects according to their assigned gender 4 Ibid 42 4 objective inquiry, which claims to discover “natural” essences of men and women. Using the example of a paring knife as an analogy for desired gender attributes (a good and virtuous paring knife will “cut and peel fruits and vegetables”5 effortlessly) those who measure up to falsely prescribed roles will be seen as the proper model for their performed gender role. Success in any given role will only solidify ones’ place in a socially constructed hierarchy, thus, perpetually trapping them in a system of inherent inequality. However, as Haslanger states, these roles only give us a, “…partial model of human life”.6 Haslanger traces the ideas of perfected gender characteristics to the problematic ground on which we base our epistemic inquiry. She believes that, “Objectification is not just ‘in the head’; it is actualized, embodied, imposed upon the objects of one’s desire”.7 According to Haslanger, as we go about the world trying to find the “essences” of objects8 (looking for the noumenal aspect of an object, an object in-itself) we mistakenly apply the criteria of looking towards finding the essences of objects, to finding essences of people. Haslanger states three criterion of how this objectification takes place. Objectivists (incorrectly) believe that, (1) All objects have a nature or essence; to be an object is (in some significant sense) to have a nature; it is by virtue of their nature that objects are members of a kind or species… (2) Natures determine what is appropriate-what is natural- for members of a kind. Natures serve to explain the behavior of the object under normal circumstances. (3) An object’s nature is essential to it-that is, the object cannot exist without having those properties which constitute its nature.”9 In short, the way we view, say, a woman, depends on the idea that there is an underlying 5 Ibid 6 Ibid 49 7 Ibid 65 8 Papadaki, Evangelia (Lina), "Feminist Perspectives on Objectification", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2015 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.) 9 Haslanger, Sally Anne. "On Being Objective and Being Objectified." Resisting Reality: Social Construction and Social Critique. New York: Oxford UP, 2012. 66. Print. 5 nature to her, thus creating the condition where certain gender roles are created as products of social construction, which inevitably fall into social hierarchies of power. If objectification is the product of a method of viewing the world, then the social position of the allegedly neutral observer is the starting point for objectification. Upon viewing the world as merely a set of empirical facts, rather than the product of social interpretation, gender roles become solidified and understood as “natural”. The investigations of the so called neutral observer (the objectivist) starts from a point of, as Haslanger claims, “assumed aperspectivity”, where the observer believes that his presence of understanding the world does not interfere with the “natural order” of observed phenomena10, thus deducing his observations as true in themselves. The underlying premise that their presence does not interfere with phenomena is their first and most critical error. Objectivists act as though such a neutral view can exist independent from their observations, neglecting the fact their presence is bound up in the same hierarchy that produces the natures that they observe. The objectifier/objectified duality creates a unique type of hermeneutic circle, where the cycle of objectification is based on a misguided interpretation of a natural order, or as Haslanger states, “…the norm [of assumed aperspectivity] provides a basis for his projective beliefs”11. Haslanger’s notion of male assumed aperspectivity extends beyond the basic sexist intellectual production of gender norms, as its deceitful ideology is based in similar ways of thinking that attempt to justify racial hatred, political differences, and general apprehension of adopting another mode of thinking that challenges men’s privileged objective status. To illustrate her discontinuity from interpreting natural facts as legitimate essences, she states: “For example, I observe that watering begonias with ammonia kills them; I assume that this is a consequence of their nature, and I adjust my actions so that I 10 Ibid 72 11 Ibid 6 water begonias with ammonia only if I want to kill them…It is central to objectification that social facts [gender roles] are treated as natural facts and so are cast as immutable; assumed objectivity legitimates this error”.12 The interpretation of the natural, biological fact of an organism dying, given the proper substances that will cause their body to wither away, is then applied to the social sphere, where if women and men act outside of their prescribed roles, they are seen as doing something unnatural, and in turn, against their (constructed) essence. The extension of epistemic objectification is solidified in sexual discourses by what Haslanger calls the “objectivist stance”, where the male applies his understanding to both his and women’s gendered roles, dominance and submissiveness respectively. The epistemic injustice of the objectivist stance creates a type of silence, where the victim is, “…in some way prevented from making their voices heard”13, as Miranda Fricker states. The only valid testimony, from this model, is the account of the objectivist, where his testimony contains the weight of a “truth”, and is thus seen as more substantial (to himself and his peers) than the experiential testimony of the objectified. This “epistemically privileged standpoint”14 lacks, what Fricker calls, the “critical openness” to attentively listen to different types of testimony, which would challenge his prescribed role of a neutral observer. She argues that instead, “Whatever you want to understand, try looking at it from the point of view of the powerless…”15. This leads us into Mackinnon’s understanding of sexual conquest and desire, which, as I argue, is the sexual manifestation of Haslanger’s principle of objectivist discourse. 12 Ibid 76 13 Fricker, Miranda. "Silence and Institutional Prejudice." Edited by Anita M. Superson. Out from The Shadows: Analytical Feminist Contributions to Traditional Philosophy, edited by Sharon L. Crasnow. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2012. 287. Print 14 Ibid 288 15 Ibid 289 7 Mackinnon’s “Difference and Dominance” approach provides a counter-narrative to the way we have understood the progression of sex equality. Like Haslanger, Mackinnon believes that our starting point for understanding sex differences leads to objectification, or as she states, “…gender is socially constructed as difference epistemologically; sex discrimination law bounds gender equality by difference doctrinally”16. The Difference approach (the sameness doctrine) follows a strict set of discriminatory events, as she states, “Its underlying story is: on the first day, difference was; on the second day, a division was created upon it; on the third day, irrational instances of dominance arose. Division may be rational or irrational. Dominance either seems or is justified. Difference is…Under the sameness standard, women are measured according to our correspondence with man, our equality judged by our proximity to his measure. Under the difference standard, we are measured according to our lack of correspondence with him, our womanhood judged by our distance from his measure.”17 Since, on this narrative, women are seen as inherently different from men, male dominance came as a product of power to enforce sex distinctions and create gender roles that entrench male power over women. What would otherwise be arbitrary differences between differently embodied beings, become the grounds which the objectifier enforces his desired subjugation. This Difference (sameness) standard evidences itself continually in the social arena as Mackinnon discusses, where, “Men’s physiology defines most sports…define auto and health insurance coverage…define quality in scholarship…defines history…”18. Through this approach, women become a contrast class to men, where they are defined by what they lack, which has infected the psyche of both sexes. Instances of women believing that they are inferior to men have been seen in this heightened political climate within a segment of the population, 16 Mackinnon, Catherine. "Difference and Dominance." Theorizing Feminisms: A Reader. Comp. Sally Anne Haslanger and Elizabeth Hackett. New York: Oxford UP, 2006. 244. Print 17 Ibid 245 18 Ibid 246 8 where a resurrection of a kind of hyper-masculine image, championed by Donald Trump, has directly focused on shaping men into the exemplar of their privileged role, and teaching women that their role is to accept, and not question, their subordinated role19. Difference approach is the accepted belief in the world now, that the sexes are just different, and we must embrace differences and remedy our society to meet those differences (although they vary by culture). Even with our inclusive steps forward, the aura of “difference” creates a situation eerily similar to Orwell’s notorious phrase, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”20. However, Mackinnon rejects the difference analysis as a falsehood, which covers up the true, more insidious, Dominance approach. Here, on the first day that matters, dominance was achieved, probably by force. By the second day, division along the same lines had to be firmly in place. On the third day, if not sooner, differences demarcated, together with social systems to exaggerate them in perception in fact, because the systematically differential delivery of benefits and deprivations required making no mistake who was who”.21 This Dominance approach to sex discrimination, that has been hidden from the consciousness of men, thanks in part to the principle of assumed aperspectivity, parallels the way that the concept of race came into being; using a trivial biological characteristic that is beneath a superimposed idea of purity and righteousness. Under the Dominance approach, sex and gender are inherently unequal and whatever measures are put in place to alleviate injustices (if there is both enough of a groundswell of desire for change and the ruling power is willing to allow it), are in fact further products of social stratification that reinforce presupposed ideals of biological essences. In short, 19 Haslanger defines women who pursue the same objectivism as men “collaborators”, where their justification of the male-objectivists’ epistemic beliefs allows those beliefs to become more entrenched in society. 20 Orwell, George. "10." Animal Farm and 1984. Comp. Christopher Hitchens. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2003. 80. Print. 21 Ibid 249 9 dominance created difference, so remedies that take the male/female difference for granted enhance dominance. The progressive inclusion of women serving open combat roles in the military, for example, may be seen as a step towards authentic equality, but it is still a remedy that the difference standard produced, thus solidifying dominance. The status of the objectifier is what gives men carte blanche access to enforce their power unchecked, and the work of Feminism, according to Mackinnon, is to, “…criticize the posture of science. In other words, our critique of the objective standpoint as male is a critique of science as a specifically male approach to knowledge.”22 When applying these ideas to the realm of sex and gender-based violence, men take no responsibility. One of the most troubling aspects of the male centric-approach to knowledge is the characterization of rape as a “woman’s problem”, even though the overwhelming proportion of these crimes are committed by men, where idle talk of what she was wearing or how she carried herself supersedes any investigation of male wrongdoing. The consequences of rape, sexual battery, and porn culture, have not been examined within male culture, and the sexual aspect of these acts have been stripped away and turned into sexless violence from the eyes of the objectifier. Whether or not one believes the crime of rape, for example, has anything to do with sex and all to do with power, can be suspended for the moment. What is undeniable, is the disproportionally sex-based (female subordinate) outcomes these acts have. As most rapes and sexual assaults are committed by men, the minds of men, within these discourses, must be examined, as I do in the next section, while remaining loyal to Haslanger and Mackinnon’s ideas. 22 Mackinnon, Catherine. "Desire and Power." Theorizing Feminisms: A Reader. Comp. Sally Anne Haslanger and Elizabeth Hackett. New York: Oxford UP, 2006. 261. Print 10 Paradoxes This section integrates Jackson Katz’s account of two aspects of male culture that, I argue, are products of the objectivist stance: bystanders and porn. I combine these aspects with William Ian Miller’s understanding of humiliation to examine why men do not speak out against sexist acts and which keep men in a perpetual state of fear of having their manhood challenged. I.- Katz on Bystanders and Male Culture Acts of sexual aggression towards women within a group of male peers could be stopped if those peers became proactive bystanders. I believe that if men had the courage to challenge other men’s sexism, the rates of catcalling and sexual assault would fall dramatically. However, the current role of bystanders’ centers around the idea of all men being predatory in their nature (either by explicitly targeting women, or by complacency in the face of sexism), thus creating the language of victim blaming. As Jackson Katz notes, “…gender violence prevention efforts over the past several decades have been based on a crude binary model: women and girls are victims or potential victims and men and boys are perpetrators or potential perpetrators”23. This model, which is essentially “risk reduction for women”24, also (as a product of the objectivist stance) teaches men that not being a more proactive bystander goes against their role as men. The neutrality25 men assume as witnesses to these crimes as either “not my problem”, “I’m not like that guy” or giving a victim-blaming response, shows that the risk reduction model rarely does anything aside from creating another victim, and strengthening prescribed gender roles. 23 Katz, Jackson. "Bystanders." The Macho Paradox. Naperville: Source, 2006. 113. Print. 24 Ibid 25 This neutrality is a variation of Haslanger’s assumed aperspectivity 11 The above type of responses that the passive bystander would say to himself are critical in his implicit understanding of his place within a social hierarchy, whether or not, for example, he is surrounded by strangers or friends during the objectifying event. Katz states that: “The anxious feelings associated with the desire to fit in or be accepted might diminish with age and maturity, but they also might not. Middle-aged men are more comfortable talking about the pressures on young boys to fit in than they are acknowledging the conformist pressures in their own lives.”26 Here, Katz offers a hint as to the discomfort that men subliminally feel in these kinds of interactions, possibly portraying a modicum of empathy in recalling their feelings when these instances first shaped their understanding of their place in the web of gender relations. The fear of being labeled as less than a man and losing the privilege of the objectivist stance makes one susceptible to falling down the ranks of male prominence, thus enacting a passive form of complicit silence. Katz describes the effect that this fear has, and men deploy two types of policing mechanisms that keeps bystanders silent, where: “(1) challenges to the manhood of men who speak out about sexism and (2) hostile questioning of their heterosexuality”27. These two policing mechanisms conflate the natural as normative, continuing the objectifiers’ reign of epistemic dishonesty. As described, the social extension of the objectivist stance creates the guise of unhinged hyper-masculinity, where, “The implication is clear: A man who speaks out on these subjects is not a real man. He is weak. He is feminine. It also implies that since he’s like a woman he is therefore ‘less than’ a man…For substantial numbers of men who challenge other men’s sexism are not ‘real men’ and they are quite possibly gay”28 26 Ibid 118 27 Ibid 125 28 Ibid 12 These policing mechanisms have oriented men’s psyches to keep their supposed honor, and avoid humiliation. For example, in a set of interviews by female state troopers in New Jersey, these women recall the crippling sexual harassment and taunting by their male colleagues. Kimberly Zollitsch, a female trooper, who had to take a stress leave to recover from the constant torment, stated that, “…two commanders failed to stop troopers from harassing her”.29 The supervising officers had the ability to stop the harassment, but the possibility of being challenged by his subordinate officers, or those equal in his rank, kept him in complicit silence, in order to avoid humiliation. A) Humiliation Humiliation is the guiding force behind Katz’s policing mechanisms. Continuing from Katz’s analysis, William Ian Miller describes two kinds of humiliation: humiliation (small h), where trivial interactions lead to a deflated sense of pretension30, and Humiliation (large H), which are traumatic instances that put one’s core being into question within the objectivist hierarchy, and leads to the possibility of total demasculinization. The first type of humiliation creates the condition for the possibility for the more extreme Humiliation. The vanity of pretension, or as Miller says, “putting on airs”31, in a sense, begs for one to be humiliated by another. What is unique about this type of pretension is that it can be instigated by those of lower-class, i.e. non-objectivists who challenge the manliness of the accused. This vanity is the product of a hierarchy of structural pretension, where, “…structural pretension involves the (mis)interpretation by the lower-ranked person of the upper-ranked person’s 29 Schuppe, Johnathan. "Women in the State Police: Trouble in the Ranks." Race, Class, and Gender in the United States. Ed. Paula S. Rothenberg. Worth Publishing, 2016. 291. Print. 30 Miller, William Ian. “Humiliation-Part 1: Its Domain and Strategies of Avoiding It”. Humiliation: And Other Essays on Honor, Social Discomfort, and Violence. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1993. 137. Print. 31 Ibid 141 13 presumed intentions regarding his self-presentation.”32 The self-presentation of the hyper masculine, “tough guy” façade can be mocked or criticized by people of a lower-class, which challenges the status of the objectivist. In order for the objectivist to not fall prey to humiliation in the eyes of the lower-class, the supposedly “natural” role he plays is doubled down, in attempts to avoid questioning by other objectivists. Take, for example, the recently released tapes of Donald Trump and former NBC host Billy Bush discussing “grabbing women by the pussy”. Within Miller’s framework, Billy Bush would be considered lower-status compared to Donald Trump, where Trump’s status as a rich and powerful man is expected to be expressed to Bush during their conversation. “When you’re a star, they let you do it”33, Trump said in reference to sexually assaulting women in pictures he showed Bush. That comment is a product of the “vanity of pretension” Miller discusses, where Trump wants to show Bush he is properly acting within his role as a man. Not acting in this way might have prompted Bush to challenge Trump’s masculinity, and Trump would have been susceptible to humiliation.34 This type of trivial interaction paves the way for future interactions that would perpetually doubt the manliness of the person in question. The more extreme case of Humiliation, Miller reserves for instances of complete dehumanization, i.e. torture, genocide, and gang rape. I argue that within certain highly masculine frameworks such us gangs, the military, fraternities, and police forces, instances of Humiliation against an objectivist who does not adequately fulfill his role allows that person to 32 Ibid 142 33 Fahrenthold, and David A. "Trump Recorded Having Extremely Lewd Conversation about Women in 2005." The Washington Post. 7 Oct. 2016. Web. 34 I do not intend to say that Trump said those comments to Bush only because he feared humiliation, but his status as a wealthy man necessitates those comments to other men to solidify his place within the masculine hierarchy. This hierarchy is evidenced by his cop-out answer when asked about the incident, as Trump said it was “locker room talk” 14 both be denied legitimacy within that group and puts the objectivists’ constructed essence as a true “man” in jeopardy. Miller states that Humiliation, “…denies the social world of normalized encounter…It tells the victims that all social norms are suspended in dealings with them because they are not human. Day-to-day humiliation, the humiliation of you and me, operates by reaffirming and confirming social norms and is the very stuff of normal interaction…It is clear that Humiliation…is a part of the concept of humiliation only by imaginative extension of the normal experiential domain of this discomfort…The normal funds the horrific…”35 If a man experiences this kind of depersonalization within the objectivist environment, when all he has ever known or aspired to be is nullified by his peers, he is finally lowered to the status of the victim, the status that was previously under his control. In this case, the failed objectivist gets a taste of what this mindset causes for the majority of women, as well as non-white/heterosexual men that are denied the same personhood that the objectivist possessed. This denial of personhood does not equal the physical and emotional abuse of a woman who was gang raped, for instance, but it gives the failed objectivist a glimpse into the reality of their victims. In order to avoid humiliation, what an objectivist wishes to keep hold of is their sense of honor within the culture of masculinity. Honor, as Miller understands, “…is above all the keen sensitivity to the experience of humiliation and shame, a sensitivity manifested by desire to be envied by others and the propensity to envy the success of others.”36 This sense of honor is inextricably bound up in the probability of humiliation, thus objectivists feel that they must over-validate themselves to keep up the facade of a “real man”. This duality between honor and humiliation keeps bystanders’ passive in the face of sexism among their peers. Constructed senses of honor are most visible in gang environments, where initiation rituals, for women in 35 Miller, William Ian. “Humiliation-Part 1: Its Domain and Strategies of Avoiding It”. Humiliation: And Other Essays on Honor, Social Discomfort, and Violence. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1993. 167. Print. 36 Ibid “Getting a Fix on Violence” 84 15 particular, involve gang rape. For example, Isha Nembhard, a former gang member, states that forced sex with male gang members has become a normalized act within the gang37, and in order to be seen as a true member, she would be forced to have sex with a gang member and his male friends. Honor, in this case, produces the “truth” that women are only seen as valuable in the gang if they go through this initiation, and that men must not challenge this rite of passage. The Humiliation that Isha felt is similar, not equal, to the possible Humiliation that would be the result of the punishment for the man (often group beatings38) if he acts outside of his role. What is so powerful about this kind of Humiliation, is that gives the harshest sense of legitimacy to the role of the objectivist. Reminiscent of MacKinnon, this Humiliation is a product of the constructed Dominance framework, where power relations have shaped the objectivist guise as the true, authentic role for men. This power produces submission as a consequence of failure, and the humiliator is reassured in his dominance. In order to maintain one’s honor within this hierarchy, men feel they must not break with established norms of oppression, which preemptively silences any men who wish to speak out against their prescribed role. B) Porn Men who would otherwise not necessarily be aggressively heterosexual and dominating in public if it were not for the pressures put on men by their peers, could feel the need to “recharge” their manliness in an environment when no other men are watching, vis á vis, watching porn39. While watching porn would fit within the accepted category of being a proper man, there is an aura of guilt upon discussing this even with other men. Katz calls for 37 Townsend, Mark. "Being Raped by a Gang Is Normal-It's About Craving to Be Accepted." The Guardian, 18 Feb. 2012. Web. 38 Sweeney, Annie. "Video Shows Gang Punishing One of Its Own." Chicago Tribune, 10 Mar. 2011. Web. 39 The porn I am discussing is the common male/female scene, where all of the “pleasure” is given to the man, essentially using the woman as a tool to achieve satisfaction. 16 “revolutionary honesty” when discussing this subject, especially in terms of the guilt and shame that many men feel while watching pornography. Since the porn industry is marketed to, purchased by, and shaped to men’s constructed fantasies about women, I believe that the porn industry, as it exists today, is evidence for Mackinnon’s Dominance theory, and its portrayals of men and women must be addressed. Porn is, at the end of it all, fake sex: It is just as much of an illusion as the gender differences that the “Difference” standard claims to discover. The combination of families and some schools’ hesitancy to discuss sexual exploration in a serious way to young men and the 24/7 access to free porn, boys are not the taught principle tenants of sex, such as respect, consent, and reciprocation. Instead, the constructed “truth” boys and men see in porn is that men get their sexual pleasure from dominating women, and that boys should mirror the actions of those exemplars (male porn stars). Although Katz, rightfully so, despises men who recreate the rape in what they see in porn to day to day interactions with women, he questions if all of the blame could be put on those who recreate those fantasies in public. “For many boys going through puberty and adolescence, the temptations of porn are irresistible. After all, it promises a kind of sexual gratification with no strings attached-and no chance of rejection.”40 Similarly, Miller discusses the perceived humiliation of sexual acts41. Miller states, tentatively, that humiliation is gendered feminine42. By this, he means that once the deflation of pretension has taken place, one’s status is lowered below the realm of honor (where men should be), to one of humiliation. Porn is, as discussed above, male-oriented, where, “…men poke, prod, pierce, and penetrate; their actions rely heavily 40 Ibid 193 41 Miller does not discuss porn specifically, but his understanding of sexual humiliation is seen in porn 42 Miller, William Ian. “Humiliation-Part 1: Its Domain and Strategies of Avoiding It”. Humiliation: And Other Essays on Honor, Social Discomfort, and Violence. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1993. 169. Print. 17 on verbs43 that cause deflation.”44 Miller continues on by stating, “For if the sex act itself is by that account perceived to be humiliating to women, the search for women thus to humiliate is humiliating to men.”45 The fear of rejection that men have is nullified by porn, where “courtship” is unneeded, and the sexual act can be carried out by the man himself. The lack of the possibility of rejection both gets rid of the fear of that men have when their masculinity is challenged (in the company of other men) and little chance of becoming emotionally attached (which would violate the norm that men are hardened and neutral in their lives). Porn, as it is practiced today, may be seen as an aspect of our society’s liberal attitude toward sex, an evolution from when sex was never discussed, and is now available any time we want. However, Foucault challenges this notion of sexual liberation and freedom that is believed today, and traces sexually objectifying attitudes to the play of power relations that produce specific “truths” of sexuality. Power This section discusses Michel Foucault’s account of the change in our understanding of sex in the West, when sex became “medicalized”, which constructed essences for sexed bodies and categorized them within an allegedly objective hierarchy. This hierarchy, Foucault believes, prescribes identities which are products of power relations, and are thus subject to change. A) Normalizing Sexuality Thus far, I have argued that the objectivist goes about life attempting to find supposed essences of objects and people, and lives in a state of fear that his role will be challenged. In Foucault’s History of Sexuality Vol.1, he has similar guiding precepts, where he believes that the 43 Porn is filled with humiliating language toward the woman, i.e. “slut” or “whore” 44 Ibid 45 Ibid 18 entire domain of sexual discourse in the West is living in an age of Sciencia Sexualis (Science of Sexuality), where we have taken to understand, classify, identify, and categorize sexed bodies and sexual acts. His understanding of Sciencia Sexualis harkens back to Haslanger’s original discussion of objectifier/objectified mode of experience, where the assumed aperspectivity that medical classifiers take in diagnoses and assessments presupposes a privileged, neutral stance, where our understanding of sexual knowledge is derived from. Put into perspective, Foucault challenges the belief that human society has evolved from the “repressive” understanding of sex, and that we now live in an age of liberal sexual exploration, guided by humanist precepts. In order for him to be able to toss both of these understandings aside, he poses a counterintuitive view of how power effects the body. Before, and indeed during Foucault’s time, the Psychoanalytic tradition of Freudian sexual repression concluded that the power of both the church and humanistic state has made us neurotic46, insofar as we are not allowed to properly express our (often violent) alleged sexual desires. The Psychoanalytic model of power, sees power as repressive, possessed by a ruling class, and is located from a centralized source47. Foucault challenges this understanding, and sees power as productive, exercised (not possessed) and is seen from the bottom up and not top down.48 Power shapes bodies, constructs ideals that we strive for, and disseminates through social interactions. Sex, for example, is one domain of discourse where power has shaped our understanding of it. The common belief of Victorian times was that sex was seen as a “secret”, which Foucault questions. The rise of the human sciences has reversed sex’s alleged secrecy and has undertaken the project of understanding, prescribing, and regulating sex. Upon investigating the idea of 46 I will go into further detail in my discussion of Freud 47 Sawicki, Jana. “Toward a Politics of Difference” Disciplining Foucault: Feminism, Power, and the Body. New York: Routledge, 1991. 20. Print. 48 Ibid 21 19 sexual secrecy of this time, Foucault shows the discourses that were prevalent in attempting to understand sex, up through the 19th century, primarily that of the Christian confessional. He states that, “…the confession became one of the West’s most highly valued techniques for producing truth. It plays a part in justice, medicine, education, family relationships, and love relations…one confesses one’s crimes, one’s sins, one’s thoughts and desires…Western man has become a confessing animal.”49 The power of the sovereign50 over their subjects, in this case the priest over the layperson, creates the need for that layperson to confess any transgressions, which produces a constructed truth that the confessor identifies himself with. In other words, the truth of the confession also serves as a type of punishment, where one is a self-admitted sinner, to his core, in the eyes of the Church, or a criminal in the eyes of the penal system. As the West has lost many of the religious dogmas that held sway over Europe in earlier centuries, the power of the confessional has moved away from the religious right, to the grasp of the domain of medical science and “…the age of secular confession had begun”51 It is important to note that Foucault does not fully deny the notion of sexual repression on an individual level, but rather challenges our understanding of the historical discourses surrounding sex in the West as repressive52. For comparison, in Eastern societies, Foucault claims that they understand sex through Ars Erotica (Erotic Art), where the participants focused 49 Foucault, Michel. “Sciencia Sexualis” The History of Sexuality. Trans. Robert Hurley. Vol. I. New York: Random House, 1990. Print. 59 50 The sovereign is not to be confused with an oppressive ruler, but one who is privileged to exercise power at a specific time. Ex.- When the priest was the sovereign over the fate of the soul, the doctor is now the sovereign over the fate of the body 51 McWhorter, Ladelle. "Views from the Site of Political Oppression." Bodies and Pleasures: Foucault and the Politics of Sexual Normalization. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1999. 17. Print. 52 Sawicki, Jana. “Identity Politics and Sexual Freedom” Disciplining Foucault: Feminism, Power, and the Body. New York: Routledge, 1991. 38. Print. 20 on how to intensify pleasure, which for them produced, “…the truth about sex.”53 In the Western medical establishment’s pursuit to extract the “truth” of sex, they adopt what Foucault calls the “medical gaze”, where the doctor looks at the patient as a collection of observable facts, and assigns an identity to that individual. He states that, “No light could now dissolve them in ideal truths; but the gaze directed upon them would, in turn, awaken them and make them out against a background of objectivity.”54 The objectivist stance that the sovereign (the prescriber of truth) takes has moved from the confessional to the examination table, from admitting wrongdoing, to being part of an “objective” hierarchy. For example, in early Europe, homosexuals were considered deviants and sodomites from the established heterosexual norm, but it is now on the spectrum of possible (diagnosable) sexualities. The diagnosis creates an identity for the patient, and it is that identity we take to be the objective truth of our sexual selves. Although the alleged equality that people of different sexes may feel in our humanistic, secular society may appear to be a step in the direction towards a form of free sexual liberation (compared to previous societies), Foucault believes that the very categorization from objectivist discourse gives us the illusion that we are living free, authentic lives, where in fact, “…normalization takes a specific direction: collections of behaviors crystalize into kinds of persons, and the practices that constitute new forms of knowledge generate their own subjectivities.”55 Through the categorization of scientific classes, sexed bodies have become normalized, where particular ideals of how we view our bodies (on a micro level) shape how we 53 Foucault, Michel. “Sciencia Sexualis” The History of Sexuality. Trans. Robert Hurley. Vol. I. New York: Random House, 1990. Print. 71 54 Foucault, Michel, and A.M. Sheridan Smith. “Preface” The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception. New York: Vintage, 1994. Xiv. Print. 55 Heyes, Cressida J. "Pictures of the Self." Self-Transformations: Foucault, Ethics, and Normalized Bodies. New York: Oxford UP, 2007. 32. Print. 21 view ourselves as “liberated” sexed beings and (on a macro level) extends those ideals to those of the same sexed classification, where we judge others insofar as how they measure up to the prescribed, normalized standard. Foucault believes, through the medical deployment of sexuality, sex became a domain of knowledge that is transferred, “…between men and women, young and old people, parents and offspring, teachers and students, priests and laity, an administration to a population”56. One of the major changes in the 19th century deployment of sexuality was what Foucault calls the “hysterization of women’s bodies”57, where medical diagnoses of a woman being hysterical necessitated the role of a man, her husband and doctor, to control her alleged irrational temperament. Foucault states that, “It is worth remembering that the first figure to be invested by the deployment of sexuality, one of the first to be ‘sexualized’, was the ‘idle’ woman. She inhabited the outer edge of the ‘world’, in which she always had to appear as a value, and of the family, where she was assigned a new destiny charged with conjugal and parental obligations. Thus the ‘nervous woman’…found its anchorage point.”58 The image of the nervous woman, stemming from the Psychoanalytic tradition, still remains a powerful stereotype that is charged against women, where they are seen as “on their period” if they act “hysterically”. In a sense, women are seen as hostage to their body; this is an example of a “truth” that has been constructed around sex, through objectivist medical classification, which acts as a micro-disciplinary effect within women’s lives. These disciplinary effects attempt to produce docile bodies, which act as exemplars and carriers of a type of constructed knowledge. Linking back to Haslanger, the production of docile bodies is an example of her understanding of discursive construction, where the disciplinary method acts as a 56 Foucault, Michel. “The Deployment of Sexuality” Domain. Trans. Robert Hurley. Vol. I. New York: Random House, 1990. Print. 103 57 Ibid 104 58 Ibid 121 22 “classificatory scheme”59 that attributes specific characteristics to bodies, and where these classifications are the criteria for “objective” judgment from others and are thus internalized as true facts. Further, Cressida J. Heyes states that, “Disciplines thus have a double, paradoxical effect: they increase efficiency in their institutional contexts…while at the same time they provide a mechanism for the intensification of power relations.”60 These disciplines exemplify the prescribed roles for sexed bodies, as well as continue to legitimize their roles within a society, where any deviation from this constructed norm could lead to a sense of being questioned by objectivists. These identities, a hysterical woman or an objective man, is what Foucault is most concerned about with the proliferation of the human sciences. Although Foucault believes that power is omnipresent and thus inescapable, he states that, “Where there is power, there is resistance”61, which gives one the chance to challenge these established norms. B) Identity and Resistance Foucault’s primary concern in The History of Sexuality is to be wary of accepting new classifications as fixed identities. In other words, identifying oneself as a heterosexual or homosexual (for example), gives legitimacy to the classification as a biological fact instead of being seen as a historical construct. Foucault shows, through his genealogical method, that sex should be seen as a “…historical accident”62 which is used by the human sciences for states to regulate sex for the future health of the population. Accepting the sexual identity that is prescribed to you gives the false impression of a kind of biologically based essence that is 59 Haslanger, Sally Anne. "Ontology and Social Construction." Resisting Reality: Social Construction and Social Critique. New York: Oxford UP, 2012. 93. Print. 60 Heyes, Cressida J. "Pictures of the Self." Self-Transformations: Foucault, Ethics, and Normalized Bodies. New York: Oxford UP, 2007. 28. Print. 61 Ibid 95 62 McWhorter, Ladelle. "Views from the Site of Political Oppression." Bodies and Pleasures: Foucault and the Politics of Sexual Normalization. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1999. 19. Print. 23 becoming more acceptable in our progressive society. As these identities become more acceptable, they become the basis for a struggle of political rights and autonomy by the non-heterosexual group, in order to be seen as a valid sexual identity in society at large. On first reading of Foucault, one might assume that his theory of power is negative, showing how our bodies have been produced throughout history and where resistance is the only pathway to any form of meaningful freedom. This misunderstanding might be favored among victims of sexual assault, for instance, in wishing to “overthrow” the all too real patriarchal objectivist framework. Against this interpretation, it is important to understand that, “Power is not evil…For example, let us take sexual or amorous relationships: to wield power over another in a sort of open-ended strategic game where the situation may be reversed is not evil; it’s part of love, of passion and sexual pleasure63. The power of one person over another that produces knowledge may have negative or positive effects, but the effects are inescapable. Power, as understood through Foucault, is an all-encompassing fact of life, where there is no domain of life that is free from the struggle of power relations. Instead of, upon first reading, seeing power as an excuse for submission and nihilism, there are avenues for meaningful resistance that can be accomplished within the web of power relations. For example, Brian Pronger integrates a Foucauldian64 account of power that can be used as a starting point for this resistance. He describes two aspects of power, (1) Puissance which, “…refers to a range of potential”65, and (2) Pouvoir which is a, “selective concretization of potential”66. Puissance consists of the array of potential possibilities that the body could 63 Foucault, Michel. "The Ethics of the Concern for Self as a Practice of Freedom." Trans. Robert Hurley. Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth. Ed. Paul Rabinow. Vol. 1. New York: New York, 1994. 298. Print. 64 In his essay, he uses Deluze and Guattari as the Philosophers he bases his thesis around, but recognizes that this understanding of power parallels with the Foucauldian definition. 65 Pronger, Brian. "On Your Knees." Men Doing Feminism. Ed. Tom Digby. New York: Routledge. 71. 1998. 71. Print. 66 Ibid 24 adopt (i.e. identities, body modification), whereas Pouvoir harnesses Puissance and guides it along a set teleological path. As Pronger notes, “The discourse of gender territorializes men’s bodies by this form of desire, simultaneously channeling it and damming it up. That territorializing Pouvoir is actualized, given Puissance, where human connections are either made or negotiated through metaphorically generalized or sexually specific phallic expansions and anal contractions. The more desire is channeled by Pouvoir of the masculine production of space the more masculine it is.”67 These paths, as Foucault has shown, change throughout different eras of history, and the current Pouvoir of bodies falls under the domain of masculine, objectivist, scientific classification. Disrupting the prescribed teleological path for objectivists and their victims, by having them glimpse into the lives of the other can prove to be a transformative experience, and could lead the objectivist to question continuing his role. As history has shaped and disciplined our bodies to mold us into what we are, a new kind of discipline can mold men’s bodies out of their objectivist role. Cressida J. Heyes gives an example of a consciousness shifting role reversal between men and women that could act as a platform for future resistance strategies. For example, Heyes discusses a handful of overtly masculine sailors who are challenged to perform ballet68 (a stereotypically female sport) to be part of a documentary. As they participate in this new bodily discipline, they attempt to become the best in order to be selected to be in the final competitive group. Heyes states that. “One man, the hardest and most masculine…comments, poignantly, that he is working conscientiously at ballet because he hopes after thirty years in shipbuilding someone will see this documentary and offer him something different”69. 67 Ibid 73 68 Heyes, Cressida J. "Somaesthetics for the Normalized Body." Self-Transformations: Foucault, Ethics, and Normalized Bodies. New York: Oxford UP, 2007. 127. Print. 69 Ibid 128 25 By challenging men to temporarily perform un-masculine norms (perhaps under the guise of a competition for it to be more palpable), the Pouvoir that has determined their roles thus far in life may be challenged, as they are offered new outlooks on life. From the harsh physical discipline of ballet, to attending “Take Back the Night” rallies or “Walk a Mile in Her Shoes” events, where men are for the first time subjected to the mental anguish that their roles have had on women, they might come to the conclusion that they have been thrown into the world of assigned identities that they do not believe in perpetuating anymore. In order for this to happen, for a man to take a step into non-masculine activities, men must show, what Heyes calls, “voluntary insubordination”70 where the teleological path for men is redirected and allow for the body to be molded in a new fashion. This kind of resistance is consistent with Foucault’s understanding of power and does not carry the baggage of privileging one identity over another. Instead, it allows for the melding of different experiences to unfold into a body who has a new horizon of possibility. Freudian Essentialism: An Objection Earlier in this section, I briefly discussed Foucault’s separation from the Psychoanalytic tradition that arose in the nineteenth century as a domain of investigative knowledge of individuals. To restate, my argument thus far has been an attempt to critique the objectivist stance, which assumes a position of epistemic neutrality, where it is believed that the observed phenomenon that men and women display is tacit evidence of an underlying essence. Indeed, throughout the works of the other theorists I have discussed thus far (particularly Haslanger and Mackinnon), there has been an explicit undertone that condemns this essentialist attitude. Some 70 Ibid 117 26 of the theorists I’ve discussed have mentioned Freud by name in their works, while others critique his Psychoanalytic understandings. Freud’s essay, Civilization and Its Discontents, develops the foundational understanding that Psychoanalysis has used in order to classify the human psyche to understand our unhappiness within society. In his essay, Freud explains his notorious theory of the Superego, Ego, and Id, where the constant struggle between the three has led to our daily suffering of life. The Superego is the reality principle, where the societal norms of nonviolence and restraint are at constant odds with the Id, which is the instinctual pleasure principle, where our sexual desire stems from. The Ego is our daily consciousness that is a product of the constant struggle between the Superego and the Id. This struggle, Freud believes, is the reasoning for our unhappiness in life, where our libidinal Id has been repressed and controlled by the Superego, and we cannot properly express our sexual desires.71 Throughout society, Freud believes, we constantly sublimate our aim-inhibited libidinal sexual urges and channel them into other avenues that are more acceptable in society, such as the obligatory (as he sees it) need to be kind to your neighbor72 and express love73 toward society as a whole. Comparing our society to those of the Greeks, where sex and love were not compulsory or seen as taboo as Freud believes, our society has become sexually repressive, and attempt to pacify individual sexual desires for the greater functioning of society. The Repressive Hypothesis, that Foucault challenges, is born. 71 This crude biological essentialism manifests itself in Freud’s work, particularly his views on women, where women are incapable of performing intellectual tasks due to their lack of a penis, and where men fear the Humiliation associated with possible castration anxiety 72 Freud critiques the Christian commandment “Love Thy Neighbor” as incompatible with our aggressive tendencies 73 By dividing love from its original, dual sense (between two spouses) to share it with all of society, true love is inhibited. 27 The essentialist attitude that our insatiable need for sex, controlled by our Id, is commonly portrayed in male norms today, where it is believed that men are inherently aggressive and sexual beings. This is the attitude that is passively behind much of the victim blaming talk, where the rape victim is accused of wearing sexually suggestive clothing and the rapist could not control his desire to rape her. As this paints a horrible picture of men, it is still a very real attitude of men in Western societies. In response to this, I would like to posit the same question that Ladelle McWhorter (in her discussion of Foucault) asks, “If sexual expression has varied so much through time and space, what justifies anyone’s assertion that sexuality is just one, universally present phenomenon?”74. Implicit in McWhorter’s claim, is questioning the essentialist account of sex and sexual expression as a stable fact of ourselves, an account that Freud believes is unchanging. Many cultures, past and present, have taken a non-male-centric approach to sex, and for my argument, I take the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Native American tribe. In short, when Christian European men began their blood-soaked conquest of America, they encountered many native tribes, who were matriarchal. What was astonishing to the Euro-Christians was that rape (among other things) was not reported in these tribes75. If a Haudenosaunee man were to rape or sexually batter a woman, he would be, “…punished by the relatives under Tribal law, but which have no penalty under our [United States] laws”76. One can see the complete reversal of the concept of Humiliation in the Haudenosaunee compared to our current society, where Humiliation in modern America is characterized by having your manhood challenged if you do not express sexual dominance. Compared that to the Haudenosaunee, where the Humiliation of 74 McWhorter, Ladelle. "Views from the Site of Political Oppression." Bodies and Pleasures: Foucault and the Politics of Sexual Normalization. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1999. 11. Print. 75 Wagner, Sally Roesch. "The Untold Story." Sisters in Spirit. Summertown: Book, 2001. 44. Print. 76Ibid 64 28 being punished and possibly ostracized by your tribe has been so powerful, it has stopped rape from occurring. Freud might say, about the Haudenosaunee tribe, that the male’s libido is inhibited, and their Id is constantly repressed, which would lead to their discontent within that tribe. However, if this were true, it would be more commonplace to see rape and sexual assault if men in this tribe did have a repressed libido, as according to Freud, it is uncontrollable. The Haudenosaunee tribe is evidence of the proper taught gender roles for men if we wish to exhibit a society where sexual victimization would be nearly eradicated. Although American society has much work to do in the field of gender violence prevention, changing male attitudes and behaviors is not an unattainable goal. Conclusion Haslanger’s objectivist stance, I have argued, has been the standpoint from where male supremacy over women is seen as “objectively” natural and men have been conditioned to believe that this is the proper mode of being. The epistemic neutrality that the objectivist takes in his investigations has created the illusion, according to Mackinnon, of making progress towards a less sexist society, the Difference standard, which is based on the arbitrary sexual differences between men and women. These differences, in fact, are a product of the Dominance standard, where the sexist conclusions that the objectivist makes become the basis for mental and physical domination over women. The Dominance standard has created an atmosphere in which male culture, according to Katz, discourages bystanders from speaking out against sexist acts, so their role of a “man” is not challenged. Keeping men complicit in their passivity is the possibility of humiliation by his peers, which would put his constructed essence of an objectivist in jeopardy. The type of humiliation that men fear is embodied in the women who are portrayed 29 in porn, and the “true” and proper role of a man, as a sexual dominator, is embodied in the male porn star, who acts as the exemplar of what the viewing man believes he should be. This constructed “truth” of the male sex, as Foucault believes, is solidified by the rise of the human sciences, where the biological essentialist view is used by medical practitioners, and the confessional dialogue that the objectivist takes has prescribed these historically contingent facts. These “facts” about male sexuality have stemmed from the viewpoint that men are inherently sexually aggressive, and their classifications of these men are held as the normative standard. However, as these power structures have taken root in sexual discourse, there is a pathway of meaningful resistance to men to challenge their roles, and view the world from the site of the oppressed. If men feel the ability to break outside of their role as objectivists, they would both challenge the culture that keeps men uncomfortably complicit in their lives, and could lay the groundwork for a more gender-equal society. Works Cited Fahrenthold, and David A. "Trump Recorded Having Extremely Lewd Conversation about Women in 2005." The Washington Post. 7 Oct. 2016. Web. Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality. Trans. Robert Hurley. Vol. I. New York: Random House, 1990. Print. ________The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception. New York: Vintage, 1994. Print. 30 _________Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth. Vol. 1. New York: 1994. Print. _________The Foucault Reader. Ed. Paul Rabinow. New York: Pantheon, 1984. Print. Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and Its Discontents. Trans. James Strachey. New York: W.W. Norton, 1961. Print. Fricker, Miranda. "Silence and Institutional Prejudice." Ed. Anita M. Superson. Out from The Shadows: Analytical Feminist Contributions to Traditional Philosophy. Ed. Sharon L. Crasnow. New York: Oxford UP, 2012. Print. Haslanger, Sally Anne. Resisting Reality: Social Construction and Social Critique. New York: Oxford UP, 2012. Print. Heyes, Cressida J. Self-Transformations: Foucault, Ethics, and Normalized Bodies. New York: Oxford UP, 2007. Print. Katz, Jackson. The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help. Naperville: Source, 2006. Print. Mackinnon, Catherine. "Difference and Dominance." Theorizing Feminisms: A Reader. Comp. Sally Anne Haslanger and Elizabeth Hackett. New York: Oxford UP, 2006. Print. McWhorter, Ladelle. Bodies and Pleasures: Foucault and the Politics of Sexual Normalization. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1999. Print. Miller, William Ian. Humiliation: And Other Essays on Honor, Social Discomfort, and Violence. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1993. Print. Orwell, George. Animal Farm and 1984. Comp. Christopher Hitchens. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2003. Print. Papadaki, Evangelia (Lina), "Feminist Perspectives on Objectification", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2015 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.) 31 Pronger, Brian. Men Doing Feminism. Ed. Tom Digby. New York: Routledge, 1998. Print. Sawicki, Jana. Disciplining Foucault: Feminism, Power, and the Body. New York: Routledge, 1991. Print. Schuppe, Johnathan. Race, Class, and Gender in the United States. Ed. Paula S. Rothenberg. Worth, 2016. Print. Sweeney, Annie. "Video Shows Gang Punishing One of Its Own." Chicago Tribune, 10 Mar. 2011. Web. Townsend, Mark. "Being Raped by a Gang Is Normal-It's About Craving to Be Accepted." The Guardian, 18 Feb. 2012. Web. Wagner, Sally Roesch. Sisters in Spirit. Summertown: Book, 2001. Print