Gender Roles and stereotyping

I promised to write about the search for the missing brothers Julian and Ruben, but then my dissertation prep caught up with me and I stopped having time to stop and write. And now it's more or less dropped from Dutch news, so I don't think I'm going to bother any more; I missed the moment. Let me just conclude my thoughts on it by use of the following statement: I know it was an emotional affair. It was a horrible thing, and my thoughts go out to their Mum.
But the hysterical reporting reminded me an awful lot of the massive outrage over stranded whale Johannes last year.

There are, however, plenty of other serious topics to write about. This is one I care deeply about.

***

Recently I've been getting worked up over a lot of things, including rape culture, the perpetuation of the patriarchy, people who argue against gay marriage and against blasphemy, and democracy. I've become a regular visitor of Everyday Sexism, which exists to point out that despite some people arguing the opposite, sexism is (unfortunately) very much alive - and surprisingly ingrained.

And quite simply, all issues I get worked up over all come back to one basic concept: people should be treated as individuals of equal worth. My main issue today is gender roles; the ideas that men are supposed to be men, who are into women, and women are supposed to be women and there for the enjoyment of men (because, as is an unfortunately still prevalent belief, "women don't like sex" - which is an obviously ridiculous idea). 

Before I bounce off into a rant about everything that's wrong in this world, let me spell out my privileges. After all, you can't properly criticise existing power relations without acknowledging your own position within them.

I think I classify as middle class. I attended a solidly middle class elementary school, in any case, and grew up in a solidly middle class town. I've been brought up as a white, Dutch, agnostic protestant in the white-majority, protestant, prosperous Netherlands, and have received a good education. I have never been discriminated against based on race, ethnicity, socio-economic status, education, political preference or religion. I have been and am immensely privileged.

There should be no external hurdles for me to do anything I want to do - except for being the leader of a strict hierarchy, because, as my father has now declared in two discussions, "women don't do hierarchy well" (Don't get me wrong, I really do love my Dad, we just tend to have different views on different things - doing discussions is pretty much our family sport).

I suppose I understand my father's point of view - his was a time in which males went into the army at 18 and females stayed home to take care of the family. I don't think he ever expected to have to defend his views of whether females are generally particularly unsuited for certain types of work to his daughter.

But this is not what makes me angry, though it does get me worked up.

What makes me angry are the comment sections of online news articles I have been reading lately, where people broadcast their opinion that somehow females who dress in short skirts ask to be raped and that somehow males are losing their masculinity for allowing females to "feminise" society.

But neither are particularly worrisome issues. Sure, these opinions are tremendously grating, but they can be opposed. They can be discussed, because they have been vocalized.

What is, however, a worrisome issue is the underlying corrosive attitude towards gender and gender-roles.

Gender still so often forms part of our identity. Many people before me have gone on to state how there is a difference between sex and gender - sex is what gives male homo sapiens their XY chromosomes, and what gives female homo sapiens their XX chromosomes. It's basic biology.

What isn't biology, however, is gender - gender is a social construct. When I say 'male' and 'female' in this post, I mean biological sex - when I say 'man' or 'woman' (or the plural) I mean gender.

Gender is what makes people expect females to like pink and glitter and flowers and ponies and stuff, what what makes people expect males to like beer and sportscars and steak and boobs and stuff.

Gender is, regrettably, also the thing that make people say truthfully idiotic things such as "women should not be in charge of a ship because women don't do hierarchy", or "men should not be nurses because they aren't caring".

Gender stereotyping is what makes me lament to one of my friends "sometimes I wish I were a guy, things would be so much easier - I could just wear a three-piece suit if I'd like to" and what makes manufacturers like McCoy's proclaim that their crisps are man crisps - so I can't possibly enjoy them?

It's what made McDonalds release a commercial in the Netherlands in 2006, in which they promoted "man-burgers"...

Translated transcript:

Woman: Oh, I'll have a man-burger.

(McDonalds falls quiet)

Voice-Over: Okay, if you girls want to act like men, we'll act like women!

(Man trying on wellies)

Man: It's exactly what I'm not looking for. It's the wrong colour, the heel's ugly...

(Different shop)

Man: Well, they feel right.

Woman: Yeah, I think they're...

Man: But they're really ugly.

(Different shop)

Man: Colour's exactly right. But those ridges, I really don't like ridges...

Woman: Ridges?

Man: Yeah, they're ugly, those ridges.

(Different shop, woman offers a pair of wellies, man only sniggers)

(Different shop again)

Man: It's so difficult. I think I like those in the first shop best. Yep. We could drop by tomorrow.

V.O.: The Big Tasty with Bacon. A man-burger. For men. And women, if they still feel like one now...

I'm fully aware that commercial was to be taken as a joke. It's not like I lack a sense of humour - I giggled tremendously when I first saw it.

Except the whole fact that I feel the need to defend myself by asserting that I do have a sense of humour is already a result of ingrained gender roles and the perpetuation thereof, because the whole notion of a female finding fault with commercial products that perpetuate gender stereotyping, no matter whether ironically or unironically, is far too often neutralized by the simple remark that the female who finds fault with the commercial simply lacks a sense of humour. Such neutralization is of course tremendously useful, because if you can neutralize something without having to actively consider it, you save yourself the trouble of questioning the underlying assumptions.

More simply said: accusing people who take offence with female-driver jokes, female-kitchen jokes and female-sandwich jokes (worse still, rape jokes) of having no sense of humour whatsoever allows people to go about their business as usual, without having to wonder whether females are often marginalized and then - gasp - actually having to do something about it. But actually, making a joke about females (and reducing their experiences of sexual abuse to a joke) is just as bad as racist jokes. No one wants to be known as a racist, so why is being sexist still okay? Why is it so much easier to call out someone on saying something racist than it is to call them out on a sexist joke?

I fully support seeing gender - like sexuality - as being on a continuum. Sex is generally dichotomous (though, as always, there are exceptions), but gender is far more fluid.

Gender stereotyping is a dreadfully narrow thing.
I am female and generally identify as a woman, but display many characteristics considered unfeminine or masculine; I loved to play with my brother's Lego bricks as a child, prefer technical and scientific documentaries over soap operas and talent shows, loathe chick flicks and chick lit and want my crime films to be as gruesome as possible, and generally enjoy taking charge of my own affairs.
Women are, however, generally expected to not like or even be capable of science and technology (consider the awful EU campaign about science for girls, see below - even if women do science, it can, apparently, only be so when science is pink and can only have to do with make-up and other "girly" things), generally expected to love chick flicks and despise action films (consider so.awfully.many internet how-tos for a woman to get a male friend to join her to see a romantic film, and so.awfully.many action film reviews that have at least one point of why women would love that film too, not generally having to do with enjoying the action but with the looks of a male star), and generally are expected to have their male companions pay for them and sort out their affairs (consider the majority of Everyday Sexism anecdotes).

I am no different from most women, or most people for that matter, in enjoying the things I enjoy. Should the things we ought to enjoy really be dictated by our sex, or can we just accept that people have different interests, which have nothing to do with their sex or gender?

Do be aware, most people are in one way or another guilty of gender-based assumptions and stereotyping. Just the other day I found myself accusing someone of "acting like a woman" for holding a grudge.

Similarly, men are expected to behave irrationally when it comes to sexually attractive females - should we really believe that men are so terribly weak that they cannot control themselves when they see a flash of skin? Funny then how there are still places in this world where females can walk around with uncovered breasts and the local males don't go into horny fits. Isn't assuming that men are sexually weak creatures not also gender-stereotyping? Placing men within the beer-drinking sports-watching category, in which men turn into drooling stupid-boxes whenever a somewhat-sexually attractive female passes by.
Most importantly, should men somehow really be denied their active role in sexual crimes, as so often rapists are assumed to be male because women are not considered to actively seek out sex? Generally, according to infuriatingly large sections of The Internet, females are apparently somehow asking to be harassed, because apparently to these sections it is a man's right to consider females public property, to be touched and used at their own discretion. If a female goes out wearing a short skirt and she gets raped, how is it that her fault? She did not request to be raped, the rapist decided to do the raping and went ahead with that. There are so many men out there who do respect females as people, and who show no signs of acting irrationally whenever they see an attractive person - is it then really irrational to ask all people to at least respect others regardless of dress and behaviour? 

Gee.

If you identify as a woman and you're somehow less than feminine, you're criticised for being un-feminine. If you're attractive, you're 'asking' to at least be harassed, as if access to 'pretty girls' is somehow an inalienable male right. If you're unattractive, you're supposedly not worth the attention, or only negative attention.

If you identify as a man and you're not so much into sports or anything, people are actively supporting the idea that you should have your man-card revoked, whatever that means. If you're a man and you like taking care of other people, same thing.

Awfully oppressive, isn't it, being denied the basic right of being respected and being considered worth equally to all others just for failing to fit these dreadfully narrow stereotypes.

And respect really isn't that difficult a thing. It is nothing more than considering others individuals with basic inalienable human rights such as, well, set out in the declaration of human rights. It is a social glue, keeping society together, lifting destructive conflicts (conflicting with others for who they are - like Hitler's attempt at annihilating just about everyone who didn't adhere to his Aryan ideal, and on a much more individual level, the rather silly fallacy of the Ad Hominem) to the level of a constructive conflict (conflicting with others for what they do).
And it's not at all difficult to implement, either. When I was in Cairo, of all places, a few years ago (pre-revolution), with my father and brother, our male tour guide took my questions about Egyptian politics, economics and the Islamic faith just as seriously as he took my brother's and father's on the same topics, and actually asked my permission to put his hand on my shoulder when we took a photo with him. Of course asking me and not my brother or father this is still recognizing a gender difference, but far more along the lines of recognizing that some women (should've been people) might be uncomfortable with others touching them without permission. At the time, I was surprised and actually found it a bit silly, as I have been lucky enough to not have had to endure much groping and catcalling in my life, but as I keep reading articles about females feeling sexually harassed my appreciation for this gesture has increased exponentially. The reverse has happened with the man in Luxor the year before who, although probably in jest, offered my Dad a good lot of camels in exchange for me - at the time I felt incredibly flattered that 1) I was apparently worth a good lot of camels, even if it was a bit of a joke and 2) my Dad was offered more camels for me than he was for my Mum 20 years earlier in Tunisia. But I've come to realise that not only is it very, very wrong to treat women as pieces of meat, to be traded against camels, as a joke it's in as poor a taste as "sandwich" jokes are.

What if we just let people like what they like, do what they do, regardless of their biological sex, wouldn't that at least stop a whole lot of nonsense about people somehow being worth less for who they are rather than for what they do? 

Was Ernest Hemingway a marvellous writer because he was male or because he wrote things like For Whom the Bell Tolls? Sure, he's a "manly" man writing about "manly" things, but does that make him any better or worse as a writer?
Was Jane Austen a wonderful writer because she was female or because she wrote the wonderful Pride and Prejudice, among other things? Sure, she was a woman writing novels that seem currently most often read by women, but does that make her less of a writer than Hemingway?
Furthermore, I simply love Oscar Wilde's writings; would one even remotely think it reasonable to consider him a better or worse writer than Austen for the sole reasons of Wilde being male? Surely not. Would one even remotely think it reasonable to consider him a better or worse writer than Hemingway for the sole reason of Wilde being gay? Surely not.

Surely, are all three completely different writers who should be judged for their own merit.

On the very clever Oscar Wilde-segue, let's discuss sexuality.

With rigid gender attitudes comes a rigid attitude of heteronormativity. It seems that a lot of (straight) males are more or less homophobic, perhaps because in homosocial (a social situation of men amongst men) situations, being bi or gay is supposedly less manly (i.e. the idea that a lot of men are scared to be even be for a second thought bi or gay because they think their male buddies might think less of them for it - the reverse is a man being able to pick up numerous very sexually attractive girls who are in their mid-teens to mid-twenties).
Most (straight) females are much more socially free to 'experiment' with other females, presumably because of pornography in which "girl-on-girl" is a trope - or the pornography trope is reflective of the general male arousal as a result of "girl-on-girl", in any case, it seems much more accepted, perhaps because a majority of heterosexual men appear to find it attractive - not judging it too harshly serves general (straight) male interests. But in the end, women are still expected to settle down and have children.

I don't understand why some people are against homosexuality. Seriously. If a person against it on religious grounds, fine, they should go ahead and deny themselves every same-sex sexual urge they might ever have and be miserable about it. But why try and forbid others from doing what they please? 

I suppose what I don't get is the "threat" of homosexuality. How is it threatening? Some people seem to be afraid that people of their own gender might crush on them. But then I still don't get the threat. What is different for a straight-man-identifying male between a woman crushing on him and a man crushing on him? 

Perhaps it's indeed the homosocial status thing but then I still don't get it. Shouldn't one feel flattered that someone fancies them? (on that note, being flattered because someone fancies you is very, very, very different from being sexually harassed - fancying implies a respect for the person behind the looks, considering them actually people rather than pieces of meat or public property).

And why do people protest so vehemently against gay marriage? Surely marriage is a personal thing, a personal contract between two people (and sometimes their god) - surely such a personal bond cannot be made worth less or more based on whoever else decides to use a similar template to formalize their personal bond?

If one truly feels it's a sin, shouldn't they leave it up to their god, à la Matthew 7:1, "Judge not others; then God will not judge you. 2 For God will judge you in the same manner as you judge others, and God shall judge you according to the measure with which you judge others." (apologies, translation from my Dutch bible, but the message remains the same).

If gender is on a continuum, then sexuality must be so too. If you particularly fancy people with certain characteristics, should it then still matter as what they identify?

I personally often find myself socially attracted to funny people, who've read books that I like too and like to discuss things like politics and films and ethics. Though I so far have only been sexually attracted to males; if I were to feel sexually attracted to a female, would that make me a different me? Would that change who I am? Surely not.

Shouldn't we then agree that people should be judged according to what they do and how well they do it, rather than according to whether they identify as man, woman or anything in between and rather than according to the type of people they generally feel attracted to. Let's try and be as my Cairene tour guide and treat people as people, whose opinions and beliefs are important regardless of gender or sexual preference and whose bodies are their own, not public property. 

Because people are just people, and they have every human right to be happy with themselves just the way they are. 

Poem: Luxor

Apart from being a criminologist I also like to consider myself a writer, and poetry is of course very suited for a blog because the narratives I write are both too long and still require too much work to post here without me feeling anxious about them.

This is a poem I wrote two years ago.

Luxor

As though the Gods alone could create
That which bears such historical weight
Sphinx and ram bordering the lane
Guardians of faith and priests' long-held reign
Bronze are the sands pouring into the Nile
Biblical river offering soil so worthwhile
Red spotted heights topping off the King's Valley
Approached through the desert's lonely alley
And at the end of the stairs that amazing sight
Looking over the city from royal height
Site of the temples of Gods long past
Oh, how they perceive time flying fast
Wonderous city of one-and-thousand dreams
How far and yet near our last meeting now seems

It was mainly inspired by those great fourteen lines by John Burgon, part of his 1845 poem about the desert city of Petra in Jordan. I can only wish to write so beautifully as he does, but I'll keep practising and though this blog is meant for serious criminological and sociological pieces, every once in a while instead I'll try and post a poem.

Petra

It seems no work of Man's creative hand,
by labour wrought as wavering fancy planned;
But from the rock as if by magic grown,
eternal, silent, beautiful, alone!
Not virgin-white like that old Doric shrine,
where erst Athena held her rites divine;
Not saintly-grey, like many a minster fane,
that crowns the hill and consecrates the plain;
But rose-red as if the blush of dawn,
that first beheld them were not yet withdrawn;
The hues of youth upon a brow of woe,
which Man deemed old two thousand years ago,
match me such marvel save in Eastern clime,
a rose-red city half as old as time.

Naturally I should've copied that wonderfully rhythmic "eternal, silent, beautiful, alone!", that's just marvelous, as marvelous as the comparisons with Greece and nearer churches and cathedrals - I should've compared stuff too.

And though I've never been to Petra and so can't judge whether Burgon's poem is in any case truthful, I dare say that he is right in claiming that things of that level of beauty seem to be particular to the Middle East and parts of North Africa.

So, poetry. Because criminology can get really depressing sometimes.
I promise something more serious later this week, about the media coverage of the Dutch case of two missing (now found dead) boys whose father was found two weeks ago having committed suicide.

Committing Criminology

This blog was never intended to play out as a sort of online diary. There are other ways to keep my parents informed, such as Skype.

This blog was initially intended to outline the academic stuff I do. Sometimes I did - I wrote a tips page for current (Dutch) undergraduates thinking of studying in the UK, and every once in a while I tried to give my opinion about politics, but I keep returning to diary-like posts.

And yet, for the last week I've been trying to write a post on gender equality, which should be serious enough. I ended up analysing the Boston Marathon Bombing-reporting in my Crime and Media paper, while instead I could've written about it here.

I suppose a blog name as 'Adventures' does not actually encourage many serious ideas either, which in turn easily leads me to turn to writing semi-diary posts. As some of you might know, I've been trying to find a new blog name for a while now, and I finally have found one.

The other day I attended one of the Scarman Lectures here, which was this time done by Dr Barbara Perry from the Uni of Ontario Institute of Technology, about islamophobia in Canada. Her lecture consisted mainly of anecdotes by victims of islamophobic violence. From these anecdotes it seemed apparent that much of that type of violence is justified by the offenders to themselves through a sort of Othering-mechanism (e.g. comments to go back to countries of origin), which upset me.

In my view, the things that upset me - gender inequality, Othering, ignorant politicians - all relate to one thing - the existent power structures. Crime and especially crime reporting relate to this too - calling a mugging criminal and banking fraud culture are very much in line still with Sutherland's crimes of the powerful and those of the powerless. Calling one set of behaviours criminal and immoral and the other not simply maintains existing power structures, and of course media representation of crime feeds especially into this by making criminals seem monstrous, non-human.

Which is also why I am writing my dissertation on how UK newspapers reported on the notion that multinationals companies that make large profits in the UK - Amazon, Google, Facebook, eBay, Starbucks, etc. - avoided paying taxes through accounting tricks. Technically, this is legal. Technically, this is not criminal. The newspapers, however, seem to think otherwise - though it is not strictly called criminal, it has by at least one paper explicitly been called immoral, while a number called for boycotting these companies. And several drew criminal justice process-analogies by terming Starbucks's decision to pay 20m in taxes over some years as pleading guilty. Which is a fascinating turn of events; a sort of pre-legislative criminalisation of corporate behaviour, which seems quite rare judging by the general apathy towards legislating against corporate misbehaviour that over and over again is apparent in corporate crime-literature.

I suppose it all, in the end, relates to my belief in true democracy, a more or less Aristotelian constitution - in which everyone is a citizen, i.e. with equal rights and the duty to consider what is in the advantage of society. In such a society, everyone would be seen as of equally human, whether rich or poor, sick or healthy, or in any other way advantaged or disadvantages, and everyone would have the duty to contribute to the best of their abilities. Indeed, if everyone did what they enjoyed best and what they are best at, there comes into existence a true free market, exchange of goods and services, and one would expect general utility to continue going up. I might come back to this at some point in the future, for I do have more to say on it.

Which is why any type of power structure that deprives any human, whether through stigma, through bad education (or none), through general violence, is immoral to me. Industrial organisation teaches that eventually, theoretically, monopolies should disappear because the continuing invasion of other companies trying to get into the market should force them to keep prices low, and those sorts of mechanisms. The same should work for incumbent power structures - if the powerless continue to invade the spheres of the powerful, at one point the power structures must change. Except that industrial economics don't always seem to take political (lack of) power and societal apathy into account.

This. This is the stuff I want to be writing about. I want to explore morality and equality and crime reporting, I want to go into adventures in the land of criminology. I want to continue. I want to discover what makes people violent and what can be done against harmful acts, whether criminal or legal, whether corporate or individual. I want to understand society.

Dr Perry referred to a statement by the Canadian PM, who took a dig at sociologists by saying that it was "not a time to commit sociology". But it is, of all the moments in all the centuries in all the past, this is it, and I want to commit criminology in my time.

So from now on this blog will called 'Committing Criminology', and I will be writing about serious things. Mostly.

Tan

So it's been a while.

I've polished and finished my essays, and I've started on collecting news articles on corporate tax evasion by multinationals in the UK as reported over fall 2012 and spring 2013 for my dissertation.

To finish the essays we sort of formed a small library gang, hanging out there everyday from about 10 to 7, just to help each other do this and finish. And it worked tremendously well, as well as just being fun - especially now that the weather's turned warm and sunny (it's 20C right now!) and we got to spend hours in the park.

I'm still waiting for news from Leicester and London about the PhDs, but that will probably still be a good number of weeks.

So now I'm more or less stuck waiting for my grades (hand in was today, so it'll be another three weeks) and doing dissertation.

But today will be a park day, celebrating hand-in, and tomorrow I'll attend stuff for course rep and other interesting things. Oh, and do a proper spring clean this time around, since now it's warm enough to actually drag stuff outside while I clean my room.

I will be posting updates about my dissertation etc in the future, as well as perhaps excerpts from my essays, because some of the stuff I wrote was pretty okay I suppose.

But let's first try and work on my tan.