When Academicians Mislead Readers - Sexuality & Culture

Banake · 2022-01-05T23:51:46+00:00

It must be noted how much patriarchal systems differ from one another. In some Islamic parts of the Middle East and east Africa, the level at which women are controlled is horrendous to this day; in some places they are forbidden to let their faces show in public. It is a sad testament to the power of tradition, especially religious, and in particular that with any connection to sex. A beautiful face seen by any men but her husband? Shocking! In our own culture, patriarchy has been far more benign, and now is—despite the book’s constant dogmatic pronouncements—virtually gone. (Partly due to the invention of effective birth control and modern technology, which removes the need for men’s greater average muscular strength, even in war. And domestic conveniences have freed women to have careers. They no longer have to churn butter, etc., etc.) Also very significant is Western patriarchy’s traditional chivalrous protectiveness toward women, which has long been to the disadvantage of ordinary men. Notably, being sent off on pain of great punishment to get their bodies and minds blown apart in war to protect the “women and children” safe at home—recall Dr. Vierich’s key point. Yes, the heights of power are still mostly occupied by men, but so are the much larger lower levels of society. The book frequently equates the patriarchy of some very different cultures to our own. Beware “black-and-white” thinking when discussing very different cultures.

A large part of the book is focused on physical partner aggression (sexual abuse is discussed separately), which it blithely attributes to patriarchal control. But its discussion is seriously biased in various ways. There have been literally hundreds of sociological surveys asking people anonymously what they have done and suffered in this regard, beginning with the work of eminent sociologists Straus, Gelles and Steinmetz in the 1970s—which found statistical equality of such aggression between women and men, by women’s own admission Straus et al., (1980). Literally hundreds of similar surveys have been conducted since then, getting basically that same result and expanding on it. (Until he burned out from the work of keeping track of all these “equal results” studies, a certain sociologist was keeping an annotated bibliography of them (Fiebert, 2012: http://www.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm). And as the research questionnaires were improved to include such things as motives, it was found that more women initiate violence—they are not acting in retaliation or self-defence. Because of their lesser strength, the harm inflicted is expectably more often to women. In John Archer’s (2000) large meta-analysis it is reported that “62% of those injured by a partner were women”. But being merely less able to inflict harm is not a moral virtue; the moral issues are motive and intent. One indicator of the harm that would be done, were women equally able, is the various survey-studies on psychological partner abuse: they too have found that both the amount of this abuse and of the resulting emotional suffering tend to be equal for men and women.

Title	When Academicians Mislead Readers - Sexuality & Culture
Author	Banake
Upvotes	11
Comments	2
Date	January 5, 2022 11:50 PM UTC (4 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/rx0hpy/when_academicians_mislead_readers_sexuality/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/when-academicians-mislead-readers-sexuality.1094412 https://theredarchive.com/post/1094412

Comments