Factors contributing to the pedestal. How many can you relate to?

nomdplume · 2015-08-07T23:58:00+00:00

An emphatic yes to them all. That literally was (and still can be) my paradigm.

I remember, before I knew the sex of my son, I was hoping to have a girl (now, I couldn't be happier that I have a boy EDIT: InB4 accusations of "sexism!" - I'm happy because I love my little boy more than anything in the world, his being a boy is beside the point) Why? Because in today's world, a kick-ass girl can be anything, but that's not true of boys (girls can be, say, a pirate, but a boy cannot be a princess, for example). The accepted gender roles expected of boys are more constrained.

A couple of additions:

It is more socially acceptable to expect men to follow traditional gender roles than to expect women to follow such roles (“I expect a woman to cook and clean” is considered backwards and chauvinistic, but “I expect a man to pay for things” is considered reasonable or at least not a big deal).

A big one for me (following on that) is the role of SAHP.

At least in my communities, a woman who gets to be a SAHM (it's recognized as a privilege) is celebrated. It's almost a status symbol ("I don't have to work 'cause my husband is that successful").

A SAHD is almost always seen as a misfit or a deadbeat. It may not be overt, due to the habituation of political correctness, but it's almost always lurking in the conversation. As a SAHD, I became quite sensitive to this reality. No one knew quite what to make of me.

Notice that, if you read a media account profiling a SAHD, it's almost always worded as "Mr. Dad is a (insert some kind of profession or artistic pursuit) AND a stay at home dad." You almost never here a man describe himself as "just" a SAHD.

The dating/courting process is generally seen as a series of events where the man must impress the woman and prove he's good enough for her.

I don't know if I've ever seen/heard/read of a case where this doesn't happen. I think it's universally true.

Again, overtly it may not be obvious, but if you look at the details of how two people got together, it's fairly plain to see the dynamic.

And, of course, people will deny this because it sullies the idea of "true love" or whatever.

Marriage and long-term relationships in the media are often depicted as one-sided. This includes common tropes like “the woman's always right”, the man always sleeping on the couch after an argument, and the man referring to the woman as his “better half”.

You missed one of the big ones - "Happy Wife; Happy Life"

How many guys have killed themselves trying to live up to that one in order to have a happy life, lol...

exit_sandman · 2015-08-08T00:46:29+00:00

There's a Facebook meme that surfaces from time to time about how men should pamper their wives so their sons can learn how to treat women, and how their daughters can learn what to expect from men. I'm sure you've seen it, or something similar. Try pointing out that it's sexist bullshit, you'll add #10 to your list: "Dissent towards the Wonderful Women Principle will not be tolerated and must be swiftly punished".

Good post.

ThorLives · 2015-08-08T00:31:52+00:00

I'm sure there's a whole ton of things I'll think of after I post this, but one thing I've been noticing recently is how often, in artwork, women are portrayed as sweet and pure and calming. Men are not. Men might be strong or complicated, but never calming. I first noticed it when I was looking for images online (not related to men or women) and noticed how many of them contained women. I've also been noticing it a lot with murals around the city - where women/girls are portrayed as pure and innocent.

Here's a google image search. It's evident even in the coloration of the images - images of women tend to use a white/light background and more colors, images of men are often dark, set to a black background, and often holding a weapon.

https://www.google.com/search?q=artwork+of+women&espv=2&biw=1507&bih=740&tbm=isch

https://www.google.com/search?q=artwork+of+men&espv=2&biw=1507&bih=740&tbm=isch

By the way, there was a post about this in the RedPill a while back where a guy talks about a lot of this. For example: "Little girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice. Little boys are made of snakes and snails and puppy dog tails.". Here's the post: https://np.reddit.com/r/TheRedPill/comments/36l14z/men_are_bad/

There's some articles on the TV Tropes website about this, too:

In any work featuring both angels and demons, most of the time the angel will be female (or at least more feminine or androgynous) and the demon will be male (or at least more masculine). The primary reason for this is that angels are supposedly beautiful, refined, merciful and noble creatures, while demons (even if they are being portrayed as Affably Evil) are ugly, rude, crude, callous and mean. Traditionally, the former traits are considered feminine while the latter traits are considered masculine. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FemaleAngelMaleDemon

If the story requires random anonymous characters to die just to move the plot forward, they'll likely be male. If the plot requires a tragic death that motivates the protagonists or shows how evil the villains are, the victim will be female. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MenAreTheExpendableGender

[deleted] · 2015-08-08T00:35:59+00:00

Every single one applies, 100%.

Additional:

Women nagging and women complaining about their husbands/sharing funny stories about how dumb her husband is. As a kid I saw that all the time. I didn't see men nagging or men complaining about their wives. So kid-me thought that men were dumb/evil while women were awesome. They did everything right, but men messed it up all the time. I didn't think of the possibility that these women were bitches and the men just didn't make a fuss about what bothered them / didn't want to embarrass their wifes in front of others.
The "damsel in distress"-trope that was even more prevalent in the movies I saw as a kid fucked me up. I really thought women are more valuable than men and had to be protected. (The first time that I recognized that something was wrong, was when I watched "Krull". The hero prince gathers a group of men to rescue the princess. Every single one of the men except the hero dies on the quest. Many of them extremely painful deaths. The film ends with a celebration. I didn't even recognize it at first. A few days later when I thought about the movie, I was like WTF?). Yeah, it still messed with my head big time and it took a lot of throatfuck videos to get that out of my system. Thank you, porn.
The pedestalizing because of the damsel in distress trope was amplified by the fact that girls often asked for help or favors, while boys didn't.
Another thing: I never saw women being physically violent. Yeah, I was a boy who didn't beat up other kids, but I thought me and my buddies were just exceptions. As I never saw a girl using violence (after kindergarten. Boy, there were cruel girls in kindergarten), it registered as "women are more peaceful and good". I wasn't aware of how evil they can be when it comes to mentally destroying their foes.

I think I could come up with more, but that's enough for now.

Xemnas81 · 2015-08-07T23:57:42+00:00

All of them

Nazrath2112 · 2015-08-08T03:36:50+00:00

All of them for me as well.

YetAnotherCommenter · 2015-08-08T04:47:53+00:00

I've always questioned these things personally but I've absolutely seen all of these tropes in my culture (particularly #3).

exit_sandman · 2015-08-08T05:31:23+00:00

All of them. Also want to add two more:

it's a lot less acceptable to set standards for women because for some occult reason they're all "sexist" or "shallow" or "sending the wrong message". The "Beach Body"-campaign which basically looked like this where no one complained about the poster showing a ripped guy, but feminists campaigned against the one showing a slim woman until kingdome come for propagating "unrealistic beauty standards".

And finally one that's not social, but biological:

women as the selective sex are in a better position than men from the onset. There is no such thing as a "penis pedestal" because penises are available in abundance for them: for a woman willing to sleep around the dating scene is like "The Star Talers", only with dicks instead of coins.

Lonny_zone · 2015-08-08T00:13:32+00:00

I relate to all. Let's see the hamsters spin on this one.

wtknight · 2015-08-08T02:02:05+00:00

I never really experienced this.
Not this one either.
Nope
I've always thought that there were all kinds of bad females out there. I certainly don't pedestalize them in this way. Of course, you don't have girls and women committing mass shootings...
Yeah, this is true, but I tried to avoid that kind of thinking as much as possible as I got older. I would say my wife and I did an equal amount of trying to impress each other back when we were dating.
This doesn't describe my relationships at all.
Well, somewhat. Generalizations about men are ridiculed quite a bit on /r/TumblrInAction, but a generalization about women could get you fired from a job. Anyway, anybody who makes overt negative generalizations about a gender probably deserves what they end up getting.
Totally disagree. Men are portrayed as sowing their wild oats or "studs." Women are portrayed as sluts. Women's sexual desire is treated as dangerous. Men's is treated as perfectly natural.
I do agree with this one. To me, the media's portrayal of the female body is probably the biggest factor that caused me to put girls on a pedestal in my mind when I was younger. On the other hand, it puts a lot of pressure on girls to live up to a physical ideal, so I'm not sure that they exactly get a net benefit out of this.

OfSpock · 2015-08-08T00:53:52+00:00

I remember reading books and when the married couple had a girl, I was sad for them unless they already had a son. Certainly in my mother's family of three girls and one boy, the boy was the favoured child who would carry on the family name. There was definitely a cultural narrative that boys were the favoured gender and that a family of all boys was better off than a family of all girls.
There is an underlying thought here that girls are less capable of saving themselves than men are.
This is a work in progress.
We are trying to encourage girls to go into sport and science and discourage both boys and girls from lives of crime.
This is supply and demand at work. I always wanted to meet someone and fall in love. Guys would ask me out and if I said I wasn't really feeling it, they would beg for 'a chance'. There is certainly a body of work (magazine articles, movies etc.) which depict people falling in love after a time of knowing each other rather than right away. This never happened to me but I would guess it happens to others. However, in these situations, they wanted to go out much more than I did, so there was certainly an element of them trying to impress me. They would perhaps, be better off looking for someone who is more into them in the first place.

I'll skip a few because I'm out of time but I want to address 8.

This is because male sexuality is, in a lot of cases gross. Men frequently press their attentions on women who are not interested, being both disrespectful and threatening. And since a lot of men don't care at all for the woman, they just want to have sex and don't particularly care about their partner, it can be dehumanizing as well. The type of guy who does this tends to hit on or harass every woman in the vicinity so we've all met him and we are often warned about his type even before we start dating.

fundude1 · 2015-08-08T15:26:50+00:00

Very accurate post about the double standards noted in this culture.

Luckily, most of the world is still male dominated. After the fall of the Anglo world (coming soon), this will go back to the normal state of affairs.

scrantonic1ty · 2015-08-08T12:01:07+00:00

Bloody hell.

Do you realize that most of this respect and treatment stuff is about what men should not to do women to hurt them and what women should do for men to care for them.

It took ZERO amount of time for a man not to grab, harass or rape a woman. In regard to work and career, that's something he was doing anyway. But for a woman to cook and clean and care for a man - that's time intensive and it's not something she was already doing. But she was expected to put in all that time and effort. He was not expected to change. All he was expected to do was act like a human being.

Question: how many of these can you relate to? How many of these were true of the region/sub-culture/environment that you grew up in?

The below are the expectations of men and women that i grew up with:

More emphasis is placed on the respect women deserve from men than on the respect men deserve from women (or from themselves).

Respect from men to women was just about not grabbing their body parts at random and not telling random women what they'd like to do to said body parts. Seemed pretty reasonable.

There is a larger focus on the importance of men treating women well than on the importance of women treating men well.

In relation to the above (no grabbing of body parts etc) and in relation to sexual assault and in relation to violence, yes.

But in relation to marriage, women were overwhelmed by messages to care for their husbands. It was (and still is) all the TV commercials (women vacuuming his house, cleaning his house, fretting about stains in their husband's shirts, making sure she serves tasty meals.)

She was expected to give up her career for his. Raise his children. Cook his meals. Wash his clothes. Clean his house. And if he had an affair, she was expected to suck it up and blame herself.

It is more socially acceptable to expect men to follow traditional gender roles than to expect women to follow such roles (“I expect a woman to cook and clean” is considered backwards and chauvinistic, but “I expect a man to pay for things” is considered reasonable or at least not a big deal).

If the woman is caring for a man's kids, yes he's expected to pay for things. Caring for kids is a job. Therefore, when he comes home from work, both he and she should cook and clean together and care for the kids. Otherwise, she's nothing but a servant.

But apart from the above scenario - if there are no kids, who the fuck expects a man to pay? Just gold digging women, who are easily avoided.

People are reminded that “women can do anything men can do” much more in the context of good things (sports, science, business) than bad things (criminality, deceit, selfishness). Often it's phrased as “anything men can do, women can do better”.

Yes. This is true. Women haven't owned the bad aspects of women as honestly as they could.

The dating/courting process is generally seen as a series of events where the man must impress the woman and prove he's good enough for her.

Yes, but the woman used to be expected to show her homemaking skills. These days, there is no real courtship and no need for a man to impress a woman any more than she is impressing him. I'd say both sexes try to impress each other equally when dating. She goes to a lot of trouble with hair and makeup and clothing - there's a lot of pressure on her to be considered beautiful enough to deserve love (which sucks)

Marriage and long-term relationships in the media are often depicted as one-sided. This includes common tropes like “the woman's always right”, the man always sleeping on the couch after an argument, and the man referring to the woman as his “better half”.

But to counter this - men were traditionally seen as the head of the household. What the man said stood. She kept hearing that she needed to keep her man well-fed.

These days, I don't see it as being uneven. I saw the 'happy wife happy life' thing as being about placating the wife so she'd go on being a good little wife.

The thing I hear most is "the wife". As though she's some object he installed in his house.

Insulting generalizations or hateful statements about men are considered much more socially acceptable than similar statements about women.

Yes. I see this as being true. And this needs to change. I think men participate and spread stereotypes about men possibly even more than women do.

Men's sexual desire (but not women's sexual desire) is often portrayed as disrespectful, dehumanizing, shallow, or even physically threatening.

No way. Never. Men's sexual desire is held up as a shining beacon of their maleness. Women's sexual desire is seen as sluttiness or evidence that there is something wrong with her 'femaleness'.

Only sexual assault/rape/comments about women's bodies are held up as physically threatening or disrespectful.

Men's bodies are more often held up as humourous or gross, while women's bodies are more often held up as sexy and desirable.

Yes, this is true. I suspect a lot of that comes from the fact that most women (or least most women in the past) went through pregnancy - during which fat is naturally deposited, and then long boring periods at home watching small children and not doing the activities they used to do. Whereas for men, nothing changes. Their bodies never balloon with a pregnancy and they're not restrained with small children in the way women are. So men have far less of an excuse for putting on weight.

RichardPalma · 2015-08-08T00:48:40+00:00

No
No
No
No
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
No

Title	Factors contributing to the pedestal. How many can you relate to?
Author	dakru
Upvotes	23
Comments	71
Date	August 7, 2015 11:21 PM UTC (10 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/PurplePillDebate
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/PurplePillDebate/comments/3g6qve/factors_contributing_to_the_pedestal_how_many_can/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/PurplePillDebate/factors-contributing-to-the-pedestal-how-many-can.280437 https://theredarchive.com/post/280437

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