In my post on Ted Haggard last night, I argued that contemporary heterosexual college guys often associate any connection with femininity with being "gay." For these kinds of guys, being "straight" or a "real man" means limiting oneself to contacts with other guys as much as possible. In other words, heterosexuality is highly homoerotic for college guys these days.
How does that compare with homosexual males? I spent two years working in a gay bar during the 1980's and part of being gay for the guys at my bar was experimenting with stereotypically female gestures, attitudes, and identifications. Experimenting both with being distinctly feminine in relation to conventional masculinity and being attracted to other guys who experimented with feminine guises, the gay guys at Mont Serrat often engaged in a male-only version of heteroeroticism. This made this group of gay men seem less homogeneous in their male homoeroticism than the straight guys at my college in Kentucky.
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I remember in class that you made a brief reference to the homoeroticism of males playing video games. If requests are acceptable, would you expand on this idea in a future post? Thank you!
This blog, specifically your retelling of working in a gay bar reminded me of a south park episode. It is titled "South Park is Gay" and if you have not seen it here is a wikipedia article that does a good job summarizing it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Park_Is_Gay!
I do not wish to argue with your premise that "heterosexuality is highly homoerotic for college guys these days", yet I wish to explore the assertion that "heterosexual college guys often associate any connection with femininity with being 'gay'.
Again, being a college student I do not disagree with the observation but I would offer a different reason as to the cause of this than the one offered in class by yourself and some classmates.
The view proposed by Mackinnon and the class was that masculinity and the "real man" values was a means of maintaining a homoerotic culture, basically, as well as through pornography and violence.
I would argue that masculinity in males is part of their nature. In mate selection in humans for thousands and thousands of years and still today I would argue, females choice of males is directed toward the most masculine and powerful of the species, because they could provide better resources during pregnancy and child rearing. Beta-males could not, and did not leave children. We are the product of alpha-males, mainly, and masculinity is a product of this. Not only are males hard wired to be masculine, but females are hard wired to choose masculine males (the entire point of the south park episode). I would then argue the exact opposite of Mackinnon, that females perpetuate a homoerotic society through their mate selection, and this setup is beneficial to both parties through perpetuation of the male genes by way of sex, and resource acquisition during pregnancy and child rearing with the act of pair bonding.
We are now living in a modern era, but we are still the same machine that was built to deal with these conditions in Africa, and changing mating behavior and social construct is not something that is going to happen overnight. It is even debatable as to whether this would be a good thing for our species.
Since women are gaining power, it was argued, there is the increased attempt by men to delegitimize and degrade women, as well as perpetuate a homoerotic society through sports, gaming, and pornography.
I can offer a different argument to account for these facts. Since women are gaining power in society since the sixties, the average woman whether in power or not will view themselves as less feminine, since they are taking on a more masculine role. In order to reassert themselves as feminine, and I would argue that women do like feeling feminine and girlie, they associate themselves with more masculine males than they might have previously in order to compensate. This leads to more masculine offspring , and explains the rise in masculine activities. The way I see it this fit’s the facts just as well as Mackinnons argument.
I enjoyed the discussion today, by the way.
A small correction. I adapted the arguments on male homoeroticism from the work of Luce Irigaray rather than Catherine MacKinnon.
To be honest, I've always been surprised about the extent to which guys except my arguments on homoeroticism among heterosexual males.
In relation to this, I want to ask if you really want to see a huge dose of homoeroticism as quintessential masculinity as you seem to assume in your reply.
I recognize your arguments as coming from work on "evolutionary psychology." But isn't that a hugely speculative area of work. As far as I know, there are only two pieces of evidence in that area: studies that find that women prefer guys with Jay Leno type jaw lines and that those jaw lines are associated with higher levels of testosterone. That seems to be a really thin reed to hang big claims about the original humans.
These arguments seem one dimensional to me. There's no correlations between intelligence, personal skills, or other kinds of capability with testosterone. It makes sense that there would be lots of qualities in alpha-ness, near alpha-ness, and beta-ness. But I don't see any reason why these qualities would be correlated with testosterone.
Another question is whether women had much choice in the mates they ended up with. According to the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss (and Luce Irigaray) the answer to that question for traditional societies is "no." One of the skills of human leaders is rewarding their followers. Why wouldn't the leaders reward their followers with desirable women whether the women like it or not? Without actual evidence, you can't know, but one speculation about early humanity is as good as another when there is no evidence.
I can speak about developments since the 1960's since I've lived, dated, and been married throughout the period. I've seen a lot of "alpha women" (to adapt your language) come through my classes, but alpha guys seem to be getting more rare. Likewise, the smart, energetic, and capable women are aggressively female, but tend to be a lot less "girlie" in the traditional sense. That's even true of the female Republican activists who use heavy make-up, wear dresses all the time, and things like that. They're not suffering fools any more than the feminists. It doesn't seem like the heavily homo-erotic gamers, sports junkies, or pornography addicts would be very attractive to them. I'll have to ask.
QUOTING:
"In relation to this, I want to ask if you really want to see a huge dose of homoeroticism as quintessential masculinity as you seem to assume in your reply. "
I think that you may misinterpret the way that I see things as a defense for those things. Rereading my post, this may stem from a grammatical error where is said before “is beneficial” instead of “was beneficial” as I meant since you can clearly see the next sentence starts “We now live in the modern world…“ Simply because I can tell you why Hitler killed millions of Jews does not mean that I condone it. So, simply because I can tell you why masculinity has prevailed in human society as homoerotic, does not mean I condone homoeroticism as the foundation of masculinity.
The main disagreement I would have with the social construct of Mackinnen, (and i realize you said your logic is based on Irigary, but Mackinnen was who we discussed in class),is that society directs the view of masculinity and power through socialization with pornography hierarchical system etc., rather than realizing that masculinity is a product of biology and evolution, and this biological basis leads to perpetuation of pornography, hierarchical system, etc.
My disagreement on this point seems to suggest to you that because I see this as the root of masculinity in society, that it is appropriate for modern society. I wouldn't argue that, though as I mentioned last post I know people who would (one of my professors for example).
The line of logic that follows with feminist thought is that reducing pornography and things of this nature would reduce the socialization of masculinity in our society and lead to narrowing the gender gap and male hierarchy. If you follow my logic, the pornography is not the cause but product, so reducing pornography like Mackinnen argued , should have no effect if my theory is right. It would simply seek different manifestations.
The question then becomes, how do you end the system of male hierarchy that has become engrained in the essence of a being? I cannot provide a good solution, but solutions like Mackinnens based on addressing the product, not the cause of a male dominated system will only provide symptomatic relief (But ill give her it's better than nothing). It would be like treating the symptoms of AIDS without ever searching for a cure.
QUOTING:
"I recognize your arguments as coming from work on "evolutionary psychology." But isn't that a hugely speculative area of work."
Slight correction, most of my argument comes from sociobiology, although I will grant you that the two fields are closely related. Sociobiology is kind of a bastard son of biology for the reason you stated above "highly speculative". It finds correlations between behavior of animals and traces them to their evolutionary roots. Similar behavior suggests similar evolutionary pressure (though i will be the first to admit not always). So they have done much in comparing the social behaviors of humans and other animals and seeing if there are known facts about their shared evolutionary history. Different approach than evolutionary psychology, but the two fields tend to agree on most things and I would argue that's a kind of evidence in itself.
Political Science is SPECULATIVE, don't let the science word fool you, ask any real scientist. So I see no problems taking speculative information from one source when the alternative is just another speculative source.
QUOTING:
"There's no correlations between intelligence, personal skills, or other kinds of capability with testosterone."
Finally, we agree. lol, that is if you are talking about the modern world. Thousands of years ago there was a difference, unless you're prepared to argue that the average woman is equal at big game hunting and operating a primitive plow. These tasks require muscle, and men on average have more, why? Testosterone. In modern times testosterone helps zero at most types of labor.
But this is our conundrum, we are machines that keep making machines suitable for an out of date practice. Men want power though they might not be the best person to be in power, and women who might be the best for having power don't really have the drive for power like men.
How do we change this? I will now take suggestions.
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