Drunken Peasant Feminism

If you'll indulge me, I want to camp out on the Gina Barreca’s The Single Majority editorial a little longer. As I said in so many words in last week's post, Barreca interprets a dubious statistic that there is 51% majority of single women to indicate that A) society has stigmatized women for remaining un-married, and that B) men have used that stigma to take their wives commitment to them for granted, and that C) the increasing singleness women into 51% is primarily to be understood as women asserting themselves against this stigma.

It is palpably undeniable from her editorial that Barreca is expressing a catharsis of released pent up rage and frustration toward men on behalf of women. The question is, is Barreca’s catharsis valid? As I said in so many words in last weeks post, the problem is that contained in Barreca's catharsis is a sweeping assessment of men that doesn't even try to sift out the cross section of men who need to stop taking their wives for granted on account of the long-on-the-wane stigma for women to be un-married from all of the other men. In this sweeping and flippant assessment of men, Barreca is not trying to deal with that cross section of men and male behavior in a way that is precise enough to truly invite men and women to better relate to each other.

Now let's assume for the sake of argument that the 51% statistic is true. In reality, there are many reasons why people are not staying in marriages, and why marriages fail, and why people never get married. In other words, there are many sundry reasons why a 51% majority of women un-married statistic may have occurred. As for the stigma of remaining unmarried, I was born a generation later than Barreca was. Most of the stigma of being non-married that I have observed among women in my generation is one that women apply to themselves for running out their biological clock. The pressure for women to measure their worth by being married was felt to a greater degree in Barreca's generation. It is clear that for Barreca the 51% majority of women un-married statistic is something that she reads as a benchmark of progress for an issue that she felt in her generation, and which she now takes as permission to publicly vent her feelings in this generation. It is also likely that Barreca's personal experiences with men and her close knowledge of her friends’ relationships have been dominated by a particular experience of men in marriage.

The question is, how much do we grant someone like Barreca the largess of having her catharsis in a public media and how much do we hold her accountable to holding her catharsis in check to seek balance? The Philadelphia Inquirer would not print something written by a man that openly and flippantly dissed all women like Barreca has openly and flippantly dissed all men. It is the province of populist media, like the editorial pages of the Philadelphia Inquirer, wherein the "You go girl!" zeitgeist has been given its voice, allowing women like Barreca to have their catharsis of pent of rage and frustration in public space.

Of course, I don't take TV to be a clear picture of the essence of real men and women, but the views on TV do provide a window into the popular gender caricatures that are reflected in many people’s attitudes. It is ironic that Barreca sees the TV as portraying a retro-grade view of women who are beholden to "Homer Simpson" men. In my view, the picture of men and women on these shows is a part of “You go girl!” but in a slightly different form than the “men need to get out the woks” feminism that Barreca discusses. In TV land, women settle for Mr. Less as an opportunity to be nagging and condescending. These comedy shows offer female viewers a reversal of the I Love Lucy riff in which the wife was the bumbling one and butt of jokes. In this TV milieu, feeling superior is the consolation prize for having a man who is chronically under-achieving in his ability to jump through the hoops that Barreca wants men to be jumping through, lest women drop them at the drop of a wish. As I observe what’s on TV, it is strong male characters like Horatio Caine (CSI Miami) and Jack Bauer (24) and Gil Grissom (CSI), etc…who are un-married and weak men like those on King of Queens and Everybody loves Raymond who are married.

In TV land, the “You go girl!” attitude is most perfectly impersonated in the character Ally McBeal. In the realm of fashion, “You go girl!” is manifested in many women partially baring intimate parts with blatant disregard for boundaries of time and place (it was Ally McBeal who jumpstarted a trend of micro-mini skirts in the mid 1990’s with a particular “You go girl!” episode in which she castigated men for criticizing her). In regard to relationships, “You go girl!” is summed up by a T-shirt that a man wore that said “When I married Ms. Right, I didn’t know that her first name was ‘Always’”.

As for Barreca and other “You go girl!” feminists, if Barreca recognizes the end of an era when many women felt socially pressured to remain married even when their husbands behaved like Homer Simpson, is Barreca happy with Promise Keepers? It is Promise Keepers that makes a serious attempt to confront Homer Simpson behavior in men and their marriages. Too often, "You go girl!" feminists are threatened and frightened by Promise Keepers, and smear it as an attempt to return to re-construct a pre-feminist gender apartheid past rather than recognize it as an attempt to take the truth of feminism to heart in regard to the behavior of lazy husbands. This part of the larger “You go girl!” attitude that has more room for the sycophant committed man and the uncommitted strong man and than it has for the strong committed man.

This "You go girl!" zeitgeist that is represented on TV and in other parts of our culture and that is influencing an attitude that many women have to one degree or another in relationships with men is the feminist aspect of a belief that I call primalism. Primalism popular is a form of postmodernism, what I call “street postmodernism”, that is based on a postmodernist rejection moral metaphysics. Primalism reduces moral questions to questions of power equilibrium among people with competing desires with the belief that the greatest social good is for people to express their feelings and desires as they operate in power equilibrium with others.

In primalism, since nothing is ever transcendently morally true beyond power equilibrium, things are merely temporarily correct so that social codes can be continually adjusted to advance the “expression privileges” of “underdog” groups that have had less power from a historical perspective. As such, primalist social codes are organized around the need for "underdogs" to have their catharsis of overcoming their “underdog-ness”. Here, underdogs are given the “expression privileges” so that they are allowed to "burn the wick", to express their rage until it is burnt out and they are ready to move on. It is the application of primalism within postmodernism that is the basis for many things that are politically correct. To illustrate the relationship between primalism and PC, often what is politically correct in our society is merely the bright, visible area of a moon, while primalism is the whole rest of the moon.

It is the ethic of primalist PC that “You go girl!” catharsis privileges are granted to women coming out from under various oppressive social structures. While the feminist movement is more than a century old, and modern feminism began in the late ‘60’s, the primalist PC “you go girl” attitude of feminism entered the zeitgeist in full form about 20 years ago. By a primalist PC ethic of power equilibrium, the past 20 years is a drop in the bucket compared to the long history wherein women were socially pressured to find worth by being married. By a PC ethic, women who want to express their outrage for this history will be granted "catharsis privileges" for a long time to come.

Darby Crash of the Germs once sang that “…evolution is a process too slow to save my soul”, and primalist PC feminism left to its own devices does not offer me a process that will result in any gender reconciliation in my lifetime. In fact, primalist PC feminism is leading the opposite way. There is a certain point at which a catharsis of rage needs to be reigned in, and if it doesn't it only begets destruction. A conflict resolution counselor will encourage an individual person in a confrontation to be accountable to being as balanced and as reasonable as possible so that the ultimate goal is not to vent rage but to advance the relationship. An individual who vents his/her anger without having the serious goal of advancing a relationship with another person will merely instigate a fight that will go back and forth. And what is true on a small scale is also true on a large scale. The lack of disciplined conflict resolution between large groups of people not only affects the relationships between groups, it leaches into the attitudes of people on the small scale and affects individual relationships.

Twenty some years and counting is a long time to pollute the waters of gender relationships a great deal by promoting confrontation is that is more interested in fighting/one-upping than in truly reconciling. It is the wisdom of Proverbs that confronts the un-fettered id that primalist ethics allows by saying "only a fool gives full voice to his anger". The wisdom of Proverbs can be amplified specifically to the realm of gender politics by saying, “only a fool allows his/her anger to be the basis of promoting destructive caricatures of men and women”. To explain the same principle with a different metaphor, Martin Luther spoke of the drunken peasant who gets on one side of the horse only to fall off the other side. One way that this imbalance occurs is when one does not make any effort to harness one’s hurt feelings into a sound course of action for reconciling with another, but rather allows the anger to completely dominate the dialogue.

The "You go girl!" form of feminism that has made it onto editorial pages, that has made no attempt to sort out caricatures and reality, and that has flippantly dissed men has become the "drunken peasant" version of feminism that only offers undisciplined euphorias of rage and new double standards to replace the old double standards. This “You go girl!” feminism has its compliment in men who express their misogyny by sexually objectifying women and who advance “You go stud!” attitudes as the blow-back to the prevailing “You go girl!” attitudes, and so the hatred and mistrust and cynicism between men and women grows. It is the deviant strength of men like radios hosts Howard Stern and Tom Leykis who operate in the wedge that the "You go girl!" attitude has helped to promote in our society between male strength and male commitment and respect toward women.

Feminism has been, and will continue to be, an important social movement. Feminism needs to be held to the standard of promoting good relationships between men and women as its goal, and the valid critiques of society that are contained in feminism need to be brought increasingly into the fold of a greater understanding of men and women. To the extent that feminism is infected with a “You go girl!” attitude, feminism needs to be saved from itself. We've long reached a point where drunken peasant feminism that is not interested in what is actually best for men and women to get along is polluting the bloodstreams of people's attitudes with bile. We've reached the point where "You go girl!" shoot from the hip feminism needs to be accountable when it shoots from the hip.

And as for the "You go girl!" excuse that men are supposed to be "tough enough to handle it", this is the part of the "You go girl!" idea that traffics in the inclinations of men to be chivalrous. Here, chivalry is mutated from a social code on the part of men to physically protect women into a social code to protect women from being openly criticized and confronted by men. It is a social code that has conflated the protection of women with primalist PC ethic that values the unreconstructed and unchallenged comfort of women to express their id. This idea that men are supposed to be strong enough to "handle it" is an intellectually lazy way of approaching relationships that works backward from a caricature of male strength. The long and short of it is that all of the various form of “You go girl!” male bashing are, in the end, relationship bashing, and that's bad.

Examining Cute Poison

An editorial, The Single Majority, was written recently by Gina Barreca and published in the Philadelphia Inquirer on January 19, 2007 in response to a recent survey that found that 51% of women were living without a spouse.

I’ll let other writers question the veracity and methodology of the survey. My interest in the editorial is that Gina Barreca uses this survey as a springboard to express her flippancy in regard to the serious task of helping men and women relate to each other. It is a sign of the times when such poisonous dreck makes past the net of news editors and finds its way into mass print media.

So here is the link to her article. If you read it first, you’ll understand what I’m commenting on. It’s not long. I would post all of it right here for the sake of convenience, but I’m trying to respect copyright laws.

The Single Majority

Now that you’ve read it, allow me to put it’s flippancy under a microscope and explain why it matters. These flippant remarks listed below are by no means an exhaustive list, they are just some choice flippant remarks that I want to examine specifically before looking at the editorial as a whole.

Flippant remark #1: The question, far as I can see, isn't why more women aren't marrying; the question is why they marry at all.

Why do women marry" could be an honest question if it were couched within a larger context of honestly questioning why people marry, including why men marry. In the absence of this context, Barreca intends the question, “…why they marry at all” rhetorically. In English, “…why (pronoun) (verb) at all” is an idiom that is intended to disparage what is being questioned. “…why they marry at all” has a conclusion encoded into it: that marriage is a drag, and why would women want to bother with such a drag?

Flippant remark #2: Fact is, there are better gigs than marriage out there for women these days

If you treat marriage as merely a gig, then, yes, there are better gigs than marriage. Barreca has a view of marriage that it is a disposable thing when it is uprooted from the realm of financial dependence.

Flippant remark #3: Maybe that's because women grew up singing, "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow" while men grew up singing, "We've Got Tonight (Why Don't You Stay)."

Notice this line, “…while men grew up…” Again, while many men may have operated like this, or still do, it is in no way representative of all men. Barreca could make the distinction between the zeitgeist and the realm of all men but chooses not to.

Flippant remark #4: (either a red gravy for pasta, which they refer to as a "Bolognese" sauce, or a stir fry made in a wok they got from their last girlfriend)

Who are the “they” in her parenthetical comment on cooking, all men or some men? Again, Barreca is too busy being cute to make a distinction. I’ll explain in more detail why this is a problem.

Flippant remark #5: Once the culture at large accepts this - that we marry, and stay in marriages, only if we wish to - perhaps husbands will once again get out the woks and work to woo their wives.

Here Barreca is trying to confront the premise that women need to be married to men to be socially accepted more than men need to be married to women, and, therefore concludes that men as a group have taken womens' commitment to them for granted after the men have wooed the women into marriage. While the cultural idea of marriage and social acceptance may have been true in the past, and while many men may have used this cultural idea as an excuse to be lazy husbands, Barreca is drawing a sweeping conclusion about what is at the root of people's relationship/marriage failures that is based on a mis-understanding of the actual relationship that exists between real people in marriage and the fashionable cultural ideas of marriage that surround them. Of course there are some men who need to "get out the woks" to help their marriage, but in the absense of any perspective or balance in regard to all men and all marriages, "get out the woks" is Barreca's jab at men and not a serious effort to help people in their marriages.

Of course, we men stay in marriages only if we “wish” to. And now here’s the problem with the word “wish”. While it is true that it is possible for one to have a meaningful and fulfilling life as a single person, we humans are compelled to seek marriage and deep relationships with the opposite sex to meet deep needs that both sexes have for each other. While it is true that marriage is, and should be, a choice, the idea that the drive to bond deeply with opposite sex is merely a “wish” makes the drive seem weaker than it actually is.

Flippant remark #6: Marriage, like dessert, is wonderful if you choose to indulge, but it isn't essential. Remember, too, that when the Bible declared it "not good for man to be alone," it didn't say anything about woman.

The Bible reference here is cute. It is part of a false idea of men and women, that men are the needy ones and that women aren’t, and therefore since women don’t need men financially in the way that they used to, women are the less needy ones in a relationship, and therefore women are more powerful and can call the shots and get men to jump through hoops if men want to be graced with the companionship of women. In sum, Barreca is saying that men are stuck in need, while women have graduated to “wish".

Now allow me to react to some anticipated reactions to my comments to these flippant remarks.

If I give Barreca the benefit of the doubt, she is trying to say that those men who are inclined to use past cultural ideas in regard to a woman's need for a man as an excuse to be a bad husband no longer have those cultural ideas available as a premise to base their behavior on. She is trying to say that the statistic of 51% is an indicator of this cultural change.

The problem is that the tone of Barreca’s article is both cute and triumphalist. Here, Barreca wants to be both fun and serious. That way, if the reader takes her seriously and disagrees with her, he can be dismissed as being humorless. Here, cuteness and triumphalism are being alloyed together to create smugness to reinforce the smugness of those who are already inclined to agree and quell those who disagree. I can almost hear Barreca responding to these comments in the same flippant manner that she has written the editorial. “Oh come on don’t be so serious. It’s just a little editorial! Surely you don’t think that I’m advocating GPS devices”.

I can hear another response to my comments, “My readers are smart enough to know that I’m not talking about all men”. In regard to a topic as sensitive as gender, one needs to carefully separate real men and women from the fashionable “zeitgeist” notions about men and women come and go. Each zeitgeist, taken in whole cloth, is a distorted caricature of men and of women. In any given zeitgeist, men are noble warriors or lazy slobs and women are fragile flowers or man-killers. Each zeitgeist notion has some claim to some piece of truth about men and women, but no zeitgeist can be confused with the essence of real men and women or even necessarily the behavior of most men and women. While it is often true that culture notions hold sway over many people's thought and behavior, sometimes the cultural zeitgeist is merely a loud, vocal minority, while the quiet majority wait for it to pass.

Any serious attempt to arrive at a prescription to help people in their relationships needs to work backward from a serious attempt to understand the essence of men and women, and not work backward from caricatures. While Barreca has identified some of the caricatures of women in the past in regard to marriage that have had serious consequences on women, she is glad to embrace a fashionable “Homer Simpson” and/or “Don Juan” caricature of men. It is this caricature of men that is complimented by her promotion of another caricature of women – the "You Go Girl!" caricature that women, unlike men, are the smart, powerful and independent ones who have the right to call the shots in a relationship. It is operating from these caricatures that Barreca tosses out her flippant prescriptions for keeping marriages together.

And no, the reference to “high fives” isn’t just cute editorial fun either. Barreca doesn’t think that the Homer Simpson/Don Juan caricature of all men and the Homer Simpson/Don Juan behavior of some men is cause for any alarm or sober mourning. If this editorial is any indication, Barreca does not arrive at “high fives” from a deep longing for men and women to actually reconcile, nor does Barreca arrive at "high fives" out a valid need to celebrate the end of an problematic cultural system. If this editorial is any indication, Barreca arrives at “high fives” because it is an opportunity for her to encourage women to feel superior to men. She might respond. "Ah" but my quip about the Bible was all in good fun". Actually it is part of a string of flippant remarks in her editorial that has consequences beyond "good fun", because it is “fun” that has its roots in cynicism.

As an anticipated response to my criticism, “My readers are smart enough to know that I’m not talking about all men” seems on the surface to be trying to protect the readers from having their intelligence questioned. What it actually does is avoid the uncomfortable reality that the people who make a zeitgeist powerful are those who are not committed enough to the quest for intellectual honesty and precision to try to carefully sort out distortions from reality. If they were, there wouldn’t be all those pesky zeitgeists. The truth is that many people absorb what they hear directly into their bloodstreams, especially when they are itching to hear it. It is the responsibility of writers to try to guide people beyond this tendency and into a higher realm of understanding.

The current “You Go Girl!” zeitgeist is real, pervasive and destructive. By eschewing precision and trying to be cutely provocative, the tone of Barreca's editorial feeds this zeitgeist and is a part of this zeitgeist. The "You Go Girl!" attitude is the female counterpart to ways that men have hurt women. “You Go Girl!” is an attitude of turning the tables on men, not of inviting men and women into serious relationships. As with the “You Go Stud!” attitudes that do not invite men to reckon with the depth of their needs for women and manage those needs well, “You Go Girl!” does not call women to reckon with the depth of their needs for men (not to mention the needs that children have for adults in covenanted relationship). “You Go Girl!” seeks to give women a phony sense of emotional independence from men that is based on a phony idea of strength and non-need in regard to men and an over-all flawed idea of human nature, both male and female.

The “You Go Girl!” is based on the simplistic narrative: that we women are the victims, but now we have the power. It is this “You Go Girl!” narrative that confuses the just cause of overcoming some specific oppressive clichés of women in our society in regard to marriage with the idea that women have been the lesser participants in the failure of marriages and relationships. This confusion is based on the phony feminist-originated idea that women are not capable of evil in the way that men are, and that evil originates from bad men and is merely imitated by the nobler sex who will return to being noble when they are freed from bad men and can operate with the power balance tilted toward them. This mis-apportionment of the capacity for evil across gender lines is the result of a feminist tendency to downplay the differences between men and women to where women are only allowed to be recognized as being distinct from men when women are seen as being better than men. Barreca’s "You Go Girl!" editorial is the part of the dross that has risen to the surface from this overall viewpoint.

Specifically in regard to marriage, women have always been just as capable and just as culpable of wrecking relationships as men. Even as the culture has changed and the zeitgeists have come and gone and will continue to, in the intimate spaces where men and women interact with their needs for each other, there have always been ways in which women and men have hurt and used each other and loved each other and profoundly blessed each other. A “You Go Girl!” attitude toward marriage and relationships does not invite women into a truly adult and clear understanding of relationships with real men but, rather, coddles women into remaining resentful toward men and relationally stunted, just as much as “You Go Stud!” causes men to be relationally and emotionally stunted. The truth is that both men and women can be lazy, bullying and manipulative in a relationship, and that there are some uniquely feminine and masculine ways to be destructive, and that men and women both need to learn to avoid destructive behavior in all the forms en route to better relationships.

Since Barreca is willing to be prompted by a dubious statistic to peak outside the zeitgeist on TV to try to find a clearer view of women, maybe she can also be on the look out for a clearer view of men. Then she might have a clearer view of the potential that men and women have to live in mature relationship with each other, and of the sad mess that our society is now in, in that regard.