Men Are The Expendable Gender

[Pingfah]

I really find myself cringing at the idea of bringing up a Demi Moore movie but in GI Jane, the crucial line in the film was "they're not the problem, we are". When men can watch a woman die with equal equanimity to watching another man die, then we shall have true equality.

For the most part though, action/sci-fi etc films are aimed at a male audience. Men typically don't want to see lots of women killed, especially not in meaningless shoot-em up scenes in action films, it's too distracting and depressing to think about lovely women being slaughtered for no good reason.

Plus it's just not sexy. Unless they are hot, dead and stuffed inside a refrigerator.

Ive said too much

 

[Hermiod]

Been there, done that.

Well, actually no, you haven't and neither have I. I started this thread to have a sensible discussion about an article, filled with examples, that was written by someone else.

Your contribution so far is to tell me you don't want to contribute ? Do I need to do that on every thread I'm not interested in too ? That's going to take a while!

 

[Kegg]

Is that some sort of great crime now?

Oh no. Freedom of thought and all that.

But that you can't acknowledge that there is this sort of discrimination against women in these stories is puzzling; and that you can only accept it (and still apparently not, given your defence of the Rachel Dawes situations) when it validates your talking points about male discrimination is frankly distasteful. Female discrimination can only be acknowledged when it's secondary to male discrimination, or maybe just a mislabelling of what actually is treating men wrong.

Do women ever get a bum rap in your eyes?

 

[Deckerd]

I really find myself cringing at the idea of bringing up a Demi Moore movie but in GI Jane, the crucial line in the film was "they're not the problem, we are". When men can watch a woman die with equal equanimity to watching another man die, then we shall have true equality.

This is the crucial point, I think. Men are the expendable gender because men make it so. Men define the qualities they value in themselves and in women.

It all comes back to biology. The male runs the show because he is physically more powerful than the female. The female plays by the rules because she needs the long-term support of the male for the rigours of pregnancy, birth, and the raising of offspring. The male needs only sexual access to the female. The male simply has a better bargaining position, and the result is the near uniform development of patriarchal societies all over the globe.

The 'women and children first' thing is simply the sociocultural extension of the fact that men are biologically (i.e. reproductively) more expendable than women are. One male can impregnate as many females as are available, whereas female reproductive capacity is independent of the number of males available. A demographic shock that significantly reduces the number of males in the population is far more survivable than one than significantly reduces the number of females.

This is all well and good as it sets it in a sociological and evolutionary context but aren't we moving beyond those constraints? This is Hermiod's argument, I think. Again, in GI Jane, she asks the politician this very question: is the death of a woman somehow more painful than the death of a man? And the politician says it doesn't matter; people don't want to see women coming home in body bags. It's politically untenable.

 

[Hermiod]

Rii, Pingfah - at no point have I suggested that the devaluing of male lives, or maybe the overvaluing of female lives, is something women invented.

Men are just as guilty. Men made the rules, but not a lot of women seem to be trying to change them.

 

[Deckerd]

If women are changing the rules, then surely this is a good thing? If men invented 'men are expendable' then any paradigm shift away from that is positive, surely.

 

[Hermiod]

Deckerd - that is exactly my argument and it seems I have misjudged the film.

Kegg - the article I linked to explains how WiR is an unintended consequence of Men as the Expendable Gender. I agree with that view.

And yes, women get a 'bum rap' in
many ways. They have a lot of people trying to address them all. They can stand to have one thread on the Internet about a subject that doesn't directly benefit them.

 

[Pingfah]

If women are changing the rules, then surely this is a good thing? If men invented 'men are expendable' then any paradigm shift away from that is positive, surely.

He said not a lot of women. And it's probably because they mostly don't care. Even most feminists I know don't seem to consider this a problem.

I think it's entirely natural for men to not want to see women killed personally, or to feel worse about it...

 

[Hermiod]

If women are changing the rules, then surely this is a good thing? If men invented 'men are expendable' then any paradigm shift away from that is positive, surely.

He said not a lot of women. And it's probably because they mostly don't care. Even most feminists I know don't seem to consider this a problem.

I think it's entirely natural for men to not want to see women killed personally...

I don't want to see anyone killed. I'm not joining in any call for the return of National Service. I just expect it to apply to women as well as men in the unlikely event that it ever was brought back.

American males, however, still have to register for the draft decades after Vietnam.

 

[Deckerd]

FWIW GI Jane is a mess. It just has a few good lines.

Also FWIW the Israeli army tried training women as front line infantry in the same way they trained men. It didn't work. The US army also tried it in a limited fashion. It didn't work. Whatever your feelings about the unfairness of it all, women are shit at frontline fighting. They aren't effective, so they aren't deployed in this way.

 

[Deranged Nasat]

Yes, humans treat males (at least the lower-status majority) as expendable, disposable and surplus. Because biologically they are. Yes, their lives mean less, yes, members of both sexes will near always care more about -and for- women and girls than they will men and boys. Yes, humans tend to treat their expendable sons like crap and always have. Yes, those who have woken up to this fact and try to change it- usually lower status young men, surprise surprise-face denials and resistance from higher-status or successfully competitive men and from women, who have no desire to change a social system that works so well for their benefit. Yes, TV and other media reproduce gender stereotypes all over the place- "women in refrigerators" being one of them.

Let's move on. Next issue.

 

[Deranged Nasat]

... can't acknowledge that there is this sort of discrimination against women in these stories is puzzling; and that you can only accept it (and still apparently not, given your defence of the Rachel Dawes situations) when it validates your talking points about male discrimination is frankly distasteful. Female discrimination can only be acknowledged when it's secondary to male discrimination, or maybe just a mislabelling of what actually is treating men wrong.

Do women ever get a bum rap in your eyes?

Ah, but the point is, reverse the sexes in this and you'll have described 90% of the population in their usual approach to gender issues, the product of decades of government and media bias that has promoted one branch of perspectives on gender above any of a multitude of others (and this is in part what the OP is pointing out- men and boys die and suffer etc all over the place in their dozens or hundreds, but as soon as one woman is in a similiar position only then does it become an issue- and often, against all logic, made to be an issue for women. And this is the case in life as in media). But as soon as someone challenges that favoured perspective, hostility is the result. And as soon as the situation is reversed to what you describe above, suddenly this becomes an issue, and hypocrisy rears its ugly head, because you're condemning the bias and the "distasteful" selectivity here, but not in its more common form.

 

[Pauln6]

There are biological and hormonal differences between the sexes that may affect women's ability to function as well as men as 21st century front-line infantry but I don't think that need be reflected in sci fi.

Star Trek had a real problem with female security guards. I want women to be as expendable as men but Tasha Yar was the only woman in security until TNG Season 4! Even now, we've never seen an all female team despite seeing numerous all-male teams. NuTrek was apallingly sexist considering that it was written in the 21st century as opposed to the 1960s. The writers showed almost no ability to adapt to modern attitudes to women (all of the principle women were pretty much primarily mothers and girlfriends). No Number One, no T'Pau, no lines given to any significant female admirals or vulcans. Olsen could have been a woman but I wonder if they shyed away from that because of his ultimate fate?

NuBSG did a much better job. A female pilot dying there was no more or less tragic than losing a man.

 

[Hermiod]

The Israelis at least have an equal system of national service, as do the Dutch.

That's about it for the West. After that you're looking at North Korea and maybe a few other countries I'm unaware of.

National service isn't really the point though. Horror movies do it, Sci-Fi does it, everyone does it. Wave after wave of men die, but it's only when a woman dies that the evil killer has crossed the line.

As the article points out, even Babylon 5's Ivanova (a woman serving in an equal military) tries to stop the destruction of a ship by protesting that there are women and children aboard.

 

[iguana_tonante]

Been there, done that.

Well, actually no, you haven't and neither have I. I started this thread to have a sensible discussion about an article, filled with examples, that was written by someone else.

Your contribution so far is to tell me you don't want to contribute ? Do I need to do that on every thread I'm not interested in too ? That's going to take a while!

I was about to write a smug answer to that, but I'm not in the mood. So I'll just be explicit: I think your obsession with this particular subject is not due to an academic interest in gender studies but to some personal issues you have with the fairer sex. Now you have my contribution to the thread.

 

[Hermiod]

^You think wrong.

So far, this is the closest thing to a grown up conversation on this or any other men's issue thread I've been involved with. Nobody has denied that women face great inequalities. The debate around those can stand to have one discussion about something that doesn't do anything to benefit women directly.

 

[Deranged Nasat]

Been there, done that.

Well, actually no, you haven't and neither have I. I started this thread to have a sensible discussion about an article, filled with examples, that was written by someone else.

Your contribution so far is to tell me you don't want to contribute ? Do I need to do that on every thread I'm not interested in too ? That's going to take a while!

I was about to write a smug answer to that, but I'm not in the mood. So I'll just be explicit: I think your obsession with this particular subject is not due to an academic interest in gender studies but to some personal issues you have with the fairer sex. Now you have my contribution to the thread.

I don't know the history here, so excuse my commenting, but this annoys me. So, "obsession" over the way in which men and boys are casually victimized in their thousands while society shrugs must mean that someone has problems with women? Typical. No, the problem is with how we treat our sons, how we raise them, how we encourage them and others to view them and their worth. Believe me, when you identify with these men and boys and actually have issues with how humanity treats them, you'll be angry. You'll be "obsessive". But the point is- and this is in part the OPs point, too, I think- that everyone else will sneer at you and become hostile because you dared to try and buck the status quo by reclassifying these expendable men and boys as "worthy victims". People just don't want to hear, because there is traditionally no capital in championing the needs of lower-status men and boys. They are, after all, expendable.

 

[Kegg]

Ah,

I had a feeling you'd show up.

the product of decades of government and media bias that has promoted one branch of perspectives on gender above any of a multitude of others (and this is in part what the OP is pointing out-

He was systematically denying the validity of a rather basic criticism. This was preposterous. Dawes is not a refrigerator girl! sort of stuff.

but as soon as one woman is in a similiar position only then does it become an issue- and often, against all logic, made to be an issue for women.

It is, though.

Let's actually do a little comparative work here. In The Dark Knight, the internal conflicts of the male lead is chiefly what the audience identifies with - and the other characters with worthwhile viewpoints and/or inner conflicts are also all men.

Hermoid's comparisons to the Dawes character to random mooks is fallacious because she is one of the leads; the only 'good guy' killed in the whole damn movie. The others are bit players and mostly men because, again, this is a mostly male universe. The film actually portays the death of minor male and female characters (a cop and judge, weren't they?) with exactly the same concern, which is very little.

This is actually pretty similiar to the magic negro trope. We have the white male at the centre, and the deviance - the white female, or the black male, or so on - who exists for him to internally react to and feel emotional about. The comparison to how males are treated is different because there are still men at the centre of the story - the refrigerator girl is a way of writing the women out.

 

[Hermiod]

If I am guilty of any 'issue' with women it is simply that I don't put their needs first as automatically as others do.

I recognise the inequalities they face but they have a great many people doing more to correct them than I ever could.

Biology may say that a male's contribution to reproduction is brief, but we are supposed to be above simple biology. If not, why is it bad when a man cheats ? Surely Tiger Woods is just following biology. Mating with as many females as possible is the safe bet, biologically speaking, surely ?

 

[Hermiod]

Kegg, I think you're forgetting someone if you think Dawes is the only good guy to die in the movie. Harvey Dent dies figuratively and then literally.