The phrase “product of their culture” is one of those things that I was saying doesn’t make sense if you see culture as the meaning-making set of practices through which the world is understood. People aren’t a “product” of their culture, they are their culture.
Feminism and violence again women
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8ball
Decolonise colons!
I've got a cult but I'm not a culture...
cesare
shady's dreams ♥
Their collective "being" creates the culture?
Yeah, OK I can see where you're coming from. I don't really agree but for reasons that aren't particularly relevant here.
I dunno, that's maybe splitting it off again, and reifies it as though it's something outside of and acting on people rather than culture being the many ways in which we make sense of what we do and what we say, its fluid and dynamic, not a 'the'.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
I think kabbes is nailing his colours to a sociological mast which explains everything to him but which ignores that culture as he defines it is not culture as other people might define it, namely as the ideas, customs and social behaviour of a particular people or society. How we do things rather than how we make sense of the world. How we behave rather than why we behave that way. It may be people from Scotland queuing at a bus stop rather than the free for all you see in London. No one's going to say that's part of how Scots (at least the Scots I saw in Edinburgh in 2005) make sense of the world, but it's how those Scots I saw behaved. Products of their culture
Anyway I really think this isn't the thread for an argument about culture, the nature of culture, but it's where I think kabbes is going down the wrong path.
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cesare
shady's dreams ♥
There's that whole 3rd person passivity thing about "culture" that I struggle with. The people announcing the culture by and large seem to be in charge of it.
Culture is simply the set of beliefs and practices that people engage with the world through. People’s understanding of what the world is is constructed through these practices and beliefs. Like Red Cat says, it isn’t some separate “thing” that exists outside the person. It is constantly changing and co-constructed by the people engaging with it, so it’s the opposite of passive. It comprises contested and contradictory elements and nobody is in charge of it.
Saying that, knowledge about it can be used to direct people through manipulating their subjective sense of who they are. However, people are quite good at noticing this manipulation and, when noticing it, they will react in unpredicted and counter-manipulative ways, so it’s a dangerous game to attempt. This government have demonstrated that amply. (The most successful ways of doing it are through institutions of power, like schools, hospitals and corporations. If you judge people against norms and punish them socially for failing to meet those norms, that tends to be pretty effective).
8ball
Decolonise colons!
Although no one would argue that cultural power is equitably distributed.
Except maybe Jordan Peterson.
Spandex
A crazy bulbous punchbag of sound
For a newborn baby culture is something that exists outside the person. From the moment they enter the world they're surrounded by the culture constructed by the people around them. There aren't lessons in culture, kids pick it up by observing the world around them, how people interact and behave towards each other. In that sense it does seem fair to say people are a 'product of their culture'. Their ways of thinking and behaving as an adult, which goes towards creating the culture they're a part of, is shaped by the ways of thinking and behaving of the people around them during their formative years.
And drawing this back towards the topic of the thread, that's how the patriarchal system is passed from generation to generation.
A newborn baby has no culture. From the moment they start to interact with the world, however, they use cultural tools to do so, from toys to language to spoons to TV. By engaging with these cultural tools, they learn what the world is and embed that culture.
They also transform the world and rebuild the culture in the process. They are not a "product" of their culture, because they are never finished and the culture is never static.
JimW
支那暗杀团
Similar thought struck me reading kabbes post; broadly agree with his take but then you spend at lot of years largely being shaped rather than shaping first, and crucial ones too.
Seperate point, but there's aspects of traditional/stereotypical masculinity I think are good, including some things often decried like emotional reserve, not sure it all links to a propensity for violence and control though obviously hard to unpick. And to be clear, that is not to deny the elements that are enabling the prevailing toxic version.
8ball
Decolonise colons!
This seems overly pernickety for the topic at hand, it’s not a social sciences lecture. We are talking about the things we absorb, some spoken, some not, and our responses to them, or lack of.
A huge proportion of which is learned early on and remains pretty stable unless challenged.
I think if you look at the individual versus society, society shapes the individual much more than the other way round (it couldn't be any other way). So I think you can consider culture as pretty static when looking at the individual.
To me it's just a question of not being so objectively social scientific that you bracket the morality of fucking rape cases. Not that I think Kabbes is doing this, just I'm not finding this way of looking at it helpful.
To me it's just a question of not being so objectively social scientific that you bracket the morality of fucking rape cases. Not that I think Kabbes is doing this, just I'm not finding this way of looking at it helpful.
I don't understand the problem with what he's said. There's a feeling and a mental representation of that feeling, an emotion, which is cultural.
I think this is very relevant to the thread. I have two children who both struggle with anxiety, one can't recognise and identify feeling, so she can't talk about her emotions, its not available to her, so she feels physical sensations that can become unbearable, and she has aggressive meltdowns. The other is almost too able to identify her feelings and name them and she becomes overwhelmed by anxiety but in a different way because now as well as the physiological sensations of anxiety, there's also a mental representation, an idea, a 'thing' called anxiety to fear too.
So, in the context of the thread, this is an oversimplification, perhaps its not so much that there are bottled up emotions that explode because a man hasn't the opportunity to talk, but that someone might not have reached the level of recognising that there's anything to talk about because these ways of making sense of feeling aren't available to them, something that says more than aggghhhhhh and ugggghhhh.
kabbes has a particular lens but unless I've very much misunderstood because I'm not an expert, the idea doesn't seem too dissimilar from Stuart Hall's concepts about culture, in contrast say with 'mechanical' interpretations of Marxism.
8ball
Decolonise colons!
Sounds like you’re better read in the area than me, though I did watch a bit of It’s A Knockout in the 70s tbf.
Peter Painter
Well-Known Member
I listened to this the other day. It's nothing amazing, just ordinary blokes having conversations and reflecting upon their own behaviour and language.
It's quite good when they're discussing how important (but not always easy) it is to speak up if/when a male friend says something out of order to a woman. One bloke talks about, "calling in", as opposed to, "calling out", his friends. It seemed like a good approach to take.
www.bbc.co.uk
It's quite good when they're discussing how important (but not always easy) it is to speak up if/when a male friend says something out of order to a woman. One bloke talks about, "calling in", as opposed to, "calling out", his friends. It seemed like a good approach to take.
Am I That Guy? - BBC Sounds
An exploration of men’s violence against women, with Scottish writer Alistair Heather
www.bbc.co.uk
8ball
Decolonise colons!
This is kind of what I meant when talking about maybe not needing to delve into the social science element to such depth.
I think I’m lucky with my circle of friends in that no one stands for too much nonsense, and there’s no change of tone based on whether women are present, or for that matter the sexuality etc. of who is there.
I think one or two work people and more distant acquaintances self-censor a little around me, but I can live with that.
I don’t think expect that especially influences anything at my age, obv.
friendofdorothy
Solidarity against neoliberalism!
Thank you for linking it back to patriarchy.
While I appreciate a high brow discussion about culture as much as the next woman - kabbes I would appreciate it you can link you ideas back to explaining how this explains male violence against women, rape and femicide. I have no fucking idea what you are going on about.
If we are all our culture and our patriarchial culture is male and violent were does that get us? Andrea Dworkin and the idea that all men are rapists? but as I am frequently told NAM etc.
I don't have the theoretical education to back this up - but I believe our individual behaviours are a complex mix of education, upbringing, genetics, hormones, as well as societies norms, laws, and probably lots of other factors.
But why censor in this way instead of allowing this thread to develop like an ordinary conversation with tangents. And this thread is in theory, I think like the last one about feminism, and yet there's a dismissal of theory, or the wrong kind of theory. What kind of theory is acceptable in the theory section?
I work sometimes with violent and potentially violent boys, and young men. They usually have an extremely traumatic (violent) background but whatever the background, the basis of the work is to find words that give enough meaning to their experience that action, acting out, violence is not relied on as their main form of expression and communication.
8ball
Decolonise colons!
I’m not censoring anyone, and I have no beef with what kabbes has to say. And I’m fine with tangents. I think we should allow the basic stuff as much as the complex stuff, and I think a lot of it isn’t that complex.
Just things like people checking each other, thinking about what they’d think about someone saying something similar about their Mum or sister, say. Just being consistent with your values and checking them against your habits. That doesn’t transform reality, but can go some distance towards making things nicer.
Kabbes has an academic background that few of us have, so things can get a little esoteric at times.
8ball
Decolonise colons!
I’m just talking about when someone says something course about someone and is pulled up by being reminded how they would feel about it being said about eg. their sister. Just bringing it home that they are talking about a person, not an object.
weepiper
I fix the machines that fight climate change
Well, you've clearly missed my point entirely.
8ball
Decolonise colons!
I really don’t think I did.
I understand the context of the framing, but the point rests on according all women the same respect as women they already have respect for, which works with most men.. well, most people. It breaks down the “othering”.
Some men don’t respect family members either, obv. Makes things more complicated but is the exception rather than the rule imo, and usually there is some effect from just saying something and not letting dodgy comments stand.
Happy to hear about any better ways round it, though. It’s not a conversation I’ve had in a while.
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The reason that the theory is important is because without understanding why people think, act, emote and respond as they do, there is a risk that your interventions will at best do nothing and at worst make things worse.
Suppose that the reason for violence against women is to do with the way that men understand what they are, what women are, what positions each have in social interactions, what social situations mean, what emotions are available and so on. Fixing the situation then needs to be a matter of building practices that change how these meanings are constructed. It becomes a root-and-branch job of understanding every interaction we have, what contribution is made by every piece of social discourse, what every cultural artefact and ritual says about these meanings. Only by making alternative constructions will we render it confusing and odd to react to a woman by raping her. What does the way our TV programmes, our newspapers, our personal conversations, our schooling, our stories, our games and toys say about how we relate to ourselves and each other? Which of these things constructs masculinity as to do with ownership, pride, rage-as-response, entitlement? And femininity as passive, a possession, a trophy, there to please?
If we then instead just concentrate on the idea that, for example, we give lessons on how bad it is to rape people, that might help. Or it might do nothing or it might create brand new constructions of identity and intersubjectivity that actually re-emphasise masculine power and choice. I certainly don't know. It's probably important to know, though.
Suppose that the reason for violence against women is to do with the way that men understand what they are, what women are, what positions each have in social interactions, what social situations mean, what emotions are available and so on. Fixing the situation then needs to be a matter of building practices that change how these meanings are constructed. It becomes a root-and-branch job of understanding every interaction we have, what contribution is made by every piece of social discourse, what every cultural artefact and ritual says about these meanings. Only by making alternative constructions will we render it confusing and odd to react to a woman by raping her. What does the way our TV programmes, our newspapers, our personal conversations, our schooling, our stories, our games and toys say about how we relate to ourselves and each other? Which of these things constructs masculinity as to do with ownership, pride, rage-as-response, entitlement? And femininity as passive, a possession, a trophy, there to please?
If we then instead just concentrate on the idea that, for example, we give lessons on how bad it is to rape people, that might help. Or it might do nothing or it might create brand new constructions of identity and intersubjectivity that actually re-emphasise masculine power and choice. I certainly don't know. It's probably important to know, though.
8ball
Decolonise colons!
This reminds me of a fractious conversation we had when I was talking about my team at work needing a new member and me musing about the gender balance on the team and you talking about vague root and branch reforms (certainly out of my power) that would be required. In the event we had to scrape around for applicants and found a young woman in China (in Shanghai right now, which we are a little concerned about as it happens - we’ve sent a care package), who has fitted in great. In the end, we were dealing with a specific situation and a very small sample size, so I’m not concluding too much.
I’m not sure the problems are as deep-rooted in culture per se. To make a bit of a leap to darker areas, I don’t think many young men are potential rapists, generally speaking. As far as I know most rapes are committed by a very small proportion of men.
I don’t know the figures for other assaults, but aside from the case of very toxic subcultures I’m not convinced the root of it is where most people seem to be looking. We could obv do better, but when it comes to rape and femicide I think there is a more specific pathology needing targeting.
I’m reminded of a case almost 20 years back when a friend suffered an attempted rape by a guy who we would in more recent parlance call the wokest guy on the block. No signs, never a dodgy comment, we were totally blindsided by this apparently really likeable guy. He had probably done similar before and possibly since, on reflection.
I also know some formerly boorish unreconstructed types who are completely devoted to their family and respectful of their female family members. The model of occasional comments leading to victim blaming leading to an escalating mysoginistic culture leading to violence of greater extremes doesn’t gel with my experience. I basically don’t think Loaded culture etc. has the simple relationship to male violence that is sometimes claimed, though that claim does make it look more easily solvable.
Maybe that’s something the theory area can address..
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Not very and certainly not recently, but these kinds of ideas - theory to understand how society works - used to be discussed on here not so long ago, I don't recall people saying all you need to do is tell the ruling class to just be nicer and more respectful and stop exploiting us.
8ball
Decolonise colons!
I’m interested to see where this analogy with ruling class exploitation leads..
But just to reiterate, I don’t want anyone to stop talking about theory. I’m not trying to control the discussion in any way. I sensed that it wasn’t just me thinking we could get some mileage without going too far into it, but let it go however it goes. Sorry if there is something about my posting style making it look like I’m trying to shut anything down - that’s def not my intention. I’m just trying to contribute with my impressions.
I’m not trying to force a change of mind with my impressions either. I’m wanting to see what people think and say about them. I’ve had my mind changed about a bunch of things by conversations on this site. It’s the main reason I post on here.
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