The paradox behind gender equality

Blogpost by Halina Brunning and Olya Khaleelee

Media spotlight on sexual abuse and attacks against woman

Our newspapers have increasingly been preoccupied with sexual abuse in society. This trend began with the inquiry into Jimmy Savile’s paedophilia, but since then we’ve seen the outing of abusers in Irish residential institutions, in our public schools, in Rotherham, in the USA with the #Me Too revelations about powerful men’s abusive behaviour towards young actors and now the scandal in Oxfam and other charities.

Because this has impacted primarily on women, we have been wondering about the motivation behind these sexual attacks. Is there a growing hatred of women in the world? Recorded statistics show that attacks against women have increased significantly (Ref.1).

What has changed recently?

– The biological reason for coupling a man with a woman is to perpetuate Homo Sapiens, thereby ensuring the continuing existence of human life on Earth. Butsince developments in medicine made it possible for women to be artificially inseminated with a donor’s sperm,the biological link between a man and a woman as a procreating couple has been broken.

-Children may be born to women who are single, unmarried, in gay relationships and even post menopausal.

– Simultaneously, in the latter part of the 20th Century, women liberated by the pill and education have climbed the career ladder, thereby becoming financially independent, whilst some have attained the highest leadership positions in commerce and politics.

-Concurrently, statistics show a steady decline in men’s health both physical and mental. (Ref.2)

-There are well recognised phenomena called“Toxic Masculinity” and “Crisis of Masculinity”.(Ref.3).

New circumstances

Under these new circumstances it appears that technicallywomen no longer require men in order to bring life into this world.All they need is sperm donated, purchased or shared, and with thiswomen can independently ensure the continuation of life on earth. Therefore men are becoming increasingly “redundant” from a sexual and procreative perspective. Furthermore, there is no single part of the world stage where men can act in the knowledge that they are uniquely qualified to fulfil a particular role or position.

A tentative hypothesis:

As a result of the shift in power relations with women, it may be that men worldwide are beginning to feel threatened,be itin the context of family, at work, or in politics where previouslythey excelled and were uniquely positioned to rule. Feelings of redundancy and rage may explain the surge of misogyny expressed as the physical, emotional and sexual abuse of women carried out, most likely unconsciously, so thatmen can still feel powerful, be it sexually, in patriarchy, in financial hegemony or in the world of politics.

The growth of women’s independence and power will probablynever be reversed, but the gender struggle continues. Men will continue theirattempts to keep women down by various means: ensuring they are paid less than menorby disallowing women access to positions of power above the arbitrary glass ceiling. There are also traditionally expressed ways of dominating women: by FGM, rape, sexual abuse,honour killing and shaming them for being the victims of male sexualised brutality. (Ref.4)

This parallel dynamicplays out all over the world:traditional patriarchal domination with attacks on women in the public sphere. Little wonder that this issue took centre stage in the USA during theirelection. Itwas almost a microcosm of the genderstruggle. Now, according to the media,rampant sexuality is spilling over in all areas of society, a sign that men are regrouping and going on the attack. Men’s power against women’s vulnerability?

Not all appears so straighforward…

As psychologists,we know that power and vulnerability are closely interlinked and interdependent, these positions seldom function independently from one another, eachhidesin theother’s shadow. One can suspect vulnerability hidden beneath an overpowering stance and vice versa. Power and vulnerability are not fixed roles given in perpetuity but are fluid positions that are constantly changing (Ref 5). These attributes are not fixed permanently onto any gender: men are not intrinsically powerful nor women intrinsically vulnerable, it is a relational dance which changes constantly depending on many interconnected variables. Perhaps we have come to a particular point in this dance when men who appeared historically and traditionally strong and powerful may at present feel lost and hide their own doubts and vulnerability from themselves and from the world by becoming ill or by inreasing their level of aggression against women.

Not all is lost…

We end on a paradox that as women begin to free themselves from masculine oppression and become more powerful,it is now men who urgently need to become empoweredin order to find their way out of this destructive crisis of masculinity which devastates them as well as those around them.

Themed References

1. Theme: violence against women WHO statistics

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352250X17300489

http://www.religionscell.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/violence-against-women-global-scope-and-magnitude.pdf

http://www.unwomen.org/en/what-we-do/ending-violence-against-women/facts-and-figures

2. Theme: mens physical and mental health

https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/why-men-often-die-earlier-than-women-201602199137

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1447828/=

(https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/talking…men/…/mens-mental-health-silent-crisis…)

(https://www.counselling-directory.org.uk/men-and-mental-health-stats.html)

3. Theme Crisis of Masculinity telegraph.co.uk› Men › Thinking Man)

(https://www.psychbytes.com› Wellbeing)

4. https://rapecrisis.org.uk/statistics.php

5. Brunning H., Khaleelee O. (2015) ‘Danse Macabre: How Eros and Thanatos Rule the World’ in Organisational & Social Dynamics 15(2) 320–339.

Authors

Khaleelee O. and Brunning H.

Sandy Henderson on April 21, 2018 at 4:55 pm

Thank you Olya and Halina. I think it is a timely contribution to an important subject. I don’t entirely buy your argument, though:

men aren’t redundant if their sperm is still needed for procreation; it is simply the method of insemination that has changed
male domination (including sexual domination) was ultimately based on force or the threat of force, so the use of further force now need not be man’s response to feeling threatened; it may simply be that progress towards gender equality is not being achieved uniformly across all countries, classes and cultures. There is a lag in some parts which is being exposed by an emerging culture of intolerance towards sexual violence (both male and female) in other parts
I agree that power and vulnerability are intertwined – most aptly demonstrated in the new power of victimhood and also in the emerging recognition that, in many Western cultures (those where violence toward women is considered almost taboo), women are commonly perceived as the more powerful party in ‘courtship’ rituals and have been for a while.
I don’t think it is matter of men ‘continuing their attempts to keep women down’, it is more that men are slow to acknowledge the extent to which their privilege and advantage is embedded in the way work is organised and in the way different types of work and role are valued
feminists are in a tangle because they can’t agree whether they should support a woman’s right to choose a role which subordinates itself to the desires of men; this plays out for many in an attempt to reconcile female empowerment with a continuing wish to be an object of desire for men (and of envy for other women), and in a reluctance to say whether power and wealth are qualities that make men sexually attractive to them, or whether they merely make up for them not being sexually attractive. This goes to the heart of the Weinstein case

2 Comments

Sandy Henderson on April 21, 2018 at 4:55 pm
Thank you Olya and Halina. I think it is a timely contribution to an important subject. I don’t entirely buy your argument, though:
1. men aren’t redundant if their sperm is still needed for procreation; it is simply the method of insemination that has changed
2. male domination (including sexual domination) was ultimately based on force or the threat of force, so the use of further force now need not be man’s response to feeling threatened; it may simply be that progress towards gender equality is not being achieved uniformly across all countries, classes and cultures. There is a lag in some parts which is being exposed by an emerging culture of intolerance towards sexual violence (both male and female) in other parts
3. I agree that power and vulnerability are intertwined – most aptly demonstrated in the new power of victimhood and also in the emerging recognition that, in many Western cultures (those where violence toward women is considered almost taboo), women are commonly perceived as the more powerful party in ‘courtship’ rituals and have been for a while.
4. I don’t think it is matter of men ‘continuing their attempts to keep women down’, it is more that men are slow to acknowledge the extent to which their privilege and advantage is embedded in the way work is organised and in the way different types of work and role are valued
5. feminists are in a tangle because they can’t agree whether they should support a woman’s right to choose a role which subordinates itself to the desires of men; this plays out for many in an attempt to reconcile female empowerment with a continuing wish to be an object of desire for men (and of envy for other women), and in a reluctance to say whether power and wealth are qualities that make men sexually attractive to them, or whether they merely make up for them not being sexually attractive. This goes to the heart of the Weinstein case
.
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Sandy Henderson on April 25, 2018 at 8:52 pm

Gerard van Reekum comments:

“In support of the hypothesis presented by Khaleelee & Brunning I can add the other day’s reference: https://goo.gl/Aq6Kpc

and in response to Henderson’s reply another one, from seventeen years ago: https://goo.gl/HSKbvu “
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