What a riot!

BBCWorld BBC News (World)
Riot as legendary US coach sacked http://bbc.in/vTcpKZ

Sports riot at Penn State. Sports riots don't disturb the status quo, which indulges hell raising on the part of young men, part of their supposed long journey on the way to maturity and bullying their way to the top, as is their god appointed task. As long as women and children are second class citizens and only men have full human rights, none of this will change. A whole class of men have largess to do anything they want. They dictate the terms of existence to women, children, employees, and other subordinates and use them as they please. Their projects are the ones that get carried out,whether it's wars or sports stadiums or stupid museums full of trashy art.
The indulgence of these college students and their sports leaders is symptomatic- and sickening. Authorities had to get out the riot police, and yet there were no arrests, as far as I can tell from the news reports. This is a contrast to the thousands who have been injured and arrested in non-violent Occupy actions.
The focus is so exclusively on men and what they do and above all what they want, with the corollary that they must be served. It's hard for women to get heard over the din of their demands.
I just read an article in the current Atlantic on Oprah which had quite a different point of view from my own on what Oprah means for women as a class.As the author says, women have a way of looking at themselves and the world which is of no interest to men. With us women it is about holding one's place, not about domination. Our major investments are in home, family, loving relationships, a certain "image:" all things that are contingent on the good will of others and which can easily be taken away. We do what we can to protect our inner gardens. We live in a state of existential insecurity, always a little off base and out of kilter. Not quite the thing, we don't have the "right stuff." Our "demands" are very hard to legitimate as they always seem unreasonable compared to the rights of "man."
This all male sex scandal and the all male response to it is such a perfect example of male domination of the discourse. It's almost too pat. And what about the women, the question Cop Car asks, is very much to the point. At best, women are entitled to protection but not to power over their circumstances, which drives many of us into inner emigration.
The main difference I perceive is that white women as a class are entitled to male protection but black women as a class are not. Women under the protection of white males are in a fairly good position in the patriarchy. But it is contingent. Oprah had to do it all herself, with no protection. But even she would not have prevailed without a few essential lucky breaks, coming along at the right time and being in the right place.
Way off topic, but not really? We all pay the price for the kind of society we live in, and we put on blinders quite deliberately to hide the reality of our situation. This may be a wise strategy, considering how powerless most of us are.

Comments

[gigi-hawaii]

What about Asian-American women like me? I have never been discriminated against, thank goodness. Racial stereotypes have become less evident these days. As for male power, that isn't always the case. Look at all of the women who have become heads of state internationally. How did they become so powerful?

[Brandon]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/11/sports/ncaafootball/penn-state-students-in-clashes-after-joe-paterno-is-ousted.html?_r=2&hp

[Cop Car]

Hattie--I've never known what to think of Oprah. As far as I could tell (although, I admired that she had gained power and position through her own doing), she was a part of pop culture - and - few of us in the scientific/technical community pay much attention to that sort of thing. At a breakfast with friends (of 40-50 years' standing), yesterday, they (as usual) kept talking about people whose names meant nothing to me. I zone out when that happens and ignore the whole thing. (They, in turn, find me a little strange and boring! *chuckling*)

[Anne Gibert]

What an interesting post. It raises all sorts of questions in my head -- like why are universities involved in football? Is the protection of white men really a good thing for women? How much has the status of women changed since the time, when I was 30 and almost divorced, that I couldn't buy a house in Massachusetts because a married woman could not own property there without her husband's written consent?

[Hattie]

What fascinating responses. I do have the best commenters, as I always say.

[Hattie]

Anne: Opening up credit to married women in their own right was huge. Yes, it is strange to think that women could not get into Yale and Harvard, too, and that men were dominant in all branches of higher education, both in numbers and in prestige.
I think most white men understand the nature of their privilege and strive to maintain it. They depend on the rest of us to keep our blinders on. Not all white men, of course, but these are class matters, not just individual matters. But look where most of the money and attention go.
There is so much theory out there. I am attracted to "masculinization" theories, which see patriarchial systems as dynamic, constantly shifting strategies to contain the demands of subalterns. I always take men and the world they have created quite seriously, since there really is no other world.

[Hank Chapin]

Super analysis, Hattie! I printed it out to contemplate at more length. Coupla points right off the top of my head: 1) A new art museum of American art, including portarits of George Washington, is getting good reviews. The master mind is a woman who is an heir of the Walmart/Walton fortune. 2) Difficult to talk about, but the boys in my extended family of approximately 50 people are floundering. But the girls are up and at 'em. I'm talking no high school degree versus a Ph. D. in optical physics at the extremes.

[Maria]

In my opinion, all throughout the long march of history, subservience to men has been the price women have paid for the survival of their children.

[Hattie]

Hank: That's the woman and the museum who got a big write-up in The New Yorker. Well, a very good thing, and I hope to see the art some day. Some of it might even be by women.
Yes, I know of families where the men are floundering compared to the women. One relative never got a high school degree but is making a very fine living as a self-employed backhoe operator. His sister is an environmentalist and member of her city council.
My own daughters are doing very well for themselves with higher degrees and good jobs. I really have no personal ax to grind here; it's just that I see what I see. It's a matter of where the big money and resources go, in general, and it's mostly to pursuits of interest to men as a class. And women like me are "colonized" into sharing many of those interests, finding them more serious and important or entertaining than "merely" feminine pursuits. There is actually more resistance to male-dominated culture among "conventional" women who place home and family at the center of their lives and ignore supposedly more important matters.
There was an article by Christine Hoff-Summers a long time ago which claimed that men were losing ground to women in higher education, but I always felt it was the zero sum thinking that if women make gains men fall back.
But what would the world of women look like if it were explored? It's mostly terra incognita, as Ursula LeGuin so elegantly explains.
http://www.pacifict.com/ron/Mills.html
Maria: It's true that protecting children has been a huge factor in forcing subservience to men.

[musings]

I just saw the Penn State riot on TV tonight and was sickened by it. I saw a bunch of idiot guys who were only thinking of sports and themselves and forgot about those little boys who were powerless and victimized by someone who thought he could get away with it. I do think there's a lot of testosterone getting in the way of "civilized" thinking. They should be ashamed of themselves. And if they aren't, you're right. What kind of society are we?

[Hattie]

Maria: And none of them were arrested!

[naomi dagen bloom]

Well, @musings, we are a pretty sorry society. The MSM will periodically refer to something called "the women's movement," but where is it? Today we witness the lawyer for Herman Cain threatening with reprisal other women who'd come forward with accusations. Do you hear a roar of horror from feminists? Nope.

And this after we have just celebrated the improved 30 years since Anita Hill took all that abuse from Clarence Thomas. Awful. I fear for my granddaughters--grandson too,

[Hattie]

Naomi: We need to be fearless. Even with all the hostages to fortune: children, grandchildren. How can we protect them otherwise?
We have all been intimidated. My grandmother's generation produced some of the toughest women who ever lived. I remember them. Their sole concern was fairness and justice for all.
But the postwar era was a real setback for women's causes, and I don't think second wave feminism was able to undo all the damage, although women did gain quite a lot of ground. But not the respect, not the moral authority. Not enough, as we see from the backlash against women.
I am happy to say I am seeing some women of that traditional tough stuff in local politics. It's so important as a woman not to give a fig what men think about you to prevail in politics.

[naomi dagen bloom]

In truth, I feel most of what we accomplished in the second wave was a rung up on the education and economic ladders. Nothing to sneeze at but what has been the price?

[Z]

What a fascinating post and thread. I hadn't read the LeGuin essay in some time, may post and link.

[Hattie]

We won where we took it on, really confronted the injustices. But we did not fight hard enough for our right to be women, not men.

[naomi dagen bloom]

Eve Ensler has been listening at OWS; has her own site, also Huffington Post. She also tweets http://twitter.com/#!/eveensler so you might listen for those of us outside.

[marja-leena]

Fascinating post and comments! Just the other day I read an atricle somewhere, maybe in our paper, about how many more women are getting higher education while the males are not, and how this is causing some imbalances about supposed suitable marriagability, ie. the men are not the equals of the women in education and income and therefore status.

[Hattie]

marja-leena: I think one of the reasons this is happening is that men have options, such as in the trades, to make a good living without going to college. If women could get into the trades in equal numbers, I think many would also choose these routes.

[Brandon]

http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/152790/poynter-review-espns-early-coverage-of-penn-state-sexual-abuse-scandal-slow-tone-deaf/

[Brandon]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/16/us-usa-crime-coach-campus-idUSTRE7AF1WZ20111116

[Brandon]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/16/sarah-palin-jerry-sandusky-should-hang_n_1097011.html

[Hattie]

Brandon: Keep 'em coming. And look at today's piece in the NYT. It's very good.

[Brandon]

"[T]oday's piece in the NYT"

Which one?

[Hattie]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/16/sports/ncaafootball/in-sanduskys-birthplace-questions-of-how-well-you-can-know-a-man.html