Une heure de peine…: David Douillet est-il Français ? via kwout

Let me offer a rough translation of this steaming pile:

“To me, a woman doing judo or in another sport, that’s neither natural not rewarding. For children’s well-being, I think a woman’s place is at home. It is the mother that has it in her genes, her instinct, that capacity to raise children. If God gave women the capacity to procreate, it’s for a reason.

So, this woman, when she has a job outside the home, by choice or necessity, she can no longer fulfill this essential nurturing function. (…) I consider this nexus to be destructured. The foundations of humanity, and nurturing, in particular, are partially shaken.

I have been told I am misogynist. But all men are. Except fags.”

Lovely.

As Colombi notes, in the context of the “big debate” on national identity promulgated by our oh-so concerned administration, gender equality has been posited by officials as a foundation of the Republic. After all, that is the reason why there is discussion to ban certain types of Muslim veils. So, what if instead of very White, very French David Douillet, a Maghred immigrant man had stated the nonsense quoted above? You can bet the outrage would be all over the place, taken as representative of “what Muslim men think of women” and their inability to assimilate into the French society, and duly stigmatized.

Will Douillet be stripped of his French nationality for refusing to accept one of the essential foundations of the Republic: gender equality? Colombi asks, rhetorically, and tongue firmly in cheek. Of course not. What an absurd notion. Stigma is not attached what is done, but to who does it and how the corresponding societal reaction, as Howard Becker has taught us.

Despite claims to generality (”all men think like that”), Douillet’s drivel will not be taken as representative of his ethnic group. That only works for minorities. They are the ones facing sanctions, symbolic and others, for their every move. Spouting nonsense without having to suffer much consequences for it is a form of social privilege.

That’s the sociological interpretation. My more, well, down-to-earth view is below:

]]> http://globalsociology.com/2009/11/05/spouting-bs-as-social-privilege/feed/ 1 http://globalsociology.com/2009/11/04/racism-gender-and-stereotyping/ http://globalsociology.com/2009/11/04/racism-gender-and-stereotyping/#comments Wed, 04 Nov 2009 20:51:29 +0000 SocProf http://GlobalSociology.edublogs.org/?p=2453 Via Sociological Images, this VERY interesting video (note the gender differences in reaction… it would have been interesting to see the reactions if it had been a black man shopping instead of a woman):

It would also have been nice to have some statistics deconstruction: if you target only a specific segment of the population (blacks), then yes, they will show up disproportionately in statistics. If you consider another population to be “safe” (based on stereotypes) and therefore subject them to less scrutiny or no scrutiny at all, then they will be grossly underrepresented in the statistics. Then you can turn around and use the “objective” statistics as support for your prejudice. Neat trick. Works every time.

Good on the ladies for standing up, and shame on the white dude not just for his lack of assistance, but also his reinforcement of the stereotype (”she played the black card”, and then once confronted with his behavior “I felt bad for her”).

And let’s not forget the overall structural effect of these things: the structural exclusion of minorities of all sorts of spheres of social life based on such stereotypes. This is not just a matter of one or two dumb salespeople. They are just channels through which structural mechanisms trickle sown into people’s lives. “Black people are more likely to… (insert one’s preferred undesirable or deviant behavior)” is the way to major social disadvantages for them whether we are discussing medical procedures (such as transplants) or mortgage lending and real estate, or just ordinary shopping behavior.

So, where are the men? At the college where I work, the student population is roughly equally divided between men and women. Why would mostly women take fitness classes? Because fitness classes are “girly”. How do we know? Because the instructors are women, for one. A woman instructor apparently automatically feminizes what she teaches. Also, it often happens, mostly in cardio kickboxing classes, that our instructor leaves the door open. It is pretty intense, so, a bit more air circulation is nice. Quite often, groups of young men – mostly athletes – will stop at the door and mimic the moves the class is doing, but with a “faggy” twist (if you’ll pardon me the expression), shaking their hips (we don’t do that in cardio kickboxing), dancing to the music (there’s no dancing in cardio kickboxing), punching in a “weak” and girlie fashion. These guys wil do that for a few seconds and then walk away. That’s all they need to demean our workout as not really working out. We’re just doing girl stuff.

Incidentally, one day, two guys from the football team were doing that for longer than usual (turned out one of them was the boyfriend of one of the young women in the class and they were waiting for them to be done, but they probably got bored waiting, so, on they went, mocking us). The instructor probably had enough and made them come into the room and do the routine with us. After a few minutes, they were dying, they could not keep up with the pace, their coordination was bad.

So, what about the few men who do show up. A few come and work out seriously and realize that it is the real deal. From my random observations (see? That’s why I put it in the title), we often get scrawny / geeky guys. Non-athletes. For them, it’s a relatively safe environment. No one makes fun of them for their lack of masculine traits (not big, not muscular), and they get to work out. However, they tend to stay in the back of the room unless they have women friends in the class.

Then, there are a few athletes who show up. And boy do these suffer. Especially in pilates and core strength which often made me wonder what kind of physical conditioning they get. One would think that core strength would be necessary in any sport. So why do athletic guys have such a hard time? For many men, pilates is unfamiliar territory: you take your shoes off, you spend a lot of time with your legs up in the air, you go through movements slowly and with control, with a lot of emphasis on posture, breathing and coordination (and boy, do guys lack coordination). Somehow, men suffer in that department. I blame bodily socialization.

What is interesting is how men react to lousy performance in fitness classes. For instance, in core strength class I am currently taking, there are a few athletes. It is less uncomfortable for men than pilates. It is more athletic and we keep our shoes on. The exercises are tough and mobilize one’s entire core in a sequence of challenging moves. Women go through it with more or less effort (it’s not easy for anyone)…silently. But men go through it with much huffin’ and puffin’ and loud moaning. Somehow, we all HAVE to know how hard it is and how much effort these guys put into it. And they don’t perform all that well. There are several middle-age women like me, these guys are half our age and we do better than them. And we’re much more quiet in our efforts.

Again, I think this goes back to gender socialization. It’s socially ok for men to be loud as they work out. It’s the masculine thing to do to display that you’re putting in the effort. Us women, we have been socialized into being quiet and not complaining. Actually, when it comes to athletes, there is a lot of performance going on. They show off whether it is to show their strength (when we work with weight, they always take the heaviest weights available) or to offset a poor performance by displays of effort (like moaning).

But it still remains amazing to me that work out classes even of a non-gender type, such as cardio kickboxing or various strength classes, are too gender-threatening for many men to take.

Rich countries feeding on poor countries’ farmland via kwout

The Oakland Institute report on land grab can be found here. Of course, one can see that “food insecurity” is defined in unilateral terms “our” (rich countries)  food insecurity is the problem to be solved by using the land in countries in the global South. Food and agricultural sustainability in the global South is simply an investment and technology issue: invest in the global South, push for genetically modified monocultures (gotta feed the cattle that ends up as burgers!), use the short-term productivity gains as proof of the necessity of bio-food.

However, according to Olivier de Schutter, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, there are several problems with this view, as he detailed in a report, and that is that the current regime of intellectual property rights does not improve prospects of food security on the long-term:

So, for De Schutter, the rights of small farmers have to be protected against the power of biotech firms and some wealthy non-profit organizations that promote biotech food, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

World Economic Forum – Latest Press Releases via kwout

So, based on these indicators, what are the rankings? Unsurprisingly, the Scandinavian countries top the list:

World Economic Forum – Latest Press Releases via kwout

In case you’re wondering, the US comes in at number 31. The full report is available in PDF here.

Taking stock of the fact that, in Europe, labor / socialist parties have strongly contributed to the dismantling of the social safety net (and a lot of good it did them too…

Reconnecting Power and Politics | Social Europe Journal via kwout

Bauman offers the following:

Reconnecting Power and Politics | Social Europe Journal via kwout

That would involve growing the spine to reclaim one’s ideology and label as terms of pride and not insults, but this would also require major ideological work against “la pensée unique” that has almost triumphed with only the global civil society to push back as national parties may not be the right vehicle for this. Globally connected social movements might work better but the “dinosaurs” in many European socialist and social-democratic party still control quite a bit of power when it comes to money and mobilization despite a “crisis of legitimacy.”