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lightcastleI am sure many of you have seen this on Facebook.
While you SCREAM at your woman, there's a man wishing he could talk softly in her ear. While you HUMILIATE, OFFEND and INSULT her, there's a man flirting with her and reminding her how wonderful she is. While you HURT your woman, there's a man wishing he could make love to her. While you make your woman CRY there's a man stealing smiles from her... Post this on your wall if you're against Domestic Violence.
Unsurprisingly, many people have pointed out the deep fail that is inherent here. This has nothing to do with a moral argument, or any acknowledgment of the women involved as thinking, feeling human beings with agency of their own. It is simply, "if you don't treat your cow well, then someone will come along and take your cow and then you will be sad".
So yeah. Fail.
Except that I've grown cynical in my time. I may view this as fail, but I think we've established by now that my instincts on people and how they should behave are terrible exemplars for what to do in the real world. In the real world, you are effective by appealing to people in terms that reinforce their frame about the world, not ones that challenge them. That's one of the reasons advertising is so reactionary... it works like that. Don't try and sell toys to girls by saying they can be anything, just reinforce the current frame of them being princesses.
So this may actually be vastly more effective than pointing out that women are complete human beings who have their own rights. It's casting out the idea that reinforcing your dominance by beating "your woman" will backfire and you will lose the marker of your dominant status. Telling people like this that beating your partner is bad doesn't get through, because it is saying "give up your dominant status marker without any reward".
It is like a recent discussion I saw on Yes Means Yes concerning rapists. Someone came on and explained repeatedly that convincing men they shouldn't rape because it is wrong isn't going to work on it's own. You have to convince them they shouldn't rape, and that other men won't back them up but will instead kick the living shit out of them. If the language they understand is violence and dominance, then express it all in those terms.
Part of me doesn't believe this, of course. I would like to think an appeal to morality would work. But after years of watching politics and personal interaction, I am less optimistic than I once was. You need to tell people a story that gets the behaviour you want by making it seem like it makes sense in their terms. Yes, it is unethical and grotesque, but then it seems to get people what they want in relationships and probably will in this scenario as well.
Yes it reinforces the frame of "Woman=property/reward", which is repugnant. In some ways it is like the people who argue against torture by saying it is ineffective. We lost the moral argument some time ago, so using their own frame is all we have left.
A while ago, there was a discussion in a few places about women as property in the libertarian philosophy and the idea that women were more free when they were property which seems sort of relevant to the discussion.
While you SCREAM at your woman, there's a man wishing he could talk softly in her ear. While you HUMILIATE, OFFEND and INSULT her, there's a man flirting with her and reminding her how wonderful she is. While you HURT your woman, there's a man wishing he could make love to her. While you make your woman CRY there's a man stealing smiles from her... Post this on your wall if you're against Domestic Violence.
Unsurprisingly, many people have pointed out the deep fail that is inherent here. This has nothing to do with a moral argument, or any acknowledgment of the women involved as thinking, feeling human beings with agency of their own. It is simply, "if you don't treat your cow well, then someone will come along and take your cow and then you will be sad".
So yeah. Fail.
Except that I've grown cynical in my time. I may view this as fail, but I think we've established by now that my instincts on people and how they should behave are terrible exemplars for what to do in the real world. In the real world, you are effective by appealing to people in terms that reinforce their frame about the world, not ones that challenge them. That's one of the reasons advertising is so reactionary... it works like that. Don't try and sell toys to girls by saying they can be anything, just reinforce the current frame of them being princesses.
So this may actually be vastly more effective than pointing out that women are complete human beings who have their own rights. It's casting out the idea that reinforcing your dominance by beating "your woman" will backfire and you will lose the marker of your dominant status. Telling people like this that beating your partner is bad doesn't get through, because it is saying "give up your dominant status marker without any reward".
It is like a recent discussion I saw on Yes Means Yes concerning rapists. Someone came on and explained repeatedly that convincing men they shouldn't rape because it is wrong isn't going to work on it's own. You have to convince them they shouldn't rape, and that other men won't back them up but will instead kick the living shit out of them. If the language they understand is violence and dominance, then express it all in those terms.
Part of me doesn't believe this, of course. I would like to think an appeal to morality would work. But after years of watching politics and personal interaction, I am less optimistic than I once was. You need to tell people a story that gets the behaviour you want by making it seem like it makes sense in their terms. Yes, it is unethical and grotesque, but then it seems to get people what they want in relationships and probably will in this scenario as well.
Yes it reinforces the frame of "Woman=property/reward", which is repugnant. In some ways it is like the people who argue against torture by saying it is ineffective. We lost the moral argument some time ago, so using their own frame is all we have left.
A while ago, there was a discussion in a few places about women as property in the libertarian philosophy and the idea that women were more free when they were property which seems sort of relevant to the discussion.
Re: Perhaps a compromise is possible?
Date: 2010-05-14 12:48 am (UTC)That said the point isn't that one should "treat one's cow nicer", but rather that the person being shorthanded isn't a means to an end (in this case, good sex), but an independent actor, who is an end, in themselves. [This also (btw) applies to the question of torture, even if we were to accept, arguendo, the efficacy of torture].
Because the act of treating people like things, is to diminish the person who so treats them, which moves out of the utilitarian realm, without leaving the realms of moral agency/calculus.