As a nation
we’ve progressed a long way regarding negative race and gender issues. Uncle Ron has been around for a few days, and
I’ve witnessed a great deal of change in my life time. However, we’re still
dogged by some of the old stereotypes, gender, and communication norms that
hamper the agency of others. With some
new found enlightenment, at least to a degree, why are we still participants in
a system that hampers equality and affects the agency of others?
Right now you’re likely saying I don’t
participate in that! Well my friends
it’s time for another chat, or reading for you, with Uncle Ron.
I will say now that if you watch TV, movies,
read, or play video games you most likely are a participant. I only say “most likely” instead of slapping
you in the face and stating “you are” to allow for some wiggle room and perhaps
make everyone a bit more comfortable and willing to chat. After all with this
type of issue a person must first realize they are a participant, understand how
they are, and then come to a form of self-realization, and change from within
if required. I can’t do it for you, or
force you to understand. All I can do is
present information, and then you my friend must come to your own conclusions. Now the question you’re begging to shout out
is, ok assuming I am Mr. smarty pants, how am I a
participant in stealing the agency of others?
Do you even know that you are? My friends most people would not say that
they are racists, or participate in rape culture, or sexism in any way. However, due to cultural/societal norms, most
of us do participate but it’s become transparent to us. This is particularly true within the hegemony
of mass media, and this is how we become agents affecting the agency of
others.
We indirectly steal the agency
of others by supporting movies, TV shows, books, and video games that depict
others in demeaning ways. These things
we watch and read do affect, over time, our judgments and thoughts.
Yes, our good friends’ pop culture and
cultivation theory are back.
To rehash from my
last blog:
pop culture is a means of
engaging in everyday life; it’s how we interact with the world. It’s our
fashions, fades, tastes, likes and dislikes and shapes our thinking. Cultivation theory generally focuses on the
cumulative influence of consuming media.
In other words what we consume in the way of media influences, over
time, our thoughts and beliefs.
Since we’re now in
school house mode, I’ve been saying agency like a broken record, so what is
agency? Go ahead and click on the link
to read Wikipedia’s definition of agency.
Really, click on the link now! Listen to me now and understand me later.
click on the link: Agency
Now that you’ve got the definition of
agency, in Uncle Ron’s words it’s a person’s power within society. In yet more words, agency is a person’s
power/ability to conduct and accomplish what they wish in their lives and in a
way their value.
We should also take a brief look at
cultural gender norms. In a nutshell,
cultural gender norms are how we expect a person to act/speak within their
roles. Men are supposed to be manly men,
and women soft spoken and loving, right? WRONG!
We’ll get into these a bit further into our chat today.
Now that we’re all schooled up on some definitions
we’ll be touching on today, and some ground work has been laid, let’s get to
it.
The objectification of women is still prevalent
in our society, and in this humble heterosexual guys world it’s more open than
in past generations at least media wise.
What I mean by media wise is that female dress codes, if you will, on
the screen have gotten sexier. Moreover
the female body is portrayed in a much sexier way than previously shown. This is one area where I think we may have
gone backwards. Although I would say
sexist talk in the work place has decreased to an extent, at least openly, but
the portrayal of women as sex objects in media has increased in my opinion. Sex sells, and Hollywood is capitalizing on
this. Check out these film clips:
Marilyn’s
subway scene was very sexy and risky’ at the time, but did you notice any difference
in clothing items between the two clips? The clothes got smaller,
less of them, and the increase in provocative postures? This day and age we
accept more “skin” and provocative gestures than in previous generations. I
would argue this is cultivation theory in action.
Sexier clothing and actions were slowly
introduced and seen more often, so over time we as a society began accepting it. It’s caused the objectification of women to
become transparent to us. This had the effect
of causing women to be viewed as sex objects, and in a large portion of female
media roles displaying sexuality is expected.
It would be in response to what the audience wants, what we want, or
media producers wouldn’t portray women in this way as we wouldn’t watch the
movies and they’d lose money. Simply
stated, they are giving us what we want.
Now this plays into rape culture which was a really hard pill for me to
swallow personally when I came to the realization I participated in it. Yes, that’s right Uncle Ron is guilty as
charged. I enjoy the look of a beautiful
woman, and in a way that’s ok, but when these women are reduced to nothing more
than their body parts therein lays the problem.
When women are reduced to nothing more than sexuality it robs them of
their agency in society. Men take on
the idea that women are for pleasure only.
This line of thinking takes from women their ability to be seen for
their brain power and abilities outside of the bedroom. It limits their prospects at being taken
seriously for many roles outside of sex.
As a guy, at first, it seems like it would be great if the roles where reversed and I were objectified by
women. However, I think I would grow
tired quickly at being viewed as nothing more than a penis with legs and
therefore not taken seriously about much.
I’m sure women are tired of this form of objectification if not downright
angry over it.
I can’t help to mention
here that in the majority of female movie roles they don’t have much in the way
of serious roles with conversation. Have
a look at this article: Female roles in film.
Apparently
most female roles are for attractiveness, or window dressing so to speak, so
what’s that got to say about how society views women as objects? As soon as we dehumanize someone, it becomes OK to harm them which is why this objectification of women is part of the rape
culture and therefore so dangerous to them.
It makes women objects for pleasure not people with feelings and
intelligence.
Another area
for me that relates to men is the emotional repression of males. How men are taught as boys not to show
emotion. Come on fellas, how many times
did you hear growing up that “big boys don’t cry?” Other fun sayings such as “act like a man”, “take
it like a man”, “grow some balls” along with others have created a society of
male repression. It’s still prevalent
today that as a man it’s not ok to show emotion, other than anger, and these
types of emotional repressions have caused a lack of feeling and emotional anesthesia,
or numbing, of men.
With that numbing in
mind, half of our society doesn’t feel or rather can’t show what they feel, now
is there any surprise at the level of “acceptable” violence in society today? More of cultivation theory here with the
emotional repression and the acceptability of violence towards others; go ahead
and say you don’t see that from films and shows. Say it!!!
Check this clip out, it’s funny but sad in a way:
If you’ve
said some of those things, as I did to my boys, then yep you guessed it, you’ve
participated in taking agency away from others.
Communication
and gender norms are part of why we do these things. These few things I list are far from complete,
and just meant as a very quick over view. Women are expected in their roles to speak
softer, be more relationship oriented blah blah blah.
Men are supposed to be straight forward,
hard, strong of character, and non-emotional.
These are accepted U.S. American roles that we are taught as we grow and
are ingrained in our society and thereby our psyche. Here’s a link where you can read up a bit on
gender roles: Gender roles.
These roles
can change and are different within different sub-cultures, but are a broad
sweeping brush stroke to some of our gender roles in the good old U. S. of A. …Murika…
I know Uncle
Ron is rambling on a bit here, but this stuff is important to all of us and I
would be seriously remiss if I didn’t at least touch on racial stereotypes.
Thanks to Hollywood, what’s the first thing
you think when you see a group of men of color walking towards you? Is it danger?
How are most men of color depicted in media? I bet more often than not you’ve seen them
depicted as thugs, criminals of some variety, or just general trouble makers. Here’s a clip of some popular films that do
just that:
How about
some song to go with it: https://youtu.be/cpGbzYlnz7c
Now some
more school time, so put on your thinking cap.
There is a thing called the looking glass self which in general talks
about how people shape the idea of themselves out of what others think of
them. Check out the Wikipedia definition
just in case you think I’m still off my rocker: Looking glass self.
Ok, with the looking glass self in place,
if you were viewed as a “gangster” or thug do you think you’d start taking on
that persona? The odds are that you
would. Therefore, if we are projecting
that image onto those of color are we not in some way contributing to those
that do develop this way? That’s one way
we are robbing them of their agency.
Hard
questions aren’t they? This plays into some societal views of both men and women of color.
They have been viewed as hyper-sexual, so back to women and
objectification for a moment. A woman of color in the
work place, with objectification thrown on top of it all, then isn’t it easy to
see how they may be viewed as sex objects?
Are you participating? A lot of
questions here I know, but that’s part of self-realization. Self-realization requires you to ask a lot of
hard questions of yourself and when I asked them of myself I didn’t like my
answers.
Reflect on
your thoughts and reflect on your actions.
Folks, it’s not my place to say you do or do not participate in taking
agency away from others. However, with
what I’ve laid down for you I think it’s hard to argue against it. In my humble opinion we all participate in
stealing the agency of others through the media we consume. Grant it most of our participation is not
intended, and in my case I didn’t even realize it. However, one wise old professor relayed to the effect of: it's not the intention so much as the impact of what's said or done.
As mentioned during the talk regarding the
objectification of women, so many of these things are transparent to us and
therefore most of us don’t know we’re participating. It took the hands of a professor and an
awesome group of class mates to help peel my eye lids back so I could REALLY see what was transparent to me. This from the perspective of a guy that thought his eyes were wide open.
I have to
say that sometimes education is painful, and my realization that I was an
indirect participant in rape culture hurt and shocked me to my core! In my particular case, this was the right
kind of pain in that my awareness was increased.
My friends,
it’s my hope that this little chat we’ve had today has helped to make you just
a bit more aware. One thing’s for sure,
once you’ve seen and heard the truth you can’t un-see or un-hear it, but you
can choose to ignore it. Now the only
question that remains is what will you do with the knowledge? After all it really doesn’t matter what I
think; what do you think?
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