The corrupting effect of the inferior
Gwen Sharp:
It’s fascinating, really: femininity is depicted as weakness, the sapping of strength, yet masculinity is so fragile that apparently even the slightest brush with the feminine destroys it. (via)
The more threatening something is deemed to be, the more it has to be repressed, kept within its proper bounds. Those who are most insistent on how threatening queerness is to social order are also those most insistent on queers being only a small proportion of the population. But that goes together--the smaller the "threatening" group is, the more threatening they have to be because the more the fact that it is inciting a very large majority to bully a small and vulnerable minority has to be disguised. Exactly the same logic went on with Jew-hatred for exactly the same reason.
Women as a group can never be as thoroughly outcasted as Jews, queers or other minority groups (though individual women who "wander off the reservation" are another matter). But the logic of deeming what is being defined as inferior as threatening if it gets outside its "proper" bounds still applies. Gatekeepers of righteousness define themselves as defenders of the proper social order, which is how conservatives are disproportionately prone to buy into the belief that certain groups have to be repressed to maintain social order and harmony. Which leads to all sorts of ironies when conservatives and conservative ideas get defined as threats to proper social order (though more one to be built than an inheritance to be preserved).
It’s fascinating, really: femininity is depicted as weakness, the sapping of strength, yet masculinity is so fragile that apparently even the slightest brush with the feminine destroys it. (via)
The more threatening something is deemed to be, the more it has to be repressed, kept within its proper bounds. Those who are most insistent on how threatening queerness is to social order are also those most insistent on queers being only a small proportion of the population. But that goes together--the smaller the "threatening" group is, the more threatening they have to be because the more the fact that it is inciting a very large majority to bully a small and vulnerable minority has to be disguised. Exactly the same logic went on with Jew-hatred for exactly the same reason.
Women as a group can never be as thoroughly outcasted as Jews, queers or other minority groups (though individual women who "wander off the reservation" are another matter). But the logic of deeming what is being defined as inferior as threatening if it gets outside its "proper" bounds still applies. Gatekeepers of righteousness define themselves as defenders of the proper social order, which is how conservatives are disproportionately prone to buy into the belief that certain groups have to be repressed to maintain social order and harmony. Which leads to all sorts of ironies when conservatives and conservative ideas get defined as threats to proper social order (though more one to be built than an inheritance to be preserved).