I have to respond to comments to the last entry, but first!

[trinityvixen]

I'm sure the Whedon-files have read this already

Not to dismiss the Joss' opinion on the matter, but womb-envy is no more a predominant explanation for sexism and misogyny than penis-envy explains the psychology of women. It is, no doubt, a secret fear and source of mistrust, but the biological imperative of survival is more complicated than

Comments

[moonlightalice]

No offense, but that article is retarded. I am so sick of the womb-envy pseudofeminist arguments that forget that anti-feminism and hegemonic masculinity has everything to do with power and little to do with biology.

[trinityvixen]

The womb-envy isn't bright, this is true. The horrified connection between a movie that glories in the torment of a woman and the real life equivalent though, that's worth a read (because he's got the sense of humor and yet righteous indignation the topic deserves).

[moonlightalice]

We're a voyeuristic people, but that's a different issue entirely from feminism.

[hslayer]

I have to agree with you this time. His explanation is silly. Honestly, between what I've seen in his shows and what I've heard from people in the fandom, I wouldn't expect brilliant pop psychology from Joss. That aside, I think any explanation would be silly. Sexism, like racism, homophobia, or any other prejudice, is inexplicable. I'm probably looking at things from too utilitarian a lens again, but overgeneralizations (i.e. "all women are bad", "women are only there to be exploited", whatever) lead to poor decisions, so holding such a belief is self-defeating. Both for the individual and for the society

[chuckro]

Sexism, like racism, homophobia, or any other prejudice, is inexplicable.

Okay, I'm no psychologist, but "fear of the other/outsider" seems like a perfectly reasonable evolutionary trait, and that would make racism/homophobia rather explicable, I think.

But regardless, saying that there is no explanation for behavior and can be no explanation is, well, useless to society as a whole. Even if we don't know them yet, there are reasons for everything. (Coincidentally, this is why Intelligent Design is stupid.)

[hslayer]

(Let's see if LiveJournal will accept my comment THIS time.... I'd claim crappy response from web servers is inexplicable, too, but that's a whole other thing.)

As I said, I was being too utilitarian. The explanation could be an evolutionary one that's no longer useful in a modern context, or it could be a "dude had poor parenting" one that was never useful in any context, or any of a myriad of other things.... But what I was really trying to say was that there's no rational explanation. There's no way to say, "Oh, I hold this prejudice in order to achieve this end," and make someone else say, "Oh, ok, that makes sense." Regardless of the origin of it, prejudice is still self-defeating; I'm probably just giving people too much credit to call it inexplicable when they don't apply rational judgement to throw it out

[wellgull]

Regardless of the origin of it, prejudice is still self-defeating

I wish. I suspect prejudice has helped majoritarian groups in a lot of instances. Systematic discrimination against women maintains the power/dominance of men in our society; Hitler found anti-Semitism (and generalized hatred of other/"Inferior") an incredibly powerful and useful unifying force; entrenched racism supported and aided the Southern economic system for hundreds of years (and really still does underly a lot of the cheap service-industry labor throughout this country, for jobs that need to be done locally).

On the contrary, prejudice and discrimination are highly useful for certain ends in the hands of certain people. That's part of why it's hard to get society as a whole to give them up: they're wedded to the power structure.