The female equivalent of Stepin Fetchit...

[redqueen]

they come in at least two flavors: 'we were meant to be subservient' and 'we were meant to be the object of lust and not the subject'

Ain't it great.

[seabeyond]

1. i dont know who or what you are talking about. nt

[Scout]

3. i think Stepin Fetchit was a racist stereotype of a subservient black man n/t

[redqueen]

4. Exactly. He catered to what white audiences wanted to see,

and what they expected. He was rewarded handsomely for serving the interests of the dominant group.

I see this same tendency among the women who serve the interests of the dominant group. Whether they do so by adopting the right-wing subservient role, or the hypersexualized/sexually available role, they are serving the dominant group and as a result they get positive feedback from the majority.

We all recognize it when religious women adopt this role. The flip side is less well-recognized. Hell simply the fact that it's occurring isn't recognized, because the hypersexualized/sexually-available woman (when that availability isn't contextually logical) isn't usually even recognized as being out of the ordinary.

[Scout]

5. yes, they think they are "winning" the game when in the long run,

the only winning move is NOT to play.

[musette_sf]

2. sounds like Roman Catholic Complementarianism

as set forth in the egregious insult to Catholic women, the ironically titled Mulieris Dignitatem.

[redqueen]

6. "Beauty pageant women, Sports Illustrated women,

and women who work for Aaron Spelling: They are to me as Uncle Tom is to the black man... They are such Stepin Fetchit sell-outs."

Janeane Garofalo.



I was just having a look around to see if I was the only one who'd made this analogy and found this. Thought I'd share. :)

[ThomCat]

7. I have to admit, I've never understood

why so many women willingly internalize these kinds of ideas to such an extent that they willingly want to be subservient, or willingly want to be little more than objects for other people.

I have yet to meet one of these women who wasn't capable of organizing her life, and her family's life, and a man's life for that matter. I ran in activist circles and I met a lot of women who were conservative activists over across the fence. They were smart and capable, but they insisted on being second-class to men. They wanted to live inside well-defined, constricting boundaries with all those hostile rules. Why?

I never understood what they got out of it. What did they gain out of a system that gave everything to men by taking everything from them?

The hostility to the very idea of feminism, before you could even begin to talk about it, was always incredible.

[laconicsax]

8. It's the result of living in a patriarchy. n/t

[ThomCat]

9. We all live in a patriarchy though.

If it were that simple...

[laconicsax]

10. You didn't grow up with society telling you to be subservient. Girls do. n/t

[ThomCat]

11. I wasn't thinking bout me.

I was thinking that if it was that simple there wouldn't be any feminists.

[seabeyond]

12. thomcat.... i have told this to my boys. my youngest, 14, i said again to him

last night, can you believe... can you believe i thought that.

i had a strong, smart, vocal mom. a father that was so respectful and taught me as a girl my self worth, like fathers do. we lived in working class and later middle class. two older brothers a year and two years apart. i was in competitive sports. i had the same expectation on me as my brothers. more so. i was the one pinned to go thru college. wasnt so given in those days.

we were not religious where religion dictated behavior.

i was born in the early 60's. thru society and the strong patriarchy, what was represented every day of life, john wayne putting her over the knee and spanking her, the woman slappong the man, the man works, the woman raises children and takes care of the house, the 60's and early 70's, i learned, knew, thought, man was the boss. i knew he was smarter. better equipped. not emotional. ALL the things we are taught from the day we are born

i can remember in my teens, somewhere along the way, i challenged the thought that there was this huge difference. i challenged the knowing that for whatever reason man was better than woman. though it wasnt so blatant as better or worse. just, it was mans world.

it wasnt bad. it wasnt stiffling. it wasnt done by family with any purpose. i was never put upon.

but i learned that society is so controlling of who we are, that even in that household, i still thought in our patriachal society, that man was more than woman. i started tearing down the conditions then. it took a lot of years.

i told my boys. can you believe? can you believe i ever felt i was less? i find that mind boggling that raised in a perfectly wonderful environment, i had still picked that up.

none of it is hard. society conditions us.

one study in the 80's with a questionairre asking men and women if they were turned on by a picture. men came out much more visual than women. women answered like they were conditioned. men answered like they were conditioned. and now, today, with the smartest of smart, we say men are more visual than women. that is why they need porn.

a study in 2009 where they actually take out the conditioning and hook up the brain and look at the evidence. they find not only are women as visual, they get turned on by all sex. men, only the gender of their preference. (which probably has to do with conditioning)

yet, it will be impossible for society to even consider women are as visual as men. though it made no sense that any one gender is more visual. i havent noticed any one gender enjoying the beauties of our world more than another. being more visual would translate in many parts of our life.

i get why people chose there roles. they think there is a pay off. they think with a well defined role, they will make less mistakes. they hold fear and are vulnerable to have it change. they protect it at all cost. they dont realize, this in itself makes them vulnerable. let go of the roles, and you are no longer vulnerable.

[redqueen]

13. They gain approval from the dominant class.

This stuff is so deeply ingrained in us. It's both alarming and fascinating. Studies have shown that not only do white patients receive better healthcare from their doctors than minority patients, but even doctors who are also minorities will treat their white patients better than they treat the patients who are in the same minority group as the doctors studied. These mores about which groups are 'better than' or 'less than' are absorbed by our subconscious, and rational thinking doesn't seem to affect the biases much at all.

I wish sociology wasn't such a hated science. Like any 'soft' science it's not as easy as hard sciences to deal with, but it is no less important. In fact I think it's more important.