Multiple sides of the same coin

When dealing with dominator culture, it is important to remember that there are multiple ways to be wrong.

I have mainly focused on how it is easy to want to control others and exert authority over them, even if it is only a matter of judging them.  

A different, related problem is to defer to those exerting authority that they don't have or are using incorrectly.

There is a lot to unpack. 

You may be familiar with the subReddit, "Am I the Asshole?"

I don't even go there myself, but notable threads are frequently shared, so I am familiar with it that way.

What I notice is that the questions generally fall into two categories. Some who are asking are facing incredible abuse and questioning because they pushed back a tiny bit and got berated for standing up for themselves at all. 

Others are the abuser, shockingly justifying horrible actions that can only place them in the realm of a narcissist.

I know these descriptions seem extreme. Sometimes questions are about behavior that is merely petty, or reasonable confusion, and sometimes there are multiple people being awful, but my description is not the exaggeration one would hope for.

I believe it can be very difficult to have a correct sense of one's place in the world and one's value. It's too easy to think that you are worse than everyone else, or better than everyone else.

The essence of dominator culture makes it normal to fall into hierarchies. Your idea of your position probably has a lot to do with your parents, quite possibly being more about how they feel about themselves than how how they feel about you.

We all start out equally valuable, but we get different resources and are treated differently based on birth circumstances. What matters are our choices, but not everyone has the same options. Some don't even have the opportunity to know about various options.

Those are reasons to have compassion toward others, especially if you know they have had disadvantages. 

Too often, though, it becomes the reason we allow those who believe in their own superiority to run roughshod over others.

Sure, the obvious correlation is allowing a convicted felon to run for president, but that can also included not speaking up about racist jokes or having a stronger commitment to prison abolition than holding a rapist accountable, therefore excluding the person he raped from the activist group.

I realize, that's a fairly wide range. 

I also realize I am posting this quite late, and it wasn't what I planned on writing today. However, as I was going to write about things like what could be appropriate and inappropriate use of authority, it turned into this.

It may be very easy to defer to awful people, because they seem to expect it and you want to be nice, and maybe when you have tried speaking up it hasn't gone well. 

If there is any point in writing this series at all, though, it should lead to being able to recognize when things are wrong, and how to respond to some wrong situations.

Under current world circumstances, there are things that are clearly one and one can easily feel justified anger, and then react in a way that is not only not solving the problem, but exacerbating it.

And of course, my writing method is to give lots of examples and background that I hope will combine to lead people to their own understanding, where they are finding the logic of it rather than just trusting me. I believe that is a more effective way of teaching.

Of course, I have spent most of my life feeling less than, so it is hard to be more assertive than that anyway.

 

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None of this is new

There are so many potential areas affected by dominator culture that could be explored that I may have a hard time deciding how much would be too much of a good thing. 

(I feel like I might start going hard on capitalism on the main blog soon, but I am not sure yet.)

Regardless, before going further I want to take a moment to show that this is not just Gina running off her secular, liberal mouth.

Dominator culture is against my religion. 

That may seem more to the point if you are a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, but it does not go well with other Christian religions, other Abrahamic religions, or other religions in general, at least if you are judging based on their sacred texts and not the behavior of their members.

This post will have some references to the texts that I am familiar with, but could easily be part of a broader discussion.

Doctrine and Covenants section 121, verse 37, referring to the powers of Heaven:

That they may be conferred upon us, it is true; but when we undertake to cover our sins, or to gratify our pride, our vain ambition, or to exercise control or dominion or compulsion upon the souls of the children of men, in any degree of unrighteousness, behold, the heavens withdraw themselves; the Spirit of the Lord is grieved; and when it is withdrawn, Amen to the priesthood or the authority of that man.

That may be the most obvious one right there; trying to exercise dominion over others strips away authority even if you had it.

From the Bible, Proverbs chapter 16, verse 32:

He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.

There are plenty of opportunities to exert control, but that should be self-control.

The Book of Mormon, Mosiah, chapter 3, verse 19:

For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.

Apparently it is human nature. If you find yourself frustrated that you have to deal with circumstances you don't control because there are people that you don't control, that's human, and that's not a sin. 

If you were to attack those people who frustrate you, that might be getting into sinful territory. 

What is much more likely -- and worse -- is when you take out your frustrations with those who have more power and privilege than you against those who have less. Maybe you are doing it because it gratifies your pride, or because you have had ambition frustrated, but it's wrong, and there are multiple indicators that it's wrong.

Because it is so natural, and there is so much structurally that supports it, it is easy to do that without thinking too much. 

Because that structure is a hierarchy, it is easy to think that you can't be oppressing anyone because look at the oppression you face!

Therefore -- and this part is really important -- it is theoretically quite easy to cooperate with racism, sexism, and homophobia and still believe you are a good person. You are just supporting families and being righteous.

It does not in fact work that way. 

If others are in fact sinning, then that will be the business of God, and Their way of dealing with it was to have Jesus Christ suffer at an incomprehensible level so that they could be forgiven -- which He also did for you -- should they choose to seek forgiveness, without any coercion.

Doctrine and Covenants, section 19, verses 18 - 19:

Which suffering caused myself, even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit—and would that I might not drink the bitter cup, and shrink—

19 Nevertheless, glory be to the Father, and I partook and finished my preparations unto the children of men.

So if being Christ-like is your goal, that's the model; anything else is fooling yourself.

There is a lot that could be added about pride and wealth, and about even the sign of the Millennium being that there are no poor (so if that doesn't sound good to you, maybe you are set for burning), but my point is that the information is there. Our scriptures are all online, so you don't even need physical copies of the books if you have an internet connections.

Libraries exist.

The information is out there.

What is most important, then, is what is in you, and what you will take to heart.

 

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Dominator culture and modesty

As many thoughts as I have been having about modesty, I kept remembering things I had already written about it.

https://preparedspork.blogspot.com/2014/06/why-would-we-ever-promote-hottest.html 

https://preparedspork.blogspot.com/2014/06/modesty.html 

https://preparedspork.blogspot.com/2015/09/false-modesty.html 

None of them are particularly recent, but the issues haven't changed that much. The big change is that when I wrote these I was not familiar with the concept of dominator culture. I still grasped the sexism and the devaluation of women inherent in it, but not how it fit into the larger system.

It doesn't change too much about what I would say about modesty.

I do think it makes more sense to see how much it is women enforcing it against women. Because dominator culture gives women less power, the opportunity to exert power against other women tracks. 

It also makes sense that they can do so without contemplating on how they are upholding a system that devalues them. Probably they accept the devaluation, but when you don't stop and think about it, who knows?

Instead of spending a lot of time on this, I am going to bring up three only vaguely connected things, and how they fit in.

First, I recently remembered something from way back, when I would have been about twelve, but the older young women were talking about prom. 

This was back when it was still common for a lot of them to sew their own dresses or to have their dresses sewn by their mother. One was telling us that the pattern she picked had a sweetheart neckline and her mother asked her if she was sure she could hold it up.

I mention that because forty years later there would be such criticism of something that would in fact have been strapless and sleeveless, but the only thing notable about it then was the mother's question about whether her daughter wasn't a bit flat-chested to pull it off. 

(There's tape for that, right?)

In fact, strapless dresses were pretty common. Maybe that was fashion, but since so many people were sewing their own and sleeves are hard, that could have played a role. 

There did seem to be less interest in policing women, but perhaps it related to that time period, where the results of feminism were still growing pretty slowly. That generation of mothers would only recently have been able to... 

• Have their own bank accounts (technically earlier but not generally allowed until 1974 with the Equal Credit Opportunity Act)
• Sue against discrimination in education (Title IX, passed in 1972)
• Specific to our church, make temple covenants without being married to an active member (This seems to have happened in the mid-80s, but stories of women being denied persisted)

One fun thing about that list is finding multiple examples of things where technically it was allowed but you couldn't get it to happen because the people with traditional power still placed barriers. Tradition would have made that easier.

I suspect that plays a role with the second thing, where women get reduced to their bodies. That seems to happen more and more now. 

I think the amount of women who have successful careers and advanced degrees and investment portfolios and homes that they own, and a general lack of desperation over not being married pushes that. There is more resentment over women owning things instead of being owned.

No one should want that for their daughters or for themselves or for anyone. Maybe if you are a man who is very unsatisfied with his life and has nothing but dominator culture to cling to, that is a logical line of thought but it sucks! It will not make you or anyone else happy. 

Then the woman becomes just a tool for sex, she is seen that way even when young, and everything about her becomes inherently sexualized.

Because really, what is so alluring about knees or shoulders that they become a danger? We get to something that was I hope a joke in Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis but I am afraid is not, where women have to keep their heads covered because their hair releases pheromones!

You cannot reduce our bodies in that way without also reducing us as people, which is the ultimate goal.

Finally, the last thing I wanted to throw in also sounds like a joke, but apparently is not. People were discussing modesty culture and one woman mentioned at church (Southern Baptist, not us) being told as a girl that a seat belt could be dangerous because of how it accentuated the breasts. This could be a temptation to male passengers in the car, and it could injure them eternally whereas the worst that could happen to you by not wearing your seat belt is death. But hey, you are dying righteously, saving your brother.

I wish that was an exaggeration, but I have seen video of a Muslim cleric criticizing women under chadors wearing backpacks, because it pulls back the shoulders. However, wearing the backpack under the chador would be okay, because then it is all a shapeless mass.

I will acknowledge that spiritual death is more serious than physical death. That does not change two things:

1. Physical death still matters, ending some opportunities and causing grief for those left behind.
2. IF MEN REALLY NEED ALL OF THIS THEY ARE HOPELESS AND WE SHOULD REDIRECT OUR EFFORTS TO SOMETHING USEFUL!

(Um, happy Father's Day, to those who celebrate.)

At some point we have to admit that it's really about control.

Maybe the next discussion should be on reproductive health, but that's enough for one day.

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Dominator culture and school safety

Having explored some ways in which dominator culture can play out, there are many more left. 

The point I want to make before getting into other aspects is that it makes things worse. 

Good intentions and reasonable desires will choose solutions that cause more harm.

Let's look at the issue of school safety.

Often that is looked at through the lens of school shootings, with solutions like metal detectors and especially school safety officers.

They don't help. Some studies show they increase the level of deadliness.

https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/states-cannot-rely-school-resource-officers-stop-school-shootings 

https://www.edweek.org/leadership/school-police-prevent-some-violence-but-not-shootings-research-finds/2023/07 

You may occasionally find a story of a guard turning a shooter away, but not more frequently than a teacher turning a shooter away. 

That isn't to say that the presence of the guards does not have an impact.

https://www.splcenter.org/news/2024/04/30/report-black-girls-suffer-most-policing-florida-school-district 

Black girls get ogled. They get hit on by the guards.

This is in addition to the already present push toward the school to prison pipeline.

They are both sexualized and criminalized; it does not make them want to stay in school.

One of the most ironic things about this is that the majority of school shooters (as well as adult mass shooters) are white males. If the goal is truly to prevent school shooters, that should be the population most scrutinized. It does not work out that way because of dominator culture.

It is not deliberate. Baked into the structure, it means that the white male students will be the most privileged, that students with darker skins will be more likely to be criminalized, and that the girls will be more likely to be sexualized, with darker skin increasing their risk.

I remember a Facebook conversation once between two former schoolmates. The first was feeling bad that budget cuts were eliminating the school safety officers, and the other was explaining about the inherent problems. The first was not exactly disbelieving, but that had not been her experience. Of course, her children were white, and the second one had a Black daughter.

A previous post had indicated that personal satisfaction might affect the need to dominate. Private security officers are often people who failed the entrance exams to get into the police academy. The common assumption is that they are frequently retired police officers. That does happen, but the former officers generally end up in management. (See Private Security and Public Police, Grunwald, Rappaport, and Berg.)

Maybe a lot of them will have something to prove, or maybe there is just an ease in falling along well-established lines of who gets what treatment. 

As recently as April there were stories of a mistrial for one school safety officer killing a student, and another who killed his ex-wife and the student he had impregnated, then fled with the child.

https://abc7.com/mistrial-declared-in-long-beach-school-officer-shooting-trial/14677917/

https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/23/us/washington-amber-alert-elias-huizar/index.html

I probably still wouldn't have even thought of writing this post, except for also seeing this article:

https://time.com/6975013/teen-mental-health-school-nurse/?utm_source=pocket_saves 

Even though one school shooting is too many, they are still comparatively rare. Bullying, mental illness, and physical illnesses happen all the time. School nurses are an important resource in identifying issues and providing help. 

School nurses get cut from the budget far more often than safety offices.

Wouldn't it be better to identify the depression or anger or disconnection in a student long before they start thinking about shooting anyone? 

Continuing to exert control reinforces the reasons someone might become a shooter.

That is ultimately the conflict. 

Are we going to kindly provide resources or try to exert control, and then keep trying the second harder when it doesn't work?

It will continue to not work.

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Dominator culture and social media: Gaza edition

This is going to be a bit of a shaggy dog post, wandering over different things seen on social media, all fairly recently.

Here is one from about ten days ago: 

https://x.com/ShahzadYounas_/status/1792535412444975486

Initially I clicked on a quote tweet, where someone had added that this is why you need to make seventy excuses before judging someone, a reference to a Muslim adage. 

There are other mentions of this in the replies, and it was new to me, so that is why I mention it.

The replies to the initial tweet are the main point of this post, but it started with an article about a panel of experts, including Amal Clooney, recommending that the International Criminal Court issue arrest warrants for crimes in both Israel and Gaza. The author of the tweet referred to people attacking Clooney's previous silence on the issue.

First of all, let me say that if anything drives me off of social media, it will be the crisis in Gaza, which has been bringing out the worst in people who had not clearly showed that they had this level of "worst" in them. 

In terms of the replies here, from a bunch of strangers, those are not surprising. There are people applauding her, and people angry at her for defending Hamas. The report seems to recommend arrests on both the Israeli and the Palestinian side, allowing everyone to be angry, but there are people also praising her and scorning how wrong all of those complainers were.

At this point, finding anger, Antisemitism, and Islamophobia is standard. 

(Questions about whether the recommendations will be effective do concern me, but that doesn't mean that establishing the legal issues has no value.)

There were a few replies that surprised me more.

• It only takes a minute to speak up; she should have said something sooner.
• She turned down a position ten years ago that shows she does not really care about Palestinian people.
• She should be speaking about Lebanon, not Palestine.

These stood out to me due to the apparent absence of logic. There can be many reasons for taking or not taking a job at one time or another, and while working on a report you might be well-advised to maintain confidentiality, if not absolutely required to. (Lawyers are very sensitive to that.)

Certainly, you should be able to care about multiple things, and multiple people at the same time, though you cannot do everything at once.

I am writing because of that determination to find fault, to cling to that fault against all reason, and even to find praise primarily as a way of judging others.

Those can certainly be aspects of dominator culture, but let us not forget that a big part of it is choosing sides.

One illustration of that is reactions to news of Jerry Seinfeld attending an IDF "fantasy" camp, where you get to train to shoot "terrorists":

https://www.newsweek.com/jerry-seinfeld-attacked-twitter-over-israeli-terror-tourism-camp-visit-west-776790

Here's the way in which I will be mean: it seemed really weird that Seinfeld has recently been lamenting the demise of masculinity. Learning he recently fired a gun and got to feel all macho... of course. Got it.

What I have seen on Twitter is various people talking about how Seinfeld himself was never really that funny, but the humor of Seinfeld the show was all because of Larry David.

I'm sure David was a huge influence on the show and its humor, but what that exchange is doing is trying to switch allegiance from one person to another, assuming that the other is going to be a better person. 

Larry David is not necessarily a good person. You get sexist and racist and apparently even Islamophobic humor in some episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm, even quite recently. That's not saying he has no redeeming qualities, and he might have more redeeming qualities than Jerry Seinfeld, but this often becomes just a matter of splitting hairs.

Look, if you loved the show Seinfeld, and you didn't mind the star dating a teenage girl and breaking up a marriage and complaining about political correctness killing comedy, but supporting Palestinian genocide is a bridge too far... I get that. Searching for a new person you can be loyal to is probably not the answer. 

Does it help that he was the good one in a conversation between Seinfeld, Ricky Gervais, Chris Rock, and Louis C.K.?

https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/25/opinions/louis-ck-chris-rock-n-word-debate-love/index.html 

Granted, the bar was set pretty low.

You can try separating the art and artist. Personally, the less I can like someone as a person, the less I enjoy their work. There is also a lot of entertainment out there, and I get by.

There are worse problems in life than realizing that a lot of the people who have entertained you were not that great. Given our overall past history, you should expect that. I'm sorry if it's disappointing.

Finally, is one of those worse things having a crude nickname?

Pro-Israel writer Eve Barlow keeps complaining about the "hate name" she has received -- designed to silence her -- "Eve Fartlow":

https://knowyourmeme.com/editorials/guides/who-is-eve-fartlow-the-disparaging-nickname-and-controversy-surrounding-eve-barlow-explained

There were 1139 people killed in the October 7th attack. That is horrible.

Since then there have been 36430 Palestinians killed, and a lot of starvation and maiming. That is worse. 

Historically, there has always been that overkill on the Israeli side. It should be possible to understand that without making it a referendum on Jewish people or religion or ethnicity.

Barlow's tweets have been about a friend seeing a "Free Parking" sign and panicking because she thought it said "Free Palestine" and about understanding how Germans could support Nazis but not how anyone can support Palestine because what do they have to offer?

And she feels like a martyr for being called "Fartlow".

That of course reminds me that when you are accustomed to privilege, criticism can feel like oppression. 

The bigger problem is how many people gravitate toward being able to oppress, or at least are okay with oppression that does not affect them. 

That's what we need to root out.

Related posts:

https://preparedspork.blogspot.com/2023/10/palestine.html