Delicious LiveJournal Links for 6-22-2010

[andrewducker]

• Playing The Ugly Card
  (tags: feminism women)
• Gay Walmart Employee Forced To Wear Identifying Clothes
  Huzzah for Utah!
  (tags: gay usa EpicFail)
• The Toshiba AC100 Android laptop. If they can iron out the niggles then I want one...
  (tags: android laptop technology)

Comments

[andrewducker]

Those would largely be _famous_ ugly men.

I've seen men-of-non-mainstream-looks have just as many problems in dating as women-of-non-mainstream-looks.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

I haven't. On balance, I know way more men going out/hooking up with women conventionally 'out of their league' than women going out/hooking up with men out of theirs. I'm not saying that no 'ugly' guys have problems, I'm saying that a disparity exists.

Besides, sticking with known quantities, can you name me any famously ugly women dating famously beautiful men? The closest I can think of are older women with younger men, but every one of those women were once (or still are) very beautiful. I'm sure I don't have to tell you what different an absence of role models makes.

Now, I really don't want to get too deeply into this because I think the issue is tangential to the material point, but there are as I see it two reasons for this.

1. It doesn't hurt that male standards of beauty are far, far wider than women's. I'm not saying guys aren't still under pressure to look a certain way, and increasingly so as time goes on, but nobody can tell me that they get the same crap women do, not by a long shot.

2. No boy's dad would ever tell him he couldn't go for whatever girl he wanted, even if she was the personification of Helen of Troy and he was 'pug ugly'. Men are actively encouraged at every step the way to shoot as high as they can; they're taught that determination and self-confidence can get you anywhere and everywhere, they're largely proven right, and they have plenty of role models to support the concept.

Results:

"ugly men with beautiful women" - 2,750
"ugly men with pretty women" - 406
"ugly men with good looking women" - 490

"ugly women with beautiful men" - 3
"ugly women with handsome men" - 47
"ugly women with good looking men" - 8

See?

I will also observe that most of the results scanning down the women's pages were quotes from lines like "Why do we always see ugly men with beautiful women but never ugly women with beautiful men?" so the majority of those few hits they do have may well be false positives.

Joachim would tell his hypothetically plain daughter that she should probably scale her expectations back a bit if she had her sights set on Beckham, and concentrate on the equally ugly men who'll apparently be more likely to love her for her sparkling personality instead of her looks. Maybe he'd say the same thing to his plain son who set his sights on Angelina. But I doubt it.

[andrewducker]

I'd argue that we have less billionaire women who can thus attract whatever man they like. And definitely less ugly billionaire women, because they'll be even less likely to be successful, due to the usual negative societal effects.

I've heard men told repeatedly that women are out of their league. Been told it myself on numerous occasions. Possibly it's not the kind of thing men tell each other in front of women so much?

I'll dgive you the one on wider standards of beauty for men though :->

[marrog.livejournal.com]

Like I say, I'm not saying it doesn't happen, I'm saying that it's not endemic.

[broin.livejournal.com]

In your opinion (and obviously, nerd culture helps), do you think men have broader 'tastes' in women than women do in men?

Just in your experience. Dunno if there's a paper on this.

[andrewducker]

I'd find it really hard to generalise there.

I've certainly know enough men who would have relationships with women (and love them) they didn't consider beautiful.

[broin.livejournal.com]

Definitely.

I suppose I'm thinking of women who assume that because they were glasses, no-one will find them attrractive. Or who are pale or freckled or short or whatever. Nerd culture often prizes these qualities, which I suppose helps to an extent.

But I've known a few who are gobsmacked that those qualities might be desired. Makes you wonder where the pressures come from, exactly.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

Makes you wonder where the pressures come from, exactly.

That's a rhetorical question, right? The answer is obviously The Evil Media And Those Who Buy Into The Standards It Sets.

The answer to who's to blame for nearly everything is The Evil Media.

[broin.livejournal.com]

Heh.

Well, yes.

Well, sort of.

I get thrown when I'm talking to people about sexism and conformity, and they clumsily point at the mythical boardroom of men (with cigars, obviously) ticking lists of fashions, standards, hemlines and recommiting to ensuring how awful bras are.

Hell, here I am in a children's charity, where I'm one man for 5,000 women. It's been run by women for 80 years. They're in charge. Except that there's something they're buying into. All this power and responsibility, and we give out teddybears with pink t-shirts for prizes. It really gets to me.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

I think the Patriarchy is to blame for setting the standards, across the board, no question whatsoever. But just because it's called the Patriarchy doesn't mean that all the movers and shakers are men.

[andrewducker]

My issue with the phrasing of "the patriarchy is to blame for setting the standards" makes it sound like there's an actual organisation deliberately setting standards, which is clearly nonsense.

Something like "the patriarchical slant of society causes the standards to be the way they are" would seem less conspiracy-minded to me.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

I don't thi-

Nevermind. This is so not an interesting road to go down.

*wanders off muttering to self* Avoid semantics, avoid semantics, avoid semantics.

[andrewducker]

But semantics are important. They affect people's understanding of what you're saying.

If you're saying "The Patriarchy set our societal standards!" then a reasonable sized chunk of the population are going to look at you as if you were saying "The Communists are in charge of the Media!" or "The Lizard People eat our children!".

If you say "The patriarchal slant of society affects our standards" then you've got a more nuanced statement which doesn't push people away so much.

IMHO, of course.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

But I'm not discussing this with a reasonable sized chunk of the population. I'm discussing it with people I expect to understand that I'm not a crazy conspiracy theorist, and that I only need to say once "When I say 'the patriarchy' I'm not talking about the mythical cigar-smoking boardroom." I then expect to be able to use shorthand and have people remember that.

[andrewducker]

I'm not actually 100% clear what you do mean by it though, because we've never discussed it, and I've picked up my (vague) understanding of what people mean by it by being involved in internet "discussions". Do you mean "the slanted way in which society tends to provide better outcomes for men"? Or something else?

[andrewducker]

Because it reinforces a system in which men do better.

[broin.livejournal.com]

(sorry, wish there was an edit function via the web :) )

[broin.livejournal.com]

But why is it a *patriarchy* if some of it is women setting standards for women?

Elsewhere, I'm having a conversation about how I'm likely to want to stay home and raise the hypothetical kids. Both women and men have told me that's weird. In one case, that I was probably a paedophile.

If I'm getting it from both ends, so to speak, why is it a patriarchy?

[andrewducker]

Because it, in the large majority of the cases, it means men do better. Sure, men get caught on the wrong side of things too, but on average, men do better.

[broin.livejournal.com]

How are you measuring 'better'? :)

Because if we're talking average salaries, sure.

If we're talking childrearing, or primary school teaching (I broke off a friendship with a girl over that one - 'male primary teachers just aren't natural'), or paternity leave, not so much. If we're talking those roles even being valued, then not so much.

That's why 'patriarchy' is a harmful term. It obscures who's penalised.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

Oh, the anecdotes are coming out! Run and hide!

[andrewducker]

That's not a terribly useful response. He's asking a question which a lot of people do.

And it highlights what I was saying in my other comment - if you're going to engage with people online then then they aren't going to know what you mean, or what your background is, etc. So using terms that are ripe for misunderstanding and confusion is going to make life harder.

[broin.livejournal.com]

?

That's not helpful. I'm asking to learn.

[andrewducker]

The mass media. If 50% of people like X then any TV show that wants to kep its ratings will appeal to X. Doesn't matter if thre are 10% liking each of Y, Z, A and B, the TV shows are terrified of being cancelled, and will thus take no chances in putting anything other than The Thing Most Likely To Succeed out there. They magnify our tastes, feed them back to us, and leave (young) people assuming that the centre of the mainstream is all that exists.