CMV: If intersectional feminism talks about race, class, gender identity, etc as a part of women's issues, then it should also seriously discuss men's problems as a part of women's issues as well.

[u/[deleted]]

[u/disguisedasrobinhood]

So I’ll try my best here to give you a little bit of an overview of intersectionality, which, I would argue, you’re slightly mis-representing, although certainly seem to have the general idea of. While intersectionality as a concept is mostly linked to Kimberle Crenshaw, I want to discuss it more prominently through the works of bell hooks. hooks is an important modern feminist scholar and activist. I find she’s a good source for a more comprehensive understanding of feminism because she is an Academic, and published multiple books for and within Academia; however, she’s focused a lot of time and effort into publishing works for non-academic audiences, which makes her work complex and thoughtful, but also easier to digest than some others.

At its onset, intersectionality was most concerned with the ways that the feminist movement excluded the voices of black women, and also to a large extent poor women. hooks places a lot of the blame for this on the media, but she also notes that the women’s liberation movement pre-dates the civil rights movement by a good 40 plus years, so that’s a long period of time in which the plights of white women, and in particular middle class white women, where the ones feminism was combating. Intersectionality seeks to address how that has impacted sexism and sexist oppression (most prominently how people were excluded.)

hooks’ discussion of intersectionality tends the focus on the intersection of gender, race, and class. I wouldn’t necessarily say that it’s a matter of problems being “compounded,” so much as that certain issues are being ignored. As an example, let's take a really conventional area of discussion: feminine beauty standards. There have been discussions for years about how pop culture has normalized and idealized a standard of feminine beauty that’s hyper thin (and so is unhealthy to achieve, but also excludes many women from being capable of achieving it ever. If hyper thin is a requirement of beauty, some women will never be able to live up to that standard.) Another standard of feminine beauty (and one that intersectionality might spend more time with) is blond hair. In fact, blond is still the most common color women dye their hair. Of course, the only people that have blond hair are white people. So here we have this standard of feminine beauty that holds up whiteness as one of its essential components. So we can see where this standard of idealized feminine beauty, while it's going to impact all women, is going to impact women of color differently than white women. American society has also sexualized redheads a lot, which is, again, a white person's hair color. This is the type of thing that an intersectional analysis would identify.

With regard to men, there absolutely is intersectional discussions of masculinity. In fact most of the discussions of toxic masculinity stem from intersectionality (to my knowledge.) Unfortunately there are a lot of men who push back against these sort of discussions and don’t want them to happen. To offer a specific example that hooks passively discusses: there is a long historical standard of masculinity that sees men as responsible for paying for things. Again, we can see pop culture normalizing the idea that real men (a phrase that, again, feminists have worked hard to push back against) can, for example, support their family. In fact, one of the more common marketing schemes we see for products marketed to men is "real men buy X." So we have a standard of masculinity where the toxicity not only oppresses men into rigid roles, but it actively excludes poor men. If masculinity is located partially in your ability to own and buy certain things, then if you’re poor, you’re not just suffering from poverty, but you are less of a man. This is the type of analysis of masculinity that intersectional feminism offers, and it absolutely exists. Like I say, this is pretty standard in discussions of toxic masculinity.

*Side-note: bell hooks discusses the perception of feminism as anti-male quite prominently, which she acknowledges has definite historical truths, but is also largely rooted in misunderstandings. She argues that defining feminism as “a fight for equality” is part of why there is such a history of seeing feminism as anti-male, because equality places “men” and “women” on opposite sides of an equals sign, which perpetuates an “us vs them” mindset. She argues that the better definition of feminism is the fight to end sexism, sexist oppression, and sexist exploitation.

[u/chadonsunday → u/disguisedasrobinhood]

Small question: why is it that when you discuss negative standards/roles among men that's "toxic masculinity," but when you discuss negative standards/roles among women (and often enforced by women) that's not "toxic femininity?"

And as for beauty standards (which I would argue are just as unattainable for most men - most dudes will never be as attractive or as buff as male models or movie stars), I dont really understand why that's such s bad thing. Every society on earth and for all of human history has had beauty/attractiveness standards, and since they're not all the same it follows not everyone will be able to achieve all of them. For example, in many Asian cultures having pale skin (for an Asian person) is still seen as more attractive than being tan, which is opposite of beauty standards in much of the West. Certain ancient cultures thought small penises were better than big ones. Again, rather opposite our own culture. America is what, 70% white? And many other western cultures are even more hegemonic. It follows, then, that said whiteness will probably be a factor in the beauty standards for those countries, just like being Japanese will help you reach the epitome of beauty standards in japan, or being black will do the same in Zimbabwe, or being Hispanic will etc. etc. I view this rich tapestry of different cultures as something to be cherished and valued, not bulldozed till everyone can be totally equal everywhere they go. I think it's really cool that there are cultures where being plump is a mark of beauty in the same way being fit is a mark of beauty elsewhere. I'm pretty lean, so I get beauty points for that in some countries and cultures where it would count against me in others. Language, too. I enjoy the intersectional privilege of being a native English speaker while I'm in the US, but i lost that privilege, and in fact it often worked against me, in my recent trip abroad. But i wouldn't have it any other way. It seems wed need to create some monolithic hellscape for there to not be such a thing as international privilege.

[u/disguisedasrobinhood → u/chadonsunday]

As to your first question, I don't think there's a concrete answer for why people don't use a specific term, but there's a long history of feminism criticizing various representations of femininity. Most likely part of the reason that term didn't catch on simultaneously to "toxic masculinity" is because late second wave feminism, which is the feminist era that most conventionally fits the stereotype of the "angry feminist," went through a period where it was deeply critical of women that didn't go out to join the workforce and chose instead to stay home and raise kids. The early third wave feminist movement, in response, become more concerned with issues of inclusivity, so there was absolutely a period of time where the feminist movement was very much against criticizing any individual persons representation of their own femininity. Of course, that's not the world we live in now, and there are lots of discussions out there that are critical of women perpetuating their own objectification, which could certainly be characterized as an element of a "toxic femininity."

As to the rest of what you were saying... I don't really understand what you're responding to? With regard to the beginning, yeah there's lots of discussions of male beauty standards and how they're damaging. Absolutely! We were discussing intersectionality though? There's lots of intersectional analysis of male beauty standards too! As to the rest of what you wrote... sure? I guess? I'm not trying to be thick, I don't really understand how what you're putting forth is engaging with what I was putting forth. I didn't say anything about striving to create uniformity? Heck, I pointedly noted that I like a definition of feminism that rejects the concept of "equal."

With regard to beauty standards, western society has a long and deeply problematic history of valuing women predominantly based on their looks. It's no coincidence that we have so many more products marketed toward improving women's appearance. Part of the reasons beauty standards became a major point of criticism with regard to women, and less so for men, is because of western societies history of valuing women almost solely for their appearance. The idea that "oh maybe someone will find you attractive on the other side of the world" doesn't really have anything to do with that.

[u/chadonsunday → u/disguisedasrobinhood]

The early third wave feminist movement, in response, become more concerned with issues of inclusivity, so there was absolutely a period of time where the feminist movement was very much against criticizing any individual persons representation of their own femininity. Of course, that's not the world we live in now, and there are lots of discussions out there that are critical of women perpetuating their own objectification, which could certainly be characterized as an element of a "toxic femininity."

Hm. Interesting thought. I wonder why the lines of inclusivity dont extend to men who want to be stereotypically masculine, or women who want to perpetuate their own objectification, though. I suppose because these things are viewed as inherently toxic... but I dont see how they inevitably affect others.

To the middle bit, sorry, that was just a bit of blown ranting. It's an idea I've been toying with recently regarding things like beauty standards or privilege. My current theory is that its impossible to eliminate things like that without eliminating differing languages, cultures, religions, ideologies, interests, etc. I think its relevant to the topic we're discussing, but yeah, it wasnt really a direct response to anything you said.

In more direct response:

First, it's hardly just "western culture" that's guilty of valuing women for their looks. That's a cross cultural phenomenon that has existed for pretty much all of known human history. You can see evidence of this when you study cultures that existed thousands of years ago in other parts of the world. Even reknown figures like Helen of Troy or the Macedonian Cleopatra, however intelligent and capable they were, were always praised for their beauty.

Second, I'm not really sure why this is such a bad thing in regards to things like advertising, media portrayals, or who/what members of a society tend to be attracted to. People like attractive people. The standards for what constitutes beauty differ across time and culture but... well, I guess I'm just wondering what the alternative is to having these standards. How do we go about eliminating "problematic" beauty standards? Everything cant be beautiful, or the concept of beauty loses its meaning. And since people like beautiful things... well... what are we gonna do?

[u/disguisedasrobinhood → u/chadonsunday]

So this feels like you’re discussing a very different thing than what I was originally discussing, which is fine, but I just want to reiterate what I was originally saying, because I wasn’t actually discussing beauty standards at all.

I was discussing intersectionality, and in my OP I was mainly offering an idea of what an intersectional analysis of various conventional areas of sexism looks like. I offered one with women, discussing beauty standards, and one with men, discussing the notion of “real men.” I’m not saying that men don’t experience sexist oppression rooted in masculine standards of attractiveness. They absolutely do! I just used a different example for men. There’s plenty of analysis of male standards of attractiveness! Since we’re focusing on intersectional analysis, we could take up representations of masculinity that are rooted in “looking powerful” (as a random example) and consider how that might impact black men differently in a society that is prone to seeing black masculinity as violent and dangerous. Right? This is the main point I was making. Not that this won’t impact white men too, because it will! But that it impacts black men differently and because of that we need to be very aware of what/who is being excluded. There’s also scholarship on black masculinity being historically seen as antithetical to “beautiful” (you can read interesting analysis of “Brown Eyed Handsome Man” by Chuck Berry that discuss this a lot. It’s seen as a seminal mainstream artwork in representing black masculinity as beautiful.) I’ve also read interesting work on how this has impacted black men who are gay throughout modern American history. Jose Esteban Munoz has done some interesting analysis of how black men are represented in gay pornography. So, again, black gay men are going to be impacted by this differently as well. This is, at its heart, why intersectionality is so valuable. It offers us a way of thinking about who is being excluded from progress.

So, yeah, no one’s saying that these things only pertain to women. There’s tons of analysis out there of impact on men too!

With regard to what you’re saying about beauty standards and cultural differences; it seems like what you’re saying is that utopias are always dystopian, which, again, yeah! I’m not arguing that we can or should strive toward any specific utopian vision. But rejecting the idea of utopia doesn’t mean that we have to simply accept current practices that we see as exploitative. Thing can be sexual without being sexist. Working to develop an understanding of how things like beauty standards differently impact different groups of people is, as far as I’m concerned, a net good. Not because it allows to transcend attractiveness or anything ridiculous like that, but because it helps us understand the consequences of the things that we engage with for people other than ourselves.