It's been a while since I've written anything about one of my pet topics - the way the changes in the society are resulting in the change in attitudes towards sex and gender, and the change in the institution of marriage, and how it all relates to politics of the moment.
I've been playing it pretty carefully since my move here to SEED scienceblogs, not firing away with my biggest artillery yet. I want to get back there again, gradually, so this is going to be just a summary and an opportunity to get you to read some of my older stuff to see where I stand. It is a also a test balloon to see how the new, expanded readership will respond to my political rants. Hopefully, this will get a lot of comments as well, and not all of them screaming insults at me:
The rates of social change are high at the moment, but they are unequally distributed (geographically) resulting in a widening chasm between urban and rural, between modern and pre-modern, between liberal and conservative. On my old blog, and to a lesser extent here, I've been hammering the notion that attitudes toward sex are at the core of Culture Wars, and determine how one side and the other make decisions on everything - from economy to foreign policy, from race relations to gender relations, from religion to evolution, from science to education.
How do one's attitudes about sex, gender and marriage develop? It's not in the genes, but it is a developmental result of the interplay between the growing child and its environment. That environment consists of peers, neighbors, teachers, priests, the mass media, all of which exert an influence, but the major early influence are parents and it is the parenting style that appears to have the most important effect.
The fact that ideologically similar people tend to geographically group together - liberals in urban and college-town centers, conservatives in exurbs and rural areas - means that most of one's childhood environment is filled with people belonging to the same ideology and applying the same childrearing philosophy to their own as well as their neighbors' children. Thus, it is easy to raise a liberal in a liberal community and it is easy to raise a conservative in a conservative community. The oddballs, e.g., liberals living in a predominantly conservative community, are likely to hide their liberalism in the public square and to be less of an influence on local kids than the majority.
A growing body of research suggests that harsh, Dobsonian childrearing leads to psychological traits that are not adaptive for the modern society (though they may have worked great in some places at some times in the past).
What appears to be happening is the arresting of development before the mind reaches a stage at which it can comprehend complex, interactionist systems. The worldview, thus, remains hierarchical: action leads to reaction, every phenomenon must have a cause (and a Causer), every thing must have a creation (and a Creator), and people and things move up and down the ladder (Great Chain Of Being or Great Chain Of Financial Success, depending on the context). There are always winners and losers - it is imposible for all to be winners.
Thus, the world is perceived as extremely competitive, thus dangerous, thus scary, and all the other people are automatically viewed with suspicion, as potential enemies or competitors, to be fought down the ladder if possible. So, this kind of upbringing results in a worldview in which people are believed to be born bad and the world is a dangerous place. Also, because people are competing against each other, there is no possibility of a common action that can result in making the world a less dangerous place. If nothing else, the world is getting scarier and scarier due to technological advances (science, beware), global communication and transportation, and the growing number of those weirdos who are not scared enough to lash out at any and every threat, real or perceived - the wussy liberals.
Another reason for such fear and insecurity is the fact that harsh parenting, intent on instilling discipline, prevents the normal development of the Internal Focus (or Locus) of Moral Authority. Internal Focus of Moral Authrotiy means that you do not do bad things because it never crosses your mind - there is no motivation to do bad stuff, no wish to even try. People without it, people with External Focus of Moral Authority, rely on fear from outside forces to prevent them from doing bad things. They really want to steal, kill, rape, have sex with animals, etc., but they do not do it (most of the time) because they are afraid of the consequences - being excommunicated from their community (worse than death in a small place), being arrested by the police, or being smitten by God's wreath. That is why an angry God - and religion as a whole - is such an important element of the perpetuation of this ideology from one generation to the next.
One of the most unfortunate consequences of this style of childrearing is the effect on one's relationship to sex, gender and marriage. In a world in which everyone is your competitor and potential enemy, aggression is an extremely important trait. You deter competitiors by signaling aggression through posturing, loud behavior and undertaking dangerous activities. This is called machismo. It is essential to cover up internal insecurities which come out of the lack of Internal Focus of Moral Authority. There is nothing worse for a man than to be perceived by other men as less than manly. This is called 'femiphobia'.
This automatically degrades women - after all, if you are not manly you are what? Womanly? In a world of fear-induced aggression, being "womanly" is bad. Thus, women who behave like men, by, for instance having an opinion and telling it out loud, are a threat. Thus, men who behave like women, perhaps due to being gay, are a threat to one's masculinity. Not to mention that being "in control of one's woman" is an important factor in achieving status among male friends. And that is all there is to being a Wingnut - male insecurity, leading to everything else that, sorry to rile you all up, constitutes being a conservative.
Many self-described conservatives are actually not so. Using the term is always a peril because of historically contingent uses of the term. Unfortunately, there is no other term, so just keep in mind that I am using the word only in its psychological sense and not in any sense related to political parties of today and the past, particular people who wrote conservative founding documents, etc. Not GOP or Reagan or Buckley or neocons or Bush or Genghis Khan or Osama bin-Laden or Stalin. Just what is in one's mind.
This is just a brief summary - the links provided throughlut the text lead to more thorough explanations so please check them out before you lash out at me. Deep Throat - you have already commented on all this before, so let the other people chime in, OK?
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Interesting ideas. I am a very liberal person raised by very liberal parents in a very conservative area. My parents were never outgoing about their political views, but I do think it is interesting that they have chosen to be much more vocal about local politics since both of their children have moved away from home. Perhaps they were concerned about being labled as a "outsider" in the community while their children were still around to feel these effects? I wonder if I would have seen a more political side of my parents had I been raised in a liberal area.
With regards to acting masculine, I see it all of the time. I teach middle school. There is little my male studetns fear more than being thought of as being "girly". Hopefully some of them will outgrow that fear.
For what it is worth, I am a fairly new reader of your blog (since you moved to the SEED site) and do throughly enjoy it. Thanks for keeping it interesting.
Thank you.
Sometimes I read books and watch movies with an intent to look for examples of such social changes. I am ashamed to admit that I just saw "John Tucker Must Die" for this reason, but it was very interesting to see the notion "there is nothing worse for a guy than to be seen as not manly enough" explicitely stated in the movie and then humorously subverted (not in a way that would work in the Real World, though) because the guy in question was actually strong and confident on the inside. Which reminds me that I have started some fashions back in high school, decades ago....
Along those lines, I thought it was interesting to see my students' reaction to the movie "Rent" (I was a student teacher at the time). There was a lot of discussion about it amongst my students. Most of the boys made fun of it, calling it a "chick flick". I pressed the conversation with a few of them, and they said that they thought musicals were "gay". I pointed out that a large number of the characters in the movie/play were gay, so in that sense they were right. What really surprised me was that actually seemed to change some of their opinions. A couple of them ending up seeing the movie, and a number of them seemed okay with the whole thing. Apparently, a musical with straight characters was "gay" and "girly", yet a musical with gay characters was fine and actually interesting.
A couple of years later I am still not sure what to make of the whole situation.
This is something I have been thinking about a lot lately.
I came around to the viewpoint that the basis for conservative and liberal thought in the United States is mostly psychological/emotional a few years before I heard of Lakoff and was amazed when I found an influential researcher articulating a similar idea. I'm glad you pointed out that being psychologically liberal or conservative is not necessarily the same as being politically or conservative. I'm interested in the idea that some people are in fact psychologically one thing and politically the other.
I suppose an example of psychologically conservative and politically liberal would be the liberal hawks. We all can think of examples of people who were apparently liberal until 9/11 and went nuts after that. The conservative cores of fear and yearning for hierarchical order rose up and overwhelmed their superficial liberalism. Most of them don't even pretend to be liberal any more.
Yes, and as Lakoff points out as well, most people harbor both worldviews, using one at home, the other at work, one at the bar with buddies, the other in the voting booth. What Rove/Luntz/Heritage/Fox cabal is really good at is activating the conservative "self" at the right time - on November 2nd every four (or two) years.
So, there is a whole range of people with a mosaic worldview. Witness the behavior of Clarkies during the Dems primaries in 2003, exhibiting the classical sign of fear-based aggression, insisting on putting a general in the White House and entirely neglecting domestic agenda that the whole Terrorism/Iraq issue was designed to hide in the first place (if you read the primary blogs, and later the Kerry blog, the Clarkies were the easiest to identify - it was all war all macho all the time).
The 9/11 events and the Administration's response to it totally triggered their conservative psychology but, for reasons of personal/family history, or dislike of Religious Right, or whatever, they identify as Democrats so, instead of voting for Bush, they tried to get a guy in a uniform (and a war criminal to boot) into the Presidency. People without such a strong identification with the Democratic Party just voted for Bush instead.
Right now, the disastrous policies of BushCo are segmenting the conservatives - many of them are starting to feel uneasy with the whole machismo at the expense of solving problems, politics instead of governing, religion and symbolism (the flag!) instead of rational approach to the world. If Democrats would figure out how to trigger the liberal "self" in those people, even a bad Democratic candidate (e.g., Hillary), woule be able to win in 2008.
Perhaps it's all about our parasites?!
So how does Mel Gibson fit into all of this?
Kidding.
It's good to see you back in the saddle...
This horse is easy to ride LOL!
I would counter that it is not attitudes toward sex that shape your views of the world, but rather what systematic theologians call 'Theological Anthropology' - if you see people as inherently corrupt or inherently good; capable of change or incapable of change, and how that change is initiated; and, of course, if morals and ethics are objective and universal or subjective and conditional. This is a larger net, but is much better at capturing the rich complexity that (IMO) your rather narrow viewpoint misses.
It can also explain such things as Objectivists - dedicated, hard-core atheists with a focus on rationality and a rather *ahem* 'modern' view of marriage, sex, etc. that are decidedly conservative.
my parents were both conservatives...there's seven kids in the family. dad ruled by fear (hitting, putting down, harsh lectures). 5 of us are socialists, 1's a liberal, and i'm totally against the political party system. all our children are left of center (canadian talk). but we all worked actively to change the pattern of repitition that our parents took on from their parents.
i guess what i'm trying to get it is that you can have whatever politics you want and be from any kind of political family clan. if you want to reject your parents politics out of rebellion you can go as far as you want but risk 'loosing' what your clan has to offer in the way of connections et al. if you don't fear those losses because you see a way of being that you percieve as more just for yourself and the world then you have to go to square one and work on yourself to undo dysfunctional patterns. it takes a lot of active, conscious work. this is more then mere rebellion.
i aslo like to throw out the word 'revolution' because each generation seems to have it's own way of bringing in new ways, which includes child rearing, views of gender , race etc.. revolution means coming around 360, which seems to happen each time a revolution runs it's course. north america has come 360 with those who hold power. but holding power and the hierarachal system can only last so long when it's not a natural state of being, and we're about as far away from a natural system as it gets.
I've tried hard to be a nurturing parent and very much agree. My boys are now 17 and 20, have never had a drink or tried drugs or gotten anyone pregnant, because it simply wouldn't occur to them that it is at all appropriate to act that way.
My older son spent most of his junior year of high school friendless after breaking off with most of his friends when they got into drugs. It was easier for him to break off with those friends, and eventually find new ones, than to deal with the crap they were doing.
We live in a *very* conservative, fairly wealthy area. The kids are constantly bitching about the parents who will buy their kids a brand new expensive car and then have the kid destroy it, only to buy them another one, or the "McMansions" that have popped up all around us. They can't understand why anyone would want one. I call them the "anticonsumers" since they don't ask for anything other than computer and video games and D&D books. (hey, they're geeks, gotta have those!). But I'm having to nag them to buy new shoes when theirs wear out, or get a decent pair of pants.
And my own parents were Republicans, back when that was a decent thing to be instead of the horrible joke it is now.
An excellent overview, and I agree with most of your ideas. However, I'd tend to consider the sexual-anxiety aspect as derivative of the other issues, and especially coming out of a failure to generate personal and internal boundaries.
For example, the reason why "gayness" and femininity are taken as threats, is precisely because the people in question can't maintain a stable boundary between themselves and others, therefore any exposure to "un-masculinity" raises the fear of contamination. Or to put it another way, even "having" to think about, say, a gay man, "puts a gay man inside their head" -- and someone without internal (psychic) boundaries, can't make a proper distinction between ideation and identification.
Then too, if someone lacks a moral center, they can't imagine any possible reason why a gay man wouldn't be raping people left and right, since, being gay they "obviously" aren't following the One True Morality As Commanded by Daddy... so they must not have any constraints at all. (Note to the sarcasm-impaired: This is not my belief, this is my interpretation of Coturnix's description. Now go look in a mirror.)
And I can't resist picking on: ...or being smitten by God's wreath. Could that be a macho fantasy of "what made them gay"? ;-)