Men Defined as Not Women (Book Notes: Ungodly Women)

There is a stark contrast in modern society between the attributes ascribed to women and those ascribed to men. Women are generally regarded as weak, emotional, and inferior. Men are regarded as strong, stoic, logical, and superior. Isn't this awfully convenient?

In Ungodly Women: Gender and the First Wave of American Fundamentalism, Betty A. Deberg quotes Barbara J. Berg in The Remembered Gate: Origins of American Feminism: The Woman and the City, 1800-1860 on the nature of gender roles in Victorian America:

Confused and unsure of themselves, men found a foil for their own ambiguous identities through the specific and stagnant qualities they ascribed to women. Men may not have known who they were or what characteristics they had, but by insisting that women had all the weak and inferior traits, they at least knew what they were not.

It’s not so much that men didn’t want to “be” women in the biological sense; instead, it’s that they didn’t want to “be” what they managed to define women as in the social, psychological, and personal senses. They took everything they didn’t like, attributed it to women, and defined themselves as something different.

It’s seems to be common for dominant social groups to ascribe all negative qualities to some discriminated-against group in society. Immigrants, racial minorities, and religious minorities have had to suffer similar experiences. It is, I think, a sign of a serious lack of self-confidence when the best way a group has to define itself is by declaring what it is not. That, however, appears to be what happened for men during the Victorian era.

According to Deberg, the radical shifts in culture in the Victorian era created crisis of confidence among men because they were no longer able to define themselves and their role in society according to traditional notions. All that was left was to ensure that, at the very least, they weren’t women — but first, they re-defined what it meant to be a woman.

Such attitudes appear to continue down through today, at least to a certain extent. The feminine is often degraded and, even when accorded some respect, it is always less respect than that accorded traditionally masculine qualities. Why would that be necessary?

 

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