I have to confess that it is only lately, and very, very belatedly therefore, that I have come to catch a real glimpse of the elephant roaming my lounge-room -- the one that calls itself USA.
No, I am not talking about Mike, here. I'm considering, rather, how much American cultural attitudes and values have influenced my experience of the Internet. I'm talking about American misogynists mostly, and American feminists, and how they go to war with one another.
Truly, there are some attitudes and ideas that some Americans espouse that I would not have had understanding of (apart from the fact that they seemed vaguely malicious) had I not encountered American feminist sites. On these sites, such attitudes and ideas are treated directly for what they are: Part of American politics, in particular the "culture war" against women, left-wing values and minorities.
Of late, I watch with Mike, the American comedy shows featuring Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. "These are [American] liberals," Mike tells me. By this he means to say that their political position is slightly left and reformist, rather than being intent upon criticising the system as it is.
I find the shouting man and the slick man to be vaguely amusing -- but not for more than a couple of episodes. Really, they are both too intent upon being entertaining and avoiding offended their base, so that their comedy does not seem to represent an entirely different genre from middle school teaching, in my mind.
I'm left with the impression that Americans do not like to eschew the notion of being entertained, in order to deal with any issues seriously and directly. It could be that I am wrong here, and I'm just experiencing the sensation of hating Western concepts of "middle school".
In general, USA culture seems to be very much to the right of Australian political culture. To give you a clue, the boy campaigning very much to the right of Julia Gillard, for the position of Prime Minister, recently, was still to the left of Obama, in terms of his policies. This is according to Mike.
Cultural politics in the USA seems to be very influenced by a religious mindset, even where the views espoused are somewhat secular. For this reason, there can often be a certain amount of moralising and puritan ethics linked to some strands of American feminism. Apart from this puritanical ascetic strand, another aspect of American feminism that I really do not understand is that which goes for an emphasis on feeling. "The patriarchy is trying to make us feel badly about our weight, our figures, and/or our proclivity for shopping. The patriarchy has no right, and ought to butt out of our individual affairs." This American cultural attitude, which defines freedom as being based on rights, is a little hard for me to understand. My own view concerning patriarchy is that if you give it an inch, it will take a mile. So, you just have to keep pushing back against it, pragmatically. Patriarchy is really an evil beast that lurks around the underworld of the cultural unconscious, in order to influence and pervert life on Earth. It really doesn't "think" in terms of rights, as it has no conscience. If it can, it will drag us all down into a pit of eternal sorrowfulness, and wounding.
The USA treatment of patriarchy is often too nice, too polite and formal.
2 comments:
Basically this is all true, although there's more to it of course -- one could write volumes, and people have. I think the point about not wanting to deal with anything directly and seriously is particularly astute. After the 30s there wasn't really a popular left anymore; there are actual left people but looking at the system is really evaded here.
There was a book I saw once in the 90s, about early American literature, that I'd like to find; it said that the famous Yankee individualism was a myth and that it was really a culture of conformity; this seems insightful.
Freedom based on rights only, that's just US civic education; if you talk to your standard person without much theoretical education they will have absorbed this idea in elementary school and it is very hard to dislodge.
Feminists on the internet, I think that's got to be somewhat different from serious feminists, people with actual activist experience and reading and so on.
US is huge and we are all very stressed out due to the alienation, and the anti intellectual bent runs rampant even in semi intellectual circles.
There's this blog I've been addicted to lately, stinkin thinkin, because my infamous Reeducation was run by a 12 step guy and I didn't know it ... he hadn't read actual psychoanalysis, but rather Melody Beattie, a pop psychologist who is alleged to be "feminist;" anyway she is one of the 12 step gurus; I am supposed to have certain characteristics and not others because my parents are alcoholics, yadda yadda, so I need to identify and detox from these 12 step ideas. You've helped a lot with that but stinkin thinkin also does; it's for people who've been in 'treatment' (most for alcohol abuse) and seek some way of thinking about these things other than the 12 steps, which are destructive, and I find it very therapeutic to discover that their experience and the conclusions they've drawn parallel mine so closely.
Anyway, the point is, there are a noticeable number of British, Australian and NZ types who comment there, and their style is different in that they are actually willing to confront people and press a point -- not for entertainment or the 'fun' of conflict, but because they really want to get to the bottom of things.
Americans, on the other hand, by and large enjoy a fight but not if it's serious. If it's serious, as in, if it will ask them to seriously look at another paradigm, they will do virtually anything to avoid confrontation. They will analyze things as incisively as anyone, but only when they are already sure this will not offend their interlocutors or make them too uncomfortable.
Ay, my comment was considered too long and is now lost; this is an interesting post, though.
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