Women do not get credit for their heroism

[InDefenseOfPOMO]

If I heard correctly, at least two mothers died shielding their children from gunfire in the massacre in El Paso.

 

The more that I thought about it, women did the same in the Newtown, CT elementary school massacre.

 

Then I recalled something I had forgotten: in the schoolyard shooting many years ago in Jonesboro, AR a female teacher died shielding a student from gunfire.

 

It seems like when men do such things a big deal is made about their heroism. Women have been doing it also in many disasters, but their heroism barely gets talked about, it seems.

[Zagadka]

As much as I like to praise women, i would correct that to parents. Plenty of fathers and men like this hero dive in to protect their children, it is just that it is usually mothers with them (for some reason, society hates men with their children). The most recent shootings (a phrase unfortunately accurate) involved several people charging back in to help people and kids escape.

[RoseGoesToYale]

1 hour ago, InDefenseOfPOMO said:

It seems like when men do such things a big deal is made about their heroism. Women have been doing it also in many disasters, but their heroism barely gets talked about, it seems.

I think it comes back to gender roles. Traditionally men were seen as protectors to the birth givers (women), and have been given all manner of bribes and incentives to act as protectors and sacrifice their lives... statues, purple hearts, the adoration of one's countrypeople, you name it. When a man pays the price of his live, the goods delivered are society lauding him as a hero, as a "man who fulfilled his manliness". In all the ways we systematically deny boys and men emotional support and acceptance, this is the worst, because we suddenly give them all that love... only after they're dead.

 

On the female side, it goes waaay back in history to biology. Basically, the value of sperm versus uteruses. A male could get upwards of ten women pregnant in a night if he wished, but a woman only has so long in time to procreate before menopause, so many eggs at a time, and it takes 9 months to actually get a baby. In other words, our ancestors saw the male function as a dime a dozen and the female function as valuable and in need of protection, especially back when keeping up the population was a legitimate struggle. How have we "protected" women? By sticking them in the home, or safe jobs, not letting them go to war, basically restricting all their freedoms at one point or another. Men are taught they have to protect women from a young age, but no one ever explains to them why, or they provide crappy explanations... "women are physically weak, emotionally fragile, unstable, blablabah!" And damn, did people buy it until the 60s.

 

Society holds on to the ancient, deeply ingrained socialization regarding this, even as the earth has become overpopulated. We secretly don't want our women to die, nor do we want to encourage them to die, because we still see the female reproductive function as a scarce resource that must be preserved and praised like diamonds. We're also still holding tight to the gender dynamic of provider vs nurturer. Men are still expected provide for a family by going off to work to win bread and women are still expected to feed, care for, and give affection to children. If we celebrate women who die as heroes, we run the risk of encouraging more to risk their lives, and when a women dies it's seen as the loss of a nurturer. We still can't bring ourselves to let men nurture, even when they do. Why aren't fathers who braid their child's hair thought of as heroes?

 

As just a rhetorical question, if somebody had to die, whose death would you rather normalize: a group of hands-off providers and protectors whose role is to be tough, emotionally stoic, and supposedly willing to die anyway, or a group of hands-on nurturers whose role is to give birth, love, food, and make sure offspring survive to adulthood?

[Karst]

@InDefenseOfPOMO, for once, I actually agree with you.

 

@RoseGoesToYale, those are some good points.  I'm normally sceptical of evo-psych, but your ideas make sense.  I would add that, in violent societies, the function of women as nurturers turns into valuing women solely as a source of more future warriors.  The more men die in war, the more women are expected to replenish the population.

[InDefenseOfPOMO]

2 hours ago, RoseGoesToYale said:

I think it comes back to gender roles.

 

It is ambiguity.

 

1,000 years ago most of the time anybody who knew the culture they were in knew why a man did what he did, I am sure.

 

But now there is ambiguity. If a man holds a door open for a woman is he doing it out of kindness or is he doing it as a ritual of chivalry?

 

It is a disservice to men to assume that they are acting according to a gender role script. The man I read about who lost his life shielding his girlfriend from gunfire in the Aurora, CO movie theater massacre: maybe he was acting out of altruism, not out of the duty assigned to him in the role of boyfriend. We should not assume anything--especially in a culture where gender roles are increasingly irrelevant.

 

Furthermore, maybe his girlfriend was going to protect him, but he realized what was happening sooner than she did.

 

In the middle of an active shooter incident, do people even have time to think about their gender role?

 

When I hear about women's acts of heroism my reaction is that I have just heard about the courageous altruism of a human being.

 

My reaction is the same if I am hearing about a man.

 

Let's give both men and women the same credit for the good that they do when we do not know things like what their intentions were; if they were acting according to a gender role script, a deontological imperative, or a utilitarian calculation; etc.

[acematt]

So called gender roles are gradually becoming a thing of the past thank God. Good riddance. Men are not expected or obligated to do a damn thing including protecting women. No such thing as chivalry. Yeah women heroes deserve a lot more credit. It is awesome when they do. Stand on their own two feet. Society is the problem as usual. Give the society the middle finger and show it the door. Society is what has caused the trouble for us asexuals more than anything. No wonder young males are shooting up places. Too much is expected of them so they are lashing out and fighting back. I'm not condoning what they are doing btw. They have obvious mental issues. It is just the cancerous thing called society. Women can be great heroes as much as men but don't dare expect men to feel any sense of duty. Bad repercussions will result. We're entitled to be our own person and do as we see fit. Sorry if I stepped on anyone's toes. A little bit sensitive about this topic. 

[Sally]

1 hour ago, acematt said:

 No wonder young males are shooting up places. Too much is expected of them so they are lashing out and fighting back. 

Oddly enough, women -- who  have had a lot expected of them for hundreds of years, and which expectations haven't stopped yet -- are not lashing out and becoming mass shooters.  

[Karst]

Another addition to @RoseGoesToYale's ideas:

When women are valued only as mothers and nurturers, this quickly turns into treating women like animals for breeding.  Consider The Handmaid's Tale...

[RoseGoesToYale]

On 8/6/2019 at 3:06 AM, Sally said:

Oddly enough, women -- who  have had a lot expected of them for hundreds of years, and which expectations haven't stopped yet -- are not lashing out and becoming mass shooters.  

Women tend to have better support systems than men, as well as a richer emotional vocabulary gained from childhood. If the stress gets to be too much for a woman to bear, she likely has people she can turn to who will listen to her sincerely, perhaps even identify with what she's going through, and she'll be more able to communicate exactly how she feels. But for men, especially ones with a "circle of bros" type thing or who struggle to make friends, they not only may not know how to say what they're feeling, but even if they do, who can they say it to who won't judge them, laugh, or tell them to just suck it up?

 

There's an article from NPR about shooting contagion. Scientists who studied mass shooters in prison who are still alive found that 80% were suicidal before the shooting. They also found that these already vulnerable men may see coverage of other mass shooters, identify with what they went through, and see their actions as a possible way out of their own feelings. With women it rarely even gets to that point... in the western world, for every four men who commit suicide, only one woman does. Somewhere in there women are getting help that saves not only their lives, but others too.

 

1 hour ago, Ardoise said:

When women are valued only as mothers and nurturers, this quickly turns into treating women like animals for breeding.  Consider The Handmaid's Tale...

Is reproductive objectification a term? If not, it should be. Not only sex objects, woman become literal "birth objects". -tosses cookies-

[Karst]

More good points.  There are so many men out there who don't see the subtler ways that patriarchy hurts them, too.  Gender equality is the proverbial rising tide that lifts all boats, not the zero-sum game some people see it as.

[acematt]

All I was trying to say is that men simply need to go their own way without any interference. Being asexual helps a lot. Also lots of men don't want kids so the ones that don't should get vasectomies. Get out of that responsibility. Keep life simple, easy, and carefree. Avoid relationships. All part of the current movement. 

[Jusey1]

Rose is pretty much spot on. We, as a society, do not want women to die thus we do not celebrate it or encourage it. However, we as a society do not give a flying muffin about a man's life and thus we are more likely to be happy when a man becomes a hero and sacrifices his life to save others. When a woman does the same thing, society will most likely be sad and depressed about the lost of a woman's life but when am an does it... They'll celebrate it as him being a hero and doing an amazing thing.

It's something I hate about society and something that has strongly negatively affected my depression because it makes me feel more like a tool when I go into deep thought about it...

[InDefenseOfPOMO]

2 hours ago, Jusey1 said:

Rose is pretty much spot on. We, as a society, do not want women to die thus we do not celebrate it or encourage it. However, we as a society do not give a flying muffin about a man's life and thus we are more likely to be happy when a man becomes a hero and sacrifices his life to save others. When a woman does the same thing, society will most likely be sad and depressed about the lost of a woman's life but when am an does it... They'll celebrate it as him being a hero and doing an amazing thing.

It's something I hate about society and something that has strongly negatively affected my depression because it makes me feel more like a tool when I go into deep thought about it...

 

Men's rights activists have given what you describe a name: male disposability.

 

However, everything outside of the men's rights movement that I have seen and heard that addresses male disposability says that it does not exist and that it was created as a misogynistic smokescreen to keep women oppressed.

 

I believe that their reasoning goes like this: men control everything, so the behavior that you describe was created by men and it is their own fault that they are treated like they are disposable.

 

Basically, you are likely to be told by feminists that male disposability is a misogynistic myth.

[Jusey1]

33 minutes ago, InDefenseOfPOMO said:

 

so the behavior that you describe was created by men and it is their own fault that they are treated like they are disposable.

Incorrect. It was created by leadership, essentially. The men and women that controls and runs the show. The type of people that will continue to do so and want to keep doing so to keep things going their way so that they can live comfortable and happily while all of their peasants suffer to the burdens of the system that is in placed and the system which they control and use.

Sadly, this system is very effective at running a country smoothly, which is why it has been used for such a long time. Keeping the women safe while the men are disposable workers and soldiers.

So, it's not a misogynistic myth. The problem that those feminists doesn't realize is that men do not rule this world but specific people do. It has never truly been just one gender/sex or even race that rules this world but rather always been specific people ruling different parts of a world. Hell, there has been times in recorded history where there was female rulers specifically. Such as where a King has died yet the Queen didn't remarry and thus ruled alone and continue to do so until her death and then the son/daughter took the throne...

It's these specific people who knows how to play the society and play well with it to gain and keep power that truly rules the world. Not a specific race. Not a specific gender. Not a specific sex. But rather specific people that did the deed and cause a lot of issues. Hell, this is why I'm a very picky Christian. A lot of stuff in the Bible seems BS to me and sounds more like someone wrote it to help control the population back long ago. (Such as the supposed hatred against homosexuals from religious texts).

[Karst]

What feminists refer to as "patriarchy" isn't solely the oppression of women by men.  That's an oversimplification.  The literal meaning of the word is "rule of the fathers".  Patriarchy is a small portion of men exercising unfair privileges over everyone else, based not only on gender, but on factors like age, class, and sexuality.

Thus, the "disposability" of some men is part of a system that keeps others down as well.  The same elders who, in the old days, would send the young men of the tribe to die in pointless conflicts were also beating their wives at home.

[Guest]

I only remember one woman making the news for her heroism, but it was her taking ownership of a dangerous situation, while her husband stood confused. 

 

Not sure if any of you remember this. 

 

Thief steals a car. Police chase ensues. 

 

He unfortunately attempts to run a red light where this very woman is stopped at in her vehicle with kids and husband in tow. Fails. Plows into said vehicle. 

 

Out comes an irate momma bear, considering her kids could have been killed. 

 

She literally pulls the armed thief out of the vehicle, and starts pummeling him to her husband and the thief's utter confusion. 

 

She was declared a hero, unaware he had a gun but was clearly riding on adrenaline, when you consider how effortlessly she rag dolled the thief. 

 

Kind of sad it takes something that extreme. But I think its the sheer shock in her level of steely resolve that garnered her that level of attention. 

 

I think she even got a dealership replacing her car, to boot for free.