(This is a repost of an article originally posted at DaRain Man. Comments older than Wednesday 10 January 2007 were originally posted there. See this post for details about the move. If that link doesn’t work, try this one.)

In Part 1 of this series, I observed the tendency of feminists to throw around the term “oppression” without defining it, or explaining why only women are “oppressed,” but never men. Yet I have encountered a few feminists who do believe that men can suffer gender oppression. In this post, I will discuss a differing feminist view.

One of the best discussions of the concept of oppression I have seen is by feminist sociologist of gender Caroline New, who argues that “both women and men are oppressed, but not symmetrically.” New agrees with me that the view that men can be oppressed is rare: “sociologists of gender hardly ever discuss the possibility that men are oppressed on the same dimension as women, i.e. in respect of gender relations.”

What makes New’s essay so different from other feminist discussion of oppression, even ones that admit the existence of male suffering is that:

(a) New constructs a clear and concise definition of “oppression” and applies it evenly, instead of employing the kinds of double standards I discussed in Part 1.

(b) New acknowledges psychological suffering of men, but doesn’t reduce male suffering to just subjective experience; she recognizes material disadvantages men face, and the cultural attitude of male disposability.

(c) New recognizes the systematic and institutional character of the mistreatment of men, and recognizes that this mistreatment should be called “oppression.”

Conceptualization of “oppression”

How does New conceptualize “oppression?”

A group X is oppressed if, in certain respects, its members are systematically mistreated in comparison to non-Xs in a given social context, and if this mistreatment is justified or excused in terms of some alleged or real characteristic of the group.

I like this formulation a lot. It’s clear, it’s concise, and it’s fair. What happens when we apply this criterion to the situations of men and women in society? New concludes that we will find both men and women to be oppressed. New writes:

I shall argue that both women and men are oppressed, but not symmetrically. While men are positioned to act as systematic agents of the oppression of women, women are not in such a relation to men. Yet unsurprisingly, given the inescapably relational character of gender, the two oppressions are complementary in their functioning—the practices of each contribute to the reproduction of the other. In particular, the very practices which construct men’s capacity to oppress women and interest in doing so, work by systematically harming men.

I agree with New that men and women are not oppressed “symmetrically.” I also like the inclusiveness of this framing: it encompasses the views of feminists who believe that both women and men are oppressed (but that women are just more oppressed), and also the views of critics of feminism who believe that the oppression of men and women is incomparable because those oppression are qualitatively different. As a feminist, New’s view is unsurprisingly the former: she believes that women “benefit less” than men from the current system, and that men are “in general tremendously advantaged.” Yet one can disagree with her version of the odious comparison, and still accept the rest of her excellent analysis.

Another important point the she makes is that the oppressions of men and women are “complementary” and mutually reinforcing. This is a subject I will return to in future posts.

No double standards

What is special about New’s analysis is that she evenly applies her criterion for oppression to both women and men, without a double standard (emphases mine):

While feminists have stressed the material dimensions of women’s oppression, they have also seen ‘femininities’ as misrepresentations constricting women’s development and limiting their options, and therefore as oppressive. By the same token, masculinities may be oppressive.

It is hurtful to reduce women to their reproductive organs, or to interact with them while ignoring their subjectivity–girls’ development, women’s capacity to flourish, are arguably damaged by such practices (Miller 1978). Similarly, to treat males as ‘hands’ or ‘guns’ (or even ‘officers’), as disposable bodies, or as naturally violent, is a form of mistreatment likely to damage their development and relationships.

Not all in men’s heads

New avoids the error that many feminists make of reducing male disadvantages in society to psychological suffering. As I discussed in Part 1, both bell hooks and Marilyn Frye focus on men being dehumanized or damaged as a product of being made into oppressors, as if this was the only harm that came to men. Daran discusses another example of the same mentality in this post.

In contrast, New argues that:

The oppression of men is not only disciplinary or psychological. It also involves material effects of men’s positioning which we only fail to see as oppressive because of the lack of an obvious agent or beneficiary.

We may argue about the constriction of the self, but death and injury clearly constitute harm. Their imposition is therefore mistreatment, although seen as a normal risk for men in war (and even in civil life deaths of women and children in accidents are considered more shocking than those of men).

She acknowledges that men suffer death and injury that the current gender order is implicated in, rather than denying, dismissing, minimizing, or ignoring it. She also insists that the mistreatment of men should be seen “as genuinely oppressive to men rather than as the minor costs of privilege.”

Not just individual harm or suffering

New recognizes how the mistreatment of men is systematic and institutionalized in Western societies. In the quote above, she notes the cultural attitude that males are more disposable than females. Of masculinities, she says:

when institutionalised such misrepresentations constitute a form of oppression. Further, masculinities are used to justify material practices which injure men, and to deny or pathologise the resulting injuries (such as ‘shellshock’).

New lists war, objectification in the sphere of work, military draft and conscription, objectification and double standards for punishment in the criminal justice system, and mental health as areas where men experience systematic mistreatment (she acknowledges that these examples are hardly complete, and that some don’t apply exclusively to men).

Calling a spade a spade

Despite viewing men as more advantaged than women in the current gender system, New articulates a clear and fair definition of “oppression.” She also acknowledges certain empirical data, like men experiencing death and injury en masse, and biases towards viewing men as more disposable than women, that other feminist analyses tend to obscure or deny. Interestingly, when New’s definition is combined with recognizing the full range of the systematic mistreatment of men, she concludes that men are oppressed. I think this is no coincidence, and that other feminists fail to come to this conclusion because they conceptualize “oppression” in self-serving manner, or they take a self-serving view of what counts as oppression. I find New’s notion of oppression to be coherent, and if you see me using the term, I am using it the way she conceptualizes it.

In Part 3 of this series, I will begin to discuss some of the many counter-arguments to the idea of the oppression of men.

P.S. Caroline New’s essay is called Oppressed and Oppressors? The Systematic Mistreatment of Men, from 2001 in Sociology Vol.35, No.3, pp.729–748. I highly recommend reading the whole thing.