Obama, Masculinity, Race, War and Leadership

Right-wing commentator and friendly co-worker Bill O'Reilly recently broadcasted a commentary on President Obama's handeling of the War in Libya.

While most will notice many of the expectedly recycled tactics used by O'Reilly to favor former Republican presidents over Democratic ones (briefly glamorizing Reagan and Eisenhower while criticizing Carter), others might not realize what he's doing simultaneously: reaffirming masculinity as leadership.

O'Reilly points out a Reuters poll in which 17 percent of Americans described Obama as someone who is "strong and decisive." The remaining poll participants found him either indecisive or cautious--two adjectives O'Reilly annunciates carefully to indicate their negative connotation.

The segment seems to stress that good leadership is defined by "strong" and "decisive" roles in military action, sending us the message that anyone who might want to think more carefully before engaging in deadly, violent international intervention is a weak, ineffective leader (more subtly read as feminine). In fact, O'Reilly points out how Obama is "no General Patton," a symbolic historical figure of military-masculinity and war leadership. 

Based on the selection and execution of language, it seems like O'Reilly is arguing that Obama might not be a strong leader because of his hesitation to initiate military action. War is inextricably linked to cultural constructs of masculinity and how it relates to problem-solving, power relations and the perpetuation of violence. Obama's lack of immediate enthusiasm for a full-fledged invasion of Libya has rendered him weak by O'Reilly and others, and therefore, too much like a woman--someone who has betrayed his more masculine counterparts of yesteryear. Being weak is wielded as an insult to a wealthy Black man in one of the most powerful positions in the U.S.; this is not only an attack on his masculinity, but his contradictory racialized masculinity in which he is expected to embrace hyper-aggression while rejecting it as a member of the socioeconomic elite. 

It makes me wonder: How do we define leadership, particularly gendered leadership? In a world whose historical memory is saturated with male-led narratives that romanticize war, murder and colonial or imperialist actions, I would say women whose leadership is mostly left out of history, or men whose roles are considered feminine/weaker within a WASP framework, comprise the "indecisiveness" O'Reilly references.

Can we take out the gendered and racialized expectations of Obama by saying anybody needed to invade Libya? After all, if such grotesque violence were so urgent, why were other revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa that have been just as actively violent unfit for similar action? Why hasn't the U.S. condemned other dictators whom they've supported in the past --like Zia-al-Huq under Reagan or Pinochet under Nixon? Why isn't Yemen stripped of its military aid for killing protestors? Why weren't Rwanda, Sudan or Somalia given no-fly zones during genocidal terror? Most importantly, who is determining urgency and the means to address it?

I'm not sure Libya as a necessary intervention has anything to do with it. That would imply that violence and dictators are unequivocally condemned by U.S. leadership, which is absolutely false. 

In the end, I think it comes down to whose leadership we praise, whose values we prioritize and whether Obama has fulfilled his duty of "being a man"--an elusive goal communicated and recommunicated through patriarchy. 

Rebecca Black and Gender-Based Bullying

This is an interesting piece from Good Morning America with overnight YouTube star Rebecca Black, whose video "Friday" attracted over 20 million views in just a couple of days.

While the song is by almost all standards an incredibly stupid mix of painfully ridiculous lyrics without much musical worth, the unfortunate reality is Rebecca can actually sing, as she demonstrates on yesterday's show.

Furthermore, she's an eighth grader who now has people telling her to cut herself, develop an eating disorder to "look pretty," and in some cases, commit suicide. This is not only cyber bullying, but sexist, gender-targeted cyber bullying that relies on normalized double standards for women. A male with an equally insipid song would not have received the same kind of specifically cruel commentary.

In the long run, while I would never defend "Friday" as artistic speech, the fact of the matter is, the song is an unintended parody that reveals the music industry's ability to market anything (Rebecca even notes it's good that a person who insulted her song said it was "stuck in their head" because that's what it's "supposed to do"). I'm not sure if her low-brain lyrics and auto-tuned singing is any different than most of our radio's top 40. It's simply an exaggerated version. Why should I insult a girl whose work is, in many ways, the same as most of the other singers I dance to? Rebecca doesn't seem to be the problem here. 

My point is, if we want to find something to critique from this entire experience, maybe it should be the music industry, the economic structure of listening to music in the U.S., and whose authority and monopolized control dictates what comes up on our iPod. 

Most tragically, our complicity with attacking and viciously "slut-bashing" (a term coined by some authors to reference double-standard name-calling and bullying toward women) Rebecca as a person needs to addressed. 76 percent of the respondents to a poll issued by Good Morning America thought the comments on Rebecca weren't harsh. Apparently bulimia is the new "butt head."

An attack on an individual clearly caught up in a sudden world of negative fame is totally unproductive and misplaced, especially when it consequently reaffirms that it's okay to slap hurtful and stinging words we reserve exclusively for women.

Biology & Bodies: Sports, Gendered Thinking and "Testosterone"

Today, we had two speakers come and discuss the role of women in sports in my Intro to Women's Studies class. While the women who presented were both great at providing interesting and personal examples from which they successfully expanded to frame relevant discussions on gender roles, equality and athletic culture, I felt the dialogue was constantly limited and muffled. What was making me so frustrated? Why did I feel as though we weren't pushing ourselves to bring individual accounts of gender and sports to a challenging level?

I think a lot of my restlessness stems from the assumptions we make about scientific "fact" and biological essentialism -- concepts that prevent us from exploring or dissecting particular topics regarding men and women because we believe in pure, fundamental differences that are rooted in things like, ah that's right, fucking "testosterone." The virtually undisputed "evidence" of "masculinity".....I like quotes....

So yeah, let's talk about testosterone, because that word was repeatedly used in class today to mean some kind of male strength elusive to the average female -- as though with the hormone came a neatly-packaged set of muscles and "manpower" unmatched by any woman. We regularly come to this type of conclusion that we feel undoubtedly splits men and women.  But hormones themselves are used by the body for all kinds of processes and are not limited to the development of secondary sex characteristics, which they do, in fact, aid, but do not fully and exclusively serve.

Feminist-biologist professor at Brown University, Ann Fausto-Stelring, writes in her fabulous book Sexing the Body about the role cultural assumptions play in shaping scientific narratives: what are we studying in science? What are we not studying? How to societal frameworks circumscribe the facilitation of experiments? Science is not done in a vacuum, people....

Fausto-Sterling writes that "if hormones could not be defined as male and female by virtue of their unique presence in either a male or a female body, then how could scientists define them in a manner that would prove translatable among different research laboratories...?" She is emphasizing that this universal understanding of hormones as biological indicators of fundamental differences in men and women is much more complicated than we think, though it is constantly silenced and/or simplified in mainstream discourse.

This brings me back to the discussion today. People mentioned their own experiences, including many of the women in my class who felt they were regularly underminded, overprotected or held to a double standard as female athletes in high school: boys didn't want to hurt them and nobody wanted the girls to get hurt....

But many of these stories failed to answer burning questions, or should I say, to raise such questions: IS there in fact a known fundamental difference in men's and women's bodies that will forever be a separation of ability in athletics? One of the speakers mentioned co-ed sports on the professional level cannot happen because men and women, while equal, are different, but is that absolute truth? Do reproductive capacities extend to the baseball field as some sort of biological barrier?

Our bodies are wondrous things. They adapt to crazy environments, interact complexly with our emotions and cognitive development. They can shape and grow to fit amazing circumstances. Our culture creates our bodies as much what genes predispose them to. Who's to say that if different conditions or less limited possibilities would rule a culture, women and men wouldn't necessarily see athletic competition more egalitarian?

The assumption that women are "naturally" more fragile, less aggressive, physically weaker is assuming we can even define human nature when attempting to do so is in and of itself an act of cultural assignment based on our value systems. Humans are not pure forms of nature; we are messy, sometimes democratic, sometimes intellectually curious beings who make interesting ideas that affect the entire human system's understanding, treatment and production of bodies in different forms.


I disavow from the "women are inherently weaker" mentality. It's too limiting. You say women have always been a certain way, that football is somehow connected to levels of testosterone. I'm calling bullshit. Let's explore more. Push more.