If men and women's social places were reversed (art film)

[Lagmonster]

Given the furor of recent activity towards women's issues these days (between #YesAllWomen and the outcry in Nigeria, among other things), I figured interest would be high enough to post a link to a short film by a French filmmaker that I saw a while back. Called "Oppressed Majority", it shows a day in the life of a man in a world where it's women who regularly catcall, harass, rape, slut-shame, and oppress men. The short is filmed in French, but there are English subtitles.

I wanted to see how other people felt about it. For me, mainly...though I think I got the message, it seemed less like a dark mirror than it seemed far too incredible to be real. At one point, I had trouble thinking like anything other than myself, rationalizing that I couldn't see myself similarly victimized by the violent girl, owing largely to my size and relative strength. In my physical prime, I probably could have tossed that actress around like a toy, and I'm neither particularly strong nor at all experienced at fighting.

But I'm wondering if that was the point, that men take for granted their size and their strength, or the security of their position in society? Or perhaps that it's just my own hubris in thinking that because I've been so fantastically lucky in life that I simply can't imagine feeling vulnerable? Well, I wouldn't be trying to open a discussion about it if it were easy.

Please note, before I give you the link (I won't embed it), that this short movie IS NOT SAFE FOR WORK. The film-maker shows at least two scenes where women are topless in a non-sexual context, as a contrast to the man (who is harassed for wearing shorts and unbuttoning two buttons of a golf shirt). There is additionally a non-graphic scene of sexual violence that might bother some.

Link Here

[mr friendly guy]

Slider's did something like this in an episode titled "The weaker sex." Obviously without the sexual violence (this was a mainstream show after all) and the nudity (that would come later). Even as a teenager I got the message even as I was amused by the man arguing with Quinn that men can't pilot a plane because they have too much testosterone.

[Spoonist]

But I'm wondering if that was the point, that men take for granted their size and their strength, or the security of their position in society? Or perhaps that it's just my own hubris in thinking that because I've been so fantastically lucky in life that I simply can't imagine feeling vulnerable?

Doesn't really matter if you have the size for it if you are incdoctrinated not to use it.
Slavery worked for millenia and slave-like contexts exist to this day. So intimidating males are just about as easy as intimidating females. More so in some contexts. Same thing with relationships where it is the female that abuse the male.
So if smaller masters could intimidate and keep multiple bigger slaves it should be relatively easy to switch to a scenario where it is the females in power even though they are smaller in size.

[Guardsman Bass]

I thought that video was really good, Lagmonster.
Spoiler

I think the best part wasn't the sexual assault in the alley - it was the scene at the crosswalk intersection, with a gross woman catcalling him while he struggled to ignore her. That really captured one of the dilemmas for women in that situation (do they yell back and give him attention? Do they ignore him and let him get away unanswered?) extremely well. It's also something that most women have probably experienced at one point or another.

So if smaller masters could intimidate and keep multiple bigger slaves it should be relatively easy to switch to a scenario where it is the females in power even though they are smaller in size.

They also outnumbered him in the video, and that's unfortunately common in fights (whether or not they involve sexual assault). You go up against a group of people, even if they're slightly smaller than you, and you're probably going to get the shit beaten out of you if you fight back - or worse.

That said, that type of rape is relatively uncommon compared to rape by people the victims know, such as family, friends, co-workers, etc.

[madd0ct0r]

the filmaker herself said that scene wasn't supposed to be realistic within the limits of that world, but instead allow men to feel that skin crawling horror the idea of rape might inspire for a woman (and how the spouse simply dosen't get how important it feels). In short, it's much more personable.

[Lost Soal]

Its a good film, the saddest part though is you just know that if the comments weren't disabled it would be filled with threats and insults

[Broomstick]

I just wanted to mention that Red Dwarf did a take on this in the episode "Parallel Universe", with the added twist that the men are subjected to women who act just as awfully as they themselves do. Comedy, of course, but with the added bite of making a point.

[biostem]

The problem, IMO, is that in order for the setting to work, you'd have to have some sort of change in biological imperative - namely, for males to want to reproduce with as many females as possible - maybe something like an early innovation to allow women to control whether they get pregnant or not - like imagine a naturally occurring herb that when taken, would prevent pregnancy or something, and which was widely accessible going back to the dawn of civilization.

Another issue, (though not shared among all women), is that going topless for women with larger breasts becomes a nuisance - running becomes uncomfortable or even painful, and so on. You can't just copy-paste stereotypical male behaviors onto women and call it a day...

[Guardsman Bass]

Do you have any proof for such a biological imperative, aside from simplistic comparisons to other mammals? Mating behavior among apes is extremely diverse - it's not as if the patriarchal norms we see now are somehow representative of "natural" human breeding behavior either.

As for women, they have taken steps to control their fertility in the past even before reliable artificial contraception, although some of them aren't too pleasant by modern beliefs. Infanticide, for example, has not been unknown among human populations.

[madd0ct0r]

The problem, IMO, is that in order for the setting to work, you'd have to have some sort of change in biological imperative - namely, for males to want to reproduce with as many females as possible - maybe something like an early innovation to allow women to control whether they get pregnant or not - like imagine a naturally occurring herb that when taken, would prevent pregnancy or something, and which was widely accessible going back to the dawn of civilization.

Another issue, (though not shared among all women), is that going topless for women with larger breasts becomes a nuisance - running becomes uncomfortable or even painful, and so on. You can't just copy-paste stereotypical male behaviors onto women and call it a day...

I was about to jump on you, but figured I should check first:

Are you applying the 'biological imperative' argument to a French Art house film, or is it something you think is a good descriptor for human behaviour in the real world?

[Simon_Jester]

They also outnumbered him in the video, and that's unfortunately common in fights (whether or not they involve sexual assault). You go up against a group of people, even if they're slightly smaller than you, and you're probably going to get the shit beaten out of you if you fight back - or worse.

That said, that type of rape is relatively uncommon compared to rape by people the victims know, such as family, friends, co-workers, etc.

Yes, but it's a very real fear for women dealing with groups of men- the fact that it could happen is enough to change the way women act in public.

I think/hope the following:

Part of the point of the piece is not that this is 'a day in the life of the average woman.' Not every woman gets cat-calls and sexual harassment every single day. It's that this is what can in fact happen to women, that the prospect of having to deal with it creates constant stress, that it informs the way women talk about feminism and so on, and that because of it there are things women just do not do for fear of their safety, even if they'd probably get away with it 99% of the time.

For example, we see in the end sequence the wife walking down a deserted road, completely unconcerned, just "to clear her head." This is something many if not most women would fear to do in real life... because in real life it's men who can do this without having to worry much about sexual assault, while women find themselves eyeing the shadows constantly.

[Simon_Jester]

Ghetto edit, although I feel a bit presumptuous even saying this when, for example, Broomstick would be in a much more qualified position to speak of the matter:

Understanding what makes us feel weird about this movie goes a long way to helping understand what 'minority' and 'privilege' mean.

In the film setting men are in a 'minority,' regardless of whether there are few or many of them- because they're in a group that more or less automatically has subordinate status. It's clear that in theory they have equal legal rights, as. That their women have equal legal rights in reality. However, these equal official rights don't translate into equal standing in practice, because of a network of interlocking social expectations.

So men have to accept that they will be interrupted and disrespected by certain women. That their appearance and choice of clothing is a matter of public significance that other people (especially women) are allowed to criticize if it doesn't suit them. That there are quite a few women out there who might offer them violence, intimately painful and personal violence, if they "say the wrong thing" or "do the wrong thing."

Having to put up with all these problems and restrictions is like having to pay a tax, day to day, just for being a man. Women (in the film setting) do not have to deal with this.

They get the advantage of being able to get away with rudeness to men (see the policewoman), while men get in trouble or are threatened with trouble for being even slightly confrontational with women (see the man breaking into tears out of sheer frustration during that scene).

They can dress however the hell they want, showing vastly more skin than almost any man in the setting would feel safe showing if it suits them to do so, and be quite safe. It's their privilege to look at others and comment on their looks, and not part of their 'tax' to have to submit to such comments and be mindful of them at all times.

They (in the film) can make crude, insulting remarks to men and be perfectly safe, whereas a man has to worry that if he insults the wrong woman he will get beaten or sexually abused. Note what happens in the film: when it's one person harassing him, the man tries to ignore her but then verbally engages her, and she chases him a short distance. If he hadn't been on a bicycle he might have been assaulted. When he gets mad and starts responding angrily to the taunts of the four women near the alleyway... well, he gets sexually assaulted. The only way he might have avoided that would be to buckle down and take the verbal abuse on the chin- and what is the effect on a person of having to submit to such abuse day after day?

So basically, women have the privilege of not having to put up with insults and danger that men have to put up with routinely. And that's what privilege looks like, it's things like job security that you don't notice on a day to day basis because they consist of freedom from some inconvenience or danger that only affects other people.

[J Ryan]

A very powerful film that does make you think. Will definitely watch this again with my girlfriend to get her opinion on this and how well it captures the fear that just verbal sexual abuse can generate.

After watching this on youtube, I then came across a similar film but with the premise of a world where being homosexual is the norm and being straight was the minority. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnOJgDW0gPI. I would warn anyone before watching this film does deal heavily with bullying and teenager suicide and the ending really does hit you in the heart.

[General Zod]

I just wanted to mention that Red Dwarf did a take on this in the episode "Parallel Universe", with the added twist that the men are subjected to women who act just as awfully as they themselves do. Comedy, of course, but with the added bite of making a point.

Sliders did a bit of this kind of role reversal too, back in the 90s. Maybe not as stark as this video but it still made an attempt at showing what would happen to the world if women were in charge instead of men.

[Zixinus]

This should be shown in schools to teenagers. It really gets around the whole "I don't get what's wrong with that because I keep imagining myself as a man" problem. Most would probably ignore it but I found it very strong and effective.

[Channel72]

Interesting film.

The problem is that gender differences are so tightly ingrained with social expectations, it's difficult to even imagine a world where the social expectations of men and women were reversed, or even equal.

As a man, I don't do stupid things like cat call at women, etc., but I still do find myself treating women differently than men. I instinctively will be more polite to women, be more inclined to offer a woman my seat on a crowded subway, hold a door open for a woman and wait for her to enter rather than walk through first myself, etc. And let's be honest, most women are conditioned to accept these sort of courtesies from men.

Is this a positive thing? I don't even know. The root of all this is that men are trained to view women as physically and mentally weaker, and thus more deserving of "kid gloves" and occasional "chivalry". At least, that's the "positive" side of things... the dark side, of course, is the accompanying expectation many men have that women aren't to be taken seriously in professional matters, or worse, women have little value apart from sex.

The biological differences between men and women (specifically, the superior upper body strength of men) may play some role in the tendency for human societies to default to patriarchies, however Bonobo apes, at least, allegedly have a matriarchal society despite the fact that the males are stronger. So who knows.

[Channel72]

Thinking a bit more about this:

As a completely ignorant non-anthropologist, my own (likely worthless) conjecture is that patriarchies might tend to exist in species where the male has superior upper body strength, along with a stronger sex drive. With Bonobo apes, the females have a very strong sex drive (Bonobo apes basically just fuck all the time, it's fantastic) as well, so the high-availability of consensual sex may have something to do with the more pacifistic and submissive behavior of Bonobo males. But whatever, I likely really don't know what I'm talking about.

[Broomstick]

The deference of the physically stronger to the physically weaker isn't inherently bad - the young and strong should likewise defer to both the old and feeble and the smaller/weaker children. The notion that physically weaker also means mentally weaker is something that should be discouraged.

Social equality doesn't mean treating everyone exactly the same, it means respecting everyone the same regardless of different capabilities.

[Zixinus]

I think that our highly patriarchal society might be due to how important warriors and strength-based crafting was (in that regard power tools empowered women without anyone realizing that at the time). The dominant cultures were most often ones that were the biggest conquerors, where there was a distinct warrior class. There men's advantage of higher upper body strength and height likely dominated women out. And since the ability to war was very important to the tribe's survival, warriors would have a prominent role and always have strong political power.
Giving a class defined by their ability to solve problems with violence probably didn't help that much with equality.

[Guardsman Bass]

Put me also in the camp that thinks it had a lot to do with conquest - the societies with the most effective warrior nobilities and best organization usually (although not always) conquered the rest, and those tended to have varying degrees of patriarchy. I'm not as convinced that the physical strength differential was the deciding factor, especially since human beings have had access to a host of weapons and tactics that are less dependent on sheer physical strength for a long time.

Of course, I wouldn't dismiss the power of contingency as well, with certain customs just happening to catch on and contributing to patriarchy because they piggy-backed on top of other trends and conquests. It's like with biological evolution, where not every trait expressed has to explicitly benefit the organism to be selected for in passing to the next generation. It can be enough for a cultural practice to simply not harm a society to such a degree that they abandon it, especially if the elites of that society has implicit "escape valves" from a constraining custom (sort of like how noble women in medieval Europe tended to have a lot more unofficial power and control than commoner women). Or like how multiple sons were favored even though they tended to be a mixed blessing in societies where only men inherited, since it meant that you either ended up dividing your land upon death and making them all poorer, or one son inherited everything and you now had other sons (some of them trained as soldiers if this was a noble family) with no real prospects.

[Channel72]

The idea that patriarchies are related to conquest and warrior nobilities is interesting; if true, we should expect patriarchies to be less prevalent in pre-historic, pre-agricultural, hunter-gatherer times, where such class divisions didn't exist (or at least weren't as clearly defined). I'm not sure if that's definitely the case - but the general anthropological consensus seems to be that pre-agricultural hunter-gatherer tribes were highly egalitarian, meaning that men and women were more or less equally influential.

The Wikipedia article on hunter gatherers makes an interesting observation about the striking contrast between the egalitarian, gender equality common to H. Sapiens hunter gatherer tribes, and the aggressive "alpha-male" behavior found in chimpanzees. Ironically, it seems that civilization has tended to make us more "chimp-like" in regard to gender roles.

[biostem]

The idea that patriarchies are related to conquest and warrior nobilities is interesting; if true, we should expect patriarchies to be less prevalent in pre-historic, pre-agricultural, hunter-gatherer times, where such class divisions didn't exist (or at least weren't as clearly defined). I'm not sure if that's definitely the case - but the general anthropological consensus seems to be that pre-agricultural hunter-gatherer tribes were highly egalitarian, meaning that men and women were more or less equally influential.

The Wikipedia article on hunter gatherers makes an interesting observation about the striking contrast between the egalitarian, gender equality common to H. Sapiens hunter gatherer tribes, and the aggressive "alpha-male" behavior found in chimpanzees. Ironically, it seems that civilization has tended to make us more "chimp-like" in regard to gender roles.

Well, it could be relate to the side effects of living in a civilization - you have a permanent home to worry about, a government to which you owe things like taxes and/or allegiance, and you have to worry about planning ahead. With a hunter-gatherer society, members tended to not live as long, and planning ahead might only consist of packing up and moving to the next campsite, as seasons change. There isn't that much of a concern over inheritance or where your property will go when you die. While you may have other tribes/clans attacking you as a hunter-gatherer, you don't have these large organized armies, with professional soldiers.

Placing value on those that are successful at warfare, since victory here carries with it all the spoils of war, may have also been a factor. A hunter-gatherer who knows where the fat game travel, or how to avoid those plants that make you sick, would be of more value. Still, in a hunter-gatherer who can reliably and consistently bring down game to provide his or her tribe with meat may have also been raised in status. Given the younger age such people would have reproduced, and a high instance of babies or mothers dying as a result, there may have simply been more males fulfilling this role...