{"id":32068,"date":"2017-03-07T01:00:51","date_gmt":"2017-03-07T06:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=32068"},"modified":"2017-02-25T11:10:14","modified_gmt":"2017-02-25T16:10:14","slug":"qotd-boys-girls-and-noblesse-oblige","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/03\/07\/qotd-boys-girls-and-noblesse-oblige\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Boys, girls, and Noblesse oblige<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Men are bigger and stronger than women. We\u2019re talking women on average, of course. I think right now I\u2019m bigger than my husband, though he\u2019s still stronger. And probably Lizzy Lifter is stronger than Geoffrey Geek who spends his entire time playing computer games and never sees the sun. BUT on average, over the population, men are so much stronger\/faster\/physically able than women that any random man can overpower any given woman.<\/p>\n

So, why aren\u2019t ALL women victims of domestic abuse? Why are women even outside, without being raped? (And if you think all women are victims, you must be living in an Arab country, where those two above are the pre-assumptions of the cultural norms.) How is this possible? Why don\u2019t men press home their advantage?<\/p>\n

Well, first because men aren\u2019t a group with \u201cgroup consciousness.\u201d Contrary to what \u201cfeminists\u201d seem to think, men are not alien creatures who reproduce by fission. They\u2019re women\u2019s children, friends, brothers, fathers. So of course, being human, they care for some women and they\u2019re decent enough to extrapolate their feelings to strange women. (And Women\u2019s Studies programs make a lot of those.)<\/p>\n

But more than that, there\u2019s a built in noblesse oblige<\/em> that prevents men from pressing home their last advantage. Our society runs with it, and is soaked deep with strains of female privilege.<\/p>\n

No?<\/p>\n

Well, take your three year old boy to a playground. Have him get in a fight with a girl. At that age, their strengths are equivalent, and the girl might be larger and stronger (girls develop faster.) Have him punch her. What do you do? You pull him back and say \u201cyou don\u2019t hit a girl. Ever, ever, ever.\u201d<\/p>\n

At which point if the girl is a little sh*t who wasn\u2019t taught her part in the bargain, she will beat him to a pulp, but never mind.<\/p>\n

You do it because you have to. This is not some fossilized rule. It\u2019s because if your boy doesn\u2019t have that trained into him REALLY early, he\u2019ll hit thirteen and seriously injure a girl. Worse, in an intimate relationship with a girl (should he turn out to like them) he will lose his cool (we all do) and suddenly become a wife abuser. Because the chances his wife will be smaller and weaker than himself are high.<\/p>\n

So you tell your three year old this \u201carbitrary\u201d rule and establish the boundaries of \u201cfemale privilege\u201d to stop him from becoming a monster when the imbalance of (physical) power sets in.<\/p>\n

Of course, the rule has its opposite. Because women have power too, in the relationship. Oh, sure, not at three, when they\u2019re just annoying, extra-whiney little boys as far as boys are concerned. (Average, statistical girls, that is. Some of us were Vengeance of G-d hellions.)<\/p>\n

I tell you as the girl who was often pulled back from these with \u201cgirls don\u2019t fight\u201d or \u201cgirls don\u2019t hit boys in public\u201d but most often (my being outsized for my time and place) with \u201cyou don\u2019t hit people smaller than you. Ever, ever, ever.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sarah Hoyt, “Noblesse Oblige and Mare\u2019s Nests”, According to Hoyt<\/em><\/a>, 2015-05-05.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Men are bigger and stronger than women. We\u2019re talking women on average, of course. I think right now I\u2019m bigger than my husband, though he\u2019s still stronger. And probably Lizzy Lifter is stronger than Geoffrey Geek who spends his entire time playing computer games and never sees the sun. BUT on average, over the population, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,73],"tags":[374,262,912,43],"class_list":["post-32068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-quotations","category-randomness","tag-children","tag-culture","tag-privilege","tag-women"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-8le","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32068"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32068\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32070,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32068\/revisions\/32070"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}