Isabel Wilkerson’s book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents provides an important illumination on the #MeToo discussion. Wilkerson’s primary thesis is that caste underlies race and slavery in the United States, a perspective that yielded its own tremendous insights and reframing not only of our challenges, but of our history. She demonstrates the ways and reasons why the upper caste clings so tightly to its position, even in spite of the damage it does to itself. Given the long history and ongoing persistence of caste in American society, one cannot maintain the celebration of the great egalitarians who were founders of our nation — an image, hope, and dream that was dominant in my own imagination. No, these were upper caste persons creating a democracy for upper caste persons, much like the lords and barons of England whose “revolt” led to the magna carta, which was meant to free them from the tyranny of a despotic king. Yet there was no such freedom for serfs, peasants, or other strata of the social order. American “patriots” led a rebellion to achieve their freedom from a despotic king about 550 years later. But just as in England before, the freedom won for the patriots did nothing for the slaves.
Caste, it turns out, is an entire structure of social conventions that are lived and trained into us all, day in and day out, to create and retain the caste status between people. Wilkerson makes the point that no matter what caste one is a member of, our behavior tends to reinforce the caste. Just as whites are conditioned in the caste system to detest blacks, to see them as polluted or unintelligent or worthless, Wilkerson shows that many members of the lower caste grudgingly accept what happens to them because of their position. Both groups model and teach their children the same things — that, she says, is the nature of caste.
Slavery is caste built on a theory of race that is designed to support caste. Likewise with gender. Gendered norms are social constructs — a theory of gender — that are likewise designed to define and support the caste positions of men and women. Men are in the upper caste, and women are in the lower caste. Or at least, men see it this way. One of Wilkerson’s primary insights is that people in the upper caste will tenaciously cling to their caste status, especially when they are further down the caste ladder than others in their group. So, one can expect an even higher level of tenacity for men who are of lower classes or have their own inferiority complexes for whatever reason. Whatever may happen, they do not want to become members of the lower caste, i.e., be seen as women or as beneath women. And that means they make extraordinary efforts to differentiate themselves as men who are above women.
I wrote my book Consent Is Not Enough as a commentary on #MeToo and tried to provide insights for men. In doing so, I began to tackle key terms in the #MeToo discussion — consent, patriarchy, objectification, toxic masculinity, entitlement, and privilege. My goal was to look at how these terms play in the male mind, based on hundreds of hours in men’s groups, and try to open the terms into the insights they represent. Whatever success I may or may not have had in that endeavor, I did not consider any of the terms through the lens of caste. Using gender caste as a lens, there is a lot more to learn.
It is not too much to say that all male behaviors revealed in #MeToo either emanate from the gendered caste system, are exercised to reinforce the gender caste system, or both. Cat calls scare women and they are meant to do so, or they are meant to provoke some kind of sexy, sassy response; both intentions reinforce the caste system. Sexual harassment in the work place reinforces that the man has the power — both to him and to her. Forced sex acts are obviously rooted in a caste system separating men into higher power and women into the subservient caste.
The notion of caste adds insight on all six of the key terms in our cultural #MeToo discussion.
· Consent: Notice that the idea of consent — agreeing to something — does nothing to undermine or reverse the actual caste system. The power dynamics still remain where the power is in the male not the female. He must propose and drive for what he wants, and she must consent or not. Yes, her ability to have her “no” honored is a good thing, but the caste relationship remains.
· Toxic masculinity: This term is a misnomer for toxic caste system, which is a more precise term for what is happening. People have focused on “toxic masculinity” and identified cultural sources of reinforcement, which then results in targeting those to find other stories, better representation, and so forth. To be sure, these sources of reinforcement play a role in building up the caste system of gender, but it is caste that should be investigated. For it is the desperation of caste — the clinging to a scrap of socially defined position in order to maintain a sense of power or control in one’s life — that drives the so-called toxic masculine behavior. Such behaviors are toxic and desperate, but they emanate from fear driven by caste, not by visions of powerful masculinity. These men do not want to lose the advantages society has given them, and their behaviors are driven by the need to keep the caste system in place, for it serves that purpose well. Caste means you get advantages you did not earn. Toxic behaviors are meant to reinforce those advantages.
· Entitlement: In my book, I outline some of the inner drivers of entitlement from a psychological perspective. Caste provides a different lens for caste is unearned entitlement. In its most extreme form, entitlement lives in slavery — the master is entitled to the life of the slave in all shapes and forms. The master literally owns the slave. And the master’s caste is always above the slave’s caste.
Wilkerson argues that perceived threats to the caste system will bring about the most wicked reactions. Men who are threatened most by a loss of caste position will often become the most abusive of men. Their women who step out of line or resist often receive the most violent response. Caste can causes men to define a woman as so worthless that even murder becomes a better psychological outcome than withstanding the perceived insult to one’s identity in caste. What’s at stake is the man’s position in caste, the position to which he feels entitled.
· Patriarchy: The common meaning of patriarchy is the definition of a gender-based caste system. Men are on top, women are on the bottom. Men get their way, women serve. While I still think that patriarchy, which actually refers to the power of fathers, is the incorrect term, gender-based caste system is clear. It is a hierarchy in which men are perceived as superior.
· Privilege: Privilege, we can now see, is what is given to those in the upper caste. Most people in an upper caste are unaware of these privileges, but they live them and experience them and they know when they are being taken away. This privilege is seen as how the world is, and they cannot understand why people in the other caste cannot do the same. Privilege is a blindness to caste and to what other people face in life. It is a total lack of empathy and self-awareness in social settings.
· Objectification: In Consent Is Not Enough, I offer a kind of defense of psychological objectification in an attempt to allow for the appreciation of beauty, even in a man or woman one may not know. What we need to actually be talking about here is not objectification, but rather, dehumanization, because dehumanization is the key to maintaining any caste system — be it slavery, Nazi Germany, India’s caste system, or the gender-based caste that lives so strongly in America. To maintain caste, the lower castes must be dehumanized, and ultimately, this is the source of #MeToo behaviors. It is the attempt to dehumanize women, for the more they are dehumanized, the more a man can assert his existence as more than that to himself and others. Our system for this is profound. Whereas slavery did it through a policing, trade, and the legal system, women as a caste are dehumanized through imagery, advertising, sexuality, and pornography. They are dehumanized through our language (bitch, whore, cunt, pussy…), and they are dehumanized through actions — e.g., cat calling, drunken date rape, and “I grab them by the pussy.” We are ensconced in a cesspool of dehumanizing imagery, and we add to it with our own language and action choices. The old saying is to “keep women in their place,” and with regard to caste, there could hardly be a better description of what it is all about. Keep women in their place so that men can stay in theirs — that is caste at work.
Hence, the #MeToo violence against women comes from a pathetic fear of losing one’s unearned position in a caste-based society. The men who perpetrate the violence hold themselves in contempt. They live in fear, and they are easy to loathe.
But let’s not let ourselves off the hook too easily. Nearly a men in our day to day lives play our own part in reinforcing caste — often passively without even knowing it, and also often with joking or more nefarious intent. Our first job is to be aware of it, and most of us are not as aware as we could be. Our second is to disrupt it where the opportunity arises, but as we do this, we must also be ready for the consequences. Caste never dies easily, and the emotional charges carried by men and meted out by them toward women can and will easily and quickly be turned on men who are disrupting the gender-based caste system.
We are fortunate today that the barriers to class for women are being removed. Women can now have careers, they can be successful, they can sit in board rooms and conference rooms and be heard and have their ideas taken seriously, not just serve the coffee. As Wilkerson points out, this is real progress in terms of class. And yet, many of those women in those meetings must still fight to not be over-voiced by men in the room. Those women will tell you about how they are assessed by their male colleagues in terms of beauty, not professionalism, and they will tell you how other women judge them similarly as unwitting reinforcers of the same caste system. Women may be upwardly mobile in terms of class, but that does not mean caste does not exist. It is still there, driving nearly everything.
As we can see then, the insight for men is to ask this: Is my action or response reinforcing or breaking the caste system? It is not a question of whether or not you yourself respect women. As Wilkerson pointed out in the caste system of race, the notion that “I am not a racist,” which emanates from the inspection of one’s own heart, may be true, but it does nothing to dismantle the caste system. In fact, it creates passivity that reinforces caste. Hence, the recognition that “I am not a racist” or “I am not a misogynist” is essentially an excuse for doing nothing and a reason to ignore the problem. “It’s not me; I am not the problem.”
Well, yes, you are the problem. And so am I. And we will remain the problem so long as we reinforce caste. Caste is the fundamental energy behind #MeToo. It is the source of men’s contempt for women. We will not fix #MeToo until the social structure of gender-based caste is dismantled. So let’s get to work.
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This post was previously published on Change Becomes You.
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You may also like these posts on The Good Men Project:
Escape the Act Like a Man Box | What We Talk About When We Talk About Men | Why I Don’t Want to Talk About Race | The First Myth of the Patriarchy: The Acorn on the Pillow |
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