When One Gender Dominates Another

April 1st, 2008 Posted in Analysis, Asymmetrical Relationship, Anti-Experiment, Murder, Gender

On one side the established law and the generally accepted conventional way. On the other snippets of action sequences like the OJ Murder Case that project other patterns. If we make the leap from case to category, place the event among those of similar form and process and attach it to an associated abstract model we find a meaning and an analysis. While speculative, it does set the socio-cultural issues in play. Publicly these alternate ways can be viewed as eccentric, disdainful, aberrant, and rejected but they exist even if transitional and temporary and conceptually unarticulated. So OJ’s actions toward his ex-wife call up the sexist and archaic form shadowed in fiction by Shakespeare’s Othello. OJ’s behavior can be projected into this model whatever his stated rationale. In detail there are anomalies and divergences but intuitively the pattern fits. (We discussed this case in larger detail in Post 94, “Orange Juice…”)

There is a parallel form on the feminine side, perhaps we could call it the macha syndrome. Like the masculine it abstractly forms around the idea of one partner of a heterosexual pair being dominant over the other and having this state develop from, and result in, an asymmetrical pattern of abuses. In the extreme it involves taking the life of the significant other.

So now we are alert to the issue of gender dominance as part of the larger issue of social dominance in our society. Ideologically and in law we, in post-modern USA, approximate an egalitarian norm especially in the relations of marital mates and companions. The extremes of the macho man pattern followed by OJ are definitely different.

The dominant females in literature are a varied lot. I suggest four examples:

(1) The female kin in the imperial household of ancient Rome as described by Robert Graves in “I, Claudius” and associated novels. The emperor’s entourage of kin and retainers become self-centered and self-indulgent and lose the virtues of the republican order that preceded them;

(2) Gustave Flaubert’s “Madame Bovary” novel carries the theme to a more modern form. A young housewife, bored in a placid but dull marriage. She is usually interpreted as a victim of the restrictive Victorian bourgeoisie family. Energetic and ambitious she escapes her weak husband in a series of affairs that do not lead to a secure resolution and she never finds her way through to economic independence. In the concrete case, the Bovary clone might, like a monkey swinging from one tree to another, find the alternative, if there be such, the nice macho man to live with in stability. This way she can drop sad-sack husband altogether. The open promiscuity of the young woman can be a phase she passes through on the way to eventual stability. And of course there are other variations on the theme. Among these are: 1) She continues in promiscuity as an ordinary way of life. It becomes conventional routine. 2) She transcends to a regular paired relationship, returns to the fold and mimics the rest of us, 3) She snares the trophy male, wealthy, old and soon dead, inherits his money and becomes the Grand Dame, an overseer of the morals of others;

(3) “The Egyptian” a novel by Mika Waltari set in ancient Egypt where a prostitute abuses and humiliates a sincere but foolish young surgeon suitor. As she ages she loses the active sexuality that she had used as the source of her power. She becomes a hag, a spiteful witch cut off from the respect and veneration due successful oldsters.

4) “The Shrike” a play by Joseph A. Kramm made into a movie (in 1955) of the same title directed by Jose Ferrer. The demanding, negating wife harasses her mate to destruction of career and his sense of self. Even the official agencies take her side and he at the end can only save his physical life by submission to her. The shrike is a bird of prey that tears its victims apart.

Both the macho and macha syndromes have two sides: The dominant person claims (1) freedom and respect for self including sexual promiscuity if desired, and 2) restriction and humiliation for the other in both physical and psychological forms. I am free, you are bound and in my service.

The cases of murder and extreme damage are the exaggerated manifestations of these syndromes. Other cases fall along a dominance dimension going from benign leadership through jokes and ragging to minor restrictions and then to the top-outs. Women in the process of dominating the other use nagging, verbal abuse, criticism, private and public humiliation and so on. The social order implied in the extreme approaches an exact human analogue of the animal power ordering in flocks of chickens and wolf packs. In the human situation this animal quality is hemmed in and channeled by cultural hedges. We have culture and we can visualize and construct a humanistic and egalitarian order. We are animal and cultural both and therefore moral. But the residuals from the past are always present. We all dimly hear the call of the wild.

So alternate syndromes float below the post-modern social surface. They are immanent-like, ready to emerge when the situation permits and encourages. They come to social attention, outside of the actual relationships and social situations in which they occur, as crime or inconvenience or entertainment. At their worse our response is shocked disbelief.

The analytic question in every case is what social order does this unusual behavior project? What social order would define it as normal? In what kind of world would this behavior make sense? This is one of the ways into the sociological analysis of the concrete, the search for the appropriate and reasonable model.

In confrontation macho meets matcha as mate. It has to occur in one of the nether regions of Hell. The man destroying lioness at ring center with the macho man who strives to control like the lion tamer in the cage with his fanged and claw armed subject. Hesitate, lose concentration, and be destroyed. Or the new wife enters Bluebeard’s castle and discovers the danger approaching.

”The Taming of the Shrew” is macho man in comedy mode. The power mad man starves self-willed woman into submission. In the story of Scheherezade, the wife, threatened with death if her husband King Shahryar is bored at any time through a long night, entertains him with tales through 1001 nights.

Inexorably we are lead to the mysterious figure of the dictator or the absolute monarch who maintains himself or herself in power indefinitely. In the social world of the dictator he is the central and dominant figure. In the family he maintains control by his own physical and/or economic power over those in his direct field: wives, children, employees, close associates. At the level of nation he is supported by loyal retainers and military force. So long as his will is not thwarted he can be pleasant, loving and supportive but when the chips are down he insists on his way over all others and does not permit opposition to exist.

A question of therapeutic. The court ordered OJ to seek therapy. He agreed but then laughed it off. He held both judge and therapist in contempt. I’m surprised that they did not notice. They and the police who were supposed to work with them certainly failed the ex-wife and her young friend. Could OJ slouching toward this murderous rendezvous have been saved if he had taken advantage of the court ordered psychological therapy instead of sloughing it off as trivial? Or more generally is there a cure, a way to reduce biologically infested acts against the common sense? A way to treat each individual who acts against the dominant social order in which he lives or has lived. (Notice that if we approve of the actions of the charismatic, inventive, autonomous person the action we would call cure for the deviant/criminal types whose behavior we dislike would become suppression.This is part of the apparatus of the moral order that makes us vulnerable.)

Some psychotherapies approximate the social alternative. In cognitive therapy an attempt is made to change the conceptual understanding of the patient and with this change redefine the social order he follows. But the dictator already knows the ordinary way. An act of giving up is required as well. Very similar to changing a habit. Give up the idea and the behavior will shift. And what is left is the ordinary way. But the dictator refuses all interventions. He ignores the judge’s order. He does not even try the option of the therapeutic dialog. He hides behind a commercially supported persona and slithers by the critique of an on-going social group. He can not see or understand that he has a social choice. His friends do not love him enough to form a special group intervention and confront him directly. The religionists have no grip on him. And ultimately, after his dastardly act he hires lawyers to avoid the final therapeutic of imprisonment. He turns all the social controls to his own advantage.

That you are in an off-kilter social order, the fact has to be recognized as quickly as possible. But the alternate order hides behind a conventional facade projected by the perpetrator. The thief going to work looks like everyone else. He/she only shows him/herself in selected, protected, hidden circumstances, and ordinarily maintains the mask of the normal. But there are always hints. The light of the self behind the persona finds ways of peeping through. The victim sees but doesn’t see because the overpowering reality of the ordinary is so important—the conventional is so in place that these moments of truth, these aberrations are shaken off.

The problem of dictatorial behavior is that it calls up a social ordering that is destructive to others, and the living energy of these others (and the authority of allies in kin and government.) The response of the victim is an essential part of the equation. (I do not want to fall into blaming the victim but it is possible that the potential victim might have a part to play.) The next-to-last stand of the therapeutic is in the isolation of the dictator. This is a conventional wisdom: avoid the relationship with the dictator as much as possible. He or she is in constant attendance offering false love, filling a need like a pusher supporting a habit, like the cadre offering administrative and coordinating services, feeding our dependencies. Opt for autonomy as much as possible. Contract and oath should be based on love and mutuality. If falling into hate and abuse and humiliation, if your resistance proves futile, turn away and exit the scene fast. Find another more appropriate mate or temporary leader or fully depend on yourself. If there is a monster in the room, quickly go through the nearest exit. .

Another note on the sociology of the trial: It is a serious ritual since the outcome involves the defendant’s life. Justice for the victim’s kin and friends and the audience turns on the trial’s outcome. Their sense of closure is part of it. The primitive vengeance, the countering power with power, is the victim’s possible response in the alternate world of the OJ-Othello social order. Punishment through the courts and the state is the replacement order.

The Judge has to have the knowledge equivalent to that of the lawyers arguing the case. Although he/she is anchored in ritual all questions have to be decided against the stark reality of the concrete. The sides in their legal conflict confuse what this may actually be. For example: in the OJ case the judge decided to not permit introduction of evidence that OJ had purchased a knife similar to the one used in the murders. The clerk who completed the sale give paid information to a newspaper on the incident. The jury had the right to be permitted to evaluate this evidence for themselves. Receiving money does not mean that the information is not true.

The civil service workers of Los Angeles: District Attorney, police, crime lab, and pathologists proved incompetent by the defense lawyers should never have continued in their positions. Employers and government should strive for competent workers and specialists, train them up to standard or place them where they can carry on and do the work required. Failure to have a staff up to the job required reflects on the everyday work of these agencies. The law without competent enforcers disappears.

The selection of ideologically tainted so-called objective decision makers to compose the jury makes objective decision even more unlikely. The same ideological bias exists in the selection of the judges who oversee our courts. Objectivity in the social realm, which through its consensual base has to be moral, has to be in doubt. You can’t get there from here.

There is also the failure of the courts and the police arm who supported the wife in her struggle with OJ. but didn’t intervene in that vital space, for him, where through physical power he could dominate.

She, operating through the courts, was able to get the kids in her care, get support from OJ. and an order forbidding any aggression by him against her. He was able to contravene this whole scheme and transform the struggle by doing her in. Her family though on her side were not of much use in this struggle though they were active against OJ. (especially her sister) during the trial.

The family of the young man caught up in this tragedy—the evidence suggests that he too defied OJ’s threats and warnings—got a good lawyer (more competent than anyone the state could scrape up) and got another jury to find OJ liable for wrongful death and were awarded some of his accumulated wealth as punishment. It is not clear to me whether he ever paid. OJ. also lost his acting and iconic advertising jobs, lost his estate but appears to have successfully transitioned to a life of leisure golf in Florida. He occasionally still sallies forth like a enraged Don Quixote on a mission to uphold the old, old macho man tradition Another judge placed the motherless children in his care. A case of legal ritual overpowering both sense and justice.

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If you bump into it, presume that it is concrete.

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Notes.

Surprisingly, for me, macha is an old Irish goddess of war. So the term not only sounds right in English at least contrasting domineering men and women but it carries a prior meaning which emphasizes the match/contrast. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macha#Macha.2C_daughter_of_Parthol.C3.B3n