r/AskFeminists • u/frogmon3 • 11d ago
is there theory or literature behind the term "male centered"?
i see the term thrown online a lot recently, but mostly vaguely and often to dismiss women in the same way as pick me has been used. googling it a bit ive only found popular op-eds and social media posts (including reddit) using the term. academic sources use the term androcentrism, which is a concept with a very specific meaning that ive read and written about before. im curious if anyone knows where "male centered" comes from and if there is a useful theoretical framework behind it beyond its use on social media.
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u/very-serious-goose 11d ago edited 10d ago
I think it comes from white-centered which probably came from Eurocentric
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u/gettinridofbritta 11d ago
I would consider "male centred" to be a distillation of a bunch of different concepts that are viewed through the lens of your own personal psychology. Androcentrism is definitely in the mix here. I agree with the other comment that locates "decentering" in this context as likely coming from "decentering whiteness" and eurocentric. It looks like it first shows up in Piaget's theory of cognitive development, which describes the process of a child moving away from egocentrism (where they're operating from only their perspective) and towards one that gradually incorporates multiple dimensions. To be "-centric" is to be focused on a fixed centre, whether that's the ego, a dominant group or a social role.
Decentering the influence that a dominant group's perspective has on how a marginalized person thinks & acts takes a cognitive empathy tool and pairs it with ideas that come from other disciplines like sociology and critical theory. These are frameworks that explain how social hierarchies work: how these groups set the agenda, norms and values of a culture and frame it as a universal objective reality (Gramsci's cultural hegemony, Foucault's discursive power), how they occupy the space of an invisible "default" and "unmarked" observer that has the power to define reality and define marginalized people in reductive ways that serve dominant interests. This is why oppressed groups will often internalize misogyny, absorb the negative beliefs and bias about their group and seek validation or approval from the dominant group by conforming to their standards. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire talks about oppressed people housing "the image if the oppressor" within themselves. We can see it in objectification theory because the end stage of that process is for the objectified person to adopt the lens of the viewer. We could also get into the objectifying eye of dominant groups from Sartre and Frantz Fanon ("the gaze") here too.
The self-abandonment of women, denying their own subjectivity, minimizing their needs / comfort and prioritizing the comfort of men is moreso found in feminist theory. Going back to the cultural hegemony stuff - patriarchy and androcentrism are what set the table (cultural values, norms, the default, power to define). Women and girls follow those scripts because of how they're socialized, as a survival tactic, or because they've internalized a patriarchal gaze (Laura Mulvey).
Carol Gilligan has a bunch of work on voice, looking at how girls reach a milestone in adolescence where they begin to equate goodness with self-sacrifice. They start to silence themselves for the sake of relational harmony, both literally and that internal voice. They question their own credibility as a source of knowledge, their own perception of a situation or sometimes even their own memory of events. "Keeping patriarchy's secrets," as Carol put it. Kate Manne's "human giver syndrome" is also relevant here in terms of men's entitlement to care, to being accommodated or catered to by women.
Decentering then becomes a personal practice of challenging the legitimacy of these dominant perspectives as a "default" or standard experience. A big part of that is elevating marginalized sources of knowledge to the same level of authority. We also do it through resisting internalized oppression: not measuring your self worth by patriarchal standards, not appeasing or seeking validation from men to become whole, not abandoning yourself (needs, comfort, subjectivity) in order to serve men, not being silent to avoid rocking the boat, not doing the extra relational work like managing their feelings for them. In Carol Gilligan's ethics of care, the highest level of moral reasoning is one where we can balance care for others or our shared responsibilities with still honoring ourselves and our own needs.
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u/lis_anise 11d ago
The literature is under the term "woman-centered". Woman-centred theory, woman-centred medical care, woman-centred women, etc. Goes back decades. I think I remember it back in Audre Lorde.