I could probably write a few books' worth on this topic, all my gripes and gut reactions to reading my stack of books on gender studies. But, I've held back a bit, in the interest of anyone who actually reads my blog. I am currently in the middle of several books at once, a state I try to avoid, as it is nice to focus on one at a time.
Women Respond to the Men's Movement, edited by Kay Leigh Hagan
The Politics of Manhood, edited by Michael S. Kimmel
Theories of Comparative Politics, by Ronald H. Chilcote
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, by Aldous Huxley
These, plus my own background, are the influences behind my current gripes/perspective. I have read many of the key mythopoetic men's movement books, a few years ago as well.
I am particularly concerned about the socialization of gender, having spent so many years in Boy Scouts. I've met the scoutmasters who just can't get over the idea of a female camp counselor at their boys' scout camp, and been a campsite host for several Mormon scout troops where initially neither men nor boys wanted a woman around at camp, especially in a leadership role. I've also seen what happens with these people over the course of a week at scout camp, as these campers almost always learned to accept and appreciate my presence at 'their' camp. I've taught Mormon troops how to put up a dining fly correctly after it blew down over night, when the men in charge insisted on doing things their way, summarily discounting my suggestions. I've also been invited to eat at those dining flies, as an honored guest ("no, let the boys cook. So, how did you wind up at a Boy Scouts' camp?") I've rarely met any man or boy at camp who remained unhappy about my presence at their camp through the whole week, and this was not by my adopting a passive or more "feminine" role while they were around. I taught knots, and led work projects and nature hikes, taught about ecosystems using decaying animals found in the woods, ....
I could be easily accepted at camp because my role and that of the campers had already been well defined. My gender was irrelevant to what I was teaching, and to my staff duties. This was true both when I was an area director, basically middle-management with a staff of 0-5 people, and teaching duties, and when I was in charge as a program director, with a staff of ~50. I wasn't there to flirt with boys, or to do anything outside my official role as camp staff, and I never acted otherwise. There were no rumors floating around about my exploits with the male staff, and while I did have a romance while on camp for a couple of the years I was there, it never necessitated my being perceived differently by campers. I would hardly call my manner as camp staff 'masculine', just straightforward and reasonable. I never pretended I was not a woman, for sure.
I found myself thinking about camp in particular while reading Margo Adair's essay in the first of my current books. She mentions at one point feeling safe while in the midst of lots of men, as if this is unusual and really special. Really? I will admit, I've been around men who made me uneasy, but because they were mean or creepy, not because they are men. I've crossed the street to avoid crossing paths with very drunk men at night, sure, but in my neck of the woods that is it. Men aren't scary. Some individual men are scary. I never, ever got the impression that I was unsafe at scout camp, surrounded by men, even alone with a bunch of 'em a mile or two from anyone else. I met a few men I am still sure are child molesters, among the thousands of adults who came to camp each summer, but in that environment, they might molest a boy they knew would keep quiet, but not a woman they just met. There were just too many other people there who might just lynch any man who tried to rape or assault a woman on camp.
Is camp unusual? Sure. For one thing, everyone has a set role. I've met quite a few young men who shelter in such camps, where they need never learn to relate to women on a personal, romantic level. Indeed, no one at such camps is interacting with a woman as a woman during the week. In our society this is hardly unusual, since most jobs and school settings also allow men and women to interact in contexts where gender is irrelevant. Camp makes it easier to see because it is almost all male, and very formalized. No wonder so few men know how to ask a woman out on a date, if our society stifles gendered interaction so much. Puritanism's influence, no doubt. It is after all still an insult to call someone a flirt, and still a recognized ideal for a man and woman to save their first sexual experience till marriage. Many, if not most sexual hookups among young adults are accomplished at parties between moderately drunk people, and there need never be any hint of romance in such encounters. Such a hookup is not about social gender, just about bodies- not a bad thing necessarily, but something which is bound to get stale after a while. Both men and women have a psychological component to sexuality, which requires a bit more than just a night of drunken sex.
I am sure in big cities women's lives are different, and since many feminist writers are familiar with the cities, New York, L.A., etc, the issues they are describing may be quite real even though the world they describe is not the one I've lived in for 31 years. In my generation, here, women and men are certainly both screwed up, but as people, not as distinct genders. Quite a few of the people I've met flirt with being bisexual in their young 20's, around the same time they are learning about vodka and rent. They talk about everything-sex, drugs, alcohol, music, religion- just as generations before them did at that age. The boys and girls try pairing up, whichever way the winds blow them, and start sorting out what sorts of partners they want. In this environment, women are pursuing men at least as much as men pursue women, and those women may very well just want sex. Everyone is trying to make it in the world, getting educated, finding jobs, making money, and at such a pace that there is no time really for many to bother finding more than just a hookup. Since women are less interested in following a man around, going where he needs to go for work, and men are equally uninterested in following a woman around, both are just looking for fun, until they have found where they want to settle. Presumably, if they never really settle, they'll never really want a committed partner. Meanwhile all of them act like they know they are missing something. Their lives are frenzied emptiness, jitterbugs unable to find the joy and happiness their efforts were meant to achieve.
No comments:
Post a Comment