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Refuge for the rational.

Saturday, October 09, 2004

Girls Who Are Boys Who Like Boys to Be Girls 

I’ve been oddly aware of gender roles lately. I want to say gender roles in our culture, but I’m unsure of what exactly is involved in the word “our” and where the boundaries that separate “our” and “their”, whether they be mental, territorial or otherwise, lie exactly. Mentally, I doubt I can even include myself in “our”, so I’m back to feeling my frustration with the way other people think about gender mirrored by my own incapacity to discuss it. It’s simple though; there seems to be a prevalent assumption that biology and gender are ever so compatible and enduringly intertwined. This results in the idiocy that depicts MEN and WOMEN as two stock characters in a novel. Men are loud and piggish and love sports, disorganization and tits. Women are flighty and incompetent and enjoy shopping, gossiping and being difficult. Anyone who departs from this is either gay or dangerously weird. I got a forward from someone at work the other day that is the root cause of this topic. It was supposed to be a bit of humour to liven a boring work day, but I didn’t find it funny despite my valiant attempt to identify with it. It was at this point that I came to the conclusion that a culture’s comedic outlook is a reflection of the worldview it holds, only taken to extremes in the spirit of mockery, and that I did not share these beliefs. The document in question was entitled “The etiquette of blow jobs” (Yes, ha ha, giggle giggle). There were two lists of ten “rules” each, one written by a man to outline his disproportionate appetite for sex and his lust for trashy, unintelligent women and one written by a women to outline her distaste for sex and anything “adventurous”, as well as her passion for being difficult. It would seem that men are amused by anything that degrades women. Women are amused by anything that reduces men to crude and useless imbeciles. I suppose one could say that this isn’t a fair example, nor assessment, of my cultures outlook on gender, it’s just a bit of toilet humour and I’m simply too educated to find it funny. Maybe even I would like to claim that, but I can’t because it simply isn’t true.

For some reason people I know find it comforting to come to me when they are having relationship issues. The way they speak about them bothers me and I’ve been complaining about it for years. There are two reasons really.

The first is that a huge number of them aren’t even looking for a person. All they want is a relationship and it doesn’t seem to matter who the person involved is as long as they fit a narrow and cursory set of criteria. Eventually, if luck has it, they will settle for someone who is kind of interesting, kind of attractive and kind of a lot of other meaningless things. I think it would be a little too Dr. Phil of me to suss it all up to insecurity, but in at least some of the cases, I assume the thought to be “If I can just get someone to love me, I should be happy with what I can get”. I suppose if insecurity really is a factor they will deny that they need someone to complete them and will deny that being alone scares them. Their desire for someone, anyone isn’t something that should really anger me as much as it does, but I think this is another worldview issue. I’m a cynic, which means that to some degree I’m a romantic. I would find it terrible and depressing to believe that I could be really happy with just anyone. I would feel cheated, and the anger comes from people who want to be cheated either wasting my time or, in the case of people I actually care about, not giving themselves enough credit.

The second, is the way they talk about the opposite sex as if they were a commodity that could be won if one were wily enough to not show all of their cards and employ subtle (obvious) manipulation tactics. They begin sentences with “Guys like...” and “Women are so...” These are neither unintelligent nor uneducated people, so I can’t understand where these ridiculous assumptions come from, but they are frustrating to one who attempts to just be something without having to confine it to the astringent definitions that have been laid out for them.
Everywhere though, there are these stock characters, and maybe those of you who don’t know me read this and assume I must be some butchy chick who hates shopping and does shooters with “the boys” at hockey games. It seems so incongruous for someone attempting to escape a discourse to do so by delving into another.

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