78uuu lumière des étoiles

Dusty:Starlight:Culture



part 2
2004-03-25   3:44 p.m.

Love you love you love you. You're so bright, and thank you for the responses. abendbrot (and I use handles here so as not to "out" y'all) points out in an email that "most men are more likely to walk away if they are encountered by someone they don’t' like". Agreed, and as far as I've observed mostly true. So why is that? Why can't "most" women?

This is all a matter of training, as I said last time - girls are raised by society to be more catty, I don't believe they're inherently so. Why is it that women feel they can't take the above attitude and walk away? More specifically, why are women so concerned with things that have little to do with them?

That old entertainment stand-by, gossip, is classically characterized as "feminine" behavior. This doesn't necessarily mean that only women engage in it, but that if we're dividing human characteristics along gender lines, we'd put "gossipy" under the column "female". I've actually overheard my male friends say to each other "stop acting so girly" when what they might mean is "stop gossiping, it's beneath you and you're embarrassing yourself".

Equating that which is bad with that which is female (roll eyes here) aside, it's worth looking at why gossip has been classified as "female" behavior, no matter who is enacting or participating in it. Does it seem nearly impossible, almost unnatural at times for women to exist outside of that world - outside of the characteristics they were expected to develop? What if a woman wasn't particularly interested in that cup o' tea - do the other women ostracize her? I think they do. It may come from a place of envy: "why doesn’t she have to compete and be afraid? How come when we gossip she walks away? Just who does she think she is"? It may come from a sense that there is something unnatural about her - something that doesn't reflect all they've been taught is normal. If she rejects their behavior and keeps her distance, they might see it as rejections of their selves, though ideologically speaking it wouldn't necessarily have to be so.

Things don't have to be that way, and much to my husband's and other friends' chagrin (that bit about "giving people too much credit" and all), I don't wholly blame the individuals. In fact, I see women who act this way more as victims than victimizers; they haven't been able to escape the confines of conventional gender roles. In competing so fiercely with other females that they seek to be hurtful, having no other logical motives to be so, they reveal just how unenlightened they might be. They are agents of a system that seeks to keep women down and divided, to keep women full of self-hatred and hatred of each other. That they're not aware of how they build such a system which ultimately destroys them is the saddest part of this chain.

A bit I wrote about this appeared in Bitch a few years back, and it got mixed reader responses. Some felt I must have been guided by the hand of God to finally be expressing what many never could express and cheered my "vision", some called me a woman-hater and anti-feminist. It is an uncomfortable subject for feminists, but feminism is limited if it purports that women unite with out inherent problems, or that there aren't differences in and among women that make organization and just friendship sometimes difficult. These "problems" or "difficulties" do come from patriarchy - women are offered so few "victories" under the system or taught to believe that there are just such few places for them, it makes sense that they feel they have to compete (whether that victory is a man, a job, the title of "most loved" etc.).

Like Abendbrot says, many women are "insecure of their positions, whether it's social, educational, or professional". Much of that has cultural reasoning behind it. Because of that insecurity, and because our society does provide women with the message that there will be so few choices for them, they might feel that "they must "level" the playing field". The presence of another woman might threaten a woman's role, especially if she has been raised to be insecure about herself, bombarded with images from the media that tell her she can never be pretty enough, thin enough, smart enough, loved enough, good enough. "If they can't succeed", she continues, perhaps in a job, in an academic field, or even in being "the closest" to so-and-so, "then they have nothing". No belief in their selves or their free-agency and possibility or potential, yes. Than what else could there be? It's quite sad.

I think I've found some clearer answers for my why, why, why questions. Though it doesn't bring relief, it does bring clarity. I'm off to write some more - I'm interested in a new project involving linguistics and gender. "Fraternization" implies "male" at it's root, you know. Is there a "female" equivalent?

yours,

T