Eva responds to Jens' "pompousness":
>>Wirklich, Eva? Then go tell your countrymen. The rule is known to
>>everybody but never endorsed expressis verbis.
>
>This is what I call muscle logic. Males are always tempted.
Hehe, as much as I'm enjoying your forthrightness with Jens, I see
some problems too, but these are problems that have nothing to do
with the topic at hand. Hence the seperate thread.
Now that statement didn't quite sound right. I know that you don't
want to make things political but your statement is interesting on an
ethnological level.
I'm sure that, perhaps not now, but fifty or a hundred years from now,
we'll realize how paradoxical our present society is. We strive to abolish
sexism once and for all, yet we indulge incessantly in androphobia
without thinking about it because it is deemed accepted to bash males,
never females. Our culture abounds with it and we don't secondthink
the result this has on boys growing up now.
What is androphobia? It's the belief that males are somehow inferior
or not as intellectual as females. It is the result of an emotional over-
compensation for the years of male domination in our society. It is
felt that male-bashing is deserved because of this long past of male
socio-political power. The only problem is that I should not be punished
for the prejudiced attitudes of my grandfather.
We generally accept that there is an overall tendency for males to be
stronger than females (although not an absolute by any means and
there is considerable overlap in the abilities of both sexes). This fact
combined with the stereotype that brawn equals stupidity, means
that we've now subconsciously equated masculinity with stupidity.
As I say, this has detrimental effects on the new generations
growing up amidst all this. Imagine being implicitly equated with
stupidity by all the negative media around you during those formative
years. What effects does this produce? Would it not further
discourage boys from intellectuality (because god forbid that people
think they're gay!), only propogating further the stereotypes and
the senseless male-female division? Of course it would.
And dare I say, that androphobia is tiring and offensive. Androphobia
has many other implications and delves into a wide array of topics
that people wouldn't immediately think of. One is homosexuality
where, since we have a misguided social equation of men=stupidity
but gay=feminity, gay men must be intellectual. And this is another
strange outcrop of our present society. It also means that gay
men are _always_ seen as effeminate (because surely why would
a man love another man unless he is a woman inside!) . So if you're
considered "butch-acting" but gay, people have a hard time
believing that you're really gay. ("Oh, he's just lying. Look at him,
Mary, he's too butch to be gay. Go up there and keep harassing him.
He's just shy."...) I could go into the legal ramifications of
androphobia as well, but this is an essay for someone else to write.
But, I'm sure that Eva never meant it this way nor did she think of
the implications. Now, was that "muscle logic"? I don't know. Only
Eva has the right to decide because she is female and knows more
than us silly oafs >:) Oh wait, but since I'm gay, I'm not really a man,
so I must be intellectual, and I guess it wasn't "muscle logic" because
us gays don't have muscle. Hehehe.
God, society is funny, eh?
- gLeN
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