Maybe it's just the men I know, Erminia, and I am quite willing to
admit they are perhaps not a typical cross section of society: but
they (at least the heterosexual men) certainly look for women to be
companions and equals. Which hardly elides difference, and maybe
celebrates it.
The younger men I know (in their early 20s) seem to be coming from
quite different assumptions about gender when they approach
relationships. This doesn't mean there are not conflicts related to
gender, but not one of the young men I know thinks of women as their
inferiors. My son, when he was very small, was quite outraged by
gender, which enclosed him much more than my daughter, who could
easily slip into being tomboy without anybody commenting: he
campaigned for the right to wear pink, because his favourite t-shirt
was pink, and I remember him being very upset when someone bought him
and his sister showbags - dolls for the girls and tanks and soldiers
for the boy. He didn't like what that said to him about himself.
Also, I've never seen a hospital nest room. Maybe they still exist
in Europe, but here, even in the most standard and conservative
hospitals, babies live in cribs next to their mothers. (In my case,
the one time I was in a straight maternity ward, they _did_ shower me
with pink booties for my daughter, and the nurses were horrified I
had my baby in bed with me instead of in the plastic box they
provided, but my conflicts with hospital management are another
story... things have gone backwards in a serious way in the past
decade as far as medical management of childbirth goes.)
As for compassion within relationships - are they possible without
it? Historically you can find many examples of marital ideals of
companionship, even equality; it's not a new thing, even if dominant
ideologies have often argued against it. People have always been
various.
It does appear to me that there is a contemporary crisis in
masculinity, not entirely unrelated to the gains of feminism, both
positively and negatively. I have had many more choices open to me
than my mother did, and most of the time I try not to forget that.
This is also not to say that misogynies of various kinds are not
alive and well, and appearing in new forms every day. But the entire
field of gender and sex is so complex and so contradictory it's
impossible to signal everything in the space of an email...
Best
Alison
>We are all, men and women, living in societies that impose upon us norms
>of appearances (men and women are equally victim of the false expectation –
>in terms of desires, appearance, skills and so on) imposed on us all by
>sexual stereotipycak identities (I remember when I was a child very kin
>about roller-skatinga nd racing , my antie strongly compaining to my father
>that he was bringing me up as a boy with unrestricted freedom, so in that
>case it was not my father imposing on me a female normative but a
>reactionary female member of the family who did not wish me to differ from
>the expected behaviour; this antie also complained that, yes, I made could
>skate but that I could not thread a needle and saw a dress: a thing that
>actually I managed to learn, after my father , not my mother, showed me how
>to do it).
>
>Of course you perceive your partner as different, and this because one is
>taught that one must pose one’s sentimental interests and sexual drives
>into a subject that is dissimilar from one’s own (this is imposed at an
>early stage in life by unsubtle heterosexual normatives that leave no guilt-
>free space into our notions of what constitute gender differences and what
>we must/are expected to be). Such impositions are placed on us since the
>first moment we were imposed names since our nakedness was accordingly
>categorized when we were first dressed up after we were born.
>
>These separations occur already in the hospital nest-rooms where the new
>born girls and the new born boys are set either in different rows or under
>differing blankets (blue and pink) or dressed up in different colours (blue
>and pink, again) or branded by bracelets displaying name and sex. And then,
>in the short space of a few years, the taboos towards one’s parents
>different sexes are already established. Beyond that, what do we really
>know about gender? At the age of three four the damage and the partition
>is already consolidated and whatever differs from those categories is
>gained through a painful process of recognition, implying guilt and
>inability at communicating one’s feelings.
>
>It is true that one tends to look for something unproblematic in the choice
>of one’s partner , and stereotypes are unproblematic in the sense that they
>do not require the effort of re-investigate our stiffed notions. More and
>more men, I hope, are looking into their partners for a real companion who,
>although different in principle, might want to assimilate one’s mind into
>the other and understand and share one’s partners tastes and sentiments and
>attitudes. It is nothing to do with changing sex, it is a matter of
>understanding the other sex and go towards him/her, crossing the boundaries.
>In a way, we are all segregated into these stereotypes which prevent
>intercultural exchanges (women’s and the men’s cultures scattered into
>those of the different races, ages, and vocations), it is like living all
>our lives into cells, so we lead the lives of the recluse.
>
>But nobody as intervened as yet to explain if in their own couples they
>have the ability to be “compassionate” and therefore trans-sexual (in the
>sense of going beyond all the divisions spoken about by feminist thinkers
>and political groups). But this is not only a gender issue, it is a social
>and anthropological one, as we all know and it will take a few more
>centuries to really develop into something else (not necessarily better, I
>fear).
>
>Erminia
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>On Mon, 17 Dec 2001 01:35:38 -0000, mindfight <[log in to unmask]>
>wrote:
>
>> Isn't, the
>>> mum, but a chain of your own continuum?
>>
>>~~ in an ideal case, yes.... but i drink the milk of nestlé, my mother died
>>while giving birth and i was born with defects due to her severe heroin
>>abuse...well not really,, i agree with your point, but i still think that
>>the woman i share my life with is different to me and i am different to
>>her - it would be terrible if we we're indifferent to each other, wouldn't
>>it?
>>
>>
>>----- Original Message -----
>>From: "Erminia Passannanti" <[log in to unmask]>
>>To: <[log in to unmask]>
>>Sent: Sunday, December 16, 2001 12:37 AM
>>Subject: Re: Is this real. . .(your Madonna)
>>
>>
>>> On Sat, 15 Dec 2001 16:31:22 -0800, passermin <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>
>>> >--- mindfight <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>> >> I feel you are being
>>> >> fucked up by nationalist states - you men
>>> >>
>>> >> ~~~but brought up by women??
>>> >
>>>
>>>
>>> Isn't, the mum, your Madonna, the one that first would bend in reverence
>>> towards your small lying naked body to kiss in adoration your wounded
>>> navel, you scar?
>>> Isn't, the mum, the one that was feeding your from her
>>> warm blistered nipple, the one that would pose her
>>> lips one you small heads, while you were sucking from
>>> her breast your first vitality, her milk?
>>> Isn't the mum the one that you will have to care of
>>> in the same way when she will get old and in need to
>>> be fed and washed and assisted in walking, the one
>>> that will need you to became her mother, her father
>>> and help her through the process of death? Isn't, the
>>> mum, but a chain of your own continuum?
>>>
>>> erminia
>>> >
>>>
>>>
--
Alison Croggon
Home page
http://users.bigpond.com/acroggon/
Masthead
http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/
|