JiscMail Logo
Email discussion lists for the UK Education and Research communities

Help for POETRYETC Archives


POETRYETC Archives

POETRYETC Archives


POETRYETC@JISCMAIL.AC.UK


View:

Message:

[

First

|

Previous

|

Next

|

Last

]

By Topic:

[

First

|

Previous

|

Next

|

Last

]

By Author:

[

First

|

Previous

|

Next

|

Last

]

Font:

Monospaced Font

LISTSERV Archives

LISTSERV Archives

POETRYETC Home

POETRYETC Home

POETRYETC  2001

POETRYETC 2001

Options

Subscribe or Unsubscribe

Subscribe or Unsubscribe

Log In

Log In

Get Password

Get Password

Subject:

Re: Is this real. . .(your Madonna)

From:

"david.bircumshaw" <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

Poetryetc provides a venue for a dialogue relating to poetry and poetics <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Sun, 16 Dec 2001 23:32:23 -0000

Content-Type:

text/plain

Parts/Attachments:

Parts/Attachments

text/plain (217 lines)

Erminia

this is might sound odd to you, but one of the feelings I have had from your
recent posts is that I (as very paradoxical peripheral single male) didn't
have a 'right' to speak in this. When I read your last I actually thought 'I
hope someone like Alison says something on this', which she has, most
handsomely, I think, and in truly 'non-sexist' but not gender-shorn terms.


Best

Dave






David Bircumshaw

Leicester, England

Home Page

A Chide's Alphabet

Painting Without Numbers

www.paintstuff.20m.com/index.htm

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/index.htm
----- Original Message -----
From: "Alison Croggon" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, December 16, 2001 11:09 PM
Subject: Re: Is this real. . .(your Madonna)


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/

Top of Message | Previous Page | Permalink

JiscMail Tools


RSS Feeds and Sharing


Advanced Options


Archives

May 2024
April 2024
March 2024
February 2024
January 2024
December 2023
November 2023
October 2023
September 2023
August 2023
July 2023
June 2023
May 2023
April 2023
March 2023
February 2023
January 2023
December 2022
November 2022
October 2022
September 2022
August 2022
July 2022
June 2022
May 2022
April 2022
March 2022
February 2022
January 2022
December 2021
November 2021
October 2021
September 2021
August 2021
July 2021
June 2021
May 2021
April 2021
March 2021
February 2021
January 2021
December 2020
November 2020
October 2020
September 2020
August 2020
July 2020
June 2020
May 2020
April 2020
March 2020
February 2020
January 2020
December 2019
November 2019
October 2019
September 2019
August 2019
July 2019
June 2019
May 2019
April 2019
March 2019
February 2019
January 2019
December 2018
November 2018
October 2018
September 2018
August 2018
July 2018
June 2018
May 2018
April 2018
March 2018
February 2018
January 2018
December 2017
November 2017
October 2017
September 2017
August 2017
July 2017
June 2017
May 2017
April 2017
March 2017
February 2017
January 2017
December 2016
November 2016
October 2016
September 2016
August 2016
July 2016
June 2016
May 2016
April 2016
March 2016
February 2016
January 2016
December 2015
November 2015
October 2015
September 2015
August 2015
July 2015
June 2015
May 2015
April 2015
March 2015
February 2015
January 2015
December 2014
November 2014
October 2014
September 2014
August 2014
July 2014
June 2014
May 2014
April 2014
March 2014
February 2014
January 2014
December 2013
November 2013
October 2013
September 2013
August 2013
July 2013
June 2013
May 2013
April 2013
March 2013
February 2013
January 2013
December 2012
November 2012
October 2012
September 2012
August 2012
July 2012
June 2012
May 2012
April 2012
March 2012
February 2012
January 2012
December 2011
November 2011
October 2011
September 2011
August 2011
July 2011
June 2011
May 2011
April 2011
March 2011
February 2011
January 2011
December 2010
November 2010
October 2010
September 2010
August 2010
July 2010
June 2010
May 2010
April 2010
March 2010
February 2010
January 2010
December 2009
November 2009
October 2009
September 2009
August 2009
July 2009
June 2009
May 2009
April 2009
March 2009
February 2009
January 2009
December 2008
November 2008
October 2008
September 2008
August 2008
July 2008
June 2008
May 2008
April 2008
March 2008
February 2008
January 2008
December 2007
November 2007
October 2007
September 2007
August 2007
July 2007
June 2007
May 2007
April 2007
March 2007
February 2007
January 2007
December 2006
November 2006
October 2006
September 2006
August 2006
July 2006
June 2006
May 2006
April 2006
March 2006
February 2006
January 2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001
2000


JiscMail is a Jisc service.

View our service policies at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/policyandsecurity/ and Jisc's privacy policy at https://www.jisc.ac.uk/website/privacy-notice

For help and support help@jisc.ac.uk

Secured by F-Secure Anti-Virus CataList Email List Search Powered by the LISTSERV Email List Manager