And another step back. I always find it funny that when women aren't allowed to do something or go somewhere, it's sexist, but when it happens to a man it becomes progress.
As a man, over the course of my life I have been asked to think of things from a woman's point of view more times than I can count. "Imagine yourself as a woman in 13 century France," "imagine yourself as a woman in Victorian England." Never have I been in a class where we were asked, "Imagine yourself as a large, sweaty viking in 7th century Sweden." While there are exceptions to this, in my experience, this one-sided way of thinking and being taught has led to surprisingly large lack of knowledge about men and the male experience in women today.
Don't believe me? Last year in my Literature By Women class, I and the two other males in the class had to explain to the entire class (of 34) the concept of "urinals". Perhaps my favorite quote comes from a shy girl who timidly raised her hand and asked, "So it's like a trough?" I then proceeded to tell her that troughs are in fact used in many restrooms, particular at sports arenas. This is in no way the only case of a lack of knowledge about the male experience I have encountered in my time at UPS. It is, in fact, bad enough that I have been working on a lecture on manliness as a concept, as of the the women I have polled on this campus, none of them have understood it.
I don't have any more time to talk today, but I'll be back tomorrow to continue this subject. If you're really good and leave some comments I may even have a teaser of my lecture on manliness. Also I apologize for the shittiness of these past two posts, I haven't had the time to write posts that I normally enjoy, which allows for things like proofreading.
P.S. 5 days until brawl.
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3 comments:
I think this is an article begging to be written. I am shocked at how anti-male some of my younger girlfriends are... perhaps if they see some of the inner thoughts of a man they will understand that a society needs both strong women AND strong men.
Hey there. Its Tracy. Against my better judgement, I'm reading your blog, risking the obsession that might result in it. (The obsession meaning me revolving my life around it, constantly thinking of counter-arguments, and sometimes, having to correct your miscomceptions.)
Let me say this: Most feminists have posted about this very topic, saying that areas where men aren't allowed is NOT solving the problem. Its making it worse. I don't think of it as progress in the least bit. Some feminists might say that, but I wouldn't consider them to be feminist.
Instead of looking at things from a "woman's" point of view, you should look at women as being just like yourself, except they may have skewed POVs from having a different way of being judged by society. The women who are unable to look at the world past what society has foisted upon them, are quite frankly, a bunch of slobering fools that should be paraded to the slaughter-house. The same with the men who think the same way.
Perhaps my larger argument is that I feel (as much as I can from my position) that feminism is no longer necessary. The gaps between men and women have been (for the most part) closed up. At this point I feel that it's this constant repetition of how disadvantaged women are that leads to what gaps are left. Now I'll be the first to say that men are very guilty (historically) of doing this, but these days I find it is much more common to hear women talking about how disadvantaged they are than anything else.
After having some time off and away from school these old posts surprise me quite a bit. Honestly I look like some kind of paranoid hyper-macho chauvinist. It is bizarre how different this campus feels than the "normal world". It's like there's an anti-male curriculum set in place or something.
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