The mind of man

So, I just finished reading the book High Fidelity by Nick Hornby (almost like a Bridget Jones for guys), and I can't help but take a minute to expostulate on the mind of the opposite sex and guy/girl relations.

I don't by any means believe that I know what it is to think like a man. I'm not wired in the same way, and I'm ok with that. It think if I were exactly the same as everybody else, life wouldn't be half as interesting. I often wonder though, what it would be like to sit in the shoes of a man for once. Would I find myself more direct and laid-back? Would I find myself apathetic or neurotic? Would I find myself different at all?

Right off the bat, I will admit that there is a clear distinction, for the most part, between the guys I know and the girls I know. I don't know that there could be a complete interchange between the sexes. It's an interesting thought - if we are all made in the image of God, shouldn't we have some ability to be interchanged? Rather, perhaps what we do have are sensibilities that are unique to both sexes. The story of creation makes it very clear that men and women are created to be different, eacha counterpart to the other. This is a beautiful thing, but where do things get messed up? Maybe it's when we mix the thoughts of gender versus sex, or maybe we don't know the answer at all. Maybe it's meant to be part of the mystery of the universe.

Having a lot of guys friends does allow me to get a few guys perspectives from time to time, but are any of these opinions truly what he is thinking when confronted with a woman? Something tells me that the minute communication crosses the gender line, it isn't quite the same as if it were being told to someone of the same sex. I've experienced this in woman to woman conversation. But what is it the prompts us all to retain a certain air of mystery or sense of that we will be misunderstood if we are just direct with someone of the opposite sex? Maybe we're don't know how, or maybe we just want to know how.

The funny thing about this whole diatribe is that it all hinges on societal definitions of what is means to be a man or a woman. These gender roles are those roles which are imposed on us due to our outward biology. Most commonly we find these "roles" manifested in the simplest ideas as having girls in pink and boys in blue. How these arbitrary notions came to be associated with who a person is is something I can't answer. Then suddenly thoughts continue on to the Freudian and Lacanian terms of gender and psychology, and you begin to wonder how wacked out ideas of penis envy being the root of all womanly trouble ever became widely accepted as truth! Somehow society ended up catergorizing individuals in such a way that individuality became impossible, and even redundant, because it is vastly more acceptable to be part of a group, right?

I know what most people are thinking now - society has changed; we no longer have to fit into specific gender roles. Men can be "Stay-at-home-moms" and women can move into the work force. The lines are being blurred. But the fact is, this is still catergorizing based on assigned cultural definitions. We still see actions as either "womanly" or "manly".

A little while ago, when trying to figure out my position as a woman in theatre, I came across and interesting term: the materialist feminist. Essentially, a materialist feminist is a feminist who believes that gender roles as imposed by society are not only detrimental to women, but are detrimental to men as well. Unlike cultural feminism, which seeks to unify women based on their biology and use this unity to subvert patriarchal tendencies, materialist feminism focuses more on the relationships in society and how they construct a person.

Too often feminism can come across as wanting to eliminate the idea of gender roles, period. Well, it's really an impossible task. You can never elminate the biological sexes, and you can never eliminate preconceived notions that individuals have based on experience and thousand of years of historical background, so can you can't radically blot out gender roles. As it stands, we will never be free of the mark and meaning of our sex and how it has been concieved in the cultural hierarchy. (Some of this aspect I believe might relate the another one of God's plans, but that's another issue to talk about later). So, what can you do? Consider the societal interactions of any given person.

Anyone can act in a way that can be labelled in a "insert category here". Working through our tendancies to be so compartmental can definately broaden the scope of individuality seen around us. Being aware of what pre-conceived notions we are holding on to is a first step in looking past the gestures and actions of any given person, and helps us learn to suspend those notions and to focus on relationships. How are these persons actions relating who they really are, rather than who they are meant to be? It's almost like seeing a Barbie, and rather than immediately associating it will little girls and pink flowers, you take a minute to see the doll and wonder what about it that makes you want to engage with it. That's the "essence" of what the doll means to you. Suddenly, you begin to see the doll as just a doll that sometimes happens to be with little girls and flowers, but is sometimes just a collector's item. You've begun to seek out a new perspective and means of investigating your world.

Maybe the whole point of me going into this is to get each one of us to start considering what roles we are playing and/or seeing played in front of us when we start to interact with the opposite sex. How many of out expections for a relationship is stem from what we feel our roles should be, or better yet what the role that the relationship itself should mean? I don't have the answer myself, but I know I've got to start unpacking some my own baggage before I can fix any relationships or start new ones. Hmm...the story of everyone's life, right? Ha!

Clearly then end of this expostulation has ended very far from where I originally intended to go, thanks to all of you who actually chose to pay attention.

Thank you, and goodnight!