Saturday, January 28, 2012
Where the lines overlap
The other day I had a very disturbing conversation with someone, a friend, no, an acquaintance of mine. He is a he, a guy, male, and he seemed to have very misconstrued ideas upon feminism, vulnerability and society. So it was a Friday afternoon and I was to work on a project with a few people when instead we went to Tim Hortons. One of my team members had to spend some time with a loved one there and so he and I were left to provide each other with company for an hour or two. I, being the distrusting person I am, spent most of the time asking meaningless questions I hadn't cared his answers for. And he asked me questions like "why don't you want to get married?", "why do you think love is temporary?"-in other words, questions I did not want to answer. As time went by I made an inconsequential futile comment on his vulnerability in which he responded saying "men dont get vulnerable". Mind you, this was the point in which my so called friend became an acquaintance. I was irritated but I kept calm, responding to the comment as if it was rationale and understandable. I explained how neuroscience has proved that females and males are at equal capabilities when born and it is the nurturing of society that dictates our behaviors. My weapon is to pull out statistics and such to prove how wrong he is and make him feel a bit stupid at once. I explained how unfortunate it is for "men" to deal with expectation like the one he had mentioned, how it is less socially acceptable for them to seem vulnerable or weak. My words went through one of his ears and came out of the other. He wanted to 'agree to disagree' but I couldn't do it. I couldn't agree to disagree when I strongly believed my argument for this dilemma was correct. However this conversation died down and he continued to say ridiculous things and distinguished everything I said with "yeah cause youre a feminist". Every argument ended with agreeing to disagree even though I had resisted it. Am I only seeing one shade of colours? Am I in the wrong?
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This was inspiring. 0.0
ReplyDeleteThank you so much!
DeleteI think all of your statements are absolutely true, it is society that really tries to control gender roles, I often think what the world would be like if girls took over the male role, but apparently society thinks its wrong to be whatever you want. One of my friends likes fashion, so people think he is gay. When will there be a world without expectations and roles for genders to play?
ReplyDeleteI know, it is ridiculous to think that every human being is labelled and categorized constantly. Thanks for reading and your nice comment, glad to share common thoughts on gender roles.. there clearly aren't too many of us around!
Deleteon the contrary, it sounds like you are the one seeing a variety of shades of colours and your 'friend' is the one stuck in black and white, adhering to the narrow gender stereotypes to which we are socialized.
ReplyDeleteI too have had such conversations where any display of wanting something different, ie, not wanting to get married, or men having 'typical female' qualities and vice versa is not met with a logical argument, but rather fobbed off with the feminism label in a negative way. it's a pity people can't better educate themselves or open their minds to other possibility - although as a society we are far too caught up in gender roles in general. my 2 cents.
It's really kind of you to see it that way, I guess I have always been one to look beyond the stereotypes but society makes it really difficult for us to define ourselves based on who we are instead of what our gender says about us. It's time that people realize there is more to us, it's time we prove it to them! Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts. It means a lot.
DeleteBitch you're ugly
ReplyDeleteIt's unfortunate you felt the need to comment on my blog post about gender roles, to let me know that you don't find me attractive.
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