Regarding gender differences
Good morning, dear readers. I hope that both of you had lovely weekends. (Mom, I know that you did. And yes, I'll remember to pick up the dry cleaning.) I would like to begin this week of posts by continuing on a thread I introduced in an earlier post: the differences between men and women, and why this is politically significant. In the former post, I merely took the significance of this issue for granted, and assumed that both of you readers were with me on it, but I think that we should expand a bit on it at this time.
If you'll look to the right, you'll see a list of links to publications that we find interesting. Some of them are right-wing, some are left-wing, some are literary, some are nifty and there are some lucky few who happen to combine everything. One of these super-nifty-left-and-right-as-it-develops magazines is First Things, a magazine of politics, culture and theology published monthly by Neuhaus and a contingent of American Jesuits. I enjoy this magazine quite a bit, although there are few other Desis For Texas staffers who are interested in what they have to say. (Let's just that there are few people involved in our efforts who are anywhere near as geeky as I am, and leave it at that.) Anyway, in last month's issue, there was an interesting book review of two books on gender theory. I thought that the review was subtle and enjoyable enough to warrant being the article linked to in our title link. Whoo-hoo!
At the root of this whole discussion is the so-called battle of the sexes. I'm sure that we've all heard various things through the years from uncles and aunties that supposedly explain why men and women are different. Here are two of my favourite ones to date.
Gurdeep Uncle: A woman's behaviour can be fully explained by words beginning with "in." Indulge, Inquire, Instruct, Investigate, Interpret and Instigate.
Amrita Auntie: The only thing that men care about is keeping women down.
My friend Raj (not the blog writer): I am firmly convinced that there is nothing more horrifying to a woman than the notion that a man is making decisions without her, and furthermore, is happy doing so.
My mother: To determine the emotional age of a man, add the digits of his age together, and you'll get his actual emotional age. So you, son, are twenty-six, which means two plus six, and that's eight. You are emotionally eight years old.
Of course, depending on which bathroom you go to, you're going to probably find humour and sympathy with either position. I've heard any number of people completely agree with any of these statements, and proclaim the genius of the authors thereof. My personal favourite of all these theories is my father's, who described the basic plotlines of all movies and television programmes as
Man bad, woman good. Man makes woman cry. Woman cries. Man is stubborn because he's dirty, stupid, ugly and has no feelings. Man eventually realizes everything that's wrong with him and spends the rest of his life apologising to woman for existing, and makes it up to her by letting her push him around.
Pretty funny, huh?
Of course, there are some serious political issues at play here. Seriously. As we all know from our studies of Plato, the single most important question that we can ask is the "What is?" question.
Once we know a thing for what it is, we can begin to properly act upon it and integrate it into a political and philosophical system. This preoccupation with determining what a thing is has led many people to think that philosophy is really nothing more than a series of definitional arguments, semantic quibbles, if you will, with no real consequence. That is the classic Marxist line. Til now, philosophers have merely interpreted the world. The thing is to change it.
Consider, though, that all the oppressive laws in history have been based on some understanding of the nature of the people being oppressed.
Women are like children, requiring guidance. One doesn't allow a child to vote. Why should we allow a woman?
Blacks are barely one step removed from the ape, as indicated by their cranial structure. We must keep them in slavery because that is all that they are capable of.
The Indian is enshrouded by mysticism, superstition and ignorance. He is incapable of self-rule.
These are all statements attributing some property to the fundamental nature of women, blacks and Indians - a statement about what they are. Anyone who thinks that these arguments over the nature of men and women don't have political consequences is delusional.
More later. I'm sure that Mimosa will have something to say on the subject. ;)
Dheeraj
If you'll look to the right, you'll see a list of links to publications that we find interesting. Some of them are right-wing, some are left-wing, some are literary, some are nifty and there are some lucky few who happen to combine everything. One of these super-nifty-left-and-right-as-it-develops magazines is First Things, a magazine of politics, culture and theology published monthly by Neuhaus and a contingent of American Jesuits. I enjoy this magazine quite a bit, although there are few other Desis For Texas staffers who are interested in what they have to say. (Let's just that there are few people involved in our efforts who are anywhere near as geeky as I am, and leave it at that.) Anyway, in last month's issue, there was an interesting book review of two books on gender theory. I thought that the review was subtle and enjoyable enough to warrant being the article linked to in our title link. Whoo-hoo!
At the root of this whole discussion is the so-called battle of the sexes. I'm sure that we've all heard various things through the years from uncles and aunties that supposedly explain why men and women are different. Here are two of my favourite ones to date.
Gurdeep Uncle: A woman's behaviour can be fully explained by words beginning with "in." Indulge, Inquire, Instruct, Investigate, Interpret and Instigate.
Amrita Auntie: The only thing that men care about is keeping women down.
My friend Raj (not the blog writer): I am firmly convinced that there is nothing more horrifying to a woman than the notion that a man is making decisions without her, and furthermore, is happy doing so.
My mother: To determine the emotional age of a man, add the digits of his age together, and you'll get his actual emotional age. So you, son, are twenty-six, which means two plus six, and that's eight. You are emotionally eight years old.
Of course, depending on which bathroom you go to, you're going to probably find humour and sympathy with either position. I've heard any number of people completely agree with any of these statements, and proclaim the genius of the authors thereof. My personal favourite of all these theories is my father's, who described the basic plotlines of all movies and television programmes as
Man bad, woman good. Man makes woman cry. Woman cries. Man is stubborn because he's dirty, stupid, ugly and has no feelings. Man eventually realizes everything that's wrong with him and spends the rest of his life apologising to woman for existing, and makes it up to her by letting her push him around.
Pretty funny, huh?
Of course, there are some serious political issues at play here. Seriously. As we all know from our studies of Plato, the single most important question that we can ask is the "What is?" question.
- What is holiness
- What is justice?
- What is reason?
- What is man?
- et cetera
Once we know a thing for what it is, we can begin to properly act upon it and integrate it into a political and philosophical system. This preoccupation with determining what a thing is has led many people to think that philosophy is really nothing more than a series of definitional arguments, semantic quibbles, if you will, with no real consequence. That is the classic Marxist line. Til now, philosophers have merely interpreted the world. The thing is to change it.
Consider, though, that all the oppressive laws in history have been based on some understanding of the nature of the people being oppressed.
Women are like children, requiring guidance. One doesn't allow a child to vote. Why should we allow a woman?
Blacks are barely one step removed from the ape, as indicated by their cranial structure. We must keep them in slavery because that is all that they are capable of.
The Indian is enshrouded by mysticism, superstition and ignorance. He is incapable of self-rule.
These are all statements attributing some property to the fundamental nature of women, blacks and Indians - a statement about what they are. Anyone who thinks that these arguments over the nature of men and women don't have political consequences is delusional.
More later. I'm sure that Mimosa will have something to say on the subject. ;)
Dheeraj
posted by Desis For Texas at 8/29/2005 08:47:00 AM
1 Comments:
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