Another Gender Thing, Or What the Heck Is Male Bonding Anyways

[debka_notion]

During learning tonight, Steve, wotyfree and I had a discussion about how we speak about the opposite sex. The starting point was the combination of looking at the curses to Eve in Genesis 3:16 and comparing with Genesis 4:7 (might be verse 6- it's the warning G-d gives to Cain), and thinking about gender, sexuality and sin. From there, things came around to my mention of being at Steve's for shabbos dinner a few weeks ago and his roommates making some comments in front of me that were quite objectifying to women, without thinking about it at all. After some discussion, he insisted that making objectifying comments about women, particularly sexual comments relating to their appearance, was a frequent and necessary piece of male bonding. I objected- there must be some way for men to bond without being derogatory to women, right?

But it has set me to thinking about how I speak about men (I'm generally pretty uncomfortable discussing men's appearance in general, although I will mention that someone is attractive, if it's relevant- I find the notion of saying more than that very uncomfortable in the vast majority of situations. I wonder if that's just me.), and how one can discuss appearance without objectifying the person about whom one is speaking.

Even more so, it is pushing me to consider how men are and are not reached by feminism, and how I'm supposed to react to that. It is becoming more and more clear that the way that feminism reaches women is different from the way that it reaches men, and how complex that relationship can be. It troubles me, but I feel clueless about how to treat the issue.

Comments

[debka-notion.livejournal.com]

Well, the term "feminism" is too narrow for what I really want. But "Gender studies" is an academic discipline (and one that often fascinates me), not a statement of one's actual views. What I need, really, is a term that talks about having positive views of both genders, and freedom for both while still respecting the notion of gender roles. I don't know what such a term would be, though.

The guy I was talking with was willing to listen, I just wasn't finding language that opened the issue up for him in a way that made sense. However, he and I have had other discussions about gender, and it often takes us a couple of times to really hear and understand each other. I imagine that it will eventually come up again, and then perhaps I'll have better fortune.

It's stuff that takes a long time to sink in. A lot of it seemed obvious and not worthy of notice to me for a long time, and then in the last couple of years, I started really noticing how different things are for men and women, and where those differences are unfortunate and problematic rather than just different- and how often that seems to be the case.