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

[lordameth.livejournal.com]

I tried writing up a response.. all sorts of things came to mind that I wanted to say. But I failed to really express myself properly, and I realized that - particularly in light of this being a difficult or touchy subject - it would be really easy to have my words misconstrued. So I erased it all.

Let me just say that I think you're absolutely right that, for the most part, feminism reaches women in a very different form than it reaches men.

I think that the issues at hand - both the problem that feminism seeks to address and the solution it seeks to bring about - are very difficult if not impossible to express in words. You either get it or you don't.

It operates on a level of experience, of atmosphere, and of feelings which just can't be quite explained by words.. like looking at the world through different prisms. It's like the feeling you get about a certain place - all the things it reminds you of, the emotional or deeper feeling and atmosphere of a place, which is something quite personal and which cannot be explained in words so much as it must be experienced. A place where you feel you belong may feel like a rather unwelcoming place to me, just because of who we are, our experiences, our backgrounds. Feminism is like that in some ways.

And it does come to us differently, because while you may have been given a positive image of womanhood by the encouragement and nurturing of your mother, your sisters, your girlfriends, as you slowly came to understand feminism over the course of growing up, we for the most part have only experienced feminism as a negative image of manhood, experienced by us through the criticism of sisters, friends, girlfriends...

There absolutely are things a guy can read to understand it better, and ways in which a woman can explain it better to a guy, but... yeah, it does come to us differently, we do perceive it differently, and much like the way you and I have different experiences of what Judaism means to us, or what being American means to us, so too do we have different ideas of what "feminism" means.

I should like to think I have "come around" as it were, as the result of many conversations (and reading of LJ posts, etc) with friends like you, and as the result of a particular seminar I took this past term in which I was the only guy in the room, and the professor and most of my classmates were strong feminists, but approached everything in an encouraging and non-confrontational manner... But it took that very particular and special environment to nurture a certain attitude and understanding in me about gender, and feminism.

It's something we each need to come to understand for ourselves, I think, perhaps, with the proper gentle pushes in the right direction. Men in our society for the most part don't tend to get raised with the right ideas being put into our heads vis-a-vis these matters - and we don't gain it on our own from our personal experiences as a woman, on account of not being a woman - and so it takes that much more effort and time to come around.

I hope that none of this comes across as critical of you. It's not intended as such, at all, and I hope you don't take it that way. I think you're more thoughtful about these kinds of things than a lot of people, and I thank you for gently pushing me to think about it too.

[shirei-shibolim.livejournal.com]

For what it's worth, I'm extremely uncomfortable talking with male friends about the relative attractiveness of female friends. I'm pretty sure this was true before I was married. My idea of "male bonding" tends to involve building a fire together or something like that.

And also...

[wotyfree.livejournal.com]

...I think he actually had a fairly good point that we don't have the social experience of being men and that I shouldn't trivialize it based on what I imagine without actually listening to men.

I'm not sure what to make of that.

[(Anonymous)]

long time lurker, first time commenter: It could also be that we are all post-feminists now. I grew up with the understanding that women could be equal in the work force, could make decisions about family structure, kids, roles to play, etc. I'm not a feminist. I'm an unreconstructed paleolithic male, who is totally comfortable with women in non-traditional roles (in the workplace and family space, that is, I'm also quite traditional in terms of religious roles).

So, male bonding may involve comments objectifying women (never wives or girlfriends, sisters are fair game). And why not? As long as I treat women as subjects (in the I/thou sense) in actual work/family/social interactions, why shouldn't I occasionally ogle a woman or discuss her charms with friends? Now, you may say that it's impossible to do both, but I'll disagree with that.