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So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
The Profile Zanzibar Age. 40 Gender. Female Ethnicity. that of my father and his father before him Location Altadena, CA School. Other » More info. The Weather The World The Link To Zanzibar's Past
This is my page in the beloved art community that my sister got me into: Samarinda Extra points for people who know what Samarinda is. The Phases of the Moon Module CURRENT MOON Writings
Poetry The Tree and the Telephone Pole The Spider I Do Not Know Their Names The Mouse Blindness La Plante The Moon Today I am Young A Night Poem Celestial Wandering Siren of the Sea If I Were a Dragon To the Dreamers Leave the Sky The Honor of the Oyster Return From San Diego War My Study Defeat A Late Summer's Night Of Dragons and Men Erebus The Edge of the World The Race Dragon's Spirit The Snake's Terror Spirit Island Metaphysics Metaphysica Transponderae Metaphysics and the Middaymoon Of Adventures in Foreign Lands The Rogue Wave: The Unedited Version Adventures in the PRC Voyage of Discovery Drinking the Blood of Goats Ticket for a Phantom Bus Os peixes nadam o mar Three Villages Far Away The River Weser Children I Should Have Kidnapped, Part I Let's Get You Out of Those Clothes Radishes Three-Piece-Lawsuit If Underwear Could Speak Croc Hunter/Combat Wombat
My hero(s) Only My Favorite Baseball Player EVER Aw, Larry Walker, how I loved thee. The Schedule
M: Science and Exploration T: Cook a nice dinner W: PARKOUR! Th: Parties, movies, dinners F: Picnics, the Louvre S: Read books, go for walks, PARKOUR Su: Philosophy, Religion The Reading List
This list starts Summer 2006 A Crocodile on the Sandbank Looking Backwards Wild Swans Exodus 1984 Tales of the Alhambra (in progress) Dark Lord of Derkholm Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The Lost Years of Merlin Harry Potter a l'ecole des sorciers (in progress) Atlas Shrugged (in progress) Uglies Pretties Specials A Long Way Gone (story of a boy soldier in Sierra Leone- met the author! w00t!) The Eye of the World: Book One of the Wheel of Time From Magma to Tephra (in progress) Lady Chatterley's Lover Harry Potter 7 The No. 1 Lady's Detective Agency Introduction to Planetary Volcanism A Child Called "It" Pompeii Is Multi-Culturalism Bad for Women? Americans in Southeast Asia: Roots of Commitment (in progress) What's So Great About Christianity? Aeolian Geomorphology Aeolian Dust and Dust Deposits The City of Ember The People of Sparks Cube Route When I was in Cuba, I was a German Shepard Bound The Golden Compass Clan of the Cave Bear The 9/11 Commission Report (2nd time through, graphic novel format this time, ip) The Incredible Shrinking Man Twilight Eclipse New Moon Breaking Dawn Armageddon's Children The Elves of Cintra The Gypsy Morph Animorphs #23: The Pretender Animorphs #25: The Extreme Animorphs #26: The Attack Crucial Conversations A Journey to the Center of the Earth A Great and Terrible Beauty The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian Dandelion Wine To Sir, With Love London Calling Watership Down The Invisible Alice in Wonderland Through the Looking Glass 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea The Host The Hunger Games Catching Fire Shadows and Strongholds The Jungle Book Beatrice and Virgil Infidel Neuromancer The Help Flip Zion Andrews The Unit Princess Quantum Brain The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks No One Ever Told Us We Were Defeated Delirium Memento Nora Robopocalypse The Name of the Wind The Terror Sister Tao Te Ching What Paul Meant Lao Tzu and Taoism Libyan Sands Sand and Sandstones Lost Christianites: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew The Science of God Calculating God Great Contemporaries, by Winston Churchill City of Bones Around the World in 80 Days, by Jules Verne Divergent Stranger in a Strange Land The Old Man and the Sea Flowers for Algernon Au Bonheur des Ogres The Martian The Road to Serfdom De La Terre � la Lune (ip) In the Light of What We Know Devil in the White City 2312 The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August Red Mars How to Be a Good Wife A Mote in God's Eye A Gentleman in Russia The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism Seneca: Letters from a Stoic | The Battle of the Sexes Wednesday. 1.24.07 7:11 am I'm writing this blog because after reading Ranor's most recent entry I got to thinking about it more in depth. Because it's not really just about boys crying, it's about boys being truly human- in a sense, for a moment not being boys or men at all but sharing in the entire gamut of human emotions elicited by human experience. So this got me to think about the differences between man and woman. I was talking to my roommate the other day about these differences, and he was lamenting that "women these days" of "our generation" (he is 10 years older than me, but whatevz) have lost their femininity. They've developed this defensive exterior, this sheen of hardness that he claims is not present in other generations. I think part of the reason he makes this proclamation is because his girlfriend typifies this type of woman, but he may be right. In the past when women weren't so integrated in the workplace, your average woman did not need a particularly thick skin. The workplace demands a tough exterior to be able to deal with the competition and criticism that one inevitably runs into there. Sure, these pressures can be found at home, but at home you aren't always required to deal with them with stony-faced professionalism. It is only natural that women should develop behaviors that reflect their surroundings and further their goals. And let us think for a moment on what "femininity" actually is. I think in some ways it is the gentle and tender way a woman moves through life, avoiding the bluntness of direct engagement and being a pleasure for the eyes, the ears, and the mind to encounter, through grace, gentleness of voice, and attention to her looks. Many people might disagree with me here, but I believe that this is the femininity of which my roommate speaks. But here again we see the hallmarks of change. In the past a woman held a lesser position than a man (some would call it "complementary" in some cultures, but I call it lesser because it weakened her independence and curtailed her personal liberties). But this absolutely did not mean that women were powerless creatures. I think they say it in the Joy Luck Club- A man is the head of a household, but a woman is the neck, and she can turn the head whichever way she pleases. Woman, in her pursuit of power and influence (a drive which is the same as a man's) has been forced for milennia to assume the role of manipulator. She works hard to seem unthreatening, meek, beautiful, and tantalizing. She studies and comes to understand the moods of both women and men, becoming sensitive to changes in them and how they might be affected by her own behavior. In short, just as a man must learn how to stand on his own two feet before other men, boldy expressing himself, appearing strong and striving after his goals, a woman must learn how to use the man as a tool to get what she wants- whether that is to have him ask her out, to get him to get her the presents she desires but cannot purchase, or to direct the future of her family. Thus the so-called "feminine wiles" of woman are just, in my humble opinion, a reaction to the power structure in which woman was born. Blunt women did not often get what they wanted, because the man had the power over them to overrule it, and bluntness in women was not valued. This is no longer true. It has been a slow march, but with the coming of the 20th century, women for the first time can achieve complete financial and personal independence. I cannot overstate the importance of this development. It changes everything. For the first time in history, woman stands with man, not slightly behind and to the side. For the first time, she is subject to many of the same societal pressures as he. As our world passes through the Age of Technology, they are learning and experiencing things new things together, and innovating together as well. Woman is learning that if she wants something out of this world, for the first time in history, she can just stand up and get it. So what does this have to do with men crying? I say... so what if women of this age appear to have lost their "femininity"? Womankind is going through a radical revision of strategy here. She is free, but she hasn't yet decided what she thinks freedom means. At first she wanted to seem much more like a man, and reject all of the hallmarks of the traditional female role. Now I believe that the pendulum is swinging back, and women have decided that they can pick and choose from traditionally masculine and traditionally feminine roles and they have to feel shame about neither. Man is reacting to this. In many ways the liberation of women has liberated man, who is increasingly no longer stuck in his position as bread winner and caretaker, but for the first time part of a real partnership. So in essence I am not concerned with how men and women are different. Talking about this and that silly and useless item which separates women from men- this pop culture idea of women as catty and emotional- the idea as men as feeling no emotions but anger. These commercials that portray men as idiots who can't even operate the folding backseat in a mini van! COME ON! The thing that is important about the two sexes is that we SHARE so many THINGS. We share the workplace, we share the duties of home, we share the human experience and the whole rollercoaster of emotions that goes with it. I would much rather learn about a person's individual nature, the places where we differ and the things that we share... human being to human being. To discuss the petty differences in gender is to fill up the space between two people with trivialities. It forces each into a role- "the boyfriend" or "the girlfriend", and each begins to assume a personality around the other that they wholly lack while among friends. And that is a shame, because I think you really miss learning something about somebody else when you force that person into a role. I think you'd find that a lot of people (like here on Nutang, for example) if you only read their writing and gendered pronouns didn't exist, it would be a long time before you could figure it out what sex they were. So let the boys cry (if the occurrence is heart-breaking, we don't want any pansy-asses here of any sex). And let the women decide how much of their "femininity" they are going to keep. There is a man for every type of woman and a woman for every type of man. And in the broader context, away from the man/woman paradigm... there is a human being for every human being, no matter what sex they are. 2 Comments. What femininity is and what masculinity is are, if you think about it, seems quite arbitrarily defined by our culture--our masculinist culture, which places value on competition, fierceness, and warfare (in both the personal and international sense). So I guess that doesn't make it so arbitrary after all. Men have ruled Western society for ages, and all those years of ingrained enculturation will be hard to sweep under the rug. But I have faith it can be done. Because pigeonholing someone into gender roles is unfair--to everybody, regardless of gender identification or what genitalia you have (or lack). » ranor on 2007-01-24 10:12:04 Wow, that was some pretty bad grammar there. Serves me right, trying to write a comment 5 minutes after I wake up... » ranor on 2007-01-24 04:21:39
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