Home | Join! | Help | Browse | Forums | NuWorld | NWF | PoPo   

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. 39
Gender. Female
Ethnicity. that of my father and his father before him
Location Altadena, CA
School. Other
» More info.
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
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 Juanes Module


Juanes just needed his own mod. Who can disagree.
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

Name.

URL.

[to enter your email, use "mailto:[email protected]"]
Subject.

Comment.

Word verification.

Copy the first 4 characters only.

If you are a member, try logging in again or accessing this page here.

Zanzibar's Weblog Site • NuTang.com

NuTang is the first web site to implement PPGY Technology. This page was generated in 0.279seconds.

  Send to a friend on AIM | Set as Homepage | Bookmark Home | NuTang Collage | Terms of Service & Privacy Policy | Link to Us | Monthly Top 10s
All content � Copyright 2003-2047 NuTang.com and respective members. Contact us at NuTang[AT]gmail.com.