Tabouli's gender studies manifesto continued

[Tabouli]

Cassie (from main list):
> It's my personal opinion that many women (myself included) feel a inner need 
to have a dominate figure in their lifes, no matter how independent they may be. 

I think there are at least two conflicting desires - wanting a playful, motherable "lovable son" figure and wanting a strong, omniscient "protective father" figure.  A lot of women seem to want one or the other (or the best of both).  Some men only understand the second one of these (this being much closer what they've been taught a man should be like), and therefore strive to dispense manly wisdom (especially about manly subjects like car maintenance) and hide every hint of vulnerability, and assume that men who don't will be considered weak and unattractive.  Then feel outraged when women go for someone like Hugh Grant.  Ahhh, how many times have I heard a man who seems positively offended by Hugh's apparent appeal "But he's an idiot!  He's a weak, foppish, bumbling prat!"  To which I reply Exactly!  He brings out the doting mother in women!  A lot of women find men's vulnerability adorable (so long as he can get his strong protective father act together if *she's* upset or needs defending).  Witness women's indulgent smiles as they watch men at play...

(I must get to work on that personality profile I've been designing which uses people's opinions on Hugh Grant and Madonna to plumb their psyches...)

David (from main list):
> 1) I don't believe it's a feminine and masculine dichotomy, rather 
weak/strong or unconfident/confident - I guess further discussion of 
this would be OT;

2) How do we see Hermione's character in this.  She has always struck 
me as the straightforward type who would not waste time on these 
games of hide-and-seek, but try to bring issues into the open and 
deal with them.  Of course, this might not apply to relationships, if 
she feels unsure - see point 1 above.<

1) Ahhh, there *are* no strict dichotomies in the social domain (unlike the physical domain (see Engineering)).  It comes back to where the norm is.  Picture two overlapping bell curves, one for male behaviour, one for female.  Sure, a man could exhibit stereotypically "female" behaviour, but because it's so much further from the approved male norm, it's likely to elicit negative responses, whereas it wouldn't for a woman.  A man who takes great care in grooming and his personal appearance, who is always talking about feelings and relationships and cries easily?  What do you think would happen?  (she asks rhetorically).  Rumours would quickly go about that he was gay (shock horror!), or at least a total wuss (I spell "wuss" with two Ss!).  For a woman exactly the same behaviour would be unremarkable, because it's not as far away from the female norm.

So in answer to David's point 1), I agree that the behaviour I described on the main list could be male or female, but is much closer to the female norm, and therefore much more common in women.  As for the weak/strong, confident/unconfident bit... in the Anglophone world, which sex is the one who is told to be big and brave and strong and (still) gets cast into the role of the sexual aggressor, the one who does the straightforward *asking* stuff?  (just look at Harry strangling those tears!)  Some women can and do do the asking, but as someone mentioned on the main list, a lot of men find this overly forward and threatening (too far from the female norm of being coy and pretty and vulnerable, and waiting for/manipulating *him* into doing the asking; which is of course why women need to be much clueier (?) about psychology and subtle signals). Not all men are put off by this, some would welcome it, but enough are.

Times are changing, but the norms haven't shifted all that much.

2)  I think I mostly answered this on the main list.  As I said, Hermione's principled and straightforward.  She's also an intellectual, which deviates a bit from the female norm, a lot of which she seems to reject (hence Lavender and Parvati's patronising attitude to her "feminine potential").  When playing peacemaker between Ron and Harry she does appear to be trying to bring issues into the open and deal with them.  All the same, intimate/sexual (or pre-sexual) relationships involving oneself are a different kettle of fish, and I wouldn't be surprised if Hermione were a lot less straightforward and open in that department due to lack of experience and confidence (as David suggested).  More the sort of girl who harbours her shameful girly crush in deep secret and stammers it out to him one day, braced for humiliating rejection...

Girly girls like Lavender and Parvati are often very disconcerted when they discover that some men actually fall for intellectual/principled women like Hermione.  It's rather like men's disbelief that women could go for Hugh Grant.  They've been taught that men want girls who are pretty and feminine and sweet and admiring, like *them*, and just cannot fathom why they would be interested in someone who breaks all the rules by being opinionated, intellectual and unglamourous.  Of course, what they're missing is that being principled and straightforward and intellectual are all things which are stereotypically more "male" (with some demographic limits on "intellectual", like level of education, social class, etc.), which some men appreciate and identify with, especially those who dislike what they see as silly female game-playing (like David, perhaps? says Tabouli cheekily, observing a certain disdain in his comment about wasting time on games of hide and seek...:D).

I speak from experience here.  When I was 20, in my Honours Psychology class (comprising 10 men and 16 women), a lot of the women just *hated* me, because I was so intellectually confident (and painfully insecure socially and personally, though they didn't see this) yet still got a lot more male attention than women whom they considered far better-looking and more socially acceptable and worthwhile.  My spies told me that they would sit in groups in the Uni Bar and scathe for hours about how men have no clue and she's a conceited private school rich bitch (? they wouldn't know a private school rich bitch if she blew herbal cigarette smoke at them out of the window of the Mercedes Daddy bought for her 18th on the way to her ski chalet), *what* is the attraction?  My secret was very simple - they were intellectual men, who greatly appreciated a woman who was young and perky, seemingly confident, and an enthusiastic participant in intellectual discussions (yes, sad to say, I was perky at 20.  Irritatingly so).  None of the other women discussed intellectual things out of class at all.  One of the men actually told me that the reason why men felt comfortable discussing anything with me (including their musings on women) was because they didn't really see me as a woman (?) because I had such a "masculine" personality.

Wasn't too sure about this, but it certainly helped me a lot in refining my gender theories...

Tabouli
(whose father was definitely her role model and spent a lot of her childhood imitating his rejection of feminine frivolity, which probably explains it...)


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]