It has always seemed to me that young women spend an inordinate amount of time arguing about who and what a real feminist is. I can't tell whose side I'm supposed to be on here.
Men can get temporarily interested in discussing what is real masculine behavior, but usually can't go more than 40 minutes straight, even at a Promisekeepers weekend. This is because pretty rapidly, some guy in the group will reveal himself as an opinionated prick who has no interest in listening to anyone else - often it's the lecturer - and the other guys start wandering away to see if anyone has any beer or cigars or good stories.
Women, OTOH, seem endlessly fascinated by the idea of who has got it right an who hasn't. I think this slows down after children, particularly the second child. The issues which were once so central start to become remote. Beer and cigars and good stories don't become remote. Men are lucky that way.
3 comments:
Which side? Any but Lena's, it appears; you wouldn't want to be anywhere near her side.
There are demonstrable ways to demonstrate or show masculine power.
Feminist power seems to take longer. Such as gender transformation or education unions.
Without the ability to force compliance and union, there's only verbal violence. Which can go on for as long as people are there.
It doesn't seem to require an opinionated lecturer, at least for me.
Perhaps my notions of what a real man is were formed already when growing up, and there's some resistance to changing it. (Except insofar as real-life experience has changed me--there's been a bit of that...)
Or perhaps there is something built-in about self-reliance and not asking directions.
Or perhaps its because the lecturers so often seem to have (perhaps because of time constraints) an oversimplified model of how families work and I tune them out as naive.
I never did get into Promise Keepers. I attended day 1 of one--stuffed shredded paper in my ears to reduce the din. The sports rally model isn't my cup of tea, I can't say I learned anything I wasn't reminded of regularly anyway, and I have no idea how you can make friends with anybody new in a stamping mill--not that striking up friendships has ever been that easy for me.
.................
WRT Lena. I wasn't very familiar with her, though bits of "news" about her did get past the firewall from time to time. I googled her image, and for some reason was reminded of Twiggy. Some of the most famous images of Twiggy showed her looking defenseless and almost afraid--or at least it seems so to me. The more formal pictures of Lena seem to have the same aura. Is this something about the women in question, or something about the aesthetics in the modeling business? Granted, some of the latter's glamor images portray women with the "I wouldn't spit on you if you were on fire" attitude. Since I gather most of the images are aimed at women, I wonder what that's supposed to evoke...
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