I'll take my chances. I forgot how nice romance is.
Men and women often can look in the same direction but see two completely different things. A man might see a football game and see pride in their alma mater, a sense of brotherhood, a passion passed on to them from their father, and so on. A woman might see that same game and be consumed by boredom. On the other hand, a woman might buy a pair of shoes and it will give her a new sense of confidence, discussion and comparison with her peers. I, however, am wearing the same pair of black shoes I bought at Macy's four years ago. There is something about turning 24 though that above all other examples separates the males from the females. Forgive my obvious male bias but when a man turns 24, it is just another birthday. To most women, it is something much more grave. In the past year, many of my friends have become engaged. To them, I wish them a lifetime of happiness. Men will view the announcement of a friend's engagement with joy and happiness. Ostensibly women will do the same. However, inside with every announcement, a tiny piece of their heart has died. It is a contest in which they are losing and some other girl has won. It matters not that the guy that proposed to their friend is a jerk. She still won and I have still lost. After numerous discussions on the subject, to women, 24 is the first time in their lives when they are no longer young. They are full grown women; and yes they have many things on their mind with friends, family, work, et cetera, but something that was always in the back of their mind has crept up and slapped them (hard!) on their face. Of course I am talking about becoming engaged. This morning I talked with an intelligent, charming woman who was bemoaning the fact that she was the only person she knew not engaged and that if she was not engaged by 26, then she must be considered damaged goods. My attempts at flattery and just plain listening were met with cantankerous snarls of, "You don't understand! You're a man!" Fair enough. I took one women's studies course in college and that hardly prepares me to call myself experienced in the wiring of the female brain. I am not saying I have an answer to this or why men and women view this so differently. I am just recording an observation.
1. It has been a nice weekend so far. Last night Andrew and Mike went to this new restaurant in Minneapolis called Seven. It was pricey but good. I really liked their upstairs bar area a lot. I am not really in the position to be paying $7 for a rum and coke, but if being in a cool atmosphere surrounded by beautiful people is fun for you, then you would like Seven. After we ate, we did a bit of barhopping. Had a drink at Bootleggers, had a couple shots at Brothers, and capped off the evening at Sneaky Pete's. I woke up this morning, felt good, went for a jog, picked up my Dad from church, watched the Gopher spring game, watched the draft, and had a nice dinner with the family. So far so good.
2. I can't stand that the Vikings drafted Percy Harvin. He is top ten talent wise but he is an arrogant, stupid prick. I understand we are not assembling the Mormon Tabernacle men's choir, however, I still want to cheer for a good group of men. Plus, let's not forget that Harvin was consistently injured while a Florida Gator.
3. Currently listening to Happy Together by The Flobots.
posted by cyclonejohn @ 10:47 AM
9 Comments:
yay Flobots!
Best of Luck with Percy...
We'll need it.
Wow. I would call you sexist, but clearly the women you know are enablers - I almost I can't blame you for the totally backwards and deeply insulting thinking about gender that you have just shared with us.
But rest assured, John, that the women you know are not what all women are like. Most of us are just like regular people. Some of us even like football. Some of us are even proud of our alma maters and feel a kinship with our fellow alums when we witness or hear about a major achievement, be it a sports win or a professor winning a Nobel. I myself own several pairs of shoes that I've owned for at least a decade. I only own one pair of jeans that doesn't have holes. I wear make-up once every couple of months and then, just mascara and only for special occasions. I recently broke up with a sweet, wonderful, loving, devoted, supportive boyfriend to make more time for my career and life goals. I am nearly 25, and I don't intend to be engaged for a very, very long time because I am still very young and and I have a lot to learn and to do before I'm prepared, emotionally or financially or experientially, to make a lifelong commitment to anyone or to anything.
Despite being practically on my deathbed, I feel pretty good about myself. I'm smart, curious, thoughtful, educated, ambitious, and attractive (and, despite my wrinkles, my fractured hip, and the risk that my eggs are drying up - rendering me completely useless - I can actually still connive a man into looking at me once in awhile). I hope to have casual, safe sex with several good-looking, adventurous, and respectful men in the next few years while devoting most of my time to making friends, maintaining friendships by having fun with my friends, and pursuing experiences and knowledge that I believe will help me to become the person I want to be and do the things I want to do with my life. If and when I DO get engaged, it will mean that my fiance knew better than to buy me an engagement ring, because if he had, I would've said no. Unless we're both going to wear one, I'm not going to wear one. I don't need to be tagged like a cow to show that I'm "off the market."
One of my very best and oldest friends is getting married this spring, and, aside from being a little bit freaked out about the fact that, at only 25, she's made a decision that will last the rest of her life, I'm incredibly happy for her. Her fiance is such a good guy. He loves her and he cares about her and he wants only to support her in whatever it is that will make her happy. She is one of my best friends and I love her, and I've seen her go through some shit. I am so thrilled that she's found a relationship that is stable and that she can rely upon, and that her fiance has the good sense to adore her and to uplift her and to listen to her and to make the decision to spend the rest of his life with her. Not a cell of me died when I heard she was engaged. I felt the place where love lives in me lift up and expand. She is happy, and she is loved, and that is no less than everything she deserves. And I felt this all while having ovaries.
I suggest that you rethink your understanding of gender, John. It's the only fair way to deal with the women and the men you care about.
First off, I am hardly an expert on the female gender. I was less offering concrete facts but more offering an observation. Your comments, although sardonic, are always appreciated. However, you are in the minority in your viewpoints. Of course not all women are freaking out about marriage at our age. At the same time, there are plenty of men who feel pressure to propose. Trust me as a man who has had pressure from numerous sides to propose in my life. Let's just take your view on engagement rings. Although I would agree with you in principle, the thinking that an engagement ring is simply the tagging on an animal is fairly radical. I can be fairly accused of many faults. I have at times even said blatantly sexist things and I acknowledge that. However, this time I feel pretty safe. Even you must admit that your views on the subject align much more closely to the traditional male than to the traditional woman. My goal of this post was not to say that one point of view was right and one was wrong. I was simply stating that the heavy majority of women I know have changed dramatically their viewpoints regarding marriage while my male friends have for the most part remained unchanged. I am not judging anyone's viewpoints on the subject because again, I hated when people judged me in the past for my "fear of committment". I am simply calling it as I see it.
I would agree that my views on engagement rings are particularly radical, and I will even admit that I think there is more to engagement rings than that. I don't personally want to partake of the custom, but I understand that many women - progressive, self-possessed women - embrace it, and I can see why. There are some really lovely elements to it.
I do not, however, agree with your statements that "most women" view turning 24 as a grave event, nor that "most women" view engagement as a competition. Like I said, as far as I can tell the women you know (aside from me, of course, and maybe people like Elsa and Anna Kendig, Annika Jones and Sam Markey, though I admit I don't know these women well anymore) are straight out of the dark ages. I don't know women like this. I don't know men, aside from you, who feel or have felt pressured to propose. Most of my friends are in their late 20s or early 30s, and many of them are male. Some are married (to people of both genders), some are not. Some have kids, some do not. Some are engaged, some are completely single. They are all where they are in their lives because it's right for them.
Furthermore, I emphatically disagree that my views are "traditionally male." In fact, I think you hit on something really important when you use the word "tradition." Traditionally, women were goods to be traded - marriage was an economic contract between two men. Traditionally, women could not work (not because they had no abilities - because they were not allowed) and had to rely on their father or a husband to support them literally so they could survive. Traditionally, women were not educated and were expected not to engage in serious conversation with men. I don't agree with these ideas, and I don't think you do, either. But the world has a long history of treating women as less than equal to men, of having value only as pawns passed between men to be used as sexual objects and breeders. To know this, as I know you do, and yet not to see the link between that history and women who feel that they are "damanged goods" if they are not engaged young, is a failure of imagination. We lived and live in a sexist society. You SHOULD be judging these viewpoints. When you hear an intelligent, charming woman talking as though she has no worth outside a wedding ring, you SHOULD be asking why she feels this way. You should not take it at face value; you should not assume that she was just born this way, and you DEFINITELY should not assume that because she feels this way, all women feel this way. If you go out to dinner with her and she says she likes Chinese food, does that mean that when you and I go out to dinner you assume I like Chinese food too? No. So why would you assume that, just because we (presumably) share similar sexual organs, we have the same view of ourselves and marriage? To link someone's uncontrollable trait - gender - to controllable, changeable, personal viewpoints - marriage, career, self-worth, football - is prejudiced and therefore oppressive. You know a few women in this world, some of whom happen to have - according to you - similar views on the purpose of marriage, the appropriate age for engagement, etc. You do not know all of us, so you cannot say what we all believe. We are individuals, with unique genetics, family histories, experiences, tastes and viewpoints. So are men. Please honor that and do not assume you know my beliefs and preferences because I have a trait I cannot control - my femaleness.
I don't disagree with you. I think it is absurd that I have had at least half a dozen discussions with "women living in the dark ages" that think they are "damaged goods" if they are not proposed to by 26. I have had zero similar discussions with me. No where did I write that it is a logical point of view to think you are worthless if you are not engaged by a certain age. In the same way I think eating disorders are absurd but it doesn't make me sexist to say that I know of many more female friends who have battled the disease then men. Do men suffer from eating disorders? Of course. Do all women have eating disorders? Of course not. My quasi-sexist start of my blog post regarding shoes and football was simply to highlight that men and women can look at the same thing and come to different conclusions. Of course two women could see the same thing and come to different conclusions. They were clumsy examples; I will give you that. Also, I am not disagreeing that marriage has had a terribly sexist past. I know you know I know that. Why I wrote this blog was simply to ask why strong, educated, progressive women in 2009 have come to this conclusion. Again, I do not claim to be any sort of expert on women's studies... far from it. You used the Chinese food example so let me go with that. If six of my female friends all call me up and say that they love Chinese food and every single man I have spoken to about food finds Chinese food confusing and unappealing, is it outrageous to write that women and men view food differently? Men and women are different genders with different needs, wants, and desires. I was simpling offering an observation from the small sampling size I gathered.
Your post did not remotely read like a question to me. I did not get out of it that you are struggling with why this negative feeling should plague educated 21st century women.
I disagree that men and women hvae different needs, wants and desire - based on biology. Women and men are socialized radically differently in nearly every society in the world. I have studied the biology of sex and gender and there is little evidence to show that there are inherent biological differences between men and women that should define their behavior and attitudes. Even if there were scientifically rigorous studies done showing that MOST women, for example, desire an early marriage based on biology rather than socialization, and if those results were rigorously tested and held up (and I haven't seen those), it is still not fair to assume that women desire early marriage, because the results show that MOST women did. It is unfair to expect that any individual will hold up to any expectation or predetermined role based on uncontrollable factors. No woman lives up to all the expectations of being a woman, and no man lives up to all the expectations of being a man. It is oppressive to believe that a man who watches football, drinks beer, hangs out with his buddies and likes fast cars should not cry or is less of a man if he does. It is oppressive to believe that a woman who buys shoes, picks flowers, cries at movies and loves babies should not aggressively pursue a career as a cop, or that she's less of a woman if she does. It's racist to assume that Asian kids are good at math. What about the poor Asian kid who just doesn't get it, who finds it dull, who would rather be in a band? He suffers more because he is defying the role that society has set for him, yet why should he? There's nothing wrong with sucking at math and being in a band, no matter your ethnic background. It is prejudiced and oppressive to hold anyone to any particular traits because of a factor they cannot control.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oftOCN1jkNo&feature=related
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