Posted by Julia from dhcp100049.res-hall.northwestern.edu (199.74.100.49) on Thursday, June 13, 2002 at 12:35PM :
In Reply to: Feminism Was Never For This posted by panch from pool0343.cvx20-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net (209.179.251.88) on Thursday, June 13, 2002 at 11:58AM :
wow, the sociologist in you is totally taking over your posts. A lot of what you said can be true, but sometimes you can't extrapolate from a theory and use it to describe individual situations. You have all these theories about women and men which in some cases may be true, but it definitely does not immediately translate into describing my life or Lilly's. I think it is fair to say that both Lilly and I have pretty good boyfriends who don't fit your schema on relations between the genders.
Friedan and Steinem did a lot for my generation...men and women have somewhat changed their attitudes. But we are far from living in a truly equitable society...there is still a gender gap in income...and higher education...and in internal labor markets...
but there is something that draws two people together, and that's simply love, which in my experience is a little less sociological than you make it :)
Maybe us goils were socialized to want affection from a man. Maybe we read one too many magazines that described the perfect man, or shared anecdotes about women with great partners. That kind of socialization is a part of all women, and men also experience some kind of socialization about what their masculinity means and how that differs from femininity..
You could say all that and you could go into your rant about us goils and all...but you forget that sometimes people want to be close to others. I know i want to have a close relationship with my parents, my female friends, my male friends...loving and being loved.
I think if you have been loved, especially by your parents, it is hard to not go out and love others. Its a basic human impulse, it is gender, age, race- blind.
I don't know about Alli, but I seriously see my boyfriend as my best friend. He's the person I want to exchange sarcastic comments with at the movies and he's the person I want to call up when I read something in the news, I prefer his company to almost anyone. He encourages me, I encourage him. We identify with each other's insecurities and we help each other...we both share the same religious beliefs and we both want to live for the standards in those religious beliefs....
I think nowaydays love is a bit more simple than you made it out to be. People love spending time with other people; and sometimes that translates into this love for another human being. There are all kinds of societal pressures that shape who we are, and biological ones (nature nurture..) but sometimes its not as complicated.
I'm sure that's more than you wanted to know...but i feel like love is not as complicated as you make it to be. Maybe when i get older and I experience the world the way you did..i might have a different opinion. But for now, I feel like Lilly and I are quite lucky to have good men in our lives...who are first our best friends before they are organisms driven by their sexual male instincts..or their fear of not being anything female-like.
-- Julia
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