Wednesday, May 13, 2009

“when he went away/ the blues walked in and met me”

We like to have very PC conversation about men keeping women down, women’s ways of doing things and thinking about things as superior to the male approach, equality as sameness, and the like, but current neurological research shows clearly that there are a number of very importance difference between men and women which explain many of the stereotypes we’ve grown accustomed to accepting… men don’t listen, men can’t find things, men only think about sex, men aren’t in touch with their feelings, etc. Things I’m reading and thinking these days make me sit back and evaluate these thoughts in a different light.


I’m into this new thing called a “learning mode”… you know, attempting to approach things in life, the universe, and everything with the idea that I have something to learn from an experience. It has been an exercise in humility, and I think that, as a strong and fiercely independent woman, humility is called for here… here being not just my wee life but search to find ways to understand and serve in God’s grander movement of humanity towards peace and prosperity.


There is a reason that clichés and stereotypes have become clichés and stereotypes. It’s not that they’re always true, but there’s a reason that things stick in our collective head. Apples, for example, do not tend to fall far from the tree, what goes up does tend to come down, and I don’t know about you, but I have found, at least so far, that the rains turn to pours in my life at a moment’s notice.


It leaves me wondering about what else is true, or at least indicative of a predisposition in a certain area. The differences in our brains are interesting. For example, I am told by most of the men in my life that there are times that they’re actually thinking nothing. Nothing. I am fully prepared for this never to be a reality for me. I can safely say that there is never a moment of silence in this head of mine, nor do I know any women for whom this would be false, except in moments of highly practiced meditation, during which I’m sure there must be some sort of thinking going on… mostly because I cannot actually imagine it being truly quiet. Peaceful, yes. Softer, sure. Empty? Thinking nothing? What does that even mean? Freedom from rolling over in the middle of the night to hear some random song from the day playing in your head (this morning it was T-Pain singing “I could put you in a mansion/ way up in Wisconsin/ said it’s nothing you could change your name T-Pain what’s happening”… SO troubling)? Wow. The experience in a body in which that’s not a reality would be so different. I think it’s why I can’t sleep with music on. It’s NEVER quiet in my head, and I always want to sing along, too. Who cares about sleep when you could be singing?


Anyway there are better examples I can think of once my head isn’t so full of other things, but what I’m trying to say is that strengths and weaknesses differ. What would happen if we actually looked at the stereotypes being thrown around and tried to see if what there is to learn... like what if "men don't ask for directions" might also indicate an inherent tendency towards individual initiative and individual investigation of truth. What if we looked at that as a natural predisposition to a strength instead of putting it down? Perhaps we would get farther not always jumping to emasculating our men. I'm not sure how that works, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't look like our current system.


Empowering women isn’t about disempowering men. Something in my wonders if we’re failing our men… like the standard for them must be re-evaluated in light of changes in balancing the wings, but it doesn’t mean that our men become dispossessed of their inherent strengths and skills to which they are predisposed. There has to be a way to empower both wings. Surely God created us complimentary.

3 comments:

Corinne said...

So your post reminded me of how much I used to think about life and the world. And now I just think about math... when I'm not thinking about math, I'm flat tired of thinking! Grad school killed the philosopher in me!
I love you, by the way.

a yates said...

i would bet some money that if a man says he's thinking 'nothing', that it really means he doesn't want to tell you what's on his mind, for any number of reasons. when i say i'm thinking about 'nothing' it means it probably isn't wise to share my thoughts at that time.

Blue Shutters said...

I love you back, Rin. :-)

... and, A Yates, we are each our own rainbow. There are many, many erroneous commonly held beliefs simply because our society is BROKEN. Maybe I've just been listening to too much Amy Winehouse ;-)... and it wouldn't surprise me to learn that yours is a mind that doesn't really slow down either.

Thirdly, THERE ARE SO MANY FREAKING TYPOS IN THIS POST. I'm so annoyed by myself. :-P