not much. But, being the OP, I did want to say a bit to wrap things up. However, as you yourself very sympathetically told me recently, sometimes women hesitate to speak up in situations like this because of the likelihood that they will be labeled as "humorless, over sensitive, aggressive, shrill and so on." Or, as seemed to be the case in this thread, likened to exploding mines that Moksha would like to agree to ignore so he can get back to pretending he's "normal." Or something like that.
To avoid that, uh, minefield, (groan....) I thought I would just instead just quote a couple of thoughts that I really appreciated seeing here, and that really bear repeating.
And the follow-up:Res Ipsa wrote: ↑Sun Apr 18, 2021 4:33 pmMy dear penguin,
The problem with suggestion is that it implies that women are so irrational that no rational human male could ever figure out what they want. It also places a burden on the women to figure out a set of rules to teach men how to be decent human beings. Why should women be saddled with the responsibility of teaching grown men to be decent humans.
It’s not really that hard. Get used to thinking of yourself as a human being who doesn’t want to cause unnecessary pain to your fellow human beings. View women as human beings. Not men, because some of the ways men treat each other are pretty awful. As fellow humans. Listen to what your fellow humans say. When they talk about sexism understand that they are talking about harm.
That will take care of the vast majority of the situations you’ll run into in every day life. The boundaries are fuzzy, and it’s tough to know exactly where the boundaries are if you try to push as close to the boundary as you can. So, stay a step or two back from the boundary. And when someone expresses hurt, apologize for hurting them (because your a decent human being who doesn’t want to unnecessarily harm fellow human beings) and try to understand why your fellow human being felt harmed.
I am not holding myself out as a great example. But when I try to do this, I think I’m a better human being than when I don’t.
(I have a new suggestion, my dear penguin, just read these two posts, oh, let's say 50 times each. Then you won't need to upset your Mommy by asking her for a list of what NOT to say to her fellow women. I am just guessing here, but something tells me the Penguin Queen would NOT be amused.Res Ipsa wrote: ↑Sun Apr 18, 2021 5:52 pm“Normal” is part of the problem. I’m reading a recent biography of Sylvia Plath. What’s striking in the early part of the book is how “normal” did so much damage to bright and talented young women. Sylvia’s parents were, as they say, wicked smart. Her father wrote a famous treatise on bees. When they married, they planned to work as a partnership in research and publishing. But after marriage, Otto forgot about the plan, and expected Auriel (sp?) to be a normal housewife and mother, abandoning her career plans. So, she did: she was a housewife, mother, and supported her husband’s career at night, doing all the support work a great man needed to publish a leading treatise on bees.
Normal is simply what most people do and expect. Our normal is heavily influenced by deep seated gender norms that treat what men do and how men think as normal. Think of what normal includes over history. Normal does not mean good. Instead of going back to normal, shouldn’t we try to go forward to better?
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