Ok, this is a little sketchy and something i started working on a while ago and never got to finishing. So excuse the flimsiness, especially of the latter half of the argument. Time permitting and fortune smiling, I will someday flesh it out. In the meantime, consider it a rant come wandering discourse.
It’s funny to see how boys react when you mention that they’re opressed. The way they rear up in sheer outrage would do credit to any Victorian virgin worth her salt. Their reactions are, tellingly, so instantly outraged and defensive, but that doesn’t seem to strike them as significant. If feminism as a political movement eventually generated awareness of socially constructed roles on a pan-gender scale, and led to movements like queer theory, it seems, somehow, somewhere, to have skipped (or been actively resisted by) your average heterosexual male. Not only are most (relatively intelligent – no irony intended) boys quite unaware of how gender roles shape and dictate their reactions and responses, they are invariably averse to any nudges towards thinking in that direction. To quite an extent, I believe girls growing up today in a doddering patriarchal setup like ours face lesser pressure, and enjoy more freedom to explore and define themselves. For one, of course, the insidious forces of this hegemony have been stripped to the bones under the critical/relentless microscopes of feminist theorizing. The act of collusion with the system then, for a woman, becomes, and cannot help but be, a self-aware/conscious act. Though many people like to dismiss feminism as the deranged/ extreme mutterings of a bunch of overzealous females with over-active imaginations (and, as if this were the last word in insults, who obviously aren’t getting any) it undeniably provides one with interesting insights even on this reaction itself. For me, its significance as a critical/political stance lies less in the answers it posits (insightful, hysterical or otherwise) and more in the questions it raises. By bringing into the arena of study Gender Construction and its socio-political origins, impact and repercussions, feminism has rendered an invaluable service to humanity, and the way it perceives itself.
Why its even more imperative now to keep the boys in line: as the system crumbles – crashes and burns gloriously in this age where, as Gore Vidal put it, ‘machines are essential for survival, men are redundant’ (or something to the effect…), boys find themselves (or don’t find themselves, as I am arguing) defending the last bastion.
Willing victims – why boys collude. Why they’re more indoctrinated, feel obliged as favoured insider recipients of the system – ‘works in our favour or so we’re told’
Why boys always look for mother-figures – so comfortable with/used to the idea of being looked after, taken care of, and being told what to do with themselves. Looking for approval, peer groups – comfort and confirmation in conformity – even the rebels tend to congregate, and loners long to communicate, if only to assert/express/explain their steppenwolfian condition of being/mode of existence. Girls outgrow, and never really understand why boys will always need to gang up to make fun of another guy, why they will kiss-and-tell, given half a chance, and why their public image will always be of paramount importance. Rituals of male-bonding. Boys are like Berkeley’s doubtful tree in the forest: if no one hears the sound, did they ever really fall?
2 comments:
Berkeley? I thought it was the quintessential Zen paradox!
dunno, never did read any dhyana phil... and the west with its tendencies to claim everything as a 'discovery', means you think they originated everything.
Post a Comment