One of the greatly appreciated comments on a recent blog asked why I believed something to be only true about boys when it is/could be true about girls as well. This is a frequently asked question and I keep pondering how I can answer it honestly and with some succinctness.
The strongest feeling I have about this is that I am not primarily interested in how boys and girls differ from each other. I am sure they do differ greatly and I am equally sure that we have no way of saying how. I studied philosophy and religion for years. And if there is one outcome that I feel unhesitatingly convinced about then it is the problems we invite in when we essentialize.
Essentialization is, linguistically speaking, an unescapable datum of human existence. Every time we use some form of "to be" in a sentence we are referring to "essence" (the Latin translation of "to be" is "esse"). The problem with essentialization is that it wants to claim something as solid and unshakable truth every time it is used and about everything in its purview. However, when we make essential statements about say boys and girls or males and females or anything in the world at all we commit a logical error. This leaves us with the difficult proposition that, in order to speak truthfully about any subject, we will have to relentlessly revise what we're saying about that subject.
This is the answer to this problem that brings us close to the absurd itself.
There is another, more practical response. It goes like this: I am writing about boys and males not to distinguish them from girls and females. No, I am writing about them because I believe that in our culture we're guilty of stereotyping males in ways that render them lifeless, uninteresting, moronic and one-dimensional. I believe that as a culture we have spent centuries on understanding women (not always favorably, true, and often by men themselves, also true), but we have largely failed to describe and understand men. I also believe that we are a culture that is afraid of males. (For good reasons, you may say. Isn't the proportion of males who commit violent crimes much higher than that of women?) Yes, you're right about that. But if it's true, then isn't it about time we investigate this with a higher goal in mind than simply to say "boys will be boys?"
My hope is that I can spark in my readers a new curiosity about males. My hope is that, instead of judging the 10 year old who threatens his peers or instead of dismissing the 50 year old who seems to have become too routine or perhaps arrogant, we begin to wonder about them, ask questions and understand the complexity of their existence.
6 comments:
I think there is a lot of resistance to challenging the stereotypes, so much is invested in them. It's so difficult but so important. Please keep doing it.
I agree that we haven't done much work on defining boys/men. I think the problem is that for many centuries women's roles were narrowly defined (domestic/mothering/weaker), so male was defined as "everything that's not female." And it was a big, inviting definition. But now that women's roles have expanded to include most of the positive aspects of manhood, the definition of male as "what's not female" is a small and not very appealing definition.
This really makes me think. I get together regularly with friends who are "feminists" and a couple of us have boys. We discuss ways to deal with a male dominated society, but I fear I have been remiss in really trying to understand males since I had my girl. Hmm. This may be why my middle child feels "girls are better than boys". I guess in my attempt to make my daughter feel "empowered" in our society I have made my sons feel like second class citizens in our family.
I ended up here by accident and am stunned by the superficiality and, quite simply, utter lack of historical knowledge that would lead to statements such as "we have spent centuries trying to understand women..." and "we as a culture are afraid of males."
The briefest glance through western history would expose such comments as utterly devoid of nuance or complexity at best, and agenda-driven and simple-minded at worst.
My quest for a more sophisticated discourse on how to understand males and females with parity continues...
Good luck on your quest. Yes, there are more subtle, complex, historical things to say about trying to understand males and females with parity. But just because the discourse may not be on the "edge of sophistication" does not take away its value. I think it's more important to get people to consider this topic at all than to worry so much about whether it's honed to a fine point.
No matter how intractable the problem, curiosity is always available. It is the universal solvent.
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