I wish we could find a way to teach our sons that women aren't lesser or even necessarily weaker. We are stronger in some ways, and undoubtedly weaker in others. But the "lens" here can't be, "compared to a man".Points on which I agree:
Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could see being fully human as a spectrum, along which men tend to position here and women there, but in which - as we mature and grow - the area of overlap grows too?
I always thought that was the entire purpose of marriage: for men and women to teach each other how to be better rounded, more flexible, wiser?
1) We should find a way to teach boys to think of women that doesn't convey that women are "lesser." That's very important, especially if we want boys to consider the woman's interests as something for which they should (at least occasionally) set their own interests aside.
2) There are senses of the words "stronger" and "weaker" in which it can be said that women are stronger than men.
3) The lens shouldn't be "compared to a man," but rather we should teach them to understand that there is an independent and valid perspective they should respect.
4) Part of the purpose of marriage is the unity of husband and wife, which is the only way to experience the fullness of human nature. That's one of St. Thomas Aquinas' three "ends" of marriage.
5) As men age, the natural decline in testosterone reduces one of the major factors that result in very different experiences of the world between men and women. Thus, it makes sense to speak of older men as being better able to understand women's perspective.
Points on which I don't agree:
1) "Being fully human as a spectrum" is only a wonderful thing to teach if it's true, and there are problems with the model. It seems like a lot of people think that way today, which is why you read journalists writing without irony about a man "transitioning to a woman" as if he were transitioning from one job to another. That can't be right, though: at the end of the process, what you will have is not a woman but a surgically altered male who is taking artificial hormones his body won't ever produce on its own. Whether this is in any sense a woman is a topic we've discussed at length, but it seems to me that the only available answers are that there is never a woman or there was always a woman. The idea of transitioning along a spectrum doesn't seem defensible.
2) The lens in a sense has to be "compared to a man" insofar as we are talking about how to raise sons. The very thing we need them to understand is that there's a contrast between the world they live in and the world a woman lives in -- and that requires talking about how their experience compares to hers. That's a problem, given that we agree in the goal in (3) above, but it's a problem we need to grapple with.
3) I think Aquinas is right that the understanding of human nature across the sex divide is not the "entire purpose" of marriage, but rather part of the purpose of marriage. I'm not sure this is a serious difference -- Cass may have been using "entire purpose" for emphasis, rather than being committed to the position literally.
4) As women age, they also endure significant changes in their hormone structures that alter their perspectives in all new ways that men don't experience and need to learn to understand by communication and intimacy. We don't grow closer by nature, in other words; one difference diminishes, a new one appears.
5) Even granting agreement on point (4), we can't rely on marriage to solve this problem because it will generally occur after the period in which misunderstandings are most dangerous. It may be the eventual and complete solution, but we still need an interim approach.
So, all that said --
What should you teach your sons about women?
First of all, love this post (and I'm honored you thought my comment was worth addressing).
ReplyDeleteOn your #1, I don't think men can transition into women (or vice versa). It's more that I don't see being male/female as entirely binary. Women, to be better people, IMO *need* to develop parts of their natures that are more traditionally thought of as "masculine", but are really present in both sexes but more developed in men as well as supported naturally by testosterone.
And I believe that men, to be better people, really *need* to develop their full, human natures too: including those parts of themselves that are traditionally thought of as "feminine", but are really present in both sexes but more developed in women as well as supported naturally by hormones like oxytocin, progesterone, and [gasp!] even estrogen.
Biologically, we both have all these hormones and men can't even *make* testosterone without estrogen :p It's pretty well documented that the best leaders are those who can fluidly use both their feminine and masculine traits. And they won't necessarily be expressed in the same way - I'm not suggesting that men emote endlessly (to be fair, I don't know many women who do that) or women start strutting around picking fights with other people to establish dominance (again, an extreme I've rarely seen IRL).
I also disagree with your #2, at least as you've phrased it. "Man", quite literally, is not and should not be the measure of all things (especially, "What humanity looks like"). Men have "a" perspective, but it ain't the entire perspective. More like a piece of a larger puzzle. And girls need to learn the very same thing about men - they're not broken women, but people in their own right with an equally valid way of looking at things.
Now, how can we negotiate so we both get enough of what we want?
One more thing: my perspective on changing hormone balances as we age is that they actually bring us closer together.
ReplyDeleteIt's far easier for me to understand how my husband reacts now that I have less estrogen in my system, and he says the reverse is definitely true for him.
Again, a welcome enhancement, not a problem to be fixed. Which is probably what nature intended.
It's more that I don't see being male/female as entirely binary. Women, to be better people, IMO *need* to develop parts of their natures that are more traditionally thought of as "masculine", but are really present in both sexes but more developed in men as well as supported naturally by testosterone.
ReplyDeleteWhen you say, "traditionally thought of," and "really present in both sexes," to me that ends any need to see male / female as other than binary.
When we talk about things "traditionally thought of" as male or female traits, I think it's better to just name them and leave the gender judgments out entirely.
E.g., I don't need to learn feminine traits; I need to learn how to employ empathy better in my life as a man. If I do that, I'm just as much a man as I was before. I haven't become more female. The fact that empathy may be more often associated with women than men is irrelevant to my actual gender, I think.
I also think it would be better to just say, as you do, that these things are present in everyone, and stop associating traits with one gender only. There's no problem in saying 'men have more of this trait, women more of that,' is there?
I don't need to learn feminine traits; I need to learn how to employ empathy better in my life as a man. If I do that, I'm just as much a man as I was before. I haven't become more female. The fact that empathy may be more often associated with women than men is irrelevant to my actual gender, I think.
ReplyDeleteI also think it would be better to just say, as you do, that these things are present in everyone, and stop associating traits with one gender only. There's no problem in saying 'men have more of this trait, women more of that,' is there?
I couldn't agree with you more, Tom.
When raising our boys, I didn't talk to them about "acting like men" at all. Nor did my husband. We *did* talk to them about honor, integrity, decency, kindness/generosity, the need to understand that the world doesn't revolve around them or their desires, and that other people deserve to be treated well most of the time.
I never saw the need to put male/female labels on it. They saw that I had to be strong in my daily life: not to whine when my husband left for a year, leaving me to handle everything (or when I had to move again after just getting settled and making friends) but just to do my duty quietly and well.
As did my husband, who wasn't always thrilled either.
It wasn't so much male or female as just acting like a grownup.
Cass:
ReplyDeleteI agreed to your point about lenses in (3). The disagreement point (2) is pedagogical. To teach a boy, you have to start with what he knows. What he knows is his experience. So you have to start with that lens to get outside of it. It's tricky.
I will be teaching them that it is going to be up to THEM to change, to understand, and to do all those things because women are perfect in understanding and apprehension who cannot possibly benefit from doing any of those things as well, and we poor benighted malesare, after all, just defective and imperfect women.
ReplyDeleteOh, wait. Society, especially the obscenity known as feminism, will be happy to do this for me. So much so that this assumption will be invisible, and it will be considered shocking to even mention it.
The disagreement point (2) is pedagogical. To teach a boy, you have to start with what he knows. What he knows is his experience. So you have to start with that lens to get outside of it. It's tricky.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure I agree, Grim. Somehow I managed to raise two sons who are both very happily married without having the slightest idea of what it is like to be male.
It simply wasn't necessary to "understand" them - just to teach them to be decent people.
My husband just wasn't around. And when he was, he didn't spend any time that I ever observed focusing on how a male child or teen sees the world.
The entire point was that no one (comment above notwithstanding) has the right to expect to get all their own way in life, and we have to be able to get along with other people to succeed in school, in life, in marriage, in our careers.
The world at large isn't going to take time to understand you. I may be misunderstanding your point, but my sons were complete bookends - as unlike each other as they could be. And yet the same tactic worked with both - focus on external behavior, not internal motivations, desires, or perspectives.
If you do that, the rest naturally follows.
And FWIW, saying it wasn't necessary to understand my sons to teach them how to get along with other people doesn't mean I don't think parents *should* try to understand their children.
ReplyDeleteJust that it's not an essential requirement. I frequently did not understand my oldest son in particular, even though he's more like me in temperment than my youngest.
Again, I may be misunderstanding you, but I don't believe everything has to be oriented around a child. Parents are supposed to be teaching them about the world, which very much does NOT revolve around them and how they see things.
That's arguably one of the fundamental lessons children need to learn: your boss doesn't see things from your perspective. Get over it - sometimes you need to bend over backwards to see things from a completely different perspective (and one beyond your experience).
Ugh. long day.
ReplyDelete*shouldn't" try to understand their children...
Ok, so this is a good thing. I asked "What should you teach your sons about women?" I was thinking that the answer would embrace teaching them to think outside their perspective, which would mean first starting with their perspective and then showing them ways in which they can't expect it to be shared by everyone. Helping them to identify differences and understand how other people experience the same reality.
ReplyDeleteBut you're proposing another possible answer: just teach them how to treat women in an outer way, and let them work it out themselves via experiences such as a long marriage. That's a much easier task for parents, because it's really hard to teach people to think outside the world they've experienced directly.
I think so, too.
ReplyDeleteI've known my husband since just before my 18th birthday. There are still things I don't understand about him, and vice versa, because (as you're always saying) sometimes our experience of the world is so different that it's not entirely possible to fully understand each other's perspective.
I still do try to understand, and so does he, but with the proviso that the best we can do may be only to get into the right ballpark.
What I told my sons when they started dating was pretty much focused on outer behavior and circumstances. I did try to explain basic drives somewhat and how they can differ for men/women. I didn't tell them they should protect their girlfriends *because* they're women, but I did tell them that both partners should be looking out for each other (women by not tempting a man into reckless behavior and not using sex to entrap/push him into commitment, men by understanding that for women sex and love are often linked, and by not tempting her into reckless behavior that will literally change her life in a way it usually doesn't for men).
If two people don't care about each other at least that much, they have no business having sex at all. And both parters have a non-delegatable and absolute duty to prevent unplanned pregnancy.
No ifs, ands, or buts.
Oh, and just as an aside: how much you wanna bet the "rapist" (!) in the linked cartoon above didn't bother to use birth control?
ReplyDeleteOne could argue that she didn't either, but there's no easy 'spur of the moment' b/c method for women, and by her account at least she was not planning on having sex that night and (again, according to her) actually said "no".
They're both abdicating a big responsibility, but who comes off worse here? I'm still not sure I buy off on him being a rapist at all.
"But you're proposing another possible answer: just teach them how to treat women in an outer way, and let them work it out themselves via experiences such as a long marriage. That's a much easier task for parents, because it's really hard to teach people to think outside the world they've experienced directly. "
ReplyDeleteThe drawback being, it takes time- significant time. Maybe it's still best to give them the opportunity to learn from our experiences first.
I've always been of the school that it's best to teach the reasons underlying the rules, and not just the rules, when possible.