quote:It shows, in short, the real world of women, because in that world, with rare exceptions, men are only visitors or, perhaps, landed immigrants. Men have enormous power over the lives (and thoughts and dreams) of women -- even women who have no use for men. But the actual community most women live in -- even predators like Crystal Allen -- consists almost entirely of other women.
I accidentally posted this before making a comment on it. Maybe I'm just an odd-ball, but I'm not so sure this is true.
Then again, maybe all my reasons for not living my real life among women have to do with women in the end, but I am not sure that is the same thing. That is, once I got to a certain point in marriage, or maybe it was after my mom had listened to a certain amount of Dr. Laura, I was forbidden to "rag" about my husband to my mother. Later, I stopped feeling like ragging on my husband helped.
I guess one of the things I like about the Hatrack community is that it includes men. Of course, my husband isn't one of those men, but that's because he doesn't like writing or even chatting in print.
I am closer to one of my sisters than most anyone else in the world, but I don't know if that's because we are women. My husband's two youngest siblings, who are a brother sister pair, have a similar closeness, almost as if they were twins.
Anyway, I just think it was an odd mythology (which does not necessarily mean untrue) for Card to embrace. Again, it may just be me. In any case, I guess it's a good review in that I am fairly warned that I probably won't get this movie.
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Among the women I know, the exceptions to the rule Card described are not rare. Of course, I'm basing that on what I know about them. I suppose they could be hiding the real community they inhabit.
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I've thought of a number of reasons I don't really have girlfriends. One is probably that when I was 18, I had a close group of friends but when my boyfriend and I broke up, he started dating one of this group. Maybe this just proves that deep down, I wish for such relationships even though I don't have them.
It may go further back, to how my parent's divorce affected my attachment to men. I'm also, in reality, a very private person. I tend to have one good friend at a time. Maybe I'm just introverted.
I was thinking about the movie "Stand by me" and how at the end the writer says "never again in my life did I have friends the way I did when I was twelve..." Maybe it's a thing men go through at puberty that makes the whole friend thing tricky for them. Not just in a homophobic sense, but that their self-worth is more bound up in achievement rather than relationships. At least, that's some mumbo jumbo from Deborah Tannen land.
I don't think self worth should be based in relationships, ultimately.
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"I was thinking about the movie "Stand by me" and how at the end the writer says "never again in my life did I have friends the way I did when I was twelve..." Maybe it's a thing men go through at puberty that makes the whole friend thing tricky for them...their self-worth is more bound up in achievement rather than relationships. At least, that's some mumbo jumbo..."
I think that the writer (Stephen King) meant that men's friendships are closer at age 12 than before or after. I believe you didn't quite catch his meaning. That's my take on it. I am not so sure that the reason men's friendships aren't as close is entirely due to the dichotomy of achievement vs. relationships. I think a lot of it is simply being too busy with wife/girlfriend/kids/church/whatever to do the kind of hanging out you do at age 12. Adult males have less to bond over than 12-year-old males. My friends at age 12 were in all the same classes as me, played on the same school sports teams as me, had to read the same books for English, etc. We all live in different places now, work in different fields, have different lifestyles, different wives/girlfriends, and there's a little less daily shared experience. I think the "too busy" part is far more the issue, though, but that may not be true. Just my thoughts.
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My best friend is a male. I don't think there is anything I don't feel comfortable talking to him about (I used to gripe about breastfeeding to him). That being said, when I got pregnant, I found my relationship with women strengthening.
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My friends all the way into junior year of high school were all males, but of course I was nice to girls too, just didn't hang out with them. My best friend is a male and we still hang out today, in fact we hung out just yesterday. Senior year of high school though I decided I desperately wanted a girlfriend, (which in some weird dichotomy didn't stop me from rejecting a handful of girls who were willing to fill the position, so I remained desperately in need of one, yet I wasn't without reservations, I dunno WHO CAN UNDERSTAND HIGH SCHOOL!?) and I became very close friends with a girl who fell head over heels for me. I just didn't like her and hurt her feelings every time I pursued other girls when clearly she was trying so hard, (I was oblivious.) In any case things never worked out but all that year I made friends with an awesome circle of girls. I still had my guy friends but girls of course smell nicer and are prettier as well as being just as intelligent.
I went on my two year mission for my church, and all my friends, guys and girls promised to write. Only the girls wrote and even my best friend didn't write until several months into my mission because he was depressed and needed support.
As an adult, now that I'm married, I'm still friends with those girls, but we exchange face book messages and the occasional phone call, but of course marriage places boundaries that have often been crossed in the past.
But when it comes to my best friend, there was a time where we would spend all day and all night doing things together, and while occasionally we can muster a most of the day activity, usually we have to keep it to lunch. One day we will probably move away from each other, and I don't know if I'll ever have another friend that I could spend all day with, but I hope so.
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So in our sample size of two (pooka and scholarette) we have two women that don't conform to the description that Card wrote. (That's how I'm reading it.) And at least one man who has had an intimately close friendship with another man. (That's how I'm reading BB's all-day-all-night friendship.)
The theory isn't holding up well, IMO. Of course I'd like to hear from others whether they think it's accurate.
quote:Anyway, I just think it was an odd mythology (which does not necessarily mean untrue) for Card to embrace.
I too think it's a slightly odd mythology. Actually I think odd is the wrong word, because I think it's a very commonly embraced mythology. It's odd, though, that Card claims to be different from most men in that he prefers to be with women, yet maintains that the way women relate to each other is inaccessible to men. I can't quite believe in it. It seems like a soft-focus glow on the mundane reality that people all relate to each other differently.
Now, my wife is one of the women who mostly forms intimate friendships with other women, leaving aside marriage. And I'm not intimate with anyone but my wife. So we're data points that more or less conform to the mythology. But my mother, and most of my female co-workers that I know well enough to judge: not so much, as far as I can tell. And some of my brothers have really, really close networks of male friends. Even my wife includes males when she describes her circles of close friends, now that I think about it.
I think there are probably generational differences, as well as religious influences on how well the mythology holds up. I think the more you (and your community) see women and men as having fundamentally separate roles, the more you might perceive these gender differences in relationships.
As pooka said, it's not to say the theory has no truth in it. However, I think I see Card arguing that differences are innate, rather than culturally reinforced and self-fulfilling stories about what the genders are supposed to do. (I think there's some of both.)
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quote:My friends at age 12 were in all the same classes as me, played on the same school sports teams as me, had to read the same books for English, etc.
In reference to Stand By Me, the narrator does reflect on the fact that once in middle school, the boys went on different tracks, though one of them bucked the judgments of society to take honors classes with him.
I come from the same background as Card, though a different generation, and I also assume that men and women have some innate differences, but I think often as not those differences are conducive to bonding rather than interfering.
The review got me to thinking a lot about what "the real world of women" means to me and the "actual community" I live in. I thought of some other things that alienate me from women. A lot have to do with sexual politics and reproductive decisions where I feel the assumptions of most women, as I've become aware of them, are off base - such as that a woman is justified to withhold sex from her husband if she's angry at him, or that whether to have children is primarily the woman's decision (I feel it should be cooperative.)
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My "group" in high school was mostly guys. While I do have "girlfriends", with the exception of a pair of sisters I've known since Brownies most are older-- like my dad's age or older. Most of my friends my age are guys.
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IRL, I pretty much only hang out with guys. I can't think of the last close female-friendship I've had that didn't start online. Maybe high school?
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