Such an interesting perspective in this letter. Resonated with a lot. I too am heady. I too have known myself to have mostly guy friends, and this has only changed a bit in my 30s as I’ve made an intention to balance it out. One of the reasons I took Latin dance classes for years was to get in touch with my (mostly absent) feminine side. I often think about what society has deemed feminine, and what that means to me if I reject a lot of it. What is better for me in the long run: being ok with rejecting norms (and being incongruent with my environment’s image of the feminine), or finding ways to accept norms (seeing the good in those things, aligning myself more with the signals of my environment)? Im shooting for balance at this stage, because I feel I’m missing something. Is my idea of missing something my own, or something that someone subliminally planted in me? I’m fortunate in that I’ve lived in both Europe and North America, so I know how one’s environment can affect self-image. It is relentless here, even in Canada which isn’t as bad as the US. In Norway there are checks and balances in respect to impressionability of both of young and old, and policies that regulate the types of depictions that are manipulative, subversive and plain unhealthy. Then: because of its strong division between lead/follower roles, is traditional Latin dance unhealthy? I don’t know, I can say that dancing it feels good tho. What I do know is that some types of differentiation is needed and healthy, because making everything gender neutral ignores the fact that we are not the same. Our bodies are really not the same. How much of my identity do I want tied to my body? Still figuring that out...
This surfaces for me something I havent articulated yet. My wife is very feminine, but not by typical contemporary western standards. She doesnt obssess over her looks. But she is fully dedicated to the family, (we homeschool 4 kids). My mother is also very feminine like that.
Haha, what you wrote at the top about men vs women and writing made me feel some type of way! I can't even put my finger as to what type of way it is...some thoughts/questions:
- wait am I not being intellectual by being a woman?? I do tend to downplay my neuroscientist background to seem more approachable, but is this (secretly) a fawning response or something?
- oh gosh am I techbro-adjacent? I suppose TPOT is... but wait, is that a bad thing?
- not that I am producing #blessed type of content, but what is inherently bad about #blessed content if it resonates with its audience? I am saying this not to levy judgement but to point out that I also have a knee jerk reaction to #blessed content that might be unwarranted...
I suppose this might be the issue with any forms of binary division (men vs women, techbro vs yoga etc, intellectual vs #blessed, etc.) They can reveal stereotypes within ourselves of either camps.
The idea that women are all about hashtag blessed and not being intellectual just kind of feels like culturally engrained misogyny to me. Not saying any of us here are specifically anti-women, it just feels like that's actually coming from historical sexism where in order to live, you had to have a husband who made money, and in order to have a husband who made money, you had to be attractive in a particular way, and in order to be attractive in a particular way, you had to have an entire culture of enhancing your attractiveness (in personality, weight, agreeableness, positivity, sexiness, etc). So hashtag blessed just feels like the last remaining vestige of the kind of acceptable agreeable personality an attractive woman would have. Very unclear whether it's actually the natural state of women. We're also probably comparing smart men to dumb women, when the actual comparison would be some gymbro to hashtag blessed women.
I thought the piece was very thought provoking, because I'm definitely in my head too much. :)
Yes, I had the same initial reactions as both of you too! But then it got me wonder, is there anything wrong with not being intellectual all the time? What's wrong with putting effort to looking attractive for my husband? It is precisely my being highly intellectual that got me out of touch with my body, so it certainly can't be the answer to everything. Maybe there's deep wisdom in the hashtag blessed approach, that I rejected because I didn't want to become one of these agreeable girls?
It seems in most cultures men are more intellectual than women, but its certainly the case that women who are intellectual are not as vocal or present as there male counterparts
Such an interesting perspective in this letter. Resonated with a lot. I too am heady. I too have known myself to have mostly guy friends, and this has only changed a bit in my 30s as I’ve made an intention to balance it out. One of the reasons I took Latin dance classes for years was to get in touch with my (mostly absent) feminine side. I often think about what society has deemed feminine, and what that means to me if I reject a lot of it. What is better for me in the long run: being ok with rejecting norms (and being incongruent with my environment’s image of the feminine), or finding ways to accept norms (seeing the good in those things, aligning myself more with the signals of my environment)? Im shooting for balance at this stage, because I feel I’m missing something. Is my idea of missing something my own, or something that someone subliminally planted in me? I’m fortunate in that I’ve lived in both Europe and North America, so I know how one’s environment can affect self-image. It is relentless here, even in Canada which isn’t as bad as the US. In Norway there are checks and balances in respect to impressionability of both of young and old, and policies that regulate the types of depictions that are manipulative, subversive and plain unhealthy. Then: because of its strong division between lead/follower roles, is traditional Latin dance unhealthy? I don’t know, I can say that dancing it feels good tho. What I do know is that some types of differentiation is needed and healthy, because making everything gender neutral ignores the fact that we are not the same. Our bodies are really not the same. How much of my identity do I want tied to my body? Still figuring that out...
This surfaces for me something I havent articulated yet. My wife is very feminine, but not by typical contemporary western standards. She doesnt obssess over her looks. But she is fully dedicated to the family, (we homeschool 4 kids). My mother is also very feminine like that.
Haha, what you wrote at the top about men vs women and writing made me feel some type of way! I can't even put my finger as to what type of way it is...some thoughts/questions:
- wait am I not being intellectual by being a woman?? I do tend to downplay my neuroscientist background to seem more approachable, but is this (secretly) a fawning response or something?
- oh gosh am I techbro-adjacent? I suppose TPOT is... but wait, is that a bad thing?
- not that I am producing #blessed type of content, but what is inherently bad about #blessed content if it resonates with its audience? I am saying this not to levy judgement but to point out that I also have a knee jerk reaction to #blessed content that might be unwarranted...
I suppose this might be the issue with any forms of binary division (men vs women, techbro vs yoga etc, intellectual vs #blessed, etc.) They can reveal stereotypes within ourselves of either camps.
Yeah, I felt something like that too!
The idea that women are all about hashtag blessed and not being intellectual just kind of feels like culturally engrained misogyny to me. Not saying any of us here are specifically anti-women, it just feels like that's actually coming from historical sexism where in order to live, you had to have a husband who made money, and in order to have a husband who made money, you had to be attractive in a particular way, and in order to be attractive in a particular way, you had to have an entire culture of enhancing your attractiveness (in personality, weight, agreeableness, positivity, sexiness, etc). So hashtag blessed just feels like the last remaining vestige of the kind of acceptable agreeable personality an attractive woman would have. Very unclear whether it's actually the natural state of women. We're also probably comparing smart men to dumb women, when the actual comparison would be some gymbro to hashtag blessed women.
I thought the piece was very thought provoking, because I'm definitely in my head too much. :)
Yes, I had the same initial reactions as both of you too! But then it got me wonder, is there anything wrong with not being intellectual all the time? What's wrong with putting effort to looking attractive for my husband? It is precisely my being highly intellectual that got me out of touch with my body, so it certainly can't be the answer to everything. Maybe there's deep wisdom in the hashtag blessed approach, that I rejected because I didn't want to become one of these agreeable girls?
100% on the gymbro = #blessed .
It seems in most cultures men are more intellectual than women, but its certainly the case that women who are intellectual are not as vocal or present as there male counterparts