"In my middle school, when they split us by gender for puberty talks, the girls learned about female and male experiences, while the boys only learned about themselves."
This reminds me of James Baldwin's comment that something similar happened between black and white Americans--blacks learned about how both whites and blacks perceived the world, while white people only learned about other whites. As a result, they were often baffled by the civil rights movement in a way they really should not have been.
When applied to gender, this really puts male comments about how hard it is to understand women into perspective. The sexes are inevitably somewhat opaque to each other, in part because all people are somewhat opaque to each other (and to themselves!), but men can get by for a longer time without having to really learn about women than women can do in reverse.
> "I have realized they are not unique because they suffer. They are unique because they do not hide suffering well. It does not occur to them that suffering might be secret or a source of shame. I mask anxiety with a veneer of confident affability."
This is a great thought. (relevant both to this discussion and the one you started on Monday!) There's a similar quote I've been trying to track down... which points out that we humans are allergic to suffering, because suffering unmasks the reality that each of us is moving inexorably towards death... steadily fading, and all the earthly things we possess are being taken away - and that reality is offensive to us. It's somewhere in "Instruments in the Redeemer's Hands," an amazing (counseling-as-a-lay-vocation?) book. (unless "it" is actually two quotes I conflated from separate sections of the book!)
"In my middle school, when they split us by gender for puberty talks, the girls learned about female and male experiences, while the boys only learned about themselves."
This reminds me of James Baldwin's comment that something similar happened between black and white Americans--blacks learned about how both whites and blacks perceived the world, while white people only learned about other whites. As a result, they were often baffled by the civil rights movement in a way they really should not have been.
When applied to gender, this really puts male comments about how hard it is to understand women into perspective. The sexes are inevitably somewhat opaque to each other, in part because all people are somewhat opaque to each other (and to themselves!), but men can get by for a longer time without having to really learn about women than women can do in reverse.
> "I have realized they are not unique because they suffer. They are unique because they do not hide suffering well. It does not occur to them that suffering might be secret or a source of shame. I mask anxiety with a veneer of confident affability."
This is a great thought. (relevant both to this discussion and the one you started on Monday!) There's a similar quote I've been trying to track down... which points out that we humans are allergic to suffering, because suffering unmasks the reality that each of us is moving inexorably towards death... steadily fading, and all the earthly things we possess are being taken away - and that reality is offensive to us. It's somewhere in "Instruments in the Redeemer's Hands," an amazing (counseling-as-a-lay-vocation?) book. (unless "it" is actually two quotes I conflated from separate sections of the book!)