Aggressive women scare me/make me uncomfortable/just rub me the wrong way. Men not so much. Why is that? My fear of middle aged women in particular has become something of an inside joke (though now I suppose it's kind of out in the open) among my friend, but it really bothers me once in a while, and I can't help but wonder where it comes from.
In college, I felt like all of my favorite professors were men, but looking back, I'm not so sure that's right. I had a female teacher for Postmodern American lit who I quite liked, actually. She's probably one of the biggest reasons I decided to go on to graduate school. I had a female humanities teacher who I didn't mind much. All of my Spanish teachers were female and I found them all unequivocally likable. I really only had one female teacher who I disliked, and I attributed my disliking her to her being female and trying somehow to make up for something that didn't need making up for. I felt like she was overbearing and horrible, in addition to being incredibly disorganized (which is by far my least favorite trait in a teacher), mostly because she felt like she had to be as difficult as the male teachers--prove that her gender had no effect on her teaching style, that the nurturing mother in her would not affect her ability to grade students justly, and so she overcorrected by setting impossibly high expectations, overworking her students, and grading on the harsh side.
In retrospect, those things may have had nothing at all to do with her gender. I recognize that, logically, but I can't really feel it. Are women simply harsher judges of other women than they are on men. Is it just me? Or does American society depict women as overbearing and needy, creating frustration with my own gender when someone actually fits into that mold. What are our expectations of men in modern society? Looking at pop culture, especially sitcoms, would indicate that we expect them to be bumbling buffoons, slow to take things seriously and in serious need of a female influence to balance them out (e.g. Everybody Loves Raymond, King of Queens, King of the Hill, The Simpsons, Friends). As a result (?) I don't expect much at all from men beyond a good sense of humor, which is perhaps why I find them less intimidating than women.
Is society's depiction of gender unfair? or is it really a reflection of gender norms? Is my analysis accurate? or am I really just projecting my own prejudices onto the culture? Food for thought.
1 comment:
I believe honestly stated, men are just different animals than women. You have a point about popular sit-coms, but need to notice that many of these are geared toward the "blue collar" community, who do tend to be more simple and less motivated than the white collar folks. I think this portrayal is also meant to generalize men and women alike as a whole. It's like saying "normal" when you really can't put a label on "normal". It's like taking the numbers 1, 100, and 1000, and saying 367 is"average". 367 is no where close to 1 or 1000, but its "normal". I have always preferred male teachers over female because it's so much easier to tell where you stand with a man, than a woman. You ask a man what they want for dinner and they'll tell you "steak and potatoes", and they really mean they want steak and potatoes. You ask a woman and they'll say "I don't know, whatever you want", when what they really mean is "name off 5 things and I'll come up with a reason why I don't want any of those, until you come to something I actually want". Things would be a whole lot less complicated in a world where men and women thought alike. Should men be the same as women, or should women just say what they mean, and mean what they say?
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