Mars and Venus aren't real places. Men aren't from one and women from another. It's just that certain cultural habits of mind lead men to wound women in a particular way and women to wound men in a different way and some members of each sex would rather retreat to the sureties of the same-sex societies they knew before the whole sex-and-love issue came up. Wouldn't it be great if you could get everything you needed from your gang of girlfriends at brunch? From your gang of guy friends banging each other over the head with toy light sabers? It would, wouldn't it?
But it would also get boring. Women need men to shake up their perfection and pointless fussing. Men need women to give them a reason to stop being barbarians and work toward something, anything. Women need to get their hands dirty, go outside GirlWorld's safety zone: men need to learn how to take care of babies and get a glimpse of the bigger picture, beyond competition, prizes, money. The problem with the patriarchy is not that it's never right, but that it is only half-right. Same with the matriarchy. Those who believe if only women ran everything it would be a more humane world are overlooking the fundamental flaw: half of humanity would have to try to deny their very nature, just the way many women have to in a patriarchy.
And are these really sex-linked traits? Woe betide the sensitive individual born with male apparatus, the mainly rational individual born with a vagina.
No comments:
Post a Comment