I hope here to throw together into coherence some thoughts and ponderings I have had recently regarding gender relations and vulnerability. I will weave together several themes that have emerged in the past few months, in incidents, anecdotes, encounters, articles, and classes. It won’t be a fully developed system, but I hope it will be a consistent beginning of things. Please nitpick my assertions and my logic, so that I can see if this framework holds water and deserves to be developed.
Let me start with some initial premises, assumptions that will undergird my further thoughts.
1) First, I will be assuming that we all live gendered existences. I mean to leave out the question of which parts come from social constructs versus biological predispositions. No matter how gender is formed, we all live lives informed by how we do and experience gender. The vast majority of us live in the male-female/man-woman dichotomy and, although I recognize that exceptions exist, I will be working with a two gender system.
2) This gendered existence affects our daily lives and interpersonal interactions.
3) Women, based on their biological make-up, are physically more vulnerable in comparison to men and especially vis-à-vis men. This premise seems commonsensical to me, and I don’t have research to back it up, but if you want to challenge it, I will gladly go off questing for some. In other words, as a vast generalization, men pose more of a threat to women than women to men, physically.
4) Gender norms exist. I will be speaking about them in sweeping generalities. I realize that these generalities will have counter-examples; these examples do not prevent them from being norms. If I have misidentified or misrepresented a norm, please call me out on it. Just be sure you are certain of the definition of “norm” before you contest one. Then contest away.
Working with these basic ideas in mind, I propose: women, on a daily basis, experience a vulnerability that men do not. This particular experience informs how we live our lives and how we see the world. It colors our gendered interaction. This does not mean that women are, most of the time, in danger. (I leave that assessment to others to make.) It does mean that, as a rule, women experience a greater potentiality for being in danger than men do. Consider: a solitary female motorist stops to pick up a lone male hitch-hiker. For whom are you instinctively concerned? Why?
I'm going to share something I saw on a tumblr post (I can't remember whose tumblr), and which credits the statement below to a celebrity whom I also can't remember, so this comment borders on almost absolutely no help, but I thought of it upon reading your post, so I'm sharing it anyhow. Because that's how I roll.
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An unrecalled celebrity recounted a presentation he was at. The presenter was talking about rape and sexual assault. He asked the men in the audience what strategies they used to avoid such assaults, and he was mostly met with blank stares -- they really hadn't thought about it that much. The presenter then turned to the women in the audience and asked the same question. Plenty of hands shot up, and answers rolled of the tongue easily. Have a buddy system with a friend. Never leave your drink unattended. Carry your keys between your knuckles. Pretend to be on a phone call. Keep campus security's number queued up on your phone when walking back to the dorm. Etc., etc.
The unrecalled celebrity then realized that while the men in the room had never given this much thought, all the women -- even women who had never experienced sexual violence themselves -- had given it a great deal of thought. He then concludes his statement with, "and that's when I became a feminist."
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If I ever remember where I saw that or who supposedly made the statement, I'll pass that along, too! However, I wouldn't get your hopes up. My brain is full of "I vaguely recall someone who said somethings." :D
Thanks, Amy! This story illustrates the problem beautifully. I may have to try to hunt down the source :-)
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