I am not yet willing to shift from the world of “is” to the
world of “ought.” I do want to note a
scene the vulnerability-dynamic can draw.
A man and a woman stand face to face.
As a female body before a male body, she has a vulnerability that she
cannot help and he cannot have. However,
he has just told her that he finds her fun and charming (not to mention pretty)
and would love to take her out to dinner.
He has a vulnerability before her that she does not have – he has no
idea what she thinks of him. If she
accepts him, both will have made an implicit agreement to accept and guard – at
least to a limited extent – the vulnerability of the other. He is guarding her physical vulnerability and
she his emotional vulnerability. This
dynamic, though by no means the only one at play here, sets the stage in an
interesting manner for “traditional” gender roles in marriage, where the
husband provides materially for the family and the wife acts as emotional caretaker. Often times, behavior that seems to fall to
the other gender is constructed to fit the acting gender’s norm, a tendency
that fascinated my sociologist self in undergrad.
Again, I do not wish to move from the realm of “is” to
“ought” or to insist that any particular gendered interaction fits this
perfectly, especially since it relies on purity of intention. I also do not mean to imply that a marriage
with “traditional” gender roles necessarily follows from the date scenario
described before it. I merely wish to
explore these as interesting gender dynamics that are largely ignored, or, when
discussed, inextricably conflated with other ideology.
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