The Matriarchy
One of the oldest entries in my "ideas for stories" document is: "Aliens land on earth and refuse to talk to the president because they feel it's obvious we're a matriarchy."
(See my many posts on "Why an idea is not a story" for why that never came to fruition.)
But I've been thinking about it again, lately. I thought about it when I went upstairs to get some parking meter change this morning.
Because I felt like Brian should have gone up. He knew my knees hurt on the stairs and he knew he'd be faster, but he didn't offer and I COULDN'T ask him to, because that's not how I was socialized to my gender role - we don't ask, but we expect.
Aside from the "More mental baggage! Where did that come from?" see where I'm going with this? The Traditional Gender Roles (all caps, TM) are as much about oppressing men as women. Oh sure, there's the tedium of housework we've all come to associate with the oppression of ladies, but what about the tedium of lawn mowing, auto repair, and all that? I imagine you could easily re-cast everything in a matriarchal mode: the 50s housewife keeps the most important job of raising children to herself and requires her man to do the less interesting work of earning an income to support them, and then to do all the menial strength-based labor around the house. She then indoctrinates man to a definition of manhood that requires an obsessive desire for her, anything less is 'unmanly'. And since she's raising the kids she perpetuates the gender roles in her offspring. Bwa ha ha ha haaaaaa. (Except, of course, that all of this hurts women. I'm trying to shift the paradigm from that just for a sec.)
Some men opposed gender equality because they thought they would lose something by it. But men haven't lost, they've gained. They've gained a place as fathers, for one. Men can still do everything they could before, but now they can do MORE. And so can women. Men can carry their babies without being called 'henpecked' - can you believe at one time the very idea of a man pushing a baby carriage was disdained? These days a guy holding a baby is an object of universal acclaim.
Way to buck the matriarchy, modern dads! Equality doesn't just help the oppressed, it helps the former oppressors more than they could have realized.
(See my many posts on "Why an idea is not a story" for why that never came to fruition.)
But I've been thinking about it again, lately. I thought about it when I went upstairs to get some parking meter change this morning.
Because I felt like Brian should have gone up. He knew my knees hurt on the stairs and he knew he'd be faster, but he didn't offer and I COULDN'T ask him to, because that's not how I was socialized to my gender role - we don't ask, but we expect.
Aside from the "More mental baggage! Where did that come from?" see where I'm going with this? The Traditional Gender Roles (all caps, TM) are as much about oppressing men as women. Oh sure, there's the tedium of housework we've all come to associate with the oppression of ladies, but what about the tedium of lawn mowing, auto repair, and all that? I imagine you could easily re-cast everything in a matriarchal mode: the 50s housewife keeps the most important job of raising children to herself and requires her man to do the less interesting work of earning an income to support them, and then to do all the menial strength-based labor around the house. She then indoctrinates man to a definition of manhood that requires an obsessive desire for her, anything less is 'unmanly'. And since she's raising the kids she perpetuates the gender roles in her offspring. Bwa ha ha ha haaaaaa. (Except, of course, that all of this hurts women. I'm trying to shift the paradigm from that just for a sec.)
Some men opposed gender equality because they thought they would lose something by it. But men haven't lost, they've gained. They've gained a place as fathers, for one. Men can still do everything they could before, but now they can do MORE. And so can women. Men can carry their babies without being called 'henpecked' - can you believe at one time the very idea of a man pushing a baby carriage was disdained? These days a guy holding a baby is an object of universal acclaim.
Way to buck the matriarchy, modern dads! Equality doesn't just help the oppressed, it helps the former oppressors more than they could have realized.