Ophelia

[amenaspointyhat]

The gender divide: Where you end and I begin

I was reading this article by Rabbi Schmuley and it reminded me of a distant and faint idea that I once had about men and women

Comments

[artemis_witch]

Forgive me but it's like the Bush Administration's effed up reasoning as applied to relationships. Meaning that 2 things that DO NOT have anything to do with one another don't develop a common denominator just because someone wants to say they do.

Iraq and Al Queda.

Feminity and Independence.

They don't have shit to do with one another. Seriously.

Being ladylike, feminine etc are part of a person's personality. How you sit, speak, eat your food, carry yourself in walking down the street etc is not something defined by whether or not you have a bank account in your name. Independence and assertiveness have nothing to do with how ladylike you are. Some of the most feminine, elegant and ladylike women I have EVER seen are business women in their dress suits and pearls and manicured nails. Some of the most unladylike and unfeminine women I have ever seen are SAHMs in sweatsuits and sneakers who have never worked in their lives. Mormon women in pairie dresses (who are the exact opposite of the independent women) are not going to win

[amenaspointyhat]

I don't want it to seem like I am supporting the 1950s view of gender roles and relationships. That I am not. I think that we each should be independent and self sufficient, even emotionally, to some degree. I wonder, though, if not knowing where to bend, where to compromise, where to let someone in to help carry the load is damaging in the end. In my life, work and personal, I make it easy for other people to slack off, and worse, to not help when I need it. I am questioning if Rabbi Shmuley is right and we have become desensitized to some gender specific qualities. Women and men think differently; this doesn't make one less capable than the other but are we dishonoring those differences by having an attitude that says "we don't need you!"
We do.
I just recently grasped the idea that men need women. They need us and want us as badly as I ever thought a girl wanted a guy. But even in needing that woman, they need someone different from themselves. I think I straddle the line too well. Just one of the guys and all. I only distract them

[artemis_witch]

Ok. I think the good Rabbi is confusing need and want.

We do not NEED men. We WANT them. I think it's better to be wanted than needed. One is love. The other is resignation.

I want to be wanted and loved. I want someone to say "you are the ONE out of all the women I've met that I WANT here in my life". I do not want someone resigned to the necessity of my particular presence because I happen to be able to fulfill some role that they had in their mind (I'm not meaning just gender roles with washing the dishes and vacuuming or whatever either. I also mean the wifey role or the woman role or whatever some guy wants to chalk me up for..I don't want to be thatWhen someone NEEDS someone else for whatever reason, that's when they go running out to find someone they WANT on the side be it the whorehouse or some poor girl who works for them and thinks she can't find a guy other than this married one. Look at any politician and how he "needs" his wife and you see it there. Or many professional business men with the wifey at home that he "

[amenaspointyhat]

Also, I have grown to love being pretty. It doesn't happen very often, not even for work much, but it does make a difference. I know I will never be an elegant woman, not in day to day life. I feel nice to be done up but I feel comfortable when I look like a 23 year old hipster. GOD I AM OLD. I never quite know how to balance that out.