Comments | reading_genji: not a chapter review

fidelioscabinet in reading_genji

not a chapter review

Dec 07, 2005 13:23

but perhaps not entirely irrelevant:

Considering the issues all of us are having over the way male-female relations are depicted in ToG (and other work from the same era), how much influence is the concept of yin and yang having on this issue for them? Or is this a question whose answer is so blindingly obvious I should go and read up on robes and ( Read more... )

ref:society

Comments 15

kate_nepveu December 8 2005, 15:27:01 UTC

I'm not really sure I understand what you're asking. Care to unpack it a little?

(Me, I firmly subscribe to the "Men are from Earth. Women are from Earth. Deal with it." school of thought.)

fidelioscabinet December 8 2005, 16:48:51 UTC

If I unpack it it's gonna get sloppy--but here goes ( ... )

kate_nepveu December 8 2005, 18:09:30 UTC

Ah. I couldn't quite parse whose minds the concept was supposed to be having an influence on, theirs or ours.

That history book last night talked about how the female-authored literature was made possible by a certain degree of social and intellectual freedom. One of the ways that I am a product of my time is that it's hard for me to conceptualize a degree of intellectual freedom that comes with an ideal of feminine passivity.

fidelioscabinet December 8 2005, 18:50:35 UTC

Having grown up in the Southern US, let me assure you that the ideal behaviors people claim to admire and emulate often have little or nothing to do with the realities of how they behave behind the scenes. Traditionally, southern women are deferential to men--and yet we still have at least our share, if not more than the usual number of dragon-lady matriarchs, mama's boys, and Highly-managed Husbands (because none of them are hen-pecked, really, right ( ... )