The World Beyond BetterMost > Women Today
Female Chauvinist Pigs?
delalluvia:
--- Quote from: lia on November 22, 2008, 07:57:41 am ---This is a fascinating discussion, particularly to the mother of both a boy and a girl, even though by now both are - at least on paper - adults. ???
I wrote about one aspect of this elsewhere, i.e. why it's predominantly women who write slash (m/m fanfiction), and some of it seems to me to fit right into this discussion, so here's most of it:
...why women write m/m fanfiction, instead of sticking to what they (should) know, i.e. m/f stories and m/f sex. The trouble is that heterosexual sex is simply loaded with prior assumptions, 1000s of years of conditioning won’t go quietly. Two men meet, they like each other (NOT a prerequisite), they have sex (even if in secret). That's what men do. No no, I know that's not what all men do, but it's accepted by society, nobody thinks of them as "sluts" just because of it. A man and a girl meet, and no, they don't just have sex. Society demands that there's at least some commitment before they have sex, otherwise the girl is considered a slut. Not the boy, of course. And afterwards: does he think any less of her because of it? Does he actually want a relationship? Do we think any less of him if he doesn't? What about the risk of pregnancy? There's an inherent power imbalance in heterosexual relationships, caused essentially by the biological difference. Even today the old double standards often prevail: boys may be given condoms and told to be careful, girls are much more likely to be exhorted to abstain until after marriage. And not entirely without reason: after all it’s the girls who are mainly suffering the consequences of unwanted pregnancy, boys/men can walk away more or less unscathed (except hopefully financially) and society won’t do any more than frown heavily. Another aspect: in my job I see a lot of police reports, and the cases of violence within relationships seem to be about 100 m/f to 1 f/m (though no doubt many more case go unreported). I have yet to see a police report of f/m rape, I see a lot of the other sort, plus the occasional m/m (though the latter are no doubt underreported, too).
The ramifications are endless, and a lot of women, consciously or not, turn to writing m/m fiction to bypass all of them and just concentrate on personality issues. Two equal partners, even their sexual roles interchangeable, just imagine the possibilities. Too bad and really ironic that a lot of those writers promptly proceed to make one (or both) of the protagonists into a woman in all but shape. Conditioning, as I said before.
Edited to clarify: I wrote "girls are much more likely to be exhorted to abstain until after marriage. And not entirely without reason". No, it's not how I brought up my kids, I am well aware of the dangers of forbidden fruit (see alcohol), but I can see how parents who love their daughters and want to protect them from the life-changing consequences of early pregnancy may come to think abstinence is the only way to achieve that.
--- End quote ---
Great post. I posted something along the same lines on a thread in the Story board when I wrote about why I prefer writing m/m fan fiction:
I write m/m fanfiction in at least two fan worlds - have 2 stories going based on BBM (but in alternate universes). I've always been interested in gay male relationships. They just tend to be fascinating to me because of the dynamics, so different from male/female or f/f relationships. In m/f fanfiction, there is always the running undercurrent of domesticity, the soap opera dramas of pregnancy, children, marriage, family relations, all of which are extremely uninteresting to me. While gay men and women can also be involved in these things, obviously, most of the fanfiction I prefer and write doesn't deal with them
e.g. they're knights well met while fighting the crusades, two monks, two soldiers, etc.
delalluvia:
--- Quote from: lia on November 23, 2008, 03:41:51 pm ---It looks to me as if this system must produce a lot of surplus girls. Seeing that boys often get a raw deal in US polygamist setups or even get discarded: I wonder what happens to the girls not required for breeding in the example you describe above?
--- End quote ---
Not sure. One healthy woman can have a child for every year of her marriage, but seeing as how these people live in such staggeringly remote areas, I tend to think that health care probably isn't the best or readily available and perhaps infant/child mortality takes sufficient numbers of the 50/50 split between male and female babies.
Gag, just found this, granted, the reporting is over 30 years old in this case, but I don't think rural areas have improved that much and it does seem to indicate large surpluses of baby girls wasn't much of a problem in the past:
...indigenous Tibetan populations in northern Nepal who also lack modern health care: for example, in Limi as of 1976, on average 43 per cent of the children born to women had died by the time of the study[17]. Similar findings were reported for the Nyinba of northwest Nepal, Where 54.3 per cent of all children born to women had died[18]. Fieldwork conducted in a relatively poor pastoral nomadic population in western Tibet between 1986 and 1988 also revealed a higher percent of morality, at 26 per cent[19].
http://www.tibet.cn/tibetzt-en/jhsy/jhsy_4.htm
magicmountain:
Forget raunch – here come the “ladettes”
There's a growing group of young women who are featuring in statistics that used to be the domain of testosterone-driven young men. More girls are being arrested and charged with aggressive assaults and other crimes than ever before. Girls are now drinking at the same or even more dangerous levels than boys, and they are doing this at younger and younger ages.
These "ladettes", as they have been called, think that being totally drunk, behaving aggressively and even becoming violent is the way to go.
****
The number of women found guilty of crimes has jumped dramatically, partly as a result of alcohol-fuelled young "ladettes" trying to emulate young males. The number of young women offenders has risen 17 per cent in the past four years, compared to just 4.5 per cent for men.
The most significant increase is for traffic offences and in offences against the justice system, which include breaches of bail or bonds and obstructing police. In each of these categories the number of women convicted in NSW jumped about 35 per cent between 2003 and 2007, according to the most recent figures obtained from the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research.
Paul Dillon, director of Drug and Alcohol Research and Training Australia, said minor offences were often linked to alcohol. The behaviour of such ladettes was the result of a societal change around alcohol, which had gone from frowning on women drinking in public to a time in which women were drinking as much, or more, than their male counterparts, he said.
Women were also using illicit drugs in more risky ways, and methamphetamines, in particular, if mixed with alcohol, were often linked to violent behaviour, he said. "The whole idea of gangs of young women committing offences was something that was most probably not really heard of 10 years ago."
http://blogs.watoday.com.au/fionastanley/2008/06/the_rise_of_the.html
http://murraybridge.yourguide.com.au/news/national/national/general/ladettes-lead-upsurge-in-female-crime/1416671.aspx
But maybe there's hope with this "Ladettes to Ladies" program lol
http://www.lifestylechannel.com.au/shows/show.asp?id=80&tab=episodes
PS When I was around 11 or 12 I was totally fearless and an out of control delinquent - around the age of 15 I told myself to stop being an idiot and snapped out of it. My inner parent (or inner lady) must have kicked in lol.
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