I've seen an unusually high number of articles entitles things like
How to make your man/woman feel X
10 things women do that really annoy men
10 cruel things men do to women
6 psycho things women do...
8 things that secretly turn men on...
appearing as things that my friends on facebook have read. I mean, they've actually taken time out of their day to read these sweeping generalisations damning a whole sex with the same ridiculous statements. I'm not going to dissect these and list why they're wrong, sexist, and just basically terrible - that should be pretty obvious to anyone with a brain. What I'm more amazed about is that people actually read these! Why? Do they really think that an article like this will give them some enlightening insight into their friends/partners which they'd never discovered, which they can use to their advantage? Do they think it'll somehow help them in their communications with people of that sex? Don't people realise that if you don't read them, people won't write as many of them!
People are all different! What turns one person may seem utterly revolting to someone else, and what I might find really annoying can seem adorable to other people. The amazing thing about humans is how different we all are - by trying to tar everyone (or everyone of a particular sex) with the same brush you create an image of the world which is very two-dinemsional and dull. There are people on this world who are also female but who I have absolutely nothing in common with - yet according to these articles, because of our genitalia we should act in the same way. If you feel you need to read these to understand a whole sex, you've got it all wrong - you need to treat people as individuals, and get to know them. Their personality, likes/dislikes, turn-ons, annoyances will be different to everyone else you've met. Sure, some people have similarites, but if you treat a whole sex as one object sharing the same brain, you're really not going to get far in your relations with other people.
So to my friends - I really, really hope you were reading those so that you could comment critically on the generalising and sexist nature of those articles, or just to laugh at how stupid and ill-informed they are. Seriously. Or I might have to reconsider your suitability to share in my ice-cream.
Why anyone allows facebook to publish their reading material is beyond me. Assumptions about sexuality are still extremely widespread - I watched a talk yesterday (on an unrelated topic) given by an otherwise perfectly liberal academic, who insisted on describing S&M desires as a "sexual disorder".
ReplyDeleteIt's beyond me too - if I find something insightful, amusing or that I want to share with my friends I'll go out of my way to link to it, otherwise everything I read will clog up people's feeds. I may read it and realise it's terrible, but if it's there it seems like I'm somehow endorsing it.
DeleteWow. It's impressive and scary that people still think in that way - 'If I don't understand or like it then there must be something wrong with people who do'...