And I wonder why I never get anything done

Story of my life...

right here.

And it's not even that my kids BOTHER me, really.  Just that they have a knack for knowing when I'm up to something that's not completely centered around them.

Make hairbows?  Perfect peace.  Fix them lunch?  Self-contained.  Laundry?  Building train systems.

Writing a dissertation?  Suddenly in desperate need of....a.....HUG!  That's it!  Or drink of water.  Or help finding a lost shoe (that they won't need to wear anytime soon).  Or...or...or....

You get the idea.

Misconceptions

I've been wandering around the internet a lot lately. In my wanderings I've stumbled across a lot of vitriolic statements condemning feminists for their stupidity, promiscuity, unrealistic expectations, physical unattractiveness, and manhating.

So in an effort to provide an alternative perspective, I offer the following:

I worked my way through college as an undergraduate. I cleaned offices, toilets and stadiums, then chased shoplifters around the university bookstore. In graduate school (master's and PhD) I earned academic merit-based funding that was identical to that of my male peers.

I have only had one sexual partner, and we did not sleep together until after we were married. At the RIPE old ages of 23 and 22.

I expect to find employment in my field. If I don't, I'll do whatever work I can get (barring illegal or immoral professions) to help support my family. I expect that if circumstances necessitate it, my husband will do likewise. Because we are partners.

This with a grain of salt: I don't think that my attractiveness or lack thereof is relevant to my value as a person, or the worth of my opinions. But just because a counterclaim needs to be made...I'm 5' 1" and weigh 115 pounds. I regularly complete races that are 10 miles or longer, most recently a 50K. I care about my appearance and stalk clothes until they are on final sale so that I can dress nicely on a small budget.

I do not hate men, individually or as a group. I try to not hate people in general.

And I am a feminist.

Now, I know I know, one case does not represent a whole group. Anecdotes do not a scientific study make....all that. I know.

I just have this radical idea: how about we just start valuing each other as individuals rather than lumping people into easy-to-target-and-hate groups?

Talk about messing with gender construction

I'm writing again.  And reading again.  Which always makes me wonder why I stop doing it because I enjoy it so much.  In a nutshell, progress is good.

Here's my mind-blowing idea, though.  For one of my chapters I'm talking about cross-dressing in theater (shocking, I know, I never talk about costumes or disguises or gender, and couldn't possibly be interested in something that's ALL THREE!) and how it works across the Comedia.

I'm using Stephanie Merrim's commentary on Juan Huarte de San Juan (a 16th-century intellectual/philosopher/humanist/physician....you know, one of those guys who did EVERYTHING, like Copernicus) and his evaluation of biological sex.  He basically goes with the Aristotelian concept of things, with "woman is an imperfectly formed man" but takes it one step further: given a little internal "heat" (not like boiling her, this is a more nebulous old concept), a woman could BECOME a man.  He establishes a continuum of gender ranging from "pure" man to "pure" woman and allows people to fall anywhere in-between.

My commentary on this centers on how fascinating it is that despite this flexibility/variability, socially constructed gender (as opposed to biological sex and the characteristics/personality traits viewed as inherent to it) in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Spain was still SO RIGID.

So last night as I was writing this up, I got to thinking about how we're sort of on the opposite of that theses days.  We know that in terms of biological sex we're pretty different (ie, a woman isn't just a man with the same plumbing only inside), more complementary;  but along with that, we don't ascribe personality traits/characteristics so universally as inherent to one sex.  We accept a range of behaviors for both genders.

Then I got to thinking about how in many ways the LDS church is still stuck in the 16th-century....we're all children of God, all valued, doctrinally we accept things like women being intelligent and men being nurturing etc - sort of a one-sex model with some variation....but there are still RIGIDLY constructed cultural roles for men (breadwinner) versus women (homemaker).

And (here's the point of the post!)

last night I dreamed that President Packer (of COURSE it was him) used Huarte de San Juan and Juan de Mariana (the "you women best not be talking in public!" early modern Spanish moralist) to justify gender roles in a talk, and people believed it.

If only a dissertation chapter could have the same tone as a blog post.  I need a break.