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Why is it that everytime women speak out in detail or write essays about what bugs us about gender roles, we suddenly become academicians doing "serious analysis"?
I don't want to continue the stereotype of portraying any woman who talks about Gender Roles as if she were some generic social sciences graduate student stuffed into a closet office of a women's studies department, ignored by the outside world and content only to communicate with other women's studies folks in serious and academic terms! I am not that person, and yet I want to talk about gender roles too. But I want to bitch or rant, talk or present, explain or persuade, in my own way. I am a 28 year old webmaster who watches Xena and X-files, owns a beefcake calender of David Duchovny, and who isn't going to cave into some kind of Reagan 80's stereotype of what I should have to look like, behave like, or sound like to be feminist woman. I won't give in to second wave expectations of what a feminist should be or any youthful fear of calling myself a feminist and I certainly won't lose my sense of humor or Generation-Xish irreverance, just to continue to express my opinions on a social issue. Missing the importance of this kind of very different feminist voice, misses out on the whole point of this website!
The "Real Men Eat Quiche" page is here because this is NOT a stereotypical serious research analysis site. We're complex women expressing our thoughts on issues in every way we are capable of, whether that means seriously or jokingly, personally opinionated prose or throughly researched academic essays. We're are good and bad, calm and infuritated, reactionary and comtemplative. And that's just me... What does it take for me to express my contradictory and holistic personality and STILL be considered feminist? I don't want to be pigeon-holed into just a slightly different kind of gender role, and stereotype.
And another thing. It's about time that the world heard about women's "pornographic fantasies" too (a term used by the guy who e-mailed us) and not just men's pornographic fantasies. Sheesh. I do want a guy to go that out-of-the-way to please me, and not have him feel less manly because he did so. I don't expect him to go that out-of-the-way (any more than I'd expect my friends to throw a surprise party for me), but I'm certainly not going to put myself on some imaginary and ridiculous moral pedastal and claim (or try to convince myself) that I don't wish that a man could do these incredible things without thinking his pecker will fall off.
An irreverant essay like "Real Men eat Quiche" is not just an act of turning the current situation around on men for feminist revenge. It has a purpose, but one which people seem to miss when they're all wrapped up in PCness and rhetoric. What's the stereotype of a Real Man? Think about that for a minute. Then re-read the page. You'll see that everything listed is somehow a refutation of that old stereotype for men. We're saying that men can be anything and still be Real Men. (Kinda sounds like the line for women breaking out of their gender roles, doesn't it?) Guys, YOU TOO can be anything you want to be, and we won't think of you as sissies, wimps, or [gasp!] women for doing so. Further, it shouldn't shock you to read the contradictory and wide rangeing ideas of what a Real Man is to women! Women are a vast, teeming bunch of very diverse biological beings. We all have different fantasies and different expectations from men. WOMEN AREN'T JUST THE OPPOSITES OF MEN! We're more like men sometimes (and they like us) than anybody would care to admit. The sexism is not inherant in the fantasies themselves, but in the imbalance of the expression of them. Up to now, it's only been men who've been allowed to openly or even privately feel this way. On billboards, in magazines, movies and television. Our years, decades, and centuries of complaining about men's fantasies and expressions of those fantasies never brought about a change in men. And frankly, we're tired of the unhealthy repression that we've had to force upon ourselves in order to maintain our position on a moral pedastal.
How convienent that some men would wish all women to be the side of the coin with Victorian and PC morals and no sex drive. It's just not like that folks. There are women who'd find all these fantasies very distasteful, and some that would like only a few of them, and still some that would connect with ALL of them. Take your pick. They're also part and parcel of what we've been denied to admit exists - female fantasies that don't place men in positions of power. We may couch them in jest, but it's a serious issue too. Part of the problem comes from an unwillingness to let a man be in a position less powerful than a woman, and allow him to retain his manhood. And part of the problem comes from the idea that all women want to be dominated.
Too many men still think of women as essentially the same kind of being. We're not. We're most definitely not the same. We can't even live up to what men think we are and all be the same, since men in different cultures have different ideas about what women are like! It would never occur to a guy here in the United States that I might be a unique and extraordinary woman for being online, liking X-files and Star trek, and for horseback riding. But mention that to some of the men of my ethnic background and they react with surprise. "She what?!? But women don't like science-fiction, or to get thier clothes messy or to touch smelly animals. Where does she find the time to do all that?"
It's the same darn thing here. Many men still think that if you say just the right line while you're sipping your drink on the barstool that you'll get all the women. I.e., they think we're all essentially the same, and that any differences are only skin deep -- we'll all respond to the same stimuli in essentially the same way. They just don't expect, and can't quite comprehend, that they will get contradictory messages from women. We're just not all cookie-cutter replicas of each other in our desires, fantasies, wants, needs or expectations! And that means one woman is going to like the "real man" who'd never cry at a movie, and who can pop a beer bottle with his teeth. Another women might actually like the "real man" who's unafraid to have long silky hair, pale skin and a fetish for black knee-high latex boots. There's an infinite range of possibilities inbetween, with a woman who desires, admires, and respects every single type.
It's up to the men to get over their angst about being anything other than themselves, and that ridiculous need for all men to live up to their stereotype: the "Real Man".