Masquerade

I r very manly! oh yeah. Look at me - i'm scary GROWL!

Hm.

Tom's Molesworth 2 comment is spot on...

Jesus X, this is a bit gnomic. Doesn't anyone have a straight answer to a bent question?

Women = alternately stupid and devious, men = alternately boring and threatening. In company, anyway.

I don't think it's difficult at all to be a woman, I am not a masquerade but then again I am an extremely girly girl who always loved to be so so maybe I am wrong to answer the question. I'm sure for some people they feel like they are putting on a masquerade, I'm 100% certain there are plenty of girls, maybe even a majority, who'd rather be in sneakers and sweats sitting about with no makeup on because it'd be faster and easier :)

Men actually have it harder than women, I think, in terms of the "keeping up appearances". Don't have emotions, don't get upset, don't do anything but sit and be manly in a suit. Argh, that's a crap life innit.

it's difficult to do both, and i think to some extent everyone has to do both in order to be accepted by society. i do think though, that women are under more pressure to conform and to spend all their money on useless and worthless cosmetics - "Because You're Worth It" - Fuck Off more like. so i guess, er, it's more difficult for birds.

I remember reading a book vaguely connected with this once: 'Gender Trouble' by Judith Butler. But that was less about adornment and more about the growing child and how gender-based behaviour was established psychologically/psychoanalytically.

At least I think that was what it was about. You've read it, haven't you, Katie?

i have indeed and it had some good points. unfortunately Butler is one of the breed of academics who think they'll gain credibility by utilising large amounts of ridiculous jargon, when the only thing they end up gaining is unintelligibility. that kind of undermined it for me.

I don't think that femininity is a fiction, I think it is a reality. I am disgusted by separatist feminist dykes who go around being butch, thereby perpetrating the myth that male is normal and female is an abberation.

but do girls have to look and act feminine? what is feminine anyway, and is it necessarily the same as female? maybe these butch dykes merely find dungarees and short hair practical, and it doesn't affect their inner perception of themselves as feminine?

not likely i know, but possibly the case.

i belive all gender is preforamnce and to be a proper man is less difficult emitonally and more difficult pyshically (sp)

It could be harder for women when they have to act like men, e.g. professionally or in academic settings. Cos at this stage, I don't think that kind of behavior (being combative without taking it personally) has been incorporated into our notion of femininity. I can't think of a situation in which men would be at a similar disadvantage. Childcare comes to mind, but I think men would find it easier to be nurturing than for women to be argumentative or whatever, that it wouldn't involve as much of an adjustment, and also that they wouldn't be stigmatized for it or conflicted about it.

as judith bitler writes, all gender is drag.

>>> men would find it easier to be nurturing than for women to be argumentative or whatever

But loads of women are incredibly argumentative!! I don't know that they find it very hard to do, either.

i don't think "nurturing" is the issue, i think it's more to do with an attitude to emotional coping (in other words, the difference is a thing without such an easy name as "nurturing")

interesting time for the topic to come up, actually (eg wartime): my friend AB said she cd no longer watch Canadian TV coverage as it was basically like, "OK, war vs anti-war: women's perspective no longer needed"

But loads of women are incredibly argumentative!! I don't know that they find it very hard to do, either. Maybe they are and maybe for some it wasn't an adjustment. All I'm saying is that proportionally the number of women who are like that is small. (From observing Q & A sessions at talks and in the classroom and stuff like that.)

mark s, I see your point, and by doing a better job of naming it, you've shown that there's more to it than I thought.

'Women's Perspective' = ??

>>> All I'm saying is that proportionally the number of women who are like that is small.

I don't agree (which you may well consider grist to the mill of your POV - this meta-quality being part of the difficulty in debating this point).

Also,

>>> harder for women when they have to act like men, e.g. professionally or in academic settings

academic setting != setting where woman 'has to behave like man' (assuming these terms to be performative etc anyway). Sitting around reading a lot = early female readership of novel / Madame Bovary retro performance. Talking about things = hardly super-intimidating male geezer hard-hat stuff. (Half the time we are told that women talk more than men anyway. And half the time we are told the reverse, psssh.)

Use other settings, please!

"argumentative" is too broad also: in what forums and about what are you willing/able to argue is important here eg:

(massive generalisation alert) men are more prepared to argue as it were FOR THE GOOD OF THE RACE (even when they're actually only proposing their own convenience), and women are more prepared to argue FROM PERSONAL FEELING (even when they're actually discussing the good of the race).

race = human race

academic setting != setting where woman 'has to behave like man'

But a lot of women think they do, or think of it as something foreign. Maybe I'm just projecting. Examples of this (assuming these qualities are masculine): terseness of explanations, assuming everyone understands terms, a lot of talk about elegance and economy, all this almost to the point of being uncooperative.

Talking about things = hardly super-intimidating male geezer hard- hat stuff

I could be conflating knowledge of subject matter with rhetorical skill, confidence, etc. It's just that at a certain point the linguistics courses in the program I used to be in seemed to turn into math and computer science courses and then it really did seem that way. Traditionally, more men than women study these subjects, so maybe it was that they knew more, not that they said things better.

Or maybe it was something determined by the subject itself rather than something true of academia in general, i.e. the way you write a good program or proof is also how you want to be able, ultimately, to talk about it. So part of becoming familiar with a subject is becoming comfortable with the mode of discourse used in discussing it.

Incidentally, taking into account differences in academic backgrounds, the female students in the program I was in probably did just as well as the male students. And they were probably just as outspoken. I guess I was speaking from my own experience, which isn't necessarily representative.

I still think that a reason women have a hard time getting into these fields is that the way things are discussed in them is stranger (wrt feminine identity) than in other fields, e.g. anthropology. But the success of other female students shows that it shouldn't be something that holds women back, i.e. we shouldn't take for granted what is masculine and what is feminine, as others have said.

Discussion above: interesting.

BUT I actually had something else in mind when starting this thread. I was thinking about writers writing about characters (narrators, maybe) from the opposite gender: male authors with female narrators and vice versa. Often in such cases people say they've got it wrong, there are false notes, or whatever. But why?

Presumably because - IF we (provisionally) accept that line of criticism (I don't necessarily) - there are certain things about 'being a woman' that a male author doesn't guess, and certain things about 'being a man' that a female writer doesn't guess. I don't mean 'the woman would be more nurturing at that point', etc (though it's relevant): much more close-up, small stuff about movements, clothes, hair, attitude to body, food, space, whatever. So my (renewed) question is - what are those things that either gender is liable to miss or omit in trying to write about each other? (I'll assume, provisionally, that these things are matters of socialization at least as much as biology.) And the other question is - is it easier for a man to write a woman, or a woman to write a man?

(So the 'masquerade' would be literary, for the purposes of the question.)

Denton Welch's short stories are often written from the perspective of a female narrator. I see what you mean about not getting it quite right. One difference that comes to mind (and I just thought of this off the top of my head) is that there is no anxiety about being a woman, or anxiety that somehow seems inauthentic. For example, there's this story called 'Fire in the Wood' (if I remember correctly) and though it's written from the perspective of a female narrator, the parts about physical contact are blank from her point of view, i.e. it's not about her desire, her fear, etc. but desire, fear, etc. that has been projected upon her. I also feel this way about some of E. M. Forster's novels. The female perspective doesn't seem messy enough. Nonetheless, I like them for what they are - the element of fantasy.

Later with the texts, I could try to work out something more specific.

For Real masquerades, The Bell Jar = his second favorite novel.

Women living in New York are reminded of their gender every day when they walk down the street - "heyyyy mamacita" "what's your number?" "you lookin fine girl" etc. I don't think women are necessarily anxious about these remarks and reminders, but they do have to put up an effort - even if subconsciously - to block that shit out. Men don't deal with anything on this level. So in this example (but perhaps not in others), to bring it round to the original question, I think it's harder to maintain the identity of a man, because you're not reminded of your gender nearly so many times or in nearly so many ways.

um...

RARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRG! *throws spear* at invading clots!