Male Society.
Phil is teaching a class on utopias and dystopias in the University's Honors College. He has 18 women and two men in the class. This configuration is not unusual in the Honors College. Women here seen to be willing to work harder in general.
He asked them last week, what would an all male society look like. I'll tell you their thoughts after you tell me yours.
What attributes would you list?
22 comments:
I picture an all-male society being like punk music plus guitar solos.
More slapstick too.
So... more Stooges, both the Moe and the Iggy Kind.
Like the Vatican!
Now I've had my little joke, I'll add that while I'm not a fan of Camille Paglia, she covers this in her book SEXUAL PERSONAE, where she states that all-male societies are extremely hierarchical with a very strongly-established and reinforced pecking order.
War-like, competitive. Any religion would be old testament like.
Yeah, guys are hopelessly competitive. Those Mad Men dudes are a perfect example of that.
Lord of the Flies.
Not really, although perhaps in some cases. A lot of guys are just too lazy to get involved.
On the other hand, too many women see all guys in stereotypical terms (and yes, the reserve is undoubtedly true). You can still be a man without caring about tools and engines or drinking bad American beer, really. (And yes, I'm sure there are women who don't care about shoes and hate to shop. I just don't know many of them.)
Jeff M.
Sheesh, gotta remember to proofread.
"reverse" rather than "reserve" up there, obviously (I hope)
Jeff M.
You know me, Jeff.
A POW camp.
Well, I guess there'd be an order of some kind and third to a half would be playing the role of women (in and out of bed) - Judith Butler's theory that gender is what you do and act rather than what you are would be well illustrated, I think. Looking toward all boys boarding schools or prisons might give some insights, though that's not to say that society would be institutionally organized or non-democratic, etc. Oh yeah, and there'd be no kids!
BTW, I really don't like what Blogger have done with the comments page or the type two words that are almost impossible to read! God help those with visual impairments - the sound file version is totally incomprehensible!
Every time I remove it, I get spammed to death. There doesn't seem to be any mechanism to complain to blogger either.
I didn't say I don't know any women who hate to shop, Patti, just not many. You're in the minority!
Jeff M.
Phil loves to shop for clothes. So we even each other out.
All single-sex situations seem to me to be even more hellish than single-other distinction points, and they're pretty hellish. While being in a 9/1-ratio situation can be pretty educational. I've been in those.
I have no idea. Like an English boys academy, I guess (think Tom Brown's School Days). The strong prey on the weak, the rich prey on the poor. In that sense, like any society.
Now another bad change in the comments format, this comments stacked to the left so one can't make them wider and get more on the page. I don't know what Blogger is up to, but it's just about got me stopping comments altogether.
Like being on a British man-'o-war forever.
There are approximations already in existence--religiously conservative cultures in which a boy or young man never sees a woman who isn't a relative, until a wife is arranged for him. I don't find anything to like about these societies.
Prison.
"Women seem to be willing to work harder..."
Don't worry, that'll change in the next generation. At first, the idea of working hard to get ahead sounds great and anyone who's been denied that opportunity goes for it when it's presented. But another generation and women will see what men have seen...
If Santorum has his way, we will all have to work very hard-two jobs at least to compensate for the lack of education that might corrupt us from his chosen destiny for us--field hands.
I'm late on this. All the above examples are limited by age or location or religion. A complete society would be much different than those examples.
A complete society would have all the competing (and non-competing) interests that exist now.
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