Music Monday/ This week in school...

The past two weeks have been full of fascinating conversation. Most notably has been a discussion of men's and women's strengths and weaknesses. This conversation stemming from the ideas of men and women from a "relational-cultural" perspective. Relational Cultural theory states that relationships are the primary source of development and remain so throughout life. Because of this Relational Cultural theory looks at both individual relationships and cultural influences as important to understanding the individual.

While I do not have time to go into great depth I wanted to post some important points that struck me in the past two weeks:

Men:
-Men suffer from disconnection from both other people and emotions. Early on sons are, consciously or subconsciously, encouraged to detach from their mothers (faster than girls) and displays of emotion begin to be discouraged. This socialization is the start of a pattern of detachment that remains for men throughout life.
-A consequence of this pattern of detachment is the difficulty men have with feeling or expressing emotion.
-A consequence of detachment from emotion is a tendency in men to confuse physical intimacy with emotional intimacy.

Women:
-Women are socialized to be objectified and sexualized by men. Because of this women are often viewed and judged through the eyes of men. This results in women having difficulty finding their own voice.
-Women are sexualized and yet when they are sexual it is seen negatively.
-Most research that has been done on humans in the past few centuries has been done on men and applied to women. As an example the idea of "fight or flight" is a reaction to stress that is displayed by men. Women's reaction to stress is to "tend and befriend" relationally. For example tests have shown that women are reported as more affectionate toward their children when they have had a bad day. In contrast men were reported as more distant upon experiencing a bad day.
-The "tend and befriend" response to stress also points to another reality for women, that they benefit greatly from relationships with other women. Unfortunately women are also the most critical of other women. It is suspected that this critical-ness is a sort of violence that women display in relationship as a response to objectification and voicelessness. From what I understand studies have shown that the more "patriarchal" (as apposed to egalitarian) a society is the more women display such violence.

An offshoot of this discussion in my head was the realization that women are objectified in our culture but I think that relationships are also objectified. Objectification is looking at something rather than looking through its subjective reality. We impose meaning on something rather than understanding the meaning of something in its context. Essentially we rob something of its personal story. We rob relationships of their story when we think that everything will end up "happily ever after."

One more thing I found extremely important in our discussions is the idea that men and women experience emotion differently and that instead of seeking understanding and sitting with emotion we are critical of the other gender. Women feel too much emotion while men "never" feel enough. Both genders experience emotion, both genders should be encouraged to experience emotion, and both genders should seek to empower each other to do so.

I think this music selection fits nicely with this theme. This is Sufjan Stevens in a collaborative concept concert about the planets with "Pluto"



Until next time, keep your moon fixed...

EDO