Comments | dragonladyflame: random things I've written on bits of paper and stashed in my purse to be found later, #217

dragonladyflame

random things I've written on bits of paper and stashed in my purse to be found later, #217

Apr 04, 2006 09:36

3.22.06: I wonder if my generation will be ever fully be able to understand how love felt when the schism between the sexes was so great that each regarded their opposite truly as "other".

Comments 9

agnoster April 4 2006, 15:48:47 UTC

I think there's a good chance successive generations will ask the same question, looking back at ours. Unless, of course, the religious right gets there way and we end up going backwards. But at that point, we might have bigger fish to fry - like, why are nuclear weapons raining down from the sky? This would concern me.

Just as relevant worldnamer April 4 2006, 15:59:44 UTC

Do we really want to understand?

dragonladyflame April 5 2006, 05:42:31 UTC

Depends on what you're aiming for, I guess. I think in some ways, for historical comprehension, it's something that could help people grasp certain relationships that were significant to history. Antony and Cleopatra? Sartre and Beauvoir?

basseykay April 4 2006, 21:40:54 UTC

Perhaps we will never understand, but I'd hesitate to suggest the significant boundrary is generational. I feel sure there are those of our generation feel this distinction at least as strongly as our parents did.

dragonladyflame April 5 2006, 05:43:00 UTC

Maybe as strongly as our parents, but what about our ancestors 600 years ago?

basseykay April 5 2006, 11:42:40 UTC

I'd guess that there are other more significant factors that would make it hard for us to understand the love of those 600 years ago. Most importantly i'd ask about just what we mean by love and what do we believe is its place? There may well be something unchanging in its meaning, but much of its meaning and its associations are very much in flux. And there is no doubt the role of love has changed dramatically.

And I'd still maintain that the line isn't generational, though it is certainly true that the more removed in time we are from any group of people the more likely we are to have trouble understanding them.

balthial April 4 2006, 23:18:21 UTC

Yeah, I've often thought about that. But, I think most people still socialize in highly gendered groups, and so most people can still understand thegeneral gist of the idea.

dragonladyflame April 5 2006, 05:44:51 UTC

True. But understanding a gist isn't quite the same as really getting a portrait of how something feels. A lot of historical commentators and such like to assure us that we have things in common with our ancestors and thereby can understand what they did, but can we? Does Antony's love for Cleopatra really make sense to us -- can it?

artiephesus April 10 2006, 16:44:42 UTC

I'm currently on a mailing list where the gender-bashing (on both sides) and discussions of relationships are increasingly depressing. One of the men, who has been divorced twice, criticizes men who stay married to controlling women, yet at the same time refuses any sort of compromise in his own relationships that might somehow take away his freedom. As someone who looks at modern relationships as partnerships, this attitude is distressing to me ( ... )