Well, I'm back from a wonderful few days in the desert for my sweetie's birthday and our anniversary. We had an interesting conversation prompted by passing through a section of Palm Springs with quite a few same sex couples. My wife started out with a very Eastern philosophy of nature - sunrises & sunsets, day & night, hot & cold, winter & summer, what the Chinese call Yin and Yang, and in it she included male and female. It occurred to me that here in the USA these days, there's a denial of the basic opposite-ness of men and women. The new image of men and women is one of interchangability, and I believe it's playing havoc with real life relationships. The media is pushing this on the public BIG TIME. I mean, the first few hundred times the young good looking girl kicked the sh!t out of the bully in the movies were funny, but they're getting to be a chiche. We're really supposed to believe Lucy Lieu can beat up three or four mafia hit men, that Meg Ryan blasts away Iraqis with an M-60 in Desert Storm while the macho male marines cower in their foxholes, and thousands of other images thrust on the American public by the media.
Much is discussed on all three of these boards about the "femininity" of the women in Asia/Latin America/Russia as compared to those in America. This has a lot to do with the recognition that men and women really are different - they're not the same. If you don't believe this go to any pre-school and look at how little boys and little girls play - even before, what some insist, is behaviour caused by social conditioning. Asian women seen to understand the differences in men and women, and that these differences are rightly part of nature, that like day & night, summer & winter, sunrises & sunsets, neither is above the other and both exist because of each other.
Just some thoughts from a desert evening ( ... with a billion stars all around.)
-- Jeff S.
