Recently a woman I know criticized men in general for being overly aggressive, and especially for resorting to violence too easily. Although I do not think that this criticism should be dismissed entirely, it occurred to me that this could easily be mirrored and we could ask "why are women so overly passive-aggressive? Why don't they use violence more? Sure it can go too far, but it solves the problem rather than letting the problem drag on for months or years."
Neither of those statements is fair for a few reasons. First off, obviously not all men are all that aggressive, and not all women are passive by any stretch of the imagination. There are great, well adjusted, people out there regardless of gender. On top of that, there are certainly people who go too far either way. We all know men who are stupidly aggressive and try to solve everything by being dominant and even violent when there are much more intelligent ways to address the issues at hand. So surely not all women, or men for that matter, should just head in that direction and imitate those men. The same goes for the mirror.
The point I am making is that a lot of feminists do not seem to realize that this argument goes both ways - they tend to start from an assumption that the way women act is normal or correct, and that men are overly aggressive or criticizing toxic masculinity. Instead, maybe we should be talking about how there is a balance between the two, and that it is even fine for women and men to act differently in this regard. I can imagine how much feminists would object to a man acting as though being aggressive is the default and that the way the average woman acts is wrong.
This gets to a key issue with how many gender studies classes and programs work - they tend to assume that stereotypically male behaviors and attitudes are wrong and act as though the way women stereotypically act is appropriate. In reality, I think if we stepped back and could ignore stereotypes and our own biases, we would see that really both extremes should be criticized and neither should be inherently viewed as any sort of default. It seems to me that few people acknowledge this unfortunately.
Have you seen the movie Wonder Woman? I believe that movie portrays a lot of truth about the state of the world in terms of man's default approach to solving problems being violence and war. Whereas if women had been making the decisions, or at least consulted, the world would be a much kinder, gentler, and more peaceful place to live. Also, it may be man's over dependence on violence and taking action that has forced women to counter balance that with too much passivity... (to avoid utter violence and chaos throughout society and the world)
i wrote an article with more of my ideas on how we arrived at this point...
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I have seen the movie. I think you make a very good point in that instance. It is definitely true that to some degree the way that women have been taught to act is in response to how some men act. It is definitely good to consider how society has, at least to a large degree, led to these differences. As I said in the article, I do believe that there is some legitimacy to the idea that we should think about how to mollify how violently many men react to things. I think the only difference we might have is that I think there would be a lot of problems with women making the decisions too - just different problems. I like how Eastern Philosophies tend to talk about balance between male and female, that is more what I am going for here.
Thanks for the input. Your article is a bit long, but I'll check it out later.
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