The female point of view

ADad · April 24, 2012, 6:43pm

In another thread (<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/909991-seven-sisters-question-asked-different-way-4.html#post14277356[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/909991-seven-sisters-question-asked-different-way-4.html#post14277356</a>), mythmom stated:

What are the elements of the female point of view?

Thanks!

pugmadkate · April 24, 2012, 6:56pm

I think it’s important to hear from people who have experienced things rather than hearing solely from the people who have observed them having the experience.

For example, I took a college course on race. I found the first hand accounts of people of color much more compelling than the accounts of the white experts who reported on the events.

Also, it’s a very recent turn of events to take seriously the reporting by minorities of their own life experience. For the most part, it’s been the white male experience and then everything else is a deviation from that. I’m not a failed man, I’m a woman!

kelsmom · April 24, 2012, 9:32pm

Men and women experience life differently. In order for the point of view of half our country to be represented properly, women have to be part of the process that makes the rules. It’s not that I don’t think men do a good job being in charge … it’s just that I think there needs to be a balance of experiences.

katliamom · April 24, 2012, 9:43pm

In the company I worked for, it took a woman who came back from maternity leave to put in place special rooms, with refrigerators, for still-nursing moms. She was the first woman on the executive team, and until her, it didn’t occur to any man on the executive team that it might be a good place to have.

The female point of view was pretty key in this decision, now applauded by the dozens of women who used this comfortable, private room over the years…

zoosermom · April 24, 2012, 9:58pm

I reject the possibility of a single female point of view. Many of the women in public life who claim to speak for women emphatically do not speak for me, and my views and opinions aren’t filtered through my reproductive organs.

MaineLonghorn · April 24, 2012, 10:00pm

katliamom, I’m jealous! I remember pumping milk in my company’s bathroom! The blueprint machine was in the bathroom for some very odd reason, so people were always banging on the door, wanting to come in! I will never forget that.

zoosermom · April 24, 2012, 10:03pm

I did the same thing in a locked stall. Co-workers would come in and chat with me.

MaineLonghorn · April 24, 2012, 10:05pm

The job was in a precast concrete manufacturing plant. I think there were a total of three women, including me, in the whole place.

poetgrl · April 24, 2012, 10:45pm

Here is a courageous group of women, who represent the women’s view, even within a male dominated organization:

[Vatican</a> says leadership group for US nuns doesn’t adhere to church teaching; orders reform - The Washington Post](<a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/vatican-says-leadership-group-for-us-nuns-doesnt-adhere-to-church-teaching-orders-reform/2012/04/18/gIQAXir0QT_story.html]Vatican”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/vatican-says-leadership-group-for-us-nuns-doesnt-adhere-to-church-teaching-orders-reform/2012/04/18/gIQAXir0QT_story.html)

I love these women.

mythmom · April 24, 2012, 11:22pm

poetgrl: Thanks for posting that. I am really interested in reading about these nuns.

ADad: I can see I have gotten myself into a whole pot of boiling water by what I wrote. Zoosermom is right – there is not one female point of view.

And yet, I still stand by what I wrote.

The poet Muriel Rukyser (I’ve spelled that wrong) once said, “If one woman would tell the whole truth about her experience the world would split open.”

I think the female point of view is:

Thinking about the decision of whether or not the country should go to war only in terms of the sons who might not come back; (and daughters for that matter).

Knowing that working and mothering is not a matter of hours in the day but of having enough emotional reserves to do both;

That money can be a weapon very easily;

That we desperately want men to be our equals in responsibility;

That we want partnership but don’t want to be told what to do;

That we need control of our own destinies;

That being taken care of is a double-edged sword;

That the survival of our children and their emotional wholeness is more important than our own egos, and that any government policy has to consider their future;

That feelings are real, as real as thoughts, and they can’t be ignored and aren’t infinity plastic;

That there are many legitimate points of view…

These are just a few of my thoughts. I had the extreme delight tonight of teaching my mythology course and giving excellent grades on panel presentations and hearing how much the class loved having my 22 year old son come in to teach them about the Aeneid. One student said, “Your son knows it as if he wrote it.” Well, he did read it in Latin three times.

I’m sure men have had similar experiences, but there was something so essentially motherly to me about bringing together my work and my family in such a way that there is no compartmentalization. Tonight in class (6 - 9, a bit of pain) they were both equally important and braided together so I could not say when one began or the other ended. Then I got to come home and tell him how much the class loved his teaching.

I really felt fortunate. And somehow that I can’t explain, it did seem the perfect representation of “the female point of view.”

scansmom · April 25, 2012, 1:39am

I read this on a parenting blog and it seemed to illustrate the general differences between a male and a female point of view:

Certainly, not all women share the same point of view or the same life experiences, but I think the term “female point of view” means more than a specific viewpoint that can somehow be held only by women or that women and men have different life experiences and the female experience needs to be acknowledged. To me, it has more to do with the differences in HOW women and men process information and internalize those life experiences, ie men tend to process information and internalize their world in a more logical/systemic/compartmentalized manner and women tend to process information and internalize their world in a more emotional/empathic/personalized manner (with variation in degree and overlap between genders, of course ;)).

cobrat · April 25, 2012, 2:25am

Out of curiosity, what do you mean by “infinity plastic”?

I’m not sure that acknowledging whether feelings are real or whether one is more emotional is solely/mostly necessarily based on gender.

I’m wondering if it is more one’s personality type and learning/life experiences as the aunts in one side of my family tend to be much more logically-oriented and tend to ignore or even be dismissive of feelings as legitimate.

On the other hand, I know several men who tend to be more emotionally-oriented and are sometimes driven batty by my ENTJ personality type…especially when in discussing problems/issues in their lives and I tend to jump into “fix-it/propose solutions” mode when all they want me to do is to listen and relate.

On the other hand, their expectations of the latter tend to drive me batty as I am admittedly not very helpful when someone needs emotional counseling. If it is really serious such as a bad breakup, I usually refer them to a friend who excels in that area so they get the help they need from him…and I don’t end up wasting their time at best…or worse…add to their painful ordeal.

Incidentally, an older female HS classmate placed a FB posting about how one reason why she doesn’t have too many female friends is that she’s not the counseling type and actually HATES to listen to other women/people chat for hours about problems and emotional issues in their lives. The context of that posting came because she was a captive audience to several women telling her about all that because she was in an out-patient facility due to recent surgery and they were nurses supposed to be caring for her…not to have her serve as their therapist.

mom2collegekids · April 25, 2012, 6:45am

*Quote:
But women’s colleges can ensure the training of women who are devoted to fighting for the female point of view in the world.
*

I thought the modern thinking was that men and women are the same but just have different genitalia?

Marian · April 25, 2012, 7:00am

Maybe it’s time for some postmodern thinking.

Because there are differences that just won’t go away, and the other posters have mentioned some of them.

One that hasn’t been mentioned is the need for women to be more concerned about physical safety. I have two kids in their twenties – one of each gender. While at college, my son could walk home from a friend’s dorm or apartment alone, without concern, at 4 a.m. My daughter could not; she had to ask a male friend to walk her home. Currently, my son can take a bus home at any hour of the night and walk from the bus stop to his apartment without concern. In similar situations, my daughter needs to spend money on a taxi. My son can choose an apartment in an “iffy” neighborhood. My daughter can’t – and she has to spend more than the should on rent for just this reason.

This sort of thing costs women money and adds a lot of inconvenience to our lives.

Pizzagirl · April 25, 2012, 7:53am

We INTJ moms don’t resemble post 11 :-)

mythmom · April 25, 2012, 8:35am

A correction to post #11: (and I know these weren’t the posters’ words)

Women were gatherer-hunters too. Hunter-gatherers is the oft used term, but it is not as accurate as gatherer-hunters because gathering provided 80% of the food. Women hunted too, but they only hunted small game, not large. The reason for this was that children are too noisy to have along when large game was hunted. It was done in groups and there would have been no one to leave the kids with.

It wasn’t a question of strategy or strength – the most common was to kill large game was to edge a stray herd member to an elevation an force them to fall off.

Of course, other strategies were used as well.

Are men and women the same with different genitalia? I guess there are some social-constructivists who believe this. I certainly don’t, and I teach women’s studies. There are three areas of functioning that women and men have consistently scored differently on every measure devised: verbal ability, manual dexterity, and spacial relations. Women outscore men on the first two; men outscore women on the third. One student told me that proved women should be secretaries. I said I thought it means we should be brain surgeons and violinists.

My point is that facts exist but interpretations differ (not by gender, I just mean by individuals. And of course, that’s perfectly expected and legitimate.)

And I think women and men differ in other ways as well. For example, young men will take more risks. 150 men died building the Brooklyn Bridge. Many of them fathers. I am not sure you could get a whole bunch of women to climb that scaffolding. And I think the Brooklyn Bridge is beautiful as well as supremely useful. I am not suggesting that these differences favor women or make us superior.

And even if social-constructivists were right, our different genitalia would make us have different concerns, like contraception, abortion, paid family leave, places to breast feed in public, etc, etc.

And I don’t think women and men have equal reception in the world. Watching the college acceptance process and the summer job/internship process with a son and a daughter it is obvious to me that my son still enjoyed an advantage. Now my son felt his sister did because he mentioned the fact that he would have liked a school like Barnard: a LAC at a major university in NYC. He liked the combination. However, he chose something very opposite – rural and small even though he had similar opportunities, so I think he was just making a point. He is a graduate of Williams.

I really feel that the DNC made its preference for Obama over Hilary very clear. I like Obama. I think Hilary would have made a better president. Just an opinion. I thought gender politics were, sadly, alive and well.

As for the phrase “are not infinity plastic,” this means that emotions cannot be shaped and manipulated to suit the situation. Plastic means moldable. My H and my first H and most of the men I’ve known have believed that emotions can be just swept away or changed at will. That hasn’t been my experience.

Now speaking to the point that some of these are individual differences and not gender differences I would say that of course there are differences in individuals and a woman can be more compartmentalized and a man more empathetic. Of course that’s true. However, there are statistical norms.

In my women’s studies classes, I make the point that if Danny DeVito came in he would be the shortest person in the room (usually it’s true), and if Janet Reno came in, she would be the tallest person in the room. That does not detract from the FACT that in the human race men are 17% bigger than women as a statistical norm.

Shakespeare would probably always be the most verbally talented person and Maya Lin would have more spatial ability than most men.

Generalizations and norms stay little about individuals at the edges of bell curves.

However, I still believe that whether through genetics, experience, or treatment in general women and men see, feel and live the world in slightly different ways and that many laws now being written are uncomfortable for women. It is also a fact that some of these initiatives come from women. I could speculate volumes about that, but I won’t.

mom2collegekids · April 25, 2012, 9:07am

*Quote:
I thought the modern thinking was that men and women are the same but just have different genitalia?

Maybe it’s time for some postmodern thinking.*

Oh I agree…but there have been many threads here on CC that have strongly implied that men and women aren’t “wired differently” and that there aren’t any differences except for reproductive organs.

I think that if men and women were really alike in views, thinking, and everything else, nearly all of us would be bi-sexual. Why would a woman be attracted to a guy if the only difference between him and her best female friend is a sex organ?

Emaheevul07 · April 25, 2012, 9:54am

Not necessarily. In a gender studies course I took, we studied the idea that this “sameness” theory is, in some ways, just as oppressive as previously held beliefs about men and women. It suggests that women are just as good as men because they’re the same as men… which suggests the worrying question of, what if we’re not the same? Because we obviously aren’t, even if the historic gender hierarchy isn’t valid. (And a lot of times we unconsciously define “sameness” as “women can do everything a man can do” as if the default for being deserving of equality is to be (traditionally)male-like, not necessarily in dress or mannerisms, but things like being willing/able to work long hours because it’s not your responsibility to get the kids home from school.) Men and women function differently in many ways and have different concerns-- the issue of nursing in the workplace that came up earlier is one of many examples of that, just because we’re not different in some of the ways commonly believed before the feminist movement doesn’t mean we’re not different at all. Some major feminist theorists are now writing extensively about this idea of equality and difference being mutually exclusive and how it isn’t, and shouldnt be, the way things are. The way I was taught, this is becoming the prevailing theory.

We actually discussed the working, nursing mothers issue in class as an example of the female perspective and the way that, today, society tends to default to the male perspective-- it’s an unusual exception when a workplace accomodates for these kinds of women-specific issues. It’s also a fairly easy circumstance to accomodate to allow women to function as “ideal workers” without forcing them to adhere to the male perspective and live in a world where things like nursing and working don’t coexist. I’m not male bashing here, it’s not like it’s their fault that these issues are (relatively) new things and society has to adjust accordingly, but these sorts of issues are things that often a man would never think about if a woman didn’t point it out, because it’s just not something they deal with. I am SURE there are things like this in the male perspective, too, that we wouldn’t ever think of, either.

I haven’t worded that as eloquently as I would have liked or as the texts I read were written, but it’s definitely a concept worth researching if you’re interested-- don’t let my bungled attempt to convey it second-hand deter you. :)

mom2collegekids · April 25, 2012, 10:01am

Ema…

I totally agree with you. My post wasn’t a personal opinion. I disagree with that opinion…but that opinion is out there and often implied on CC. Men and women ARE different. Yes, some women may have more “male traits” and some men may have more “women’s traits”, but there’s a reason why more mothers post on CC than fathers do.

sax · April 25, 2012, 10:06am

Its not the genitalia;it’s the hormones and the way they affect (effect?) human behavior.

testosterone<…>estrogen

It’s where you fit on the spectrum that determines your patterns of thinking and behavior.

You are then influenced by the way people treat you depending on how you look.

The female point of view

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