Girls Who Love Boys Who Love Girls

After a recent fascinating discussion on Hitched! about gender issues, someone posted this. Fascinating!

When I was a kid, I didn’t play with boys. My sister was the type of girl who had boy friends – and I don’t mean boyfriends (I was indeed the type of girl who had plenty of those, hah) but boy friends, the kind that help you get to know how the other sex operates. I was always a little nervous around boys. I didn’t know much about them. I had no idea how they worked. They didn’t seem terribly fun. They never seemed to make magazines or radio stations or write stories. They were always pushing and fighting and playing sports. I wasn’t particularly interested in them and, as I got older, I mostly just wanted to make out with them. I didn’t have any real understanding of the whole male experience.

This year, however, I did a bunch of work with the White Ribbon Campaign and that, coupled with the fact that we’ve got a small boy on the way, got me thinking pretty extensively about the whole thing. Admittedly, I’ve always simply assumed being of the male variety was pretty easy and without any major challenges. But I’ve learned that it’s not – and in order to push forward equality, it’s just as important to think about what needs to change in the male experience as in the female one. After all, how can we raise a generation of young women who innately understand that they are as deserving of respect as their male counterparts if their male counterparts don’t equivalently learn not only that they are a part of this respect-giving culture, but why it needs to work the way that it does in order for all people to share in a more equal society?

Interesting stuff.