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When I told several female friends about the work they did, their response was: "Are they gay?" It's funny. From the days of chivalry all the way to the modern
by goatinaboat 7y ago
When I told several female friends about the work they did, their response was: "Are they gay?"
It's funny. From the days of chivalry all the way to the modern patriarchy, men's behaviours have been conditioned by one overriding factor: what will impress women? I don't see that evaporating overnight. Men suppress the emotions for the simple reason that women have demonstrated a preference for men that do that, and this is simply an example of that being made explicit. You could say "this is how the patriarchy harms men!". But it wasn't men who chose it to be this way.
- paganel 7y ago12th or 13th century chivalrous poetry from South of France was still full of feelings and what have you, and a little earlier the Arthur-related stories were not void of feelings either. I personally blame the “Protestant ethic”, for lack of a better name, which started culturally imposing itself starting with the mid-1600s in England and present-day Netherlands (in the early 1600s a guy like Shakespeare was still not afraid to share his feelings in his Sonnets).
- hirako2000 7y agoSpot on.
- nradov 7y agoDid the majority of 12th century French women consider those poets attractive?
- paganel 7y agoProbably, otherwise why would have they wrote the way that they did? And earlier than that we have Achilles, the male character that is synonymous with courage and presented by Homer as “the greatest of all Greek warriors”, but even so he wasn’t afraid to cry when his close friend Patroclus was killed in battle.
- nradov 7y agoThat doesn't show any causality. People write poetry for all sorts of reasons.
- hdfbdtbcdg 7y agoUsing the word patriarchy to describe modern western society is always going to derail any conversation about men's issues into a flame war. EDIT added 'modern'.
- krapp 7y agoWestern societies are traditionally patriarchies, based as they are on the patriarchal ideals of Judeo-Christian religions. That's simply a statement of fact, and reasonable people should be able to discuss it on a site like HN without flamewar.
- decebalus1 7y agoWhenever I hear patriarchy in a conversation I can't help but start laughing as it reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriarch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriarch which as growing up in an eastern orthodox family was a central part of my belief. It never helps the conversation.