Male Validation
Added 2023-03-21 14:53:10 +0000 UTCHappy Spring to Northern Hemisphere! Happy Winter to the friends in the south.
Some friends shared this conversation with me and I keep thinking about the premise… are things women enjoy deemed socially “less than” until men validate it?
Personally, I first really felt this when members of my family would dismiss romance genre even as they avidly read other genre fiction like Lee Child. Obviously I feel it a lot with liking romantic Kdramas or Kpop. I think if I keep unpacking during the day more and more dots will connect so I thought it could be a good thread.
And for any male-identifying listeners…patriarchal views hurt your side of the house a lot too and we will dig into one of those topics later this week.
What do you all think?
-Lia
Comments
What a great topic and discussion. I feel like I’ve been fighting dismissal my whole life (and at my age, that means more than half a century!!!) but I know I’m also guilty of contributing to the problem by being dismissive about the things I love. (What are you reading? Me: It’s JUST a romance). Ugh! I need to do better. I'm listening to the book recommended a couple comments up by Ashlea: Invisible Women – it’s powerful but depressing. We ALL need to do better. 🌸
Kathi
2023-03-22 21:19:39 +0000 UTCOr food and it’s “cooking” when women do it regularly as a generalized rule and “haute cuisine” when a man dons a chef hat and makes it career
Megan Erickson
2023-03-22 18:00:34 +0000 UTCMaybe I'm more cynical, but I think it's not perceived as "less than" until (some) men validate it, it's perceived as "less than" until or unless those men figure out a way to take it over and make it theirs. If they can't figure out how to do that (for example with Romance fiction), then it will always stay in the cultural sidelines. Even when (again in the case of Romance) it makes more money than other male dominated parts of the culture (like literary fiction). The real eye opener for me was hearing a podcast about (and later reading) "How to Suppress Women's Writing" by Joanna Russ. All that being said, to go back to the example of The Beatles. Rock & Roll started out as an African American dominated subculture, until other groups figured out that they liked at it and (more importantly) could make money at it. And you see that happening over and over again in music, especially in the last century. It's enough to make anyone cynical.
Raymond Hodgson
2023-03-21 22:35:52 +0000 UTC
