Mark's Pages

November 25, 2004:

Cultural Feminism: the old "battle of the sexes" viewed from the perspective of female solidarity.

A million years a go you believed that men and women were two different species, incapable of communion or even communication beyond sex. I don't know what you believe now but I wonder whether some remnant of this once-core system of values colors your suspicion over my friendships with women.

It's possible this is the single most acute point of difference between us. That I strongly reject what seem to me to be goofy lists of ideologically-posited differences between women and men. That the majority of my strongest friendships since childhood have been with girls and women. That I can comfortably spend time alone with women friends without romantic encounters happening, indeed that the thought that they might seems laughable.

I wonder right now whether something of the great surprise we sometimes exhibit toward each other follows from this basic divergence.