Is There Anything Good About Men?

I Just ran across an intersting article that takes a feminist approach to gender and applies it to our cultures understanding of Men. Very cool, something I’ve been interested in for quite a while. It’s called “Is there anything good about Men?“. I thought it was very interesting not only for what it directly says about gender, but because the section that discusses social grouping trade-offs between genders has a lot of relevance for understandings of hierarchy and access.

I definitely don’t agree with all of his arguments or points, in particular I think he’s much to eager to divide the world into neat and even “spheres” and discounts the system bias and even violence that has historically been levied against individuals who wish to operate outside the “sphere” that their cultures have ordained for their gender – ie men who would prefer to operate in what he terms the intimate 1-to-1 sphere and women who would prefer to specialize in the broader networks of “shallower” relationships. Gender is not absolute, after all. Still, he makes some interesting arguments and the evolutionary perspective on gender differences and the idea of biology making tradeoffs between strengths and weaknesses makes sense to me. Take the good, leave the bad. In any case, I’m curious about other people’s reactions to the article, both positive and negative.

Posted: September 11th, 2007 under gender & feminism, science and history.
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