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Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!ttidca!ttidcb!jackson
From: jackson@ttidcb.UUCP (Dick Jackson)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Masculinity is "Normal"
Message-ID: <472@ttidcb.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 10-Oct-85 12:25:02 EDT
Article-I.D.: ttidcb.472
Posted: Thu Oct 10 12:25:02 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 11-Oct-85 08:29:16 EDT
Organization: TTI, Santa Monica, CA.
Lines: 21

This is my first, and unless I get flamed enough, probably my last to
net.women. I read this group because I still have the hope that one day
I will understand women - maybe, I thought, by eavsdropping on their
thoughts about themselves, I would get some clues.

(To some of us men, women are mysterious, almost alien creatures. "Who
knows what women think about" wrote Jack Smith of the LA Times. "We do
know, however, what men think about - food, sex and football".)

Therefore I get slightly annoyed that so many postings to this group are
from chaps. The recent question about feeling feminine/masculine however
resulted in a preponderance of female answers,interesting in that they were
generally stereotypical.

I wonder if this is because many men feel as I do, neither masculine nor
feminine but just "normal". If so this would reinforce the view that the
mainstream world is a male one, which womanish things are "outside".
Am I blundering into what to others is a glaringly obvious idea? Maybe,
just as some people live a long time not realizing that they are
heterosexual writers of prose, I need to have it beaten into me that my
world is not "normal", but male?