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From: tron@fluke.UUCP (Peter Barbee)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: what makes you feel feminine/masculine?
Message-ID: <1234@vax1.fluke.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 23-Oct-85 16:31:51 EDT
Article-I.D.: vax1.1234
Posted: Wed Oct 23 16:31:51 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 24-Oct-85 08:24:32 EDT
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Organization: John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc., Everett, WA
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Great article Sharon, I agree with a lot but not all of what you say.  
I'll respond only to your three questions below.

>[men don't show femininity]  Because they fear rejection and
>embarrassment from other men. Do they fear the same things from women?
>
Yes, in fact I feel as much rejection from women as from men as I show
more of my "feminine" side.  (a sidebar, I don't have a feminine side
but I do have traits society (that's all you out there) label feminine).

>The men are the only ones who can answer my question. You complain about the
>rules of masculinity, but where do they come from? Don't throw "SOCIETY"
>at me! Society is made up of people. Society's perception of women
>as drastically changed in the last 30 years. Why not an equal shift in
>society's perception of men? 

To the first question, yes *society* does create the rules of masculinity.
Why does the Rambo image still have admirers?  If women stopped being
interested in Rambo don't you think he'd start to go away?  I do, because
if the way I act was causing me to not be able to find suitable female
accomplices I would change the way I act (for now I'm not changing).

I think that *society* is composed of both men and women and, as in it
takes two to Tango, both sexes are active participants on the rules committee.
It may be that men have a few more votes, I'm not sure.

To the second question, a simplistic answer is that men haven't changed.  Thus
society's perception hasn't changed.  A more interesting answer is that I think
"men's liberation" (or hopefully human liberation) has lagged the women's lib
movement by several years.  In fact it is barely underway now.  Men didn't
(and don't) realize how stifling their role of power is, not all of us are
willing to give up that power.  Remember, power corrupts, and infinite power
corrupts infinetely.  This is the situation many men are used to.

How do I know the men's liberation movement has barely begun to gain momentum?
In this very socially liberal community we do not support a men's forum nearly
as well as we do for women.  I know we're somewhat interested because there
are so many male postings to net.women (although sometimes I think we (the men)
are merely trying to prove that we are the most sensitive male around), but
the men's mailing list still has not gotten off the ground (it is moving,
maybe it will become airborne).  At least we do have some inertia, no matter
how little.

With hope,
Peter B	             { allegra, ihnp4!uw-beaver }!fluke!tron