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Out of Egypt:Halfway to the Promised Land"God is a place you will wait for the rest of your life." |
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July 12, 2008
they nailed it
People who have a doctrinaire idea of how children should be raised (whether that be in regard to gender roles or anything else) have always frightened me. So much damage can be done in childhood.
Posted by donovan at 12:28 PM | Category: Culture
Goodness. Four columns on that site!
Posted by: nougatmachine at July 12, 2008 12:41 PM
Focusing on style rather than substance today, eh, Dagen?
Posted by: Evan Donovan at July 12, 2008 12:52 PM
Gender roles are sticky. I'm at the place where I embrace the sex/gender difference--that gender is an expression unrelated or, at least, not necessarily related to body parts. A friend of mine is a transgender m to f, and she has a lot of fun playing with masculine and feminine expressions.
I know a lot of people at Covenant argue for strict gender roles (which I would call sex roles if it didn't sound so kinky). Where do you come down on that issue, Evan?
Posted by: Adelaide at July 18, 2008 10:31 PM
Evan, I don't think "childhood" as an abstract concept can strictly be raised, per se. Did you mean "children"? :)
Adelaide, this isn't to answer for Evan, but I'd say for myself that gender roles as an expression of preference are okay but gender roles as a universal, compulsory mandate are destructive.
Unfortunately, we live in a society where a guy who loves horses and figure skating will get pulverized. In fact, the hyper-masculine protype is still so strong that a girl who digs cars will be considered "cool" while one who likes teacups is not. It's a narrow little ideal that probably a tiny fraction of the populace lives up to. I wish sometimes I could be a gender superhero and swoop in wherever I hear the phrase "oo, that's so gay" or "she can't help it, she's a girl" and do some serious a**kicking of my own.
Posted by: funke at July 19, 2008 7:47 AM
To answer in reverse order:
Sarah, would "So much damage can be done (to people) in childhood" be better? I think it's an OK sentence, just with a few words implicit. Or were you correcting the content of my sentence, not the grammar?
Adelaide, I'll answer you in a separate post :)
Posted by: Evan Donovan at July 19, 2008 10:39 AM
I was talking about your first sentence. The second sentence is fine.
Posted by: funke at July 19, 2008 1:08 PM