From: Kathryn Aegis (k_aegis@mindspring.com)
Date: Sun Sep 12 1999 - 11:45:58 MDT
Just wanted to interject that I don't necessarily see removing gender from
society as a goal, but rather increasing the choice of expression and
decreasing the social pressure to conform to one of two gender choices.
Many Western societies, including America, have taken an important first
step in doing so: they have established for women the same neutrality in
the public sphere that men have had. In other words, women now go to work,
run their errands, and walk the streets without the social approbation that
used to accompany those activities. Quite an amazing measure of progress
when one considers that only 50 years ago this was almost unheard of.
This area of neutrality is reaching into personal relationships as well.
Women and men attend the same schools, form close friendships, and retain
those friendships throughout life. Only 50 years ago, women and men were
schooled separately, formed largely same-sex friendships, and lived in
entirely different spheres of societal existence (home and work). Again,
amazing progress.
And, yet, through all of this, the dynamics of love, lust, and intimacy
have survived, undiminished. People can choose to express their own
strenghts of femininity and masculinity in these realms, where it really
counts.
Kathryn Aegis
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