Most well-known writers are men.This is the way it is, worldwide. This is the way it always has been. Women may be better equipped to listen, to an interpret sounds, hand gestures and “body language” including facial expression and pupil dilation. These are good things to be good at when taking care of babies and being an exquisite lover.
I agree one of the reasons there are not as many female writers is sexism. Same for why there aren’t as many men who are the primary caretaker for their children. It just is there seems to be more to it than that.
Before I retired I was a professional social worker. Most professional social workers are women. I spent most of my career working for agencies that served infants, preschoolers, and their families. Such agencies employ mostly women. I worked for one agency for four years before I was promoted to supervisor. The fact was I was next in line in terms of seniority, based on years worked. That was not the way it looked as time went by and I found myself supervising six social workers with masters degrees and they were all women.
I learned a great deal about raising children in those years. Nearly all of it I learned from women. The stuff I didn’t learn mainly from women, I learned from doctors, who were mostly men. Fortunately, more and more women are finding that talent, compassion and hard work can overcome not having a penis and not identifying as being male if they want to complete medical school.
At the time I was learning I didn’t think much about gender. This changed when I started supervising a social worker, who identified with being a radical feminist. She was actually very quiet about that. To this day I am grateful she let me know.
The title of this piece doesn’t seem to apply to what I’ve written so far because it doesn’t. At least for most of it, it doesn’t. Just the part about women being better at learning things in ways other than through words.
So let me be more focused. Before I do though, how about a song:
[This day and age we’re living in
Gives cause for apprehension
With speed and new invention
And things like fourth dimension.
Yet we get a trifle weary
With Mr. Einstein’s theory.
So we must get down to earth at times
Relax relieve the tension
And no matter what the progress
Or what may be proved
The simple facts of life are such
They can not be removed.]
You must remember this
A kiss is just a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh.
The fundamental things apply
As time goes by.
Yes, that is from the song by Herman Hupfield, “As Time Goes By,” made popular by what some consider the best movie of all time, Casablanca, released in 1942.
Even back in 1942 people were getting stressed out adapting to “new invention” and exposure to abstract scientific explanations of the universe. They were easily entertained by listening to a song about simple things like kisses, which seemed then to be standing the test of time.
Flash forward to today, where the most popular thing to kiss is the glass of a cell phone and the most popular way to sigh is the clever choice of an emoji or two. We may be running out of words to describe our cultural experience in order to be able to sing about it and relax.
The great cause of this problem may be with words themselves and the over-reliance of their use by men to navigate their life’s journey. To make my case, I am forced to use words, thus the warning to men in the title.
The use of words in any language implies the universe can be divided up into parts that can be labeled. It can’t. Not really. Zen Buddhists try to get around this problem by writing that words are like signposts that point to things. Such as the word moon not being the moon, just a hint as to where to look for a spiritually uplifting sight.
Many meditation practices seek to guide practitioners to stop the words or at least slow them down as they pop into mindful awareness, to get into a better state. Some spiritual teachers recommend listening to silence to do the same.
Silence is hard to listen to these days, with all of the Apple Watch alarms going off and the aircraft spraying their chemicals overhead, but it can be done, even outside of a cave.
In the USA we had a president who reminded us that it “depends on what your meaning of the word is, is” and got away with it. We have lawyers who make a great deal of money doing the same thing. A man’s very freedom can depend on how a judge or a jury defines a word. It is also scary to note the most popular training for politicians to be is law school. This makes sense however because politicians usually go onto to write law or at least do a good job of pretending to as lobbyist do most of the work.
Law enforcement people are helped by knowing what words they can use to arrest people. It does not matter the arrested never heard these words before getting arrested because when it comes to the law, “Ignorance is no excuse.” For excuses to win one’s freedom it is critical to get a good lawyer. If a good lawyer is not affordable there is always the hope that the food and housing afford by jails and prisons will be an improvement over how one was living.
Then there are sacred words, written down in what is deemed to be holy scripture. There is little like holy scripture to generate disagreements over what words mean and claims of having gotten to the root of things by better understanding how to translate some ancient language into one that can be understood.
Getting rid of words is what needs to be done to live more in the “Now,” which is a popular thing to want to do. Whenever you find the words to describe what is being experienced the experience has already happened. Usually trying to put it into words shortened the experience if it was a good experience and lengthened it if it wasn’t.
Sometimes a man is best off if he just allows himself to experience the way his lovers’ breath can warm his ear cannel before the brain starts to interpret what those ear vibrations might mean. Best to just know that he knows what the intonation of a sigh meant, rather than how a popular self-help book might advise how to understand what is going on in a relationship.
I understand if a man loses focus on the words in his mind it could lead to reckless sex, that while very pleasure l in the short term, can be very unpleasant in the longer term. Often this problem can be addressed by knowing how to use the best words to call a “time out,” to spend more time to know how a man feels about the situation.
I trust that my GMP editor, Christa Callies McDermott will be able to get my words here into good enough shape to meet the approval of GMP publisher, Lisa Hickey, so this can get posted on The Good Men Project website. I really want to be able to help men not read things like this article. They may be much better off by not doing so.
If you are a man and just aren’t ready to give up on words yet keep coming back to The Good Men Project where you will find writing that makes much better use of words then this here.
I plan on trying to practice more. You can look for my upcoming article on the word, “theopneustia” and what that can point to. If you can’t wait for me try Google. You can also focus on warm lover breath, past, present and future.
Being an amateur writer for The Goodmen Project has been a very good way for me to counter the forces of aging. If you find my writing style a possible symptom of destructive brain changes secondary to aging, go read something else.
I am vey prone to missing out on experience because I am too busy thinking about how I might write about it. I miss out on connections with other people when my words form opinions which I express to the wrong person, at the wrong time or in the wrong way.
Sometimes my interest in self expression causes me to write on and on, when it would have been better, if I had stopped many paragraphs ago. I think this may be one of those times.
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