quiet waters are deep ... or shallow

[piranha]

copied and slightly expanded from a comment else-journal:

*Are* men much less mysterious and complex than women want them to be?

i think that a) men are people and b) people are both less and more mysterious and complex than any particular person of any gender might want them to be. which has caused me no particular grief, pain, or confusion since i wised up and started surrounding myself with people who a) don't think of us as primarily gendered, and b) don't find mystery either eternally perplexing and worrisome, nor romantic, but simply something interesting to be explored (i understand my long-term partners well, and find them endlessly mysterious in small ways, and i think that's neat).

it's astounding how much better my personal world has become since i've removed stereotyping from it as much as possible. (the drawback is that i now mostly dislike interacting with the mainstream; it tries my patience something fierce. oh well; i'll die a hermit and my cats will eat me -- eccentric film at 11.)

i wonder whether i might hate living in japan.

Comments

[redbird]

For what it's worth, I want people to be complex. Mysterious is optional, so long as it doesn't come from attempts to deceive me or conceal important-to-the-relationship information.

I haven't found people of one gender to be more/less complex or mysterious than people of any other gender, but it's possible that my sample is self-selecting.

[brooksmoses]

The tricky bit, I find, is that there's a difference between complex and complicated. (Well, maybe it's only linguistically tricky; it's clearer in practice than in language.)

Mostly I'm finding this in me; I seem to be being a lot more complicated than I wish I were, lately.

[redbird]

I have a vague idea of the distinction you're looking for; if we needed to get it clarified, I'd probably want to do so with examples.

[trulybloom.livejournal.com]

people are both less and more mysterious and complex than any particular person of any gender might want them to be

This is a really interesting observation. I think it's always easy to make generalities about people - be it based on gender, age, religion, race, whatever - it's human nature to try to categorize based on a set of common traits. But I think that's the interesting thing about getting to know someone - discovering all the little things that make them different, unique, individual.

i wonder whether i might hate living in japan.

Why do you think you could hate living in Japan?

[zxhrue.livejournal.com]

Stereotyping bad. Not in the least because its lazy. What do you mean by "think of us as primarily gendered"?

Difference exists. Mystery? Well, sometimes, but usually as much because of delusional tendencies or socialization gone amok as anything else. Complexity good, or at least usually more interesting than the lack thereof.

Japan and Japanese culture have always been interesting to me, but not very mysterious. I do always find the first few years of living someplace else to be extra stimulating because it generally takes my filter set that long to adapt. Sometimes I wonder, if decisions had gone differently, and I had ended up in Japan for that oh so important language exposure as a 3-5 year old, if I would try more aggressively to go and live there. On the other hand the pressures toward social conformity would probably cause me to be as mainstream dysfunctional there as I am everywhere else. On the gripping hand I probably only have one skill set which would be employable there (teaching colloquial U.S. English), and long ago discovered that I don't have the patience to teach. So not very likely.

*fangirls madly*

[liv]

I really appreciate this post. You're very right about gender and about mystery, and thank you for expressing such true things so well.