Re: RARA-AVIS: male fantasy worlds?

From: Anthony Dauer ( anthony.dauer@verizon.net)
Date: 22 Aug 2001


I don't see any value in whether or not someone "could" have a fantasy in a discussion based on whether or not they "actually" do. Of course they could. Just as of course some do ... there's only one universal law and that's there ain't any.

Men could fantasize about the heroic nature of Mr. Rogers ... doesn't mean they will. Part of the problem as well is when we say "men" and "women" some automatically suppose an "either or" or "black and white" absolute conclusion when that's rare at best. Of course there are "some" women who do, just as there are some men who fantasize about being Mr. Rogers. But as a group ... as a whole, it's the statistically majority that brings a definitive aspect to the argument.

We could of course just dismiss it all because of the gray areas and declare everyone open to be anything, but that tends to chaff against the natural human desire to classify the surrounding world and its contents. The only harm occurs when the group assumption is actually applied to individuals without regard to their specific desires.

Anthony

----- Original Message ----- From: Carrie Pruett Sent: Wednesday, 22 August, 2001 1:34 PM

> Ah, see, I read your original posts about the "mythical" PI as a male
> fantasy figure to say that only men *have* this fantasy. I agree that
it's
> self-evident that men are traditionally *featured* in this fantasy, but
> there's certainly plenty in this fantasy to appeal to women : the
> traditional PI is something of an outsider in the law enforcement
community,
> which women can certainly relate to; violence is certainly a fact of many
> women's lives, even if they spend more time trying to avoid it than to
> inflict it; and the PI traditionally has a degree of independence that
many
> women, particularly of the Baby Boom generation and beyond, have very
> consciously been struggling for (singleness being viewed as the default
> condition for adult men and something of a tragedy for adult women).

--
# To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to
# majordomo@icomm.ca.  This will not work for the digest version.
# The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 22 Aug 2001 EDT