30 July 2007

Underlying Motives II - Form and Function

To understand a people, study their underlying motives.

Feminine people (mostly women) are mainly concerned with how things look. Things like physical appearance, such as clothes, weight, and age. Things like homes, gardens, and venues, for how clean they are and how they're decorated. Things like social interactions and how they play out, from which arises etiquette. The proper time and place for drama. The appearance of appropriate sentiments, competence, and morality in the eyes of the public.

Masculine people (mostly men) are mainly concerned with what things do. Everything is a tool. Clothes are tools to protect the physical body from the elements. Hands are tools to make hammers, which are tools to drive nails into boards. Houses are for shelter, storing items, and providing physical structure. Food is fuel for the body in the same way gas is fuel for the car. Drugs are tools to heal or take away pain. Words are tools to convey thoughts. Art is for expressing emotions. There are tools to make more tools, and tools to fix broken tools. Tools to look at how things in the world work on their own, in order to turn them into useful tools.

Thus, little girls like to play dressup with dolls, and little boys like toys with lots of moving parts.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

And I'd say that most people have both a female and a male side. So people tend to see things as tools even if they are females and males can be really good at spotting things.

I never notice what people wear when it comes to clothing. I can assure you that my female friends would be a much better witness than me. I also don't care about how people decorate their homes, how clean their houses are (unless they are an utterly disaster and a risk to the health) and stuff like that.

I don't think the gender is all that black and white.

MWT said...

I figured you'd say that. It's why I said "feminine people" and "masculine people" instead of women and men.

I was generalizing. It may not apply to you personally, but you've still noticed that it's generally your female friends who notice clothing, home decorating, etc. rather than your male ones, no?

Anonymous said...

That's because most of my female friends acts as females should act. And that means being interested in stuff like that. I know women that try all their lives to act interested in fashion but admit to me that they just hate the fact that they have to think so much about what to wear or not.

Why people notice stuff depends on what they are interested in. I'm an aesthete. I'm interested in shapes and colours. And mainly in faces because that was what I was drawing a lot. But that is not because I'm a female. I think my brother is better at fashion than me just because he is more interested in looking good. Gal would probably spot what sort of computer someone was using while I wouldn't care or even see the comp.

I think that by saying that women generally just think about the shape of stuff is a bit too general. It sounds as if females are superficial beings. I mean, I like dice that have nice colours but they have to be balanced too. How they look doesn't really matter if they don't work as well as I like.

And besides males tend to be very careful about how their cars looks, no?

I think a feminine person just like a masculine person think that a house primary is a shelter. But if the female is an aesthete she will probably care about how it looks too. But I know a lot of feminine persons that just don't give a damn too. Just as well as I know really masculine men that really bothers about how the garden looks or what colour the wallpapers have. Just because he is interested in such stuff.

The question is therefore. What interests tend to be seen as feminine/masculine interests? And why? Why isn't females encouraged to get other interests?

Here in Sweden the school is supposed to encourage girls to be more interested in science and it's considered good for boys to play with dolls. But we still have a long way to go until the common man thinks it's ok too. And girls are still forcefed with the opinion that all they should care about is how the clothes looks like, not how nice they are to wear. Unfortunately everything comes down to the fact that the woman is meant to please the man. Why would we have high heels if not? And why would females wear them? I'm just to practical to wear them. You can't run away from a thug in them...

Oh boy, long comment...