As I don't have a subscription I don't know if this is in reference to something like the Irving Layton funeral, or just general Globishness. Globularity? Globbledom?

I've also encountered it several times in the last week or so -- TV surfing, mostly. Oh, and that horrible Macleans article; post-secondary education is also too feminised, it seems. Me, I hadn't noticed.

Needless to say, my eyebrows are hovering at the top of my forehead on this one.

I hadn't heard the phrase before, so I googled.

I certainly would not have made it if it this far academically wasn't for a deep inner need to crush the average, and to excel. My academic experience is that most men also feel the need for competition to motivate.

Is Queer eye for the straight guy too feminised?

I've been reading some parents for at least a decade worrying about how a "feminized" education system could be short-changing their sons, and I might be semi-prepared to take some of their concerns seriously, depending on the data they can produce and how they present it.

But once we shift to employment, claims that any field has become "too feminized" are shorthand for prejudice, IMHO. When we're talking about the arts, we're talking about adult workers, as in any other field. The arts become what people want them to become, both the people who become arts workers and the people who appreciate their work. If any field were ever driven hard by market discipline, boy, it is the arts. Nature red in tooth and claw, as all arts workers know.

A feminist historian here (must retrieve my books from my largest bookcase - still in boxes) wrote extensively on the feminisation of professions with their resulting loss in status (from secretaries to medical staff).

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My vote was "No," but only because there wasn't an option for "What the f$#@ is this poll talking about?"

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[ 09 January 2006: Message edited by: pogge ]

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Originally posted by skdadl:

How many Grope readers would have been thinking about this topic before the Grope planted the silly thought in their minds? The question itself encourages paranoia, and paranoia is one main root of prejudice. Stupid Grope.

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To (sorta) answer skdadl's question -- not this Grope reader. I gotta get out more maybe, or read more stupid journalism, but I hadn't heard/read this phrase before, as I said last night. I googled again this morning and spent several distressing minutes reading crap that contains these two words.

It may well be a species of homophobia, but it certainly is misogyny.

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A feminist historian here (must retrieve my books from my largest bookcase - still in boxes) wrote extensively on the feminisation of professions with their resulting loss in status (from secretaries to medical staff).

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Originally posted by Makwa:
As a very angry and harmed man, one should be so lucky to be granted the choice of being even a little bit 'feminized.' Such a release it could be from the anger and harm and danger held inside for so many male humans. From what I have learned from my Elders, it is only from learning from our female energies, do our male energies become free and complete. It is without this understanding comes the anger, loneliness, misery and harm we do to one another.

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Makwa, do you really think that works? Discovering the other side within yourself?

I'm serious. I have been thinking about this a lot lately, because lately I have often been very angry. When I say angry, I mean smashing my fist into walls angry. Like that. Jumping up and down and swearing, for sure, but approaching blind physical anger too.

Like speechifying for hours in an empty kitchen angry - that kind of angry, which prevents you from going to sleep even when you're exhausted. That kind of angry.

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Is that my yang, my male side?

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Personally, I've been too feminized, but after laying some boundries concerning whale bone stays with "Mistress Helga", I no longer feel that way.

When a patriarchal society tilts too far over to the male side, emphasizing and glorifying the 'masculine' & effectively excluding from power and vilifying all that is female, then force (moral, political, intellectual, boycott, etc. etc.) is applied to level this unbalance, there is initially a shift that draws more women into the fields where they are now accepted. There is also a perception that society is now too feminised.

Too bad.

oh where oh where is the preview post button?

[ 09 January 2006: Message edited by: deBeauxOs ]

I have held some of those sentiments at different times. For example - the idea that children aren't allowed to fight back if some other kid picks a fight with them is one I disagree with - if my kid is being bullied and teachers can't stop it, and they so often can't, I don't want him getting in trouble if he finally decides to physically defend himself. That was how I finally ended up stopping people from bullying me when I was in grade school - by learning how to fight and beating the shit out of some kid who felt like he was put on earth to torment me. Worked like a charm. Sometimes schoolyard justice works better than getting parents involved. I remember another time when I told the teacher and my parents about the way I was being bullied by some other kid. (This was before I learned how to fight.) My father talked to the principal, and the kid's parents were called. And then those of us walking home from school that night were treated to the spectacle of this kid's father kicking his ass all the way home. Literally. I think it probably would have been more effective for me to have defended myself against this kid physically by beating him in a good schoolyard fight than to sic his abusive father on him. (Of course, we didn't know his father was abusive at the time, and no one found out since no parents were witness to this shit-kicking.) Soon afterwards, I learned how to fight from a friend of mine, and got explicit permission from my parents to beat the crap out of any kid who picked on me.

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Originally posted by ronb:

Sounds a trifle too expressive to qualify as yang to me. Isn't the entire range of masculine emotion supposed to be feigned indifference punctuated by extremely brief outbursts of pointed violence? Sustained displays of anger not so much.

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Originally posted by skdadl:

Makwa, do you really think that works? Discovering the other side within yourself?

I'm serious. I have been thinking about this a lot lately, because lately I have often been very angry. When I say angry, I mean smashing my fist into walls angry. Like that. Jumping up and down and swearing, for sure, but approaching blind physical anger too.

Like speechifying for hours in an empty kitchen angry - that kind of angry, which prevents you from going to sleep even when you're exhausted. That kind of angry.

I don't know how many women get there, but I sure have lately. Is that my yang, my male side? And is it good that I've found it? It suddenly seems all too accessible. Scares the hell out of me, though.

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I spent much of the first 10 years of my adult life there.

It's not yang, per se. Yang is positive energy, movement, so I can see some relationship, but it's not quite the same thing. We westerners relate yang and yin to male and female, but that's an essentialist comparison drawn from our culture, and always bothers me. Women are as yang as men and can still remain feminine. It just has to do with energies -- motion and stillness are a better comparison.

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I found it easier (although not in a crisis period, I needed to be angry and sometimes think anger has saved my life or at least my marbles) to deal with anger appropriately when I could acknowledge what generated it.

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Yes, that is a helpful way to put it, and to think.

Rage is a real problem though, isn't it. Like some other emotions, it can keep feeding on itself by force of inertia sometimes - as sadness can, eg, in crying jags, or in depression.

and, man, have I got a temper. I learned how to control it most of the time, but I've had a couple of "blind rage" episodes where I really do think I would have been capable of drinking blood from the throat of someone I saw as an "enemy". The expression "see red" is SO descriptive, everything did disappear into a red haze and those who saw me blow up said my eyes changed colour from green to cat-yellow.

Skdadl, I "defuse" almost daily. I argue with the knob on TV who reads what he insists is the news, I argue with the castratii on CBC radio, and I've had a couple of kitchen rants where I let alll the elder gods and goddesses know I was about fed to the teeth with their inactivity.

Almost always the anger comes from a feeling of helplessness, the realization that it really doesn't matter what I do or say, or what we all do or say, there is a grossly unfair system with it's huge foot on our scrawny necks and when we struggle, that system either yawns or laughs.

And, hen, it ain't gettin' better as I get older!! I used to take that anger energy out to the woodpile and split alder and fir until I was wet with sweat. Now I don't have a woodpile, or a wood burning stove, and I don't have the physical strength to really attack the wood if I had any, so I vent.

Irene, the poodlymutt, ignores me. Lace, the boxer, tries to become invisible, and SkinnyMinny sits with her nose raised to the ceiling and lets loose with her hound ooo-ooo-ooo.

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Originally posted by anne cameron:

TESTIFY, my good woman! Give'em shit! And bad cess to the entire lot of'em.

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I feel better already.

The animals are funny, aren't they? I just have cats, so I don't get yowls, but whenever I am ... unusual ... they will all gather round and hunker down and watch me. Often, it is noticing that - that the cats are all watching me - that makes me realize I have been holding forth.

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Originally posted by skdadl:
I think I know what they're thinking, though. "Gee, if this keeps up, is she gonna remember to feed us?"

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Hint: they are often black - the Siamese pattern is a variation on the black cat gene(s) - long and slinky with short, sleek fur.

Renzo was in full Siamese mode last night, cursing the weather gods (he hates winter as much as I do). Since it wasn't very cold, I gladly opened the door to show him the snow but he wanted no part of it - he doesn't like the new outdoors here - alas no Italian garden with vines and lots of places to take shelter, even in winter.

I have two cats. Ruby's mom was a crippled Manx but I'm told she HAS to have siamese in her background because she will not shut up..and she doesn't "meow" or "mew" she WHINES....and each whine sounds like every other whine so there's no telling what it is she thinks she wants this time...lately I've just put her outside as soon as she starts whining...

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Originally posted by Tape_342:
See that? Responses from three womens and a gay guy and already the thread derails to cat talk... too feminized indeed.

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But did no one notice the most important part of the 'feminized'?

Star trek!!! STAR TREK??? Too feminized? Lets have a mud bath or shower with Archer and his female vulcan sexbot?? Seven of nine slinking around? Commander Riker and hey look at this planet of women wanting sex?

Too feminized? Lets remmeber the Prime Directive but still kick the shit out of people?

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posted by fern hill: Stereotyping of the worst kind!! Cats are NOT a feminist issue.

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WTF is "too feminized" anyways?

I wonder if this term is not only a direct attack on feminsim but also on the anti-war movement.

[ 13 January 2006: Message edited by: a citizen of winnipeg ]

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"In your opinion, has the arts and entertainment scene in Canada become too feminized?"

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I think that this question is really, "In your opinion, are there too many women involved with the arts and entertainment scene in Canada?"

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Originally posted by Loretta:

I think that this question is really, "In your opinion, are there too many women involved with the arts and entertainment scene in Canada?"

"Feminized" means nothing in itself, in my opinion. It's a cover for asking if too many women are involved, something that would be inappropriate to ask outright.

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Originally posted by Glorified Ape:
Does anyone else find it strange that the concept of "too feminized" is offhandedly dismissed so easily while the concept of "too masculinized" is an assumed condition in almost any realm of society?

To borrow from another, seems to me a "species" of misandry.

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