What does it mean to be a man?

Interesting question, with interesting possible answers.

The VDay Movement apparently just started posting columns from guest writers in the "V-Men" section. I think that's important and significant in itself--to stop violence against women, against anyone, we've got to have both men and women involved--but the column itself brings up good questions.

There's growing awareness that it's tough to be a girl: that we're hit with a slew of contradictions that we're supposed to be (strong/skinny, independent/taken care of, assertive/demure) and yet somehow avoid at the same time (tomboy/girlie girl, madonna/whore). This is good. Girls deserve to carve out their own selves, and understand that there are a lot of people trying to tell them what they should be.

Where this thought goes wrong is when it villainizes, when it casts the girls as victims and the rest of society as heartless, diabolical, hellbent on stuffing females into passive poses for its own maintenance of power. It's a social paradigm. People who put little girls in dresses don't do it to keep them down--they do it because that's what everyone does, and because it's a pretty dress. There are some implications to that dress, and to gendering a kid one way or the other, but honestly? I'll put my daughter in a dress someday and then tell her "go on, honey. get the soccer ball and let's play."

This gendering and confusion doesn't only go one way, either. A. and I talk about what it means to be a man--and a traditional one, he ain't (thank goodness). I'm not exactly a princess in a tower, and I'm not looking for a white knight! But so many men think they need to be precisely that--the ideal--without realizing that inherent in "ideal" is also "impossible".

Gender: it tends to be a sticky subject for just about everyone who actively thinks about it. Hoping to follow this column and see what light it can shed.