I left out sports since participation in sports is productive; you get exercise. However, the suggestion that gaming or music (and I say this as a fan of both) are in any real sense less pointless than fashion is ridiculous on its face.
Indeed, from a male perspective the comment is often made that much of women’s fashion is not designed to appeal to men. Few men really notice the finer points of shoes and handbags, for example. In our culture, this appears to be a luxury that appeals to women mostly.
Not that this makes it any more or less shallow than any other sort of luxury …
It’s certainly not what I meant, and I don’t think anyone else did either.
Just that when a woman professes a girly interest, she must also profess one that’s not girly as well. This isn’t meant to imply the non-girly interest isn’t TRUE at all.
Anyone who has actual contempt for anything that’s not, say, puppy-kicking or baby punting, gets a mental eyeroll from me. Reading your post made me picture an extremely insecure woman who feels that “girly” things are inherently frivolous and gosh darnit, she’s not frivolous! Therefore, she will go overboard and actually have contempt towards “girly” things, instead of just disinterest.
The entire point of “saying she’s into hockey as well as romance novels” is exactly the opposite of what you’re assuming. It’s because if both are true, saying you like hockey makes you look “better” than if you just liked romance books. Your entire attitude in this post underscores why some women do this. You’d sneer at them if they just mentioned liking romance novels.
For the record, I don’t give a shit if my mates dislike hockey, or any other sport. Again, I don’t want a significant other who can outburp me. Recognizing the name of the quarterback of my football team is fine.
This is what I was picturing in my post above. When you are knocked down in your teens for not being popular enough, it can create this kind of IMO unreasonable hate.
It just occured to me that when I think of regional stereotypes, I think of women in the red states as more likely to be football fanatical, pickup truck-driving, beer-drinking, gun toters. And when I think of men in the blue states, I think of elegantly-groomed (AKA metrosexual) latte drinkers who rather go listen to acoustic music rather than go to a basketball game. Of course these are kind of exaggerated generalizations here, but I’m wondering if conservatism is more likely to cause to women to gravitate towards “male” interests, because that is what is most esteemed in the community.
Yep, you’re right, it’s unfair. Regardless, people do this pretty frequently. When they want to understand (or characterize) a class of people they use their experience with members of the group. It’s not entirely unreasonable, but it is fraught with selection bias; you’re more likely to notice loud, annoying people, so your sample generally isn’t representative.
If you accept my argument, then you should see that you profit when people like you do good things. There are a lot of ways to slice up the population, so the argument applies to your gender, age, ethnicity, etc. The actions of an individual have more impact in smaller groups and classes that are less popular.
If you’re with me this far then the rest should be smooth. Gay men aren’t universally respected and some can be really annoying. This negatively affects innocent folks and should be discouraged or at least resented. To use an extreme example after a school shooting hits the news people that share interests with the killer are scrutinized and sometimes persecuted. It may not be fair, but it happens.
The fact that they are more likely to be X does not mean most of them are X. There are in fact very few women who drive pickup trucks in red states, even if there are more than in blue states.
On the other hand, there are an awful lot who are football fans, or at least a lot who enjoy attending football games.
Yeah, but being a sports fan is different than playing sports. The vast majority of sports spectators aren’t getting exercise while they watch the game, except that which comes with stuffing their face with hotdogs and doritos while they make that dent in the couch deeper.
Getting emotional about a bunch of overpaid adults who are standing around hitting, throwing, or bouncing a ball into the air is pretty pathetic, when you reduce the whole thing down to its core parts and really think about it.
Interesting hypothesis. I’ll be a data point for you (sort of). I’m a libertarian/“classical liberal” type. Think objectivism without the crazy Ayn Rand baggage. So no, I don’t drive a pickup truck, drink beer, or tote a gun (though I have no objection them and am anti-gun control). I’m pro-choice, pro-gay rights, not religious, and not too fond of the welfare state. So I’m not sure where that puts me in your spectrum, but definitely not red-state conservative.
What should be, exactly? A gay man has no more obligation not to be annoying than a straight man does, and a woman, or a gay man, has no obligation whatsoever not to be harmlessly “girly” just because other people inaccurately characterize other women/gay men for that reason. It’s the stereotypers who need changing.
All this resentment does is waste emotional energy on people you have no control over. It also can cause someone to cut themselves off from a harmless or maybe even socially important interest that is associated with their group, simply due to shame and fear of ridicule.
