We’ve got a few younger women in our classes, singles who are getting the most out of their non-married years before some man comes along and not so much sweeps them off their feet as takes away their one leg to stand on. Most of them are pretty bright. Some are just educated and good test takers. There’s one whom I thought was just a pretty good test taker who’s slowly revealed herself to have a genuinely keen and curious mind but whose intellectual interests heretofore were limited to the highlighted portions of her textbooks. It’s a sadly common pattern amongst even very young kids here, but it seems that her curiosity never had a chance to develop because there was always an authority on whatever she was studying nearby to “guide” and “instruct” and thus remove any need for initiative.
Well, I had thought her mind was more or less dead, as are a lot of college kids who no longer have to study for entrance exams and thus see no reason ever to crack a book ever again, but it was not so. She still had some mind yet to be killed off, and started doing very well at English for about a year. Then came the final nail in the coffin for the intellectual life of young women – domesticity.
I don’t mean to deny her or any other people the happiness that finding a partner and fulfilling a perceived social imperative can bring, but hearing someone who ought to be wanting to travel, solve world problems, attend symposia and consider going for a master’s suddenly realigning herself to purely servile household duties is beyond disappointing. One week it’s “the Dalai Lama’s followers are fanatical and resist modernization”, the next it’s “I made a cake for my boyfriend. I need to attend cooking classes to learn new recipes.” Sad, and such a waste. People ought to have partners in life, but the domestic arrangements that bind them ought not to completely stymie any potential either had in any area besides housekeeping. And yes, I sympathize with the men too, but it’s quite a bit less of an insult to go from learner to earner than to go from learner to squeakily subservient maid/patisier.
In case you think I still need to justify that overly dramatic thread title, consider that this is just the latest case – we’ve had several women quit before just because their husbands didn’t want them out late, or didn’t think they’d need the job skills, or they themselves didn’t have time to both train for a job and take care of her kid or her husband’s mother while her husband was attending semi-obligatory drinking parties with coworkers after working 11 hours 6 days a week. I actually regard each step of female socialization here as more and more bad news – as steps further and further from any chance of having an active, human mind beyond the age of 30. Marriage is the last of these – and when I hear of it I know I have to more or less say goodbye to that person’s potential as an active, curious student.
By the way, none of this applies to my own partnership – I cook and my woman works. We both see gender roles, particularly the chain gangs they are here, as an abomination of wasted humanity and lost self-respect.