Quote:
Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze
Yes, in the individual sense, perhaps; collectively, less so, because men are normative in our culture. Often, women are expected to conform in ways which run so deep and prove so restrictive that we have to squint to see the shapes into which they're expected to contort themselves.
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I guess it depends from what perspective you look at. I don't want to make myself sound like an anti-feminist, but my reaction was quite different. I was much more focused on the masculine roles in this and the involuntary disgust that the outsider had with a "man" performing particular gender roles - especially sexual roles. Of course, it's the flip side of the same coin really. But I could extrapolate this to be talking about perceptions of masculinity vs femininity and even how that can impact perceptions of same sex relationships. In some ways I think the expectation for men to be masculine can be even more restrictive than the expectation for a woman to be feminine.
In any case, this is what I took from my reading and one of the reasons the book resonated so strongly with me.