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Old 06-01-2006, 05:37 AM   #2
coheneran
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Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: In the company of the aggrieved
Posts: 8,762
Quote:
Originally Posted by Noku
Feminism has been very hot topic in Finnish political forums. Gender roles are usually seen as econopolitical problems but these problems have also social sides. Media is the main reason for these social problems because they create gender based stereotypes and puts opposite sex relationships in pre-schematic frames.

Of course heterosexuality is natural, but how natural is our everyday life anyway? Today, our lives are being given subconsciously stereotypical directions. Boys play football, girls like poneys. Even though what they would really want to do might be the very opposite. Parrents try to prevent their kids from exceeding their gender limits, but when you look at it, does it seem a bit silly? I mean having these artifical gender roles, in which we are supposed to stay inside.

When boys get older many will lose their childhood friends of opposite sex, probably because they have to start forming identity as a male and at the moment they are too young for dating and relationship to opposite sex is very rarely seen as an unsexual relationship in future life (it always should be dating). Boys like girls like boys.

In post-modern society we have to build ourselves from the parts available. But no longer the parts available depend on your gender. People choosing the same direction in life share the same problems and would be good friends. Many people would need good friends. Actually I am not just talking about friendship alone. The whole direction of interaction with a person is predestined by gender assumptions. If you meet a new person in a bar, without any sexual interests, you still couldn't treat him and her the same way. Sexual signals are always expected from the communication of opposite sex. The way you would interpret certain communication might be different depending only on the gender of the speaker.

Also it is unfair that media has this cliche of two opposite sex best friends always end up together, because it is selfrecreating cliche, we are made to believe that. Gender stereotypes make us suspisious and provide us with false assumptions.

My claim is:

In openly bi-sexual environment friendships with opposite sex would be much more accepted than in todays society (even if heterosexuality would be the dominant form of sexuality). Also, that will be the trend which towards we are leading in future, breaking the gender boundaries in social sense.

I accept that we can't change the biological effects of genders, but for humans it seems to be natural to have sex without reproduction of species in mind.
You make good points, and I agree with your claim, even though it has never been tried so there's no proof it would be like that. But, as an openly bisexual (for conventional purposes anyway) person, I can say I have about as many female friends as I have male friends, estimated, I've never bothered to count.
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