Tman -- I always
do chime in on these things, but then, I've now had a year of holding these Ticas up next to my post-mortem on marriage #2 and I'm still learning what's what.
Like I've said before, I'll bet the Latinas have got some Phase 2 surprises for us waiting behind the curtain, so don't think you've landed in Tahiti on the Bounty when you discover them.
That's why meeting someone who can introduce me to her culture, but hopefully stand apart from it as an individual, is possibly the best thing that's happened to me out of all this. (Too bad I'm learning Tico Time from her, however...
)
The gringa/hombre thing is a case of individuals feeding off their culture, and then inputting back into it. But it really is a spin-out from the "traditional" roles that had been closer to the reproductive poker hand Nature dealt our grandparents and those before them.
Feminism was the necessary corrective for a bunch of stuff that you and I saw was blatantly
unfair as we were growing up. We didn't like seeing it happen to our mothers, wouldn't want it for our sisters, and tried like hell not to do it to our girlfriends and wives.
It just violated our sense of fairness, and the politics rolled out very simply from that point of view. (Plus, combine that with the Birth Control revolution, and it looked like lots of these women wanted to join us in OUR idea of Fun, too, and leave all that nasty puritanical stuff behind!)
But what was conceived and described and promoted by a handful of very smart females and simpatico males as "Feminism", was poorly-understood and -absorbed by the larger culture, and the young women immediately benefiting from it. It degenerated, in their popular jargon -- what you'd hear at parties, or husbands being nagged by their wives -- was bashing. Male-bashing.
Things you could no longer say about Blacks, or Jews, or women, or any other group -- you could say about Men, and get a laugh from all. TV was full of bumbling fathers and weak-kneed boyfriends.
And we were expected -- by them, and by other men around us -- to accept it! In the delicate balance of "going along so you could keep your squeeze", we rarely pushed back. They had allies; we mostly didn't. (I think more working-class guys kept their stance of independence (looking like "cave-men" to us -- we erroneously conflated it with other stuff going on in the Vietnam War era), but middle-class guys ran from it -- a curious reversal of fortunes.)
If you could summarize and average all these "political crimes" ascribed to men, it would probably have to read: "He didn't do what I wanted!" Wa-aa-aa-aah!
Every guy was getting blamed for something that happened to her from some other guy before. (And that was possibly her own participation 50-50 -- just the break-up angst being generalized into political lingo.) And we were supposed to listen, empathize, and never criticize. Bla-bla-bla-bla-bla.
And then, of course, the early freedom of the "Sexual Revolution" turned into the puritanical blaming men for WANTING women! "Oh, he's just horny," and turning men back on their shame for, on average, wanting her more often than she wanted him. And as if he never compensated her for that in so many other ways. (Now, if he always had some VARIETY available out there...
y'know, like having ZB just down the street)
In other words, women did not instantly develop confidence, and political awareness, and a sense of fairness back at men, that Feminism called for, just because they read some feminist books and took some women's studies courses. Quite the opposite -- there was very little practical application into individual lives being taught. Big blank spots being left for them to fill in, randomly and weirdly.
Individual women did not take responsiblity for what the feminist principles might have been really all about, and that we were trying hard to be supportive of. They still did the same old girly maturation games and issues, and put a manipulative rhetoric over it, and we mostly swallowed it.
I suspect that the fathers who came home from World War II took out a lot of their violent experiences on their families. They had no therapeutic outlets, and were expected to just forget all they had been through. After all, "We WON!" Marriage, job, house, K*ds.
Me, I had two wives (in sequence) who I realize, in retrospect, were trying to get me to
hit them, which of course I wouldn't do. But, god, the frustrations their attempts led to! All their different ways of picking fights, which I tried to de-fuse calmly and rationally, not realizing where their experiences were trying to steer me!
(The first one, completely absent father -- violent until the infant was 6 months old and then she kicked him out -- and violent mother, like right out of Stephen King: "Carrie" -- and the second one, seeing her father punch out her mother, I don't know how often. So it was programmed into her expectations, which again, I refused to accommodate.)
So -- the question is why did
I , Mr. Simpatico, not get treated with respect for my efforts and understanding? Because young women are not logical, or loyal, or objective enough to be appreciative of another's efforts. Narcissism was having its field day.
I was
so much in the view of "Well, she's just making up for all that abuse, or lower status of women, or 'looks-ism' etc etc" that I rationalized a lot of bad behavior coming
my way. "Well, I can take it..." Until I couldn't, but I never understood the entire chemistry going on with it.
But my statement before holds: Once you let disrespect stand, you're toast. Men are in relationships with women to be appreciated; why ever let
anything start going in the opposite direction???
And the woman is not happy doing it, either. In fact, she gets more frustrated, because she is no longer living with someone she feels to be a Man, if she is able to slice him down. It's instinctive, and no recent political rhetoric can undo millions of years of evolution (I know you know this stuff, and well, too.)
For the most part, women want men to dominate in certain areas of their relationship, and no pretending otherwise will satisfy anyone for long.
So I don't see how these women were really reacting to something that had happened, historically, to OTHER women; and only reacting sporadically to what had happened to themselves.
Just as you would advise any woman to leave after the first hit, because that is something in himself that a man must control, so I would compare the first disrespect coming from her. If she believes she can get away with it, or doesn't know what it is when she is running her mouth, she needs to be informed otherwise. (This is probably what occasions most of the hitting, too -- both parties need to step away, probably permanently.)
But, in most cases, they had the culture, the TV shows, the political rhetoric mis-applied, to refer to, and for the most part, they had compliant men who rationalized away what they were receiving. Comparing to others around them, well, it seemed acceptable.
Topic for another night: Suppressing a man's desire for variety, as part of instituting this cultural imbalance? Was that maybe the subterranean purpose of the whole romantic culture, from movies to Big Band music, to valentines, etc etc?
Men want TWO things in women: Quality, and Variety. This is our nature.
It's like two islands out in the South Pacific, separated by a vigorous (and sometimes perilous) swim: "Quality Island", and "Variety Island".
You may be having a wonderful, idyllic life on Quality Island with that "special one". But every so often, you peer across the strait to Variety Island, and wonder how much more the guys over there are enjoying life.
And vice versa...
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