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Last day of classes.

Feminism is not something with which I was ever able to identify. (In fact, I’ve always been somewhat of a misogynist.) This may be due to several factors (one of which is my bout with Kallmann syndrome) but I always imagined feminists to be a group of women sitting around a large conference table, griping about babies and complaining about men. (And, yes, there are projectors and pie charts and everything.) The only time that I actually got to read something written by so-called feminists was during my first semester at Brooklyn College, in a class entitled “People, Power, and Politics.” It was offered conjunctly by the Political Science and Sociology departments. My professor was a young hipster of the male persuasion. He made Thomas Jefferson and Karl Marx exciting. However, when the semester dwindled down and the readings began to echo the ideas of feminism, no amount of this professor’s enthusiasm could make me take the topic seriously.

We read several works, some of which included “The Woman-Identified Woman” and The Feminine Mystique, and I was not impressed. All that I was able to extract from these works is that all women do is complain, complain, complain. At least the male thinkers we covered in this four-credit class had something to say! The feminists did not philosophize, theorize, or conceptualize. All they did was discuss how unhappy they were and how horribly dull their lives were.

I side more with women like Phyllis Schlafly; those who call themselves anti-feminists appeal more to my belief system. Women need to learn to embrace their womanhood and admit that they are the weaker sex. After all, there is a reason that the sexes do not compete with one another in the Olympics, wrote Schlafly. But this is nothing to be ashamed of, for there are things in which women excel but in which men cannot succeed. Of course, I’m not saying I agree completely with The Power of the Positive Woman, but I think Schlafly was onto something. There are innate differences between the two sexes. Their roles in society have always been different from those of men.

In my bones, I can feel that I am different from my male counterparts. I am more of a nurturer. I believe that this is the reason it is so difficult for women to let go of their sons: they, as women, feel the need to nurture those who crave nurturing. Women do not feel a similar desire to care for their daughters. (Of course, a woman loves all of her children… but she realizes that her daughter is bound to grow up just like her. She can see it in the way her young daughter plays with her toys and mimics mommy, which I do not think happens by accident.) The female children will grow up to be independent thinkers who will have their own love to give away. The male children, however, will lag behind because they require more of their mother’s attention… and the mother is more than willing to give her son everything he wants. However, once he grows older and finds a wife, the mother’s heart breaks because she no longer has a son on whom to dote. (This is probably around the same time that the mother begins to nag her children to give her grandchildren, for her need to nurture never leaves her.)

This, of course, leads to the question of homosexuality, where the gender roles are slightly skewed. While I think that there are psychological reasons behind homosexuality, I do not think that there is anything wrong with being gay. (Note that I don’t think that gay people are sick in any way.) And, yes, the gay men portrayed on television shows likes “Will & Grace” are exaggerated… but there is still some truth to the idea that there are inherently polarized gender roles being fulfilled by people of the same sex. So there are almost definitely man- and woman-specific traits, whether they be carried out by males or females.