White People Go to the Bathroom Like This...

There is a lazy, lazy, lazy, lazy, lazy way of doing sermons, self-help books, relational counseling, legislation, and who knows what else. It involves using facile and sloppy generalizations about categories of people to make facile and sloppy points that apply to no one anywhere but feed an abstract sense of identity that is irrelevant to actual people and so leads to their eager interest in more facile and sloppy sermons, self-help books, relational counseling, and legislation.

It happens to no end, especially in churches, in matters of men and women relating to each other.

Guys you know what I'm talking about, right? Right? And all the ladies are just looking at me, "What? What does he even mean?"

There are entire careers built on convincing men and women in relationships that women need someone to translate their words to men.

Ladies you say: I had a rough day with my boss today.
He hears: Tell me how to fix this problem I have.
The problem is, women are oriented about relationships whereas men, by their nature, need to fix things. He hears the world through his blue earphones.

I suppose, in the world of at leasts, it could be good for people who have submitted to a certain ideological conception of their existence to use the tools of their oppressors to build themselves some sense of relief. I guess if you're a man who has internalized the idea that men are universally barely more than retarded taciturn baboons, incapable of any kind of verbal expression, then it could be helpful if someone came along and offered you a means of communication as the imbecile you are.

I dunno. It seems like giving someone something to drink while they're hanging on a cross. Doesn't quite seem honest, and I'm not sure it's better than nothing. I think if I tried to relate to The Qweenbean as an abstract concept, or the idea of a woman, rather than who she is... well, that would be hell for both of us.

This would be a good intro to a skit about me relating to my wife that way, I would say, "I bet it would look a little something like this..." Then we would dissolve to some scene of domestic hilarity that skewers, skewers, I say, the ideas of men and women by applying the ideas to real situations.

And me, well I'm no better. We always carry some chains. I'm only different from, not necessarily better than, the mouth-breathing ape of a man that refuses to say "I love you". But that's only a bit here or there.

I'm convinced this is part of the reason THE CHURCH panics so much about teh Gay. We're not really interested in how people actually relate to each other- even in what we call heterosexuality. How could we possibly then address the actual complexity and diversity of human interactions that do not fit easily into our simplified categories? MAN and WOMAN as complementary binary already doesn't work, don't ask us to think about the possibility of gender as multiplicity even if that's what it really looks like in existence.

Anyway what got me thinking about this was a reference to research that shows men and women actually hold the remote about the same amount of time when watching TV.

So next time your pastor, family counsellor, camp speaker, or self-help guru says something about how men channel surf and women stay put, you'll know you're being lied to. Just like with that bit about men and women using a different average amount of words in a day. And isn't that what everyone wants?