Anyways, our talks on hegemony and masculinity focused on societal trends, but what about relationships? Take friendship, for instance, which is already hard enough to define. Some say friendship is about honesty and loyalty. Others emphasize compassion and care. There come gray areas when being loyal means lying or being honest means not being loyal. Friendship itself is already a difficult enough concept.
Now add in hegemony and masculinity, and we've taken the issue of understanding friendship to a whole other level. Friendship between girls is different than friendship between guys. Where girls talk everything out - guys keep emotions on the down low. It is seen as un-masculine to be too emotional. The hegemony is that guys aren't supposed to talk about their feelings - a masculine trait. So most guys don't talk about their feelings - especially with each other. Girls on the other hand can talk TOO much about their feelings. I've heard so many girls say that it's easier to be friends with guys because they are less drama. Similarly, I've had guys tell me things they say they just can't tell to their guy friends.
If these are gender roles constructing our basis for human relationships - how do we even know what's real?
I really agree with Harleen on this. Friendship, is such a difficult term to define and means so many different things to different people. Plus what if someone does not fit into the two gender role category? Are transgendered people or bisexual people going to have different structures for friendships just based on what society tells us?
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