Mars-Venus
I have been terribly curious about this Mars-Venus stuff for quite some time now. Yeah, yeah - I mean that bestselling "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" by John Gray.
Given the reputation it has, I am not likely to agree with the philosophy of the book, but then it is even more important to hear out those who differ from you. At the same time I did not want to spend money buying this one! Today, in one of my rare trips to the library it occured to me that I could try to locate it there. Unfortunately, I did not find this particular title there, but found another one by the same author. I do not remember the title exactly, but it was something like "Mars and Venus forever together".
I read only two chapters (since I thought I ran a risk of destroying any potential relationships of mine, if I started believing too much of the stuff there...).
Now, the good part of the book is that it identifies the problems people are facing these days correctly. The traditional gender roles are changing and hence the expectations and roles in relationships also have to change. When that does not happen, problems arise.
At a broad level, he identifies the solutions correctly too. That men and women have to understand each other better in terms of "what is going on in the other person's mind".
Problem comes when he suggests the solutions. This "what is going on" has been severely stereotyped in the process of suggesting how to understand each other. It is something like this. The traditional roles have been considered as the base; and the (unsaid) premise he works on is that the changing roles are abberrations. Without delving into the rationale of these abberations, however, (probably because he has not explicitly called them abberations) he takes them as given and then suggests the new role of relationships as something that needs to heal the wounds caused by these abberations.
It is this bias that stereotypes things...
But the curiosity to read the "big one" (Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus) still remains :-D
Categories: Feminism, Literature
Given the reputation it has, I am not likely to agree with the philosophy of the book, but then it is even more important to hear out those who differ from you. At the same time I did not want to spend money buying this one! Today, in one of my rare trips to the library it occured to me that I could try to locate it there. Unfortunately, I did not find this particular title there, but found another one by the same author. I do not remember the title exactly, but it was something like "Mars and Venus forever together".
I read only two chapters (since I thought I ran a risk of destroying any potential relationships of mine, if I started believing too much of the stuff there...).
Now, the good part of the book is that it identifies the problems people are facing these days correctly. The traditional gender roles are changing and hence the expectations and roles in relationships also have to change. When that does not happen, problems arise.
At a broad level, he identifies the solutions correctly too. That men and women have to understand each other better in terms of "what is going on in the other person's mind".
Problem comes when he suggests the solutions. This "what is going on" has been severely stereotyped in the process of suggesting how to understand each other. It is something like this. The traditional roles have been considered as the base; and the (unsaid) premise he works on is that the changing roles are abberrations. Without delving into the rationale of these abberations, however, (probably because he has not explicitly called them abberations) he takes them as given and then suggests the new role of relationships as something that needs to heal the wounds caused by these abberations.
It is this bias that stereotypes things...
But the curiosity to read the "big one" (Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus) still remains :-D
Categories: Feminism, Literature
posted by Jaya @ 11:25 PM
del.icio.us
2 Comments:
At Sat Jul 02, 11:13:00 AM 2005,
Anonymous said…
Don't!
If stereotyping gender roles doesn't agree with you, you will find this book lousy. I didn't get beyond 3-4 chapters. I think an online pdf is available somewhere on the net.
At Sat Jul 02, 12:52:00 PM 2005,
Jaya said…
If you can locate the pdf, please let me know anyway. As I said I am curious to have a look, if it is just for the sake of reading someone having views contrary to mine...
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