One thing I’ve noticed is that lotsa people say “manly,” but nobody ever says “womanly.” What’s up with that? Oh, it is a travesty of English! Of our society! Of our very cultural foundations! Of… ah, it’s not actually that serious, I don’t think. But, it is a little question that gnaws at me.
Lotsa questions gnaw at me. Some big ones right now are:
Sadly, some are unanswerable, but some are assailable! Contemplatable! Graspable! Quite unlike my socks.
The question for today is something about why nobody says “womanly.” Now, I don’t mean that so narrowly—we’ll get to that.
The most strong argument for its lack of usage is probably just that everyone says “feminine” instead, and that “feminine” covers the analogous conditions of both “manly” and “masculine,” but I don’t think that that explains everything. Some words are just used less than others, it’s unavoidable, but it does call into question why “womanly” in particular is not used.
Now, I have a bit of a skewed perspective on this, being a lesbian myself (gooooo lesbianism!!! Woohoo!!!), but on the other hand it could lend me greater insight into it.
One thing that irks me to no end is random people calling me “sweetie,” “baby,” “honey,” without even knowing me. It’s usually men who say this, but women do it too to a smaller extent. It’s like… I really, honestly doubt they would ever call random men by analogous terms—“handsome,” “big boy/man,” “stud,” and so on—and they instead call them by disanalogous terms like “bro,” “dude,” “man” (outside of those terms’ gender neutral usages). They don’t use terms of endearment and attraction for other men, but do use terms of endearment and attraction for women.
Hmm! Now that’s a little hook to think about.
Another thing I’ve noticed is that the general public* treats and has treated men and women as effectively separate species (often in order to cover up for the perpetuator’s own interpersonal communication difficulties): women are homemakers, men are soldiers; women are ever-submissive and sexually impotent, men are ever-horny and rapists in waiting; women are dainty and fragile, men are crude and disposable; neither can ever understand the other and your gender determines your life—it’s all just so crap. Obviously, this is a strawman of this mindset and (hopefully) no person believes all of this fully, but bits and pieces of this and more infiltrate modern culture. It’s Pervasive. Malignant. Insidious.
Alright, now we’re getting somewhere.
And then, another thing is that the general public hates weirdness and abnormality; just think of how those words feel when you say them! They feel bad, spiteful, uncomfortable. I myself am weird to most people, and they hate me for it. Now, I don’t believe that the train of thought of these people is “that person acts differently from others, therefore they are bad,” all sterile and illogical, but instead it’s something like “that weirdo makes me feel icky, therefore they are bad.” It’s in three parts: they perceive some person as acting unusually in some way, they feel uncomfortable about it, and then they conclude that, because they feel bad, this makes the person acting unusually to be bad.
Okay, now let’s put these all together:
This can all be summed up by this line, which of course I got from my good friend, Señor Hombre de Paja: “You cannot be womanly, you can only be feminine. Men can be manly and masculine and the difference is important. This is how the world works. Suck it up. And if you don’t agree, we’ll shun you.”
Secretly I’m not a big fan of that guy, he’s got quite the scratchy personality, so I’ll restate it in my own terms: women are expected by the general public to be feminine, quiet, and submissive, and by having distinctness (being “womanly”) they are breaking an insidious societal and cultural mold.
In conclusion, there’s a lot of points of failure to this idea and thought process, and it relies on my (very likely) poor understanding of wider American culture. But, there’s something true about it that I have only recently started to think about in terms of gender. I don’t think this is really about the term “womanly” in particular, but instead about a broader suite of problems that I’ve been noticing throughout my life. I could go on and continue this onto the topic of lesbian relationships, but I’m getting a bit sleepy; it’s best to save this for later.
*“General public” herefrom used to refer to the the appearance of the average American’s perspective. I am not well aware of public sentiment at all, but this is what I have gleaned from watching people, especially older people. This is not representative of all people and will invariably depend on time, location, and culture.
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