Reading Responses

When your typical day involves spending between 4 and 5 hours riding or waiting for buses and trains, it's pretty easy to find time to read. So I've done a lot of reading since this April. And a couple of books that I read last month have been demanding that I make mention of them on here.

The first is a book that I've been trying to read since I bought it as a recommended book for a class I took Fall of 2006. It normally doesn't take me anywhere near 4 years to read a book, especially of this length - it's only about 160 pages. But this one, Gender Vertigo: American Families in Transition by Barbara J. Risman, was tough because it is based on an assumption that I just cannot get behind. In fact, it goes completely against what I believe to be true. The underlying belief of this book is that we, as a society, need to move beyond gender - that any difference between the sexes beyond basic anatomy is something that we need to get rid of. And it is hard work to read something that directly challenges deeply held convictions, such as that gender is good, right, necessary, and eternal.

There is a lot I could talk about here. She does include some pretty interesting studies, mostly with very solid methodology, and I could discuss what I think of her measures and results. Or I could try to evaluate what exactly I think gender is, because most of her measures I don't really consider accurate reflections of the real differences between masculinity and femininity. But I also can't figure out, if those measures aren't the difference, what is.

But what struck me most is her reasoning behind wanting a post-gendered society. In her introduction, she says, "Although some foraging societies may have had both a gender-based division of labor and near equality of men and women, such a scenario is unlikely in a post-industrial society, where ideology dictates that social position be based on achievement." She herself acknowledges that it is, or has been, possible to have gender divisions and at least near-equality. But there has never been a time in human history where gender was not an important structure in organizing society. So why this insistence on moving beyond gender? Wouldn't it be at least as easy to change society's view to see an equal value in "women's work"? After all, she herself says in the forward "The most important lesson I have learned, and from my mother, is that our post-gender families must elevate the traditionally female values of nurturing and homemaking above all else - for it is this work, what women have always done, that turns isolated individuals into families and communities, brick and mortar in hearth and home, and gives meaning to our lives." When she argues that the work traditionally done by men has greater prestige than that done by women, then says that the traditional women's contributions should be elevated above men's, I see the possibility of making them equal.

The other book I need to talk about is Lost Horizon by James Hilton. I actually did read this before but, oddly for me, remembered nothing other than the most basic ideas behind it. So it was a lot like reading it for the first time.

Before moving on, I must warn you that there may be spoilers coming.

From everything I've heard and read, Shangri-La is supposed to be a utopia. But in reading this book, I found it to be really disturbing. The main reason is probably that nobody is allowed to leave. It doesn't matter how nice the place is - if you can't leave, it is more prison than paradise. And that's the way things are in Shangri-La. And to add to it, they bring people in without warning them of this condition beforehand. Maybe it wasn't quite so bad when they were dealing with lost mountaineers who would have died anyway, but Conway's group was kidnapped for the very purpose of forcing them to come and stay.

Then the knowledge that when someone leaves the mountain they age drastically to where they would have been without the life-preserving properties of the mountain adds a little more creepiness to the situation.

I can see some of the appeal in the place, don't get me wrong. To have so much time to devote to little studies and hobbies and projects that you couldn't do in the regular world does have its draw. But I would still rather live a short life, maybe even in as confined an area, just to have the knowledge that I chose it.