thread: 2012-06-25 : "Conflict" "Resolution"
On 2012-06-26, creases wrote:
This is very interesting! I only have something to add re masculine/feminine terminology. Is the intent here that "masculine" stands for conflicts where the focus is on violence? Either explicitly, or else through a metaphorical filter (eg. sports, or politics, or business, or science, or romantic rivalry, etc., conceived as warlike)? Or because the narratives are structured such that conflicts are zero-sum, so the story of that conflict winds up looking more like a war story than anything else? If it's something along those lines, I think maybe what we're really talking about is violence-centered narrative. To the extent we want to call that "masculine", it's probably because boys are socialized to treat violence as normal. My main reservation is that a focus on violence not essential to, nor exhaustive of, masculinity, so calling violence-centric narratives "masculine" is tendentious AND reinforces the problem it's supposed to expose.
This makes R go "Violence is a red herring."
This makes sdm go "Feminine = LeGuin"
To me, "feminine" conflict is conflict in the style of modern an Ursula LeGuin novel--the kind I couldn't stand as a guy in my 20s (where's the conflict?), but enjoy more now. At least, that's how I currently map it.
