fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2632 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2632 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

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02.

[Game of Thrones]

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03.

[Patrick Stump / Fall Out Boy]

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04.

[Men in Black, Agent Coulson]

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05.

[Twin Peaks]

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06.

[Defenders of Berk/How To Train Your Dragon 2]

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07.

[Lily Allen]

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08.

[Attack on Titan]

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09.

[The Brittas Empire]

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10.

[Panic! at the Disco]

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11.

[Frozen]

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 037 secrets from Secret Submission Post #376.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

How's that even possible, though? Statistically, women are slightly more than the population of the planet. It's a bit odd if you can't find even one female with whom you have enough in common for a friendship. Even if you randomly befriended strangers in a double blind experiment, you'd still have close to a 50-50 split because that's how odds work.

So yeah, I have difficulty buying that argument.

there is more to life than statistics, anon

Let's say you live in a rather small and conservative town, where just about every girl intends to get married and have kids after they graduate, and you'd like to go to college and have a career first. The odds of finding another girl, who accepts your interests and doesn't think that you are a weirdo for not wanting kids right away or ever, fall quite a lot.

Keep in mind that those other girls might not want to be your friends, if you don't adopt their way of thinking.

I lived in that same sort of town. You know what? I found people (male and female!) interested in the same things I am. Funny what going to a female-run comic book shop in your dinky-sized area will do for that.

Most of them moved away, but I did, too.

Uh. My town didn't even have a male run comic shop. So...yeah.

You lived in a small, conservative town where the girls were all interested in getting married and popping out babies, and it somehow managed to have a female-run comic book shop, which is rare even in large, diverse areas?

What a magical place this must have been.

We're not talking itty-bitty, but 30k? Is pretty small.

The city is basically a military base with a few extra citizens. A lot of military wives are exactly the "get married and pop out babies" type. I've met enough to corroborate this.

Yeah see, my town has 8000 people.

*shrug* My high school was smaller than that, and very homogeneous in terms of race and economic background. Despite being an introvert, I still managed to make female friends because even in a small sample group, not every woman in it will have the exact same interests.

Mine was too, but it had a lot ot do with where I was living.

Also, 30k is a large town if not a veeery small city. It's not a "small town"

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2014-03-19 15:02 (UTC) - Expand

diet_poison - 2014-03-19 17:03 (UTC) - Expand

(Anonymous) - 2014-03-19 18:16 (UTC) - Expand

lol no.

30K is only a small town if you're from New York. For most of us, a small town is a place like Red Oak (pop. 5742), Wapello (pop. 2067), or Villisca (pop. 1252) in my home state. Not to mention Badger (pop. 561), Fertile (pop. 370), or the booming metropolis of Cylinder (pop. 88).

30k is not small. And I say that as someone who grew up in a small actual city (Indianapolis). Small is less than 10k, and for some, less than 1k.

But the boys are okay with your outside-the-box plans? o_O

Yeah, seriously. Who are the girls getting married to?!

This exactly. I was actively shunned by most of the girls I knew growing up because I didn't fit the perfect mold of the super feminine future farmer's or salesman's wife whose main goal in life was to start having babies by the age of 22 and by middle school were already eyeing potential husband candidates. I had to move to the other side of the state to find a group of female friends who could do better than sort of tolerate my presence. Although I did not have male friends at home either because they weren't looking to waste any time on someone who was obviously not gonna be a "good" wife candidate.

Edited 2014-03-19 00:49 (UTC)

That kind of just sounds like a case of "none of these people had anything in common with me" and it wasn't really gendered?

yeah but the guys just sort of didn't notice I was there whereas the girls were WAY more obvious about their disdain for me. Also, the ones who used to mock and pick on me for being different were all female.

Sounds like a cultural thing, tbqh. Does sound awful. :/

But how does it follow that you'd somehow end up with more male friends in this hypothetical town? Are they all magically not interested in those exact same things as the unacceptable female friendship candidates due to their being male?

You're discounting a lot of things, such as, oh, I dunno...gender norms.

Oh yeah, sure, gender norms are only real insofar as we make them real. But a damn lot of people make them real, and a damn lot of people follow them. If one's interests don't align with those norms, then s/he's going to have trouble getting along with people of her/his gender.

Or the other main gender, says this lesbian.

If one's interests don't align with those norms, then s/he's going to have trouble getting along with ~~people of her/his gender.~~ people who believe in gender norms.

Fixed that for ya.

Gender norms aren't as "norm" as everyone seems to think. They're what's presented as a norm. "People of your gender" do not automatically ascribe to those norms. Even the ones who are into girly pink stuff and kids can surprise you.

It's really nice that you apparently haven't been routinely questioned or had assumptions made about you due to gender norms, but others of us have. They are absolutely pretty "norm" in a lot of communities/societies. It's kind of why we have to spend so much time and energy questioning and deconstructing them.

But I guess men don't actually get flack for acting too "feminine," and women don't actually get flack for acting too "masculine," and the right hasn't been throwing temper tantrums for the past few years over people stepping out of their "natural" roles. We must be imagining it all.

This is all true but your previous statement that you are "going to have trouble getting along with your gender" is weird because there are tons of people who do buck gender roles, as well as people who fit them but recognize that not everyone else feels the same.

Depends a bit on the circumstances, I guess? My sister comes to mind. She had friends of both genders in school, but then she moved away to study. In all of her courses she was one of three women, and she didn't click with the other two at all and made a handful of male friends instead. She missed having female friends, though, but there just wasn't time between studying and having to work to go out and meet new/more people.

When she moved again and started her PhD at another uni, that changed again.