Gender Relations (A Post From Disneyworld)

I was talking with a friend last night about our respective relationships that we are in, and we came upon the interesting topic of societal gender roles. My friend, being the typical college girl, often speaks of how she and her close group of friends get together and are very close in a friendly way, which is what spawned this post. In my high school, the girls would often hug each other very freely and openly. However, when I talked to my friend about her take on said girls being so open with guys, she said there was a difference. She believed that society has roles and standards for friendships between girls and friendships between a guy and a girl, and that she felt it was wrong to go against them.

This brings up a curious point: If we take this idea to the extremes, girls can show affection towards each other whenever they feel the need but guys can’t do so until they get into a relationship. Girls can be open because they’re supposed to be and thus take advantage of it, while guys generally can’t due to pressure regarding homosexuality. Because guys can’t comfortably get hugs, etc. from other guys due to this, their options are to go to their parents (which is frowned upon by peers), or to go to girls, who may share the same belief as my friend (that guy-girl friends can only have specific relations). This means that during the middle- and high-school age, society has a bunch of guys deprived of physical contact and with no reliable outlet for it, leading to them being desperate for relationships and forcing themselves on girls that they like regardless of what the girls think (due to teenagers’ egocentrism). This makes it highly likely that the girls will reject them due to their clingy behavior and make the guys even worse off.

I find it curious that people would set things up in this way. They promote a society in which guys are deprived of affectionate contact (which might explain why guys play football and other contact sports... it allows them to get physical contact with other males without being chastised for it) and where girls can have as much as they want provided they find the right people. It just seems very strange to me.