Invisibility

[tim]

An article from Jezebel about the guy who attended my alma mater as an exchange student (emphasis on the past tense, apparently) and proceeded to call the entire campus "whores" would have been great without one line: "boys really can't handle single-sex schools".

I, and the (at least) other two guys who graduated from Wellesley in 2001, handled it just fine. I don't recall ever calling anyone a whore while I was there[*]. Blame Jeremy Pham's behavior on his douchiness -- blaming it on his gender is too easy. This isn't to say that his gender (or rather, his gendered socialization) has nothing to do with his behavior -- just to remark that apparently, even in discussions of men at a women's college, some of us still end up invisible.

[*] except in the "Listen, ho" sort of way [**]
[**] you had to be there

Comments

[asrabkin]

Are these standard terms, or are they your coinage? What do they mean? Is extrinsic gender different from "socially perceived gender"?

[tim]

They mean the same thing that intrinsic and extrinsic properties usually mean. In the same way that mass is an intrinsic property of an object while weight is an extrinsic property.