Written In The Sand

This is part two of our look at men and women, the differences and the stereotypes. This episode will add to the foundation we’ve already established and we will get to the point of why this topic needs to be here. Just to recap, in part one I presented some general stereotypes of both men and women and then took a look at the merits and shortcomings of those stereotypes. To re-emphasize, I want to make clear that such stereotypes are not going to be true for everyone, but they are going to be true for someone. The dangers of stereotypes is that they create an expectation, sometimes it is one of standards that one must live up to and at other times the expectation that one is no better than the stereotype. These expectations come from outside and also from within. Men setting expectations for other men, women setting expectations for men, men setting them for women, and women setting standards for other women. And last, but not least, we expect them from ourselves.