Here is a question: How many of you enjoy spending time with women more than 10 years older than you?
I ask because two things occurred to me earlier today. One was that I do in general find conversation with women in their late 20's to 40's to be quite engaging. There is a sense in which conversation with the ladies is more refined, practical and actually quite philosophically well-grounded.
Yes, people like to talk about their hobbies, distinct interests and recent entertainment outlets like soap operas, and I often find that I don't have a lot in common with many of the women I talk to in that respect. But casual feminine conversation seems to have a much more inclusive and relatable structure to it, in that it's less focused on the facts "as they are" but more about the various levels of interpretation that could be placed on those facts, and about how other facts can provide a contrasting or supportive weight to each interpretation. At least on the surface, anyway.
By contrast, male interaction is often rooted in "what we did/saw/listened to", "what you argued", "where we're going/what we're doing" and so on, focusing on fundamental underpinning events and states whose interpretation is held fixed for the purposes of discussion or participation. I've also seen this quite a lot in ladies around my own age, though definitely less so. This seems a lot less natural to me as a way of actually holding conversation, even while I like the more deliberate, metaphysical approach as a foundation for personal and professional decision making and investigation.
The other thing I noticed was how little relating to older women has been approached in sci-fi and fantasy; in fact, how little older female characters that don't fit into the "maiden, mother, crone" archetypes actually seem to feature in sci-fi and high fantasy more generally.
For Men, we have mentors, atoners, noble demons, white knights, rogues, ineffectual loners, grumpy bears, Arthur Dent ... all manner of roles suited to the middle aged male character. But older women, excepting the odd senior soldier (amazingly, this is one area where the militarized shooter genre may have interesting contributions to the discussion), are always either teachers, Mother/Grandmother figures or witches or otherwise wise women. Why is this? Surely not everyone that occupies the world we live in can be so easily pigeonholed, so why do the various other worlds we create assume that they will be?
It strikes me that this is one of the real problems of Elves as a species in high fantasy. When the wise and philosophically engaged women of our worlds all have bodies of 25-year-olds, it allows you to put older and wiser females into the discussion without ever really addressing questions of aging.
Is this a problem? And does it affect the way we interact with the older women we come across in our everyday lives?
I ask because two things occurred to me earlier today. One was that I do in general find conversation with women in their late 20's to 40's to be quite engaging. There is a sense in which conversation with the ladies is more refined, practical and actually quite philosophically well-grounded.
Yes, people like to talk about their hobbies, distinct interests and recent entertainment outlets like soap operas, and I often find that I don't have a lot in common with many of the women I talk to in that respect. But casual feminine conversation seems to have a much more inclusive and relatable structure to it, in that it's less focused on the facts "as they are" but more about the various levels of interpretation that could be placed on those facts, and about how other facts can provide a contrasting or supportive weight to each interpretation. At least on the surface, anyway.
By contrast, male interaction is often rooted in "what we did/saw/listened to", "what you argued", "where we're going/what we're doing" and so on, focusing on fundamental underpinning events and states whose interpretation is held fixed for the purposes of discussion or participation. I've also seen this quite a lot in ladies around my own age, though definitely less so. This seems a lot less natural to me as a way of actually holding conversation, even while I like the more deliberate, metaphysical approach as a foundation for personal and professional decision making and investigation.
The other thing I noticed was how little relating to older women has been approached in sci-fi and fantasy; in fact, how little older female characters that don't fit into the "maiden, mother, crone" archetypes actually seem to feature in sci-fi and high fantasy more generally.
For Men, we have mentors, atoners, noble demons, white knights, rogues, ineffectual loners, grumpy bears, Arthur Dent ... all manner of roles suited to the middle aged male character. But older women, excepting the odd senior soldier (amazingly, this is one area where the militarized shooter genre may have interesting contributions to the discussion), are always either teachers, Mother/Grandmother figures or witches or otherwise wise women. Why is this? Surely not everyone that occupies the world we live in can be so easily pigeonholed, so why do the various other worlds we create assume that they will be?
It strikes me that this is one of the real problems of Elves as a species in high fantasy. When the wise and philosophically engaged women of our worlds all have bodies of 25-year-olds, it allows you to put older and wiser females into the discussion without ever really addressing questions of aging.
Is this a problem? And does it affect the way we interact with the older women we come across in our everyday lives?
