Posted 1:25 AM by e*star

Here's your banter. I guess it's your say as to if this is stimulating enough or not... ;)

Pray, here, that this banter not be meaningless!!
Raymond, I understand your need. I really do. And really, I wonder if men like you as well as the one whom you referenced from Salon.com have gone unnoticed so frequently so that there are really more who share the same craving in their significant other. Men and their uncontrollable physical needs, blahblahblah... Okay, *not* to mitigate the very concensus that yes, men really do focus more on the physical than do women. All I know is that it really is hard to find somebody who is intellectually stimulating in a way which compliments your own intellectual capacities. Furthermore...it is even harder to find that somebody who can actually *communicate* and *articulate* these thought processes!! What more...what are the odds that these few, enlightened (I hesitate to use this term for fear of sounding elitist) individuals would cross paths with each other?? I feel the frustration...I do. :)

I interject myself to say "Hi" and "Welcome!!" to Rasee from another (albeit misdiagnosed in great, great degree) Capricorn. ;)

Here, I'd like to scrutinize an excerpt from your Salon.com dude:
And while some guys can compensate easily enough for their gals' lack of interest in, say, fishing by going off and sharing it with like-minded friends, it's not so easy for me, because most of the friends I have whom I can connect with on this intellectual level are women -- and I associate the banter so strongly with romance.

I tend to wonder about this--do we really need a justification for needing intellectual stimulation from a significant other? I worry that he justifies his need for "banter" from his signficant other when it should be other men who should be justifying their lack of need of this very quality from their women. Can I get an AMEN from anybody?? Because he has accepted the fact that he is the exception, he basically has confirmed the fact that the majority of men are okay with finding intellectual stimulation from their other male counterparts. Intellectual stimulation found only in male friends. True, this is only after scrutiny, but all the same, this makes me upset. Not too upset, but only because I am female and like other females, have lived our whole lives in order to accept our permanent, secondary place in society just because it exists as such. For clarification, I am not attacking him in any shape or form--just pointing out assumptions made yet so often unscrutinized because of socialized conditions, no matter how unjust. But really, what is up with that?

Why *can't* men prioritize intellectual stimulation in their female counterparts more often? Call me femi-nazi or whatever you may, but really. Sometimes I feel really disheartened at conditions that are just taken for granted when in reality they should be questioned. Question everything. Everything. Question everything you think you know, you think you believe, because only when you can understand the other side do you really know you believe what you believe, and you believe even more in what you already believe. Or, you change it and you are all the more enlightened because of it. Really. So, my analyses follow...

I believe the above example basically confirms maybe one half of a concensus as to the dating world. I believe that women, with the exception of your typical "gold-diggers" and such, tend to look for a guy who is interesting...if not intellectually stimulating then somebody who is just short of that capacity--like i said, interesting. This, I contrast with what I've stipulated above about guys and their chosen female counterparts. They are just not looking for that in a woman for maybe multiple reasons--they don't think to look for it, or maybe even, they prefer not to look for it. Yes, friends, I am talking about general male hierarchy.

I was talking with my boyfriend, whose name is Ian, about strong women. I guess I should give a short introduction--Ian is my boyfriend from heaven. Short of gushing about my significant other til you stop reading this in disgust (if you haven't already ;) ), I will summarize that I do banter very intellectually with my boyfriend. This is an established quality that both of us share and value in each other and to me, he is a Godsend. Moving along, the term we used was "strong women", but perhaps to clarify a better-suited term would be strong-willed women. Ian was talking with his friends--whom, not to boast, I get along with very, very well--and they were actually discussing "strong(-willed) women". Dynamic personalities, moderately opinionated personalities, you name it...and really...they were saying in general how some men just don't have the confidence for it. Ian and I discussed this at length and came to the conclusion that because of the socialized male-female hierarchy, many men are used to these very conditions. Many men cannot handle strong-willed women, for fear that it jeopardizes their manliness, or position of control in the relationship.

I am not saying, here, that all men are evil and oppressive. Far from it. I am not male-hating; however, I have tried to understand as much about the world in which I was placed and why people tend to think the way they do and why people tend to be treated the way they are treated. Men have also been conditioned just as women have--although they are often well-wishing, have grown up in a place in which pressure has been placed upon them to fit a certain role. That role is almost always means being the "man of the house"--the one with the final say.

This may differ from the intent of Raymond's original stipulation about plain, intellectual banter, but really...my tendency is to look past the surface and search out the reasoning behind conditions and to just really question everything. Hee hee...forgive me, because this means I go off on many different tangents. :) Anyway, I know I have left out a lot about screwed up things on the female side, and although I am a true feminist, I do believe that there are many, many women who are less than the upright citizens they have the potential to be--and it is not the fault of the societal conditions in which they have grown up. ;) Believe me--I have a lot to say about female shortcomings as well!!

All in all, please comment. I am interested as to what people might have to say, including blatant objections!! :)