Women who write

I am finishing the 3rd book of poems, and working hard on the figuring out of the title. I will post it as soon as I am sure of it. Today's Writer's Almanac says that men like women who write. It is probably not true in my case. My husband is not glad that I say anything to anyone about him. He believes in privacy and anonymity, and considers me like a leaky faucet in his life. He is not happy about it, but he has continued to let me live, while he grumbles.
In my AlAnon group, once after a meeting, several women were visiting together. One woman said that she has known married men to "hit on" women in the group, even when it is inappropriate. I said that it is good that we have been sort of encouraged to have same-sex sponsors, so that it will help us to maintain healthy boundaries, when we have not been good at boundary-setting before. I admit, I have been an amoeba to other people's needs. After the conversation, I went on thinking about this issue. I think the men in the group are very privileged to hear women's inner thoughts. We don't talk back, or "cross-talk" or counsel. We simply listen. So some women, working on an issue inside their own minds, are laying out their thinking in a "safe place" for the first time. Many women came from homes with a tremendous amount of emotional abuse, and were completely shut down and unable to allow themselves to communicate beyond a bare survival level. We see this all the time in the places where life is more primitive, and the gender roles more restrictive. The way we have structured the 12 Step meetings, people are encouraged to share their experience, strength and hope. This allows everyone access to our insides. Which is a sort of emotional penetration, which others in the group are privy to, without having to know the person well, or do any connecting work. I realize that there is still some "weight" attached to the issue of gender. The other day we were talking after surgery with some nurses who are like me, with grey hair and a couple of decades of "health care" experiences. I was remembering how it felt to walk into the surgical lounge during the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas hearings. The guys were incredulous that this should be happening on tv, to someone who was being vetted for the Supreme Court. We still had a few guys who were up until that time telling off-color jokes, or teasing nurses, or flirting a bit too outrageously. That was the beginning of the wake-up call, I think, for a lot of the guys to watch what they were doing, and be more respectful in their manners and speech. Most of the men I have known have been respectful in their thinking, but some of their behavior was a bit rough; and they have learned the necessary lessons for acting more professional and reasonable and respectful in the workplace.
Now, we also have a lot of women writing, and "spilling their guts" in various formats. So it is an interesting thing to think about the question of whether men love women who write, or are alarmed, or just entertained by it. It certainly is a way to talk about the emotional contents of our thoughts, and we are able to give someone an extensive insider's tour of our minds, without having to face us across the breakfast table, or discuss the household tasks, or to undress or touch in any physical way. So there will be voyeurs, and there will be some interested bystanders who go home and understand their own wives and daughters better, and some for whom this is a major form of learning about human nature.
I was thinking about Chekhov. He has always been a wonderful model of a physician to me, although most people think of him as a writer. He is so thoroughly looking at the patient, and the forces acting on the patient, and the milieu in which the patient exists, that one can practically name all the medical diagnoses in the people of his stories. Once I read a fascinating article about writers who are so graphic at describing reality that even a disease which was not yet known at the time of the writing can be inferred from a description by one of these writers.
It remains interesting to me that most of the male writers write about men with more clarity than they do about women. Women are often written more as an "object of affection" or interest, rather than from the inside, in novels from the previous centuries. And also, women had the handicap of less education, so often their thoughts could not be as complex as the thoughts of men, and be believable. It remains to be seen whether there will be a new sort of gain from the women writing now, into the interiors of women's minds, not just as romantic partners, but as independent thinkers and interesting people to know. And sort of a side issue, is whether this "window into the interiors of the womens' minds" will yield a new level of friendship and integration of self and other, and interactions with both men and women.