Creativity--now a 'chick thing'?
Got an unsettling e-mail from one of my buds this morning. I have a hefty amount of correspondence because I'm a cyberjunkie and have been for many years now. But lately I'm hearing from a lot of men who feel comfortable venting into my Gateway 850. This is fine with me--just call me "Auntie Yenta." All of them have something important to say, and I'm honored they think I'm the one to say it to. I'm learning a lot about what men are thinking these days, and sometimes I can actually offer practical advice.
The one this morning got me to thinking. My buddy in Canada was feeling a tad frustrated because he'd been surfing the 'Net, looking around for a group that discussed new ideas relating to things like ecology and civilization in general. He'd stumbled across a website devoted to creativity, but found that even the guys there were presuming the women had some kind of an exclusive contract with intuition; the Muse, whatever. I would like to submit that idea is a perfect load of crap, albeit carefully placed in a designer container and tied with a pink ribbon.
Just because we can give birth doesn't automatically give us the abilities to do anything else. That's nothing more than a biological function, and it's going to happen to most of us whether we're paying attention or not. I'm deliberately not using the term, "Motherhood," here because that's a different thing altogether. But it seems to me some people are getting the two confused.
To say that women are 'naturally' more creative than men is something like saying I drink a lot of tea because my ancestors were British. I hardly ever drink tea.
It looks like some people are conveniently forgetting some of the most creative minds in history. Do I have to mention names like Nicola Tesla, Linus Pauling, and on and on? Although I can see how some could respond, "Well, they were famous," so I'll talk about non-famous creative men I know personally. I can do this because I have never felt much threatened by this mythical "Patriarchic Establishment" some of my sisters would like to eliminate. True, I was bummed in high school when they wouldn't let me be the Editor of the school paper because the position traditionally went to a guy. They gave it to a guy I had respect for, and could do the job so why not? And by the way, this guy was writing Star Trek fanfiction twenty years before it became a 'thing.' Is that not creative?
True, he's busy now working for a living and raising his kids. He doesn't write much anymore. But he does a radio show where he reads books for the blind, and there's the kids I mentioned. Maybe one of his kids will be the next Gene Roddenberry, because they had the benefit of a dad with ideas.
I've got a brother who is a gourmet chef and master gardener, neither of which one does without creativity. My husband does some incredible primitive sculpture based on nothing but a pile of Popsicle sticks. He's built things like a barn with working doors, every detail true-to-life and to scale. This all comes straight of his head and into the real world. Is that not creativity?
Creativity isn't a gender issue, and to me it's really sad that anyone would think it is. Creativity comes from the spirit, not from DNA. I don't know that I ever thought the reason I write stories and come up with the occasional brilliant idea has anything to do with the fact I'm a girl. It's an ethereal concept that refuses to be quantified or qualified. The minute you try to explain it or dissect it, it tends to go away and become something else. New thoughts, 'thinking outside the box,' that's creativity. You can't claim it or own it either. It just is.
It's not a chick thing, or a guy thing. In fact, it is precisely the thing that will get us all out of this mess of gender issues, of feminism and masculism and mutual hatred and distrust.
Well, I can hope, can't I?
(c)2001 TWSchuett
