Illustration: Ulé Barcelos Text: Julia Jürgens
I don’t have a universal theory of the world. Men are the ones usually interested in universal theories. Men explain the world, and women try to understand how men explain the world. It’s been going around in circles like that since time immemorial. Women argue for this or that model but never invent their own, because the terms of the models have all been defined by men – and those terms are completely foreign to women. Time and space, for example. I never got those. Men have even tried to explain women to women. We’re all still trying to understand that one. Even today when women analyze men, they have to rely on men’s theories to do it. It’s the same way in every field. Religion, science, the arts – men have laid the foundations of all the general theories. It’s impossible to add anything to them, first you’d have to go through everything and understand it.
There’s an old children’s game called „I went shopping“ where everyone has to remember a long list of things packed into an imaginary bag, and each person adds a new item after reciting the list. If thirty people before me have already packed an apple, a loaf of bread, chocolate cookies, carrots, and so on, then I’m out if I’ve been so busy trying to remember all the things that are already in the bag that I didn’t have time to think of anything new to put in it! In the same way, women are too busy studying men’s general theories and trying to understand why they don’t understand these theories.
It may sound misogynistic to say that women have more modest ambitions, but I think it’s true. They’re resigned to the fact that they aren’t the ones who explain the world. Maybe men have this enormous desire to explain the world because they feel more responsible. Maybe because they can’t have children, they are more focussed on themselves, on their lives, and also on their death.
Zum Original
I don’t have a universal theory of the world. Men are the ones usually interested in universal theories. Men explain the world, and women try to understand how men explain the world. It’s been going around in circles like that since time immemorial. Women argue for this or that model but never invent their own, because the terms of the models have all been defined by men – and those terms are completely foreign to women. Time and space, for example. I never got those. Men have even tried to explain women to women. We’re all still trying to understand that one. Even today when women analyze men, they have to rely on men’s theories to do it. It’s the same way in every field. Religion, science, the arts – men have laid the foundations of all the general theories. It’s impossible to add anything to them, first you’d have to go through everything and understand it.
There’s an old children’s game called „I went shopping“ where everyone has to remember a long list of things packed into an imaginary bag, and each person adds a new item after reciting the list. If thirty people before me have already packed an apple, a loaf of bread, chocolate cookies, carrots, and so on, then I’m out if I’ve been so busy trying to remember all the things that are already in the bag that I didn’t have time to think of anything new to put in it! In the same way, women are too busy studying men’s general theories and trying to understand why they don’t understand these theories.
It may sound misogynistic to say that women have more modest ambitions, but I think it’s true. They’re resigned to the fact that they aren’t the ones who explain the world. Maybe men have this enormous desire to explain the world because they feel more responsible. Maybe because they can’t have children, they are more focussed on themselves, on their lives, and also on their death.
Zum Original