When my mother was young and Truman was president, her mother and father explained to her how car seating arrangements could unintentionally reveal social class.
Yes they can. I tend to think about this question in terms of “wavelengths”, and not in the woo-woo way. There’s the AM mono band where lots of male-female friendships can thrive, but it’s mono and narrow in terms of sense dampening. Then there’s the FM stereo band where the sound space (sensuality space, if you will) is radically wider and you can hear and experience much more nuance. That’s the romantic band, and somewhere in my prose the concept of fidelity is present, metaphorically convenient, morally inconvenient.
I'm a Christian conservative (though I wasn't really raised as one) and not sure what algorithm brought me here, hadn't read anything of yours before, but I'm always fascinated when I hear about married people with close opposite-sex friends, because relative to my own life experience (much of which is NOT with other Christian conservatives), it's so alien. Different enough to be not just describing another culture, but practically another species. Still, I find it all interesting, and the class angle and seating arrangements you describe are not something I'd heard or thought about before.
Now, I notice that we tend to instinctively go with the "middle-class" seating arrangement -- husbands and wives sit together. Though this often creates awkwardness as the men and women want to talk about different things, so either the women are talking or the men are talking, frontseat to backseat, or the car is a cacophony with two separate frontseat to backseat conversations. But no one wants to be the one to call for the working-class arrangement: "Next time, men up front, women in back."
Likewise, whenever I'm in a large group with married men and women, at a party or family gathering for example, the groups very naturally and effortlessly start to sex-segregate over time. People arrive as couples, but a topic comes up, and the interest level in that topic is very clearly distinguished by sex. Perhaps it's clear immediately -- the men are very interested in talking about it and the women have little interest. Or perhaps it only becomes clear as the conversation goes on -- the women want to keep discussing it, but the men want to move on, or explore some tangent.
This is true whether I'm talking about a more blue-collar or white-collar group. Maybe in one group, the men are far more interested in talking about sports or a home improvement project than the women. In another group, the men are more interested in discussing current events, politics, investing, theology, military history, etc. But the fact that men and women want to talk about different things is, in my experience, a universal. Men and women also have different communication styles and even if the topic isn't all that coded by sex, we tend to be more comfortable talking about it with the same sex, unless it's someone that we know very intimately: a spouse, a parent, perhaps a sibling.
So for the most part, I don't think fear of infidelity plays that big a role. Or at least, it's against this backdrop, where the default is for men and women to naturally and effortlessly segregate, in the absence of being compelled by sexual attraction. If I were to say to my wife that I want to spend time hanging out one-on-one with an unrelated woman she would of course be concerned, but she knows, correctly, that's not something I would ordinarily want to do unless sexual attraction played a role. If I'm going to spend some time with a friend, it would be to engage in or discuss male hobbies and interests, which I'm not able to talk about with my wife and children. Maybe there are some women out there who share my male hobbies and interests, but why should I want to try to locate them and spend time with them when I have plenty of male friends?
Thank you for this! I think in some ways you're right -- these things become self-reinforcing, because the more we presume that men and women have separate interests, the more suspicion we have when a cross-gender friendship does form. What could they possibly have to talk about BESIDES sexual attraction?
I suppose I talk about sports more often with my male friends, but books, movies and music (I have a deep attachment to music) seem to transcend gender? Or perhaps not for everyone!
Of those, music makes the most sense to me. Popular tastes in music differ quite a lot. Classic rock for men vs. Taylor Swift and various other divas and pop artists for women. Country as a genre has a good bit of overlap, though not as much when it comes to individual artists.
But classical music is one domain with a lot of overlap. Perhaps this is true of instrumental music in general -- as soon as singing is introduced, one sex is going to enjoy the vocalist and the lyrics more than the other. But a male and female instrumentalist are interchangeable.
But books, movies? Most of the time, the best you can do with the opposite sex is find a movie that one of you really wants to watch, and the other is content to watch. Maybe there's more overlap, again, when it comes to really high-brow stuff. Art films. I don't know anyone who cares for those anymore, but I do recall friends from college who did and would watch them as couples.
Otherwise, the biggest exception in my mind is that, while they're male-coded, there are still a fair number of female nerds/geeks who love Star Wars and Lord of the Rings (but of course, more who love the more female-coded Harry Potter).
But outside the realm of sci-fi/fantasy, I don't think I've ever known a woman who loves male-coded movies. E.g. war movies, gangster movies, which are generally my favorites.
I think this same difference in tastes carries over to fiction books. With nonfiction books, meanwhile, men and women tend to have very different intellectual interests. Women are also more interested in more practical books about self-improvement, dieting, etc. Maybe we both read memoirs and autobiographies, but men would much rather read books about other men, and women about other women. When it comes to religion, men would rather study finer points of theology, while women would rather read devotionals or more practical books about applying one's faith.
Fascinating! I like to read novels about relationships and my favorite country artists are mostly women: Miranda Lambert, Ashley McBryde, Morgan Wade. I didn’t grow up with such a coded understanding of culture. I wonder if geography plays a part? Lifelong coastal Californian…
Geography might be part of it. I've lived in cities and suburbs in the South, the Midwest, the Mountain West, and the Southwest, though never really on the coasts. My parents grew up in the suburban Midwest.
As for this "coded understanding" - how much of it is growing up, and how much is gradually discovered in adulthood? I think a lot happens in adulthood. Once people figure out what they really like and are passionate about, what they're really happy to talk and think about as the decades pile on.
Younger people are more curious, more likely to dip their toe into a broader range of interests. Also, in some cases, we explore those interests specifically BECAUSE there will be girls there (I think young men probably do this more than young women). In college, I watched "Koyaanisqatsi" (not normally my cup of tea) out of a combination of curiosity and there were girls there. I never really enjoyed hanging out at bars either, but there were girls there.
An example for women that comes to mind is golf. The hobby has always had a strong male lean, but these days a lot of sporty women dip their toe in during 20s and 30s and think it's OK. Still, their interest nearly always fizzles out.
As married adults who know what we like and don't have as much time for hobbies, we tend to narrow in. Consequently, the Venn diagrams between men's and women's interests tend to show less overlap over time.
Feelings are not facts. One of my favorite lines. I use this one regularly in conversation and in my own brain.
Yes they can. I tend to think about this question in terms of “wavelengths”, and not in the woo-woo way. There’s the AM mono band where lots of male-female friendships can thrive, but it’s mono and narrow in terms of sense dampening. Then there’s the FM stereo band where the sound space (sensuality space, if you will) is radically wider and you can hear and experience much more nuance. That’s the romantic band, and somewhere in my prose the concept of fidelity is present, metaphorically convenient, morally inconvenient.
Thanks for this take and sharing your experience Hugo!
I'm a Christian conservative (though I wasn't really raised as one) and not sure what algorithm brought me here, hadn't read anything of yours before, but I'm always fascinated when I hear about married people with close opposite-sex friends, because relative to my own life experience (much of which is NOT with other Christian conservatives), it's so alien. Different enough to be not just describing another culture, but practically another species. Still, I find it all interesting, and the class angle and seating arrangements you describe are not something I'd heard or thought about before.
Now, I notice that we tend to instinctively go with the "middle-class" seating arrangement -- husbands and wives sit together. Though this often creates awkwardness as the men and women want to talk about different things, so either the women are talking or the men are talking, frontseat to backseat, or the car is a cacophony with two separate frontseat to backseat conversations. But no one wants to be the one to call for the working-class arrangement: "Next time, men up front, women in back."
Likewise, whenever I'm in a large group with married men and women, at a party or family gathering for example, the groups very naturally and effortlessly start to sex-segregate over time. People arrive as couples, but a topic comes up, and the interest level in that topic is very clearly distinguished by sex. Perhaps it's clear immediately -- the men are very interested in talking about it and the women have little interest. Or perhaps it only becomes clear as the conversation goes on -- the women want to keep discussing it, but the men want to move on, or explore some tangent.
This is true whether I'm talking about a more blue-collar or white-collar group. Maybe in one group, the men are far more interested in talking about sports or a home improvement project than the women. In another group, the men are more interested in discussing current events, politics, investing, theology, military history, etc. But the fact that men and women want to talk about different things is, in my experience, a universal. Men and women also have different communication styles and even if the topic isn't all that coded by sex, we tend to be more comfortable talking about it with the same sex, unless it's someone that we know very intimately: a spouse, a parent, perhaps a sibling.
So for the most part, I don't think fear of infidelity plays that big a role. Or at least, it's against this backdrop, where the default is for men and women to naturally and effortlessly segregate, in the absence of being compelled by sexual attraction. If I were to say to my wife that I want to spend time hanging out one-on-one with an unrelated woman she would of course be concerned, but she knows, correctly, that's not something I would ordinarily want to do unless sexual attraction played a role. If I'm going to spend some time with a friend, it would be to engage in or discuss male hobbies and interests, which I'm not able to talk about with my wife and children. Maybe there are some women out there who share my male hobbies and interests, but why should I want to try to locate them and spend time with them when I have plenty of male friends?
Thank you for this! I think in some ways you're right -- these things become self-reinforcing, because the more we presume that men and women have separate interests, the more suspicion we have when a cross-gender friendship does form. What could they possibly have to talk about BESIDES sexual attraction?
I suppose I talk about sports more often with my male friends, but books, movies and music (I have a deep attachment to music) seem to transcend gender? Or perhaps not for everyone!
Of those, music makes the most sense to me. Popular tastes in music differ quite a lot. Classic rock for men vs. Taylor Swift and various other divas and pop artists for women. Country as a genre has a good bit of overlap, though not as much when it comes to individual artists.
But classical music is one domain with a lot of overlap. Perhaps this is true of instrumental music in general -- as soon as singing is introduced, one sex is going to enjoy the vocalist and the lyrics more than the other. But a male and female instrumentalist are interchangeable.
But books, movies? Most of the time, the best you can do with the opposite sex is find a movie that one of you really wants to watch, and the other is content to watch. Maybe there's more overlap, again, when it comes to really high-brow stuff. Art films. I don't know anyone who cares for those anymore, but I do recall friends from college who did and would watch them as couples.
Otherwise, the biggest exception in my mind is that, while they're male-coded, there are still a fair number of female nerds/geeks who love Star Wars and Lord of the Rings (but of course, more who love the more female-coded Harry Potter).
But outside the realm of sci-fi/fantasy, I don't think I've ever known a woman who loves male-coded movies. E.g. war movies, gangster movies, which are generally my favorites.
I think this same difference in tastes carries over to fiction books. With nonfiction books, meanwhile, men and women tend to have very different intellectual interests. Women are also more interested in more practical books about self-improvement, dieting, etc. Maybe we both read memoirs and autobiographies, but men would much rather read books about other men, and women about other women. When it comes to religion, men would rather study finer points of theology, while women would rather read devotionals or more practical books about applying one's faith.
Fascinating! I like to read novels about relationships and my favorite country artists are mostly women: Miranda Lambert, Ashley McBryde, Morgan Wade. I didn’t grow up with such a coded understanding of culture. I wonder if geography plays a part? Lifelong coastal Californian…
Geography might be part of it. I've lived in cities and suburbs in the South, the Midwest, the Mountain West, and the Southwest, though never really on the coasts. My parents grew up in the suburban Midwest.
As for this "coded understanding" - how much of it is growing up, and how much is gradually discovered in adulthood? I think a lot happens in adulthood. Once people figure out what they really like and are passionate about, what they're really happy to talk and think about as the decades pile on.
Younger people are more curious, more likely to dip their toe into a broader range of interests. Also, in some cases, we explore those interests specifically BECAUSE there will be girls there (I think young men probably do this more than young women). In college, I watched "Koyaanisqatsi" (not normally my cup of tea) out of a combination of curiosity and there were girls there. I never really enjoyed hanging out at bars either, but there were girls there.
An example for women that comes to mind is golf. The hobby has always had a strong male lean, but these days a lot of sporty women dip their toe in during 20s and 30s and think it's OK. Still, their interest nearly always fizzles out.
As married adults who know what we like and don't have as much time for hobbies, we tend to narrow in. Consequently, the Venn diagrams between men's and women's interests tend to show less overlap over time.