About men and humans

Early winter, wind and rain replaced the cold, as I leave the shoppingcenter parking lot I discover something is wrong with one front wheel. I pull over at a bus stop. As I feared, the tyre is completely, totally flat! Can the situation be any worse? Oh yes, it can! Right behind me is another car, and out of it comes a real macho-man. Tan, black-eyed beach-lion dressed for winter.

In a stuttering attempt at speaking Norwegian, he states that I have to get into his car, because my tyre is flat, and therefor he must drive me home and get this sorted. I never have the habit of being obedient, and I certainly do not want to sit in his car. So I open the trunk and start looking for spare wheel and necessary tools. He explains that he is a strong, big man, and he is not able to fix this, so it is stupid of me to even try. While I keep doing my things, he moves very close and gets more and more insisting, in his nagging. Why do Norwegian women have to be so stubborn and wilful? Stop this already!

The situation became very unpleasant. It was cold and difficult, at the same time I became annoyed, angry, and scared. But luckily two other cars stopped, and that was ordinary, normal Totninger (people from this erea). Men in safety shoes and coveralls bought at the local co-op. This made our new fellow citizen disappear very quickly, still expressing his indignation.

The Toten-men apparently sensed my state of mind, and they wisely kept some distance, and made some joking comments. Asking if this could be a problem? No, probably I just liked this place to change tyre, maybe I had forgotten the winter tyres on one side. And they would love to help, but unfortunately they didn`t have an umbrella. But CRC and a mallet appeared, to loosen the very tight wheel nuts. I even got some muscle help. Just enough to get it loose, so I could manage it. That is true musicality, in interaction between people, to know when to help without anyone need to ask, and to know when to step aside and let the other person keep some self-esteem.

When I was even served some coffee, the negative experience had been turned around to become a nice evening that restored my faith in human beings! We had a light, joking tone between us, so I dared to ask them if they stopped because they saw it is a female driver? They asked if I think I am that pretty! We had some good laughs about all the out-of-gas jokes, but agreed that of course in reality we would all stop to help others regardless of gender. Because, as they reminded me, we are all “folk”.

I don`t know how to translate that word. Google suggests “people”, that is not accurate. When you would say “as a gentleman” in English, we would say “som folk” in Norwegian. And that is gender neutral… we are all “folk”!

And this is my point. It is better to be “folk”, than a tender little flower to be put in a vase and placed where the owner wants, and exhibited at the right events. So we accept the logical consequences, that if someone tries to use femininity to make others do a job for them, they are asked where they keep the wheel-chair. It is nice when someone open the door for me, if that does not mean I have to wait to let him do it. It is also natural for me to open the door for men, if I am first. Respect is a two way street!

Just as it takes two parts to develop our, by others standards, very free and liberal rules for relationships.

A lot has been said about Eilert Sundt and his social scientific research in the 1850s. How he used systematic analysis of the statistic material, and how this made him develop a deeper understanding and more sympathetic view of the rural culture. How he changed from being the condemning, moralistic person in office, with a need to educate. In my opinion his way of describing the causes behind the raise in the number of unprovided children out of wedlock, it is epic! He compare with a flood in the river Glomma. When it is much snow in the mountains, when it melts fast, when the river runs wild in the upper parts of the valley, then the farmers in the lowlands are not surprised by the flood. Likewise, he shows how in the first half of the 1800s it is a huge number of children born. So the officials should not have been so surprised that 20 years later it is a lot of young women in fertile age. He rounds of this by recording an excellent interview with an old woman, showing how the so-called promiscuity has been at least as bad in earlier times. The difference is back in her days, the population was not growing so fast, it was much fewer young people competing for the jobs, and easier to make a living. He then goes back to the statistics, and show how the percentage of women who had one or two children before they married has been very stable, over a long period of time. And how most of them ended up building sound families and good lives, nevertheless.

His project: “About the immorality in Norway” instead become about the morality! Admitting that it has served us well, this idea to give girls a lot of freedom to make their own decisions and choices.

But the prerequisite for this, of course, is that they had a lot of good, trustworthy men to choose from!

Almost hundred years earlier, Axel Christian Smith published his topographic descriptions of Østerdalen, in eastern Norway. In this works he even discusses the population growth. In the 1700s it is not usual to question the fact that more inhabitants equal bigger workforce, more taxes and greater wealth for the nation. So Smith is rather careful when he suggests that maybe it can be good reasons for families to try to avoid pregnancies… and maybe that can even be in the nation’s best interest.

This is at the heart of another core issue in the everlasting tug-of-war between the establishment and the populist, between the bourgeois and the peasant, the ordinary people. And the rural everyday life usually manifest as a healthy balance, a double thinking. Of course every child is a blessing, of course we celebrate fertility in all its forms… but it might still be wise to try and limit the fertility. We should count our blessings… so maybe it should not be too many of them?

So there have been a lot of theories and practices for family planning, some rather amusing to read about. It was important to teach the girls to have fun on their own. A good, pleasant washing every morning can make it easier to resist other temptations. Not only for the young girls, but even more in matrimony. Then it could of course even be a source for power, as we know from many stories, pure blackmail against the poor husband. Before TV shows and sex education in schools, the sources for knowledge in this field was mothers, grandmothers, aunts and friends. And jokes and anecdotes! Making fun of girls who had not been taught anything at home. Stories about Friday-rules, about sleeping arrangements. About desperate men. And of course about young, newly wed women who couldn`t manage to keep to their own rules.

This is a rich side of our popular culture, partly documented through shows and books of anecdotes; we never get tired of watching exchange of daring stories on TV. What we never think about, is that the men would have to respect the women’s decisions. Safe periods and taking care of one’s own business, it would be of little relevance if the husband considered the wife to be his property to do what he wants!

Between the female ideals and the male ideals, there has to be symmetry.

So, what is it that makes us “folk”? Could it just be that we grow up? Little children learn to not only think about themselves, that others become sad if they get less of the chocolate. Young people are looking for their own identity, find out who they are. They see themselves mirrored in others reactions, are always very conscious of what their peers will say, how they can get admiration from the group. Piet Hein said about looking for the fixed point, the Archimedian point that everything else is relative to: If you do not find it inside yourself, you will find it nowhere. That is to grow up. That is to become “folk”.

That is the starting point to develop our own identity. We no longer need to fulfil other people’s expectations; we no longer need to try to conform to predetermined gender roles. Thus, we do no longer need to push others into opposite gender roles just to strengthen our own. Now we can see other people’s needs, and put the welfare of others ahead of peer pressure and bigoted condemnation. Now we can build true relations, maybe also family, instead of just building our own egoistic position in a social group.

The macho- man who was so provoked because I neglected him, and changed the tyre myself, maybe he came from more gender segregated society. More like to the bourgeois world that Eilert Sundt represented. A world where men live their lives in arenas where they socialise with other men and it is these peers that are important to them, their opinion that matter. And family, wife and children, are something that the man take care of, and something that is important for his status in the group.

Teachers, officials, priests, we had many of those who tried to teach us ordinary people this more decent way of living… Generations of ordinary people have shown a remarkable and admirable patience in listening to all the lecturing. It just did not have much interest for real life.

An old teacher once told me about when he started his studying. He was told to distance himself and lay off everything from Toten, and it was not just the dialect. In his old age he was very remorseful, and it was important to him that teachers in the future did not do the same mistakes that he had done. He was a strong advocate for more respect for the children, the culture and the values that they carried, the ballast from home. But now more than ever are we faced with very strong attempts to mould us in the same academic, bourgeois ideal. At the same time we might have reason to worry about those few new citizens with strong, outspoken attitudes that can be clashing with ours.

But we have dealt with moralists and men of darkness for so long. They never made any lasting impact before. I find it difficult to believe that most ordinary men will change now. And for us women here, we are not easy to take control over and put in a vase. So it is my bet that we will all continue to be “folk”.