Captain's Log. Stardate April 13th, 2013. My ethnographic observations and work at my Head Quarters have been rather absorbing of late, hence the long silence in this log. I'd like to return briefly to the woman question. A few weeks ago, I was passing a playground, and I saw a little boy sitting down with a rather submissive air, and a little girl, possibly a year older than him, standing over him wagging her finger at him, and telling him what's what. I wondered if this could be a foreshadowing of the dominance of the woman in the Kling-On household?
I will try to sketch the main features of the "classic" Kling-On Woman, with the important caveat that there are numerous exceptions to this pattern. It captures a common tendency among Kling-On women, NOT a universal rule. (1) The Kling-On woman is not easy to win over. She will wait until you have proved yourself an honorable and fitting suitor, have spent plenty of time around her friends, and proved to her liking, before she will even consider "officially" going out with you, something that in the Kling-On region is only a short step away from marriage. (2) Kling-On women do not generally play games with men they do not know well. For example, I heard of one unfortunate soul who, during a visit to the Kling-On region, sidled up to a Kling-On woman in a bar, and attempted to make some light banter with her about the weather or some such topic. Without further ado, she turned to him and said something like, "No thanks, not today." Perhaps the still-birth of a beautiful friendship? Or perhaps a legitimate form of self-defense? (3) Kling-On women are queens in the domestic hearth. Their rule there is virtually absolute. They take great pride in the way they run their households. It is considered a great honor and sign of friendship to be invited into a Kling-On home. (4) Kling-On women do not mince their words. They tend to share their opinions freely, and tact is probably not their primary virtue. On the other hand, they tend to be more honest and direct than women from other parts of the world. These qualities of untactful candor and brute honesty are shared by their male counterparts, perhaps in even greater quantities. (5) Kling-On women are "women of their word." If they say yes, it means yes. If they say no, it means no. I would trust the word of an average Kling-On woman much more than an average non-Kling-On woman, knowing nothing else about her.
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AuthorDavid Thunder is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Culture and Society, a humanities and social science research center at the University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain. Archives
May 2014
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