Maybe I shouldn't have prefaced my statement with an apology. That came out all kinds of wrong. I am not apologizing for the content - I only wanted to avoid offending people with the delivery. Apparently, I failed.
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Originally Posted by sweetpea
Yes, we're all human beings, but gender issues are alive and well in our society, addressing them and speaking about them is a way to break down those boundaries. And if we can't speak about it in peace here on this little internet site, where can we?
Sweetpea
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I never said that gender issues did not exist or that my aim was not to break down gender boundaries. That is, in fact, the exact opposite of my point. What I mean to contribute to this thread is my opinion (based on my own experience being female and the four years I spent at a women's college) that the best way to make good friends (and at the same time avoid reinforcing gender stereotypes) is to deal with
people instead of
men and
women.
If, the second you meet somebody new, you introduce yourself as a woman or a girl, you implicitly send the message that
there is something inherently different between us (if speaking to a man) or
there is something inherently the same about us (if speaking to a woman), despite how little you know about each other. (1) That is the way stereotypes (and rumors) are made and reinforced. (2) That message invariably frames all of your interactions, whether or not most people are aware of it.
My own experience has been that there are simply people with whom I am able to get along and people with whom I am unable to get along. I used to think it had something to do with gender, but going to a single-sex institution taught me otherwise. It only has to do with gender if you make it have to do with gender. So, Lead543, I suspect that the pattern you've noticed among the people who attended your high school (that many of them are poor judges of character and can't think for themselves) is more about the unfortunate collection of girls in that town than it is about girls or women everywhere. I'm sorry you had to grow up there - I really am. I promise you that I say this as one who can relate. I hope you can move past the people who burned you in the past and meet your college mates with as much of a clean slate as possible.
To answer your question more specifically, I will say this - I haven't made any friends in college who are nearly as close as I am to my best friends from home. However, the college friends I do consider to be very close are close to me in a different way, and I had no idea that we would be so close when I first met them (or anytime soon after). In fact, some of my best friends from freshman year are people who won't give me the light of day when I pass them on the street, and one of my closest friends today was once the really popular girl from my orientation group who pretended she didn't know me when I said "hi" to her on the first day of classes. There's no telling what kind of batch you'll have to pick from and there's absolutely no way of knowing how good a friend a person will be a year or two down the line based on how well you get along during your first year in college.
Just try to focus more on making friends who respect you and who make you feel comfortable, and forget about the business of making sure you're an equal opportunity friend. Does it really matter whether they're girls or boys if you think they are fun people and you trust them?