A few unanswered questions on gender roles

After reading Helene Cixous' The Laugh of the Medusa, I'd just like to ponder a few historical background questions regarding gender and writing/reading roles. 1) Where did the man-as-writer role originate? and, related, 2) where did the woman-as-reader role originate? and 3) when did those roles switch?

Many critics draw the corporal connection with the male anatomy and the pen. Obvious enough. An "analog for creating," writes Dr. Mary Klages in her article "Helene Cixous: 'The Laugh of the Medusa'." And that originates with ... well, Adam. And, speaking of Adam, there's the naming role God gave him. The book of Genesis portrays Adam dubbing animals, creating terms, names, words, to call them, associate them, order them. And isn't that what writing is, after all - naming? Writing amounts to articulating, expressing, recognizing and terming. Critics also associate writing with power, the ability to wield, the potency to create. This, too, makes sense.

But what about woman as reader? When did that happen? If women have been, historically, 'absorbers' of knowledge, not creators of knowledge, it would follow that they specialized in reading. Above are Mary Cassatt's "Woman Reading" and Monet's "Woman Reading," both impressionist works. I scoured the internet for paintings of men reading, and they are few and far between. A 2007 USA Today poll found that "More women than men read every major category of books except for history and biography." Also, "among those who said they had read books, the median figure — with half reading more, half fewer — was nine books for women and five for men." The trend in role, however it originated, seems to have stuck.

Still, today my English classes are dominated by females. Few males choose to pursue writing, accepting - I think - the social stereotype of being verbally impaired. A man - especially the college student version - who writes poetry in private is 1) either "emo," mentally disturbed, or depressed or 2) super attractive for his rarity. (Either extreme depends upon the man's strange uniqueness.) Women are the creative ones, the expressive ones, and writing seems to suit this modern woman. They swoon over poetry, articulate thought, compose letters, song lyrics, and absorb themselves in the (flimsy) gender-restricted genre known as "chicklit." They've certainly carved out space for themselves. When did that change? Cixous - among others - crusaded for women's literary space, penning battle cries like "Write! Writing is for you, you are for you . . . Write, let no one hold you back, let nothing stop you: not man, not the imbecilic capitalist machinery. . . " (2041). Now, it sometimes seems, women dominate literary space, especially capitalist-driven literary space. Book clubs and chicklit make for prosperous markets. Why? Men still write, yes, many of them prolifically, but why aren't there more male writers in our generation? Where'd the male English majors go?

These wanderings are inconclusive. More later.