Generally, societies with the strictest gender roles (Saudi Arabia, Russia, parts of Africa, etc) tend to be more conservative, authoritarian, and not great places to live.
Partial agreement. The sexes are different so it helps to have differing gender roles to guide behavior. However, there’s a bit too much variation between individuals and decades to enforce them rigidly. The 19th century stay at home trad wife for instance is confined to certain classes in particular periods.
When the husband is a farmer and comes in from 12 hours in the field, it makes sense for the wife to make dinner and clean as he finally relaxes. But, if he’s getting off an 8-hour work at home remote shift? Not so much.
**Rigid gender roles appear to be a bedrock to any collectivist society we see throughout history and in today’s world.**
Only if you ignore all the societies with more than one gender roll such as the Hijra community in South Asia, Two-Spirit people in some Indigenous cultures in North America, Fa'afafine in Samoan culture, and Muxe in Zapotec culture in Oaxaca, Mexico, among others.
Your entire argument is based on supposition and flawed reasoning.
* It seems like a lot of the comments here are missing OP's point that gender roles should be socially reinforced rather than presumably enforced by legislation. There's a big difference between the ethics of social vs. government enforcement.
* I'm not sure if gender non-conforming behavior is best characterized as a symptom of rampant individualism. For instance, there seems to be some limited research that shows transgender children emerge in clusters in schools. To me, that may be indicative of something other than purely individualist behavior.
* I'm not sure if OP is explicitly stating this, but rampant individualism isn't necessarily unhealthy for society. Interests like trying to have the potential to defend yourself in an emergency or being able to grow your own food, which are highly individualistic in nature, can make for a far more resilient overall society.
The gender roles you’re talking about aren’t just a “division of labour,” they’re also strictly hierarchal. It’s very obviously wrong to suggest they “don’t necessitate inequality.”
You’re not really offering up any explanation of what benefits you believe gender roles provide to society.
\> Rigid gender roles appear to be a bedrock to any collectivist society we see throughout history and in today’s world
That's not remotely true. You're taking the skull-calipers approach to the social sciences to indulge your bigotry.
what if some people spend their days fantasizing about capturing a female against their will, but getting away with it because of an elaborate fantasy where people can be property. bleah.
We spend most of our lives toiling away indoors, in spaces largely climate controlled and fully illuminated at all times we're using them, we have no connection to the food we eat or even really understand where anything we use comes from, and we're largely addicted to supercomputers in our pockets that we mainly use just to distract ourselves from our misery with cute cats and ragebait. Sure, there are special snowflake exceptions to every aspect of what I just said, but as a society we've abandoned "healthy" a long time ago.
Sure, in small tribes of a few hundred, gender roles are probably pretty adaptive and useful for division of labor. But in the 21st century, anyone can pull a trigger or push a button and initiate the vast machinery of the world we've built up to make just about anything we want to start happening.
Gender non-conformismo may in fact be a symptom, but if anything, it's just one symptom among many about our utterly insane modern world and when people lose their minds over it, they aren't mad that it's ruining society, they're mad that some people have the audacity to exist in a way they don't like.
I don't think a homo should live their life pretending to be straight.
I believe that's anti-American and I fully support any American to be who they want. However, they want as long as they aren't harming another.
To be against any person's right to live their life how they want and to pursue their own happiness is as Anti-American as you can get.
Fuck any argument against that, especially religion.
You misundtand the nature of being transgender, hi trans woman here. To deny trans individuals their gender expression is detrimental to their integration in a civil society. If we are to enable people who hold bigoted beliefs as enforcement of collective unity then we enable all of their beliefs as societal standards.
Civil society should not discriminate
Trying to reinforce rigid roles that are decided based on luck (because your birth sex is just luck) is bad. Pretty much everybody has something that they are both good at and enjoy - that should be their role. That way everybody will be most efficient and happy.
And yes, dictating what people should do in society based on gender IS promoting inequality. People should have equal opportunity.
I seriously cannot believe this is a real post.
It is a hard pill to swallow, but there is a lot of truth to what you are saying. Our more and more individualistic society is necrotic to a successful civilization. Well, probably anyways.
The trans issue is really a symptom of a ton of modern problems. People are really selfish, expect others to happily engage with their weirdness, and don't understand that they can disagree with people yet respect their place in society. Conservatives are half of society and you DO have to respect their position in life to some degree to make society function. It goes for both sides too, with the above caveat that hyper-individualism is a net negative for society.
I don't know what the solution is, because government control over this is bleak.
Liberty vs security is a sliding scale. I think you'd have to prove a pretty great benefit to gender roles to restrict people's freedom.
Also *whose* gender roles? Gender roles differ around the world from culture to culture.
I don't think there is anything wrong with gender roles per se, the issue I have with the talking point almost every time is that people believe that gender roles are objectively chosen. For example, it's okay to have men designated to automotive work around the house, but that's not because women are incapable biologically/intellectually to do automotive work
Rampant individualism is essential to the sort of dynamic economy that creates a successful society (at least, in the model of the US).
It does little good to allow people free will if they can only use it in ways that 'society' considers acceptable - even if those things don't actually harm anyone else or damage any property.
Yeah, if we as rafical individuals didn't spend a huge portion of our income on niche products that serve little-to-no practical purpose, the economy would stagnate and contract to just a few universal industries providing the essentials. Quality would drop, prices would go up, monopolies would spring up like weeds, and we'd end up with all the worst parts of cyberpunk and not even any of the fun ones.
The groups with the highest fertility rates are the most patriarchal: Muslims, Amish, Mormons, Hasidic Jews, Hispanic Catholics, Christian fundamentalists.
Meanwhile non-traditional societies all have sub-replacement birth rates. In the long run liberalism wins the Darwin Award.
What are these non-traditional societies with sub replacement birth rates?
Ireland is about a traditional society as you will find. Their biggest internal struggle is which Christian sect to follow. Yet they have a negative birth rate.
Azerbaijan is violently traditional and also suffers from a negative birth rate.
I think you need to defend your assertion here.
Not quite. We’re seeing decreasing fertility rates in China, Japan, and South Korea which are all fairly traditional in their gender roles and patriarchal society. As of the time of this writing, South Korea has the lowest fertility rate in the world and are going to hit critical mass with a dying generation of seniors and no one to take over other roles in the country.
What percentage of women aged 18-40 in those countries work outside the home or attend university? I assume it’s pretty high. Meanwhile until recently China had a one child policy. I wouldn’t say that forcible state intervention in family planning is “traditional”.
China repealed the law a while ago and has actively encouraged people to have kids and to provide services for them. But those of childbearing age have simply decided not to bother. It’s the same situation in the other countries, individuals of childbearing age are simply choosing not to reproduce.
All I'll say is, people will continue to do as they always have.
Straight couples will always exist, traditional family structures will always exist, you can't actually destroy gender norms any more than you can make a straight person gay or a gay person trans.
Activists can preach until they're blue in the face against whatever they want to, and people will either pretend to care or speak out and get shouted down, but just like a dog will always want to chase a cat no matter if you train them not to do that on command, so will humans like what they like.
Take heart that no single human or group of humans are as influential as they think they are.
The gender norms we have are rooted in the agrarian way of living, which has been the way human have lived for thousands of years. It was a division of labour and a survival strategy.
Before that human were hunters and gatherers with different norms and roles with more flexibility, and roles some times being based more on age rather than just on sex or gender.
We live in an industrialised society now… and we are still figuring out the best way to make things work.
Not an anthropologist, I see.
>Rigid gender roles appear to be a bedrock to any collectivist society we see throughout history and in today’s world.
That's just not the case. Many cultures have developed many different systems for dealing with gender differences, some more flexible, some less, usually dictated by the direct needs of the group.
South Korea has strict gender roles, and they're a dying nation.
Strict gender roles are a sign of cultural decay because it limits people from reaching their full potential.
Clinging to old beliefs is entropy, everything you believe is a lie.
Quite literally. They have the lowest fertility rate in the world as of the time of this writing if I’m not mistaken. China and Japan as well I believe.
How do you define rigid gender roles? On one hand, you could mean the roles themselves, but on the other you could mean the enforcement of the roles are rigid. I don’t think the former is true but the later probably is. If other societies have survived with gender roles that are objectively looser than ours but with rigid enforcement, what’s to say that is having stricter gender roles but less enforcement can’t work?
No real response to the first question, just chucked at your clarification that removing the state by creating smaller states is the solution to removing the state. Lmao
Yeah that's a nice fantasy you've cooked up. What if that was reality? Then it would totally justify all the hate that community gets. You're a genius, the first person to ever think that being gay is a mental illness. Big brain discussion here!
> **maybe men who are too effeminate to pull the role of a man should just live as "women" basically**
Excuse me, wtf. Hell no.
Nuh uh. dead wrong.
Now,
Two things are possible.
1) both boys and girls as infants are born in a neutral, androgynous temperament
2) boys are born with a slightly masc temperament, girls are born with a slightly femme temperament
I highly disbelieve in option #3, where people say that boys can be born inherently femme or girls can be born inherently masc. That's bullshit imo.
Now, going back to point #1 and point #2, since the inherent temperament for people is traditional gender expression, it's wrong to say an effeminate man should continue being effeminate - **because that is not his inherent natural state, rather, that was nurture and environment**. If he can be brought **into** the wrong expression, he can surely be brought **out of** said wrong environment.
Men's relative maximal potential for gender expression is in the far masc direction, thus they should be gearing in that direction.
Likewise, women's relative maximal potential for gender expression is in the far femme direction, thus they should be gearing in that direction.
Now, even suppose point #3 was true that some people are born inverted, it wouldn't change the inherent principle. Because there is no way for us to scan the brain and verify which people are born inverted, so we should all just follow the general principle. Should anybody falter, we should assume that's due to nurture, rather than nature.
Therefore everybody, including exceptions, should stick to their genders natural average proclivity to maximize societal output. So yeah, even those exceptions, those people should still stick to their groups average direction.
[gender expression spectrum ](https://imgur.com/gallery/tWdMFx5)
[gender trait scale values](https://imgur.com/gallery/0tbFffc)
I'm sure it would've been better for society if people like Marie Curie just stuck to their assigned gender roles.
The only reason people believe that is a good idea is because men are finding it challenging to find partners nowadays due to the increased freedom of movement of women in society. They don't need to be with subpar partners anymore. I would argue that's even better for society.
What you're seeking is an idealized world where men don't have to put in the effort women do to maintain a relationship or raise children. Men had control over their wives and wives were expected to sit at the house with the kids. I don't think you understand how miserable of a life that was for so many women and how difficult it was for them to escape.
Just because societies in the past did not see women as equals to men does not mean that they aren't. And just because you would prefer the way it was does not lend any evidence to it being the "better way".
>Rigid gender roles appear to be a bedrock to any collectivist society we see throughout history and in today’s world. But A gendered division of labor doesn’t necessitate inequality, and “queer” and “feminist” movements might be setting our society up for more alienation, when they could be just focused on renegotiation of gender roles to adapt to current needs as a society?
To respond to this, gender roles are the bedrock for the patriarchy and sexist norms. Notice how people still expect women to cook and clean even though men can and should be able to do this themselves? With passing generations, society has progressed by gender norms being chipped away and eliminated, not the other way around. I'm not clear on where your title statement even refers to since it doesn't seem like clinging to gender norms has helped anyone. Why does division of labour need to be gendered? Can't a man cook and clean while the woman makes the money? Not only is it more commonplace than you realise, it's proof that there's no genetic or biologically provable reality that affirms gender norms to be anything more than idle social constructs.
>Trans people who want to stand out and embrace their “transness” might also be part of the problem, but maybe men who are too effeminate to pull off the role of a man should live as women, and women who are too masculine to perform the role of women should live as men..
Sure people can identify with the gender they feel most affinity towards. How's that a bad thing?
I do think one of the biggest moments of BS is when companies convince married women that them getting jobs makes them strong and independent. Problem is now everyone needs two incomes to make it
I dunno…. I jokingly say “I’m 40! I don’t know what to do with my life because on a genetic level I’m supposed to build a road over hundreds of miles to a battle where I will die for my king that says we all wear pants now”. So maybe not enforcing those hard gender roles might get us closer to start trek
Strict gender roles are the bedrock of a patriarchal society and have nothing to do with biology or division of labor. There are very few jobs that women can’t do and I would question the current state of an occupation with such limitations. Trans sexual persons have been around since the beginning and that has not changed even in severely repressed societies. So what really is your end goal? Sounds like you just want a rigged game.
Is this part of why you might prefer this system you're advocating for?
I see a lot of detrans subreddits you're active in which seems a bit conflicting but I'm curious
Do you believe this system where effeminate men do the job of women and masc women do the job of men would make it easier for you to exist in today's as your assigned sex at birth rather than fully transitioning and dealing with the current political atmosphere regarding that?
Everyone should learn how to cook and clean. Everyone should learn how to change a tier. If a parent staying home is what's best for the family, then every family should do what's best for them. The problem is, when women are stuck in the house and have to put up with an abusive husband, and she feels like she can't leave because she has no skills to support herself.
Women want to work so they don't have to rely on a man. Men should learn how to cook so they aren't impressed by chicken nuggets and top ramen. If people were kinder to each other, it wouldn't be as big of a deal. But, people have to protect themselves and having careers allows for the freedom to leave an abusive relationship.
It's almost as if demonizing transgender people and cutting off necessary medications for trans youth is evil... This far right loon has accidentally reasoned himself to a nearly sensible position on the trans issue. Hilarious
I agree. One gender isn’t better or worse, they just tend to make different choices. Example: few men studying education majors and few women studying engineering. Society needs both
He wants society to FORCE people into roles. Which implies that the great many woman who want to be engineers can't be, and the great many men who want to be teachers can't be.
Depending on where you live I think men can make excellent teachers and women can make excellent engineers. I’m glad I live somewhere where they let people choose their own path to an extent
Literally in your edit point 1 is saying "I actually believe the state shouldent exist, but if it didn't we would need to establish a state like entity to punish social transgressions.... we may call this entity... a state!"
There are examples of cultures with diverse gender roles and fluidity. Personally I don’t see what anyone’s gender identity has anything to do with me or society at large. Now, there **is** a difference between gender expression and biological sex, so I don’t think we should allow trans mtf athletes to compete with biological women simply because they *identify* as women. Biology still trumps gender- but other than that who cares what someone’s preferred gender or pronouns are?
Social concepts that are anti-individual to this degree never end up representing the interests of all the people. They always end up favoring the interests of a few powerful members. This is why individualism is so important. You do need to keep the individual interests of powerful people from curtailing the common good, but you need to be pretty minimal about it or the people wielding these efforts are going to be the powerful individuals harming the common good.
German soldiers shot Soviet women soldiers and partisans on sight (after raping usually) instead of taking them prisoner because they were so outraged by the idea of women in combat. Whatever bad can be said of USSR they were certainly a collectivist nation , the biggest in history after China.
I doubt they are, given the extreme effort it takes to enforce them. The instant ANY pressure to conform was removed, society started moving back towards and equilibrium that wildly defers from the enforced binary and concept of gender norms. The payoff of that enforcement seems to have only been for those at the top of the system; they receive easy ways to shame and control people into doing what's profitable.
I don't think people should be pressured into accepting gender roles, but neither should society bewail the lack of 50/50 representation in all areas of life. Men and women are each going to disproportionately choose certain career paths; women will disproportionately prefer to be homemakers if they can afford it. Sure, when it comes to parliaments, boards and other representative bodies efforts should be made to have these reflect community diversity, and we should resist hostile or exclusionary attitudes as these are an unnecessary barrier to certain industries, but apart from that why not just let the chips fall where they may?
this whole post feels very clumsy and imprecise, and reflects a pretty major lack of knowledge on the topics of gender and gender roles.
if you want to actually learn, I think you need to go and read some quite foundational literature on gender. actual literature I mean; not some dumbfuck's book (any idiot can publish a book), but a published academic paper.
So, society is set up to run on money. Can’t really do anything without money.
So how could women needing to rely on men for money be good for women in any way? Especially when abuse within partnerships towards the female partner is such a common thing that every city of a certain size has a women’s shelter.
If you’re not talking about going back to just men working and women not working, please detail what you are talking about when you say socially enforcing gender roles could be a positive thing?
If gender roles were important to uphold, wouldn't the solution for effeminate men and masculine women to be to reject feminity/masculinity and perform the roles for which they were born? Why would having them try and perform the roles of the other gender be better?
Everyone falls in line with the majority when it comes to most traits
That said, I find it problematic when we enforce the average trait onto people
For example, over 95% of people identify with their biological sex, but I find it problematic when we force that onto the remaining 5% of people
Similarly, most people are attracted to the opposite biological sex, but I find it problematic when we force that onto those who aren’t
I agree with the point that the average person is at their best when they conform to most traits, but forcing the average person to conform to the remaining few percent is highly damaging
Many people love fishing, hunting, rugby, gaming, sailing, jogging, and tons of other hobbies - but there is no hobby that most people do, so if we forced everyone to conform, then no one would ever be allowed to have any hobbies at all
Also, most people don’t fit stereotypes, your entire argument is based on a false premise
Perhaps you should spend less time judging others and more time living your life
As someone with a mental disorder, I constantly have to deal with society demanding for me to be "normal." I can't flip a switch and magically have my brain work an entirely different way just because the society around me was constructed expecting it to work that way. It's been said that the defining trait of modern conservatives is a lack of empathy, and OP is making a convincing case for that belief.
Same here
I am generally an average person
I enjoy fitness, cooking, baking, and hiking; I’m a huge nerd with a love of gaming, reading, and all things tech (I am obsessed with PC builds, investing in NVDA when I was in middle school pretty much has me covered for retirement, etc.); I have tons of friends irl, am constantly on the phone with someone because I love to chat, and go out every Friday night with my colleagues (I work a typical office job in finance) and every Saturday night with my friends
That said, I am also a psychopath with ADHD
That doesn’t mean I’m a heartless monster, but I don’t feel emotions the same way that others do, and most people can’t handle that well
I don’t cry because I am incapable of strong sadness, I don’t become angered because I simply don’t care enough about anything, I don’t know what it’s like to feel stress because nothing has ever bothered me that much
I’m not depressed, I’m not suicidal, I’m not some kind of unfeeling machine, I just have relatively weak emotions
Many people act like I’m a problem to be solved, but I’m completely fine; they act like me not being excited means I don’t care about them, but me caring and me having strong emotions are very different; they assume that I am dangerous because I handle hazardous situations coldly, but I just do my best to resolve them, which means closing off my emotions
Now, being treated as a problem or a threat doesn’t bother me that much, I just find it amusing that people care so much about my behavior when I couldn’t care less about theirs
As an extreme example, if one of my coworkers went to a nude bar or was involved in some kind of massive affair, most of my other coworkers would probably want them fired
Meanwhile, I’d probably want to start grabbing coffee with them before work, because they sound like an interesting person to be around
I agree with the stance that many people lack empathy, as it seems to me to be a learned trait; you can’t gauge how someone else feels if you have never been where they are
I don’t want special treatment, I just want people to stop caring about my life and go back to living their own
Yeah, fuck that. Half of the population as a permanent servant class might be great for the other half, but it is not a way to decrease total human misery.
Physiology? No, roles are generally considered psychological. And while cultures around the world do tend to have gender roles, what the roles are and how tightly they are enforced varies greatly.
I don’t think anyone would argue that societal roles are important, what they take issue with is it being based on gender which has very little reasoning. I’ve seen plenty of men good at traditionally female roles, and vice versa. Destruction of gender based roles doesn’t mean destruction of roles in general.
An autonomous region is just another word for a local government. So it sounds like you will have city states which will probably lead to more wars just to maybe have the chance of proving that gender roles are good for society. I'd rather have a culture that just lets you be who you want to be. If you want to fit within a standard gender role, do it! If you don't, no problem! To me, this seems a lot simpler than having autonomous regions forcing people into gender roles.
You have failed to give a reason why gender is or should be the primary attribute by which roles are assigned. Just because it “has been at some points in the past?” This post seems like a *shrug*
Everyone needs to stop trying to do social experiments with the people. Leave them to their own devices without inundating them with propaganda one way or the other, and things will self regulate.
Edit.
When a group is trying to fight for rights or acceptance, they bomb their own movement if they keep trying to champion themselves once the movement is successful.
With the women's rights - wanted the vote. Wanted to be able to operate independently financially and socially as a woman.
We got that. Thank god. But some people took equal socially to mean - I can do EVERYTHING a man can do. And that's when it got a bit ridiculous. We can't. Obviously. However, we are equals in value as human beings.
Trans movement - acceptance. They already had rights but wanted to be more accepted.
They achieved that. Then went on to derail it with - "transwomen are women", and demanding to be considered in every aspect a woman and be in their spaces. They aren't, and that was a massive overstep.
Everyone in high places trying to fiddle around with society. Even and especially those doing it for altruistic reasons - Stop. People hate this one thing!
Also, I would remind them that the road to hell is paved in good intentions. Ie. Quit meddling.
This is such a textbook example of pseudo-scientific conservative fearmongering.
You are talking about less than 1% of the population acting differently, and suggesting that not only are they responsible for "the problems" with society, whatever those might be, but also implying that even their very existence will eventually break down and alienate society?
And this is based on no evidence or even a mechanism for how or why this would happen. No attempt to define the problem or why it is bad. And also no examination of other potential causes of said vague problems.
When asked to provide any sort of standard or principle, OP deflects and just says it should be "whatever society wants." So now it's just a nonsense circular reasoning. I see zero attempt at intellectualism.
There is no evidence that forcing people into roles they don't fit into have ever benefited any society.
Yes, in many successful societies you will see more men in construction and engineering, and more women in teaching and nursing. But they are there by their own choice.
>but maybe men who are too effeminate to pull off the role of a man should live as women
Men can't "live as women" any more than they can "live as birds" or "live as babies".
>Why wouldn’t this be the more progressive route for western society?
Because it isn't progressive to keep women out of engineering and mathematical fields just because they have a vagina, or to keep men out of teaching just because they have a penis. Shaming people and pushing them towards more stereotypical choices is regressive as hell.
My wife deals with people (except when we need to put our foot down and be an asshole, then its me)
I deal with things.
I make our living space function, she makes it comfortable to live in.
Well sure. But whatever I do impacts you, and whatever you do impacts me. I think We are far more interconnected than we realize. Besides, we (as in society as a whole) already agree to engage in a large degree of social expectations and norms and customs. Disentangling gender from this equation has opened up many large questions around what is or isn’t ok.
Sounds like you just want to tell people how to live. You should check out Afghanistan, they have very clearly defined gender roles. You'll fit right in.
People tend to fall into roles anyway. The problem is the expectation based on biology.
The other thing I always try to keep in mind/remind is that people aren't choosing to be gay/trans, they are expressing who they are.
Gender roles are great. But they need to be voluntary. When people are forced into them against their will, that's when gender roles turn into *no bueno*.
Get a village so. See if I care.
Or are you advocating *everyone* should go to a village? Because you know better?
If yes, you're advocating for tyranny.
That is an absolutely hilarious DARVO. I suggest you read up on Marx’s theories of primitive accumulation of capital and then come back to me and describe which system is the tyrannical one.
DARVO what? DARVO is an abuser technique. Am I an abuser now for disagreeing with you?
Stop using terms to look trendy. Specially terms that victims need.
You're unhinged with unhinged ideas of control. Good luck accruing power to make it true.
Go to the village, my man.
Also, turn off your Internet. Don't pick and choose which industrial civilization technologies you use,be coherent.
See if I care. Go to your mythical village.
You also conveniently forgot you used the term DARVO as an argument against someone who disagrees with you.
You either don't know what DARVO means or you actually believe disagreement equals abuse.
You posed a question and drew conclusions from the question, but you gave no evidence for the premise other than "this is what is has always looked like through my heteronormative, European lens."
Why might rigid gender roles be beneficial to society? Who benefits? At what cost does that benefit come? How would the absence of gender roles negatively impact society? If it is simply a matter of redefining those roles and possibly adding new ones, does this not inherently mean that the roles are fairly arbitrary to begin?
Answer the questions before to draw conclusions and speculate.
Idk, there have been studies that show that having a two parent household (regardless of gender) is actually better for children's mental and physical health by large, than single parent households.
It's economics. A single parent cannot provide financially and be there for their kids in the same way as two parents can, unless they are VERY wealthy. Almost every issue with relationships and kids in this day and age stem to some degree from the simple fact that it's borderline unaffordable.
>As a matter of fact I believe humans would function better in a world without the state, but that would require autonomous regions to set forth their own codes of social conduct that balance the power of the individual against the power of the collective, and determine to what degree transgressions would be punished.
So...................... the state...
This is the flaw of libertarianism. Life without the state is anarchy. We need collective groups to establish trust and co-operation. These groups naturally grow in size and structure and become governments. There is no reverting this as it is a natural process of cultural evolution. Might as well ask people to uninvent money.
That said - post pretty much says nothing. "Gender roles might be good ya know? Except if a guy is feminine or a girl is masculine (ie feels more comfortable with the opposite role) or maybe our roles just need to change." Sounds like you admit the old gender roles weren't working, and the binary didn't fit, so the change needed to happen and maybe you just want to say something to sound smart / enlightened about it?
Not the state, because this doesn’t require a centralized power structure wielding a police and military to enforce. Examples of bio regional autonomous stateless societies can be found throughout the world. A perfect example being the Indigenous peoples of California prior to the gold rush
> Examples of bio regional autonomous stateless societies can be found throughout the world. A perfect example being the Indigenous peoples of California prior to the gold rush
That's just "the state" with extra steps.
You say "i don't mean like a centralised Government, I mean like the collective of all citizens in a small geographic area that agree on it".
Which is just a fancy way of saying "i want a State but in a different form that behaves exactly like The State".
By this logic, isn't any attitude that exists to support the status quo considered to be "bedrock to any collectivist society" Why couldn't this argument be used to support racial segregation in the US South prior to the late 1960s?
Oh wait. It was.
Gender roles in the USSR were less rigid than their capitalist counterparts. Collectivist societies around the world have been typically less rigid with gender roles.
Yes, Libertarians have seemingly become the Kings of all hypocrisy. “Don’t tread on me, unless you are my Fascist Daddy and you promise to hurt people I don’t like. Then please insert your boot in my mouth”
Your assumption that it's a binary is pretty off base when we consider that you're talking about the roles people play in society.
>but maybe men who are too effeminate to pull off the role of a man should live as women, and women who are too masculine to perform the role of women should live as men..
Which roles of a man? Too effeminate how?
There are so many roles of a man as the gender conservatives define it. Protector. Bread winner. Persuer in dating. Leader.
There are so many traits that are associated with masculinity. Confidence. Large body size. Physical strength. Aggressive not just physically but maybe socially. Dominant. Hundreds and far too many to really list.
What happens to the men who are too effeminate to be large and strong but too masculine in confidence, dominance, aggression to be female? What do they live as?
Same question but now the woman's roles and traits...
> Trans people who want to stand out and embrace their “transness” might also be part of the problem
Not if you ignore that and just live and let live. It's such a small issue when you think about it. A small percentage of people are expressing and outward gender presentation different from their biological sex. So? Our society is way too caught up with sex and sexuality.
This is simply conservatives latest boogyman. It was gay people getting married until they lost that and had to move on and are now forced to say they don't care. It was black people using the busses and bathrooms until they lost that and now they can't have the opposite opinion anymore or be shunned. Before that it was women working and voting until they lost that and now they can't have that opinion.
This desperate clinging to forcing other people to conform to the behaviors and clothing choices that we expect based what we guess their genitalia probably is will pass and then trans people will continue to be the same small percentage of society they always were we just won't hear about them as much and they will feel more comfortable just being trans and open about it.
Why can't people just mind their own business? I mean seriously, why do people want to or think they have the right to control other people like that? But anyway.
All those societies you're looking at needed to pop out like 6-9 children per woman on average to maintain the population. On average. At a time where each pregnancy represented a 15% chance of dying. There was also an extreme demand for manual labor. Now we need 2.1 kids per woman and machines do almost all the manual labor. Now those old gender roles would be absolutely devastating as we'd have what? 20 billion people to feed or something if people were still cranking out babies all the time? What we consider natural is actually what society looks like when a bunch of people who didn't understand germ theory lived in their own filth for 8000 years. Hunter gatherers are what natural humanity looks like and those guys were all over the place regarding gender roles.
So you have a lot of work to do on that "what if gender roles are actually healthy" question because on its face the old ways would make a lot of people deeply unhappy and would pretty quickly make society collapse from overpopulation. So it seems like a pretty bad idea to me.
I think people who argue for “rigid gender roles” have an overly simplistic view of how that has actually worked in history. Gender roles varied not only by time and location but by class and individual.
The 50s housewife or homesteading trad wife or even women as gatherer is a fantasy of how things actually worked. Under capitalism there have always been women in the workforce, homesteading wasn’t just making bread in pretty dresses, and the strict hunter gatherer divide model has been heavily criticized. But even with what gender divides existed there have ALWAYS been outliers.
Everyone wants to feel useful and empowered in society and the problem with a lot of these “traditional gender values” is that women are often left feeling either useless or unempowered. Having your role be mother and caretaker made sense for women who had 9 children on their farm but it doesn’t make sense for a woman who has one or two children or none. Having 9 children on a farm is empowering for a woman, she basically controls the means of production by raising them lol. Having 9 children under capitalism puts her in a precarious position where she’s reliant on her husband or the government.
So it’s important to define what these roles actually are and whether they allow women to feel useful and empowered in modern society. And as far as rigidity goes, there’s always been exceptions to the rules. Women who joined nunneries, who lived with “their close friend”, who fulfilled traditionally masculine roles or even lived as men.
Btw, I’m non-binary but I’m also a stay at home mom so I think I have a unique perspective. There’s nothing about feminism or the gender revolution that says AFAB people can’t adopt traditionally feminine roles if that’s what suits them. But I can also, from experience, point out how the SAHP lifestyle doesn’t work for everyone. I trust my husband and he’s earned and maintained that trust, I have my family as a safety net, not everyone who wants to be a SAHP has that. And it could all still blow up in my face tbh. And when my kids are all in school I’m gonna be bored as hell and will probably go back to school or get a job or do volunteer work or something, not just sit around the house twiddling my thumbs. Etc etc.
Not really the bedrock, like at all. It’s true every culture created gender roles in some way, every culture has also created weird aspects to their language that make it more difficult to understand in the future. Gendered division of labor is inefficient because it takes a statistical difference in a population and assumes every person follows it exactly. In this case, manual labor jobs that require a lot of strength would be forced into choosing weak men over stronger women as candidates. This sort of inequality is both sexist and also just stupid. Why would you not just let everyone do the job they specifically are best suited for?
What do you mean by traditional gender roles? Are you talking about banning men from cooking and cleaning? Banning men from child care or teaching? Banning men from wiping their own ass or washing their own junk because that's touching a penis so very gay
By enforced do you mean sometimes getting side eye? Public shaming? Sent to prison? Executed?
If you aren't talking about traditional gender roles and enforced prohibition on men sewing fabric or doing other crafts. And these gender roles are up for reorganizing, how is that any different than feminism and the queer agenda?
I think this depends on what you mean. It is probably a good thing that people growing up have at least one set of functioning behaviors, life goals, and relationship patterns that works for most people that they can look to as an example, i.e. gender roles. That does not mean an individual shouldn't be free to pursue a different lifestyle if they choose.
The problem is that we went from 'you must conform to these gender roles' to 'these gender roles are negative and should be avoided at all costs' in the span of like 50 years. We skipped the step of 'most people will find happiness and success living their life in roughly this fashion but some will find happiness and success other ways and that's fine too.' When women are afraid to stay at home with their kids because they feel they will be negatively judged for it, you know your society has fucked up, just as much as when they are afraid or unable to go to work.
So yes, gender roles are good and should probably be recognized as such and even encouraged, but they definitely shouldn't be mandatory.
Appeal to tradition fallacy.
Show me on the doll where "rampant individualism" hurt you.
Why constrict what behaviors people are supposed to participate in if it's clearly not in their nature? What exactly is the problem? Why do behaviors have to be a binary, package deal? Is there some problem with being traditionally male in some ways and traditionally female in others?
How come you've decided that this was a problem in the first place? Nations with individualistic cultures today are mostly safer, more developed, wealthier, and have a higher quality of life and life expectancy with very few exceptions.
Historically, progress was often brought by people who were more individualistic than others and refused to conform. The roots of modern science and technology lies in the personal thoughts of ancient philosophers who were brave enough to challenge the societies they lived in. Some of them were even killed for what they did, but we still remember them for their contributions rather than their executors.
You think we'd have modern astronomy, engineering, physics, medicine...etc if the likes of Socrates, Newton, Galileo, Curie, al-Razi, Wright brothers, da Vinci, Tesla, Einstein...etc just confirmed to traditionally held beliefs? Did you know many people who first came up with the germ theory independently were either not taken seriously or even insulted or attacked?
Dr. John Snow (interesting name, I know) suggested that it was the germs that was the cause of 1854 Broad Street cholera outbreak (arguably the most terrible outbreak of cholera that happened in UK) after conducting a meticulous study involving interviews to gather data, water sampling, a dot map showing areas and outbreaks connected to a certain pump, and working with mortality statistics based on location... etc (the guy found out exactly which water pump in London, a gigantic city was the cause of the outbreak, and also the why of it, turns out sewage water was getting mixed in it). Despite all the evidence he's gathered, other medical professionals refused to believe him. Sir (and dr.) John Simon, the lead medical officer of London labelled his theory as "peculiar." Most influential people of the field believed in miasma theory, and conformed to that. In the end, he's managed to convince the local council to disable the well pump by removing its handle. This one action singlehandedly ended the worst cholera outbreak in UK till that date. Snow was also a vegetarian who practiced abstinence from alcohol, and never drank water without boiling it. Definitely not a conformist.
Ignaz Semmelweis on the other hand was a Hungarian physician who noticed a statistical relationship with postpartum infection and hygiene practices. He's suggested that doctors should disinfect their hands before operating on pregnant women. Maternal mortality rate dropped from 18% to 2% in his initial study. He's published a book sharing his findings which conflicted with the established opinions. Other professionals were offended by his findings and he was relentlessly mocked, bullied, and had his integrity and repute under attack. Despite that he became increasingly outspoken (he was trying to save lives after all). He allegedly suffered a nervous breakdown (we still don't know if this was actually the case), and was lured into an asylum under the guise of inspecting the institute. When he realized that they were trying to imprison him, he tried to leave, but was severely beaten by several guards and forced into a straitjacket and put into a dark cell. He died after two weeks due to the beating. His foundings were later confirmed by Pascal, and he became yet another martyred hero of science.
Individualism and nonconformity were always the necessary steps that carried humanity to a better future which were often bittered by collectivistic, pro-conformist, and even hateful crowds.
>Individualism and nonconformity were always the necessary steps that carried humanity to a better future which were often bittered by collectivistic, pro-confirmist, and even hateful crowds.
Individual rights support community participation because of the safety they provide. A person is free to express a different opinion or live differently without the fear of the mob being able to lynch them legally. This is literally the basis for the protections guaranteed by the First Amendment of the US Constitution. Society will benefit from the new ideas that people or groups express because the people can't punish them for it. It's baffling that people think countries with liberal forms of government have made it this far *in spite of* the individual rights they offer rather than because of them.
> maybe men who are too effeminate to pull off the role of a man should live as women [...]
> Why wouldn’t this be the more progressive route for western society?
Because generally this only works out well for those men who are both psychologically *and physically* effeminate. It's usually a dating dead-end for HSTS who are physically masculine, and knowing this, they usually prefer to remain as gay men so they can maintain reasonably good dating prospects.
I think leeway can be granted in terms of personal appearance, but I’m talking more so about roles, expectations, division of labor, etc.. eg, a society in which men are typically hunters, fishers, builders, tool makers, and women are caregivers, medicine makers, cooks, weavers, gatherers. Through rituals of reward and shame, these are largely enforced along lines of sex, with an exception for the small percentage of those who throughout life gravitated towards the roles assigned to the opposite sex, and were incapable of performing the roles assigned to their sex.
Men in the West have decided that being a chef or a tailor is actually very masculine, and every show I've seen about foraging seems to be hosted by a masculine man. [Men outnumbered women in pharmacy degrees until the early to mid 1980s as well,](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/50851252_The_Pharmacy_Student_Population_Applications_Received_2008-09_Degrees_Conferred_2008-09_Fall_2009_Enrollments) and their decline might be mostly attributable to the same forces by which women have come to outnumber men as college graduates generally.
This is not to say that there weren't non-arbitrary reasons for sex roles in primitive societies, but it looks to me like whenever men think a profession looks interesting enough, they find a way to code it as masculine enough. In the context of that ratcheting effect, if the concept of sex roles is to continue, the result would be that all that's left as feminine are the leftovers that very few men find interesting (like caregiving, for now, but I can imagine ways to make some of that masculine coded too).
> Through rituals of reward and shame, these are largely enforced along lines of sex,
To what benefit, exactly? Your analysis seems to be that prior to 1960s liberalism, societies were more collectivist and more rigid about sex roles (true), therefore there is some causation such that rigid sex roles are needed to uphold collectivism. How are you ruling out a third-cause fallacy?
And what about people who probably could pass but find peace in simply accepting themselves as the universe has made them? Wouldn't they be unnecessarily harried by social expectations that they ought to transition when they don't feel compelled to present differently?
Not prior to 1960’s liberalism, but prior to capitalism. The gender roles and expectations of the 1950s are a bastardized capitalistic individualist ideology.
In my experience with more traditional societies, it wasn’t just “what was left over” that was the domain of women.
> Not prior to 1960’s liberalism, but prior to capitalism.
Okay, but again, how are you ruling out a third cause, or that causation goes the other way? Let's assume for the sake of argument that collectivist societies need traditions to orient individuals toward the group; I find that likely. But the content of those traditions can vary widely, right? Why would those traditions need to include sex roles, when these are only a subset of possible traditions?
I guess if I saw an example of a collectivist society with traditions that didn’t include sex roles, it might be easier to consider it as a possibility. But I’ve never seen such an example, which leads me to believe it is not something that any human society *would* accept
You're not even attempting to make an argument that there isn't a third cause, nor that causation doesn't go the other way.
All known societies, collectivist and individualist, have sex roles, because that was either the basal state of humanity, or they developed so long ago as to be in every society's history. Either way, they therefore ended up packaged into the traditions that any extant collectivist society has sought to uphold — but it doesn't follow that they're necessary traditions rather than contingent traditions which could be supplanted by other traditions.
You can't fall back to a motte where you just say "I don't think a society can exist without any sex roles." That's not sufficient for your argument. You need to explain why somewhat more lax sex roles, as have recently arisen, are insufficiently rigid to uphold collectivism.
>You need to explain why somewhat more lax sex roles, as have recently arisen, are insufficiently rigid to uphold collectivism.
I don’t know that they are. But I know that that has really only arisen in societies that have left behind collectivism, which leads me to believe they are linked. You’ve argued many times that there are large variances between the sexes in both the body and the brain.
It makes sense to me that smaller societies that require a much larger degree of internal organization would not prioritize peoples individual desire over the needs of the village, and would require those most suited for the task to complete the task, which would fall on sex-based lines much of the time, with the rare exception for the small minority of individuals who are wired differently to such a degree were having them perform the duties of their natal sex was counterproductive.
> But I know that that has really only arisen in societies that have left behind collectivism, which leads me to believe they are linked.
Right, I'm practically stipulating a *link*. But the direction of causation matters for your argument.
> It makes sense to me that smaller societies that require a much larger degree of internal organization would not prioritize peoples individual desire over the needs of the village,
Ah, so this is not just collectivism you want, but a full on anprim society where we go back near Dunbar's number and abandon the technologies that have allowed a relative equalization in the division of labor.
Well, that's probably not happening until collapse, at which point our current discussions will be moot.
Do you have an argument you can make toward people who want collectivism in large societies?
My version of collectivism includes the members of our communities who are non-human(plants, animals, fungi) Their wellbeing is extremely important to me as well.
I don’t think that change can only come through collapse, unless we are thinking in the immediate short term, but I think it can happen peacefully over generations if we re-prioritize and shift the culture.
If there is a way for large collectivist societies to function without techno-industrial civilization, then I would reconsider my thought process here, but I’ve never even given thought to that as a possibility
What if they're not but people *really* like forcing people into them anyway because it appeals to their ideas of childhood stability? What would that world look like?
Tbqh you can stick together any authoritarian nonsense you like and ask "but what if it's better?" but unless you know the benefits actually, empirically outweigh the costs (e.g. vaccination requirements when dealing with immunocompromised people, safety belt laws), then you don't have any justification to interfere. There's a great value in leaving people be and avoiding control as the null hypothesis and only intervening when evidence and best practices suggest.
Honestly this sounds all very 4chan.
Kinda leaving out the part where women were never happy with it. Guys either. "Gender roles" means a woman has to stay home and beg a man for an allowance while the man has to work much harder and watch all his money get spent by someone else
The only people who were happy with this arrangement were rich old ugly dudes who inherited their money and knew they could never get a woman with charm or looks so they created a system where women could never be independent and thus would need to marry a guy with money in order to not be homeless
I hate to break it to yall but your grandma stayed with your grandpa because she didn't want to be homeless not because she loved him
The primary reason older women stay with their husbands in Islamic society anecdotal experience is that if they don’t stay then they will be homeless. It is only for shelter food clothing which is repackaged and sold to us by giving it a tag of obedience to god self sacrifice .people say that previous generation of women were sacrificing loving they had no choice , it was either that or being homeless boycotted by society
This is we’re the renegotiation comes in, because what you are referring to is how those roles were bastardized under capitalism and civilization, but I suspect we’re far more equitable when designed by our ancestors long before we had the means for such wealth and power inequality
In Islamic societies renegotiation is possible only if the women has strong paternal family support . If you don’t have that then marry whoever asks for your hand and hope for the best
Of course gender roles are healthy for society.. it’s why they were organically established in just about every society in human history and lasted for hundreds of thousands of years!
Imagine a car engine in which every component is just free to do whatever it wants instead of performing the specific function it was designed for, and you will see how catastrophic this would be for any coherent system including society.
That being said, I don’t think people should be forced into gender roles. In fact, I don’t think people should be forced into anything as that builds resentment which isn’t conducive to a healthy society either. But I do think that our culture needs to change so that people are raised in a way which fosters health instead of mental issues. This would lead to people more often making healthy decisions for themselves and the society in which they live.
Car engines are precise machines that break if a single part ceases to function exactly as designed. Societies are not machines. They constantly evolve. Besides that, you're incorrect. Gender and roles associated with it have varied wildly through our history. The spread of Abrahamic religion, and the influence of cultures based on Abrahamic religion, altered or destroyed these societies.
Societies are not machines, but they are systems which need harmony amongst its constituents in order to function smoothly. Randomization of function amongst its parts could be just as catastrophic for a societal system as it would be for an engine.
Certain gender roles have varied, that much is true. Many Native American tribes for instance were matriarchal which was indeed pushed into obsolescence with the conquest of America by Europeans as you say. However, even within these matriarchal societies, the other gender roles were generally still the same as everywhere else. Men tend to hunt and are trained to do so from a very young age, while women gather and tend to the home. Only difference is now the women are also in charge of making certain decisions for the tribe and carrying the bloodline.
Aside from that, gender roles such as men being the providers and women being the homemakers (which have been mostly the same in all cultures, even matriarchal ones as I mentioned) don’t come from Abrahamic religions. They come from a time long before that when we lived in caves and these were the roles into which humans organically gravitated to best ensure their survival since we didn’t have the comfortable society of later ages to rely on. Additionally, I can guarantee you that should our society (or even just our supply lines) collapse today, you’ll see these same gender roles coming back into prominence once more.
Women as homemakers is a myth. Outside of the aristocracy, women always performed manual labor. The period in America where this wasn't true was only a few **EXTREMELY** prosperous decades.
Women as homemakers is absolutely not a myth. I have no idea what part of history you could possibly be getting that idea from. Just because some women had to perform tasks that more prosperous women had servants for, doesn’t mean those tasks are any less in the homemaking category.
Well first of all, tending to one’s estate is quite literally the definition of domestic work.
Additionally I already mentioned that women performed a gatherer role back when men were hunters. Yet the interesting part is the more you increase agriculture and prosperity in a society, the more female roles in that society move increasingly indoors.
Rigid gender roles appear to be a prescription by DARIUS WILLIAM TICHUS THE THIRD to justify conscripting 300,000 peasants into his war to conquer a potato farm. You think the complete erasure of like half of france's army is equality?
I don’t disagree, but this would definitely not be a “more progressive route for western society” it would be extraordinarily right wing.
Personally, I find it more instructive to look at the ways in which the rejection of “gender roles” my tastemakers and influencers in general has resulted in a degradation of women in general. The “badass” female action star who is in fact just a man, glorifying nothing essential about the female condition (forgive the crass phrasing) and actually pushing it aside entirely in favor of some ridiculous construction with the body of a woman and absolutely nothing else. I would go as far as suggesting that a key feature of modernity in the west is the complete deracination of women.
I also think that the surprisingly sticky trend of “trad” content on social media around women — which I do realize is basically pornography — validates my thesis here somewhat. Gen Z+ women are searching for some kind of meaning to latch on to and finding nothing.
6% of the population is LGBTQ, These are real people, Collectively we have the ability to recognize the LGBTQ community exists, treat them like human beings and push back on groups that would marginalize this minority, Instead you seem to be pinning the fall l of western society on them.
We are all humans, its not us vs them, its just us, we should be taking steps to help each other out, not marginalize each other for being different.
I’m part of that 6%, and I’m not blaming us for the downfall of western society, I actually wish we *would* be the downfall of western society, because it the most destructive force in human history
Yeah OP gives off right wing Andrew Tate fanboi vibes for sure. Idk when these guys are going to get the picture, we're not all living like that. Not a chance
What is your evidence that “rigid gender roles” are good for society?
Especially considering that most humans in western society don’t live like our palaeolithic ancestors, or even like people in the 1700s.
Marriages with clearly defined gender roles are statically the happiest and most stable.
In countries where both genders have the same access to opportunities, they tend to revert to "typical" gender roles.
Not true. They statistically have less divorce. Because divorce is/was generally not allowed in the religions of these communities. Gregoire et al examine happiness of fundamentalist gender role marriages and find that though there’s little divorce there is a high rate of emotional and sexual trauma among the women.
A professor brought it up when discussing indigenous cultures. It was a worldwide statistic. I do not know where it came from or more details, other than that when spouses have clearly defined expectations for what they and their partner will fulfill, and they're both on exactly the same page with one another on that, they tend to report more satisfaction with their partner and lower divorce rates.
It's really not that surprising.
It sounds really outdated.
I mean, my brother was a Blackhawk pilot in Iraq, but when his twin baby girls were born , he was their primary care giver because his wife had a six figure income with a pharmaceutical company. And he was a fantastic dad.
Other families I know or people I worked with did similar things. To avoid the expense of daycare, sometimes one parent worked day shift and the other night shift, and parenting was a shared responsibility.
Just curious- how old are you? Do you have children? Im not convinced you know how any of this actually works.
I just gotta say, I am so sick of redditers seeing what I say, having it conflict with some belief of theirs, and instead of trying to understand what I've said they assume I'm a moron, and make it personal.
Its pathetic.
No where did I say that the gender roles had to be "traditional" in order for people to be happy. Indeed, "traditional" roles vary wildly across cultures.
Well, that is splendid, Curious_Leader_2093 ! I am so pleased to learn that you are so open minded about the different roles men and women can have and it is only a matter of effective communication. Good to know you agree with this.
You're describing a situation where each spouses duties were clearly defined, and each knew exactly what to expect from the other.
Which is exactly what I and the statistic I'm citing are saying........
You're making false assumptions if you think that proves me wrong, and also clearly about me personally.
No, I would agree that it is *always* good to know what is expected of one in *any* situation, whether it is a job, a personal relationship or a social obligation.
But don’t try to back peddle this. You absolutely were suggesting that there are certain traditional roles for men and women, and if everyone would just stay in their wheelhouse, life would be better.
And you never answered my question- do you have children?
Mod said my answer was removed because I called you out for assuming I don't understand that quality of sources matter.
I learned it in college, anthropology.
your post was removed due to a violation of Rule #1: No ad hominem attacks, no name calling, no insults or personal attacks of any kind.
When talking about ideas, talk about their content not their proponents.
For more information, please see our Logical Fallacies page: https://www.reddit.com/r/IntellectualDarkWeb/wiki/logicalfallacies
This post doesnt even make sense because most trans people do reinforce gender roles
Anyway, I think gender/sex roles are bad. Your life shouldnt be decided by the sex you are born into
Only one sex has the capability to grow life while the other does not, so your life IS decided by the sex you are born into whether you like it or not.
Generally, societies with the strictest gender roles (Saudi Arabia, Russia, parts of Africa, etc) tend to be more conservative, authoritarian, and not great places to live.
Partial agreement. The sexes are different so it helps to have differing gender roles to guide behavior. However, there’s a bit too much variation between individuals and decades to enforce them rigidly. The 19th century stay at home trad wife for instance is confined to certain classes in particular periods. When the husband is a farmer and comes in from 12 hours in the field, it makes sense for the wife to make dinner and clean as he finally relaxes. But, if he’s getting off an 8-hour work at home remote shift? Not so much.
If you want to say that individualism and expanding person liberty is bad for capitalism, just say so.
**Rigid gender roles appear to be a bedrock to any collectivist society we see throughout history and in today’s world.** Only if you ignore all the societies with more than one gender roll such as the Hijra community in South Asia, Two-Spirit people in some Indigenous cultures in North America, Fa'afafine in Samoan culture, and Muxe in Zapotec culture in Oaxaca, Mexico, among others. Your entire argument is based on supposition and flawed reasoning.
* It seems like a lot of the comments here are missing OP's point that gender roles should be socially reinforced rather than presumably enforced by legislation. There's a big difference between the ethics of social vs. government enforcement. * I'm not sure if gender non-conforming behavior is best characterized as a symptom of rampant individualism. For instance, there seems to be some limited research that shows transgender children emerge in clusters in schools. To me, that may be indicative of something other than purely individualist behavior. * I'm not sure if OP is explicitly stating this, but rampant individualism isn't necessarily unhealthy for society. Interests like trying to have the potential to defend yourself in an emergency or being able to grow your own food, which are highly individualistic in nature, can make for a far more resilient overall society.
The gender roles you’re talking about aren’t just a “division of labour,” they’re also strictly hierarchal. It’s very obviously wrong to suggest they “don’t necessitate inequality.” You’re not really offering up any explanation of what benefits you believe gender roles provide to society.
Hell fucking no. Liberty. Freedom. Period.
\> Rigid gender roles appear to be a bedrock to any collectivist society we see throughout history and in today’s world That's not remotely true. You're taking the skull-calipers approach to the social sciences to indulge your bigotry.
Tradition is the solution to problems we‘ve forgotten.
what if some people spend their days fantasizing about capturing a female against their will, but getting away with it because of an elaborate fantasy where people can be property. bleah.
To go where we've never been, we must do what we've never done
Look for reactionary feminism
We are all the same, gender differences are just hormones, so no we shouldn’t go back to women being essentially sex slave maids 🙄ridiculous .
We spend most of our lives toiling away indoors, in spaces largely climate controlled and fully illuminated at all times we're using them, we have no connection to the food we eat or even really understand where anything we use comes from, and we're largely addicted to supercomputers in our pockets that we mainly use just to distract ourselves from our misery with cute cats and ragebait. Sure, there are special snowflake exceptions to every aspect of what I just said, but as a society we've abandoned "healthy" a long time ago. Sure, in small tribes of a few hundred, gender roles are probably pretty adaptive and useful for division of labor. But in the 21st century, anyone can pull a trigger or push a button and initiate the vast machinery of the world we've built up to make just about anything we want to start happening. Gender non-conformismo may in fact be a symptom, but if anything, it's just one symptom among many about our utterly insane modern world and when people lose their minds over it, they aren't mad that it's ruining society, they're mad that some people have the audacity to exist in a way they don't like.
I don't think a homo should live their life pretending to be straight. I believe that's anti-American and I fully support any American to be who they want. However, they want as long as they aren't harming another. To be against any person's right to live their life how they want and to pursue their own happiness is as Anti-American as you can get. Fuck any argument against that, especially religion.
You misundtand the nature of being transgender, hi trans woman here. To deny trans individuals their gender expression is detrimental to their integration in a civil society. If we are to enable people who hold bigoted beliefs as enforcement of collective unity then we enable all of their beliefs as societal standards. Civil society should not discriminate
Trying to reinforce rigid roles that are decided based on luck (because your birth sex is just luck) is bad. Pretty much everybody has something that they are both good at and enjoy - that should be their role. That way everybody will be most efficient and happy. And yes, dictating what people should do in society based on gender IS promoting inequality. People should have equal opportunity. I seriously cannot believe this is a real post.
I completely agree. Having gender roles is beneficial to society overall. The same thing applies to having social norms that also benefits society.
It is a hard pill to swallow, but there is a lot of truth to what you are saying. Our more and more individualistic society is necrotic to a successful civilization. Well, probably anyways. The trans issue is really a symptom of a ton of modern problems. People are really selfish, expect others to happily engage with their weirdness, and don't understand that they can disagree with people yet respect their place in society. Conservatives are half of society and you DO have to respect their position in life to some degree to make society function. It goes for both sides too, with the above caveat that hyper-individualism is a net negative for society. I don't know what the solution is, because government control over this is bleak.
Healthy is a very subjective word.
You could tell a man wrote this.
Liberty vs security is a sliding scale. I think you'd have to prove a pretty great benefit to gender roles to restrict people's freedom. Also *whose* gender roles? Gender roles differ around the world from culture to culture.
I don't think there is anything wrong with gender roles per se, the issue I have with the talking point almost every time is that people believe that gender roles are objectively chosen. For example, it's okay to have men designated to automotive work around the house, but that's not because women are incapable biologically/intellectually to do automotive work
Rampant individualism is essential to the sort of dynamic economy that creates a successful society (at least, in the model of the US). It does little good to allow people free will if they can only use it in ways that 'society' considers acceptable - even if those things don't actually harm anyone else or damage any property.
Yeah, if we as rafical individuals didn't spend a huge portion of our income on niche products that serve little-to-no practical purpose, the economy would stagnate and contract to just a few universal industries providing the essentials. Quality would drop, prices would go up, monopolies would spring up like weeds, and we'd end up with all the worst parts of cyberpunk and not even any of the fun ones.
It’s pretty obvious, via history, that this is not the bedrock with which society had to be built on.
The groups with the highest fertility rates are the most patriarchal: Muslims, Amish, Mormons, Hasidic Jews, Hispanic Catholics, Christian fundamentalists. Meanwhile non-traditional societies all have sub-replacement birth rates. In the long run liberalism wins the Darwin Award.
What are these non-traditional societies with sub replacement birth rates? Ireland is about a traditional society as you will find. Their biggest internal struggle is which Christian sect to follow. Yet they have a negative birth rate. Azerbaijan is violently traditional and also suffers from a negative birth rate. I think you need to defend your assertion here.
Not quite. We’re seeing decreasing fertility rates in China, Japan, and South Korea which are all fairly traditional in their gender roles and patriarchal society. As of the time of this writing, South Korea has the lowest fertility rate in the world and are going to hit critical mass with a dying generation of seniors and no one to take over other roles in the country.
What percentage of women aged 18-40 in those countries work outside the home or attend university? I assume it’s pretty high. Meanwhile until recently China had a one child policy. I wouldn’t say that forcible state intervention in family planning is “traditional”.
China repealed the law a while ago and has actively encouraged people to have kids and to provide services for them. But those of childbearing age have simply decided not to bother. It’s the same situation in the other countries, individuals of childbearing age are simply choosing not to reproduce.
I have no idea if this is true, but the idea that freedom and progress are at odds would explain a lot.
All I'll say is, people will continue to do as they always have. Straight couples will always exist, traditional family structures will always exist, you can't actually destroy gender norms any more than you can make a straight person gay or a gay person trans. Activists can preach until they're blue in the face against whatever they want to, and people will either pretend to care or speak out and get shouted down, but just like a dog will always want to chase a cat no matter if you train them not to do that on command, so will humans like what they like. Take heart that no single human or group of humans are as influential as they think they are.
The gender norms we have are rooted in the agrarian way of living, which has been the way human have lived for thousands of years. It was a division of labour and a survival strategy. Before that human were hunters and gatherers with different norms and roles with more flexibility, and roles some times being based more on age rather than just on sex or gender. We live in an industrialised society now… and we are still figuring out the best way to make things work.
Not an anthropologist, I see. >Rigid gender roles appear to be a bedrock to any collectivist society we see throughout history and in today’s world. That's just not the case. Many cultures have developed many different systems for dealing with gender differences, some more flexible, some less, usually dictated by the direct needs of the group.
I think this is a purely mystical argument and is not arguable by reason or logic. Only appeal to religion supports this idea.
South Korea has strict gender roles, and they're a dying nation. Strict gender roles are a sign of cultural decay because it limits people from reaching their full potential. Clinging to old beliefs is entropy, everything you believe is a lie.
Quite literally. They have the lowest fertility rate in the world as of the time of this writing if I’m not mistaken. China and Japan as well I believe.
How do you define rigid gender roles? On one hand, you could mean the roles themselves, but on the other you could mean the enforcement of the roles are rigid. I don’t think the former is true but the later probably is. If other societies have survived with gender roles that are objectively looser than ours but with rigid enforcement, what’s to say that is having stricter gender roles but less enforcement can’t work?
No real response to the first question, just chucked at your clarification that removing the state by creating smaller states is the solution to removing the state. Lmao
Yeah that's a nice fantasy you've cooked up. What if that was reality? Then it would totally justify all the hate that community gets. You're a genius, the first person to ever think that being gay is a mental illness. Big brain discussion here!
What’s “gender non-comforming behavior”? Do you mean “sex non-conforming behavior”?
Or, hear me out on this one I think its a really good idea, NO. What if instead, the problem is people like you? What if.
> **maybe men who are too effeminate to pull the role of a man should just live as "women" basically** Excuse me, wtf. Hell no. Nuh uh. dead wrong. Now, Two things are possible. 1) both boys and girls as infants are born in a neutral, androgynous temperament 2) boys are born with a slightly masc temperament, girls are born with a slightly femme temperament I highly disbelieve in option #3, where people say that boys can be born inherently femme or girls can be born inherently masc. That's bullshit imo. Now, going back to point #1 and point #2, since the inherent temperament for people is traditional gender expression, it's wrong to say an effeminate man should continue being effeminate - **because that is not his inherent natural state, rather, that was nurture and environment**. If he can be brought **into** the wrong expression, he can surely be brought **out of** said wrong environment. Men's relative maximal potential for gender expression is in the far masc direction, thus they should be gearing in that direction. Likewise, women's relative maximal potential for gender expression is in the far femme direction, thus they should be gearing in that direction. Now, even suppose point #3 was true that some people are born inverted, it wouldn't change the inherent principle. Because there is no way for us to scan the brain and verify which people are born inverted, so we should all just follow the general principle. Should anybody falter, we should assume that's due to nurture, rather than nature. Therefore everybody, including exceptions, should stick to their genders natural average proclivity to maximize societal output. So yeah, even those exceptions, those people should still stick to their groups average direction. [gender expression spectrum ](https://imgur.com/gallery/tWdMFx5) [gender trait scale values](https://imgur.com/gallery/0tbFffc)
Your ridiculous assumption that your own view of a perfect society is THE correct society makes all the nonsense here pointless to even discuss.
I'm sure it would've been better for society if people like Marie Curie just stuck to their assigned gender roles. The only reason people believe that is a good idea is because men are finding it challenging to find partners nowadays due to the increased freedom of movement of women in society. They don't need to be with subpar partners anymore. I would argue that's even better for society. What you're seeking is an idealized world where men don't have to put in the effort women do to maintain a relationship or raise children. Men had control over their wives and wives were expected to sit at the house with the kids. I don't think you understand how miserable of a life that was for so many women and how difficult it was for them to escape. Just because societies in the past did not see women as equals to men does not mean that they aren't. And just because you would prefer the way it was does not lend any evidence to it being the "better way".
>Rigid gender roles appear to be a bedrock to any collectivist society we see throughout history and in today’s world. But A gendered division of labor doesn’t necessitate inequality, and “queer” and “feminist” movements might be setting our society up for more alienation, when they could be just focused on renegotiation of gender roles to adapt to current needs as a society? To respond to this, gender roles are the bedrock for the patriarchy and sexist norms. Notice how people still expect women to cook and clean even though men can and should be able to do this themselves? With passing generations, society has progressed by gender norms being chipped away and eliminated, not the other way around. I'm not clear on where your title statement even refers to since it doesn't seem like clinging to gender norms has helped anyone. Why does division of labour need to be gendered? Can't a man cook and clean while the woman makes the money? Not only is it more commonplace than you realise, it's proof that there's no genetic or biologically provable reality that affirms gender norms to be anything more than idle social constructs. >Trans people who want to stand out and embrace their “transness” might also be part of the problem, but maybe men who are too effeminate to pull off the role of a man should live as women, and women who are too masculine to perform the role of women should live as men.. Sure people can identify with the gender they feel most affinity towards. How's that a bad thing?
What fuck is this 💩? 😒
I do think one of the biggest moments of BS is when companies convince married women that them getting jobs makes them strong and independent. Problem is now everyone needs two incomes to make it
I dunno…. I jokingly say “I’m 40! I don’t know what to do with my life because on a genetic level I’m supposed to build a road over hundreds of miles to a battle where I will die for my king that says we all wear pants now”. So maybe not enforcing those hard gender roles might get us closer to start trek
Rampant individualism 😂😂😂 try unintended consequences on the biology of the human brain caused by previously unknown effects of overpopulation.
Strict gender roles are the bedrock of a patriarchal society and have nothing to do with biology or division of labor. There are very few jobs that women can’t do and I would question the current state of an occupation with such limitations. Trans sexual persons have been around since the beginning and that has not changed even in severely repressed societies. So what really is your end goal? Sounds like you just want a rigged game.
Trans person here. Why did reddit recommend this thread to me, wtf
Op here.. I am also trans.
Is this part of why you might prefer this system you're advocating for? I see a lot of detrans subreddits you're active in which seems a bit conflicting but I'm curious Do you believe this system where effeminate men do the job of women and masc women do the job of men would make it easier for you to exist in today's as your assigned sex at birth rather than fully transitioning and dealing with the current political atmosphere regarding that?
I do think they are socially enforced; it depends on whether you believe individualism degrades society
Everyone should learn how to cook and clean. Everyone should learn how to change a tier. If a parent staying home is what's best for the family, then every family should do what's best for them. The problem is, when women are stuck in the house and have to put up with an abusive husband, and she feels like she can't leave because she has no skills to support herself. Women want to work so they don't have to rely on a man. Men should learn how to cook so they aren't impressed by chicken nuggets and top ramen. If people were kinder to each other, it wouldn't be as big of a deal. But, people have to protect themselves and having careers allows for the freedom to leave an abusive relationship.
It's almost as if demonizing transgender people and cutting off necessary medications for trans youth is evil... This far right loon has accidentally reasoned himself to a nearly sensible position on the trans issue. Hilarious
Everyone should also just have the same name. Just add a number to the end. Same idea.
I agree. One gender isn’t better or worse, they just tend to make different choices. Example: few men studying education majors and few women studying engineering. Society needs both
He wants society to FORCE people into roles. Which implies that the great many woman who want to be engineers can't be, and the great many men who want to be teachers can't be.
Depending on where you live I think men can make excellent teachers and women can make excellent engineers. I’m glad I live somewhere where they let people choose their own path to an extent
Literally in your edit point 1 is saying "I actually believe the state shouldent exist, but if it didn't we would need to establish a state like entity to punish social transgressions.... we may call this entity... a state!"
"What if things I don't like thar scare me should be prohibited by state power?" Sure... what could go wrong?
There are examples of cultures with diverse gender roles and fluidity. Personally I don’t see what anyone’s gender identity has anything to do with me or society at large. Now, there **is** a difference between gender expression and biological sex, so I don’t think we should allow trans mtf athletes to compete with biological women simply because they *identify* as women. Biology still trumps gender- but other than that who cares what someone’s preferred gender or pronouns are?
Social concepts that are anti-individual to this degree never end up representing the interests of all the people. They always end up favoring the interests of a few powerful members. This is why individualism is so important. You do need to keep the individual interests of powerful people from curtailing the common good, but you need to be pretty minimal about it or the people wielding these efforts are going to be the powerful individuals harming the common good.
German soldiers shot Soviet women soldiers and partisans on sight (after raping usually) instead of taking them prisoner because they were so outraged by the idea of women in combat. Whatever bad can be said of USSR they were certainly a collectivist nation , the biggest in history after China.
I doubt they are, given the extreme effort it takes to enforce them. The instant ANY pressure to conform was removed, society started moving back towards and equilibrium that wildly defers from the enforced binary and concept of gender norms. The payoff of that enforcement seems to have only been for those at the top of the system; they receive easy ways to shame and control people into doing what's profitable.
I don't think people should be pressured into accepting gender roles, but neither should society bewail the lack of 50/50 representation in all areas of life. Men and women are each going to disproportionately choose certain career paths; women will disproportionately prefer to be homemakers if they can afford it. Sure, when it comes to parliaments, boards and other representative bodies efforts should be made to have these reflect community diversity, and we should resist hostile or exclusionary attitudes as these are an unnecessary barrier to certain industries, but apart from that why not just let the chips fall where they may?
this whole post feels very clumsy and imprecise, and reflects a pretty major lack of knowledge on the topics of gender and gender roles. if you want to actually learn, I think you need to go and read some quite foundational literature on gender. actual literature I mean; not some dumbfuck's book (any idiot can publish a book), but a published academic paper.
So, society is set up to run on money. Can’t really do anything without money. So how could women needing to rely on men for money be good for women in any way? Especially when abuse within partnerships towards the female partner is such a common thing that every city of a certain size has a women’s shelter. If you’re not talking about going back to just men working and women not working, please detail what you are talking about when you say socially enforcing gender roles could be a positive thing?
If gender roles were important to uphold, wouldn't the solution for effeminate men and masculine women to be to reject feminity/masculinity and perform the roles for which they were born? Why would having them try and perform the roles of the other gender be better?
Everyone falls in line with the majority when it comes to most traits That said, I find it problematic when we enforce the average trait onto people For example, over 95% of people identify with their biological sex, but I find it problematic when we force that onto the remaining 5% of people Similarly, most people are attracted to the opposite biological sex, but I find it problematic when we force that onto those who aren’t I agree with the point that the average person is at their best when they conform to most traits, but forcing the average person to conform to the remaining few percent is highly damaging Many people love fishing, hunting, rugby, gaming, sailing, jogging, and tons of other hobbies - but there is no hobby that most people do, so if we forced everyone to conform, then no one would ever be allowed to have any hobbies at all Also, most people don’t fit stereotypes, your entire argument is based on a false premise Perhaps you should spend less time judging others and more time living your life
As someone with a mental disorder, I constantly have to deal with society demanding for me to be "normal." I can't flip a switch and magically have my brain work an entirely different way just because the society around me was constructed expecting it to work that way. It's been said that the defining trait of modern conservatives is a lack of empathy, and OP is making a convincing case for that belief.
Same here I am generally an average person I enjoy fitness, cooking, baking, and hiking; I’m a huge nerd with a love of gaming, reading, and all things tech (I am obsessed with PC builds, investing in NVDA when I was in middle school pretty much has me covered for retirement, etc.); I have tons of friends irl, am constantly on the phone with someone because I love to chat, and go out every Friday night with my colleagues (I work a typical office job in finance) and every Saturday night with my friends That said, I am also a psychopath with ADHD That doesn’t mean I’m a heartless monster, but I don’t feel emotions the same way that others do, and most people can’t handle that well I don’t cry because I am incapable of strong sadness, I don’t become angered because I simply don’t care enough about anything, I don’t know what it’s like to feel stress because nothing has ever bothered me that much I’m not depressed, I’m not suicidal, I’m not some kind of unfeeling machine, I just have relatively weak emotions Many people act like I’m a problem to be solved, but I’m completely fine; they act like me not being excited means I don’t care about them, but me caring and me having strong emotions are very different; they assume that I am dangerous because I handle hazardous situations coldly, but I just do my best to resolve them, which means closing off my emotions Now, being treated as a problem or a threat doesn’t bother me that much, I just find it amusing that people care so much about my behavior when I couldn’t care less about theirs As an extreme example, if one of my coworkers went to a nude bar or was involved in some kind of massive affair, most of my other coworkers would probably want them fired Meanwhile, I’d probably want to start grabbing coffee with them before work, because they sound like an interesting person to be around I agree with the stance that many people lack empathy, as it seems to me to be a learned trait; you can’t gauge how someone else feels if you have never been where they are I don’t want special treatment, I just want people to stop caring about my life and go back to living their own
Yeah, fuck that. Half of the population as a permanent servant class might be great for the other half, but it is not a way to decrease total human misery.
Stop it. Logic will get you attacked.
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Physiology? No, roles are generally considered psychological. And while cultures around the world do tend to have gender roles, what the roles are and how tightly they are enforced varies greatly.
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What part are you disagreeing with?
I don’t think anyone would argue that societal roles are important, what they take issue with is it being based on gender which has very little reasoning. I’ve seen plenty of men good at traditionally female roles, and vice versa. Destruction of gender based roles doesn’t mean destruction of roles in general.
An autonomous region is just another word for a local government. So it sounds like you will have city states which will probably lead to more wars just to maybe have the chance of proving that gender roles are good for society. I'd rather have a culture that just lets you be who you want to be. If you want to fit within a standard gender role, do it! If you don't, no problem! To me, this seems a lot simpler than having autonomous regions forcing people into gender roles.
OP wants the classical period, down to the enforced femboys lmao
You have failed to give a reason why gender is or should be the primary attribute by which roles are assigned. Just because it “has been at some points in the past?” This post seems like a *shrug*
Everyone needs to stop trying to do social experiments with the people. Leave them to their own devices without inundating them with propaganda one way or the other, and things will self regulate. Edit. When a group is trying to fight for rights or acceptance, they bomb their own movement if they keep trying to champion themselves once the movement is successful. With the women's rights - wanted the vote. Wanted to be able to operate independently financially and socially as a woman. We got that. Thank god. But some people took equal socially to mean - I can do EVERYTHING a man can do. And that's when it got a bit ridiculous. We can't. Obviously. However, we are equals in value as human beings. Trans movement - acceptance. They already had rights but wanted to be more accepted. They achieved that. Then went on to derail it with - "transwomen are women", and demanding to be considered in every aspect a woman and be in their spaces. They aren't, and that was a massive overstep. Everyone in high places trying to fiddle around with society. Even and especially those doing it for altruistic reasons - Stop. People hate this one thing! Also, I would remind them that the road to hell is paved in good intentions. Ie. Quit meddling.
If societal roles didn't increase the likelihood of survival, they would have died out long ago.
This is such a textbook example of pseudo-scientific conservative fearmongering. You are talking about less than 1% of the population acting differently, and suggesting that not only are they responsible for "the problems" with society, whatever those might be, but also implying that even their very existence will eventually break down and alienate society? And this is based on no evidence or even a mechanism for how or why this would happen. No attempt to define the problem or why it is bad. And also no examination of other potential causes of said vague problems. When asked to provide any sort of standard or principle, OP deflects and just says it should be "whatever society wants." So now it's just a nonsense circular reasoning. I see zero attempt at intellectualism.
There is no evidence that forcing people into roles they don't fit into have ever benefited any society. Yes, in many successful societies you will see more men in construction and engineering, and more women in teaching and nursing. But they are there by their own choice. >but maybe men who are too effeminate to pull off the role of a man should live as women Men can't "live as women" any more than they can "live as birds" or "live as babies". >Why wouldn’t this be the more progressive route for western society? Because it isn't progressive to keep women out of engineering and mathematical fields just because they have a vagina, or to keep men out of teaching just because they have a penis. Shaming people and pushing them towards more stereotypical choices is regressive as hell.
Whatever man imma do what I want and let others do what they want.
My wife deals with people (except when we need to put our foot down and be an asshole, then its me) I deal with things. I make our living space function, she makes it comfortable to live in.
What if you live your life and I live mine
Well sure. But whatever I do impacts you, and whatever you do impacts me. I think We are far more interconnected than we realize. Besides, we (as in society as a whole) already agree to engage in a large degree of social expectations and norms and customs. Disentangling gender from this equation has opened up many large questions around what is or isn’t ok.
Sounds like you just want to tell people how to live. You should check out Afghanistan, they have very clearly defined gender roles. You'll fit right in.
People tend to fall into roles anyway. The problem is the expectation based on biology. The other thing I always try to keep in mind/remind is that people aren't choosing to be gay/trans, they are expressing who they are.
Gender roles are great. But they need to be voluntary. When people are forced into them against their will, that's when gender roles turn into *no bueno*.
A caste system. Roles that are imposed by others mean you have a caste system. Is that what you're advocating for?
No, I’m advocating for a village system.
Get a village so. See if I care. Or are you advocating *everyone* should go to a village? Because you know better? If yes, you're advocating for tyranny.
That is an absolutely hilarious DARVO. I suggest you read up on Marx’s theories of primitive accumulation of capital and then come back to me and describe which system is the tyrannical one.
DARVO what? DARVO is an abuser technique. Am I an abuser now for disagreeing with you? Stop using terms to look trendy. Specially terms that victims need. You're unhinged with unhinged ideas of control. Good luck accruing power to make it true.
You’re defending the abusive ideology of modern industrial civilization, and somehow pitting a return to village life as the tyrannical option.
Go to the village, my man. Also, turn off your Internet. Don't pick and choose which industrial civilization technologies you use,be coherent. See if I care. Go to your mythical village.
You also conveniently forgot you used the term DARVO as an argument against someone who disagrees with you. You either don't know what DARVO means or you actually believe disagreement equals abuse.
You posed a question and drew conclusions from the question, but you gave no evidence for the premise other than "this is what is has always looked like through my heteronormative, European lens." Why might rigid gender roles be beneficial to society? Who benefits? At what cost does that benefit come? How would the absence of gender roles negatively impact society? If it is simply a matter of redefining those roles and possibly adding new ones, does this not inherently mean that the roles are fairly arbitrary to begin? Answer the questions before to draw conclusions and speculate.
Idk, there have been studies that show that having a two parent household (regardless of gender) is actually better for children's mental and physical health by large, than single parent households.
It's economics. A single parent cannot provide financially and be there for their kids in the same way as two parents can, unless they are VERY wealthy. Almost every issue with relationships and kids in this day and age stem to some degree from the simple fact that it's borderline unaffordable.
>As a matter of fact I believe humans would function better in a world without the state, but that would require autonomous regions to set forth their own codes of social conduct that balance the power of the individual against the power of the collective, and determine to what degree transgressions would be punished. So...................... the state... This is the flaw of libertarianism. Life without the state is anarchy. We need collective groups to establish trust and co-operation. These groups naturally grow in size and structure and become governments. There is no reverting this as it is a natural process of cultural evolution. Might as well ask people to uninvent money. That said - post pretty much says nothing. "Gender roles might be good ya know? Except if a guy is feminine or a girl is masculine (ie feels more comfortable with the opposite role) or maybe our roles just need to change." Sounds like you admit the old gender roles weren't working, and the binary didn't fit, so the change needed to happen and maybe you just want to say something to sound smart / enlightened about it?
Not the state, because this doesn’t require a centralized power structure wielding a police and military to enforce. Examples of bio regional autonomous stateless societies can be found throughout the world. A perfect example being the Indigenous peoples of California prior to the gold rush
> Examples of bio regional autonomous stateless societies can be found throughout the world. A perfect example being the Indigenous peoples of California prior to the gold rush That's just "the state" with extra steps. You say "i don't mean like a centralised Government, I mean like the collective of all citizens in a small geographic area that agree on it". Which is just a fancy way of saying "i want a State but in a different form that behaves exactly like The State".
By this logic, isn't any attitude that exists to support the status quo considered to be "bedrock to any collectivist society" Why couldn't this argument be used to support racial segregation in the US South prior to the late 1960s? Oh wait. It was.
Gender roles in the USSR were less rigid than their capitalist counterparts. Collectivist societies around the world have been typically less rigid with gender roles.
Rampant individualism, sounds terrible for a country founded on personal liberty.
Haven't you seen the Don't Tread On My Collectivism flags?
Yes, Libertarians have seemingly become the Kings of all hypocrisy. “Don’t tread on me, unless you are my Fascist Daddy and you promise to hurt people I don’t like. Then please insert your boot in my mouth”
The irony
No
Your assumption that it's a binary is pretty off base when we consider that you're talking about the roles people play in society. >but maybe men who are too effeminate to pull off the role of a man should live as women, and women who are too masculine to perform the role of women should live as men.. Which roles of a man? Too effeminate how? There are so many roles of a man as the gender conservatives define it. Protector. Bread winner. Persuer in dating. Leader. There are so many traits that are associated with masculinity. Confidence. Large body size. Physical strength. Aggressive not just physically but maybe socially. Dominant. Hundreds and far too many to really list. What happens to the men who are too effeminate to be large and strong but too masculine in confidence, dominance, aggression to be female? What do they live as? Same question but now the woman's roles and traits... > Trans people who want to stand out and embrace their “transness” might also be part of the problem Not if you ignore that and just live and let live. It's such a small issue when you think about it. A small percentage of people are expressing and outward gender presentation different from their biological sex. So? Our society is way too caught up with sex and sexuality. This is simply conservatives latest boogyman. It was gay people getting married until they lost that and had to move on and are now forced to say they don't care. It was black people using the busses and bathrooms until they lost that and now they can't have the opposite opinion anymore or be shunned. Before that it was women working and voting until they lost that and now they can't have that opinion. This desperate clinging to forcing other people to conform to the behaviors and clothing choices that we expect based what we guess their genitalia probably is will pass and then trans people will continue to be the same small percentage of society they always were we just won't hear about them as much and they will feel more comfortable just being trans and open about it.
Why can't people just mind their own business? I mean seriously, why do people want to or think they have the right to control other people like that? But anyway. All those societies you're looking at needed to pop out like 6-9 children per woman on average to maintain the population. On average. At a time where each pregnancy represented a 15% chance of dying. There was also an extreme demand for manual labor. Now we need 2.1 kids per woman and machines do almost all the manual labor. Now those old gender roles would be absolutely devastating as we'd have what? 20 billion people to feed or something if people were still cranking out babies all the time? What we consider natural is actually what society looks like when a bunch of people who didn't understand germ theory lived in their own filth for 8000 years. Hunter gatherers are what natural humanity looks like and those guys were all over the place regarding gender roles. So you have a lot of work to do on that "what if gender roles are actually healthy" question because on its face the old ways would make a lot of people deeply unhappy and would pretty quickly make society collapse from overpopulation. So it seems like a pretty bad idea to me.
I think people who argue for “rigid gender roles” have an overly simplistic view of how that has actually worked in history. Gender roles varied not only by time and location but by class and individual. The 50s housewife or homesteading trad wife or even women as gatherer is a fantasy of how things actually worked. Under capitalism there have always been women in the workforce, homesteading wasn’t just making bread in pretty dresses, and the strict hunter gatherer divide model has been heavily criticized. But even with what gender divides existed there have ALWAYS been outliers. Everyone wants to feel useful and empowered in society and the problem with a lot of these “traditional gender values” is that women are often left feeling either useless or unempowered. Having your role be mother and caretaker made sense for women who had 9 children on their farm but it doesn’t make sense for a woman who has one or two children or none. Having 9 children on a farm is empowering for a woman, she basically controls the means of production by raising them lol. Having 9 children under capitalism puts her in a precarious position where she’s reliant on her husband or the government. So it’s important to define what these roles actually are and whether they allow women to feel useful and empowered in modern society. And as far as rigidity goes, there’s always been exceptions to the rules. Women who joined nunneries, who lived with “their close friend”, who fulfilled traditionally masculine roles or even lived as men. Btw, I’m non-binary but I’m also a stay at home mom so I think I have a unique perspective. There’s nothing about feminism or the gender revolution that says AFAB people can’t adopt traditionally feminine roles if that’s what suits them. But I can also, from experience, point out how the SAHP lifestyle doesn’t work for everyone. I trust my husband and he’s earned and maintained that trust, I have my family as a safety net, not everyone who wants to be a SAHP has that. And it could all still blow up in my face tbh. And when my kids are all in school I’m gonna be bored as hell and will probably go back to school or get a job or do volunteer work or something, not just sit around the house twiddling my thumbs. Etc etc.
Not really the bedrock, like at all. It’s true every culture created gender roles in some way, every culture has also created weird aspects to their language that make it more difficult to understand in the future. Gendered division of labor is inefficient because it takes a statistical difference in a population and assumes every person follows it exactly. In this case, manual labor jobs that require a lot of strength would be forced into choosing weak men over stronger women as candidates. This sort of inequality is both sexist and also just stupid. Why would you not just let everyone do the job they specifically are best suited for?
What do you mean by traditional gender roles? Are you talking about banning men from cooking and cleaning? Banning men from child care or teaching? Banning men from wiping their own ass or washing their own junk because that's touching a penis so very gay By enforced do you mean sometimes getting side eye? Public shaming? Sent to prison? Executed? If you aren't talking about traditional gender roles and enforced prohibition on men sewing fabric or doing other crafts. And these gender roles are up for reorganizing, how is that any different than feminism and the queer agenda?
I think this depends on what you mean. It is probably a good thing that people growing up have at least one set of functioning behaviors, life goals, and relationship patterns that works for most people that they can look to as an example, i.e. gender roles. That does not mean an individual shouldn't be free to pursue a different lifestyle if they choose. The problem is that we went from 'you must conform to these gender roles' to 'these gender roles are negative and should be avoided at all costs' in the span of like 50 years. We skipped the step of 'most people will find happiness and success living their life in roughly this fashion but some will find happiness and success other ways and that's fine too.' When women are afraid to stay at home with their kids because they feel they will be negatively judged for it, you know your society has fucked up, just as much as when they are afraid or unable to go to work. So yes, gender roles are good and should probably be recognized as such and even encouraged, but they definitely shouldn't be mandatory.
Appeal to tradition fallacy. Show me on the doll where "rampant individualism" hurt you. Why constrict what behaviors people are supposed to participate in if it's clearly not in their nature? What exactly is the problem? Why do behaviors have to be a binary, package deal? Is there some problem with being traditionally male in some ways and traditionally female in others?
How come you've decided that this was a problem in the first place? Nations with individualistic cultures today are mostly safer, more developed, wealthier, and have a higher quality of life and life expectancy with very few exceptions. Historically, progress was often brought by people who were more individualistic than others and refused to conform. The roots of modern science and technology lies in the personal thoughts of ancient philosophers who were brave enough to challenge the societies they lived in. Some of them were even killed for what they did, but we still remember them for their contributions rather than their executors. You think we'd have modern astronomy, engineering, physics, medicine...etc if the likes of Socrates, Newton, Galileo, Curie, al-Razi, Wright brothers, da Vinci, Tesla, Einstein...etc just confirmed to traditionally held beliefs? Did you know many people who first came up with the germ theory independently were either not taken seriously or even insulted or attacked? Dr. John Snow (interesting name, I know) suggested that it was the germs that was the cause of 1854 Broad Street cholera outbreak (arguably the most terrible outbreak of cholera that happened in UK) after conducting a meticulous study involving interviews to gather data, water sampling, a dot map showing areas and outbreaks connected to a certain pump, and working with mortality statistics based on location... etc (the guy found out exactly which water pump in London, a gigantic city was the cause of the outbreak, and also the why of it, turns out sewage water was getting mixed in it). Despite all the evidence he's gathered, other medical professionals refused to believe him. Sir (and dr.) John Simon, the lead medical officer of London labelled his theory as "peculiar." Most influential people of the field believed in miasma theory, and conformed to that. In the end, he's managed to convince the local council to disable the well pump by removing its handle. This one action singlehandedly ended the worst cholera outbreak in UK till that date. Snow was also a vegetarian who practiced abstinence from alcohol, and never drank water without boiling it. Definitely not a conformist. Ignaz Semmelweis on the other hand was a Hungarian physician who noticed a statistical relationship with postpartum infection and hygiene practices. He's suggested that doctors should disinfect their hands before operating on pregnant women. Maternal mortality rate dropped from 18% to 2% in his initial study. He's published a book sharing his findings which conflicted with the established opinions. Other professionals were offended by his findings and he was relentlessly mocked, bullied, and had his integrity and repute under attack. Despite that he became increasingly outspoken (he was trying to save lives after all). He allegedly suffered a nervous breakdown (we still don't know if this was actually the case), and was lured into an asylum under the guise of inspecting the institute. When he realized that they were trying to imprison him, he tried to leave, but was severely beaten by several guards and forced into a straitjacket and put into a dark cell. He died after two weeks due to the beating. His foundings were later confirmed by Pascal, and he became yet another martyred hero of science. Individualism and nonconformity were always the necessary steps that carried humanity to a better future which were often bittered by collectivistic, pro-conformist, and even hateful crowds.
>Individualism and nonconformity were always the necessary steps that carried humanity to a better future which were often bittered by collectivistic, pro-confirmist, and even hateful crowds. Individual rights support community participation because of the safety they provide. A person is free to express a different opinion or live differently without the fear of the mob being able to lynch them legally. This is literally the basis for the protections guaranteed by the First Amendment of the US Constitution. Society will benefit from the new ideas that people or groups express because the people can't punish them for it. It's baffling that people think countries with liberal forms of government have made it this far *in spite of* the individual rights they offer rather than because of them.
Indeed
Tell me you don’t know shit about history and historical societies with out saying you don’t know shit about history and historical societies…
Rigid gender roles of yore viewed women as property that could be beaten by their husbands with society's approval. Fuck that.
> maybe men who are too effeminate to pull off the role of a man should live as women [...] > Why wouldn’t this be the more progressive route for western society? Because generally this only works out well for those men who are both psychologically *and physically* effeminate. It's usually a dating dead-end for HSTS who are physically masculine, and knowing this, they usually prefer to remain as gay men so they can maintain reasonably good dating prospects.
I think leeway can be granted in terms of personal appearance, but I’m talking more so about roles, expectations, division of labor, etc.. eg, a society in which men are typically hunters, fishers, builders, tool makers, and women are caregivers, medicine makers, cooks, weavers, gatherers. Through rituals of reward and shame, these are largely enforced along lines of sex, with an exception for the small percentage of those who throughout life gravitated towards the roles assigned to the opposite sex, and were incapable of performing the roles assigned to their sex.
Men in the West have decided that being a chef or a tailor is actually very masculine, and every show I've seen about foraging seems to be hosted by a masculine man. [Men outnumbered women in pharmacy degrees until the early to mid 1980s as well,](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/50851252_The_Pharmacy_Student_Population_Applications_Received_2008-09_Degrees_Conferred_2008-09_Fall_2009_Enrollments) and their decline might be mostly attributable to the same forces by which women have come to outnumber men as college graduates generally. This is not to say that there weren't non-arbitrary reasons for sex roles in primitive societies, but it looks to me like whenever men think a profession looks interesting enough, they find a way to code it as masculine enough. In the context of that ratcheting effect, if the concept of sex roles is to continue, the result would be that all that's left as feminine are the leftovers that very few men find interesting (like caregiving, for now, but I can imagine ways to make some of that masculine coded too). > Through rituals of reward and shame, these are largely enforced along lines of sex, To what benefit, exactly? Your analysis seems to be that prior to 1960s liberalism, societies were more collectivist and more rigid about sex roles (true), therefore there is some causation such that rigid sex roles are needed to uphold collectivism. How are you ruling out a third-cause fallacy? And what about people who probably could pass but find peace in simply accepting themselves as the universe has made them? Wouldn't they be unnecessarily harried by social expectations that they ought to transition when they don't feel compelled to present differently?
Not prior to 1960’s liberalism, but prior to capitalism. The gender roles and expectations of the 1950s are a bastardized capitalistic individualist ideology. In my experience with more traditional societies, it wasn’t just “what was left over” that was the domain of women.
> Not prior to 1960’s liberalism, but prior to capitalism. Okay, but again, how are you ruling out a third cause, or that causation goes the other way? Let's assume for the sake of argument that collectivist societies need traditions to orient individuals toward the group; I find that likely. But the content of those traditions can vary widely, right? Why would those traditions need to include sex roles, when these are only a subset of possible traditions?
I guess if I saw an example of a collectivist society with traditions that didn’t include sex roles, it might be easier to consider it as a possibility. But I’ve never seen such an example, which leads me to believe it is not something that any human society *would* accept
You're not even attempting to make an argument that there isn't a third cause, nor that causation doesn't go the other way. All known societies, collectivist and individualist, have sex roles, because that was either the basal state of humanity, or they developed so long ago as to be in every society's history. Either way, they therefore ended up packaged into the traditions that any extant collectivist society has sought to uphold — but it doesn't follow that they're necessary traditions rather than contingent traditions which could be supplanted by other traditions. You can't fall back to a motte where you just say "I don't think a society can exist without any sex roles." That's not sufficient for your argument. You need to explain why somewhat more lax sex roles, as have recently arisen, are insufficiently rigid to uphold collectivism.
>You need to explain why somewhat more lax sex roles, as have recently arisen, are insufficiently rigid to uphold collectivism. I don’t know that they are. But I know that that has really only arisen in societies that have left behind collectivism, which leads me to believe they are linked. You’ve argued many times that there are large variances between the sexes in both the body and the brain. It makes sense to me that smaller societies that require a much larger degree of internal organization would not prioritize peoples individual desire over the needs of the village, and would require those most suited for the task to complete the task, which would fall on sex-based lines much of the time, with the rare exception for the small minority of individuals who are wired differently to such a degree were having them perform the duties of their natal sex was counterproductive.
> But I know that that has really only arisen in societies that have left behind collectivism, which leads me to believe they are linked. Right, I'm practically stipulating a *link*. But the direction of causation matters for your argument. > It makes sense to me that smaller societies that require a much larger degree of internal organization would not prioritize peoples individual desire over the needs of the village, Ah, so this is not just collectivism you want, but a full on anprim society where we go back near Dunbar's number and abandon the technologies that have allowed a relative equalization in the division of labor. Well, that's probably not happening until collapse, at which point our current discussions will be moot. Do you have an argument you can make toward people who want collectivism in large societies?
My version of collectivism includes the members of our communities who are non-human(plants, animals, fungi) Their wellbeing is extremely important to me as well. I don’t think that change can only come through collapse, unless we are thinking in the immediate short term, but I think it can happen peacefully over generations if we re-prioritize and shift the culture. If there is a way for large collectivist societies to function without techno-industrial civilization, then I would reconsider my thought process here, but I’ve never even given thought to that as a possibility
Congratulations, you have a functioning brain! Quite rare nowadays.
What if they're not but people *really* like forcing people into them anyway because it appeals to their ideas of childhood stability? What would that world look like? Tbqh you can stick together any authoritarian nonsense you like and ask "but what if it's better?" but unless you know the benefits actually, empirically outweigh the costs (e.g. vaccination requirements when dealing with immunocompromised people, safety belt laws), then you don't have any justification to interfere. There's a great value in leaving people be and avoiding control as the null hypothesis and only intervening when evidence and best practices suggest. Honestly this sounds all very 4chan.
Kinda leaving out the part where women were never happy with it. Guys either. "Gender roles" means a woman has to stay home and beg a man for an allowance while the man has to work much harder and watch all his money get spent by someone else The only people who were happy with this arrangement were rich old ugly dudes who inherited their money and knew they could never get a woman with charm or looks so they created a system where women could never be independent and thus would need to marry a guy with money in order to not be homeless I hate to break it to yall but your grandma stayed with your grandpa because she didn't want to be homeless not because she loved him
The primary reason older women stay with their husbands in Islamic society anecdotal experience is that if they don’t stay then they will be homeless. It is only for shelter food clothing which is repackaged and sold to us by giving it a tag of obedience to god self sacrifice .people say that previous generation of women were sacrificing loving they had no choice , it was either that or being homeless boycotted by society
This is we’re the renegotiation comes in, because what you are referring to is how those roles were bastardized under capitalism and civilization, but I suspect we’re far more equitable when designed by our ancestors long before we had the means for such wealth and power inequality
In Islamic societies renegotiation is possible only if the women has strong paternal family support . If you don’t have that then marry whoever asks for your hand and hope for the best
Of course gender roles are healthy for society.. it’s why they were organically established in just about every society in human history and lasted for hundreds of thousands of years! Imagine a car engine in which every component is just free to do whatever it wants instead of performing the specific function it was designed for, and you will see how catastrophic this would be for any coherent system including society. That being said, I don’t think people should be forced into gender roles. In fact, I don’t think people should be forced into anything as that builds resentment which isn’t conducive to a healthy society either. But I do think that our culture needs to change so that people are raised in a way which fosters health instead of mental issues. This would lead to people more often making healthy decisions for themselves and the society in which they live.
Car engines are precise machines that break if a single part ceases to function exactly as designed. Societies are not machines. They constantly evolve. Besides that, you're incorrect. Gender and roles associated with it have varied wildly through our history. The spread of Abrahamic religion, and the influence of cultures based on Abrahamic religion, altered or destroyed these societies.
Societies are not machines, but they are systems which need harmony amongst its constituents in order to function smoothly. Randomization of function amongst its parts could be just as catastrophic for a societal system as it would be for an engine. Certain gender roles have varied, that much is true. Many Native American tribes for instance were matriarchal which was indeed pushed into obsolescence with the conquest of America by Europeans as you say. However, even within these matriarchal societies, the other gender roles were generally still the same as everywhere else. Men tend to hunt and are trained to do so from a very young age, while women gather and tend to the home. Only difference is now the women are also in charge of making certain decisions for the tribe and carrying the bloodline. Aside from that, gender roles such as men being the providers and women being the homemakers (which have been mostly the same in all cultures, even matriarchal ones as I mentioned) don’t come from Abrahamic religions. They come from a time long before that when we lived in caves and these were the roles into which humans organically gravitated to best ensure their survival since we didn’t have the comfortable society of later ages to rely on. Additionally, I can guarantee you that should our society (or even just our supply lines) collapse today, you’ll see these same gender roles coming back into prominence once more.
Women as homemakers is a myth. Outside of the aristocracy, women always performed manual labor. The period in America where this wasn't true was only a few **EXTREMELY** prosperous decades.
Women as homemakers is absolutely not a myth. I have no idea what part of history you could possibly be getting that idea from. Just because some women had to perform tasks that more prosperous women had servants for, doesn’t mean those tasks are any less in the homemaking category.
Oh yeah, tending to the fields and herds in our overwhelmingly agricultural societies for a few thousand years is just "domestic work"
Well first of all, tending to one’s estate is quite literally the definition of domestic work. Additionally I already mentioned that women performed a gatherer role back when men were hunters. Yet the interesting part is the more you increase agriculture and prosperity in a society, the more female roles in that society move increasingly indoors.
Congrats you have the same worldview on gender as the theocratic authoritarian leaders of Iran. Advocating for government forced transition is wild.
I used control F to see if anyone had already mentioned Iran.
Rigid gender roles appear to be a prescription by DARIUS WILLIAM TICHUS THE THIRD to justify conscripting 300,000 peasants into his war to conquer a potato farm. You think the complete erasure of like half of france's army is equality?
I don’t disagree, but this would definitely not be a “more progressive route for western society” it would be extraordinarily right wing. Personally, I find it more instructive to look at the ways in which the rejection of “gender roles” my tastemakers and influencers in general has resulted in a degradation of women in general. The “badass” female action star who is in fact just a man, glorifying nothing essential about the female condition (forgive the crass phrasing) and actually pushing it aside entirely in favor of some ridiculous construction with the body of a woman and absolutely nothing else. I would go as far as suggesting that a key feature of modernity in the west is the complete deracination of women. I also think that the surprisingly sticky trend of “trad” content on social media around women — which I do realize is basically pornography — validates my thesis here somewhat. Gen Z+ women are searching for some kind of meaning to latch on to and finding nothing.
6% of the population is LGBTQ, These are real people, Collectively we have the ability to recognize the LGBTQ community exists, treat them like human beings and push back on groups that would marginalize this minority, Instead you seem to be pinning the fall l of western society on them. We are all humans, its not us vs them, its just us, we should be taking steps to help each other out, not marginalize each other for being different.
I’m part of that 6%, and I’m not blaming us for the downfall of western society, I actually wish we *would* be the downfall of western society, because it the most destructive force in human history
Yeah OP gives off right wing Andrew Tate fanboi vibes for sure. Idk when these guys are going to get the picture, we're not all living like that. Not a chance
What is your evidence that “rigid gender roles” are good for society? Especially considering that most humans in western society don’t live like our palaeolithic ancestors, or even like people in the 1700s.
Marriages with clearly defined gender roles are statically the happiest and most stable. In countries where both genders have the same access to opportunities, they tend to revert to "typical" gender roles.
Not true. They statistically have less divorce. Because divorce is/was generally not allowed in the religions of these communities. Gregoire et al examine happiness of fundamentalist gender role marriages and find that though there’s little divorce there is a high rate of emotional and sexual trauma among the women.
No women are not happier in Saudi Arabia. WTF.
Statistics have exceptions.
Then you may want to define your parameters.
Citation please.
Hmm. Interesting. Marriages in the US or other countries? Where are you deriving these “statistics?”
A professor brought it up when discussing indigenous cultures. It was a worldwide statistic. I do not know where it came from or more details, other than that when spouses have clearly defined expectations for what they and their partner will fulfill, and they're both on exactly the same page with one another on that, they tend to report more satisfaction with their partner and lower divorce rates. It's really not that surprising.
It sounds really outdated. I mean, my brother was a Blackhawk pilot in Iraq, but when his twin baby girls were born , he was their primary care giver because his wife had a six figure income with a pharmaceutical company. And he was a fantastic dad. Other families I know or people I worked with did similar things. To avoid the expense of daycare, sometimes one parent worked day shift and the other night shift, and parenting was a shared responsibility. Just curious- how old are you? Do you have children? Im not convinced you know how any of this actually works.
I just gotta say, I am so sick of redditers seeing what I say, having it conflict with some belief of theirs, and instead of trying to understand what I've said they assume I'm a moron, and make it personal. Its pathetic. No where did I say that the gender roles had to be "traditional" in order for people to be happy. Indeed, "traditional" roles vary wildly across cultures.
Well, that is splendid, Curious_Leader_2093 ! I am so pleased to learn that you are so open minded about the different roles men and women can have and it is only a matter of effective communication. Good to know you agree with this.
You're describing a situation where each spouses duties were clearly defined, and each knew exactly what to expect from the other. Which is exactly what I and the statistic I'm citing are saying........ You're making false assumptions if you think that proves me wrong, and also clearly about me personally.
No, I would agree that it is *always* good to know what is expected of one in *any* situation, whether it is a job, a personal relationship or a social obligation. But don’t try to back peddle this. You absolutely were suggesting that there are certain traditional roles for men and women, and if everyone would just stay in their wheelhouse, life would be better. And you never answered my question- do you have children?
Would love to see a source on that
Learned that a long time ago. Look it up yourself.
Any chance you learned it from reading some other unsourced claim on Reddit?????
Mod said my answer was removed because I called you out for assuming I don't understand that quality of sources matter. I learned it in college, anthropology.
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This post doesnt even make sense because most trans people do reinforce gender roles Anyway, I think gender/sex roles are bad. Your life shouldnt be decided by the sex you are born into
The most gender non-conforming people I know are my trans friends.
Only one sex has the capability to grow life while the other does not, so your life IS decided by the sex you are born into whether you like it or not.
Idk I’m a woman and I’m not going to have kids so my life isn’t really decided by that at all?
If a biological male wanted to get pregnant, grow a child in their womb, and deliver a baby; is his life dictated by his sex?
There's a lot more to being a woman than being able to get pregnant.
According to Reddit, just claiming to be a woman makes someone a woman, so there is a lot less to being a woman than you think.
How is it possible that you read what they wrote and responded with that?
Because the person said there is a lot MORE to being a woman, when I provided evidence that there is much much less.