LGBTitp - Part Seven

[Murdim]

Besides, most of the differences between males and females are physiological, not psychological or sociological. No matter what you do, nature will find a way to enforce its own stereotypes, and the rest of them aren't related to someone's sex in any way.

((This message brought to you by Feminine Heterosexual Cis-Males Society - i.e. me.))

If this was the case, why do the societal roles and presentations associated with each gender vary so much throughout time and place ? Some decades ago, little boys tended to be dressed in pink and little girls in blue. Throughout the ages, men wore make-up. And let's not even talk about dresses and pants. What make you think that our your set of conceptions of what is feminine and masculine is somehow the right, "natural" one ?

Some aspects of gender roles can be somewhat linked to objective factors (e.g men being more often than not the dominant sex throughout societies). But very few of them can be explained by it (e.g women warriors being the exception rather than the rule). And virtually none of them can be justified by it (e.g women needing protection when they are pregnant... duh).

Amusing story: a Swedish child is being raised without any disclosure of its gender. (It's not even being furnished with a unisex wardrobe from the Swedish children's unisex clothing retailer, but with clothing on either end of the spectrum. No word about the toys.) Imagine the coming-out party later in life. [EDIT: To forestall the question of grammar, Swedish has two grammatical genders: neuter and non-. No convolutions are required to strip out references to masculine or feminine.]

Let's just say there's a difference between not imposing gender roles upon one's children, and using them as a social experiment.