“Ms. Warner clearly believes that the persistence of gender roles and characteristics is a lamentable thing, the root of much of the problems that plague our youth.”

I think what she finds lamentable is not the persistence of gender roles, but the extreme ways in which they are expressed – girls feeling like they have to prove their femininity by being perfectly made-up, and boys feeling like they have to prove their masculinity by calling each other “fag” and never showing weakness.

I agree with you completely. I don’t think there’s such a thing one type of “masculinity” or “femininity”. I don’t think a person’s gender role is one of two checkboxes, it’s a whole spectrum, and while some people may be perfectly fine at one end or the other, many people are not. *I* am not – when you get right down to it, I’m not actually all that stereotypically masculine. I’m not interested in sports and never have been, I don’t like going camping or doing “outdoors” type stuff, I don’t drink beer and prefer liquers, and on and on. But see, I’m perfectly okay with that. If I tried to acquire a taste for all the things I don’t like just to appear more “masculine” to other people, I would just be putting on a front, and I don’t really want to do that – I’d rather just be myself. And if somebody feels like they have to belittle me or my hobbies, and point out how “unmanly” I am – well, I think that says more about them than it does about me.

So my point is that if traditional gender roles and behaviors work for you and make you happy – wonderful. My problem with traditional gender roles, though, is that all too often they come with the expectation that *everyone* should adhere to them, and if you don’t then you’re not a real man/woman, which is ridiculous. And if returning to traditional gender roles means pressuring people to act in ways that are unnatural to them, then what good have we really done?

Your gender isn’t something you earn, or even something that’s determined by your outward appearance or hormones or chromosomes (here I am referring to not only transgendered/transsexual people, but also the nearly one thousand intersex people that are born every year.) It’s determined by your sense of identity, which means that if you say “I’m a woman” or “I’m a man” and mean it, then you are. Far more important than whether someone is a man or a woman is whether they are a good person who is happy with who they are – I would guess that anyone who relies on hurting others in order to feel good about themselves is probably neither.

‘In fact, most women in Sweden find it easy to meld femininity with feminist ideals. Carin Gablad, 49, is Stockholm’s chief of police, in charge of fighting crime in the capital with a force of 4600 officers. “My approach is the opposite of macho,” says the tall, blonde police boss. “I use psychology and negotiation in most cases, but I’m not afraid to use brute force.”

Chief Gablad owes her high position to one simple fact: She gets results. Crime has dropped by 9 percent under her leadership, and shortly after taking office in 2003, she won acclaim by capturing a top politician’s murderer. “Women make excellent police officers because we’re less ego-driven and confrontational than men,” she says. Nearly one in three police officers in Stockholm is a woman, and female recruits now outnumber men at some police training academies. “I think women are increasingly keen to join professions like the police because they are no longer told to act like men,” she says. “They are rewarded for being themselves.”‘

Sweden is the top country for women partially because they have equal rights without having to act like men! ( I gotta say, though, that the way the country thinks about pregnancy and early parenthood has something to do with this. If women who are women take time off to have children, and return to the workforce to find that their experience of caregiving is devalued, equality will forever remain a distant dream.)

Have you read Ivan’s comment above? He makes some very good points without coming across as… well, ignorant. I’m not sure where “Everyone knows that gay guys aren’t liked” is coming from… and, of course, I don’t know you or know where you live, ect. However, you do realize that “Everyone” is a very inclusive word, right? And by extension, a very long stretch when used as an argument.

As a completely heterosexual, socially conservative male, I found that Ivan’s comment has a lot to offer and I completely agree with what he has said.

Equal means that two things are strictly and exactly the same.

Equivalent means that the value (worth) is the same of two things. Approximately equal or similar is another way to put it (eg. Wal-Mart replaced my Panasonic T.V. with an equivalent Sony T.V.).

Obviously we *value* women and men equally (because we are all human!). However, as we should all remember from high school biology, XX =! XY. There are genotypic differences, which in turn translate to phenotypic differences, which then determine what men and women can and cannot do, relative to each other.

IMO, however, we should find two different words to describe this because they’re a little ambiguous.

Now that I’m married – to an incredibly manly engineer who does tons of manly things – and we’ve faced a couple of life facts (like moving to the US for his job), I’m wondering more and more about the gender traits and identities. How much, really, how much is inherent and how much is social? How much is helping us and how much is hurting us instead? How much of those roles (and activites and attitudes associated) help us shape our own selves and how much shove us into unhappiness?

Isn’t what women’s liberation was about? Don’t you think it all boils down to the pursuit of happiness? And self acceptance?

Gender identities appear everywhere in our daily life, and I’m getting to really wonder… Would I be happier if I could be in a sports team instead of running in the mill every time I go to the gym? Would I die of desperation if the water tap broke and flood my home? Would my husband die of sandwich overdose if he had to plan his meals for a long time? What if I landed a superjob and he had to make the choice to leave it all behind and follow me?

When I lived alone I could fix things quickly or being able to tell when I had to ask for help — the fusebox had no misteries to me. When his girlfriend ditched him and he had to nurse a broken heart alone, he would cook hearty meals and fresh fruit never was in shortage. However, when we begin our life together, we left some abilites to the other’s care and I still don’t know if that’s totally good. Maybe that’s personality traits, and not gender traits.

I could go on and on forever, but I think I should stop here. To this reader, gender identities are one of those solid rock facts with fuzzy limits.

Thank you for bringing this up.

Working in the construction industry, I spend most of my week in a very masculine environment. We do a lot of heavy work, use pig power tools, and work our asses of to get the job done. That’s a good feeling, and big part of masculinity. Too many of my co-workers take it too far, though, and there is way to much bickering and calling each other fags. Most of the time this happens, the insults come from men who are very insecure about their own manliness, and need to belittle others in order to feel more masculine in comparison. These are the same men who make sexual comments about every single attractive women they see, insult every unattractive women they see, and call every woman a ’slut’ who actually enjoys sexual behaviour.

To me, this ultra-macho behaviour (as opposed to ultra-masculine) does seem rooted in time. Not in any historical period, like the 50’s, but in their their own childhood, when boys first learn about social rules and codes of conduct, and begin to act accordingly and enforce the rules towards others. These men have never learned to think for themselves about what traits are of value, and never see past the type of behaviour exemplified by, say, SpikeTV. Even something so rewarding as a comitted, loving relationship is seen as compromising their sexual identity.

Back to the point; I think that Warner makes a good point in saying that there is a “full array of [gender] choices” available in society. There is room for the full spectrum of sexual preference for both sexes, and people should feel free to express themselves in any way that does not harm others.

I don’t think that mass androgyny is good for our culture, any more than extreme macho/feminine roles are. Though there are going to be general tendencies, there will be a decent chunk of society who will feel constrained by either extreme. Our behaviour will undoubtedly be influenced by our respective amounts of testosterone or oxytocin, but those amounts will vary in many individuals, leading to a diverse spectrum of behaviours.

Society now is mroe tolerant than ever, especially in terms of race (well, it is where I’m from, and I guess I can’t speak for everywhere), and we are beginning to expand that tolerance to other areas, including sexual/gender issues. The resurgence in machoism that I’ve noticed is (hopefully) just a last spasm before it dies out, and we can fully embrace the type of strong yet nuanced masculinity that the good people here at Art of Manliness are advocating.

i have nothing against the macho straight man engaging in whatever behaviors he enjoys. but if the price of his manhood is suppression of mine — and i have a male sexual identity to live out just as he does — then i’m not willing to pay that price in order to keep him feeling comfortably “male”.

if he’s panicked by my male identity then his belittling of me isn’t an expression of his manhood, it’s a nagging unease about who HE really might, or might not, be AS A MALE.

as long as one is comfortable in a role, one can allow others, gay or straight, to play their roles and live out their lives unhindered.

but your freedom to do this must never hinge on a curtailment of my freedom to do the same. when it does, that’s not a sign of your manliness, it’s a sign of your male insecurity, and no one should honor that, ever. understand it, yes. accede to it, no.

this male presumptuousness about the superiority of the male role also helps to explain why some men mistreat or try to narrowly define women. thankfully, most women these days are determined not to accept such restrictions, nor should they ever again. we as a species have been there and done that.