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Also (and I hope you know that I'm trying to be silly more than dismissive, Moongirl!) for all of my talk of the myriad of ways that things can be, and work just fine, I definitely do acknowledge that some people do want to lean in to gender roles as they understand them, and so long as they both feel good about it and it's what they both want in a partnership, that is totally cool, good, fine!
It is a huge, huge reason that I'm drawn to the kink community, people figure out what they want and go for partners compatible to that, and often acknowledge the mindfulness and free choice of it. There are LOTS of couples in the group who really do prefer strong, dominant and masculine male archetypes and soft, submissive female ones. And we're all like, "Cool, get on with your bad self! Just don't yell at or shame others who do different things." Those who feel most comfortable and natural with that, do that, and those who don't, do something else. And it isn't confusing, because we talk about it.
I just plain dislike the idea of assumed "norms" because there are too many humans who get invalidated or "erased" or whatever with that kind of situation. Not only the entire LGBTQ+ spectrum of people, but even those whose personalities just don't fit with it. The existence of all these others does not have to be a threat to how any more traditional folks want to live their lives.
I hope I don't come across that I'm yelling at or shaming people?
I feel like more disapproval has been directed at me than vice versa. I did grow up in a family with very traditional gender roles and when I couple up with a guy it's usually a situation with traditional gender roles. Maybe partly because that was modeled to me growing up and partly this is just how my personality is wired.
My mom has a JD from UCLA but said she could never work as an attorney. Shes too emotional, too feminine (?). Her law professors told her that if she wants to e an attorney she's going to have to shut off her emotions and be all logic, etc. and she simply can't. I have a very similar personality to her so I get it. I'm capable of being logical but it's not my default setting.
Though I enjoy things like cooking, decorating a house, gardening, making my surroundings beautiful, music, art, etc. Basically the fluffy stuff of the world but the stuff that gives the world beauty and color. I think that's the yin part of the yin and yang. The feminine.
I don't mind what others do, live and let live. But I'm also a curious people and I like to discuss things and hear others perspectives and experiences.
Just because I ask questions doesn't mean there is an implied disapproval there. I'm curious and enjoy discussion.
Exactly. If I spend a Saturday afternoon mowing my lawn, have I done MAN'S WORK, or have I just done a task at my house that needs to be done that I'm capable of doing? If a guy spends that same time doing laundry after he drops off his car to get the oil changed, is he not a man, or has he just prioritized how to spend his time?
I think you hit the nail on the head. Chores aren't viewed as gender specific.
In 8 years, my husband has mowed the lawn once. I don't think he's done a load of laundry more than a handful of times. He doesn't dust, rarely vacuums, he cooks about half the time. He was the one replacing the flooring and drywall when we had a pipe burst in the basement because he has experience with that. He's the resident IT expert. A seam went in a pair of pants and that went to a local seamstress because neither of us could have repaired that properly.
I think yardwork became more my thing because I was only out of the house for work 8.5 hours a day and for years, hubby would be gone 12-14 hours a day.
For you, us and for many, it's simply about what needs to be done, who has the time for it and who has expertise or the desire to may money to someone else to complete it.
Feminism has been more successful than I think has been popularly acknowledged. Starting in grade school, young girls start to outperform young boys. They are better students, require less discipline and do better in school. As they age they gap between girls and boys widens. Women are more likely to graduate from high school and more likely to go to college and graduate school. Women out earn men in 147 of 150 cities. They are more likely to assume professional and managerial positions. They less likely to get hurt or injured at work, they are less likely to get in trouble with drugs and alcohol and as a consequence they are likely to live longer than men. They also control more wealth then men.
I don't begrudge women their hard earned successes, but I think its fair to state that gender roles are in the process of a great deal of change of flux right now and I think that is having impacts in dating.
I also want to pick up here a discussion that was started by Moongirl about gender roles and dating, that I thought was interesting but was deleted for being off topic on another of my threads. Basically I want to continue that discussion here.
There should be no gender roles, in my humble opinion. Or at least not the harmful ones that ruled the USA for so long: Man asks, man pays, man feels entitled to sex, man outearns woman so he controls the dynamics of the relationship and the home. Woman waits, woman expects man to pay, woman plays hard to get because if she doesn't, she'll be shamed as "easy." American dating culture is toxic and feeds into all kinds of nonsense expectations.
The antidote to this is that women should be more comfortable with approaching men and lose the expectation that men will pay for them, whereas men should stop taking it as an affront to their masculinity that a woman pays for herself and stop applying stupid sexual double standards. I hear the way these silly "incels" talk about women and I want to say, "And you wonder why they don't want anything to do with you? You reek of misogyny."
I have more to say on this but I fear it will come out wrong. The bottom line is that in the USA at least, people need to understand that the old money-based dynamic does not work anymore. Years ago, men controlled so much in a relationship because they paid for house and food. I do not think American men have reckoned with the fact that this does not fly anymore and that their old role of "provider" is becoming obsolete. I mentioned in other threads that young women don't want or need men for their money, so men need to find other ways to make themselves desirable as potential partners, ways that start within, such as respect, kindness, compassion, quiet strength (NOT machissimo), and comfort in thier own skin as an equal, not a master.
I also know that sexism, misogyny, and toxic, fragile masculinity are so deeply rooted in American culture that none of this will come to pass in my lifetime. I mean, for heaven's sakes, a lot of men can't even refer to women as WOMEN and instead have to infantilize them with the inferior term "girls."
I hope I don't come across that I'm yelling at or shaming people?
I feel like more disapproval has been directed at me than vice versa. I did grow up in a family with very traditional gender roles and when I couple up with a guy it's usually a situation with traditional gender roles. Maybe partly because that was modeled to me growing up and partly this is just how my personality is wired.
My mom has a JD from UCLA but said she could never work as an attorney. Shes too emotional, too feminine (?). Her law professors told her that if she wants to e an attorney she's going to have to shut off her emotions and be all logic, etc. and she simply can't. I have a very similar personality to her so I get it. I'm capable of being logical but it's not my default setting.
Though I enjoy things like cooking, decorating a house, gardening, making my surroundings beautiful, music, art, etc. Basically the fluffy stuff of the world but the stuff that gives the world beauty and color. I think that's the yin part of the yin and yang. The feminine.
I don't mind what others do, live and let live. But I'm also a curious people and I like to discuss things and hear others perspectives and experiences.
Just because I ask questions doesn't mean there is an implied disapproval there. I'm curious and enjoy discussion.
No, you come across as dismayed, that assumptions cannot safely be made.
And that's a very mild thing, that could be seen as a very personal reaction, compared to wholesale yelling or shaming, but the notion beneath it is, "Wasn't life so much easier, back when most people were all doing things the same way? Wouldn't it be so much easier for most of us, if it were still like that? Am I the only one who feels this way? Men?" And when you get sentiments like that from gentle woman types, then there can be men who hear that and feel like they might be heroes if they enforce that notion. You won't use force. But they will. And historically, that's pretty much how it went.
Then you have the idea that rather than shifting to abandon constraining "norms" that instead everything is changing to a new norm. So in the past, it was as you describe, men were men and women were women and everyone knew their place, yadda yadda (totally summing up a concept, not quoting or mocking or anything there)... The idea that the NEW WAYS will take over and replace the OLD WAYS is why there is fear and then aggression, against that which is not like the normative/traditional people.
Like, oh, if we just let people be gay, then our way of life will die out! There will be no more traditional families or babies! Society will collapse unless we fight! The fear of change is rooted in the idea that there can only be one way to behave, and if the normative society allows space for the different, then the different will take over and become the new norm. Or maybe more accurately, if we just let trans people exist, how will we know their pronouns? Ask? OMG, I have to ASK?? Ugh. Life was so much better when I could just assume and generally be right!
So you have this mild dismay that is on the same sliding scale where the extreme end is, "I need diversity to disappear so that the mainstream can be comfortable." Just having to navigate a world where we can't assume things and have to communicate, is...confusing? Bound to cause bigger problems?
Really, implying that a woman who has a strong career role will be so masculine that she robs her poor husband of his ability to sustain an erection with her, was...something else. You might as well have told men to stop women from getting into these career fields, lest it destroy the fabric of American society by emasculating them. While also telling women that we better not be too successful, lest some hottie damsel in distress steal away our men. This is the kind of messaging that seeps into minds and crystallizes and becomes propaganda. And then fuels movements that do direct and real harm to minority populations. So I do feel a need to challenge it, if only because I'm not sure that you understand the flavor of these sentiments. I jested about the romance novel stuff, but really? It's more like the anti-suffragette propaganda. Plenty of women actually stood AGAINST women's right to vote, saying that we'd become masculine and shouldn't bother our pretty heads, that there was peril and much to lose, in messing with gender roles.
If a man doesn't have to stress as much about supporting a family because his wife is earning most of the income, then he can relax at home with the children, cook for the family while his wife works late to meet a deadline, etc.
So the financial burden is off of him. But what I'm wondering is, does he feel like a man? If his testosterone is declining because childcare tends to raise female hormones, prolactin and oxytocin for instance, and the effects might be he gains weight, he loses his libido, when his wife wants some intimate "stress relief" at the end of the day, he finds he can't achieve an erection. His wife is understanding but maybe frustrated.
Then the following day when the husband takes the children to the park while his wife is at the office, and emcounters a sexy scantily dressed single woman on the way to a job interview at the gentleman's club there who needs help with her car. She has a flat tire and asks if he could change it. She doesn't know how and can't with her long false nails even if she knew how.
Suddenly he feels like a man. He swaggers over and changes her tire, bantering in a flirty way as the sexy woman bends over, gushing he much her hero he is, admiring his biceps, his manly skills, giving him an eyefull of cleavage and upper thigh. His testosterone is spiking now. While he couldn't perform last night, now he is fully uhhh ready.
I'm just saying this is a likely scenario because of how hormones and sex drive operate. Can you turn a man into a housewife? Yes. But will that man possibly find himself irrestistably drawn to people and situations that make him feel more like a man and less like a housewife? Probably. Is this ok? If he still loves his family and remains committed?
No, you come across as dismayed, that assumptions cannot safely be made.
And that's a very mild thing, that could be seen as a very personal reaction, compared to wholesale yelling or shaming, but the notion beneath it is, "Wasn't life so much easier, back when most people were all doing things the same way? Wouldn't it be so much easier for most of us, if it were still like that? Am I the only one who feels this way? Men?" And when you get sentiments like that from gentle woman types, then there can be men who hear that and feel like they might be heroes if they enforce that notion. You won't use force. But they will. And historically, that's pretty much how it went.
Then you have the idea that rather than shifting to abandon constraining "norms" that instead everything is changing to a new norm. So in the past, it was as you describe, men were men and women were women and everyone knew their place, yadda yadda (totally summing up a concept, not quoting or mocking or anything there)... The idea that the NEW WAYS will take over and replace the OLD WAYS is why there is fear and then aggression, against that which is not like the normative/traditional people.
Like, oh, if we just let people be gay, then our way of life will die out! There will be no more traditional families or babies! Society will collapse unless we fight! The fear of change is rooted in the idea that there can only be one way to behave, and if the normative society allows space for the different, then the different will take over and become the new norm. Or maybe more accurately, if we just let trans people exist, how will we know their pronouns? Ask? OMG, I have to ASK?? Ugh. Life was so much better when I could just assume and generally be right!
So you have this mild dismay that is on the same sliding scale where the extreme end is, "I need diversity to disappear so that the mainstream can be comfortable." Just having to navigate a world where we can't assume things and have to communicate, is...confusing? Bound to cause bigger problems?
Really, implying that a woman who has a strong career role will be so masculine that she robs her poor husband of his ability to sustain an erection with her, was...something else. You might as well have told men to stop women from getting into these career fields, lest it destroy the fabric of American society by emasculating them. While also telling women that we better not be too successful, lest some hottie damsel in distress steal away our men. This is the kind of messaging that seeps into minds and crystallizes and becomes propaganda. And then fuels movements that do direct and real harm to minority populations. So I do feel a need to challenge it, if only because I'm not sure that you understand the flavor of these sentiments. I jested about the romance novel stuff, but really? It's more like the anti-suffragette propaganda. Plenty of women actually stood AGAINST women's right to vote, saying that we'd become masculine and shouldn't bother our pretty heads, that there was peril and much to lose, in messing with gender roles.
I'm not trying to revert to 1950 and I think that would be a terrible idea. What I want to do is break through even further than we are now, into a system that would be even better than the present one.
The present is better than the past.
But the future could be even better.
It's a work in progress.
I am trying to bring the current problems to the fore so they can be addressed and solved. Not as a way to argue that feminism was an awful idea and we should just forget it all and go backwards and pretend it never happened.
Do you think the current system is ideal? There are no problems?
I think there are problems but nothing that can't be solved.
I don't believe in being an ostrich, being in denial, pretending all is hunky dory, because I do see evidence there are people deeply dissatisfied with the current state of things.
Do we just dismiss them? Say "Well Im happy, must suck to be you!"
Why not try to solve the issues arising instead of pretending like they don't exist?
If a man doesn't have to stress as much about supporting a family because his wife is earning most of the income, then he can relax at home with the children, cook for the family while his wife works late to meet a deadline, etc.
So the financial burden is off of him. But what I'm wondering is, does he feel like a man? If his testosterone is declining because childcare tends to raise female hormones, prolactin and oxytocin for instance, and the effects might be he gains weight, he loses his libido, when his wife wants some intimate "stress relief" at the end of the day, he finds he can't achieve an erection. His wife is understanding but maybe frustrated.
Then the following day when the husband takes the children to the park while his wife is at the office, and emcounters a sexy scantily dressed single woman on the way to a job interview at the gentleman's club there who needs help with her car. She has a flat tire and asks if he could change it. She doesn't know how and can't with her long false nails even if she knew how.
Suddenly he feels like a man. He swaggers over and changes her tire, bantering in a flirty way as the sexy woman bends over, gushing he much her hero he is, admiring his biceps, his manly skills, giving him an eyefull of cleavage and upper thigh. His testosterone is spiking now. While he couldn't perform last night, now he is fully uhhh ready.
I'm just saying this is a likely scenario because of how hormones and sex drive operate. Can you turn a man into a housewife? Yes. But will that man possibly find himself irrestistably drawn to people and situations that make him feel more like a man and less like a housewife? Probably. Is this ok? If he still loves his family and remains committed?
That is not how hormones and sex drive operate. That is how toxic masculinity and the men and women who buy into it operate. If a man can only feel masculine and sexually aroused in the face of another person's seeming helplessness, I put forth that such a man is a rather sick individual.
There should be no gender roles, in my humble opinion. Or at least not the harmful ones that ruled the USA for so long: Man asks, man pays, man feels entitled to sex, man outearns woman so he controls the dynamics of the relationship and the home. Woman waits, woman expects man to pay, woman plays hard to get because if she doesn't, she'll be shamed as "easy." American dating culture is toxic and feeds into all kinds of nonsense expectations.
The antidote to this is that women should be more comfortable with approaching men and lose the expectation that men will pay for them, whereas men should stop taking it as an affront to their masculinity that a woman pays for herself and stop applying stupid sexual double standards. I hear the way these silly "incels" talk about women and I want to say, "And you wonder why they don't want anything to do with you? You reek of misogyny."
I have more to say on this but I fear it will come out wrong. The bottom line is that in the USA at least, people need to understand that the old money-based dynamic does not work anymore. Years ago, men controlled so much in a relationship because they paid for house and food. I do not think American men have reckoned with the fact that this does not fly anymore and that their old role of "provider" is becoming obsolete. I mentioned in other threads that young women don't want or need men for their money, so men need to find other ways to make themselves desirable as potential partners, ways that start within, such as respect, kindness, compassion, quiet strength (NOT machissimo), and comfort in thier own skin as an equal, not a master.
I also know that sexism, misogyny, and toxic, fragile masculinity are so deeply rooted in American culture that none of this will come to pass in my lifetime. I mean, for heaven's sakes, a lot of men can't even refer to women as WOMEN and instead have to infantilize them with the inferior term "girls."
I agree with everything but the last paragraph. Fragile masculinity? Men are accused of ridiculous things like "mansplaining" (worst term ever), being shamed for even being masculine, but also shamed if we're a little sensitive. We can't win. Don't even get me started on politics, where white men are absolutely hated beyond belief. One man's view. I also refer to women as women, unless I'm talking about a "girl" from high school or when I was a kid and I would have been a boy. Women call men boys ALL the time, so I don't get the issue anyway. Doesn't really offend me, as I like being thought of as "boyish", particularly at my advanced age, haha.
I'm not trying to revert to 1950 and I think that would be a terrible idea. What I want to do is break through even further than we are now, into a system that would be even better than the present one.
The present is better than the past.
But the future could be even better.
It's a work in progress.
I am trying to bring the current problems to the fore so they can be addressed and solved. Not as a way to argue that feminism was an awful idea and we should just forget it all and go backwards and pretend it never happened.
Do you think the current system is ideal? There are no problems?
I think there are problems but nothing that can't be solved.
I don't believe in being an ostrich, being in denial, pretending all is hunky dory, because I do see evidence there are people deeply dissatisfied with the current state of things.
Do we just dismiss them? Say "Well Im happy, must suck to be you!"
Why not try to solve the issues arising instead of pretending like they don't exist?
No, of course things are far from perfect, and there might be a part of human nature to some extent, to feel threatened by things that challenge assumptions we wish to hold, and I don't know if I'll live long enough to see that really change, especially in cultures that are even more homogeneous and/or traditional than our own, but... Here's where it kind of sucks. I want to push the idea that progressive thinking isn't a threat to traditional thinking, and that they can coexist (gender roles being one of the most key and core examples of this), but what about when there actually is a threat? The French case where the woman at the beach was not permitted to wear her burkini? That's when "progressive" ideology goes just as militant as "traditional" ideology was! I wish people wouldn't do such things.
So it is not traditionalism that I abhor, or argue against, it's a desire for conformity. Is the human species as a whole capable of "live and let live" really? Well, I can only try to do that myself, but I've got my doubts about humanity overall.
In order to accept human diversity, in dating as much as anywhere, we have to be willing to be uncomfortable. It can be uncomfortable to ask questions, to talk about things...but I don't see a better way. However, "be willing to be uncomfortable" has become a piece of advice I give myself and others, because a bit of discomfort, at least of the social or cognitive kind, is generally not the end of the world.
So if someone is dissatisfied because they were forced to be uncomfortable, because change is happening, because assumptions cannot safely be made, or because their preferences are no longer the norm... I don't know what solutions to that problem there are, other than telling them to learn to live with some discomfort, learn to ask the right questions in your search for what you want. I won't be telling them not to want whatever they want, but to perhaps adjust their strategy in seeking it.
No, of course things are far from perfect, and there might be a part of human nature to some extent, to feel threatened by things that challenge assumptions we wish to hold, and I don't know if I'll live long enough to see that really change, especially in cultures that are even more homogeneous and/or traditional than our own, but... Here's where it kind of sucks. I want to push the idea that progressive thinking isn't a threat to traditional thinking, and that they can coexist (gender roles being one of the most key and core examples of this), but what about when there actually is a threat? The French case where the woman at the beach was not permitted to wear her burkini? That's when "progressive" ideology goes just as militant as "traditional" ideology was! I wish people wouldn't do such things.
So it is not traditionalism that I abhor, or argue against, it's a desire for conformity. Is the human species as a whole capable of "live and let live" really? Well, I can only try to do that myself, but I've got my doubts about humanity overall.
In order to accept human diversity, in dating as much as anywhere, we have to be willing to be uncomfortable. It can be uncomfortable to ask questions, to talk about things...but I don't see a better way. However, "be willing to be uncomfortable" has become a piece of advice I give myself and others, because a bit of discomfort, at least of the social or cognitive kind, is generally not the end of the world.
So if someone is dissatisfied because they were forced to be uncomfortable, because change is happening, because assumptions cannot safely be made, or because their preferences are no longer the norm... I don't know what solutions to that problem there are, other than telling them to learn to live with some discomfort, learn to ask the right questions in your search for what you want. I won't be telling them not to want whatever they want, but to perhaps adjust their strategy in seeking it.
I don't know if you are implying that I'm uncomfortable with change or diversity. If so then you have read me completely wrong. I have lived "native" in other cultures, got college degrees in some of the most progressive disciplines, and to this day live my life with my middle finger up at anyone who disapproves. I do what I want and am pretty darn determined to do just that.
But maybe I read that into your post where it wasn't intended.
You seem to be making a "slippery slope" argument though. If we discuss these things, it's dangerous, because it encourages intolerance, or something like that?
If that's what you believe, we have to agree to disagree here.
I don't think any topic of conversation should be off limits.
Does this topic make you uncomfortable and that's why you seem to discourage discussing it?
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