I believe the grand majority of the differences between men and women are caused by societal stereotypes, and also not-quite-yet-outdated biology.
Before this modern age of medicine, if women wanted to have sex, there was an insanely high chance they were gonna have kids. No way around it. The men had to go everything to take care of them because there was simply no way around it. Thus, all these platitudes and niceties formed about this horribly unequal model of men-vs-women, and sadly they have not all died out yet. In America, in the more progressive cities, people like me are fighting for that inequality to finally just fucking die, but the more conservative Texans do not appreciate progress or change, so it's a never-ending fight.
You are indeed entitled to your own opinion, but men and women just plain are not that different. Period. Women are psychologically more frail because our society has created an impossible situation for us. We are still expected to be well-groomed at all times, or else we get looked down upon. We are still cute, precious little sex objects, no matter how active our drive to change that, and we still get paid less than men in 20fucking11. Women's psychological instability is a direct cause of this strange, hybrid society we're living in right now, which is a mix of old-school "if you want to have sex, you WILL become a wife and a mother, soon" and post-modern "Okay, yes, people are just people, and should be judged on their mental character and what they add to society, not physical strength or number of nice suits."
America in particular is especially backwards and broken, so don't think I'm praising it, lol. But perhaps the male-vs-female debate has different cultural/societal backgrounds on either side of the pond, yes? There are indeed countries where women have NO rights, but just because we have been fighting to get where we are doesn't mean we stop now. It is unfortunate that "feminist" has come to basically mean "feminazi", because the term feminist actually is a positive one that means "men and women should be equal, but women are still not equal."
On the flip side, it's kind of caused a counter-reaction. Men are afraid to show feelings, hug their friends, or anything that might even slightly be considered gay or girly because they feel this deep need to constantly represent their masculinity. This, too, is societal. Men feel feelings, but they're repressed by society and parents in that society. Loooll, parents do SO much damage to the kids they're raising (in this state especially) that it is just un-freakin'-believable. People should not just have kids out of some sense that 'it's what people do.' It should be a decision, because it is damn obvious to people like me when parents just sort of 'ended up' in that situation, and are bullshitting their way through it because they are unhappy about how much their kids hold them back.
But maybe that's just my personal view of family.
WOW WALL OF TEXT this could go on for fucking ever. What I'm saying is that while, yes, women don't need to act like men in order to be appreciated characters, but this 'women are one way and men are the other way' is just plain wrong. Many men are one way and many women are the other way, but I fear it's a cause of society's bullshit brainwashing. I know I personally am completely fucked up from every angle because my own natural personality is so at odds with how I was raised and what I was taught. I'm still recovering, but I basically have to tell people every day that things they assume about me because I am biologically female are just plain incorrect, and to not assume things about me or anyone else just because of what's between their legs.
tl;dr It's all a case-to-case basis. Everyone's different. Generalizing is bad.
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Date: 26/2/11 16:20 (UTC)Before this modern age of medicine, if women wanted to have sex, there was an insanely high chance they were gonna have kids. No way around it. The men had to go everything to take care of them because there was simply no way around it. Thus, all these platitudes and niceties formed about this horribly unequal model of men-vs-women, and sadly they have not all died out yet. In America, in the more progressive cities, people like me are fighting for that inequality to finally just fucking die, but the more conservative Texans do not appreciate progress or change, so it's a never-ending fight.
You are indeed entitled to your own opinion, but men and women just plain are not that different. Period. Women are psychologically more frail because our society has created an impossible situation for us. We are still expected to be well-groomed at all times, or else we get looked down upon. We are still cute, precious little sex objects, no matter how active our drive to change that, and we still get paid less than men in 20fucking11. Women's psychological instability is a direct cause of this strange, hybrid society we're living in right now, which is a mix of old-school "if you want to have sex, you WILL become a wife and a mother, soon" and post-modern "Okay, yes, people are just people, and should be judged on their mental character and what they add to society, not physical strength or number of nice suits."
America in particular is especially backwards and broken, so don't think I'm praising it, lol. But perhaps the male-vs-female debate has different cultural/societal backgrounds on either side of the pond, yes? There are indeed countries where women have NO rights, but just because we have been fighting to get where we are doesn't mean we stop now. It is unfortunate that "feminist" has come to basically mean "feminazi", because the term feminist actually is a positive one that means "men and women should be equal, but women are still not equal."
On the flip side, it's kind of caused a counter-reaction. Men are afraid to show feelings, hug their friends, or anything that might even slightly be considered gay or girly because they feel this deep need to constantly represent their masculinity. This, too, is societal. Men feel feelings, but they're repressed by society and parents in that society. Loooll, parents do SO much damage to the kids they're raising (in this state especially) that it is just un-freakin'-believable. People should not just have kids out of some sense that 'it's what people do.' It should be a decision, because it is damn obvious to people like me when parents just sort of 'ended up' in that situation, and are bullshitting their way through it because they are unhappy about how much their kids hold them back.
But maybe that's just my personal view of family.
WOW WALL OF TEXT this could go on for fucking ever.
What I'm saying is that while, yes, women don't need to act like men in order to be appreciated characters, but this 'women are one way and men are the other way' is just plain wrong. Many men are one way and many women are the other way, but I fear it's a cause of society's bullshit brainwashing. I know I personally am completely fucked up from every angle because my own natural personality is so at odds with how I was raised and what I was taught. I'm still recovering, but I basically have to tell people every day that things they assume about me because I am biologically female are just plain incorrect, and to not assume things about me or anyone else just because of what's between their legs.
tl;dr
It's all a case-to-case basis. Everyone's different. Generalizing is bad.