A few important statements to begin with:
I am female. Yep, never been mistaken for a male even in my dirtiest dungarees filthy from stringing fence or cutting firewood. That is I've never been mistaken
if you see me(unless the men you know frequently wear dresses for no reason, have long hair, and a decidedly feminine figure!). Apparently Yorick thought I might be in possession of an alternative set of equipment.
I frequently exhibit what would apparently be considered masculine traits: I 'take a stand', 'make ...judgement of right and wrong', and 'have backbone'[sic] and I don't gasp lose it when I break one of my nails!. No apologies for these since I do not believe them to be solely masculine or feminine.
I am not a 'masculine' woman. The thought someone may think that sends me into paroxysms of helpless laughter!
Ok, here goes. Warning: this is the first post of the day, it's icy outside so everybody's home from work/school, and I feel verbiose. [img]smile.gif[/img]
Stereotypes, that is what we're really talking about here, and the railing against them. MagiK bemoans the fact that society has taken the attempted breaking of stereotypes too far. In a way, it has. Is this a good thing? In many ways,perhaps. Some few males are more willing to acknowledge and cope with some of the 'softer' emotions including sadness, lonliness, and communication in general. This is good. And women, in turn, are supposed to acknowledge the more masculine emotions of aggressiveness, anger, and resolve. From my pov..........
I am the oldest of four children, three girls and a boy. From the age 12, I worked alongside my father learning the carpentry trade on school holidays and summer break. As I have said, I am not a 'masculine' female, but my dad rarely made much concession for my (societally decreed and scientifically delineated) 'weakness'. Granted, I was not forced to carry an unreasonable amount of weight or anything, but I was expected to contribute fully and to the extent of my ability in whatever task was at hand. And I did. At school I indulged my love for dresses and heels and on the weekend and holidays, I dressed in jeans or overalls and workboots and set concrete forms or roofed or painted/nailed or set in water pipes. Daddy said that just because I was a girl didn't mean I had to be weak and I shouldn't have to *count* on a man to take care of everything (cause that was about so much b.s, he said, it's supposed to be a partnership. ::nods:: wise man).
So it was no great surpirise when I enlisted in the service. Now I wanted to go to Cryptographical school but the wait was a minimum of six months and for that time, I would be forced to take a desk job typing and fetching or some such 'feminine' job for some petty officer. Nope, not for this gal. I put in and got the next opening in a school available--welding (hull maintenance technician, that is, also including fire fighting) school. I was one of a dozen or so in a crowd of a hundred + men and the only one in my particular class. I worked hard, took no concessions to my gender, and earned the respect of my peers. You learn real fast that a fire aboard ship has no care what gender is fighting to put it out.
Aboard ship, I received bull from the other men--not because I didn't complete all my tasks, not because I was weaker, not because on ocassion I simply could not lift a steel sheet they could--but because I was in 'their' navy...I was a threat to what they perceived as an all-male tradition.
I have never backed down from a just fight. I have never used tears to get my way. My children are taught that it's ok for boys to cry in pain or sadness, and it's ok for girls to be asseertive and not submit to a male simply because it is expected even when she's in the right.
I have been accused of not being 'a woman' (from a man who felt threatened by the fact that I never cowed in front of him), of betraying my fellow females for my strident denouncement of the radical feminists who seem bent on creating a uni-sex. I have been condescended and patronized because I have breasts. I have been treated as a second-class, no-IQ individual because I do not have a penis.
Yes, perhaps society has gone too far in its quest to close the gap between male and female. BUT society consists of those same men and women! If a man refuses to stand for his convictions, it is not society's fault--it is his for taking a 'safer' avenue of silence. If a woman is treated as a barely sentient individual, then it is her responsibility to either change the behaviour or remove herself from the environment. Don't ballyhoo over the fact that men aren't allowed to be masculine and women, feminine! WE ARE ALL HUMAN. We all have exactly the same emotions, needs and wants. The difference is how we go about manifesting these.
Men and women are made to complement each other, not overrule or emulate. If you're an 'effeminate' man, fine. Doesn't mean you are forced to act in some weak-wristed, foppish, stereotypically 'female' manner any more than a 'masculine' woman need act in a swaggering, aggressive manner.
Those who seek to harm or kill don't give the proverbial rat's patoot if you're female or male or how you enact your gender. They only care for the pain and anguish they cause. And the last time I checked, we both bled red, we both felt pain and we both cried with loss. Quit your bitching and *do* something about it.