What's Masculine and Feminine - Page 2

exactly attolia, times have changed. sleepingwraith makes very good points as to why we generally feel the way we do as far as how we should act due to our genders. but times have changed, women can give birth without the aid of mans protection quite easily now. men are also free to do as they please sexually, economically, socially ect.

ignore gender roles, they are stupid and out of date. people who simply accept them are sheep. thats not to say that people who follow traditional gender roles are in the wrong, it is a formula that has worked for thousands of years and will most likely continue to work for a long time to come. but there should be no problem breaking away from them. and there should be a much greater acceptance to anyone who chooses this path.

Specify the question. With the existing posted question, the logical answer would be stereotypes.

It makes sense in the evolutionary sense that women should be protected. Women give birth and are way more involved than the males with the infant's upbringing. While a mother is busy being focussed on her offprings' needs (food, water, etc) she's not going to have enough time or energy to watch her back, and in order for the infant to live, dad protects mom so that kid can live to reproduce, and thus genes are continuously passed down. It's survival of the fittest. And it may not make a lot of sense nowadays, but instinct lives on.

1800-1900c. (Period of Enlightenment) also known as modernity-- is largely the reason we have the gender performative roles we have today.

With the developement and the continual evolution of: maths, astronomy, science, time and the polemic charts( the grid), the divide between man and nature became increasingly wider. Man (supposedly) could control and so did control nature (so the introduction of industry, cities, time, maps etc etc.)
Religion and god were pushed to the side--along with superstition from the medieval era--

Anatomically (Latin) before the Enlightenment man and woman were asigned the same "named" body parts....men=penis, women=inverted penis, men=gonads, women=inverted gonads. I was amazed at this information. There is a diagram..I can't remember the name of it though (sorry).

So it is true that with the establishment of medicine female body parts were eventually re-named--and the event of birth gave women a place within nature. So our cultural narratives came to be; men "controlled" nature = men "controlled" women.

All subjects viewed as masculine, therefore controlling the outer world were considered masculine: knowledge, landscape (property), wealth etc.
All feminine aspects of nature were atributted to females: birth, beauty, "natural" land, peace, superstition etc. (which is were the idea of witches came in, herbs, mid-wives etc).

So I agree birth and the biological functions of women have a lot to do with the gender roles we perform today.

The Postmodern expulsion of metanarratives are gradually changing the gender roles, our subjectivities are changing.

I think the most important thing to remember is that we are born with a sex and we are given a gender to perform.