"It's not all relative"

Can we make accurate generalizations about people? Sex roles (ie a man's job vs. a woman's job)?

Been debating this with a classmate. When is something relative and when is it universal? What is a "real" woman? What is a "real" man? I told my classmate that it was all relative. It depended on who was defining and determining the nature of things.

Supposed to....that's what bothers me. The insistence that we do what we are supposed to do. Women have wombs, so we are supposed to have children. Anyone who goes against what they are supposed to do is looked down on, understandably. Sometimes that social control gets out of control and limits freedoms.

What about man being the protector-breadwinner and women being the child-raiser? Can I say that a "true man" should hold his emotions in in order to survive and ensure the survival of his family?

Who is to dictate who behaves how?

Unless we know why we are here in the first place we will never know what it is we are meant to do.

I wasn't asking about what we were meant to do as much as what we tend to do.

Why ask the wrong question. It is much more important to know what we were created to do than just what we tend to do.

The words "should" and "meant" throw me off. According to whom should we do these things? What determines what we should do anyway ?

It is what it is as well as what you make it.

There are always three sides, one is constant, fixed, a reality created by a power not our own, but never fully understood or seen while always influential as a structural base (black)

Another is always relative, subjective, seen by all, digested by the senses and interpreted differently by every individual mind, even when thought to be in perfect agreement (white)

The last is the mixture of the two, obvious to some, denied by just as many, both definitive and abstract, the miraculously impossibly actual contradiction that is what it is, and it is all things, (grey)

What this means for your questioning Attolia is that there are dimensions that do not restrict any form or function to any one designed, proclaimed, deducted, demanded, meaning or purpose.

A woman can be a woman and even a man or neither, a mother and a barren womb, a breadwinner and a housewife, a rocket scientist and a simple mind, happy and sad, or none of the above.

Boundaries do exist, from any number of sources and creations, but you do not have to abide by them or make them your own, but you can.

One can be a part of a society, but not of their culture, one can share ones culture but choose to grow to something different or new.

Stereotypes exist because people fall in line, exceptions to rule exist because some never will, even though they can.

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Can we make accurate generalizations about people? Sex roles (ie a man's job vs. a woman's job)?

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The answer to such a question is always yes, no, and maybe. Even if it makes your head hurt.

One can be one thing on the outside while another within.

Isn't that how it is normally anyway, and doesn't that make you both?

And doesn't that also make it all relative to which ever perspective it is viewed from, as well as relative to whatever aspect is viewed?

And who determined the laws of nature?

Probably whomever determined the laws of god, so I guess I'll stick with that being unknown, wouldn't want to be arrogant and presumptuous and claim things I can't know, that would be silly.

My understanding is that the bone structure and musculature of the women is almost identical to the mans except her pelvis and pelvic floor differs to accommodate child birth. Beyond that physically the construction of body is identical. An archaeologist bereft those parts of a skeleton may have real difficulty sexing the remains. It is mostly done by making a guess based of the development of the muscle and in children they can't even make this poor guess.

Physical development is also strongly affected by physical activity. It has been statistically proven that fathers seem to be more protective of female babies and toddlers than males and that females get less physical activity as a result. Such early habits are likely formative both to the bodies structure, its chemistry and behaviour in later life. The question of whether women raised in a society where they are expected to compete physically with men would develop comparable physical prowess is an open one.

Its one of the reasons I have no intrinsic objection to the notion of women in military combat roles or unisex competition even in aggressive sports.

What of the neurological differences? It's true there do appear to be small differences in the size and development of certain brain regions among the sexes but the brain like the muscle is not a static entity and will change with use and upbringing. By the same token these differences are only an average. People who have conditions such as autism and even dyslexia usually owe it to some under lying variation in brain morphology. Differences that make the small variations between the sexes look miniscule. If we are to say dyslexics have less in common with non dyslexics than men and women have with each other then how much store should we really put in the argument that there is some in born difference in the temperaments of men an women.

I would argue that beyond sexual function there really is no intrinsic difference between men and women.