To think we’ve lost the concept of men being men and women being women, and society is worse off for it?

[ThatNimbleKhakiAnt]

Traditional gender roles may not have been perfect but at least they provided structure. Now everything is blurred and instead of progress, we just have confusion. Are relationships stronger? Are people happier? I don’t think so. It feels like in trying to fix things, we’ve just made everything messier.

AIBU to think we’ve lost something valuable?

I knew i'd find you here having wifey wars when I saw the title!

They really do need to bring back that 😂 emoji…why hello again!

Yes I think so too. Definitely seeing more of these posts, especially with the home education gang for some reason.

But then it sounds like it's your choice.
The whole point of feminism is to have a choice and full agency over your life.

I am very familiar with the US and 100% agree. The US evangelical right also firmly has the UK in its sights. Politically, the Trump administration would do anything to drag the UK away from Europe as much as possible.

I cannot believe no one has said this yet, but ok.. ... ( clearing throat, and taking a stance like when Prince George in the Blackadder series was taught by two actors how to make a speech): " The good old days when men were real men, women were real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri".
(bow and exit left)

This is absolutely absurd perception.
The almost whole history of human kind finding things to eat was responsibility of everyone in the household. Actually, in many countries it is and was primarily women's problem, because they actively take care of children.

The golden age of US was one of the only eras where the mythical traditional patriarchate really meant that Mickey will be the one who will go and solve it.

I've read stories from current North Korea, which is technically patriarchal, but in effect women are the ones putting food on the table there.

So yes, that young woman isn't taking a stereotypically men's role, she is doing what women has always done, fighting for her family to survive.

But there's no denying that society is completely fucked up now, right? Have you all missed that? And the man-bashing thing doesn't help. Sure, there were lots of negative things back in the 1950s, especially for women but we are still struggling and fighting for our rights to single sex spaces. Now, we barely have the right to call ourselves women! We all have to take the blame for this because the most vocal trans activist types are usually women. Women are erasing their own identity!!
Also, look at all the women-bashing that's going on here by (surprise, surprise) women! Why shouldn't someone decide they want to divide the family jobs in a traditional way if they want? By that I mean, one person earns the money, one person concentrates on the kids. If that works, what's wrong with it?
This pressure that women apply to other women is ridiculous. We are biological beings and men and women are not interchangeable. There are certain things that men and women are better at and happier doing and let them just do whatever they want. This remind me of that sketch Ricky Gervais did about someone seeing an ad on a notice board for guitar lessons and shouting 'but I don't want guitar lessons.' Fine if you don't want to divide the roles in a certain way but stop knocking other people's choices if that's what they want. Jeez, women are their own worst enemies!!

I cannot think of one solitary thing my gender makes me “better at”.

There maybe so biological
realities around the creation of children but that’s it. And as somebody without kids not a single one of my strengths is linked to my sex.

I also think society is far from fucked up and think the 50s would be an awful place for me to be.

There are loads of psychology papers on how men and women differ in terms of temperament and personality traits.

Glad to hear you think society is not fucked up though! It's not my experience.

There really aren’t. I suggest you read Cordelia Fine’s Delusions of Gender.

So you think women and men are basically the same? You can't see any difference in what they are interested in in life? There's no point in arguing about this if you can't see a difference.

I completely agree.

AVERAGE GROUP differences.

There are plenty of papers on average group differences.

But an average is just an average. There is far more variability within groups than between them. Men are taller than women on average. It would be stupid to think this means every man is taller than every woman or all women are the same height and that height is short.

Before I am an average I am an individual and not one of my strengths is linked to my sex.

I'm learning to clock the "see next", "see all" option before I bother to engage further. I see in this case that the Ploppalong Cassidy has plopped and run so I'll pass on this one.

I unfortunately only did that after responding.

Ok, let's say there are some observable differences. Are they really born, coming from biology, or are they results of socialization within gender norms?
I hope you agree that at least partially it is learned, not born difference. Now, is this difference which is forced on men and women actually useful and fair?

It still contributes to Operation Let Them Speak, so there is that.

If that’s your level of argument, I can’t help you. Like I said, do some reading.

As a starting point, bear in mind that we can’t have the remotest idea of how men and women might behave ‘biologically’, without gendered socialisation, until we have a control group somehow raised to adulthood with no gendered socialisation.

You're right. Men and women are more the same than they are different. But at the tails of the bell curve that's where the differences really matter. For example, if you picked a random man and a random woman from a bus stop and guessed that the man was more aggressive, you'd be right 60 per cent of the time. That's a difference but not a massive one. However, if you went looking for the 1 in 100 most aggressive people, they are all men. I suggest you read a bit about the concept of overlapping bell curves.

Another example: Men are more interested in 'things', women are more interested in 'people' on average. In fact, a woman has to be more into 'things' than 85 per cent of women, to be as into 'things' as the average man.
This is one of the most robustly demonstrated differences between men and women by psychologists.

There are also obviously physical differences- men are stronger and taller than women on average, they have a larger muscle mass on average and larger lung capacity on average. And genitalia obviously! :-)

But at the end of the day if you can't see differences between men and women then you are deluding yourself.

Those differences have fuck all to do with gender roles. As a pregnant woman I can tell you I am feeling my female nature every second of every day right now. Do I welcome my DH telling me he's going to step back from his job so I can keep on building my business? Absolutely. Do I think less of him as a man for doing that? Absolutely not! Do we have different parenting styles? Yes, they're complimentary and I respect his approach like he respects mine. I grow the kid. He's got facial hair. But we've got to be a team across the board so neither of us ends up prisoner of our biology and artificial societal expectations.

That's what I've been saying all along. Men and women have to work as a team and divide the work whatever they see fit, whether that's traditional roles or not.

My concern is that reactionary thinking may very quickly lead us to where this toxic bunch wants us: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/09/pete-hegseth-video-pastors-women-voting

To be honest I'm not sure. A lot of these cultures - the ones DH grew up in included - have developed and westernized and that's caused a lot of issues. They're still in the process of becoming, as I suppose we all are. Though I would argue western cultures are on the downhill slide of unbecoming - all civilisations end, eventually, whether by internal collapse or takeover. So we're at different points in the process - very hard to compare them or say what advantage / disadvantage there is in the matriarchal set up. Except there seems to be more pragmatism, so this is just how we do things, rather than a special status or power conferred to one group over the other. The culture is collectivist, not individualist though, so that results in a very different lens through which the world is seen.

I do know as a teen entering Western society DH was bemused by the male obsession and control over breasts. Where he was women were topless (though not usually the white women). Breasts weren't considered sexual, the underside of the thigh was. Generally speaking men were hunter gatherers while women made the decisions. Western influence and development has overtaken a lot of the traditional male role, which has caused a decent amount of depression and malaise in men, but our knowledge of those impacts is limited to 25+ years ago.