OK, so I'm embarking on a new book (fiction) and its main theme will be this: how do men and women form loving, successful partnerships in the context of the new gender stereotypes that are developing in society. The character whose viewpoint we take is a man (as am I).
So, I'm a keen reader of pop psychology and sociology but (for context) have a background in the physical sciences (QM, cosmology and such). I'm in broad agreement with the principle that our gender stereotypes are learned rather than hard-wired, but from what I've read it does seem very important for even very small children to differentiate between the genders per se. Considering that the "blank slate" approach to child development has now been broadly discounted, and how various experiments have shown how important it is for us to form tribes (in one mathematical simulation it was shown that it can directly benefit the spread of genes to be tribal), is it possible / likely that we can't help but identify with our own gender?
If this is the case (thoughts please!) then it occurs to me that trying to create a society free of gender stereotypes may do more harm than good. My argument would be this: gender stereotypes provide necessary tools for us to make sense of the world around us. If we attempt to remove gender stereotypes completely, we are left with one of two situations:
a) men and women are simply unable to form a coherent picture of who they are as individuals.
b) Stereotypes sneak in by the back door, and aren't recognized for what they are.
My opinion is that men are falling into category a) and women into b). Remove the validity of the traditional male stereotypes and non-gender specific traits that are associated with men become something that may be rejected. So, for example, men are "supposed" to be protective of women. This is a gender stereotype associated with much of what is wrong with a misogynistic society. However, the desire to want to protect the important women in a man's life has (in an ideal, equal society) nothing to do with his gender or the genders of those he is wanting to protect. This leaves the man with no reference point, and he has to go through the process, trial and error, of learning how to express those feelings without being sexist. Many men will simply give up, as only the emotionally intelligent and sensitive will be able to work it out.
The new female stereotype of the woman as being able to do everything on her own - successful career, well-rounded childcare, look after hopeless hubby etc etc - not only contributes to the problems of male a) but potentially puts women in the invidious position of consciously rejecting help from others on the basis that its not what a woman should do. If a desire to conform to stereotypes is hard-wired, then following the ultra-capable woman stereotype is a real bind. Whilst there are ultra-capable women out there who do have loving, equal partnerships it seems that they are happy because they are with ultra-capable men. Most women are not ultra-capable and most men are not either, so a woman confronted with the ultra-capable woman stereotype must either seek out one of the few ultra-capable men or choose to reject men altogether. Or feel a failure because she isn't ultra-capable and is, therefore, not a proper woman.
Boiling it all down, I suppose the questions I have are these: how do we know whether or not the idealized models of men and women we are designing through feminism are not gender stereotypes themselves, and if we inevitably have gender stereotypes no matter what we do, what should those stereotypes look like?