Are/should male norms be the benchmark for female 'equality'? Should 'femininity' be prized too?

[ChesterBelloc]

Inspired by an interesting comment on another thread:

"What I find interesting though is that in all the (justified) talk about equality the standard is set by a male, testosterony , capitalist set up. For a woman to be successful she must do what men have traditionally done. That’s great. But why does no one tell young men that they should aspire to do the roles that women have traditionally filled? Because caring is not valued as highly as producing. And that is a bit of a problem in my opinion."

Two contentions there:

1. female success is now measured against traditionally male benchmarks (financial independence, professional success - though I would also add the 'equality' of her personal relationships)

2. caring roles (traditionally associated more with women) are not valued as highly as 'producing' roles

I absolutely believe that every human life is of the same intrinsic value, and absolutely do not believe that men are 'better', or that what were commonly considered 'masculine' traits are more important/valuable than 'feminine' traits. They're not a binary, or a hierarchy: they're just different.

However, I do believe that the work that women have traditionally done (keeping house, raising children, caring for elderly family members etc) has been steadily de-valued, and is now considered 'drudge work' that can/should be done by (mostly) minimum-wage workers, freeing up women for the far more important, worthy task of competing with men for success in the capitalist labour market ignoring the fact that those who work in the 'caring' professions are overwhelmingly women, looking after other people's children/parents rather than their own. Why is caring work only considered a worthwhile use of one's time if it has a wage attached?

This could turn into an essay, so I'll stop there, and simply ask if you think that men and women should aim for identical life outcomes (clearly impossible in the face of the biological need for future generations), or if there is any mileage in the idea that the sexes are different, and that the more 'female-associated' traits should be considered just as much of a strength as the more 'male-associated'? For example, is female biology (including menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding) a hindrance that needs ever-more sophisticated work-arounds, or something we should prize as a society (for example, making considerable adjustments to accommodate it in the labour market)?**

I'm expecting lots of disagreement with most of the above, but I'd appreciate a civil discussion!

"In the police child protection, sexual offences departments have more female officers- they choose this role, not pushed into it.

Or could it possibly be that children find women less threatening, especially since it’s overwhelmingly likely that men will have committed the crimes against them, so the women volunteer (it must be an extremely taxing role for a person)"

Fizzy, I'd agree with this. I think women's naturally higher levels of empathy will make them more likely to understand that they will be less threatening to abused children than men, and they are willing to sacrifice themselves to do a horrendous job, for someone else's benefit.

(I don't mean to infer that men are not able to sacrifice themselves for others, but I think, ironically, this impulse for them may be more closely tied into their own immediate family unit, whom they (over the centuries) have strived to protect, depend and provide for. There is also the 'Women & Children First' attitude, honourably demonstrated on the Titanic).

I think the whole idea of self-sacrifice has become deeply unfashionable now, though, across the whole of society, and I think the ill-effects will be felt deeply for generations to come.

I’m a scientist.

The evolutionary psychology movement is deeply misogynistic. Because you can justify almost any awful behaviour with ‘but we’ve evolved to..!’

But you can drive a bus through their arguments.

1. We haven’t ‘evolved to do’ anything. Evolution doesn’t have a goal. It reacts in the present time to present factors. That means that aggressive mae behaviour was adaptive at one point. And now it’s not. Neither time was ‘right’ - but we live in the present.

1. We have a degree of control over our actions. Testosterone made me do it is not a defence in court. You’re a sentient human being, controll yoirself.

Femininity? What IS that? It’s societal conditioning of what’s expected from women - to be nice, pretty, quiet and to service men. No thanks. I want to be me.

Femininity or lack of it is used to bash women when they step out of a role that men want them in. Look at the Brienne character in GoT for example. Or the feminazi crap that MRAs come out with. Or the kerfuffle over wonder woman’s thighs. Women are ‘supposed’ to be thin and passive and fragile. When they become strong, either physically, socially, financially then they need to be taken down because they are a threat. And thus the stereotype of the feminazi sitting in her lake of male tears, or the business woman with her cowed husband’s balls in her briefcase. It’s all bollocks, but it reinforces the idea that uppity women should know their place.

Caring roles? Should be open to all. It’s not a female preserve for any reason other than it’s traditionally been women who do the shitwork.

Here in Sweden, I see plenty of male kindergarten teachers. That’s great - it also means it’s seen as a good career and it’s paid ok.

EBear, my point is that some of these strengths occur innately more, at a population level, in women; not that an individual woman is necessarily better at something than an individual man. Skills can be learnt, but I wouldn't describe empathy as a skill.

Do women have higher empathy? Is that actually true? I’m not sure it is but willing to be proven wrong if you have data.

And self sacrifice... no again this is women being co opted to serve. You hear all this ‘oh we’ve lost so much in the West, our elderly in country x are all loved and cared for in the home.’ That sounds lovely. The reality is that it’s women doing all the caring, at the expense of everything else. The men do what they want and the women do what they must.

The starting premises of the argument are faulty, namely:

Women are more caring
Women have an innate femininity
Strength and power is masculine
For a women to become strong she must lose something

These are not innate properties of the female. They are socialised into us from the start.

some of these strengths occur innately more, at a population level, in women;

I’d want to see data before I believed that

my point is that some of these strengths occur innately more, at a population level, in women; not that an individual woman is necessarily better at something than an individual man. Skills can be learnt, but I wouldn't describe empathy as a skill.

I don't agree - it's mostly down to socialisation, and that includes learning to be empathetic.

It's thinking that something is more innate in one sex than the other that helps keep power structures the way they are.

Sadly, traditionally female roles are not valued by western society. The power/work/strength of a woman behind a successful male CEO isn’t generally acknowledged. That’s a pity because many woman do want to raise their families themselves but societal pressures put this as very low status (when in truth there is no more important job).

It’s absurd to suggest there are no biological differences but equally absurd to suggest there are very many things a woman cannot do. There are, however, roles women and men are each better suited to.

Femininity in various guises exists in virtually all societies. The roles allocated are part of the evolutionary process. Not because of any long term aim other than survival. Pregnant women and babies are vulnerable; men had to take on responsibility for protecting them from all manner of risks if their own gene pool was to continue. Those roles persist today.

There are, however, roles women and men are each better suited to.

The only roles men are innately better suited to than women are

1. Sperm donor
2. Penis model

Everything else, absolutely every other difference, is down to culture and society.

The roles allocated are part of the evolutionary process.

Evolution isn’t some kind of benevolent higher power. It’s a reaction to environmental factors which include social and cultural factors. Systems, like the patriarchy, replicate themselves, become more intensified through the generations, unless they are disrupted.

Let’s get on and disrupt.

It’s a reaction to environmental factors which include social and cultural factors

It's not even that. It's not a reaction to anything.

The roles allocated are part of the evolutionary process.

No: this is a profound misunderstanding of evolution. Evolution does not act towards a goal. It does not have an agenda. It truly is blind. Evolution uses as its raw material two things. The inherent variability in the population and the environmental factors present at that particular moment. A variation more suited to the present environment is more likely to persist to the next generation.

It’s no good using ‘because we evolved that way’ as an excuse for male behaviour. We lived in caves and hunted big game just an eyeblink ago, for a tiny proportion of our evolutionary history. Now we live in cubicles and click mice. Perhaps before that we were matriarchal troop structured primates? Who knows.

On average, men are physically stronger than women. So a role with greater strength need may in average be filled by a male. These roles are not the norm now - let’s take truck driver as an example. Twenty years ago trucks were hard to drive. You needed to be strong to turn the wheel. Now they all have power steering. And hence a good proportion of the mega trucks on the building sites near me are driven by young women.

I can’t think of many purely strength based roles - and ironically the ones I can think of are lower skill generally and lower paid. Perhaps deep sea diver - well paid, need to be able to lift about 120lb of kit.

Any job that relies on not pure strength or actively requiring a functional penis is as doable by women as men.

Children raised in institutions would be bad for children, bad for society as a whole.
Socialism whilst sounding good on paper- is selling out on freedom. Parents would hand over their power to the state to raise children.
The focus can't be purely on materialistic things to the detriment of society as a whole. Individualism and "me, me, me" attitude is at the core of identity politics and it's poisonous. Family is the very reason I want to earn a wage, so my kids can have a good life.
Yes women need opportunity and should have freedom to choose how they live, but let's not remove the importance of children and the vulnerable just so we can go out and earn more. I'd take family over money any day.

@Anatidae said it better than me.

I think some women are frightened to believe that it’s social and cultural factors - over many, many generations- that mean overall men commit more violent crimes and women are more prevalent in caring roles or show more empathy. Feminism and equality don’t want to destroy caring, empathy etc. They do want to spread it around.

Women are not innately more emotionally intelligent or morally good than men. Sorry! But both men and women are damaged by the patriarchy. Maybe a matriarchy would be differently but equally damaging. Who knows?

anatidae
We are saying at some point in our ancestory there were different selection pressures on male/female so there are differences physically and behaviourally- yes in modern times those selection pressures are removed, thus we can choose what we want to do, but some differences remain.

We are saying at some point in our ancestory there were different selection pressures on male/female

And they are saying this is a fundamental misunderstanding of evolution.

I should say "we" not "they".

roles allocated are part of the evolutionary process

Trying to work out if this is a wind up or if you believe the 1950s ladybird book of the caveman is actual history rather than speculative fiction

But that’s not a logical explanation, nor is it necessarily true.

We were once tree dwelling primates. We were once a kind of lemurid small mammal. We were once unicellular slime. Now we are urban dwelling desk jockeys. Which bit gets to dictate what men in the 21st century behave as?

Human society has never just been ‘aggressive males and submissive females’ - look at the astounding differences in tribal societies. Some are matriarchal, some are patriarchal. Huge differences in social setups - humans are adaptable. We are omnivores, we adapt well to different climates and environments and we do it quickly. Hunter gatherers is what we were most recently, and actually, they don’t have huge sexual differences in resource provisioning. I suspect we never have actually - the idea of the women tending the hearth and the men going out to hunt has little to no athropological basis - it’s us putting our own cultural assumptions on the past.

Humans as a species don’t have much sexual dimorphism (large bodily differences between the sexes) at all. if anything, that indicates that there has never been a sustained period of manly big men doing manly things. Species with huge sexual dimorphisms do exist - we aren’t one of them.

The evolutionary psychology argument is a fallacy, and rightly seen as such in scientific circles.

Evolution is change in frequency or genes in a population. What you are describing is natural selection. males and females would have had different selection pressures- reproductively we are different and reproductive success depend on different variables, i.e. Males are more successful by quantity of mates, females by quality of mates. Reproduction is more biologically costly for females- More energy, time- pregnancy, lactation, defending their young. Because of the cost involved females are choosier and more selective about who they mate with.
As I said monogamy was a trade off because of the mutual benefits.
As I said one behavioural difference is males are more aggressive and higher sex drive.
If you don't think this is the case how do you explain

• men being interested in porn, lap dancing clubs, prostitution, females on average don't pursue this kind of stimulation. I don't think it's cultural , men seem more driven to this visual stimulation.

Numerous experiments have shown testosterone has behavioural influences when administered on female animals.

Humans are dimorphic- women have less body hair, softer facial features, softer voice, breast tissue, curvier hips, smaller waist etc... we are dimorphic, it's obvious.

People reject evolutionary differences because it doesn't support their ideology. The fact that we are dimorphic shows the different selection pressures were at play at some point

No missy I don’t mean just differences in secondary sexual characteristics when I say humans are not very sexually dimorphic.

I mean massive differences in size and physiology. This runs from the sexes being almost identical to huge differences in size and appearance.

Here’s a particularly dimorphic species - this type of angler fish.

And I do sort of know what I’m talking about with evolution, honest ;)

This is an interesting discussion. I dont think anyone disagrees that caring and empathy are traits that should be more highly valued and rewarded in society. The problem is framing these traits as being inherently feminine and more career orientated traits as being inherently masculine.

There have been a number of studies showing that, on a population level, there are some differences in some areas between male and female brains. BUT if you look at an individual brain, only 1 in 6 will conform to a gender specific pattern (ie have all the typically female or male features). The majority of us have mosaic brains with some 'female' areas and some 'male' areas. Since these studies were done on adults it is also impossible to say how much the differences that exist on a population level are down to genetics and how much down to the influence of society. The human brain is an immensely plastic thing and very responsive to external influence - that's why we are so good and learning and adapting behaviour.

It's anecdote rather than science, but in my own household we had a pretty even division of labour until our first child was born. Whilst my husband was on his two weeks paternity, it was him who did the majority of the caring work for our son, so I could concentrate on breastfeeding. Part of this was because caring for a newborn did not come at all naturally to me but it did to him. Once he went back to work, I had another 6 months of leave. Of course by the end of that I have ended up as the primary carer and that role has been reinforced by the birth of our daughter. But if we had both been able to take 6 months off I don't think that imbalance would have appeared. It certainly wasn't an inherent difference at the start.

*f you don't think this is the case how do you explain

• men being interested in porn, lap dancing clubs, prostitution,*

Oh my. Nononono. You cannot use ‘evolution’ as an excuse for men doing all these things. That’s societal conditioning of men to be able to do whatever the fuck they like and social subjugation of women to be commodities.

You cannot honestly think that this has justification from our evolutionary past ??