Can femininity ever be more than restrictive stereotypes?

[HamsterToast]

There is a movement in India to bring more value to 'feminine' traits (you know the drill, nurturing, caring, sweet etc). The hope is to improve women's rights this way.

It made me wonder about internalised misogyny and how I had learned to have no respect for my so-called feminine traits.

Can valuing feminine traits help women's rights? Or do we need to disassociate women totally from ideas of the feminine?

Not if we call being nurturing and caring a feminine trait, no. That makes masculine the opposite of nurturing and caring. I.e. shits. I very much welcome the idea of encouraging all human beings to be nurturing and caring and dispelling the myth that men are incapable of such behaviours. That would do wonders for women's rights. Calling men or women 'sweet however is disempowering/infantalising.

You are female (I assume), so whatever your personal traits are, they are feminine.

And if they're good traits, value them. Bollocks to valuing ones associated with looking after others above anything else.

Caring, sensitivity, sweetness, nurturance etc are good traits. The problem with the concept of femininity is that it arbitrarily designates half of humanity to never experiencing them, and half of humanity to experiencing nothing else.

Let's encourage everyone to model the best virtues. Let's encourage everyone to work hard at getting rid of their vices.

Let's stop saying certain useful traits belong predominantly to one sex more than another and acknowledge that if something is a good thing for a human to be, it won't matter what sex they are.

Kindness is not feminine. Assertiveness is not masculine. They are useful human attributes.

Now, if you're talking about valuing the shitwork that women are usually assigned to because of the assumption that we have certain traits that men don't, then I am right there. Because the consequence of the feminine trait assumption is that women do the drudgery better. Look at the words I am using for it - deliberately chosen, I might add - words that already show the low status so much 'women's work' has.

It's all of a piece. Leave ideas of 'femininity' and 'masculinity' in the fashion world where they belong. Value virtuous, good things - like caring, leading, being kind, being assertive and protective etc. Eschew abuse, exploitation and oppression. We'll all be much better for it.

Feminine is a word, like elegant and masculine, that is entirely in the eye and judgment of the beholder and differs from culture to culture and generation to generation.

Concepts of feminine and masculine are unfortunately tied to the sex people were born as.
I don't see how it's possible to "bring more value" to feminine traits seeing as women are force fed and pushed into having these "traits" in the first place because men don't want to do that shit.

Maybe instead being feminine as a man shouldn't be such a crime, rather than femininity itself needing more "value" added.

Those traits absolutely have value. But they aren't owned by females. We should encourage them in everyone.

Femininity is powerful ignore it at your peril.

The concepts of feminity and masculinity should be to us as abhorrent as racial stereotypes.

YY

I don't feel schemes like this have the potential to be emancipating: more the reverse: reinforcing 1950's tropes doesn't benefit anyone. Women don't have to be sweet, or nice. Still women. Women don't have to have long hair and smooth legs and lipstick and skirts: still women. still deserve rights.

I don't think that will improve women's rights.
Ensuring girls have equal access to education, employment and women's health care (contraception). Punishing violence against women and forced marriage. Those are ways that women's rights can be improved.
Forget masculinity and femininity concentrate on gender-blind virtues of kindness and respect for others and so on.