It’s interesting to expand this concept of clothes too.
What would we wear if we started over?
Presumably at least at first it would be based on weather/environment, comfort & convenience.
What do the small number of remaining isolated tribes wear? I seem to recall a lot more toplessness because it’s just easier to feed a baby if you aren’t wearing three layers of clothing with a fiddly little clip mechanism on your nursing bra (yet god forbid a female nipple show up in a mum and baby pic on Instagram).
Personally, I think it’s madness not to accept that some of the behavioural differences between women and men are directly connected to our biology.
On top of that there exists a layer of sex stereotypes that originated from the biological differences. Some of these are quite benign (and dare I say it, sometimes fun to play around with!) but others have been used to oppress women, to endanger working class men and have been escalated and escalated to the point where they are actively harmful to not just women and girls but men and boys too.
Sex based behaviours are like other sex traits - they are ‘on average’. On average, men are taller than women. On average, men are stronger than women. That doesn’t mean there aren’t short men and strong women.
Re: risk taking - I think previous posters are confusing a willingness to take risks with bravery - they are two separate things than can sometimes combine. The police officers in the Nashville school exhibited both.
Women can be extremely brave tho, to the point where they achieve extraordinary things, but that doesn’t mean that we aren’t also (on average!) less inclined to take risks and thus less likely to apply for jobs that include include daily risk to life.
Boys, on average, take more physical risks than girls do. You can see this in play from a very young age and it becomes even more obvious at puberty.
Boys being more prone to risk taking doesn’t make them intrinsically more valuable than girls, in some circumstances it’s a negative trait, driven by impulsivity and short term thinking rather than noble protection.
Risk taking often results in boys and young men landing on the wrong side of the law or causing immense physical damage to themselves. Teenage boys and young men are far more likely to become disabled through stupid shit like cliff jumping or reckless driving.
Luckily it seems to be a bit of a peak, drop, mellow out situation with risk taking behaviours going up at puberty, peaking by the time the frontal cortex finishes developing and then it drops off a bit when long term thinking kicks in.
if (on average) a boy’s biological impulses can make him take stupid risks, then surely good male socialisation (by which I mean, useful to society and rewarding to the individual) should be focussed on lessening the stupidity while praising the fearlessness, encouraging social responsibility and rewarding bravery and selflessness (eg by paying first responders more!)
The women and girls who are outliers in the risk taking stakes should also be praised and rewarded when their inclinations are harnessed for the greater good (whereas traditional female socialisation would discourage risk taking and punish girls who exhibited it) and boys who are naturally inclined towards being cautious shouldn’t be shamed for their lack of risk taking behaviours, but encouraged in the directions that suit the traits they do have (whereas traditional male socialisation would peer pressure them into doing stupid shit).
Women aren’t obliged to have babies anymore and that’s a good thing, women are now encouraged to develop their intellect through the same institutions that were once the preserve of men) also a good thing.
Nonetheless, the fact remains that the (average!) traits of the female body have evolved around the baby making aspect.
It’s why we have more body fat, it’s why we grow breasts.
Doesn’t it make sense that it’s also why we are (on average!) less inclined to drive recklessly, start fights in pubs and jump off cliffs for shits and giggles?
We’ve got all sorts of scientific knowledge now but when humans evolved a heterosexually active female human of fertile age would spend half of every month not knowing whether she’s pregnant or not.
Doesn’t it make sense that at certain points in the menstrual cycle we’d be more or less inclined towards risk taking behaviours? That our strength or activity levels might vary depending on what our cycle is doing? That our agreeableness might vary too? Most of us are well aware that we can be irritable when premenstrual but perhaps not that the opposite can happen before ovulation?
This is the sort of science that is being explored with female athletes, how to make the best of their cycle in terms of training and competition (and it’s something males who say they are women will never have to think about in their training and completion schedules 😬).
A lot of women haven’t been prevented from independently recognising their own patterns due to the near-ubiquitous use of hormonal contraceptives (which work either by mimicking hormonal levels in early pregnancy (and fighting against our natural hormones to keep us there for extended periods, sometimes for years at a time eg mirena) or by arresting ovulation and creating a synthetic version of a cycle over the top of what’s left of our natural one. This resembles a cycle but anything man made is obviously going to be cruder (eg ‘withdrawal bleeds’ instead of periods on the combined pill). Of course, for some women, especially those who have non-typical hormonal cycles the cruder, more simplistic version of a cycle can give welcome relief.
Don’t get me wrong, I think contraceptive tech has been amazing in terms of women’s Lib, but it’s at the cost of a couple of generations of women not really knowing what their baseline is and in hindsight, it’s not really a surprise that fucking about with a woman’s cycle can effect her mental health (both positively and negatively).
I quit hormonal contraceptives for good circa 2003 when I got a mirena coil and promptly put on three stone, started crying uncontrollably and clumps of my hair fell out (male GP refused to believe me and I had to beg to have it taken out). I switched to copper coil and as soon as period tracking on smart phones became a thing I started using them, albeit in a very lackadaisical sort of way.
I’ve now got about 14 years of no-exogenous-hormones cycle data, and can tell you categorically that there are two days a month where I am an extremely nice version of myself (follicular phase right before ovulation) and three days a month when I can move a wardrobe upstairs single handedly (luteal phase as progestogen peaks). There are two days a month where my kids know not to ask me anything about anything because they’ll get an immediate no (when both oestrogen and progesterone are lowest so last two days of cycle).
What women most likely naturally recognised about themselves for centuries (even without fancy words to describe it) and then had interrupted with the advent of hormonal contraceptives is being replaced with scientific papers, but the papers are dense, hard to connect with real-life experiences and are no doubt at least a bit tainted by the ever present spectre of Big Pharma.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4113343/
The GenderBorg’s influence on language and priorities in endocrinological and OBGYNAE departments, as well as their influence on journalistic integrity (even at scientific periodicals) makes it even less likely that women (the cunty kind) will be able to access useful, relevant, digestible material that allows for properly informed consent re: contraceptive choices.
TLDR (still long, sorry/not sorry) our biology, including our hormones definitely influence our abilities and behaviours and pretending it’s all socialisation prevents women from understanding ourselves properly.
Older women become stubborn, argumentative ‘Karen’ type figures because the waning of our agreeable hormone levels, coupled with the reduced impetus for finding a heterosexual mate post the fertile years makes us less likely to give a shit what men think. I think this is fucking great!
Our biology is probably a big reason why so many younger women are BeeeeKinders to the GenderBorg (seeking male approval, fawning instead of fighting or flighting) and a contributing factor to the phenomenon of late-blooming lesbians - once the mammalian instinct to make and raise a new human is sated we are more able to freely look at what else we might want in order to live a happy and fulfilled life (socialised compulsory heterosexuality aka ‘comphet’ is likely a factor too, but one that is surely waning in most western societies?).
We know that giving males synthesised female hormones changes their behaviours (depot provera contraceptive injections have been used to chemically castrate sex offenders, and everyone knows that poor Alan Turing was forced to take estrogen as a punishment for homosexuality).
What it doesn’t do is change them into females. They are still males, males with artificially altered hormones that affect some aspects of their behaviour (and it doesn’t just affect libido, which is why there are some serious ethical dilemmas around using hormones for this purpose, and the only thing that justifies it is prevention of harm to children).
Men have peaks and troughs in terms of lifespan hormone production but once puberty is done the other changes are less pronounced than the changes women experience, we have monthly cycles and (optional!) pregnancies and postpartum phases, as well as an end to the fertile stage and the menopause years.
The maiden/mother/crone aspect of our lives keeps us divided by making us fear turning into our mothers (but now I am awfully like my mother I can’t imagine what I was so afraid of? My mum was ace).
Which reminds me, I really need to buy Victoria Smith’s Hags.
Basically, anyone who thinks that acknowledging the connections between female biology and female behaviour is problematic or anti feminist needs to examine their own internalised misogyny.
Women are different (in SOME aspects) to men.
That doesn’t mean women are lesser than men.
Acknowledging difference (and even celebrating some bits of it) doesn’t mean women have to stay home and cook and clean and pop out babies on command.
(I can’t cook for toffee).
It does mean that when a heterosexual couple have a baby the woman is (on average!) far better at responding to the infant’s needs.
Doesn’t mean she can’t go back to work after minimum maternity leave if she wants to.
Does mean she shouldn’t be forced back to work immediately, even if she physical recovers from the birth within a day or two.
Doesn’t mean a separated dad should be prevented from having visitation time with a new baby.
Does mean he can’t insist on overnights.
We need to acknowledge the (average!) differences in order for women to obtain and maintain the legal and societal protections we need to live safe, fulfilled, happy lives.
We also need legal and societal protections that acknowledgment where we DON’T differ much at all (ie academic achievement) in order to prevent shithead men and their fawning female sidekicks using the differences as an excuse to oppress and control.
Denying biological differences in (average!) physicality just results in men getting sponsored by tampax and winning at women’s sports.
Denying biological differences in (average!) behaviours makes it really hard to justify female only spaces on the grounds of safety, dignity and privacy.
Women don’t tend to stick their heads/camera phones under cubicle partitions to perve on unsuspecting occupants.
Most men don’t either, but there are enough who do to not want any of them in the ladies.