What do you think of traditional gender roles

[Kenemet]

11 hours ago, seanjo said:

No one said women can't fight, but the comparable man will always beat the comparable woman. Men have had to make bayonet charges against other men, I ask again would you send women against men.

I don't know where you get your tennis stats from, but the most famous case I know of is a retired Jimmy Conners beating an in her prime Navratilova.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Sexes_(tennis)

Yes.

And one group of women women did charge into enemy fire in WWI:  http://spartacus-educational.com/Wdeath.htm   And here's how women are doing in the modern American military as of 2015: http://www.military.com/daily-news/2015/08/31/women-in-combat-silver-stars-combat-action-badges-casualties.html  We're seeing combat, voluntarily.  We go into action.  No sitting behind the lines, playing nurse.

Do you think we're cowards because we're female and raised differently than men?   

Women deal with male aggression all the time - from little aggressions like walking down the street and getting cat-called or harassed or fondled to larger ones (spousal abuse.)  We're conditioned to avoid, to defend, to be soft, to not bother men... but when we overcome that, we're as capable as any man.

For pete's sake... we're not some exotic species.  We're human.  

And you may have missed Billie Jean King beating Bobby Riggs.  I remember that match.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Sexes_(tennis)#1973:_Riggs_v_King  You may be too young to remember Babe Zaharias and these others: http://www.totalprosports.com/2011/10/28/9-female-athletes-who-competed-against-men/

A lot of the problem when women enter these fields is NOT that they're incompetent, but that the men work against them to drive them off.  I played professional chess for a short period of time.  I have competed in matches where men threw chess pieces at me when I won, angry that they lost to a woman (instead of seeing me as a better chess player... which I was.)  I've heard other men taunt the ones who lost to me as "you got beat by a wooooomannn, you loser!" - instead of "you lost to a better player."  Other women will have similar stories.

 

[Paranormal Panther]

They're traditional for a reason. Men and women aren't the same, and they reflect that fact of life. Men tend to excel at certain activities, and women tend to excel at certain activities. There's nothing wrong with that. The exceptions should not be forced to fit the rule. The rule should not be forced to fit the exceptions. Let men and women do their own things. Most of them will conform to traditional gender roles when they do that.

[Paranormal Panther]

22 hours ago, seanjo said:

Would you send a regiment of Women on a bayonet charge against a regiment of Men?

Do you think we should get rid of gender in sports, i.e. Women and Men compete together?

That's already happening in sports. The "enlightened and progressive" are embracing "trans inclusion" in sports. This means that former men are dominating the women's events in which they compete. One Australian trans weightlifter took first place, and there are more examples. We should apologize to Lance Armstrong and Sammy Sosa. Performance enhancing drugs should *not* be banned. Let's allow college athletes to participate in Little League baseball too while we're at it. Let's also combine all records that were separated by gender, even though no women will now be in the top ten, let alone in first place. 

[Paranormal Panther]

On 10/15/2017 at 4:25 PM, ChaosRose said:

Outdated and constricting.

Some people just naturally fall outside of the sort of made up social constraints. 

I'm not one of them. I'm pretty girly. But I take notice.

They're natural. They're not outdated or constricting. We can't escape the fact that there are major differences between the genders. I'm talking about ordinary people, not anomalies.

[Paranormal Panther]

On 10/15/2017 at 4:44 PM, ChaosRose said:

I often wonder how different things might be if the gender roles were more fluid. 

How might I be different if I had grown up on stories of women being warriors, rather than princesses?

You aren't in your 80s. Wonder Woman was on TV when I was a toddler. Xena was on TV during the '90s. There were all kinds of female heroes in cartoons and comics through the decades.

[Paranormal Panther]

10 hours ago, Aquila King said:

And I will answer again, yes, so long as these women prove themselves physically adept enough for the task.

I don't know why you keep insisting that we stick to a generalized rule that has plenty of exceptions, rather than just create a physical standard that could be met by anyone regardless of gender. The countless examples of physically adept women poke a tremendous hole in your argument. Yes, men on average are physically stronger then women, but so long as there are exceptions to this (to which there are plenty), then it makes more sense to treat everyone as an individual case, rather then stereotype them based on gender.

That's a good sentiment. Now, compare the best male athlete in each sport to the best female athlete in each sport, and compare the ordinary man to the ordinary woman from the age of 18 to the age of 60. It's common for teen boys to beat elite women in soccer matches, as well as other sports. We can't escape these differences with wishful thinking.

[freetoroam]

On 10/15/2017 at 8:25 PM, Invisig0th said:

?

In what terms do you mean "traditional gender roles"

In job roles?

In dress code?

In manerism?

In what is part of nature?

[freetoroam]

15 hours ago, seanjo said:

No one said women can't fight, but the comparable man will always beat the comparable woman. Men have had to make bayonet charges against other men, I ask again would you send women against men.

 

If the woman was a butch lesbian and the man a camp gay....yeah, send them in together.

But the above is far away from the traditional gender roles.

Women and men can change the way they dress , change their hair style, their manerism, the tone of their voices, a woman can wear Doc Martins just as easily as a man can wear a frock......IMO  i find some of the new non traditional attire and manerisms pretty ridiculous and there is NOTHING individual about it. 

When we talk about gender today, it is not man and woman, it is a whole bunch of what some people want to be identified as .... 

Quote

So on that note...what do i think about traditional gender roles ? 

A lot less complicated than it is today!

Edited October 16, 2017 by freetoroam

[Kenemet]

1 hour ago, Paranormal Panther said:

That's a good sentiment. Now, compare the best male athlete in each sport to the best female athlete in each sport, and compare the ordinary man to the ordinary woman from the age of 18 to the age of 60. It's common for teen boys to beat elite women in soccer matches, as well as other sports. We can't escape these differences with wishful thinking.

"Ordinary" has a huge range, you know.  You can get an "ordinary" man who's 5'5" tall or an "ordinary man who's "6'2" tall (outside those ranges, they are Not Ordinary).  If a woman wants to join a man's team (or vice-versa) and can play at the same level, they should.

I saw your argument about gender roles... and would note that your version of them leaves all the interesting stuff to men while the women get the chores that nobody wants (housekeeping... yeah, some folks of both genders love cleaning and washing and cooking, but there's no reason why this should be assigned to one gender.)  Furthermore, our ability to think and reason are equal with any man's (and better than some men's.)

Why should we be told to go clean house if we're baseball players who are as good as any man on the team?  Why should we stay in the kitchen cooking if we're capable of producing clean, well-designed computer code in Java or Python or any other computer language?  Why should we be told to go tend kids if we have the hands and minds of a skilled surgeon and passed medical school?

Why should we be told to sit and answer the phones and be a secretary when we can carry as much fire equipment as some of the recruits that have already been hired and have as much stamina as these recruits?

[spartan max2]

I think it made sense historically because of evoluntary, biological factors. But I think due to our technological and societal advances it's now outdated and pointless 

[GlitterRose]

5 hours ago, Paranormal Panther said:

They're natural. They're not outdated or constricting. We can't escape the fact that there are major differences between the genders. I'm talking about ordinary people, not anomalies.

I was talking about people who naturally fall outside of the norms, as I stated. 

[GlitterRose]

5 hours ago, Paranormal Panther said:

You aren't in your 80s. Wonder Woman was on TV when I was a toddler. Xena was on TV during the '90s. There were all kinds of female heroes in cartoons and comics through the decades.

No. I'm not in my 20s, either.

I grew up on Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, The Princess and the Pea. 

Sure, there was Wonder Woman, later, and Xena, later than that.\

They were the exceptions to the rule that I had already learned. The rule was that we were supposed to be beautiful and sweet, and then we would be taken care of. 

[Kenemet]

5 hours ago, seanjo said:

All exceptions to the rule. And King was 29 yo I believe to Riggs' 55 yo....

 

Have you read your own link to the Women's Battalion?

I don't quite get where you're coming from here.  You mention a bayonet charge as though soldiers running from a trench into fire are stopped and made to have a genetic test and turned back if there's not an XY sex chromosome.  You talk about women "exceptions to the rule" as though every single human male in the world could outdo every woman but this particular set of one-in-a-billion-women.

Segregating people by roles is something we as a culture are getting beyond - though some parts of America are still rather hide-bound by these notions.  In other first world countries, women have been taking on combat roles and other things you seem to feel are "men only" arenas... and the world hasn't collapsed.  I think America needs to move forward into the 21st century.

And if you relax the gender roles, you get men who are better at parenting (instead of dictating to kids, actually parenting them) and you get away from the "stupid mother/dumb blonde wife" idea (which is dangerous... you don't want a stupid person looking after your infant child or trying to take care of you if you're seriously ill.)

I don't see any advantage in rigid roles.  Perhaps you can tell me why it's such a huge advantage.

[Kenemet]

10 hours ago, ChaosRose said:

No. I'm not in my 20s, either.

I grew up on Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, The Princess and the Pea. 

Sure, there was Wonder Woman, later, and Xena, later than that.\

They were the exceptions to the rule that I had already learned. The rule was that we were supposed to be beautiful and sweet, and then we would be taken care of. 

And most of those women weren't heroes.  They needed the prince to come rescue them.  They didn't look around and say "the heck with this captivity bit.  I'm out of here."

[internetperson]

On 10/15/2017 at 10:09 PM, Kenemet said:

Samaurai wives, for instance, were trained to defend the household with spear and other weapons if they were attacked.

There have been women placekickers in football and women in many other sports.  Some, like weightlifting, require sheer muscle mass.

This doesn't help your argument if these women were considered a last line of defense. I do understand women can fight. Apparently when magellan was off the shores of south america they found half naked women and they sent their best looking guy out to the beach to talk to them. The biggest one there bashed him on the head then they cooked him on the beach. When native americans attacked settlers the women were reported to have fought 'just as viciously as the men' (I may have butchered that and they were reported to fight more viciously). However again, in this case they were protecting kids in the wagons and were the last line of defense.

The flip side of gender roles is men are just a bunch of ogerish dummies. I imagine if all you had to do was have an army made up of women and they'd dominate all the men then someone throughout history would have proven this to be true. 

It's not just in humans either other mammals are typically similar, right? 

I agree with you that if women can compete in a sport and perform as well as men then they should be able to play. But again the placekicker thing really doesn't help your argument, it further proves the point that men are generally going to physically dominate women in aggressive physical sports. This is why the gals that would be the superstars in football are the exception. Keep in mind the men that play don't simply walk into the field. They are the exception of men. 

I agree the roles need to be relaxed. 100% agreed. I played on a pool APA league a few years ago and women were given a starting advantage which is bull****. Even if there weren't exceptions to size differences in men and women and it was a black and white matter pool has zero physical nature about it. It's not a sport it's a game. Such bs. I hope they changed that rule.

Anyway your post reminded me of this for better or worse:

 

Edited October 17, 2017 by internetperson

[Paranormal Panther]

21 hours ago, Kenemet said:

"Ordinary" has a huge range, you know.  You can get an "ordinary" man who's 5'5" tall or an "ordinary man who's "6'2" tall (outside those ranges, they are Not Ordinary).  If a woman wants to join a man's team (or vice-versa) and can play at the same level, they should.

I saw your argument about gender roles... and would note that your version of them leaves all the interesting stuff to men while the women get the chores that nobody wants (housekeeping... yeah, some folks of both genders love cleaning and washing and cooking, but there's no reason why this should be assigned to one gender.)  Furthermore, our ability to think and reason are equal with any man's (and better than some men's.)

Why should we be told to go clean house if we're baseball players who are as good as any man on the team?  Why should we stay in the kitchen cooking if we're capable of producing clean, well-designed computer code in Java or Python or any other computer language?  Why should we be told to go tend kids if we have the hands and minds of a skilled surgeon and passed medical school?

Why should we be told to sit and answer the phones and be a secretary when we can carry as much fire equipment as some of the recruits that have already been hired and have as much stamina as these recruits?

Maybe I should have been more precise. I will use the word, "average". The average man has a size and strength advantage over the average woman. That should go without saying.

Please show me where I said that women should cook and clean. I want a specific quote, not mind-reading. You're putting words in my mouth that I never said. My point is that most people will embrace traditional gender roles because of how we're made (not saying that women should do all of the housework).

Your questions, about housework, have absolutely nothing to do with what I said or thought about this subject. I never believed that any person should be stopped from any activity that they have the ability to do. I don't understand why you're misrepresenting my points. I'm just saying that there are gender differences that can't be denied, even with the use of flimsy propaganda.

As for firefighters, I'm cool with female firefighters (or any other occupation) if they have the ability to do the job. They should not be hired to fill quotas if they are too small and too weak to perform their duties, especially when lives depend on their competency. A female firefighter, who I support because she *has* the needed competency, did an undercover sting that showed that most female recruits were too incompetent to perform their duties, but they were hired to meet ridiculous gender quotas. Like this female firefighter, I believe in the merit system, not unrealistic feminism that sometimes sacrifices lives for dogma.

[Paranormal Panther]

17 hours ago, ChaosRose said:

I was talking about people who naturally fall outside of the norms, as I stated. 

There are people like that. They can do whatever they choose. I won't force or push my views on them, and I won't let them force or push their views on me. Let them do them.

[Paranormal Panther]

17 hours ago, ChaosRose said:

No. I'm not in my 20s, either.

I grew up on Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, The Princess and the Pea. 

Sure, there was Wonder Woman, later, and Xena, later than that.\

They were the exceptions to the rule that I had already learned. The rule was that we were supposed to be beautiful and sweet, and then we would be taken care of. 

In other words, you were exposed to both extremes. They demonstrated that there were choices. I'm cool with beautiful and sweet. Most guys are, despite the best efforts of third-wave feminism.

[Kenemet]

37 minutes ago, Paranormal Panther said:

Your questions, about housework, have absolutely nothing to do with what I said or thought about this subject. I never believed that any person should be stopped from any activity that they have the ability to do. I don't understand why you're misrepresenting my points. I'm just saying that there are gender differences that can't be denied, even with the use of flimsy propaganda.

So what exactly do you mean by "gender roles" and which culture's gender roles do you think need to apply?

And doesn't a role imply a dichotomy and not a spectrum of abilities?

[Paranormal Panther]

Just now, Kenemet said:

So what exactly do you mean by "gender roles" and which culture's gender roles do you think need to apply?

And doesn't a role imply a dichotomy and not a spectrum of abilities?

I'll use occupations as one example. Men still dominate construction. They dominate jobs that require size and strength. These realities are based on gender differences.

[Kenemet]

3 minutes ago, Paranormal Panther said:

I'll use occupations as one example. Men still dominate construction. They dominate jobs that require size and strength. These realities are based on gender differences.

This is a spectrum, though.  

You were advocating, I believe, for separate roles for men and women.  No women in men's areas and vice-versa.

So are you thinking that no women need to be doing construction work of any sort?  

Let's explore how YOU think this should be in your ideal world.  Tell me about it in specifics.

[Paranormal Panther]

1 minute ago, Kenemet said:

This is a spectrum, though.  

You were advocating, I believe, for separate roles for men and women.  No women in men's areas and vice-versa.

So are you thinking that no women need to be doing construction work of any sort?  

Let's explore how YOU think this should be in your ideal world.  Tell me about it in specifics.

No, I never said that! Read what I wrote about female firefighters. I said that men dominate some jobs, like construction, since men have a size and strength advantage. I was very clear that all things should be based on merit, not gender, so we can discuss this further if you don't *misrepresent* my points with straw-man caricatures that have absolutely nothing to do with my comments, let alone my beliefs. 

[Kenemet]

1 hour ago, Paranormal Panther said:

No, I never said that! Read what I wrote about female firefighters. I said that men dominate some jobs, like construction, since men have a size and strength advantage. I was very clear that all things should be based on merit, not gender, so we can discuss this further if you don't *misrepresent* my points with straw-man caricatures that have absolutely nothing to do with my comments, let alone my beliefs. 

I apologize -- I have misinterpreted your statements.  I'd confused you with the OP and his position.  In that case, I would agree with you... base it on merit and ability and not on gender.

[Podo]

Gender roles are dumb and I have no use for them. Everyone should just act how they like, wear what they like, love who they like, and be whoever they like. Any custom around what a man or a woman "should" be/do/say are archaic at best and oppressive at worst.

[Paranormal Panther]

20 hours ago, Kenemet said:

I apologize -- I have misinterpreted your statements.  I'd confused you with the OP and his position.  In that case, I would agree with you... base it on merit and ability and not on gender.

I've done similar things in the past. I accept your apology.