Thread: Gender Roles

you know its funny you ask this question.
its easier to accept that the woman can handle or adapt or do more manly things than the other way around.
kind of like the tom-boy. a woman can get dirty, play in the mud, ride a motorcycle and its accepted more and sometimes even sexier.
(like a woman who wears work-boots and jeans, LOL)
but if you reversed that and seen the man doing more and more woman things, it isnt as acceptable for whatever reason.
most guys can adapt to a woman being more universal or adaptable to sitsuations and things but maybe in todays world for a woman to see a guy doing womans things its a turn off and not manly enough.

Originally Posted by WildChild

I'm curious what do you see as female/male roles? Do you see some backsliding? Where do you think we are headed? What would be ideal?

WC, this is a very very touchy subject I think and you know what I'm saying coming from the same generation as I.

Bottom line, the sexes are different, they are, are they not? I fear to lump them together as the same or reverse the roles is not good or even safe. Mothers should be Mothers, Fathers should be Fathers. They have there roles in life. Maybe you are talking of Women and Men in general but I'm going to hit the subject of Fathers and Mothers, ok?

Lets take a look at it this way. 1st I'll preface my remarks that I believe in the Creation.

In the animal kingdom they are creatures that do what they are made to do by instinct, they don't know any different. Man kind was made with a soul to make decisions but within him or herself there is a conscious deep within to do things the way they were created. When that individual comes to the age of accountability they do what they feel of their own choosing. My feeling is the world as a whole has gone astray from those roles. Just because the world has went a certain way does not mean that any individual should go that way. A majority does not make things right all the time!

I personally don't have a problem of a woman swinging a hammer, I think that's pretty cool. but to think that a Father can raise a child with the same attributes that a Mother would have, I have a problem with that.

When I was raising a family the wife stayed at home and I was the bread winner so to speak. If the wife had to go to work, ok, but I made it possible where she didn't have to and she didn't want to. Our Kids had security in that.

Before WWII many women were that way, why?
That's what made a family unit strong.
And she didn't mind. The War broke out, men were in the battle field and somebody had to be "Rosy Riveter"... the woman!

Again I don't have a problem with the woman working and sharing with the decisions in the home. To me it should be a shared strategy, a goal that's accomplished by 2 working side by side.

I feel the Women is very strong and can accomplish more than the world as a whole will admit. But she has her place as well the Man!

I'm talking of just 1 aspect of your question here, I'll back off then maybe come back for more!

But yes we are backsliding, is it good, depends on how you perceive how it should be and what your inner beliefs are!

I was in K-Mart yesterday, in the toy section...and I kid you not there was a washer/dryer set with a little girl on the box folding a towel with a big smile!! WTF?! And next to it was the same deal, only she was ironing. On the shelf above that was a play work bench with a little boy, of course.

I couldn't believe it!

I consider high school to be the greatest social experiment on the face of the earth, and I most certainly paid attention.
It may have been the crowd I ran with, but there are still many factors conditioning both men and women to keep women down. I was in NJROTC all four years. I became the commanding officer (highest rank) my senior year, in charge of a passel of under-disciplined wanna-be Marines. They had to find a coping mechanism (any coping mechanism!) to have a woman in charge of them, and it's kind of funny what they came up with:
I, apparently, have a penis.
Not just any penis. A BIG one. The biggest penis of them all. They behaved quite well after coming to this decision. Oh, and it was hilarious. But it also speaks volumes about how some men will go to avoid having a woman be in charge. Even to the point of turning her into a masculine figure. (Not that 16 to 18-year-old boys are men. But they will be someday.)
I also noticed something about women leading women. Every year that there was a girl in the CO position, one of the freshman girls from that year would become the CO their senior year. There was also much better female cadet retention rates when there were females in charge. Of course, this has only been a 7-year experiment so far but it speaks wonders about giving young women permission to seek leadership positions.
We are often raised to be chained to our towel-folding and child-raising abilities, not necessarily by our parents but by our culture (and its media) at large. But then we're presented with the idea that stay-at-home moms are lazy or gold-diggers. Gender equality has certainly come a long way but it has a long way left to go.

LOL. sourpuss I know what you are saying but really I don't personally look down on a woman that may, lets say take a place in the home full time, or just part time where she is the one who does the laundry and wash and so on. It's an honorable position, I, unlike alot of men don't look at it as being some kind of washer woman. I feel the woman even if she does not work a secular job has a 24/7 job on her hands and it is very honorable. See to me that's part of the problem people have taken the honor out of the so called role of a woman. Maybe I'm not making myself clear, not sure

Take me now for instance, I've Ironed my own close for yrs. since the days that I was in the Navy and some times I've washed the clothes and done the dishes but if you take the gender out of what a Mother in a what I would call a "Normal Motherly" state then you have the danger of reversing the roles. Is that good, is it?