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I think you're both kind of wrong. So much time is spent on worrying about the 'thinking' part of 'are women and men different?' (Or AFAB and AMAB if we want to use the language usually used in spaces dedicated to gender discussions). To me, the purpose of differentiating women and men is just down to efficiency, improving design of society and the items in it, and giving outliers (such as myself) language for why we feel so weird and don't fit in. For example, men being so much physically stronger and larger than women does impact a fair amount of basic things in life. Car design is a pain in the ass (it's super fun that if I adjust the steering wheel in my car I can't see the speedometer), office chairs and tools are only made for men's bodies (my hands are small and I'm short), etc. Erasing sex just means things get designed for the average and large swaths of the other sex are ignored. (I'm not male, but I'd imagine large men have similar issues with things like sewing machines, bottles, diaper changing stations, etc. being designed for females only). I also have a hard time fitting in in female-dominated spaces because so much of it is based around mollification/preventing conflict. Which makes sense because if you're female, starting shit with the other half of the population doesn't end well for you. Het and bi women generally live lives where they spend their time being aware that they will not win physical confrontations. (Aside: I'd guess this is why DV is more of an issue in lesbian relationships: The risk of being an abusive prick isn't being offset by the fact that your victim could pin you to the floor and punch you until you pass out). Being aware of this means I can place my own assertiveness/aggression in context and be like 'ah I feel out of place here because I am a statistical anomaly for my sex, not because anybody is wrong'. > If you consider a definition of feminine (prettiness, gracefulness, gentleness, empathy, humility, and sensitivity) it’s not someone who acts to make their mark on the world as a man might - it’s someone who at best achieves that by supporting a masculine partner. What a terrible vision of the world that is, and what an incredible waste of individual human talent. This I find really interesting, as I spent a lot of my life fighting any parts of myself that were traditionally feminine. I'm a more masculine than usual cis woman; bordering on butch but not quite there. And in my 30s I'm unlearning a lot of messiness around that and starting to accept the part of myself that likes teaching and nurturing + has a very strong passion for making sure the next generation is armed for the world we're sending them into. After all, surely wanting to pursue an academic career creating digital skills and history curricula for K-12 (mostly K-8) education is a 'waste of my individual human talent' when I could be writing new algorithms, isn't it? I submit that the only people who get to determine whether something is an incredible waste of human talent are the people possessing the talent. |
I think that's an excellent way to consider the topic as long as we remember the protections like title VII and title IX were put into place to bar obstacles to employment and education such as "We don't think it would be worth our time and effort to train you because people like you don't succeed here."