Thoughts on Masculine/Feminine Dichotomies

As a historian, I am interested in the human experience and how that experience and our perceptions thereof changes over time. One telling example involves our conceptions of "manly" and "ladylike" attributes and behaviors. Of course, the non-reflective element among us deem their present gender milieu as self-evident, timeless, and "natural." In truth, however, virtually nothing transcends history. Everything - both sacred and profane - is affected by historical context and development.

Eighteenth-century aristocratic masculine norms, for example, would seem rather effeminate by present-day standards. Powdered wigs, braided hair, "pony tails", ruffled cuffs, knee-high stockings, and "genteel" mannerisms would be described as "delicate." With the evolution of American and - to an extent - British masculinity through the early nineteenth century and the Victorian decades toward the turn of that century, strict dichotomies of male-female roles and norms bifurcated society into feminine "domestic" and masculine "public" spheres. As these recent historical developments have become reified, and perpetuated throughout American culture ever since, many have come to assume that they are "natural" and axiomatic. "Everybody knows that men act this way!" "That's for girls!" "Be a man!" "Girls don't do that!" "Act like a lady!"

Although there are obvious biological differences and undeniable reproductive functions of men and women (for those who choose to reproduce naturally) and certain innate propensities or gravitations of each sex to certain activities, we need not accept the artificial dynamic cultural appendages outside of these static distinctions as "natural" or "normal." Such fields are best represented by subtle transitions of grays rather than by stark blacks and whites. The gender nexus is fluid, dynamic, amorphous, and undefined.

It seems to me to be a more worthy goal to produce offspring that aspires to human excellence, valuing the traits of compassion, empathy, aesthetics, creativity, honesty, love, gentleness, tenacity, courage, altruism, reasonableness, intelligence, love of learning..., rather than replications from simplistic gender molds. We are all complex - okay, well some more than others - creatures consisting of unique blends of stereotypically "masculine" and "feminine" traits. Just as eight basic notes (through multiple octaves) create infinite varieties of melodies, so do personality traits create the kaleidoscopic creation that is human.