Gender issues.

[explodi]

Is it possible to remove all the cultural horseshit and still describe definitive personality traits of masculine males and feminine females, and if so what are these traits

Comments

[sepheri]

Look at the Gnostic Mass.

[explodi]

Have done, and it is good, but in my mind refers to relations between male and female humans, not a man or woman's relationship with the world as a whole, their role in society. You know, secondary sexual roles.

[explodi]

Hmm. On second thought (I am thinking of the Fast show now)

"Approach the world as you would a beautiful woman, with worshipful curiosity and gentle but fearless... exploration..!"

What would be the priestessly equivalent be? (Give everything a good petting and tell it it's a good boy?)

[androktone]

I think the having babies is what predominantly causes the differences; women who never want or have children don't have an awful lot of differences from men, if you stripped away cultural femininity/machismo. But you would find it difficult to do that :)

This question has caused me a lot of thought; I don't think I'm different mentally from a bloke from a similar background (ie my brother) but of course all the implications of roles forced on you as bearer-of-children or provider-for-families are going to sneak up on you. O for a beautiful world where we were all sterile ;)

[explodi]

So you do not think our sexual function affects the way we perceive the world in a way more profound than the physical sensations of shagging? Does not our adolescent sexual self-discovery add a subtle flavour to the way we explore other things? Perhaps in a way abstractly linked to penetration or envelopment? Filling or forming?

[androktone]

Hmm. I was not aware of being sexualised as I grew up until other people started behaving differently to me as I was an adolescent, but perhaps that is the difference? Boys are aware they have a sexual tool from the first time they open their eyes, girls are not aware of theirs so early and many times not until somebody else tells them.
I don't think it *needs* to affect the way we explore and percieve the world, as a self aware adult. People *let* their sex determine their thoughts and actions to various extents.

[explodi]

Well that is food for thought. Perhaps Freud has even more to answer for than I ever suspected. But then, speaking only as a boy, sexuality becomes a MASSIVE obsession in the teens, seeps into everything and never really goes away. My word! The girls were right all along! They are normal and we are freaks!

But culturally you have to admit some consensus of definitive traits are important so the mating ritual can happen. Would you dare to speculate on the features most advantageous to proletariat men and women who desire reproduction and nest building?

[explodi]

Yes! That is kind of what my musing were based on, though I was thinking more in archetypal terms of 1 and 0 rather than the fleshy ins and outs, though in human terms that is what we are talking about.
It is interesting to consider that despite the incredible defectiveness lots of guys have on the issue, men are in the privileged position of being equipped both for giving and receiving (assuming we do not count hands, feet and foreign objects)