What does 'Femininity' mean to you?

[Penumbra]

Do you have a definition, example, philosophy, or picture to characterize it?

 

[Sunstone]

I cannot recall a time in my life that I was ever satisfied with my images of either femininity or masculinity. I suppose those images originated in what I was taught growing up, but I've always, so long as I can remember, both had trouble accepting them, and had trouble coming up with any other definition of the terms than I was taught that satisfied me. Perhaps that's because I can find very few differences between men and women that are not, for the most part, social constructs, or -- at best -- merely matters of degree.

Having said all that, as I was growing up, I was taught that a feminine person was warm-hearted, nurturing, people-oriented, not too intellectual or academically gifted, albeit often intelligent in other ways, kind, sensitive to others, submissive, to at least some degree prudish, and somewhat squeamish.

 

[DallasApple]

A person.

 

[DallasApple]

MY problem is there is a label ...with much attached.

I have no problem with saying "gender"It sticking people in a box I have issue with.

 

[Penumbra]

MY problem is there is a label ...with much attached.

I have no problem with saying "gender"It sticking people in a box I have issue with.

It's interesting how some people seem so sure of the gender differences. I see it time and time again in various threads here.

 

[Aquitaine]

Ohhhh - I see what you're doing.

Anyways, like in the other thread "Femininity" to me basically is the same thing as "Masculinity", except it goes off of what society imposes on Females rather than Males.

 

[Penumbra]

Ohhhh - I see what you're doing.

Anyways, like in the other thread "Femininity" to me basically is the same thing as "Masculinity", except it goes off of what society imposes on Females rather than Males.

Where do you think the societal differences for what femininity and masculinity are, come from?

 

[Aquitaine]

Where do you think the societal differences for what femininity and masculinity are, come from?

Dunno, maybe from the comprehensive structure of our ancestral societies. Men did this, Women did that. It probably all started the moment Males said to the Females "You do X, we'll go and do Y".

From that point it was probably just a snowball effect, right up until said society got it's first does of counter-culture.

 

[Sunstone]

Dunno, maybe from the comprehensive structure of our ancestral societies. Men did this, Women did that. It probably all started the moment Males said to the Females "You do X, we'll go and do Y".

My guess is "X" happened to be gather most of the daily food for the tribe, while "Y" happened to be brag for months and months on end about the last mammoth they killed.

 

[Aquitaine]

My guess is "X" happened to be gather most of the daily food for the tribe, while "Y" happened to be brag for months and months on end about the last mammoth they killed.

Which would explain why cooking is still primarily considered a Female role, whilst bragging over which nation won what war is still considered a Male pastime.

 

[Sunstone]

Which would explain why cooking is still primarily considered a Female role, whilst bragging over which nation won what war is still considered a Male pastime.

ROFL! Ain't that the truth!

In one of my Anthropology classes I was taught that there is no known society in which day to day cooking isn't primarily a female role. There were several theories as to why that was the case, but I was never entirely satisfied with any of them.

 

[Penumbra]

Which would explain why cooking is still primarily considered a Female role, whilst bragging over which nation won what war is still considered a Male pastime.

ROFL! Ain't that the truth!

In one of my Anthropology classes I was taught that there is no known society in which day to day cooking isn't primarily a female role. There were several theories as to why that was the case, but I was never entirely satisfied with any of them.

Interestingly, while cooking is often considered a female role, men dominate the top ranks of professional chefs.

So it's interesting that gender roles get assigned the way they do, whether or not they correspond to real differences in natural talent.

 

[Aquitaine]

ROFL! Ain't that the truth!

In one of my Anthropology classes I was taught that there is no known society in which day to day cooking isn't primarily a female role. There were several theories as to why that was the case, but I was never entirely satisfied with any of them.

Meh, I dunno why it's had to be that way - many of the world's best Chefs are blokes.

I think it may have initially come about as a process of elimination for something else which was "contracted out" to Males, rather than Females deliberately being "contracted" to do a specific task.

Men are on average taller and have more upper-body muscle mass than Women IIRC. So early Men may have looked at the (on average) smaller Women and thought to themselves "We'll be better off doing the hunting, so out of necessity Women will have to be the ones to do the domestic chores".

Rather than the Men thinking "You know what the Women will really excel at? Domestic chores!".

But hey, I dunno.

 

[Sunstone]

Meh, I dunno why it's had to be that way - many of the world's best Chefs are blokes.

I think it may have initially come about as a process of elimination for something else which was "contracted out" to Males, rather than Females deliberately being "contracted" to do a specific task.

Men are on average taller and have more upper-body muscle mass than Women IIRC. So early Men may have looked at the (on average) smaller Women and thought to themselves "We'll be better off doing the hunting, so out of necessity Women will have to be the ones to do the domestic chores".

Rather than the Men thinking "You know what the Women will really excel at? Domestic chores!".

But hey, I dunno.

The closest any theory I've heard has come to making sense to me is that women do the cooking so that they can control the food distribution, which for somewhat elaborate and involved reasons, they are evolutionarily better at than men. The idea is that this behavior arose in us as an instinct, which explains its ubiquity. But I'm not entirely satisfied with that theory.

 

[Aquitaine]

The closest any theory I've heard has come to making sense to me is that women do the cooking so that they can control the food distribution, which for somewhat elaborate and involved reasons, they are evolutionarily better at than men. The idea is that this behavior arose in us as an instinct, which explains its ubiquity. But I'm not entirely satisfied with that theory.

Women are better a distributing food than Men?

 

[Penumbra]

Men are on average taller and have more upper-body muscle mass than Women IIRC. So early Men may have looked at the (on average) smaller Women and thought to themselves "We'll be better off doing the hunting, so out of necessity Women will have to be the ones to do the domestic chores".

Rather than the Men thinking "You know what the Women will really excel at? Domestic chores!".

But hey, I dunno.

I don't think it worked out quite like that, because then we'd have to question why men were larger to begin with. With natural selection, traits develop because they are useful for survival and are being utilized, so there would have had to have been behavioral differences between men and women to warrant them having different bodies. Evolution drove men to become the more larger, more muscular sex with a larger upper body, and women to become the smaller, finer sex with narrower shoulders and wider hips for childbirth.

That being said, I do think that behavioral differences do, to some extent, feed off what our physical bodies are. In other words, behavioral differences must have existed to drive the bodies in different directions, but at the same time, bodies can influence behavioral differences. If a man realizes himself to be taller, heavier, more muscular, with more prominent features (like brow ridges, jaw size, hand and feet size relative to height, etc.), coarser skin, more body hair, and genitalia designed for penetration, while a woman realizes herself to be smaller, lighter, with less muscle tone, finer features (smoother skull, smaller jaw, smaller hands and feet relative to height), softer and thinner skin, less body hair, and genitalia designed for reception, along with the biological role of carrying and giving birth to a child and the physical vulnerability that this would entail, I'm sure that this would influence their respective behavior on a statistical level. Plus, knowing that children grow up and develop these differences, parents and other adults may treat them differently even when they are still physically pretty similar, as children.

 

[Sunstone]

Women are better a distributing food than Men?

Well, if I can recall the details after 30 years or so, the theory is based on some evidence (not sure what evidence anymore) that women tend to distribute food portions more according to need than do men. So a man might give all his children, himself, and his spouse, equal portions perhaps. But a woman will give her spouse the largest portion, just as his metabolic needs are greater, and give her kids portions more fit for their individual needs than a male would. (Of course, these are generalizations: Not all men or women fit this model.) Based on whatever evidence there is for that, however, the reasoning takes off from there: A male's inclination to distribute food evenly would prove disadvantageous during lean times because the people who needed the most would have less than they needed while the people who needed the least would have more than they needed. And this would mean in practice that some of the children would be more likely to survive lean times than others. But a woman's inclination to distribute the food according to need would mean that more of the children would be likely to survive during lean times. Hence -- and I just bet you're ready for the conclusion by now! --- hence, humans evolved to favor women as day to day cooks because as day to day cooks they controlled the distribution of food, which they tended to manage in a way that favored the survival of relatively more offspring.

Try saying that all in one breath!

At any rate, I don't totally buy the theory. But I do think there is probably some evolutionary reason why women are everywhere found to be the day to day cooks. I mean, why would that behavior be ubiquitous if there were not an evolutionary reason for it?

 

[Aquitaine]

I don't think it worked out quite like that, because then we'd have to question why men were larger to begin with. With natural selection, traits develop because they are useful for survival and are being utilized, so there would have had to have been behavioral differences between men and women to warrant them having different bodies. Evolution drove men to become the more larger, more muscular sex with a larger upper body, and women to become the smaller, finer sex with narrower shoulders and wider hips for childbirth.

That being said, I do think that behavioral differences do, to some extent, feed off what our physical bodies are. In other words, behavioral differences must have existed to drive the bodies in different directions, but at the same time, bodies can influence behavioral differences. If a man realizes himself to be taller, heavier, more muscular, with more prominent features (like brow ridges, jaw size, hand and feet size relative to height, etc.), coarser skin, more body hair, and genitalia designed for penetration, while a woman realizes herself to be smaller, lighter, with less muscle tone, finer features (smoother skull, smaller jaw, smaller hands and feet relative to height), softer and thinner skin, less body hair, and genitalia designed for reception, along with the biological role of carrying and giving birth to a child and the physical vulnerability that this would entail, I'm sure that this would influence their respective behavior on a statistical level. Plus, knowing that children grow up and develop these differences, parents and other adults may treat them differently even when they are still physically pretty similar, as children.

Yeah that's true. So early gender roles may have been born simply out of our biological differences.

 

[Penumbra]

Well, if I can recall the details after 30 years or so, the theory is based on some evidence (not sure what evidence anymore) that women tend to distribute food portions more according to need than do men. So a man might give all his children, himself, and his spouse, equal portions perhaps. But a woman will give her spouse the largest portion, just as his metabolic needs are greater, and give her kids portions more fit for their individual needs than a male would. (Of course, these are generalizations: Not all men or women fit this model.) Based on whatever evidence there is for that, however, the reasoning takes off from there: A male's inclination to distribute food evenly would prove disadvantageous during lean times because the people who needed the most would have less than they needed while the people who needed the least would have more than they needed. And this would mean in practice that some of the children would be more likely to survive lean times than others. But a woman's inclination to distribute the food according to need would mean that more of the children would be likely to survive during lean times. Hence -- and I just bet you're ready for the conclusion by now! --- hence, humans evolved to favor women as day to day cooks because as day to day cooks they controlled the distribution of food, which they tended to manage in a way that favored the survival of relatively more offspring.

Try saying that all in one breath!

At any rate, I don't totally buy the theory. But I do think there is probably some evolutionary reason why women are everywhere found to be the day to day cooks. I mean, why would that behavior be ubiquitous if there were not an evolutionary reason for it?

An aspect I'd be curious about as far as that evidence is concerned, is whether it is controlled for experience.

If they studied portion sizes given by women and men, but women in the study statistically already have more experience giving out portion sizes (and hence know how much their husband wants and how much their kids tend to leave on the plate if they give them too much), then it could very well be a matter of one group having had more experience to develop the optimal way to do it.

But it's possible they did control for experience level when gathering evidence.

 

[Aquitaine]

At any rate, I don't totally buy the theory. But I do think there is probably some evolutionary reason why women are everywhere found to be the day to day cooks. I mean, why would that behavior be ubiquitous if there were not an evolutionary reason for it?

Could it possibly have something to do with being seen as the primary child carer?
Since part of looking after a child is to feed them, cooking would obviously be a useful skill in ensuring the kids were properly fed.