The idea that we can simply be "free from gender norms" is probably not accurate. Science shows humans develop and enforce norms naturally, subconsciously and illogically from an an early age.

2020-10-22T14:41:39+00:00

Absolutely. I have tried to hammer this home for a while now and been met with varying reception.

Put it this way, even if you could snap your fingers and magically erase all "norms" that exist today, within a short amount of time new norms would naturally develop.

The norms themselves might be "socially constructed" (I hate this term) but what isn't socially constructed is the fact that we have norms. The fashion of the day might be socialized, but what isn't socialized is the fact that fashion trends exist. Human beings, and all primates actually, are biologically social creatures. Of course we look at what is popular within the group and feel a pressure to conform our behaviour to that. That's not even a bad thing either.

Adymus · 2020-10-22T17:24:14+00:00

The principal that I think is missing from those who are trying to abolish gender roles is that gender roles are not determined individual by a particular ideology, or individual parent or teacher, they are determined collectively by society as one big whole.

So for instance, I once read some anecdotes from a mom who was trying to make her baby boy wear dresses. For a short period of time he did, but then he stopped wanting to wear dresses, and began to just want to dress like a boy (she still made him wear pink and purple). The mother in the situation responded with frustration, and made her husband try and convince her son that it’s okay to wear dresses, which he did try, but it didn’t work. Ultimately the mother blamed the father and claimed it was on him, as a role model, to convince his Son to wear dresses.

The gaping fallacy that the mom in this situation was missing is that her family is not a closed isolated system, it is connected to the rest of society. So while you can try to convince a little boy that “it’s normal” for a boy to wear a dresses, that little boy is going to fact check you by taking a look at the other boys in his school, or look at the men and boys walking around outside, or the boys and men on TV and movies, and see that pretty much none of them are wearing dresses. So your child is not just going to look to your ideology or their parents behavior for guidance on social norms, they are going to look to society as a whole. If you try and convince a little boy that it is normal for men to wear dresses, that little boy is not an idiot, they are going to just look around and notice it isn’t true. They will just internalize that their parents are lying about what is normal, and shouldn’t be listened to. If society is to change their gender roles or norms, they will do it together organically, probably out of necessity, not out of indoctrination.

Ultimately, your child wants to fit in and feel accepted, for the most part, they are not going to choose to break gender norms just to make their ideologue parents proud, they are going to choose the behavior that allows them to fit in and operate functionally in that society. There is no force that is causing that little boy to crave wearing a dress, however he will want to dress like other boys if we wants to feel connected to his friends, and society as a greater whole, because that norm is very much still firmly in place.

IJustWantABlackGf · 2020-11-08T17:58:28+00:00

Based Leftist

agiganticpanda · 2020-10-22T15:39:53+00:00

To me it's not about "abolishment of norms" but "expanding acceptance of the human experience."

I've been having trouble getting my head around emoji pronouns though.

PrincessofPatriarchy · 2020-10-23T04:41:04+00:00

It was once the norm that women weren't allowed to have jobs. Now they do. It was the norm that black people were naturally inferior to the white man. Now they're not. It was the norm that women were sex-craved beasts and only men had the requisite logical faculties to control their libido. Now we think the opposite. It was the norm that only men and women are allowed to love one another. Now it isn't. It was once the norm that only people of the same race should intermarry. Now we have changed it.

Tons of norms have already changed drastically since even the 1990s. Marital rape is now illegal in every state, gay marriage is legal and more accepted, transgender people are no longer subject to conversion therapy, we had our first black President and women now outnumber men in education. All of these are changes from "the norm" in less than one lifetime.

Just throwing out there that we should just never try to change norms because they're immutable is demonstrably false.

I'm a woman, I work in a male-dominated profession and I'm child-free. All of these have affected me not at all. No one is chasing me with pitchforks, my male co-workers don't hate me because of my gender, my boyfriend is also happily child-free and I'm happy as a clam. I'm being myself. Should I be driven out of the workforce, cosigned to domestic life, forcefully impregnated just because in your allegation gender roles don't change? They already have.

If women can have a career, get an education, control their fertility, play video games and shoot guns then men can be primary care-takers, take care of their looks and take up baking.

If anything it seems "the norm" is that women who step outside of their gender roles are more praised. Guys constantly fetishize girls who are into video games, girls who are into cars, or who watch sports, etc. The opposite hasn't fully happened for men yet, where women applaud men who are more feminine. But it's already happening. Look at KPOP, men in Korea are largely considered "effeminate" in comparison to western standards in their presentation and style but they have girls across the globe going crazy over them.

I don't think men and women have to be the same, or that they necessarily will be in an equal society. There are likely some biological influences. But I don't think people should be forced into rigid and restrictive gender roles under some misconception that norms never change.

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