I was recently reading a post asking about attitudes towards traditional gender roles in the MRM and I had some thoughts that I felt like sharing in a broader post.

It is quite a common attitude today even among many feminists that men should not be required to fit into traditional male roles (at least in some respects for feminists). But even if men were entirely free to fit into the female gender role I don't think equality would be reached, because naturally men and women are different, and men naturally are not as suited to the female role.

Because of that fact I think we need to somehow balance two different roles and make each have advantages and disadvantages that are fair in order to reach true equality. Right now as a society we constantly denigrate the male gender role, ignore all the positive things it brings to society and other people, and act like being traditionally male is some form of pathology.

One example of this occurs in societies attitudes towards fathering. I think traditionally men and women parent differently, and bring different things to the raising of children. I think both sexes have a natural tendency to fit the traditional roles, although some people might break the molds. Traditionally I think fathers disciplined their kids more, and tend to not be as protective of them, and helped their kids through supporting them, providing a positive example for them, and teaching them rather than looking after them from day to day. Right now the traditionally male aspects of parenting are generally seen as bad or not important, and being a good parent is described as doing what mothers traditionally did. In order to fully achieve equality in this area we need to recognize not only that men are just as important to raising children as women, but to recognize the different things each gender typically brings to child rearing and how both are important.

Another example of this is the treatment by society of the more traditionally male tendencies regarding playing, competition, and occasionally violence. Many people, and feminists especially treat many of these natural tendencies as problematic, and point to things like school shootings as aspects of this. However they only look, and often only see the bad side of these traditionally masculine behaviors.

Societies view of masculinity (which men have a natural tendency towards) is overwhelmingly negative these days. It is not allowed to attribute anything positive to men or masculinity, yet we constantly hear about every positive thing that women do or have done. It is not allowed to attribute anything bad to women or femininity, but we constantly have all the bad things that men do rubbed in our faces.

On this issue I also think feminism's influence is extremely clear. While you could argue that feminism helps (really it tries to force in some ways) men become more traditionally feminine it is the reason for the shaming of the traditional male role.