we were discussing children.
but you're getting to the point, yes. the way adults behave in their gender roles when grown-up are largely constructed by their society. they 'assume' gender roles as they grow into maturity and assume more and more responsibilities and social importance.
children, however, do not have anything like such polarized gender roles.
you were talking about children. girls like make-up and 'pretending' to run a home. boys like going outside and 'pretending' to be soldiers, apparently because of 'instinct'.
it's total bollocks. they do that because of the social environments in which they are raised. it's society preparing them for their socially ordained roles, not some essential, ahistorical, evolutionary 'instinct'. women do not have 'instincts' to wear make-up and dresses. it's ridiculous. maternity itself takes many social forms, beyond the elemental mother-child dyad. victorian mothers, for instance, deputed child-rearing to nannies. 'b-b-b-but it's instinct!'
'instinct' should imply a universal trait across our entire species. we all have the same hardware underneath the racial phenotype-level stuff. there is no 'african instinct' or 'french instinct'. the fact that diverse peoples from all over the world and throughout time have wildly different conceptions of gender and typical gender behaviour, should tell you all you need to know about your idea that '1950s housewife' is 'instinct'.
insofar as there are differences between boys and girls - and there patently are - there is an emotional-behavioural level that's probably to do with hormones, puberty, the cycle of biological maturity, etc. girls at some point do become broody and boys at some point do want to compete for the choiciest mate. but that doesn't explain why children play or behave the ways they do. children's play is extremely fluid and gender neutral. society shapes it in its own image.
Last edited by uziq (2021-01-21 16:58:27)
