This seems to have been dead for a while, but it's still near the top and I feel like I have something to say about this, sooooo... yeah.
[quote="Regulus"]^ I'll agree with that. Society does tend to place limitations on the way women can act.
But... that applies to men, too. How many male counselors do you know? What about psychiatrists, teachers, or babysitters? As a guy, if I decided that my goal in life is to become a house-husband and cook, buy groceries, and look after my children while my wife works in politics, I wouldn't be able to do that. Society would tell me that I need to man up and be a man, you know.
If we're going to talk about gender equality, let's stop focusing on the hardships of females and look at it from the perspective of equality. I'd call it
gender bias, because that seems a little more accurate. Everyone who has ever lived in a human society has had this problem.[/quote]
This is true. These are common stereotypes, definitely, but like all stereotypes they don't always hold true... especially now, since a lot of things are changing in regards to our society. Perceptions can be altered over time. Going off of your examples - both my counselor and 5/6 of my teachers were male last year, not to mention (perhaps most importantly) I was raised by my father, who was a single dad. It certainly wasn't the norm, but I don't think anybody ever told him to 'man up' about it. Raising children is a tough job, regardless of what gender you are. And the thing is, sometimes personal circumstances cause the male to be the one raising the children. Although it can seem 'strange' to us when gender stereotypes are reversed, it's really only because that's not 'how things usually go' and it seems like a novel idea. But again, the role of a single parent is pretty much the same across the board, whether they're a single mom or a single dad.
As for me, personally, I've always kind of been in the boat with DG, in that I don't really care what gender a person is, just as I don't really care for what gender I am (read: was born into without my consent). It's not the first thing I look at. In addition, I have honestly come to believe that you should be able to love somebody regardless of which chromosomes they have - this, too, is becoming more and more of a possibility as time goes on. Overall, I've just always hated the idea of gender as a determining factor for anything aside from a strictly practical anatomical viewpoint, as while I acknowledge that there are some basic physical differences between males and females, I don't really have a strong gender identity (probably because much of that identity is based off society and relations, and as for me, I didn't socialize well with females growing up, nor did I have a central mother-figure in my life - thus it was kind of a moot point since I was under no pressure to be 'feminine').
Fact is, as long as someone isn't telling me, or anybody else, what they can or cannot do based
solely off their gender or any other similar social factor, then I don't care. As it has been said, there will always be some differences between the genders due to psychological and physiological differences - that's simply a fact we cannot change, and that can affect the jobs men/women get as well as their behaviors - but as long as it's not used to disparage another gender or cause blatant sexism, then again, it's not something I'm worried about. Although I am extremely grateful for the vision and work of early feminists, and I believe that the achievements they accomplished were extremely important, I think a lot of 'feminism' today, at least in the US/Western countries, is just people making mountains out of molehills... no offense intended, of course.
I'll just keep being a person like everyone else either way. :s