We should celebrate the differences between men and women.
Why do Liberals rush to celebrate differences in race and sexual orientation, but try to deny differences between the male and female sexes?
Is the Era of Gender Discrepancy Over?
Gil Kaufman
2011/06/25 11:00:00
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82 votes
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22% | |||
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200 votes
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54% | |||
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90 votes
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24% | |||
If you're a fan of "Mad Men," you know there was a time when men were men and women, well, they wore tight skirts, cooked up steaks in skillets and always had a cold drink at the ready for their hard-working mates.
It's a nostalgic throwback that will likely gain even more traction with the upcoming launch of primetime dramas that will peek into the world of the Playboy empire and 1960s-era stewardesses.
But even as this groundswell celebration of traditional gender roles invades prime time, NPR pointed out this week that we may be approaching the point where the gender divide is being slowly erased, if not outright ignored.
Among the examples:
-- The Toronto couple who announced that they're raising their 4-month-old, Storm, without revealing the child's gender, as a "tribute to freedom and choice in place of limitation."
-- Androgynous Australian model Andrej Pejic, who walked both the male and female runways at the Paris fashion shows earlier this year.
-- A recent J. Crew catalog that featured a young boy with his toenails painted pink.
-- A Michigan high school that announced this year's prom court would be gender-neutral after a transgendered student was denied the homecoming king crown last year.
-- East Tennessee State University looking to become the latest college to offer gender-neutral student housing – not just coed dorms, but dorms open to anyone regardless of how they express their gender -- following the lead of Stanford University, the University of Michigan, Rutgers University and other colleges.
-- The new State Department passport application that uses gender-neutral language, replacing "father" and "mother" with "parent one" and "parent two."
-- The splashy OWN network show chronicling the life of Chaz Bono, the transgender offspring of pop diva Cher.
Is the gender neutral march unstoppable? I'm not sure, because at the same time officials in Chicago, Tampa and New York are making efforts to open more single-sex public schools. Leonard Sax, a psychologist and author of "Why Gender Matters" told NPR that ignoring gender has the ironic consequence of exacerbating gender stereotypes, not eliminating them.
"The determined lack of awareness of gender difference which you describe ... puts both girls and boys at risk — but in different ways," wrote article author Linton Weeks. "Not merely academically, but physically — increasing girls' risks of knee injury and concussion — and spiritually — increasing girls' risks of drug and alcohol abuse; increasing boys' risk of disengagement and apathy."
I tend to think the resting place is somewhere in between: unrestrained by hard-and-fast gender identities (is it going to kill you to let your daughter wear boys' jeans or your son take ballet lessons?), but not so oblivious to them that we go out of our ways to pretend they don't exist at all (see not announcing the gender of your child).
Do you think gender matters?
It's a nostalgic throwback that will likely gain even more traction with the upcoming launch of primetime dramas that will peek into the world of the Playboy empire and 1960s-era stewardesses.
But even as this groundswell celebration of traditional gender roles invades prime time, NPR pointed out this week that we may be approaching the point where the gender divide is being slowly erased, if not outright ignored.
Among the examples:
-- The Toronto couple who announced that they're raising their 4-month-old, Storm, without revealing the child's gender, as a "tribute to freedom and choice in place of limitation."
-- Androgynous Australian model Andrej Pejic, who walked both the male and female runways at the Paris fashion shows earlier this year.
-- A recent J. Crew catalog that featured a young boy with his toenails painted pink.
-- A Michigan high school that announced this year's prom court would be gender-neutral after a transgendered student was denied the homecoming king crown last year.
-- East Tennessee State University looking to become the latest college to offer gender-neutral student housing – not just coed dorms, but dorms open to anyone regardless of how they express their gender -- following the lead of Stanford University, the University of Michigan, Rutgers University and other colleges.
-- The new State Department passport application that uses gender-neutral language, replacing "father" and "mother" with "parent one" and "parent two."
-- The splashy OWN network show chronicling the life of Chaz Bono, the transgender offspring of pop diva Cher.
Is the gender neutral march unstoppable? I'm not sure, because at the same time officials in Chicago, Tampa and New York are making efforts to open more single-sex public schools. Leonard Sax, a psychologist and author of "Why Gender Matters" told NPR that ignoring gender has the ironic consequence of exacerbating gender stereotypes, not eliminating them.
"The determined lack of awareness of gender difference which you describe ... puts both girls and boys at risk — but in different ways," wrote article author Linton Weeks. "Not merely academically, but physically — increasing girls' risks of knee injury and concussion — and spiritually — increasing girls' risks of drug and alcohol abuse; increasing boys' risk of disengagement and apathy."
I tend to think the resting place is somewhere in between: unrestrained by hard-and-fast gender identities (is it going to kill you to let your daughter wear boys' jeans or your son take ballet lessons?), but not so oblivious to them that we go out of our ways to pretend they don't exist at all (see not announcing the gender of your child).
Do you think gender matters?
Top Opinion
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Fef 2011/06/25 15:25:01
You just WISH that were the truth so your life and your amibitions are more tangible to you.
When the feminists say they want equality, and they are really the ones pushing this whole gender-neutral thing, what they are really asking for is EQUIVALENCY. There's a huge difference. A $20 money order and a $20 bill are equal in value, but not equivalent, or identical, in their features. Just because something has the same worth does not mean it is utterly the same. There are important differences that make each suited to a particular purpose. So it is with genders. Men and women are supposed to be different to make each others' lives better.
That is one of the huge fallacies of modern thinking. We are not supposed to be completely self-sufficient. We were designed to benefit from what a spouse of the opposite gender would add to our lives. A spouse completes us emotionally and physically, or some would say reproductively, but that would be too narrow a view of the thing. Indeed, even the people we communicate with on a regular basis have different things to offer us that can be directly attributed to the differenc...
When the feminists say they want equality, and they are really the ones pushing this whole gender-neutral thing, what they are really asking for is EQUIVALENCY. There's a huge difference. A $20 money order and a $20 bill are equal in value, but not equivalent, or identical, in their features. Just because something has the same worth does not mean it is utterly the same. There are important differences that make each suited to a particular purpose. So it is with genders. Men and women are supposed to be different to make each others' lives better.
That is one of the huge fallacies of modern thinking. We are not supposed to be completely self-sufficient. We were designed to benefit from what a spouse of the opposite gender would add to our lives. A spouse completes us emotionally and physically, or some would say reproductively, but that would be too narrow a view of the thing. Indeed, even the people we communicate with on a regular basis have different things to offer us that can be directly attributed to the differences between the male and female mind.
As the feminists have convinced more and more people that unless they achieve EQUIVALENCY with men they are a slave to a stove and babies, human unhappiness in otherwise good conditions has exploded. Perhaps one day Western society will realize that they've been had. Until then, those who know that the old paths work are happy. Those who have yet to realize the deception suffer from a sense of incompleteness and unfulfilled desire.
When feminists win, we ALL lose.
We are living in an era of "Creative Destruction", where old stereotypes are no longer important.
Yes, we have gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people moving openly throughout our society, but how does it affect YOU?
We have people with multi-color hair, Mohawks, tattoos, mix marriages and other such racial and cultural integration. So What? How does it adversely affect YOU!
Given the proliferation of gay marriage, sex change operations (like an "Adadictame"), rampant and easy access to porn sites, recent FBI stats show a reduction sex crimes overall, to violent crimes overall, to “hate” crimes overall.
http://video.foxbusiness.com/...
America has become a more tolerant nation and, outside of government interference, we’ve become a more civil society.
So… what’s the problem?
http://video.foxnews.com/v/10...
Sounds crazy, but it's true!
Believe in God or believe in evolution, Don't you think that the animal kingdom was designed the way it is for a reason?
The males of most animals are the aggressors, the females are the nurtures. We are messing with design and it will be the downfall eventually.
And just who exactly, are the strong?
Voted NO @"Era of Gender Discrepancy Over?"
YES, it part of who you are as a person. @ "Do you think gender matters?"
The only thing that is changing is the notion that gender is bad and should be purged from our awareness. As with any sort of denial, this will merely cause other problems and blow up in our face.
Once upon a time, people thought nothing of experimenting on kids by teaching them to be afraid of loud sounds, etc. Today we find that horrific, but think nothing of experimenting on kids by teaching them to stifle their self identity. How long before we wake up to this form of abuse?
I'll give it another two decades. The pendulum needs to swing a bit farther before it comes back... and it will.
I already know the he'll ill get but HERE'S THE TRUTH ABOUT THAT. ..
No ma'am. U don't get along better with guys, they get along better with you. Pretty hair, boobies, or perfume can do that to us, ur not 'just' friends cuz that guy ALWAYS thinks in the back of his head he will 'get a piece. .. so, there's NO SUCH THING AS GENDER EQUALITY.
There are major differences in the two sexes. Although I have seen a lot of boyish looking girls and girly looking boys in the last few generations, I still don't want to believe it's part of a conspiracy to homogenize the human slaves.
Soon we are all going to look the same, act the same, do the same things. It's too bad the things we do will not be for ourselves.
Make those miserable people happy! Sure, they might be happy for a minute if they get their way, but there are more roads to happiness than the one their on, they just can't see how to get there.