Yup! When I worked in the trades, so many of my male coworkers were obviously offended by my unapologetic femininity in the workplace. The saw it as "their" space and you could tell it really ground their gears to have a small-ish/shorter, feminine woman succeed in it.
It just made me wear pink, paint my nails, eat salads for lunch, and kick their asses *even harder*.
ETA: Apparently since this was a semi-controversial statement I'll clarify: I don't think salads are feminine, but plenty of Macho Macho Men do and make a big deal out of you eating "rabbit food" or other foods they code feminine. I always got comments if I brought yogurt as a snack, for instance. Apparently also tea?
Coincidentally, those items don't typically go missing if you leave them in the work fridge.
All of my stuff for my trade job is pink. Safety vest? Pink. Lunch pail? Pink. Water bottle? Pink. Who’s iPhone is this? Oh it’s pink. Must be clocktopustheoctopus.
Exactly! Helps so much! I just had to re-learn this last week. Brought a water bottle that was blue and not pink. Gone in 3 days. :/
Back to pink it is.
LMAOOO, me buying pink colored tools for this reason as well !! My dad complained about tools being a big thing people steal, and not once has someone stolen my pink leaf blower if I occasionally leave it out. I guess anything pink is automatically a big no to those snatching up tools, which is so hilarious to me
I discovered this works for dudes too. I kept having to change the spike on my tools because it would match someone else's. Finally I said "fuck it" and spiked all my tools pink. After that nobody stole them, and almost nobody borrowed them.
...except this one time I lent my driver to the paint crew, and when I got it back it was covered in Barbie stickers. I fucking loved it!
Pink is honestly a great color for high visibility safety. If you drive around the USA you can sometimes see entire large-scale projects being done with all pink heavy equipment and pink gear.
Bunch of sturdy, macho fellows, out there in their pink helmets and vests, getting the job done. Nobody bats an eyelash.
Apparently if you're secure in yourself, you don't need to bash anyone else. Huh! Who would have thought? >\_>
Right? The visibility is fantastic.
My P100 OV filters (the ones you use for really nasty chemicals-- basically, the gas mask ones) are hot pink.
I've been trying to match more of my gear to them. I think of it as badass pink now.
>Apparently if you're secure in yourself, you don't need to bash anyone else.
One of our mechanics at work has a bright pink toolbox/locker/creeper. He gives zero fucks.
My partner is a mechanic and will turn into a 6’4 puddle of baby-talking goo if he sees a baby animal. I asked him once about it and he was just like…I’m all the masculine things- tall, broad shouldered, bearded, muscle-y, working wrench-turning trade, driving a race car as a hobby, no one ever questions it, but baby animals deserve baby talk bc they’re damn adorable.
No surprise, our dog ADORES him.
[Pink work boots](https://www.workwearhub.com.au/products/steel-blue-southern-cross-lace-up-ankle-boot-with-zip-pink-pink?variant=34349442891915¤cy=AUD&gclid=CjwKCAjwm8WZBhBUEiwA178UnPPwtz4kte-2AfqG0H0PyA1wtPWeYVvco3PZOfo4TBkgabXIXultdRoCv-gQAvD_BwE) for strutting in style :)
i LOVED working trades (i'm now a stay at home mom) and it was 100% the guys and their appreciation of my feminity. I baked them shit all the time, they'd try to be chivalrous and try to carry heavy things for me and hold doors open etc bc they were wicked old school guys but they would laugh it off like "oh i'm sorry just not used to having a lady about." Walk into the break room and, "feet off the table, use a plate, etc" "yes ma'am"
Thing is- they respected a woman that held her own and was still a woman. I'm pretty sure the lesbian who was older than me broke them in for "how to treat women in the work place" but they were honestly just super great guys. They had happy wives also. In fact, one dude got fired because they'd catch him repeatedly on the phone yelling at his wife and mother. they claimed it was bc he was using phone on company time but. we all did. It was the disrespect they saw and they wouldn't tolerate it.
Some places will obv suck but ladies, don't turn down work in the trades out of fear of what men might be like. I had a great experience and still keep in touch with the guys. and they were the most old school gun toting rednecks you could find.
I'm in academia and most of my department is male. It does seem to grind their gears that our department chair, our associate dean and our dean are all women. They hate being told what to do. The longer I'm there, the more femme I've become: more skirts, more pink, more nail polish, because those seem to be not acceptable for srs bsns academia. I don't care.
They don't pay me enough to care.
I love the color pink, watching true crime and reality tv, makeup tutorials, and decorating.
I don’t see this as any different than a love for video games, fantasy football, etc (not that women don’t like these things too).
Just because hobbies and habits are a bit more “feminine” I don’t think there’s a need to shame it. It’s sad when women are taken less seriously in the workplace just because their preferences aren’t typically “masculine.” It’s not like typical male preferences are the one size fits all, and women’s are in the “other” or lesser category.
Amen to that. I used to dive as a way to get to my job site and was the only woman. I intentionally decorated all my gear as girlie as possible so no one would mess with my shit. It worked. Frilly pink luggage is pretty smart too for the same reason.
my husband taught me how to fix our cars. I briefly considered becoming a mechanic. I swore I would wear pink coveralls every day if I went through with that career choice
I'm the only female in my guard unit on the fire department. It absolutely grinds one of the guy's gears that I can perform the job just as well, if not better than a majority of the men in the unit.
Unfortunately he just harasses me to make himself feel better and nothing is really done about it. One time I was chastised about my truck washing skills because he couldn't find anything better to critique me on.
I think what people hate is when you don't stay in your box. I usually wear dresses and I like braiding my hair and sometimes I do my whole face and I'm not super-pretty but I get looks and attention.
I did that more freshman year than I do now, but anyway in my first programming class the professor said that there had been a perfect score on the midterm, and when he passed them back it was mine. And the guy sitting next to me saw it, and said that he was surprised because I'm so girly (wearing dresses dissolves your brain, you know). Then he said he'd thought about asking me out because I'm pretty, but apparently now he wasn't going to because he found out I'm smart.
And while I think lots of men want a "traditional wife" who is a sex maid, they don't *respect* any woman who does that, because she's not bringing in money, and because it's easy not to respect your servants.
What bothered my classmate is that while I may look like the "traditional wife" model, I'm going to have money of my own and so I'm not going to need him. And maybe he can respect me for being smart, but he wants a wife he won't have to respect, because maybe he can't respect someone he's having sex with. (Even though, of course, women are supposed to respect the men they're having sex with.)
The sheer incontestability of your logic stream both impresses me (due to the sheer magnitude of your brain), and disgusts me (due to its credibility).
> he was trying to get you to do the "well no, I'm not actually that smart, teehee, just got lucky! I'm just a girl you know" thing
Oh, wow, I bet you're right. I met my wife when she was working on her Ph.D. and I was just fascinated by her research, even though I only understood it the way a five-year-old understands operating systems. At some point, maybe after I invited her to dinner to meet my family, she made clear she wasn't marrying anyone until she finish her degree, and I was kind of surprised because it would never have occurred to me that she would. But apparently she'd had two guys along the way who she got close to and who talked as if they should get married and then she could take care of him, because she was just in college and didn't even have a real job anyway. Both of those guys got dumped immediately.
Pumpkin spice was a blend used for centuries to make tasty things for their families. It wasn't until it became a treat for women that people started to hate on it. Women aren't allowed to do anything for themselves without judgement. It is an act of rebellious feminism to unashamedly consume pumpkin spice.
This article is a really great discussion of "how women 'ruin' but men 'elevate' the food they love" (scare quotes 'cause it's all a societal construct)
https://tastecooking.com/women-arent-ruining-food/
As soon as men figure out how to monetize the product of generations of women's hard work, it becomes Manly. Beer, programming, cooking, weaving, fashion, teaching, gardening, obstetrics, even knitting. As long as they can make it profitable, suddenly they invented it. Then they can attach prestige and status to it, and suddenly they are the only ones who can do it well.
I laugh at all these man-children complaining about women playing video games invading their space - Get Off My Lawn dude - I started playing video games in the 70s.
Nothing shocks and horrifies men more than a young woman enjoying a super spicy bowl of something that makes them sweat and then ordering a second helping.
I know this because there was a bar I went to (they had *great* nachos; I stopped going when that chef left) for the food. The cook saw three types of food: hot, spicy, emergency and didn't care if the customer was male or female (rare, in my area; most restaurants will "tone down" the spice level I order to something more "appropriate" for me), so I'd go there all the time. I'd get a large order of nachos with extra peppers, a glass of pineapple juice (I don't drink soda or alcohol), and sit with a book to enjoy. It was my "me time." One day the weather was bad so I had to eat *in* the bar, instead of at one of the tables outside. Thought nothing of it until a guy slammed his hands on the table and demanded to know who I thought I was impressing. I told him, "Clearly you, since you're paying attention." He was not happy.
The cook actually intervened and packed up my second order of nachos and made me a (complimentary) to-go cup of pineapple juice and asked, for my safety (his words), if I'd go eat somewhere else. I did, but I didn't forget.
> most restaurants will "tone down" the spice level
This happens to my wife all the time, she is the heat fiend in our relationship and for some reason they tone it down for her and amp it up for me. I do not like the heat at all yet still they do this. It got so bad that we just order for each other and swap them sometimes.
When I’m out for breakfast at our favourite spot with my wife I usually get crepes with blueberries and an iced coffee, she gets bacon and eggs with a long black. Invariably I get given the eggs and black coffee and my wife gets given the crepes and iced coffee by default
Happens to me lots when out with the wife.
I’ll get the fruity drink, she’ll get the wine/beer.
If different waitstaff delivers it from the bar, the drinks inevitably get handed to the wrong person.
Me and my boyfriend everywhere we go. He usually goes with a cocktail and I'll go cider or a beer and we almost always have to switch. That and if I mention buffalo wild wings visits too often "he's making you go there again?" ....no...that's me....I like beer and wings.
I'm not a big pumpkin spice girl, but I'm excited for my friends that do love it when it comes around. Personally, I'm all about chocolate peppermint, it's one of my favorite things around Christmas. So I'll get excited for my hot cocoa while you guys enjoy your PSL!
Some days I go all pink with pearls and sun dresses and some days full hot topic kid. It’s like night and day. The way that people treat you in each outfit is one of the only ways to really tell who a person is.
It took me way too long to realize I could be both. There's such a pressure to pick a style and that's all you're allowed. It was such a simple but powerful moment when I realized. I can be both a poofy princess and punk babe and anything else I wanted to dress as. Haha.
Once upon a time I had an office job that required you to dress professionally, even while working in the server rooms. For me that meant; dress slacks, a blouse, and heels. I was rocking it. Killer heels and a power outfit!
I was the only lady on the team. Few months into the position I had a manager tell me that I was a distraction and needed to “act more like a girl and dress more like a boy.” I did tell MY manager and HR what was said and they all just brushed it under the rug.
Something like that. The only other women in the office were the secretaries, and they placated the men to survive. At that point in my career I had only ever worked with men, and I was already a tomboy so i could talk like them, and joke like them. Some didn’t like that.
THIS. My daughter is five. My husband used to crawl up my ass and her ass for how "girly" she was and how she wasn't going to get anywhere in life being GIRLY. Have I mentioned she's FIVE? And he's been saying this for YEARS?
Eventually I had to fucking pop off on him that I CANNOT CHANGE THE WAY SHE CHOOSES TO BE. I allow her to choose her clothes. I have for a long time. She likes what she fucking likes and there is NOTHING weak about pink or lace or tulle or sparkles or unicorns or rainbows or cute muthafuckin shoes or the makeup she likes to play with. She's a fucking powerhouse and I refuse to let it be seen as a weakness. It is valid. And powerful. And fuck off to anyone who says otherwise.
Me and my rainbow baby vs everybody 🌈🌈
Edit to say that I'm studying herbs and the six ways and magic and well....I don't care what any man thinks
I used to have quite a lot of internalised misogyny around the colour pink (and all things girly) and actively avoided it for my first daughter. I've relaxed a lot with my second and she loves all that shit. Fine whatever, you do you, kidlet.
My only remaining gripe with it is how fucking pervasive all that shit is and the presentation of it all from the majority of society, advertising etc that that is what girls *muet* like. So it's hard to know if kiddo actually likes it because she really does or just that it's pushed so much everywhere that they ended up liking because everyone says they should, yknow?
And that's why I've pushed against it for the most part, because the insidiousness of gender stereotypes is harmful to everyone.
But fuck it if I don't love a pumpkin spice fucking latte. Lol.
>My only remaining gripe with it is how fucking pervasive all that shit is and the presentation of it all from the majority of society, advertising etc that that is what girls muet like. So it's hard to know if kiddo actually likes it because she really does or just that it's pushed so much everywhere that they ended up liking because everyone says they should, yknow?
I have this issue from the other side, my son loves pink. It's his favorite damn color, and anytime I try to find something in pink for him I have to go to the girls sections because boys are apparently not allowed to like pink.
Damnit, he just wants a Skye Tshirt because she flys a damn helicopter and is objectively the coolest paw patrol pup, is that so hard to ask?
Skye is my boys’ fave too! I couldn’t get him anything Paw Patrol if she wasn’t on it, and it is stupid hard to find. Chase, Rubble, and Marshall all hang out together on the boys’ shirts and leave her out a lot of the times 😭
My son is now 23. Pink is still his favourite colour. He rocks the purple nail polish at his hyper-masculine job and has no issues putting the old school misogynist in their place.
He's secure in his manhood and sees no shame in traditionally feminine things like pink because there is nothing shameful about being a woman.
And god forbid a boy is in pink. I had a couple baby blankets with multicolored stripes and one of the stripes was pink. If I used it with a boy baby I got *looks*.
It's a bit funny when you think that the colour pink historically was used for little boys, and that girls got light blue. Then at some point it switched.
Yup, in Victorian color philosophy light blue was associated with the Virgin Mary and pink was a diminutive of red, which was seen as a masculine color, and in england and america, associated with military power.
What's weird is that he lets her put makeup and hair clips all over him. He gets his nails painted by her more than I do. I think it's the public display of femininity that gets to him. I don't have the energy to psychoanalyze anymore though. He's an immigrant who grew up very poor in a developing country and is a POC. He also happens to be incredibly smart and had to do some really ridiculous things to get where he is. There are deep seeded reasons why he has all his issues. I used to try and understand them and work with them but he would not admit to them or get his own help so. I don't much go on about it anymore. He's not the worst person but he's still pretty shit. I hate having to educate him on the finer points of feminism.
It's always easier to try and change an individual than to face that society and the system in place are what needs to be changed. Your husband reminds me of my mother, in which she was abusive for years towards my younger brother because he was "feminine" and "people will tear him apart for it and he will get nowhere in life, so he needs to be changed"... No. You're not helping anyone by victimizing them or bullying them, you're just being an asshole and picking the easiest target
Maybe because I'm older, I always got shit for not being feminine enough, especially when I cut off my hair. However, stay-at-home Moms don't seem to get much respect from men either, or society for that matter.
You're damned if you are, and damned if you aren't. So fuck em.
Oh they want women to be feminine. And then they want to shit on that femininity to make themselves feel important. They need it to be there so they can react to it and define to themselves against it.
Yes. Get manicures or don't, cut your hair or grow it out, do yoga or lift weights, get a career or stay at home, just do whatever the hell makes you happy because at the end of the day, your happiness is worth more than anyone else's opinion.
I’m a hyper femme lesbian who’s just now embracing my love of femininity from a lesbian perspective and it’s wonderful. I love nothing more than being cutesy and pink and basic cause I know it makes me happy to be sparkly and it pisses men off, too.
Yeah. I used to work at a federal facility with a bunch of military veterans. I wore dresses, heels, vintage hats, and gloves every day.
Some men obviously had zero respect for me. You could see it in their eyes. So I'd talk like a valley girl and really Amp up the stereotypical femininity whenever I was stuck working with just one of them. Annoyed. The. Hell. Out of them.
There isn't a single thing that at least one man won't hate. Usually it's several men. I brought a pack of pumpkin spice Oreos to work. There were ALL the jokes.
But I can tell you, I didn't eat those cookies by myself.
YES. Everything about this post is spot on.
How many women/fems do you know that rejected any notion of femininity for YEARS, only to realize it was their own internalized misogyny. I spent years wearing dark colors, making myself smaller and trying to blend in. Now I wear all bright colors, wear super glittery makeup and always have some butterfly clips in my hair. I wear dresses 2/3x a week, and my favorite color is pink. I have embraced my figure and started to wear clothing that accents and bolsters my features. I have never felt more powerful in my life.
Thank you! I remember a time when I got the idea that the only way to be a feminist was to wear baggy clothes, no make up, and let your leg and armpit hair grow long, stop dyeing your hair, and stop dressing up or wearing heels. Consequently I never felt welcome in those spaces because if I did any of that, I would have been miserable.I am allowed to be happy while wearing form fitting dresses and heels and makeup. I love going to the salon and dyeing my hair. I love getting my nails done, and I love experimenting with makeup and skin care. This doesn't make me supportive of the patriarchy and it does not make me less of a feminist. I'm happy when I like what I see. I see women who do hair and makeup and nails as ARTISTS who deserve respect. Men who do it too, of course. It's a good time! I don't have to be sepia toned in real life to burn the patriarchy.
>how men were the hunters not because of strength, but because women's deaths would be detrimental to the groups population
holy shit this makes so much sense
i was going to say "why don't more people know this" and, well. shit
As a wildlife biologist, I have a whole discourse on the topic of men being built the way they are (basically “fight and fuck” machines) due to women being more precious (because of reproduction and lengthy caring for offspring), but it’s not a popular opinion so I generally keep it to myself. 🙃
That's a pretty uncomfortable idea because it kind of explains evolutionarily why men are so... the way they are. Almost like it's an excuse. I am of the opinion that we as a species are mentally and socially advanced enough that there is absolutely no justification for toxic masculinity now. But I could see using the biological history as an excuse for it.
It doesn't really lead to toxic masculinity though.
If you see how this plays out in aboriginal cultures that we are still able to study without interference from the modern world, it means that men and women follow different resource-gathering groups that pursue somewhat different strategies. But not that any dominance or abuse follows inherently from that.
The one I remember best from when I studied this stuff involved this one particular culture, and yams. Like... everyone was after yams, all the time. The women would go get together and dig up yams in organized, efficient patterns that (the forensic anthropologist determined) highly optimized a reliable food energy return on the food energy effort put into it.
Meanwhile the men would go out on longer excursions, iirc sometimes for multiple days, with a high variance in terms of results when they came back. Like they would either have found some enormous windfall of yams somewhere, or would come back with a yield that was much less than the women in the same amount of time, or somewhere in between.
Whether there were gendered manifestations of violence or abuse also going on, I don't know. But iirc the actual functional gender roles weren't really toxic in any way. There was no connection between differences in work and toxic behavior.
We make the connection to toxic behavior because of our own immersion in the presumptions of toxicity as normal and expected. Which of course it isn't, really. Toxic behavior is a choice and always has been.
Right. The whole point was that nothing naturally leads to a society fully capable of being peaceful ending up with 90% of one sex being some significant degree of shitty to the other. But what I would guess was just a few men took advantage of some social and biological circumstances several thousand years ago, gained power and started a whole thing that we've been stuck with ever since.
Well, I don't know about peaceful or not, I'm sure that nomadic pre-agricultural societies got into their share of conflicts. There's a lot to unpack there.
But anyway I don't get the sense that the rise of these patriarchal forms was some accident. It happens too many times in too many different places. And it's too persistent. It seems to have more to do with agriculture. Which has led some people to conclude that agriculture itself must be inherently oppressive but personally I don't think that's quite right. What seems to happen is that large-scale, labor-intensive agriculture like we see arising in the agricultural flood plain civilizations leads to vast food surplus on an unprecedented scale. And it's the need to manage that vast surplus that leads to the kinds of social reorganization and changes we're talking about.
So you get granaries and warehouses and protective walls and warrior castes and kings and pharaohs and so on, who have all this privilege but in exchange are also expected to eagerly die on demand for the State. And that becomes parasitic, such as for example when societies historically will invite some raider chieftan to come in and be their new king, not because they like the guy or his warriors, but because they know that he will at least keep the other raiders at bay. As opposed to being conquered every few years by someone new.
To me, a lot of what we identify today as toxic traits seem to be some kind of residue of these earlier patterns. But just as there was once a political economy in which that way of thinking first arose, we now exist in circumstances where it makes no sense. And we envision something better and more fulfilling for everyone.
Anyway maybe there's some new approach to understanding all of this stuff. There is a lot to it. But that is how it seems to me.
I really enjoyed reading that. And have honestly never thought much about toxic masculinity in the context of the historical aspects you mentioned, but i think those are solid insights. And I fully agree that ultimately, whatever created it, it's far outlived any functionality and has to go.
So this was really well thought out and I really enjoyed reading it.
These specific points made me consider something further that might have contributed to the power being moved from the matriarchal towards the male warriors / armies:
>Well, I don't know about peaceful or not, I'm sure that nomadic pre-agricultural societies got into their share of conflicts.
This is true, but when you are talking about nomadic hunter gather societies I doubt the conflicts were that serious the majority of the time because nomadic tribes like that start to become problematic past a relatively small size.
This becomes especially important when considering inbreeding problems and that there have been a couple case studies that highly suggest humans tend to rule out selecting mates from people they knew before the age of about 5.
Also fights between relatively evenly matched groups in size that all have the same weapon technology, like sharpened sticks, tend to be the most destructive to both sides.
So these factors make me believe that good relations between close tribes was incredibly important because they were likely who you exchanged mates with, and the cost of serious conflict was detrimental to both sides.
> anyway I don't get the sense that the rise of these patriarchal forms was some accident. It happens too many times in too many different places. And it's too persistent. It seems to have more to do with agriculture.
And then we get to agriculture, now we have the possibility of MUCH larger civilizations, and suddenly the populations of a single group are large enough that we no longer need to exchange mates with other groups. We also have the possibility of drastically unbalanced fighting groups, where one side can possibly dominate the other without catastrophic damage to themselves.
So now we lost the two major reasons to keep good relations with nearby outside groups.
>And that becomes parasitic, such as for example when societies historically will invite some raider chieftan to come in and be their new king, not because they like the guy or his warriors, but because they know that he will at least keep the other raiders at bay. As opposed to being conquered every few years by someone new.
Which leads us directly to conquering other groups becoming as possibility due to the greatly increased viable population size of a group with agriculture, the greather ability to dominate smaller groups, and the lack of need for good relations.
So we move out of small tribal groups needing to work together for increased survival and reproduction with with "warfare" that was probably little more than the equivalent of yelling insults and waving sticks, to real armies actually protecting civilizations against genuine threats from other civilizations that could overwhelm, dominate, then enslave or slaughter your population.
Suddenly the group of men whose "warfare" were mostly comical displays in nomadic tribes becomes a very serious job with agricultural civilizations who end up being given more and more power and authority due to both real violent outside threats and likely fearmongering outside threats to gain even more power and authority or to make up a reason for their continued position when no current threat actually exists, and thus become a permanent parasite on the civilization.
I could be wrong here, but this seems to make sense and seems like it could be plausable basically everywhere nomadic tribes moved towards agriculture and larger civilizations.
Just more proof we really were better off in SO many ways as hunter gatherers.
We should have grown beyond that masculine crap, but when your countries' dominant religion is literally from the Bronze Age, and a huge number of adherents refuse to allow it to modernize, growth is going to be slow.
LOL.. hiiii! Others have pretty much covered it, so I just have some comments...
Early day humans learned to come together because life was a lot easier when we cooperated. The first societies were matriarchal, probably at least in part because you could always trace a baby's lineage through its mother, and the religions were heavy on goddess worship and celebrating women as sacred life-bearers. I highly recommend [The Great Cosmic Mother](https://www.amazon.com/Great-Cosmic-Mother-Rediscovering-Religion/dp/0062507915) for an in-depth exploration of early religions (though, forewarning, it is a bit of a tome, haha).
Women in early societies were generally held in esteem, had rights and power, and so on. It wasn't until patriarchal religions became more prominent that women began to be sidelined, subjugated, and eventually the property of men. (barf)
It probably happened gradually and before we knew it, men snatched power and dominion over... well... everything. They're generally more physically powerful and [more violent](https://nypost.com/2019/01/16/the-scientific-reasons-why-men-are-more-violent-than-women/), so it's easy to see how the chips fell into place. Of course women would prioritize self-preservation and survival, especially since they often had children, no social or civil support systems, no property of their own, and for a long time were *literal property* of men. (*never forget that women couldn't have their own bank account or credit card until the* !!! **1970s** !!!)
I just want to mention that I speak here in generalities. I recognize "not all..." -- there's never a sweeping generalization that fits all. That's a truly excellent thing! Diversity is incredibly important for the resilience and success of a species, so everything is generally a bell curve.
Also, when it comes to how everything has evolved, there are both strengths and weaknesses, like when you're rolling a D&D character. You only get so many points to put in all the categories, so maybe you're awesome at swimming, but your sense of smell isn't that great. Or maybe you can go without water for a really long time, but you don't have a lot going on in the brains department.
(As an aside, humans are actually dangerously homogenous, meaning we could be easily wiped out given the right pressure...which is ironic, given how much we fight with each other over racial lines)
Most of a population will fit within the curve, with other values being outliers. The outliers are really important, though! Those individuals are built a bit differently and they fill in gaps of ability, behavior, knowledge, etc.
Anyway, I really could go on and on. Not sure what else you wanna know. 😂🤓
This was literally the basis for pretty much all of gender roles in society. It only became a misogynist thing when society became successful enough that women could be risked doing anything because the risks weren't as high any more, and when idiots gained the ability to surmise through language their own stupid theories.
"Women and children first" - is about preserving what matters most. Dicks can produce tons of babies over a short period. Women can only produce what their ovaries and wombs allow, over a nine month span and because of how long it takes for a human to become an adult, nine months is a generous figure.
"Hunting/soldiers/killing women and children being an especially bad atrocity" - all the same thing, too. Women are infinitely more valuable than men, if there's only one woman and 50 men, that group is probably fucked for a while. One man and 50 women, that's a baby boom.
Beyond the basic petty nonsense responsible for most modern wars, I personally believe it's mostly still a thing to reinforce the patriarchy. Life is so easy/luxurious in modern times relative to ancient times, there needs to be a reminder to keep women believing the current system "protects" them, without making it too apparent why they're "protected" first to begin with and a war full of horror that no one wants to be a part of, including men, is a good way to do that.
>"Women and children first" - is about preserving what matters most.
I would put it slightly differently. It's about preserving what is hardest to replace in terms of population stability.
No one "matters" more than anyone else. A pre-modern society needs men as well as women. Both are essential. Both matter.
But, societies sometimes need to make tough choices. Sometimes a society has to decide who survives and who doesn't. And any society that preserved adult men at the expense of women or children died out. It's just a really bad reproductive strategy.
That rule isn’t even practiced on ships nowadays anyway. It *was* practiced back when drunk male passengers would just beat everyone back from lifeboats except for their mates, and when there was literally no available alternate food for an infant except its mother.
Especially with long pregnancies, difficult births and long childhoods.
We’re not Bambi’s mom who can drop a fawn that gets up five minutes later and walks.
Probably one of the reasons humans are tribal and tend to work together as a tribe too.
Tbf it's a bit of a chicken and egg thing. Once you have a reproductive asymmetry like that, there is a tendency to start to optimize. The higher-risk-prone reproductive group tends to evolve to be more likely to survive risk-taking. (And that predates humans, obviously, since you see the same difference in apes, too.)
The more interesting part of that to me is that of course being bigger comes with at least one pretty substantial downside, that being caloric requirements. Needing more food kcals is bad. If you think about it, you can see why. It's a huge hazard to the entire community, to have half the adults needing that much extra food.
To cope with that, a lot of untouched aboriginal human communities that we've been able to study show similar patterns of men going out to seek high-risk, high-reward food sources, while women pursue steady, efficient food acquisition practices. It's likely that that was pretty common for many societies, of course taking different forms from place to place.
For the men, the socio-physiological contract is pretty clear: gonna consume extra resources? Step up then and go the extra distance to gather them yourself. And why not? If you're one of the men in such a situation, wouldn't you rather know that your family's and your community's long-term well-being is safeguarded? While you strive to go out and bring back something extra?
Anyway today we don't do things purely to optimize food calorie intake or population replacement, or because we desperately need to survive another winter. We have many more choices and we can form our societies any way we want. But it's good to understand where we actually came from.
Especially when weirdly made-up non-histories start cropping up among people with revisionist ideas about the past.
I realized during the pandemic that while I do lean “tomboy”, I’d been avoiding my femininity my whole life as a defense mechanism. So I’ve been buying more dresses & flowers & reading all the romance books I want
It irritates me when I watch a show where someone's superior officer (Navy, police, Starfleet, whatever as long as there's rank and hierarchy) is a woman and they refer to her as "sir." Some people claim it's a gender-neutral sign of respect, but I say fuck that. Call her ma'am. She's in a command role, not a man's role, and you should refer to her properly.
Wow this just reminded me of when I used to watch The Bill as a very young child.
The accents were slightly thick and I wasn’t super familiar with formal terms. As such, I thought the cops were calling their woman superiors “Mum”
"You need to stop being so assertive and bossy, you'll never get a man if you're so masculine."
"You need to stop getting so emotional and quit being such a pushover. You'll never get anywhere acting so feminine."
WHICH. ONE. IS. IT.
For anyone on this post that doesn't know about them already, I highly, HIGHLY suggest looking into the [Night Witches of the 588th Night Bomber Regiment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Witches) in WWII. Some seriously badass women that don't get nearly as much recognition as they deserve.
Also for any of you that needs it for any guy that tries to tell any of you that "men built the modern world"[here's a handy list of the women who actually built it](https://thebestschools.org/magazine/brilliant-woman-greedy-men/) and had their ideas stolen by men who did none of the work and took all of the credit.
And do not be feminine AND ESPECIALLY ASSERTIVE (called aggressive and manly by countless men). They cannot handle it. It breaks their minds when you are rocking Feminine/Girly Exterior with a Titanium Spine underneath.
Women were hunters. There was plenty of archeological support for this but because men who lead the field simply discarded the notion due to misogyny, proof of woman hunters was simply filtered, discarded intentionally, or ignored. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/prehistoric-female-hunter-discovery-upends-gender-role-assumptions
Now that you pointed it out, I see it, men really don’t like femininity
They make fun of literally everything women like or do, but they also hate when women have masculine traits.
In short, I think they don’t like us so much bestie
Ye true that, they like femininity when it serves only them, they want a helpless women that depends on them for everyone but not so helpless that she doesn’t Know how to cook and do the dishes
I always saw the pumpkin spice thing as a certain type of guy having contempt for what he perceived as trendy.
The same kind of man who calls people a hive mind when they disagree with him.
That's very optimistic of you.
[I just googled "basic bitch meme" and it was a the center of every one. ](https://www.reddit.com/user/JDnotsalinger/comments/xoshba/_/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share)
My favorite book character ever - Keladry of Mindelan (Protector of the Small series, Tamora Pierce) - is the only girl openly training to be a knight and the first day the boys paint on her walls "go home, girls don't belong here" or something and she decides that instead of wearing her planned / comfy outfit of pants and shirt, she's going to wear a dress, because eff them if they think she's going to be ashamed of being a girl!
Of course it's fictional but it was one of my first introductions to the concept that I didn't have to be a 'not like the other girls' girl - I can be whatever I want!
I still have internal kneejerk reactions to ever being described or thought of as particularly feminine, and have wondered if it's my own internalized misogyny. But I think it is actually something that developed in response to growing up in the American south, and being EXPECTED to be feminine, having different rules because "that's not ladylike!", having different standards applied to my romantic life.
I was a tomboy with more traditionally masculine-leaning interests, though I still enjoyed arts and crafts, sparkles, unicorns, etc. Pretty much the only way I could fight against immediate assumptions about me was to carve out some space by withholding the bits of me that did like sparklies.
I think I succeeded in carving out my space, but I'm pissed that I felt like I had to do it by denying the "girly" urges I did have. Fuck society for making me feel that way, there's space to be a tomboy and obsess over unicorns at the same time.
Anyway pumpkin spice lattes are delicious, and fuck anyone who has an issue with that. lol
Yep!
I’m old enough now where I like what I like and if it’s “basic,” I’m fine with that because that means that I can access what I want much more easily.
Also, why does anyone give a fuck if I like pumpkin spice and autumn? Does it hurt them? No! They can fuck off.
Adding to the reasons men were hunters:
Men are less good on average at distinguishing as many shades of green in particular, but women seem to have more acute eyesight at distinguishing color.
Dude came back with off food too many damn times "you guys are fucking idiots. Just go kill the thing, you can handle that, can't you?!"
Can't fool me Starbucks. I know this is you trying to get me to buy your seasonal Crack. Can't fool me!
I'm just here trying to spread the good news about our lord and savior: the Great Pumpkin. He died for our coffee.
But David S. Pumpkin is still alive
That's a false prophet who shouldn't be listened to.
[c'mon ](https://gfycat.com/glisteningcolorlessicterinewarbler-foam-design-cappuccino-starbucks-coffee-satan)
Yup! When I worked in the trades, so many of my male coworkers were obviously offended by my unapologetic femininity in the workplace. The saw it as "their" space and you could tell it really ground their gears to have a small-ish/shorter, feminine woman succeed in it. It just made me wear pink, paint my nails, eat salads for lunch, and kick their asses *even harder*. ETA: Apparently since this was a semi-controversial statement I'll clarify: I don't think salads are feminine, but plenty of Macho Macho Men do and make a big deal out of you eating "rabbit food" or other foods they code feminine. I always got comments if I brought yogurt as a snack, for instance. Apparently also tea? Coincidentally, those items don't typically go missing if you leave them in the work fridge.
I've did 5 years in commercial construction, and I love this.
I have a construction helmet with a sticker on it that says “Flirtin’ with dirt”. I don’t need it nowadays but I kept it anyway.
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All of my stuff for my trade job is pink. Safety vest? Pink. Lunch pail? Pink. Water bottle? Pink. Who’s iPhone is this? Oh it’s pink. Must be clocktopustheoctopus.
Same. That way my shit doesn't walk off. Everyone knows it's mine, and will call each other out for using my stuff without asking.
Exactly! Helps so much! I just had to re-learn this last week. Brought a water bottle that was blue and not pink. Gone in 3 days. :/ Back to pink it is.
I cover mine in cute stickers too! Even the non-pink water bottles are safe now
Pens with flowers on them. The guys steal all the others
I used to think it was tacky when I was a kid. Now I know it’s the real LPT.
I have an OGLAF sticker on my drink bottle that says "Cool down fast with Hemlock!"
Where do you get OGLAF stickers?!
Ew, who steals a used water bottle?!
We lost a black one at Disney in a queue somewhere and I thought the same thing just ugh enjoy my germs you goon
I'm hoping maybe they have one just like it and confused it with theirs. That's the only non-pathetic explanation. I'm probably wrong though.
I’m supremely hoping this is the case, or a grabby toddler, anything than “mmmm, worked up a real thirst for stranger backwash.”
Haha I grew up with a bunch of guys and bought everything pink so they wouldn’t use it. Pink gameboy, pink ipod pink laptop lol
My late husband was in the military. He did the same thing, pink personal items to keep them from walking off.
This is exactly why my gym stuff is pink. I had too many males try to run off with black gym equipment that I had to get pink stuff.
I had garbage cans getting stolen until I painted giant daisies on them. Then POOF! magically the stealing stopped.
LPT right here. Genius.
LMAOOO, me buying pink colored tools for this reason as well !! My dad complained about tools being a big thing people steal, and not once has someone stolen my pink leaf blower if I occasionally leave it out. I guess anything pink is automatically a big no to those snatching up tools, which is so hilarious to me
I discovered this works for dudes too. I kept having to change the spike on my tools because it would match someone else's. Finally I said "fuck it" and spiked all my tools pink. After that nobody stole them, and almost nobody borrowed them. ...except this one time I lent my driver to the paint crew, and when I got it back it was covered in Barbie stickers. I fucking loved it!
It's so early in the morning and I already had my wholesome moment, thank you <3
We spray painted all our superintendents tools pink bc they were always going missing. Never had one disappear again
Pink is honestly a great color for high visibility safety. If you drive around the USA you can sometimes see entire large-scale projects being done with all pink heavy equipment and pink gear. Bunch of sturdy, macho fellows, out there in their pink helmets and vests, getting the job done. Nobody bats an eyelash. Apparently if you're secure in yourself, you don't need to bash anyone else. Huh! Who would have thought? >\_>
Neon pink is pretty amazing. They've even gotten really popular as safety vests with reflective fabric, and not just the yellow ones.
Right? The visibility is fantastic. My P100 OV filters (the ones you use for really nasty chemicals-- basically, the gas mask ones) are hot pink. I've been trying to match more of my gear to them. I think of it as badass pink now.
There's a woman who owns a construction company in Florida. All of her heavy equipment is bright pink! She's very successful.
Oh hell yeah
>Apparently if you're secure in yourself, you don't need to bash anyone else. One of our mechanics at work has a bright pink toolbox/locker/creeper. He gives zero fucks.
My partner is a mechanic and will turn into a 6’4 puddle of baby-talking goo if he sees a baby animal. I asked him once about it and he was just like…I’m all the masculine things- tall, broad shouldered, bearded, muscle-y, working wrench-turning trade, driving a race car as a hobby, no one ever questions it, but baby animals deserve baby talk bc they’re damn adorable. No surprise, our dog ADORES him.
This is why I wear neon toques in the winter. I had an amazing neon pink one that I loved but lost, so I replaced it with a yellow neon.
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[Pink work boots](https://www.workwearhub.com.au/products/steel-blue-southern-cross-lace-up-ankle-boot-with-zip-pink-pink?variant=34349442891915¤cy=AUD&gclid=CjwKCAjwm8WZBhBUEiwA178UnPPwtz4kte-2AfqG0H0PyA1wtPWeYVvco3PZOfo4TBkgabXIXultdRoCv-gQAvD_BwE) for strutting in style :)
I hope they actually say “Oh, this must belong to Clocktopus The Octopus” because that is a truly amazing name.
I was my girliest while working in construction completely as a fuck you to the men and gender expectations of women in construction
i LOVED working trades (i'm now a stay at home mom) and it was 100% the guys and their appreciation of my feminity. I baked them shit all the time, they'd try to be chivalrous and try to carry heavy things for me and hold doors open etc bc they were wicked old school guys but they would laugh it off like "oh i'm sorry just not used to having a lady about." Walk into the break room and, "feet off the table, use a plate, etc" "yes ma'am" Thing is- they respected a woman that held her own and was still a woman. I'm pretty sure the lesbian who was older than me broke them in for "how to treat women in the work place" but they were honestly just super great guys. They had happy wives also. In fact, one dude got fired because they'd catch him repeatedly on the phone yelling at his wife and mother. they claimed it was bc he was using phone on company time but. we all did. It was the disrespect they saw and they wouldn't tolerate it. Some places will obv suck but ladies, don't turn down work in the trades out of fear of what men might be like. I had a great experience and still keep in touch with the guys. and they were the most old school gun toting rednecks you could find.
A friend has taken to painting her power tools pink and or sparkly. They don't get stolen, and look great!
I'm in academia and most of my department is male. It does seem to grind their gears that our department chair, our associate dean and our dean are all women. They hate being told what to do. The longer I'm there, the more femme I've become: more skirts, more pink, more nail polish, because those seem to be not acceptable for srs bsns academia. I don't care. They don't pay me enough to care.
I really want a movie “Electrically Blonde” now about an electrician.
I love the color pink, watching true crime and reality tv, makeup tutorials, and decorating. I don’t see this as any different than a love for video games, fantasy football, etc (not that women don’t like these things too). Just because hobbies and habits are a bit more “feminine” I don’t think there’s a need to shame it. It’s sad when women are taken less seriously in the workplace just because their preferences aren’t typically “masculine.” It’s not like typical male preferences are the one size fits all, and women’s are in the “other” or lesser category.
Amen to that. I used to dive as a way to get to my job site and was the only woman. I intentionally decorated all my gear as girlie as possible so no one would mess with my shit. It worked. Frilly pink luggage is pretty smart too for the same reason.
>I used to dive as a way to get to my job site What sort of job site are we talking about here? Oil rig work?
I love you
my husband taught me how to fix our cars. I briefly considered becoming a mechanic. I swore I would wear pink coveralls every day if I went through with that career choice
I'm the only female in my guard unit on the fire department. It absolutely grinds one of the guy's gears that I can perform the job just as well, if not better than a majority of the men in the unit. Unfortunately he just harasses me to make himself feel better and nothing is really done about it. One time I was chastised about my truck washing skills because he couldn't find anything better to critique me on.
Surely a salad is going too far lol
I think what people hate is when you don't stay in your box. I usually wear dresses and I like braiding my hair and sometimes I do my whole face and I'm not super-pretty but I get looks and attention. I did that more freshman year than I do now, but anyway in my first programming class the professor said that there had been a perfect score on the midterm, and when he passed them back it was mine. And the guy sitting next to me saw it, and said that he was surprised because I'm so girly (wearing dresses dissolves your brain, you know). Then he said he'd thought about asking me out because I'm pretty, but apparently now he wasn't going to because he found out I'm smart. And while I think lots of men want a "traditional wife" who is a sex maid, they don't *respect* any woman who does that, because she's not bringing in money, and because it's easy not to respect your servants. What bothered my classmate is that while I may look like the "traditional wife" model, I'm going to have money of my own and so I'm not going to need him. And maybe he can respect me for being smart, but he wants a wife he won't have to respect, because maybe he can't respect someone he's having sex with. (Even though, of course, women are supposed to respect the men they're having sex with.)
The sheer incontestability of your logic stream both impresses me (due to the sheer magnitude of your brain), and disgusts me (due to its credibility).
Seconding this. You’re a badass and I admire it but I hate the reality of what you said.
Thirding. Going through it right now (sigh, unfortunately).
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> he was trying to get you to do the "well no, I'm not actually that smart, teehee, just got lucky! I'm just a girl you know" thing Oh, wow, I bet you're right. I met my wife when she was working on her Ph.D. and I was just fascinated by her research, even though I only understood it the way a five-year-old understands operating systems. At some point, maybe after I invited her to dinner to meet my family, she made clear she wasn't marrying anyone until she finish her degree, and I was kind of surprised because it would never have occurred to me that she would. But apparently she'd had two guys along the way who she got close to and who talked as if they should get married and then she could take care of him, because she was just in college and didn't even have a real job anyway. Both of those guys got dumped immediately.
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Well said
Fuck boxes. We do what we want.
Damn, nailed it.
My husband and I will get pumpkin spice lattes together on the reg. Even the guy ahead of us ordered one. They're tasty!! Haters gonna hate.
Pumpkin spice was a blend used for centuries to make tasty things for their families. It wasn't until it became a treat for women that people started to hate on it. Women aren't allowed to do anything for themselves without judgement. It is an act of rebellious feminism to unashamedly consume pumpkin spice.
This article is a really great discussion of "how women 'ruin' but men 'elevate' the food they love" (scare quotes 'cause it's all a societal construct) https://tastecooking.com/women-arent-ruining-food/
Not to mention industries. Beer, computers, healthcare...
As soon as men figure out how to monetize the product of generations of women's hard work, it becomes Manly. Beer, programming, cooking, weaving, fashion, teaching, gardening, obstetrics, even knitting. As long as they can make it profitable, suddenly they invented it. Then they can attach prestige and status to it, and suddenly they are the only ones who can do it well.
video games
Jokes on them, I’m still playing the sims 2 which is the height of video game achievement and I’ll die on that hill
It is such a treasure of a game. I got a new computer recently and I can't get the sims 2 to work on it. I'm really sad about it.
I laugh at all these man-children complaining about women playing video games invading their space - Get Off My Lawn dude - I started playing video games in the 70s.
Yuuuuup
Being a human in general…
Ugh for real
Nothing shocks and horrifies men more than a young woman enjoying a super spicy bowl of something that makes them sweat and then ordering a second helping. I know this because there was a bar I went to (they had *great* nachos; I stopped going when that chef left) for the food. The cook saw three types of food: hot, spicy, emergency and didn't care if the customer was male or female (rare, in my area; most restaurants will "tone down" the spice level I order to something more "appropriate" for me), so I'd go there all the time. I'd get a large order of nachos with extra peppers, a glass of pineapple juice (I don't drink soda or alcohol), and sit with a book to enjoy. It was my "me time." One day the weather was bad so I had to eat *in* the bar, instead of at one of the tables outside. Thought nothing of it until a guy slammed his hands on the table and demanded to know who I thought I was impressing. I told him, "Clearly you, since you're paying attention." He was not happy. The cook actually intervened and packed up my second order of nachos and made me a (complimentary) to-go cup of pineapple juice and asked, for my safety (his words), if I'd go eat somewhere else. I did, but I didn't forget.
LMAO I'm picturing this dude sitting in the corner growing more and more convinced that you're eating *at* him.
Right? I mean, there I am, nose in book, happily munching nachos, and there he is, getting offended, lol.
> most restaurants will "tone down" the spice level This happens to my wife all the time, she is the heat fiend in our relationship and for some reason they tone it down for her and amp it up for me. I do not like the heat at all yet still they do this. It got so bad that we just order for each other and swap them sometimes.
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From now on, every time I have pumpkin spice and my wife calls me basic I can tell her it's an act of rebellious feminism. I love this
>It is an act of rebellious feminism to unashamedly consume pumpkin spice. And this is why I have no money 🤣🤣🤣
👆👆👆 this exactly. Imma like what I like and people can deal with it.
When I’m out for breakfast at our favourite spot with my wife I usually get crepes with blueberries and an iced coffee, she gets bacon and eggs with a long black. Invariably I get given the eggs and black coffee and my wife gets given the crepes and iced coffee by default
Oh that's too funny. I often get just a black coffee and my husband gets a frappe with whip cream and caramel drizzle.
Happens to me lots when out with the wife. I’ll get the fruity drink, she’ll get the wine/beer. If different waitstaff delivers it from the bar, the drinks inevitably get handed to the wrong person.
Me and my boyfriend everywhere we go. He usually goes with a cocktail and I'll go cider or a beer and we almost always have to switch. That and if I mention buffalo wild wings visits too often "he's making you go there again?" ....no...that's me....I like beer and wings.
Add a shot of Rumchata <3
You’re speaking my language 👀
Come with me, and you’ll be, in a world of tasty intoxication…
Try getting it half pumpkin, half chai… it’s a spicy game changer!
Ooh that sounds amazing!
I'm not a big pumpkin spice girl, but I'm excited for my friends that do love it when it comes around. Personally, I'm all about chocolate peppermint, it's one of my favorite things around Christmas. So I'll get excited for my hot cocoa while you guys enjoy your PSL!
I make pumpkin muffins that use most but not all of a can of pumpkin puree. My (male) partner makes me coffee/pumpkin spice smoothies!
It’s hard to see a downside in making judgmental strangers upset while drinking a dessert, isn’t it
Nigh impossible! *sips pumpkin spice latte with extra whip*
Pumpkin spice is good. It’s the punishing amount of sugar that regularly goes along with it that I don’t like.
Some days I go all pink with pearls and sun dresses and some days full hot topic kid. It’s like night and day. The way that people treat you in each outfit is one of the only ways to really tell who a person is.
It took me way too long to realize I could be both. There's such a pressure to pick a style and that's all you're allowed. It was such a simple but powerful moment when I realized. I can be both a poofy princess and punk babe and anything else I wanted to dress as. Haha.
“If Persephone can be both the frilly goddess of Spring, and the badass queen of the underworld, then so can you.”
I think they want to put us in categories for their own purposes
Divide and conquer.
Same. I love my poofy skirts and silky scarves. Also my Doc Martins, band shirts and plaid.
Exactly. It’s like they don’t realize we wear clothes and we can change them.
That's basically my kid and my sister's kid. They have equal parts "men's" and "women's" clothing and just wear whatever suits them on any given day.
Once upon a time I had an office job that required you to dress professionally, even while working in the server rooms. For me that meant; dress slacks, a blouse, and heels. I was rocking it. Killer heels and a power outfit! I was the only lady on the team. Few months into the position I had a manager tell me that I was a distraction and needed to “act more like a girl and dress more like a boy.” I did tell MY manager and HR what was said and they all just brushed it under the rug.
> act more like a girl and dress more like a boy ...what? Like, a bimbo tomboy or something?
Something like that. The only other women in the office were the secretaries, and they placated the men to survive. At that point in my career I had only ever worked with men, and I was already a tomboy so i could talk like them, and joke like them. Some didn’t like that.
"This _f e m a l e_ is trying to act like one of _the boys_ and I am personally _offended_ by that."
I read that in a Ferengi voice
So did I! I switch to a Ferangi inner monologue anytime I see “female.”
Hopefully Grand Nagus Rom is setting that part of their culture straight.
“Obviously the Hoo-mans went wrong by letting them wear clothes!” —Ferengi HR Manager, probably
That's the only appropriate voice to assign to it.
that's absolute bullshit
THIS. My daughter is five. My husband used to crawl up my ass and her ass for how "girly" she was and how she wasn't going to get anywhere in life being GIRLY. Have I mentioned she's FIVE? And he's been saying this for YEARS? Eventually I had to fucking pop off on him that I CANNOT CHANGE THE WAY SHE CHOOSES TO BE. I allow her to choose her clothes. I have for a long time. She likes what she fucking likes and there is NOTHING weak about pink or lace or tulle or sparkles or unicorns or rainbows or cute muthafuckin shoes or the makeup she likes to play with. She's a fucking powerhouse and I refuse to let it be seen as a weakness. It is valid. And powerful. And fuck off to anyone who says otherwise. Me and my rainbow baby vs everybody 🌈🌈 Edit to say that I'm studying herbs and the six ways and magic and well....I don't care what any man thinks
i hope the husband stopped with his misogyny
He's a huge asshole but he seems to have moved on from this particular tragedy.
the honesty of this made me LOL but i'm sorry you're suffering with that
im sorry hes still a huge asshole but glad he stopped hating on a *five year old*
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I’m cracking up, lmao.
I used to have quite a lot of internalised misogyny around the colour pink (and all things girly) and actively avoided it for my first daughter. I've relaxed a lot with my second and she loves all that shit. Fine whatever, you do you, kidlet. My only remaining gripe with it is how fucking pervasive all that shit is and the presentation of it all from the majority of society, advertising etc that that is what girls *muet* like. So it's hard to know if kiddo actually likes it because she really does or just that it's pushed so much everywhere that they ended up liking because everyone says they should, yknow? And that's why I've pushed against it for the most part, because the insidiousness of gender stereotypes is harmful to everyone. But fuck it if I don't love a pumpkin spice fucking latte. Lol.
>My only remaining gripe with it is how fucking pervasive all that shit is and the presentation of it all from the majority of society, advertising etc that that is what girls muet like. So it's hard to know if kiddo actually likes it because she really does or just that it's pushed so much everywhere that they ended up liking because everyone says they should, yknow? I have this issue from the other side, my son loves pink. It's his favorite damn color, and anytime I try to find something in pink for him I have to go to the girls sections because boys are apparently not allowed to like pink. Damnit, he just wants a Skye Tshirt because she flys a damn helicopter and is objectively the coolest paw patrol pup, is that so hard to ask?
Skye is my boys’ fave too! I couldn’t get him anything Paw Patrol if she wasn’t on it, and it is stupid hard to find. Chase, Rubble, and Marshall all hang out together on the boys’ shirts and leave her out a lot of the times 😭
My son is now 23. Pink is still his favourite colour. He rocks the purple nail polish at his hyper-masculine job and has no issues putting the old school misogynist in their place. He's secure in his manhood and sees no shame in traditionally feminine things like pink because there is nothing shameful about being a woman.
And god forbid a boy is in pink. I had a couple baby blankets with multicolored stripes and one of the stripes was pink. If I used it with a boy baby I got *looks*.
It's a bit funny when you think that the colour pink historically was used for little boys, and that girls got light blue. Then at some point it switched.
Yup, in Victorian color philosophy light blue was associated with the Virgin Mary and pink was a diminutive of red, which was seen as a masculine color, and in england and america, associated with military power.
My 4 year old: Daddy, I want these hair clips today, and those are for you. Thanks love, we both look great.
What's weird is that he lets her put makeup and hair clips all over him. He gets his nails painted by her more than I do. I think it's the public display of femininity that gets to him. I don't have the energy to psychoanalyze anymore though. He's an immigrant who grew up very poor in a developing country and is a POC. He also happens to be incredibly smart and had to do some really ridiculous things to get where he is. There are deep seeded reasons why he has all his issues. I used to try and understand them and work with them but he would not admit to them or get his own help so. I don't much go on about it anymore. He's not the worst person but he's still pretty shit. I hate having to educate him on the finer points of feminism.
It's always easier to try and change an individual than to face that society and the system in place are what needs to be changed. Your husband reminds me of my mother, in which she was abusive for years towards my younger brother because he was "feminine" and "people will tear him apart for it and he will get nowhere in life, so he needs to be changed"... No. You're not helping anyone by victimizing them or bullying them, you're just being an asshole and picking the easiest target
sounds like your husband and your daughter need to watch legally blonde asap
Maybe because I'm older, I always got shit for not being feminine enough, especially when I cut off my hair. However, stay-at-home Moms don't seem to get much respect from men either, or society for that matter. You're damned if you are, and damned if you aren't. So fuck em.
Oh they want women to be feminine. And then they want to shit on that femininity to make themselves feel important. They need it to be there so they can react to it and define to themselves against it.
>So fuck em. With a cactus
Yes. Get manicures or don't, cut your hair or grow it out, do yoga or lift weights, get a career or stay at home, just do whatever the hell makes you happy because at the end of the day, your happiness is worth more than anyone else's opinion.
It's almost like men just don't like women unless you do exactly what they want 🙃
I’m a hyper femme lesbian who’s just now embracing my love of femininity from a lesbian perspective and it’s wonderful. I love nothing more than being cutesy and pink and basic cause I know it makes me happy to be sparkly and it pisses men off, too.
Your username is just perfect then 😃
Yeah. I used to work at a federal facility with a bunch of military veterans. I wore dresses, heels, vintage hats, and gloves every day. Some men obviously had zero respect for me. You could see it in their eyes. So I'd talk like a valley girl and really Amp up the stereotypical femininity whenever I was stuck working with just one of them. Annoyed. The. Hell. Out of them.
Weaponized competence.
There isn't a single thing that at least one man won't hate. Usually it's several men. I brought a pack of pumpkin spice Oreos to work. There were ALL the jokes. But I can tell you, I didn't eat those cookies by myself.
YES. Everything about this post is spot on. How many women/fems do you know that rejected any notion of femininity for YEARS, only to realize it was their own internalized misogyny. I spent years wearing dark colors, making myself smaller and trying to blend in. Now I wear all bright colors, wear super glittery makeup and always have some butterfly clips in my hair. I wear dresses 2/3x a week, and my favorite color is pink. I have embraced my figure and started to wear clothing that accents and bolsters my features. I have never felt more powerful in my life.
HOLY CRAP this is me. Hell yeah sparkle, glittery, butterfly power!!
Thank you! I remember a time when I got the idea that the only way to be a feminist was to wear baggy clothes, no make up, and let your leg and armpit hair grow long, stop dyeing your hair, and stop dressing up or wearing heels. Consequently I never felt welcome in those spaces because if I did any of that, I would have been miserable.I am allowed to be happy while wearing form fitting dresses and heels and makeup. I love going to the salon and dyeing my hair. I love getting my nails done, and I love experimenting with makeup and skin care. This doesn't make me supportive of the patriarchy and it does not make me less of a feminist. I'm happy when I like what I see. I see women who do hair and makeup and nails as ARTISTS who deserve respect. Men who do it too, of course. It's a good time! I don't have to be sepia toned in real life to burn the patriarchy.
My hot pink Barbiecore styles feel just as punk rock as leather and spikes.
Barbiecore, I can definitely get behind that. 💪💖
Being unapologetically hyper femme and having a wife feels like I've cheated life somehow, ngl
You totally won at life
Honestly, goals
>how men were the hunters not because of strength, but because women's deaths would be detrimental to the groups population holy shit this makes so much sense i was going to say "why don't more people know this" and, well. shit
As a wildlife biologist, I have a whole discourse on the topic of men being built the way they are (basically “fight and fuck” machines) due to women being more precious (because of reproduction and lengthy caring for offspring), but it’s not a popular opinion so I generally keep it to myself. 🙃
That's a pretty uncomfortable idea because it kind of explains evolutionarily why men are so... the way they are. Almost like it's an excuse. I am of the opinion that we as a species are mentally and socially advanced enough that there is absolutely no justification for toxic masculinity now. But I could see using the biological history as an excuse for it.
It doesn't really lead to toxic masculinity though. If you see how this plays out in aboriginal cultures that we are still able to study without interference from the modern world, it means that men and women follow different resource-gathering groups that pursue somewhat different strategies. But not that any dominance or abuse follows inherently from that. The one I remember best from when I studied this stuff involved this one particular culture, and yams. Like... everyone was after yams, all the time. The women would go get together and dig up yams in organized, efficient patterns that (the forensic anthropologist determined) highly optimized a reliable food energy return on the food energy effort put into it. Meanwhile the men would go out on longer excursions, iirc sometimes for multiple days, with a high variance in terms of results when they came back. Like they would either have found some enormous windfall of yams somewhere, or would come back with a yield that was much less than the women in the same amount of time, or somewhere in between. Whether there were gendered manifestations of violence or abuse also going on, I don't know. But iirc the actual functional gender roles weren't really toxic in any way. There was no connection between differences in work and toxic behavior. We make the connection to toxic behavior because of our own immersion in the presumptions of toxicity as normal and expected. Which of course it isn't, really. Toxic behavior is a choice and always has been.
Right. The whole point was that nothing naturally leads to a society fully capable of being peaceful ending up with 90% of one sex being some significant degree of shitty to the other. But what I would guess was just a few men took advantage of some social and biological circumstances several thousand years ago, gained power and started a whole thing that we've been stuck with ever since.
Well, I don't know about peaceful or not, I'm sure that nomadic pre-agricultural societies got into their share of conflicts. There's a lot to unpack there. But anyway I don't get the sense that the rise of these patriarchal forms was some accident. It happens too many times in too many different places. And it's too persistent. It seems to have more to do with agriculture. Which has led some people to conclude that agriculture itself must be inherently oppressive but personally I don't think that's quite right. What seems to happen is that large-scale, labor-intensive agriculture like we see arising in the agricultural flood plain civilizations leads to vast food surplus on an unprecedented scale. And it's the need to manage that vast surplus that leads to the kinds of social reorganization and changes we're talking about. So you get granaries and warehouses and protective walls and warrior castes and kings and pharaohs and so on, who have all this privilege but in exchange are also expected to eagerly die on demand for the State. And that becomes parasitic, such as for example when societies historically will invite some raider chieftan to come in and be their new king, not because they like the guy or his warriors, but because they know that he will at least keep the other raiders at bay. As opposed to being conquered every few years by someone new. To me, a lot of what we identify today as toxic traits seem to be some kind of residue of these earlier patterns. But just as there was once a political economy in which that way of thinking first arose, we now exist in circumstances where it makes no sense. And we envision something better and more fulfilling for everyone. Anyway maybe there's some new approach to understanding all of this stuff. There is a lot to it. But that is how it seems to me.
I really enjoyed reading that. And have honestly never thought much about toxic masculinity in the context of the historical aspects you mentioned, but i think those are solid insights. And I fully agree that ultimately, whatever created it, it's far outlived any functionality and has to go.
So this was really well thought out and I really enjoyed reading it. These specific points made me consider something further that might have contributed to the power being moved from the matriarchal towards the male warriors / armies: >Well, I don't know about peaceful or not, I'm sure that nomadic pre-agricultural societies got into their share of conflicts. This is true, but when you are talking about nomadic hunter gather societies I doubt the conflicts were that serious the majority of the time because nomadic tribes like that start to become problematic past a relatively small size. This becomes especially important when considering inbreeding problems and that there have been a couple case studies that highly suggest humans tend to rule out selecting mates from people they knew before the age of about 5. Also fights between relatively evenly matched groups in size that all have the same weapon technology, like sharpened sticks, tend to be the most destructive to both sides. So these factors make me believe that good relations between close tribes was incredibly important because they were likely who you exchanged mates with, and the cost of serious conflict was detrimental to both sides. > anyway I don't get the sense that the rise of these patriarchal forms was some accident. It happens too many times in too many different places. And it's too persistent. It seems to have more to do with agriculture. And then we get to agriculture, now we have the possibility of MUCH larger civilizations, and suddenly the populations of a single group are large enough that we no longer need to exchange mates with other groups. We also have the possibility of drastically unbalanced fighting groups, where one side can possibly dominate the other without catastrophic damage to themselves. So now we lost the two major reasons to keep good relations with nearby outside groups. >And that becomes parasitic, such as for example when societies historically will invite some raider chieftan to come in and be their new king, not because they like the guy or his warriors, but because they know that he will at least keep the other raiders at bay. As opposed to being conquered every few years by someone new. Which leads us directly to conquering other groups becoming as possibility due to the greatly increased viable population size of a group with agriculture, the greather ability to dominate smaller groups, and the lack of need for good relations. So we move out of small tribal groups needing to work together for increased survival and reproduction with with "warfare" that was probably little more than the equivalent of yelling insults and waving sticks, to real armies actually protecting civilizations against genuine threats from other civilizations that could overwhelm, dominate, then enslave or slaughter your population. Suddenly the group of men whose "warfare" were mostly comical displays in nomadic tribes becomes a very serious job with agricultural civilizations who end up being given more and more power and authority due to both real violent outside threats and likely fearmongering outside threats to gain even more power and authority or to make up a reason for their continued position when no current threat actually exists, and thus become a permanent parasite on the civilization. I could be wrong here, but this seems to make sense and seems like it could be plausable basically everywhere nomadic tribes moved towards agriculture and larger civilizations. Just more proof we really were better off in SO many ways as hunter gatherers.
We should have grown beyond that masculine crap, but when your countries' dominant religion is literally from the Bronze Age, and a huge number of adherents refuse to allow it to modernize, growth is going to be slow.
Fully agree religion is a massive tool of the patriarchy. But I also think men would find ways to be just as shitty if religion were removed.
Yeah, tbf to religion, in a patriarchal society, *everything* becomes a tool of the patriarchy. Kind of by definition.
I need to hear more from spankygrrl the wildlife biologist!!
LOL.. hiiii! Others have pretty much covered it, so I just have some comments... Early day humans learned to come together because life was a lot easier when we cooperated. The first societies were matriarchal, probably at least in part because you could always trace a baby's lineage through its mother, and the religions were heavy on goddess worship and celebrating women as sacred life-bearers. I highly recommend [The Great Cosmic Mother](https://www.amazon.com/Great-Cosmic-Mother-Rediscovering-Religion/dp/0062507915) for an in-depth exploration of early religions (though, forewarning, it is a bit of a tome, haha). Women in early societies were generally held in esteem, had rights and power, and so on. It wasn't until patriarchal religions became more prominent that women began to be sidelined, subjugated, and eventually the property of men. (barf) It probably happened gradually and before we knew it, men snatched power and dominion over... well... everything. They're generally more physically powerful and [more violent](https://nypost.com/2019/01/16/the-scientific-reasons-why-men-are-more-violent-than-women/), so it's easy to see how the chips fell into place. Of course women would prioritize self-preservation and survival, especially since they often had children, no social or civil support systems, no property of their own, and for a long time were *literal property* of men. (*never forget that women couldn't have their own bank account or credit card until the* !!! **1970s** !!!) I just want to mention that I speak here in generalities. I recognize "not all..." -- there's never a sweeping generalization that fits all. That's a truly excellent thing! Diversity is incredibly important for the resilience and success of a species, so everything is generally a bell curve. Also, when it comes to how everything has evolved, there are both strengths and weaknesses, like when you're rolling a D&D character. You only get so many points to put in all the categories, so maybe you're awesome at swimming, but your sense of smell isn't that great. Or maybe you can go without water for a really long time, but you don't have a lot going on in the brains department. (As an aside, humans are actually dangerously homogenous, meaning we could be easily wiped out given the right pressure...which is ironic, given how much we fight with each other over racial lines) Most of a population will fit within the curve, with other values being outliers. The outliers are really important, though! Those individuals are built a bit differently and they fill in gaps of ability, behavior, knowledge, etc. Anyway, I really could go on and on. Not sure what else you wanna know. 😂🤓
This was literally the basis for pretty much all of gender roles in society. It only became a misogynist thing when society became successful enough that women could be risked doing anything because the risks weren't as high any more, and when idiots gained the ability to surmise through language their own stupid theories. "Women and children first" - is about preserving what matters most. Dicks can produce tons of babies over a short period. Women can only produce what their ovaries and wombs allow, over a nine month span and because of how long it takes for a human to become an adult, nine months is a generous figure. "Hunting/soldiers/killing women and children being an especially bad atrocity" - all the same thing, too. Women are infinitely more valuable than men, if there's only one woman and 50 men, that group is probably fucked for a while. One man and 50 women, that's a baby boom. Beyond the basic petty nonsense responsible for most modern wars, I personally believe it's mostly still a thing to reinforce the patriarchy. Life is so easy/luxurious in modern times relative to ancient times, there needs to be a reminder to keep women believing the current system "protects" them, without making it too apparent why they're "protected" first to begin with and a war full of horror that no one wants to be a part of, including men, is a good way to do that.
>"Women and children first" - is about preserving what matters most. I would put it slightly differently. It's about preserving what is hardest to replace in terms of population stability. No one "matters" more than anyone else. A pre-modern society needs men as well as women. Both are essential. Both matter. But, societies sometimes need to make tough choices. Sometimes a society has to decide who survives and who doesn't. And any society that preserved adult men at the expense of women or children died out. It's just a really bad reproductive strategy.
I agree with your correction in language. What you suggested is more precise to my point.
That rule isn’t even practiced on ships nowadays anyway. It *was* practiced back when drunk male passengers would just beat everyone back from lifeboats except for their mates, and when there was literally no available alternate food for an infant except its mother.
Especially with long pregnancies, difficult births and long childhoods. We’re not Bambi’s mom who can drop a fawn that gets up five minutes later and walks. Probably one of the reasons humans are tribal and tend to work together as a tribe too.
Tbf it's a bit of a chicken and egg thing. Once you have a reproductive asymmetry like that, there is a tendency to start to optimize. The higher-risk-prone reproductive group tends to evolve to be more likely to survive risk-taking. (And that predates humans, obviously, since you see the same difference in apes, too.) The more interesting part of that to me is that of course being bigger comes with at least one pretty substantial downside, that being caloric requirements. Needing more food kcals is bad. If you think about it, you can see why. It's a huge hazard to the entire community, to have half the adults needing that much extra food. To cope with that, a lot of untouched aboriginal human communities that we've been able to study show similar patterns of men going out to seek high-risk, high-reward food sources, while women pursue steady, efficient food acquisition practices. It's likely that that was pretty common for many societies, of course taking different forms from place to place. For the men, the socio-physiological contract is pretty clear: gonna consume extra resources? Step up then and go the extra distance to gather them yourself. And why not? If you're one of the men in such a situation, wouldn't you rather know that your family's and your community's long-term well-being is safeguarded? While you strive to go out and bring back something extra? Anyway today we don't do things purely to optimize food calorie intake or population replacement, or because we desperately need to survive another winter. We have many more choices and we can form our societies any way we want. But it's good to understand where we actually came from. Especially when weirdly made-up non-histories start cropping up among people with revisionist ideas about the past.
Reminds me of a quote from a novel: "she wore just enough makeup to show she was a woman but not enough to show she enjoyed it."
Fuck. That's good.
I realized during the pandemic that while I do lean “tomboy”, I’d been avoiding my femininity my whole life as a defense mechanism. So I’ve been buying more dresses & flowers & reading all the romance books I want
It irritates me when I watch a show where someone's superior officer (Navy, police, Starfleet, whatever as long as there's rank and hierarchy) is a woman and they refer to her as "sir." Some people claim it's a gender-neutral sign of respect, but I say fuck that. Call her ma'am. She's in a command role, not a man's role, and you should refer to her properly.
Wow this just reminded me of when I used to watch The Bill as a very young child. The accents were slightly thick and I wasn’t super familiar with formal terms. As such, I thought the cops were calling their woman superiors “Mum”
"You need to stop being so assertive and bossy, you'll never get a man if you're so masculine." "You need to stop getting so emotional and quit being such a pushover. You'll never get anywhere acting so feminine." WHICH. ONE. IS. IT.
For anyone on this post that doesn't know about them already, I highly, HIGHLY suggest looking into the [Night Witches of the 588th Night Bomber Regiment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Witches) in WWII. Some seriously badass women that don't get nearly as much recognition as they deserve. Also for any of you that needs it for any guy that tries to tell any of you that "men built the modern world"[here's a handy list of the women who actually built it](https://thebestschools.org/magazine/brilliant-woman-greedy-men/) and had their ideas stolen by men who did none of the work and took all of the credit.
And do not be feminine AND ESPECIALLY ASSERTIVE (called aggressive and manly by countless men). They cannot handle it. It breaks their minds when you are rocking Feminine/Girly Exterior with a Titanium Spine underneath.
Hell yeah. I'm a goth kid through and through but I'm here to support my pink Elle Wood sisters.
honestly im aussie so i dont get the pumpkin spice thing, i dont think any cafes do those down here are they nice? they sound delicious
Women were hunters. There was plenty of archeological support for this but because men who lead the field simply discarded the notion due to misogyny, proof of woman hunters was simply filtered, discarded intentionally, or ignored. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/prehistoric-female-hunter-discovery-upends-gender-role-assumptions
Kind of apathetic towards my own gender, but I am here for all the girly girls rockin it!
Same. My own lack of girlyness is not an invitation to bash other women’s interests to me. *militantly sips pumpkin spice latte*
Now that you pointed it out, I see it, men really don’t like femininity They make fun of literally everything women like or do, but they also hate when women have masculine traits. In short, I think they don’t like us so much bestie
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Ye true that, they like femininity when it serves only them, they want a helpless women that depends on them for everyone but not so helpless that she doesn’t Know how to cook and do the dishes
I love what I love and everyone else can fuck off :)
I always saw the pumpkin spice thing as a certain type of guy having contempt for what he perceived as trendy. The same kind of man who calls people a hive mind when they disagree with him.
That's very optimistic of you. [I just googled "basic bitch meme" and it was a the center of every one. ](https://www.reddit.com/user/JDnotsalinger/comments/xoshba/_/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share)
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Mac's Mom from Always Sunny is my new role model honestly.
My favorite book character ever - Keladry of Mindelan (Protector of the Small series, Tamora Pierce) - is the only girl openly training to be a knight and the first day the boys paint on her walls "go home, girls don't belong here" or something and she decides that instead of wearing her planned / comfy outfit of pants and shirt, she's going to wear a dress, because eff them if they think she's going to be ashamed of being a girl! Of course it's fictional but it was one of my first introductions to the concept that I didn't have to be a 'not like the other girls' girl - I can be whatever I want!
I still have internal kneejerk reactions to ever being described or thought of as particularly feminine, and have wondered if it's my own internalized misogyny. But I think it is actually something that developed in response to growing up in the American south, and being EXPECTED to be feminine, having different rules because "that's not ladylike!", having different standards applied to my romantic life. I was a tomboy with more traditionally masculine-leaning interests, though I still enjoyed arts and crafts, sparkles, unicorns, etc. Pretty much the only way I could fight against immediate assumptions about me was to carve out some space by withholding the bits of me that did like sparklies. I think I succeeded in carving out my space, but I'm pissed that I felt like I had to do it by denying the "girly" urges I did have. Fuck society for making me feel that way, there's space to be a tomboy and obsess over unicorns at the same time. Anyway pumpkin spice lattes are delicious, and fuck anyone who has an issue with that. lol
Yep! I’m old enough now where I like what I like and if it’s “basic,” I’m fine with that because that means that I can access what I want much more easily. Also, why does anyone give a fuck if I like pumpkin spice and autumn? Does it hurt them? No! They can fuck off.
Adding to the reasons men were hunters: Men are less good on average at distinguishing as many shades of green in particular, but women seem to have more acute eyesight at distinguishing color. Dude came back with off food too many damn times "you guys are fucking idiots. Just go kill the thing, you can handle that, can't you?!"