How much of this gender identity/confusion thing, is socialization, mores, traditional roles, artificial discrimination, societies expectations, our history, and our customs?
If there was a way to separate out the superficial, subjective, artificial differences our society places between the sexes, would most men and most women still “feel confortable” with their sex?
In other words, what if the roles and expectations of the 2 sexes were more differentiated(as they were in the past) and reversed(but not changing the most overt and obvious physical differences and not changing the basic biology of sex differences)?
For example, what if males and females were expected by society to live in opposite clearly differentiated roles, as they were say back in the 1950’s(or 1850’s) before there was gender blending?
Would todays men still be confortable feel very much “male”, and would todays women still feel very much female ?
If our society pressured/required/encouraged all males to wear dresses, makeup, look pretty, stay at home and take care of the house and raise the children, if we had most of our leaders in business and in politics being women, if we never ever once had a male president of the United States, if our congress was 90% female, if 90% of our corporations and businesses were led by women, if we only drafted women and not men, if we did not let men go into combat, etc. If it was women who were physically stronger than men, if it was women who were the sexual agressors, if it was women attacked men and raped men instead of the opposite, if men were afraid to walk the streets alone at night and not women, if it was women who had most of the construction jobs, if police and judges were mostly women, if most of our prisons and criminals were overwelmingly female instead of male, if men were never given equal rights under the United States Constitution(attempts to get an ERA for men being rejected), etc.
What if everyone made jokes about dumb male blondes? What if all the car mechanics were women, and any man that came in to get his car fixed was talked down to as not being able to understand anything mechanical? What if all of our generals all over the world were women, and all of the inventions were discovered by women? What if men going to college, medical school, law school, etc was a very rare thing indeed for any man to do and getting higher education was very recently allowed for males? What if it was women who wrote the Bible and God was a woman, Jesus was a woman, Budda was a woman, and all of the leaders of all of the religions of the world were female? What if there were many countries, eg the middle east, where men had to wear burkas and could not show any part of their bodies except for their eyes, and if a man and woman committed adultry in those countries it was the man who was stoned to death? If it was our custom for women to ask men out, for women to do the proposing for marraige, and if it was improper for a male to make sexual advances to women, if it was generally accepted for women to be strong and macho and never cry, but men were expected to be pretty and dainty, etc?
What if most of professional sports were women? and it was mostly women and girls who played, watched, read about and were fixated on professional sports? If most of our doctors were women and most of our nurses were men?
What if all baby boys from the time they were born in the hospital were all dressed in cute pink dresses and the girls were dressed in blue and were given catchers mits by their aunts and grandmothers? What if men could be arrested in the United States for going topless, but women could? What if all boys were given pretty frilly dresses and dolls for Christmas and all girls were given toy trucks and sporting equipment?
Would most of todays men still feel “confortable” being male?
)