I am “in your face” about feminists demanding that I and other men act like neutered pets. I live defiantly manly. There’s not a darn thing wrong with stoicism either. In today’s sickeningly weak society, we could do with a hell of a lot less whining and gushing about our feelings and percieved injuries. “SUCK. IT. UP.” “Gameface, boy, gameface.” Two timeless, Zen simple bits of advice from my old man.

I try not to be too neanderthal in my day to day life as a cop, but I sure don’t dampen my manliness in any way to satsfy PC dogma. If they don’t like it, then it’s so very, very sad. One of my gifts God helped me develop over the years is that I absolutely don’t care what others think. Feminist guilt trips have no power here. If a chick (yeah, I said it) can keep up, then she’s in and a welcome part of the squad; if not, then go home and watch cartoons with the other girls and boys who couldn’t make it either.

“Ms. Warner clearly believes that the persistence of gender roles and characteristics is a lamentable thing, the root of much of the problems that plague our youth.”

I think what she finds lamentable is not the persistence of gender roles, but the extreme ways in which they are expressed – girls feeling like they have to prove their femininity by being perfectly made-up, and boys feeling like they have to prove their masculinity by calling each other “fag” and never showing weakness.

I agree with you completely. I don’t think there’s such a thing one type of “masculinity” or “femininity”. I don’t think a person’s gender role is one of two checkboxes, it’s a whole spectrum, and while some people may be perfectly fine at one end or the other, many people are not. *I* am not – when you get right down to it, I’m not actually all that stereotypically masculine. I’m not interested in sports and never have been, I don’t like going camping or doing “outdoors” type stuff, I don’t drink beer and prefer liquers, and on and on. But see, I’m perfectly okay with that. If I tried to acquire a taste for all the things I don’t like just to appear more “masculine” to other people, I would just be putting on a front, and I don’t really want to do that – I’d rather just be myself. And if somebody feels like they have to belittle me or my hobbies, and point out how “unmanly” I am – well, I think that says more about them than it does about me.

So my point is that if traditional gender roles and behaviors work for you and make you happy – wonderful. My problem with traditional gender roles, though, is that all too often they come with the expectation that *everyone* should adhere to them, and if you don’t then you’re not a real man/woman, which is ridiculous. And if returning to traditional gender roles means pressuring people to act in ways that are unnatural to them, then what good have we really done?

Your gender isn’t something you earn, or even something that’s determined by your outward appearance or hormones or chromosomes (here I am referring to not only transgendered/transsexual people, but also the nearly one thousand intersex people that are born every year.) It’s determined by your sense of identity, which means that if you say “I’m a woman” or “I’m a man” and mean it, then you are. Far more important than whether someone is a man or a woman is whether they are a good person who is happy with who they are – I would guess that anyone who relies on hurting others in order to feel good about themselves is probably neither.

‘In fact, most women in Sweden find it easy to meld femininity with feminist ideals. Carin Gablad, 49, is Stockholm’s chief of police, in charge of fighting crime in the capital with a force of 4600 officers. “My approach is the opposite of macho,” says the tall, blonde police boss. “I use psychology and negotiation in most cases, but I’m not afraid to use brute force.”

Chief Gablad owes her high position to one simple fact: She gets results. Crime has dropped by 9 percent under her leadership, and shortly after taking office in 2003, she won acclaim by capturing a top politician’s murderer. “Women make excellent police officers because we’re less ego-driven and confrontational than men,” she says. Nearly one in three police officers in Stockholm is a woman, and female recruits now outnumber men at some police training academies. “I think women are increasingly keen to join professions like the police because they are no longer told to act like men,” she says. “They are rewarded for being themselves.”‘

Sweden is the top country for women partially because they have equal rights without having to act like men! ( I gotta say, though, that the way the country thinks about pregnancy and early parenthood has something to do with this. If women who are women take time off to have children, and return to the workforce to find that their experience of caregiving is devalued, equality will forever remain a distant dream.)

Have you read Ivan’s comment above? He makes some very good points without coming across as… well, ignorant. I’m not sure where “Everyone knows that gay guys aren’t liked” is coming from… and, of course, I don’t know you or know where you live, ect. However, you do realize that “Everyone” is a very inclusive word, right? And by extension, a very long stretch when used as an argument.

As a completely heterosexual, socially conservative male, I found that Ivan’s comment has a lot to offer and I completely agree with what he has said.