Gendered personality traits in society [View all]
I would like to preface this post, first, by saying that I am a generally shy, quiet, timid, bookish, introverted, and self-reflective person-even though I am also a young man. The point I am trying to make here is that a lot of that which I listed above, in my experience, seems to be at least somewhat more associated with "feminine" (read: what society has constructed as feminine) qualities, more so than for men. It doesn't make sense to me why personality traits that can be found in a wide variety of people-men and women included-are gendered traits in society.
Why do men have to be aggressive, obsessed with sex, and lacking in emotional complexity (or perceived that way, anyway)? Why do women have to be "overly" emotional, constantly worried about how they look, always fearing social rejection, and always wary of the men they meet and know in their lives?
These are all rhetorical questions, by the way; I think we all know the answer already. None of it has to be this way. None of it is inevitable. But that is how society operates as is. That is how we are compelled to operate by our culture, by the conditioning that we all go through and have gone through.
The question is...where to begin?
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