From conduct books to “wife school,” the history of “natural femininity” is mostly the history of people desperately teaching women to perform it correctly.
I can’t quite pinpoint it but I think…I think your analogy proved Carol’s point. Plug standards are arbitrary human conventions. Europe and America picked completely different shapes and both work fine. Nothing in nature decided sockets should be female. There are 15 different plug standards worldwide because countries just picked their own in the late 1800s: pure historical accident, no nature involved. We standardized it, and now we enforce it because deviation breaks the system. That’s exactly her argument: if gender roles needed nature to hold them up, they wouldn’t need so much enforcement.
Also by your logic heterosexuality requires 2-3 men per woman. Two or three prongs are often needed to better fit a socket. And across all 15 global standards, zero work with just one prong. How bold and progressive of you, sir. 👏🏿
What I find so funny about these biological determinist arguments is that there is no evidence of their scientific validity. Show me the dishwashing gene, or the baby swaddling gene. Oh wait, those don’t exist.
Awe Frankie. I understand honey. But it's open season on your kind. I bet she doesn't even own a waffle iron. Or ever skimmed through even one copy of Martha Stewart Living. Shameful.
In the spirit and tradition of keeping things the same, I want you to come over to my house, and I'll cook you a real nice dinner okay? Fresh baked bread and all the fixins'. I'll serve it with a smile. 😸 (But there won't be any p*ssy waiting for you later on. Sorry about that 🙀).
“Pretty tame” as far as horrifying practices go is still a long way from “peachy”. And, foot binding and FGM are/were not done for the benefit of some hypothesized man, they are/were done for the benefit of the systems that allow men to and reward men for dominating women. They are structural, not personalized.
Learning household skills is useful for both sexes and should be part of regular parenting and education. "wife school" is more than just those things, she was very specific about all the emotional/social indoctrination. It's like saying military training only involves learning to use various kinds of equipment, fighting techniques, tactics etc when the learning obedience and internalizing a hierarchy and thinking as part of a group is obviously just as important, even foundational to everything else.
"Which is one of patriarchy’s greatest scams: making women work very hard to look naturally passive."
All of it is so absurd — painfully absurd.
Thank you.
If gender roles are “natural”, why do they need so much ENFORCEMENT?
That's what I want to know.
I can’t quite pinpoint it but I think…I think your analogy proved Carol’s point. Plug standards are arbitrary human conventions. Europe and America picked completely different shapes and both work fine. Nothing in nature decided sockets should be female. There are 15 different plug standards worldwide because countries just picked their own in the late 1800s: pure historical accident, no nature involved. We standardized it, and now we enforce it because deviation breaks the system. That’s exactly her argument: if gender roles needed nature to hold them up, they wouldn’t need so much enforcement.
Also by your logic heterosexuality requires 2-3 men per woman. Two or three prongs are often needed to better fit a socket. And across all 15 global standards, zero work with just one prong. How bold and progressive of you, sir. 👏🏿
Thank you, you handled that with more dignity than his comment deserved.
It’s getting wild out there. We need to support each other. Let’s just hope he doesn’t bring the lock and key analogy. That’s a classic.
Oh god, I hate that one.
Spot on. Thank you for this rejoinder; you're awesome. 😺💙
Congrats, this was a dumb enough bad faith argument that I’m writing a full post on how stupid it is.
I look forward to that article!😅 I ran out of patience and lost a brain cell.
Everyone I interact with isn’t an asshole. Just a lot of loud asshole men.
What I find so funny about these biological determinist arguments is that there is no evidence of their scientific validity. Show me the dishwashing gene, or the baby swaddling gene. Oh wait, those don’t exist.
Looks like my comment wound up in the wrong spot. Whatever. I don't have time for this nonsense anyway.
> museum of accidental honesty
I love this idea! I volunteer to curate…
so many lists, treatises, manuals, how-to guides. I always tell my students to be nervous the minute anyone says natural.
Reading “delusions of gender” and oof. Seems the “gender differences” are the result of gender inequality, not the other way round!
If women are naturally submissive, why do all major religions need to cajole, threaten and sweet-talk women into submitting?
Yes.
That’s the point.
I chose the name.
Awe Frankie. I understand honey. But it's open season on your kind. I bet she doesn't even own a waffle iron. Or ever skimmed through even one copy of Martha Stewart Living. Shameful.
In the spirit and tradition of keeping things the same, I want you to come over to my house, and I'll cook you a real nice dinner okay? Fresh baked bread and all the fixins'. I'll serve it with a smile. 😸 (But there won't be any p*ssy waiting for you later on. Sorry about that 🙀).
GPT speak???
And no, it is not “skills that the modal straight woman and/or her husband would appreciate having in that culture + time period”
It is “behavior that men want because they want power and control over women.”
None of these skills or training benefit women in any way.
Men are not lonely enough.
“Pretty tame” as far as horrifying practices go is still a long way from “peachy”. And, foot binding and FGM are/were not done for the benefit of some hypothesized man, they are/were done for the benefit of the systems that allow men to and reward men for dominating women. They are structural, not personalized.
Learning household skills is useful for both sexes and should be part of regular parenting and education. "wife school" is more than just those things, she was very specific about all the emotional/social indoctrination. It's like saying military training only involves learning to use various kinds of equipment, fighting techniques, tactics etc when the learning obedience and internalizing a hierarchy and thinking as part of a group is obviously just as important, even foundational to everything else.
The difference is one of degree, not of kind.