A Hypocrisy With Gender Roles

Among all the inconsistencies embedded within the very notion of gender roles and gender-specific personality traits, there is one that does not get denounced enough.  It is the tendency for some sexist people to arbitrarily accept it when women act in a so-called “male” way while viewing men who act in a so-called “female” way as if their lifestyle is an abomination.

If a woman displays allegedly “masculine” characteristics, like consistent emotional toughness, thorough competitiveness, and general aggression, her behaviors might be judged threatening or offensive by those who believe the complementarian heresy, but they will likely be judged as less offensive to sexists than if the scenario was reversed.  If a man displays allegedly “feminine” characteristics, like consistent emotional sensitivity, gentleness, and general submissiveness, his behaviors will probably receive far more objections from the same sexists who would reluctantly accept those of the hypothetical woman in the previous sentence.

You’ve probably heard the phrase “real man” get verbally tossed around--and often in an intentionally belittling way--far more than the phrase “real woman,” which only confirms the hypocrisy of those who use the phrases.  The phrases, of course, have no philosophical or moral significance, since anyone who uses them to refer to some “ideal” set of gender-specific attitudes or behaviors can only mean something purely arbitrary and irrational.  What one person means by them contradicts what another person means by them, and logic proves that it does not follow from someone having a male or female body that he or she will have some imagined set of behavioral and personality characteristics.

There’s a very simple way to be a “real man” or a “real woman”: be born with the body of a man or woman!  Gender is merely a category for bodies, having nothing at all to do with personality traits, moral obligations, or individual competencies.  Anyone who claims otherwise is guilty of the no true Scotsman fallacy.  This is analogous to someone characterizing another person as not being a "real" American for not voting for a particular candidate, when whether or not one is an American has absolutely nothing to do with anything other than whether someone was born in America or obtained citizenship through alternative means.  Someone is a man or woman because of their anatomy and physiology, not because they adhere to someone's fallacious ideas about how men and women should think and act.