Men with boobs.

[Heart]

Originally Posted by betenoire

I think men and women are the same. I mean there are no emotional/character traits that a person can say "women are" or "men are" without someone knowing several instances where a woman wasn't, or a man isn't - and finding that the trait that you attached to womanhood or manhood fits the opposite sex as well.

I just don't buy that men are from mars and women are from venus. I don't think we are hardwired differently from one another. SOCIALISED differently, yes. But hardwired? I just don't see it.

In a key way, I agree with this. Even if men and woman are different in some fundamental ways, the issue is not the difference, as much as it is the way those difference are valued. Society (socialization, culture, etc) decides what is male/man/masculine and then values that above what they decide is female/woman/feminine. That's the issue. And that's one of the reasons that masculine women risk erasure.

I actually think that masculine and feminine are distinct energies (modes of expression, performances, what-have-you) that can be embodied by male or female people.

But "man" and "woman" get rigidly constructed and defined along binary gender lines as man=masculine, woman=feminine. Ergo -- we get descriptions of butch women as "men with boobs."

Heart