Masculinity Defined

Today at FLI...

I learned that, to be considered a man, your static and unchanging role or uniquely masculine calling is to:

1. Provide
2. Protect
3. Lead
4. Love

Everything else is subjective.  Whether or not you play football, go hunting & fishing, boating or have a loud Harley, own a fancy car you spend a lot of time and love on, or if you cook, clean, take care of children, wash dishes, or mow the lawn - none of those things define either masculinity or femininity, even though culture or history might have you think they do.  Personality, family background, culture conditioning, peer influences, era trends and societal norms - all of these things vary with time and place, and none of them define you or chain you to a gender.

Now, granted, there are some characteristic normal distributions of certain traits along a continuum which have tended to be more masculine than feminine - like weightlifting, this is true - but it is no more true than saying because the average height of a man is greater than the average height of a woman therefore height must be a masculine trait.  Not so!  I'll even include a picture to demonstrate the ridiculousness of this fallacy (even though we make these gender assumptions all the time).  Height is a continuum upon which both men and women fall into a bi-modal (two hump) normal distribution like so:

 

Therefore, the only conclusion that can be had is: height is a human trait - and generally speaking, men are taller than women.  This conclusion does not negate the fact half of the male population is taller than 84% of all women - that's a fact from the US Dept of Health.  Still, this fact does not support the conclusion that, "since most men are taller than women, therefore tallness is a masculine trait,"  nor is it accurate to conclude that, "a tall individual could be defined as male sinply because of their height [or female if short for that matter]."  These are both very inncorrect assumptions generalities which serve to confuse the question "what defines a person's gender?"  Yet, as obvious as it is to see the fallacy in this argument, our society makes theses same kind of sweeping, gender-specific generalizations all the time - on the street they're called stereotypes.  And many a person has been confused about the nature of his or her gender simply based on what percentile a well-developed or highly-visible trait landed along the continuum.  Tisk, tisk!

And believe it or not - a few quick quantitative searches will show that this same continuum-distributive phenomenon is observed in almost every trait that either men or women can have.  There is always a distribution, often characterized by the bimodal shape.  It is essential to remember: these bimodal humps - or stereotypes - whatever you want to call them, do not define gender.  They simply define what traits are commonly found among a group - not what defines the group.

Yay for science debumking cultural myths and coming to aid us in our discussion of gender roles and gender definitions.  Isn't it sad that I resorted to terms like bimodal and normal distribution during a semester where I don't have to take any math classes?  A most undeniable certainty.

*hangs head in shame* ;-)

~AK