Why? Because as a society we're not interested in confronting the problems with male gender roles when they affect men, only when they affect women. So you'll occasionally see someone poking at the edge of the problem when they realise (for instance) that men being pressured into 80-hour workweeks means women are forced to look after kids, or that women can't rise as high in the ranks as men, but that's it. Often they'll just end up trying to patch the symptoms whilst ignoring the underlying problem, for instance by trying to lower demands on female executives and employees compared to their male counterparts.
Gender roles are a problem because they mean that anyone who doesn't fit into them nicely gets screwed over. This affects, oooh, probably pretty much everyone because the odds of someone matching up with them exactly in every possible regard are pretty damn low.
>Gender roles are a problem because they mean that anyone who doesn't fit into them nicely gets screwed over. This affects, oooh, probably pretty much everyone because the odds of someone matching up with them exactly in every possible regard are pretty damn low.
Do you have any evidence of gender roles so specific and enforced so strictly that "pretty much everyone" gets "screwed over" for not matching up with them exactly in "every possible regard?"
How do you account for all the people, perhaps a majority, who don't seem to have any problem with traditional gender roles, but in fact, embrace them? They don't seem to feel they are being "screwed over."
Sure, and that's the point-- you can't even do something as unimportant as wear a particular kind of clothing without subjecting yourself to serious social pressure, but we're being asked to believe that gender roles don't really affect people's choices.
Well, of course a majority of people seem to embrace traditional gender roles - that's what our society rewards people for! We look up to women who drop out of work to raise kids and look down on men who do the same as unmanly, tut-tut about how women who don't have kids will regret it later once their feminine instincts kick in, beat up people who wear the wrong kind of clothing for their gender (clothing, for fuck's sake!), ...
