Title and image source from this Mastodon toot by [email protected]. I even took the damn title because I couldn't think of anything more apt.
As always, respect my trans homies or I make your pronouns was/were.
this post was submitted on 15 Apr 2024
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I think about this question fairly frequently!
The very existence of masculine vs feminine trait sorting is driven by the question of "what would benefit the survival of a species for one reproductive caste to have which the other lacks?".
The bimodal distribution across which various traits manifest in the population of a species (which we humans have come to label as "gender") exist because of their utility as a survival strategy. The individual traits we usually organize into those two categories often indeed ARE mutually exclusive: Strength vs stealth, speed vs precision...
To be stronger or store more energy, one must be bulkier. Bulk often sacrifices stealth, precision, and finesse. Furthermore on the behavioral aspect one cannot both be a doting and attentive custodian of the young AND always be out and away in dangerous places confronting threats and taking risks at the same time. Specialization has benefits, but always a trade off; mastering some capabilities while sacrificing others.
But that's the is and you asked for the ought.
Nature, as I expect you probably know, doesn't have an interest in what "should" be; only what survived. Hypothetical potentialities only became available to we sapient beings as a byproduct of our victory over moment to moment subsistence. Once we achieved the luxury of having a choice, only then did a choice begin to matter.
In light of that, my position is that we all have business in choosing for ourselves. I for one think that while "masculine" vs "feminine" is itself kind of a contrived and arbitrary dichotomy now that our species is largely no longer wild, unthinking, and beholden to instinct alone... we still have preferences.
I, for instance, happen to find physical and behavioral traits commonly described as "feminine" to be more aesthetically pleasing and attractive.
(In many cases I kinda wish I had those traits myself...)
But I don't think there needs to be a consensus about what actually "belongs" in a set, or which "set" an individual is "supposed to" get, on a prescriptive basis.
Ideally I hope for a future where we will all have more say in our own design, so we can pick and choose which traits we want in ourselves, and the label of masculine or feminine will only matter in so far as one's own advertisement to our peers.