It never stops being darkly funny how the same people who insist gender is inborn and immoveable are also the same people who claim your manhood can be taken from you for the smallest things: Eating ice cream or soup. Crossing your legs. Being nice to a woman.
No one proves the social construction of gender more consistently than conservatives, who forever are freaking out that any behavior outside of ever-stricter gender roles is a enough to dismantle one's entire gender identity.
That said, there's always centrist liberal types who, thinking they're daring, will say, "Well some amount of gender is inborn."
And 9 times out of 10, their example will be something they view as exclusively "male" and is something like I personally do all the time.
Recent example heard from Ayelet Waldman on her podcast, trotting out this trope: As proof of inborn male traits definitely attached to the Y chromosome, she cited changing light bulbs and lighting gas grills. 🤔
I do wonder how people who say shit like this think single women survive. Or lesbians.
Ironically, it's because I do a very feminine-gendered thing — cooking most of our food — that I am also the only person in our house who operates the gas grill. Not that I doubt my partner could. He just doesn't. It's my thing.
One of my favorite gender-bending memories was the night I sat outside with two female friends. All three of us had needlework in our hands and our conversation was a deep dive into some tech stuff. (I'm a software developer who knits for pleasure. They're not that different.)
Heh... the folks who have no idea what @abbysyarns.bsky.social used to do for money.
Or the number of men in the army who crochet/knit (me, I spin, and weave).
Do you know about core rope memory? That shit's the coolest. And Jacquard looms -> punch cards in computers -> modern computing! Fibre arts and software dev: not that different, secretly.
Shoutout to anthropologists! Ages ago I read an anthropological account of a society in which, unlike the West, sewing was reserved for men, because it was a highly prized skill. The universal is that men usually monopolize high-prestige jobs & activities.
I may be misremembering, but I had read that sewing here in the West was also coded as a men's activity because mending your military uniform was a specific duty
Dad grilled; Mom cooked. Typical, nothing to see here. At some point, Mom weaponized meal planning (one of her chores) to include grilled meals basically every day, year-round, outside Chicago. I fondly remember the burgers Dad grilled Dec 22 during my college break. In the snow.
Much like my coworkers wife, who proceeded to nearly fry her transmission and motor despite her son(also a coworker) trying desperately to help her. "You don't know what you're doing, this is YOUR FATHERS responsibility" well, now I know why the kid's on so many meds for mental instability....
Someone needs to explain that the defining characteristic of the Y chromosome is mostly that it does not contain things and that XY individuals still get most of their characteristics from the X chromosome
The Y chromosome is mostly about enabling certain characteristics that are already coded for on other chromosomes. It's like a dress pattern that comes with a bunch of options and you have different instructions you follow depending on which version you want to make.
How else are you going to drive away the lions at night and cook your gazelle? ;)
I suspect there may be a mild link to advantageous risk taking by non-young bearing members of the family unit.
I...how would human genetics have evolved to link these behaviors to different chromosomes
Light bulbs have been around, what, 150 years? How quickly does she think this happens
Or does she think that light bulbs were specifically designed to be screwed in by men
I've also been in a situation where a bunch of men needed me to light a fire for them at a party. Turns out it's not the Y chromosome, but being a former Girl Scout/growing up in rural Texas.
Do they change light bulbs with a penis? Very talented. And lighting gas grills, well don’t try this at home! Apologists for patriarchy are rather pathetic.
Would love to know what defined inborn gender traits in these people's minds before light bulbs existed - with no light bulbs or gas grills, what showed that everybody male Stone Age - Vitorian era had "inborn gender traits?"
Wearing deer pelts instead of boar pelts?
Farming 🥔s instead of 🧅s?
The idea that females are inept at anything remotely mechanical and/or females must ask males to do odd jobs around the house because the males won’t do it their own damn selves.
I realised the other day when observing a meme that I mentally categorise grilling as lesbian coded because my dad was never a big grill guy but my lesbian friends used to invite me over and grill regularly
I'll admit to being deeply intimidated by our gas grill for a very long time. But once my husband became disabled and couldn't cook any more, I learned.
Wait, that was serious and not humor?
I occasionally say it's ok to exploit patriarchy for things it's good at, like opening pickle jars and getting stuff off high shelves.
