The Necropolitan Sentinel

If Gender is synonymous with the role one plays in soicety, then why not say a role in soicety, or a sexual role in soicety? You could say that’s a bit verbose, I suppose, but no one ever accused these people of being terse.Because scientists like to invent words? I honestly don’t know. Although, from my experience, sex as it refers to whether you have manly bits or womanly bits is not the same as having a sexual role. Remember that in science, your sex (male, female) is not necessarily about what you do with those manly or womanly bits. It’s just about whether you dangle or don’t. The truth is, sex and gender are usually directly linked. But not always.Also, it’s important to note that the role of women in, for instance, American soicety has changed fairly drastically over the last two hundred or so years. Yet, women are still female they still have two X chromosomes, they still lack the dangly bits, etc. Yet, their roles have changed. If they are, indeed, still female (XX, not XY), then the only thing that’s changed is their role how we define their gender.%name said:In any case, that’s a little besides the point. There are obviously historical, environmental, and biological factors that determine the patterns of existing societies.Very much so. And it’s important to note that even if what a soicety does makes no sense at first glance, cultures always have a reason for what they do. Human beings are fairly logical creatures, oddly enough.%name said:The question is, at what point does one determine Heer be Genderes as opposed to biology? Furthermore, given the huge gaps in our knowledge about biological differences between men and women, gaps exacerbated by hostile attitudes in the social sciences, how can anyone say with any degree of confidence the major factors that play into in cultural expressions at all?I both want to say we can’t, and yet, we can. To explain what I mean, the thing is, culture is a difficult creature to classify. It encompasses so much of what we are. It is what we wear, what we eat, what we believe, what we do, how we think, etc, etc. How much of this is based purely on biology is unclear.To be clear, I speak from an Anthropological perspective, as it is what I have my degree in. My discipline focuses on the micro versus the macro. So, for instance, for every fundamental, This is always this way that, say, a Sociologist might throw out there, an Anthropologist would respond with, Well, not always, and here is this one tribe in Equatorial New Guinea that is the exception to your rule. With that in mind, if we are to make the presumption that all human beings have fairly much the same genetic code with a few small differences (i.e. we’re all the same species, same base model, as it were), I offer this for your consumption:It is safe to say that in Western Society, men are regarded as the aggressive side of the equation, while women are the passive, nuturing side. Men are expected to be strong, the bread-winner, outgoing, the one who goes off to war (see the fact that the U.S. draft only registers men). Women are expected to raise children, be understanding, be more empathetic. Recent studies have gone on about how women tend to try to build bridges, bring understanding to the table, while men tend to be more aggressive towards getting their way. That female children tend to want to build things while male children tend to want to run around and bust up what the female children have built.Alright. With that in mind, consider the following:In Papua New Guinea, there exists a tribe called the Tchambuli. Among this tribe, what we think of as traditional gender roles are entirely reversed. Women are the aggressive, pushy, outgoing, warlike, bread-winners. Men are the passive, nuturing, caring, and empathetic stay-at-home-dads.If biology solely determines gender, why is it that two living cultures existing on the same planet with base members of the same species have such radically different gender roles?