Hmm. That's an interesting way to look at things. How would that correlate with other gender roles?
I'm not sure I understand the question. It's its own model. If you're looking for "sulphur is like X, mercury is like Y, salt is like Z" that doesn't always work. Imagine if you were comparing checkers and chess and somebody asked which chess piece corresponded to a red checkers piece. Somebody who only knew checkers might ask that question, but the question is flawed.
Or do you mean something else? Examples?
What league role, if any, would be high in Mercury?
If they are capable of being acted upon, they contain mercury. More specifically, they
all contain mercury because they're capable of being acted upon. But like Neonivek says, any change-oriented class, or high regeneration/self healing class could be described as high in mercury. Regeneration would be closer. The ability to quickly and easily change roles would be more mercury+sulphur, since the "causing of change" and "doing the change" are different qualities.
Lord Bucket is basically saying that instead of seeing "roles" in male and female we should instead use these three entirely non-gender related ones.
Well, I'm not saying we "should" do anything. But it is an alternate model that's available, and it does describe reality better than masculine/feminine. It might be
unfamiliar, but look at all the anger and disagreement over gender roles. Look at people argue over what a man or woman is "supposed to" be or do. That makes sense if you reduce people to nothing but masculine/feminine, but people are more complicated than that. Identifying as "I'm a masculine macho man! Rawrr! Women are weak and beneath me!" makes about as much sense as saying "I'm made of oxygen and I'm awesome because of it! You have carbon in you! That makes you weak!"
If you want to be
feminine, then yes: do what you're told. Smile and demurely accept what you're given. If somebody wants sex, give it to them. If somebody beats you, accept it. You're accepting what they're giving you and giving them what they want.
That is what "feminine" is.But if you hear that and interpret it to mean "this is what LordBucket believes is the proper role for women" then you're totally missing the point.
Random example: ask yourself honestly, if a girl sees a hot guy in a bar and asks him out, is that feminine behavior? No. But some that somehow make it "wrong" for her to do that? Of course not. But it being "ok" for her to do doesn't make the behavior feminine just because she happens to be a woman.
If we want to talk about biological male and biological female, we can do that. But if we're going to talk about masculine/feminine, let's not be confused and assume that masculine=biologically male and feminine-biologically female. They're different things.
Gender roles have nothing to do with "acting upon" or whatever, but instead developed because males are generally better suited to physical activity. I have no idea why people disregard this, or say it is false.
Cultural conditioning.
But let's remember to distinguish between "male and female" and "masculine and feminine." Biological male/female does not necessarily mean "exclusively masculine/exclusively feminine."
I think if you divorce the concept of masculine/feminine from biology, and think of them as
impersonal forces the give/receive, actor/acted upon, dichotomy makes sense. It's simply popular for people view these things in terms of biology because biology is familiar.
I suggest that it makes more sense to conceive of fundamental forces with an explanation that is internally self-consistent, and suggest that individual humans are complicated entities that are a mix of those forces...than to arbitrarily say that "masculine/feminine" are an inconsistent mix of traits that we apply to biological male/female...sometimes, and not very consistently. Thinking of our perception of masculine/feminine as purely a result of culture and habit, just doesn't make a very useful model.
Which is at the heart of the angst and confusion surrounding the issue.
It
makes sense, to conceive of "that which acts upon / that which is acted upon." It's an internally consistent way of looking at things. If I use a pencil to write on a piece of paper, I am acting upon the pencil and the pencil is receiving my action. In this relationship, I am male and it is female. The pencil, in turn, is acting upon the paper. In this relationship the pencil is male and the paper is female. Nobody gets angry over this.
But once you try to pigeon hole people into "you're a guy so you're supposed to do X and you're a girl so you're supposed to do Y" that's when people get angry.
He's making some complicated symbolic metaphor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlchemyThe three-way mercury/suphur/salt model is simply more usefully descriptive than the two-way masculine/feminine model. We can have all sorts of arguments about "what's masculine and feminine" and "proper roles" and so forth, but we're unlikely to come to a consensus. The model is flawed, and often doesn't describe things very well. For example, if a guy beats up all the other guys and tells women to take their clothes off and they eagerly do, one might tend to think of him as masculine. Think James Bond. But what if a guy "white knights" and protects the virtue of women...but never sleeps with them? Is that masculine? Well...you tell me. Is it feminine? Well...probably not. But the behavior is a common behavior of "biological males." But is that behavior masculine or feminine? Tough to categorize. The masculine/feminine model just doesn't accommodate it very well. But it's
easy to categorize as salt.
LordBucket actually defines "masculine" and "feminine" in very weird ways,
and then tries to use those definitions to justify sexist attitudes.
I request fewer accusations and more courtesy.
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Topic: A Strange Idea about Gender Roles (Read 56990 times)