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[Frumple]

Thaat'd be because the majority of homosexual resistance tends to come from heterosexual members of the own gender, rather than the opposite*. Given that males still have a greater overall power bloc in most of the world, it's not surprising there's a heavier cultural lashout against male homosexuality than female.

*Everything anecdotal I've seen point to a general trend toward finding homosexual relationships in the opposite gender to be kinda' sexy. I've met exactly one man in my life that didn't find lesbian relationships to be arousing, personally. As for the opposite, I just kinda' wave vaguely toward fanfiction (absolutely infested with females writing stories heavily involving male homosexual relationships) and shounen ai/yaoi manga. My personal, completely unsupported, theory is that if you find something attractive (read: The opposite gender.), then multiplying that can't help but be better.

[kaijyuu]

Hrm, I'd say everyone has a lot of "you're imperfect and need to fix it" shoved down their throats, regardless of who they are. I'm finding it a bit difficult to swallow that any gender is significantly more pressured to look and act "a certain way" than the other.

If you're looking at the media (tv, movies, video games) yes women fit into far less roles. Slim and buxom is the order of the day, barring special circumstances. This is because most writers and artists are indeed, still male. They can create male characters that look sexy to women, and they can make male characters that look cool to men, because that's what they want. That's two different possibilities right there. Women need to look sexy to men, and that's it, because again that's what they want. There are no women characters that are intended to look "cool" or inspiring to women, or at least it's very rare. (I'm also discounting the non-"good" looking character types, like maybe a fat evil matriarch oppressing orphan children or something) I would never tell an artist to make anything other than what they want, so I'm not blaming the male writers/etc for this. The problem is there just needs to be more females making movies/tv/video games, and making said things for women as well as men, not just men. The idea is women will watch a show made for men, but men won't watch a show made for women; that's outdated and blatantly false, yet still a common opinion of those making tv/movies/video games/etc.


I personally think we need to separate "looking unattractive" from "looking bad." The problem is people turn up their noses if you don't look as presentable as possible. I can't wear what clothes I deem comfortable; I need to wear what fashion dictates looks good. Screw that, says I, while people laugh at me wearing shorts year around in freezing weather.

[Truean]

See, with men, the expectations are ordinarily more manageable and reasonable. It also goes in steps. It's ok if you're not super buff or anything, then you're just a regular guy, which is fine. Hey, even if you're fat, it's not necessarily that bad by itself and you can certainly overcome it by playing football or something. Clothes, as long as you don't look gay or something, you're usually ok. Though, it has to be strictly "boy clothes," for the most part. It's largely stuff you can control or at least reasonably influence.

Girls on the other hand.... Heaven forbid you're the fat girl; you will make the fat boy seem like the coolest thing ever by comparison. Moreover, if you're "regular" instead of fat or thin, you're also never gonna be completely ok with your body shape. Even if you are rail thin as a girl, you're still screwed. Anorexia... society telling girls with dangerous medically low weight that they are somehow "still too fat." Skinny guys or even muscular guys will at some point just usually say "it's enough," not so with girls. Also, while girls do have more flexible clothing choices, they get more made fun of due to what they wear. It sucks and there's no real winning.

The gay thing just adds a whole new dimension of screwed up to the already screwed up situation. Meh, it's no win.

[Vector]

Spoiler: I think I got this. (click to show/hide)

Where within each box, black is 'okay', and white is not?

Nah, opposite.  Black is bad, white is "you're okay, bro."

I'd say this ties into the fact that women are allowed to do more "male" things, than men are allowed to do "female" things.

To name an example, what do you call a woman who has more masculine habits? A tomboy.
What do you call a man who has more feminine habits? A sissy.

That's because men are already assumed inherently better than women from the outset, so a woman with more masculine traits is just making herself inherently better.

[Pnx]

I'd say this ties into the fact that women are allowed to do more "male" things, than men are allowed to do "female" things.

To name an example, what do you call a woman who has more masculine habits? A tomboy.
What do you call a man who has more feminine habits? A sissy.

That's because men are already assumed inherently better than women from the outset, so a woman with more masculine traits is just making herself inherently better.

I think this actually sounds about right.

[Truean]

I'd say this ties into the fact that women are allowed to do more "male" things, than men are allowed to do "female" things.

To name an example, what do you call a woman who has more masculine habits? A tomboy.
What do you call a man who has more feminine habits? A sissy.

That's because men are already assumed inherently better than women from the outset, so a woman with more masculine traits is just making herself inherently better.

I think this actually sounds about right.

So long as said guy judging her still finds her attractive.... Otherwise she's "too butch," but yes. Sadly.

[G-Flex]

That's because men are already assumed inherently better than women from the outset, so a woman with more masculine traits is just making herself inherently better.

I think there's more to it than that. Women had to fight pretty hard, and did, in order to be seen as legitimate holders of primarily male occupations, for example. Men never really had to, so the (far fewer) things that were considered "off-limits" to them before still remain surprisingly off-limits. I'd say the same applies to types of clothing and lifestyle choices in general, really.

[Vector]

Ah, yeah, that's a good point.  Thank you.

[Truean]

I once told a friend of mine everything.... She listened and then asked me, curious, what it meant to be a woman.... After all, if I wanted to be one.... She agreed that it wasn't just genitalia or chromosomes. I didn't really have an answer. I still don't know if I do. I would like to know. I'm not even sure there is a good answer. I've thought about this for a long time--years really. Still I can come up with nothing that isn't contrived at best.

I don't know that it matters, but if it does....

[Frumple]

Can do a fairly good facsimile of definition of human (Start with Ol' Aristotle and social animal, work from there), but gender's more or less culture specific. There's not a good answer because the only inherent differentiation points are biological and not really meaningful. Everything else is pretty much entirely cultural. Which is to say basically made from whole cloth, mumblemutter.

Which is really annoying, honestly. Almost the entirety of "masculine" behavior in American culture just annoys me, and the "feminine" side doesn't do any better I'd really just like to be human and leave the rest of that as the non-issue it genuinely, at-the-core-of-things, is. Damn shame society doesn't let people do that yet, bleh.

One day, we'll figure out an easy way to swap genders and all this rotterdamn nonsense will go the way of the dinosaur (assuming we haven't brought them back by that point). To the future *toasts* Because there's no way in hell I'm toasting to anything that's probably going to go down in my lifetime.

[Heron TSG]

Simple answer: It means to be yourself. A woman is a woman, no matter what she does.

[Pnx]

Simple answer: It means to be yourself. A woman is a woman, no matter what she does.

Except become transsexual.

[Heron TSG]

Well, then he would be a man, wouldn't he?

[G-Flex]

Define "woman". If you mean biologically female, that's sort of right, kind of, but shouldn't affect as much as it does. If you mean "woman" as in the gender, you're getting into social constructs that don't really have any objective basis at all. Not like the lack of an objective basis is always a bad thing, it's just always that way with social concepts; gender is no more objectively-defined than "democracy" or "capitalism".

[Heron TSG]

Alright, I'll get my foot out of my mouth. How about... 'Being woman is whatever a woman says being a woman is?' That doesn't really clarify either. Still a bit tautological.

How about this one? "We're all humans, damn it!" It doesn't really answer the question, despite its truth.

I'm not even sure there is a good answer.