“ I think in most cases that has a lot more to do with the enforcement of gender roles. I think a lot of people suppress themselves to be more socially accepted. I find this is especially true for men and the frustration of it is probably why men are supposedly more violent. No one will let them talk about their emotions without calling them a wimp, a sissy, or even a woman (thanks, Jake).”
I totally agree that many men are conditioned to keep their emotions to themselves — not just by other men, mind you, but by women as well. And I agree that that’s not very healthy and may even contribute to some male violence. At the same time, I think one of the reasons why men are shamed for sharing their feelings is because it’s such an alien thing to most men. Is biology/evolution at least partly to blame for that? I think it probably is, and we may just have to agree to disagree on that point, although I would happily concede that it isn’t exclusively one factor or the other; IMHO, it’s almost certainly a combination of social conditioning and biology. Perhaps we might agree on that, but disagree on which of the two has a bigger influence.
“Where we may diverge is in the value of STEM jobs versus “women’s” jobs. We place zero value on housekeeping at home, and those STEM jobs earn way more than the educators that enable people to get training that specific.”
Actually, I mostly agree with this. I’m in the camp that believes the market should decide the value of specific occupations, but I do agree that house work — the bulk of which is obviously done by women — is severely undervalued. That’s one of the reasons I don’t complain too often about divorce laws. Generally speaking, I do think men get the shaft more often than women in divorce cases, but I also think the problem is overstated precisely because working husbands wouldn’t have as much time and energy to invest in their careers if their wives weren’t willing to take on as much of the house work as they typically do. So if that means having to share a good portion of your accumulated wealth with the woman who took the daily burden of house work off your shoulders while you were busy climbing the corporate ladder, that seems fair to me. I feel very differently about the custody battles that sometimes happen in conjunction with divorces, but that’s a different conversation for a different day.
