General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Historic Difference between Men and Women [View all]RainDog
(28,784 posts)I use that phrase - "Once reality has started" to speak to the idea of the impossibility of sorting nature/nurture regarding many gender issues. History tells us what was expected but not necessarily what exists. Most all us, however, fall into the trap (me included) of opinions weighted toward one view or another.
In my case, I question the "nature" assumption more than the "nurture" assumption because of simple things like this: before the women's movement made it possible for more women to work in positions that weren't subservient to a male role in the workplace, people said women couldn't be lawyers or dentists because they lacked the innate capacity to reason. This was within the 20th century, not some long ago argument. After the women's movement, people discovered women were more than capable of being lawyers and dentists, and women are now well represented in both fields.
The belief they could not perform those roles prevented them from performing those roles.
Divisions of labor based upon gender roles are not constant across cultures. This is another reason to question assumptions of essential features of entire genders.
The example of warfare has to rely upon a long history of a division of labor based upon gender roles, not some natural impetus behind those gender roles.
During the Renaissance era in Europe, women were thought to have insatiable sexual appetites. They could not get enough sex with a variety of men. Men, on the other hand, were thought to be more reticent, to not have the same sort of sex drive that made women seek out man after man for sexual pleasure.
Now, the myth goes the other way.
But they're both myths based upon gender assumptions, not people.
If someone wants to ask why women did not overthrow a system of patriarchal rule that aligned with religious beliefs and cultural practices for thousands of years, do those same people want to ask why African-Americans, after centuries of slavery, did not overthrow the slave holders?
People recognize that those who were brought here as slaves existed within a system in a society that codified their second-class status and had no provision capable at that time for the overthrow of slavery. I don't blame those who were held as slaves here for that reality, nor assign some essentialist explanation to the behavior because, first of all, it's silly. But also because there were historical examples of other ways of being for the same ethnic group that belies such a statement.
The same holds for females and males and the gender assumptions here.
The real point of all this is to say: It's a good thought exercise to ask yourself if assumptions that are made on the basis of history offer any valid reason to claim something is essential to the character of any group. I think that the answer is no, for any such question.