I noticed a thing: whenever someone says "men are X way, women are Y way", I decide that it means men are better. Then I swap X and Y, and men are still better.
For example: if men are more detail-obsessed, that's good (passionate about getting things done well). If women are more detail-obsessed, that's bad (wasting time on something useless).
This resurfaces every once in a while, and I rarely mention it because this is the clearest-cut example of sexism I can think of. Boo, sexism.
Until now, I thought it worked this way: "men are better" is an existing belief, and then my attitude towards detail-obsessiveness/etc changes to get me to the conclusion I want.
But it's trickier than that. When I think "detail-obsessed guy", I imagine a guy making a train model. When I think "detail-obsessed girl", I imagine a girl running around fixing her room for unknown reason. I appreciate train models more than clean-looking rooms, so guys win in this one.
Let's say I want to imagine "a guy making a train model" and "a girl making a train model". The guy is tall, calm, wearing a coat, about my age. The girl is in middle school and somewhat capricious. The guy still wins, in my imagination.
I think what happens isn't "men are better". What happens is "cultures I like are all male cultures". Wearing a coat is not inherently good, but I like people who wear coats. Being capricious is not (that) bad, but I dislike capricious people much more than they deserve. Etc.
(Note: I am being liberal with the word "culture" here, and I don't know how to define it. Something like "a common behavior or set of behaviors", I guess.)
It's 2am here and I don't have the time to list all the cultures I like and dislike. This would be useful to do, so maybe in a future post.
This is a bit of a leap, but: I think I like certain cultures because they are familiar. And I like familiar things an awful lot. I like them in the same way I like sweet things more than bland things, and warmth more than coldness, and rest more than work. I think I am scared of the unfamiliar much more than an average person, and I also have a lot of resources that let me avoid unfamiliar places/cultures/people for as long as I want to.
"But haven't you seen a lot of men and women in your life, in fiction, etc?" — yes. But the thing is that while I've seen men and women, I haven't participated in female cultures almost at all. Participation creates familiarity, merely seeing something doesn't.
Alright. Okay. What to do?
I think familiarity is genuinely great — just like not working is genuinely great. However, unfamiliar things (and work, and blandness, etc) are also great. Everything is great, and I'm just prevented from seeing it.
I think the solution is paying attention to noticing when unfamiliar things, novelty, etc, turn out to be good. For example:
That's all for now.