Book Review of "Dangerous Children": Chapter 3

In chapter 3, the author fairly briefly goes through the following points:

1) Femininity is a product of men
2) Women's Studies found that there are lots of "femininities", depending on social class, ethnicity, etc., but they're all united by the fact that men defined them
3) Masculinity is also defined by men
4) Men's Studies also found that there are lots of "masculinities", but unlike Women's Studies (and as the author states, incorrectly) came to the conclusion that there isn't really anything that unites the various forms of masculinity

Now, not (yet) being an expert on men's studies, I can't comment as to what the reigning paradigm is. I also want to point out that while no one asked women what their role in society ought to be, no one asked me what I thought masculinity ought to be, either - and this goes for all the other men I know, too. Maybe one or another man could have broken from the pack and shared his views with other men on what a proper gender role is for men, and maybe his views would have gained some currency, but how much of men's roles have been defined by men, and how much is simple inertia? And, since men, like women, are a diverse group, how many men actually wanted those roles that were foisted on them? Men may still have had more control over their gender roles than women have had, but even then, it doesn't seem like much...

So, I've noted before, (and this may just be a bias on my part) I don't completely accept that either gender necessarily designed gender roles, at least not in a way that was without considerable constraints. Since humans are apparently uniquely able to speculate about non-present minds, most of us have a tendency to see design and intent where there really wasn't any, and it seems to me like this is another case of that; and even when people have consciously set about thinking about gender roles, historically it's been done unscientifically, and usually winds up (in my opinion) being more the product of economic, political, or religious factors more than the thinker's own intentions.

I don't mean to say, though, that gender roles weren't affected by men's general monopoly on political and religious discourse (though there were certainly exceptions to this rule), but that I think it's very important to keep in mind that whatever these men thought about gender, it wasn't in a vacuum, and seems to me to be mostly the product of other social forces. And, also, while men tended to own the religious and political discourse, women usually had control of children's upbringing, and it seems undoubtable that this would have had its own effect on gender roles.