Elizabeth Childs wrote:
>
> Michael, Bryan, Robert - I'm curious where you guys are located
> geographically. I live in Berkeley, California, where the women are loud,
> the men are in touch with their feminine sides, and practically everyone
> seems to be bisexual. While I do think there are some significant
> differences in male and female personalities that are probably biologically
> influenced, this tendency you guys have to put the whole human race in
> either a "girl" box or a "boy" box is alien to me. The people around me
> differ much more between individuals than they do between genders, and I
> think most of the research supports me on that.
I live in New Hampshire, where men are in touch with their manly sides, as they should be. Many of the women here, though, while feminine (not lesbian or feminist, although there are plenty of both of those too) are far more practically conservative in a libertarian sense than probably even the majority of the men where you are. They don't care what your gender preference is, they just don't want you stuffing it down their throats whenever you are out in public, and they don't want their tax dollars supporting elaborate social bureaucracies to do so.
>
> Do you guys live somewhere with much more rigid gender roles? Just think
> how different your perspectives on women would be if you lived in a
> traditional Middle Eastern country. Perhaps some of your thinking here is
> culturally based.
"Rigid" gender roles? Excuse me? Gay and bisexual gender roles can be just as rigidly enforced by a society as straight roles. I imagine that someone who is straight in the bay area is probably ostracized for his or her 'perverted' and 'anti-social' sexual preferences (seen it with my own eyes).
I lived on Capital Hill myself in Seattle for several years. Being the only straight guy in a bar will demonstrate what I'm saying.
Mike Lorrey