Gender roles

The German word for the Enlightenment is the Aufklarung, which roughly translated means the "clearing up." It means that during the Enlightenment the West performed a sort of spring cleaning on its ideas. I believe that we are now experiencing a second Aufklarung, but it is a social one, and, like the last Aufklarung, this one has a tendency to dismantle ideas recklessly, with the ravenous need to destroy of a mother cleaning out her son's closet.

One particular area that has been uprooted has been the area of gender. The movement happened so fast that many of us missed it. When I go to my father's hometown of Live Oak, Florida, to visit, I see a world of women told to be submissive, who often are full-time moms, while the husband provides for the family financially. At family gatherings, the women cook, clean, and dish gossip, while the men watch sports and grill meat. Areas of responsibility are clear: the woman manages the house, while the man manages the yard. When I was in this environment, the clarity of these spheres felt confining and freeing at the same time. I feel liberated because I understand what is expected of me: the yard must be kept up, money must be provided, and sports must be watched. If I can meet these simple conditions, I will meet the approval of my peers. The same impulses are enormously confining as well. There is an expectation of masculinity that is deeply troubling. Men cannot be nurturing or caring, they cannot play with the children or talk about relationships, and women cannot have a career or speak of serious things.

But then I return to my world, where women and men are hardly distinguishable, except physically. It's a more complicated, messier way to live, but it's not always worse.