I've been toying with viewing it as a storytelling - there's some stories that have been told so many times we know them like it's religious; and there's two big stories that get told a lot, and one is the man story and the other is the woman story
Conversation
This Tweet was deleted by the Tweet author. Learn more
Replying to
The king story is one where he wears a crown, where he tells people what to do, where people try to kill him sometimes, where he's succeeded by his children. The story is defined by invisible rules of society - everyone agrees he should wear a crown, and tell people what to do.-
2
4
This has a lot of overlap onto personality traits - maybe the king is vain, or commanding, or confident, or entitled. But those personality traits seem maybe like things that support or are an outgrowing of his role as king; traits that enable him to fulfill the story better.
1
2
I guess this depends on what you mean by your question, but personality traits feel like building blocks to a story; they are (usually?) not the story itself, they are a means by which the story is brought to life
2
This Tweet was deleted by the Tweet author. Learn more
This Tweet was deleted by the Tweet author. Learn more
Replying to
At least in this frame, an aggressive woman is taking on traits from the male story; she is *deviating* from her story, which is why we consider an aggressive woman to be doing something weird with gender. I think we're generally very tolerant of story deviations, but we-
1
4
still frame it *as a story deviation*; the story is the background by which we understand how people act. Are they being a proper King, or a wimpy King?
I don't think I understand a lot of the modern discourse around gender, I suspect a lot of it is sloppy and inconsistent.
1
4
This Tweet was deleted by the Tweet author. Learn more
Replying to
I have a general faith in stories; as in I think they slowly evolve over time to be useful. I think the traditional gender story is still extremely useful, which is why it's still being told so much. Once it stops being useful, it'll fade out.
> the traditional gender story is still extremely useful
I thought a major point of feminism was to insist that the traditional gender story *wasn't* useful, that it was actively harming people (both women and men). The claim that it still has use feels conservative to me.
1