Can We Stop it with Gender Stereotypes Already?

Do gender stereotypes help or hurt?

It’s time for a new episode of the To Love, Honor and Vacuum podcast! I hope you all will listen, but if you don’t have time, I’ll have some links and rabbit trails below so you can read all you want as well!

And consider this podcast “extras”. If you want to go deeper into what I talked about in the podcast, here are some more things to help you.

But first, here’s the podcast:

Main Segment: Gender Stereotyping Needs to Stop

I’m going on a little bit of a rant here and talking about how we do far too much gender stereotyping–“Men are like X” and “Women are like Y.”

Now, there are some definite differences between the genders, and I go through some of the biological differences, like women having better and more acute hearing, while men have better spatial ability (on the whole). The problem comes, though, when we extend these biological differences to personality traits or character issues.

So I explain how not all men are logical and not all women are emotional. And then I go off on a rant about the concept of “biblical womanhood” and “biblical manhood”. Ever notice how people talk ad infinitum about biblical womanhood, but they so rarely talk about biblical women? When you look at actual biblical women, they rarely match these ideals of biblical womanhood.

And why does this matter? Because so much marriage advice is centered around gender roles. When people tell you that there is only one way to be a woman, don’t listen to them. Instead of trying to reclaim womanhood or manhood, I think we’d do far better to reclaim Christ. All of us are supposed to act like Christ, not “act like men” or “act like women”. And all of us are unique, with a unique part in God’s plan. So that’s okay to be you! And it’s okay if your marriage doesn’t fit the mold, either!

Rebecca and I continued this topic into the Millennial Marriage segment (with a brief interlude from Connor.