I wonder what it's like?
There's the physical side - having those appendages. The greater ability to build muscles. Having to shave the face. Concern about baldness. The boring clothes and more boring shoes.
But what's it like being viewed as a, well, a person, from, say 18 onwards? Rather than as either a sex object or as a non-entity? I'm not saying, it would be crazy to say, that women are always perceived in these ways. But I think we are seen through a lens. Though maybe everyone is...
A young man... might be threatening?
An older man... might be a potential husband... might be deemed to have power... to be able to take charge... to be expected to take responsibility... to be selfless when the welfare of 'women and children' are at stake. Poor thing.
But he might also be seen 'just' as a doctor or a greengrocer or a writer or a musician.
A man might be seen truly at times.
A woman, well, less often, I think. There's not such strangeness about women academics or surgeons or lawyers or CEOs as there was. But even so, I think if I say the title of any of those positions, the image that comes to mind is a male one. Also, I think most men will, consciously or not, rate her attractiveness. Women do that to men - but we probably do it more to other women - and men do it most. I think.
There will also be the assumptions - that she should be caring - she's only a proper surgeon if she's a caring one - while a man can be a technical master, and who cares about his heart? To be a CEO she has to subsume some of her 'femininity'. A man can just be a man.
Now, a man may break stereotypes if he's a primary school teacher or a nurse. And he may be undervalued because he does 'women's work'. He should be teaching at a university! He should be wielding a scalpel! He's a man, damn him!
A woman is both praised and condemned - praised for doing 'man's work', secretly condemned for the same crime.
In all, I reckon your chances of being seen for who you are must be about 30-40% higher if you're a man.
I wonder how this plays out among men and women who have transitioned. Thomas Page McBee is a transgender man - he fought at Madison Square Gardens, the first trans man to do so. His book, Amateur, is fascinating. In the end, I think he feels sad about how society treats both men and women. Maybe especially women. He's a journalist. As a woman, no-one listened to him. As a man, with a lower voice and differently imposing body, despite his relative shortness, suddenly he was heard. Just because he was a man.
It would be cool to be heard.
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