"We gave them science, what did they do?  They built a bomb and they used it, too!"
-Ayreon, 01011001

Has it ever occurred to the politicians, world leaders, and nuclear weapons scientists that building nuclear weapons that could destroy the world, when we have nowhere viable to go, and no way to transport large groups of people there, is a totally stupid idea? 

It's like a person who lives in the only house in a vast wasteland burning down that house, while they are still in it...

Stupid idea for today: What's between your legs determines your role in life

Sometime, in the distant past, before there were extremely unreliable and silly career aptitude tests, someone decided that the whole problem of roles in society could be solved by checking between a baby's legs and letting what you saw determine how the baby should act and what it should be when it grew up.  You've got a goofy-looking extra appendage?  Ok. You bring home the bacon, and if you don't want to beat the shit out of everything in site, we'll wonder what's wrong with you.  You're missing one?  Ok.  You get to raise the children and clean the house, and if you're not demure and submissive and proper, then we'll wonder what's wrong with you.  And we'll automatically assume you need to be taken care of and protected because the big scary world is just way too much for your fragile little constitution.

How on earth did we come up with that one?  Why not go by hair color, height, eye color, hair texture, or something else equally arbitrary?

"But Siren!"  you say.  "Men and women have psychological differences, too!" 

Yes.  That they do.

ON AVERAGE. 

Maybe, on average, women show their emotions more than men.  But you will still find men who wear their hearts on their sleeves and women who hide theirs behind a carefully constructed poker face.  Does that make the former less manly and the latter less womanly?  Of course not!  It just makes them different. 

Maybe, on average, men tend to do better at mathematics than women.  (I'm just guessing on this one.  Don't shoot me if some statistic out there proves me wrong)  But does that make the girl who aces advanced calculus in high school any less womanly or the guy who can't tell a quadratic equation from an equals sign any less manly?  Not at all.

Maybe males are supposed to like rough games better than women do.  Does that make the guy who prays gym class will be cancelled due to an alien invasion less manly or the girl who longs to be on the wrestling team any less womanly? No.  Where did we get that idea?

Maybe women are supposed to be better with kids.  Ok.  Maybe on average.  But then explain to me why my brother looks forward to our 3-year-old neice's visits and is absolutely wonderful with her and I dread the visits and breath a big sigh of relief when she goes home?

The only universally applicable difference between males and females is the obvious physical difference.  Yes, I was born with a set of ovaries.  But that doesn't mean I need to be taken care of, or that my only option in life is to be a homemaker, or that I am naturally nurturing, or have a strong maternal instinct or that I love getting dolled up in frilly clothes.  All it means is that, if those ovaries and everything that came with them work properly, I can have a baby.  That's all.  The rest is up to my personality, my natural abilities, and the opportunities I have.

I am not saying that conforming to the roles traditionally associated with your gender is a bad thing.  I could write a whole separate blog on how ridiculous and even harmful that is.  I am just saying that it's ridiculous how society has made such a big deal of what's between our legs, to the point of ignoring what's between our ears. That's what should determine how we behave and who we get to be in life.  We as a society are getting better about it, but even these days I meet people, even young people who've grown up after women's lib, who see gender roles as firmly set with no room for exceptions. 

Usually, these people site some sort of religious reason. The Bible or Koran says men should do this and women should do that.

To them, I say this:  first of all, those books were written in a time when, in the culture around, that was what people were already doing.  Women took care of kids, men provided for the family. This was before house-husbands and two-career families.  I don't know about the Koran, but it seems to me the Bible was just telling men and women how to fulfill the roles they already had been given by society in a way that was fitting to the Christian religion.

Secondly, I am guessing that if you are using religion to justify rigid gender roles, you believe in some sort of god.  So why would your god create a man who is great with kids and then punish him because he didn't want to be away from home all day earning money and prefered to be with his kids? Why would he/she create a woman with good business sense or good political sense and then get mad at her because she wasn't in the kitchen making dinner?  Shouldn't it matter that everyone is doing what they are good at and the kids are at least being taken care of by someone who has their best interests in mind?