Quote Originally Posted by PaulaQ View Post
I know my Dad likely plays a role in my feelings about this. Dad brooked no sissies. Possibly I just like to blame stuff on him, though. I'd feel bad about that - but he deserved it anyway.
Easy enough to do and I could say the same. However, barring any sort of criminality, folks were doing what was in keeping with their view of how things should be. In this context, it's a binary world: there are Men and there are Women. The roles and responsibilities are clearly defined (traditionally speaking) and that's how life went on.

Unfortunately the binary definition of things doesn't cover nearly enough. There's a lot of fuzzy space between the notions of Men and Women as well as outliers as shown by the data. If you believe in the binary construct, then it means that a whole bunch of folks have to be force fitted into one of the other. If you don't believe in the binary construct, it opens things up for the consideration of other ways to be. Just because this is how we've thought for the last few hundred years doesn't mean that's how it has to be for the next few hundred years.