Is there really much of a difference between boys and girls?
Gender is set up socially as a binary. However, in reality, the traits we call masculine and the traits we call feminine are actually common to both sexes. Most studies I’ve come across not that the average female and the average male are actually very much alike as far as masculinity and femininity are concerned. The difference is that a similar act performed by a man is seen differently by society than when performed by a woman. Take…bodybuilding. When a man does it, it is socially acceptable and masculine. When a woman does it just as well, we view it as being deviant. It isn’t that women cannot be bodybuilders, it is that we stigmatize them for doing so. When a boy gets mad and gets into a fight in grade school, it is seen as him acting out his aggression, which is “what boys do”. A girl gets into a fight and it is stigmatized as being “unladylike” and she is told to “act like a girl”. The issue here is not that there is a fundamental difference. If there was, why would we have t
