TL;DR: these are just some thoughts that have been bugging me for awhile and won't fuck off and didn't know where else to share them. Whether or not you read this I hope you have a great day😃
Probably super unpopular opinion: For the last few years one of the major topics has been gender roles and why they are so bad.
What if it is not the roles that are bad though, but the manner we perceive them? Hear me out, absolutely nothing I am about to write is disparaging to either gender. Everything I say is with complete respect and admiration for what I perceive as an entire evolutionary process, so if you perceive something to be negative then try considering that perhaps the flaw may not be mine. And to be completely honest, I have far more respect for what I perceive as women's evolutionary roles as a gender than I do for men's evolutionary roles. Neither gender was ever supposed to have any form of dominance over the other; we've always been meant to strive towards a harmonious balance. Also keep in mind everything I say is considering is considering us as a species with a healthy population, not a bloated overpopulation situation that completely dismisses all of it anyways. And of course I know nothing, this is speculative opinion and I have no means to reliably confirm.
So let me start this off with what even are the gender roles I'm referring to, at the risk of over-simplification I am going to use the most common stereotypes:
Women - motherhood, nursing, general caretaking and raising of young.
Men - guardianship, physical labour, generally "drone and soldier ants" if you will.
Immediately there are already two patterns apparent; women are instinctively drawn to fields that radiate patience, wisdom and compassion. Men are instinctively drawn to fields that demand physical strength or the chance to protect or fight. This to me is not coincidence, but evidence of our social evolution going as far back as our days as arboreal primates and a further consequence of the influences our reproductive organs; not hormonal but functional. (By the way, you think the reason every kid plays The Floor is Lava but no one ever talks about it is it's instinctive from those arboreal days?)
It is common knowledge that once boys hit puberty, it is standard to produce sperm until death while girls only ever have a finite amount of eggs. Some suggest this could be why young males seem to be so much more horny than young females (by no means am I making any excuses for any of the despicable atrocities committed by any predators. They should all be locked away indefinitely and we absolutely need better education at every level about all these matters). But to me this also suggests from a biological and evolutionary standpoint that men were designed to be expendable because women were not. The most fundamental gender roles were that men would die so women could survive today to bring life tomorrow; a concept that should sound quite familiar to the fundamentals of chivalry. That is likely how our species survived our most tumultuous ages whilst being preyed upon by great predators.
My point being that that very basic relationship shaped our social evolution as a species: males fought and worked and often died young. Females raised the young, healed the sick, and lead us as our elder matriarchs. Some of the most loved pagan gods were women, symbols of love and beauty and fertility. Symbols of life and passion and bountiful harvest. We still see mortality rates that favour women (not a complaint, just another clue).
To sum it all up, this is why I don't think gender roles are necessarily bad. I just don't think we value the right traits as a society. We have allowed greed and ruthless ambition to trample over the ideals of compassion and wisdom and love, the very influences that offered us the nourishment to be able to make the great strides we did as a species to get where we are now.
PS seriously guys, nurses do not get enough credit
