Zseni wrote:

They [gender roles] shift constantly. So too do racial roles, which, like caste systems, organize societies as well as gender roles.

You want to say, "but to some extent (and maybe in the majority of the time) gender roles are instinctive. Women are nurturers and men are warriors. They just are." Or something like that, but less eloquent. However, your judgment in this is even less scientific than mine. You assign a irrevocable biological root to a condition whose symptoms are completely expressed socially and culturally - the gender role you mean when you say "gender role" is not the one where she has a vagina and that's all. And to back up this assumption, you point me to chimps, and then say it's obvious.

But we're not chimps, and the things boy chimps and humans have in common are not banking, machine guns, preturnatual interests in physics, or torturing small animals. The scope of a man's activities is much greater than a chimp's for better or worse. But girl chimps are interested in the same things as women are, right? Attracting mates, caring for children, that sort of thing.

And this is biologically determined, not culturally, and it should be completely relevant to the natural biological state of women.

Right?

Even though the span of human activity is much more vast than the scope of any other animal's, the laws of nature apply too heavily to women. They are weighted with these natural gender roles. They are positively gravid with the consequences of gender roles. They are naturally barefoot and pregnant, just like men are naturally championship race car drivers. The irony is totally lost on most naturists of this stripe.

It's a sloppy theory that condemns half of humanity to behave "naturally" in the most animal fashion, while allowing the other to "naturally" excel at all human prodigies of engineering and art.