For this assignment in my Human Sexuality class I have to write about male gender traits and female gender traits. In other words, what does society think of as male/female specific characteristics and it was kind of interesting trying to come up with them. After we come up with the traits, we have to also write about which traits we have and if they fall on the female or male list and if we wish we had or didn't have these traits and why. It's suppose to make you think about how society makes you think some traits are bad if they belong to the other sex. Anyway, here's some of the ones I wrote down. I'd love to hear what you would come up with.

Male
1. Aggressive
2. Competitive
3. Dominant
4. Destructive
5. Physical
6. Bread winner

Female
1. Nurturing
2. Submissive
3. Articulate
4. Intuitive
5. Perceptive
6. Empathic

Male:
1. Physically strong
2. Independant
3. Sexual
4. Agressive
5. Emotionally distant

Women:
1. Strong emotionally
2. Intuitive
3. Nurturing
4. Intelligent
5. Brave

Male:
1. Physically strong
2. Competitive
3. Logical
4. Emotionally reserved
5. Decisive

Female
1. Nurturing
2. Sensitive
3. Submissive
4. Inner Beauty
5. Open

Tiki.

Interesting, Jessica!

Male
1. Aggressive
2. Sexual
3. Competitive
4. Domineering
5. Destructive
6. Physically strong
7. Emotionally reserved
8. Illogical

Female
1. Nurturing
2. Thoughtful
3. Intuitive
4. Perceptive
5. Physically strong
6. Empathetic
7. Independant
8. Logical

I feel I must add that I'm generalizing, here. I do know a few really nice men with "female characteristics". (I also know a few women with some of the "male traits".)

Ellis - Actually, that's what the paper was mostly about. After you made the list of traits, you had to pick from the list your traits (whether they be male or female) and talk about your opinion of society cultivating male traits in men and female traits in women. It was a pretty cool paper. I talked about a wage gap study by Linda Babcock:

Linda Babcock wrote a book called, “Women don’t ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide,” where she explored the wage gap between genders. In a study she conducted on graduates going out into the workforce she found a huge discrepancy in the starting salaries between men and women. "It turned out that only 7 percent of the female students had negotiated but 57 percent (eight times as many) of the men had asked for more money," Babcock writes. Meaning that when women took these jobs, they felt they could not negotiate for higher pay. Women are not taught to be aggressive, instead we accept lower paying job because we don’t even realize we should be asking for more money.

By the way, my traits were 50/50..

Jessica, it's a fascinating subject. I'd love to read your paper!

One book that has interesting information about this is called "How the Mind Works" by Steven Pinker. The first half of the book is mostly 'mecanical' working of the brain, but it lays the foundation for the second half which addresses gender differences, love, anger, all kinds of interesting stuff.

There is another book which is written for game designers specifically about how to design games that will appeal to both males and females. It is mostly about game design but it does explore the differences in the way the genders go about problem solving. If there is any interest I will dig the title up.

Fatbat, that DOES sound interesting! If you have time, I'd love to know the title!