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Some men will ask for directions
And some women don’t wear makeup
Why do people continue to stereotype based on gender?
Philosophers have done it since forever, of course. Don’t get me started on Aristotle! He was a great philosopher, but had weird ideas about women.
Chinese philosophy has the yin/yang duality, and Hinduism pairs each god with a goddess. In Christianity, we have God creating Adam and Eve in His image. The universe, according to philosophy and religion, has both a masculine and feminine component and each has its own characteristics.
Society takes its cue from these concepts, and so we are all broken up into girls and boys, men and women, male and female — and we supposedly have particular traits based on our gender.
Little girls, for example, are sugar and spice and everything nice while little boys are made up of snips and snails and puppy dogs’ tails. Men are supposed to be big and strong and chug beer while women are petite and dainty and pour tea with their little fingers upraised
These stereotypes fit the idea of yin and yang. Yin represents the feminine and is passive and exists in the shade while yang is masculine, active and sunlit. Yet in paintings, the yin side will always have a dot of yang and the yang side will have a dot of yin. This reminds…
