“Actually including machista foreign countries (I have lived in Spain under Franco, Peru which is very conservative esp. re gender, northern Brazil which is very machista, etc.).”
This is why I have said that if they men are happy, they will leave the women alone. I have said send the men to war, so that if they are not at least happy, they will be kept busy. I’ve also said that female teachers in Rhodesia had a tremendous amount of status and used to induce awe. They were frightening people. The minute I got to Australia I notice that the female teachers, even more than the male ones, were browbeaten and cowed.
Liberal society is taken for granted to be automatically better than authoritarian societies, but it is not better in all respects. When we allow people to be too natural or to “follow their natures”, we end up with a retraction of the psyche into modes of understanding that relate to very familiar things, like the nuclear family, and the gender roles in place there. Notably, then, the breeders establish what is normal for the rest of us in terms of gender roles, as little Johnny and little Jill grow up retaining their most primal memory of the maternal mother and breadwinning pop. Since that is all they have as a reference point, we are all supposed to cater to that and make them feel at home and normal by adopting roles that replicate their expectations of their family.
Everything sinks to a low level then, but there is no arguing with it, as it is said to be “nature” — that is, the most liberal of propositions (“follow your nature!”)
As for me I am against the reduction of every value and meaning to whatever can be ascribed to the call of nature. I find that demeaning to the extreme.
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