Gender stereotypes are exaggerated distortions of the special internal gifts that God instilled in men and women to balance out a partnership. By design, men usually crave the ability to be a provider & protector, and you can see the hit it takes on them when they aren’t able to fulfill that. On the flip, women are wired better for empathy & being caregivers, and you can see the hit it takes on a woman when she doesn’t have a place to channel those gifts.
Somehow, society twisted those into meaning specific things instead of seeing a birds eye view. Some men prefer serving ‘self’, whether that means making work their ‘wife & family,’ or being lazy and abandoning their gender wired gifts and burdening ppl in their lives instead. A lot of women are forced into things out of necessity, instead of being able to utilize their special gifts to care for a family. The nuclear family has been shredded and demonized on purpose. They used ‘gender roles’, something society itself ‘assigned’, as a shame pressure point to hijack the beauty of men & women having complimentary strengths & weaknesses. As a society, we’ve allowed worldly stereotypes to manipulate our interpretation of what God instilled in us. Further, few women feel protected and secure with today’s ‘man.’ So many girls I know sought careers- not bc they really wanted them- it’s bc society tells them they have to have one in order to hold worldly ‘value’, or they had to out of necessity from being single/family needs more income, or bc they feel as though they have to ‘be ready’ for their husband to leave them bc of our society excusing that behavior and normalizing it. Men artificially fill the ‘stereotypes’ (maid, restaurants/food delivered, porn, hookups, or even a woman with low self worth that will do everything I mentioned without any commitment or investment from the guy in return). The things that a lot of women do out of love for a spouse, bc of their caring nature, might include some of society’s stereotypes, but for them, it’s an expression of their nurturing love. It isn’t until a man doesn’t have an empathetic ear at home, little things done ‘just bc’, or the tender, yet tough, support of a woman that he sees the unique gifts, not the ‘chore stereotypes.’ You can’t purchase the things that truly matter. If something is a stereotype ‘service/chore’, it’s a bastardized simplification of God’s balance.
I’ve never met a woman that shouts about not needing a man that’s ever actually *had* good men in her life (dad, granddad, brother, uncle...). They usually don’t think they ‘need a man’ bc they’ve never seen the beauty of Gods special gifts & tendencies working in tandem with respect and love. Once you see how it was designed to be, you always see the irreplaceable value of the strengths in one filling the weakness in the other, and vise versa. When the beauty of those gifts arent seen by someone, it’s easy to look on the surface and rail against society’s labels. Those labels were put there and exacerbated so someone who didn’t see the unique gifts at the root in one accord wouldn’t look any deeper. As Christ’s purpose for specific gifts is continually degraded, it makes it a lot easier to attack the top level stereotypes. However, the more those are jumbled, the more it effects the unique gifts God instilled in men & women, making them push them down further and try to ignore them in order to appease the surface level dictators.
when I hear women rail against men and say they’re better than them, all while they’re trying to define their own worth by measuring how well they fulfill ‘mens roles’, Im always shocked that they don’t see the irony.
Worldly behaviors are toxic, not the special gifts God instilled in each gender.
It’s like a ray of the sun telling a wilting flower it’s ‘terrible & not needed’ bc it’s not flourishing & growing where that ray shines. However, the sun ray fails to consider the nutrients in the dirt, and it doesn’t tilt away from a rain cloud so the flower can have water. Meanwhile, there’s a seed in a different patch of dirt, and a different sun ray is using its gifts in tandem with the dirt by not evaporating rain clouds with its ray, so the dirt can do its part to give life to the plant. God designed everything to have special gifts that create something good when they’re used to compliment each other. We have all of the rays of sun screeching that they can ALSO provide the benefits of dirt, they don’t need the dirt to grow that flower! Meanwhile, the dirt is like ‘suuuuure’ and takes its annoyed self into an indoor growing facility with artificial sunlight. The sun ray might get lucky once in a while and have a weed grow through the cement, but it’s not the same as a flower. And the dirt will be able to use the artificial sunlight- but it doesn’t go through seasons, get nutrients from surroundings/bugs, or a break from the light like it did outside during the night. Sure, the flower can grow there, but in an artificial world, the flower is a product of a machine. There’s a reason everything has special purposes. We’re so incredibly spoiled and surrounded by self righteous thought that ppl dare to take the incredible complimentary gifts we possess and demonize them by assigning them a mop or a briefcase, when that’s not what ‘masculinity’ & ‘being a man’ or ‘femininity’ & ‘being a woman’ is actually about.