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As an old friend of mine once said many moons ago, "Equality does not imply identicality..." if that's even a word. Point being, you can have an overarching sense of equality without requiring the sexes to be identical in form and function, seeing as how in many ways we simply are not.
That said, I can't say I've though much about about men suffering disproportionately in response to the economic issues we are facing. I will say that I think it's ridiculous to expect to have a major cultural shift, largely brought upon my technological advances, in social gender roles for women without expecting a necessary shift in gender roles for men. Nothing happens in a vacuum. I think a large part of this is related to the avarice of corporate America. Just as technology was supposed to free us up to work less hours...after all, the machines would be carrying the heavy load...right?...it has turned out that we are now tethered to our workforce productivity roles more tightly than ever. Instead of freeing up our time, we reduce the economic bottom line. Similarly, instead of increasing the workforce responsibilities of women and reducing the responsibilities of men...we now simply have homes where both the man and woman, or husband and wife, or husband and husband or wife and wife...both work 40+ hour jobs and strive for professional excellence. At least in the Western world. I can only imagine that we will have to negotiate a trade-off between the necessary roles of maintaining a stable home, which used to the sole responsibility of the female, into a shared responsibility...or we will continue along the path of reduction of lifestyle for people in general.
As a side note, I think it's interesting to juxtapose these questions of the social roles of men and women living in a Western-type culture versus the shit that people in developing areas have to live through. Do these things translate to countries with substantially lower standards of living in a meaningful way? I'm not so sure. I can't wrap my head around it. I should probably just delete this post and think about it some more, but I'm not going to. C'est la vie.
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You don't love me, you just love my piggy style
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