Reading through this thread, I see a lot of generalizations that are not particularly useful. All women athletes try harder to be feminine, women who cry a lot are manipulative, caregivers (and those who need them) are weak...I don't think it was anyone's intent, but that's what you come away with by the end of the thread.
I think one of the most delightful things about being a (mostly) free and autonomous adult is having the ability to find out who you are, accept your characteristics and desires and to grow within your own entirely unique persona. That's not to say that everyone
is growing and not reliant upon ugly characteristics such as selfishness and manipulativeness, etc., certainly those people are out there, but when discussing these roles and characteristics in general it's not very instructive to speak of these things as necessarily negative or indicative of bad character on the part of the people who do them. It kind of shuts down the discussion for many people who might feel indicted by one those generalizations.
Fortunately or not, I'm not one of those people.
I am and always have been a caregiver. I cry fairly easily. I can live alone, but I prefer to have a male partner. Sexually, I am submissive. For the first time in my life I have a man who provides all of our household income (while I go to school) and I like it. I clean the house, I prepare (and serve) the meals, I pack him a lunch everyday, I make the cocktails (:-p)...I'm just like June Cleaver except I listen to rap and talk like a sailor. I would even dress like her if it were practical, but it's not.
I am going to school to become a nurse, something I wish so much that I had thought of earlier. It is the perfect profession for me considering my personality characteristics. For years I tried to implement characteristics above within different contexts (regular jobs, mostly secretarial) and found it to be unsatisfying. In fact, just like there are people who use a ruse of weakness to manipulate people, there is also an ilk of people who try to use and abuse people like myself.
So, that said. I am an uncompromising feminist, it's how I was raised by my mother (who has also turned out to be a caregiver...much more than I knew as a child). I am independent-minded, meaning I have many opinions and am not reluctant to share them. I have an avid curiosity. I'm a problem-solver and a good person to have around in a crisis. I'm comfortable around all types of people. Characteristics such as these are not usually thought of as congruent with the others that I cited above, but there you have it. It's the paradox of becoming exactly who you are and not apologizing to anyone for it.
So that is my message to you, ZS. If it feels good and still allows you to grow into a free and autonomous person, then do it. All the questions about male, female, masculine, feminine kind of fall by the wayside when you think of yourself holistically and without the restraints of cultural/societal expectations.
