I don't feel equality is 100% there yet (though it's certainly improved a lot from even a century ago - I don't think I could have lived with myself if I had been born then!).
From the previous thread, I also don't personally think men are peer pressured to punch one another and hang out at pubs any more than women are to buy shoes and vomit out their dinner each night to be "attractive" - some succumb to the peer pressure, some don't, but it's probably as rotten for both sets of us.
Also not sure it can be proven that women have a lower threshold for pain
it could easily be that men, driven more by testosterone and the instincts and social conditioning to win, see the pain's warning as something to be ignored with the goal in sight. Whereas a woman, driven by social conditioning to be responsible and nurturing, might judge that say, losing a limb just to be king of the hill isn't worth it. I've seen no evidence that any men I know hurt any differently than I do. Maybe they also just feel more peer pressure to hide it when they do? Never been terribly bothered by peer pressure myself.
On the media circus and reports of women earning less or not being able to do certain things, it's wrong to limit what females can achieve on the premise that they might have children; many don't. I have no problem with earning less than an equivalently skilled single man if I am dividing my responsibility with having children (even after the birthing stage, there are times when you have to pick the children or the job, and for me I'd always pick the first so I accept that I'm not qualified to be a serious careerwoman in this respect). If there were no children, it would be a problem to me that someone's gender is a limitation on their potential. Similarly if the man was a primary caregiver for children of his own he should be treated the same way a mother is, for better and for worse.
To go off on a rambling tangent (sorry), when I play online games, I often play as a male character. I avoid all of the scary nutcases who chase female characters around giving them presents and asking for their contact details. But more deeply than that, the way I'm treated by some players who don't know I play both is different when I log on as a male character and a female, even if it's the same character type. If I play as a male rogue, people just expect me to get on with my job and stab things, excellent. If I play as a female, there seems to be some weird undercurrent where people are impressed I can actually hold a mouse and my skill in the group is in question unless I play far better than they expect; people keep trying to help me play or dive in front of monsters to protect me. If I beat them in a contest, some people actually exclaim that they are ashamed they lost to a girl. They should be ashamed but that's because I'm not very good, not because I don't have a penis. I don't see how my gender relates to my ability to buttonmash.
I know an awful lot of people of both genders deliberately play as girl characters to get an easy ride by milking these prejudices (which then reinforces them!) so it's never going to stop unless there's a cultural shift to stop treating women like people of a different, less capable species. Sometimes I just want to stab virtual monsters, not prove myself worthy to be there in the first place.
Irrelevantly this forum name was chosen for its ambiguous (in Japan...) gender connotations too for similar reasons
I see physical gender as mostly irrelevant unless I want to have sex with the person - much like homosexuality, to drag up an older thread. As I don't tend to want to have sex with people I meet, it's generally ignorable in favour of their other individual strengths and weaknesses. If some people want to act in a "girly" way and some want to be "manly" that's fine, but they won't get any special treatment either way!
R
