No, I mean normative. Look it up. You’d also do well to read something about early gender socialisation. Children know about gender roles very very early, at leasst age 3. And that includes the social, political, economic and cultural dominance of males.

In terms of socialisation, women still “do” most of the early socialiastion, and are bound to treat male children, consciously or not, as “other”. Quite apart from the growing number of households with no adult male resident of any description, I’d be surprised if there are many families where men genuinely spend as much time with the children as women, and I’m sure most of the important demands, food, affection, body maintenance, nursing, what you might call nurture, still fall on women.
Knowledge of men being normative (by which I think you mean dominant, biologically we are genetically modified women), surely only becomes apparent at puberty, at which point your own gender, as the most formative component of subjective experience, is perceived as normative, as your in group. Obviously social context plays a huge part, especially peer group, but trying to tease apart which is the most influential is problematic and probably misuided, as external influnces are transactive with each other and the individual.

I presume you are referring to the developmental aspects of sex-determination in foetuses when you state that female is the “default” gender. I can’t help wondering how you expect a two- or three-year-old child to be able to a) know this or b) understand the complexities of the biology of how gender develops in the womb.

If you genuinely cannot understand how a male child is socialised to view himself as normative, may I suggest you take a look at the hegemony of masculinity throughout history, in culture, in politics, even in language. He only has to look around him to witness this hegemony in all its forms, implicit and explicit.

As for “having to separate from the mother’s identity” being a sole preserve of males, this is a common misconception, but nonetheless untrue. Why is it “a struggle” to internalise the paternal introject? Why is it any more of a struggle than for a female child to internalise the maternal introject? What might be a struggle for a male is to deal with the fact that he has an attachment to, and dependency upon a figure whose gender is generally subjugated to the male. Now *that* I could imagine would be a headfuck for a child.

The early years conditioning you refer to is not predominantly female, assuming the child has a present and active father. While it is true that both parents have an influence in this regard, what you will find is that it is the child’s broader social context that is the more powerful.

Back in the here and now, I still don’t understand this idea that women “aren’t allowed” to take responsbility. Take the familiar “having it all” narrative. Irrespective of gender, it’s not possible to comit 100% to both a career and a family, but rather than taking responsibility for that decision, women palm it off on the state, who must legislate for equality, the employer who must enact that legislation in the form of family friendly practices, and the tax payer who must fund their child minding needs. In what sense are women here taking responsibility ? They are only taking “rights” (the right to have children, the right to a career and the right to have a choice between the two).

Thanks MM for the reassurance. Your comment about responsibility is rather sickening to me though. It seems to me there is somewhat an imbalance between the genders in the rights/responsibilities stakes. It looks as if you are expecting women to take responsibility for areas of their lives in which their “rights” are denied them. And that is BANG out of order. What a load of cobblers. Makes me want to heave.

Well said, Rob

I think the issue arises, and the patriarchy is perceived, precisely because women meet resistance when they “take some responsibility” for their lives.

Getting a bit tired of all this cobblers about “the patriarchy”. Take some responsibility for your own life instead of blaming abstract structures.

[please delete]

And now that you mention EMPATHY, it makes me try to wonder, how would I feel, as a child, a male, fragile-egoed, competitive, rough-and-tumble child, that has already subtlely been socialised to define myself as somehow superior, more normative, than the female, to discover that a miracle of such great importance will never be mine to experience, but the sole domain of those whom my gender identity is bound up with denigrating…

The sadistic excesses of andocracy, it seems to me, are driven by such sour grapes as this.