I’m asking because part of the fun of the ongoing science project that is parenthood is watching other parents freak out over gender roles, thinking through one’s own hangups, and speculating on which characteristics of a child are conditioned vs. innate.

That’s all I meant.

I guess my explicit use of the word “stereotype” wasn’t enough to impart that I was making commentary about stereotypes rather than about bookish, meterosexual men? You bookish, metrosexuals are always so sensitive about your masculinity Of course, I am a bookish homosexual so I can only cast my metaphorical stones with so much force. My point was, however, that statements like “men need women to be women and women need men to be men…” make little sense (or are, at best, bland statements of biological necessity) unless we also accept the same kind of stereotypes that might question the masculinity of bookish metrosexuals – or the femininity of ambitious women with no patience for children. I am assuming Will was not just talking about the procreative necessities of sexual beings. But apart from that, the only thing men “need” women to be are effective partners and repsonsible spouses, likewise for the womanly “need” of men. The rest is just finding a complementary mix, between two people, of personality traits that don’t depend at all on gender.
You seem to suggest that having kids is a trump card for masculinity. It sounds like a reasonable propositiion, to me – but who cares about that, anyway? Surely not you or your wife and kids? What does it matter whether you are “really” masculine or not? It betrays a certain insecurity to be so concerned about whether you are “masculine” or “feminine”. Why bother? Isn’t everyone really a blend of masculine and feminine characteristics. If you accept that, then Will’s statement is pretty silly. But statements like it do, at lease, serve to reassure all those people concerned about being “real men” and a “real women” that all their effort in the direction of masculinity and femininity was worthwhile.

In short, the problem is the entire conceptualization of gender roles and masculinity/femininity that we let influence our lives and our conceptions of ourselves. Will’s statement depends on these pernicious archetypes for it’s validity. And these same archetypes inspire the subtle question your “childless” comment proposes: What right does a single, childless guy have to question the masculinity of a bookish, metrosexual husband? Don’t we look silly having this kind of argument? That’s my point: Arguing or pontificating about something as meaningless as “masculinity” is silly because the concept (and it’s counterpart) is itself silly. We need to get over it… and unfortunately that means getting over our love of phrases as quaint as “men need women to be women and women need men to be men…”

No, I don’t think Will went that route at all, although that wasn’t immediately clear from his initial post. With the final sentence of my comment, I was just stating the importance of being careful when using the word ‘need’ to express this idea, as it could be easily construed to mean ‘ought’.

I also don’t deny that a majority of males act a certain way at least partially due to biological factors. I just wanted to clarify what is a very common misperception about feminism.

Just because Will or anyone else likes art museums doesn’t mean he has to then forsake all claim to masculinity and its various social, moral, sexual, and aesthetic implications.

Quick show of hands here: who among the commenters has kids? Just curious.

did will go from is -> ought though in a general social or legalistic sense? he was speaking of himself and the *majority* of males.

This is where both you and Kipnis get feminism wrong. There is nothing inherent to the ideology that dictates how feminine women should or shouldn’t be (or, for that matter, whether or not men should be attracted to women with classically feminine traits). In fact, feminism at its core, just like other classical liberal theories, is about minimizing the number of restrictions placed on the personal choices people make. If this means a woman chooses to wear “pearls, lipstick, and tight sweaters”, then feminism would honor that woman’s decision just as it would honor the decision of a woman to get a buzz cut and wear combat boots. That’s not to say all feminists respect women who choose the former, but don’t pan the ideology as a whole just because one radical segment believes that the only way women can work towards equality is if they are androgynous.

Stating your personal preference for women who choose to adhere to traditional gender roles is something feminists whould respect, but stating as an immutable fact that both sexes need to adhere to traditional gender roles isn’t.