Women Vs. Men

Recently I put quite a lot of thoughts into the ideas of roles. Is there something typical for a man that he really needs to fulfill? What about me as a woman, what points are given to me that I cannot ignore. We'll have those themes in my youth group next year, more exactly the topic is: Guys need to become men and women may stay women. (EDIT: The topic is now called differently)

This bothers me quite a lot. Nowadays it's pretty rough to bring up kids. For example, I'd encourage parents to life certain roles and raise their children towards them. Not by punishment if the kid doesn't want to, but to encourage them. I think it's perfectly fine for boys to play LEGO and for girls to play with dolls. That doesn't mean I don't tolerate it the other way around, but I can't understand people who say that we should give no boundaries to kids. It is strange if a little boy wants to wear skirts, it simply is. He doesn't understand what he is doing, and our world isn't ready for that anyway, he'll just have a rough childhood for nothing.

I know about transgender and about gay people and I have nothing against them, but for me a child can't decide and is easy influenced by its parents. At this stage it should have guidelines, which it can throw over as a teenager. We all change when we grow up, we leave behind most of the stuff our parents told us and we become our own human being. In that time we can decided for ourselves completely and we start to understand the consequences following to our doing. To be honest this topic is way to delicate to write about it, so don't get me wrong.

Back to the quote about men and women. I don't want to "stay" a woman, I want to become one. A woman isn't the same as a housewife, but it isn't a "bra burner" either. In my mind, a woman is strong, but not afraid to show weakness. She is able to live her life on her own, but might choose to share it with a partner and even kids, depending on what she wants. A woman knows herself, is able to accept help and all in all, she is dedicated to whatever she does. I want to become such a person, but I'm far from that.

I grew up in a Christian household and I still believe in that whole heartily. My mum never thought me that I couldn't become anything, she never gave me limits. With god everything is possible, that's what I know. I don't like the picture that is drawn of Christians these days; I might compose another post about that later. Anyway, I'm curious to find out what our youth pastor has to say about women staying women.

Now let's talk about men. I know a lot of guys that were very immature when they were about fourteen. I couldn't stand being around them, it made me furious. Now they've grown up and are still childish, which is no problem. My best male friends all kept their little boy inside alive, but the important fact is that they matured, they’ve become reasonable and they learned when it's ok to be all funny and when they should be serious.

Recently I talked with a female friend of mine how guys in their late teens suffer a lot of pressure. You need to be strong and independent, earn a lot of money and have the right woman on your side or you are worth nothing. What about the sensitive boys out there? They are forced to change, they are not considered men. Gay guys aren't considered men either, and for me this is kind of wrong, their sexuality doesn't change their gender.

Gender seems in fact to be unbelievable complicated and that annoys me. For me it's clear you are either male or female, except for when you have a genetically disease. Again, transgender are too either male or female, they just decide to change from one to the other. But to become a man or a woman, there is more than just genetics.

Sorry that this was so long and a bit confusing, have a nice day though.