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Episode 55 - Gender Yin-Yangism
If you asked a person to make a list of all the words that would describe a "man" and then I asked them to make a separate list of all the words that would describe a "woman" what do you think are the chances that you would end up with a list of antonyms? Do we see "masculine" and "feminine" as opposites? Should we? Not only is it not actually true that men and women are opposites but the concept that they have opposite traits will tend to put all the positive traits in the men's column and all the negative traits in the women's column.

In Eastern philosophy there is a concept called the yin and the yang. These are represented artistically by the pair of swirly black and white teardrops. It is meant to represent a pair of "opposite but interconnected forces" in Chinese cosmology. The way we talk about men and women we often pair them up as opposites, like the yin and the yang. We use a lot of language and terminology that helps create this largely unspoken illusion.

I think I know how society got to this point. For many (MANY) years the only people of note or importance were men. The stories we tell are ways of communicating our society across generations and for a very long time stories were told by men, for men, and about men. Whenever it came time for the men telling these stories to describe women it was most likely as something "different" than men. And the easiest way to portray someone as different is to make them opposite.

Links
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yin_and_yang
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_masculinity
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Tate