Victoria Pendleton

If you can show me a society where beards, big muscles and deep voices are considered feminine, i will concede that there might be more social variation than i am admitting, but you seem to want to reduce biological explanations to some sort of behavioural determinism, which is not the right approach.

I kind of see where you're going with this now. For me, biological characteristics, such as beards, breasts, body fat, voice etc. are a given (although as an aside, I work with a lot of trans people who would argue that in spite of having male or female biological characteristics, they are in fact female or male...), whereas behaviours and traits (aggression, submission, competitiveness...) are not.

From my own perspective, I'm biologically male, but don't feel that I show many behaviours that are stereotypically 'male'. I accept that these characteristics were the result of centuries of traditionally learned gender roles that came about as a result of biological characteristics (such as strength, the role of the hunter-gatherer etc.) but feel that the way that society has developed over the past hundred years in such a way that the traditional gender roles are no longer as relevant.

In short, I just don't feel that my brain's wired up that way.