The more I look into it the more I find that certain places it was very common for it to be seen as an unmasculine thing to cook, unless it was your career, in which case you were a responsible business person- which overcomes the “feminine preparer of food”. As you can tell from the discourse in the chat- I seem to have hit a defunct topic that has already started to turn over again. What society deems masculine and feminine shouldn’t also be characterized as good or bad, but those traits certainly are seen by some to be good or bad. For example, the idea that men can be stoic in the face of adversity- is not actually a thing only men have, It’s a trait they are more often shown to possess than women, but that doesn’t mean its true, nor does it mean a stoic woman is more masculine. They are just traits certain people have associated with genders. The image of the “Stay at home Mom” that cooks, cleans and maintains the home while the father goes out and provides for the family- has been a trope for a very long time. That dynamic provides a few ways of looking at things, one, a stay at home mother provides a safe and clean environment for children and for a husband, this enables the husband to spend time at work to make money and provide things for the family. They are a team, making life easier for both of them by contributing needed things. Then some people think of the two jobs- that the stay at home job is clearly the easier of the two- and then that leads them to believe that women are somehow inherently unable to deal with the harshness of a real job and are only capable of doing basic things at home. They see the father as more important, thinking, she needs him, but he doesn’t REALLY need her. Which is utter bullcrap. This unfortunately has been the case in places all over the world, but especially the USA.

The truth is, some jobs, are easy. Some husbands, go out to a job, that frankly anyone could do, and barely do any work at all, and get paid. Usually those kinds of jobs have a lot of responsibility, but none of that prevents a woman from doing the same job. While working at home, would likely be far more physically taxing- which flies in the face of “women not being strong enough to deal with real work”.

This is all stuff most of you already know, but – It wasn’t really that long ago that it was extremely common. Society changes, but it can also loop. We are seeing some of that now again actually, because there’s a lot going on, on multiple fronts mind you, dealing with gender. The dealing with masculine and feminine traits and bias is often people going back to some of those older ways of thinking. That men are meant to do one thing, and women another. This has exploded in circles that I think might be caused by some men having difficulty adapting to the change in how much freedom women have now. It used to be to get a woman, really all you needed was to be an ok person, and a nice job or money- heck often didn’t need to be a nice person either. That that careers aren’t a male domain, women can actually afford to look for a partner they want to be with, and not settle with someone to try and make it work. Men seem to not have adapted to this as quickly. It’s sad to me that many seem to have adopted the idea that, we should just go back, that women having jobs was a mistake and we need to correct it- so they can get desperate women to marry them o_o;

We have a loneliness problem all over the world, that’s for sure, but its a challenge to overcome, not back track on.

As for what is masculine and what is feminine. That will shift and change, probably already making this comic seem obsolete! Obviously the characters don’t concern themselves with it, and Phil has lots traits people would consider feminine. Some people might even call some of them bad. The people it really matters too- they don’t.
(did anyone survive reading this post? Y’all are hardy folk-)