when you said you were never opposed to the idea of men having to do all the work because i was raised believing that was just the way things were., what made you accept it easily? don't say because i understood and knew it's how reality works, but someone must have disciplined you a lot when you were younger to accept it, and Leading, initiating, taking action, etc. is something that you'll detest in the early stages of learning to meet women because it's something that's difficult to do if it wasn't ingrained in you early in your childhood/teenage years. Unfortunately for most guys these days, being "passive" seems to be the norm.
I'm guessing its hard to develop that habit of leading, initiating, taking action if it wasn't ingrained in you in your teens/formative years, ya i wish it was ingrained in me younger. Although i did make myself proud for me being the only one out of my group of 4 friends last night, to be the one that approached girls while we were in a hookah bar while they just sit standing at their table, although the approaches didn't go anywhere i was glad i did it, i feel i did more approaches the past few months than i did the past few years, although didn't get the results i wanted, as in flakes, or i get first dates but no second date.
Sorry if this comes off as combative but it seems to me that you're looking for answers that confirm an idea or bias you already have; which you won't find here. Again, it's irrelevant to look for a correlation between leading, initiating, taking action and how you were raised as a child. Knowing or not knowing won't make a bit of difference in your life; only the decisions you make here and now are important.
If you
really,
absolutely want to look at this the way that you're going about it then you need to take into account every single man and woman's socioeconomic status, religious background, political background, cultural background, familial values and family subculture, etc. There are too many variables to take into account to boil something like this down to a correlation.
Plus, keep in mind that, even if my family was highly progressive there is an entire culture and society around me showing me that men lead; my next door neighbors display it, the family up the street displays it, the media reflects it, cartoons reflect it, etc. and everybody is influenced by it. So, again, it's irrelevant to find a correlation because at the end of the day you're approaching women who have been culturally (both implicitly and explicitly) taught that men initiate, and you're going to interact with men who have been culturally (both implicitly and explicitly) taught that men initiate and take the lead. I'm not saying it's right or wrong because it doesn't really matter at the end of the day, all I'm saying is that it's what's culturally accepted and it's something you're going to run into for the rest of your life.
If you really want to take a look at the origins of this phenomena then you need to look at the beginnings of agriculture (which was discovered on accident by women). When people still lived as nomads (and cultures that still do, though small and spread few and far between, reflect this as well) the culture and social structure was very egalitarian. Men and women took on whatever jobs they were best at without a regard for gender; if a woman was a better climber then she would climb the trees and pull out bird eggs, if a man was better with cooking then he would cook, etc. However, as agriculture developed and people realized they could grow food, domesticate animals, and no longer had to travel then it was at that point that women said "You go out and hunt, I need to stay here to watch over the garden," and things escalated from there when gender roles became implicit and generations of offspring were
shown that men do XYZ tasks, and women do YZX tasks. Nobody made the decision about dominance and gender-power-position but I suspect that events took place that caused people to rationalize which tasks were more important; for instance, if there were years when farming failed because it was new and men were able to successfully hunt and provide substance for the family then it's easy to rationalize that the men's job was more important and consistent.
Again though, I don't feel that this is important either. I'm a psych major and I've always had an existentially humanistic view on life; I feel that life is objectively meaningless and that it's up to each individual to be responsible for creating their own meaning and because of this I feel that social norms, gender norms, etc. are increasingly stupid and only box people in and make life more predictable and less anxious (which is the bane of human existence). This concept that people should live their lives as painlessly as possible is stupid but people (men and women) willingly give up their freedoms and responsibility to make things easier and less painful. Men can be passive with women because there's easy access to porn or whatever gets you off, women can be passive because by-and-large men still lead and make the first moves, etc.
One last thing. Though I've never investigated this, myself, I wonder about a few things;
-Women are receivers, biologically, and can only reproduce once every 9 months.
-Men, biologically, can reproduce as much as they'd like so long as there is a flower open to pollination.
This in and of itself could be an implicit rationalization that people may have reached in order to create gender roles and gender inequality. Especially, since, before laws were established the physiology and physique of a man meant they could overpower a woman and still procreate. Basically, once agriculture was established and the first gender roles were established then the overall environment adapted to fit that new norm; men remained physically fit, women no longer had to be as physically fit for survival... and years and years later enough gender differences popped up that people could rationalize that men were the dominant ones and women were dependent on those men and the idea has stuck ever since.
-Richard
