Well, this certainly is a charming thread. My initial reaction was to be impressed by the number of assumptions, myths, and magical thinking that I was reading, beginning with the title.

IMHO, typecasting either gender gets tricky, because there's always, always an exception. For example, shaving--as a woman, facial hair can be a fact of life, and not due to hormonal changes at menopause. So some women have beards, some shave. Culturally, some males have no or very little facial hair, so shaving (or not) has no tie-in to virility. The importance of the public vs private domains of women's lives survives cross-culturally for several reasons: it works (in terms of how power is managed), it provides women respite from the demands of a male-dominate public setting, and, typically, when women are no longer able to bear children, their status increases. It goes without saying that this is not true in the US.

Amazons also lived in Africa, one group in particular earning a reputation as strong fighters. I don't believe that the word "amazon" was used to describe them, and I don't remember very much about their history. I believe their ruler, a woman, became very well-known for her intelligence and governing skills, but that's somewhat of a guess--she could easily have simply been a despot.

It's so interesting to me that gender seems to be perceived as a polarized issue, as if one either fits column A or column B. In my own experience, I can sense a range of body images and identities. Sometimes, these are related to outside appearances, such as haircuts, wearing a dress or jeans, assertiveness, eye contact--in my youth, I was often mistaken for a young man, now it happens less frequently but it still happens. Little kids will often ask me if I'm a boy or a girl. I think if anything I cultivated an androgenous look for the freedom of it, to not be typcast.

blt