cross-gender roles from Sergio Mascarenhas on 1998-09-23 (Glorantha Digest Vol 06)

From: Sergio Mascarenhas <sermasalmeida_at_mail.telepac.pt>
Date: Wed, 23 Sep 1998 17:10:03 +0100

Jane Williams:
> so I'd put male healers in the 15% who take cross-gender
> roles, like the male cooks.

AFAIK, at least in the RW this is not exact. I mean, the fact that a man cooks or heals (or does any other housework) does not imply he his crossing genders.
The key issue is the context in which a man his doing such a function: internal/domestic or external/public.
Internal/domestic his doing housework in his own family circle. In that case he would be crossing genders.
But in the past (in most societies I know-of with strong gender differentiation, and where women were not supposed to assume public activities, or were not admited to have a presence outside of the familiar circle), doing housework as a job was reserved for men. In Muslim countries cooking in restaurants was a male job. Women cooked at home.
In India, payed housekeepers were men, not women. Both the Muslim cook and the Indian housekeeper would refuse to do at home the same tasks they had finished doing in someone else's home. After all, they were men! They were not supposed to do a woman's (their woman's) job! : cooking and cleaning at home.

So, deciding whether a man is / is not crossing genders when he cooks or does a similar job may depend, not only on the task, but also on the context in which it is done.

Sergio