How about all happy families realize it’s impossible to be happy all the time and so don’t exhaust themselves and ruin what happiness they have by expecting what they can’t ever obtain? Idealized happiness is every bit as much an impossible goal as is idealized masculinity. Or femininity, for that matter.

I said in summing up my point from the book I read that the Seneca clan mothers, who were the center of power in the tribe, were clearly not diminished in any way by the realization that in general certain roles are better suited to one sex than the other. Mulan in the movie and the ancient legend was the exception. Not the rule.