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The man must realize a lesson of humility where he confronts his inner darkness/weakness/emptiness, the heroine must realize the truth of her inner light/power/fullness.
This coincides with the Western cultural understanding of men as inherently agentic and women as inherently unagentic. This also coincides with the pagan understanding of the act of sex as weakening men and strengthening women.
I have not watched any drag shows (besides Rocky Horror Picture Show, Disney’s The Little Mermaid, and that one episode of My Little Pony), but I am putting together pieces of a puzzle I haven’t seen: in a drag show storyline, the drag queen empowers the heroine to find, embrace, and perform her inner light/power/fullness.
One of the fascinating things about season 1 of My Little Pony Friendship is Magic is that the friendship between the two focus ponies of the episode is treated by the story structure as the hero, and both ponies involved must own the errors they made before the friendship is restored and the “hero” “wins”. In particular, the Rarity/Applejack sleepover episode and the Rarity/Fluttershy fashion model episode.
Is this a 'Western cultural understanding'? I imagine this is a pretty universal phenomenon, found in virtually all other cultures too. And even modern woke feminist media, which is ostensibly trying to deconstruct/criticise Western cultural traditions ends up reproducing the same thing (without realising it?), which is half the reason woke media sucks, because more often then not the female heroine has no agency despite the story pretending like she does.
I mean it's been more than a century and men are still trying to figure out whether it was a good idea to let women out of the kitchen. So the roots are definitely deep. Almost no culture in the world is considered sociologically matriarchal, so in majority cases the men are the decision makers so again that would bias the world view towards men as agents and women as inherently unagentic.
However there is another alternative system that does arise in certain cultural time periods. Generally during the warrior class in high levels of activity time periods. Such that often the men would go to war and the women would be the home care takers along with handling finances and the family business or their family part of the feudal estate. In these instances women are decision makers and are well versed in financial matters.
It is my belief that if industrialization had not taken place, then this would likely have been the final outcome of gender roles. A woman respected within her own sphere of influence as a well educated and skilled person but still within a societal expectation of her area of expertise being a woman's role.
So it would be akin to all men being soldiers, and all women being real estate agents as a firm rule or something along those lines separating certain skilled jobs as for women, and others for men, both being respected.
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