there are hypermasculine women who work out, train martial arts, and could kick my ass, and hyperfeminine males who wear makeup, behave coyly, play hard-to-get, avoid conflict and concede arguments immediately, etc. and are generally way more feminine than my girlfriend (a balanced type).
The problem with your approach is that you are making specific black and white traits out to be masculine or feminine. Conceding arguments is a feminine trait? Where the hell is this the case? Where is it written in the stone of bioloogical evidence that this is a feminine trait? American culture? Other cultures where women are brutally beaten if they argue with their husbands? Conditioning is not to be confused with gender traits!
Women do not 'easily concede' arguments and if they do they are not women, they are weak minded individuals, and there are both males and females who are just that. I don't know where people who think that 'conceding arguments' is a feminine trait come from, but where I am none of my female friends concede anything and I do not perceive them as masculine or feminine for it, I perceive them as strong willed humans. I think there is a degree of indirect misogyny going on here when people perceive shit like this.
Not surprisingly, you've completely misunderstood me. For this discussion to work, I'll make the distinction now, sex = biologically male or female, gender = culturally constructed male or female. Please do not confuse the two.
I don't think there's any such thing as an inherent gender trait, because genders (i.e. the collection of presentations and behaviors that are expected of members of a given gender group) are socially constructed and historically contingent, varying from time to time and region to region. However, in modern (i.e. last several hundred years) western (europe and the united states) culture, masculinity is identified with confident, aggressive, strong, powerful, unemotional, calculating, reasoning paternalistic behavior, and femininity is identified with neurotic, weak, emotional, irrational, sweet, nurturing, maternal, yielding behavior. These characterizations no more accurately reflect the 'true' nature of each sex's temperament than any other set of cultural norms, and I agree that they're misogynistic (as is western society). Obviously, these are oversimplifications, merely classic modes of gender which are subject to constant changing and shifting. The fact remains that women who maintain professional jobs, partake in contact sports, argue passionately for their beliefs, dress in business suits, etc are identified as masculine women, bitches, etc for breaking out of the straight jackets of their socially prescribed gender roles. Men who spend a lot of time on their appearance, fail to maintain significant muscle mass, perform poorly at sports, work in nurturing roles (e.g. daycare, nursing), concede arguments to their spouses, cry during plays or films, etc are identified as pussies, sissies, girly-men, etc for breaking THEIR gender roles.
Given that these attributes are distributed with tremendous heterogeneity within each sex, these norms are clearly oppressive to members of both sex who, either through nature or nurture, do not identify strongly with their socially prescribed roles. The degree to which gender roles are enforced through law or social coercion marks the degree of oppression, with certain radical islamic societies which mandate complete covering of the female body and denying girls access to schools being the extreme.
I respect anyone who can defend their position intelligently. However, in my experience (did speech and debate for 6 years, then coached it) when a woman in a debate round pursues her point aggressively, the judge (an average american) almost invariably finds her distasteful, but if a man pursues the same line of cross-examination with equal aggression, he's perceived as persuasive and skilled. This is true whether the judge is male or female, and depends primarily on level of education, but the sad fact remains that women who argue passionately are shunned in our society as inappropriately masculine or 'bitchy'.
