Fascinating thread. You might note that there is macho, there is manly and there is just plain male. Different words, somewhat different meanings but probably all irrelevant to the basic division of man's work and woman's work. That has different meanings in different places. For some, factory work is woman's work. Mining, logging, things like that, that's man's work. Farming? Now that's confused. Some of it is man's work but any of it could be done by a woman, yet it is sedentary, so it isn't especially macho, even if it is manly. Same with ranching or raising cattle. The word ranching isn't used so much in the east but cattle and horses area raised here just the same. However, I understand that sheep herding is a man's job.
I'm from the hills of West Virginia, which is a land of tough and capable women, yet there is no place with a clearer division of men's things and women's things, only it isn't always what you think it might be. Because the woman's place is in the kitchen (after her outside chores are done), she is the one who tends the fire, not the man, though he is the one who manages the wood supply. In the absense of a man, the woman, usually old by then, has to do it all. In the absence of a woman, everything is turned upside down. If there is a boy around (there isn't always), he had to take on many chores, starting with taking out the ashes.
My mother was an invalid, so my father, a truck driver, had to do most everything when he was at home, which included cooking and gardening. There was no confusion of gender roles. He didn't clean house, however, since we had help.
Army life can do strange things to people. My son served over three years as a tank crewman, half of that in Iraq. He now happily cooks for himself and so on and things have to be proper and correct. I served in the army, too, and I'm the same way and sometimes we have our conflicts because I guess we aren't on the same page or something. It's like we're operating under different standing orders. My daughter, on the other hand, never served (her boy friend's in the air force at the moment) and so is hopeless from our standpoint. Oh, and my son's hobbies include biking and is always rebuilding his 15 year old mountain bike, is the in-house computer expert and even goes camping now and then.
I think that in spite of the Victorian ideal of man and woman division of labor and other distinctions applied mostly to such classes as could afford to have the woman stay at home and even more so, to those that did not require her to work (the work being done by other men and women) and so for that reason, no one has mentioned "ladies" or "gentlemen" in this thread.
No one at all knits or crochets in our house.
