The man box came from the social system of the past couple of hundred years as the latest iteration of patriarchy - a social system that is only about 5k years old.
In most hunter-gatherer cultures, unless they live very far North and mostly live on meat, gatherers provide most of the daily calories. Sometimes as much as 80%. Meat is an occasional (although important) supplement to that. These tribes were not some sort of Flinstonian version of the 1950s.
"This brings me to gender roles. I believe this topic needs its own story, but I haven’t gotten there yet. In short, unlike in a patriarchal culture where there are rigid rules about what is for men and what is for women, egalitarian societies don’t seem to worry too much about who does what, as long as everyone contributes in some way and the work gets done. Gender roles appear to have been devised as a way to ensure that all the bases get covered, but the additional strong value of personal autonomy (Story F) means that there are not too many concerns if someone does work not loosely designated for their gender, as long as they work.
Evidence of this goes back thousands of years, with female big game hunters and warriors as well as current cultures where both men and women hunt and both men and women gather."
In Egypt prior to the 4th C BC women were the heads of the household and did all the business (both legal and otherwise) while men stayed home and did the weaving. Gradually that flipped, but it was not because the climate or the geography changed. The Mosuo of China live in a matrilineal culture that doesn't even recognize the role of husbands or fathers. Everyone lives in the home of their mother or grandmother with their siblings, children, nieces and nephews. Couples never marry, or live together. On the other side of the mountain where the climate and geography are largely the same, there are patriarchal cultures.
I'm not blaming you for believing these reductionist cultural narratives - after all, that's what most people have been fed - but they are generally quite wrong.
Who knows why your friend doesn't text you back, but that doesn't negate that a huge part of American masculinity is about what you are not - that you are not a woman (or too feminine), not too emotional, and not gay. If you aren't keenly aware of that, it's because it's so much a part of the ocean that we all swim in and it's hard for the fish to identify the properties of the water.
