acting like a man

I know, I know, it's been slightly over two months since I blogged, but I have a bone to pick. I'm not quite sure who it's with, but it begins with this phrase:

"If a woman wants to act like a man, treat her like one."

It's been going around my school for a while...shockingly, it's only boys who say it. My issue here is mostly with what it's supposed to mean, in this day and age, to "act like a man". I mean, what is acting like a man anymore? Wearing pants? (No, girls do that...) Carrying and/or being able to use a gun? (Not by a long shot. Look at Sarah Palin, for god's sake!) Fighting? (Heck no. Cat fights, people, and it's not like you exactly think of tomboys getting into those.) Using heavy machinery, fixing things, putting them back together, mechanics and that kind of thing? (I think not. Look, there are female mechanics. There are females who drive road graters for a living.)

In fact, I don't really see how there's a way to act like a man, really. Not anymore.

So if there's no acting like a man, how do you go about treating a girl like a man, and why is it considered a punishment in the first place? Yes, I'm going to treat you like a man by giving you higher wages and better opportunities for executive jobs. I'm going to treat you like a man by NOT automatically underestimating your physical strength. I'm going to give you a default position of higher regard in the majority of Middle East countries. Dear god, who would want to be treated like a man?

I'm not saying that there aren't differences between men and women--of course, there are. But modern American culture has gone a long ways towards blurring the line of what women "can" and "can't" do, and that sort of saying should be null and void by now.