Gender Roles and the Rational Soul

In this episode I take on a listener question about gender roles and Stoicism — whether they exist, how the Stoics would have defined them, and what any of it means for modern relationships. We look closely at Musonius Rufus, the so-called “fourth head” of the Stoic school, who argued that women and men share reason, virtue, and moral responsibility in equal measure — but who also, being a man of his time, fell back on some outdated assumptions about what that equality should look like in practice.

From there, I unpack how we can read those ancient ideas without either dismissing them or accepting them wholesale. What would a Stoic say about “fifty-fifty” relationships today, about who pays for dinner, or who does the dishes? We’ll explore how justice and reason — not gender — define our roles, and how mutual care can guide modern partnerships without falling into pathos or ideology.

Key takeaways from this episode include:

• Musonius Rufus saw virtue as genderless, even if his society didn’t.

• Stoicism asks us to perform our chosen roles justly, not conform to old scripts.

• Rational partnership — not cultural expectation — is what makes a relationship Stoic.

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