What does being a man mean to you?

[ZenGum]

I think your Man Vs Boy rather than Man Vs Woman point is an excellent one, and really helps.

If your point about responding rationally rather than emotionally is correct, then I know lots of very big boys and girls.

On philosophy - female philosophers have been very rare until recently and are still only a small minority - probably less than 25% of tenured academics, at a guess based on personal experience.

Perhaps the earlist female philosopher (in the modern sense) was Harriet Taylor, colleage and later wife of John Stuart Mill. In the 20th century, De Beauvoir and Hillary Putnam were among the earliest to be significant, and even now it is hard to think of "prominent" female philosophers. I can name several who are a little better-known than average - Cynthia Macdonald and Rae Langton - but even for this I am straining.

My observations of this topic are both for professional and personal reasons. And no, there isn't much going on in philosophy departments.

Oh and while some philosophy is introspective - Hume, Kant, much modern European philosophy - quite a lot is dialectical - sit around a table and argue. Perhaps a kind of collective introspection. Facts and empirical research do occasionally make an appearance, but are not always required.