Lots of interesting stuff you bring up there Dave. Thanks for sharing your experience with Newfoundland. As someone who worked in the oil industry it is alway interesting to hear such stories especially about these kinds of cultural differences that always interested me.

There is a Norwegian TV series called Lykkeland in 3 seasons on Norwegian Broadcasting: https://tv.nrk.no/serie/lykkeland

It is about the oil adventure in Norway from the beginning. It deals a lot of with culture crash between Norwegians and Americans as the oil industry was built up. Being married to an American and working with many Americans that is always interesting. I know one American oil guy who watched it and loved it.

Speaking of gender, I find myself is a sort of middle position. I will usually describe myself as a moderate feminist. I can see both sides of this debate. The trans issue is quite interesting in my view because Norway being very leftist, close to socialist ideology for so long generally have a long history of rejecting biological reality in a lot of our academic settings on gender. For this reason Norway was trailing more liberal countries on trans rights and treatment.

Keep in mind that I make a big distinction between socialism/social democrat ideological thinking and liberalism. I find that in North America these two are conflated while to us I would say they are opposite ideologies.

Anyway because gender was seen as socialized here rather than biological in nature, gender Dysphoria was not seen as something that really needs a surgical or medical treatment. One just had to socialize you to the gender corresponding to the sex you were born with. It had very unfortunate outcomes for intersex children born in Norway who did not get treated well until medical doctors started accepting that there was a strong biological component to your experience of gender which had to be taken into account.

Ironically because we have trailed the non social democrat liberal countries such as US, UK etc on this issue there has been this misconception among conservatives there that we somehow embrace conservative traditional values. When in reality it is being too far left which was the reason we did not offer much medical treatment in regards to gender Dysphoria.

I am personally a socialist, but I think this is just one of those areas where my side got it wrong. We grately underestimated the importance of biology. So while I don't think you can simply socialize boys into becoming girls, I still don't think biology is perhaps an iron rule in the way many conservative seem to look at it.

I am not a biologist but one of the things I have understood about humans that set us apart is that our behavior is far more plastic than that of other animals. Culture, environment and upbringing can do a lot more to alter us than what is normal. I don't think it can render basic biology irrelevant, but I think there is a lot of untapped potential.

I can just look at my own society Norway and the role of women compared to other countries I have lived and traveled in. Clearly culture has impact. It is funny when I see people in conservative states in the US claim with certainty that there is not more gender equality to be gained. We are at the end of the road. They could spend some time in the Nordics and see that is BS. And I don't think there is any reason to believe we are at the end of the road either.

My thinking is informed a lot by being a father and raising kids. Because I am quite interested in culture and politics I did observe very clearly how childhoods even in Scandinavia push gender roles a lot. My kids like cooking at it was quite hard to find cooking toys suited for boys. Eventually I had to go to IKEA. I find that Scandinavian toys are generally much more gender friendly. They are made in a way that often have a broader gender appeal.

American toys can be a little bit over the top gendered I think. Boy stuff gets a very militarized macho look while girls stuff gets very pink princess looks.

Sorry, now I am rambling on here. I should probably write more specifically about this topic somewhere.