The Vexed Question of Blue and Pink.

I grew up at a time when the twin concepts of masculinity and femininity went unquestioned, and was taught that strong masculinity was the greatest good to which a boy could aspire when he grew to adulthood.  So I have to ask questions to which I probably can’t know the answers:

Does masculinity, and its distaff counterpart, exist, or is the concept derived artificially through countless generations of gender stereotyping grounded in cultural practice? If it doesn’t, how did the male gain dominion over the female in the first place (a fact which I generally abhor, being an adherent of the different-but-equal school)? If it does, doesn’t it rather trouble the waters of political correctness?

No doubt there exist a million learned tomes on this subject, but they’re all just expressions of somebody’s opinion. How can I know?

And I don’t expect anybody to offer answers because the whole subject becomes uncomfortably complex and takes you down into the unfathomable depths of unverifiable myth.