The complementarianism of, say, John Piper, Mark Driscoll, Owen Strachan and the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood relies heavily on demanding that all men conform to rigid, prescriptive standards of manhood and that all women conform to rigid, prescriptive standards of womanhood, regardless of personality, giftedness, culture, circumstances, and perhaps most ironically, the very complementary character qualities that often make a relationship work!

You see this sort of language a lot in complementarian literature: “real men,” “real women,” “real marriage,” “hardwired,” “programmed,” “blueprint”—as if masculinity and femininity are rigid, set-in-stone ideals to which we must ascribe, rather than fluid expressions of our unique selves.