Well, there are a lot of rather good female runners, boxers and rugby players. I live down the road from a female England prop, and she's a fair bit fitter and stronger than most men. Paula Radcliffe can outrun a fair number of male professional marathon runners. So there's really a few variations on your thesis:
1) All men are better than all women at all 'manly things'
2) The average man is better than the average woman at 'manly things'
3) The best person at 'manly things' will always be a man
It's quite clear from this that, even if you're right, it doesn't justify pidgeonholing those men and women based on their gender rather than their abilities. Looked at another way, almost all of the best basketball players and sprinters are black men. Almost all of the best marathon runners are East African. This doesn't mean, though, that white men and people from outside Kenya should give up on those sports altogether.
Well I hope and do believe you're smart enough to know I meant averages, because I was quite explicit and it's quite obvious. There are women who are very good at all those fields I mentioned, but not as good as the best men, who are in average better.
I can't believe you saw the need to post what you did.
Well I hope and do believe you're smart enough to know I meant averages, because I was quite explicit and it's quite obvious. There are women who are very good at all those fields I mentioned, but not as good as the best men, who are in average better.
I can't believe you saw the need to post what you did.
Good, in which case read what DF and I posted afterwards. The fact that the average man is better than the average woman does not mean that the best n people are all men.
QUOTE=Flying Pig;13051187]Good, in which case read what DF and I posted afterwards. The fact that the average man is better than the average woman does not mean that the best n people are all men.[/QUOTE]
I was only taking about averages, but just so I can continue to state the obvious, which apparently is quite controversial in CFC: the very best in those fields are indeed all men, and among top performers the number of men is vastly bigger than that of women. No female team could ever win the World Cup, or even qualify for it. No female boxer could ever defeat any serious male contender.
Good, in which case read what DF and I posted afterwards. The fact that the average man is better than the average woman does not mean that the best n people are all men.
I was only taking about averages, but just so I can continue to state the obvious, which apparently is quite controversial in CFC: the very best in those fields are indeed all men, and among top performers the number of men is vastly bigger than that of women. No female team could ever win the World Cup, or even qualify for it. No female boxer could ever defeat any serious male contender.
Well, I bet the Spanish womens' team would beat the Welsh men. The best woman marathon runner would place in the top 20 in the men's marathon. The point being that in the vast majority of cases, gender does not determine aptitude. To get back to the point, as it were, the fact that there are biological differences between men and women does not justify judging people in terms of gender rather than ability.
Well, I bet the Spanish womens' team would beat the Welsh men. The best woman marathon runner would place in the top 20 in the men's marathon. The point being that in the vast majority of cases, gender does not determine aptitude. To get back to the point, as it were, the fact that there are biological differences between men and women does not justify judging people in terms of gender rather than ability.
Nobody ever said it did. It's in fact unbelievable that by stating the obvious truth that men are bettet at football or running one is actually expected to clarify that some women are in fact better than most men at those fields.
I wonder, if I stated that "Americans are richer than Angolans" would people remind me that there are millionaires in Angola who are richer than most Americans? Would people ask me if I'd rank as one of the richest men in Angola? Would people pretend not to understand perfectly what I meant? I very much doubt it.
Everyone understood very well what I meant, and of course knew it to be true, but yet felt forced to make some nonsensical remarks against strawman positions nobody holds just to show how progressive and egalitarian they are. We do live in very weird times.
OK, so what inferences do you draw from your conclusion? I take it you don't intend it to stand in a vacuum. Should it be used to profile people? Should it be used for positive discrimination?
OK, so what inferences do you draw from your conclusion? I take it you don't intend it to stand in a vacuum. Should it be used to profile people? Should it be used for positive discrimination?
The conclusion I draw is that the genders have some huge physical differences, so there's no reason to assume there are no natural behavorial differences as well, which is the context in which I first made this very obvious remark. Why this must lead to profiling or discrimination I do not know.
Oh, and btw the Spanish female football team isn't that good. US, Germany and Brazil have the best teams. And none of them are better than the Welsh male team.
Nobody ever said it did. It's in fact unbelievable that by stating the obvious truth that men are bettet at football or running one is actually expected to clarify that some women are in fact better than most men at those fields.
I wonder, if I stated that "Americans are richer than Angolans" would people remind me that there are millionaires in Angola who are richer than most Americans? Would people ask me if I'd rank as one of the richest men in Angola? Would people pretend not to understand perfectly what I meant? I very much doubt it.
Everyone understood very well what I meant, and of course knew it to be true, but yet felt forced to make some nonsensical remarks against strawman positions nobody holds just to show how progressive and egalitarian they are. We do live in very weird times.
The conclusion I draw is that the genders have some huge physical differences, so there's no reason to assume there are no natural behavorial differences as well, which is the context in which I first made this very obvious remark. Why this must lead to profiling or discrimination I do not know.
I don't think you really disagree with my entirely obvious and non-controversial statement that in the pre-industrial world, women were not as effective soldiers as men. If you do, state as much. If you don't, have a good day.
Please make a citation. Note I did not use the plural: a citation, as in the singular; a single citation. Arachnofiend did as much and you scoffed on the basis that your position was "obvious."
This is not only fallacious, it's wholly illogical. It is the rational equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and singing "la la la I can't hear you."
You have asserted females could not be as effective, soldiers-wise, as males. This may not seem like a controversial statement to you, but unfortunately that's not how hypotheses and proofs work. You have made the assertion, and now you must demonstrate the assertion.
To re-cap, since you seem to be flying off the handle, and thus good reason may elude you right now:
LUIZ: (women can be effective soldiers today, obviously they couldn't in the past).
ARACHNOFIEND: link; “Women have always fought,” he said. “Shaka Zulu had an all-female force of fighters. Women have been part of every resistance movement. Women dressed as men and went to war, went to sea, and participated actively in combat for as long as there have been people.”
... now, it has been asserted that, in history, women have indeed fought. So now the burden is on you to show how these women soldiers were less "effective" than male soldiers.
And I'm afraid you have all of your work ahead of you, because ranking soldiers within supposedly all-male armies does not give the overwhelming impression that fighting effectiveness is tied only, or even largely, to individual skill or strength. I cite the tactical numerical deterministic model, the relevant studies involving which have shown fighting forces throughout history to be greatly varied in their strength and effectiveness, for a number of reasons. Suffice it to say that it does not seem "physical strength" nor "hardness of abs" are qualified here; "all other things being equal" seeming to miss the point of quantifying battling armies in the first place (all other things will never be equal).
To wrap it up, I'm asking you- nay, challenging you- to make one reference or citation which demonstrates or proves your assertion that women, historically, could not be effective soldiers. Just a citation would do, but that alone does not win you the argument: you must show how the citation conclusively proves the assertion. For example, if you cite a source insisting that, because women did not serve in armies as often as men, they must have been worse soldiers; then, it does not take a lot of imagination to suppose there may be other plausible reasons for this exclusion. That is not an example of a conclusive demonstration of the historical superiority of male soldiers.
On the other hand, I doubt very much you will attempt to engage this issue, especially if you are, as you seem to be, so utterly convinced of the rightness of your ways, you will not do so much as consider another argument. At most I expect you to retort with a tirade about my motivations, or to make snipes at the finer points of my logic. At the least I expect you to ignore me and continue soap-boxing about the fundamental differences between whites and blacks males and females, which cannot be surmounted, should not be surmounted, and never will be surmounted.
Naturally, but I didn't mean only advanced industrialized countries. You can look at pre-industrial Europe, Japan, the Islamic world, etc etc... there is definitely a pattern.
And note how those differences decreased even more as culture decreased even more. And notice how the convergence goes toward the gravity of western capitalist cultural mores, coincidently also the countries with the most political dominance. In fact the further and further you get from a cultural singularity the more and more. And what's at the forefront of where this convergence is going? Surprise! Women acting more and more like men in fields where the behavior difference corresponds to a success difference, and men acting a little bit more and a little bit more like women where it doesn't matter. I can wear nail polish, my sister is a urologist.
Not in the same way. It's not that I want a system that serves me fully and I'll settle for fairness. I want a system that serves everyone and won't settle if it just so happens to keep me down from what fair is. People have all kinds of feelings towards how much they think they and society would most ideally interact. The current system doesn't keep me down, so I don't have to fight that side, but since it shortchanges others, that's where my dissatisfaction lies today.
It has nothing to do with going back to the kitchen, though.
I wouldn't say subservient, or even auxiliary. I don't like subservience, in women or anyone. I just don't like, on a personal level, "masculine" behavior on women (that is, I'm not interested in those women. Doesn't mean I don't respect them in the workplace, in which case they are indeed just like one of the guys). My point was that for me personally if all women behaved like "one of the guys" the world would be a sad sad place.
Well, the consequences of women being kept out of whole modes of behavior by being rejected by men who already have power for their behaving that way is that they won't achieve equal success. This is pretty 1-2.
If you really want a world where women aren't compelled to act like one of the guys, but do want women to be social equals to men, then you need to promote a world that rewards this. Our world rewards being competitive, because modern humans set it up that way. If you want to hang out with women in a world in which women are true equals who are acting feminine, then acting feminine has to be a viable strategy for achieving success.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that of course women should be entirely free to behave as they want, but I don't think we should necessarilyencouragemasculine behavior and preferences.
Underlying all of your argument you are a priori categorizing certain behaviors and preferences as masculine.
Why are they masculine? Men do them. Why do men do them? Because they are masculine. Since men and women are biologically different, because the difference is men and women are biological categories, and since masculine behaviors are masculine and they are masculine because men do them, who are biologically different, these behaviors are from biological differences.
That's your argument!
If you meant what you wrote in the quote above, you are placing everything we discuss after that point in your logical signal flow. But that statement is the statement you can only make after we have figured out the truth in what we are discussing, i.e. our discussion should come completely in front of your assumption.
So of course masculine behaviors are masculine if they are masculine. But they aren't tautologically masculine, they are taught as masculine. They are replicated as masculine. They are 100% for sure culturally masculine.
But are they also 100% biologically masculine? Theoretically: Maybe. (not IRL--maybe some things, who knows). But you have to prove it. You have to prove why those things are objectively, culturally-independent, biologically male-traits.
Remember, culture and biology are not opposite ends of a spectrum but X and Y axes.
Not with your nursing example. Not your interest in math example. We've shown that those things at any meaningful modern level are the product of kids being influenced to think a certain way. Girls are just as interested in math until they start finding out that they aren't supposed to be. More and more men are becoming nurses and are happy to do it, as there becomes less and less of a stigma. Stigma is not a biological force. The capable to feel or promote stigma is.
By the way...
Culture is not experienced in your symbolic thought while gut aversions are evidence of "biological". Maybe that's part of what you're thinking? You wanting to hang yourself to not be nurse is pretty weird, but mostly because it's weird you use that as example to illustrate your point, since it's so obviously not an argument for a bio difference even if the bio difference was the reason. That's the nuance I'm trying to explain to akka, btw. It is, however, known that such an anecdote can be a product of culture, demonstrated, regardless of biology.
I don't actually believe the stereotype that women are inherently worse in math. I believe they tend to be less interested in it, which is easy to confuse with being worse at. Just like men tend to be far less interested in the caring professions (the ones who are interested aren't any worse, at least from what I've seen). I think this is too strong to be a cultural thing; if I had to be a nurse I'd hang myself.
I'm not trying to make any overly sophisticated point here. My POV is merely that the sexes are very different in a number of ways, let's embrace the diversity instead of trying to force uniformity. I mean, we wouldn't make females compete with males in sports just to pretend we're all equal, when we clearly aren't. I see no point in assuming women should be more like men (if you think about it that's kind of sexist as it assumes being "masculine"is the correct way for all humans to behave). And just to be clear, I'm all for female CEOs, Presidents and etc. I'm just happy most girls don't have that kind of personality.
To be clear, I wasn't ascribing the hypothetical to your beliefs, I was using the hypothetical as it is congruent with your logic. The hypothetical being women and math skills.
But your "celebrate diversity" argument is BS because you're assuming diversity where there isn't, and in other places where there may or may not be. Calling certain behaviors "masculine", the ones associated with success in an area that has zero bearing on physical strength capabilities is not celebrating diversity. It's artificially reinforcing a cultural difference and then asking people to emotionally support that artificial reinforcement.
So let's recap a second and then bring this home:
Luiz said:
My POV is merely that the sexes are very different in a number of ways, let's embrace the diversity instead of trying to force uniformity.
But because there's no reason to think that the differences meaningful to us in a modern society are anything other than a social construct (until we prove otherwise), and because these differences result in a difference of status, should we really celebrate these differences rather than just prefer or not prefer people's styles of behaving on a personal level?
(To be clear, when you say celebrating these differences, you mean celebrating these behaviors, not celebrating that there's a difference, right?)
A real celebration of diversity is celebrating when men and women are all gender bending.
Are you down to:
A) celebrate gender bending men and women and other folks AND
B) reward people economically (and politically!) equally for being soft and relationship appeasing and touchy feely?
That's good. I wouldn't think you would assume anything else! Perhaps your idea is that now that there's convergence and we are seeing a convergence of gender norms, these gender norms must be the result
But our cultures aren't cross-cancelling to produce the culture that is most congruent to human "nature". I mean, it sort of is, kind of? It's a convergence towards the logic of the system that has the most force. So western liberalist capitalism, and its resulting logic. That just means that the convergence of gender norms proves what gender norms are tolerated/promoted by our system, and which are on the out, for our system.
So it's more like, gender-norms were on a trajectory within the capitalist world system, they continued on that trajectory, and capitalism gobbled up everything so now everyone's doing it.
It doesn't deny a biological difference. Not even if in our system women and men started acting and being treated exactly the same. That might contain a cultural counterbalance. Buuuuut that's a shaky claim when, again, we do know that culture is strong enough to do that, but don't know what the biological differences in behavior if any genetically are.
That's both pretty insulting and purposedly twisting his point. Not liking agressive and competitive behaviour from the person you share your life means you want a slave ? Seriously ?
There is so many things wrong with this I don't know where to even begin...
You can begin by understanding that he didn't write "the person I want to share my life with". He wrote "women" in the context of all women in society. I know he didn't literally mean "all women in every circumstance should" blah blah but he did mean that is how he thinks women should default their behavior. (And that society should not encourage otherwise, in his follow up post.)
So when I responded to that, I was responding to what he wrote.
Nor did I write "slaves". That was all you, man. But I did write that having women act like that in our society does mean they will be economically (and implied politically) subservient. If you think inequality is slavery, you are far more radical than I am.
So was I the one to twist his words and then insult him? Or did you twist both of ours and then tell me he should be insulted?
Hey, maybe he meant what you said he did, and I am supposed to understand that when Luiz talks about all people, he just means as they relate to him, and not what he wrote. In that case you are a far better reader of people than I am.
I undertand and agree somewhat with your point.
My problem is the totally unbalanced way in which you weight the informations, which seems suspiciously fueled by a desire to reach wanted results hiding behind an excessively conservative take on the data, rather than a genuine attempt at being objective.
It's obvious that nurture can overwrite a lot of nature when it comes to behaviour (the japanese soldiers were killing themselves in drove for absolutely no gain just out of an ingrained weird sense of "honour" that was totally artificial, for instance, while naturally we would strive to survive).
I still don't see how it makes irrelevant the titanic amount of evidences that men and women are "naturally" quite different in behaviours and that most of the typical ones they are culturally assigned stem directly from these biological differences.
Humans are adaptable. I don't validate the argument that the existence of adaptability makes impossible to see and recognize the inherent trends it can overpower.
See right above. I don't see how the obvious fact that culture can overpower nature in some ways change the fact that there is still strong natural tendencies.
We're obviously coming from two different perspectives here, with regards to assumed evidence.
To be clear, you mean biological behavioral differences irrespective of culture, yes? And you mean biological behavioral differences as a relevant force for maintaining and promoting these differences, yes?
As forum etiquette dictates, both of us are allowed to assert things and in good nature we are supposed to take on faith each others claims of studies and stuff. But the divergence is getting big.
I'm noticing the words you are using to describe how much data there is to evidence biological behavior differences' seems to be growing. Right now, the amount of evidence is titanic. That's your operating premise in this discussion of how we should default our assumptions.
I have seen purported evidence of biological differences of men and women. I have not seen a titanic amount, but I've seen it. By and large I have noticed that most take a modern behavior, notate a gender difference, and then give it some evolutionary-psychology explanation for why it's a fundamental biological difference. It often sounds nice but there's no reason not to believe any other explanations of the cause of the difference.
So to me, when I read some variation of "mountains of evidence" in my mind, I'm picturing mountains of the types of studies that showcase differences that don't actually suggest any real biological difference any more than a cultural one.
The thing is that none of those narratives that I know have ever been meaningfully tested, they've merely been augmented with congruent narratives. So to me, that details why we should explore that avenue. But not one to take as a given.
All things held equal, we could weight such a study as 50-50 chance that there is purely biological basis or purely a cultural one, until we have reason to suspect otherwise (that reason cannot be that other such 50-50 studies have the same evolutionary-psychology story! that story becomes more credible after weighting! It can't be used to weight.)
So that's one type of study that shows a difference that I have regularly found cultural reasons more compelling, especially in light of knowing that cultural narratives have been solidly demonstrated and studied in ways the aforementioned kind of study has proved no such biological thing, just a possibility among many.
So that's what's going through my head. You write that I'm not weighting equally in the face of evidence. Well, should I? I think I'm weighting as accurately as I know. Which is to say we should more or less assume any demonstrated difference between sex is, abstracting this a bit, likely to have a root cause that's proportionally equal to the value of relevant studies that prove the level of gendered behavior is caused by sex, what level is caused by convention, or both. Since most of the studies rigorous enough to demonstrate a cause have so far done so in favor of culture and not in favor of sex, even though there might be even more studies that aren't conclusive yet share a compelling common narrative, we should predict that those inconclusive studies, despite their narrative, are more likely to have cultural explanations after all.
To be clear, it's because we should extrapolate from what we know, rather than weight popular narratives that fill the void of what we don't know. Even if those narratives make sense and might even be true.
So that's one side, here's the other.
Knowing there's bio differences doesn't mean those differences cause the other differences we see in society. Bio differences we know are things like hormone levels. Correlate hormone levels to behavior and you can make assumptions of the differences between men and women, but you'd be wrong to. This isn't a matter of being too conservative with the evidence. Here's why with two points:
1) High testosterone in men and high testosterone in women may have some similarities, but those similarities may come to play precisely do to self-replicating features of culture. Those features of culture may or may not have come from some earlier biological situation*. But that it doesn't matter. What matters is that, say with testosterone: if we see higher testosterone as a source of acting more competitive in our culture with both sexes, it might mean because testosterone encourages that feeling which in turn encourages a motivation that rewards that feeling as dependent in this culture. It could be that in another culture, women with higher testosterone would find themselves avoiding conflict more while men with higher testosterone would just smile a lot.
How, why? Because testosterone motivating behavior might not be motivating the thing that causes aggression per se, but the thing that values that which competitiveness does for us right now. And that that thing could be tailored to our social environment i.e. our culture.
2) But let's say we DO answer that question and know that testosterone for sure directly motivates competitiveness directly. We know that men and women with higher testosterone are more aggressive than men and women without.
Here's where it gets interesting. I wrote this to Farm Boy already but I can't remember if it was in this or the other gender/sex thread so here's a recap:
It does not follow from the above, however, that men are therefore more naturally aggressive because they have higher testosterone than do women. It might be that in fact the real difference between testosterone and behavior is that women are equally as naturally, behaviorally competitive with men using much less testosterone to be that way.
Because of what the testosterone is doing or because of other hormones and neural transmitters and everything ridiculously feed-backing therein, women are as naturally competitive but with much less testosterone.
The point then is not to over extrapolate causes and effects.
Which to me leaves a pretty clear motive for why I think there may or may not be biological differences driving behavior, but that since I know there are proven cultural forces that can produce big differences in behavior, I'm going to default to assuming a cultural narrative is likely than I will assume a biological narrative is likely.
Spoilerasterisked comment :
Exhibit A:
*i.e. violent murderous sociopaths who could create ironfisted social rules and make people subservient to their whims having been the most physically brutal man to trywhile being the least likely personto be stopped by the others. (Note dutchfire's comment on "p%". What we don't know is how many others tried. It's even possible that given their environment, more women attempted to break from equality and become ruthless dictators, but were quashed like the other men who failed).
What emerges: a hierarchy of a violent man controlling resources and other violent people to create a functioning, self replicating social system, that initial circumstance of cities (small enough to be controlled by the violence of one person but large enough and settled enough to have its inhabitants dependent on the food distribution of others--a food distribution that comes from a source you can't exactly hide (your farm lands don't move)). Like capitalism later using racism to organize labor, we see gender divisions used to organize political power.
I'm not telling you that this is the history of human society. I'm demonstrating how in a historical moment, a very specific biological divergence (or maybe not even, maybe a total accident) could have played a very big role in what in almost all other cases would have been irrelevant. But the impact of that big role in that one moment took on its own life, and stayed with us and had all kinds of consequences that we completely misrepresent.
Like the elephant growing up chained and dying in the fire, unaware its chain only biologically mattered for less that 90% its potential lifespan, we might very well point to the chain, and a piece of evidence about how the chain has worked at one point, and therefore conclude the chain does the very thing it doesn't: physically restrain the elephant.
I wonder, if I stated that "Americans are richer than Angolans" would people remind me that there are millionaires in Angola who are richer than most Americans? Would people ask me if I'd rank as one of the richest men in Angola? Would people pretend not to understand perfectly what I meant? I very much doubt it.
You're right. No one would question it. But if you tacked on "therefore there are biological differences" and then expected people to accept such a statement you'd be in for quite a surprise. You argument about men and women are not observations of facts and averages, they are statements of cause and effect.
Does a More Equal Marriage Mean Less Sex?
The article is rather long, so it is a good idea to read it for yourselves, but the basic premise is that the more a man acts like a man, the more likely a man tries to be equal with the wife, the less likely it is going to turn on the woman, so in effect men who are more manly are better for women. This goes against our egalitarian society, but it is what has made other societies survive before us.
@Hygro, yes there is a biological difference between men and women, that should be blatantly obvious.
Does a More Equal Marriage Mean Less Sex?
The article is rather long, so it is a good idea to read it for yourselves, but the basic premise is that the more a man acts like a man, the more likely a man tries to be equal with the wife, the less likely it is going to turn on the woman, so in effect men who are more manly are better for women. This goes against our egalitarian society, but it is what has made other societies survive before us.
How do you mean "better?" Better to what extent? Better for whom - the man or the woman? Better in what way? "More sex" or some other, abstract thing?
How has this made "other societies" survive before us? What is meant by survive? Which other societies? Which societies did not implement this so-called necessity?
When you can answer even one of these questions, I will consider your position to have merit. As it stands, it is just another unqualified assertion.
No, the relevant (and very obvious and logical) statement would be :
5) Among the best p% of people at "manly things", the vast majority would be men.
The other formulations are trying really, REALLY hard at casting the most obvious concept in the most twisted ways in order to make them either false or sexist (or both).
Good, in which case read what DF and I posted afterwards. The fact that the average man is better than the average woman does not mean that the best n people are all men.
I was only taking about averages, but just so I can continue to state the obvious, which apparently is quite controversial in CFC: the very best in those fields are indeed all men, and among top performers the number of men is vastly bigger than that of women. No female team could ever win the World Cup, or even qualify for it. No female boxer could ever defeat any serious male contender.
In terms of statistics, a football team is very different from an army. A football team contains ~20 players, an army tens/hundred thousands of men. Among the best 10.000 boxers in the Netherlands, I expect there to be some women, among the best 100.000 there surely are women.
Hygro, my concern is that you are undervaluing the social echoes of 'violent sociopathy,' as you put it, which is I think a overstretch on your terms. Being less risk averse could play here without isolating to something quite so loaded. Little differences make big ones over time.
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