The gender equality paradox

[Akka]

That statement is irrelevant to the original reason we were having this discussion, namely luiz' claim about women being unfit for military service.

It was plainly obvious (and was even explicitely stated in the quote below) that it was about statistical averages.
Case in point :

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.

Why are you being so purposedly dense about it ?

 

[dutchfire]

It was plainly obvious (and was even explicitely stated in the quote below) that it was about statistical averages.
Case in point :

Why are you being so purposedly dense about it ?

A statement only about averages is irrelevant to the original claim by luiz, as has been explained several times.

 

[Akka]

A statement only about averages is irrelevant to the original claim by luiz, as has been explained several times.

Wrong on both cases.
First, the statement about the average is perfectly relevant about the military case Luiz was making.
Second, the way you "explained" it was completely biased, which is the very reason why I answered the post we're discussing right now.

 

[Quackers]

luiz's posts have ruffled a lot of feathers..

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.

Please, prove me wrong on at least this point.

I think luiz is referring to pre-industrial warfare. Not the modern type, your model only takes into account 20th century conflicts.

Anyway, theoretically lets assume two units consisting of 100 men and 100 woman. They're equally trained, equally disciplined, on equal terrain you get the picture. The only difference is physical, male vesus female. Each individual is equipped with a sword and some chain mail. They are than told to attack each other. Who will win? It is obviously going to be the men. Contrasting the average man to the average woman will see differentials in height, upper body strength and limb length in men's favour. All factors which improve your effectiveness in combat.

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

luiz never said woman cannot be effective soldiers.
This was his actual quote:

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.

There is a big difference between "ineffective" (useless) and relatively less effective.

 

[dutchfire]

Wrong on both cases.
First, the statement about the average is perfectly relevant about the military case Luiz was making.
Second, the way you "explained" it was completely biased, which is the very reason why I answered the post we're discussing right now.

You might want to read this part of the conversation again, it seems like you missed it (or at least, the point of it).

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.

Actually, I think the relevant statement would be:

4) The best p% of people at 'manly things' are men.

Where p% is the percentage of people that are needed in society to do manly things. E.g. if the Queen needs an army of 10.000 people who are good at fighting, will they all be men?

And I think for most reasonable values of p, the answer will be no.

Ah, yes, DF has it right for this purpose. For example, in 2013, the best woman runner in the London Marathon would have come 13th had she entered as a man. If you needed 100 marathon runners out of the thousands who competed, therefore, quite a chunk of them would be women.

Indeed. The Roman army had 125.000 men in its legions.* If someone asks why they were all men, and the answer is that men are more able fighters than women, then you're saying that even the 125.000th most able man was more able than the best woman. I find this unlikely.

* During Augustus, according to wiki
** Where by ability, I mean natural, innate ability, not the nurture part of it.

More to the point, I find it hard to believe that some of the rather useless overweight twenty-year-privates that end up skulking around the line infantry couldn't be replaced physically by some of the ladies from the sappers and the like.

 

[Farm Boy]

While raw body mass and violent tendency may explain some aspects of mêlée age warfare it doesn't do to forget that burning you able bodied womenfolk on stabbity shankity slashity enterprise is pretty wasteful unless your tribe/group/nation is severely overpopulated.

 

[Akka]

You might want to read this part of the conversation again, it seems like you missed it (or at least, the point of it).

You just repeat the same things to which I already answered this :

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).

Is there an actual point you wish to make, or are you simply attempting to continue using strawman in circle ?

 

[dutchfire]

That might be a good answer to the question:

"why were there on average more men then women in military service?"

Sadly for you, this is not the question we are discussing, so it is irrelevant.

 

[Flying Pig]

While raw body mass and violent tendency may explain some aspects of mêlée age warfare it doesn't do to forget that burning you able bodied womenfolk on stabbity shankity slashity enterprise is pretty wasteful unless your tribe/group/nation is severely overpopulated.

That's not to say that raw body mass and strength no longer count, just because the actual process of killing people isn't a matter of how hard you can push a pointy thing into them. One has to be able to carry a large amount of heavy equipment over a long distance, be resistant to cold, and be able to carry one's comrades should the need arise. I was always taller and heavier than the average soldier, and so usually ended up carrying heavy equipment such as mortars and machine-guns; shorter blokes, who weighed half as much and had to take two strides for every one of mine, had to be much fitter to keep up. This isn't to say, though, that a good female soldier couldn't replace a second-rate male one. The fact that it will probably always be male rugby players carrying the heavy weapons is immaterial. Otherwise, you might as well ban skinny people from soldiering.

EDIT: Looking below me, I can see some metal poles and a net going for a walk.

 

[luiz]

Blah blah blah
or
"look how progressive and egalitarian and good I am!"

You're so tiring. You didn't present any evidence. The other poster you referred to linked to some obscure feminist sci-fi website which makes this claims about Shaka Zulu without offering a single study or paper to back it up. It reads like a poorly written opinion piece, on a fiction website. Anything I write here is as good "evidence" as that. And of course, what if Shaka had some female soldiers? Does that prove that they were as effective? People have used child soldiers in several wars, and still do, does that mean that they are as effective as grown men?

So you offer nothing and yet have the nerve to challenge me? Well, get off your high horse. My claim that in the pre-industrial world women were less effective soldiers is backed by the empirical evidence that all great armies throughout pre-industrial history were composed of men. It's also quite obvious, for people who know what it's like to be a soldier and for people who actually know women (neither of which is your case, obviously) that some requirements of pre-industrial warfare, such as very long forced marches carrying heavy weights, made women even less effective than men, as they have less resistance to that sort of activity (and I'm talking about averages, in case any idiot feels the need to point out that are women who are more resistant than the average men). So my claim is on the side of evidence, yours is on the side of ideology and pose. So offer something more concrete, or go to hell.

 

[Farm Boy]

That's not to say that raw body mass and strength no longer count, just because the actual process of killing people isn't a matter of how hard you can push a pointy thing into them. One has to be able to carry a large amount of heavy equipment over a long distance, be resistant to cold, and be able to carry one's comrades should the need arise. I was always taller and heavier than the average soldier, and so usually ended up carrying heavy equipment such as mortars and machine-guns; shorter blokes, who weighed half as much and had to take two strides for every one of mine, had to be much fitter to keep up. This isn't to say, though, that a good female soldier couldn't replace a second-rate male one. The fact that it will probably always be male rugby players carrying the heavy weapons is immaterial. Otherwise, you might as well ban skinny people from soldiering.

EDIT: Looking below me, I can see some metal poles and a net going for a walk.

Confused. I think my argument was that while differences in general size and temperament may make the average young male more suitably fit for military service than the average young female, that alone wouldn't be adequate to explain all male militaries. Having those be exclusively one gender is indeed a social construct. Whether it's not burning your tribes breeding members by sending them out to get killed or whether it's the fact that your military cannot control adequately the behavior or soldiers that are in imminent fear of death thus putting your military female service members at unreasonable levels of risk from their own fellows.

 

[ParkCungHee]

While raw body mass and violent tendency may explain some aspects of mêlée age warfare it doesn't do to forget

Also, don't forget that it really wasn't all that important even in pre-industrial warfare. If it was, Romans would have made even worse soldiers then women.

 

[luiz]

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.

I agree with the point that the more advanced the society, the more women can "act like men". So no society was as egalitarian as our modern western capitalist societies. Doesn't that kind of reinforces the argument that behavorial differences may be of natural origin, as the further you go back, the more defined gender roles you have?

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.

Fair enough. I'm sure we'd disagree on the extent that women are shortchanged, though. I tend to agree that they are still somewhat in some fields of work (not all). But OTOH, men are already being shortchanged in some other areas (child custody and support, for instance, at least in my country).

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.

Well, that is one of the cases where I say "tough luck". You can't expect people to change their dating preferences in the name of "social justice".

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.

And I think it is a viable strategy to achieve success! Success isn't only about making the most money. Most men won't gear their whole lives thinking about how to maximize money-making either. That's not how we choose our careers (though of course it's a consideration). There are many different ways to be successful, which at the end of the day only means being pleased with yourself. How less pleased with themselves are women in our modern societies? I'm willing to admit they might be a bit less pleased, but probably far less than simple raw wage data would suggest.

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.

What I mean by "masculine" behavior, as I explained in some other posts, is "behaviors our current society generally consider to be masculine". I am not using this as "proof" that they are inherently masculine. I am asking if the fact that such behaviors are usually considered to be masculine in so many different cultures that evolved separately and independently, isn't that a good indicator of an underlying non-cultural cause?

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.

Well I do find diversity in "masculine" and "feminine" behaviors (as defined by our culture). I have worked in all-male groups, and in mixed groups, and much prefer the latter exactly because of the diversity of behaviors. It makes the whole environment "lighter".

So let's recap a second and then bring this home:

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?

Um, how come culture is the default explanation until proven otherwise? I'd say a combination of culture and biology are default, until proven otherwise.

(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?

[/quote]
I'm totally down with A and B. I just don't think most men or women are that interested in "gender bending", at least to a great degree (to some degree of course they are).

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.

I didn't mean to say they're both equal in that they're both biological. I meant to say that in one case people are more than capable of understanding average and outliers, on the other they pretend to be idiots because they want to pose as paladins of equality and progressiveness.

 

[luiz]

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.

A statement only about averages is irrelevant to the original claim by luiz, as has been explained several times.

And the fact that you have to increase the number to 10.000 or even 100.000 shows that you agree with me.

Oh, and an argument about averages is the only one that freakin' matters when discussing the effectiveness of soldiers or football players or marathon runners!!!

It's obvious I'm talking about averages, because any argument not based on averages would be totally irrelevant. So please, quit playing stupid.

 

[Farm Boy]

Also, don't forget that it really wasn't all that important even in pre-industrial warfare. If it was, Romans would have made even worse soldiers then women.

The Roman tribe had sexual dimorphism and testosterone preponderance favoring increased body mass in Roman females? No clue what you are saying.

 

[ParkCungHee]

Romans were weak midgets.

 

[dutchfire]

And the fact that you have to increase the number to 10.000 or even 100.000 shows that you agree with me.

No, it shows that I'm talking about armies, which typically have thousands of soldiers, while you've strayed of from the topic and moved to football teams, which are not comparable.

Oh, and an argument about averages is the only one that freakin' matters when discussing the effectiveness of soldiers or football players or marathon runners!!!

It's obvious I'm talking about averages, because any argument not based on averages would be totally irrelevant. So please, quit playing stupid.

You have still missed the point

Let me spell it out for you, because it seems that is necessary. Imagine I'm in a high school class with 30 students, half male half female. Now, men are typically better runners than women. So, the average man in the class is probably faster than the average woman, and the fastest runner in the class is probably male. Our class will join a running competition and needs to send a team of 15 people, independent of gender.

The luiz & Akka approach to this is to say "Well, men are on average faster than women, so we will send our 15 men to the competition." Do you think this is indeed optimal?

 

[luiz]

No, it shows that I'm talking about armies, which typically have thousands of soldiers, while you've strayed of from the topic and moved to football teams, which are not comparable.



You have still missed the point

Let me spell it out for you, because it seems that is necessary. Imagine I'm in a high school class with 30 students, half male half female. Now, men are typically better runners than women. So, the average man in the class is probably faster than the average woman, and the fastest runner in the class is probably male. Our class will join a running competition and needs to send a team of 15 people, independent of gender.

The luiz & Akka approach to this is to say "Well, men are on average faster than women, so we will send our 15 men to the competition." Do you think this is indeed optimal?

You are twisting my words and making an argument I never made, I don't know if out of actual intellectual limitation or a desire to pose as super egalitarian and progressive.

So let's recap, shall we?

Why did this argument start? Becaue I, Akka and others were arguing that that there are some undeniable physical differences, so it's reasonable to assume they play a role in behavioral differences. To illustrate this point, I pointed out that men are better at stuff such as running or playing football, and to illustrate the narrowing gap of ability made possible by technology, I stated that women used to be less effective soldiers and today that is much less the case.

Now, it should be patently obvious to anyone over 7 that to illustrate that there are physical differences between men and women, which was my whole point, I need to talk about averages. It's also interesting that the very best at all those fields are always and invariably men, but averages are the real point.

So the fact that in a group of 10.000 people some of the best runners will be women means exactly nothing to the case I was making.

Is that clear enough, or do you want to do some more posing?

 

[dutchfire]

The luiz & Akka approach to this is to say "Well, men are on average faster than women, so we will send our 15 men to the competition." Do you think this is indeed optimal?

You forgot to answer the actual question

With regards to the recap, I (and Flying Pig) only come in after you made this statement

women can be effective soldiers today, obviously they couldn't in the past

I'm not very much interested in the other parts of the wall of text that this thread has produced.

 

[luiz]

You forgot to answer the actual question

Because that question has nothing to do with the argument we were making!!!!

It's a cop-out on your part, because you know damn well that my assertion that men are in average better at those fields is correct but want to keep on posing! How tiring!
But to make you happy: of course it's not optimum, so bloody what? Did I ever say it was optimum for all armies to be 100% male? Did I ever say all men are capable of beating all women in a marathon? God damn it, quit being thick!

The discussion here is about the causes of behavioral differences, if there's a biological component to them. That statement you quoted was made within the context of discussing physical differences, so it is also related to averages! Surely you're capable of grasping that when discussing if there are physical differences only averages matter?

You answer now, please.