Does anyone here have thoughts on gender roles and identity?
Yeah blah blah “I support people to live how they want libertarianism”, but what do you think the reality of gender roles in terms of nuture/nature and their positive/negative aspects in society are?
This is something that I’ve been thinking about lately, and it’s something that’s helped me realize exactly how radical my own position really is on social matters like this.
Thoughts?
The conditioning of people to not just accept gender roles but to regard them as being the way society works has been and continues to be extremely destructive. Look at this equal pay foolishness. Women who do not have children NOW EARN MORE THAN THEIR MALE COUNTERPARTS. And Obummer and his ilk want to enforce equal pay? Are they going to pay men more? What negative consequences will that have. Look at the gender roles in a public school where boys seem to be regarded as inferior girls.
Bogart,
What do you mean by your first sentence? Aren’t such interventions advocated by the very people who wish to diminish gender roles? Do you see the destructiveness of gender roles being entirely an economic question or a social one as well?
I’m heterosexual, I tend to have a personality that drifts towards some form of masculinity (that is, unless someone is overly sold on Hollywood or fascist like carictures, I doubt many have thought of me as feminine), I tend not to be sexually attracted to “masculine” things.. That may not sound like much, but it does say something.
You may find Freud and some other Freudian psychoanalytic psychologists interesting on things like this (Erikson, Adler, etc).
Other than that, Kierkegaard said something along the lines that man is reflection, woman is substance: I tend to see things along such lines.
As to positive / negative aspects on society:
In so much as you keep conservatives, liberals, moralists, etc out of sexual topics the less headache I have.
EDIT
“Other than that, Kierkegaard said something along the lines that man is reflection, woman is substance: I tend to see things along such lines.”
What do you and the Dane mean by this?
Fortunatley, this is not so easy to answer - it’s just kind of one of those themes to kind of kick around in your head and watch it play out and manifest in various forms.
But to give a kind of non analytic or scientific illustration:
A man is not “fully born”, but is kind of a wandering wraith roaming around, not entirely in the world, trying to get to the bottom of things, manipulate things, etc.
A women tends to be, almost like Athena, fully born into a maturity and ready to go in her environment.
Read maybe “the seducer’s diary” by K. I’ll go home and check for other good works, he addresses this theme quit a bit (and it is very much a predecessor or cousin to a psychoanalytic approach to things)
i wonder where society got this idea that women were x and men were y.
Vive,
I don’t know if that’s entirely a fair assessment. I think it’s true to say that women are by and large more emotional than men are, but this isn’t an expression of what being itself is. While there is a type of man who analyzes and asks why he is, most men are infamous in my mind for lacking this characteristic, while “manipulation” itself can certainly be viewed as a form of being.
Anyway, any elaboration you feel like providing would be appreciated and I’m always up for some good Kierkegaard when he’s talking about psychology (not doing some of the archetypal stuff he does in “Fear and Trembling”)
Meistro,
Is that a serious question? If so I think the answer should be pretty obvious.
It’s not entirely clear what the topic is, so I’ll talk about my experience and ideas on gender.
My first thought is that I feel sorry for people who buy into gender and limit their own selves based on the shape of their body and what others say this must mean about their being. I see gender very much as something people are bullied into, who then subtly bully others into who aren’t conforming. It’s much more visible once you’ve stepped out of it and stopped giving into others’ pressure to go along with it.
The whole men-this, women-that thing I’ve found is an utter waste of time. It’s quaint to hear people talking about it. It’s seemingly valuable, accurate, etc. but it’s a trap that ends up being self-perpetuating. What you focus on affects what you perceive about people and the kind of creative response you can have to new situations.
It has lots of parallels with the kind of response you get when you suggest a lack of state is possible, like “but who will pave the roads?”. I think all the facets of personal identities (which are heavily labeled with gender) are a great palette to explore and identify with to find one that expresses oneself. My main issue is the one-size-fits-all application into two troughs. I see people as being born unique beings that have great depth, but that are only seen primarily as one of two possible things, and come to see themselves in this extremely shallow way and lose touch with what was unique.
As for society functioning, I think that we’re plenty smart enough to figure out how to work reproduction into colorful lives as unique beings. I don’t think it requires the massive binary gender apparatus to function.
Blargg,
While I agree with parts of what you said, do you really believe that there is no natural basis for gender roles? Do you think that gender is determined entirely based upon “bullying”?
I have very strong reasons to think that this is not the case (although I by no means fall in with the hard-line gender-determinists on this issue), but I would like to hear your input before I elaborate.
I’ll have to continue this in a few days: As I have 0 resources on me now - I was hoping to use a very quick illustration.
some quick points though:
I really didn’t intend to call women “more emotional” - I meant that they tend to develop in a diffferent way than men in a way which tends to be more at home with the environment around them.
As for a male being “more penetrating” (to use a more Freudian expression) it isn’t so much a logic vs emotion dichotomy, at least primarily, but how one tends to relate to an environment. I think it may be better to say rather than “logic vs emotion” (which to me doesn’t seem very helpful for much) a better question may be “what type of reasoning does one tend to use” (or something along those lines)
“manipupulation”, “being”, etc I was not using in any logical or philosophic manner - it was just a quick type of attempt at “folk” psychology.
As for the part of most men not being reflective, I’ll hopefully get to that later. If you want to add anything to that before I answer please do
Vive,
I have a hard time accepting the idea that women are inherently more at home with their environment unless you mean that in the most physical sense. In my experience women are much more involved with, and influenced by social pressures than men are, that they tend to be the bigger worriers, and in a way the far more aggressive and “proprietary” genders… I’ve talked to waaayyy too many women about what they would do to any “bitch” who insulted them or who got near their man.
I think that the “penetrative” aspect of man actually has implications that might be impossible to overstate. As bizarre as it might seem to bring attention to the inherent actions of sex; inevitably the male is allowed inside of the female, he takes comfort from her, but at the same time he is ultimately providing the essence of the sexual interaction and forcing himself into the female. As peculiar as claim is, sex actually sums up gender roles greatly. Both have their advantages, both are in some way dependent upon the other, both even have similar and often harmonious goals, yet they are fundamentally different, one “provides” while the other “receives”, while itself housing and caring for the other… Whether this is just a coincidence or has some real, and indeed quite Freudian, meaning is something I’m still not decided on…
Where the f*** us Clayton in this thread?
lol,
good stuff. We are talking a little past each other - what you say is true (at least within the “folk” context that I am trying to keep in), about women and social pressures. I’m just going to have to hold off on an answer for now - it’s kind of difficult to think of where to even start, and how to quickly finish off with this type of topic - I usually don’t go into these things, just because I understand that I am comming from a bt of an off angle (though it is not orginal, that is it isn’t my own thoughts on things) with information that I don’t wish to misrepresent, and there is just no way to give an easy answer. lol, I honestly thought my little K paraphrase would have been good enough to not beg for any questioning.
And yes freud used: penetrating - convex vs a recieving-concave dichotomy - so you certainly have your Freud hat on.
Neodoxy, I don’t invest much in the past or care much why things are like they are, so I’m not claiming anything about why things are like they are (it’d take a while to explain why I don’t focus on the past, for which I have good reasons). I’m far more interested in what is happening in the present and what effect it has on me (and others). I do believe that each person could be evaluated along a large number of constructed continuua and plotted in a large multimensional space, and you’d find that a binary gender was a pathetic tool for doing any justice to the space. So I see the level at which it’s adhered to and clung to in trying to understand people as due to bullying and the way fitting into a recognized identity grants one consideration from others.
I think I get your question, about a person’s essence, its characteristics. I have no objection with that being mostly fixed at birth, and thus one’s makeup (including all aspects classified under gender) not being socially constructed. How it manifests would be largely cultural, in the palette the culture provides, and the things one is forbidden to do (the bullying aspect). The palette in a way sets up arbitrary associations with activities, such that some express the wrong essence for someone and thus they avoid the activity. Even though this could also steer people to certain things and away from others, I see it as benign since it’s just the way the distributed unconscious development of culture goes, and these assocaitions can be changed if enough people desire it.
I disagree with the characterization of sex as involving “male forcing” or any female discomfort. To state it as bluntly as possible, where this occurs is with sexually inexperienced males who are over-eager and inconsiderate sex partners.
I agree that the relative inversion of penetration-roles is crucially important. I am gaining sympathy for the idea - originating with Freud - that the female has two different pathways to orgasm, the clitoral and the vaginal, and that there is, in fact, a polarity between these pathways, such that the vaginal pathway is the “healthy” or natural pathway. This has nothing to do with saying that women oughtn’t to have clitoral orgasm, merely that the inability to achieve vaginal orgasm with a partner who is capable of giving a woman a vaginal orgasm may be a sign of female sexual dysfunction.
In fact, I’ll push it further than I think Freud ever did. In my view, the fundamental aphrodisiac underlying all sexual behavior is not coitus but its reverse: the birth act. I think this is evidenced by the nature of female vocalization during sex - generally, a strong contrast to male vocalization. Female vocalization during sex can easily be mistaken for cries of pain and has the same general vocal character (short, repeated, vocal bursts emanating from the ‘core’ or stomach) as birth cries. Finally, birth pains can actually be alleviated naturally by clitoral stimulation (masturbation) during birth… most women do not attempt this nowadays, but of those who do, many experience noticeable alleviation of pain and a few even achieve orgasm during childbirth, suggesting that female orgasm may be capable of serving as a natural anaesthetic for some women, perhaps depending not only on genetics but also circumstances.
Even further, I believe that the effect that thougths of childbirth have on most people - repulsive, the opposite of an aphrodisiac - and the avoidance of associating sex with childbirth is juvenile. At the very least, it suggests a potentially unhealthy disconnect between the sexual partners. While I do believe that casual sex occurred in the ancestral environment, I don’t think we fully appreciate the rarity of the kind of casual sex that people regularly engage in nowadays. In the ancestral environment, maidens may have experimented with non-vaginal sex prior to choosing a partner. Unattached mothers - which at some point in the past did not carry the stigma it would eventually come to carry - may have “fished” for new partners through casual sex… three months later: “Now look what you did, you have to stay with me.” Attached women also likely “shopped around” by engaging in non-vaginal sex, as well. Cuckoldry was a constant threat but I think that women generally fully realize the gravity of the choice to engage in vaginal sex with someone besides their partner.
This is a catalogue of many of the casual sex behaviors that I think took place in the ancestral environment - none of these involved meeting completely random people you’ve never seen before and deciding within 30 minutes flat to come back to their apartment and have vaginal sex using a contraceptive method. Wherever casual sex occurred, it was always with someone that was otherwise a known-variable socially, and involved either forgoing vaginal sex altogether to avoid pregnancy or a weighty decision to knowingly chance pregnancy. Either way, the sacredness, for lack of a better word, of childbirth was psychologically preserved and its role as the fundamental aphrodisiac was, thus, maintained.
Clayton -
“I think this is evidenced by the nature of female vocalization during sex - generally, a strong contrast to male vocalization. Female vocalization during sex can easily be mistaken for cries of pain and has the same general vocal character (short, repeated, vocal bursts emanating from the ‘core’ or stomach) as birth cries.”
I’m trying to understand this. The ‘style’ of a woman’s vocalization during sex is a kind of evidence that the act of birth is what really ‘turns on’ a person?
Female vocalization during sex can be mistaken for cries of pain, sure I’ll give you that. I’ve been there and asked “Are you okay?” But, those vocalizations can be mistaken for cries of pain no matter what is causing the pain. Short vocal bursts emanating from one’s core are not exclusive to ‘birth cries’.
So, how did we leap to birth cries?
I’m not trying to be a troll either, I’m trying to understand this by not taking on any assumptions here.
The thoughts of childbirth as repulsive might be because childbirth, especially from a historical standpoint, was painful, and bloody, sometimes fatal right? Or am I missing your point here?
Are you saying people might fap to birth ‘porn’?
No glory holes in Ancient Mesopotamia?
No cruising in the bathhouses in Rome?
Those last three questions are merely rhetorical my dude.
The simple fact is that gender roles are developed by society, not science. I do not believe that science can explain the changing that roles have undergone over the last few centuries. In the overall scheme, our society is still stuck in the gender roles of the early 19th century. Men being the source of income, women being the source of domestic tranquility. A man is independent, a woman dependent. A man is frugal, a woman is luxury-ridden. I could go on but the point is that only recently have some views on gender roles been undergoing change such as women being the “breadwinners,” a neologism that was developed in the early 19th century. Establishment of societal gender roles do not change in a flash but slowly evolve over time.
I personally can’t buy into any biological explaination of gender roles since they vary so much from culture to culture.
HAHA - totally. You can read my stuff here, here, here and here to sort of get the idea where I’m coming from overall. Basically, it’s based in an evolutionary argument: the purpose of sex is children, thus, what really turns us on about sex is the prospect of children. This is generally acknowledged in the case of women, e.g. doll play, fantasizing about having a child(ren), purchasing a housepet as a kind of “kid substitute” for the duration she chooses to forgo having a child, nesting when first pregnant, etc. And despite the lower biological investment of human fathers into their offspring - I believe this is just as true of men, though it may be less obvious.
I’m not aware of any empirical study that supports (or denies) my theory on birth cries - it is my own theory. If I were in a position to suggest to scientists things they should study, this would be one of the things I would recommend they look into. As far as the pain and danger of childbirth, I think this only goes to reinforce my theory, not undermine it. The sex act is often most exciting when performed as an act of dangerous recklessness. Why is this? I think that the reasons for this are slightly different for men and women, respectively. For men, the reasons are probably more related to the prospect of cuckolding another man… the excitement is the excitement of “biological theft”. For women, the reasons are probably more related to the prospect of mating with a more genetically excellent male. But the root cause of this excitement in both cases lies not in the coitus itself, but in the ultimate consequences of it: reproduction. Note that I’m speaking of evolutionary forces on the unconscious psyche, I don’t think people generally think this stuff through, and I don’t think Nature has the slightest interest in having people think it through.
As you will notice, I’m using a priori reasoning. I’m not saying “Women make cries during sex, therefore, I think it’s all about the birth act.” I’m saying it the other way round. Sex is, logically, all about the reproductive consequences of it. Thus, the things that turn us on about sex - such as a woman’s vocalizations during sex - do so in large part because Nature has wired our brains to be excited by them vis-a-vis the way they push our “this will produce a child” button, psychologically. I know it’s a freak theory, but so be it.
As for Student et. al. who doubt there is any biological basis for gender roles, please consult the lecture by Steven Pinker above (first 40 mins), addressing a very narrow topic but still touching on many of the key issues that go into the discussion.
Clayton -