Nature, though through nurture people’s behaviors can certainly be changed to some extent.
I would mainly like to focus on the source of gender, although I would like to discuss the nature of gender as well.
Anyone ever think of doing a lexiconographic study / geneology on gender? My guess is that would be the easiest way to do anything empirical or analytical on it.
Vive, I think that would be really interesting, although I don’t know how much we could do with pre-historic cultures which would be extremely important in our assessment… Feminist literature might actually be a very good place to turn to…
Juliet Mitchell
Simone De Beauvoir
basically, male/female is a dialectic, but woman has yet to reach the place where she embraces the Other so there is an unformed synthesis and the source of gender is, for Freud, the collective historical experience of mankind. both authors say that looking to the historical record will be unfruiful. There are always bits and pieces of evidence that are of course true, but they cannot be reversed.
Yeah feminist writers do take an interest here. Foucault as well, I think, in his book on sexuality.
But here is where studying indigineous tribes all over the globe may come in handy.
Also, my guess is there could probably be some type of ultra easy verification system in prehistorical archaeology that shows finding of any significant community recognized gender differences in some form or another.
I have many thoughts on gender, but some types like to pull out trigger words to things they don’t like or understand such as “post-modern” so I’ve refrained from posting, but…
If you’re gearing towards gender roles I think in time in some first world countries where traditional roles and practices have been fading away you’ll find that gender roles will begin balance out between the sexes (unless ignorance and low-culture keeps rising), or what’s considered gender and gender roles to “neutralize” itself.
Somewhat related, but I was working up a piece to continue some old feminism posts on the inverse of gender roles and being gender queer, and that it doesn’t not neutralize but reinforce gender concepts. For example, there could be someone who’s a lesbian, but their gender is a social construct; they may be gender queer with the position such as “I’m a man in a woman’s body who likes women and is gay” (to that extent, and yes these are positions people hold), so generally one may here “I was born in the wrong body” etc., but eventually this becomes a formula of explanation. In the end the gender roles many of them rail against they only inversely support them, not neutralize them.
I think they’re railing against the imposition of a particular gender role on them based on the shape of their body, not the roles existing and open to voluntary identification with.
+1 Blargg - the key is individual choice. We can look at it like athleticism. Some people are more athletic, some people are less athletic. To suppose that either preference is somehow “superior” and the other “inferior” is baseless opinion. Being masculine and being feminine is the same. Most men strive to adopt and project masculinity. Most women, femininity. Those who choose to do otherwise ought not to be prevented from doing so. There is little more to be said about the issue. The constant haymaking about these narrow subsets of human freedom - homosexual freedom, female freedom, freedom of all races, etc. - has been cynically turned to the uses of the State by corralling dissent. If you think money production or the terms of banking arrangements, for example, should also be free, then you’re simply unserious… clearly, you don’t care about the only freedoms that are “serious”, like women’s freedom, gay freedom and the freedom of all races.
Clayton -
I have many thoughts on gender, but some types like to pull out trigger words to things they don’t like or understand such as “post-modern” so I’ve refrained from posting, but…
If people are railing against words like “feminism” and “post-modern” on a forum like Mises.org (where these words shouldn’t be too crazy to use) on open topics that deal specifically with gender, than these people are idiots.
You can’t try to tune out “post-modern” language or thought on a feminist and expect the person to have any concern for what is being said - it kills any chance of dialogue. A person has just “meta’d” their way out of the conversation if that happens.
Of course, it still helps to keep on topic:
like how to approach this from a nature / nurture angle, etc and probably not from aesthetics, moralizing, etc.
vive, the complaints regarding post-modern feminism had to do with it’s anti-logic position. You can’t have a meaningful discussion with someone who knowingly throws logic out the window.
Maybe,
but my main point is if you bring up “gender” as an unqualified topic - you have to expect to be engaging feminists and “post modernism”. If this is something from a previous topic, I am unaware, and am out of that conversation.
Ex: Mises critique of socialism is heavily qualified, it has nothing on Rousseau primitive socialism.
I think the moral to my post is: qualify vague terms so people are not out in the wilderness when they talk to each other
Bert and Clayton duked it out in a previous thread and on more than one forum. I’m assuming that’s what Bert was referring to. Other than that, I agree with the moral of your post.
“Being masculine and being feminine is the same” ← very badly worded. What I meant was:
“In this regard, the difference between being masculine and being feminine is analogous to that between being athletic or not being athletic.”
They’re definitely different but neither one is better or worse. It is actually a kind of soft-sexism to argue that being feminine is a sign of oppression. In fact, it is like the many ways that 18th- and 19th-century white Americans regarded the natives as “needing our guidance” or “needing to assimilate for their own good”, etc. On the surface, it seems like a nice sentiment, but it is actually patronizing. The woman who emulates masculine behaviors and attitudes is held up as a role model. And the feminist is someone (male or female) who is “looking out” for effeminate women who need to be delivered from the oppression that they are subject to - as evidenced by their overt femininity - in order so they can exhibit the truly free behaviors and attitudes of the masculine. It is patronizing and, simply, wrong.
Clayton -
What Clayton said about male vs female attractiveness being objective is meaningless. We have subjective value theory because values are not intrinsic properties of objects. Beauty is not a physical property of a viewed object any more than it is a property of the viewer. A belief is generally considered objective when it is held by everyone. What we have here is a number of samples of subjective valuations of different things plugged into an arbitrary mathematical operation. If you think that averaging calculations turn subjective evaluations into an objective evaluation, welcome to mainstream economics.
Economic benefits: beauty gap is certainly is not the reason that women gain more “economic benefits”. There are several factors in the difference, the most obvious of which is that women have a monthly high lust period, men have constantly high lust. A man can never have the earning power of a woman given the same genotype and phenotype.
“Sexual” benefits: All women as a group have the same pool of men to choose from. Thus, women as a group’s mate selection can’t benefit from anything except improvement of the male population. (The opposite is happening due to evolution of humans into whales.)
While I agree with you about Clayton’s post, I think the reason he considers it objective has to do with evolutionary reasons. That doesn’t make it objective, but I believe that is why he thinks it is. I may be wrong. Separately, when everyone agrees, it is universal, not necessarily objective.
Another thought:
Is nature / nurture a valuable dichotomy, can the entire concept be abandoned all together for any form of grand theory? Usually when I see a dichotomy like this, I tend to to put it in a high degree of suspicion.
MOre thoughts:
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As aristophanes alluded to: historical verifications are no “ultimate” argument for (or against) gender - however someone can show a phenomonoligical manifestation of gender using various forms of historical outlooks.
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Objective aesthetics is a crazy concept, and no way in hell would I debate:
If all you are doing is confirming the fact that jack says jill is attractive because he said so and wish to call that objective, I guess that works. I wouldn’t be so keen to put a buzzword like “evolutionary” on that though (in fact I think references to evolution myths is way overplayed today).
Or evolution took place (obviously), and everything is here existing (even more obvious) so all that happened was “objective” - I guess you can say that, but what does that say, and in what context are we supposed to care about that?
I’m probably more sympathetic to gotlucky and Caley’s view, but even here is the statement “Everyone likes pie” verifiable: this statement in any worthwhile way - it may say something more about the person comming up with the test than what it is supposedly trying to verify - this is probably putting me in lachmann territory, but so be it.
I would think the nature/nurture dichotomy has its uses. I doubt that it’s all one or the other. In terms of gender, my parents didn’t want to give either me or my sister exclusively what would be considered male toys or female toys. But in the end, my sister preferred dolls and I preferred the building blocks. Obviously some boys will prefer dolls and some girls will prefer building blocks, but I doubt that companies would delibrately waste resources marketing toys that children don’t want.