4 ms·

Having someone else bear a child for you was an option, millennia ago. It's really not very complicated how to do this: they get pregnant, then give you the chi

by curi 19y ago

Having someone else bear a child for you was an option, millennia ago. It's really not very complicated how to do this: they get pregnant, then give you the child when it is born. That you overlook this demonstrate the power of culture. Doing what I described violates taboos, so it's hard to imagine.

rms 19y ago
People still do it with surrogate mothers...
Tichy 19y ago
I was talking about the pregnancy itself. Btw., there are other costs for the mother besides missing a few weeks of work: there could be medical problems, the mother might even die. So it is still more costly to have babies for women than it is for men. I seem to remember that women also have a higher risk for infection through many STDs. However, I think we might not disagree as much as you may think: of course, in theory, since the mind can control the body, it is conceivable to create any kind of culture. Maybe we could teach our children to only walk on legs and feet, so you could rightfully claim that "walking upright is just a cultural thing". The "richer" human societies are, the more wasteful cultural habits like that we could afford. I am not sure that society can be reprogrammed in an arbitrary way, though. First of all, it still needs to survive, and it must be able to compete with other societies, even other animals. I think you have to take into consideration WHY culture evolved into it's current state - it has an evolutionary history. I read your statements as such that you think that it was a random whim of nature to give us our current culture. If you are convinced that men and women are equal, then there must have been a 50:50 chance for gender roles being exactly reversed. Do you agree thus far? My claim is merely that it was not random, but that there was a bias due to the differences of men and women, which makes certain cultural habits more effective than others. As you say in your previous post, and I said somewhere else, inventions might tip the scales, and other cultural models could become viable.
- curi 19y ago
  It's strange you would think I had said our current culture is the random whim of nature. I actually think it is a mix of the good ideas and mistakes of people not nature. My comments the entire time have been human-centric in where they attribute causes. Why does our culture have major gender roles that permeate people's personalities, today? It's not because it made logical sense in the past. Whether it did or not then, it does not now. And hasn't for some time. And this has been pointed out on a number of occasions. A particularly well-stated case was made by William Godwin in the 1790s. What happened? People did not listen. They let their biases and closed-mindedness and unreasonableness get in the way of progress. That is the reason gender roles remain entrenched. If people were more thoughtful during the last few hundred years, then we wouldn't have recognizable gender roles today. That's the sort of cause I consider important and meaningful to explaining the present day situation. Another fact of the situation is that parents teach gender roles to their children, whether the children like it or not, and without regard for whether it is helpful or hurtful, useful or not, makes sense or not, etc In a culture which does this, it isn't reasonable to say the gender roles exist because they are correct: the mechanism which perpetuates them does not depend on them being correct, and people are unwilling to change it so that it does.

by curi 19y ago

rms 19y ago

People still do it with surrogate mothers...

Tichy 19y ago

I was talking about the pregnancy itself. Btw., there are other costs for the mother besides missing a few weeks of work: there could be medical problems, the mother might even die. So it is still more costly to have babies for women than it is for men. I seem to remember that women also have a higher risk for infection through many STDs. However, I think we might not disagree as much as you may think: of course, in theory, since the mind can control the body, it is conceivable to create any kind of culture. Maybe we could teach our children to only walk on legs and feet, so you could rightfully claim that "walking upright is just a cultural thing". The "richer" human societies are, the more wasteful cultural habits like that we could afford. I am not sure that society can be reprogrammed in an arbitrary way, though. First of all, it still needs to survive, and it must be able to compete with other societies, even other animals. I think you have to take into consideration WHY culture evolved into it's current state - it has an evolutionary history. I read your statements as such that you think that it was a random whim of nature to give us our current culture. If you are convinced that men and women are equal, then there must have been a 50:50 chance for gender roles being exactly reversed. Do you agree thus far? My claim is merely that it was not random, but that there was a bias due to the differences of men and women, which makes certain cultural habits more effective than others. As you say in your previous post, and I said somewhere else, inventions might tip the scales, and other cultural models could become viable.

curi 19y ago
It's strange you would think I had said our current culture is the random whim of nature. I actually think it is a mix of the good ideas and mistakes of people not nature. My comments the entire time have been human-centric in where they attribute causes. Why does our culture have major gender roles that permeate people's personalities, today? It's not because it made logical sense in the past. Whether it did or not then, it does not now. And hasn't for some time. And this has been pointed out on a number of occasions. A particularly well-stated case was made by William Godwin in the 1790s. What happened? People did not listen. They let their biases and closed-mindedness and unreasonableness get in the way of progress. That is the reason gender roles remain entrenched. If people were more thoughtful during the last few hundred years, then we wouldn't have recognizable gender roles today. That's the sort of cause I consider important and meaningful to explaining the present day situation. Another fact of the situation is that parents teach gender roles to their children, whether the children like it or not, and without regard for whether it is helpful or hurtful, useful or not, makes sense or not, etc In a culture which does this, it isn't reasonable to say the gender roles exist because they are correct: the mechanism which perpetuates them does not depend on them being correct, and people are unwilling to change it so that it does.