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> When you look at the subject of aggression there is no more important factor than gender. Something like 90 percent of the people in prison for violent crimes

> When you look at the subject of aggression there is no more important factor than gender. Something like 90 percent of the people in prison for violent crimes are men. Men have different brains than women, which comes from our different roles during evolution, when the brain was formed. Men had a role of being aggressive, which makes no sense for a woman because a woman was not endowed with the physical strength of a man, who probably outweighs her. But although 90 percent of those in jail are men, 90 percent of people who have been awarded medals by the Carnegie Institute for heroism are also men. What is wrong with this guy? Doesn't he know that gender is a social construct?

vzip 11y ago
It's kind of frightening that people are leaving university with a developed hostility toward the notion of sexual dimorphism in humans.
- sarciszewski 11y ago
  To split hairs a bit: Gender identity is a social construct while biological sex is not. I think the author meant sex, not gender, and GP meant gender, not sex. It's easy to conflate the two in conversation, but keeping a semantic barrier between them will help maintain civil discourse without the risk of devolving the discussion into a flame war.
  - goda90 11y ago
    The thing is, gender identity is very much affected by sex too. Many outward behaviors that are often classified as masculine or feminine have roots in different hormone levels in the sexes. That's why I dislike that many attack gender roles and other social gender norms indiscriminately. Some of them have a basis in nature and it's healthy for the vast majority of people to embrace them. At the same time there shouldn't be any room for attacking those who don't follow the norms either. And of course some norms are just harmful. It's not so easy to just throw them all out.
    - sarciszewski 11y ago
      > The thing is, gender identity is very much affected by sex too. Affected by? Yes. The same thing? No. > That's why I dislike that many attack gender roles and other social gender norms indiscriminately. Huh. That sounds like something I'd expect to read about firsthand on Tumblr moreso than something that reasonable people would do. > At the same time there shouldn't be any room for attacking those who don't follow the norms either. And of course some norms are just harmful. It's not so easy to just throw them all out. I think that's fair.
  - crimsonalucard 11y ago
    I hate to break it to you. But behavior and gender is determined by genetics. Therefore gender identity is not just a social construct but a biological one as well. Take for example the correlation between feminine behavior and two X chromosomes (XX). There is high correlation between these two factors. Additionally examine the correlation between masculine behavior and XY. Again another high correlation implying the possibility of a causal connection between gender and genes. Though correlation doesn't imply causation it lends more credibility to the hypothesis. What if we were to raise a child, born a boy, as a girl? If gender were truly a social construct there would be no issue. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer
    - sarciszewski 11y ago
      > I hate to break it to you. But behavior and gender is determined by genetics. Therefore gender identity is not just a social construct but a biological one as well. I must admit my knowledge of the scientific literature around the relationship between biological sex and gender identity is limited. Have they found a genetic/epigenetic/hormonal marker that correlates with 95%+ of transgendered people yet?
      - crimsonalucard 11y ago
        No they have not found such a marker. They have not found a definitive biological causal mechanism that causes transgendered traits. They have found correlations between certain biological mechanisms and transgendered traits. However these findings lead to only about a 70% correlation at most. Please note that the 70% correlation cannot be ignored. It indicates high likelihood of a causal connection. It is unwise to dismiss this correlation even if it is below a 95% criteria. My intuition tells me that 70% is only a statistic for a single causative biological agent out of several. Once all biological markers are discovered and correlated together, I believe that the number will be 99%. Please also note that the correlation between the XX chromosomes and the female gender is above 95%, same with the XY chromosomes and the male gender. These correlations meet your criteria. There is no scientific study that proves this but you will note through common sense that males and females tend to act within their gender role over 95% of the time.
- golemotron 11y ago
  Steven Pinker's'The Blank Slate' explains it well. Western culture has a bias toward nurture explanations rather than nature explanations because admitting nature affects people's perceptions of their abilities and our sense of agency as a culture. If all differences are culture we can fix them. That's why it becomes political.
  - astazangasta 11y ago
    Pinker is full of shit on this subject. I remember his intro to psych lecture including an example of a how gendered thinking is hard-wired involving small boys playing with guns. Obviously an example of socialization; evolution did not teach anything to anyone about guns. There is a huge amount of sloppy thinking in this subject.
    - shasta 11y ago
      Could you expound upon your definitely-not-sloppy thoughts on why boys obviously couldn't be predisposed to playing with weapons?
      - astazangasta 11y ago
        They could be; its just difficult to conclude that based on observing that they play with weapons, since obviously they must be taught what weapons are, and along with that who (men, women) should use them. Pinker makes little effort to account for such problems and often makes the "widely observed == genetic" fallacy.
      - neffy 11y ago
        Distaff side here. I loved playing with guns when I was a kid. My parents though thought they weren't suitable for girls, so they were quickly banned. So I made my own bow and arrow set, needless to say, that didn't last long in the suburbs. Then I finally got smart, and they never found about the slingshot. And I was enlightened.
    - Retric 11y ago
      People have been using bows for 500+ generations and ranged weapons for even longer. That's plenty of time for a preference for ranged combat to show up (ed: become frequent). The Atoal is believed to be ~30,000 years old. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spear-thrower https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spear-thrower And spears are ~400,000 years old. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amentum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amentum is rather hard to date, but it's simpler than an Atoal.
- araneae 11y ago
  You're implying that people learn this at university. My experience was the opposite; I took an animal behaviour course at university that presented much of this information. Sexual dimorphism is a fairly major topic in animal behaviour. For instance, I learned that in every society where it was tested, men are more violent than women. But interestingly, the society itself was important as well; for instance, American society is overall more violent than Icelandic culture, and accordingly American women commit more violent crimes than Icelandic men. So there are differences in between the sexes, but the culture is a very important input if we look at how extreme the trait is.
  - kalzium 11y ago
    Didn't the British exile lots of prisoners to North America in the early settlements? Maybe there's also a genetic connection? ;) Just joking. I think overall happiness of people is also really important. The more unhappy people are the more violent they get. People in Skandinavia are generally quite happy folks: Easy access to education, internet, food, health care, low poverty etc...
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
  The hostility isn't to sexual dimorphism per se. If only because of hormones and reproduction, there is clearly sexual dimorphism. Anybody can see that. The hostility is to the tendency to attribute differences between men and women to sheer biology without a careful consideration of other factors.
noja 11y ago
It's a social construct as well. Look at children: male brains develop differently to female brains. Their blood contains different chemicals. There are differences and those differences have effects.
minikites 11y ago
What do you mean to imply by this?
sjs382 11y ago
Not everyone has exposure to the differences between and the politics of sex/gender identity. I'm sure the author didn't intend any ill will. The author is clearly writing about something that makes up one aspect of a person's gender: biological sex. So, the author isn't being as specific/clear as you like, but you're doing disservice to your cause with comments like "What is wrong with this guy?"
zajd 11y ago
Gender =/= Sex How it is so many people don't grasp this is beyond me.
- sjs382 11y ago
  gender = {biological sex, social structures, gender identity, ...} There's no reason to assume that the author has any ill will toward the LGBT community. It's a misunderstanding that people are (with good reason) very passionate about, but something that the author probably hasn't given much thought to.
- bonoboTP 11y ago
  Because the conceptual difference doesn't exist for about 99.9% of people. Also, most languages have no such distinction. For example in my native language Hungarian we either use the English word "gender" or say (the equivalent of) "social sex" and "biological sex". It's a niche thing. I understand that some people feel sensitive about sex/gender or the differences between transsexual/transgender/transvestite/queer/crossdresser/drag-queen etc. But for the vast majority of the people this just isn't a topic of interest.
  - astrodust 11y ago
    Around 0.3% of the population in the US can be identified as transgender, so that knocks it down to 99.7%. Then there's other factors, where people don't adhere to any particular binary gender at all, which erodes that even further. When you include the full spectrum of LGBTQI you probably have to cut that down to no more than 95%, possibly less. When you say "for the vast majority" you presume they operate in isolation, but they don't. Most people will end up knowing at least one person that doesn't conform to the traditional gender patterns, which means it's a problem everyone faces.
    - sarciszewski 11y ago
      I've known three, and I don't have an awful lot of friends and acquaintances. I also don't go out of my way to only talk to LGBTQI folks. (I do, however, go out of my way to talk to people interested in technology and especially computer security.)
JoeAltmaier 11y ago
Way to miss the point. And a very important point it is. But lets just snark about vocabulary instead. Its the activist way - invent a new jargon, or redefine the old one, as a way to draw a circle around the in crowd of savvy activists, and all the rest of us jerks.
- PhasmaFelis 11y ago
  That was sarcasm.
eggie5 11y ago
you mean sex not gender right?
hasenj 11y ago
I hope your comment was meant as sarcasm.
ybrah 11y ago
Fairly certain golemotron is being sarcastic
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
chillingeffect 11y ago
Furthermore, the role of sex/gender in prisons is not fixed in time and culture. For example, this article [1] shows that from 2003 to 2013, women in Chinese prisons increased by 46 percent. In that same period, women in American prisons increased by 15 percent. This is evidence that gender/sex does not impart a natural, fixed amount of criminality. Criminality varies in time and in response to stimulus. [1] http://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/women-07032015105910.html http://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/women-07032015105910.h...
popmystack 11y ago
Yeah let's all rely on pseudo-science with no empirical evidence to back it up -- except for U.S. statistics on imprisonment. HAHA SNARKY COMMENTS!
PhasmaFelis 11y ago
Gender is social and genetic; like most human behavior, nature and nurture are both involved. Pretending it's exclusively one or the other is foolishly reductionist, no matter which side you're on.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > Gender is social and genetic. Pretending it's exclusively one or the other is foolishly reductionist, no matter which side you're on. Gender (both ascribed gender and gender identity, though the two are distinct but related) is social but references, in different ways, biological sex; biological sex is phenotype, and as such a mixture of genetic and environmental (but not at all social, except to the extent that the elements of phenotype that are defined to be "sex" are, like all definitions, a social construct.)
ZeroGravitas 11y ago
Putting aside the gender stuff, is he claiming aggression and heroism are the same thing?

vzip 11y ago

It's kind of frightening that people are leaving university with a developed hostility toward the notion of sexual dimorphism in humans.

sarciszewski 11y ago
To split hairs a bit: Gender identity is a social construct while biological sex is not. I think the author meant sex, not gender, and GP meant gender, not sex. It's easy to conflate the two in conversation, but keeping a semantic barrier between them will help maintain civil discourse without the risk of devolving the discussion into a flame war.
- goda90 11y ago
  The thing is, gender identity is very much affected by sex too. Many outward behaviors that are often classified as masculine or feminine have roots in different hormone levels in the sexes. That's why I dislike that many attack gender roles and other social gender norms indiscriminately. Some of them have a basis in nature and it's healthy for the vast majority of people to embrace them. At the same time there shouldn't be any room for attacking those who don't follow the norms either. And of course some norms are just harmful. It's not so easy to just throw them all out.
  - sarciszewski 11y ago
    > The thing is, gender identity is very much affected by sex too. Affected by? Yes. The same thing? No. > That's why I dislike that many attack gender roles and other social gender norms indiscriminately. Huh. That sounds like something I'd expect to read about firsthand on Tumblr moreso than something that reasonable people would do. > At the same time there shouldn't be any room for attacking those who don't follow the norms either. And of course some norms are just harmful. It's not so easy to just throw them all out. I think that's fair.
- crimsonalucard 11y ago
  I hate to break it to you. But behavior and gender is determined by genetics. Therefore gender identity is not just a social construct but a biological one as well. Take for example the correlation between feminine behavior and two X chromosomes (XX). There is high correlation between these two factors. Additionally examine the correlation between masculine behavior and XY. Again another high correlation implying the possibility of a causal connection between gender and genes. Though correlation doesn't imply causation it lends more credibility to the hypothesis. What if we were to raise a child, born a boy, as a girl? If gender were truly a social construct there would be no issue. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer
  - sarciszewski 11y ago
    > I hate to break it to you. But behavior and gender is determined by genetics. Therefore gender identity is not just a social construct but a biological one as well. I must admit my knowledge of the scientific literature around the relationship between biological sex and gender identity is limited. Have they found a genetic/epigenetic/hormonal marker that correlates with 95%+ of transgendered people yet?
    - crimsonalucard 11y ago
      No they have not found such a marker. They have not found a definitive biological causal mechanism that causes transgendered traits. They have found correlations between certain biological mechanisms and transgendered traits. However these findings lead to only about a 70% correlation at most. Please note that the 70% correlation cannot be ignored. It indicates high likelihood of a causal connection. It is unwise to dismiss this correlation even if it is below a 95% criteria. My intuition tells me that 70% is only a statistic for a single causative biological agent out of several. Once all biological markers are discovered and correlated together, I believe that the number will be 99%. Please also note that the correlation between the XX chromosomes and the female gender is above 95%, same with the XY chromosomes and the male gender. These correlations meet your criteria. There is no scientific study that proves this but you will note through common sense that males and females tend to act within their gender role over 95% of the time.
golemotron 11y ago
Steven Pinker's'The Blank Slate' explains it well. Western culture has a bias toward nurture explanations rather than nature explanations because admitting nature affects people's perceptions of their abilities and our sense of agency as a culture. If all differences are culture we can fix them. That's why it becomes political.
- astazangasta 11y ago
  Pinker is full of shit on this subject. I remember his intro to psych lecture including an example of a how gendered thinking is hard-wired involving small boys playing with guns. Obviously an example of socialization; evolution did not teach anything to anyone about guns. There is a huge amount of sloppy thinking in this subject.
  - shasta 11y ago
    Could you expound upon your definitely-not-sloppy thoughts on why boys obviously couldn't be predisposed to playing with weapons?
    - astazangasta 11y ago
      They could be; its just difficult to conclude that based on observing that they play with weapons, since obviously they must be taught what weapons are, and along with that who (men, women) should use them. Pinker makes little effort to account for such problems and often makes the "widely observed == genetic" fallacy.
    - neffy 11y ago
      Distaff side here. I loved playing with guns when I was a kid. My parents though thought they weren't suitable for girls, so they were quickly banned. So I made my own bow and arrow set, needless to say, that didn't last long in the suburbs. Then I finally got smart, and they never found about the slingshot. And I was enlightened.
  - Retric 11y ago
    People have been using bows for 500+ generations and ranged weapons for even longer. That's plenty of time for a preference for ranged combat to show up (ed: become frequent). The Atoal is believed to be ~30,000 years old. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spear-thrower https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spear-thrower And spears are ~400,000 years old. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amentum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amentum is rather hard to date, but it's simpler than an Atoal.
araneae 11y ago
You're implying that people learn this at university. My experience was the opposite; I took an animal behaviour course at university that presented much of this information. Sexual dimorphism is a fairly major topic in animal behaviour. For instance, I learned that in every society where it was tested, men are more violent than women. But interestingly, the society itself was important as well; for instance, American society is overall more violent than Icelandic culture, and accordingly American women commit more violent crimes than Icelandic men. So there are differences in between the sexes, but the culture is a very important input if we look at how extreme the trait is.
- kalzium 11y ago
  Didn't the British exile lots of prisoners to North America in the early settlements? Maybe there's also a genetic connection? ;) Just joking. I think overall happiness of people is also really important. The more unhappy people are the more violent they get. People in Skandinavia are generally quite happy folks: Easy access to education, internet, food, health care, low poverty etc...
TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
The hostility isn't to sexual dimorphism per se. If only because of hormones and reproduction, there is clearly sexual dimorphism. Anybody can see that. The hostility is to the tendency to attribute differences between men and women to sheer biology without a careful consideration of other factors.

noja 11y ago

It's a social construct as well. Look at children: male brains develop differently to female brains. Their blood contains different chemicals. There are differences and those differences have effects.

minikites 11y ago

What do you mean to imply by this?

sjs382 11y ago

Not everyone has exposure to the differences between and the politics of sex/gender identity. I'm sure the author didn't intend any ill will. The author is clearly writing about something that makes up one aspect of a person's gender: biological sex. So, the author isn't being as specific/clear as you like, but you're doing disservice to your cause with comments like "What is wrong with this guy?"

zajd 11y ago

Gender =/= Sex How it is so many people don't grasp this is beyond me.

sjs382 11y ago
gender = {biological sex, social structures, gender identity, ...} There's no reason to assume that the author has any ill will toward the LGBT community. It's a misunderstanding that people are (with good reason) very passionate about, but something that the author probably hasn't given much thought to.
bonoboTP 11y ago
Because the conceptual difference doesn't exist for about 99.9% of people. Also, most languages have no such distinction. For example in my native language Hungarian we either use the English word "gender" or say (the equivalent of) "social sex" and "biological sex". It's a niche thing. I understand that some people feel sensitive about sex/gender or the differences between transsexual/transgender/transvestite/queer/crossdresser/drag-queen etc. But for the vast majority of the people this just isn't a topic of interest.
- astrodust 11y ago
  Around 0.3% of the population in the US can be identified as transgender, so that knocks it down to 99.7%. Then there's other factors, where people don't adhere to any particular binary gender at all, which erodes that even further. When you include the full spectrum of LGBTQI you probably have to cut that down to no more than 95%, possibly less. When you say "for the vast majority" you presume they operate in isolation, but they don't. Most people will end up knowing at least one person that doesn't conform to the traditional gender patterns, which means it's a problem everyone faces.
  - sarciszewski 11y ago
    I've known three, and I don't have an awful lot of friends and acquaintances. I also don't go out of my way to only talk to LGBTQI folks. (I do, however, go out of my way to talk to people interested in technology and especially computer security.)

JoeAltmaier 11y ago

Way to miss the point. And a very important point it is. But lets just snark about vocabulary instead. Its the activist way - invent a new jargon, or redefine the old one, as a way to draw a circle around the in crowd of savvy activists, and all the rest of us jerks.

PhasmaFelis 11y ago
That was sarcasm.

eggie5 11y ago

you mean sex not gender right?

hasenj 11y ago

I hope your comment was meant as sarcasm.

ybrah 11y ago

Fairly certain golemotron is being sarcastic

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

chillingeffect 11y ago

Furthermore, the role of sex/gender in prisons is not fixed in time and culture. For example, this article [1] shows that from 2003 to 2013, women in Chinese prisons increased by 46 percent. In that same period, women in American prisons increased by 15 percent. This is evidence that gender/sex does not impart a natural, fixed amount of criminality. Criminality varies in time and in response to stimulus. [1] http://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/women-07032015105910.html http://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/women-07032015105910.h...

popmystack 11y ago

Yeah let's all rely on pseudo-science with no empirical evidence to back it up -- except for U.S. statistics on imprisonment. HAHA SNARKY COMMENTS!

PhasmaFelis 11y ago

Gender is social and genetic; like most human behavior, nature and nurture are both involved. Pretending it's exclusively one or the other is foolishly reductionist, no matter which side you're on.

dragonwriter 11y ago
> Gender is social and genetic. Pretending it's exclusively one or the other is foolishly reductionist, no matter which side you're on. Gender (both ascribed gender and gender identity, though the two are distinct but related) is social but references, in different ways, biological sex; biological sex is phenotype, and as such a mixture of genetic and environmental (but not at all social, except to the extent that the elements of phenotype that are defined to be "sex" are, like all definitions, a social construct.)

ZeroGravitas 11y ago

Putting aside the gender stuff, is he claiming aggression and heroism are the same thing?