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Gender is entirely a social construct very loosely tied to biology but not at all determined by it. This doesn't sound plausible. [tl;dr: If evolution didn't

Gender is entirely a social construct very loosely tied to biology but not at all determined by it. This doesn't sound plausible. [tl;dr: If evolution didn't build in a powerful urge to make our gender behavior match our reproductive sex, then it made a huge error and missed a very easy and effective optimization.] It may be the case that gender could be very loosely tied to biology in a philosophical or theoretical sense, but in the world that we're in right now, there are very strong adaptive reasons that gender expression and reproductive sex tend to stay close (statistically, of course) in any sexually dimorphic species, which I'd call a very strong "tie to biology". Evolution 101-wise, gender can only be allowed to diverge from reproductive sex to a limited enough extent that it's more or less irrelevant to reproductive success. Evolution will make sure of that on a long enough time scale (at least up until the modern era, where we can to some extent decouple reproduction from sex). If the two diverged commonly enough that animals were often foregoing sex with reproductively compatible partners in favor of incompatible ones that nevertheless matched the gender role they were interested in, then an adaptation that better facilitated reproductive matchings would easily emerge and dominate the population. Note that such a compensating adaptation might even emerge as some form of social behavior, even if the impetus to that behavior was genetically driven; IMO, this doesn't make it any less tied to biology. As an example, one suggestion [1] to solve the "gay problem" in evolution (why has full homosexuality, where a person is not at all attracted to members of the opposite sex, not been eradicated from the gene pool, since it should be so devastating to reproduction rates?) is that getting rid of the "gay gene" (or genes, or whatever) is actually a very difficult task for evolution to carry out (I'm anthropomorphizing evolution here for ease of speaking, not because I don't realize why that's wrong) for some reason. Difficult enough so that accepting the ~10% homosexuality rate was a better option, though obviously not ideal. So instead of getting rid of homosexuality, evolution tried to mitigate the "damage" that such behavior causes by enhancing an inclination for people to disapprove of it, which meant that even when people/animals were fully homosexual, they still tended to mate with members of the other sex due to social pressure. Thus the seemingly fitness-devastating 10% homosexuality rate was bumped down to a more ignorable number via social effects, and the presence of the gene was a net win. This is not to say that there's a "homophobia gene"; if this theory is correct, I'd guess that evolution more likely leveraged existing social behaviors (like wanting to fit in, or hating people that act differently) and turned them up to a slightly higher level. In the case of gender identity, I suspect that there is a heavy dosage of social conformity involved in training people to signal their reproductive sex through gendered behavior. But I think it's biologically driven, or at least that it would be extremely surprising if it wasn't, since it's such low-hanging fruit. I'm sure that these biological imperatives are somewhat flexible, and that if pink was considered a boy color then boys would flock to the pink section of Toys R Us, rather than these things being hard-coded into the genome (though certain behaviors are definitely going to be hard-coded, since sex signaling had to take place before higher-level thought centers could be leveraged). But the inclination to figure out what these socially derived sex-signaling behaviors are is not a social construct - that's an evolutionary imperative, so while we may be able to change the particular expressions of gender that we see in the world, it's probably going to be rather difficult to prevent people from seeking them out and conforming to them. This is why I'm always uncomfortable with nature vs. nurture questions - the environment that evolution optimizes any particular genome to succeed in includes the entire existing social structure, which was also influenced by previous rounds of evolution. So picking apart what is a "social construct" and what is "biological" is really a fool's errand, when it comes down to it - there's a delicate interplay between the two, and they always play off of each other. [1] I should mention, there are other theories as well, the simplest being that even with the "gay gene", a person is only sometimes fully homosexual (twin studies have shown that homosexuality is definitely not 100% determined by DNA, though it's not 0%, either), so they do rather limited damage, and if tied to useful adaptations, there would be no particular evolutionary imperative to get rid of such a gene; the point, though, is that such arguments only hold up to a point, and if a large percentage of the population was gay, there would be much more selection pressure against that behavior, tamping down the ratio rather quickly to a lower level.

einhverfr 15y ago
Culture is not determined by biology though. If it did, third-generation Chinese immigrants would be more Chinese than American. The problem here is that culture determines gender. Some cultures have two, some three, some even have more. Many cultures treat children as genderless and initiate them into genders in rites of passage. In some cases gender is contextual, so among the Norse and among the Greeks, there was a specific gender-based stigma attached to being the penetrated partner in male-male sex. Male-male sex was not stigmatized, only crossing the gender line and being penetrated as a woman. I think it is a grave error to look at one's own culture and assume that it is biologically determined. As for the "gay problem" we have to recognize at some point that every culture addresses human sexuality differently, and human sexuality is remarkably malleable. For example there are tribes in Papua which make young boys give oral sex to tribal elders as a part of a rite of passage as a way of them literally ingesting manliness in order to become men. Once we look at our own sexual taboos involving who and what we are forbidden to have sexual relations with, and we recognize that these are socially contextual, not innate taboos, things change a great deal.
- bermanoid 15y ago
  The problem here is that culture determines gender. Absolutely. I never claimed otherwise. All I think is that some sort of robust signaling mechanism that displays a person's (or animal's) reproductive "team" should be expected to exist in any sexually dimorphic species. In many animals, this is hard coded, but I suspect that in humans that was generalized to a high level imperative, "figure out what sex you are, and clearly display the appropriate characteristics so that mates can find you". Once we look at our own sexual taboos involving who and what we are forbidden to have sexual relations with, and we recognize that these are socially contextual, not innate taboos, things change a great deal. But this is exactly my point: the fact that these social sexual taboos so often go against behaviors that reduce evolutionary fitness suggests that supporting those social behaviors may, in fact, be precisely the way that evolution ended up most easily controlling those behaviors. To be very clear about this: the fact that behavior is influenced socially rather than genetically does not necessarily mean that it's an accident of history. It very well could be a direct evolutionary adaptation that leaned on social behavior to implement itself. Nature tunes nurture, and nurture tunes nature, so arguing for one to the exclusion of the other is usually wrong. That doesn't, of course, mean that we shouldn't try to overcome such evolutionary imperatives. But we should be aware of the fact that in such cases, the social behaviors are not completely arbitrary, and that we have an uphill battle to fight.

einhverfr 15y ago

Culture is not determined by biology though. If it did, third-generation Chinese immigrants would be more Chinese than American. The problem here is that culture determines gender. Some cultures have two, some three, some even have more. Many cultures treat children as genderless and initiate them into genders in rites of passage. In some cases gender is contextual, so among the Norse and among the Greeks, there was a specific gender-based stigma attached to being the penetrated partner in male-male sex. Male-male sex was not stigmatized, only crossing the gender line and being penetrated as a woman. I think it is a grave error to look at one's own culture and assume that it is biologically determined. As for the "gay problem" we have to recognize at some point that every culture addresses human sexuality differently, and human sexuality is remarkably malleable. For example there are tribes in Papua which make young boys give oral sex to tribal elders as a part of a rite of passage as a way of them literally ingesting manliness in order to become men. Once we look at our own sexual taboos involving who and what we are forbidden to have sexual relations with, and we recognize that these are socially contextual, not innate taboos, things change a great deal.

bermanoid 15y ago
The problem here is that culture determines gender. Absolutely. I never claimed otherwise. All I think is that some sort of robust signaling mechanism that displays a person's (or animal's) reproductive "team" should be expected to exist in any sexually dimorphic species. In many animals, this is hard coded, but I suspect that in humans that was generalized to a high level imperative, "figure out what sex you are, and clearly display the appropriate characteristics so that mates can find you". Once we look at our own sexual taboos involving who and what we are forbidden to have sexual relations with, and we recognize that these are socially contextual, not innate taboos, things change a great deal. But this is exactly my point: the fact that these social sexual taboos so often go against behaviors that reduce evolutionary fitness suggests that supporting those social behaviors may, in fact, be precisely the way that evolution ended up most easily controlling those behaviors. To be very clear about this: the fact that behavior is influenced socially rather than genetically does not necessarily mean that it's an accident of history. It very well could be a direct evolutionary adaptation that leaned on social behavior to implement itself. Nature tunes nurture, and nurture tunes nature, so arguing for one to the exclusion of the other is usually wrong. That doesn't, of course, mean that we shouldn't try to overcome such evolutionary imperatives. But we should be aware of the fact that in such cases, the social behaviors are not completely arbitrary, and that we have an uphill battle to fight.