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That question frames it in reverse. The right question is whether gender should be culturally important. And I can't think of a single reason why it's good for
by chowells 4y ago
That question frames it in reverse. The right question is whether gender should be culturally important. And I can't think of a single reason why it's good for anyone for cultural roles to be predicated on gender. It hurts men just as much to tell them that they're not supposed to be a nurturing full-time parent as it hurts women to tell them they're not supposed to be a breadwinner.
Now, you can certainly find a few places where men and women tend to have different biological capabilities due to how the body develops during puberty. Given that both height and strength have significantly non-overlapping distributions between men and women, it's unlikely you'll see a woman in the NBA. But that doesn't need to result in a cultural expectation regarding the acceptable gender of an NBA player. It's perfectly acceptable to say "most are men, but it's cool if a woman makes it" instead of "you can't do that, you're a woman."
So as to the question asked in the article? Well, you've got to be a little careful. Men, the individual people to whom the label "man" is applied, are absolutely not culturally redundant. They can participate in culture as much or as little as they desire. But it would be nice if the label "man" stopped carrying unique cultural expectations. Although as Betteridge's law would suggest, that's sure not a description of the present state of the world.
- timellis-smith 4y agoBecause it is important. The more egalitarian countries show more differentiation across career choices than less egalitarian ones. I.e. men show a greater prefence for thing based careers and women show a greater prefence for people based careers. If you've ever watched kids playing you'll realise how self evident it is, from a very early age before kids are remotely aware of cultural norms. This flies in the face of all predictions that roles of sex are purely cultural.
- chowells 4y agoThat's a complete non-sequitor. I said that cultural roles should not be gendered. You responded that people have things they prefer to do. That is 100% orthogonal. People absolutely should be able to follow their preference so long as they take direct responsibility for the results of their actions. And cultural norms shouldn't add expectations for what people do based on their genders. No conflict. These things work together in harmony.
- timellis-smith 4y agoApologies if I misunderstood your post. If I understand you correctly now, then we are in agreement.
- darthrupert 4y ago> Given that both height and strength have significantly non-overlapping distributions between men and women, it's unlikely you'll see a woman in the NBA. Doesn't NBA have a women's category? One would assume that you see only women there (in 1990s terms), right?