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Social organization is subject to functional requirements based sometimes but not always on biology. There is a tendency to see our current social organization

Social organization is subject to functional requirements based sometimes but not always on biology. There is a tendency to see our current social organization as dictated entirely by biology but that can't be right since, say, ancient Sparta or medieval Iceland were very different in important ways. So we can still work to create a society that works better for us.

sliverstorm 15y ago
Social organization can be restructured, sure. I have no issue with that suggestion. But even functional requirements aside, the sexes have different biochemistry, and like it or not your biochemistry has an effect on your behaviors and nature. Perhaps it is small, perhaps it can be overridden, but to claim it has precisely zero impact on anyone seems like an endeavor in foolishness. Essentially I take issue with the claim that the only way the sexes differ is mechanical.
einhverfr 15y ago
@sliverstorm: I am not convinced that biochemistry determines behavior differences as much as many biologists would like to think. There are cases where it does, of course, but on the whole our bodies are organic systems which learn behaviors based on external stimuli. One important source of that stimuli is culture, which also includes things like language. Physical environment provides another set of stimuli. And just because one thing seems more natural doesn't preclude other societies from doing things differently. For example Arnold van Gennep, the early Dutch anthropologist, spent a fair bit of space talking about the Todas in India which until reasonably recently practised polyandry. When you start looking at how polyandry was implemented in their culture, you can see clearly what problems they had to solve, and hence why polyandry is generally far more rare than polygyny. For example, if a woman has multiple husbands, then there is a question as to who is the socially recognized father. The Todas handled this through a series of rituals where the woman could select one of her husbands as the father of her children (regardless of having sexual relations with other of her husbands), and could re-assign that role going forward (i.e. for children born after the ritual, which she could only do while pregnant) if she so chose. Our biological systems are largely secondary to social inputs, I think. There are imperatives and some of those have biological origins. However, it's way too easy to assign too much responsibility to biology and too little to culture.

sliverstorm 15y ago

Social organization can be restructured, sure. I have no issue with that suggestion. But even functional requirements aside, the sexes have different biochemistry, and like it or not your biochemistry has an effect on your behaviors and nature. Perhaps it is small, perhaps it can be overridden, but to claim it has precisely zero impact on anyone seems like an endeavor in foolishness. Essentially I take issue with the claim that the only way the sexes differ is mechanical.

einhverfr 15y ago

@sliverstorm: I am not convinced that biochemistry determines behavior differences as much as many biologists would like to think. There are cases where it does, of course, but on the whole our bodies are organic systems which learn behaviors based on external stimuli. One important source of that stimuli is culture, which also includes things like language. Physical environment provides another set of stimuli. And just because one thing seems more natural doesn't preclude other societies from doing things differently. For example Arnold van Gennep, the early Dutch anthropologist, spent a fair bit of space talking about the Todas in India which until reasonably recently practised polyandry. When you start looking at how polyandry was implemented in their culture, you can see clearly what problems they had to solve, and hence why polyandry is generally far more rare than polygyny. For example, if a woman has multiple husbands, then there is a question as to who is the socially recognized father. The Todas handled this through a series of rituals where the woman could select one of her husbands as the father of her children (regardless of having sexual relations with other of her husbands), and could re-assign that role going forward (i.e. for children born after the ritual, which she could only do while pregnant) if she so chose. Our biological systems are largely secondary to social inputs, I think. There are imperatives and some of those have biological origins. However, it's way too easy to assign too much responsibility to biology and too little to culture.