4 ms·

> What kind of advantage might this sort of thing have given humans in the past? You're skipping a very important detail in all of this. The gender. A sick m

by maratd 15y ago

> What kind of advantage might this sort of thing have given humans in the past? You're skipping a very important detail in all of this. The gender. A sick man deserves contempt, a sick woman deserves attention and caring. Which explains why most men insist they're fine, even when at the brink of death, while women are incapacitated with the slightest headache. In my experience, women have a tendency of succumbing to periodic ill-feeling. All of it subconscious. This brings the attention of men and family. That constant and consistent caring is habit forming and serves her well in the future when she becomes genuinely sick (or pregnant). There's your evolutionary justification. This seems like an extreme example of the above. Probably a high status female overdid it and the rest of the females were just mimicking her behavior, all of it subconsciously. While human beings are drawn to certain behaviors instinctively, the nuts and bolts of the behavior is learned and passed down culturally. In other words, women may have a predilection toward periodic ill-feeling, but in what manner they express it is up to them ... or in this case, up to the high-status female.

andrewfelix 15y ago
Not sure what anecdotal evidence you're leaning on to prop up that argument. My mother used to work herself to the bone even with a cold.
- ErrantX 15y ago
  Agreed; this is not a gender thing at all. I suffer quite continual pain in my back, and have a bad habit of working through an illness to the point of exhaustion. I know plenty of friends who do the same, rarely complaining. A girl and her brother that I know are constantly ill - and moaning about the smallest thing. So it is a personality issue, I suspect, nothing to do with gender.
- ekianjo 15y ago
  Every rule can have exceptions. I do not know if there is any data to back this up, though. Unless you consider that it seems women seem to visit doctors or medical institutions more much often than men (at least in the countries I know of). That could be an indication of this underlying behavior.
  - TruthElixirX 15y ago
    Or it could be that women are more often targets of violence and are more prone to medical issues due to reproduction.
TruthElixirX 15y ago
Casual pseudo-scientific misogyny is the new scientific racism.
- maratd 15y ago
  I don't make a habit of responding to comments, but your response contained 4 insults in a single sentence of 8 words, which is seriously impressive. Kudos to you sir!
aaronblohowiak 15y ago
>A sick man deserves contempt, a sick woman deserves attention and caring. This is unfortunate for men.
pessimizer 15y ago
You've been viciously downvoted here, but you should have expected it. Hacker News has a pretty libertarian contingent that thinks that the acknowledgment that people have different experiences is equivalent to asserting that people have different capacities, because of an underlying assumption that the baseline experience is equal for everyone. The kind of thought process that sees it as obvious that a claim that Affirmative Action is needed is equivalent to a claim that minorities are naturally inferior. Contrary to what some people say, these situations are very often a gender thing. They tend to happen in places where girls are most limited in expression, at times when they are most limited in expression. The range of behavior considered normal for teenage girls in the US is severely limited compared to what is considered acceptable for teenage boys. When I was in high school, I could wear the same dirty jeans every day, I could start a band that wore mouse ears and played top 40 pop songs backwards, I could spend 12 hours straight programming my computer at home, I could go to school without shoes on and completely ignore my hair unto entropy. If I were a girl, not plucking my eyebrows would drop me to low social status at school, and depending on the school maybe even just not wearing makeup would do it. Combine that with letting your hair go to pot and locking yourself away in your room for 12 hours to program your computer, and you might be diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder like aversion or oppositional defiant at best, thrown out of the house at worst. In certain communities around the world, the triggers for deviance might start if you wore pants, or just asked to wear pants, or refused to go to the dance. I swear I've read nationally distributed news articles that start with girls choosing to wear a suit to prom, and end in death threats. Being sick, or possessed by demons, isn't punished in society like the very real female transgressions of sloppy dressing, or being obsessed with math. Sickness and possession are signs of physical or spiritual attack that make you a victim, rather than signs of deviance that make you a threat to the social order. Expression that relieves stress has a lot wider acceptable range in certain groups than in others. The groups with the narrowest options for expression tend to find more bizarre loopholes (sickness and religious mania), resulting in behaviors that seem odd. As a boy, the only thing I was expected to avoid was "acting like a girl." Girls are actually expected to act like girls - whatever strange set of largely male-dictated behavior that entails. edit: Fainting fits were once an expected behavior for women, and special furniture was required. Hysteria was thought of as a disease of female reproductive organs, and was cured through orgasm. special furniture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fainting_couch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fainting_couch the expert's opinion: http://books.google.com/books?id=ilXAFoFg1-8C http://books.google.com/books?id=ilXAFoFg1-8C

by maratd 15y ago

andrewfelix 15y ago

Not sure what anecdotal evidence you're leaning on to prop up that argument. My mother used to work herself to the bone even with a cold.

ErrantX 15y ago
Agreed; this is not a gender thing at all. I suffer quite continual pain in my back, and have a bad habit of working through an illness to the point of exhaustion. I know plenty of friends who do the same, rarely complaining. A girl and her brother that I know are constantly ill - and moaning about the smallest thing. So it is a personality issue, I suspect, nothing to do with gender.
ekianjo 15y ago
Every rule can have exceptions. I do not know if there is any data to back this up, though. Unless you consider that it seems women seem to visit doctors or medical institutions more much often than men (at least in the countries I know of). That could be an indication of this underlying behavior.
- TruthElixirX 15y ago
  Or it could be that women are more often targets of violence and are more prone to medical issues due to reproduction.

TruthElixirX 15y ago

Casual pseudo-scientific misogyny is the new scientific racism.

maratd 15y ago
I don't make a habit of responding to comments, but your response contained 4 insults in a single sentence of 8 words, which is seriously impressive. Kudos to you sir!

aaronblohowiak 15y ago

>A sick man deserves contempt, a sick woman deserves attention and caring. This is unfortunate for men.

pessimizer 15y ago

You've been viciously downvoted here, but you should have expected it. Hacker News has a pretty libertarian contingent that thinks that the acknowledgment that people have different experiences is equivalent to asserting that people have different capacities, because of an underlying assumption that the baseline experience is equal for everyone. The kind of thought process that sees it as obvious that a claim that Affirmative Action is needed is equivalent to a claim that minorities are naturally inferior. Contrary to what some people say, these situations are very often a gender thing. They tend to happen in places where girls are most limited in expression, at times when they are most limited in expression. The range of behavior considered normal for teenage girls in the US is severely limited compared to what is considered acceptable for teenage boys. When I was in high school, I could wear the same dirty jeans every day, I could start a band that wore mouse ears and played top 40 pop songs backwards, I could spend 12 hours straight programming my computer at home, I could go to school without shoes on and completely ignore my hair unto entropy. If I were a girl, not plucking my eyebrows would drop me to low social status at school, and depending on the school maybe even just not wearing makeup would do it. Combine that with letting your hair go to pot and locking yourself away in your room for 12 hours to program your computer, and you might be diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder like aversion or oppositional defiant at best, thrown out of the house at worst. In certain communities around the world, the triggers for deviance might start if you wore pants, or just asked to wear pants, or refused to go to the dance. I swear I've read nationally distributed news articles that start with girls choosing to wear a suit to prom, and end in death threats. Being sick, or possessed by demons, isn't punished in society like the very real female transgressions of sloppy dressing, or being obsessed with math. Sickness and possession are signs of physical or spiritual attack that make you a victim, rather than signs of deviance that make you a threat to the social order. Expression that relieves stress has a lot wider acceptable range in certain groups than in others. The groups with the narrowest options for expression tend to find more bizarre loopholes (sickness and religious mania), resulting in behaviors that seem odd. As a boy, the only thing I was expected to avoid was "acting like a girl." Girls are actually expected to act like girls - whatever strange set of largely male-dictated behavior that entails. edit: Fainting fits were once an expected behavior for women, and special furniture was required. Hysteria was thought of as a disease of female reproductive organs, and was cured through orgasm. special furniture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fainting_couch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fainting_couch the expert's opinion: http://books.google.com/books?id=ilXAFoFg1-8C http://books.google.com/books?id=ilXAFoFg1-8C