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It is my sincere hope that this understanding becomes pervasive in society, such that the inane social movements based upon naught but angry emotional mob menta

• PhasmaFelis 13y ago
  The truth lies somewhere in the middle, as it often does. It's fallacious to assume that there are no inborn differences between men and women. It's equally fallacious to insist (as many do and will, probably citing this study) that there are vast and uncrossable gulfs between men and women, and that anyone who crosses those gulfs anyway must be some sort of deviant. Humans are complex, the product of both nature and nurture. We need to recognize and encourage natural differences, but we also need to shut down social conditioning that attempts to enforce a particular set of differences without regard for individual context.
  • stcredzero 13y ago
    We'll said! Also, we should be careful not to impose new restrictive social conditioning while eliminating the legacy conditioning. We will never entirely succeed, but we should try. (In the same way that one can't drive 100% straight but one should still make a good effort.) Once one's movement for justice has crossed the line, where there are apologetics for the abandonment of that effort, it is then creating injustice.
    • cwaniak 13y ago
      Oh, you Marxists and your never ending quest to "eliminate" this or that from the society. The human genes haven't changed in the past 10,000 years. There is nothing you can change that will not dive back into the previous state with some social unrest or crisis.
      • Fomite 13y ago
        This will come as a shock to those who are lactose intolerant, a mutation whose rise is in the vicinity of that time period. Protip: Evolution doesn't actually stop. Unless that was sarcastic. At which point, carry on :)
        • lambdaphage 13y ago
          Adult lactose tolerance is the mutant phenotype-- intolerance is the norm.
          • Fomite 13y ago
            Yeah, that. Mea culpa, but the idea remains the same.
      • stcredzero 13y ago
        Marxists..."eliminate" this or that from the society. Ok, you're right. Things just haven't been as good since we Marxists have eliminated the doctrine of coverture and laws forbidding women to wear pants. (Fact. Look these up.) A) I'm not Marxist. B) Society in the recent past was far from perfect. C) For your sake, I hope you're trolling and this isn't your best attempt at a reasoned response.
      • PhasmaFelis 13y ago
        Yeah, you're just trolling now.
      • einhverfr 13y ago
        s/Marxists/Progressives/ Marx was a progressive (i.e. he saw history as an endless march towards progress). But not all progressives are Marxists. If you buy the myth of progress, then eliminating divisions in society and traditional institutions like strong families is good because it is good for that sort of individualism which supports a modern corporate economy. on the other hand, if you don't buy it, then you might start asking why family businesses and expecting to retire with the kids are so bad, and why we sacrifice family on the alter of individualism..... I consider myself to be on the "light side" of post-modernism, namely that side which looks to the premodern past for truth (not the dark side which tends to discount all knowledge).
    • tw268 13y ago
      Feminists believe that traditional female behavior is bad/useless and needs to be eliminated. We tell girls that to be worthwhile, they need to live lives like men. I never understood this. If people are happy and productive in traditional roles, why do they need to be eliminated?
      • PhasmaFelis 13y ago
        That's the popular strawman, not what (most) feminists believe. Feminism* teaches that women (and men) should be allowed to do whatever they want, whether that's stay home with the kids or run a corporation; as opposed to "traditional" values that dictate strictly gender-segregated life paths. Yes, I'm sure you can find feminists who think that blah blah blah whatever. Every group, movement, and party on Earth has fringe members. Look at what the majority* believes, not what the furthest extremes say.
        • stcredzero 13y ago
          When radical feminists start deliberately violating the free assembly and speech rights of other groups, what should the response of the majority feminists be?
          • magicalist 13y ago
            Why should "majority feminists" have any more expectations for their response to those actions than there are for, say, your response?
          • abraininavat 13y ago
            To tell them to fuck off obviously. Can you point to specific instances of that happening?
            • stcredzero 13y ago
              Yes. Groups labeling themselves as feminists have sought to disrupt speakers, harass audience members, and basically stop gatherings by literally doing nothing more enlightening than yelling, "Shut up already!" Then this behavior is justified through ad homonym attacks on the speaker and audience. You can find references to the earlier incident here: http://oncampus.macleans.ca/education/2013/03/08/a-mens-rights-advocate-spoke-at-the-university-of-toronto/ http://oncampus.macleans.ca/education/2013/03/08/a-mens-righ... Also, 5 minutes into the speech described above, the fire alarm was pulled. To me, that's not speaking truth to power. That's violating the rights of others.
    • einhverfr 13y ago
      What's the difference then between "social conditioning" and "culture?" Doesn't all social conditioning restrict? If so, isn't this just a way of rehashing the same idea that culture is the source of all evil human-rights-wise?
  • demallien 13y ago
    Yes. I didn't read the whole paper, just the abstract, but I would not be surprised to learn (based on previous studies) that the difference between men and women is smaller than the variance amongst men, or the variance amongst women, which is the case for nearly all non-primary sexual differences between men and women.
    • Gracana 13y ago
      Just to add another variable to consider, studies show* that men and women perform considerably better or worse at stereotypically masculine and feminine tasks depending on how their identity is primed. Considering individual variance and societal influence, making assumptions about an individual's capabilities based solely on their sex seems foolish and even harmful. * Sorry to provide this without citation, I believe the studies are cited in the first section of "Delusions of Gender" if anyone is interested in the topic.
    • im3w1l 13y ago
      I (maybe mis)interpret your comment as saying that such a difference would be negligible. I disagree with that.
      • Dylan16807 13y ago
        Variance inside each group is huge, so no, saying the inter-group difference is smaller is not at all calling it negligible.
      • demallien 13y ago
        Think of it more as a Venn diagram with the two circles mostly overlapping. The radius of each circle will be bigger than the distance between the centres of the two circles... That's what I'm trying to say.
  • maratd 13y ago
    I'm sorry, but I have no idea what your comment actually means. What gulfs? Men and women are complimentary. The masculine and the feminine interplay between each other and cooperate toward mutual benefit. There is no gulf. I reject the notion that we somehow have to eliminate the feminine and the masculine, to be left with some sort of androgynous average. That's just nonsense. And yes, some men can be feminine and some women can be masculine, and we all certainly have characteristics that can be described as one or the other, but they can and should be described as one or the other. Not as some gender-less PC nonsense. There is nothing wrong with being a masculine man. There is nothing wrong with being a feminine woman. And there is nothing wrong with the array of all the other possibilities. There are no gulfs that need bridging.
    • greenrice 13y ago
      I think you need to re-read the comment that you responded to.
    • vacri 13y ago
      There is way too much false dichotomy in your comment. Boiling people down to being merely masculine or feminine is highly oversimplifying the human condition.
      • gfodor 13y ago
        well that's, just like, your opinion man
      • Rusky 13y ago
        Don't boil people down to "merely" masculine or feminine. But acknowledge that some traits individuals possess are masculine or feminine.
    • PhasmaFelis 13y ago
      No, there aren't, but a lot of people are firmly convinced that there are. Feminism and "political correctness" and your alleged "angry emotional mobs" exist as a necessary backlash to the (historically overwhelmingly popular) idea that Man and Woman are as complimentary and irreconcilable as opposite poles of a magnet. These people don't just assert that "boys, on average, prefer trucks to dolls," but that boys shouldn't be allowed to play with dolls, or wear dresses, or cry, or like other boys. It's that gigantic, history-long engine of oppression that we're fighting against. Yes, some people may occasionally take it too far in the other direction, as humans tend to do. Forcing a boy to play with dolls against his will is just as bad as forcing him not to. But that's nowhere near as large or widespread a problem as traditional gender-enforcement still is today.
  • Dewie 13y ago
    Assuming that there is a middle ground is also a fallacy, however intuitive that middle ground seems to be on the surface.
  • deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
• jb17 13y ago
  I don't think anyone is denying physical differences between people with XX and XY chromosomes. I also think it's common knowledge by now that sex influences the development of diseases (which is what the paper is about). What the debate is usually about is inequalities in social power relations and whether these can be attributed to what you call 'social conditioning' or biology. This paper doesn't contribute anything to that question. You seem to suggest that people are completely determined by their biological setup, and that there are no influences from society. I don't think that's right.
  • AutoCorrect 13y ago
    I think what the GP means is that there is a very vocal, very vitriolic subsection of the feminist movement that claim there is NO reason for the differences in men and women, other than the historical repression of women by men. Which couldn't be further from the truth: up until recently, women were very much at the mercy of the groups of men around them (physically), and only recently has the value of women in society dropped to that of men. </dons flamesuit>
    • jb17 13y ago
      I don't think I ever encountered that argument, and when I see people arguing against it, it always seems to be a straw man. The argument I've encountered goes more like this: Because there has been historical oppression, we can't easily distinguish the influence of that from biology and should remove the oppression before we come up with biological theories that justify the oppression. That seems reasonable to me.
      • s_baby 13y ago
        Speak for yourself. I personally know a lesbian couple that forces their boy to wear dresses, play with dolls, and talk down anything traditionally "male". I completely agree with your original post but it's hard to deny there's a turd in the feminist kool-aid bowl and no one is willing to pull it out.
• jforman 13y ago
  What "understanding"? This paper provides no evidence whatsoever that sex-biased gene expression is due to nature rather than nurture. They collected data from adults only (well, 2 people were under 20 out of 137 subjects). You aren't sporting much evidence to justify a righteous rant against your "angry emotional mob mentality."
  • drewcrawford 13y ago
    While you are correct that this particular study offers no real evidence in the nature/nurture debate, my understanding of neuroscience is that the existence of early differences in gender-based behavior are so well established in the discipline that to publish on that result is no longer interesting to neuroscientists. What remains at this point is to figure out a mechanism behind that result. So the line of inquiry behind this paper is not so much "whither behavioral differences?" but rather "Given this large body of research over the past 10 years that demonstrates behavioral differences, what can we see in the brain that might be a mechanism for this result?" If you are not familiar with that earlier body of research establishing behavioral differences, these studies might be a place to start, and then of course you can walk the bibliographies to find more. http://www.psy.miami.edu/faculty/dmessinger/c_c/rsrcs/rdgs/emot/weinberg.dp.gender2.pdf http://www.psy.miami.edu/faculty/dmessinger/c_c/rsrcs/rdgs/e... http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1571891304001293 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1571891304... http://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI9219513/ http://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI9219513/ http://www.math.kth.se/matstat/gru/5b1501/F/sex.pdf http://www.math.kth.se/matstat/gru/5b1501/F/sex.pdf http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~dcampb/Campbell.InfantMetaALSexDiffInfantChildDev1999.pdf http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~dcampb/Campbell.InfantMetaALSex...
    • haberman 13y ago
      I recently came across a link to this book, which I have not yet been able to read: http://www.amazon.com/Brain-Storm-Flaws-Science-Differences/dp/0674063511 http://www.amazon.com/Brain-Storm-Flaws-Science-Differences/... Published just a few years ago, it criticizes much of the research on sex differences, and from the reviews it makes a very exhaustive and compelling case. I'm curious if these are some of the studies it criticizes. (I don't have an opinion on this either way as I have not been able to examine the evidence. But I'm very interested to see that there is so much controversy, even among scientists, on this issue).
• rayiner 13y ago
  I quite favor the idea of gender-segregated schooling, because I do think boys as a whole get the short-end of the stick in K-6 because the school environment isn't structured as well for them. That said, the structure of schooling isn't arbitrary. It's a reflection of the needs of a modern knowledge economy. It's something that doesn't just affect boys versus girls, but certain kinds of boys versus other kinds of boys. Compare your stereotypical programmer to the stereotypical kid who bullied him in 5th grade. More likely than not, the bully had less patience and a lower attention span, more physical strength and greater size, and a well-developed ability to get others to follow him through a mixture of coercion and manipulation. A thousand years ago, at least in Europe, these skills would have been a ticket to higher social status through violence and war. The programmer stereotype, if he was lucky, might have found reprieve in a monastery or something. Of course the shoe is quite on the other foot today, isn't it? The ability to do tedious, boring work for long hours is now valuable, and is basically what modern K-12 education prepares you to do. Is our modern economy unfair to the bully?
  • MarkTee 13y ago
    The structure of the modern school system (the one employed in the western world, at least) dates back to the Industrial Revolution. It's hardly "a reflection of the needs of a modern knowledge economy".
    • rayiner 13y ago
      The modern school system dates back to the industrial revolution, but has continued to evolve in the direction of longer school days, less physical activity and free play, and more material. All this is consistent with the increasing demands as we transition from an industrial economy to the modern economy.
• onetwofiveten 13y ago
  This paper examines adults, and does not resolve the nature vs nurture argument. The conclusions you have drawn from it are premature, and, I suspect, indicate what you want to believe. The "inane" social movements you attack are based on a desire to achieve equality and fairness between genders. A desire for a better, fairer, more liberal world. Even if misguided, they have good intentions. Your attachment to gender essentialism is equally "emotional" and "inane" and a tad more suspicious. All of which is unimportant. Even if there are innate biological differences between the sexes, they are at most trends, not hard barriers. There is almost complete overlap. I've personally seen every kind of behaviour from every possible gender identity. So it doesn't make any sense to prejudge people by their gender, or force gender roles on children. The issue of whether or not ADHD/ADD are real diseases, and whether children are being over-medicated is completely different to the issue of gender essentialism. I suspect you're lumping them in together because they are two things that are new that you don't like.
• lsc 13y ago
  >young boys are medicated with psychiatric drugs for beings boys I grew up with ADD, and did not obtain medication, by choice, until I reached adulthood. I perceive the medication to be supporting what I'd generally call "masculine values" - it's good for deadening the emotions and producing things. I'll skip it if I know the day is going to be mostly social, or even if I know that I will have a meeting where my ability to schmooze is more important than my ability to focus and complete a task. I describe being medicated as being "two drinks more sober" - Focus is easier, yes. It's easier to get things done, sure. But social stuff, unless there is a clear and directed goal, becomes rather less interesting and rather more awkward in a way that could be described imprecisely and offensively as "a little bit autistic." >Boys are failing at every step in public institutions, with higher drop out rates at all levels of schooling. I have a different theory on why that is. I think that the causation of the correlation between formal education and money sometimes runs opposite the traditionally assumed direction; if you have the prerequisites to make a lot of money (either your parents are upper middle-class or are obviously really smart and very hardworking and know when to conform and when to rebel) you are far more likely to go to school. I mean, it works the regular way, too; some people do come out of school with skills that have a high market value, I'm just saying, a lot of those people would be valuable either way. That fits into my theory on why boys are dropping out more than girls. I would suggest that boys are raised to be results oriented. If you can get the ball through the hoop, or the oblong object between the poles, people will like you. As you get older, that's the nice car and house. We are taught that people value us for what we can produce, what we can accomplish, not who we are. Sure, confidence is important, but that's mostly because you need [to at least be able to fake] confidence to accomplish anything that involves other people. [as an aside, my experience as a man is that the reality is that people value you for your money, yes, but it's dramatically less important than I was led to believe as a boy. Now, I still believe that I'm largely judged by my accomplishments, my prestige, but it's way more complex than just money; in fact, a degree would have been a useful minimum social proof of accomplishment, and would have helped me in that arena far more than I thought it would have when I made the decision. Still, that perception that how much money I made was the primary thing others would value me on was very strong when I was younger, as I think it is in most young men, and it had a large effect on my life decisions when I was making the work/college decision, as I think it does for most young men.] My perception is that girls and women are primarily valued for their characteristics; who they are (or, at least, how they look and how they act towards others.) over what they can produce. This... is a very different set of incentives. Of course, I didn't grow up as a girl, and haven't experienced life as a woman. I have no idea how much my perception is shared by people who have. College is... well, my perception is that it's not about increasing what you produce, primarily, It's about changing who you are. Making you a better (or some would say, more culturally middle-class) person. From a raw "what can I produce?" standpoint, if your parents aren't rich enough to pay for it, you are quite likely better off getting that construction job, or that front-line tech support or computer repair position than you would be working on an art history degree. But if you are trying to learn how to deal with other people, how to be charming and interesting? art history, or maybe literature isn't a bad bet. Of course, I'm not advancing this viewpoint as an absolute "this is the way it is" - I don't know that it is. These are just my perceptions as a person who perhaps put more thought into gender roles than most people did while growing up.