6 ms·

It's not. Such a thing would be impossible. Look up "gender socialization" and read about girlhood: http://www.metafilter.com/121190/teenage-girls-they-havent-

It's not. Such a thing would be impossible. Look up "gender socialization" and read about girlhood: http://www.metafilter.com/121190/teenage-girls-they-havent-been-living-theyve-been-performing http://www.metafilter.com/121190/teenage-girls-they-havent-b... http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens-blog/2014/jan/10/little-girls-deserve-better-toys-sexism http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens-blog/2014/jan... http://sodisarmingdarling.tumblr.com/post/34106027759/what-its-like-being-a-teen-girl http://sodisarmingdarling.tumblr.com/post/34106027759/what-i... http://rebeccahains.wordpress.com/2014/01/20/is-my-son-smart-is-my-daughter-skinny/ http://rebeccahains.wordpress.com/2014/01/20/is-my-son-smart...

guard-of-terra 12y ago
The articles you quote, while flamebait, don't try to answer the forementioned question. As for "impossible" - why?
- detcader 12y ago
  That women talking about being girls is "flamebait" says more about you than the articles.
spindritf 12y ago
Why would a tendency to adorn oneself not be innate? Seems pretty universal to me. Why should nurture be the default assumption? I'm sorry but your answer is terrible, akin to "look up sexual selection and read about genetics."
- detcader 12y ago
  "a tendency to adorn" is not the same as "a tendency to adorn oneself with jewelry", which is what I've been talking about -- are you talking to me? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Why should the non-existence of God be the default assumption?
  - spindritf 12y ago
    Why is nature a somehow extraordinary claim and nurture is not? That was my question. "a tendency to adorn" is not the same as "a tendency to adorn oneself with jewelry" The latter is a subset of the former, OK. But I completely don't see the relevance.
    - detcader 12y ago
      The most complex kinds of objects that chimpanzees craft are tools. To posit that a psychological propensity for pieces of jewelry (a human invention) is inborn in only women is extraordinary and reeks of post-hoc logic. To posit that it is cultural meme is obviously not. Do you not understand this intuitively? Are you being 100% honest with me?
      - andrewflnr 12y ago
        I think you're fighting a strawman here. The "human invention" part is what led the other commenters to generalize from "jewelry" to "adornment", which is a more accurate expression of the idea anyway. In this theory, jewelry is only a close-to-hand vehicle for expressing deeper inborn urges, also satisfied by elaborate clothing, hairstyles, hats and head-dresses, war paint, etc. Further, it's not present only in women, it just seems stronger. Given the obvious morphological and other behavior differences between men and women, it's entirely plausible that such a thing could be inborn.
        detcader 12y ago
        Most of the world population is religious (or was for most of civilization's history, if the scales have tipped recently) -- perhaps we should assume that belief in God is inborn? I will break it down if that doesn't suffice: Before women and men were women and men, they were girls and boys growing up in whatever cultural atmosphere they were born into; and every culture worldwide has a policy of showering newborn and infant girls with "adornment" while withholding it from boys. This is trivial observation -- I invite you to visit your nearest toystore (look at children on the boxes if you're having trouble) and report back to me otherwise.
andrewflnr 12y ago
I think what's happening here, and in a lot of other cases, is that culture [0] tends to sieze on real (in this case IMO) asymmetries (girls care more about appearance than men) and blow it far out of proportion. I'm not justifying it, not even close; I find it horrifying. I'm saying that it has a seed in reality, mixed with a freight of repression and poorly-handled social revolutions, a beautiful thing corrupted. You have to wonder, if not from some inborn difference, how did this vast asymmetry come about? All this to say, those articles are not evidence about any putative inborn interest in jewelry. They're perfectly consistent with either theory. [0] Yes that's a bit of a vague term. I take it to mean something like, "what everyone around you is saying/doing".
- detcader 12y ago
  Should we assume that men have a natural tendency to cry a bit less because men cry less often? The articles are more strongly consistent with the theory of gender socialization -- that the media et al coerces girls to focus (obsess, kill themselves over,) appearance, and without it it would be impossible to say to what degree such a thing as actually "biological". The rational course of action is to assume an absence of such a theoretical reality until evidence is found, just as with anything.
  - andrewflnr 12y ago
    Yes. Men are more concerned with being/appearing strong, again, re-inforced and exaggerated by cultural norms. This also makes us tend to buy relatively useless tools/toys like power tools and big trucks, to make us feel strong. IMO this is a close analogue to the common female concern with aesthetic adornment. Women mock us, justifiably, for the dominance contests we like to get into, stemming from the same desire to be strong. Of course, women have their own analogues of our dominance contests. The deep fundamentals are the same, what differs is more our interpretation. Both sets of instincts stem from where we first look to power. Heck, they could just be subconscious logical deductions from the physical asymmetries between sexes, and the nature of our reproductive drives, but at that point the distinction almost doesn't matter, because it's still going to outlive any education campaign to stop it. This all seems obvious to me. We already have abundant evidence of a fundamental difference, it's all around us. It seems a more elegant explanation than all this madness occurring with no trigger at all, which is the view you seem to advocate. I don't know what else I can say.

guard-of-terra 12y ago

The articles you quote, while flamebait, don't try to answer the forementioned question. As for "impossible" - why?

detcader 12y ago
That women talking about being girls is "flamebait" says more about you than the articles.

spindritf 12y ago

Why would a tendency to adorn oneself not be innate? Seems pretty universal to me. Why should nurture be the default assumption? I'm sorry but your answer is terrible, akin to "look up sexual selection and read about genetics."

detcader 12y ago
"a tendency to adorn" is not the same as "a tendency to adorn oneself with jewelry", which is what I've been talking about -- are you talking to me? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Why should the non-existence of God be the default assumption?
- spindritf 12y ago
  Why is nature a somehow extraordinary claim and nurture is not? That was my question. "a tendency to adorn" is not the same as "a tendency to adorn oneself with jewelry" The latter is a subset of the former, OK. But I completely don't see the relevance.
  - detcader 12y ago
    The most complex kinds of objects that chimpanzees craft are tools. To posit that a psychological propensity for pieces of jewelry (a human invention) is inborn in only women is extraordinary and reeks of post-hoc logic. To posit that it is cultural meme is obviously not. Do you not understand this intuitively? Are you being 100% honest with me?
    - andrewflnr 12y ago
      I think you're fighting a strawman here. The "human invention" part is what led the other commenters to generalize from "jewelry" to "adornment", which is a more accurate expression of the idea anyway. In this theory, jewelry is only a close-to-hand vehicle for expressing deeper inborn urges, also satisfied by elaborate clothing, hairstyles, hats and head-dresses, war paint, etc. Further, it's not present only in women, it just seems stronger. Given the obvious morphological and other behavior differences between men and women, it's entirely plausible that such a thing could be inborn.
      - detcader 12y ago
        Most of the world population is religious (or was for most of civilization's history, if the scales have tipped recently) -- perhaps we should assume that belief in God is inborn? I will break it down if that doesn't suffice: Before women and men were women and men, they were girls and boys growing up in whatever cultural atmosphere they were born into; and every culture worldwide has a policy of showering newborn and infant girls with "adornment" while withholding it from boys. This is trivial observation -- I invite you to visit your nearest toystore (look at children on the boxes if you're having trouble) and report back to me otherwise.

andrewflnr 12y ago

I think what's happening here, and in a lot of other cases, is that culture [0] tends to sieze on real (in this case IMO) asymmetries (girls care more about appearance than men) and blow it far out of proportion. I'm not justifying it, not even close; I find it horrifying. I'm saying that it has a seed in reality, mixed with a freight of repression and poorly-handled social revolutions, a beautiful thing corrupted. You have to wonder, if not from some inborn difference, how did this vast asymmetry come about? All this to say, those articles are not evidence about any putative inborn interest in jewelry. They're perfectly consistent with either theory. [0] Yes that's a bit of a vague term. I take it to mean something like, "what everyone around you is saying/doing".

detcader 12y ago
Should we assume that men have a natural tendency to cry a bit less because men cry less often? The articles are more strongly consistent with the theory of gender socialization -- that the media et al coerces girls to focus (obsess, kill themselves over,) appearance, and without it it would be impossible to say to what degree such a thing as actually "biological". The rational course of action is to assume an absence of such a theoretical reality until evidence is found, just as with anything.
- andrewflnr 12y ago
  Yes. Men are more concerned with being/appearing strong, again, re-inforced and exaggerated by cultural norms. This also makes us tend to buy relatively useless tools/toys like power tools and big trucks, to make us feel strong. IMO this is a close analogue to the common female concern with aesthetic adornment. Women mock us, justifiably, for the dominance contests we like to get into, stemming from the same desire to be strong. Of course, women have their own analogues of our dominance contests. The deep fundamentals are the same, what differs is more our interpretation. Both sets of instincts stem from where we first look to power. Heck, they could just be subconscious logical deductions from the physical asymmetries between sexes, and the nature of our reproductive drives, but at that point the distinction almost doesn't matter, because it's still going to outlive any education campaign to stop it. This all seems obvious to me. We already have abundant evidence of a fundamental difference, it's all around us. It seems a more elegant explanation than all this madness occurring with no trigger at all, which is the view you seem to advocate. I don't know what else I can say.