More gender discussion
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Sorry, I stopped watching when he misrepresented Matthew Sheppard's murder.
If you are referring to the book ** by Stephen Jimenez you might want to read this.
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I am certainly amused by Media Matters attempting to discredit something due to "wild extrapolation, the use of highly questionable and often inconsistent sources, paranoia."
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Sorry, my bad. I wasn't clear in my request for clarification. I know what begging-the-question means, I just do not see to what question/argument you are saying is being "begged" or how. Help ?
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I originally quoted this:
When we stop expecting every single person ever born to be either a "manly" man and or a "feminine" woman with no middle ground,
Basically, I was calling BS on your assumption about manly and feminine expectations.
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Okay, I'll accept that my statement was a little over the top with the "every single person" bit ... but the underlying reality is that we all live in a society that has a lot of gender behavior expectations. Here is an article on an internationally respected book on the subject.
What I believe is that when we stop perpetuating specific behaviors as being male or female behaviors, the easier it will be to start fixing a lot of other problems. A friend of mine was told by his daughter's 6th grade teacher that they should discourage her interest in mechanical engineering because she would have a hard time making a successful career out of it.
When pressed for what the problems were (math? spacial perception?) he actually fainted in shock. The teacher's recommendation was based on the (ahem) reasoning that engineering is a male-dominated field and girls are not able to advance easily within it so they ought to seek easier (more "traditional") careers.
I've heard at least 35 very similar (albeit less extreme) stories around the country (I travel a lot for work) so this is by no means unique.
PS: My friend's daughter is now 17 with a full-ride scholarship waiting to a major polytechnic university.
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Okay, I'll accept that my statement was a little over the top with the "every single person" bit
Fair enough.
The teacher's recommendation was based on the (ahem) reasoning that engineering is a male-dominated field and girls are not able to advance easily within it so they ought to seek easier (more "traditional") careers.
It sounds like campaigns nominally against sexism have backfired to a certain extent.
PS: My friend's daughter is now 17 with a full-ride scholarship waiting to a major polytechnic university.
Good for her.
Relatedly, I just came across this:
Feminist Outrage As Lefty Mag Says Successful Women Don't Have Kids
A feminist article, by a feminist journalist in an archly pro- feminist magazine, has provoked anger from politicians and the twitterati because the |
Lefty magazing, The New Statesman was talking about how high ranking female politicians tend to have fewer children than similarly ranking men.
The article points out that successful female politicians generally have less children than their male counterparts; argues that women are persecuted for having children and for not having children,
I linked to an article about an article. Now, I'm not interested enough in this to click through to the original, but based on what I know about TNS, that's a plausible thing to read there. I dunno, maybe it's accurate, but I suspect the persecution angle is largely in the eye of the beholder on this front, no less than the equal pay fallacy and for all the same reasons.
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It is only in the past 20 or so years that even doctors have begun to say ... hmmm, let's wait a bit to see the way this kid develops before we make an irreversible decision.
While the exact same people are applauding when preteen kids decide they're transsexual.
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Journalists like to use emotional trigger words to sell papers (or click-throughs) so "outrage" and "persecuted" are less likely to be accurate as they are profitable.
A more on-target study would be "How much time do politicians who are parents spend time at home with their kids?" -- My guess is the male/female divide would drop dramatically since politics is a very time consuming career. Who knows? Maybe such a study would even show males in the minority since the (bogus) gender stereotype is that hard working dads never spend as much time with their kids as moms.
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@anotherusername I'm not sure just who you mean by "the exact same people" but since the pre-teen (the onset of puberty) is a critical time for gender development, many doctors dealing with "wait and see" kids often prescribe hormone treatments to delay the onset of puberty in order to get more time before a decision is made. Medical professionals (and their insurance carriers) dread the idea of getting sued by former patients for premature/wrong sex change treatments and are ultra careful to be sure they get it "right" (meaning a satisfied patient).
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Journalists like to use emotional trigger words to sell papers (or click-throughs) so "outrage" and "persecuted" are less likely to be accurate as they are profitable.
Very true. But it's not just journalists. Activists and politicians tend to use that sort of language. Honestly, I'd expect "discriminate" before "persecute," but I stand by my statement.
A more on-target study would be "How much time do politicians who are parents spend time at home with their kids?" -- My guess is the male/female divide would drop dramatically since politics is a very time consuming career.
What studies about the "pay gap" have found is that women with children really do tend to spend less time working. And from the article, many of the women up at the top have no kids at all. Biology pretty much requires that mothers invest more time in children than fathers, even if it's only the gestation and recovery period, which can still significantly change one's career.
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Of course you might be right, after all you never hear of men being expected to stay home and remain barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen so that must be a biologically based "right" stereotype.
Well if you see a man pregnant in the kitchen, call the Nobel commitee.
And if you're saying there's no difference, then why do we have separate sport categories for men and women, for example? And why do women consistently perform worse than men in things like weightlifting, but better in things like gymnastics?
And men must never wear a dress because that is not a masculine biologically based stereotype. No son of mine will ever be allowed to wear anything but pants, not like those effeminate Roman Centurians, Celtic Warriors, Greek Philosophers, Catholic Popes or US Supreme Court Judges. And no daughter of mine will ever be a Race Car Driver, Construction Engineer, or Nuclear Physicist because those jobs require working with tools and we all know that tools are the biological domain of males only.
Is that your argument? Because it's not my argument, so I guess it's yours.
SO... if people are diagnosed by a doctor as having an problem then it is real, but if they recognize the issue for themselves -- after years of being told by society to shut up and conform because they are sick or wrong to have such feelings -- it is a not real problem?
That's... kinda how diagnostics work, yeah. You don't get to wake up one day and say "I definitely have breast cancer". You get confirmation from people who aren't biased.
Microaggressions ... this is a new name for the ancient "death-by-ten-thousand-cuts"
And it's so much worse than death by a stone to the head or a machete to the throat, right?
Look, as I said - on one hand, you have gays and transgenders who live out a drama every day because their family would dump them on the streets the moment they came out, and on the other you have gays and transgenders (or not) arguing fucking pronouns. One of them is kind of a more pressing issue, don't you think?
Society should at least not make them even more pervasive.
Gender dimorphism doesn't mean that stereotyping is an appropiate thing to do.
Eh, I don't see it as that big of a problem. It's a stereotype alright, but it's not particularly vicious or harmful (like "every Arab is waiting to murder you and your family", it's not totally wrong (like "every gay is effeminate"), and you can still deny the stereotype for yourself and nobody's going to bat an eye these days.
There's a difference between there being a stereotype and that stereotype causing active harm. And in 2015, there's very little harm for women coming from the stereotype in most places - we still have some things to sort out with more traditionalist "no, you're not getting a career, I want grandchildren" crowd, but overall the situation is mostly under control.
Sickening.
Kinda silly, but... sickening? Really? The old one is still gender-neutral, and the new one is for boys who think girls have cooties to avoid, and the girls still in the princess fantasy to buy and have better chance of not getting a stupid car.
The real question is why does any gender need to have special treatment?
Well, try telling the women "okay, as of now, no parities for you, no women's sport teams, you're on your own, good luck". And see how the feminists lose their shit.
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If I wasn't at work I'd GIS for penis drink
That's what mobile internet is for.
You're welcome:
[spoiler]
[/spoiler]
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a cat version of K-9 from Doctor Who circa 1976.
I wondered for a long time if I was the only one who saw a cat in this emoji. Now I know.
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How is this different from other special Kinder Surprise series?
Have you seen your average little girl's face when she gets a car from her Kinder Surprise? I bet it's almost as sad as when I got some stupid one-piece shark or hippo or whatever else they had with no moving parts and nothing interesting from mine when I was a kid.
The best one I got and still remember was this:
(picture not mine). Want to know how I got it? I traded it with my sister who was near tears when she found it.
The only valid point is there should be a series for boys as well so they wouldn't be disappointed upon discovering some stupid doll in there.
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It's a stereotype alright, but it's not particularly vicious or harmful (like "every Arab is waiting to murder you and your family", it's not totally wrong (like "every gay is effeminate"), and you can still deny the stereotype for yourself and nobody's going to bat an eye these days.
ERROR: mismatched parentheses.
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I actually don't know anyone who is intersex, but I do "give a shit" about social justice ... well, actually it would be more correct to say I give a shit about solving society's many problems and I am adamantly opposed to making it harder to solve those problems because of incomplete, incorrect, and ignorant information.
Your desire to extinguish ignorance is very noble (just like Don Quixote), and you seem to be doing a pretty good job here, all things considered. Just be sure that the information you are spreading is actually correct. If you don't actually know anyone that is affected by the thing you are talking about, how do you even know what information actually needs to be spread to help solve their problems?
I mean, it's only very recently that any reasonable fraction of non-binary people have been allowed to be themselves, and from what I can tell, most of them are still figuring things out. It might be better to wait until they are ready, and let them speak for their selves than to go blurting out any old factoid, to where we end up with this ham-fisted “we'll put sex and gender on your public profile, so people know we're twice as tolerant as the next forum” bullshit.
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My daughter loves everything pink, and princesses, dresses, tiaras, all of that. I think it's weird, but if that's how she chooses to express herself, I can support that.
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I think it's weird, but if that's how she chooses to express herself, I can support that.
Funny how often that happens.
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You got any data to back up your vague implications?
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Just the same anecdata that nearly everyone has. Which is more than the people who made that image of yours had.
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But how much of that is the kids' own preferences and how much is society telling them what their preferences should be?
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My experience says a lot of it comes from the kids themselves. Here's an interesting anecdote:
My daughter (currently 14 years old) has often been interested in non-traditional (for girls) stuff. She was totally into Lord of the Rings and had lots of swords and stuff. Her current favorite online thing seems to be Doll Devine, which is basically an online version of dressing up paper dolls. My daughter had some legos but never really got into them. My son loves them. Most of his creations are either guns or vehicles that are really just gun platforms. When out in the woods, he constantly finds sticks and branches that are guns or bazookas or swords.
The pendants among us will come up with counter stories, but I think those are the exceptions.
Hormones, brain differences, whatever...boys generally seem to play differently than girls do.
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And this has been proved to be the same in monkeys...
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I think you're both talking across each other slightly here. The key point for me is don't make the legos blue, and don't make the dolls pink and let the kids play with what they want. If my daughter wants to play with a toy car but they're in a "for boys" section in the toy shop then that's us as a society unfairly influencing her. I'd hope we could agree that's a bad thing.
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The key point for me is don't make the legos blue, and don't make the dolls pink and let the kids play with what they want.
Grey toys for life! Grey toys for joy! Grey toys are all we need!
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blue vs pink toys https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5LRdW8xw70&feature=youtu.be
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blue vs pink toys
Those words made me think of one of those plastic boxing games, except bleached from being in the sun too long.
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Confronted with scientific studies linking gender differences to biology, a Norwegian gender researcher doesn't change her view that it's all culture.
Q What is your scientific basis to say that biology plays no part in the two gender' choice of work?
A My scientific basis? I have what you would call a theoretical basis. There's no room for biology in there for me...And I feel that social sciences should challenge thinking that is based on the differences between humans being biological.Other researcher:
The fascinating thing with this science, is why they are so concerned with finding the biological origin to gender? Why this frenetic concern?
Q You say there are no innate difference that explains interests. What do you base it on?
A I must rely on science when I try to explain the relations here. So far science hasn't been able to prove a genetic origin to gender differences, outside of the reproductive organs.
Q You said that there are no innate differences in feeling, interests...How do you know there are none?
A My hypothesis is that there are none. Science hasn't shown any. Then I must work from that level...The second guy at least dresses his opinion up in science.
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That second guy is probably flabs. "I don't think Y is true, so obviously Y isn't true, and when you look at things from that perspective..."
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Nah, he has a lot of wrong ideas, but it's because of bad assumptions and poor reasoning, not lying to himself.
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Working from false assumptions is exactly what we're talking about here. Or at least I am.
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IMO, the problem is that social science is not as rigorous as biology is. But of course if you are paid to teach the thing you may get the wrong idea after getting a round of applause in a handful of conferences for bold claims backed by some nice graphs in Excel, among peers.
Just to be clear, I am not saying it is inherently less rigorous, just that at this time and age it is not strongly backed by science. Same was true for psychology few decades ago.
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More gender differences‽
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the problem is that social science is not as rigorous as biology is....
I am not saying it is inherently less rigorousI don't think it can be, really. In the physical sciences, you set up an apparatus and run an experiment. The result supports or refutes your hypothesis. Other people can run the same experiment to confirm your results.
In biology, you can get a bunch of organisms, divide them into two groups and run a controlled experiment. Again, other researchers can repeat your experiment and get (one hopes) the same results.
Experiments on people tend to be more problematic. One can do, for example, controlled experiments to observe how people behave in specific situations. However, the sort of thing we are discussing here is, basically, how people behave over a lifetime of experience. Setting up two complete societies, identical in every way except for the experimental variable, and populating them with representative populations is just a tad difficult, not to mention the ethical issues. But without the ability to run such experiments, I don't think it can have the same degree of rigor. We are left with studies of real people living their lives in the real world, with a wide variety of personal experiences that influence individual behavior in ways that are difficult to control. One can attempt to control for some of the factors when analyzing the data for the population, but this is subject to interpretation (and possibly bias), and somebody will always complain that some significant factor wasn't controlled for, or that the adjustment to account for this or that wasn't done correctly, and if you analyze the data according to method X, you get a different result.
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I think you are right (to some extent), it is harder to devise experiments to see the effect of genocide on the mind of the survived populous.
However, there are still clever ways to set up an experiment, to test an independent variable. Like in the documentary they did a test to see if really boys likes cars and girls like pink, then to reject the hypothesis that it is the environment and parental treatment, they reduced the age of babies enough to have no doubt they have not been predisposed to those environmental conditions. It is the scientific method that matters, some experiments have more error, but in the lack of evidence they are still the best estimates.
I think once AI is advanced enough, we can experiment better with social sciences, perhaps just in a simulation.
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AIs lack the biological part. Particularly, gender-specific hormones produced by reproductive organs.
The most obvious proof that men are biologically designated as the stronger gender is what injecting testosterone does to people. Both men and women.
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a) populace
b) the first nation to institute ubiquitous big-brother level surveillance is going to do so much to advance our understanding of human nature you cannot even imagine.
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My daughter loves everything pink, and princesses, dresses, tiaras, all of that. I think it's weird, but if that's how she chooses to express herself, I can support that.
That's strange. My three daughters prefer pink and purple, and dresses, and tiaras, and dolls, too! Now they'll occasionally get out the building blocks and cars and pretend to be giant monsters, but they spend significantly more time with the traditionally "girly" stuff. We go to the store to pick out a toy, and they lead me to the "girl" toys.
But how much of that is the kids' own preferences and how much is society telling them what their preferences should be?
Let me add this to me anecdote: my kids don't watch traditional TV, so they don't get commercials. They watch everything from My Little Pony to Marvel cartoons. We don't tell them what to watch, aside from when it is something we feel is inappropriate for their age. They play plenty of video games, mostly Lego games because they get bored or frustrated with everything else. As far as I can tell, my daughters are acting out their own preferences.
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We go to the store to pick out a toy, and they lead me to the "girl" toys.
I think the point here is why does the toy store have a "girl" section in the first place? Why not just mix all toys together, and let the kids decide which they want?
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I think the point here is why does the toy store have a "girl" section in the first place? Why not just mix all toys together, and let the kids decide which they want?
My observation is that it really isn't a "girl" section and a "boy" section. It's more like a "dolls and doll accessories" aisle, and then there's an aisle for "playing house toys", another aisle for "construction toys" (Lego, K'NEX, etc.), another aisle for action figures, and so on. This kind of organization makes sense from a display standpoint, because then you can go in thinking "I need a doll," find the correct aisle, and pick out one of 20 different dolls. Or you go in looking for Legos, and you go to the Legos section and pick out the set you want. If you mix everything together, then people just buy the first doll or car they see. Either that or they decide they want to go to a store with better organization and you lose the sale.
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My observation is that it really isn't a "girl" section and a "boy" section. It's more like a "dolls and doll accessories" aisle, and then there's an aisle for "playing house toys", another aisle for "construction toys" (Lego, K'NEX, etc.), another aisle for action figures, and so on.
Why aren't action figures and their little cars or whatever "dolls and doll accessories", though? Why is that division necessary?
Anyway, I don't know where you shop, but none of the big box/department stores here in the US (that I'm aware of) are set up that way. They obviously separate items based on the gender expected to buy them. You might have an aisle with 50 RC cars in it, but Barbie's RC Corvette is next to the dolls, not next to the other RC cars.
And people forget while they praise Lego for that little "toys know no gender" note they distributed decades ago that just recently they produced a line of Legos<super>*</super> to specifically target the "girls" aisle at US department stores.
<super>*</super> I know some wanker is going to tell me the correct pluralization is "Lego" but I don't give a fuck.
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I think the point here is why does the toy store have a "girl" section in the first place?
Because boys and girls are mostly interested in different things. So we organize around that instead of the crazy ideas of college professors.
You might object about how western society has standardized around blue and pink, but then I'm not sure why that would bother someone so much.
Oh, and for @buddy, now I have the stuff in that Norwegian documentary to back up my impressions in addition to my own anecdata.
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Because boys and girls are mostly interested in different things. So we organize around that instead of the crazy ideas of college professors.
Some people load the toilet paper roll to dispense from the front, some people from the back. But we don't have two separate aisles of toilet paper rolls.
Although we should. Those filthy back-loaders.
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Some people load the toilet paper roll to dispense from the front, some people from the back. But we don't have two separate aisles of toilet paper rolls.
I'd like to skewer you for the nonsense involved in this analogy, but...
Although we should. Those filthy back-loaders.
...you're making a lot of sense here.
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Why aren't action figures and their little cars or whatever "dolls and doll accessories", though? Why is that division necessary?
Last I checked, the "dolls and dolls accessories" aisles in the stores I frequent are already full. The "action figures and their accessories" aisles are separately full. So, we have two aisles of similar toys that are separated based partly on branding, partly on the fact that an action figure and a doll are different sizes (gasp), and partly because you want to keep a toy and its accessories close together so that people can find the things that match (I'm sure there are more reasons as well).
Anyway, I don't know where you shop, but none of the big box/department stores here in the US (that I'm aware of) are set up that way.
Wal-Mart, Target. In the Phoenix area. Guess you aren't aware of everything "here in the US".
You might have an aisle with 50 RC cars in it, but Barbie's RC Corvette is next to the dolls, not next to the other RC cars.
Let me 'splain it to you: Most RC cars are just RC cars. Nothing else. Barbie's RC car is intended to be a ride for Barbie, and is considered a Barbie accessory. Also, the stores are probably contractually obligated to display it next to all the other Barbie brand toys (the stores don't have complete control over these things).
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The Daily Bruin (UCLA student paper) carries an op-ed on free tampons. Not getting into the merits of this silly argument, there's an editor's note that is pretty funny:
Editor’s note: This blog post refers to individuals who menstruate as women because the author wanted to highlight gender inequality in health care. We acknowledge that not all individuals who menstruate identify as women and that not all individuals who identify as women menstruate, but feel this generalization is appropriate considering the gendered nature of most health care policies.
In a follow up post
@Red Square said:
To improve on this Cloward and Piven strategy, I suggest that all men also get free Mach 5 shavers, Organic Not Animal Tested Fair For Trade Non GMO Project USDA Vegan Shaving Cream for sensitive skin (to cover all bases), and Christian Dior aftershave to please the
ladiesself-identified female-gendered persons.After all, women's periods occur once a month and most men have to shave every day, which is unfair.
Editor’s note: this comment refers to individuals who shave as men because the author wanted to highlight gender inequality in health care. We acknowledge that not all individuals who shave identify as men and that not all individuals who identify as men shave, but feel this generalization is appropriate considering the gendered nature of most health care policies.
Also, FREE HAIRCUTS!
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The Road to Hell thread is
.(@pjh, thanks for the cool emoji)
