Feminist theory has held that gender (the set of memes that people with penises behave in certain ways, and people without penises behave in other ways) is both socially constructed and socially enforced.
Many (and probably most) animals also have gender in the sense that individuals with penises behave in certain ways, and individuals with ovaries behave in other ways, despite not having memes.
One cached thought in the rationalist community that isn’t often questioned is that natural selection, rather than higher-level social pressures, cause certain things.
I’ll take it you haven’t been paying attention to the discussions of status on OB and LW. In my experience rationalist are much more willing to consider explanations based on social pressure, then feminists are to consider explanations based on natural selection.
Many (and probably most) animals also have gender in the sense that individuals with penises behave in certain ways, and individuals with ovaries behave in other ways, despite not having memes.
I think this is a cached thought. It’s very easy to anthropomorphize; if scientists can do it for the concept of natural selection itself, they can certainly do it for animals. The scientific community is much less neutral than we would both like it to be, and as such, it will support findings that are more in line with the social status quo. This is something that we admit for everything that we’ve changed our minds about, and it doesn’t seem surprising to me that we’ll continue changing our minds.
I’ll take it you haven’t been paying attention to the discussions of status on OB and LW. In my experience rationalist are much more willing to consider explanations based on social pressure, then feminists are to consider explanations based on natural selection.
In my experience, almost all “status” conversations are based upon a hackneyed post-hoc evolutionary just-so story. Most prominent feminists are not in fact scientists, and this is the fault of our society for not being more scientific in general, not feminism specifically (what political movements are led by scientists?).
Additionally, I think when you use the word “consider,” you mean “accept.” Feminists do consider explanations based on evolution; they just reject them because they think another explanation is more probable. The fact that they reject them isn’t very useful; what would be interesting is why, but you don’t bring that up.
I think this one section also displays fairly bad mind-killing—even if my team is bad in some way, that isn’t evidence for it being wrong, and it isn’t evidence for your team being right.
Many (and probably most) animals also have gender in the sense that individuals with penises behave in certain ways, and individuals with ovaries behave in other ways, despite not having memes.
I think this is a cached thought.
Yes, but it’s still true.
It’s very easy to anthropomorphize; if scientists can do it for the concept of natural selection itself, they can certainly do it for animals. The scientific community is much less neutral than we would both like it to be, and as such, it will support findings that are more in line with the social status quo.
I’m confused by this statement. Are you seriously arguing that the observations that, e.g., female but not male bears take care of the cubs, or that peahens prefer peacocks with more impressive tails, etc., are simply cases of scientists being biased?
In my experience, almost all “status” conversations are based upon a hackneyed post-hoc evolutionary just-so story.
Speaking of cached thoughts: it is a common cached thought to dismiss any explanation of human behavior based on evolution as a post-hoc just-so-story regardless of the merits of the explanation.
The fact that they reject them isn’t very useful; what would be interesting is why, but you don’t bring that up.
OK, let’s look at your explanations:
Feminist theory has held that gender (the set of memes that people with penises behave in certain ways, and people without penises behave in other ways) is both socially constructed and socially enforced. This is accomplished by instilling a great many cached thoughts in humans of both sexes that even most rationalists never question, and then severely punishing the people who transgress those categories in a variety of horrific ways.
(...)
Gender is, as the OP suggests, maintained mostly by men for our own benefit (and to a lesser extent, maintained by women so that men will reward them).
So you’re explanation appears to boil down to “it’s all the patriarchy’s fault”. This appears to be a classic case of an anti-affective death spiral.
even if my team is bad in some way, that isn’t evidence for it being wrong
On the contrary, if your team is bad at rationality, that is evidence for it being wrong.
Cached thoughts are thoughts that we think are true because we cached them at some point and never re-evaluated them. To properly re-evaluate a cached thought we need to re-evaluate all dependencies, including the ones that we might not notice at first.
It’s exceedingly hard to do that, which is why otherwise intelligent people in the past didn’t start questioning the aspects of racism and sexism that are commonly denounced today.
OK, let’s look at your explanations:
I’m not a prominent feminist; I haven’t written anything of substance on feminism, and I don’t even consider my opinion to have much meaning since I’m male-assigned. I’m not the people I was talking about.
I think you should read some actual feminist literature (I’d start with bell hooks and then move on to some Dworkin), with an eye towards the differences in how you perceive the world versus how bell hooks and Dworkin perceive the world.
I don’t even consider my opinion to have much meaning since I’m male-assigned.
Good grief. You may lack relevant experience to justify a particular opinion, but that’s totally different from saying your opinions are invalid-by-maleness. It is needlessly essentialist. Mary Daly’s exclusion of men from her class (for the reasons she posited) was conceptually wrong.
There’s a difference between an essentialist gender outlook, where gender is an essential aspect of people with a certain biological configuration, and an objective gender outlook, where gender is an objectively observable configuration of human minds.
Specifically, the difference is that after the Great Feminist Cultural Revolution, gender won’t objectively exist. It will have been erased from institutions, individuals, and cultures (by “after”, we mean “hundreds of years after”).
Gender is like any other socially instilled bias, except that it tends to run much deeper (gender socialization starts at birth; religious socialization starts later, and isn’t connected to one’s anatomy at all). As such, it does objectively exist, and you can’t handwave it away.
As far as I can tell, this is a definitional dispute. There are many traits that females express in modern society. I take essentialist theory to be saying that all of these traits are based in sex, not in gender.
As you say, this is wrong—lots of these traits are gender and would disappear if feminist social engineering succeeded. Only those traits actually based on sex would remain
I was criticizing the position you expressed that men have literally nothing to say about the dividing line between female gender and female sex. For example, a man can say “Getting pregnant is an expression of sex, not gender” or “Wearing dresses is an expression of gender, not sex.”
Men have literally nothing to say about the experiences of women under patriarchy, which is the basis of feminism.
Let’s ignore for the moment whether all feminists do or should believe this.
Is you position that men have nothing useful to say about how to end patriarchy? Because that looks a lot like the stereotypical patriarchal assertion that women have nothing useful to say about how society should work. It seems to me that the counter-argument to that position should work just as well to justify male participation in the intellectual process that hopefully leads to the reshaping of society to make it more gender equal.
Men and women are taught drastically different things under patriarchy to such an extent that I think that men attempting to think in a feminist way will be off-target far more so than women. Patriarchy exists objectively.
I don’t think Mary Daly was wrong, but I haven’t read her (yet).
Imagine two professors of German studies: Hans, a native and citizen of Germany, and Bob, a native and citizen of the United States.
If you are asking questions about what it is like to live in Germany, sometimes you get correct answers from Hans, and sometimes from Bob. There’s no reason to believe that Bob will never have useful things to say about Germany, even when talking to Hans. Even if Hans will give a more accurate answer more often.
Why is it different when the subject is feminism and Hans is female instead of German?
Because it’s easier to get facts about what it’s like to live in Germany if you aren’t a German than it is to get facts about what it’s like to be a woman in patriarchy if you aren’t a woman.
To put it another way, until it’s possible to print out and debug human connectionist networks and association maps, most of the knowledge about gendered oppression can only be obtained by listening to women.
This is, of course, something that men under patriarchy are loathe to do, which is why Less Wrong (a male-identified male-dominated community) insists that men are perfectly fine sources of feminist analysis.
I certainly don’t expect Bob to give more useful answers than Hans a majority of the time. When it changes from Hans & Bob to Alice & Bob, the percentage will fall further.
In short, your position is that men have no useful input, which is very different from saying that they seldom have useful input. Bob should never have become a professor of feminism, as you describe the issue.
The truth does not depend on the observer, but the data observed does, very much so, depend on the observer. Especially when the device capturing and interpreting the data is as messy as a human brain, two observers looking at the same situation can come away with very different impressions.
I missed this:
On the contrary, if your team is bad at rationality, that is evidence for it being wrong.
This is what I was referring to:
Someone once said, “Not all conservatives are stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.” If you cannot place yourself in a state of mind where this statement, true or false, seems completely irrelevant as a critique of conservatism, you are not ready to think rationally about politics.
The fact that there are postmodernist feminists is completely irrelevant.
Many (and probably most) animals also have gender in the sense that individuals with penises behave in certain ways, and individuals with ovaries behave in other ways, despite not having memes.
I’ll take it you haven’t been paying attention to the discussions of status on OB and LW. In my experience rationalist are much more willing to consider explanations based on social pressure, then feminists are to consider explanations based on natural selection.
I think this is a cached thought. It’s very easy to anthropomorphize; if scientists can do it for the concept of natural selection itself, they can certainly do it for animals. The scientific community is much less neutral than we would both like it to be, and as such, it will support findings that are more in line with the social status quo. This is something that we admit for everything that we’ve changed our minds about, and it doesn’t seem surprising to me that we’ll continue changing our minds.
In my experience, almost all “status” conversations are based upon a hackneyed post-hoc evolutionary just-so story. Most prominent feminists are not in fact scientists, and this is the fault of our society for not being more scientific in general, not feminism specifically (what political movements are led by scientists?).
Additionally, I think when you use the word “consider,” you mean “accept.” Feminists do consider explanations based on evolution; they just reject them because they think another explanation is more probable. The fact that they reject them isn’t very useful; what would be interesting is why, but you don’t bring that up.
I think this one section also displays fairly bad mind-killing—even if my team is bad in some way, that isn’t evidence for it being wrong, and it isn’t evidence for your team being right.
Yes, but it’s still true.
I’m confused by this statement. Are you seriously arguing that the observations that, e.g., female but not male bears take care of the cubs, or that peahens prefer peacocks with more impressive tails, etc., are simply cases of scientists being biased?
Speaking of cached thoughts: it is a common cached thought to dismiss any explanation of human behavior based on evolution as a post-hoc just-so-story regardless of the merits of the explanation.
OK, let’s look at your explanations:
So you’re explanation appears to boil down to “it’s all the patriarchy’s fault”. This appears to be a classic case of an anti-affective death spiral.
On the contrary, if your team is bad at rationality, that is evidence for it being wrong.
Cached thoughts are thoughts that we think are true because we cached them at some point and never re-evaluated them. To properly re-evaluate a cached thought we need to re-evaluate all dependencies, including the ones that we might not notice at first.
It’s exceedingly hard to do that, which is why otherwise intelligent people in the past didn’t start questioning the aspects of racism and sexism that are commonly denounced today.
I’m not a prominent feminist; I haven’t written anything of substance on feminism, and I don’t even consider my opinion to have much meaning since I’m male-assigned. I’m not the people I was talking about.
I think you should read some actual feminist literature (I’d start with bell hooks and then move on to some Dworkin), with an eye towards the differences in how you perceive the world versus how bell hooks and Dworkin perceive the world.
Good grief. You may lack relevant experience to justify a particular opinion, but that’s totally different from saying your opinions are invalid-by-maleness. It is needlessly essentialist. Mary Daly’s exclusion of men from her class (for the reasons she posited) was conceptually wrong.
There’s a difference between an essentialist gender outlook, where gender is an essential aspect of people with a certain biological configuration, and an objective gender outlook, where gender is an objectively observable configuration of human minds.
Specifically, the difference is that after the Great Feminist Cultural Revolution, gender won’t objectively exist. It will have been erased from institutions, individuals, and cultures (by “after”, we mean “hundreds of years after”).
Gender is like any other socially instilled bias, except that it tends to run much deeper (gender socialization starts at birth; religious socialization starts later, and isn’t connected to one’s anatomy at all). As such, it does objectively exist, and you can’t handwave it away.
As far as I can tell, this is a definitional dispute. There are many traits that females express in modern society. I take essentialist theory to be saying that all of these traits are based in sex, not in gender.
As you say, this is wrong—lots of these traits are gender and would disappear if feminist social engineering succeeded. Only those traits actually based on sex would remain
I was criticizing the position you expressed that men have literally nothing to say about the dividing line between female gender and female sex. For example, a man can say “Getting pregnant is an expression of sex, not gender” or “Wearing dresses is an expression of gender, not sex.”
You seem to have targeted a problem that I don’t care about, so we’ve miscommunicated at some point.
Men have literally nothing to say about the experiences of women under patriarchy, which is the basis of feminism.
Let’s ignore for the moment whether all feminists do or should believe this.
Is you position that men have nothing useful to say about how to end patriarchy? Because that looks a lot like the stereotypical patriarchal assertion that women have nothing useful to say about how society should work. It seems to me that the counter-argument to that position should work just as well to justify male participation in the intellectual process that hopefully leads to the reshaping of society to make it more gender equal.
Men and women are taught drastically different things under patriarchy to such an extent that I think that men attempting to think in a feminist way will be off-target far more so than women. Patriarchy exists objectively.
I don’t think Mary Daly was wrong, but I haven’t read her (yet).
Imagine two professors of German studies: Hans, a native and citizen of Germany, and Bob, a native and citizen of the United States.
If you are asking questions about what it is like to live in Germany, sometimes you get correct answers from Hans, and sometimes from Bob. There’s no reason to believe that Bob will never have useful things to say about Germany, even when talking to Hans. Even if Hans will give a more accurate answer more often.
Why is it different when the subject is feminism and Hans is female instead of German?
Because it’s easier to get facts about what it’s like to live in Germany if you aren’t a German than it is to get facts about what it’s like to be a woman in patriarchy if you aren’t a woman.
To put it another way, until it’s possible to print out and debug human connectionist networks and association maps, most of the knowledge about gendered oppression can only be obtained by listening to women.
This is, of course, something that men under patriarchy are loathe to do, which is why Less Wrong (a male-identified male-dominated community) insists that men are perfectly fine sources of feminist analysis.
I certainly don’t expect Bob to give more useful answers than Hans a majority of the time. When it changes from Hans & Bob to Alice & Bob, the percentage will fall further.
In short, your position is that men have no useful input, which is very different from saying that they seldom have useful input. Bob should never have become a professor of feminism, as you describe the issue.
How seldom does seldom have to be before seldom becomes ‘no’?
Why is this relevant? The truth should not depend on the observer?
The truth does not depend on the observer, but the data observed does, very much so, depend on the observer. Especially when the device capturing and interpreting the data is as messy as a human brain, two observers looking at the same situation can come away with very different impressions.
I missed this:
This is what I was referring to:
The fact that there are postmodernist feminists is completely irrelevant.