I wonder if “evopsych” and “the patriarchy” are some sort of mirror image words that make people from the other side stop listening whenever they get brought into the argument.
If humans having any behavior differences by gender that are not culturally constructed is a suspect viewpoint, what do you make of humans having evolved from animals that don’t have culture to construct things but do have behavior differences by gender?
I assume that those differences are slighter than one would assume, that society may necessarily point us in directions in which the evolutionary “purpose” of our traits are harmful (and so we should not privilege those evolutionary traits as inherently good or excuses for behavior which is societally harmful). I know that working from the viewpoint in which all of gendered behavior is culturally constructed will have me wrong sometimes, but the trend of history makes me think I’ll be less wrong by keeping that viewpoint as opposed to the contrary one.
Also, you probably mean sex, not gender—gender is between the ears, sex is between the legs. (It’s more complicated than that, obviously, but that’s the pneumonic that’s been useful for me.)
I know that working from the viewpoint in which all of gendered behavior is culturally constructed will have me wrong sometimes, but the trend of history makes me think I’ll be less wrong by keeping that viewpoint as opposed to the contrary one.
I’m not sure how stable this strategy is. Right now, personal genomics and big data informatics might be making biology smarter at a surprising rate, while sociology has no similar tool ratchet to boost it up. I mean, you’re not up against some caricature from the 19th century spouting about God-ordained moral order, but people who are intent on actually looking into the one billion moving parts that make a human come together and make sense of them.
Also, you probably mean sex, not gender—gender is between the ears, sex is between the legs. (It’s more complicated than that, obviously, but that’s the pneumonic that’s been useful for me.)
Well, you do decide how to behave with what’s between your ears, not what’s between your legs.
Hmm. I’m getting a bit of what you’re getting at with biology, and you might be right. But sociology doesn’t become less true when it’s harder to study it, and I’m throwing in my chips with the side that is guessing that most of the time genetics matter less than most people think on issues that can also be effected by societal conditioning.
The sex/gender thing was a correction, you were talking about gendered animals, and animals don’t have genders, they just have sexes. Gender is the societal construction, sex is biological. It’s just a definition/clarity issue—sorry to sidetrack with it!
I’d like to point out the falsity that animals do not have gender. Perhaps crickets and pigeons do not have enough complexity within their psychology to either ‘feel like a male’ being a female or ‘behave in stereotipically male ways’ being a female (which I understand as two ways of being cross-gendered. I’m not sure this is how the term “cross-gendered” is used, but it is what I’m meaning here, having sex A and gender B)
But I’ll bet all my money in that a lot of more complex animals (I”ll go with Lions, Bonobos, Dolphins and maybe Baboons) are obviously possibly cross-gendered as a personality trait. That would mean that behaviors usually pertaining to males activate in females (especially triggered ones) with strong stimuli for instance. And some specific animals (say Joe and Mimi) might be so prone to that that actually they behave more like the opposite sex than their own.
Other than that I’m happy with the above clarifying discussion.
I had a bit about how it was possible that some animals had gender but decided that was probably nitpicky detail that overcomplicated the issue, which was that the original response to me was confusing sex and gender. Though it’s also possible that some of the animals that you’re discussing actually are just intersex, or that the entire issue is just us anthromorphizing animals, attributing personality traits to be gendered at all because we’re so entrenched in biological determinism that we’re willing to spew that social baggage on everything we touch.
I wonder if “evopsych” and “the patriarchy” are some sort of mirror image words that make people from the other side stop listening whenever they get brought into the argument.
If humans having any behavior differences by gender that are not culturally constructed is a suspect viewpoint, what do you make of humans having evolved from animals that don’t have culture to construct things but do have behavior differences by gender?
I could see that being the case, yeah.
I assume that those differences are slighter than one would assume, that society may necessarily point us in directions in which the evolutionary “purpose” of our traits are harmful (and so we should not privilege those evolutionary traits as inherently good or excuses for behavior which is societally harmful). I know that working from the viewpoint in which all of gendered behavior is culturally constructed will have me wrong sometimes, but the trend of history makes me think I’ll be less wrong by keeping that viewpoint as opposed to the contrary one.
Also, you probably mean sex, not gender—gender is between the ears, sex is between the legs. (It’s more complicated than that, obviously, but that’s the pneumonic that’s been useful for me.)
I’m not sure how stable this strategy is. Right now, personal genomics and big data informatics might be making biology smarter at a surprising rate, while sociology has no similar tool ratchet to boost it up. I mean, you’re not up against some caricature from the 19th century spouting about God-ordained moral order, but people who are intent on actually looking into the one billion moving parts that make a human come together and make sense of them.
Well, you do decide how to behave with what’s between your ears, not what’s between your legs.
Hmm. I’m getting a bit of what you’re getting at with biology, and you might be right. But sociology doesn’t become less true when it’s harder to study it, and I’m throwing in my chips with the side that is guessing that most of the time genetics matter less than most people think on issues that can also be effected by societal conditioning.
The sex/gender thing was a correction, you were talking about gendered animals, and animals don’t have genders, they just have sexes. Gender is the societal construction, sex is biological. It’s just a definition/clarity issue—sorry to sidetrack with it!
I’d like to point out the falsity that animals do not have gender. Perhaps crickets and pigeons do not have enough complexity within their psychology to either ‘feel like a male’ being a female or ‘behave in stereotipically male ways’ being a female (which I understand as two ways of being cross-gendered. I’m not sure this is how the term “cross-gendered” is used, but it is what I’m meaning here, having sex A and gender B)
But I’ll bet all my money in that a lot of more complex animals (I”ll go with Lions, Bonobos, Dolphins and maybe Baboons) are obviously possibly cross-gendered as a personality trait. That would mean that behaviors usually pertaining to males activate in females (especially triggered ones) with strong stimuli for instance. And some specific animals (say Joe and Mimi) might be so prone to that that actually they behave more like the opposite sex than their own.
Other than that I’m happy with the above clarifying discussion.
I had a bit about how it was possible that some animals had gender but decided that was probably nitpicky detail that overcomplicated the issue, which was that the original response to me was confusing sex and gender. Though it’s also possible that some of the animals that you’re discussing actually are just intersex, or that the entire issue is just us anthromorphizing animals, attributing personality traits to be gendered at all because we’re so entrenched in biological determinism that we’re willing to spew that social baggage on everything we touch.