• Taneras
    18
    Might be due to a small population size, as those numbers seem like an outlier. I see no reason to see that drastic of an increase in your average 30-34 woman compared to that of women in their 20's.

    If 75 was the overall average, but 30-34 averaged 98, how much lower than 75 was the sub 30 group? That suggests a larger difference between women in their early 30's and 20's than women and men in general.
  • Harry Hindu
    4.9k
    Some people call themselves non-binary and genderfluid. So I guess those guys think gender is socially constructed and they can swap as they want.Judaka
    But if gender is socially constructed, then gender isn't something that they have a choice in swapping for themselves. It would only be within the power of society as a whole to swap their "gender", not based on their own personal choices.
  • Harry Hindu
    4.9k
    No.

    It's penis/vagina logic; because homosexuals exist doesn't abolish the reproductive status quo.

    Homosexuality is the abstract case, I don't care how sugar coated the topic is for their social security.

    Penis's/vagina's are opposites that work in harmony, and this is gender.
    kill jepetto
    This is probably the result of your limited and subjective understanding of reproduction. Reproduction is more than just sex. It also takes the rearing of the child to a viable reproductive age. If the child doesn't survive to be able continue the existence of the species, then have you really reproduced (in the evolutionary sense)? Natural selection would promote any behavior by any member of it's species that improves the successful outcome of the propagation of the gene pool, which might include certain males or females abstaining from sex and instead focusing on the rearing of the children in the tribe. This not only promotes the survival of subsequent generations but also helps to minimize competition between heterosexual males or females for sexual partners.

    Being honest, Baden, it's a stupid topic.kill jepetto
    That is your opinion. Others obviously don't agree with you. No one is making you participate.
  • Harry Hindu
    4.9k
    Gender is by definition a social construct.NKBJ
    Yes, yes. We've already moved past that part. This is the assumption that the OP challenges. It is now up to you to move the ball forward with a new argument that addresses the logical inconsistencies that such a definition entails.

    The social experiment you link to is interesting, but it's just one case and thus not really proof of anything. It's impossible to tell what of his problems were due to the experiment itself, the tension of the experiment in relation to societal expectations, or just his own brain malfunctioning indepently of all that.NKBJ
    Wow. Just, wow. If I had posted anything like this about transgenders, my posts would be deleted and I'd be called a "bigot". You can take David Reimer's word for it if you'd like. He specifically blames Dr. Money for his problems and his gender dysphoria. Here's the link to the documentary that the BBC article summarizes:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUTcwqR4Q4Y

    So where is the consistent benchmark that we use for determining the validity of someone's feelings and claims as evidence for the gender or their confusion as to what their gender is? Is a transgender's brain malfunctioning?
  • Harry Hindu
    4.9k
    The phrase "gender is a social construct" refers to the binary gender system. The criticism is that it excludes transgender people, who feel they should not have to conform to either traditional gender role, but instead their "innate" gender identity.Echarmion
    Yet their innate gender identity is conforming to the binary gender system. I pointed this out in the OP.

    Well, you might ask, if not for pink over blue, how does a person determine their gender? If gender is a social construct, then the only way for a person to determine their gender is to choose one’s gender based on gender stereotypes present throughout a culture.Harry Hindu
  • Harry Hindu
    4.9k
    We have some reasons to minimize genetic influence: being controlled by genes (mere molecules) gets in the way of our determination to be whatever we want to be, however and wherever.Bitter Crank
    As a determinist, I don't see us being controlled by our genes, or trying to transcend our genetic coding. What we do or think is determined by our genes and development. Human beings are a highly intelligent social species. This is basically saying that human beings are a cultured species.

    I would agree that our "wants" are socially constructed, but our "needs" our biological. In a sense, our wants are really cultural manifestations of our biological needs.

    I'm somewhat persuaded (not going overboard) that our behavior is largely genetically directed. Since we have apparently exhibited cultural traits for a very long time, I think we can safely say that "some sort of culture" is a biological trait. The detailed expression of culture, though, is learned and can be innovated. Use of language is ancient and genetic; book publishing is a mere 700 year old innovation.Bitter Crank
    Yes, language acquisition is culture that has infiltrated our biology. In the previous Nature vs. Nurture debate I dropped the idea that the nature vs nurture debate is a false dichotomy, and is something that the scientific research article link I provided in the OP mentions as well.
  • TheWillowOfDarkness
    2.1k


    Social influences or construction are actually a biological event. Our response to environment are biological, always have been.

    The Nature vs Nurture dichotomy was misleading form the very beginning. There are not biological vs environment causes. All biological causes occur in an environment and are subject to its influences. Any environmental influence impacts upon a life form though reactions of its body. All social/environment influences are biological. Any biological effect is a product of it environment (i.e. there was not an environment which prevent that effect or caused biology to behave different).

    In most modern context, at least when you get into the people who study the subject, "socially constructed" does not mean "caused by a social force rather than a biological force." Rather, it means where dealing with a certain sort of biologically/environmentally caused state of a social environment or interaction.

    With sex or gender, this state of the social environment, the "social construction," is a concept/categorisation/language used to relate to people. It's not a distinction of a biological influence as opposed to a social influence, but an analysis of the sort of state (no matter its biological and environmental causes!) in question.
  • Harry Hindu
    4.9k
    The phrase "gender is a social construct" refers to the binary gender system. The criticism is that it excludes transgender people, who feel they should not have to conform to either traditional gender role, but instead their "innate" gender identity. — Echarmion

    Yet their innate gender identity is conforming to the binary gender system. I pointed this out in the OP. — Harry Hindu

    Some people call themselves non-binary and genderfluid. So I guess those guys think gender is socially constructed and they can swap as they want. — Judaka

    But if gender is socially constructed, then gender isn't something that they have a choice in swapping for themselves. It would only be within the power of society as a whole to swap their "gender", not based on their own personal choices. — Harry Hindu
    I'd like to expand on this part a bit.

    If gender is a social construct, then a gender's binary, ternary, decimal, unitary or sexagesimal quality is just another social construct. At any point a citizen of some culture could revolt and claim yet another "gender", but if it's not recognized by the culture, then it isn't what society defines as "gender". In essence, the individual would be non-gendered, or not part of that cultural heterosexual game that heterosexuals play. That isn't to say that they are unequal.

    A comparative example would be the identity of "uncle". "Uncle" can refer to the biological relationship between a male and his sibling's offspring, or could refer to the socially constructed idea of a male mentor, or role model, for a young person. If a male doesn't engage in the act of the socially constructed version, does he reserve the right to redefine "uncle" for his own purposes and declare that the term needs to be redefined to suit his own subjective idea? No. Of course not. In essence, they would be a non-uncle, or non-participants in that cultural construction.
  • Harry Hindu
    4.9k
    With sex or gender, this state of the social environment, the "social construction," is a concept/categorisation/language used to relate to people. It's not a distinction of a biological influence as opposed to a social influence, but an analysis of the sort of state (no matter its biological and environmental causes!) in question.TheWillowOfDarkness
    Then why is it that some people want to focus on culture as the primary source of one's gender and focus on changing only culture. I have yet to see anyone make the claim that we also need to make changes to our biology to get to a gender-neutral "utopia". Is this what you are suggesting? What part of our biology would we change?
  • TheWillowOfDarkness
    2.1k


    It's not a question of source at all.

    The argument is that gender and sex are themselves social states. Here a distinction is being made between states of the body (e.g. penises, vaginas, chromosomes, etc.) and the state of belonging to a gender or sex (e.g. "This person is male, the person is female, etc"). People are distinguishing a difference between the facts of the body and the facts of how someone is categorised under a sex and gender.

    The point isn't that gender or sex has a cultural source. It's, literally, that gender or sex categorisation is a cultural state itself, an act of a person using a certain language/category to describe someone else, rather than a biological state.

    And that's why no-one argues we need to make change to our biology to reach a gender-neutral "utopia." The fact of sex or gender, a social categorisation of a person with a body, is different to the fact of having a certain body. Changing one's biology, one's body, would have no impact on the sex or gender one belongs to, since the sex or gender one belongs is not given by the fact of a body.
  • Harry Hindu
    4.9k
    I believe that evolutionary biologists will not say that they are referring to social constructions when using terms like "males" and "females" when explaining how sexual reproduction evolved.
  • Walter Pound
    202
    People are distinguishing a difference between the facts of the body and the facts of how someone is categorised under a sex and gender.TheWillowOfDarkness

    This seems to equivocate how one knows X with what X actually is.

    Suppose that I am categorized one way or other, and we agree that the "categorizing" is a sociological phenomenon, it still seems possible that sex differences between men and women exist and that these biological differences pertain to the brain structure of the species. If this is the case, then sex differences lead to behavioral differences (at least average differences) between the species.
  • TheWillowOfDarkness
    2.1k
    The "social construction" of gender and sex is made all to clear in this case of David Reimer.

    What happened in that case? The social fact of sex and gender categorising failed David. Instead of "constructing" an understanding of David as he existed/as he belonged to sex and gender categories in himself, Dr. Money "constructed" the opposite. He got everyone to understand and treat David as something he was not. Instead of creating social states in which people understood David's sex and gender, he did the opposite: created states of misunderstanding David's sex and gender.

    David was failed because people built up the wrong idea about his sex and gender. People failed to build the concept of sex and gender which understood him. He was harmed not some notion of sex or gender's origin, but a failure of people to form an understanding which reflected him. Dr. Money build David a spike pit into which he was repeatedly thrown whenever sex and gender came up. He should have David a house to live in (i.e. watched David, noticed his sex and gender identity, and instead build the idea he was male despite lacking a penis).
  • Walter Pound
    202
    Money was on the extreme end of the blank slate theory; he truly thought that one's sense of being male or female was the product of social forces and social forces alone.

    The fact that David resisted these social forces is evidence that our gender identities are rooted in our brain's structure.

    P.S. I also think transgenders feel that they are born in the wrong body because of their brain structure as well. I am very skeptical of the social environment hypothesis.
  • TheWillowOfDarkness
    2.1k

    Maybe, but I'm not interested in the ad hoc "just so stories" of evo psych preachers here. You don't go to the Flat Earther for an account of Earth in 3-dimensions.

    I'm interested in people who are studying the subject in question, gender and sex, in relation to individuals, identities an society.
  • kill jepetto
    66
    Anyone else reject that gender identity even exists?

    There is male, female, combinations of, or neither male or female, genders determined by genetic make-up; some have penises called boys and some have vagina's called girls.

    As distinct from girls and boys, are transexuals (an abstract case - sugar coated), who identify as a boy when genetically a girl, or vice versa.

    Needless to say there was hardly any gender identification before gay pride took over; seems like a con intended on improving the social security, of abstract sexualities. It's slandering family-oritentated men and women by educating stupidly to their children and social groups.

    What I'd like to bring to topic is that I believe gender identity doesn't exist; and that gender is referring to something real, not based on a person's want to be noticed as a certain type of thousands, such as squirtle pokemon.
  • TheWillowOfDarkness
    2.1k


    You have bodily difference between people, sure.

    They just cannot be said to be sex difference, as they are not determined by a fact of sex categorisation, but by the facts of the bodies. Those bodies could be categorised in all sorts of different ways.

    It's actually the "X is X" equivocation which this is avoiding. Since it distinguishes the fact of body from the fact of social categorisation, no longer can people make the equivocation between sex/gender and the body. If someone talks about "a male," I can no longer just assume they necessarily have a certain bodily trait. I have to actually to the work of describing their body, if I want to deal with it.
  • Walter Pound
    202
    People can feel they are different than their biological sex says they are,Terrapin Station

    I think this conflates genetics with brain structure.

    One hypothesis for why there are transgenders is that there was something in the prenatal environment that leads to a brain structure that closely mirrors their gender identity. This means that one can accept those genetics reveals that one is biologically male or female, but those genetics themselves do not lead to one being male or female.
  • kill jepetto
    66


    You can no longer assume a male is a human with a penis?

    - gender is a spectrum of male and female (combinations/neither).
  • Walter Pound
    202
    They just cannot be said to be sex difference, as they are not determined by a fact of sex categorisation, but by the facts of the bodies. Those bodies could be categorised in all sorts of different ways.TheWillowOfDarkness

    All that is necessary for there to be sex differences is for the human species to display average differences in sexually dimorphic traits. Men are, on average, taller than women, and this is a sex difference within the human species.

    I think that society does have expectations between men and women and I can accept that those social standards are just social standards, but I don't think it makes any sense to deny what seems so obvious from an evolutionary standpoint. There are sex differences between men and women and this includes differences in regards to our brain.
  • TheWillowOfDarkness
    2.1k


    Bodies, it's a difference in bodies. On average, some bodies with a certain traits (e.g. penises, testes, etc.) are taller than some instances of other bodies with certain traits (e.g. vaginas, breasts, etc.).

    This is certainly not a sex difference in the context of an individual. Some individual woman are taller, on average, than the average of men. To be taller or shorter is not a sex difference with regards to an individual woman and her sex.
  • Walter Pound
    202
    I agree that some women are taller than some men, but I don't see how it follows that there can be no sexual dimorphic differences in the human species unless said differences are categorically distinct with no overlap between the sexes.

    Can you explain your reasoning?
  • TheWillowOfDarkness
    2.1k


    The issue isn't with a dimorphic difference in bodies or describing that. If we are dealing with a large group of bodies and their differences, we can describe that perfectly well. There is no barrier to doing that within the context of any species. One just looks at the bodies an describes them.

    Sex, however, is not a description of bodies. It's a categorisation of the individual. The moment sex enters the frame, we cease to be just be talking about a large aggregate of bodies we've seen. We start talking about an individual, where they belong and what we can expect of them.

    Using dimorphic description of bodies, myths are created about who individuals with a sex are and what they might do.

    Instead of looking at how the body of an individual might exist, we start making assumptions based on a dimorphic generalisation to the individual. We mistake dimorphic description of aggregate bodies for an account of any given individual with a sex.

    It's an outright failure of description. We are mistaking description dimorphic masses for an account of an individual with a sex.
  • andrewk
    2.1k
    The average height of men is higher than for females. When a woman is taller than the male average, do we say she has a 'male height'?

    No, we say she is a tall woman.

    Men are on average more proficient at mathematics than women. Whether that is nature or nurture is uncertain, but the observation is robust. When a woman is better than the average man at maths, do we say she 'has a male brain' or 'is like a male mathematician'?

    No, we say she is good at maths.

    The majority of men are sexually attracted only to women and the majority of women are sexually attracted only to men. When a woman is only sexually attracted to women, do we say she has 'male sexuality' or is transsexual?

    No, we say she is a lesbian.

    In all these cases we just act according to the basic principle that it is the norm to deviate from the average, and averages contain very limited information.

    What properties are there that have significant difference between male and female averages, or are more commonly possessed by one or the other sex, that cannot be dealt with by this common-sense approach (a woman that likes fixing bikes / a man that likes interior design), other than those that are physically shackled to biological sex, like ability to bear a child, or ability to produce sperm?.
  • Walter Pound
    202
    Okay, so you are saying that while there may be average sex differences between men and women that individual men and women are not necessarily in line with those average differences?

    If so, then we can agree.
  • Walter Pound
    202
    I think the denial of biology is sparked by a fear that if there are biological forces at play in shaping human behavior that those behaviors are as good as static and no amount of social change could alter them.
  • TheWillowOfDarkness
    2.1k


    More than that, I'm saying it means they are not really sex differences. The context in which sex categorisation gets applied is the individual. Such averages are never relevant to describing the individual at all because you are dealing with one rather than the aggregate. As such, the presence of sex is no reliable guide to describing the individual at all.

    At the individual level, all sorts of traits occur in all sorts of combinations. Dimorphic trends in masses bodies or concepts we might use as proxy for that (i.e. sex) cannot be trusted. Sex differences are dissolved because at the individual level, traits aren't exclusive to people of one sex or another.
  • Judaka
    1.7k
    But if gender is socially constructed, then gender isn't something that they have a choice in swapping for themselves. It would only be within the power of society as a whole to swap their "gender", not based on their own personal choices.Harry Hindu

    If gender is socially constructed then that means it's a learned behaviour which means you can unlearn it.
  • TheWillowOfDarkness
    2.1k
    We have to be a bit careful here. David Ramier resisted Money’s attempts to socialise him as female because he expressed a male identity and reflected the female one. This is not exactly the same resisting all social influence.

    There are couple of levels in which Ramier could be or was affected by socialisation.

    First, there is a possible surface level cause that Ramier’s aggressive socialisation into a female gender role might have affect his sense of self. If Ramier identified with behaviours associated with the male gender role in his environment, then he might have been driven to despise the female identity he was given. I don’t think it’s likely, but it is possible social influence.

    Secondly, and far more interestingly, is the constructing sex and gender categories themselves. Children don’t start out with an understanding of gender and sex categories. We have to teach them. In this respect, David Ramier was absolutely influenced by our social constructions of sex and gender.

    To even think of oneself as male or female, especially with respect to certain sorts of behaviours or bodies, one has to learn (or imagine) specific concepts of bodies and what it means for categorisation. David Ramier didn’t just, for example, think he was fine with a gender/sex of female and just take issue with his body (e.g. “I am female but my body is wrong”). His body was bound up with an particular idea of what being male of female entails, an concept, a “social construction” state of categorisation applied to bodies. He was deeply influenced/constituted be the social construct of sex and gender.

    The lesson to take from the Ramier case is not that people are immune to social influence, but that much of the world is beyond a social influence we might which to impart. (be that David Ramier resisting female identity or a trans person resisting a cis identity that Harry Hindu wishes to enforce.

    To trans people, the world is full of Dr. Moneys, all trying to make them into the cis gender person they are not).
  • Walter Pound
    202
    honestly, your hypothesis is unparisomious.

    The alternative hypothesis that I presented is far more parsimonious and is able to explain why even transgenders exist.
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