gender

i think one of the more interesting books i've read on gender and biological determinism is "Demonic Males"-- it cries out for a feminist critique, however.

http://www.amazon.com/Demonic-Males-Origins-Human-Violence/dp/0395877431/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1329339100&sr=8-1

Also

http://www.google.com/search?q=chevalier+d%27eon&sourceid=ie7&rls=com.microsoft:en-US&ie=utf8&oe=utf8

I don't "own" the other thread. I didn't even start it.

And that "Demonic Males" although I read it, was picked apart pretty thoroughly by other primate scientists so I don't think much "feminist" critique is needed.

so, the first thing i wanna do is to restate my take on gender and biology from that previous thread, as i'd like to know what others think:

gender's odd. it's clearly a cultural construct, both in a hazy, general sense that exists outside any specific individual and in the various ways we all individually (re)construct & perceive it. but that's not all it is. unlike "race", there's a substantial biological component to gender, at least to the extent that sex and gender are related. of course, we can only understand what "biological gender" might mean at several levels of remove, as filtered through a thicket of complex inherited constructions from which we can't even sensibly hope to extricate our perspectives.

speaking personally and not necessarily scientifically, it seems to me that biological gender probably does in certain respects "drive" human behavior and that these drivings do sometimes correspond at least partially with the dubious cultural constructs we've inherited. men, for example, seem in general to be more openly and aggressively violent than women, to the extent that male violence is a serious problem the world over. the fact that male violence has been a problem in every society and historic epoch i know of suggests to me that it probably has at least some basis in human biology.

with that in mind, it doesn't seem unreasonable to suppose that the relationship between testosterone and male competition might have something to do with this, as competition often expresses itself in aggression, and aggression in turn in violence. this is not to say that men are intractably violent, of course, or that women can't be violent themselves...

Oh and if you're going to trot out the tired old "feminists be making men all suspect bcuz they'd like them to acknowledge privilege" wow you are really taking the retro thing a bit far there.

Just from the PW review of that book, ryan, I will certainly not be reading it.

In their analysis, patriotism breeds aggression, yet, from an evolutionary standpoint, they reject the presumed inevitability of male violence and male dominance over women.

How enlightened and helpful of them. I'm so glad they took that first step toward actually doing something about a culture of rape and violence--they rejected its inevitability!

ah. well i read it a long time ago and it popped into my head on the "gender/biology" question. im not intending to defend it. not helpful bringing it up here, i guess.

That "differently framed space" crack was pretty dumb, you have to admit. I think the initial post was judgier than it had to be under the circumstances. But I'm interested to see what's discussed here, because this kind of reading material is stuff I'm prob never going to tackle on my own!

― one little aioli (Laurel), Wednesday, February 15, 2012 12:39 PM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark

It's not the reviving of the thread, or the addressing of the topic, it's the "hey! List of ppl who clashed w WCC & Laurel on the other thread, we got a new clubhouse here!" that irks.

― White Chocolate Cheesecake, Wednesday, February 15, 2012 12:40 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark

okay, that's fair. guilty as charged. i was feeling a bit shut out in that last thread (and perhaps prickly in response) and i got the feeling that at least a few others were on the same page. could have been a bit more politic about it itt, though.

anyway, i don't in any way mean to frame this thread as "not feminist". my hope was that it would feel like a free and open space to all, including WCC & laurel & anyone else.

in the terms of this thread id argue simply that nothing is really anything until it's interpreted as such, and i think that even includes how we respond to our own hormonal states.

in that there is no real direct through-line from hormonal and/or biological states to behavior.

contdzr: In your whole 2nd paragraph, I feel like you could remove "male" from "male violence" and you'd be closer to the truth?

In partic, this statement: "the fact that male violence has been a problem in every society and historic epoch i know of suggests to me that it probably has at least some basis in human biology." That's not science! That's your assumption from a general knowledge of history! I don't know if you're right or wrong, but gbx made some pretty fact-filled posts to the oth thread about how from a medical standpoint he wasn't going along with any kind of hormone-driven assumptions about violence or anything else.

gender is weird in that there's the sex<->gender link at one level, the internal psychological self-image, the perception of others, and then the entire idea of "traditional gender roles" or even gender roles at all, in that you probably should be able to decide what aspects and roles you apply to your life(style)

and about eighty other angles, really

And that "Demonic Males" although I read it, was picked apart pretty thoroughly by other primate scientists so I don't think much "feminist" critique is needed.

― White Chocolate Cheesecake, Wednesday, February 15, 2012 12:56 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

curious abt this. i read a good deal about it at the time, and it seemed to be fairly well-received, at least in mainstream circles at the time of publication. and criticism isn't necessarily negation, right? always meant to read it, tbh.

Laurel, can we at least assume that being born male in a society with customs that perpetuate male violence mean there's a relation, even if it's not directly a result of the organism, but rather the perceived gender role of the organism?

Oh and if you're going to trot out the tired old "feminists be making men all suspect bcuz they'd like them to acknowledge privilege" wow you are really taking the retro thing a bit far there.

are you replying to a post that hasn't even been made?

In their analysis, patriotism breeds aggression, yet, from an evolutionary standpoint, they reject the presumed inevitability of male violence and male dominance over women.

Huh? Patriotism is a relatively recent construct.

What if patriarchy was a very successful but increasingly less so human adaptation? Like, among all the other weird things in human evolution (and we above all species have had the most 'success' with cultural and social adaptation; we even eat in perhaps a highly unnatural way) like smaller jaws, etc..., we went through a period of endemic low-level violence that favored brutish males and now were still living through the genetic echo of that, even when it may or may not make much sense since anybody can sit in a control room and 'pilot' drones?

That "shut out" that you felt on that thread? That's pretty much how I feel on ~the rest of the Internet~ where I get advertising choices based on my google searches that mark me as "male" and try to sell me Rogaine. That's how I feel when my Sys Admin says "you're not a girl, you're a geek" as if that's supposed to be a compliment.

If you, as a man, are made to feel little ~shut out~ by a feminist space, you should actually take a little moment on how you have the rest of the world to feel comfortable in, which is not a choice for gender non-conforming women like me.

Opinions on "biological gender" presented without science to back them up make me so angry that I want to show you all exactly how little testosterone has to do with violence. But I dont get to write it off my violence as "testosterone" when I get angry, I just get written off as "crazy woman" and penalized in ways that a man getting angry will never face.

tbf the solution there is to stop society from accepting violence from any party, not to accept it from women, too

Laurel, can we at least assume that being born male in a society with customs that perpetuate male violence mean there's a relation, even if it's not directly a result of the organism, but rather the perceived gender role of the organism?

I don't know! But that's not what contend was asking, he is specifically talking about the likelihood of a link between masculine violence/aggression and testosterone...or something? If I'm parsing correctly.

@MW Replace 'genetic echo' with 'cultural echo' and I think you might have more of a point.

but gbx made some pretty fact-filled posts to the oth thread about how from a medical standpoint he wasn't going along with any kind of hormone-driven assumptions about violence or anything else.

Even if you ignore the fact that adolescent males are far more likely to kill, die or engage in anti-social bhaviors you haven't even looked at the (slightly, by comparison) bi-morphism of humans, meaning even if your aggressor is a woman, you have a statistical chance that, if you're a man, you outweigh her or are taller.

in the terms of this thread id argue simply that nothing is really anything until it's interpreted as such, and i think that even includes how we respond to our own hormonal states.

...in that there is no real direct through-line from hormonal and/or biological states to behavior.

― ryan, Wednesday, February 15, 2012 1:04 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

sure, but we don't need a direct through-line of the "hormone Y causes behavior X" sort in order to reasonably suppose that human chemistry might have some kind of influence on human behavior, especially when considered in a general sense.

I'm not interested in explaining books to ppl who haven't read them. If you're so interested in gender, go read them yourself. I gotta get off this thread because this level of anger makes me feel violent and women are socialized to direct that violence / anger on themselves.

...

@MW Replace 'genetic echo' with 'cultural echo' and I think you might have more of a point.

I am super curious about the effect of culture on human evolution. In aworld filled w/racism and the kind of sexism that leaves little girls out to die, the relationship is not tenuous in some cases, it's very direct. Thus I think genetic and cultural are intertwined.

If you aren't interested in a thread, indeed, why stick around? It can be interesting to others who are interested in it, and I think Con has made a sensible decision to separate his interests from the former thread and place them here.

xxp

man, you can cut the sexual tension in here with a knife, amiright?

This biological underpinings of gender discussion is kind of one that involves actual science and not just how we feel about things? Maybe it should have a reading list? Because otherwise this convo is kind of weird.

in the terms of this thread id argue simply that nothing is really anything until it's interpreted as such

Mr Shakespear?

the same society that is trying to tell WCC that her actions are untoward or that she's going to get male advertisements (which, I dunno, I get ads that seem more woman-targeted sometimes, advertising algorithms suck) is the one that told me as a kid that aggressively standing up to a bully was ok, I should be in the pursuing role in relationships, I should be protective of women in my life to an extent I wouldn't be for men, and that I am supposed to have interests or aspirations that I am not that into

Yet, as a white male, I can go up to people and they assume my privilege until I disavow enough of these and get a look of disgust or questioning? Do I lose some marginal amount of privilege, or is it just a stigma on top of that privilege?

man, you can cut the sexual tension in here with a knife

If there's one reason for sexual reproduction, it's 'tension'. It may be fucked to live and throw out lots of 'weirdos' but it's not as complacent nor as vulnerable as asexual reproduction. Hence us...

btw I left the other threads because I felt I wasn't really contributing anything -- not everyone is an endless font of deep thought! And really, other than trying to root around for devil's advocacy or whatever, I've got nothing some days

it's worth pointing out that biodeterministic assertions that are necessarily rooted in some dichotomous Testosterone/Estrogen ish betray a fundamental and devastating, argument-wise, misapprehension of some basic endocrine stuff

― i love pinfold cricket (gbx), Tuesday, February 14, 2012 1:17 AM

in that: genotypically men and women are pumping out estrogens and androgens all the time, but at differing rates and compositions. this is largely (but not entirely) due to having different soft things making different hormonal stews; stews that, in XX/XY or XXY or XYY or w/e, are comprised of hormones shared and produced by literally (almost) everyone and that (surprise) can be chemically induced to act more like what we simplistically believe are their binaries.

which is to say: it might be very likely that if someone's hormonal ecosystem, with its v special concentration ratios, is experiencing a surfeit of testosterone, that that may predispose someone to aggression. or "aggression." and so sure XY "men" are more likely to roiling in that brew.

but that says nothing about the actual, root-causes of violence and violent behavior, what's doing the roiling. many ppl have a genetic predisposition to cancer (and these genes are often ~less~ subtle than the in-yr-face obviousness of X/Y phenotypic difference). and some of these people will, "inevitably," go on to develop cancer. but many of them dramatically increase their risk by engaging in behaviors and exposing themselves to risks (maybe unknowingly!) that also predispose to cancer. would we be right to demur on the topic of "bad behavior" or "social determinants" and make the genetic component the essential one, because it's more "science-y"? because that would be dumb.

so yeah ok i guess retrospectively males are pretty violent and sure if you take steroids (as a man or a woman) you're gonna be more hot-tempered than if you didn't. and criminals have excessive levels of testosterone or something (note the word "excessive"). big fucking deal! PCP, booze, and lust make all ppl violent and criminals also have "excessive levels" of drug addiction, mental illness, minority status, and connections to poverty.

tl;dr even pretending to get serious about the ~hormonal~ roots of gendered relations is roughly equivalent to phrenology, both scientifically and ethically

― i love pinfold cricket (gbx), Tuesday, February 14, 2012 1:46 AM

I kind of lost the plot after that tbh.

contdzr: In your whole 2nd paragraph, I feel like you could remove "male" from "male violence" and you'd be closer to the truth?

In partic, this statement: "the fact that male violence has been a problem in every society and historic epoch i know of suggests to me that it probably has at least some basis in human biology." That's not science! That's your assumption from a general knowledge of history! I don't know if you're right or wrong, but gbx made some pretty fact-filled posts to the oth thread about how from a medical standpoint he wasn't going along with any kind of hormone-driven assumptions about violence or anything else.

― one little aioli (Laurel), Wednesday, February 15, 2012 1:05 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark

first part of that i disagree with. yes, violence has always been a problem. but males seem always (in every culture and throughout history) to be disproportionately responsible for extreme acts violence and aggression. regardless of how we interpret this fact, it remains a fact, and i don't see why we should sweep it under the table.

fwiw, i responded to GBX in that other thread. while testosterone might not be clearly linked to male violence, it is clearly linked to make competition and seems to be produced as a result of victory over other males. the competition in question is often aggressive and even violent, and from those few things it seems reasonable to at least keep the hypothesis on the table.

^ when i say that, i mean scientifically linked.

sure, but we don't need a direct through-line of the "hormone Y causes behavior X" sort in order to reasonably suppose that human chemistry might have some kind of influence on human behavior, especially when considered in a general sense.

yeah, this is in fact a very complex problem.

i think my take is simply this: "gender" and "biology" are entirely separate realms. they are absolutely irreducible to each other. incommensurable. just in the way your nervous systems only communicates with itself, gender and biology are closed off from one another. at best they are "environmental irritations" that are nevertheless folded into the self-referential processes at work in both.

in fact, and it sounds weird, but it's just as pertinent a question to ask how gender influences biology!

maybe men are just told their entire lives that they're more violent and the masculine culture reinforces that?

God these dicussions feel so depressing to me :/

the natural correlary to that testosterone assertion, contendz, is that is that the social construct of masculinity is rooted in competition, aggression, and acts of violence. and that is ... to me, limiting, especially if we view gender as either dichotomized or (male-female) spectral.

That "shut out" that you felt on that thread? That's pretty much how I feel on ~the rest of the Internet~ where I get advertising choices based on my google searches that mark me as "male" and try to sell me Rogaine. That's how I feel when my Sys Admin says "you're not a girl, you're a geek" as if that's supposed to be a compliment.

If you, as a man, are made to feel little ~shut out~ by a feminist space, you should actually take a little moment on how you have the rest of the world to feel comfortable in, which is not a choice for gender non-conforming women like me.

Opinions on "biological gender" presented without science to back them up make me so angry that I want to show you all exactly how little testosterone has to do with violence. But I dont get to write it off my violence as "testosterone" when I get angry, I just get written off as "crazy woman" and penalized in ways that a man getting angry will never face.

― White Chocolate Cheesecake, Wednesday, February 15, 2012 1:11 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark

hey look. it's possible that i felt shut out of the other thread for good reasons that i need to reflect on. and it's possible that i felt shut out due to interpersonal shit that isn't quite as politically clear-cut. or both. fwiw, it's possible that i did reflect in the manner you suggest and did this anyway. i humbly submit that i did.

i mean, i'd love to talk to someone about the science involved. that's a big part of why i brought this stuff up here.

contend, you are normally so sensible and otm in my estimation that it's a crazy new world in which I have to stop myself from reflexively agreeing with you, but you have not brought any facts to this thread except your own wondering about stuff.

I'm not saying that wondering about stuff isn't great and good for discussions, but there is actual research in the area this thread purports to be about, and WCC and ryan and (hopefully!) zora and other people who're engaged with stuff like this right now, will drop some info and then we can look into the studies and critique them, maybe, and stuff like that.

That was a many-post xp in case that wasn't obvious.

So it's too simple to assume that gender isn't 'based' around ranges of phenotypes?

I guess where I'm getting with this is: I think we can all agree that the gender norms and prescribed gender roles in society have a number of harmful effects, the most visible being male privilege -- that is where the feminism thread was going, and really I think that bring this discussion elsewhere is worthwhile as a big picture thing. Because the feminist discussion is supremely important in the ~now~.

But what about the long term? Is there any way we can get to a point where a lot of the baggage of supposed gender roles is dropped? At the biological base, we're stuck with only one sex being able to bear children. But the traditional mother/father roles are already being reevaluated, especially with marriage between any two consenting adults (and the assumed child-rearing privileges) becoming the norm.

Is gay marriage an automatic boon to the negatives of gender roles, in that it breaks them down?

I am learning new language recently and I'm super into the idea of performance, the performance of gender, and I thought plax/judith's post on the other thread was rly beautiful and visionary about where we could go with gender, if we made it happen.

:)

maybe men are just told their entire lives that they're more violent and the masculine culture reinforces that?

― valleys of your mind (mh), Wednesday, February 15, 2012 1:24 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the natural correlary to that testosterone assertion, contendz, is that is that the social construct of masculinity is rooted in competition, aggression, and acts of violence. and that is ... to me, limiting, especially if we view gender as either dichotomized or (male-female) spectral.

― "renegade" gnome (remy bean), Wednesday, February 15, 2012 1:27 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

okay, that makes sense. but one of the things i found really interesting in that other thread was this quote brought up by La Lechera, from the book The First Sexual Revolution: Lust and Liberty In the 18th Century:

"Adulterers and prostitutes could be executed and women were agreed to be more libidinous than men – then in the 18th century attitudes to sex underwent an extraordinary change"

this is fascinating, not least because it contradicts what current western societies often try to tell us about the "natural" nature of human sexual roles, attitudes and behaviors. this supports the idea that gender is a cultural construct, and as such is as fluid as culture itself can be. but the "disproportionate" nature of male violence does not seem to be similarly fluid. instead, it seems to be pretty consistent throughout history and across cultures. that's why i've focused so much on it in both of these threads. it's an outlier. a special case.

I feel like I'm venturing more into the ridiculous self-help dump thread with this, but I feel like discovering where we would optimally like to go with the future of these things and then shaping our dialogue to influence and persuade others in the world at large is more effective than squabbling over differences of definition

contenderizer, no one is arguing that males have been more violent historically or that current male culture is more violent, I think?