Rolling Maleness and Masculinity Discussion Thread

"quasi-darwinian just-so stories to back up what you thought or hoped people shd be like (in this instance psychotically aggressive)"

there is a part in the African book where he mentions that humans likely evolved from a species of ape now extinct who were very violent and who invented weapons and that we did not come from the peace and love vegetarian primates and i had no idea if it was true but i wanted to believe it because Trump.

w/parenting and masculinity, it goes w/o saying that there are parents (and not just dads!) who will allow or sometimes implicitly encourage some of the less-decent aspects of masculine behavior bc they don't want their sons to be soft. my son had a friend whose behavior was horrible and never checked by his dad, it was usually dismissed as a boys-will-be-boys thing. up to and including the last time we saw him at this kid's birthday party, when they were in a bounce house together and the kid grabbed my son by the neck and dug his fingers in and flung him around. the dad went over while this was happening, and i figured he'd tell him to cut it out, but instead he pulled out his phone and snapped a pic!

my wife had steam coming out of her ears and we cut off contact after that when our son told us he didn't want to see him again (and fortunately this coincided with us no longer going to the same preschool as that kid.)

mum and dad also had a book which proved that humans had been aquatic mammals for a while after they stopped being apes, and that's why we have curly public hair under our arms (sadly i don't recall its title)

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/413dcQq1KHL._SL500_SX373_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

that behavior isn't exactly limited to boys, since girls can have unchecked rough behavior too, but it was part of a larger picture there with that friendship and with other random boys he'd bully at playgrounds. xp

I love when someone brings up the aquatic ape theopry

that's it! at least, that's the author -- it was actually the book before that one:

https://pictures.abebooks.com/HALLOFBOOKS/md/md7641565169.jpg

pfft that's barely a challop, MY dad has the following on his bookshelf

https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1355040022l/3304466.jpg

"When asked what genre these works belonged in, Kurtén coined the term paleofiction to describe his oeuvre" 👌🏽

maybe its cuz my brother & sister were so opposite gender stereotype (my sister is in a phd program for math in fact) but i dont really buy anything but the loosest connections between gender & behavior, every kid in school is shaped by socialization & the socially gendered behavior *of the other kids*

you are not a parent iirc

Yes please let us keep trying to settle this centuries-old either/or debate itt, without embracing the possibilities of both/and.

1. i allowed for the possibilities of both and thus "loosest connections"
2. sorry that my involvement was the exact moment when we're no longer allowed to consider this question

it's def "both/and" imo, it's just interesting trying to tease out how they interact and where

xp

you are not a parent iirc

― Οὖτις, Wednesday, November 1, 2017 2:36 PM (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

how is only including the perspectives of parents a legitimate boundary for this conversation

in the circles in which i travel it has gone too much to the side of 'socialization' so when i suggest that biology plays a role i mean it more as a corrective than as an either/or. i think it's both. that said, it would be strange if humans were the only animals where gender behavior was even primarily the product of socialization. the rest of the animal kingdom has very clear social roles depending on the sex of the individual. we can obviously rise above that but when i hear conversations that assume this kind of radical butlerian social construct theory as accurate - it seems v silly to me idk.

when watching Mindhunter i wonder why insanity isn't an equal opportunity employer. jeffrey dahmer's parents were apparently really nice and normal and they loved him a lot but he just started mutilating and killing animals at a young age and the rest is history. what is it about maleness that makes male insanity so much more...extreme. okay, obviously, dahmer is the extreme of the extremes. but you really have to go out of your way to think of female equivalents. complulsive behavior in general can seem really off the charts when it comes to men/males.

it seems even sillier to me that attraction to trucks was considered a biologically-linked trait a few posts upthread

i wonder if you're smart enough to figure it out without it being spelled out for you

Narrator: he was not

Err, I've not seen Mindhunter and this is just an aside, but Dahmer's mother tried to kill herself when he was young, very needy attention wise, and young Dahmer didn't get a lot attention as a result. Not to excuse him, but portraying it as "he grew up in a loving family" is a bit of a stretch. But that probably goes for most.

xxxp to scott

isnt this the kind of dick measuring this thread is suppoesd to be dismantling? or is mordy leaning on his biological inclination to dick measuring

oh cool here we go

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2583786/

this one shows that male rhesus monkeys prefer cars and female rhesus monkeys don't have a preference. there's another study about vervet monkeys where the females preferred dolls and the males preferred cars. this suggests to me that there's a biological component or that the monkeys are socializing gender.

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/09/101220-chimpanzees-play-nature-nurture-science-animals-evolution/

Now new research suggests that such gender-driven desires are also seen in young female chimpanzees in the wild—a behavior that possibly evolved to make the animals better mothers, experts say.

Young females of the Kanyawara chimpanzee community in Kibale National Park, Uganda, use sticks as rudimentary dolls and care for them like the group's mother chimps tend to their real offspring. The behavior, which was very rarely observed in males, has been witnessed more than a hundred times over 14 years of study.

I'm not one to pass over a legit whaling on d40 but wtf has he said wrong now that is so objectionable?

like i said - we can rise above this stuff but there's a difference between aspirational gender discourse and the pretense that all gender is socially constructed

"but i dont really buy anything but the loosest connections between gender & behavior"

i guess i really do buy the connections. the best case scenario for me is just nothing being a big deal as far as gender goes. which is why i dream of a world where the co-ed shower scene in starship troopers is a no big deal reality.

first we just bind ourselves together in a fascist war-state

Me too Scott me too

why wouldn't apes complex social relations affect their development

but anyway i don't see why this issue matters either way

i suspect there's something inherently aggressive about the action of driving that might be more attractive to men? just the idea of moving this massive thing forward and getting a rush off that.

men much more likely to make unnecessarily sharp or aggressive moves when they want to make a point to another driver. and men sure love those sharp 90 degree turns!

one reason it might matter is bc it determines how we educate our children. if males can be socialized to learn the same way females are then we should just do that but if they aren't we need to make adjustments to the current sitting in a chair for 8 hours a day regime. xp

why insanity isn't an equal opportunity employer

Disabilities aren't either; almost all of my son's special-needsy world is boys. Autism, ADHD, speech delays, cerebral palsy, Angelman syndrome, fragile X. Boys boys boys boys. We know of like two girls in special education, both apparently with Down Syndrome.

My go joes were like dolls

xp I'm guessing that has something to do with this:

The X-chromosome has played a crucial role in the development of sexually selected characteristics for over 300 million years. During that time it has accumulated a disproportionate number of genes concerned with mental functions. For reasons that are not yet understood, there is an excess proportion of genes on the X-chromosome that are associated with the development of intelligence, with no obvious links to other significant biological functions.[22][23] There has also been interest in the possibility that haploinsufficiency for one or more X-linked genes has a specific impact on development of the Amygdala and its connections with cortical centres involved in social–cognition processing or the ‘social brain'.[22][24]

I think if we're going to vary how we educate our children it doesn't make sense for gender to be the determining factor given how much variation there is within them

Although now I'm thinking of my friends whose daughter has Rett Syndrome and that seems to appear disproportionately in girls despite also being on the X chromosome.

xp also I don't think socialisation at that depth is within the control of the govt/education system

"we should just do that but if they aren't we need to make adjustments to the current sitting in a chair for 8 hours a day regime."

my 12 year old boy spent the entire school day yesterday biking 17 miles with his class. and they tied in science, math, etc to the trip. that's the newfangled way.

like i said, i don't think biology doesn't matter, that's an absurd position. i just think society still has a much more overdetermined notion of how tenuous gendered ideas & biology really are; that pink was the color for boys & blue a color for girls 100 years ago, for ex

Male monkeys, like boys, showed consistent and strong preferences for wheeled toys, while female monkeys, like girls, showed greater variability in preferences.

maybe i'm missing something, but this gives away the game. The study is set up as if there were two genders, when in fact women show "greater variability in preference," not a preference for female toys. whereas males tended to be drawn to the "male" toys. Built into the study is a gender binary which assumes there can only be two kinds of toys, an assumption that monkeys will fit into one of two groups. these two groups only exist bc of the boundaries of the study, which presumes two possible answers going in. maybe im missing something but it feels like the deck is stacked?

i don't understand what is confusing you. in that study the boy monkeys preferred to play with wheeled toys and the female monkeys played with wheeled toys and with dolls.

Phil, my son's condition (a vanishingly rare KDM5C mutation) is x-linked and overwhelmingly hits males. Females are carriers but usually only have mild effects, if any.

my 12 year old boy spent the entire school day yesterday biking 17 miles with his class. and they tied in science, math, etc to the trip. that's the newfangled way.

this is a big reason why we have our kids in private school - we felt they'd cater to their learning needs better w/ smaller classes, more inventive pedagogy, etc. (the other big reason is religious.) the public schools here are great - nationally acclaimed - but they are basically sitting a desk all day. unfortunately most ppl don't have the luxury of choosing.

one reason it might matter is bc it determines how we educate our children. if males can be socialized to learn the same way females are then we should just do that but if they aren't we need to make adjustments to the current sitting in a chair for 8 hours a day regime. xp

― Mordy, Wednesday, November 1, 2017 2:56 PM (eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

fwiw i dont think we even disagree about this, but i'm not sure why it would matter if its biological or socially determined; if men are struggling to sit in a chair x hours a day more than women bc they've been allowed to run wild vs. they're driven to run wild, it still has to be dealt with. the socialized reality isn't something that can just be undone with progressive parenting or whatever, its a deep societal thing regardless

ah, right, the x-chromosome. i knew that. i think that's the thing responsible for my response when i learned about trepanning: huh, that makes sense! let some air in.

i honestly believe that's what makes the idea of a gunshot to the head so appealing to so many men. relieves the pressure.

thread has taken a dark turn

these two groups only exist bc of the boundaries of the study

LOL

Not to derail, but this is a condescending, reductive and inaccurate statement:

this is a big reason why we have our kids in private school - we felt they'd cater to their learning needs better w/ smaller classes, more inventive pedagogy, etc. (the other big reason is religious.) the public schools here are great - nationally acclaimed - but they are basically sitting a desk all day. unfortunately most ppl don't have the luxury of choosing.

I’ve been vocal about school types before, and I have NEVER been in a private school whose pedagogy is more cutting-edge than some of the most under-resourced publics I’ve taught in.

LOL

― Οὖτις, Wednesday, November 1, 2017 3:09 PM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

if you don't understand what i'm saying theres no need to be a dick about it