How much god damn evidence do we need before the urge to be scientifically correct overcomes the urge to be politically correct?
How much do you need to be shown otherwise? Right is America, that question has been retried w/ wealth never being picked.
Did he try any matriarchal societies?
Biology would seem to dictate that men and women would have different strategies. Since women carry the baby for 9 months and have a limited fertility over their lifetime. Though it's a poor example because reproduction is the same for all women. While different women have different talents and strengths.
Even in mate selection you can't ignore social pressures. If you don't believe me bring someone home your parents wouldn't approve of.
there is more variation of talents in the sexes than between them.
Can you say precisely what you mean by that, mathematically? I'm envisioning two clouds of points here, and I'm trying to figure out what it would mean for there to be more variation in each of the clouds than between the clouds.
How much god damn evidence do we need before the urge to be scientifically correct overcomes the urge to be politically correct?
How much do you need to be shown otherwise? Right is America, that question has been retried w/ wealth never being picked.
Did he try any matriarchal societies?
I don't know.
However, I'd like to make another point here: How many matriarchal societies are there? Not many.
But hey, most societies have been and are patriarchal because of social conditioning, and not because men in general are assertive, aggressive, and obsessed with wealth and status, and that their social conditioning merely reinforces these typical genetic masculine traits!
Similarly, I wonder why there haven't been any societies where women formed war bands and raided neighboring villages and collected men as trophies. Or where women hunted and men collected berries? Social repression, or genes?
"we know that social conditioning generally reinforces genetic disposition."
That's an awful big claim ege. Care to back it up with something?
Matt Ridley made a really good case for it and I'm digging through one of his books to find the exact argument. It was along the lines of natural selection and sexual selection, and how if social conditioning did not reinforce genetic disposition, those genes would have been eliminated out of the gene pool. That men did hunting in the Pleistocene period not because they were told to by their elders, but because they were as a gender better at throwing things at moving objects than they were at paying attention to detail, e.g. spotting small objects like fruit and whatnot among the bushes and in the forest canopy. So their genes were more successful at being carried on to the next generation; they brought home more food, improved their social status, and mated with more women.
Yeah, I don't think anyone has the urge to be scientifically wrong.
But if being scientifically correct conflicts with being politically correct, then a lot of people would rather be scientifically wrong than be politically incorrect (because political incorrectness means no funding for your experiments). That, and a lot of scientists begin their research with an extreme political correctness bias; for instance, they do studies to try to prove their belief that men and women are essentially the same and they behave similarly and respond to the same kinds of treatments and incentives. They end up being horribly wrong, but politically correct.
So I am worried that some fields of science, on some topics, has become a propaganda tool for political correctness.
Biology would seem to dictate that men and women would have different strategies. Since women carry the baby for 9 months and have a limited fertility over their lifetime. Though it's a poor example because reproduction is the same for all women. While different women have different talents and strengths.
Yeah, basically. Men like porn not because men have been taught by their parents and their society to like porn, but because male mammals are genetically disposed to promiscuity and casual sexual encounters, especially with strangers (a lot of porn is sexual interaction between two strangers; it is very rarely a guy having sex with his wife or girlfriend). Women on the other hand generally do not enjoy porn because they are sexually repressed, but they are sexually repressed because being promiscuous until the advent or birth control only earned them 9 months of pregnancy and a child they were, again, genetically disposed to look after.
Yeah, basically. Men like porn not because men have been taught by their parents and their society to like porn, but because male mammals are genetically disposed to promiscuity and casual sexual encounters, especially with strangers (a lot of porn is sexual interaction between two strangers; it is very rarely a guy having sex with his wife or girlfriend). Women on the other hand generally do not enjoy porn because they are sexually repressed, but they are sexually repressed because being promiscuous until the advent or birth control only earned them 9 months of pregnancy and a child they were, again, genetically disposed to look after.
Hahahah.
Oh my god I need to stay out of this thread. /runs away
Look, if you want to disagree, then disagree. This is D&D, no?
Snarky remarks don't get us anywhere. I mean sure, in your own little world I'm sure you've convinced yourself that I am an idiot and will never see the right side of things, but I assure you that when you say shit like that, I share similar views about you.
That said, certain people (possibly many, depending on where you are talking about) who want to bully aside "political correctness" to speak "hard truths" are simply racists and/or misogynists eager to commit a confirmation-bias-soaked naturalistic fallacy.
In response to DisGrace, who kindly responded to me in the [chat] thread rather than here.
I don't like porn because 98.4% of it it treats women like fuck toys instead of people.
Granted. I fully agree. However, we know this doesn't hold true in a general sense because research has shown that pictures of naked men do not turn women nearly as much as pictures of naked women do turn on men. Notice that we're talking about pictures here, so nobody is treated like fuck toys. Just pictures. Pictures of men in suggestive poses, and pictures of women in suggestive poses. Sure, you may not like porn because its objectification of women, but that is not the only reason you don't like porn, research says.
What about romance novels? Do men not enjoy romance novels because romance novels objectify men and treat them as romance toys? Or because they don't contain enough promiscuous sex, violence, power struggles, car chases, and what-have-you?
3.) You do know that "genetically speaking" female animals of all types, women included, are going to want to fuck lots of other specimens of the same animal - so that those genes you think are running so much behind the scenes ACTUALLY GET PASSED ON TO THEIR OFFSPRING. There's no point in avoiding wasting energy not being pregnant if you and all your precious genes are just going to be an evolutionary dead end.
Well yeah, it is better to be pregnant than not, genetically speaking. But the reason they fuck lots of individuals is not because they want to make sure their genes actually get passed on. Elaborated below.
In fact many female animals are very promiscuous, much more so than scientists used to believe - check out sperm selection at some point.
First of all, female animals are more promiscuous than scientists used to believe, that is true. But - and this is a fact - the gender that makes the most investment in procreation is the least promiscuous one. Sperm is cheap, egg is expensive.
Second of all, the reason many female animals have sex often is not to simply pass their genes on, but to make sure they get help with parental care from the largest number of males possible. If the bird is fucking 10 males and lays eggs, the male birds cannot know for sure if the offspring are theirs, so they won't take the chance by breaking the eggs.
In gorillas, if a male gorilla comes across a pregnant female gorilla and he does not recognize her, he will kill her. Female gorillas, to make up for this, copulate with as many male gorillas as possible. Similar behavior can be observed in felines, particularly lions and tigers who kill the offspring of the females they don't know in order to try to put her back in heat.
4.) You are probably not going to give a shit about anything I say because you already "know" that there are Biological Differences Between Men and Women and boys genetically like Tonka Trucks and Lego and girls must have Barbies and kitchen/laundry/baby doll playsets. 5.) seriously, wtf?
I never said anything about "must" or even "should". I am not prescribing behavior, I am merely describing it.
How much god damn evidence do we need before the urge to be scientifically correct overcomes the urge to be politically correct?
How much do you need to be shown otherwise? Right is America, that question has been retried w/ wealth never being picked.
Did he try any matriarchal societies?
I don't know.
However, I'd like to make another point here: How many matriarchal societies are there? Not many.
But hey, most societies have been and are patriarchal because of social conditioning, and not because men in general are assertive, aggressive, and obsessed with wealth and status, and that their social conditioning merely reinforces these typical genetic masculine traits!
Similarly, I wonder why there haven't been any societies where women formed war bands and raided neighboring villages and collected men as trophies. Or where women hunted and men collected berries? Social repression, or genes?
Historically, there have been a lot, actually. It's just that the European stock happened to fall into that type, and they imposed on the rest of the world.
For example, many who study mythology find a part of the Japanese creation myth surprising because women were dominant at the time of its first appearance.
there is more variation of talents in the sexes than between them.
Can you say precisely what you mean by that, mathematically? I'm envisioning two clouds of points here, and I'm trying to figure out what it would mean for there to be more variation in each of the clouds than between the clouds.
To pick a random example, say, upper body strength... the idea is that the difference between the strongest man and the weakest man is greater than the difference between the male mean and the female mean. Thus, greater variation within sex.
In response to Medophine, who kindly responded to me in the [chat] thread rather than here.
I don't like porn because 98.4% of it it treats women like fuck toys instead of people.
Granted. I fully agree. However, we know this doesn't hold true in a general sense because research has shown that pictures of naked men do not turn women nearly as much as pictures of naked women do turn on men. Notice that we're talking about pictures here, so nobody is treated like fuck toys. Just pictures. Pictures of men in suggestive poses, and pictures of women in suggestive poses. Sure, you may not like porn because its objectification of women, but that is not the only reason you don't like porn, research says.
What about romance novels? Do men not enjoy romance novels because romance novels objectify men and treat them as romance toys? Or because they don't contain enough promiscuous sex, violence, power struggles, car chases, and what-have-you?
Have you ever thought that perhaps the blood-rush-to-naughty-bits-after-looking-at-nudie-pics findings might be because we are also socialized to consider the female body as "erotic" and "sexy", while things like body hair and those wacky-looking dongers hanging down between your legs, which are properties belonging primarily to males, are not so much eroticized in our culture?
3.) You do know that "genetically speaking" female animals of all types, women included, are going to want to fuck lots of other specimens of the same animal - so that those genes you think are running so much behind the scenes ACTUALLY GET PASSED ON TO THEIR OFFSPRING. There's no point in avoiding wasting energy not being pregnant if you and all your precious genes are just going to be an evolutionary dead end.
Well yeah, it is better to be pregnant than not, genetically speaking. But the reason they fuck lots of individuals is not because they want to make sure their genes actually get passed on. Elaborated below.
I look forward to it.
In fact many female animals are very promiscuous, much more so than scientists used to believe - check out sperm selection at some point.
First of all, female animals are more promiscuous than scientists used to believe, that is true. But - and this is a fact - the gender that makes the most investment in procreation is the least promiscuous one. Sperm is cheap, egg is expensive.
Second of all, the reason many female animals have sex often is not to simply pass their genes on, but to make sure they get help with parental care from the largest number of males possible. If the bird is fucking 10 males and lays eggs, the male birds cannot know for sure if the offspring are theirs, so they won't take the chance by breaking the eggs.
In gorillas, if a male gorilla comes across a pregnant female gorilla and he does not recognize her, he will kill her. Female gorillas, to make up for this, copulate with as many male gorillas as possible. Similar behavior can be observed in felines, particularly lions and tigers who kill the offspring of the females they don't know in order to try to put her back in heat.
Animals want to pass their own genes on, they want the best possible genes to combine with their own, and they want the best possible care for their gene-containing offspring. (Blah blah blah, "want" is not meant to imply conscious thought, etc.) However, what you said was that females didn't want to have sex because they are trying to avoid babies, which is actually pretty much the opposite of what our genes are telling us.
4.) You are probably not going to give a shit about anything I say because you already "know" that there are Biological Differences Between Men and Women and boys genetically like Tonka Trucks and Lego and girls must have Barbies and kitchen/laundry/baby doll playsets. 5.) seriously, wtf?
I never said anything about "must" or even "should". I am not prescribing behavior, I am merely describing it.
But you know this.
I apologize, I thought that the fact that you want to have different curricula for boys and girls based on their inherent tendency toward engineering and/or sociology rather implied that you did have a "should" in mind. Or the fact that you're brassed off that people dare to be upset when it's implied that women are worse at doing math and science and most other things that take place outside the kitchen. Such an imagination I have!
How much god damn evidence do we need before the urge to be scientifically correct overcomes the urge to be politically correct?
How much do you need to be shown otherwise? Right is America, that question has been retried w/ wealth never being picked.
Did he try any matriarchal societies?
I don't know.
However, I'd like to make another point here: How many matriarchal societies are there? Not many.
But hey, most societies have been and are patriarchal because of social conditioning, and not because men in general are assertive, aggressive, and obsessed with wealth and status, and that their social conditioning merely reinforces these typical genetic masculine traits!
Similarly, I wonder why there haven't been any societies where women formed war bands and raided neighboring villages and collected men as trophies. Or where women hunted and men collected berries? Social repression, or genes?
Historically, there have been a lot, actually. It's just that the European stock happened to fall into that type, and they imposed on the rest of the world.
For example, many who study mythology find a part of the Japanese creation myth surprising because women were dominant at the time of its first appearance.
Okay. Over the course of human history, how many patriarchal societies have there been, versus how many matriarcal ones?
What about species of apes and other mammals? In how many of them females are dominant and in how many of them males?
Most importantly - and I want you to answer this even if you cannot answer the previous questions - are male gorillas dominant because they have been socially conditioned, or because natural selection has selected the dominant ones over the submissive ones?
there is more variation of talents in the sexes than between them.
Can you say precisely what you mean by that, mathematically? I'm envisioning two clouds of points here, and I'm trying to figure out what it would mean for there to be more variation in each of the clouds than between the clouds.
To pick a random example, say, upper body strength... the idea is that the difference between the strongest man and the weakest man is greater than the difference between the male mean and the female mean. Thus, greater variation within sex.
For example. I say "You have 10 men and 10 women. Who do you pick for your basketball team?"
The answer is "the tallest"(well, and the best at basketball but shush). That might mean you get 80% men. It may mean you get 90% women. There are odds, there are averages, but until the shortest man is taller than the tallest woman, they're not completely useful when you have better comparisons that are easier and more useful on an individual basis.
Most importantly - and I want you to answer this even if you cannot answer the previous questions - are male gorillas dominant because they have been socially conditioned, or because natural selection has selected the dominant ones over the submissive ones?
I think they're dominant because they're twice as big.
And if you're wondering why the fuck there are so few females in technical disciplines, instead of dropping verbal diarrhea on us, try googling "Jade Raymond". That should answer it.
So you're saying that the case of one person explains the case of everyone? That prejudice and social pressure is the only reason why there are so few women in technical fields?
I see.
In high school my counselor recommended that I take Home Ec instead of AP Computer Science. Can't speak for all women out there, but I doubt that happens to very many men.
In response to Medophine, who kindly responded to me in the [chat] thread rather than here.
I don't like porn because 98.4% of it it treats women like fuck toys instead of people.
Granted. I fully agree. However, we know this doesn't hold true in a general sense because research has shown that pictures of naked men do not turn women nearly as much as pictures of naked women do turn on men. Notice that we're talking about pictures here, so nobody is treated like fuck toys. Just pictures. Pictures of men in suggestive poses, and pictures of women in suggestive poses. Sure, you may not like porn because its objectification of women, but that is not the only reason you don't like porn, research says.
What about romance novels? Do men not enjoy romance novels because romance novels objectify men and treat them as romance toys? Or because they don't contain enough promiscuous sex, violence, power struggles, car chases, and what-have-you?
Have you ever thought that perhaps the blood-rush-to-naughty-bits-after-looking-at-nudie-pics findings might be because we are also socialized to consider the female body as "erotic" and "sexy", while things like body hair and those wacky-looking dongers hanging down between your legs, which are properties belonging primarily to males, are not so much eroticized in our culture?
Yeah I have. But I find it hard to believe that social conditioning is the only reason for it, or the underlying reason.
Look at animals; it is almost always the females who start showing physical signs of fertility when they are ready to mate. And it is not only male humans that go crazy at the sight of the naked female body. Are chimpanzees and gorillas socially conditioned to have the blood-rush-to-naughty-bits response? No. So in humans social conditioning cannot be the underlying reason for that reaction, although it certainly has an effect - perhaps this is because social conditioning, in this case, reinforces genetic disposition?
In fact many female animals are very promiscuous, much more so than scientists used to believe - check out sperm selection at some point.
First of all, female animals are more promiscuous than scientists used to believe, that is true. But - and this is a fact - the gender that makes the most investment in procreation is the least promiscuous one. Sperm is cheap, egg is expensive.
Second of all, the reason many female animals have sex often is not to simply pass their genes on, but to make sure they get help with parental care from the largest number of males possible. If the bird is fucking 10 males and lays eggs, the male birds cannot know for sure if the offspring are theirs, so they won't take the chance by breaking the eggs.
In gorillas, if a male gorilla comes across a pregnant female gorilla and he does not recognize her, he will kill her. Female gorillas, to make up for this, copulate with as many male gorillas as possible. Similar behavior can be observed in felines, particularly lions and tigers who kill the offspring of the females they don't know in order to try to put her back in heat.
Animals want to pass their own genes on, they want the best possible genes to combine with their own, and they want the best possible care for their gene-containing offspring. (Blah blah blah, "want" is not meant to imply conscious thought, etc.) However, what you said was that females didn't want to have sex because they are trying to avoid babies, which is actually pretty much the opposite of what our genes are telling us.
No, they are not trying to avoid babies, of course not. They are trying to avoid babies by low quality males, and they are trying to avoid unnecessary babies. Whereas males are basically looking for every opportunity to copulate; they'll literally sleep with any female they come across. Polygamy is much, much more common among animals than polyandry. In fact, in relation to polygamy, there are some very sound theories that suggest the reason male animals are better at spatial reasoning and navigation is that they had an evolutionary pressure on them to find and follow complex routes between the nests of each female they had copulated with.
4.) You are probably not going to give a shit about anything I say because you already "know" that there are Biological Differences Between Men and Women and boys genetically like Tonka Trucks and Lego and girls must have Barbies and kitchen/laundry/baby doll playsets. 5.) seriously, wtf?
I never said anything about "must" or even "should". I am not prescribing behavior, I am merely describing it.
But you know this.
I apologize, I thought that the fact that you want to have different curricula for boys and girls based on their inherent tendency toward engineering and/or sociology rather implied that you did have a "should" in mind. Or the fact that you're brassed off that people dare to be upset when it's implied that women are worse at doing math and science and most other things that take place outside the kitchen. Such an imagination I have![/QUOTE]
The current methods of schooling are unfair towards boys, who are fidgety, difficult inattentive, and slow to learn, compared to girls. Nineteen out of every twenty hyperactive children are boys. Four times as many boys as girls are dyslexic and learning disabled.
So I am asking, should we try to customize the curriculum towards males and females, and make this optional so that exceptional individuals of each is given equal opportunity to excel? I am neutral in this - I have mixed feelings. That is why I am asking you folks. Hell, this may be a separate thread on its own.
Most importantly - and I want you to answer this even if you cannot answer the previous questions - are male gorillas dominant because they have been socially conditioned, or because natural selection has selected the dominant ones over the submissive ones?
I think they're dominant because they're twice as big.
No, it's the other way around. they are big because they are dominant.
Think about it in terms of natural and sexual selection; if the males are dominant, and they are competing for females, that means the genes that make the males big will give those males a fitness advantage. On average, more big gorillas will end up passing their genes to the next generation. Eventually, the average male gorilla will be larger than the average female gorilla, because female gorillas have no evolutionary pressure on them to get big - they are generally not fighting each other or predators as much as the males.
Have you ever thought that perhaps the blood-rush-to-naughty-bits-after-looking-at-nudie-pics findings might be because we are also socialized to consider the female body as "erotic" and "sexy", while things like body hair and those wacky-looking dongers hanging down between your legs, which are properties belonging primarily to males, are not so much eroticized in our culture?
It's probably a lot of both environment and genetics.
Not sure if someone has said this yet, or if it is completely wrong, but this is what I've learned:
Patriarchy (and thus male dominance) developed with the societal ability to accumulate more property. Nomadic societies are largely egalitarian (far more so than sedentary societies in comparable areas and times) and generally matrilineal because the child's mother is known, its father is not. When agriculture developed, men did the hard labor (plowing and such, probably as a replacement for their previous hunting duties but I'm iffy on that), because women were largely in charge of watching the offspring, horticulture (planting and such) and training them to do the labor that they could. So, as men did the more productive labor, they became more economically important, and accumulated more wealth/property. With that wealth and property came the desire to leave it to their offspring (understandably), which then turned into a male dominated society because they thought that if women were allowed freedom they would start popping out babies that didn't belong to their husbands.
(also interesting to me: with the rise of patriarchal societies came the de-powering of a lot of female gods, and the destruction of a lot of the gods' female forms. I don't have my history text right here, though, so I've not got an example so this is just kind of an irrelevant sidebar)
t historical; dr: There's a reason patriarchy developed, and its directly related to the type of society we live in. Men aren't inherently dominant, and there's nothing PC about saying that.
The current methods of schooling are unfair towards boys, who are fidgety, difficult inattentive, and slow to learn, compared to girls. Nineteen out of every twenty hyperactive children are boys. Four times as many boys as girls are dyslexic and learning disabled.
So I am asking, should we try to customize the curriculum towards males and females, and make this optional so that exceptional individuals of each is given equal opportunity to excel? I am neutral in this - I have mixed feelings. That is why I am asking you folks. Hell, this may be a separate thread on its own.
Wow, you have no fucking clue what you are talking about. Schooling is NOT unfair toward boys. In fact, research (Carol Gilligan and the Sadkers are excellent resources) shows that boys are called on as much as 8 times more frequently in class, because they are far more willing to call out to the teacher, while the girls who are socialized to sit patiently and raise their hand, get neglected. (This is true of male and female teacher alike, btw.) Most of the "Boy Crisis" you hear about is specifically that boys from poverty level and ethnic/language minority backgrounds are falling behind (and the girls too, but to a lesser extent).
Making it "optional" to take girl or boy classes is going to work really well too, I bet, especially with how totally not homophobic our country is right now - adolescent kids are known for being able to handle stuff like this with consistent maturity. I bet you'd never hear stuff like, "Tina decided to take shop class with all the boys, what a dyke!" or "That faggot Sam is in Home Ec third period." Not to mention the girls who will opt out of more difficult classes, if given the choice, because they've been told by the media and several of their peers over and over that guys are threatened by girls who are smart(er than them). I can't find it now, but the guidelines for a separate girl/boy junior high math curriculum featured "teaching" the girls about math by having them count flower petals. IN JUNIOR HIGH.
Have you ever thought that perhaps the blood-rush-to-naughty-bits-after-looking-at-nudie-pics findings might be because we are also socialized to consider the female body as "erotic" and "sexy", while things like body hair and those wacky-looking dongers hanging down between your legs, which are properties belonging primarily to males, are not so much eroticized in our culture?
It's probably a lot of both environment and genetics.
That's not really disputed by most anyone at this point. Nature vs. Nurture might as well be Food vs. Water.
But the point doesn't end with "so therefore nature influences you a lot too, and that means that women are going to always be more likely to be less sexual/do more cooking/be more caring than men".
What it means is that there are a whole ton of mutually interacting forces that are difficult to pull apart.
How much god damn evidence do we need before the urge to be scientifically correct overcomes the urge to be politically correct?
How much do you need to be shown otherwise? Right is America, that question has been retried w/ wealth never being picked.
Did he try any matriarchal societies?
I don't know.
However, I'd like to make another point here: How many matriarchal societies are there? Not many.
But hey, most societies have been and are patriarchal because of social conditioning, and not because men in general are assertive, aggressive, and obsessed with wealth and status, and that their social conditioning merely reinforces these typical genetic masculine traits!
Similarly, I wonder why there haven't been any societies where women formed war bands and raided neighboring villages and collected men as trophies. Or where women hunted and men collected berries? Social repression, or genes?
Historically, there have been a lot, actually. It's just that the European stock happened to fall into that type, and they imposed on the rest of the world.
For example, many who study mythology find a part of the Japanese creation myth surprising because women were dominant at the time of its first appearance.
Okay. Over the course of human history, how many patriarchal societies have there been, versus how many matriarcal ones?
What about species of apes and other mammals? In how many of them females are dominant and in how many of them males?
Most importantly - and I want you to answer this even if you cannot answer the previous questions - are male gorillas dominant because they have been socially conditioned, or because natural selection has selected the dominant ones over the submissive ones?
We know that the first societies were matriarchal, so I guess females are born dominant.
Not sure if someone has said this yet, or if it is completely wrong, but this is what I've learned:
Patriarchy (and thus male dominance) developed with the societal ability to accumulate more property. Nomadic societies are largely egalitarian (far more so than sedentary societies in comparable areas and times) and generally matrilineal because the child's mother is known, its father is not. When agriculture developed, men did the hard labor (plowing and such, probably as a replacement for their previous hunting duties but I'm iffy on that), because women were largely in charge of watching the offspring, horticulture (planting and such) and training them to do the labor that they could. So, as men did the more productive labor, they became more economically important, and accumulated more wealth/property. With that wealth and property came the desire to leave it to their offspring (understandably), which then turned into a male dominated society because they thought that if women were allowed freedom they would start popping out babies that didn't belong to their husbands.
What I learned is that property accumulation is only related to number of sexual partners - during the Pleistocene period when humans were hunter-gatherers, society was generally monogamous; they could not store food, and food accumulation was very much based on luck, so every male was pretty much equal in that aspect. With the advent of agriculture there came the prospect of a constant food supply, as well as the ability to store that food in granaries. So you can see from looking at the historical record that at this time males who were successful farmers hoarded food, gained power, and through that, access to more women.
I don't think this is really related to dominance because dominance is a direct result of the hormone testosterone. The gender with more testosterone is more aggressive and territorial and status-obsessed, and therefore ends up being the dominant gender in society.
The current methods of schooling are unfair towards boys, who are fidgety, difficult inattentive, and slow to learn, compared to girls. Nineteen out of every twenty hyperactive children are boys. Four times as many boys as girls are dyslexic and learning disabled.
So I am asking, should we try to customize the curriculum towards males and females, and make this optional so that exceptional individuals of each is given equal opportunity to excel? I am neutral in this - I have mixed feelings. That is why I am asking you folks. Hell, this may be a separate thread on its own.
Wow, you have no fucking clue what you are talking about. Schooling is NOT unfair toward boys. In fact, research (Carol Gilligan and the Sadkers are excellent resources) shows that boys are called on as much as 8 times more frequently in class, because they are far more willing to call out to the teacher, while the girls who are socialized to sit patiently and raise their hand, get neglected. (This is true of male and female teacher alike, btw.) Most of the "Boy Crisis" you hear about is specifically that boys from poverty level and ethnic/language minority backgrounds are falling behind (and the girls too, but to a lesser extent).
It may or may not be unfair towards boys - that part was my personal opinion.
I am, however, right about the stuff that matters, which is everything else I said in that quote.
Posts
Did he try any matriarchal societies?
Even in mate selection you can't ignore social pressures. If you don't believe me bring someone home your parents wouldn't approve of.
I don't know.
However, I'd like to make another point here: How many matriarchal societies are there? Not many.
But hey, most societies have been and are patriarchal because of social conditioning, and not because men in general are assertive, aggressive, and obsessed with wealth and status, and that their social conditioning merely reinforces these typical genetic masculine traits!
Similarly, I wonder why there haven't been any societies where women formed war bands and raided neighboring villages and collected men as trophies. Or where women hunted and men collected berries? Social repression, or genes?
Matt Ridley made a really good case for it and I'm digging through one of his books to find the exact argument. It was along the lines of natural selection and sexual selection, and how if social conditioning did not reinforce genetic disposition, those genes would have been eliminated out of the gene pool. That men did hunting in the Pleistocene period not because they were told to by their elders, but because they were as a gender better at throwing things at moving objects than they were at paying attention to detail, e.g. spotting small objects like fruit and whatnot among the bushes and in the forest canopy. So their genes were more successful at being carried on to the next generation; they brought home more food, improved their social status, and mated with more women.
But if being scientifically correct conflicts with being politically correct, then a lot of people would rather be scientifically wrong than be politically incorrect (because political incorrectness means no funding for your experiments). That, and a lot of scientists begin their research with an extreme political correctness bias; for instance, they do studies to try to prove their belief that men and women are essentially the same and they behave similarly and respond to the same kinds of treatments and incentives. They end up being horribly wrong, but politically correct.
So I am worried that some fields of science, on some topics, has become a propaganda tool for political correctness.
Yeah, basically. Men like porn not because men have been taught by their parents and their society to like porn, but because male mammals are genetically disposed to promiscuity and casual sexual encounters, especially with strangers (a lot of porn is sexual interaction between two strangers; it is very rarely a guy having sex with his wife or girlfriend). Women on the other hand generally do not enjoy porn because they are sexually repressed, but they are sexually repressed because being promiscuous until the advent or birth control only earned them 9 months of pregnancy and a child they were, again, genetically disposed to look after.
Hahahah.
Oh my god I need to stay out of this thread. /runs away
Snarky remarks don't get us anywhere. I mean sure, in your own little world I'm sure you've convinced yourself that I am an idiot and will never see the right side of things, but I assure you that when you say shit like that, I share similar views about you.
That said, certain people (possibly many, depending on where you are talking about) who want to bully aside "political correctness" to speak "hard truths" are simply racists and/or misogynists eager to commit a confirmation-bias-soaked naturalistic fallacy.
Granted. I fully agree. However, we know this doesn't hold true in a general sense because research has shown that pictures of naked men do not turn women nearly as much as pictures of naked women do turn on men. Notice that we're talking about pictures here, so nobody is treated like fuck toys. Just pictures. Pictures of men in suggestive poses, and pictures of women in suggestive poses. Sure, you may not like porn because its objectification of women, but that is not the only reason you don't like porn, research says.
What about romance novels? Do men not enjoy romance novels because romance novels objectify men and treat them as romance toys? Or because they don't contain enough promiscuous sex, violence, power struggles, car chases, and what-have-you?
Well yeah, it is better to be pregnant than not, genetically speaking. But the reason they fuck lots of individuals is not because they want to make sure their genes actually get passed on. Elaborated below.
First of all, female animals are more promiscuous than scientists used to believe, that is true. But - and this is a fact - the gender that makes the most investment in procreation is the least promiscuous one. Sperm is cheap, egg is expensive.
Second of all, the reason many female animals have sex often is not to simply pass their genes on, but to make sure they get help with parental care from the largest number of males possible. If the bird is fucking 10 males and lays eggs, the male birds cannot know for sure if the offspring are theirs, so they won't take the chance by breaking the eggs.
In gorillas, if a male gorilla comes across a pregnant female gorilla and he does not recognize her, he will kill her. Female gorillas, to make up for this, copulate with as many male gorillas as possible. Similar behavior can be observed in felines, particularly lions and tigers who kill the offspring of the females they don't know in order to try to put her back in heat.
I never said anything about "must" or even "should". I am not prescribing behavior, I am merely describing it.
But you know this.
That was DisGrace that said those things, and that's not how you spell my name.
God damn.
Corrected.
what must be done, specifically
For example, many who study mythology find a part of the Japanese creation myth surprising because women were dominant at the time of its first appearance.
To pick a random example, say, upper body strength... the idea is that the difference between the strongest man and the weakest man is greater than the difference between the male mean and the female mean. Thus, greater variation within sex.
Have you ever thought that perhaps the blood-rush-to-naughty-bits-after-looking-at-nudie-pics findings might be because we are also socialized to consider the female body as "erotic" and "sexy", while things like body hair and those wacky-looking dongers hanging down between your legs, which are properties belonging primarily to males, are not so much eroticized in our culture?
I look forward to it.
Animals want to pass their own genes on, they want the best possible genes to combine with their own, and they want the best possible care for their gene-containing offspring. (Blah blah blah, "want" is not meant to imply conscious thought, etc.) However, what you said was that females didn't want to have sex because they are trying to avoid babies, which is actually pretty much the opposite of what our genes are telling us.
I apologize, I thought that the fact that you want to have different curricula for boys and girls based on their inherent tendency toward engineering and/or sociology rather implied that you did have a "should" in mind. Or the fact that you're brassed off that people dare to be upset when it's implied that women are worse at doing math and science and most other things that take place outside the kitchen. Such an imagination I have!
Okay. Over the course of human history, how many patriarchal societies have there been, versus how many matriarcal ones?
What about species of apes and other mammals? In how many of them females are dominant and in how many of them males?
Most importantly - and I want you to answer this even if you cannot answer the previous questions - are male gorillas dominant because they have been socially conditioned, or because natural selection has selected the dominant ones over the submissive ones?
For example. I say "You have 10 men and 10 women. Who do you pick for your basketball team?"
The answer is "the tallest"(well, and the best at basketball but shush). That might mean you get 80% men. It may mean you get 90% women. There are odds, there are averages, but until the shortest man is taller than the tallest woman, they're not completely useful when you have better comparisons that are easier and more useful on an individual basis.
Also bees, ants, killer whales, bison, hyenas, and Bonobos.
I think they're dominant because they're twice as big.
Relative to what?
And if you want primate examples (which are the ones I would be chiefly familiar with), see also lemurs, sifakas, bonobos, giladas (sp?).
Also: social insects, hyenas, some whales (I forget which)
Yeah I edited :P
This article on Bonobos is quite interesting, I hope ege is reading it.
In high school my counselor recommended that I take Home Ec instead of AP Computer Science. Can't speak for all women out there, but I doubt that happens to very many men.
So what?
Yeah I have. But I find it hard to believe that social conditioning is the only reason for it, or the underlying reason.
Look at animals; it is almost always the females who start showing physical signs of fertility when they are ready to mate. And it is not only male humans that go crazy at the sight of the naked female body. Are chimpanzees and gorillas socially conditioned to have the blood-rush-to-naughty-bits response? No. So in humans social conditioning cannot be the underlying reason for that reaction, although it certainly has an effect - perhaps this is because social conditioning, in this case, reinforces genetic disposition?
No, they are not trying to avoid babies, of course not. They are trying to avoid babies by low quality males, and they are trying to avoid unnecessary babies. Whereas males are basically looking for every opportunity to copulate; they'll literally sleep with any female they come across. Polygamy is much, much more common among animals than polyandry. In fact, in relation to polygamy, there are some very sound theories that suggest the reason male animals are better at spatial reasoning and navigation is that they had an evolutionary pressure on them to find and follow complex routes between the nests of each female they had copulated with.
I apologize, I thought that the fact that you want to have different curricula for boys and girls based on their inherent tendency toward engineering and/or sociology rather implied that you did have a "should" in mind. Or the fact that you're brassed off that people dare to be upset when it's implied that women are worse at doing math and science and most other things that take place outside the kitchen. Such an imagination I have![/QUOTE]
The current methods of schooling are unfair towards boys, who are fidgety, difficult inattentive, and slow to learn, compared to girls. Nineteen out of every twenty hyperactive children are boys. Four times as many boys as girls are dyslexic and learning disabled.
So I am asking, should we try to customize the curriculum towards males and females, and make this optional so that exceptional individuals of each is given equal opportunity to excel? I am neutral in this - I have mixed feelings. That is why I am asking you folks. Hell, this may be a separate thread on its own.
ege, don't go there. That's retarded.
EDIT: And my "so what" should have been addressed to ege, in that case.
No, it's the other way around. they are big because they are dominant.
Think about it in terms of natural and sexual selection; if the males are dominant, and they are competing for females, that means the genes that make the males big will give those males a fitness advantage. On average, more big gorillas will end up passing their genes to the next generation. Eventually, the average male gorilla will be larger than the average female gorilla, because female gorillas have no evolutionary pressure on them to get big - they are generally not fighting each other or predators as much as the males.
Bonobos are really a pretty good analogue to humans. Some of the few primates that sex each other up for fun.
Also for like, shaking hands.
It's probably a lot of both environment and genetics.
Yeah, I read the Bonobo thing. They seem to be an interesting exception.
Patriarchy (and thus male dominance) developed with the societal ability to accumulate more property. Nomadic societies are largely egalitarian (far more so than sedentary societies in comparable areas and times) and generally matrilineal because the child's mother is known, its father is not. When agriculture developed, men did the hard labor (plowing and such, probably as a replacement for their previous hunting duties but I'm iffy on that), because women were largely in charge of watching the offspring, horticulture (planting and such) and training them to do the labor that they could. So, as men did the more productive labor, they became more economically important, and accumulated more wealth/property. With that wealth and property came the desire to leave it to their offspring (understandably), which then turned into a male dominated society because they thought that if women were allowed freedom they would start popping out babies that didn't belong to their husbands.
(also interesting to me: with the rise of patriarchal societies came the de-powering of a lot of female gods, and the destruction of a lot of the gods' female forms. I don't have my history text right here, though, so I've not got an example so this is just kind of an irrelevant sidebar)
t historical; dr: There's a reason patriarchy developed, and its directly related to the type of society we live in. Men aren't inherently dominant, and there's nothing PC about saying that.
Wow, you have no fucking clue what you are talking about. Schooling is NOT unfair toward boys. In fact, research (Carol Gilligan and the Sadkers are excellent resources) shows that boys are called on as much as 8 times more frequently in class, because they are far more willing to call out to the teacher, while the girls who are socialized to sit patiently and raise their hand, get neglected. (This is true of male and female teacher alike, btw.) Most of the "Boy Crisis" you hear about is specifically that boys from poverty level and ethnic/language minority backgrounds are falling behind (and the girls too, but to a lesser extent).
Making it "optional" to take girl or boy classes is going to work really well too, I bet, especially with how totally not homophobic our country is right now - adolescent kids are known for being able to handle stuff like this with consistent maturity. I bet you'd never hear stuff like, "Tina decided to take shop class with all the boys, what a dyke!" or "That faggot Sam is in Home Ec third period." Not to mention the girls who will opt out of more difficult classes, if given the choice, because they've been told by the media and several of their peers over and over that guys are threatened by girls who are smart(er than them). I can't find it now, but the guidelines for a separate girl/boy junior high math curriculum featured "teaching" the girls about math by having them count flower petals. IN JUNIOR HIGH.
That's not really disputed by most anyone at this point. Nature vs. Nurture might as well be Food vs. Water.
But the point doesn't end with "so therefore nature influences you a lot too, and that means that women are going to always be more likely to be less sexual/do more cooking/be more caring than men".
What it means is that there are a whole ton of mutually interacting forces that are difficult to pull apart.
We know that the first societies were matriarchal, so I guess females are born dominant.
What I learned is that property accumulation is only related to number of sexual partners - during the Pleistocene period when humans were hunter-gatherers, society was generally monogamous; they could not store food, and food accumulation was very much based on luck, so every male was pretty much equal in that aspect. With the advent of agriculture there came the prospect of a constant food supply, as well as the ability to store that food in granaries. So you can see from looking at the historical record that at this time males who were successful farmers hoarded food, gained power, and through that, access to more women.
I don't think this is really related to dominance because dominance is a direct result of the hormone testosterone. The gender with more testosterone is more aggressive and territorial and status-obsessed, and therefore ends up being the dominant gender in society.
It may or may not be unfair towards boys - that part was my personal opinion.
I am, however, right about the stuff that matters, which is everything else I said in that quote.