This is certainly possible. It is also true that many observers have in the past seen the disparities among races and genders as having a cultural cause. Now of course this would be ludicrous in the 50s when some groups were literally barred from entry into some sectors, but still today some of these disparities exist even without those official barriers. While men are not doing as well in school as females, black men are doing worse than white men. Could this be culture or personal as well? Or is this disparity evidence of still remaining structural barriers?
I agree that invention of agriculture was perhaps the biggest single change in the organization of our societies. Still, it doesn’t necessarily follow that biology stopped being relevant after that time. Agriculture might be 10,000 years old, and the vertebrate lineage is probably 500 million years old. I think there is no way we shed all our evolutionary baggage in geological blink of the eye. Most anthropologists I think would say that a human (and maybe even a Neanderthal) from 100,000 - 200,000 years ago would be fully able to function in society today. Further, the evolutionary pressures on humans did indeed change after agriculture, but the demands on males and females to reproduce remained disparate. Males and females had to (and still have to) jump through different hoops to successfully reproduce, and these divergent selective pressures would have reinforced behavioral diversity between the sexes. The theory that men and women differ solely because of teaching just isn’t tenable anymore.
What is biology other than a teaching? If we are going to talk about things that havent been around for very long, the study of biology is also one of them. And to what extent does that study simply reify ideas that humans have long held because of social teaching? We can correctly say 'gender' is constructed, but so too is biology and well, sex. That's what people do, attempt to put order on the world.
I am not sure if I am following wgb. Are you suggesting that all of biology and science is just made up?
Isn't it? That isn't a dismissal of its utility to us and its attempt at intellectual rigor, but quite literally everything is "made up" by people to understand the world and to impose order on things.
Ball's in your court Too Hotters, Duggars school of "viruses arent real" is ready to enroll your children and make them manly men
I am still not sure. When I hear a postmodernist talk of reification and social construction, I usually understand them to mean that the underlying entities being described do not exist in reality. However, when you talk about capitalism, you seem to believe such a thing as capitalism exists. Ditto patriarchy and racism. And, sigh, do viruses exist?
If something is constructed why wouldn't it exist to those who constructed it? Does anyone believe there is some 'objective unbiased reality' that exists only to be confirmed by human science? That would seem to position humans as the center of the universe, or imply there was some sort of order made for us to uncover ... which invites metaphysical questions. Even if you did believe that there is some outside order to the universe - understanding the limits and biases of science because its done by people ... wouldnt that be impossible to know anyways? What I am (relatively) certain of is that all knowledge is constructed linguistically, and is therefor "made up" by people. Language is of course one of our oldest and most useful technologies. Its a good thing!
Before we get completely off track I guess I can boil my rantings down to this question: Do you think science is better equipped to deal and contend with a) long held assumptions predating modern science that are deeply entwined with human culture or b) new or novel discoveries which have little relation to long-standing ideas about humanity. Will biases be more pronounced in one or the other? Equally?
Gotta love how you consider this off topic. You're carrying on like an expert. Was wondering if you have any direct experience.
An expert on what? I havent given anyone parenting advice. What does that have to do with anything I wrote? That's why its off topic. Anyway, you are kind of making my point, saying personal experience and observation gender > fancy book learning.
An expert on the inherent nature of little boys and little girls. Actually having some of your own might be informative.
I don’t think that it necessarily follows that because we use constructed language to represent concepts from the world that the concepts themselves must too be constructed. While I agree that the number we write as “2” or “two” must be constructed, the quantity of two can actually exist. This many potatoes: Is more than this many potatoes: To bring this back to topic (or at least closer), if we raised all females to act as males, what would happen? Would they all start picking their navels, making cringy fail videos, and getting in fist fights? I don’t think they would. And if they did, I would have to admit that the change in teaching was associated with a change in behavior, rather than suggesting that male behavior was socially constructed.
I dont subscribe to the idea of "inherent nature" ... I'm deeply skeptical of that, so I dont really know what you are talking about there. But Donald Trump has children, perhaps you can learn something from him about gender seeing as how that make someone an expert.
I would of course say B. I think any attempt to find truth will be more successful if our society is primed for that knowledge. I do think the thing we call “science” (and now I’m going to be the reification guy, as I don’t think there is exactly a single pursuit that makes up science) is our best way of identifying and overcoming these biases. Of course, that is no guarantee that we will find this truth quickly or at all, but science appears to be progressing, using the metrics of explanatory power, making successful predictions, and logical consistency, etc.
Having kids of your own doesn't make you an expert. It might however inform your opinion. I've known numerous people who thought that boys and girls personalities are different primarily because of the environment they are raised in. Then they had kids of their own...
What does that even mean though? Is there something inherent in how males act that is teachable to females? We can agree that 2 potatoes is different from 1 (or boys have different parts from girls), but the meaning derived from that is entirely constructed isnt it? In fact, isnt all meaning created by difference/comparison? If everything was the same, we wouldnt need to makes sense of things.
It certainly might inform your opinion, it could also bias it too. Do you think no feminist or gender theorist has ever had children or something? Also I dont know how you have an environment that is free of all of the world's ideas of gender, children's personalities etc.
Do all feminists or gender theorists think the same thing as you do? And I hope you don't think I'm arguing that human society and culture don't have an impact on the personalities of boys and girls. Never said that.
