(The obviousness-in-retrospect of this argument, stated so straightforwardly, combined with the fact that I almost never hear it stated so straightforwardly and never thought of it myself, makes me update towards culture being able to non-obviously derange debates like this to a really high degree. Far mode isn’t naturally about truth.)
… though it’s worth keeping in mind that “the details of how gender works are made up” is still true to a pretty large extent (≥ the extent to which cross-cultural variation in gender exists); it’s just that, like all culture, they’re made up in a way generated/constrained by primate behavior, which has a lot of sex-dependence.
Yes, that’s obviously true. What social-contested behaviors of men and women can be resolved only by reference to that fact?
The feminist argument need not reject that most behaviors of men and women are different—that’s plainly true. (Men pee standing up, women ovulate). The issue is what proportion of behaviors important in modern society are sexually determined. If the answer is anything but all of them, then the argument that gender != sex is well founded.
On the other hand, are they reliably reproduced across wide genetic distances? Some species differentiate relatively little in just a few specific scenarios like behaviors related to reproduction (wolverines; for a more marked example, many fireflies). Some differ pretty much not at all (many sharks). Some are strongly differentiated from our own expressions of that difference (seahorses). Some have both high behavioral dimorphism and great deal of divergence from our own culturally-typical notions about that (spotted hyenas).
Basically, it’s not a very informative statement unto itself, when so many ideas about the specifics of ways in which gender and sex differ are coded to our own cultural ideas of how that works in humans.
Totally agreed, it just informs our prior about the existence of some sort of significant gender difference in humans.
Some species differentiate relatively little in just a few specific scenarios like behaviors related to reproduction (wolverines; for a more marked example, many fireflies).
Can you say more? (didn’t find anything with extremely casual searching)
In the case of wolverines, their lifestyles and behavioral regimens are not greatly-divergent except insofar as females dig nesting burrows and other behaviors directly relevant to giving birth. Otherwise, you’d be hard-pressed to tell them apart; low sexual dimorphism, low behavioral dimorphism by sex; the only really obvious thing is that wolverines try to avoid overlapping their ranges with members of the same sex.
Fireflies, similarly, don’t seem to be very distinct by sex until it’s time for a mating display; then they have ways of signalling it, but their lifestyles and behavioral cues, let alone anatomy, don’t differ much.
Basically, how much of a difference sex and gender make seems to be variable. Are there differences in size? Decoration? Behavior? Lifestyle? Energy expenditure on various aspects of those things? You can’t predict the answers to those questions from the commonly-held idea of “males have cheap, plentiful gametes; females have few, expensive gametes” (which doesn’t even reliably hold for all species, in addition to neglecting other salient factors like birthing method, social structure and other things that shape this without being directly determined by how they accomplish sex).
Incidentally, humans in our ancestral state (including modern subsistence foragers) tend to have very low body fat, which is the single biggest contributor to secondary-sexual dimorphism being so prominent in much of humanity today (nutrition and fat stores are probably why menarche occurs so early these days for many, and one factor contributing to comparatively high fertility). The popular perceptions of human sexual dimorphism may be distorted by this relatively recent context shift.
It seems obvious on the face of it to me, and, I suspect it did to you, before you let someone try to get clever about it.
What it does leave out, though, and where some—if not cleverness, mental flexibility—is required, is that those are just boxes, and not all individuals fall neatly into the boxes. That, too, is not simply memetic.
It doesn’t have to be a flame war.
By “made up” In the context of gender, I mean it’s a cultural norm that only has a very small basis in nature.
In the context of sexual orientation, I take the nature component to be larger, but still mostly cultural.
I’m open to new opinions on this, I’m mostly agnostic on these, but take them seriously.
“Many (and probably most) animals also have gender in the sense that individuals with penises behave in certain ways, and individuals with ovaries behave in other ways, despite not having memes.” It would be surprising if H. sapiens were very different.
(The obviousness-in-retrospect of this argument, stated so straightforwardly, combined with the fact that I almost never hear it stated so straightforwardly and never thought of it myself, makes me update towards culture being able to non-obviously derange debates like this to a really high degree. Far mode isn’t naturally about truth.)
Well that changes things.
And yes that is disturbing.
… though it’s worth keeping in mind that “the details of how gender works are made up” is still true to a pretty large extent (≥ the extent to which cross-cultural variation in gender exists); it’s just that, like all culture, they’re made up in a way generated/constrained by primate behavior, which has a lot of sex-dependence.
yes. I still think gender is a stupid idea and has large components of made-upness.
Ten times agreed.
Yes, that’s obviously true. What social-contested behaviors of men and women can be resolved only by reference to that fact?
The feminist argument need not reject that most behaviors of men and women are different—that’s plainly true. (Men pee standing up, women ovulate). The issue is what proportion of behaviors important in modern society are sexually determined. If the answer is anything but all of them, then the argument that gender != sex is well founded.
It hurts me that I’ve never heard or thought of this point before, given the obviousness-in-retrospect. What other obvious mistakes am I making?
On the other hand, are they reliably reproduced across wide genetic distances? Some species differentiate relatively little in just a few specific scenarios like behaviors related to reproduction (wolverines; for a more marked example, many fireflies). Some differ pretty much not at all (many sharks). Some are strongly differentiated from our own expressions of that difference (seahorses). Some have both high behavioral dimorphism and great deal of divergence from our own culturally-typical notions about that (spotted hyenas).
Basically, it’s not a very informative statement unto itself, when so many ideas about the specifics of ways in which gender and sex differ are coded to our own cultural ideas of how that works in humans.
Totally agreed, it just informs our prior about the existence of some sort of significant gender difference in humans.
Can you say more? (didn’t find anything with extremely casual searching)
In the case of wolverines, their lifestyles and behavioral regimens are not greatly-divergent except insofar as females dig nesting burrows and other behaviors directly relevant to giving birth. Otherwise, you’d be hard-pressed to tell them apart; low sexual dimorphism, low behavioral dimorphism by sex; the only really obvious thing is that wolverines try to avoid overlapping their ranges with members of the same sex.
Fireflies, similarly, don’t seem to be very distinct by sex until it’s time for a mating display; then they have ways of signalling it, but their lifestyles and behavioral cues, let alone anatomy, don’t differ much.
Basically, how much of a difference sex and gender make seems to be variable. Are there differences in size? Decoration? Behavior? Lifestyle? Energy expenditure on various aspects of those things? You can’t predict the answers to those questions from the commonly-held idea of “males have cheap, plentiful gametes; females have few, expensive gametes” (which doesn’t even reliably hold for all species, in addition to neglecting other salient factors like birthing method, social structure and other things that shape this without being directly determined by how they accomplish sex).
Incidentally, humans in our ancestral state (including modern subsistence foragers) tend to have very low body fat, which is the single biggest contributor to secondary-sexual dimorphism being so prominent in much of humanity today (nutrition and fat stores are probably why menarche occurs so early these days for many, and one factor contributing to comparatively high fertility). The popular perceptions of human sexual dimorphism may be distorted by this relatively recent context shift.
It seems obvious on the face of it to me, and, I suspect it did to you, before you let someone try to get clever about it.
What it does leave out, though, and where some—if not cleverness, mental flexibility—is required, is that those are just boxes, and not all individuals fall neatly into the boxes. That, too, is not simply memetic.
Also, animals can have memes. See the recent article about baboons—http://lesswrong.com/lw/99t/can_the_chain_still_hold_you/