1) There are people who desire to do things that are not acceptable within their gender roles (i.e. cross-dressing) 2) Internalizing gender narratives makes those people miserable 3) Those people (as a group) are not more likely to engage in unacceptable behaviors (i.e. molest children) 4) Prior changes to gender and other social norms have occurred without society falling apart 5) Plausible arguments exist that those changes were net benefits for society (preventing Condoleezza Rice or Hilary Clinton from being Secretary of State is wasting talent)
In short, there is obvious and significant suffering that these changes could plausibly alleviate. Comparing these changes to similar changes suggests the downside risks are low. Even Burke acknowledged that change was sometimes necessary—otherwise Burkean conservatism becomes a fully general counter-argument.
In response to 1&2, I’d point out that 2 things: there are many gender norms,which may range from frivolous or harmful cultural baggage to valuable or vital biological or sociological adaptations. And, establishing a norm can be done with a range of incentives, and we should be open to optimizing them to minimize the misery while still promoting the norms that lead to a more harmonious society.
I don’t believe #3 is the main argument for establishing gender roles.
For 4, there’s a lot of apart in a society to fall. Some trends that worry me I do find plausible links to prior changes to gender norms. While I’m not sure I’m prepared to argue that here, I don’t think the converse is firmly established, either.
5-Probably (there are probably arguments, I mean) but I don’t find simply listing two names of women in high office to be one of them.
Oh, I don’t know if you ever know for sure, unless you find some of those social experimenters and loose them, but beware the difference between destructive and non-destructive testing. Factors I’d consider in evaluating a norm’s positive utility would include universality, stability, considerations of likely effect in aggregate, and so forth.
For example, I’d feel less masculine wearing a pink shirt around North America, but guys in China did so fairly commonly, and I’d expect to find considerable variation in this across time and cultures, so I consider it a bad idea, or at least pointless, for color based gender norms to be overtly encouraged. Women being the caregivers to young children seems to have been the case across time and cultures so I’m skeptical of the notion that there’s no purposeful innate difference in the mean approaches to childbearing and think people who discourage girls from playing with dolls not especially wise on the matter.
Different axioms of human nature are certainly going to give you different conclusions of course.
For example, I’d feel less masculine wearing a pink shirt around North America, but guys in China did so fairly commonly, and I’d expect to find considerable variation in this across time and cultures, so I consider it a bad idea, or at least pointless, for color based gender norms to be overtly encouraged.
You’d be right; the association of pink with femininity is fairly recent.
It’s not clear to me that putting a lot of effort into eliminating overt caste markers is the best way to go if you’re interested in weakening caste, though.
I think it’s one thing to let a child do both gender stereotypical and non-gender-stereotypical activities that they want, and quite another to try to keep them from doing gender-stereotypical activities.
As I recall, pink shirts for men were a fad in the US in the 60s and/or 70s, but googling doesn’t turn up quite what I remember—business-style shirts in fairly light pink.
how much they desire [to violate gender norms] is how they were brought up.
This argument would have more force if you had specific examples of different things parents do that affect the existence of the desire to violate gender norms.
For example, J. Edgar Hoover was born in 1895 (and was a cross-dresser). There’s no plausible argument that second-wave feminism (circa 1960s) or third-wave feminism (circa 1990s) had any effect on his upbringing.
If society could affect the frequency of the desire, reducing the frequency might be a viable solution. But I’ve yet to hear a vaguely plausible story about what parents can choose to do that would have any effect.
For example, J. Edgar Hoover was born in 1895 (and was a cross-dresser).
The cross-dressing think was probably a black legend.
There’s no plausible argument that second-wave feminism (circa 1960s) or third-wave feminism (circa 1990s) had any effect on his upbringing.
In any case a single anecdote isn’t strong evidence and it’s pretty clear that the amount of cross dressing and other gay/trans phenomena has gone up since the 1960s and the 1990s.
We could control for that by looking through the records of past civilizations and trying to get an idea of whether changes to gender or social norms were reliably associated with collapse.
Chesterton’s fence and similar Burkean arguments are generally a reasonable position. But in this case, we know:
1) There are people who desire to do things that are not acceptable within their gender roles (i.e. cross-dressing)
2) Internalizing gender narratives makes those people miserable
3) Those people (as a group) are not more likely to engage in unacceptable behaviors (i.e. molest children)
4) Prior changes to gender and other social norms have occurred without society falling apart
5) Plausible arguments exist that those changes were net benefits for society (preventing Condoleezza Rice or Hilary Clinton from being Secretary of State is wasting talent)
In short, there is obvious and significant suffering that these changes could plausibly alleviate. Comparing these changes to similar changes suggests the downside risks are low. Even Burke acknowledged that change was sometimes necessary—otherwise Burkean conservatism becomes a fully general counter-argument.
In response to 1&2, I’d point out that 2 things: there are many gender norms,which may range from frivolous or harmful cultural baggage to valuable or vital biological or sociological adaptations. And, establishing a norm can be done with a range of incentives, and we should be open to optimizing them to minimize the misery while still promoting the norms that lead to a more harmonious society.
I don’t believe #3 is the main argument for establishing gender roles.
For 4, there’s a lot of apart in a society to fall. Some trends that worry me I do find plausible links to prior changes to gender norms. While I’m not sure I’m prepared to argue that here, I don’t think the converse is firmly established, either.
5-Probably (there are probably arguments, I mean) but I don’t find simply listing two names of women in high office to be one of them.
Fine. How do we tell the difference? Also, how do we tell the difference between norms-masquerading-as-facts and facts?
Oh, I don’t know if you ever know for sure, unless you find some of those social experimenters and loose them, but beware the difference between destructive and non-destructive testing. Factors I’d consider in evaluating a norm’s positive utility would include universality, stability, considerations of likely effect in aggregate, and so forth.
For example, I’d feel less masculine wearing a pink shirt around North America, but guys in China did so fairly commonly, and I’d expect to find considerable variation in this across time and cultures, so I consider it a bad idea, or at least pointless, for color based gender norms to be overtly encouraged. Women being the caregivers to young children seems to have been the case across time and cultures so I’m skeptical of the notion that there’s no purposeful innate difference in the mean approaches to childbearing and think people who discourage girls from playing with dolls not especially wise on the matter.
Different axioms of human nature are certainly going to give you different conclusions of course.
You’d be right; the association of pink with femininity is fairly recent.
It’s not clear to me that putting a lot of effort into eliminating overt caste markers is the best way to go if you’re interested in weakening caste, though.
I think it’s one thing to let a child do both gender stereotypical and non-gender-stereotypical activities that they want, and quite another to try to keep them from doing gender-stereotypical activities.
As I recall, pink shirts for men were a fad in the US in the 60s and/or 70s, but googling doesn’t turn up quite what I remember—business-style shirts in fairly light pink.
More than I knew about pink shirts for men.
I agree. (worthless comment, but I decided against saying more and don’t see how to delete).
And one of the factors affecting this how much they desire these things is how they were brought up.
This argument would have more force if you had specific examples of different things parents do that affect the existence of the desire to violate gender norms.
For example, J. Edgar Hoover was born in 1895 (and was a cross-dresser). There’s no plausible argument that second-wave feminism (circa 1960s) or third-wave feminism (circa 1990s) had any effect on his upbringing.
If society could affect the frequency of the desire, reducing the frequency might be a viable solution. But I’ve yet to hear a vaguely plausible story about what parents can choose to do that would have any effect.
The cross-dressing think was probably a black legend.
In any case a single anecdote isn’t strong evidence and it’s pretty clear that the amount of cross dressing and other gay/trans phenomena has gone up since the 1960s and the 1990s.
This could be anthropic fallacy.
We could control for that by looking through the records of past civilizations and trying to get an idea of whether changes to gender or social norms were reliably associated with collapse.