Are people born the way they are, or does the environment make them the way they are?
In a strange convergence evolutionary psychologists and many religious individuals believe that people are inherently the way they are, their base nature, either derived by original sin and the divine, or through genetic forces makes us a certain way. Our basic drives, needs, wants, desires are set.
Then there is the belief that we are blank slates, the “Tabula Rasa.” People that believe this, believe that associative learning, conditioning, and learned behavior is all that matters. That evolutionary psychology or beliefs about inherent human nature cannot help people, because it isn’t accurate or true, that “social context” is all that matters.
Often people that believe that we are blank slates, will point out different societies and the differences between them, or that people that are competent in this time, would have difficulty in different time.
However, it is like looking at a forest of fir tree and comparing it to a forest of oaks and focusing on the minor differences, and denying that they are both forests, both composed of trees.
Certainly, people can learn, they can adapt, they can take skills that a unique to their situation, but what makes them fundamentally human is the same.
If you truly believe that “Tabula rasa” is the way of human nature, that our behaviors are learned and that social context means everything, then you by extension accept the core tenants of feminism: That gender is an arbitrary social construct, as is our sexuality and orientation and that all of these things are malleable and subject to change. There is no fundamental psychological difference between the genders that can not be corrected. That any differences in treatment are learned behaviors.
I could go on.
Is that really a position men want to take?
No.
It concedes too much to the feminists, it undermines men.
Whether it is from God or our genes, there are fundamental attributes of each gender that remain, and have remained through out history.
People may not like what evolutionary psychology says about people, just as people may attribute too much to it, but explaining everything as a matter of conditioning, social context, response is the path to the dark side of social engineering. It is also a pretty lie.
What most societies have done is recognize the dark impulses of our nature, both men and women, and caged it, directed it in socially acceptable forms, and punished the bad behavior. This does not mean the drives did not exist, just that the consequences for engaging in them were severe.
What makes us human, what makes us the way we are fundamentally we had at birth.
Denying it, does not change it.
Wanting to believe that men or women can have their basic fundamental nature changed is, a peculiar form of white knighting. A belief that if the context were different, women’s nature would be different, they would return to being the precious little snowflakes of our dreams, rather than repressed.
