Science denial won’t end sexism.

Kuato2012 · 2023-04-18T17:10:25+00:00

I just wish more people understood that bell curves can overlap while still having statistically significant differences in their means. People seem to view sex differences like this, when the reality is usually more like this

Also, Quillette requires a login now? Even though it's free, I just don't want to accumulate yet another username/password.

sambiak · 2023-04-18T18:46:54+00:00

Concluding people on average are different is not conservative

No, but using that to justify changing nothing is. I know people who are against father's leave because "they are less biologically suited for taking care of a child".

If your best defense for a lousy state of affairs, is "it's biology" you are not going to convince anybody.

edit :

On one hand, without those differences one can only conclude feminists are right when they say a majority of men in f ex CEO’s, scientists and composers must be due to sexism. Counterarguments will shrink to whataboutism.

Yeah, very good example, what is the biological reason 96% of CEOs of Britain's largest public companies are men ? Why is it that in ex-soviet countries the sex ratio of scientists is balanced ? Why is it that every time these biological arguments are raised, there is a huge variation in outcomes between countries ?

Could it be that our culture has the biggest impact on the fates of people of different sexes ?

I do believe that the answer it's sexism is also lazy at best, wrong at worst. At least they have the will to change. If you want to keep society where it is today, you are a conservative, no need to justify your beliefs with lousy science.

parahacker · 2023-04-18T19:47:08+00:00

The biggest issue is that we still aren't really clear on what those differences are, behaviorally.

Physical differences are easy to measure; behavioral differences are a damned nightmare to measure. Not least of which because social contagion is real, culture is real, and have an overwhelming effect on behavior - those are not liberal inventions, and to return your argument back on you, conservatives often don't attribute enough of human behavior to culture.

For example, who initiates in sex and flirtation. There are cultures out there, such as the Wodaabe, where the gender roles are completely reversed in that sense. And have done for hundreds of years, if not millennia. And they are far from the only ones. But to hear some conservatives tell it, it's just men's job to make the approach, it's biology, and that's just how it is.

Can you see why such assertions are problematic?

insane_gravy · 2023-04-18T19:13:04+00:00

Concluding people on average are different is not conservative. Neither is concluding the sexes on average are.

No, but this line of reasoning is used to justify conservative policy decisions and it is foolish to pretend otherwise when we already know racists do this to justify their own bad policies. It also doesn't help when information presented as "science" is of such poor quality that it comes across as being little more than trying to establish consensus for a conservative ideology. I've seen that done here by the way.

dude_chillin_park · 2023-04-18T20:10:22+00:00

Biological contrast in sexuality isn't optional. But structuring society around that sexual contrast is optional. Each culture prescribes certain strategies for indicating one's sexual role. Many, but not all, are dual, reflecting a crude understanding of sexuality and reproduction through the carnal act itself.

If gender equality in Sweden means women are free to be nurses and men engineers, I don't think it indicates that women are biologically disposed to nursing. It indicates that the culture still demands that people express their sexual roles through their occupation and lifestyle. If being a woman no longer means financial and social dependence on a husband, if elaborate gendered dress is no longer fashionable, then how does one express her identity as a woman? By choosing a feminine career. By preferring feminine music and art.

Why is nursing a feminine career? Who decides what art is feminine? It's a closed circle: I am a woman so I do what other women do, then women's things are defined as what many women do. Maybe clearing out historical baggage, such as in a communist revolution, would help to destroy such assumptions.

But do we need to do that? What we need to do is make sure the small number of women who do become engineers don't feel out of place, unsafe, or judged as masculine if they don't want to be. Likewise the men who become nurses or full-time fathers.

Affirmative action might be one way of addressing this. But it should go both ways: women engineers should be given extra resources to compensate for their rarity, and so should male nurses.

It's not because the work of engineering is harder for women, but because they are bravely going against cultural inertia and possibly against their families' conservative ideals-- maybe not even explicitly, but just in the way they were given dolls to play with (to practice caring for humans) instead of trucks. They need help to be their authentic selves rather than giving in to expectations.

A man becoming a nurse faces the same struggles, and should be helped in the same way. Maybe the assistance should be proportional to the gender balance in the profession. Like if 1% of nurses are men, male nurses get a lot of help to ensure male strengths and voices are represented in the profession. If 25% of clothesmakers are men, they get a bit of help but not as much.

ProfessionalPut6507 · 2023-04-19T06:59:24+00:00

The whole idea of no gender differences with regards to the CNS is just idiotic, but, as you said, it is the cornerstone of feminist ideas. (All differences are due to evil men, and DA PATRIARCHY.) This even has gone into Nature, of all places... (Read the review of The Gendered Brain -absolutely unscientific - in the #1 science journal.)

But this, unfortunately, also means that trans activists can claim that a woman is whomever says she or he is a woman -the idea works for them, too, and hence the current clash between feminist and trans activism.

Somewhat ironic.

LeftWingMaleAdvocates-ModTeam · 2023-04-19T04:47:19+00:00

[permanently deleted]

Title	Science denial won’t end sexism.
Author	Blauwpetje
Upvotes	96
Comments	80
Date	April 18, 2023 4:53 PM UTC (3 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/comments/12qvzjg/science_denial_wont_end_sexism/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/science-denial-wont-end-sexism.1214978 https://theredarchive.com/post/1214978

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