Are masculinity and femininity innate?

TheGreasyPole · 2015-06-03T07:34:22+00:00

Are masculinity and femininity innate or learnt behaviors? Or both ?

Both. Most sexual qualities are both. Genes do nothing in their own. They work by bouncing off the environment. Those genes that bounce of the environment so well that they leave more copies, spread.

Masculinity and Femininity start as drives created by genes. How they manifest will depend on the environment they are bouncing off.

Masculine ? Beards in this year ? Maybe you wear a beard. This year it's clean shaven ? Maybe you go for the chiseled jawline.

The drives genetic, the expression depends on the environment.

If a motherless girl is raised by a masculine father , will she be more masculine or feminine ? If a fatherless boy is raised by a feminine mother, will he be more masculine or feminine ?

I'll answer these both together because the answer is reversible.

They will feel a genetic drive to act as their sex acts (barring homosexuality etc). They will attempt to learn how to do so from their environment.

In so far as they have only one parent, they will probably learn "a little less than others" about their sexes behaviour in private, and this may be misconstrued as being "more X-uline" but is more like a misconstrual that "all humans do X" than "that's an X-uline thing".

Whatsmore, the effect is actually quite small... Because there are plenty of other social queues (friends, relatives, role models, entertainment) and they pick up and use those instead of the missing parent.

So, it's a disadvantage but not a major one if the rest of society has a good idea what makes a man/woman.

So the chicks without mums do fine, more or less.

But because of the state of society, dudes without dads get fed a big load of horseshit (more or less).

The societal war on masculinity and masculine behaviour hits them the hardest.

GayLubeOil · 2015-06-03T09:24:56+00:00

Inject yourself with testosterone and find out for yourself if the male hormone causes male behavior.

RareBlur · 2015-06-03T06:04:41+00:00

Do different cultures express masculinity and femininity different? Are different cultures capable of expressing them different? If yes, then it's learned.

gavinok · 2015-06-03T07:20:06+00:00

Well most BP here don't even think there is a difference between masculinity and femininity in terms of personality. But anyways:

The behaviors have a natural part and a learned part. The natural part is given to you by your genes and expressions of sex hormones like estrogen, testosterone, dihydrotestosterone etc. However, when people are raised, certain households or environments can either suppress or encourage masculinity or femininity in males or females. For example if boy A is a by nature masculine, but grows up being told all men are rapists and he is evil for wanting to be assertive, leader-like, bold, and craving sex, then he will become less masculine as a result. On the other hand, if a boy is unmasculine in nature, but is constantly put in challenging situations where he has to be a leader for himself and make decisions that will greatly affect his life, then he will become more masculine because it is encouraged.

If a motherless girl is raised by a masculine father , will she be more masculine or feminine ? If a fatherless boy is raised by a feminine mother, will he be more masculine or feminine ?

This usually has the opposite effect, not the equal effect. If a mother is feminine, she will want a man to take charge sometimes and lead the way, kill a spider if need be, move heavy furniture etc. She will want her son to be strong and masculine. However, if the father is feminine, it will likely cause the son to be feminine because he gets a bad role model.

miope · 2015-06-03T14:19:28+00:00

Both, innate and learn. Because hormones and socialization

HonestThrowAway212 · 2015-06-03T14:28:07+00:00

In my observation, women who think they're masculine usually live in an imaginary world. Sort of like my little 3 year old nephew who actually thinks he can throw me around because I play along.

To give an example. I used to play a ton of pick-up basketball. There was a young tomboyish chick who used to come to the court sometimes. It was an unspoken agreement that guarding her was a chore done on a rotational basis because going at it against her at 100% would be like doing that to a young teenage kid so a no-no. She would occasionally get buckets precisely because of her low-effort opposition. If she had any clue that she was being essentially played against at 50% then she would not insist on playing with us. She actually thought she was competing somewhere near the level of the men she was playing against.

Edit: Point is, masculinity in women is artificially cultivated. Without social pressures to preserve the psyche of women in male-dominated spaces the pretence of female masculinity would be very quickly dissipated. Shit is innate.

Nazrath2112 · 2015-06-03T21:23:54+00:00

Being a man or woman is innate. If you were to remove all stimuli and environment, men would be more prone to doing men stuff (Destruction) while women would be doing more womens stuff (Creating).

However this is almost not reproducible. Because of reactions to stimuli and environment all of those innate behaviors will be influenced by society.

A better question would be, what part does society play in influencing the behavior of men and women? And in this question we can see that society plays a HEAVY part in what are innately male or female. A male from Sparta would be much different than a male from current day America. You could also argue that a female from Sparta would be more of a man than most males in current day america.

TerpBerpPerpDerp · 2015-06-03T04:28:27+00:00

If TRP and RPW must exist to improve them, then I would say that they are not innate, but rather learned.

However, hormones are innate, as are their effects on behavior. I would say that the learned behavior and attitudes of masculinity and femininity is simply the way society deals with the biological sex differences, in a way that maximizes the coherence and strength of society. Religion helps when doing this.

In this corner of the internet, TRP teaches masculinity in order to maximize plates, while RPW teaches femininity to nab an Alpha Bux.

latercrow · 2015-06-03T03:51:35+00:00

I think its both. For the most part I do think a lot about gender is a learned performance that begins in childhood when kids feel the desire to differentiate themselves. So I think the predisposition is natural but a lot of the specific behavior is learned and replicated. I believe there have been studies that show gender differences in babies so some aspects are innate.

And to your last two questions it would depend on the individual. My personal experience is growing up primarily with my mother (divorced when I was about 8 and saw father about every other weekend) and three older sisters who are all fairly feminine but my personality is slightly masculine.

Title	Are masculinity and femininity innate?
Author	HappilySingleWoman
Upvotes	4
Comments	21
Date	June 3, 2015 3:37 AM UTC (11 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/PurplePillDebate
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/PurplePillDebate/comments/38bigz/are_masculinity_and_femininity_innate/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/PurplePillDebate/are-masculinity-and-femininity-innate.281807 https://theredarchive.com/post/281807

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