How do you feel about traditional gender expression and biology?

2021-05-26T09:38:25+00:00

It’s very clearly a mixture of both.

a-man-from-earth · 2021-05-26T08:53:50+00:00

I'm in the camp that believes biology plays a much larger role than many on the left are willing to admit, but it is definitely an interplay of biology and social factors.

Here are some of my favorite biology professors talking about the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnvKFfyZJVM

Skirt_Douglas · 2021-05-26T14:39:51+00:00

[permanently deleted]

Robble93 · 2021-05-26T09:10:01+00:00

Gender has its roots in biological differences between men and women. And that turned into a social construct that has expanded into very rigid sets of rules around gendered behaviour in most cultures. Nowadays, social rules around gender are not that rigid anymore in most liberal western countries. But both tradcons and transgender-activists uphold the same old rigid rules around gender. They believe that showing behaviour that deviates from the social norms for your gender, makes you less of a man or a woman, or even someone of the other gender.

Blauwpetje · 2021-05-26T10:30:42+00:00

IMHO this is one of the ideas that caused the biggest disasters the last half century in men-women-relationships, together with the growing gynocentrism. Suggesting we can do away with our 'roles' because they're 'socially constructed' has left a lot of people confused, steerless and lonely, and it never worked on a large or even moderate scale. It also prevents people from finding out why so many things go wrong, because the idea of purely 'social causes' often leads to circular reasoning. If I'd thought women were the same as men, I'd be even more flabbergasted about what I see happening than I already am.

adam-l · 2021-05-26T11:55:16+00:00

You'll end up like a dog hunting his tail.

There is only one way out of this circular reasoning, and that's identifying that the single most important difference between the sexes is sex.

In politics they say "follow the money". I say "follow the fucks". See the fucks distribution, see how it evolved once women were given absolute freedom, see what's going on on hookup apps, and you have your answer.

Oncefa2 · 2021-05-26T12:18:15+00:00

I don't understand people who refuse to accept the science around evolutionary psychology, which is kind of like the basis for the whole field (at it's roots psychology is just a branch of human biology).

I won't claim that the views you expounded are "correct"; many people reduce evolutionary psychology down and get a number of things wrong about it. But it is a perfectly valid (and a pretty important) field of study.

As to the rest of your post it's really pretty simple: biology drives averages but individual variance is larger than what those averages are. So if you have 100 men and 100 women you will find statistical differences but they're small enough that you can't really generalize to a single man and a single woman.

enjoycarrots · 2021-05-26T05:30:20+00:00

There are biological aspects of human sex that inform and help create gendered behaviors. But, how those gendered behaviors look in the context of human societies is massively influenced by environment and social norms, far more so than biology in itself.

For that reason, it's far more accurate to consider what constitutes gendered behavior to be a social construct, even if it's influenced by biology. On that note, how we define gender is ultimately up to us. Language isn't fixed, and if our understanding of gender evolves such that "gender" is a more useful word when it refers to how people view themselves in relation to socially-constructed gender norms, rather than referring only to their biological sex, then that's just fine by me. I do understand that many people struggle with that shift in language. A lot of people consider gender and sex to be interchangeable words, given that it's such a small percentage of the population for whom their personal understanding of "gender" and "sex" don't map one to one onto each other. So, that interpretation just seems natural, and anything contrary to it, by corollary, can feel unnatural.

That said, even if biology dictated certain gendered behaviors in a hard way, that would not then mean that people who behave or view themselves contrary to those typically defined biological imperatives should be considered harmful or invalid or less worthy of societal recognition.

Even if being transgender, or gay, was just a lifestyle choice, that wouldn't change my view very much. To be clear, I don't think such things are "a lifestyle choice." But, even if they were, I wouldn't then think that such people don't deserve to be recognized and respected, because choosing to be transgender or gay harms exactly nobody, and people deserve that freedom.

edits - eye twitching at my own grammar and fixing some of it

LastRounder · 2021-05-26T09:09:36+00:00

I, as biologist, see that gener physiology, roles and behavior are intertwined with each other.

Basis is, without any doubt, biological,because biological sex is an objective fact. XX, XY, they exist for a reason. Reason being to make possible diversity of genes, new match making of traits etc. That's obvious.

Other species, that have distinct sexual dimorphism also mostly have distinct different behavior patterns. Like males being more competitive, aggressive, etc.

Why this patterns exist?

Because they are a) successfull. Because that specimens who possessed that traits have survived. And b) they are preferred by females, so are passed to the next generations.

Humas are animals. I mean, our species belongs to animal kingdom, so to think that we are somehow excluded from main patterns of animal, mammalian and primate evolution would be dangerously arrogant.

Why men are stronger and bigger? Because it helped survival. And because women preferred stronger and bigger men. And so on.

Basically we are surrounded by evidence, that sexual dimorphism in psychology is innate human trait, thar was positively selected by nature and human sexual selection.

So I just scoff on the idea about "gender being social construct". Arguing with around 1,5 -2,5 millions years of evolution is like trying to piss against the wind. People doing this are just embarrassing themselves.

UnHope20 · 2021-05-26T18:52:55+00:00

Now, I will admit up front that I really hesitate to put any faith into evolutionary psychology arguments. Saying that women have, for example, a biological imperative to seek the strongest and most stoic mate feels like a tradcon wet dream.

Not to argue, but this is an fairly imprecise understanding what evolutionary psychologists believe. There's a lot going other than that.

Same for men and say, being generally more interested in things than people. That one is more tolerable, but it still implies to a greater degree than I'd prefer that gender is a biologic construct.

Are you accepting claims based on what is tolerable for you to believe? Wouldn't it be better to evaluate the argument based on it's own merits?

Ask a black person, I'm not a fan of racism. But, if a researcher presents me with data that casts my kind in a negative light the solution isn't for me to refuse to believe it.

Psychology isn't an ideology.. Or at least it shouldn't be lol

Good post though

Blutarg · 2021-05-26T17:14:41+00:00

There is no such thing as "gender".

Uppmas · 2021-05-26T09:11:34+00:00

The problem with evopsych is that while it claims to be more ''scientific'' than general sociology, there's not exactly a way to analyze human behavior in a vacuum. All human behavior happens in a social context.

I don't think anyone here disagrees that you can influence human behavior to a very strong decree, so it is readily apparent that many things are not set in stone by biology.

The truth is really that we probably can't know how much is biologically hardwired. Unless we do some ethically questionable studies where kids are grown outside of society in a controlled environment. But even then the behavior might be a negative reaction to the highly unnatural environment and not innate. A good parallel is alpha wolf theory, where wolfs do form a hierarchy, but only in captivity. In the nature wolf packs are just a family of wolves.

OirishM · 2021-05-28T05:14:53+00:00

I get what you're saying. I just don't really think that because something is natural then we must be in thrall to it forever, so biological arguments on gender are interesting for qualitatively describing the problem in full, but too often I see people using them as proof that things can't or even shouldn't change, which just seems a bit pointless, and at odds with our history as a species.

We're humanity. We've been giving two fingers to "nature" or what naturally occurs since we started making flint tools and cooking food. Fuck nature, we can forge our own path.

Interesting_Doubt_17 · 2021-05-26T14:48:39+00:00

I think when people say that gender is a social construct what they mean is that it's not very rigid and that there is an arbitrary line which is not set straight etc.

A social construct is basically something that it's created (unconsciously or not) and interpreted through social communication or language even if that construct is/might be based on a real/physical thing. Like a tree. The tree in and of itself is physical, it does exist but our interpretation of it is socially constructed along with the word "tree". For example when does a tree stops being a tree? When it's cut off, when there are no leaves left? Or when we see a tree that doesn't look a typical one and we might view it as a different type of plant.

The sorites paradox kinda hits the nail on the head when it comes to social constructs.

I hope you might get what I'm trying to say.

purebredginger_ · 2021-05-27T02:08:29+00:00

I think biology plays a part, but it's largely inconsequential. I'd consider myself a gender abolitionist if anything.

Blauwpetje · 2021-05-26T11:07:36+00:00

BTW frankly this is one of the disadvantages of the sub growing so fast. Only a few weeks ago I started an extensive discussion about this subject, with this article as a basis. It seems like we have to do it all over again.

https://quillette.com/2019/03/11/science-denial-wont-end-sexism/

BloomingBrains · 2021-05-26T16:39:22+00:00

I think its obvious that biology/evolution plays some role, but its also obvious that society contributes as well. I really don't get why everyone thinks it has to be totally black and white, one or the other. It's really hard for me to imagine that after millions of years of evolution, there were no ingrained traits because they were more useful for survival (as the extreme left would claim), but its also really hard for me to imagine that people don't change whatsoever based on their upbringing and environment as the far right would claim.

A term I like to use is biological determinism, because that's what you're describing when you mention the "tradcon wet dream". Its basically saying that we can't/shouldn't go against the impulses, they exist, and they're inescapable. Which is stupid because that's clearly not true. There are women who don't seek the strongest and most stoic mate, and there are men who are quite monogamous/romantic.

Also, lets remember why things like the urge to seek the strongest and most stoic mate exist: because that instinct evolved at a primitive time when people had to struggle for survival. Having a loving mate was a secondary concern to surviving, and being a stoic partner would be conducive to survival. Perhaps a byproduct of that would be a not very satisfying relationship, but the point of relationships wasn't to have a beautiful and fulfilling experience, it was to survive. If we look at it from the male perspective, there is a natural instinct to objectify women for their physical/sexual attributes. The overwhelmingly powerful urge to breed with women who had signs of youth/fertility was a useful tool for producing healthy children, its a crude tool but one that worked in the absence of unified culture.

So just as we acknowledge how its wrong to objectify women for sex now, its just as wrong for women to objectify men for resources/survival utility. The fact that at one time they were necessary evils for survival has no bearing on that.

Just because something exists doesn't mean we have to accept it as good, in modern times.

Old-Tax-7289 · 2021-05-27T15:33:30+00:00

I’m a diehard sociologist and can talk about the social construction of gender all damn day. But even I have to admit there are both biological and social factors at work (trust me, it pains me to say that, lol) That being said, as someone with a PhD in the area (I don’t mention that to sound elitist or imply I know it all, but rather just to indicate to anyone reading that I’ve studied this topic a LOT)—anyways, because of that, while biology does have a role, I can also say that biology doesn’t play as much of a role as conservative, traditionalist types like to believe. Also it’s critical to understand that sex and gender are not the same thing. For many people they “align” but they are two different categories that are in many ways BOTH social constructed. Take this (dare I call him) doctor/scientist, John Money for example. He basically created the scale (and long lasting practice in medicine) for babies that determines sex via an inspection of only external genitalia and whether or not a clitoris or penis is (this is not a joke) “too big” or “too small” respectively for the baby to have a “normal” life. (I.e. what sex traditionally correlates with that sex organ). This began a practice of surgically adjusting babies genitalia to meet existing and what they thought acceptable, standards of sex and gender. John Money believed it was all about nurture and if we raise a baby like the sex we assign them then they’ll be that sex and that gender. Well John Money was very wrong (for many reasons and in many ways), and many of the babies that were surgically altered (although we can’t know what they’d be like had they not been), a lot of them grew up to not feel like they identified with their assigned sex at birth. And there are a lot of reasons why that can happen but it was happening at much higher rates in these populations. So, this example shows actually both factors at play because one, surgical intervention and hormones, do not a gender identity make and nurture is also not sufficient bc being “raised as x sex” wasnt a particularly successful solution either. not that “nurture” is all there is to social construction and it’s effects because living in a gendered world has its impacts on our brains and how we process information and form our identities at our brains most malleable stages, which can create conceptual frameworks in our minds where we could sometimes fall over a sword believing that something is natural that isn’t)—and that’s clearly biological and sociological—BUT it shows that it’s not ONLY social, and YET it was not only social within a socially constructed paradigm that John Money created (I.e. a penis less than whatever cm in size is not viable for a normal life as a “man”) and I’m sure you’ve heard the saying “It’s easier to dig a hole than build a pole.” That scale (sometimes referred to somewhat jokingly as the phallometer lol) was/is in many places still used although it’s starting to become less common, to determine assigned sex at birth for ambiguous EXTERNAL genitalia. These decisions were often made with no information on their internal organs or chromosomes. And often without true informed consent of the parents. Which is unethical in medicine even if you don’t buy anything I’m selling about gender or sex here. The funny part is these measurements were completely made up and based in nothing scientific. And docs had no way of knowing what their organs would have “grown into” (ie penis size for example is so subjective in terms of visual inspection alone, let alone on a baby who will grow).

Anyway, interesting (and important stuff). I 100% recommend reading the book “Fixing Sex” if you’re interested in this concept and wanna learn more about Money’s experiments turned procedure bc it’s so interesting and blew my mind when I first read it in grad school. It sheds light on so many things we still do today which is crazy. Also, I suggest Excluded by Julia Serrano for those interested in additional commentary on this topic from a bio perspective.She talks about how they intersect and provides a lot of interesting insight!

Also, tangentially related, I remember one of my psych professors in college telling me in a human sexuality class: be warned, don’t ever forget that what’s published in science doesn’t always reflect reality, or at the very least, a complete and thorough reality. She wasn’t trying to go all conspiracy theorist but she talked to us about how she gained a lot of insight into how many studies on social aspects of gender were often not published bc they kind of undermined SOME aspects of older biological interps and academics are almost always dicks about that shit. And corps too if they’re funding research and have a lot on the line. Power is a huge factor in all of this too…

Title	How do you feel about traditional gender expression and biology?
Author	throwra_coolname209
Upvotes	17
Comments	75
Date	May 26, 2021 4:07 AM UTC (5 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/comments/nl7ync/how_do_you_feel_about_traditional_gender/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/how-do-you-feel-about-traditional-gender.1188333 https://theredarchive.com/post/1188333

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