191–200 of 297 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So can you explain what gender is, then? I've always viewed gender & sex as being an issue of parts or lack of parts a human is born with, and gender is their sexual personality or preferences. Do you believe there are specific (limited in quantity) genders?
Gender is the sex of the brain.
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> gender is a cultural construct Trans people such as myself are proof that gender is not a social construct. In my experience, the nastiest transphobes are the ones who believe gender is a social construct. They're called TERFs. They can't wrap their minds around the fact that we prove their pet theories wrong, so they stalk, harass, and doxx us.
Stalking, harassing and doxxing is indefensible, but not being able to wrap one's head around gender is understandable I think. Often people want, whether trans or not, to express their gender in terms of constructs like name, language, manner of dress etc which are clearly social (sometimes clearly invented in the last 100 years). We have no easy way of deciding how these seemingly superficial things relate to under…
Like many things, gender is a mix of both. It's an immutable core wrapped in various social and cultural markers we've come to associate with "masculine" and "feminine". And of course the range of possible cores is more of a continuum than a simple binary flag (even though we like sorting all the arbitrary markers into two neat piles as if that really means anything).
Considering we still largely refused to acknowledge something as intuitively obvious[0] as non-right-handedness less than two generations ago, I wonder how long it will take until we've learned to deal with the fact that gender (and sexuality) is as idiosyncratic as nearly everything else about an individual's identity.
[0]: Seriously. People generally have two hands. Why on Earth should we assume that there's something special about the one that is dominant for most people? Good luck explaining gender and sexuality to a society that can't even imagine not everybody is strictly right-handed.
I'd much rather prefer to lurk Hacker News but these comment chains have just been so exasperating. I'd like to know how many people actually believe that science is engaged in a widespread effort to dissimulate the truth of sex differences? Everyone knows that there is a sexual dimorphism in humans. It's not that pronounced compared to other species. Our dimorphism is not anomalous amongst great apes, nor is it indi…
So even if you grant greater variance, this is all very impeachable by technological means, and technological means are just extensions of human means. Reality is allowed to differ from ideology and almost always does. However, ideology with technology can change reality. Those ideologues that refuse to interface with technology lose much of their power to shape reality in the manner their ideologies prescribe. Combine that with the fact that biology is becoming increasingly mutable and you have neat science fiction idea: ideologies competing to redesign humans in their image.
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Perhaps you could explain how the existence of trans. people is proof that gender is not a social construct?
Because physical dysphoria is a thing. Whenever I've heard a suggestion that I should just live as a feminine guy, it just makes me feel sick. Even in a world where no gender stereotypes existed, I wouldn't want to be male. I'd rather not live the rest of my life with a masculine face, body hair, a flat chest, male fat distribution, etc. My transition has nothing to do with social roles and everything to do with my b…
I'm surprised to see this ranking so high on HN. Sex-based difference is the biggest taboo of our time. The current educational and political system is organized toward exclusively presenting the view that gender is a cultural construct and there are no differences between men and women other than plumbing. Men and women, on average, differ significantly on career choice, likes, dislikes, and motivation. And, it has…
Yeah the challenge is the way we attach value judgements to the different things genders tend (generalization) to be better at. This is purely anecdotal, but in my extended family many members believed the "we're all the same" view. I was given whatever toys I wanted whether they were considered masculine or feminine. It challenged people to see me grow up and be obsessed with heavy machinery - something they obvious…
I wonder how much is (1) subconscious reinforcement of tradition or influences from outside the home.
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Having lived through so much of the polictically correct conditioning about equality of everybody I became pretty numb to it. Then having a child and seeing the stark difference between play habits of boys and girls made me think about it again. Anecdotal, of course, although consistent with many other people's anecdotes, which starts to look like data after a while.
Check out the work by Simon Baron Cohen at Cambridge, which includes studies on newborns showing clear differences between genders. http://www.math.kth.se/matstat/gru/godis/sex.pdf Also check out the work of John Money, who popularised the concept of 'gender as a social construct', and wrecked the life of a young man whose penis had been destroyed by trying to raise him as a girl: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_…
If anyone ever fails us to understand how blind spots in our perception and cognition work, one of the best examples is to contrast the intensity of calls for equal treatment for the sexes with the fact that up to 80% by region of American baby boys [1] get a piece of their sexual organs removed shortly after birth.
Moreover, we even allow Mohels to suck the baby's penis clean and have a celebratory meal afterward, called a Seudat Mitzvah [2]. And the fact that babies sometimes contract herpes and die from it [3] doesn't stop it.
So that's a hell of a blind spot, although I won't say it's just academics with power, it's numerous institutions including the religious ones, the corporate ones and even outlaw institutions. The evil that happens to people is the accumulation of all the mundane evil people in institutions do to protect themselves.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevalence_of_circumcision#/me...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brit_milah
[3] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2304793/Two-babies-s...
I'm surprised to see this ranking so high on HN. Sex-based difference is the biggest taboo of our time. The current educational and political system is organized toward exclusively presenting the view that gender is a cultural construct and there are no differences between men and women other than plumbing. Men and women, on average, differ significantly on career choice, likes, dislikes, and motivation. And, it has…
> Sex-based difference is the biggest taboo of our time. The problem is that correlating things with sex (even when such a correlation seems apparent) is just as bad as correlating things with race, ethnicity, religion, age, index finger length, eye color, and pretty much anything else. It disadvantages those in the arbitrarily-designated outgroup, and subjects everyone to the Fallacy of Composition https://en.wikipe…
If someone wants to hire the tallest 50% of the population to be fruit pickers and fairly evaluates every member of the population resulting in a 90% male workforce, how can they defend themselves against accusations of discrimination? In such an instance, it would be important to understand the height differences in male and female populations.
What about the most intelligent 5% of the population being best suited for STEM fields? With fair evaluations would that result in even splits across sex (or race, for that matter)?
Even with self selection, people are going to select into roles they are best suited for.
Does the Jamacian ACTN3 gene variation result in more Olympic gold sprinters, or is it a result of racial discrimination?
Articles like this on HN and the interest in studying differences between different groups is at least partially a direct result of pressure and accusations of discrimination based on sex/race distributions of groups.
I agree, ideally evaluating each person should be done on an individual level. I also think evaluating issues of discrimination should be done on an individual level.
I'm surprised to see this ranking so high on HN. Sex-based difference is the biggest taboo of our time. The current educational and political system is organized toward exclusively presenting the view that gender is a cultural construct and there are no differences between men and women other than plumbing. Men and women, on average, differ significantly on career choice, likes, dislikes, and motivation. And, it has…
I think it's the right political conclusion, even if the reasoning is questionable. Just because you could conduct research to root out differences in populations of females and males, it doesn't mean that you should. What's the point? It seems to be that these arguments are used to justify gender disparity in occupations, achievement, etc.
I like Dan Dennet's response to this question:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beKC_7rlTuw&feature=youtu.be...
I'm surprised to see this ranking so high on HN. Sex-based difference is the biggest taboo of our time. The current educational and political system is organized toward exclusively presenting the view that gender is a cultural construct and there are no differences between men and women other than plumbing. Men and women, on average, differ significantly on career choice, likes, dislikes, and motivation. And, it has…
> gender is a cultural construct Trans people such as myself are proof that gender is not a social construct. In my experience, the nastiest transphobes are the ones who believe gender is a social construct. They're called TERFs. They can't wrap their minds around the fact that we prove their pet theories wrong, so they stalk, harass, and doxx us.
It is akin to saying that the Black Panthers are good, when the KKK is bad. They're both bad.
Feminism == Masculinism == sex discrimination
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Stalking, harassing and doxxing is indefensible, but not being able to wrap one's head around gender is understandable I think. Often people want, whether trans or not, to express their gender in terms of constructs like name, language, manner of dress etc which are clearly social (sometimes clearly invented in the last 100 years). We have no easy way of deciding how these seemingly superficial things relate to under…
This is absolutely true. A few years ago the majority of Americans couldn't even wrap their heads around marriage equality.
