Nostalgic Pushhead

Just a question I thought I'd lay to you people, because you seem smart.
Gender. Does it exist? Some people say no. I had an english professor earlier this year say that gender was "purely a social construct".
I don't buy that- I think gender has a defenite biologically ingrained component. Environment/culture is defiently a huge factor, of course. But I believe there is a biological basis for it.

I have reasons and evidence and stuff but I'd like to hear what you guys think. And what's the current scientific consensus? I hope I'm not preaching to the choir, that'd be boring...

And if this is in the wrong forum or something, go ahead and move it...

pz

It's neither and it's both.

The current scientific consensus is nonexistent, and is more than a little muddled. You will find plenty of people who emphasize the genetic component, and you will find a smaller number of perhaps even more vocal people who emphasize environment.

Of course, they're both wrong. The correct and rather zen-like answer is that if you are curious about whether it is nature or nurture, you are asking the wrong question.

Here's a succinct quote from Susan Oyama in Evolution's Eye that might help:

Writer@Large

Well, the last time I looked, man and women had different, if compatable, naughty bits, determined by a distinctly different chromosomal designator (XX or XY). So I think anyone who says "gender does not exist" is being intentionally postmodernist and extreme in obvious and intentional ignoring of biological differences.

If the question is "does social gender exist?" then the answer is "of course it does!" and those who deny that gender roles develop socially is foolish and overly simplistic. But I'd love to hear some details of your teacher's ideas.

--W@L

Vesica

I went to a rabidly PC, gender obessed undergraduate institute, so I will throw in my two cents.

As I understand the arguments, gender as a concept has little to do with chromosomes. That idea would be refered to as 'sex'. In fact the APA will not let researchers ask about a respondee's gender (often providing the choices Male/Female)...this variable is always termed 'Sex'.

I have meet people that believe in multiple genders..I have never really been clear on this but somehow sexual preferences always become intertwined with the idea of gender.

Nostalgic Pushhead

Yup, Writer@Large- you're talking about sex. Its seperate from gender.

One of my major reasons for believing gender is biological is the problems with intersexual infants. When a kid's sex is indeterminate, doctors ussually "fix" it, randomly choose a gender. If gender were social, wouldn't the kids, raised as whichever, become that gender? But thats not what happens.
Then there's John Money, who proved it further with the case of a perfectly normal male who due to a circumsion accident was raised as a girl... and didn't take to that too well. To say the least.

ps418

Oh, you mean are behavioral/psychological differences between sexes solely socially constructed? No, of course they're not.

Patrick

Nostalgic Pushhead

Well, yeah. but some people believe otherwise. Just was curious about alternate points of view...

Undercurrent

It seems like no matter how many beliefs are challenged by so many people, the notion that the mind is somehow independent of, or at most loosely coupled to, the body remains sacrosanct. Animals only recently evolved rational bits of brain. It would be absurd to believe that these rational bits aren't constantly bombarded by signals from the more basal bits that respond to hormones and control sexual impulses in animals.

Pyrrho

Since you want an argument, I will give you one, though I'm not sure how much time I'm willing to devote to this. I will argue for two points. First, that we don't have sufficient evidence to know whether the supposedly observed gender differences, even if real, are caused only by environmental factors, or whether some are caused by biological considerations. Second, I will argue that, whatever the cause of the differences that are observed, women are superior to men.

Regarding the first point, what is the first question that pretty much everyone asks, whenever someone has a child? "Is it a boy or a girl?"—and that determines how it is treated ever after. If it is a girl, people say things like: “My, isn’t she pretty!” which is a lie, because all babies look like Winston Churchill, and if it is a boy, they say things like: “My, isn’t he strong!” which is a lie, because all babies are helpless. So, from the beginning, they are receiving different treatment, and we can expect that different treatment may cause differences later throughout the body, including the brain, which is being constantly affected by what one senses (all sensory input results in the nerves sending a signal to the brain, and with a different sensory input, the signal will be different). So we cannot, even with very young children, tell whether any difference that is noticed, even if the difference is real rather than imagined (due to the bias of those doing the study), is not the effect of the different treatment each received. And it is important to notice that Experimenter Bias is a very real problem, particularly when considering any study on a topic of this nature (please click on “Experimenter Bias”). Almost everyone has an opinion on such subjects, and it is difficult to imagine adequate safeguards that could be employed in such studies. As sex is generally very visible, it is difficult to obtain a Double Blind test of the behaviors of male humans vs. female humans. The vast majority, if not absolutely all, of the studies on such subjects are so hopelessly biased that they are totally worthless for determining anything about the matter at hand. For more on these ideas, I refer you to The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould, as well as Myths of Gender: Biological Theories About Women and Men by Anne Fausto-Sterling. I recommend reading them in that order. (I think many of you will be surprised to find how different your own position is from Stephen Jay Gould’s.)

Let me further observe, that until we have a full understanding of the functioning of the brain, we cannot know if two different brains, with different structures, can perform the same functions or not, as far as thought processes are concerned. There can be, for example, different designs of electrical circuits, made of different components, that perform precisely the same function. So even if one could establish a structural difference in the brains of men and women (as well as establish that this difference was NOT caused by differing environmental factors, which are known to affect the brain), this would not suffice to show that the thought processes of men and women differs (not to mention all of the considerations of individual variation).

As for what has been mentioned so far:


The first thing to observe is that “intersexual infants” are likely to be treated differently than ordinary children, with some parents feeling that their children are freaks. They may try to hide such feelings, but it is ridiculous to suppose that this will not affect the way they are brought up. That such treatment might cause problems later on would hardly be surprising. And the case promoted by John Money involves a child who the parents knew was “supposed to be” a boy, but was raised as a girl because some idiot doctors circumcised him a bit more completely than usual. As mentioned above, we all know that people, as a matter of fact, do treat males and females differently, and this may easily explain problems later on for this particular child. Not to mention, of course, whatever trauma the children above may suffer from the significant surgical alterations which they may undergo. And we may also say, that any attempt to use these children to settle the matter is to use a group that is systematically unrepresentative of the groups about which we are attempting to come to some resolution.

Let me also add to the above, that within the group of all human males, there is considerable variation in behavior between different individuals (and the same individual considered at different times). Any behavior that falls within the total range of human male behavior may be properly called “human male behavior”, because human males actually engage in these behaviors. This same idea applies to human females.

Now, whenever two groups of individuals are compared, it is likely that the average of one will be different from the average of the other, simply due to the sum total of the differences within each group. If we consider something that we can actually measure, such as weight, and we take two groups, say of 5 people each, and let us suppose that the members of the first group (let us call it “Group A”) individually have the following weights in pounds: 110, 160, 180, 250, 300 (there are a couple of Americans in this group), and then in Group B: 120, 125, 135, 145, 175.

The total weight of the members of Group A is 1000 pounds, so the mean (“average”) weight of the members of Group A is 200 pounds. The total weight of the members of Group B is 700 pounds, so the mean weight of the members of Group B is 140 pounds.

Now, there are several interesting things to observe from these imaginary sets of people. First, the “average” member of Group A weighs more than the average member of Group B. This kind of thing leads many people to say things like: “A-types weigh more than B-types”. However, ALL of the members of Group B weigh more than the first member of Group A. Also, all members of Group B fall between the variations in weight of Group A. Furthermore, no member of either group, in fact, weighs the “average” amount for the group. What is the significance of such matters? The significance is this: When speaking of members of different groups, the “average” member does not tell you anything about any particular member of the group. This fact is almost always overlooked, but is of the utmost significance.


Going back to the subject of our discussion, to wit, whether there is a biological factor in the supposedly different behaviors of men and women, there is considerable variation in behavior between individuals within each group, and we can expect that the “average” of each group will be somewhat different, as any two distinct groups of individuals is likely to be different. This, however, will tell us nothing about any particular individual in either group. Further, we would need to know what the complete range of behaviors is for each group, as it may turn out, as in the imaginary examples of “Group A” and “Group B”, that all of the members of one group fall within the range of variation of the members of the other group. It is possible, for example, that the range of behaviors of women falls within the range of behaviors of men, in which case it would be appropriate to say that all women behave like men (though not all men behave like women). Of course, it could turn out the other way, or neither way, but that can only be determined after a satisfactory number of unbiased studies are done. And as things stand right now, there appear to be none that fit that description. (If you think you know of any, by all means, let us know, but be prepared to tell us all the relevant details of how it was conducted, and what steps were taken to ensure that Experimenter Bias did not invalidate the study.)

I’ve already spent more time on this than I planned, so I will quickly move on to the second point, and be very brief with it.

The second point is, whatever the cause of the differences that are observed, women are superior to men. This, in fact, is extremely obvious, when one considers the crime rates. The vast majority of crimes are committed by men. Not only do men commit more crimes overall, but they also commit the worst crimes, far more often than women. The vast majority of murderers are men, and the disparity between men and women becomes far greater when we consider mass murderers.

As for accomplishments that I expect some of you to now mention, in an attempt to discredit this idea, suffice it to say that women have, historically, been systematically denied the opportunities that allow accomplishments. Historically, literacy rates have differed between men and women because women have been denied an equal education with men (the fact that so many women are literate now shows that a lack of literacy was not due to inability, but lack of opportunity). And those who cannot read and write are less likely to achieve great things that we will read about in history books. Even today, women are often discouraged from studying math and science, due to prejudice against them. (Social pressures are factors even if no laws are relevant to certain cases.) It can only be due to prejudice, as they have never been given the same encouragement, so we cannot know what they might achieve if they had been given this encouragement.

Again, we all know that men and women are treated differently, so we cannot know what women would accomplish if they were treated the same as men.

Let me finish with the words of H.L. Mencken:

ps418

Piscez,

As you can see, the arguments for the 'opposition' are laughably weak. Next time you go to the bookstore, check out the chapter on gender in Steve Pinker's book, The Blank Slate. It does a fine job of summarizing the relevant empirical evidence for a biological basis to some between-sex differences. Also check out Sex on the Brain, by Deborah Blum, Sex and Cognition by Doreen Kimura, Male, Female: The Evolution of Human Sex Differences written by David Geary and published by the American Psychological Association, and A Mind of Her Own, by Anne Campbell.

Patrick