Todays Genders in Society

[Moiraine]

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Originally posted by MagiK:



Moiraine its not that hard to figure out what is due to societal conditioning and what is just coming naturally. I know Garnet will argue against me, but watching my kids grow up I could clearly see that the male was different from the female and it wasnt about barbies or which toys were played with, it was how they acted. When I was a teen baby sitting, I could always tell the difference betwen boys and girls..again it is how they responded to issues not things......awww never mind I quit.

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Wow, I am impressed that you have sired so many children that you are able to create statistically valid laws just by observing them ! :

Oh, and please, don't "it's not that hard ..." on me, I've been knowing since childhood that people use statements starting with such a formula when they know full well that what follows is flawed.

different people will always be treated differently by the majority - human nature

[Durwyn]

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Originally posted by Lord Shield:
different people will always be treated differently by the majority - human nature

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Nature or not, it can be changed, its just a matter of thinking and going over the past expirences and mistakes of 'human' nature...

[Thoran]

Boy you guys pick some threads sure to get everyone worked up.

I have a few things to offer... along with an opinion (since that's what bbs's are all about)

- American Indians - I grew up on a Reservation till I was six (Seneca / Salamanca NY), then I was 1/2 mile from the reservation border until I went to college. The Seneca's were/are a matriarchal society. To this day the bloodline for acceptance into the "Nation" is the mothers bloodline. Your mother can marry whomever she wishes and you're still a Seneca. Property rights are now non-sex based I believe but used also to be matriarchal. The way it was explained to me is that there is a male group of elders and a female group of elders these days. It appears to outsiders that the male elders make all the decisions now... but the reality is that without the female's OK, nothing happens. Case in point - The male elders were all gung-ho about building a casino on the reservation, had plans drawn up and all. The female group said "NOPE",

no casino. [img]smile.gif[/img] Take it for what you will.

One thing that hasn't been considered in this discussion is to look at our closest relatives. Primates. NOW, I'm not trying to say that a primate and a human are both locked into the same behaviors, but they are a control group that has not been corrupted by the impact of human society [img]smile.gif[/img] .

Anyway, all by themselves without any impact of society male adolescent chimps form into groups (called gangs by observers). What do they do? They run around making a rucus, being indescriminately destructive and generally making an agressive nuisance of themselves. This is not a behavior observed in female chimps. The point I'd like to make: animals exhibit sexual roles without the broader impact of sociatal influence. This is broadly true in the world... males and females of the same species act differently.

It appears to me that most studies point to hormones as a primary cause of behavioral tendencies. These tendencies are not gender specific, but the hormone concentrations are. I think given that line of reasoning you could come to some basic conclusions -
1) there is an increased probability of agression in persons within which you find increased levels of testosterone.
2) scientific study has indicated that human males display increased levels of testosterone relative to females... and adolescent males more so over mature males.

Therefore I think it's not an unreasonable conclusion then that human males, due to their increased levels of testosterone, which tends to increase agression... will generally display increased agression when compared to females, irregardless of societal conditioning (which ideally would act as a mitigating influence... but that's most certainly not universally true). Additionally, adolecent males are especailly susceptable to this influence.

RANT...
Does this make men evil and exploitative as the "feminazi's" would have you believe? I think not. The structure of human beings both male and female is intended to optimize our chances for survival. Male agression is not barbaric, it's a natural outgrowth of our desire to succeed as a species. It also has positive impacts on men, especailly when channeled in productive directions. The same can be said of women and the "natural" mechanisms that influence them. While we are different in many ways, in the end we are complimentary and undoubtably equal. Propeganda like the venemous bile that the radicals in NOW spew adds nothing to society... they should and will be marginalized just like the mysoginist are.

[ 02-04-2002: Message edited by: Thoran ]

[fable]

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Originally posted by Neb:


And you treated your boys and girls the same way? EXACTLY the same way? And how about your wife? Did she treat them EXACTLY the same way as well? And how about their friends? Or anyone else they encountered? What about the TV-shows they watched, were males and females treated equally and doing the same things there?

I think not.

And the same goes for the children you've babysat

Unless they're treated 100% equally and only subjected to seeing males and females being treated 100% equally and doing the 100% same things you cannot see whether they're actually different, because otherwise they'll get pictures of males doing this, and females doing that.

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Set firmly in a given society, all of us at a very young age are strongly influenced by a whole series of factors within our immediate environment: our parents, our peers, the toys we're given, even the color and cut of our clothing. Boys and girls are conditioned from a very young age to act in a manner expected of their gender, economic class, etc. Deviating from this is frequently punished in some way, while "appropriate" behavior is rewarded.

Note, I'm not saying that gender-based social patterns are necessarily bad--or good; this whole discussion seems to focus around whether or not these patterns are a matter of social conditioning. And I don't presently see how a teen boy, brought up with toy guns, enrolled in boys' sports activities from an early age, wearing different clothes, taught appropriate behavior "for a young man" by his parents, is going to be a control candidate fit for observing the unbiased effects of gender in an "unsocialized" environment. The social links to individuation and gender self-identity are manifold.

[Garnet FalconDance]

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Originally posted by fable:


Set firmly in a given society, all of us at a very young age are strongly influenced by a whole series of factors within our immediate environment: our parents, our peers, the toys we're given, even the color and cut of our clothing. Boys and girls are conditioned from a very young age to act in a manner expected of their gender, economic class, etc. Deviating from this is frequently punished in some way, while "appropriate" behavior is rewarded.

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::nods::

I am the oldest--and as a very young child (I can remember to about 3/4 yrs old) I loved to play outside with toy cars and such. My uncle (I think) had given me a police car that had working sirens and lights and everything! So I took it out and played in the dirt/mud, making various bugs good guys and bad guys (hey, I was an only child til I was 5! [img]smile.gif[/img] ) Dolls? They were good for nothing, IMO. They just sat there staring blankly into space, no interaction, no nothing. Simply did not spark any interest in rping !

I learned *very* quickly that as a girl I was *not* supposed to get dirty when I played, playing with cars and such was *not* acceptable and feeding dolls to the neighborhood dogs was not looked upon favorably. It wasn't until I was several years older that I finally found a way I could 'play' in the dirt without getting the royal chew-out from my mother----gardening! She had no interest in it but appreciated the fresh vegies and fruits and I had a healthy interest and ability in growing things. No praise, no thanks for the vegies, just no bitching. To this day, *vegetable* gardening is the only female pasttime she holds acceptable for little girls ('cause flower gardening is not nearly as dirty thus is fine).

My baby brother, however, was actively praised for coming home with enough dirt *on* him to plant his own garden!

So I can and do understand this stupid double standard society has. We want guys to be more sensitive but ridicule them for showing 'soft' emotion (sadness, empathy, caring of any sort, etc) or label them as somewhat effeminate. We want our women to be strong and independent, yet they become suspect of being lesbians (don't want to use the terms). It's all a bunch of b.s.

Again, are we discussing biological differences or societally influenced behaviours?

[Thoran]

Preschool children are the closest you're going to get to a control group, of course one could argue that even they are not a 100% untainted human study group, but they're as close as you're going to get.

In that group of 3-5 year olds there are marked differences in behavior between boys and girls (admittedly unscientific on my part - observed by my wife over many years teaching preschool). The way she described it was as "rules of thumb"... that preschool age girls tended to be (but not always) developmentally ahead of the boys, and that the boys tended to be more active/rambunctuous throughout that age range.

Society most certainly enforces gender roles... but there are solid physical, developmental, and mental differences behind the scenes.

And whoever said that women use more of their brains than men needs to stop believing 3rd rate science. It's well known that the idea that we only use a small fraction of our mental capacity is a bunch of refuse, and the idea that women are "smarter" than men is N.O.W. propeganda... stemming from the fact that women develop more rapidly than men. The reason is that women in history needed to be ready to procreate EARLIER than men... hence the rapid development. Sometimes the application of a little common sense (and consideration of the agendas of people forwarding a certain position) will cut through a lot of pure BS. [img]smile.gif[/img] How can someone observe the world around them, see the fundamental and very significant physiological differences between men and women... and come to the assumption that all those obvious difference aren't accompanied by significant differences in behavioral and thought processes? It doesn't pass the rule of applied common sense IMO.