An update on the Ada Initiative
An update on the Ada Initiative
Posted Jan 13, 2012 22:43 UTC (Fri) by Julie (guest, #66693)In reply to: An update on the Ada Initiative by nix
Parent article: An update on the Ada Initiative
Well, of course, there are biological differences between the sexes ;-)
But you're talking about sex, not gender. Gender is, according to wikipedia:
"A socio-cultural phenomenon that divides people into various categories such as "male" and "female," with each having associated dress, roles, stereotypes, etc."
In very early human primitive societies engaged in the day-to-day struggle to survive, roles were doubtlessly more restricted according to one's sex for practical reasons; child-bearing (with no contraception available - a tool developed later by humans to allow us to control our own _biological_ behaviour) would naturally dictate a more sedentary role for women.
But social behaviour is not governed by biology; it is shaped explicitly by our conscious self-awareness. Sometimes this has a subconscious undertow (which can be consciously counteractable once it has been identified), but this too is socially shaped (see my long post in response to giraffedata).
All our actions (even the most basic, think about eating food for example: animal feeding compared to human dining, with all its intricate rules, meanings and varied contexts) take place in another dimension when we carry them out compared to our closest primate 'relatives'.
Chimps and gorillas probably get very close to the self-conscious border and may temporarily pass over it; passing, for example, the 'mirror test' (although not without 'practice'), and a gorilla was spotted in the wild [1] taking 'measurements' in water using a stick, indicating perhaps a sense of 'I', wondering whether the water was too deep to wade into.
(Assuming their physiological make up allows it, the fact that gorillas, and many 'higher' primates, with a few rare examples, can't learn to swim is a pertinent example of the inflexibility of their behaviour - even when such a simple skill is involved - compared to ours, btw. Many other 'stupider' non-primates can swim, presumably as a result of, in their case, a genuine biologically 'hard-wired' 'instinct'.)
But apes (and indeed all other animals) are characterised by their inability to stay in the self-conscious realm _permanently_ like we do; there is a fundamental passivity in the behaviour of other primates, behaviour which has not altered over millions of years, and which, without our intervention to teach them tricks and 'sign language', speaks of a lack of sustained, conscious, self-awareness - a lack of any intentionality which might allow them to understand and shape the world around them. While they exist through their lives, our lives are narrated through an explicit interaction with others and the world around us within a baroque, many-layered social framework of our own meaningfully-interpreted invention. No behaviour that arises out of this can be realistically compared to that of even the most intelligent chimp, who cannot be capable of grasping a socially-determined concept such as gendered behaviour, with its 'associated dress, roles, stereotypes, etc.'. Nor can the way we live our lives at all be crudely accounted for by any biologically-determined features, like the comparative size of areas of the brain.
[1] http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/09/0930_0509...
Posted Jan 16, 2012 14:47 UTC (Mon)
by blujay (guest, #39961)
[Link] (5 responses)
The very fact that WP puts "male" and "female" in quotes, as if society or culture assigns people to one category or the other, demonstrates the absurdity of the argument. Whether a person is male or female depends on exactly one thing: their chromosomes.
Whether a person acts like a typical male or female relative to their culture is another matter. We're all aware of the ages-old nature vs. nurture argument. It will NEVER be settled because we cannot ever REALLY KNOW all the factors that influence a particular person. It's pointless to try to assign a ratio--the point is that both nature and nurture, biology and society, affect people's personalities. It's foolish to say that it's either one or the other.
Finally, I'm not going to go through this post and your previous one bit-by-bit, but suffice it to say that the examples you cited do not prove that biology has no effect--they prove that society does. (Which is obvious, anyway.) To claim otherwise is arguing from the false premises that 1) we can ever know what the ratio is for anyone, and 2) that it could possibly be one or the other instead of both.
P.S. It seems that we disagree on this, but I was pleased by your first post in which you agreed that attempting to increase women's participation is no different in principle than attempting to increase men's. I guess we agree on that. Discrimination is discrimination, regardless of which group it's applied to. We should be encouraging all people to participate and we should be advocating freedom for all people. We should not be attempting to manipulate anyone, whether groups of people or individual people.
Posted Jan 16, 2012 15:39 UTC (Mon)
by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106)
[Link] (4 responses)
That is (mostly) true, but "male" and "female" are sexes, not genders. One's gender is more correctly referred to as "masculine" or "feminine", and while there is a general correlation, the two categories do not always correspond. One's sex is a biological concept, but gender is a social/cultural phenomenon. Quite a few things which do not have a biological sex--and perhaps are not even biological in origin--are still considered either masculine or feminine. Just look at languages like French and Spanish, where all nouns are assigned a specific gender. Even in English there are a few cases like that; ships are always treated as feminine, for example.
Posted Jan 17, 2012 10:33 UTC (Tue)
by dgm (subscriber, #49227)
[Link] (3 responses)
Posted Jan 17, 2012 16:40 UTC (Tue)
by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106)
[Link] (2 responses)
No, they're not. Even when speaking of people, there are feminine males and masculine females--people who are biologically male, but express more than the average/expected degree of feminine gender traits, and visa-versa.
Of course, it's generally not an all-or-nothing proposition, but rather a continuum. Most people display at least some gender traits contrary to their sex, while in a few rare cases sex and gender are completely at odds with each other.
"Male" and "female" are biological traits (though even at this level not all cases are perfectly clear-cut). "Masculine" and "feminine" are derived classifications based on physiological traits, behaviors, psychology, and perhaps other factors. There is a strong correlation, to be sure, but they are far from being synonyms.
Posted Jan 17, 2012 18:45 UTC (Tue)
by dgm (subscriber, #49227)
[Link] (1 responses)
Masculine and feminine are adjectives, while male and female are usually nouns. And that's all.
Posted Jan 17, 2012 20:00 UTC (Tue)
by giraffedata (guest, #1954)
[Link]
Male and female are primarily adjectives. I believe it is a recent invention to use them as nouns; we used to say "man" and "woman" where we say "male" and "female" now. I even heard once that calling a man a male is special to American English.
I never heard a distinction between gender and sex before now, but I like it. There are two things to discuss and two words; it makes sense to use one for each. The history and common usage also matter of course; I don't know much about that.
There is a world of difference between masculine and male. I've never heard of a masculine connector or a feminine hamster.
An update on the Ada Initiative
An update on the Ada Initiative
An update on the Ada Initiative
An update on the Ada Initiative
An update on the Ada Initiative
An update on the Ada Initiative
Masculine and feminine are adjectives, while male and female are usually nouns. And that's all.