An update on the Ada Initiative
An update on the Ada Initiative
Posted Jan 16, 2012 14:47 UTC (Mon) by blujay (guest, #39961)In reply to: An update on the Ada Initiative by Julie
Parent article: An update on the Ada Initiative
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
Masculine and feminine are adjectives, while male and female are usually nouns. And that's all.