Evolutionary Benefits of Gender Differences

[Katy]

National Geographic

This is an interesting article on the evolutionary benefits of gender roles, or division of labor. Essentially, letting men go hunt big game while women and children hunt small animals close to camp or get fruits and veggies gave modern humans an edge on neandertals when we started moving north.


Of course, being anthropologists, they have to be sensitive and add:

The scientists point out in their study that gender roles were not always the same in early-human cultures, and there's nothing that predisposes either sex toward certain kinds of work.

Oh well.

[Dan Rowden]

Well, of course not, gender roles just popped out of the ether for no discernable reason whatever.

[Katy]

Well, of course not, gender roles just popped out of the ether for no discernable reason whatever.

huh. It left out half my quotation.

"That women sometimes become successful hunters and men become gatherers means that the universal tendency to divide subsistence labor be gender is not solely the result of innate physical or psychological differences between the sexes; much of it has to be learned," the authors write.

There's the second half.

So, what? The exception disproves the rule? Sure, I can stand up to guys twice my size in sword fighting but It's something like 2% of the females who try stick with it past a month and 15% of the males... And in the end is like 99% male dominated sport - so much so that they wrote a whole book on how to be a female in this sport...

[Dan Rowden]

Gender difference is totally political now. So much for science and for thought.

[Kevin Solway]

"The scientists point out in their study that gender roles were not always the same in early-human cultures, and there's nothing that predisposes either sex toward certain kinds of work.

That women sometimes become successful hunters and men become gatherers means that the universal tendency to divide subsistence labor by gender is not solely the result of innate physical or psychological differences between the sexes; much of it has to be learned," the authors write"

This shows that the scientists don't understand what gender means.

Let's say there is one woman on earth who is better at hunting than she is at gathering because she has high testosterone levels. And all other women are better at gathering.

Does that mean that women are not predisposed towards certain kinds of work?

That would be an insane conclusion. But that is the quality of science in our modern age.

[Dan Rowden]

Well, yeah; I think Katy made the same point.

[Katy]

Gender difference is totally political now. So much for science and for thought.

Well, you know, popular media wouldn't want to offend anyone. Or make them think. They'd lose readership.

]Let's say there is one woman on earth who is better at hunting than she is at gathering because she has high testosterone levels. And all other women are better at gathering.

Does that mean that women are not predisposed towards certain kinds of work?

It's insane; even ignoring psychological factors, which it would be sort-of-possible to argue are learned, at least to a large degree... being shorter, physically weaker, and slower would make a woman a worse choice for hunting megafauna.

Not to mention the fact that childcare is much more instinctively a feminine role - and having a baby on your back doesn't make you a very good candidate for running down a mammoth.

Really, it's not until fairly recently and fairly European that gender has been the same as sex (and that's starting to change again) - when they look at these skeletons and show that a few females were killed in battle, I wonder whether these same females were performing traditional feminine roles at all.

[Kevin Solway]

I think Katy made the same point.

Yes she did. The stupidity of it all is hard to comprehend. It's the same as the problem in the "Customer service" thread - it shows a total lack of conscousness.

[Dan Rowden]

Well, when science becomes as politicised as "gender studies" have become, understanding is the last thing anyone wants to be accused of. It just isn't right to actually understand anything. What is "right" is what you can make seem plausible for political purposes.

[Katy]

Yes she did. The stupidity of it all is hard to comprehend. It's the same as the problem in the "Customer service" thread - it shows a total lack of conscousness.

I think the difference between this and the "Customer Service" thread is that this is semi-intentional. For another academic example, I recently read an article in class, which I unfortunately cannot find a free copy of. The abstract, however is over here

Anyway, if you read the abstract, and the article you find it basically says that the women are intentionally manipulating the men by creating public displays to embarasse them until they start financing stuff for them. The author of the article didn't even try to hide that that's exactly what was going on, but then the second half of her article was all about how awful the men were for making the women do this.

Anyway, we read this in class one day, and about two paragraphs in, I started laughing. I just couldn't help it. Everyone else in the class starts discussing how awful this is of the men, when suddenly they realize that I'm laughing instead of commiserating. I suddenly became the class misogynist (you'd think the honor would go to one of the men in the class who admitted they were only taking such a lame course because they had to...)

I'm stuck wondering whether I'm the only one in the class able to read.
Of course another possibility is that I'm the only one in the class nerdy/interested enough to read the entire article...


Point being that academia has totally lost its focus and become some kind of self-perpetuating cycle of idiocy. PC seems to have taken hold and replaced any semblince of reality.

Well, when science becomes as politicised as "gender studies" have become, understanding is the last thing anyone wants to be accused of. It just isn't right to actually understand anything. What is "right" is what you can make seem plausible for political purposes.

"gender studies" - by which we mean buying 15 textbooks about women, and then including a 5 page .pdf file about masculinity.

Seriously. We've become so PC that it's un-PC to have the entire branch of study that is supposed to make us be PC...




EDIT: went back to reply to Dan here instead of making a 2nd post - we posted at the same time.

[Kevin Solway]

Anyway, if you read the abstract, and the article you find it basically says that the women are intentionally manipulating the men by creating public displays to embarasse them until they start financing stuff for them.

Many societies have a culture of teasing men who are still unmarried after the age of, say, 30. For example, such men are often teased that they are homosexual.

In some small towns in Germany, men who are still unmarried on their 30th birthday are made to sweep the stairs of the town hall until kissed by a virgin.

I was told that somewhere they parade unmarried men down the street every year and spit at them, but I don't know if that's true, although it sounds believable.

I think this is all part of the shaming process for not providing more fully for a woman's material wants.

A book that should be studied in gender studies is Vilar's The Manipulated Man

[Pye]

.

If gender dynamics/roles are ruled by genetic evolutionary advantage, then why the complaints?

Then this "over-feminized" universe is ruled by genetic evolutionary advantage; and the teasing of German men unmarried after 30 is ruled by genetic evolutionary advantage; and the arrival of PC gender discussions is ruled by genetic evolutionary advantage; and the manipulating to provide for women's material needs is ruled by genetic advantage, etc. etc.

Or what? Did at some point genetic evolutionary advantage give way to -- what?

Why not just lay back and rest in this advantageous evolutionary default program? Everything must be working just fine, it you give it this authority.

One says they promote consciousness with this line of thinking; I think you promote exactly its opposite.


.

[Katy]

Or what? Did at some point genetic evolutionary advantage give way to -- what?

.

What are you saying? That we should go back to exactly how it was in cave-man days? Just because something provides an advantage at one point doesn't mean it will continue to provide an advantage. That's sorta an important point in evolution - things will work for the niche a species is filling. If that niche gets changed, the species will change too.

[Pye]

.

Katy writes:

Just because something provides an advantage at one point doesn't mean it will continue to provide an advantage.

Right. That was my point.

So why the grief over what's happening to gender roles now?


.

[tooyi]

Fat is fat in any language. Despite efforts to conflate terms, change vocabulary and how people use them, Fat will still be there. What happens then is that the consciousness in people automatically self-organizes to match a new slang term for Fat thus accurately representing the way things really are with all the things that were connected to it.

Gender was not a choice but is a natural consequence of a slight original asymmetry that the environmental pressure breathed larger like a wind suddenly blowing a flower open. If it could have been a choice the asymmetry would have guaranteed an opposite outcome, but that would be silly (false) like saying:


(Choice)

1/2 = 2/1


instead of,


(Reality)

1/2 = 1/2


The Greeks were smart enough to realize logos and tragedy (theater). A play will find its catharsis either intentionally (consciously) or unintentionally (the american dream) but it will always get there. The difference is whether there will be bliss or interim patches of brief ecstacy with a humongous letdown in the end. If neccessary the viewer must complete the tragedy themselves and that causes the suffering that no material good you buy or put on can alleviate. The only way to cause a masterfully orchestrated tragedy is to intent through logos by cutting into the egregious efforts at drama using logic. The natural impulse is to get everything now and fast and that is why there is canned laughter and the applause sign. Intent is present only in proportion to the regulation of immediate release.

So when gender roles, the language and terminology that is in use to define them changes, the factors, feminine and masculine, don't. The difference between a masterful play and a contrived one is the truth. That's why fat will just be Fat. How much you desire to deny that is how big a bomb you get at the box office.

[Pye]

.

Who's talking about changing genders?

Oh wait. Those who say "women must become more masculine" are . . . .

Fat is fat. Gender is gender. Now what?


.

[sue hindmarsh]

The female gender role has now become so inflated that many females suffer confusion and anxiety over the choices open to them. “Having it all” – a career and a family - hasn’t made woman’s lot really any easier, if anything, it has made her life more difficult and frantic. But it often isn’t any easier for the woman who chooses career over family or family over career. Not having both, she feels like she is not living up to her full potential.

-
Sue