Is gender 100% bullshit? Or not

Being socialised is different from blank slate (all behaviour is entirely nurture), which do you mean Fairenuff?

It's a really interesting discussion and something that I have also wrestled with mentally a great deal.

I think anyone who doesn't recognise the incredible fragility and vulnerability of a newborn baby has an impairment but many people are afraid of this and so nurturing is the furthest thing from from their mind.

I feel a similar way about other people's babies myself, I don't feel any need to care for them if their actual parents are right there. I can see the baby is safe and so why would I want to get involved. I instinctively desired to care for my own babies and so did my (male) partner, but other people's babies usually leave me rather cold.

But if I found an abandoned baby crying in a park I would pick it up and cuddle it without thinking. I would feel a very strong desire to comfort and protect the baby. The same if I read about a baby being mistreated. Can't we also call this a nurturing instinct? I think in this sense almost all humans, men and women, have a strong nurturing instinct and there is something very wrong with humans who do not have it, who would leave the crying baby. Or is this a different kind of instinct all together, since I wouldn't feel the long-term desire to actually raise that abandoned baby myself?

all behaviours are socialised

Truly, that is so incredibly naive. It’s a nice clean thought but so incredibly incorrect it’s scary that you go around thinking that.

I don't think there's any need to be scared. Of course human behaviours are socialised. Young learn from adults. They observe and then practice until they have learned enough to become independent from their carers. Everything around us is socialised from birth. Everything.

speaking if you take time to notice whilst you're about your daily business, you will see genderised behaviour everywhere. Especially in the way adults treat and speak to children differently, depending on their sex.

Can I come back to the hormones issue? I really challenge the idea that our behaviour is universally affected by hormones. Just because we feel emotional when our hormones are imbalanced and causing problems (eg PMT used to cause me to feel emotional/aggressive) doesn't mean we are equally affected by our hormones all the time or that our general character is affected by them, despite the fact that my normal hormone mix is totally different from yours.

@alldayinbed

I'm not saying all male violence and aggression is innate and so they should get a "get out a jail free card". But to say male aggression is wholly due to socialisation is wrong. I think it's a complex issue including a combination of nurture, socialisation and instinctual behaviour.

Alot of violent men are so mainly because they learnt the behaviour from their fathers. But if we castrated all boys in infancy, would we see the same patterns of violence repeated?

speakingwoman

The Big 5 is over 60 years old and is the widely accepted and validated personality measure globally

Even if you want to claim it’s not appropriate / makes you uncomfortable, it IS measuring something, they are absolutely valid statistical constructs and just dismissing them because they don’t fit your ideology isn’t sensible

Men often fall in love with their babies too. They can't breastfeed but they can be just as nurturing as the mother.

There are studies that suggest children with devoted dads are at an advantage. Obviously the same is true of mothers but it's perhaps not something you'd automatically assume about dads.

I'd guess this is partly instinctual and partly learned. Nurturing their child tends to go with being protective of their child's mother. This is all to do with men being so much stronger. Society tries to ameliorate male sexual aggression by teaching men to protect women from other men and urging them not to use their strength against women. Doesn't work in many cases, sadly, but the intent is there.

As children benefit by having both parents around as they grow up, there are social pressures to encourage that.

Human beings are unusual in how long it takes us to raise our young to maturity. I'd guess quite a chunk of male behaviour around their offspring is instinctual rather than learned, simply because it increases their chance of successfully rearing a child and thereby spreading their genes

Neuroticism in psychology on the Big 5 is not what you describe

It is a globally accepted way in which to measure personality and their differences but you seem sure it’s just made up, how?

The ‘more emotional’ thing about women could relate to the fact that women score consistently higher on the ‘neutoticism’ Scale on the Big 5 than men. Literally meaning that women are more susceptible to emotions.

You said 'it's worth looking at the facts'

The whole concept of neuroticism is from the 19th century although it is rooted in ideas which emerged before then. The word comes from 'neurosis' and 'erotic' ie it is a condition in part caused by a woman's sexual organs and desires as well as their menstrual cycle, which are all supposedly inherently unnatural.

Neuroticism itself is a social construct and a highly misogynistic one at that

Biological sex is binary!

Why do you work so hard to deny this?

Biological sex is not binary. Not all females gestate. Not all can. Not all males are dominant. Some females are dominant. There are thousands of intersex conditions. In fact, unless you have had your chromosomes and hormone sensitivity levels tested, any one of us could have an intersex condition, regardless of whether we have successfully procreated, and not know about it.

This isn't correct. To be female is to be 'of the class' that can bear young. Biology is very messy and things go wrong. If you have issues with fertility you aren't suddenly male. Your sex will still be easily discernible.

To be intersex is extremely rare. For most people, as far as I'm aware, it's either immediately obvious at birth or you don't go through a normal puberty, for example. My friend with a Disorder of Sexual Development has no breasts and she is infertile. (Turner syndrome) along with there being other physical symptoms. Very few people are going to get beyond their twenties without realising they have a DSD. I'm sure it happens but not often.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blank_Slate

A summary of pinkers book.

I don’t think you are computing the danger of saying ‘all behaviour is socialised’

You are a proponent of the blank slate theory.

Massively proven to be wrong over and over

all behaviours are socialised

Truly, that is so incredibly naive. It’s a nice clean thought but so incredibly incorrect it’s scary that you go around thinking that.

The point is, biological sex changes with age, external factors such as diet and environment and so on.

You are getting confused. Biological sex is about primary and secondary sex characteristics. Your genitals, your chromosomes. There are 2 sexes. Biology doesn't change. Even if, let's say a man is in an accident and loses his penis, his sex hasn't changed.

Absolutely your hormones might and your personality might over the years but again that isn't your sex actually changing.

Just imagine living in a time when women were built like rowers! that's a society where men think twice before committing sexual assault.

There is no evidence of that. Men are stronger even than strong women. If women could protect themselves from rape by being stronger we would have a lot more emphasis as a culture on women bulking up.

I suspect all humans can be violent given the right provocation . But to me a key part of being human is using our brains to overcome limitations of our biology, which I think comes with our complex language and our focus on art and music.

, women learn alternative behaviours because otherwise they will lose more often in a violent encounter. . Males may learn that it's manly to be strong and tough.

Argh. Bus

@Radardetector
Let's take all the boys in our culture, and tell them all, every day, to suppress emotion, suppress their nuturing instincts, in favour of other attributes.
For some, this is going to be ok. But for others it's going to be really damaging. Some will just turn into dickheads (your a-hole boss) a small number will go entirely nuts (incels etc).

If we then say toxic masculinity is innately male, biological and unchangeable, we don't question the cultural suppression of boys human instincts.

Sure, there is a data correlation between being male and being violent. But you cannot prove causality...

If female nurturing skills were not based in any biology, I believe we would not be here right now, we would have become extinct a long time ago

I wonder why we don’t want to value this immensely valuable female behaviour

I'm sorry but this is a load of crap. If males had wanted to, they could have annihilated females eons ago. They didn't because they wanted to protect the human race. They wanted to nurture their offspring.

All behaviours are socialised.

You can ask, why do women behave like this, why do men behave like that.

It's not a mystery. Just look at what is socially expected and accepted in society and you can see why people behave the way they do.

Even the tag 'feminine' is starting to bug me.
Because if there's two women, you and me. You like cooking, I hate it.
Why do you get the tag feminine and I do not? Who decided to link your preferences with our sex - rubberstamp approved - and detach mine from our sex?
Why isn't hating cooking feminine and loving it not?

Because all gender is, is an invented means to rubberstamp expectations of our sex.
Some of our sex will happily naturally possess those traits and meet expectations, some will not, and of those who do not, some will learn to conform, some will eventually accept or like it, and some will not.

Gender is just a uniform mould we are expected to fit, like Cinderella's slipper. A few will fit it naturally, some will amputate toes and some aren't interested in wearing glass on their feet at all.