Is gender 100% bullshit? Or not

Radardetector By it's very definition if a particular sex role is socially constructed (and therefore reinforced) you will see it repeated widely across that sex. You seem to be using the widespread presence of sex based norms / stereotypical behaviours as evidence that they're socially constructed. A similar example would be if I pointed out that people under the age of 30 must be naturally much more adept with their thumbs and that this is a skill people lose after the age of 30. It must be a natural aptitude since it is so widespread. Ignoring the impact of smart phones altogether.
Brilliant

That depends on what we mean by nurturing. I don’t mean that people have a desire to remove a child from a present mother and take over the care.

But the basics of nurturing, a desire to care for and protect the young and vulnerable, is shown in almost all humans who are old enough to understand they are separate to others.

Turph, why sorry? It's obviously true, and sad that anyone feels embarrassed by the lack of the alleged instinct, which AFAICT is largely down to oxytocin and then habituation. Or else very strong social schooling into overcoming a natural revulsion.

@Turph

When did I say women arn't violent. Saying men are more violent and aggressive is not the same as saying women arn't.

Of course they are but in much lower numbers. Possibly because women are more empathetic, less driven to dominate and less sexually motivated. Women are also weaker and so more aware of potentially coming off worse in a physical altercation - hense why female murderers often choose poisoning. But yes women can be and are violent, but on a much smaller scale then men.

Although surely anyone, male or female, who has no nurturing response to a newborn baby has a serious psychological impairment.
I meant to comment on this. I disagree completely. 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. They want to put the baby somewhere safe and leave it there (someone else's arms!) I've seen it in women as well as men, and invariably the conversation that follows describes their discomfort and embarrassment at not having the nurturing switch click on. Men and women from large families seem to have had more practice with babies so it comes more easily but that desire to nurture someone else's child, even family, quite often isn't there in nice, normal people. Sorry.

If we viewed violence as the result of societal factors and not innate to biological sex we'd be in a better position to improve behaviour.

You can "view" it as a social construct but if it is innate (not saying I know it is just that it could be) you won't get anywhere.

We didn't build social norms on nothing. Women and men will have had different behaviours and so taken on different roles in the early stages of humanity. Society has then evolved around those innate behaviors. Over time somthing like women nurturing their own young, morphed into all women are nurturing and so should only take on caring roles in society.

Obviously women being nurturing is a false stereotype. But society imposed that role on us because we have an innate instinct to care for our own young.

Also the whole apprenticeship system - being taught as a child how to be an artist, a stonemason etc.

Radar but there is a discussion to be had about why we pretend women are never violent. To me it's sexist in itself. The idea of the pure and loving woman who never hurts anyone is demeaning; that person lacks agency. Genghis Khan had agency! We choose to follow the law, we choose to be considerate or to avoid violence; it's a conscious decision not just a default. We treat female murderers like circus freaks, whereas in fact it's rare but normal. Japan is closing police stations due to a lack of crime but Japanese people still murder, just less often. We wouldn't consider them unable to commit murder, we recognise that as a nation they choose not to kill each other at the rate Hondurans do.

@Radardetector
It's not a good idea to extrapolate animal behaviour to humans. Yes, lions and chimp males are territorial and fight each other, but the ladies are no slouch on this front. (Have you seen a lioness in full hunt mode. That's not gentle nurturing beast!) Yes stags clash antlers, but this isn't the Same as inventing guns.
Penguins make great dads, male bower birds love a bit of arts and crafts and dancing.
Biologically closer species, like apes and rats frequently live in matriarchal societies and the females can be just as 'violent' as the males.

Most giraffes prefer gay sex, some chimp species have sex with deer, really the animal kingdom is not equivalent to humans.

If we viewed violence as the result of societal factors and not innate to biological sex we'd be in a better position to improve behaviour.

There's seriously no doubt that older men can nurture younger males. History is full of it. They tend to train them to be heroes, though.
Youngest person to swim the Channel

But in which case is male violence sex or gender? Does society condition men to be violent towards women, or is it innate. Do men choose to be violent, or do they choose to not be violent? Is there a default?
Assuming we agree that being violent is a negative trait, this reads to me like men are violent and women are not. Which isn't true. Men's violence is more destructive because of their physical strength, ability to impregnate, and the structures of power they have created to exclude women and deny them justice after the fact. They also are violent more often. So it seems to me that men are just better at violence, and because it is easier for them to be violent (excused, hidden, females are smaller, etc) it makes it more likely still that they will continue to be violent. It's the structures of law and justice that free us and allow us to exist as equals. So the places with a breakdown of law and order women suffer the most.

I lurk in some weird places online, and MRAs/incels etc are quick to throw out the accusation that mothers are just as likely to be violent as fathers

I've seen that too. They go on about infanticide alot and how woman are more violent then men because they are violent to kids. I've also heard them say men are only violent because they are smacked by their mothers whereas daughters don't get smacked.

Presumably the people who hunt boar have to teach children how to hunt, which is itself a nurturing behaviour.

Yes, there must be a lot of that. Also: '"Be sure to aim for the jugular, this is how you do it."

Presumably the people who hunt boar have to teach children how to hunt, which is itself a nurturing behaviour.

Plus, plus - I don't know where this comes from but anyone who's ever engaged in online debate with a bepenised person will know how important it is for them to win. It's not about exchanging ideas or learning or anything but gotcha. It's a total obsession with status to the exclusion of things I'd (as a mere female) regard as more important, like sharing information and increasing understanding.

Let’s jusr say that it is biological that women like nurturing^

Why? It's not true. You may have been socialised to think this but there is no reason to presume that.

I agree. I lurk in some weird places online, and MRAs/incels etc are quick to throw out the accusation that mothers are just as likely to be violent as fathers. link
It's not NAMALT, it's the opposite. I don't feel I can be taken seriously as a woman if I cling to the notion that all women are morally superior.

If you’re good at something, you tend to be increasingly thrust into that role. If you breastfeed, you become skilled at caring for a young person. So you’re better at feeding, so you get to do it, or chosen to do it. Let her get on with it while I go out and hunt boar. And so on, through generations. Easy to see how this becomes gendered, and then that role gets thrust onto the whole class of people like you (formerly known as women).

@SarahCarer oh yeah! All that too! That's why you can't boil it down to 'oh he has a willy that's why he's violent' or 'she has a lot of oestrogen that's why she's a good mum'. I was only making the point about hormones as one part of the rich tapestry that makes us 'male' or 'female'.

But yeah always so much to learn and maybe some new discoveries will overturn everything we think we know about this stuff.

I think there might be fuzzy bits around hormones. Isn’t there a link between higher testosterone and propensity to violence?
There's a strong correlation between the warrior gene and violence, the original study was of a Dutch family in which all the menfolk were violent. It's a bit toxic to discuss now because although the correlation was strong and subsequently replicated, the gene isn't evenly spread amongst all demographic groups. It's a shame because something like genetic analysis and early intervention would actually prevent so much violence. The gene basically predicts a violent reaction to any provocation, rather than random violence. So identifying who might be prone to reacting violently and focussing on them could have been really useful.

@SarahCarer

I don't beleive that male aggression is a social construct, I think it is a sex based characteristic.

We can see the same aggressive behaviour in other mammals. I think women being more empathic, cleaner and alert to danger are sex based characteristics there to help us care for our young. Again we can see the same behavior in the animal kingdom.

in a mega speedy skim ( my eyes are tired) that's observational studies which of course are bounded by the diversity in society and culture that are available to be measured.

There are no observations from a society where there were no differences in how women and men were treated in anything, women are always very aware that they are weaker. Could that awareness in itself make women behave differently...probably yes.

Is that biology or culture? It is biology that women are weaker. It is biology that weakness is exploited. A form of Darwin. but the end result is not biologically encoded as at birth far as I know. It's still appears to be some kind of learned behaviour.... culture.

It's pretty hard to imagine any way of proving some things either way ( ethically at least)

it doesn't reduce the point that caring for people is undervalued in our society today because it's seen as women's work. But assuming that women are naturally better at caring is a generalisation that is not proven and I don't see any benefit form promoting am unproven generalisation . I can see negatives though...discouraging boys who are caring from following their natural instincts, making women who are less caring feel bad about themselves, and making it easy to keep the wages low for caring jobs...because it's only women and it comes easy to them

But I am too tired to make any sense anymore.

You seem to be using the widespread presence of sex based norms / stereotypical behaviours as evidence that they're socially constructed. Sorry what I meant to say was "You seem to be using the widespread presence of sex based norms / stereotypical behaviours as evidence that they're based in biology"

Radardetector By it's very definition if a particular sex role is socially constructed (and therefore reinforced) you will see it repeated widely across that sex. You seem to be using the widespread presence of sex based norms / stereotypical behaviours as evidence that they're socially constructed. A similar example would be if I pointed out that people under the age of 30 must be naturally much more adept with their thumbs and that this is a skill people lose after the age of 30. It must be a natural aptitude since it is so widespread. Ignoring the impact of smart phones altogether.

alldayinbed I'm not sure you've travelled as far as you think though. You seem to have gone from thinking it's your genitals that tell you how to think to thinking it's your hormones. What about reason? What about repetitive thought patterns, the things we invest our brains into? What about exposure to art and culture? And what about language and socialisation?

@SarahCarer

Why?