Two Opposing Popular Mumsnet Views

[UppityUpUpDoon]

Two very popular views I see on here often seem to me completely at odds, and I can't work out if the two groups who jump on threads to express these views are two different groups, or if they are the same group and can justify holding both views simultaneously.

Popular Opinion 1:
Men can never become women and vice versa. There are irrefutable and biological differences that no amount of hormones/surgery/etc will negate.

Popular Opinion 2:
It is completely unreasonable for a pregnant woman to express (or indeed privately feel) a preference for one sex over the other. All babies are just babies. Girls can like football, boys ballet, etc. There's no statistical difference.

YABU - Both can be true (please explain your reasoning, and at what age you think the sexes start to diverge). I should say there are a lot of studies on these, but I'm also interested in people's opinions.

YANBU - These are two opposing views.

No, we couldn't.
The male brain and the female brain are wired differently.

What's that for to do with your first point, which was whether or not human beings can change sex?

Obviously, they can't. It's biologically impossible. We're all either male or female.

If women left their children at the same rate as men do, the human race wouldn't continue. I think there is a difference in the bond between mother and child.

Well yeah people can't change sex. And women sometimes wish their baby was the opposite sex. But that doesn't mean she's going to try and change the child's gender identity or force them into being trans?!

There have been lots of studies that show how girls and boys are socialised differently from birth.

The studies show that people interact differently with boy babies (and with girl babies who are presented as boy babies) from how they interact with girl babies (and boy babies who are presented as girl babies).

I mean only 100 years ago people thought that you could never make women as intelligent as men and yet now in many countries it seems clear that women are completely capable of doing degrees and academic research etc.

if the culture changes enough then yes, most stuff can be changed.

What's the evidence that this is biologically driven, and not the result of social expectations? Women would be judged far more harshly for abandoning their children than men would, and they know it.

YABU.

They're not opposing views - they're very much aligned, ideologically.

And I couldn't be bothered explaining why, yet again. Go read a book or two.

In Greek and Roman times many children were simply abandoned on hillsides/in the rubbish heaps.

by both parents.

it’s a plot point in many Greek plays.

It would be still be unreasonable to be upset, if you attended knowing that it was a mixed sex book club though.

So you don't think testosterone (and the other hormone differences) has an effect on behaviour? Higher levels of testosterone have been shown to reduce cognitive empathy.

What? No.

By showing a sex preference you're putting a lot of gendered assumptions about likes & behaviour on a little baby (girls will wear pink, like shopping & let you plait their hair, boys will be rough & have no relationship with their mum).

By saying a man can be a woman you're saying being a woman is dependent on gendered appearances. Long hair, clothes and breasts.

It's not at odds in any way to think that both of the above examples of gender-wang are a load of balls.

But that doesn’t address what the OP is suggesting.
Much of that bond is to do with levels of oxytocin. There are studies showing that the levels of oxytocin in men increases if they are fully involved in the caring of their children.

Indeed, but there may be a reason for that. There was an awful documentary
(The Boy who was Turned into a Girl)
where the parents of a boy raised him as a daughter (due to a botched circumcision). It ended tragically for him and from a young age he hated being treated as a girl. Not data of course, but compelling nonetheless.

Hormones can impact behaviour but not to the levels you’re describing.

She’s probably starting the 7th ‘AIBU to think grandmothers shouldn’t be obliged to provide childcare’ thread today…

What reasons? What specific reasons do you think boys and girls should be raised differently.

And what does ‘raising him as a daughter’mean.

Yes this was clearly the point at which logic failed. Gender critical, sex realist. No contradiction.

Both positions are the same. They reject the harmful sex stereotypes that make up gender. Men and women can like whatever they want to like, dress however they want, take up whatever pastimes they like, do whatever work they like. This is dictated by personality, not sex. Therefore all babies have the same potential and shouldn’t be treated according to harmful and outdated stereotypes.

There are as many ways of being a man as there are men in the world, and as many ways of being a woman as there are women. The only constant is their sexed bodies.

There is no tension between your two points.

Yes, I do think that hormone differences have an impact, but I don't think hormone levels are determined purely by biological sex - environmental factors also play a role. For example, when fathers are involved in caring for their sons, their sons will typically have lower testosterone levels as adults.

I'm not saying that there are no differences between men and women. Merely that the biological differences are grossly overstated while the differences in socialisation are general understated. Studies have repeatedly shown that people who think they treat boys and girls no differently do actually interact with them in quite different ways.

I think this is a bit dated (pink, dresses, etc). Hopefully our ideas of girls have moved along a bit.
But... for instance, a woman may still think (even despite not wanting to feel this!), "I live in a dangerous area - I would prefer a son because he will be able to protect the family better." That's not irrational - a son is much more likely to be stronger and far more likely to use violence if needed.

Gosh, it sounds like I think women should feel these things. I don't. I'm merely trying to say that if they do, let's not tell them their entire life's experience of men and women are wrong ("there's no difference between the sexes, it's all socialisation, etc").

But the point the OP is making is that, using this example, it would be unreasonable to state, or even have, a preference for a female-only book club. Because there is no difference between a female-only book club and a mixed-sex book club.

I think that is bollocks. I think that sex differences are real and important, sloppy, superficial gender stereotyping is damaging, and gender disappointment can be real and cannot necessarily be dismissed as a result of said sloppy gender seterotypes.

In this particular instance, (the case of David Reimer) he was given a girl's name, dressed in frocks, and encouraged by his parents to engage in stereotypically "little girl behaviour" such as playing with dolls and baking with his mother.

He was born in 1965, an identical twin.
David Reimer - Wikipedia LINK

I think you'd be hard pressed to find a woman who actually wants to though (apart from the odd exception) even if there wouldn't be a backlash

Well thats not now, when there is a welfare state that will just about support most new mums.