In a gender neutral future Utopia

[tsonlyme]

...would men and women behave in a similar manner?

If we abolished the social construct of gender stereotyping and children were raised with no gender bias in any area would men and women be indistinguishable from each other in their behaviour? Is behaviour nature or nurture? Is its root in socialisation or sex specific hormones/physiology?

Or is this an impossible question to answer unless it happens?

No I think that there is a primeval differentiation between a male and a female brain, They will never become indistinguishable.

I'm not sure what you mean by behave/behaviour?

Anyway, the differences that are often talked up between men and women are not actually all that much even now, with our current levels of sex based stereotyping/socialisation. (Have you read Delusions of Gender?) So I can imagine that if there was a lot less of it, then the supposed differences between men and women would disappear altogether.

kursk, brains are currently indistinguishable. It's not possible to certainly identify whether a brain is male or female by examining it, if you take the overall size out of the equation. There's no such thing as a male or female brain. There's just brains with a variety of features, some of which might be slightly more common in women than men, or vice versa.

But Kursk - doesn't that reinforce the debunked theory of male and female brains?

By male behaviour I mean aggression, a belief that things should go their way, shouting loudest, entitlement etc.

Female behaviour - people pleasing, caring, acquiescence.

Are thes behaviours we learn through socialisation or are they innate?

AssassinatedBeauty

Agreed there is no physical difference between a male and female brain, I am thinking more of the traits.

I don't believe that socialization makes women caring, and men violent. I believe these traits are deep rooted primeval things we share with the other animals.

The male and female of every species shared similar traits.

Male= aggression, claiming territory pack leader etc

Female= looking for a mate, caring etc

What do you mean by behaviour?

Are you suggesting that 1. women are inherently feminine and then 2. these inherently feminine behaviours/traits say of meekness, forbearing, submission, quietness, compassion, mercy, grace (ad infinitum from whatever Romantic poet takes your fancy) somehow are controlled by oestrogen or by having a uterus?

I think that would be the only way to find out for sure how much of the differences are due to nature, and how much are due to nurture. So it is impossible to say until it happens!

My hunch is that there are some differences, but that the differences between individuals of both sexes are more significant than the differences between the sexes overall.

"The male and female of every species shared similar traits.

Male= aggression, claiming territory pack leader etc

Female= looking for a mate, caring etc"

That's not true.

Male violence seems to be genetic to some extent.

But we will never find out how exactly things are, as a future wherein boys are not socialized to be violent can only emerge if we select men for not being violent and thereby steer evolution to men who do not want to socialize their sons to be violent.

A culture cannot exist in complete opposition to the nature of the people living in it. At least not in a good way - it is very unlikely that a dictator will ever think of enforcing the abolition of gender and the equality of the sexes against the resistance of the general population.

squishysquirmy

Why not? It's certainly true for bears, wolves, cows, chickens, sheep, monkeys off the top of my head

Regrouted- my question exactly! I don't know.

VestalVirgin - crikey. Gender as an evolutionary concept. Now there's something to stew my brain about, thank you!

Um, no, Kursk, females are much LESS likely to go looking for mates than the males are.

The leader of any given group of herbivores is most likely to be female, wolf packs are led by couples.

The only thing that male animals do more often than female animals is fighting against animals of their own species.

"The male and female of every species shared similar traits." Every species? Of mammals, fish, reptiles, amphibians, birds, insects and so on?

There's a few more species than that, I think. Lions, for example.

Yes a wolf pack is lead by a couple, forgot about that.

I am not talking about pack leaders, just general traits males generally tend to be nomadic.

I am sure that testosterone and estrogen

......play a part too

There are some differences between outliers but there is a huge overlap. For some traits - be it nurturing, aggression, passivity, physical coordination - if you put the whole population on a spectrum from 0%-100% you might well find that the people in the 0%-10% decile were more likely to be one sex and the people in the 90%-100% decile were more likely to be the opposite, but that most people would be somewhere in the middle.

Other traits would be thoroughly mixed all through.

It would be ridiculous to assume anything about someone's personality based on their sex despite it being known that the people best at xxxx are often that sex.

Spotted hyenas...

... therefore, the only thing I consider to be possibly genetic is male violence.

In species where the male is involved in caring for the young, the female is not more caring than the male. Therefore, if we assume that human fathers having anything to do with the children they fathered is natural, then we also have to assume they are just as capable of caring for children as the mother.

Or, I suppose, we could just form all-female groups and kick men to the fringe of society, never to be involved in raising children. Every assumption should be followed to its logical conclusion. Indeed, much of societal sexism is based on NOT following things to the logical conclusion.
(If men cannot help raping scantily clad women, should we not lock up those beings who so severely lack self-control? Just as example.)

I don't think we can know what it would be like but I don't think we're going to go towards a gender neutral utopia anyway. I think we're absolutely revelling in gender stereotypes

I think male/female are fundamentally different in behaviour.

My kids were little 2/3ish. They had a pile of shared toys, including "girl" toys and "boy" toys.

Toddler ds pushed cars around, sometimes crashed them. Toddler dd got a piece of kitchen roll and made the cars a little bed and spoke to them in a caring manner. Neither child had been to nursery. Both had spent all their time with me.

Toddler ds took doll/figure type toys and put them on towers and drove the cars into the towers sending the doll flying. Toddler dd took the doll/figure type toys and fed them playfood.

Blocks. Toddler dd would build little houses for any figures. Toddler ds would build a tower as high as possible.

They shared clothes. They saw me do manual tasks such as building furniture. They saw dh do tasks such as cooking. I did not bring them up or socialise them as girl/boy. That is how they were born.

There are massive variations in male/femal traits across speices. Nature is amazingly diverse - what's weirdest thing you can imagine? I guarantee nature has made something weirder

Even if you just stick to mammals, there are no set male and female traits. Female meercats can be very aggressive towards other female meercats (ever watch meercat manor?), female lions do the hunting, and some species of monkeys have very territorial females.
On the other side of the coin, many species feature males that are "caring" towards their young or towards other pack members. And believe me, males of many species are very interested in "looking for a mate".

Those are just the species I can think of off the top of my head.

You should look into Bonobo monkeys, as they are the closest relative to humans. You might be surprised.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonobo

GinaFordCortina

I agree I have also noticed a push back against gender neutralization.

As for male violence being genetic I believe that it's a genetic trait of females too. In relation to females protecting the young

Toddler ds took doll/figure type toys and put them on towers and drove the cars into the towers sending the doll flying. Toddler dd took the doll/figure type toys and fed them playfood.

And mine didn't do that. So there's that theory crushed. Also since when are cars, blocks etc proof of natural human behaviour?