Is gender 100% bullshit? Or not

[speakingwoman]

Big question!

So, biology is a stable reality (I have been reading the well-written Hands Across the Aisle site)

Some bits of biology are visible and tangible e.g. our wider hips.

That changes some behaviours (our gait is different to men’s gaits).

And our hormone mix is different.

Where does biology stop and gender start?

Oh yes I agree gendered behaviour exists, I'm not saying it doesn't. Quite the opposite in fact. But I do think the world would be a better place without it and people could just be people rather than being confined to current societal gender norms.

@Fairenuff

Do you think that if we could remove all gender reinforcement and socilisation from society, men and woman would behave in much the same way and there would be no defined differences between men and women other than sex/biological differences.

I think the grey area inbetween the genders would be bigger and more people would fall into it. But I think we would still observe some general differences in behavior between the two sexs.

gendercritter

Do you believe that men are more violent than women?

Do you think that if we could remove all gender reinforcement and socilisation from society, men and woman would behave in much the same way and there would be no defined differences between men and women other than sex/biological differences.

I think they could indeed behave much the same way yes.

But you are talking about ridding the world of misogyny which is impossible.

And there will still be greed and injustice to deal with, I don't think we could rid the world of that.

So what about the situation in Scandinavia...the least inequality in the world yet females outnumber men significantly in caring / people industries and men massively outnumber women in engineering / stem ?

It seems the more freedom people get, the more ‘gender roles’ are reinforced

www.thejournal.ie/gender-equality-countries-stem-girls-3848156-Feb2018/

Do you believe that men are more violent than women?

Yes, I guess I do. I'm not sure! I have no idea at all if that is inherent and relates to their biology (I think so in all honesty) or if it's more to do with nurture. I wonder if it's possible to ever unpack it fully. I am not an expert.

I do think, however, that society could make some massive changes and very firmly teach boys and men that violence is not ok. I think violence against women would then drop significantly over the generations. I think things would still be unequal but not as much as now. There are no real consequences for men being violent now.

gendercritter

So men have biological ‘gender’ behaviour but not women?

I agree that male violence must be controlled, indeed we do! A large proportion of laws are there simply to account for this ‘gendered’ behaviour.

But there’s the thing, we are more similar than we are different as we are the same species, however there are certain behaviours that are more common in females and then the same for men.

I do understand the issue in acknowledging this as it seems we have systematically devalued female behaviour, however denying the reality doesn’t progress anything for women.

There is no innate or biological gender. Gender is purely society's expectations based on our biology. We have biological differences.

There is no innate or biological gender. Gender is purely society's expectations based on our biology. We have biological differences

How do you know this?

Perhaps we could be more careful/precise with language? I think the phrase gendered behaviour can mean innate gender ( driven by genes we don't understand or more likely just don't exist ) , sex driven gender (characteristics affected by the sex related genes) , and learned gender.

So men learn a gender behaviour of violence, that is partially enabled by the sex driven difference of physical size and probably nothing more innate than female violence but it is possible that some genes lead to specific hormones that do support violence.

personally I would say that the obvious women caring for their own babies is not a gender thing, but a sex thing. It's part of reproduction . So knocking gender is not devaluing the role of the mother

It is possible to believe that gender is rubbish at the same time say that sex is significant and should not be ignored.

Moon cup lots of our behaviour around birth are actually hormone driven. Rushes of oxytocin and prolactin surge through the female body to make us bond and make breast milk

So men have biological ‘gender’ behaviour but not women?

No. That's not what I said. Violence is pretty different from 'neuroticism'

gendercritter

You said you believe violence is a natural behaviour in men. I agree with you. I also am trying to understand the reason it exists. Some of the answer may lie with actually imagining a world without violence and wondering if we would have survived? would we have survived until now without humans (men) not prepared to be violent?

You can even view this at your micro level when a burglar enters your house...what do you need? Someone to be violent? Well, who is prepared to do that?

There has been a requirement for violence and almost all species who are currently in existence have a form of violent behaviour (not always by the male)

Sooo boys don't have testosterone any more than girls do, so why are primary aged boys so violent? It is due to societal acceptance and indeed encouragement from the programmes and games they play and watch and behaviours that are tolerated and they encouraged to participate in. Not all boys fight.

Is there any proof that testosterone has a part to play in violence? Are male hedgehogs more violent than female hedgehogs? Female clown fish rule the roost but it is males who have testoserone (and turn female if the female dies). Testosterone makes birds sing but not fight.

I think too many things are being equated without any evidence. And many things being thought of as evidence because 'many boys/men, women/girls do it'.

There is not a single country in the whole world with full equality and even if they have better levels that doesn't correlate to a change in societal pressure to participate in certain types of roles.

Oh look, the Sweden fallacy crops up again.

Basically because we have no society in which both sexes are treated identically from birth, there is no measurement data that covers the full range of possibilities. This makes analysis very difficult and a particular problem is that of confounders. Things that affect the results but you have not been able to control for.

I will try to explain ....imagine a Swedish society starts to pay caring roles similarly to engineering roles and then discovers that they see a bigger proportion of women going into caring roles than before,! that does not prove that caring is innate to women. It's predictable. .

Because the confounding factor is that the sexism is still present more generally in the population even if not in law. So now girls, who are encouraged from birth to consider themselves as caring see no penalty in taking a caring role. They can satisfy society expectations and still get a good wage.

It will take many generations before we treat female children identically to male children. It will therefor take many generations before we will be able to see any real differences that could be called gender differences ( here I am talking about differences primarily between sexes that are not related to reproduction) However, given the lack of genetic evidence, I suspect that we won't see any gender difference

Oh, do let's talk about the science of the wandering uterus that causes hysteria! Please.

boys have higher testosterone than girls

Uranus wanders so why not your uterus?

Evening all.

I like the idea of starting from this: “There is no innate or biological gender. Gender is purely society's expectations based on our biology. We have biological differences.”

And then seeing whether there is stuff it can’t account for.

Midgebabe, my wording “bullshit” may not be the best way to elicit precise use of language. I take your point though.

Speaking..I wasn't thinking about you, blunt is after all usually clear in meaning. Sorry it seems my attempts to be clear were anything but.

Au contraire.I understood you clearly.

But other contributors had read the question in different ways from each other probably because of ambiguities in how I phrased.

radardetector
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. A lot of violent men are so mainly because they learnt the behaviour from their fathers
There seems to be a social basis, a familial basis, a cultural basis and a genetic basis for violent behaviour. As has already been discussed in the "Mexican woman vs Swedish man violent offender stakes" posts. What this says to me are two things: firstly that male violence is overt, (shameless, accepted, natural and brutal) and the female inclination to angry malice might well be entirely equal to that of males but women's violence is covert (shocking, unnatural, "poisoning vs beating", very rare). Those are the parameters within which most people understand violence by the two sexes.
Secondly although the possibilities of benevolent use of genetic screening are quite amazing (and terrifying), in practice people will take what knowledge they have and form a prejudice. We all have them. Young men at night - avoid. Loose rottweiler running towards you - fear. Young man with a rottweiler, at night, recently arrived from a country with no female rights in the middle of a civil war (pick any one of about 100 countries here!) - avoid like the plague... That's a prejudice, and to my untrained mind it isn't a problem unless the holder of that prejudice fails to acknowledge it, and/or actively discriminates against someone in a situation where their personal safety is not in question. Example: the young man from the war zone with the large dog asks me to stop and chat to him, on the street, at midnight. I will not. I realise there is a chance he and the dog are both delightful and that we will have a lovely conversation. I realise the likelihood of this is minute, and can recognise and own my prejudice (quite happily, whilst jumping into a taxi to escape). If the young man came for a job interview the next day as a forklift truck driver, and he had a forklift licence and a good reference, there would be no reason to discriminate against him. My personal safety isn't in danger, even if I'd seen him the night before and felt unsafe he hasn't done anything wrong.
Likewise with sexual, romantic or platonic relationships: you get to pick who is in them with you, and that isn't discriminatory. If you don't want a foreign coworker in your house, don't invite them. If you ignore them at work and cause them to feel uncomfortable, that's discriminatory, and bullying.
I digress. There are cultural and genetic factors at play. It's very difficult to discuss this, but it shouldn't be impossible. I have faith in human nature and our ability to choose for ourselves how to behave; every person who came from a terrible background and became a brilliant person is positive proof of this. The negative proof is the Menendez case!

I may have had too much wine ( is that possible?) but i think this thread been really useful in helping me get more precision & Clearer understanding

I like the idea of starting from this: “There is no innate or biological gender. Gender is purely society's expectations based on our biology. We have biological differences.”
Agreed and succinctly put