Is the Male Female Divide a Social Construct or Scientific Reality?

[theilltemperedqueenofspacetime]

https://richarddawkins.substack.com/p/is-the-male-female-divide-a-social?utm_medium=android&triedRedirect=true

I'm not sure if this is 100% new but I enjoyed it, and it is well and usefully cross-referenced. Some idiotic comments, as ever.

Thanks for posting I will read the article later although I'm pretty sure I will conclude that the male female divide is a scientific and common sense reality.

I see Dawkins is lionising Jan Morris. A lot of educated men seem to do this; even when the familiy testimonies of such men always tell a different story.

I’ve noticed this, too, that Jan Morris is very popular with men who identify as anti-woke. Douglas Murray is another example.

I can’t stand Morris. Turgid, fussy writing style; treated the women in his life with contempt; self-absorbed and dishonest, as a person and as an author.

Thankyou for posting, I will read it later.

But surely this is ever so straightforward - there are physical and behavioural differences between men & women. These are sufficiently noticeable that, while most of society is built around men, some small concessions are made for women’s specific needs - most notably spaces where women are vulnerable, and sports. These are really essential (and honestly insufficient) to allow women to participate fully in society.

Everything else is really just stereotyping

I found the explanation about anisogamy particularly clear, although one btl commenter still managed to misunderstand. Dawkins is of course always a bit of a curate's egg, but I enjoy reading him. His empathy for the very male, very self-regarding 'Jan' Morris is almost comical.

@DragonRunor "while most of society is built around men, some small concessions are made for women’s specific needs"
This is succinct! Thank you.

there are physical and behavioural differences between men & women

The former being scientific reality, the latter being mainly (but not exclusively) the result of socialisation.

What do you mean here by "mainly"?

I don't agree with 'mainly'. The behavioural differences between men and women may not be binary (there's no behaviour found exclusively in only one sex), but they do seem to be consistent over time, and therefore likely to be mainly innate (eg there's never been a society where women commit the majority of the violent crime).

Man and woman - scientific
Male and female - I never know what people mean by this. But if we are talking about violence, promiscuity, aggression or lack thereof - scientific again.

Violent crime is one of the exceptions. 'Behaviour' covers everything from propensity to murder to likelihood of taking dance classes.

Hence 'mainly'.

Levels of violent crime and sex offences vary across times.and cultures - so they are susceptible to cultural influence to some extent. But as far as I know male levels are always higher than female levels for the same time, place and culture. So there is a strong biological influence.

But a lot of sex differences in more everyday behaviours are pretty much entirely down to social factors. Whether they are considered male or female behaviours depends on time and place.

Before the invention of the typewriter, virtually all secretaries were men. Before they realised there was money in it, virtually all computer programmers were women. An interest in learning the relevant skills and taking the jobs was not consistent across time.

Someone who has long curly hair, wears flowery high heels and lots of makeup, loves ballet, and would always choose a glass of wine over a glass of beer could be a woman in the 1980s. Or could be a man at the court of Louis XIV. None of those behaviours are in the least biological.

Jan Morris wrote a very compelling book which was serialised in the Sunday Times (may have been the Telegraph) It had a huge impact on how many of us saw "Transexuals". This might be why Dawkins is so sympathetic, I know I was until very recently.

I think possibly the discussion arises because there are different "layers" of behaviour.

There's nothing inherent about tapping at a keyboard or a punch card machine that makes men or women more attuned to it.

But men are more likely to aggressively seek out high-status jobs, and/or to demand higher status from the jobs they are doing. I think this is biological. So when programming with punch cards was seen as a nice secretarial job for women to do, women did it, and when it became associated with a new "computing revolution" with the promise of big bucks then men did it.

Even today there is a clear divide within tech - women tend to work in stable 9-5 programming jobs working in established programming languages often with established training programmes or learning routes. Men tend to be the ones founding startups, trying out experimental languages and tools, etc. Wherever there is an element of risk there is over-representation of men. (There is a lot of overlap, exceptions etc but this is true in general.)

Basically I think there are biological differences which play out differently in different societies, but in predictable ways.

Female and male are scientific reality.

Segregation by sex is a social construct, which is the reason it can be changed, either by removal or, as now, by pretending people are the opposite sex and therefore have the right to switch which facilities they use.

It's scientific and physiological. The world wasn't built around men, it was built by men. We can feel uncomfortable about this, but it's true.

We can say men are violent, they start wars and are mostly bad for society, but war has lead to technological advances that we all take for granted today. Out of bad comes some good.

We don't want to fight wars, work in oil fields, keep infrastructure running. I love my home, my car, the street I live on, I have hot showers and a flushing toilet; but I don't have any interest or intention of doing anything to keep it all working. That's a "man's" job.

Yes, I think most people have not read or even heard of the material that came from Morris's children, which came much later.

And then most never met his personally, which is often a point where spidey-senses will kick in and say, this person is not how they presented themselves on the page.

Yes, I think this is exactly it.

Men are more likely to seek status, take risks, and be aggressive. Women are more likely to be agreeable. This impacts employment, but what that looks changes depending on the environment.

The women in regular hours jobs also is related to the demands of mothering, in my experience. Women are less likely to want unpredictable evening work or especially travel when they have young children.

What kind of activities and work reflect those tendencies will change over time