How masculine/feminine do you rate yourself?

[RFayette]

I am reacting to the idea you posited earlier in the thread that masculinity is evil and should be destroyed. As long as there are people who normally feel this way, telling them that this is wrong isn't really any better than the social engineering that you criticize.

I was talking about the construct of masculinity, not of all individual traits that are associated with it. In a feminist society, some individuals may still end up having these traits, but there will be no social force bringing those traits together and giving them a normative content. As such, it will become a lot easier to distinguish their socially acceptable manifestations from their pathological ones.

But couldn't biology do as such, without any structured "social force"?  I mean, I think aggregate differences in testosterone levels between men and women are a huge factor in differences between masculinity and femininity, before we take social conditioning into account. 

[Ban my account ffs!]

I love that Antonio believes there wouldn't be any major societal problems as a direct result of simply replacing toxic masculinity with its feminine counterpart.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I am reacting to the idea you posited earlier in the thread that masculinity is evil and should be destroyed. As long as there are people who normally feel this way, telling them that this is wrong isn't really any better than the social engineering that you criticize.

I was talking about the construct of masculinity, not of all individual traits that are associated with it. In a feminist society, some individuals may still end up having these traits, but there will be no social force bringing those traits together and giving them a normative content. As such, it will become a lot easier to distinguish their socially acceptable manifestations from their pathological ones.

But couldn't biology do as such, without any structured "social force"?  I mean, I think aggregate differences in testosterone levels between men and women are a huge factor in differences between masculinity and femininity, before we take social conditioning into account. 

It could, to some extent. I'd wager that these differences would be minimal, but my guess is as good as yours. There's only one way to find out, though...

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

according to social stereotypes of masculinity: 2
according to my own understanding of healthy masculinity: 1

[Associate Justice PiT]

I am reacting to the idea you posited earlier in the thread that masculinity is evil and should be destroyed. As long as there are people who normally feel this way, telling them that this is wrong isn't really any better than the social engineering that you criticize.

I was talking about the construct of masculinity, not of all individual traits that are associated with it. In a feminist society, some individuals may still end up having these traits, but there will be no social force bringing those traits together and giving them a normative content. As such, it will become a lot easier to distinguish their socially acceptable manifestations from their pathological ones.

     If it's just about not teaching people to act in certain ways, I can't really disagree with that. A less radical idea I would posit though is to redefine what masculinity means. I call it less radical because it is something that has been done before, with the code of chivalry.

     While people think of chivalry as pulling chairs out for women, it was established as a fairly complex code of conduct governing the actions of knights. Among other things, it demanded mercy for opponents, courtesy towards women, and loyalty to your noble lord and benefactor. This was something that was instituted because of issues in the Medieval period with young noblemen who needed guidance on how to act. They found that guidance in a concept of masculinity that deliberately excised many of its worst aspects. Chivalry is not perfect, but it provides a blueprint for what healthy masculinity might look like.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Oh come on. Men in modern society are by and large awful people, but even I'll admit they've made a lot of progress over the past thousand years. Even the most "chivalrous" men of the time would still come across as more violent and domineering than average men today. Going backwards isn't the solution.

The problem with masculinity, even a hypothetical redefined one, is that it would still be a set of social expectations men would face simply by virtue of being men. Same with femininity, which in patriarchy obviously teaches women to accept their submossive role in society. I guess you could imagine a set of gender norms that weren't oriented at creating a hierarchy and would thus be "egalitarian" in a sense, but it would still mean that people are held to different standards based on their biological sex of birth. That, to me, is fundamentally unjust and unacceptable.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I love that Antonio believes there wouldn't be any major societal problems as a direct result of simply replacing toxic masculinity with its feminine counterpart.

I love how you haven't read or understood any of my posts and have no interest in discussing them substantively, yet still think you sound so clever.

[RFayette]

Oh come on. Men in modern society are by and large awful people, but even I'll admit they've made a lot of progress over the past thousand years. Even the most "chivalrous" men of the time would still come across as more violent and domineering than average men today. Going backwards isn't the solution.

The problem with masculinity, even a hypothetical redefined one, is that it would still be a set of social expectations men would face simply by virtue of being men. Same with femininity, which in patriarchy obviously teaches women to accept their submossive role in society. I guess you could imagine a set of gender norms that weren't oriented at creating a hierarchy and would thus be "egalitarian" in a sense, but it would still mean that people are held to different standards based on their biological sex of birth. That, to me, is fundamentally unjust and unacceptable.

How is the bolded not an expression of bigotry against a huge subset of the population just for being who they are?  This is just ridiculous.

We have men's/women's sports teams because of innate, natural differences of strength between the sexes.  The idea that there aren't considerable natural differences in personality between the two sexes, without regarding social conditioning (which generally reinforces existing differences rather than creates them) seems pretty ludicrous to me.  It seems that some informal set of 'ideals' for both genders is inevitable based on biology, though it is good as a society that we've open up the working world to women in ways that were unavailable in earlier years and become less rigid, I don't think you can ever get rid of what you refer to as the social constructions of masculinity and femininity.

[Antonio the Sixth]

How is the bolded not an expression of bigotry against a huge subset of the population just for being who they are?  This is just ridiculous.

No, not "just because of who they are". That's my point: men don't have to be this way. They are socialized into becoming this way through the construct of patriarchal masculinity. The reason why so many men do such terrible things (and yeah, they do - I'm the first to be upset by that but it's hard to deny) is because they have internalized norms conducive to that. That doesn't justify bigotry against men as a whole, since we all have free will and can to varying extents break free of this socialization. But the empirical fact, and its roots, have to be acknowledged.

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Throughout history, all sorts of horrific ideologies have been justified in the name of "natural differences". Patriarchy is no exception. At the very least, the onus of the proof should be on the Scientific Sexists arguing that men and women ought to be treated differently due to their biology. I have never seen serious evidence of that.

[Associate Justice PiT]

Oh come on. Men in modern society are by and large awful people, but even I'll admit they've made a lot of progress over the past thousand years. Even the most "chivalrous" men of the time would still come across as more violent and domineering than average men today. Going backwards isn't the solution.

The problem with masculinity, even a hypothetical redefined one, is that it would still be a set of social expectations men would face simply by virtue of being men. Same with femininity, which in patriarchy obviously teaches women to accept their submossive role in society. I guess you could imagine a set of gender norms that weren't oriented at creating a hierarchy and would thus be "egalitarian" in a sense, but it would still mean that people are held to different standards based on their biological sex of birth. That, to me, is fundamentally unjust and unacceptable.

How is the bolded not an expression of bigotry against a huge subset of the population just for being who they are?  This is just ridiculous.

We have men's/women's sports teams because of innate, natural differences of strength between the sexes.  The idea that there aren't considerable natural differences in personality between the two sexes, without regarding social conditioning (which generally reinforces existing differences rather than creates them) seems pretty ludicrous to me.  It seems that some informal set of 'ideals' for both genders is inevitable based on biology, though it is good as a society that we've open up the working world to women in ways that were unavailable in earlier years and become less rigid, I don't think you can ever get rid of what you refer to as the social constructions of masculinity and femininity.

     I agree with this, basically. As I said, chivalry is not perfect. The plan is to use that as a basis going into future, as it is something that has been proven to work. Eliminating normative gender is likely not to work.

[Antonio the Sixth]

as it is something that has been proven to work

In a social context that has next to nothing in common with modern society. Feudalism, too, had "proven to work" as an economic system around the same time.

In the words of our Great Leader, it's 2016!

[RFayette]

as it is something that has been proven to work

In a social context that has next to nothing in common with modern society. Feudalism, too, had "proven to work" as an economic system around the same time.

In the words of our Great Leader, it's 2016!

What currently functioning society do you think is closest to the "ideal" in your view, then?  I'm curious because your posts seem to be aiming for some un-realizable utopia, in my opinion.

[Antonio the Sixth]

as it is something that has been proven to work

In a social context that has next to nothing in common with modern society. Feudalism, too, had "proven to work" as an economic system around the same time.

In the words of our Great Leader, it's 2016!

What currently functioning society do you think is closest to the "ideal" in your view, then?  I'm curious because your posts seem to be aiming for some un-realizable utopia, in my opinion.

As a progressive, I don't profess to know the exact form that the ideal society ought to take. I simply have a sense of the direction toward which we should lead society. In the case of gender issues, the direction is simple: moving away from the socialization of strict gender norms, and toward a uniform socialization that teaches children basic moral values (honesty, kindness, altruism, humility, etc) and otherwise leaves them free to develop their own personalities.

This is not a utopia: it is, I want to hope, the direction society is already moving towards (even if very, VERY slowly and unevenly).

[Associate Justice PiT]

as it is something that has been proven to work

In a social context that has next to nothing in common with modern society. Feudalism, too, had "proven to work" as an economic system around the same time.

In the words of our Great Leader, it's 2016!

What currently functioning society do you think is closest to the "ideal" in your view, then?  I'm curious because your posts seem to be aiming for some un-realizable utopia, in my opinion.

As a progressive, I don't profess to know the exact form that the ideal society ought to take. I simply have a sense of the direction toward which we should lead society. In the case of gender issues, the direction is simple: moving away from the socialization of strict gender norms, and toward a uniform socialization that teaches children basic moral values (honesty, kindness, altruism, humility, etc) and otherwise leaves them free to develop their own personalities.

This is not a utopia: it is, I want to hope, the direction society is already moving towards (even if very, VERY slowly and unevenly).

     As far as socializing children goes, I basically agree with this. My point of concern is that people will end up establishing gender norms in their own relations with other people, even if they can agree that they should not be forced on children (a step that many people have started taking with religion). This is the sort of in-group/out-group psychology that I was referring to. If these (more voluntary) norms are going to exist, we can still talk about what they are going to look like, and encourage systems that reward positive behavior and discourage negative behavior.

[RFayette]

as it is something that has been proven to work

In a social context that has next to nothing in common with modern society. Feudalism, too, had "proven to work" as an economic system around the same time.

In the words of our Great Leader, it's 2016!

What currently functioning society do you think is closest to the "ideal" in your view, then?  I'm curious because your posts seem to be aiming for some un-realizable utopia, in my opinion.

As a progressive, I don't profess to know the exact form that the ideal society ought to take. I simply have a sense of the direction toward which we should lead society. In the case of gender issues, the direction is simple: moving away from the socialization of strict gender norms, and toward a uniform socialization that teaches children basic moral values (honesty, kindness, altruism, humility, etc) and otherwise leaves them free to develop their own personalities.

This is not a utopia: it is, I want to hope, the direction society is already moving towards (even if very, VERY slowly and unevenly).

My question is, what are examples of strict gender norms you seek to abolish that you see today in the raising of young children?  Apart from clothing (and toys, though this is changing), I don't really see much.  This is why I tend to see social conditioning as an outgrowth of biology and not the other way around.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

In regards to gender roles, people on both sides take very absurd stances. My favoured point of comparison is height. Imagine overhearing an argument between two people about the effect of gender one height. One person argues that gender has no effect on height, and any supposed difference in the average height of genders is down to upbringing. The other person disagrees and says, no, actually every single woman is smaller than men. All persons who do not conform to the normal heights of their danger are subversive abherations. And they will argue into the night. It's the same for many emotional attributes. There is a difference in the "average" (insofar as such qualities can be assigned numerical values) aggressiveness (etc) of genders, but these bell curves are wide and overlapping. So I do disagree with ssuperflash's hypothetical. Dropping one boy and one girl into the woods wouldn't really show anything, but dropping 500 boys and 500 girls into the woods might be more revealing.

The other rot people bring up is forgetting that natural selection is an explanation, not an excuse. Human civilisation has been a grand experiment in ignoring natural selection, so I see no reason to say "well evolution says x, so we must follow call of nature!"* especially in the pseudoscientific justification of a lot of treasured "old" gender roles came into place hilariously recently, especially for working-class women.

*The reality of Paleolithic life may be far more egalitarian than we might think.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

In regards to gender roles, people on both sides take very absurd stances. My favoured point of comparison is height. Imagine overhearing an argument between two people about the effect of gender one height. One person argues that gender has no effect on height, and any supposed difference in the average height of genders is down to upbringing. The other person disagrees and says, no, actually every single woman is smaller than men. All persons who do not conform to the normal heights of their danger are subversive abherations. And they will argue into the night. It's the same for many emotional attributes. There is a difference in the "average" (insofar as such qualities can be assigned numerical values) aggressiveness (etc) of genders, but these bell curves are wide and overlapping. So I do disagree with ssuperflash's hypothetical. Dropping one boy and one girl into the woods wouldn't really show anything, but dropping 500 boys and 500 girls into the woods might be more revealing.

The other rot people bring up is forgetting that natural selection is an explanation, not an excuse. Human civilisation has been a grand experiment in ignoring natural selection, so I see no reason to say "well evolution says x, so we must follow call of nature!"* especially in the pseudoscientific justification of a lot of treasured "old" gender roles came into place hilariously recently, especially for working-class women.

*The reality of Paleolithic life may be far more egalitarian than we might think.

I think it is generally more a matter of culture channeling and forming the raw material of biological tendencies than flat out ignoring it.  Ignoring these things isn't sustainable, because these tendencies will crop up, and without the sort of culture or ethic that can direct and support them in productive ways they can turn destructive. For example, developing and constraining the fight instinct into a protective stance rather than a self-seeking aggressive one.  On the other hand, culture can also make these tendencies much more destructive then they might be otherwise. Ultimately we can escape neither culture nor our biology, and these things cannot escape each other, but there is a lot of room for how we configure this interaction.

[Antonio the Sixth]

     As far as socializing children goes, I basically agree with this. My point of concern is that people will end up establishing gender norms in their own relations with other people, even if they can agree that they should not be forced on children (a step that many people have started taking with religion). This is the sort of in-group/out-group psychology that I was referring to. If these (more voluntary) norms are going to exist, we can still talk about what they are going to look like, and encourage systems that reward positive behavior and discourage negative behavior.

Note that when I'm talking of the socialization of children I'm not only talking about family socialization. Family is indeed a major pillar of patriarchy, and changing norms about how to raise your children is hard. But beyond that, there is the impact of the mass media and of peer groups. Even if parents do all their efforts to raise their children in egalitarian value, they can still turn on the TV and see TV shows and ads promoting different attitudes and behaviors. Or they can go to school and be scorned by the other kids because they're acting "like a girl/boy". So it's a society-wide phenomenon that has to be tackled on multiple fronts.

Once the many sources of patriarchal socialization are eliminated, then it will be possible to observe if men and women "naturally" drift toward different behaviors, and devise social norms accordingly. Neither you nor I will probably live to see that, though. To me, that task is daunting enough to make everything that comes next not very interesting.

My question is, what are examples of strict gender norms you seek to abolish that you see today in the raising of young children?  Apart from clothing (and toys, though this is changing), I don't really see much.  This is why I tend to see social conditioning as an outgrowth of biology and not the other way around.

Toys are probably the most glaring example, yeah. Try being a boy who enjoys playing with dolls. I agree that it's changing, and it makes me hopeful about the future, but it's still most definitely there.

Again though, to me the most important aspect is emotional development. A little girl who cries will, in most circumstances, receive emotional comfort and attention, while a little boy who cries will be met with contempt and told to "man up". Conversely, a girl will be disciplined a lot more severely than a boy for expressing anger or rebellious behavior. Thus, instead of experiencing the full range of human emotions (which I hope we can all agree both men and women do experience), children are taught to systematically suppress some of them, which, in adulthood, leads many of them to express the emotions they are allowed to have in pathological ways. I'd even argue that men have it worse in this regard, as their range of acceptable emotions is extremely limited. There's a lot of work by child psychologists on the damages that early socialization has on boys and how it translates into violence during adolescence and adulthood.

snip

Yup, you caught me. I confess, I'm a bitter self-hating misandrist nazi psycho. In fact, I'm working on a secret eugenics program to wipe out men entirely within a generation. Soon my dream will come true!

[Antonio the Sixth]

how even though most of your post is responding to Crabcake, you feel the need to bookend it with comments on me. It's kind of affectionate.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I look forward to a substantive response from you in the future

lol

[President Johnson]

I'd say 0.5 (U30). Voted 1.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Well it's certainly a bit... well... weird to put a number on this surely?

[Associate Justice PiT]

In regards to gender roles, people on both sides take very absurd stances. My favoured point of comparison is height. Imagine overhearing an argument between two people about the effect of gender one height. One person argues that gender has no effect on height, and any supposed difference in the average height of genders is down to upbringing. The other person disagrees and says, no, actually every single woman is smaller than men. All persons who do not conform to the normal heights of their danger are subversive abherations. And they will argue into the night. It's the same for many emotional attributes. There is a difference in the "average" (insofar as such qualities can be assigned numerical values) aggressiveness (etc) of genders, but these bell curves are wide and overlapping. So I do disagree with ssuperflash's hypothetical. Dropping one boy and one girl into the woods wouldn't really show anything, but dropping 500 boys and 500 girls into the woods might be more revealing.

The other rot people bring up is forgetting that natural selection is an explanation, not an excuse. Human civilisation has been a grand experiment in ignoring natural selection, so I see no reason to say "well evolution says x, so we must follow call of nature!"* especially in the pseudoscientific justification of a lot of treasured "old" gender roles came into place hilariously recently, especially for working-class women.

*The reality of Paleolithic life may be far more egalitarian than we might think.

I think it is generally more a matter of culture channeling and forming the raw material of biological tendencies than flat out ignoring it.  Ignoring these things isn't sustainable, because these tendencies will crop up, and without the sort of culture or ethic that can direct and support them in productive ways they can turn destructive. For example, developing and constraining the fight instinct into a protective stance rather than a self-seeking aggressive one.  On the other hand, culture can also make these tendencies much more destructive then they might be otherwise. Ultimately we can escape neither culture nor our biology, and these things cannot escape each other, but there is a lot of room for how we configure this interaction.

     This is basically what I've been referring to. I'm not thrilled with different people being held to different standards of conduct, but different people tend towards different types of conduct. Culture, if it must play a role, and in the development of a social species that it must, can at least seek to minimize the damage of biological tendencies. As you put it, aggression can be channeled to protect rather than attack.

     Antonio, the main reason why I speak of normative masculinity at all is that men and women have different biological tendencies with different positives and negatives. Controlling one's anger is a more compelling need for men than it is for women. While eliminating sources of social pressure to act in certain ways is an admirable goal, ignoring biologically-based differences in behavior to do so risks leading to its own forms of social maladjustment.

[Antonio the Sixth]

If you say so... Personally, I think a gender-neutral moral education emphasizing the need to both express one's feelings and remain in control of them could work just fine to channel "biological" male violence (to the extent that it actually exists). Again, considering the historical track record of people who have used biology as a justification for treating human beings differently, I think the onus should be on THEM to prove that differentialism is needed.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Well it's certainly a bit... well... weird to put a number on this surely?

I don't think it's necessarily any weirder than the Kinsey scale. Which is probably a good argument against the Kinsey scale.