Does anyone here have thoughts on gender roles and identity?
Yeah blah blah "I support people to live how they want libertarianism", but what do you think the reality of gender roles in terms of nuture/nature and their positive/negative aspects in society are?
This is something that I've been thinking about lately, and it's something that's helped me realize exactly how radical my own position really is on social matters like this.
Thoughts?
The conditioning of people to not just accept gender roles but to regard them as being the way society works has been and continues to be extremely destructive. Look at this equal pay foolishness. Women who do not have children NOW EARN MORE THAN THEIR MALE COUNTERPARTS. And Obummer and his ilk want to enforce equal pay? Are they going to pay men more? What negative consequences will that have. Look at the gender roles in a public school where boys seem to be regarded as inferior girls.
Bogart,
What do you mean by your first sentence? Aren't such interventions advocated by the very people who wish to diminish gender roles? Do you see the destructiveness of gender roles being entirely an economic question or a social one as well?
I'm heterosexual, I tend to have a personality that drifts towards some form of masculinity (that is, unless someone is overly sold on Hollywood or fascist like carictures, I doubt many have thought of me as feminine), I tend not to be sexually attracted to "masculine" things.. That may not sound like much, but it does say something.
You may find Freud and some other Freudian psychoanalytic psychologists interesting on things like this (Erikson, Adler, etc).
Other than that, Kierkegaard said something along the lines that man is reflection, woman is substance: I tend to see things along such lines.
As to positive / negative aspects on society:
In so much as you keep conservatives, liberals, moralists, etc out of sexual topics the less headache I have.
EDIT
"As in a kaleidoscope, the constellation of forces operating in the system as a whole is ever changing." - Ludwig Lachmann
"When A Man Dies A World Goes Out of Existence" - GLS Shackle
"Other than that, Kierkegaard said something along the lines that man is reflection, woman is substance: I tend to see things along such lines."
What do you and the Dane mean by this?
Fortunatley, this is not so easy to answer - it's just kind of one of those themes to kind of kick around in your head and watch it play out and manifest in various forms.
But to give a kind of non analytic or scientific illustration:
A man is not "fully born", but is kind of a wandering wraith roaming around, not entirely in the world, trying to get to the bottom of things, manipulate things, etc.
A women tends to be, almost like Athena, fully born into a maturity and ready to go in her environment.
Read maybe "the seducer's diary" by K. I'll go home and check for other good works, he addresses this theme quit a bit (and it is very much a predecessor or cousin to a psychoanalytic approach to things)
i wonder where society got this idea that women were x and men were y.
... just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own - Albert Jay Nock
Vive,
I don't know if that's entirely a fair assessment. I think it's true to say that women are by and large more emotional than men are, but this isn't an expression of what being itself is. While there is a type of man who analyzes and asks why he is, most men are infamous in my mind for lacking this characteristic, while "manipulation" itself can certainly be viewed as a form of being.
Anyway, any elaboration you feel like providing would be appreciated and I'm always up for some good Kierkegaard when he's talking about psychology (not doing some of the archetypal stuff he does in "Fear and Trembling")
Meistro,
Is that a serious question? If so I think the answer should be pretty obvious.
It's not entirely clear what the topic is, so I'll talk about my experience and ideas on gender. My first thought is that I feel sorry for people who buy into gender and limit their own selves based on the shape of their body and what others say this must mean about their being. I see gender very much as something people are bullied into, who then subtly bully others into who aren't conforming. It's much more visible once you've stepped out of it and stopped giving into others' pressure to go along with it. The whole men-this, women-that thing I've found is an utter waste of time. It's quaint to hear people talking about it. It's seemingly valuable, accurate, etc. but it's a trap that ends up being self-perpetuating. What you focus on affects what you perceive about people and the kind of creative response you can have to new situations. It has lots of parallels with the kind of response you get when you suggest a lack of state is possible, like "but who will pave the roads?". I think all the facets of personal identities (which are heavily labeled with gender) are a great palette to explore and identify with to find one that expresses oneself. My main issue is the one-size-fits-all application into two troughs. I see people as being born unique beings that have great depth, but that are only seen primarily as one of two possible things, and come to see themselves in this extremely shallow way and lose touch with what was unique. As for society functioning, I think that we're plenty smart enough to figure out how to work reproduction into colorful lives as unique beings. I don't think it requires the massive binary gender apparatus to function.
Blargg,
While I agree with parts of what you said, do you really believe that there is no natural basis for gender roles? Do you think that gender is determined entirely based upon "bullying"?
I have very strong reasons to think that this is not the case (although I by no means fall in with the hard-line gender-determinists on this issue), but I would like to hear your input before I elaborate.
I'll have to continue this in a few days: As I have 0 resources on me now - I was hoping to use a very quick illustration.
some quick points though:
- I really didn't intend to call women "more emotional" - I meant that they tend to develop in a diffferent way than men in a way which tends to be more at home with the environment around them.
- As for a male being "more penetrating" (to use a more Freudian expression) it isn't so much a logic vs emotion dichotomy, at least primarily, but how one tends to relate to an environment. I think it may be better to say rather than "logic vs emotion" (which to me doesn't seem very helpful for much) a better question may be "what type of reasoning does one tend to use" (or something along those lines)
- "manipupulation", "being", etc I was not using in any logical or philosophic manner - it was just a quick type of attempt at "folk" psychology.
- As for the part of most men not being reflective, I'll hopefully get to that later. If you want to add anything to that before I answer please do
I have a hard time accepting the idea that women are inherently more at home with their environment unless you mean that in the most physical sense. In my experience women are much more involved with, and influenced by social pressures than men are, that they tend to be the bigger worriers, and in a way the far more aggressive and "proprietary" genders... I've talked to waaayyy too many women about what they would do to any "bitch" who insulted them or who got near their man.
I think that the "penetrative" aspect of man actually has implications that might be impossible to overstate. As bizarre as it might seem to bring attention to the inherent actions of sex; inevitably the male is allowed inside of the female, he takes comfort from her, but at the same time he is ultimately providing the essence of the sexual interaction and forcing himself into the female. As peculiar as claim is, sex actually sums up gender roles greatly. Both have their advantages, both are in some way dependent upon the other, both even have similar and often harmonious goals, yet they are fundamentally different, one "provides" while the other "receives", while itself housing and caring for the other... Whether this is just a coincidence or has some real, and indeed quite Freudian, meaning is something I'm still not decided on...
Where the f*** us Clayton in this thread?
lol,
good stuff. We are talking a little past each other - what you say is true (at least within the "folk" context that I am trying to keep in), about women and social pressures. I'm just going to have to hold off on an answer for now - it's kind of difficult to think of where to even start, and how to quickly finish off with this type of topic - I usually don't go into these things, just because I understand that I am comming from a bt of an off angle (though it is not orginal, that is it isn't my own thoughts on things) with information that I don't wish to misrepresent, and there is just no way to give an easy answer. lol, I honestly thought my little K paraphrase would have been good enough to not beg for any questioning.
And yes freud used: penetrating - convex vs a recieving-concave dichotomy - so you certainly have your Freud hat on.
A talk worth listening to:
Clayton -
Neodoxy, I don't invest much in the past or care much why things are like they are, so I'm not claiming anything about why things are like they are (it'd take a while to explain why I don't focus on the past, for which I have good reasons). I'm far more interested in what is happening in the present and what effect it has on me (and others). I do believe that each person could be evaluated along a large number of constructed continuua and plotted in a large multimensional space, and you'd find that a binary gender was a pathetic tool for doing any justice to the space. So I see the level at which it's adhered to and clung to in trying to understand people as due to bullying and the way fitting into a recognized identity grants one consideration from others. I think I get your question, about a person's essence, its characteristics. I have no objection with that being mostly fixed at birth, and thus one's makeup (including all aspects classified under gender) not being socially constructed. How it manifests would be largely cultural, in the palette the culture provides, and the things one is forbidden to do (the bullying aspect). The palette in a way sets up arbitrary associations with activities, such that some express the wrong essence for someone and thus they avoid the activity. Even though this could also steer people to certain things and away from others, I see it as benign since it's just the way the distributed unconscious development of culture goes, and these assocaitions can be changed if enough people desire it.
I think that the "penetrative" aspect of man actually has implications that might be impossible to overstate. As bizarre as it might seem to bring attention to the inherent actions of sex; inevitably the male is allowed inside of the female, he takes comfort from her, but at the same time he is ultimately providing the essence of the sexual interaction and forcing himself into the female. As peculiar as claim is, sex actually sums up gender roles greatly. Both have their advantages, both are in some way dependent upon the other, both even have similar and often harmonious goals, yet they are fundamentally different, one "provides" while the other "receives", while itself housing and caring for the other... Whether this is just a coincidence or has some real, and indeed quite Freudian, meaning is something I'm still not decided on... Where the f*** us Clayton in this thread?
I disagree with the characterization of sex as involving "male forcing" or any female discomfort. To state it as bluntly as possible, where this occurs is with sexually inexperienced males who are over-eager and inconsiderate sex partners.
I agree that the relative inversion of penetration-roles is crucially important. I am gaining sympathy for the idea - originating with Freud - that the female has two different pathways to orgasm, the clitoral and the vaginal, and that there is, in fact, a polarity between these pathways, such that the vaginal pathway is the "healthy" or natural pathway. This has nothing to do with saying that women oughtn't to have clitoral orgasm, merely that the inability to achieve vaginal orgasm with a partner who is capable of giving a woman a vaginal orgasm may be a sign of female sexual dysfunction.
In fact, I'll push it further than I think Freud ever did. In my view, the fundamental aphrodisiac underlying all sexual behavior is not coitus but its reverse: the birth act. I think this is evidenced by the nature of female vocalization during sex - generally, a strong contrast to male vocalization. Female vocalization during sex can easily be mistaken for cries of pain and has the same general vocal character (short, repeated, vocal bursts emanating from the 'core' or stomach) as birth cries. Finally, birth pains can actually be alleviated naturally by clitoral stimulation (masturbation) during birth... most women do not attempt this nowadays, but of those who do, many experience noticeable alleviation of pain and a few even achieve orgasm during childbirth, suggesting that female orgasm may be capable of serving as a natural anaesthetic for some women, perhaps depending not only on genetics but also circumstances.
Even further, I believe that the effect that thougths of childbirth have on most people - repulsive, the opposite of an aphrodisiac - and the avoidance of associating sex with childbirth is juvenile. At the very least, it suggests a potentially unhealthy disconnect between the sexual partners. While I do believe that casual sex occurred in the ancestral environment, I don't think we fully appreciate the rarity of the kind of casual sex that people regularly engage in nowadays. In the ancestral environment, maidens may have experimented with non-vaginal sex prior to choosing a partner. Unattached mothers - which at some point in the past did not carry the stigma it would eventually come to carry - may have "fished" for new partners through casual sex... three months later: "Now look what you did, you have to stay with me." Attached women also likely "shopped around" by engaging in non-vaginal sex, as well. Cuckoldry was a constant threat but I think that women generally fully realize the gravity of the choice to engage in vaginal sex with someone besides their partner.
This is a catalogue of many of the casual sex behaviors that I think took place in the ancestral environment - none of these involved meeting completely random people you've never seen before and deciding within 30 minutes flat to come back to their apartment and have vaginal sex using a contraceptive method. Wherever casual sex occurred, it was always with someone that was otherwise a known-variable socially, and involved either forgoing vaginal sex altogether to avoid pregnancy or a weighty decision to knowingly chance pregnancy. Either way, the sacredness, for lack of a better word, of childbirth was psychologically preserved and its role as the fundamental aphrodisiac was, thus, maintained.
"I think this is evidenced by the nature of female vocalization during sex - generally, a strong contrast to male vocalization. Female vocalization during sex can easily be mistaken for cries of pain and has the same general vocal character (short, repeated, vocal bursts emanating from the 'core' or stomach) as birth cries." I'm trying to understand this. The 'style' of a woman's vocalization during sex is a kind of evidence that the act of birth is what really 'turns on' a person? Female vocalization during sex can be mistaken for cries of pain, sure I'll give you that. I've been there and asked "Are you okay?" But, those vocalizations can be mistaken for cries of pain no matter what is causing the pain. Short vocal bursts emanating from one's core are not exclusive to 'birth cries'. So, how did we leap to birth cries? I'm not trying to be a troll either, I'm trying to understand this by not taking on any assumptions here. The thoughts of childbirth as repulsive might be because childbirth, especially from a historical standpoint, was painful, and bloody, sometimes fatal right? Or am I missing your point here? Are you saying people might fap to birth 'porn'? No glory holes in Ancient Mesopotamia? No cruising in the bathhouses in Rome? Those last three questions are merely rhetorical my dude.
The simple fact is that gender roles are developed by society, not science. I do not believe that science can explain the changing that roles have undergone over the last few centuries. In the overall scheme, our society is still stuck in the gender roles of the early 19th century. Men being the source of income, women being the source of domestic tranquility. A man is independent, a woman dependent. A man is frugal, a woman is luxury-ridden. I could go on but the point is that only recently have some views on gender roles been undergoing change such as women being the "breadwinners," a neologism that was developed in the early 19th century. Establishment of societal gender roles do not change in a flash but slowly evolve over time.
'Men do not change, they unmask themselves' - Germaine de Stael
I personally can't buy into any biological explaination of gender roles since they vary so much from culture to culture.
Ambition is a dream with a V8 engine - Elvis Presley
So, how did we leap to birth cries?
HAHA - totally. You can read my stuff here, here, here and here to sort of get the idea where I'm coming from overall. Basically, it's based in an evolutionary argument: the purpose of sex is children, thus, what really turns us on about sex is the prospect of children. This is generally acknowledged in the case of women, e.g. doll play, fantasizing about having a child(ren), purchasing a housepet as a kind of "kid substitute" for the duration she chooses to forgo having a child, nesting when first pregnant, etc. And despite the lower biological investment of human fathers into their offspring - I believe this is just as true of men, though it may be less obvious.
I'm not aware of any empirical study that supports (or denies) my theory on birth cries - it is my own theory. If I were in a position to suggest to scientists things they should study, this would be one of the things I would recommend they look into. As far as the pain and danger of childbirth, I think this only goes to reinforce my theory, not undermine it. The sex act is often most exciting when performed as an act of dangerous recklessness. Why is this? I think that the reasons for this are slightly different for men and women, respectively. For men, the reasons are probably more related to the prospect of cuckolding another man... the excitement is the excitement of "biological theft". For women, the reasons are probably more related to the prospect of mating with a more genetically excellent male. But the root cause of this excitement in both cases lies not in the coitus itself, but in the ultimate consequences of it: reproduction. Note that I'm speaking of evolutionary forces on the unconscious psyche, I don't think people generally think this stuff through, and I don't think Nature has the slightest interest in having people think it through.
As you will notice, I'm using a priori reasoning. I'm not saying "Women make cries during sex, therefore, I think it's all about the birth act." I'm saying it the other way round. Sex is, logically, all about the reproductive consequences of it. Thus, the things that turn us on about sex - such as a woman's vocalizations during sex - do so in large part because Nature has wired our brains to be excited by them vis-a-vis the way they push our "this will produce a child" button, psychologically. I know it's a freak theory, but so be it.
As for Student et. al. who doubt there is any biological basis for gender roles, please consult the lecture by Steven Pinker above (first 40 mins), addressing a very narrow topic but still touching on many of the key issues that go into the discussion.
Student,
I disagree that cultural variations in female roles is that compelling a piece of evidence for rejecting the biological nature of gender roles. If we think of societies as ways that various ways human nature could result in an actual community, then we would expect from the get-go "outliers". Some societies that don't follow man's "inherent" nature, what his psychology normally tends to.
There is an small island (I forget where, I read about it in one of Malcolm Gladwell's brilliant books) where suicide is an exceedingly common response to extremely stressful situations and social conflict with one's family and loved ones. This single sample doesn't mean that human beings in general tend towards a highly suicidal pattern, the overwhelming majority of societies reject that action. Instead this was one of the more unlikely ways human nature could result in a society. Meanwhile societies generally have relatively fixed gender roles. I've only heard of a single society in which gender roles were entirely reversed, and other than that it's generally men who are "in control" with women staying at home and so on, this is a pretty universal phenomenon.
Now there are two reasons why this would occur in society after society: either it's a biological matter or it's one of historical necessity that no longer applies to modern conditions in most areas, but is instead perpetuated by culture. I remember my mother talking about this a in regards to marriage a long time ago. She described the traditional marriage structure as a division of labor in early societies, where the basic structure made sense based off of biological differences. It made sense for the mother to stay home with the children and take the "caring" role while the stronger male performed hard labor. While I think that the extent of the difference in gender roles is certainly due to culture and historical necessity, it nonetheless I have a hard time buying into the idea that gender is wholly a social construct.
I think that this is a particularly insightful little case study. The problem of course is that we have the most pathetic sample size possible, yet the results seem powerful. Something that continues to allude me in all this, however, is the matter of transgendered individuals.
Clayton,
I think that you misinterpreted my use of the word "forcing" in this instance.
The Freudian aspect that I'm having a hard time pinpointing, and its aspect that is most essential, is how this is "transmitted". If birth-giving is indeed an inherently sexual act, and sex itself is connected to birth-giving then where is the causal connection here? Why is this the case? From that point, what is the implication of this to gender roles? What does this mean to the broader issue of how women, or men, generally behave within society?
I mean, doesn't the question answer itself? Why does it feel good to eat? Because it nourishes the body, that is, provides necessary conditions for bodiliy survival. The causal connection is that those hypothetical organisms that had an "anti-eating reflex" would quickly have perished. The same goes for childbirth - obviously, the whole reproductive process is involved, but this is the "most essential" aspect of the whole thing... the actual bringing of the living organism into the world to live.
The simple fact is that science tells us what is, not what ought to be. How someone ought to act is a perceived gender role.
>Does anyone here have thoughts on gender roles and identity?
Women tend to have average intelligence, while men, with only one X chromosome, are more variable. Thus, the greatest minds (say, von Mises) and the worst minds (say, insane criminals) are likely to be men. But this has little bearing on the average person's role.
Men are physically larger than women on average. But technology works to neutralize the relevance of this. For example, operating a forklift, a man cannot lift any more than a woman can. An armed woman can kill as easily as an armed man can. Birth control measures can also enable a woman to be as promiscuous as a man might be. It is physically easier for a man to commit rape, but it is no easier for them to evade forensic techniques.
Technology has led to there being no benefit from having defined roles anymore. They are merely cultural curiosities at this point.
If we think of societies as ways that various ways human nature could result in an actual community, then we would expect from the get-go "outliers". Some societies that don't follow man's "inherent" nature, what his psychology normally tends to.
But the rules of society are not drawn from a random distribution. They are the result of interactions between people in those societies. If most men were biologically programmed to prefer to go out and work and most women similarly programmed to prefer to stay home, I don't see how the interaction between these agents would yield anything besides a patriarchal society.
Now there are two reasons why this would occur in society after society: either it's a biological matter or it's one of historical necessity that no longer applies to modern conditions in most areas, but is instead perpetuated by culture. I remember my mother talking about this a in regards to marriage a long time ago. She described the traditional marriage structure as a division of labor in early societies, where the basic structure made sense based off of biological differences.
What is the traditional marriage structure? Polygamy continues to be practiced in many countries:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygamy
It made sense for the mother to stay home with the children and take the "caring" role while the stronger male performed hard labor.
Are you so sure that actually how early societies were organized? If we look at developing nations today, I don't think we see women being sparred hard labor. If you look at sub-saharan africa and south east asia, you will see women are just as likely to participate in the agricultural labor force as men (not simply staying at home caring for the kids). On average, women account for 43% of the agricultural work force in developing countries. http://www.fao.org/docrep/013/am307e/am307e00.pdf
If you want to get anecdotal, women of the Yanomami are the ones primarily responsible for hard labor and farming. The food they grow account for 80% of the Yanomami diet. And it's not easy work either. During Harvest time they cary 70-80 pounds on their backs! So what do the men typically do? Hunt (it worth noting that meat accounts for less than 10% of the Yanomami diet), socialize, and occasionally clear land so the women can farm it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yanomami_women
So there are def. developing cultures where women do just as much hard labor as men (and in some cases more so). But I don't even think your characterization is true for most people in "developed" economies. I personally did not grow up in a household where the mom stayed home. My mom worked at a paper mill until she left on disability. Before her, my grandmother was a foreman at the local rubber hose plant. Before her, my great grand mother and great grand father worked together on their farm. Maybe it was how I was raised but I never grew up expecting women to be spared much in terms of "hard labor".
While I think that the extent of the difference in gender roles is certainly due to culture and historical necessity, it nonetheless I have a hard time buying into the idea that gender is wholly a social construct.
I will say this in "favor" of the "biological determinaiton of gender roles" hypothesis. I don't think it is a coinsidence that women are physically smaller and less powerful than men and have also historically been assigned "gender roles" that precluded them from political participation and economic leadership in the West.
I read it the other way: the de facto roles that the genders stereotypically adopt.
This is false on many fronts. First of all, the most important way that men and women differ - reproductive potential - is orders of magnitude different. While technology has provided the possibility of a woman having as many children as a man can have, the economic costs are still much higher for a woman than for a man; the occurrence of even one woman having anywhere near as many children as the most reproductive men seems highly unlikely.
Second, technology has not made men as objectively beautiful as women. Thus, women enjoy an automatic gender advantage: they are more objectively beautiful than men and, thus, enjoy all the economic and sexual benefits that come with that.
Even if technology could economically overcome all the differences, it is not clear to me that gender roles would necessarily become obsolete. It's like how you can't tickle yourself... being female or being male is a big part of how we push each other's buttons socially, romantically, sexually, etc.
I don't think biological determinism can play much into an "Austrian" outlook on sociology either, I think that falls into "scientism"
@Clayton
Yea, but so what? You can argue that evolutionarily people were predisposed to like eating because if they didn't they died. Why is it that the roles in sex would have a psychological affect on individuals, and why would stimulation of the birth canal through sex necessarily be linked in any real way with child birth itself? These two things aren't a straightforward even as sexual desire is. The major urges and bodily functions give us a clear reason why it would have developed, but this is not the case for what we are talking about or gender roles in general.
@Student
"But the rules of society are not drawn from a random distribution. They are the result of interactions between people in those societies. If most men were biologically programmed to prefer to go out and work and most women similarly programmed to prefer to stay home, I don't see how the interaction between these agents would yield anything besides a patriarchal society."
Because tendency is not necessity. As I outlined above there are three things that affect societal formation:
1. Psychological tendency
2. The general conditions faced in that society
3. Unique happenstance
Certain conditions will necessitate that different social structures emerge, whereas some random occurrences and precedence will cause different ways that society will emerge. Just because men tend to be more dominant need not mean that things always play out in such a way to establish a patriarchy, it will merely make it more likely. With that said I'm not even certain that I consider "patriarchy" as something that is generally implied by what I consider the "male" tendency to be.
"What is the traditional marriage structure? Polygamy continues to be practiced in many countries:"
Yet these are usually arranged in the same way: men dominant, woman stays at home and has a more caring for children/housekeeping role. I actually think it's "more natural" for individuals to tend towards polygamy, particularly for us men with our urges.
"So there are def. developing cultures where women do just as much hard labor as men (and in some cases more so). But I don't even think your characterization is true for most people in "developed" economies. I personally did not grow up in a household where the mom stayed home. My mom worked at a paper mill until she left on disability. Before her, my grandmother was a foreman at the local rubber hose plant. Before her, my great grand mother and great grand father worked together on their farm. Maybe it was how I was raised but I never grew up expecting women to be spared much in terms of "hard labor"."
I was actually always raised in a female-dominated household, but nonetheless I've also been exposed to what I see as differences in actions between females and males. How these differences manifest themselves is interesting, and less than straightforward, but there does seem to be some regularity, and I have a hard time buying that it's entirely due to nurture. I don't know if I've ever talked to anyone about the opposite sex who denies that there seems to be some fundamental differences in "how we work". This will necessarily have societal consequences, but these consequences will not always be the same, and under radically different situations, such as what we see in the developed world, they will be very different than what we see in other situations. Nonetheless, classically and even today we see there as some regularity between sex and gender roles. I think it's hard for people in our world to fully understand what a truly genderless world would be like.
"I don't think it is a coincidence that women are physically smaller and less powerful than men and have also historically been assigned "gender roles" that precluded them from political participation and economic leadership in the West."
Do you think these two things are linked?
Edit
"I don't think biological determinism can play much into an "Austrian" outlook on sociology either, I think that falls into "scientism""
I actually fully disagree with this. i think that human biology is intimately linked with a fuller understanding of Austrian Economics. Praxeology can tell us what can be, yet psychology along with other human sciences can tell us what is likely to be.
I have a thought.
I think there's an ongoing process of pussyfication of the white middle class youth by the public school system in many western countries, who are being over exposed to female oriented education.
>objectively beautiful
Clayton, isn't that nonsensical?
Edit: maybe you meant "(inter-subective) beauty commanding a higher objective exchange value".
Surely this applies to female models vs. male models. But we are talking about typical roles. Is this really of relevance for typical people?
@baxter: No, it's not.
OK, if "objective beauty" per se is valid, please let's hear a definition of it.
Markers of beauty are symmetry, male-typical secondary sexual features in men, female-typical secondary sexual features in women, etc. There are more, female-specific markers of beauty (red, full lips, large, perky breasts, light-colored hair, etc.) and some that are shared by both male and female (light eyes), etc. This has absolutely nothing to do with inter-subjectivity nor with assessing the frontiers of physical attractiveness. Beauty is averageness and women are much closer to the average on many measures - including facial symmetry and secondary-sexual features - than men. As Christopher Hitchens once put it, "Most men are fantastically unattractive" which he held to explain why men have to rely on humor and other gimmicks to attract women.
Yet these are usually arranged in the same way: men dominant, woman stays at home and has a more caring for children/housekeeping role.
I don't feel like this has been established. I agree men do tend dominate the relationship. But do women typically stay home and focus on child rearing and housekeeping to the exclusion of other work (such as farming)? I don't think so. I have already linked to one study that women are just as likely to participate in the agricultural labor force as men in developing countries. And a case of at least one cultural where they actually work harder and provide more than men.
My point is not that men don't historically dominate relationships with women. In fact, onsidering the relative physical strength of men, should we be suprised matriarcy is rare? My point is
i think that human biology is intimately linked with a fuller understanding of Austrian Economics. Praxeology can tell us what can be, yet psychology along with other human sciences can tell us what is likely to be.
Let me see if we are on the same page.
What if (as Mises seems to have thought) that Freud and Psychoanalysis were part of prax (in the branch of thymology)? Our utilizing and contextualization of biology gives it its meaning. I think (?) student may have hinted at this when he said it is the actual factual interactions between individual subjects in societies.
I do think there are ways to talk about these things and make meaning of them (perhaps not on this forum, as I stated earlier it would be rather difficult): But any hard line philosophic, scientific, psychological, and I can't believe I have to say this -aesthetic (even if it is "scientific") end can't really establish much. We can probably look at the phenomenology of things - but to talk about the science of gender or "evolution says X", I don't think much is going to be accomplished.
Back to your original question: it may be best just to talk about what is actually meant by nature / nurture - and see if a theory could be formed around it: is it a category that matters, is there a better way to frame the subject, etc, etc. I don't really have a thought on it right now - but I think that may be the more interesting, and to the point of things in your OP's concern, correct?
I'm really busy now, hopefully I can have more time thursday to really think about / clarify anything I said. In fact, due to time constraints, I am doing a 48 hr ban on everything fun in my life starting ...... now
"My point is not that men don't historically dominate relationships with women."
Is this a general comment or one that is aimed at a specific society? Because if it is general then you are absolutely wrong. Patriarchal societies are dominate throughout the historical span. Matriarchies are an extreme rarity.
Double negative. So IOW:
"My point is that men do historically dominate relationships with women."
IOW:
I agree that matriarchies are rare. :)
I think that I've been rather unclear of what I've really wanted to talk about here which I really f***ed up in the title and termed "gender roles" when in reality I'm just talking about gender and the generally different behaviors in males and females. While this most certainly relates to gender roles, I'm much more interested in just the matter of nurture nature as it applies to sex and thereby gender.
Anyway, I just can't buy into the idea that gender roles are entirely social constructs. Even in the cases you are citing it would appear that men (even if they are just lazing around which I also have a hard time believing considering how close to starvation many of these groups live) are doing things (hunting) that they are more suited to. Child-rearing is universally female in nature, as is the fundamental setup of marriage in term of dominance.
Anyway, for most of these roles the fact is that they deal with physical traits and strength, something that doesn't apply in the modern world.
So I'd like more of a discussion on the role of gender, its source, and what the more "inherent" traits of the sexes are, if there are any.
What I'm fundamentally saying is that psychology can theoretically shed A LOT of information on economic relationships. Praxeology can tell us, for instance, some tendencies that would happen if human beings were generally relatively risk averse. Meanwhile psychology could theoretically tell us if people are risk-averse or not. Psychology can then help us to predict certain outcomes, as well as help us to explain why certain outcome occurred. For instance it could help us to explain generally how much people fight wage cuts and help us to understand how sticky wages tend to be.
I understand the difficulties in universalizing these findings over time and space, as well as actually testing these tendencies to begin with and I think that this is why behavioral psychology is currently being abused and will be abused onward into the future especially when combined with neo-classicism, this does not alter the fundamental possibility of psychology and economics to pair up with one another and for psychology to aid in our understanding in the real economy, as well as what to focus on in praxeological theory.
title changed
(still busy) so do you want to focus on nature / nurture and maybe the relationship of psych with the social sciences / philosophy of the social sciences?