What does classrooms, parks, and water fountains have to do with bathrooms? Do you think the Civil Rights movement would have been mollified if they had everything BUT bathrooms?
They have several things to do with it. First is the issue of intent. Intent matters. If we were to only allow certain bathrooms to be used by college graduates and others by non-college-graduates, that'd be messed up. But denying some jobs to non-college graduates is a different story.
The intent behind race-based segregation is to prevent the races from intermingling as much as possible. The intent behind avoiding situations where the opposite sex sees you naked has to do with cultural squeamishness about *sexuality*, not about *gender itself*. It isn't because the culture wants to prevent men and women from being in the same community. It's because a lot of women don't want men leering at them when they're in a locker room (which are also gender segregated).
By contrast, race has no more impact on using a bathroom than it does when you sit at a restaraunt. Let's say a state decided to make laws enforcing the use of sun tan lotion to prvent skin cancer. To be reasonable, they only require each person that goes out in summer to wear a certain amount of sun tan lotion in order to prevent getting burned. If you have darker skin, you need less lotion. While this law isn't actually logistically possible to enforce, I don't have an issue with this kind of race-based discrimination... Because the intent isn't based around race itself, but rather external qualities. If there were higher speed limits of people of a certain race, or longer prison times specifically based on being a certain race committing the exact same crime, that would be prejudiced and sick.
That's why I feel you're getting backlash here. The separation based on the sexes has more to do with nudity and cultural squeamishness about sex itself. There's a reason our culture only has such separation enforced when nudity is involved. If you had a restaurant hold up a sign with "only women allowed", that would be a civil rights violation. This is a murkier gray area.
But ultimately, this part of the argument isn't that relevant. All you have to do is show that society would be better off overall if this law was enforced. I don't think you've done that yet.
@Tyler: Special pleading is a fallacy. A fallacy is not a contradictory but an ivalid argument.
The particular version of special pleading you're using is a double standard, also called a "contradictory standard." But, you might be correct if you claimed it's not a "direct contradiction." I'm not confident in saying it's that. But, you ARE claiming one set of standards for yourself and another for others, and I AM confident in calling that a simple contradiction. As in "a person, thing, or situation in which inconsistent elements are present."[1]
Simple put, by your own logic you've not sufficiently shown that logic has telos, but evolution doesn't. You're being inconstant, if not "directly contradictory."
Either way my statement aren't even special pleading since I don't say everything is arbitrary.
I didn't say your fallacy had anything to do with "saying everything is arbitrary." I said it has to do with your regard to evolution and logic. Don't strawman me.
@Stairc: Sorry but I feel every reply I would make would just be a repetition of what I already said. I don't want to say the same things over and over again.
An easy solution to this is to correct your argument.
If gender didn't exist as a concept that had meaning then people wouldn't identify as the other gender because there would be literally no point in doing so. If all names, all activities, all groups, all ideas, all colors, all rights, all roles, all concepts, and everything else was all equal outside of biological differences, then what would be the differences between male and female genders? And if there was not difference, then how could one feel that they were in the wrong gender?
This is a tautology. If the concept of gender didn't exist then the concept of gender would not exist.
So are you saying that gender equality can't exist because biology? Or are you saying that complete gender equality existing wouldn't make gender lose meaning? If both genders were treated equally, what would be the difference between them?
One could just as easily say that if the concept of blue did not exist then the concept of blue would not exist. What's your point?
No, it is more like the idea that race will lose all meaning if everyone becomes multiracial with similar skin colors due to integration.
If you're trying to say that we could, as a society, remove the concept of gender, then once again you are incorrect, because gender is inherent in us physically in our minds' perception of ourselves, which has a very definite physiological component and therefore cannot be argued to be purely a construct of nurture.
I don't think I can reasonably argue with your definition of gender without you stating what it is. I already have stated my ideas, but you haven't said which parts of gender you think are biological or not. Please give me your definition of gender before I continue this argument.
I know that, Blinking Spirit was saying that any society will have gender roles. I am just saying that gender roles and gender inequality came from women having very little control over whether they could work until recently.
How does this lead toward your thesis that gender roles are arbitrary? You're just proving Blinking's point. Gender roles are linked to sex and are therefore not arbitrary.
They are linked to sex, but they don't have to be anymore now that birth control exists. They used to be very reasonable but now they are arbitrary.
So are you saying that gender equality can't exist because biology?
Define "gender equality."
If you mean "complete lack of any concept of gender," well, first of all, that's an extremely odd definition of equality, and second, correct, that cannot exist because our brains are predisposed to identifying with a particular gender, because gender is not solely a social construct.
Or are you saying that complete gender equality existing wouldn't make gender lose meaning?
I have said nothing with regards to gender equality, because that's a totally separate topic.
I don't think I can reasonably argue with your definition of gender without you stating what it is. I already have stated my ideas, but you haven't said which parts of gender you think are biological or not. Please give me your definition of gender before I continue this argument.
I like Wikipedia's definition: "Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to, and differentiating between, masculinity and femininity. Depending on the context, these characteristics may include biological sex (i.e. the state of being male, female or intersex), sex-based social structures (including gender roles and other social roles), or gender identity."
They are linked to sex, but they don't have to be anymore now that birth control exists. They used to be very reasonable but now they are arbitrary.
They are not arbitrary because they are based on the fact that women give birth but men don't. That's the opposite of arbitrary.
It's worth noting that "non-arbitrary" doesn't equal "justified". The decision to enslave people isn't arbitrary, it's done for clear and obvious economic reasons. That doesn't mean slave owners are justified in their actions. There's a difference between "there are reasons concepts of gender developed" and, "those reasons are great and make sense in modern society".
Many people in this thread are pointing out that the concept of gender, and associated gender roles, did not arise arbitrarily. However, that doesn't mean they're saying these concepts are justified. Racial stereotypes don't arise arbitrarily, but they're also not justified.
I just added the World Health Organization's definition of gender and sex to the OP. Is that enough?
When it acknowledges that the term is "often" used differently in "scientific literature, health policy, and legislation"? It's definitely not enough to establish that the definition is the only "correct" one. The only meaningful way by which a word's definition can be said to be correct or incorrect is to look at the usage of the general language-speaking community. To say "lots of people use this word one way, but they're wrong" is pure nonsense.
What you can do is say, "For the purposes of this discussion, I'm using this more specific definition for this word". Scientists and philosophers do that all the time. It's not "incorrect" either. So setting aside its prescriptivist aside, we can absolutely use the WHO's definition here. My criticism is not that you're using the incorrect definition of the word; it's that you weren't being clear which definition you're using from the outset.
I recognize that I should have originally included what definition I wanted to use and I apologize for not doing that.
Until birth control was invented, women were forced to have the feminine gender roles that we are familiar with because pregnancy stops one from many kinds of work.
Absolutely. You're making my case for me. This isn't arbitrary.
I recognize that it wasn't arbitrary before. However, due to the existence of birth control, it now has lost its purpose and become arbitrary.
This is the Merriam Webster definition of arbitrary
not planned or chosen for a particular reason : not based on reason or evidence
: done without concern for what is fair or right
Feminine gender roles existing despite birth control making them unnecessary means that they no longer have a reason to exist and are no longer fair or right.
What I am trying to say is this. Is there any reason, other than society saying "because that is how it is", that a female can't be named John? Is there any reason, other than society saying "because that is how it is", that a male can't like pink? Is there any reason, other than society saying "because that is how it is", that males can't wear skirts and females wear pants. If there is not a reason for it other than "that is just how it works and that is just what we want, deal with it", then it is clearly arbitrary.
Those traits are arbitrary. If those were the entirety of what "gender" is, then you would have successfully demonstrated that gender is arbitrary. But gender is huge. There are many components to it far beyond terminology and fashion. And we just saw above one component that wasn't arbitrary. What you're doing here, looking at some part of the whole and assuming that what's true of the part must be true of the whole, is called the fallacy of composition.
Ok then. It seems like it would be a lot easier for you to list the components of gender that aren't arbitrary than it would be for me to list the components of gender that are arbitrary.
If gender didn't exist, I think that gender dysphoria wouldn't either.
Trans people apparently have an innate biological predisposition for a particular gender/gender role.
David Reimer, who was not medically a trans person, apparently had an innate biological predisposition for a particular gender/gender role.
There's a little fuzziness about what this implies logically that I won't go into, but surely it suggests at least a plausible alternate hypothesis that we all have innate biological predispositions for particular genders/gender roles. So the next question is, when you say "if gender didn't exist", what exactly are you saying? Because if you're speaking purely of eliminating the social trappings of gender, then the biological predispositions would still be there, which means everybody would feel dysphoric until they created new social trappings of gender.
First, can someone please actually state which components are biological in their opinion? It is impossible to argue with "some unspecific components are biological". Second, if anyone was allowed to feel the emotions they wanted, have the roles they wanted, be in the groups they wanted, wear what they wanted, be called what they wanted, and do whatever they wanted without having to take gender into consideration, how would people feel dysphoric? If anyone could be allowed to feel what we now associate with femininity and masculinity without it being considered abnormal for those characteristics and feelings to be felt by someone of a different sex, there wouldn't be dysphoria. Correct me if I am wrong, but it seems like you think that I am saying that the emotions and behaviors that make up femininity and masculinity should be gotten rid of. I am not saying that. I am saying that a woman should be able to feel as "masculine" as she wants without having to identify as a man and vice versa.
First, can someone please actually state which components are biological in their opinion? It is impossible to argue with "some unspecific components are biological".
What I think is relevant is the fact that it's pretty clear there are elements of gender that are biological. Given this, your statement about gender being purely a social construct cannot hold and your argument is undermined.
Second, if anyone was allowed to feel the emotions they wanted, have the roles they wanted, be in the groups they wanted, wear what they wanted, be called what they wanted, and do whatever they wanted without having to take gender into consideration, how would people feel dysphoric?
Because you cannot raise someone without them having no concept of gender. That's the whole point. Your personal mental identification of being male or female is itself a part of gender. And if that doesn't sync up with your sex, then you can feel dysphoria.
This is evidenced by the Reimer case. Reimer was born male but became sexed female due to surgery and was raised female. It was believed at the time that gender was purely a social construct, and Reimer would identify as a girl and never know the difference. But he didn't. Reimer suffered gender identity disorder and had great difficulty identifying as a girl. He always felt he was supposed to be male.
You're trying to say that if there were no society-enforced ideas of gender, then people wouldn't feel gender identity disorder. The problem with this is that you're making the same assumption that was made about the Reimer case: that gender is purely based on conditioning. Except the Reimer case flies in the face of this. Reimer proved that his gender identity was an ingrained biological trait.
If anyone could be allowed to feel what we now associate with femininity and masculinity without it being considered abnormal for those characteristics and feelings to be felt by someone of a different sex, there wouldn't be dysphoria.
No, there WOULD still be gender identity disorder. You're not getting the point. If a person's brain is wired male and his sex organs are female, or if a person's brain is wired female and her sex organs are male, that person will experience gender identity disorder. He or she will not feel correct in his/her own body.
Your problem is you're trying to view this while still clinging to the idea that gender is purely a societal construct, when in fact this disproves that gender is purely a societal construct.
Correct me if I am wrong, but it seems like you think that I am saying that the emotions and behaviors that make up femininity and masculinity should be gotten rid of. I am not saying that.
Wait, what? You're saying exactly that. You said in the OP that you wanted to get rid of gender. The concepts of masculinity and femininity are a part of gender!
I am saying that a woman should be able to feel as "masculine" as she wants without having to identify as a man and vice versa.
Dude, no one has a problem with questioning societal gender views. But that is only one aspect of the broader concept of gender. You cannot simply conflate "societal gender views" with "gender" as a whole, and saying, "Why don't we get rid of gender?" is quite a problematic statement because gender is a far more complex topic than anyone really understands.
I don't think issues of gender dysphoria disprove gender as a social construct. Human beings aren't wholly malleable, but that doesn't mean that they have some essential gender that their social upbringing ought to match or reflect. You are born into the world and some things suit you and other things don't. Your experiences and what you witness influence how you feel about certain things. If you are experiencing the world or desire to see the world a certain way and everyone tells you that you have to do it some other way quite adamantly, then you might develop gender dysphoria. You weren't essentially destined to be a certain gender, but what you experienced led you to a certain disposition.
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One of these day I have to get myself organizized.
I recognize that it wasn't arbitrary before. However, due to the existence of birth control, it now has lost its purpose and become arbitrary.
This is the Merriam Webster definition of arbitrary
not planned or chosen for a particular reason : not based on reason or evidence
: done without concern for what is fair or right
Feminine gender roles existing despite birth control making them unnecessary means that they no longer have a reason to exist and are no longer fair or right.
Be careful with dictionaries. Those are two different usages of the word "arbitrary". They are not tied together. As Stairc pointed out, a decision can be made for a reason and still be unjust. And a decision can be made without reason and still be just. I'd argue that women being stuck with childrearing was never fair nor right. And men being the primary perpetrators and victims of organized violence wasn't fair nor right either. Evolution is dictated by what works, not what's fair.
Ok then. It seems like it would be a lot easier for you to list the components of gender that aren't arbitrary than it would be for me to list the components of gender that are arbitrary.
[...] It is impossible to argue with "some unspecific components are biological".
If you think that, you're still not grasping the shape of the logic at work here. Imagine I do give you a list of biological components of gender. Then you successfully argue that every item on that list is in fact social and arbitrary. You still haven't proven anything. You are defending an "all" proposition: "All components of gender are social and arbitrary." Now, an "all" proposition can of course be disproven with a single counterexample. You can refute "All swans are white" by pointing to just one black swan. But an "all" proposition cannot be proven merely by providing a long list of examples. You can show me as many white swans as you like, but you will never eliminate the possibility that there is some black swan out there which you haven't seen. And if you go through a list of specific components and say they're all social and arbitrary, that's all you're doing: showing us white swans. So as long as this is your approach, you will fail. It's not our fault; it follows from the sweeping nature of the position you have taken.
Second, if anyone was allowed to feel the emotions they wanted, have the roles they wanted, be in the groups they wanted, wear what they wanted, be called what they wanted, and do whatever they wanted without having to take gender into consideration, how would people feel dysphoric? If anyone could be allowed to feel what we now associate with femininity and masculinity without it being considered abnormal for those characteristics and feelings to be felt by someone of a different sex, there wouldn't be dysphoria. Correct me if I am wrong, but it seems like you think that I am saying that the emotions and behaviors that make up femininity and masculinity should be gotten rid of. I am not saying that. I am saying that a woman should be able to feel as "masculine" as she wants without having to identify as a man and vice versa.
But a trans man wants to identify as a man. You're describing a tomboy. There's a huge difference between the two. If you don't believe me, go find some trans folk and talk to them about it.
Because you cannot raise someone without them having no concept of gender. That's the whole point. Your personal mental identification of being male or female is itself a part of gender. And if that doesn't sync up with your sex, then you can feel dysphoria.
This is evidenced by the Reimer case. Reimer was born male but became sexed female due to surgery and was raised female. It was believed at the time that gender was purely a social construct, and Reimer would identify as a girl and never know the difference. But he didn't. Reimer suffered gender identity disorder and had great difficulty identifying as a girl. He always felt he was supposed to be male.
You're trying to say that if there were no society-enforced ideas of gender, then people wouldn't feel gender identity disorder. The problem with this is that you're making the same assumption that was made about the Reimer case: that gender is purely based on conditioning. Except the Reimer case flies in the face of this. Reimer proved that his gender identity was an ingrained biological trait.
While I won't argue with the rest of your post because you're correct, I'll respond to the bolded part. While obviously the concept needs to be taught to children so they can understand and navigate our society which is certainly gendered, there are instances of parents raising their children without prescribing their childs' specific genders and allowing the children to identify as they choose. Storm Stocker of Toronto is the most recent headline-grabbing example of it, but some parents do try to raise their children as gender-neutral. It's not raising a child with no concept of gender, but I suppose it's close.
But with if society itself is in itself an evolutionary construct, and its functions created for a purpose?
I.E.
Feudalism arose due to destruction of a strong central power (Rome)as away to bring order.
Men inherited property due to women dieing in childbirth (Leaving an infant monarch behind)and women being unable to have children after a certain age.
Which then begs the question, which current gender roles are societal driven and not biological (Dont know how one can prove this in an imperical way) and which ones hurt society (Does it really matter if men dominate Engineering and Women dominating nursing so long as both can access the fields if they chose)
Gender studies are basically arguing that the raccoons are in cahoots to eat the trash, yes the raccoons will eat the trash but there is no organization involved.
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Don't you see that the whole aim of Moderators is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make infractions literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten.
Gender studies are basically arguing that the raccoons are in cahoots to eat the trash, yes the raccoons will eat the trash but there is no organization involved.
Actually, raccoons can demonstrate a remarkable level of cooperative behavior.
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
But with if society itself is in itself an evolutionary construct, and its functions created for a purpose?
And what if in a rapidly advancing society technologically allowing genders to fill equivalent roles as compared to low tech societies, failure to adapt results in the death or decay of the system? From our point of view, that'd be bad for the most part, right?
The idea that gender roles evolved to be as they are today doesn't justify gender roles as they are today, it just explains them, much like the occasional vestigial tail. The reason equity in the work place matters, rather than people 'just leaving it up to choice' is because outdated norms inform the current situation, and cultural attitudes are a large part of what's pushing people away. It's hard for men to get into nursing when cultural attitudes look down on it, and it's hard for women to get into STEM for the same reason.
The idea that gender roles evolved to be as they are today doesn't justify gender roles as they are today, it just explains them, much like the occasional vestigial tail. The reason equity in the work place matters, rather than people 'just leaving it up to choice' is because outdated norms inform the current situation, and cultural attitudes are a large part of what's pushing people away. It's hard for men to get into nursing when cultural attitudes look down on it, and it's hard for women to get into STEM for the same reason.
You're correct that evolution isn't justificatory, but while we're on the subject of being more accurate about how we apply evolutionary theory, let's keep in mind that when evolution speaks, its voice doesn't issue forth from the mouth of a gender studies major. Nature per se doesn't have a concept of "outdated norms," nor does it appear to care whether 51% of scientists are women or 49% of nurses are men. If it did, we could measure the consequences of our failure to maintain this balance in terms of observable failure of our society to continue itself.
A person wanting to use evolutionary theory to support something like more men in nursing or more women in science would have to explain how one should expect these career demographics to impact the relevant fitness variables and why. I have never -- not once -- heard anyone coherently explain why any particular human field of endeavor should be expected to have the same demographic balance as it would if its members were randomly sampled from the entire population, evolutionarily or otherwise.
I will give the people using evolutionary theory to buttress traditional gender roles this much credit: they are at least telling a story about how the traditional roles lead to making more babies, even if it is "just-so."
There's no inherent reason why a field needs to have an equal distribution based on the population. It's not important in itself, but it's a warning sign that may indicate a problem or prejudice in the culture.
There's no essential reason that the demoraphics of high level businesse esecutives have to mirror the demographics. It's not inherently a bad thing if all CEOs are men. However, that sort of result indicates one of four major things.
1) This is an outlier explicable by statistical modeling.
2) There's some sort of cultural or prejudicial force that is either discouraging women from wanting to apply themseles to high level executive career paths.
3) There's some sort of institutional prejudice against women in high level business environments.
4) A mixture of the above.
If 2 or 3 are true in part or in whole, those are causes for concern. It's like if a kid with failing grades and a bad attitude suddenly gets a perfect score on a test. There's nothing wrong with getting 100% on a test, in fact that's awesome. However, the anomalous result might be an indication of a problem with the process (i.e. the kid might have cheated).
There's no inherent reason why a field needs to have an equal distribution based on the population. It's not important in itself, but it's a warning sign that may indicate a problem or prejudice in the culture.
To say that it could indicate prejudice is to say nothing at all. People's life trajectories correlate with trillions of variables; any given statistical analysis could be responding to any subset of these correlations.
However, that sort of result indicates one of four major things.
1) This is an outlier explicable by statistical modeling.
2) There's some sort of cultural or prejudicial force that is either discouraging women from wanting to apply themseles to high level executive career paths.
3) There's some sort of institutional prejudice against women in high level business environments.
4) A mixture of the above.
- Are you saying this is an exhaustive list of alternatives? That no other logical possibilities remain? (It's not.)
- I am not sure your use of the term "outlier" here makes any sense. Things are only outliers relative to given distributions. In order to question whether or not a data point is an outlier, one must believe that data point has been drawn from a particular distribution. But in this case, it is circular to hypothesize this, because whether or not particular human fields of endeavor must conform to the anterior distribution of the population is the very question we are asking!
- There should be no a priori expectation that a non-random selection process -- such as the process for picking good scientists, nurses, basketball players, et cetera -- would produce a distribution that looks as if the selections were being made randomly.
If 2 or 3 are true in part or in whole, those are causes for concern.
Indeed. But your list is about a trillion items short, and before you can infer the presence of 2 or 3, you've got to rule out the other trillion.
The idea that gender roles evolved to be as they are today doesn't justify gender roles as they are today, it just explains them, much like the occasional vestigial tail. The reason equity in the work place matters, rather than people 'just leaving it up to choice' is because outdated norms inform the current situation, and cultural attitudes are a large part of what's pushing people away. It's hard for men to get into nursing when cultural attitudes look down on it, and it's hard for women to get into STEM for the same reason.
You're correct that evolution isn't justificatory, but while we're on the subject of being more accurate about how we apply evolutionary theory, let's keep in mind that when evolution speaks, its voice doesn't issue forth from the mouth of a gender studies major. Nature per se doesn't have a concept of "outdated norms," nor does it appear to care whether 51% of scientists are women or 49% of nurses are men. If it did, we could measure the consequences of our failure to maintain this balance in terms of observable failure of our society to continue itself.
A person wanting to use evolutionary theory to support something like more men in nursing or more women in science would have to explain how one should expect these career demographics to impact the relevant fitness variables and why. I have never -- not once -- heard anyone coherently explain why any particular human field of endeavor should be expected to have the same demographic balance as it would if its members were randomly sampled from the entire population, evolutionarily or otherwise.
I will give the people using evolutionary theory to buttress traditional gender roles this much credit: they are at least telling a story about how the traditional roles lead to making more babies, even if it is "just-so."
Not sure if your argueing against me or not, but it seems like your making my point.
Even in Norway, Nursing is dominated by women and engineering by men this seems to suggest that there is an intrinsic factor in determining career choices in genders.
Also even the vaunted 75 cents to dollar is due to career choices not any cabal, men take higher risk more lucrative jobs and suffer the vast majority of on site job fatalities and injuries. They also dont take time off for pregnancy because natures a b_tch.
Hell since the Ogodei died humanities been on an upward climb, sometimes quickly sometimes slowly with a few hiccups here and there but things have been getting better since 1241.
That being said I think women should be able to pursuit any career they wish because there will always be outliers and it enriches society to allow them to flourish, plus despite what both sides say I think its a very western tradition after all the great Charlemagne educated his daughters and sons, women fought in the crusaders and were counted among st the dead defenders of Constantinople.
Also a strong legal system which can punish companies for illegal behavior such as discrimination is the bedrock of a free market.However having government mandates not only are ineffective ie Norway they seem to me to only succeed in punish poor men.
@ Blinkingspirit But do raccoons have a secret Jewish male raccoon Illuminati that ensure they get the meatloaf?
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Don't you see that the whole aim of Moderators is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make infractions literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten.
There's no inherent reason why a field needs to have an equal distribution based on the population. It's not important in itself, but it's a warning sign that may indicate a problem or prejudice in the culture.
To say that it could indicate prejudice is to say nothing at all. People's life trajectories correlate with trillions of variables; any given statistical analysis could be responding to any subset of these correlations.
However, that sort of result indicates one of four major things.
1) This is an outlier explicable by statistical modeling.
2) There's some sort of cultural or prejudicial force that is either discouraging women from wanting to apply themseles to high level executive career paths.
3) There's some sort of institutional prejudice against women in high level business environments.
4) A mixture of the above.
- Are you saying this is an exhaustive list of alternatives? That no other logical possibilities remain? (It's not.)
- I am not sure your use of the term "outlier" here makes any sense. Things are only outliers relative to given distributions. In order to question whether or not a data point is an outlier, one must believe that data point has been drawn from a particular distribution. But in this case, it is circular to hypothesize this, because whether or not particular human fields of endeavor must conform to the anterior distribution of the population is the very question we are asking!
- There should be no a priori expectation that a non-random selection process -- such as the process for picking good scientists, nurses, basketball players, et cetera -- would produce a distribution that looks as if the selections were being made randomly.
If 2 or 3 are true in part or in whole, those are causes for concern.
Indeed. But your list is about a trillion items short, and before you can infer the presence of 2 or 3, you've got to rule out the other trillion.
Yes, I'm saying it is a reasonably exhaustive list of alternatives as to why Men are disproportionately represented in high business offices compared to the population at large. In fact, I can narrow it down further to 2 possibilities.
1) It's just chance.
2) There's a reason for it.
We can subdivide the second possibility further into...
2a) The women are the reason (i.e. women are choosing not to apply for those jobs or not enter those career paths or some other choice that leads to this).
2b) The institution is the reason (i.e. people are promoting men disproportionately to women)
Option 2a maps to my proposed option 2. Option 2b maps to my proposed option 3. I may have worded it more loosely, but that's basically it. I just invoked the reasons behind why women might not be going into those fields to begin with and so on, if option 2 is correct.
Option 4 is the fair mixture of multiple above reasons.
So when you said:
I have never -- not once -- heard anyone coherently explain why any particular human field of endeavor should be expected to have the same demographic balance as it would if its members were randomly sampled from the entire population
This is the coherent explanation. If all teacher's black kids are getting dramatically worse grades than his white kids, that's a warning flag. There might be perfectly reasonable non-racist explanations for this, but it's definitely something we need to pay closer attention to. And, since stastical improbabilities are indeed improbable, most assume either option 2 or 3 is at work.
A person wanting to use evolutionary theory to support something like more men in nursing or more women in science...
I don't think anyone here is doing that. Jay was pretty clearly supporting more men in nursing and more women in science on the basis that it sucks to want to something and be excluded from doing it or looked down upon for it.
2a) The women are the reason (i.e. women are choosing not to apply for those jobs or not enter those career paths or some other choice that leads to this).
It is kind of a stretch mapping this to "There's some sort of cultural or prejudicial force that is... discouraging women..." For all we know at this point in the analysis, it could be practical, biological, or (why not?) supernatural.
It certainly could. It's possible that magic rabbits are controlling the brains of women and convincing them not to apply for CEO jobs.
It's also possible that women inherently don't want CEO jobs on a biological level, or have inherent drives to do other things that aren't compatible with a CEO's job.
Note though that I didn't say where the "prejudicial" force game from. It was meant to be equally possible for the prejudice to come from the outside or the women themselves with regard to the field.
I could definitely have been clearer though. I hope my second post clarified things.
Yes, I'm saying it is a reasonably exhaustive list of alternatives...
"Reasonably exhaustive" just means "exhaustive," since basic logic (an essential component of reasonableness, as I'm sure you'll agree) can tell you whether or not a list of cases is exhaustive, and you can always make something exhaustive by adding "none of the above" to the end.
...as to why Men are disproportionately represented in high business offices compared to the population at large. In fact, I can narrow it down further to 2 possibilities.
1) It's just chance.
2) There's a reason for it.
I don't want to get derailed into a philosophical quagmire here, but there are a litany of problems with the classical chance/reason dichotomy. Suffice it to say that this list is not exhaustive. As a first attempt at fixing it you could make it exhaustive in the following way:
1) It happened by chance.
2) It didn't happen by chance.
This is exhaustive (being of the form "A or not A") but there are other problems with this. Blinking Spirit alluded to them earlier in the thread when someone started throwing the word "arbitrary" around. Anyway, this is a problem.
I know you've participated on the atheist side of many debates on the Religion forum here and as such, you've seen theists abuse this dichotomy to no end. Don't do the same thing.
We can subdivide the second possibility further into...
2a) The women are the reason (i.e. women are choosing not to apply for those jobs or not enter those career paths or some other choice that leads to this).
2b) The institution is the reason (i.e. people are promoting men disproportionately to women)
Non-exhaustive. Add "2c) None of the above."
This is the coherent explanation.
When I said I never heard a coherent explanation, that was the truth, but I should have been more clear -- I've also heard all the common explanations, including this one. None of them are coherent. In this case the problem is multiple non-exhaustive case analysis, which is a formal logical error.
If all teacher's black kids are getting dramatically worse grades than his white kids, that's a warning flag. There might be perfectly reasonable non-racist explanations for this, but it's definitely something we need to pay closer attention to.
Like any other observed regularity in nature, it is inherently worthy of attention and study. However, choosing in advance racism as a preferred or default explanation for an observed regularity is yet another fallacy (called, unsurprisingly, "privileging the hypothesis.")
And, since stastical improbabilities are indeed improbable, most assume either option 2 or 3 is at work.
...Again, I don't want to get into a philosophical quagmire here, but suppose you were debating a theist on the Religion forum about the various improbabilities associated with the universe, and imagine your own answer.
But let's see where it goes: what specific statistical improbability are you referring to here?
I don't think anyone here is doing that. Jay was pretty clearly supporting more men in nursing and more women in science on the basis that it sucks to want to something and be excluded from doing it or looked down upon for it.
I'm sure Jay does believe what you say here about exclusionary discrimination, and I do as well. However, Jay said this:
And what if in a rapidly advancing society technologically allowing genders to fill equivalent roles as compared to low tech societies, failure to adapt results in the death or decay of the system? From our point of view, that'd be bad for the most part, right?
This, to me, sounds like a (highly contentious) assertion applying evolutionary theory to the question of gender roles in high-tech society. I think it's worth digging into; I'd like some evidence that "the system" is dying or decaying, and I'd like something that causally links whatever that is back to problems with gender roles.
He also mentioned "outdated norms," which is another concept I have serious beef with -- for one thing, I hope I'm long dead before the expiration date on the norm "you shouldn't murder people" comes up.
Of course it's always entirely possible that I'm misinterpreting something, and if so I'll wait for Jay to clarify. But I'm definitely still seeing some points of contention here.
Cutting aside all the fluff, you've now actually agreed with what you seem to be trying to refute.
Like any other observed regularity in nature, it is inherently worthy of attention and study. However, choosing in advance racism as a preferred or default explanation for an observed regularity is yet another fallacy (called, unsurprisingly, "privileging the hypothesis.")
There we go. No one in this conversation, including me, advocated "choosing racism in advance".
You said...
I have never -- not once -- heard anyone coherently explain why any particular human field of endeavor should be expected to have the same demographic balance as it would if its members were randomly sampled from the entire population
And you have been answered. We care if all a teacher's black students get lower grades than every one of his white students because results like that often correlate to racism. We care if a hypothetical job seems to only hire men despite an equal amount of men and women applying. It's not inherently bad to have far more men and women in a field than others. However, it's often a warning sign of racism. Not all tumors are cancerous, many are benign, but if someone asked you "Why should anyone care if they notice a lump on their body? You shouldn't ASSUME it's a tumor." I'm pretty sure you'd have an answer ready to go. Additionally, if you accept the premise that men and women aren't biologically disposed to - say - engineering, then the reasons for the odd distribution are probably either cultural or institutional.
If you assume (which isn't a proven assumption to my knowledge but it's one often made by the people making these arguments) that, without any influence of society telling girls to be non-engineers, just as many girls would want to be engineers as boys - then you have a cultural or institution bias... Or a really weird distribution of numbers. However, if it was purely random we'd expect each new generation to have their own weird distributions. We'd expect to see a bunch of female nurses one generation and then something close to a standard deviation next generation, and overall we'd expect each field to be male-dominated as often as it's female-dominated. Since we don't see that, there's got to be more than just probability going on here.
It doesn't have to be sinister, sons might just imitate their fathers more often than their mothers and vice versa. It could also be for a whole host of other reasons. However, what I view as "benign" is often not viewed that way by the people angry about this. I look at a girl being bought drinks at a bar as an advantage and a compliment. A lot of civil rights activists see it as objectification and insulting. So, a lot of people even view the seemingly benign cultural quirks that might be partly causing such results as a problem to be fixed.
By the way, comparing the possibility of racism or sexism in a workplace to unfalsifiable and unproven myths is pretty insulting. The response would be, "yes, the thing you're pointing at looks wildly improbable - but your supernatural explanation has even less to justify it. That means the improbable answer is still more reasonable." Are you saying racism and sexism are equivalent to supernatural causation?
We care if all a teacher's black students get lower grades than every one of his white students because results like that often correlate to racism. We care if a hypothetical job seems to only hire men despite an equal amount of men and women applying. It's not inherently bad to have far more men and women in a field than others. However, it's often a warning sign of racism.
Calling such things a warning sign of racism is privileging the hypothesis of racism.
Not all tumors are cancerous, many are benign, but if someone asked you "Why should anyone care if they notice a lump on their body? You shouldn't ASSUME it's a tumor." I'm pretty sure you'd have an answer ready to go.
Yes, my answer would be not to assume it's a tumor. In fact, since most lumps aren't tumors, I would advise anyone who asked to put most of their Bayesian prior probability mass on the "non-tumor" outcome -- but to check anyway, because the consequences of a "tumor" outcome are so severe as to considerably overweight that option in the final calculation of expected value.
The point is, I would not advise anyone to jump straight from "lump" to "tumor" without doing the checking step in between.
Additionally, if you accept the premise that men and women aren't biologically disposed to - say - engineering, then the reasons for the odd distribution are probably either cultural or institutional. If you assume (which isn't a proven assumption to my knowledge but it's one often made by the people making these arguments) that, without any influence of society telling girls to be non-engineers, just as many girls would want to be engineers as boys - then you have a cultural or institution bias...
I don't accept unproven premises except on a purely hypothetical basis. In a hypothetical world where there were no biological gender differences, you would have to attribute any gender gaps to something non-biological. But once again your case analysis is not exhaustive -- there are plenty of things that fall under the heading "non-biological" which are not cultural or institutional biases.
Or a really weird distribution of numbers. However, if it was purely random we'd expect each new generation to have their own weird distributions. We'd expect to see a bunch of female nurses one generation and then something close to a standard deviation next generation, and overall we'd expect each field to be male-dominated as often as it's female-dominated. Since we don't see that, there's got to be more than just probability going on here.
As I said before, if you were rational you would never have an a priori expectation that a non-random selection process (like the selection processes for nurses, scientists, basketball players, et cetera) would produce a result indistinguishable from randomness.
By the way, comparing the possibility of racism or sexism in a workplace to unfalsifiable and unproven myths is pretty insulting.
I'm not comparing racism or sexism to those things. I'm comparing your argumentative strategy to the argumentative strategies of those who advocate those things, and finding them to share unfortunate flaws. And though my intention wasn't to insult, if you are insulted I am not too upset, especially if it shocks you into realizing that you're applying the same kind of faulty reasoning that you yourself would have objected to in another context.
We care if all a teacher's black students get lower grades than every one of his white students because results like that often correlate to racism. We care if a hypothetical job seems to only hire men despite an equal amount of men and women applying. It's not inherently bad to have far more men and women in a field than others. However, it's often a warning sign of racism.
Calling such things a warning sign of racism is privileging the hypothesis of racism.
Recognizing something is a symptom of a serious problem does not mean you’re privileging the diagnosis of the result. Let’s check out the conversation.
Firefighter 1: How should we look for dangerous fires?
Firefighter 2: How about we look for smoke?
Firefighter 1: Whoa, that’s privileging the hypothesis of a dangerous fire! You can’t assume just because there’s smoke, there’s a dangerous fire! What if there’s a bonfire or just a really intense chimney?
Firefighter 2: Uh, dangerous fires have a symptom of smoke. Other stuff does too, sure, I’m not saying that all smoke represents dangerous fires - but we should certainly pay attention when we see a lot of smoke and then find out what’s causing-
Firefighter 1: Stop privileging the dangerous fire hypothesis!
Not all tumors are cancerous, many are benign, but if someone asked you "Why should anyone care if they notice a lump on their body? You shouldn't ASSUME it's a tumor." I'm pretty sure you'd have an answer ready to go.
Yes, my answer would be not to assume it's a tumor.
Who said you should assume it’s a tumor? You're the one that keeps bringing in the idea that even considering a cause means you're assuming that cause.
In fact, since most lumps aren't tumors, I would advise anyone who asked to put most of their Bayesian prior probability mass on the "non-tumor" outcome -- but to check anyway, because the consequences of a "tumor" outcome are so severe as to considerably overweight that option in the final calculation of expected value.
Great. Now apply the exact same thinking to a situation where a classroom’s black kids are all getting bad grades and all the white kids are getting good grades. See? You didn’t have to “privilege” the tumor outcome to recognize a potential symptom.
The point is, I would not advise anyone to jump straight from "lump" to "tumor" without doing the checking step in between.
Luckily, I have not advocated anyone doing that. Are you sure you’re arguing with me?
Additionally, if you accept the premise that men and women aren't biologically disposed to - say - engineering, then the reasons for the odd distribution are probably either cultural or institutional. If you assume (which isn't a proven assumption to my knowledge but it's one often made by the people making these arguments) that, without any influence of society telling girls to be non-engineers, just as many girls would want to be engineers as boys - then you have a cultural or institution bias...
I don't accept unproven premises except on a purely hypothetical basis. In a hypothetical world where there were no biological gender differences, you would have to attribute any gender gaps to something non-biological. But once again your case analysis is not exhaustive -- there are plenty of things that fall under the heading "non-biological" which are not cultural or institutional biases.
I’m treating the premise on a hypothetical basis too, because I’m not aware of the studies involved in biological predisposition. I’m also rather uninterested in this line of argument, because it’s going to devolve into a cluster of definitions and nitpicking when you’ve already agreed on the main point. Clearly I’m using the words “culture” and “institution” in a much broader sense than you are - and likely a much looser sense - because there really isn’t anything that would fall outside those definitions as I’m dealing with them. Considering your own loose use of the word “coherent” I think you can appreciate that.
But I don’t see a compelling reason to continue this line. It doesn’t seem necessary to the point at hand.
Or a really weird distribution of numbers. However, if it was purely random we'd expect each new generation to have their own weird distributions. We'd expect to see a bunch of female nurses one generation and then something close to a standard deviation next generation, and overall we'd expect each field to be male-dominated as often as it's female-dominated. Since we don't see that, there's got to be more than just probability going on here.
As I said before, if you were rational you would never have an a priori expectation that a non-random selection process (like the selection processes for nurses, scientists, basketball players, et cetera) would produce a result indistinguishable from randomness.
Why not?
I believe I know exactly why not, but you should tell us. You haven’t justified this statement sir.
We expect CEOs to be experienced in business, educated, good at communication and public speaking and a whole host of other skills. Naturally their selection wouldn't be random in terms of these characteristics.
However, if the non-random selection process is selecting against women - that's sort of the whole point. Activists don't want the gender to be a factor here.
By the way, comparing the possibility of racism or sexism in a workplace to unfalsifiable and unproven myths is pretty insulting.
I'm not comparing racism or sexism to those things. I'm comparing your argumentative strategy to the argumentative strategies of those who advocate those things, and finding them to share unfortunate flaws.
Which, since my main argument in those situations is based on supernatural causes not being proven to exist (and perhaps not even be possible) and thus much less reasonable explanations than a quirk of probability… In order for that comparison to hold weight, you’re assuming racism and sexism to have little to no evidence of existence.
Where’s the flaw exactly?
And though my intention wasn't to insult, if you are insulted I am not too upset, especially if it shocks you into realizing that you're applying the same kind of faulty reasoning that you yourself would have objected to in another context.
I’d be delighted to take a look at this flaw in my reasoning here. I even gave you the sample argument I would have responded with. Please show me how that counter-argument I gave applies to the argument I’ve advanced here. Repeatedly stating that I'm wrong isn't useful.
They have several things to do with it. First is the issue of intent. Intent matters. If we were to only allow certain bathrooms to be used by college graduates and others by non-college-graduates, that'd be messed up. But denying some jobs to non-college graduates is a different story.
The intent behind race-based segregation is to prevent the races from intermingling as much as possible. The intent behind avoiding situations where the opposite sex sees you naked has to do with cultural squeamishness about *sexuality*, not about *gender itself*. It isn't because the culture wants to prevent men and women from being in the same community. It's because a lot of women don't want men leering at them when they're in a locker room (which are also gender segregated).
By contrast, race has no more impact on using a bathroom than it does when you sit at a restaraunt. Let's say a state decided to make laws enforcing the use of sun tan lotion to prvent skin cancer. To be reasonable, they only require each person that goes out in summer to wear a certain amount of sun tan lotion in order to prevent getting burned. If you have darker skin, you need less lotion. While this law isn't actually logistically possible to enforce, I don't have an issue with this kind of race-based discrimination... Because the intent isn't based around race itself, but rather external qualities. If there were higher speed limits of people of a certain race, or longer prison times specifically based on being a certain race committing the exact same crime, that would be prejudiced and sick.
That's why I feel you're getting backlash here. The separation based on the sexes has more to do with nudity and cultural squeamishness about sex itself. There's a reason our culture only has such separation enforced when nudity is involved. If you had a restaurant hold up a sign with "only women allowed", that would be a civil rights violation. This is a murkier gray area.
But ultimately, this part of the argument isn't that relevant. All you have to do is show that society would be better off overall if this law was enforced. I don't think you've done that yet.
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Simple put, by your own logic you've not sufficiently shown that logic has telos, but evolution doesn't. You're being inconstant, if not "directly contradictory."
I didn't say your fallacy had anything to do with "saying everything is arbitrary." I said it has to do with your regard to evolution and logic. Don't strawman me.
An easy solution to this is to correct your argument.
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So are you saying that gender equality can't exist because biology? Or are you saying that complete gender equality existing wouldn't make gender lose meaning? If both genders were treated equally, what would be the difference between them?
No, it is more like the idea that race will lose all meaning if everyone becomes multiracial with similar skin colors due to integration.
I don't think I can reasonably argue with your definition of gender without you stating what it is. I already have stated my ideas, but you haven't said which parts of gender you think are biological or not. Please give me your definition of gender before I continue this argument.
They are linked to sex, but they don't have to be anymore now that birth control exists. They used to be very reasonable but now they are arbitrary.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
If you mean "complete lack of any concept of gender," well, first of all, that's an extremely odd definition of equality, and second, correct, that cannot exist because our brains are predisposed to identifying with a particular gender, because gender is not solely a social construct.
I have said nothing with regards to gender equality, because that's a totally separate topic.
I like Wikipedia's definition: "Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to, and differentiating between, masculinity and femininity. Depending on the context, these characteristics may include biological sex (i.e. the state of being male, female or intersex), sex-based social structures (including gender roles and other social roles), or gender identity."
They are not arbitrary because they are based on the fact that women give birth but men don't. That's the opposite of arbitrary.
Many people in this thread are pointing out that the concept of gender, and associated gender roles, did not arise arbitrarily. However, that doesn't mean they're saying these concepts are justified. Racial stereotypes don't arise arbitrarily, but they're also not justified.
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I recognize that I should have originally included what definition I wanted to use and I apologize for not doing that.
I recognize that it wasn't arbitrary before. However, due to the existence of birth control, it now has lost its purpose and become arbitrary.
This is the Merriam Webster definition of arbitrary
Feminine gender roles existing despite birth control making them unnecessary means that they no longer have a reason to exist and are no longer fair or right.
Ok then. It seems like it would be a lot easier for you to list the components of gender that aren't arbitrary than it would be for me to list the components of gender that are arbitrary.
First, can someone please actually state which components are biological in their opinion? It is impossible to argue with "some unspecific components are biological". Second, if anyone was allowed to feel the emotions they wanted, have the roles they wanted, be in the groups they wanted, wear what they wanted, be called what they wanted, and do whatever they wanted without having to take gender into consideration, how would people feel dysphoric? If anyone could be allowed to feel what we now associate with femininity and masculinity without it being considered abnormal for those characteristics and feelings to be felt by someone of a different sex, there wouldn't be dysphoria. Correct me if I am wrong, but it seems like you think that I am saying that the emotions and behaviors that make up femininity and masculinity should be gotten rid of. I am not saying that. I am saying that a woman should be able to feel as "masculine" as she wants without having to identify as a man and vice versa.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
Because you cannot raise someone without them having no concept of gender. That's the whole point. Your personal mental identification of being male or female is itself a part of gender. And if that doesn't sync up with your sex, then you can feel dysphoria.
This is evidenced by the Reimer case. Reimer was born male but became sexed female due to surgery and was raised female. It was believed at the time that gender was purely a social construct, and Reimer would identify as a girl and never know the difference. But he didn't. Reimer suffered gender identity disorder and had great difficulty identifying as a girl. He always felt he was supposed to be male.
You're trying to say that if there were no society-enforced ideas of gender, then people wouldn't feel gender identity disorder. The problem with this is that you're making the same assumption that was made about the Reimer case: that gender is purely based on conditioning. Except the Reimer case flies in the face of this. Reimer proved that his gender identity was an ingrained biological trait.
No, there WOULD still be gender identity disorder. You're not getting the point. If a person's brain is wired male and his sex organs are female, or if a person's brain is wired female and her sex organs are male, that person will experience gender identity disorder. He or she will not feel correct in his/her own body.
Your problem is you're trying to view this while still clinging to the idea that gender is purely a societal construct, when in fact this disproves that gender is purely a societal construct.
Wait, what? You're saying exactly that. You said in the OP that you wanted to get rid of gender. The concepts of masculinity and femininity are a part of gender!
Dude, no one has a problem with questioning societal gender views. But that is only one aspect of the broader concept of gender. You cannot simply conflate "societal gender views" with "gender" as a whole, and saying, "Why don't we get rid of gender?" is quite a problematic statement because gender is a far more complex topic than anyone really understands.
If you think that, you're still not grasping the shape of the logic at work here. Imagine I do give you a list of biological components of gender. Then you successfully argue that every item on that list is in fact social and arbitrary. You still haven't proven anything. You are defending an "all" proposition: "All components of gender are social and arbitrary." Now, an "all" proposition can of course be disproven with a single counterexample. You can refute "All swans are white" by pointing to just one black swan. But an "all" proposition cannot be proven merely by providing a long list of examples. You can show me as many white swans as you like, but you will never eliminate the possibility that there is some black swan out there which you haven't seen. And if you go through a list of specific components and say they're all social and arbitrary, that's all you're doing: showing us white swans. So as long as this is your approach, you will fail. It's not our fault; it follows from the sweeping nature of the position you have taken.
But a trans man wants to identify as a man. You're describing a tomboy. There's a huge difference between the two. If you don't believe me, go find some trans folk and talk to them about it.
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While I won't argue with the rest of your post because you're correct, I'll respond to the bolded part. While obviously the concept needs to be taught to children so they can understand and navigate our society which is certainly gendered, there are instances of parents raising their children without prescribing their childs' specific genders and allowing the children to identify as they choose. Storm Stocker of Toronto is the most recent headline-grabbing example of it, but some parents do try to raise their children as gender-neutral. It's not raising a child with no concept of gender, but I suppose it's close.
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Feudalism arose due to destruction of a strong central power (Rome)as away to bring order.
Men inherited property due to women dieing in childbirth (Leaving an infant monarch behind)and women being unable to have children after a certain age.
Which then begs the question, which current gender roles are societal driven and not biological (Dont know how one can prove this in an imperical way) and which ones hurt society (Does it really matter if men dominate Engineering and Women dominating nursing so long as both can access the fields if they chose)
Gender studies are basically arguing that the raccoons are in cahoots to eat the trash, yes the raccoons will eat the trash but there is no organization involved.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
The idea that gender roles evolved to be as they are today doesn't justify gender roles as they are today, it just explains them, much like the occasional vestigial tail. The reason equity in the work place matters, rather than people 'just leaving it up to choice' is because outdated norms inform the current situation, and cultural attitudes are a large part of what's pushing people away. It's hard for men to get into nursing when cultural attitudes look down on it, and it's hard for women to get into STEM for the same reason.
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You're correct that evolution isn't justificatory, but while we're on the subject of being more accurate about how we apply evolutionary theory, let's keep in mind that when evolution speaks, its voice doesn't issue forth from the mouth of a gender studies major. Nature per se doesn't have a concept of "outdated norms," nor does it appear to care whether 51% of scientists are women or 49% of nurses are men. If it did, we could measure the consequences of our failure to maintain this balance in terms of observable failure of our society to continue itself.
A person wanting to use evolutionary theory to support something like more men in nursing or more women in science would have to explain how one should expect these career demographics to impact the relevant fitness variables and why. I have never -- not once -- heard anyone coherently explain why any particular human field of endeavor should be expected to have the same demographic balance as it would if its members were randomly sampled from the entire population, evolutionarily or otherwise.
I will give the people using evolutionary theory to buttress traditional gender roles this much credit: they are at least telling a story about how the traditional roles lead to making more babies, even if it is "just-so."
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It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
There's no essential reason that the demoraphics of high level businesse esecutives have to mirror the demographics. It's not inherently a bad thing if all CEOs are men. However, that sort of result indicates one of four major things.
1) This is an outlier explicable by statistical modeling.
2) There's some sort of cultural or prejudicial force that is either discouraging women from wanting to apply themseles to high level executive career paths.
3) There's some sort of institutional prejudice against women in high level business environments.
4) A mixture of the above.
If 2 or 3 are true in part or in whole, those are causes for concern. It's like if a kid with failing grades and a bad attitude suddenly gets a perfect score on a test. There's nothing wrong with getting 100% on a test, in fact that's awesome. However, the anomalous result might be an indication of a problem with the process (i.e. the kid might have cheated).
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To say that it could indicate prejudice is to say nothing at all. People's life trajectories correlate with trillions of variables; any given statistical analysis could be responding to any subset of these correlations.
- Are you saying this is an exhaustive list of alternatives? That no other logical possibilities remain? (It's not.)
- I am not sure your use of the term "outlier" here makes any sense. Things are only outliers relative to given distributions. In order to question whether or not a data point is an outlier, one must believe that data point has been drawn from a particular distribution. But in this case, it is circular to hypothesize this, because whether or not particular human fields of endeavor must conform to the anterior distribution of the population is the very question we are asking!
- There should be no a priori expectation that a non-random selection process -- such as the process for picking good scientists, nurses, basketball players, et cetera -- would produce a distribution that looks as if the selections were being made randomly.
Indeed. But your list is about a trillion items short, and before you can infer the presence of 2 or 3, you've got to rule out the other trillion.
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
Not sure if your argueing against me or not, but it seems like your making my point.
Even in Norway, Nursing is dominated by women and engineering by men this seems to suggest that there is an intrinsic factor in determining career choices in genders.
Also even the vaunted 75 cents to dollar is due to career choices not any cabal, men take higher risk more lucrative jobs and suffer the vast majority of on site job fatalities and injuries. They also dont take time off for pregnancy because natures a b_tch.
Hell since the Ogodei died humanities been on an upward climb, sometimes quickly sometimes slowly with a few hiccups here and there but things have been getting better since 1241.
That being said I think women should be able to pursuit any career they wish because there will always be outliers and it enriches society to allow them to flourish, plus despite what both sides say I think its a very western tradition after all the great Charlemagne educated his daughters and sons, women fought in the crusaders and were counted among st the dead defenders of Constantinople.
Also a strong legal system which can punish companies for illegal behavior such as discrimination is the bedrock of a free market.However having government mandates not only are ineffective ie Norway they seem to me to only succeed in punish poor men.
@ Blinkingspirit But do raccoons have a secret Jewish male raccoon Illuminati that ensure they get the meatloaf?
Yes, I'm saying it is a reasonably exhaustive list of alternatives as to why Men are disproportionately represented in high business offices compared to the population at large. In fact, I can narrow it down further to 2 possibilities.
1) It's just chance.
2) There's a reason for it.
We can subdivide the second possibility further into...
2a) The women are the reason (i.e. women are choosing not to apply for those jobs or not enter those career paths or some other choice that leads to this).
2b) The institution is the reason (i.e. people are promoting men disproportionately to women)
Option 2a maps to my proposed option 2. Option 2b maps to my proposed option 3. I may have worded it more loosely, but that's basically it. I just invoked the reasons behind why women might not be going into those fields to begin with and so on, if option 2 is correct.
Option 4 is the fair mixture of multiple above reasons.
So when you said:
This is the coherent explanation. If all teacher's black kids are getting dramatically worse grades than his white kids, that's a warning flag. There might be perfectly reasonable non-racist explanations for this, but it's definitely something we need to pay closer attention to. And, since stastical improbabilities are indeed improbable, most assume either option 2 or 3 is at work.
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It is kind of a stretch mapping this to "There's some sort of cultural or prejudicial force that is... discouraging women..." For all we know at this point in the analysis, it could be practical, biological, or (why not?) supernatural.
Don't be silly. There are no Jewish racoons; Jewish identity is only passed down matrilineally.
They're Mormons.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
It certainly could. It's possible that magic rabbits are controlling the brains of women and convincing them not to apply for CEO jobs.
It's also possible that women inherently don't want CEO jobs on a biological level, or have inherent drives to do other things that aren't compatible with a CEO's job.
Note though that I didn't say where the "prejudicial" force game from. It was meant to be equally possible for the prejudice to come from the outside or the women themselves with regard to the field.
I could definitely have been clearer though. I hope my second post clarified things.
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"Reasonably exhaustive" just means "exhaustive," since basic logic (an essential component of reasonableness, as I'm sure you'll agree) can tell you whether or not a list of cases is exhaustive, and you can always make something exhaustive by adding "none of the above" to the end.
I don't want to get derailed into a philosophical quagmire here, but there are a litany of problems with the classical chance/reason dichotomy. Suffice it to say that this list is not exhaustive. As a first attempt at fixing it you could make it exhaustive in the following way:
1) It happened by chance.
2) It didn't happen by chance.
This is exhaustive (being of the form "A or not A") but there are other problems with this. Blinking Spirit alluded to them earlier in the thread when someone started throwing the word "arbitrary" around. Anyway, this is a problem.
I know you've participated on the atheist side of many debates on the Religion forum here and as such, you've seen theists abuse this dichotomy to no end. Don't do the same thing.
Non-exhaustive. Add "2c) None of the above."
When I said I never heard a coherent explanation, that was the truth, but I should have been more clear -- I've also heard all the common explanations, including this one. None of them are coherent. In this case the problem is multiple non-exhaustive case analysis, which is a formal logical error.
Like any other observed regularity in nature, it is inherently worthy of attention and study. However, choosing in advance racism as a preferred or default explanation for an observed regularity is yet another fallacy (called, unsurprisingly, "privileging the hypothesis.")
...Again, I don't want to get into a philosophical quagmire here, but suppose you were debating a theist on the Religion forum about the various improbabilities associated with the universe, and imagine your own answer.
But let's see where it goes: what specific statistical improbability are you referring to here?
I'm sure Jay does believe what you say here about exclusionary discrimination, and I do as well. However, Jay said this:
This, to me, sounds like a (highly contentious) assertion applying evolutionary theory to the question of gender roles in high-tech society. I think it's worth digging into; I'd like some evidence that "the system" is dying or decaying, and I'd like something that causally links whatever that is back to problems with gender roles.
He also mentioned "outdated norms," which is another concept I have serious beef with -- for one thing, I hope I'm long dead before the expiration date on the norm "you shouldn't murder people" comes up.
Of course it's always entirely possible that I'm misinterpreting something, and if so I'll wait for Jay to clarify. But I'm definitely still seeing some points of contention here.
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
There we go. No one in this conversation, including me, advocated "choosing racism in advance".
You said...
And you have been answered. We care if all a teacher's black students get lower grades than every one of his white students because results like that often correlate to racism. We care if a hypothetical job seems to only hire men despite an equal amount of men and women applying. It's not inherently bad to have far more men and women in a field than others. However, it's often a warning sign of racism. Not all tumors are cancerous, many are benign, but if someone asked you "Why should anyone care if they notice a lump on their body? You shouldn't ASSUME it's a tumor." I'm pretty sure you'd have an answer ready to go. Additionally, if you accept the premise that men and women aren't biologically disposed to - say - engineering, then the reasons for the odd distribution are probably either cultural or institutional.
If you assume (which isn't a proven assumption to my knowledge but it's one often made by the people making these arguments) that, without any influence of society telling girls to be non-engineers, just as many girls would want to be engineers as boys - then you have a cultural or institution bias... Or a really weird distribution of numbers. However, if it was purely random we'd expect each new generation to have their own weird distributions. We'd expect to see a bunch of female nurses one generation and then something close to a standard deviation next generation, and overall we'd expect each field to be male-dominated as often as it's female-dominated. Since we don't see that, there's got to be more than just probability going on here.
It doesn't have to be sinister, sons might just imitate their fathers more often than their mothers and vice versa. It could also be for a whole host of other reasons. However, what I view as "benign" is often not viewed that way by the people angry about this. I look at a girl being bought drinks at a bar as an advantage and a compliment. A lot of civil rights activists see it as objectification and insulting. So, a lot of people even view the seemingly benign cultural quirks that might be partly causing such results as a problem to be fixed.
By the way, comparing the possibility of racism or sexism in a workplace to unfalsifiable and unproven myths is pretty insulting. The response would be, "yes, the thing you're pointing at looks wildly improbable - but your supernatural explanation has even less to justify it. That means the improbable answer is still more reasonable." Are you saying racism and sexism are equivalent to supernatural causation?
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...You did it in the very next sentence you wrote:
Calling such things a warning sign of racism is privileging the hypothesis of racism.
Yes, my answer would be not to assume it's a tumor. In fact, since most lumps aren't tumors, I would advise anyone who asked to put most of their Bayesian prior probability mass on the "non-tumor" outcome -- but to check anyway, because the consequences of a "tumor" outcome are so severe as to considerably overweight that option in the final calculation of expected value.
The point is, I would not advise anyone to jump straight from "lump" to "tumor" without doing the checking step in between.
I don't accept unproven premises except on a purely hypothetical basis. In a hypothetical world where there were no biological gender differences, you would have to attribute any gender gaps to something non-biological. But once again your case analysis is not exhaustive -- there are plenty of things that fall under the heading "non-biological" which are not cultural or institutional biases.
As I said before, if you were rational you would never have an a priori expectation that a non-random selection process (like the selection processes for nurses, scientists, basketball players, et cetera) would produce a result indistinguishable from randomness.
I'm not comparing racism or sexism to those things. I'm comparing your argumentative strategy to the argumentative strategies of those who advocate those things, and finding them to share unfortunate flaws. And though my intention wasn't to insult, if you are insulted I am not too upset, especially if it shocks you into realizing that you're applying the same kind of faulty reasoning that you yourself would have objected to in another context.
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
Recognizing something is a symptom of a serious problem does not mean you’re privileging the diagnosis of the result. Let’s check out the conversation.
Firefighter 1: How should we look for dangerous fires?
Firefighter 2: How about we look for smoke?
Firefighter 1: Whoa, that’s privileging the hypothesis of a dangerous fire! You can’t assume just because there’s smoke, there’s a dangerous fire! What if there’s a bonfire or just a really intense chimney?
Firefighter 2: Uh, dangerous fires have a symptom of smoke. Other stuff does too, sure, I’m not saying that all smoke represents dangerous fires - but we should certainly pay attention when we see a lot of smoke and then find out what’s causing-
Firefighter 1: Stop privileging the dangerous fire hypothesis!
Who said you should assume it’s a tumor? You're the one that keeps bringing in the idea that even considering a cause means you're assuming that cause.
Great. Now apply the exact same thinking to a situation where a classroom’s black kids are all getting bad grades and all the white kids are getting good grades. See? You didn’t have to “privilege” the tumor outcome to recognize a potential symptom.
Luckily, I have not advocated anyone doing that. Are you sure you’re arguing with me?
I’m treating the premise on a hypothetical basis too, because I’m not aware of the studies involved in biological predisposition. I’m also rather uninterested in this line of argument, because it’s going to devolve into a cluster of definitions and nitpicking when you’ve already agreed on the main point. Clearly I’m using the words “culture” and “institution” in a much broader sense than you are - and likely a much looser sense - because there really isn’t anything that would fall outside those definitions as I’m dealing with them. Considering your own loose use of the word “coherent” I think you can appreciate that.
But I don’t see a compelling reason to continue this line. It doesn’t seem necessary to the point at hand.
Why not?
I believe I know exactly why not, but you should tell us. You haven’t justified this statement sir.
We expect CEOs to be experienced in business, educated, good at communication and public speaking and a whole host of other skills. Naturally their selection wouldn't be random in terms of these characteristics.
However, if the non-random selection process is selecting against women - that's sort of the whole point. Activists don't want the gender to be a factor here.
Which, since my main argument in those situations is based on supernatural causes not being proven to exist (and perhaps not even be possible) and thus much less reasonable explanations than a quirk of probability… In order for that comparison to hold weight, you’re assuming racism and sexism to have little to no evidence of existence.
Where’s the flaw exactly?
I’d be delighted to take a look at this flaw in my reasoning here. I even gave you the sample argument I would have responded with. Please show me how that counter-argument I gave applies to the argument I’ve advanced here. Repeatedly stating that I'm wrong isn't useful.
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