Doubtless, but the problem is that we live in such a culturally gendered society that there’s hardly any reliable way of identifying which traits are truly “hard-wired into our biology” rather than being culturally determined. We can come up with fabricated evo-psych speculations linking practically any “masculine” or “feminine” trait with a postulated biological cause, but that isn’t the same as being able to determine the existence of such causes scientifically.
I must be misunderstanding you. What is there about men and women using the same bathroom that would make gender identity, much less physical genitalia, disappear?
Did you know that at my house, we don’t have separate bathrooms for men and women? We have two bathrooms, but they are open to anyone without regard for gender. It’s a bold political statement, I know.
Hmmm. Funny thing. I remember growing up that this was the policy in my parent’s home, and my grandma’s home, and my uncle’s home. I guess our family has always been on the forefront of the assault on gender.
I’m not a bathroom nazi by any means, but I don’t think it’s fair to compare a public restroom setting to a restroom in a private residence where access is strictly controlled, and 99-100% of the people using the restroom are either close family relations or vetted and trusted guests.
…Apparently it was norwegian? - YouTube alas I can’t site the study directly.
All of these study newborns, without time to have been socialized one way or another. Of particular interest and unbeknownst to me before searching was the difference in pain responses between males and females being present in newborns.
I acknowledged in the first word of my post that you quoted that there are doubtless such biological differences. The point, which you likewise acknowledge, is that in a culturally gendered society we have no good way of separating the biological differences from the cultural ones to any really meaningful extent.
Yes, there are studies on (small numbers of) newborns that show sex-linked differences in, e.g., neonatal “looking time” at faces versus mobiles (is this the one you were searching for?). But the actual documented differences are not as categorical as water-cooler recaps of the research tend to suggest:
When you say “11 of 44 male neonates preferred looking at the face, 19 at the mobile, and 14 showed no preference, while 21 of 58 female neonates preferred looking at the face, 10 at the mobile, and 27 showed no preference”, it really sounds a lot less categorically gender-essentialist than “clearly showed males lingering on mechanisms and females lingering on faces”, doesn’t it?
More importantly, there’s no way to convincingly link these sex-linked differences in purely biological, pre-social neonatal behavior to other sorts of gender differences in a world so thoroughly permeated by cultural gender expectations. Trying to jump from “slightly under half of male infants prefer the mobile while slightly under half of female infants prefer the face” to sociological conclusions like, say, “and that’s why engineers are mostly men” is just unsupported evo-psych-type speculation in a slightly different guise.
When you’re actually looking for real differences between populations, you most decidedly are not looking for perfect divisions between them. What you’re looking for is the mean and the standard deviations. In short, how do they behave on average. While I’d love for a better study with a larger sample size, human studies especially on newborns aren’t exactly easy to organize. We have the data we have, and they show a statistically significant difference in preference (Also, that members of the population vary across the spectrum, but no one should be surprised by this). Like all statistics relevant to a population at large, what matters is where the mean lies. There is a difference between the females and males that we can trace all the way to newborns. That eliminates the possibility that all gender differences can be chocked up to cultural indoctrination and lends significant credence to the body of thinking that suggests men are more technical and women more social.
Actually, we’ve established that there are differences between genders that manifest within a day of birth that lean in the same direction we see populations leaning towards as adults. You’d have to demonstrate some significant mechanism that eliminates this trend to justify culture having reintroduced or reinforcing it.
Every reputable study done shows the same gender preferences at all ages. These trends don’t go away and then re-manifest only when exposed to specific cultural triggers, they just get bigger in all cultures studied as age increases. “Cultural indoctrination” seems to be almost a non-factor.
And that’s before you mention the effects of more gender neutral cultures ('A gender equality paradox': Countries with more gender equality have fewer female STEM grads). As cultural egalitarianism increases, the divergence between male and female career preference increases. If anything, it would appear that traditional culture has a normalizing effect on career choice between genders, not the opposite.
Not sure what rape has to do with anything. I’m just talking about people’s comfort level and expectations of privacy, and how those can differ depending on where you are (residential or public bathroom). I just think there is a different dynamic at play.
To be fair, I think you’re both missing the point.
People are discomforted by cross gendered bathrooms because we’re raised to think it’s wrong.
People are raised to think it’s wrong because we inherited a lot of scruples from our more religious forebearers, and the idea of a boy and a girl in close proximity with their privies off was enough to get everybody’s privies in a knot. It’s neither effective against nor implemented to prevent rape. More likely it was to stop Jim from sneaking a peak at Jane and learning what her naughty bits look like before they’re married. You’ll note, Roman public bathrooms weren’t gender segregated, and so far as I can find the earliest segregated bathroom dates back only to the 1780’s, well within the “oh deary, we surely mustn’t let Jim get curious” timeframe.
Presumably, that discomfort wouldn’t exist if we didn’t learn that bathrooms are supposed to be segregated and that proximity to the opposite gender is a significant danger. After all, Roman bathrooms didn’t even bother with stalls.
Sure. But the average differences actually found here are substantially smaller than casual descriptions of the research tend to suggest.
But AFAICT nobody here is trying to argue for that possibility: not even, AFAICT, the folks referenced without cite in the OP who allegedly advocate eliminating all social acknowledgement of gender differences.
That’s where you make the leap into speculation. Assuming that these neonatal looking preferences are causally related to, and significantly determinative of, the complex behaviors that we call “being more technical” and “being more social” is not supported by the evidence.
Again, nobody’s disputing that.
“Lean in the same direction”, like “lends significant credence”, is speculative-analogy talk rather than scientific deduction.
The problem is that you’re making up the conclusion that the behaviors you’re talking about here actually constitute a single causally connected “trend”.
:rolleyes: The conclusion-jumping is reaching catastrophic levels here. You are cherry-picking a few behavior patterns in a few closely related countries out of a massively complex entanglement of historically gendered expectations and roles, and declaring that you can identify them as primarily biological in origin. This is not persuasive except to people who already believe the views you’re arguing for.
Mind you, again, nobody here is claiming that biology can’t be or isn’t significantly determinative of gender differences in adult behavior patterns. Just that actually demonstrating the extent to which biology is or isn’t determinative is a lot more difficult than you realize.
This. The idea that people will become completely comfortable with co-ed casual nudity is a distinct and extremely separate concept from the idea that mothers might go to work while the fathers stay home and do the housework. Both events could occur, but I really don’t see how one would drive the other. So what kind of “gender” are we talking about losing here?
Y’all realize most public restrooms have stalls and/or locking doors. Nobody need be stared at. If you are pee-ing out in the open I am afraid you are asking to be looked at. IMHO.
ETA I know men’s rooms have urinals, but females don’t use them, anyway.
P.S. I have a small problem with people hearing me pee, but that’s another issue.
The thing is, comfort or discomfort isn’t a thing on its own. There has to be some underlying reason why people feel this comfort or discomfort.
We already accept the difference between being alone in a bathroom and restrooms having multiple people in stalls that don’t completely hide you from the other person. We already put up with the risk that some gay person may leer at us.
So what is different when you have unisex restrooms? What is the additional fear that makes people more uncomfortable in that situation? Whatever it is, can we get over it?
In the trans restroom debate, the argument is always about people of the opposite gender harassing, molesting, or raping people. That is what they flat out say. So it sure seems that the discomfort of having someone of the “wrong” gender in the bathroom with you is due to the fear of sexual crimes.
I for one really don’t care. But I also think we should stop with these cheap stalls and actually put up good dividers. If they need air flow, built it in the traditional way with vents and such, not huge open space that people can peer in and see.
That would, in my opinion, make them more like home bathrooms. The only difference is that the sinks are outside the toilet room.
The OP referenced Starship Troopers; I assume they were talking about the co-ed shower scene. The notion that this gender erasure might somehow make casual coed nudity acceptable is definitely on the table.
I must be misunderstanding you. What is there about men and women using the same bathroom that would make gender identity, much less physical genitalia, disappear?