:smack:
Should read: All the twin studies in the world won’t tell you jack shit about whether a given behavior is elicited by patriarchy or is innate if both twins in each study are observed under patriarchal conditions.
I brought up twin studies because they are the illustration par excellence that it is possible to control for the effects of nature vs environment on behaviour. That’s it. As I noted a number of times, the specific arguments dealing with the hardwiring of gender behaviour were based on other material (for example, the cloacal exstrophy study).
Abe:
Fair enough. I’ll assemble some and post. My Liz Fisher’s in the other apartment but I should be able to put together some stuff from other materials.
[QUOTE=AHunter3]
Abe:
Sorry, but I have to agree with Spider Woman. You can’t measure the effects of factor x on variable y unless you can measure/observe variable y in the absence of factor x as well as in its presence. All the twin studies in the world won’t tell you jack shit about if both twins in each study are observed under patriarchal conditions.
[QUOTE]
Let me ask a very sincere and honest question. I can’t figure out what this “patriarchal” society is supposed to be in concrete terms. I feel the same frustration that I get when communist philosophers talk about the “means of production”. I know it is supposed to map to something real but what is it? I can look around and see some old-school examples of things I would consider patriarchal but it breaks down as we get more recent.
My daughter is three years old. She has gone to a preschool with all female teachers since she was 8 weeks old. Her mother is a very successful and aggressive Executive Vice President. I, her father, am fairly successful too but I keep her most nights and a lot on the weekend. She likes things that are stereotypically female but she also has male typical tastes like bugs and gore too. I treat her as my child and not just as a daughter. I think I would treat a son the same way at that age.
How do I know how much she has been influenced by the patriarchal society? Am I supposed to be the patriarch. If so, the only people that will be suprised more than me will be my wife and daughter.
Shagnasty, our current society (western civ, specifically USA for purposes of this post) is not a patriarchy; it would be better described as a transitional society, midway to being postpatriarchal but with patriarchal origins and patriarchal leftovers.
Had your daugher been born to earlier generations in the same place, she would have lacked the right to vote, would have been denied the right to hold property in her own name (unless widowed, perhaps), would have been legally required to follow her husband had he unilaterally chosen to move, and otherwise subjected to a host of laws specific to her gender and overwhelmingly disempowering to her. That’s not currently society but that’s where we came from.
Had your daughter been born to only slightly earlier generations — with a birthdate in the 1950s, let’s say — she might have been freed of much of that oppression and yet still denied credit in her own name if she were to marry, paid substantially less for the same job and/or discriminated against in hiring, not given the same coursework in high school nor equal educational opportunity afterwards, and so on. Again, that’s not current society, but that’s where we came from.
I’m happy to report that in today’s world most of those barriers to her equal participation are down as well. There are still a lot of residual attitudes that may persist to affect her as an adult woman, attitudes that may make it more of an uphill struggle for her to occupy positions of leadership, let’s say. There are also a lot of traditions, such as taking her father’s last name as a child and changing it to her husband’s last name at marriage if she marries, which are not enforced by law (she can ignore them) but only the weight of opinion and shared expectation. These things also appear to be on the wane, though.
Part of the process of pushing those old leftover atttitudes out is discussion and airing of such things in venues like this one. Places where, for example, someone might post “Doper women, on marriage are you changing your name to his?” or “BBQ Pit: So my best friend’s husband has a job offer in Cincinnati and she doesn’t and doesn’t want to move, I can’t believe how arrogant he is to assume they move whenever he feels like it” or “Opinions please, is this sexual harassment? I’m a receptionist, male boss wants me to dress in a way I think is decking me out as sexual eye candy, any feedback?” etc etc
We also have cultural values and priorities, enshrined in tradition and structure, which date back into antiquity. One could call them “patriarchal” the same way one could call a given building’s architecture “Doric” — with dead-on historical accuracy. But most often when someone (feminist) says this institutional structure or that value / priority is “patriarchal” they not only mean that they originated in patriarchal times, but that these aren’t (necessarily) the best structures for our modern purposes, or that other things should (perhaps) have higher priority in the new world, or even that these structures and institutions (may) help prop up what’s left of power asymmetry between men and women. Very few such things can be shown to directly hurt girls and women, and there’s plenty of room for someone to opine that some such patriarchal institutions and traditions are harmlessly so, inoffensively so. It’s not a political crime to be more enchanted with charming traditions and other relics of our patriarchal past than self-described feminists might be.
And I’m blithely missing your point, aren’t I? You’re asking what this “patriarchal environment” consists of such that twins born into it can’t be assessed to determine if this or that sex diff is caused by patriarchy or by biological hard-wiring, aren’t you?
OK, start with the jobworld, topic of lots of rancorous argumentation over the last 120 years. Our structure of dead-serious competition, and the values thereof, are patriarchal in the first sense (that’s the timeframe in which the structures originated), a strong case can be made that they are patriarchal in the second sense (lots of stuff is done by businesses that we as a species do not benefit from; they are done because those activities effectively trap profits in their profit-pile. The priorities of competitive capitalism, one could argue, are a bad mesh with modern needs), and a still-strong case can be made that they are patriarchal in the third sense as well (that lots of underlying assumptions, such as the existence of a domestic wife to do child care and shop during shopping hours and so on, are assumptions that, where applicable, are applicable at women’s expense, and that women in the workforce, particularly at the upper executive levels, are at a disadvantage because that’s where those assumptions are often still applicable: wealthy men with wives in clearly ancillary-supportive roles in marriage; Type A career women trying to compete with them without a “wife” of their own, etc).
Hope this helps.
I have not found where you have provided scientific studies which show which traits are hard-wired, and which ones are not, and how you would control for environmental influences. I am not lecturing you any more than you were lecturing me. As I said before, if there were incontrovertible proof in this area, we would not be having this discussion.
Please show me where I said that no behavior is hard-wired. I believe what I have been saying all along is that it does not seem to be possible to establish which behaviors are hard-wired and which ones are not, without being able to control for environmental influences.
I argued that there was not incontrovertible proof.
Not the same thing.
I am not blaming the media for causing the problem. They are reflecting attitudes. Yes, women do stay at home more than men do, but not exclusively. In many marriages/relationships, both spouses work full-time. Most commercials still depict women doing the domestic chores.
Huh? These are the anti “bra-burners,” the women who say that I hate men because I expect that if both partners work full-time, the domestic tasks should be shared equitably.
Studies on swinging marriages? I wonder what the impetus was for that?
I believe people can find studies to support just about everything that they want to believe.
Why say whine, or idiocy? That may be your perception because you disagree with the link, and seems to be an example of an argumentum ad hominem. More of the same follows, attack the source, and then you don’t need to bother with it.
What they state is that there is not clear-cut proof.
What you did say was this:
Perhaps if you actually addressed the evidence and arguments I provided, then we wouldn’t be having this discussion. You claim you haven’t found the evidence? There is very strong evidence in post #127 that you have ignored so far. It handles the issue of hardwiring in gender differences quite extensively, complete with some rather strong controls. But it’s not like I’ve been sitting on my hands in this thread, you will find, in varying degrees, references to well supported arguments in most of my posts.
I do not think I said that you said that no behaviour is hardwired. For the nth time: you have made claims such as “it is difficult to sort out what differences are attributable to hardwiring and what are attributable to societal conditioning. Standardized testing is not a good measure, because there are no controls for societal conditioning or hardwiring.” I replied that it is not that difficult and showed why, that there are controls. You have attemtped to equivocate or deny many of my arguments apparently because you find some conclusions and statements offensive or otherwise undesirable for women, not because you had contrary evidence to present. But I have argued repeatedly that nothing I am presenting should be construed as any attack on a particular gender, or as any justification for unequal treatment, and showed why.
And I have showed repeatedly that your contention is demonstrably incorrect. Incorrect in general terms if we look at twin studies, and incorrect in specific gender identity terms if we look at other studies focusing on sex and behaviour. Yes, there were some good controls in place to isolate the effects of biology versus environment. I’ve gone over this at least four times now, could you address the meat of the arguments instead of restating your beliefs?
Your previously blatant conspiracy is now reduced to an issue of reflecting attitudes. Very well, but you will still need a more solid argument than hand-waving about “reflecting attitudes”. Can media be blamed for “reflecting” the attitudes and points of view one finds in the world? Is it harmful? What is your evidence? What is the origin of these “messages” and what are the messages?
Perhaps they do. I wouldn’t know it from your posts, because you’ve provided your opinion but not something to back it up. As I said, it is possible that advertisers are targeting the largest group of buyers of their products, women. We really won’t know until you work on your thesis some more. Until then I can’t agree or disagree with it, but I can disagree with your claim on the importance of cultural influences on gender behaviour since you have not demonstrated these cultural influences, and since I have demonstrated important biological influences on gender behaviour.
Try actually addressing the primary arguments rather than the tangential ones, and this sort of thing should become pretty clear. You will note I was discussing the drive for casual sex and how it is balanced by factors that appear to arise from natural causes. The tendency to form long-term monogamous bonds is not necessarily incompatible with the drive (greater in males) for casual sex. That is why I had a look at the studies on married swinger couples, who are in a monogamous bond and who engage in casual sex with others. The evidence indicates they’re happier and more satisfied, on average, than non-swinging couples.
It was a tangent in response to another one of your blanket statements, " If men focused on what their biology ideally suited them for, we would not live in a monogamous society." I intended to show how such statements are actually pitfalls in the discussion.
Nice way to invalidate a piece of evidence, shall I use the same trick instead of actually bothering to try ground my argument in available science? “Oh, you cherry-picked that evidence to reflect your opinion, I hereby summarily dismiss it”. But no, you will note I actually made the effort to address your concerns.
Unfortunately the source presents an idiotic argument, or, at the very least, the source is a silly and very loose way to respond to arguments I presented here. It’s not a scientific position being presented, just a piece that complains about some experts not invited to a TV programme. Your other piece was a collection of glurge that led up to the greatest glurge of them all in its conclusion, reactionary militant advocacy that said “Biologically identifying traits of oppressed groups is always for the purpose of justifying the oppression” and so forth.
It’s nice that you point out fallacies you think I am engaging in. Now look in your fallacy dictionary for non sequitur, check again the definition for argumentum ad hominem, and apply them both to the conclusion quoted in the above paragraph.
I have to wonderif you are arguing for the same misguided and exaggerated attempts at political correctitude that have hampered research into, for example, the study of rape? Rather than address the argument, it is a lot easier for militants to attempt to stifle and condemn investigation into the matter. Such an approach, unlike honest, agenda-free, results-neutral scientific inquiry, is what is truly dangerous.
They equivocate and handwave and play down or completely ignore important evidence. If you stick by your sources, I suggest you present and defend the relevant arguments in them. And before you do that, there are reams of evidence here in post #127 you can address if you want to discuss this issue. But I thought you now agreed that many sex differences in behaviour are indeed biological? Which means that you are satisfied with the controls of the evidence I presented? If not, elaborate and support your objections.
Even though that is by no means all I said on the topic, my answer to you is: Yes, I said that. My next question is: So what? You seem to think it means something other than what the text very simply spells out. Please elaborate.
In all the studies you showed, there is still no way to control for environmental influences. And, the studies are correlational, not causal. In order to do this, a control group would need to exist showing a study group with no environmental influences, and this is not possible.
When is it sex difference and when is it gender difference? states:
"*How do you know when to call something a sex difference rather than a gender difference? Using the definitions given for sex (biological differences between males and females) and gender (socially defined differences between men and women), sex differences therefore refer only to those differences that can be attributed solely to biological difference. Medical literature most commonly addresses biological sex differences. Increasingly we find that medical evidence is published with sex as a variable of analysis.
Gender differences delineate those differences that exist between men and women. Gender differences by definition take into consideration the fact that outside the test tube it is impossible to control for the interactions between people and their environment. Outcomes data therefore demonstrate gender difference because it is impossible to tell whether health outcomes are 100% attributable to the biology of males and females or whether they are some mixture of the interaction between biology and the environment within which men and women experience them.
It is therefore more common to use gender differences as a blanket term for sex and gender difference when speaking about people because you can’t separate them from their environment. The generic rule of thumb must therefore be:
If you know that the difference is 100% biological it’s a Sex Difference,
Everything else must be considered a Gender Difference*." [bolding is as found]
This interesting article suggests that males hormones change when they take on nurturing roles: when they become fathers. The conclusion of this study:
"*Although testosterone may be the “primary” male sex hormone, research makes it clear that other hormones are also significant, especially during the transition into fatherhood Wynne-Edwards believes the research is “a validation of the experiences that men know they have had. It also goes a long way to bumping testosterone off its pedestal as the only hormone that is important to men.”
Parke believes that the research suggests something even more radical: "Men are much more androgynous than we think. We have the capability to be aggressive and nurturing. The traditional view of men as predominantly aggressive really sells men short and denies their capability to experience the range of human emotions.
The research suggests that a man’s hormones may play an important role in helping him experience this full range of emotions especially in becoming a loving and devoted dad. In fact, it offers the first evidence that to nurture is part of man’s nature.*"
This suggests that biology is influenced by environment.
I would like to ask for some clarification, Abe? What is it that you are saying, with the studies you present?
Here is what I am saying:
We do not know to what extent gender roles are influenced by heredity and environment; the jury is still out. The bra-burning feminists made a statement by drawing our attention to the fact that women do not need to adhere to traditional roles, and that we are not necessarily predestined to do so.
As for the television commercials, I do not have any sources besides my own observations. It could be that you don’t watch television much. I never said the c-word (conspiracy), that was you. I said “I believe that our patriarchal environment shapes us in ways of which we may not even be aware. And I believe Madison Avenue buys right into this by portraying advertisements which show, for the most part, women doing the cooking, cleaning, and laundry.”
This is why I said “I believe,” because I am putting forth my opinion. And yes, there is room for opinion in debate.
Here you say:
I wrote that in response to this comment of yours:
Your comment that
[Bolding added for this post]
It could be that even biology is affected by environment, it could be that men can also be nurturers, and the correlational study about fathers and hormones suggests that.
You may notice that I say “It could be” or “This suggests.” It is because at this time, we do not have incontrovertible proof. That means that your posts are your opinion also.
I wrote:
> Look at the opportunities for women in other countries. One measure of this is
> the percentage of women in the national legislatures of the countries (which
> would mean for the U.S. the percentage in the House of Representatives and
> the Senate). The U.S. is no better than average for the world.
Here’s a website with fuller comparisons of the representation of women in various fields in a variety of countries. The news story I read says that it concludes that the U.S. comes out 17th on this index. (I can’t tell if that’s what the complete article says, because I can’t read pdf files.) In any case, a number of other countries have more gender equality than the U.S.
Here’s the website:
Dr Catherine Hakim, a sociologist at the London School of Economics who specialises in women’s employment and women’s issues:
For decades we’ve been told Sweden is a great place to be a working parent. But we’ve been duped
Abe:
I’m finding it difficult to get direct access to materials online without paying Google Scholar, and as I mentioned before, I’m not where my academic bookcase is.
Before pursuing this further, what’s the challenge? Am I to demonstrate that the notion — that patriarchy originated with and is coterminous with agrarian civ — is an idea given creedence by one or more people within the field of anthropology? Am I to demonstrate that this notion is generally given serious creedence among most anthropologists? Am I to demonstrate that any serious dissent from this notion is not really given any creedence among anthropologists? Am I to demonstrate through empirical evidence that the hunter-gatherers of the many millennia before agriculture were in fact not patriarchal?
I myself am not a professional anthro, nor an academic of any flavor that matter. I suspect I can land some references that would establish something somewhere between the first and the second, i.e., that it’s an idea being seriousy touted within anthropology but that dissenting opinions (and/or disregard for this notion in some quarters) can still be said to exist within anthropology. I cannot demonstrate the last and can’t imagine any form of data that could do so. Even if I could take a time machine and videotape homo sap during the Pleistocene, we’d be up against how, precisely, one is to operationalize “patriarchal” as a variable. Or even “power”. Arguments of that sort exist among anthros w/regards to some nonhuman primate species currently extant.
AHunter3, my claim is that there are strong indications that in humans males are the dominant sex by nature (with many caveats, including the fact that environment can significantly influence the degree of dominance). This is not to say that males have a patriarchal gene or any such nonsense. And patriarchy itself may be a nebulous term, but for the purposes of this discussion I have referred to patriarchy consistently as the average tendency for men to dominate women politically and publicly. This tendency is recognized as a human universal present in all societies studied (see Donald E. Brown, below). Another poster repeatedly attempted to play down the conclusions it is possible to draw from the available evidence (and the evidence itself), but I will continue to address that argument when I have time.
If men are not dominant over women by nature, then patriarchy would appear to be caused not biologically but acquired from the environment, which is in line with your claim that patriarchy replaced a previous non-patriarchal system roughly 10,000 or 12,000 years ago thanks to agrarianism.
What is the real evidence for this claim? I asked because this is not an innocuous field of inquiry, it is intrinsically tied to the old and downright decrepit theory of the Blank Slate, which enjoys undeserved levels of politically correct support. As is the case for many gender feminist claims (which all depend on the Blank Slate for their survival), I am not aware of evidence for denying pre-agrarian patriarchy, and I am aware of evidence that suggests the opposite, i.e., that patriarchy appears to be the result of human nature as previously and extensively argued. There is a quick preliminary check that does not require a time machine: do today’s surviving pre-agrarian cultures exhibit sexual equality (or female dominance) as the societal norm? Hunter-gatherer behaviour ought to reflect the behaviour of pre-agrarian (and, presumably, pre-patriarchal) societies. We should expect that men in hunter-gatherer societies do not dominate public and political life as they do (to varying degrees) everywhere else. But, according to Brown’s analysis of research (and others), male dominance is pretty much universal.
The claim that in hunter-gatherer societies there is a rough sexual equality of sorts is misleading in addition to being dubious, and I think it may be one of the controversial buttons in academia today. Not only is this theory connected to the Blank Slate, but also to the (even worse) theory of the Noble Savage and the “natural is good” movement.
Firstly, in any kind of human society we find division of labour by sex, which does not suggest equality right off the bat: nonetheless, in the case of hunter-gatherers, men typically hunt and women typically gather, with the result that both provide sustenance. While both male and female hunter-gatherers are thus responsible for providing nutrition, it is simplistic to claim that such societies are not patriarchal just because both sexes contribute to the dinner pot; such an approach focuses only on food provisioning, and completely ignores other factors that are influences in human (or any animal) life.
Here, from Brown’s list of Universals, are some male and female differences common to all human societies:
Genes and their organisms are locked in battle with three crucial and potentially deadly enemies found in virtually every environment: parasites, predators, and the neighbours. Let’s leave aside the fight against parasites, which is a lengthy and complex discussion (and one that is not really contermplated by the subjects fighting it). If we look at the problems of predators and neighbours --the latter meaning competition with other groups-- it is clear that the male sex is typically better built for these challenges than the other. Because humans have no natural weaponry this difference can be said to be amplified by sexual dimorphism, with males (as previously argued) better equipped by nature to compete violently and repel predators, either bare-handed, or using crude weapons. These are important parts of the job - perhaps even more important to survival than providing sustenance.
In mating matters at the default setting, males usually chase a number of females, and females typically select the fittest mate. In humans, who have fairly long gestation periods and very long childhood, there are incentives for both sexes to form long-term semi-monogamous bonds that afford the genes of both parties the chance for continuation. However in all species that form mating bonds (and I am aware of no completely monogamous mammal species), there are also biological incentives to commit acts of infidelity. Infidelity is a strategy that allows participants the chance to boost and safeguard their genetic legacy. A male who deposits his seed in many females rather than just one has a much greater chance of successfully perpetuating his genes; the investment for this is virtually zero for the male (note that being promiscuous is often considered a positive for men). A female who forms an attachment with a resource rich – but not necessarily genetically rich-- male, and who then copulates with high quality males, is carrying out an ambitious survival strategy but runs a terrible risk should her mate become aware of her activities (note that female promiscuity is often regarded negatively).
Evolution has endowed both sexes with characteristics that help prevent or cope with these problems (e.g., sexual jealousy), but consider what options are open to males and females upset at discovering that their mate is cheating on them: being on average more aggressive and stronger than women, men again have the clear natural advantage even in these sexual matters, which suggests that male domination will ensue as a matter of course. While men tend to react with jealousy to the simple act of sexual betrayal itself, women appear to be more distraught by the implications for long-term success of the mating bond (the concern is based on the strength of the emotional bond - will her mate love her, or will he love and raise the cildren of some other floozy?).
The female of the species tends to have more secretive (if perhaps fewer) affairs than the male. Once again this puts men in a default position of dominance, where they may frequently engage in infidelity while considering any similar behaviour on the part of women to be unacceptable betrayal. From a biological point of view, this glaring double standard makes sense because it costs a male virtually nothing to copulate, but for females the result of a single infidelity can be a huge investment in time and energy, and if that huge investment is then grabbed by an angry mate and dashed on a rock (a la chimpanzee) or cast out, the loss in pure resources (time and energy) is extremely high for the female and may even affect the survival of her genes.
So, while it is true that both sexes might contribute food equally in the case of hunter-gatherers (or females might even contribute the greater portion of the calories), it seems a long leap of reasoning to claim that sexual equality or matriarchy is the rule, because there are many other factors in play. Men in any society retain a clear advantage in dealing with two out of the three environmental dangers (predators and neighbours), and it must be noted that they are the two most visible ones, the ones that you can actually do something against in primitive societies. Men retain the capacity to dominate over women. They retain a more violent disposition than females. They are wired to seek high status for themselves more so than women. There are genetically motivated double standards for sexual activity, and these double standards favour males. And so forth.
It seems to me that such sex differences are not a recipe for equality at all. So not only is there little or no real evidence for the sexual equality of pre-agrarian societies, but the very notion would appear to be both counter-intuitive and contradictory to our knowledge of human and animal nature.
Mind you, it is quite possible that the Zen economic principles that are said to be found in hunter-gatherer societes may minimize some expressions of patriarchy (rather than preclude it) but I think that is a different argument (though the two are perhaps confused and conflated). The bulk of the evidence seems to point towards human nature as, to some degree or the other, producing male-dominated attitudes and societies that favour men.
Oops, that’s what you get for free-wheeling in a rush. When I said that I discuss patriarchy here as “the average tendency for men to dominate women politically and publicly” I should have written “the tendency, on average, for men to dominate women, especially politically and publicly”.
Abe:
It has been said that there’s a tendency — perhaps inherent in behavioral biology, perhaps merely rooted in the tendency for the race to go to the swift and the fight to the strong — for young men at their physical peak to compete with each other at physical intimidation, and for the winners to intimidate and boss around all others in their environment. Nevertheless, in the majority of today’s world we have no institutionalized rule by the young & strong, but instead something between a middleaged-ocracy and a gerontocracy, depending on specific culture.
So it is important to make a distinction very early on, between human males being dominant in this fashion on an individual level, and the presence or absence of institutions that structure power inequities as part of the foundations for how the society is built.
Patriarchy is not “the boys tend to shove and berate the girls”. Patriarchy is “the boys shove the girls out of the clubhouse if they try to get in, and the clubhouse is where the decisions are made”. Obviously, they could be closely related (in this example it’s easy enough to imagine the one leading smoothly to the other), but they need not be (in this same example, it isn’t patriarchy until and unless the society in general, including the girls, recognizes the authority of the clubhouse as the place where decisions are made; if the girls have their own clubhouse and just roll their eyes at the boys and their boys-only clubhouse, that’s not patriarchy)
There is probably some Rousseau-esque sticky-sweet sentimentality about the Noble Savage, remade for modern consumption as the Egalitarian Hunter-Gatherer. It’s entirely possible that male h/g folk are assholes and mistreat their sisters. But the anthropological studies to which I referred describe daily life, decision-making processes, and general social esteem in the community as not being male-centric, and that makes it non-patriarchal.