Okay, I’m opening up a used can of worms here, but what really are the differences between men and women? Is either one superior? Is either one at a particular disadvantage? There was another thread titled
“Are men the cause of wars and violence?” But I think the questions go much deeper than that. Any opinions? Now I’m going to duck behind these sandbags in preperation for pelting (and not the baby seal kind).
“I am homelier! Homelier than thou!”-Vince, from: Commonly Known Vincisms And Vincenomers
>>Is either one superior? Is either one at a particular disadvantage? There was another thread titled
“Are men the cause of wars and violence?” But I think the questions go much deeper than that.<<
Is one superior to the other? Sometimes. I suppose we could get into a long debate over whether or not the differences in the sexes has *anything* to do with biology or are just imposed on us by society.
Are men the cause of wars or violence? It depends on who you ask. Some anti-male feminist (They're not all anti-male so I'm making sure I make a distinction here) claim that men are the cause of all violence. But then they tend to be the ones who say women do most of the child rearing. So it would seem to me that they're the ones raising men to be killers. Of course that's not really a fair assessment.
Men are more prone to being violent though. At least according to every war or crime statistic I've ever heard.
Quote: “Men are more prone to being violent though. At least according to every war or crime statistic I’ve ever heard.”
I don’t know if that’s true. Although I think you can say that men and women fight for completely different reasons. Men seem to be more prone to fight over territory/superiority issues. Whereas women seem to be more prone to fight over emotional issues. I can’t claim to be an expert, this is just what I’ve witnessed.
“Yeah baby, I’m sure you are real beautiful on the inside. But how’m I supposed to see your beautiful insides when I gotta look through all that ugly?”-Vince, from: Commonly Known Vincisms And Vincenomers
Men tend to be stronger, women tend to have greater endurance. I think most differences are social rather than biological; learned or taught. The Venus MArs thing is an interesting model to deal with some realtionships.
I’ve heard of men being more strong than women, but the endurance bit is new to me. Though I have heard that women do better in school than men.
“Yeah baby, I’m sure you are real beautiful on the inside. But how’m I supposed to see your beautiful insides when I gotta look through all that ugly?”-Vince, from: Commonly Known Vincisms And Vincenomers
As for personality, I haven’t got a clue. There’s just too much variation between individuals to qualify the entire male or female sex. I suspect that a lot of differences are cultural rather than biological, having to do with the different ways that men and women are socialized.
As for superiority/inferiority, that’s pretty much a judgement call.
I’m a big fan of the Carlin quote that matt_mcl beat me to posting. It helps no one, to my way of thinking, to posit that men and women are inherently different, and then to (arbitrarily, no matter what kind of “evolutionary psychology” you think is backing you up) lay out the various ways in which we’re different. I don’t like it when James Grey (is that who wrote those books?) does it, and I don’t like it when Carol Gilligan does it. Sure, men and women look at things differently, but it’s my contention that those are differences in socialization, and nothing hard-wired. It’s always irked me when some feminists trotted out their “women nurture, men compete” crapola toward the end of reforming a competitive, apparently male-inspired, capitalist society. It translates too easily into notions of separate spheres for men and women. As far as societal attitudes about gender are concerned, I’m a pretty firm adherent to the idea that there’s nothing we’ve learned that we can’t unlearn. I actually consider positions like Gilligan’s something of a betrayal of the goals feminism’s aiming for in the first place.
But that’s just a bee in my own personal bonnet. Maybe evolutionary psychology isn’t a load of ad hoc crap. But I’ve yet to be convinced.
“Are you frightened of snakes?”
“Only when they dress like werewolves.”
-Preacher
Men are the experiment, and women are the control.
If you look at bell curves describing men and women, you will notice that the men’s curve is wide and low, while the women’s curve is high and tight. The standard deviation from the normal in men is greater than in women. In other words, the tallest man is taller than the tallest woman, the strongest man is stronger than the strongest woman, the most violent man is more violent than the most violent woman. The curve goes both ways, that means that men have favorable attributes as well as unfavorable attributes, over or under women.
Since it is up to the woman to decide who to mate with, she will generally pick the favorable attributes. Thus the human race moves towards these favorable attributes.
Men are the experiment, and women are the control.
While I agree completly with your post, Lux Fiat, I have to defend Gilligan just a little. The Ethos of Care and Ethos of Judgement concepts are really pretty facinating, as long as you remember that both sexes use both ethos; the socilization of one group (men) to an ethos of judgement and another group (women) to an ethos of care is an artificial dichotomy. Gilligan realizes that the ethos of care has many problems, and that in fact it keeps a woman from being able to take decisive action; on the other hand, it provides a much needed tempering to the ethos of judgement. I don’t know that she ever suggests that there is a biological componet to this, and I had the distinct impression that one of the things she hoped her work would accomplish was to illuminate the differente ways we socilize boys and girls and what the consequnces of that are. (Please correct me if you know better–I have not studied Gilligan at any great lengh.) Also, remember she was reacting to a man who had determined “scientifically” that women where much less capable of moral reasoning than men. (shudder)
I do think that the “Gray” books can get people in trouble. When you are told your whole life that “men are all this way” and “women are all this way” you carry alot of expectaions into a relationship. The fact is, the variation between sexes on everything you can think of is smaller than the variation within each sex; people vary way to much to take any sort of genralization into a relationship.
On the flip side, books like Grey’s and work like Gilligan’s do a good job warning parents how and what they might be inadvertently socializing their children to be, so that we can avoid it. Then again, they might also convince parents that there is no point in trying to overcome gender stereotypes: “We can’t expect Johnny to comunicate effectivly! He’s from Mars! We can’t expect Suzie to be reasonable, she’s from Venus!”
I’m not a big fan of evolutionary psychology either. I think that the psychology of each individual human is too volatile to move slowly in any direction, which is what evolution is all about. Not just change, but slow change. At least in most cases. However, while I don’t necessarily think that exploring this issue will accomplish anything, I do think it’s damned interesting. I mean, haven’t you ever looked at someone and wondered “What the hell are you thinking?”
“I stink, therefor I am.”-Vince, from: Commonly Known Vincisms And Vincenomers
John Gray is a rip-off artist who oversimplifies the work of real scholars. He bought his Ph.D. through a diploma mill. I would steer very clear from his works or his brand of thinking.
Manda JO- I’ll buy that. I’ve only read a couple of articles by Gilligan myself, so I gratefully acknowledge your expansion of my understanding on that subject. Grey’s still a loser. Or perhaps I should say, people who interpret Grey’s thesis to mean, “We’re different, and that’s the way it is, world without end, amen,” are losers. I’m not going to run twice into trouble on the same thread by making blanket assertions about authors’ intentions.
FF- Sure, it’s interesting to speculate about that kind of thing. I think we run into trouble, as you mentioned, when we start mistaking speculation for scientifically viable fact.
Also:
{doing the cabbage patch}
Green Bean called me sma-art! Green Bean called me sma-art!
“Are you frightened of snakes?”
“Only when they dress like werewolves.”
-Preacher
“Sherlock Holmes once said that once you have eliminated the
impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be
the answer. I, however, do not like to eliminate the impossible.
The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it that the merely improbable lacks.”
– Douglas Adams’s Dirk Gently, Holistic Detective
I can’t think of a single society where men and woman do not have a division of labor.
How about a primate species where males and females hang out together and perform the same tasks?
Even some of the chimps have outgroups consisting of couple/few un-related males. (Current Disvocery magazine)
Even the oldest of fossils demonstrate that the males are taller and females are shorter; pygmy females are shorter than their male counterparts. Height is probably a function of sexual selection, so there is probably purpose to it and wouldn’t it have to be functional?
Much as I hate to admit it, I have actually read John Gray, and he does not say that men and women always behave in certain ways. What he says is that the characteristics and behavior that he describes as “male” or “female” can apply to either sex, they are just more likely to apply to one or the other. I certainly don’t take him as a scientific authority, but based on my own experience and observation, I think he did hit on some general truths.
Arguments about how much of observed behavior is due to biological predispositions and inherent characteristics and how much is due to cultural and contextual influences can easily end up sounding like two kids arguing about how many gallons of swimming pool water are caused by the pool’s length and how many are caused by its width. And in both cases, the arguments miss out on the depth.
In the later 1800s, women wore corsets. Men did not wear them. Difference between the sexes? You could study men’s behavior and cultural influences and attempt to conclude that even in the absence of Victorial notions of masculinity, men would not wear corsets. It’s a “Venus thing” after all, then? But by the turn of the next century (now), women don’t tend to wear corsets. Oh, so it is all socialization after all? But isn’t there a statistically significant difference in the contours of waist-to-hips circumference between men and women, and doesn’t the corset emphasize that difference? Is that piece of information not useful to understanding the corset? And did socialization cause that?
The crux of the problem is that people do not exist apart from a social context; they don’t make any sense outside of a context (any more than a swimming pool’s length has much reason in the absence of its width).
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