Vasquez on 27/6/2012 at 13:37
Quote Posted by faetal
BLOCK OF TEXT
faetal, I love you, but pleeeeeze use paragraphs!
faetal on 27/6/2012 at 13:43
Sorry, am basically vomiting out opinions in between writing a thesis, so it comes out a tad compressed. Have put some gaps in, just for you.
Vasquez on 27/6/2012 at 13:45
Ooo thank you <3
Scots Taffer on 27/6/2012 at 14:13
Quote Posted by faetal
It is a cultural equilibrium, but it can be disrupted by changes in attitudes, brought about by punctuation events.
In some places, racism is still not quite as taboo as it ought to be. Same story with sexism, it used to be perfectly acceptable for women not to have the vote, but over time, we have been getting closer and closer to equality of opportunity between the sexes. Does this mean some sexism still exists? Of course. Is some of that reinforced by women adhering to stereotypes? Of course. Will that ever completely disappear? Who knows - I doubt it though. Does this mean that things can get no better than they are through re-evaluation of the cultural status quo? Of course not.
This is interesting, as many of your posts in this thread have been and - while some it sails straight over my head and I'm not ashamed to say so (I feel like I need a PhD to read most of demagogue's posts) - I think that you've captured a discrete thing here which partially refutes my assertion and suggests that change isn't just possible, but probable.
I know it may seem trite and dismissive to bring up a TV show, but I've been watching
Mad Men again lately and as much as it comments on gender politics of the 60s and the changing social norms, I can see parallels in today's society. Making a dismissive comment about "dames" in my workplace environment, or any environment for that matter, would have been a lot easier 10 years ago than it is today. There are female senior managers in our company and in others there are female Execs and CEOs, I know this is extracting the conversation from the wider debate back into smaller circles again, but I suppose it is here where the seeds are sown that bear fruit in later generations.
It is, I suppose, some kind of irony that there has been a black President before a female President.
It may all well be a process of evolution, social evolution that is, and the biggest ingredient in that is time.
faetal on 27/6/2012 at 14:28
Sorry about the language barrier. While being in education for the best part of the decade doesn't make you smarter per se, it does have tangible effects on vocabulary as your every thought has be documented in the language of your profession and while doing a PhD your every waking moment is spent working or thinking about work, so it permeates everything.
With regards to social attitudes changing, I think the default perception is that society as is represents a stable state because it mostly changes far to slowly to see, unless you are witness to a particularly dramatic punctuation event, e.g. end of apartheid in South Africa or more recently, the acceptance of homosexuality as a natural variant of human sexuality rather than an opt-in sexual perversion.
The Mad Men example is a good one. Some of these attitudes are very much still prevalent today, the difference is that it is now far more likely to be sustained when someone is called on it. There is still a ways to go before we achieve optimum equality, and like many fear, there is even a chance we'll overshoot the mark and end up with some situations where women have an unfair advantage, but it should be understood that in a society which strives to be fair and just, the end point of these equilibria is likely to end up at the point of lowest moral dissonance, in line with social logic.
For example, it is extremely difficult to justify paying a women less than a man if they do the same job equally well, thus it can be predicted that after x amount of time, unless society stops wishing to be fair, that this equality will shrink and disappear. Sexism came from a time when men explicitly had the power, whereas now it can not be justified too easily. Currently, we have a system in which men have the de facto power, which still needs addressing, but that is more easy to do since the attitudes drifted, as it has become hard to justify any system in which women are considered low caste.
CCCToad on 27/6/2012 at 14:49
Quote Posted by Scots Taffer
I know it may seem trite and dismissive to bring up a TV show, but I've been watching
Mad Men again lately and as much as it comments on gender politics of the 60s and the changing social norms, I can see parallels in today's society. Making a dismissive comment about "dames" in my workplace environme
I can't wonder as to how much of the sexes attitudes towards each other is the result of nature vs nurture. I recall one study my professor discussed during college where they "reversed roles" with some wealthier women and male strippers. The results of the study were that the women became so aggressive and possessive that it stunned even the male strippers: they exhibited behaviors like keeping one of them in her apartment with an attitude regarding him as a toy for her, and burning cigarette butts onto their skin while they were on stage.
I'm not saying that females would be dominant, I believe that males are naturally dominant because our higher hormonal levels naturally incline us to aggressive and dominant behavior. What I'm saying is that violently possessive behavior by females is something that is probably only less prevalent among females due to social norms.
demagogue on 27/6/2012 at 15:03
That suggests the obvious "solution": culture of androgyny* and hormone supplements. Then again, our society, esp online culture, is probably enough like Final Fantasy emo-friendship-conquors-all as it is. =/
* Androgyny is not sexlessness, but exhibiting features of both sexes. Two different strategies; I've seen feminists usually promoting it over ignoring sex differences altogether & "radical equality" (sexlessness usually isn't what they want for that reason; like some of you have been pointing out).
Edit: It is interesting that the whole culture of androgyny coming out of like Japan (herbivore culture)... isn't so much for feminist reasons (the original proponents back in the 1970s), but economic reasons (economic depression) affecting what men expect from their own lives, not thinking about marriage, being very "tame" in work & relationships & not pushing, etc, and taking on a feminized culture for certain things... Then that culture has percolated into Western culture a bit through this whole anime revolution becoming the undercurrent of so much online culture for better or worse.
faetal on 27/6/2012 at 17:16
A culture of androgyny debases both sexes. Sexual dimorphism is a part of being human and masculinity and femininity should not be undermined as they are still highly important traits not only for individuals (and don't forget this also includes men who are feminine and vice versa), but also as a species. There are many masculine and feminine traits and archetypes which define how we feel in ourselves and interact with each other socially and sexually. This includes all kinds of things of course - masculine women who are attracted to feminine men, masculine and feminine gay men and women and various shades of grey in between individuals and permutations. The point is that none of these traits ought to be used to discriminate or to define a person in the whole before their individual traits are taken into consideration.
My girlfriend is a tiny little thing and cute as a button, but she manages the entire European sales team for a US biotech company and commands an excellent salary, which continually surprises people. In an ideal society, it shouldn't. In time, perhaps it won't.
nbohr1more on 27/6/2012 at 23:10
Quote Posted by faetal
Hi, I'm a biochemist and you don't understand evolution nearly as well as you think you do. Especially if you think that (a) all of these traits are genetic and (b) changes in these traits will be noticed by the women who take the actions you propose, or even their great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandchildren. So don't be lecturing about a subject you don't seem to grasp.
I won't claim to challenge a biochemist at evolutionary understanding at the gene or molecular level but I think the general concept is that anything can become a trait as long as it's aimed for when breeding. Some neurologists claim there is a region in the brain dedicated to "Religious Thought". Without resorting to the idea that "God put it there", the evolutionary explanation is that eons of worship and strict enforcement of religion have bred a region specifically for those thoughts so that humans who have that region are less likely to be killed during an Inquisition or other religious scourge. Maybe men could develop a "no sexism" region after thousands of years.
AFAIK Evolution is a concept that not only applies to biology but also ideas (memes). There is no need to wait generations for this to take effect. If large numbers of women unilaterally proclaimed that this is the new norm and that is how they will be selecting mates then the whole house of cards would fall.
Even if the richest men are not driven by sexual demands, those who they employ (second rung) will surely include some men who strive to achieve wealth to have sexual appeal, as head down each tier so you will find more men struggling to obtain money so they can attract women (or maintain the women they've "won"). Remove the influence of money, then the whole structure has little to offer those who wish to pursue relations with the opposite sex. (It'll be like having a stash of gold bars after a nuclear war rather than having a stash of canned food.) Then, by the droves men who wish to remain sexually viable will abandon the pursuit of wealth in favor of other more female friendly activities. The whole structure of our commerce system will be shaken-up.
(Except for asexual introverts who'd rather play with gadgets all day than have sex... )
OK, it's not practical but it's food for thought.
You are what you eat.
Society is who you date.
faetal on 27/6/2012 at 23:37
Quote Posted by nbohr1more
I won't claim to challenge a biochemist at evolutionary understanding at the gene or molecular level but I think the general concept is that anything can become a trait as long as it's aimed for when breeding.
Why? What is in it for them? Even small genetic changes can take tens of generations and there's no guarantee that such selection would guarantee those changes, as we don't know how much is genetic and how much is environmental.
Quote:
Some neurologists claim there is a region in the brain dedicated to "Religious Thought". Without resorting to the idea that "God put it there", the evolutionary explanation is that eons of worship and strict enforcement of religion have bred a region specifically for those thoughts so that humans who have that region are less likely to be killed during an Inquisition or other religious scourge.
The idea isn't that the religious area in the brain developed in response to religion, the idea is that religion exists because of these areas of the brain. The jury is still more or less out on that though.
Quote:
Maybe men could develop a "no sexism" region after thousands of years.
Maybe we already have this, maybe it's called re-progammability. Our brains are not given to us hard-wired and they are open to a load of adaptation. People who were openly racist in the '50s look back and feel shame - not all, but some - the point is that social programming and culture are transmissible between people and groups.
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AFAIK Evolution is a concept that not only applies to biology but also ideas (memes).
Evolution is a generic term as well as a biological one. You were talking about evolution of organisms by natural selection. A switch to another definition of the same word is more or less a change of topic: (
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/evolution)
Quote:
There is no need to wait generations for this to take effect. If large numbers of women unilaterally proclaimed that this is the new norm and that is how they will be selecting mates then the whole house of cards would fall.
What is in it for them? Attraction is nothing to do with choice and all to do with impulses and evaluation. The idea that "women" (a) are a fungible group just because of their anatomy and hormones and (b) select partners solely on the basis of a conscious tick list is not realistic. What cultural change over time achieves is to make certain attitudes seem backwards, this can work against which character traits women find attractive. The notion that there can be a deliberate social program designed to make women choose only "nice guys" or whatever will be akin to arranging marriage and also probably make loads of douche bags learn really quick how to behave nice as a ruse. There is no quick fix.
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Even if the richest men are not driven by sexual demands, those who they employ (second rung) will surely include some men who strive to achieve wealth to have sexual appeal, as head down each tier so you will find more men struggling to obtain money so they can attract women (or maintain the women they've "won").
Again, I'm not sure that categorising humans with such broad parameters says anything meaningful. Try and find someone whose profession and personality type are filed under "rich guy". Also, because wealth is necessarily a minority trait, I don't see it having too great an impact on evolution through natural selection, since most successful reproduction (in evolutionary terms, that is known as winning the round) occurs in people who are not rich.
Quote:
Remove the influence of money, then the whole structure has little to offer those who wish to pursue relations with the opposite sex. (It'll be like having a stash of gold bars after a nuclear war rather than having a stash of canned food.) Then, by the droves men who wish to remain sexually viable will abandon the pursuit of wealth in favor of other more female friendly activities. The whole structure of our commerce system will be shaken-up.
There will always be plenty of women to go around. The idea that all women end up with rich guys doesn't make sense due to the majority of people not being rich. I've never earned more than £26k (~$40k) a year and have spent most of the last 7 years as a poor student, but that never stopped me attracting women. My gf earns twice as much as I do and had a marriage proposal from a rich guy before we met and she basically told him to kiss his own entrails as he pretty much gave the whole "I'll take you on exotic holidays and buy you nice jewellery" schtick, which made her feel like he saw her as (a) inferior to her and (b) like she was essentially for sale. When she asked him to tell her about himself, he just talked about all the shit he could afford. Sounds dull right? I should probably mention that my gf is kind of awesome. Women are not the 1 dimensional ditzes portrayed on reality tv shows. Most are real people looking for other real people. Sexism is not down to them to eradicate by trying to create a sexual gradient for men to play up to. First off, that portrays men as shallow idiots just chasing pussy, which is every bit as bad as insinuating that women just go where the money is. Secondly, it is men who should be changing their attitudes because of an increasing respect for women, not because they are being blackmailed with the threat of dry spells...
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(Except for asexual introverts who'd rather play with gadgets all day than have sex... )
OK, it's not practical but it's food for thought.
You are what you eat.
Society is who you date.
Society is the 6 degrees of separation which links us all. It's a big inter-connected web - more so since the internet took off. Ideas are like viruses and the ones which bear traits which allow them to out-perform other ideas are the ones which stick. The idea that men are superior to women is one which is being diluted with each wave of new information being traded in the public consciousness. Fuck, in 20 years time, I hope even *I* sound backwards for even having this discussion.
