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In the trans debate, I encountered an argument the other day which to me reads like a textbook example of an unfalsifiable hypothesis. I would like to run it by you good people to see if there's something I'm missing.
My woke, far-left sister was complaining about a male person she knows who claims to be non-binary, and yet behaves in a manner entirely consistent with certain negative stereotypes about masculinity, specifically "mansplaining", the tendency of certain men to condescendingly talk down to women, even if the women in question are more knowledgeable about the topic in question than the man himself is. She said it was abundantly obvious from his demeanour that this person was a man, not something intermediate between male and female.
I thought to myself "wow, my sister's gotten redpilled somewhere along the way" and enthusiastically agreed with her, arguing that I think the concept of "gender identity" has essentially zero predictive power, and that self-declared trans people almost invariably behave in a manner more consistent with their natal sex then their claimed gender identity. The specific example I gave was that trans women are 6 times more likely than cis women to be convicted of a crime, and 18 times more likely to be convicted of a violent crime. Which is exactly what you'd expect on the basis of their sex, not their gender identity. If trans women are women trapped inside men's bodies, why do they commit crimes at the same rates as men?
My sister's rebuttal was that, even though trans women are women trapped inside men's bodies, they were still socialised to be male prior to their coming out as trans, which compels them to behave in a manner consistent with the masculine norm.
This strikes me as a perfect example of the adage "if a theory explains everything, it explains nothing". If a trans woman behaves in a manner consistent with how you'd expect a female person to behave, that demonstrates that she's really a woman. If a trans woman behaves in a manner consistent with how you'd expect a male person to behave, that demonstrates that she was socialised into behaving like a male person against her will. Under this framing, there is literally nothing a trans woman can do which can ever point away from her "really" being a woman.
What would it take to falsify this hypothesis? Is there some piece of the puzzle that I'm missing here? I'm sincerely looking for a steelman.
Her argument is falsifiable (although I doubt she'd accept it).
Of the hundreds of nations and cultural groups in the world, is there a single one where the female murder rate is higher than the male rate? No? Then male violence is mostly genetic, not learned.
I don't see what that's supposed to have to do with the question at hand, can you explain?
It seems like an answer to an entirely different question, and one that most all corners of progressive space would agree with.
I've interacted with plenty of progressives/woke people/whatever who think the overrepresentation of men in STEM in essentially every society on earth is evidence of nothing other than just how pervasive and inescapable the patriarchy's brainwashing is.
I wonder if you've actually met a lot of progressives who believe that, or if you've met a lot of progressives who were responding to people who claim is it purely genetic by claiming that culture also plays a role.
Anyway.
Propensity to violence is a very atomic personality trait that, of the type that genetics is known to affect.
'Participation in STEM fields' is a hugely contingent and complex social behavior that has nothing to do with our evolutionary environment. There are certainly genetic factors that contribute to it under a given cultural regime, but it can't be a simple and direct relationship because it's not even a fact about the person themself, it's a fact about the interaction between the person and their society.
Yes I have, and I don't like your implication that I'm lying.
I'm wondering if you're mistaken in your belief, and if having this possibility pointed out to you might cause you to reflect on it and re-evaluate.
The point is that these two situations (hearing someone talk about the influence of patriarchy who believes it is one piece of the causal network vs hearing someone talk about the influence of the patriarchy who believes it is the only casual factor in existence) are very similar to the listener and very easy to confuse with each other, especially if one of them happens to fit with a narrative you're already familiar with.
Very few people actually hold beliefs of the type 'this entire gigantic complex social phenomenon is 100% the result of sinister conspiratorial brainwashing across every country it appears in and has zero other causal factors affecting it'.
People are dumb, but few are that dumb.
It's much more common to believe your opponents believe something like that, than for them to actually believe it.
But it sounds like maybe I'm not allowed to question your lived experiences or whatever, regardless of the type of claim you're making about other people, so, ok.
I'm not mistaken. I'm thinking specifically of a conversation I had with a friend of mine. This friend works in software design for one of the largest public bodies in Europe and has a master's degree in physics - not an idiot. Nevertheless, when I had this conversation with him, he asserted that the idea that there were differences between male and female brains which could impact upon their career choices was "pseudoscience". When I pointed out that, if culture was the deciding factor, we would expect vastly different rates of female employment in STEM between, say, the US and Sweden - he countered that the US and Sweden were functionally indistinguishable from a cultural perspective. It's been well over a year and I'm still trying to wrap my head around that one (different language, completely different demographics, vastly different rates of religious observance, different climate, different core industries - in short, everything that you might call "culture").
I've lost count of how many times I've been called a misogynist (either in person or online) for even suggesting that the differences between male and female brains might influence men's and women's career choices, or even pointing out that these differences exist. This assertion is routinely rounded off to "oh, so you're saying men are smarter than women?", which I've never claimed, never said anything with even a passing resemblance to that claim.
None of the above should come as a surprise to you if you're familiar with the controversy surrounding James Damore's Google memo. When a well-qualified employee in one of the five biggest tech companies in the world can lose his job simply for (correctly!) asserting that there are differences between male and female brains which impact upon their career choices, I think we're far past the point where you can plausibly claim "oh no, of course woke people recognise the differences between male and female brains, they're just saying culture matters too".
How do you know? Have you conducted a poll? Conspiratorial thinking is all the rage on the left. Most woke people believe that Trump and Putin conspired to steal the 2016 election, or that the number of unarmed black Americans shot dead by the police in a calendar year is 2-3 orders of magnitude higher than the real figure. I'm not "strawmanning" or "weakmanning" when I point out that a large proportion of woke people believe that American police officers collectively kill 20 unarmed black men a week, I'm just honestly reporting their professed beliefs. The claim that it's sexist to claim that there are real differences between male and female brains is prominent enough to have its own Wikipedia page, and it's not listed anywhere on their list of topics characterised as pseudoscience. Based on all of the above and my own personal experience of frequently interacting with woke people, I wouldn't be even a little surprised if a large proportion of woke people literally uncritically endorse the exaggerated strawman narrative you outlined above. I think you're sanewashing a batch of extremely conspiratorial and unscientific beliefs sincerely held by millions of Westerners. I think this is a big motte-and-bailey argument in which the bailey is "male and female brains are exactly alike and any observed differences are solely the result of cultural conditioning" and the motte is "of course we're not denying that there are differences between male and female brains, we're just saying that culture plays a big role too".
? Maybe you meant USA and Sweden?
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