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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   35346 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022

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The triumph of the blank slate

an article in the Atlantic recently made the case that separating sport by sex doesn’t make sense, because it ‘reinforces the idea that boys are inherently bigger, faster, and stronger than girls in a competitive setting — a notion that’s been challenged by scientists for years.’

On a similar theme, a few weeks back the New York Times ran a piece arguing that ‘maternal instinct is a myth that men created’. In the essay, published in the world’s most influential newspaper, it was stated that ‘The notion that the selflessness and tenderness babies require is uniquely ingrained in the biology of women, ready to go at the flip of a switch, is a relatively modern — and pernicious — one. It was constructed over decades by men selling an image of what a mother should be, diverting our attention from what she actually is and calling it science.’

Just recently, Scientific American stated that ‘Before the late 18th century, Western science recognized only one sex — the male — and considered the female body an inferior version of it. The shift historians call the “two-sex model” served mainly to reinforce gender and racial divisions by tying social status to the body.’

Yet what is strange is that such ideas are triumphant, even as the scientific evidence against them mounts up, with the expanding understanding of genetics and the role of inheritance. The tabula rasa should by all rights be dead, indeed it should have been killed twenty years ago with the publication of one of the most important books of the century so far, Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate.

Rather than blank slate-led ideas falling to mockery and obscurity, the opposite has happened — they’ve proliferated and spread. Pinker was obviously right, yet seems to have lost.

i recently was in a seminar discussing fixed versus growth mindsets, and it was argued that believing in any innate/genetic component of intelligence was connected to a 'fixed' mindset. we were discouraged from using the idea of 'talent' as it implied that some people were just naturally better at some things than others. it seems like a core part of the 'diversity, equity, and inclusion' mantra that is finding its way everywhere - the idea of innate difference is anathema to the principle behind caring about equity versus equality.

I just thought of this now after coming back to your post...

but if women are just as strong as men, why do they need protection from rapists? Why can't they just fight back?

Jarring question, but I think it reveals one example of how the disattachment from reality can have unforeseen consequences.

Reality is that which, when you stop belieiving in it, doesn't go away.

If men are naturally stronger than women, why is female-on-male rape a problem at all?

The answers to that question should give you the answers to your question as well. Further, given that the article is talking about a competitive context and not in averages, I think it's easy to see why your question misses the point a bit.

Technically, in most Western countries, it is nigh impossible for a woman to legally rape a man.

In the USA, a woman can drug you, tie you up, and force you to have sex with her, but the FBI only considers it rape if she penetrates your anus.

Similar in UK and India.

I've argued with feminists on this point, and they've used essentially the same argument as is widely used to explain female underrepresentation in STEM i.e. women are naturally just as strong and fast as men, but the patriarchy systematically discourages them from pursuing physical activities, so they never develop the relevant skills.

I don't want to Chinese robber the entire movement: most feminists I've met personally are well aware that men are stronger and faster than women for biological reasons.

Doesn't that lead one to wonder: "How did the Patriarchy ever gain power?" Are men just better at organizing? Women were too nice? But doesn't that suggest general differences between men & women.

It's an incoherent (and inconsistent with science and trivial observation) viewpoint.

I long wondered at what the progressive take on the progenitor of all extant "inequalities" is. We're humans in a Garden of Eden state before the cis white males upended everything?

White Supremacy can kind of be explained away by Europeans leveraging advantages in geography, technology, and resources into becoming the dominant civilization, then generating justifications for this post-hoc.

But patriarchy, hmmmm. Males as authority figures appears in EVERY human culture at EVERY point in history (unless the patriarchy rewrote the history books?)

It's replicated in nature, especially amongst primates.

Sexual dimorphism usually results in one sex being smaller, weaker, and "subservient" to the stronger sex, which in turn is expected to use their strength to fight off attackers/to catch prey.

Yes, men could have used their superior strength to place themselves on top of every social hierarchy and build cultures around this ideal, but it still seems firmly rooted in nature and evolutionary history, and thus can't just be explained away as a set of lucky circumstances that allowed on sex to just so happen to get a leg up on the other and then to conspire to keep it that way.

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