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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   35347 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.

There's so much that's wrong about these sorts of claims regarding gender parity in sports, but something that I feel usually goes unmentioned is just how belittling and condescending it is to female athletes. The sport that I have the most personal experience with is running, so I'll focus there for this point. Running happens to be a sport where there are smaller gaps between men and women than sports that rely more on size and strength, but there remains a persistent 10-12% difference in speed at every single distance (see world records here if you're curious)). Less statistically provable, I see the same sort of differences pop up at pretty much every level of the sport, including my mediocre hobbyist level (e.g., I can run 20K in 1:18, women with similar weekly mileage, similar physical build, and similar apparent fitness run roughly 1:26-1:26).

So, what's it saying about women to say that the difference is culturally constructed? Well, it must be saying that their training is, in some way, inferior. That when a Kenyan woman blazes an incredible 2:20 marathon and wins the female side of competition, the reason she's so much slower than the men is that she wasn't supported enough or didn't work hard enough or didn't eat right. That seems false, since the men and women do exactly the same thing. Or that in the 20K mentioned above, when I finish like 20th in a local race, but ran by the second-place woman in the last couple miles, she just wasn't pushed hard enough to succeed, or didn't train right. That's even more wrong though - I know her, I know she ran in high school and college (I didn't start running till my mid-20s and have never had a coach) and know that she runs more miles than I do.

This mentality that physical differences between genders are constructed strips these women of the respect they deserve. When I narrowly beat a female runner, I know that she's a better runner than me. I know that she's likely more talented than me, has likely outworked me, and that every bit of speed gain she gets is harder to come by than my testosterone-fueled improvement. The perspective that the reason I'm faster is because of culture rather than biology denies her the respect that she deserves for her hard work, instead making her an object of pity, insisting that if it weren't for some ephemeral oppression, she'd be just as fastest as the boys.

I hate it.

It's interesting; I finally met, in the wild, a woman who claimed there were no biological differences in terms of strength, agility, speed, etc. between men and women. I had thought they were just caricatures on the internet, but I guess they really exist. She was in the army and claimed to have 'outperformed' 90% of the men there before she was injured. She was about 5'6 and maybe 120 pounds, so while I'm not too familiar with the army, I'm a bit skeptical of that one. She claimed testosterone had no effect on athletic performance and that literally the only difference physically between men and women is that men have a wider pelvis. Scientific papers describing any effects of testosterone are just transphobic.

This all grew out of the casual [sport] league I played in over the summer that went out of it's way to encourage inclusion of trans players. Man/lady were replaced with 'female-matching' and 'male-matching.' Traditionally, we played co-ed and matched genders on the field, and trans players (100% trans women in this league at least) would match with the gender they identify as. The women on the field were getting absolutely wrecked. Like, every now and then someone would absolutely blast by me uncovered before I realized it was a trans woman and her defender was struggling 10-15 feet behind her before I'd peel off and try to salvage the situation.

It honestly doesn't affect me and all the most strident pro-trans commissioners in the league are female, so I don't particularly care, but this is just...a step too far. There's no way this can be covered up in smokescreens about hormones or whatever else, it's just an immediately obvious fact that this is true. You just need some video footage of trans women absolutely destroying people at [sport] and it's not really sustainable.

I tried the same argument you just brought up as it seemed the most likely to elicit sympathy from a strident feminist, i.e. that it cheapens the accomplishments of female athletes, but she would just say that those female athletes would be as good as the men if it weren't for the patriarchy. Thankfully, people with that point of view are a vanishingly small minority - on my team of very left-leaning players, it was about 13 people arguing with her and her reluctant boyfriend trying to mediate.

Every woman I've ever met who claimed this has been young without exception. I think it's just a filter you pass through as a woman - you're young, reasonably attractive, men want to impress you and using force on you that might make you feel unsafe or even inferior is verboten, even in a situation like sports where you might expect it. If you're middle class or higher, men using any sort of force is socially unacceptable so you can pass your entire life without realising how much stronger men are.

Eventually you hit the filter - hopefully in the 'my brother/cousin/friend showed me how easily he can manhandle me while wrestling' and nothing worse, and you realise the truth. I have a lot of sympathy for women who believe this and then discover it. I can't imagine finding out that you're almost completely vulnerable half of society is a pleasant feeling.

I don't disagree with what you are saying but you can easily come away with an alternative conclusion - that this demonstrates the average young woman's privilege in our society.

You could easily analogise this situation to a young ignorant rakish noble who isn't aware that he is at the mercy of peasant rabble potentially rising up to kill him, until one day he he is confronted by an angry mob he has to defuse because he raised taxes too high. But the noble is still in the privileged positon, we shouldn't pity him.

Similarly a young woman who remains remarkably ignorant about reality about the differences between men and women enjoys a similar privilege. The fact that a young woman can go decades without a single man even daring to demonstrating a modium of physical strength against her (or even for her) shows how much social power she has.

I think the above post was saying that it's not simply an inherent privilege of gender/sex so much as an inherent privilege of age. The further one gets from being a little girl, the likelihood of experiencing how rough things can get increases.

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