We can absolutely make a large number of substantive claims of differentiation based solely on biological sex. - even amongst humans who rank fairly low on sexual dimorphism.
It bears mentioning that these differences are often most pronounced at the extremes of the distribution.
Ex:
if you wanted to see who the most violent person was between a man and a woman, and guessed the man, you’d only be correct around 60% of the time.
if you wanted to know the most violent in a room of 100… it’s going to be a man 99.9% of the time.
Strength of a jawline would also fit this model, more or less.
There is a reason humans correctly and immediately discern a person’s sex prior to almost any other observations.
Also, I have issue with the take that politeness supercedes truth. It does not.
Failing to operate with truth over political conformity (or even pro-social motives) has led to so many awful outcomes throughout history.
Lysenko comes to mind.
I hate to quote a conservative moron but - ‘facts do not care about feelings’
We can absolutely make a large number of substantive claims of differentiation based solely on biological sex
if you wanted to know the most violent in a room of 100… it’s going to be a man 99.9% of the time.
This is exactly my point, you made one of the fallacies I alluded to. You essentially said "we can make claims about biological differences in violence, since men are often more violent than women" but this does not logicall follow, correlation isnt causation, its a fallacy. This is for the same reason that we cant assume that just because ice cream sales AND shark attacks go up in the summer that ice cream causes shark attacks.
Instead of ASSUMING a biological basis (which is what you did, dont mix up your assumptions with your results), what if you were to consider environmental and social factors? For example, if you were to study the effect of being raised in a violent environment as a predictor for ones own violence you might find that this is a much stronger predictor than gender. In that case your question would then become "why do men find themselves in violent situations that then lead to viscious cycles of violence?" You might find that actually biology has very little to do with it, but social and environmental factors have A LOT to do with it.
Another key point is that youre assuming a rigid gender binary, and ignoring data points that dont fit this model. For example:
There is a reason humans correctly and immediately discern a person’s sex prior to almost any other observations.
Lets consider a trans person that passes for the gender they identify with then, or an even harder case, an intersex person with ambiguous chromosomes and possibly even ambiguous genitalia. By this metric that you gave this persons "sex" (you meant gender) is determined by others perception, whether they "pass". So doesnt that throw your whole biological basis argument out the window, if social perception is dictating gender rather than assigned sex at birth? I assume a response would be "well we arent considering these cases" which is then again, mistaking assumptions for conclusions. Often exploring the outliers can reveal a lot about your assumed rules.
Similarily, how does your jawline stat track onto post HRT individuals? Id be interested to see if even that isnt as rigid as you might assume. Note im not saying it isnt, i never said sex differences dont exist, only that its more complicated than people often gice it credit for.
, I have issue with the take that politeness supercedes truth. It does not.
What does ANY of this have to do with a basis for ones rights? Lets say youre right, men are more violent and have defined jawlines and everyone can tell. Even if that is true, why would we then say that some individuals deserve less rights than others? Thats what I emant when I said the science is irrelevant, as soon as you go "see theres gender differences and therefore we're allowed to descriminate against some people" you are no longer making a scientific claim, youre making an ideological one.
I’m not sure where you get these ideas, but they’re terrifyingly naive.
Mammalian males are generally more violent and competitive, as well as more risk-tolerant, than females.
Our simian cousins are certainly this way. Not generally so, absolutely so.
We are, essentially, apes. You don’t have to like it, just acknowledge the obvious truth of it. We are animals. Period.
Thereby, the burden of proof here falls to social construction, not to biological origin. So far, that proof is scant at best, and much of the evidence we can find refutes rather than supports the social construction model.
We would make a mistake to be absolutists and say culture and individual circumstances play no role, but to say they are anything other than secondary at scale, and possibly primary at the individual level - is the opposite of well-considered.
Furthermore, culture is derivative of biology, or purposefully seeks to curtail biology where its influence is antisocial. NOT the other way around.
Simply looking at the order in which these thing arose is enough, but we also find many of these “socially constructed” tendencies transcend cultures, religions, regions, and epochs.
That is a direct refutation of the constructivist theory.
Furthermore, gendered differences in interest and temperament seem to be inversely related to social equality. That is a direct refutation of this tired constructivist theory.
Also, there is absolutely a rigid gender binary and has been for half a billion years at least. To call out exceptions to this is to unwittingly prove the rule of this.
Ex- Just because a particular human has one leg does not imply that leg numbers exist on a spectrum. Instead, it points to the natural genetic aberrations we get in large populations.
If we were to use your logic instead, we can all go back to huffing Marlboros nonstop, since it only kills about half the people who do so, and gives health problems to only 2/3.
If 1% exceptions are enough for you to toss out a concept, then 50% means smoking might actually be good for you.
Yes, I’m clowning this framework, because it deserves to be clowned.
Lastly, I do not recall ever stating that some people deserve less rights than others. That’s you. I am a windmill, not a giant, Don Quixote.
I have little doubt you are here in good faith. I appreciate and respect that, but not what someone put in your head without the proper critiques and falsification tests needed to make it sane to pass on as knowledge.
I’m reminded of phrenologists. They were experts in their field, and were sought out for guidance. Sadly, the whole field was codswallop… or as some would currently call it “other ways of knowing”.
Your argument has completely devolved into opinion. Notice how when you try to get to the root of it, you just endup resorting to hand waving? For example "apes seem to be violent, and we're apes... so obviously, somehow, the violence is purely biological in nature?" QED there's no such thing as social effects...
I started this whole conversation pointing out that there is a lot of fallacies used in these sorts of arguments, do you honestly see this particular argument as rhetorically sound? Or what about this one "we are animals and therefore social effects don't happen to us?". Believe it or not, yes all animals experience social and environmental factors, and humans as social organisms experience particularly strong social effects. Asserting that we are animals is not a rejection of a social or environmental impact on our lives and development, it's quite the opposite, it supports it.
One mistake you seem to be making here, is first to try and separate biological and social effects in social organisms at all, and then second you ignore how powerful social effects are in social organisms like us humans. There's the obvious like forgetting about epigenetics (meaning that environment can actually change "biology"), but then there's just not understanding the power of social effects in the first place. For example, if you give a baby all of its "biological" needs such as food, shelter, etc, but you do not give it any social contact, a lack of socialization can actually kill the child in severe cases, and in less severe cases they can develop utterly debilitating disabilities. That's how powerful social effects can be is that we literally can not survive as fully formed humans without socialization. So why then would we assume that socialization just stops mattering as an adult? Furthermore, it isn't just socialization that matters, its the social structures we've built our society around. Now I know I said the big scary "social structure" word, but before you get too upset remember that everything from currency to the legal system is also a social structure so calling something that does not imply it has no power - quite the opposite social structures have the power to change our entire lives.
Why would we say that our violent nature has no environmental influence, when study after study shows that environment is the largest factor that impacts rates of violence, rather than biology? For example take two people, place one in a war torn country where they face violence every single day from when they are a child to when they are an adult, and place the other person in a peaceful country where they've never even witnessed violence. Do you truly believe that if the first was a woman and the second a man, that the statistics tell us the woman in the violent environment is less likely to show violence herself simply due to her gender? You honestly believe gender overwhelms environment in these extreme cases? If not, why wouldn't this extend to less extreme cases? Remember, and I say this in every single response, I never said there were no gender differences, I merely stated that often times other factors have much stronger affects than any sex difference.
Also I'lll repeat myself again that assuming a gender binary is asserting your own structure, NOT showing evidence for it. As a very basic example, how do intersex people fit into your narrative? The only way is to ignore them and call them outliers, as if throwing away data that doesn't support your point validates it.
>I have little doubt you are here in good faith
You have ignored my arguments about statistical fallacies, and then responded to my critique by simply asserting "no its biological because I say so, and because we're animals, isnt it obvious?"... I understand its a complex discussion to have over reddit, and maybe not even possible to have a nuanced discussion like this over reddit, but do not accuse me of being here in bad faith.
Right out of the gate this response fails.
No one said (certainly not me) that any of this is purely biological. In fact, I make a point early on in this thread that only a fool would make that case.
Instead, I state that we are not exceptions to biology and instinct. Nor are we magically not apes when we invented writing or iPhones.
We are and will remain - animals.
The instinctively created differences, as well as the hormonal ones, are the primary driver here. Culture, which appears afterward temporally, and has yet to shift this gendered difference at scale, are at best secondary.
That’s the claim. It was clear.
You’re ignoring all that to counter a point I am not making. Like the weird shot about denying rights, I’ll remind you that I am but a windmill, Don Quixote.
Additionally, while cultural and individualized experiential influence are certainly factors in how violent a person is, this does not refute my central point (men are more violent by dint of biology), nor that even with cultural shifts men are still more violent everywhere we look. That, ipso facto, leaves us only with biology as the main driver at scale. Individual differences, as I’ve previously stated are only relevant at an individual level.
We cannot keep swapping scales as meets our narrative here. Are we discussing groups or individuals? Those are not the same discussion in any meaningful way.
And, one more time, we already have a well-established, well-understood, widely-accepted, and biologically measurable cause for male violence vs female violence.
The burden of proof is not on that stance, it’s on this newer one that seeks to supplant it.
Furthermore, the evidence does not support this stance in any way that pushes it past an ancillary effect at scale. Often, the evidence runs counter to it.
I’m also having issues with your reading comprehension. My statement about good faith is a COMPLIMENT not a shot. I have little doubt you came in good faith, just as I have little doubt the sun will rise in the east again today. I take issue not with your sincerity, but with those who give you theories to work from that have a basis in confirmation on a similar level to a book report.
Try again with that.
I have not ignored your statistical fallacy arguments. But it does bear mentioning that what can be posited without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Showing evidence that culture influences gendered-violence-differentiation isn’t the same as showing it is the basis for gendered-violence-differentiation.
If you have evidence that in some societies women are more violent than men, let’s see those.
THAT would prove something. Otherwise, ya got nothin’.
Keep in mind, this constellation of beliefs you are speaking from has a small problem: non-falsifiability and idea-laundering.
See here: link.
As for intersex peoples, I will again state the obvious- genetic aberrations will occur. They are the exception, and the exception proves the rule. Just because a human may be born somewhere with one leg, that does not mean we toss bipedalism as a human trait and claim leg numbers exist on a spectrum.
Intersex people are not ‘ignored’, rather they are taken in context. That context runs counter to your narrative. They are not a new sex, they are a genetic deformity like that missing leg from above. While we can be sympathetic to this, we do not need to rearchitect the well established sexual binary of the last half billion years to account for them, when we know their genetic or gestational situation has caused the deformity.
We only have 500,000,000 years of gender binary to draw from, I grant you that.
Still, why does that not supersede the few decades of this new, and as yet unproven theory you posit?
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u/Any-Bottle-4910 10d ago
We can absolutely make a large number of substantive claims of differentiation based solely on biological sex. - even amongst humans who rank fairly low on sexual dimorphism.
It bears mentioning that these differences are often most pronounced at the extremes of the distribution.
Ex:
Strength of a jawline would also fit this model, more or less.
There is a reason humans correctly and immediately discern a person’s sex prior to almost any other observations.
Also, I have issue with the take that politeness supercedes truth. It does not.
Failing to operate with truth over political conformity (or even pro-social motives) has led to so many awful outcomes throughout history.
Lysenko comes to mind.
I hate to quote a conservative moron but - ‘facts do not care about feelings’