TL;DR: The article points to explanatory mechanisms that explain how androgens (testosterone) cause differences in the amygdala (fear and anger regulation center of the brain) before birth. These differences go on to cause difference in play behavior later in life.
It seems to me this kind of science is currently politically inconvenient. It points to gendered behavioral differences that have an innate cause.
> There have been nonbinary systems of gender throughout history.
Saying "because it existed previously [therefore it is more valid]" is a poor argument, and ignores the current common law system which has used gender & sex interchangeably.
Also, it sounds like the "history you were taught" failed to mention the separation of gender & sex is a relatively new idea in modern times[1]—and ignores biology, which is anthropologically disingenuous.
He's not saying all, he's saying most—which is true. Native Americans didn't quantify gender but they also didn't have legal documents, which in common law countries and their predecessors used gender and sex interchangeably.
To me, it appears that you just want to pigeonhole the summary into something convenient for your beliefs?
(for context original comment read:
"It seems to me this kind of science is currently politically inconvenient. It points to behavioral differences that have an innate cause. This is well-known to be the case across mammals, but it's currently fashionable to claim that among humans, gender is purely a social construct. What science is telling us all, if we're willing to listen, is that there very much are bioligical reasons why men and women tend to behave differently on average. I personally think that better understanding this is a good thing: it's better for us all if we understand what makes us who we are.")
Extrapolating normative claims about how humans ought to behave from a study on rat fetuses react to hormones is a massive logical leap.
The notion that sex exists is not particularly controversial in either the sciences or the humanities. What is controversial is (1) its confabulation with gender, and (2) normative appeals on its basis.
You're the one who brought the politics with you into this thread :^)
Ok, let's say the amygdala is different between men and women. Now, give me a quantitative model that explains observed social differences derived from that.
The issue people take with biological essentialism is that it uses the plausibility of genetic/developmental differences driving sex differences to dismiss or outright deny the very obvious reality of coercive social forces that also definitely drive sex differences. It is a "gender of the gaps" argument that draws ire: "this difference might be physiologically inherent to sex, so I don't think it's an issue worth investigating".
No, I'm not making the argument that there aren't coercive social forces. Peer pressure is a real thing, and I've had to endure it, just like everyone else. In my opinion, what social pressure tends to do is exaggerate existing biological differences, enforce conformity (pressure you into behaving more like others). I'm not arguing that this is a good thing either. I didn't like that kind of social pressure growing up.
The argument I'm making is that pretending that typical male/female behavior is exclusively a product of our culture is wrong. It doesn't have to be all social, or all biological. It most probably is a mixture of both (just like in every other nature vs nurture debate). If we understand the biological root well, then we have a more solid basis for understanding the social forces that operate on top of that.
> The issue people take with biological essentialism is that it uses the plausibility of genetic/developmental differences driving sex differences to dismiss or outright deny the very obvious reality of coercive social forces that also definitely drive sex differences.
This is a huge strawman, and fallacies seem to be part of a lack of intellectual rigor from people who object to discussing biological differences.
Why not flip your point on its head: can you show me a model of discrimination that focuses purely on the social component, and shows that the results we see with, eg, the wage gap result purely from social components — or have a social component at all?
Because what I see is frequent dishonesty — discussing the “wage gap” but not “hours gap” or “risk gap”, for instance — and the denial of inherent biological differences has become dogma to people pushing false social statistics, because an analysis of those differences would show them to be liars.
It’s just gaslighting to demand a rigor from people advocating biological differences that’s never been shown by the cultural differences crowd — we have massive evidence of biological differences in evevery system of the body, including the brain; we have no quantitative models for how culture impacts outcomes. (Actually, we have a bit: it seems to be that more liberal countries express greater gender variation between jobs, because there’s less social pressure to accrue power, eg, fewer women go into programming in better off countries. This is what you’d expect, if there’s an underlying difference in biological preference.)
The objection to your position is that it’s an anti-scientific, anti-intellectual one that drives you to public dishonesty, such as the fallacies and double-standards made here.
It’s entirely political people don’t want to talk about this — sex based differences might imply the ratio of, eg, CEOs is skewed for the same reasons the ratios of top athletes are.
"Why not flip your point on its head: can you show me a model of discrimination that focuses purely on the social component, and shows that the results we see with, eg, the wage gap result purely from social components — or have a social component at all?"
This can be argued to be possible, and have at least one social component. [1][2]
Wait a second. You’re not holding social and biological explanations of observed sex differences to the same standard. You say that coercive social forces are realities that “definitely” drive observed sex differences, but you’re not willing to allow that physiological differences are also clearly realities and must obviously also drive observed sex differences, to a greater or lesser extent? The unstated assumption seems to be that since coercive social forces and observed sex differences are both social phenomena, much less rigor is required when attempting to extablish causal links between them.
I think it’s just as easy for “social constructivists” to pass “just so” stories off as proof as it is for “biological essentialists” to cling to what you call a “gender of the gaps”. My question is, “The gaps between what?” Certainly not the kind of experimentally verified, quantifiable casual links that you expect them to provide for their own explanations.
In order to avoid getting lost in abstraction, here’s a concrete example. A social constructivist might present a study of differences in the types of toys that parents buy for boys and girls as evidence that a coercive social force definitely drives the different levels of interest that men and women show in STEM fields. (This isn’t actually the best example, because studies of very young infants have shown that males and females display clearly different levels of interest in different types of toys long before social conditioning can possibly have had any effect, but that’s beside the point.) A reasonable biological essentialist would counter that the constructivist has taken two observed social phenomena and asserted a definite causal link between them without doing a fraction of the legwork that would be demanded if an essentialist tried to tie the differing levels of interest to a physiological phenomenon, no matter how well quantified. Have longitudinal studies been done? How was differential parental encouragement measured? What makes the attempt to link these two social phenomena less of a “just so” story than those leaned on by evolutionary biologists?
In the absence of rigorously tested links between coercive social forces and observed sex differences, the null hypothesis can’t be that the latter are primarily caused by the former. It has to be, “Observed sex differences are caused by some mixture of social and physiological factors, and we haven’t done enough research to determine their relative contributions.” What you’re trying to say is that social phenomena have social causes until proven otherwise, and that’s an assertion that I see no reason to accept uncritically. Take something like differential rates of incarceration for violent behavior. Given that male mammals are almost universally much more aggressive than female mammals, are you willing to accept the argument that we must assume this observed sex difference to have a social cause until the link between physiology and human male violence has been rigorously worked out in detail? That strikes me as unreasonable.
It sounds like you're bringing up a personal axe to grind. I happen to theorize that a lot sex differences are biologic myself, but I think your comment is more venting than a relevant comment on the article at hand.
22 comments
[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 61.7 ms ] threadIt seems to me this kind of science is currently politically inconvenient. It points to gendered behavioral differences that have an innate cause.
You can still analyze based on sex.
Saying "because it existed previously [therefore it is more valid]" is a poor argument, and ignores the current common law system which has used gender & sex interchangeably.
Also, it sounds like the "history you were taught" failed to mention the separation of gender & sex is a relatively new idea in modern times[1]—and ignores biology, which is anthropologically disingenuous.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simone_de_Beauvoir
> throughout most of history (and even on most legal documents), Gender = Sex
Which is literally not true.
> throughout most...most legal documents
He's not saying all, he's saying most—which is true. Native Americans didn't quantify gender but they also didn't have legal documents, which in common law countries and their predecessors used gender and sex interchangeably.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_gender
While gender and biological sex can be disconnected under certain conditions for the majority of the population this is not the case.
(for context original comment read:
"It seems to me this kind of science is currently politically inconvenient. It points to behavioral differences that have an innate cause. This is well-known to be the case across mammals, but it's currently fashionable to claim that among humans, gender is purely a social construct. What science is telling us all, if we're willing to listen, is that there very much are bioligical reasons why men and women tend to behave differently on average. I personally think that better understanding this is a good thing: it's better for us all if we understand what makes us who we are.")
The notion that sex exists is not particularly controversial in either the sciences or the humanities. What is controversial is (1) its confabulation with gender, and (2) normative appeals on its basis.
I'm sorry, but who do you know that thinks testosterone is a myth?
Ok, let's say the amygdala is different between men and women. Now, give me a quantitative model that explains observed social differences derived from that.
The issue people take with biological essentialism is that it uses the plausibility of genetic/developmental differences driving sex differences to dismiss or outright deny the very obvious reality of coercive social forces that also definitely drive sex differences. It is a "gender of the gaps" argument that draws ire: "this difference might be physiologically inherent to sex, so I don't think it's an issue worth investigating".
But you're not making that argument, of course.
The argument I'm making is that pretending that typical male/female behavior is exclusively a product of our culture is wrong. It doesn't have to be all social, or all biological. It most probably is a mixture of both (just like in every other nature vs nurture debate). If we understand the biological root well, then we have a more solid basis for understanding the social forces that operate on top of that.
This is a huge strawman, and fallacies seem to be part of a lack of intellectual rigor from people who object to discussing biological differences.
Why not flip your point on its head: can you show me a model of discrimination that focuses purely on the social component, and shows that the results we see with, eg, the wage gap result purely from social components — or have a social component at all?
Because what I see is frequent dishonesty — discussing the “wage gap” but not “hours gap” or “risk gap”, for instance — and the denial of inherent biological differences has become dogma to people pushing false social statistics, because an analysis of those differences would show them to be liars.
It’s just gaslighting to demand a rigor from people advocating biological differences that’s never been shown by the cultural differences crowd — we have massive evidence of biological differences in evevery system of the body, including the brain; we have no quantitative models for how culture impacts outcomes. (Actually, we have a bit: it seems to be that more liberal countries express greater gender variation between jobs, because there’s less social pressure to accrue power, eg, fewer women go into programming in better off countries. This is what you’d expect, if there’s an underlying difference in biological preference.)
The objection to your position is that it’s an anti-scientific, anti-intellectual one that drives you to public dishonesty, such as the fallacies and double-standards made here.
It’s entirely political people don’t want to talk about this — sex based differences might imply the ratio of, eg, CEOs is skewed for the same reasons the ratios of top athletes are.
This can be argued to be possible, and have at least one social component. [1][2]
1. https://www.nber.org/papers/w9873 (The widely known paper describing racial callback differences in resume submission)
2. http://gap.hks.harvard.edu/orchestrating-impartiality-impact... (The widely known phenomenon describing blind auditions in applying for orchestra employment)
so, even blind audition couldn't eliminate the gap?
I think it’s just as easy for “social constructivists” to pass “just so” stories off as proof as it is for “biological essentialists” to cling to what you call a “gender of the gaps”. My question is, “The gaps between what?” Certainly not the kind of experimentally verified, quantifiable casual links that you expect them to provide for their own explanations.
In order to avoid getting lost in abstraction, here’s a concrete example. A social constructivist might present a study of differences in the types of toys that parents buy for boys and girls as evidence that a coercive social force definitely drives the different levels of interest that men and women show in STEM fields. (This isn’t actually the best example, because studies of very young infants have shown that males and females display clearly different levels of interest in different types of toys long before social conditioning can possibly have had any effect, but that’s beside the point.) A reasonable biological essentialist would counter that the constructivist has taken two observed social phenomena and asserted a definite causal link between them without doing a fraction of the legwork that would be demanded if an essentialist tried to tie the differing levels of interest to a physiological phenomenon, no matter how well quantified. Have longitudinal studies been done? How was differential parental encouragement measured? What makes the attempt to link these two social phenomena less of a “just so” story than those leaned on by evolutionary biologists?
In the absence of rigorously tested links between coercive social forces and observed sex differences, the null hypothesis can’t be that the latter are primarily caused by the former. It has to be, “Observed sex differences are caused by some mixture of social and physiological factors, and we haven’t done enough research to determine their relative contributions.” What you’re trying to say is that social phenomena have social causes until proven otherwise, and that’s an assertion that I see no reason to accept uncritically. Take something like differential rates of incarceration for violent behavior. Given that male mammals are almost universally much more aggressive than female mammals, are you willing to accept the argument that we must assume this observed sex difference to have a social cause until the link between physiology and human male violence has been rigorously worked out in detail? That strikes me as unreasonable.