Gender Roles

[Jimmy Higgins]

Women don't "need" to feel feminine (whatever that means, which is part of the problem), do they?

I think there is a wide gap between need to and simply feels. A need implies a desire towards an end where as feels is about observation of a sensory input.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Says the person who just made a post to point out how "errors are errors".

Quit trying to downplay or scoff at your own usage and own it, why don't you?

Quit assuming your own emotional and moralistic perspective onto me.

I will be critical of exactly the usage I glean from a communication in public. If you meant something other than what I stated by "error" in the clear cultural context of "moralistic loading", then you have the obligation to disambiguate it.

You frequently fail to use the proper awakening of "is", and this chases usages where you clearly try to bolster your opinion with such strong language.

Me: Well, the copier fucked up the copy.

That is a pretty awful metaphor there. For a person who is sensitive as to certain things, one would think you'd have stated that differently.

It's not just awful for sensitivity issues but also for technical reasons. Copiers are designed. At some point there are product specifications and intended use in the design process. Users expect the thing to operate according to the design. Emily has been sneakily inserting design into arguments by reifying biology and evolution. Like so: biology made man and woman. But evolution relies on diversity through "errors" and so a fifty thousand foo tview is bugs are features. It's how it works. When we go into a more microscopic view in a narrow context we might call such an evolutionary feature an error. It isn't a necessary term except in the narrow contexts where it relates to an unexpected event.

 

[Jarhyn]

Women don't "need" to feel feminine (whatever that means, which is part of the problem), do they?

I think there is a wide gap between need to and simply feels. A need implies a desire towards an end where as feels is about observation of a sensory input.

Well, for most trans women, it's expressed as a felt need, an itch they have to scratch, and if they don't life just feels worse.

I can feel as masculine or as feminine depending on how I act, but which of those I actually do is based on how I feel compelled to feel: I have a need, a slow and pressing demand on me to actualize, on occasion, not merely (do thing) but (feel feminine), not for the sake of any of the result but for the sake of the feeling.

It is intrinsically tied to the gender we are.

Would you rather I use the term "want"? It is no less a thing in the head either way drawing a person to do things, and "be" in some particular way.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Women don't "need" to feel feminine (whatever that means, which is part of the problem), do they?

I think there is a wide gap between need to and simply feels. A need implies a desire towards an end where as feels is about observation of a sensory input.

Well, for most trans women, it's expressed as a felt need, an itch they have to scratch, and if they don't life just feels worse.

I think we could do a really good job of getting to grips on sex, gender, biases on such, etc... by programming a male and female robot.

 

[Jarhyn]

Women don't "need" to feel feminine (whatever that means, which is part of the problem), do they?

I think there is a wide gap between need to and simply feels. A need implies a desire towards an end where as feels is about observation of a sensory input.

Well, for most trans women, it's expressed as a felt need, an itch they have to scratch, and if they don't life just feels worse.

I think we could do a really good job of getting to grips on sex, gender, biases on such, etc... by programming a male and female robot.

Maybe? I'm not sure that would work well in practice because of the inability of the kind of systems we build to hone in on a cultural state.

Because the underlying substrate of, say, an LLM, will continue in a static way only mutable within the bounds of contextual data "around" the more persistent "model" part, it can't really adjust the way people do without "training" on the data somehow.

As a result, building such a robot as would adjust over time to a cultural context, which would absorb whatever cultural context was presented over time, would require a more advanced structure than currently exists for us to operate on or with.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Women don't "need" to feel feminine (whatever that means, which is part of the problem), do they?

I think there is a wide gap between need to and simply feels. A need implies a desire towards an end where as feels is about observation of a sensory input.

Well, for most trans women, it's expressed as a felt need, an itch they have to scratch, and if they don't life just feels worse.

I think we could do a really good job of getting to grips on sex, gender, biases on such, etc... by programming a male and female robot.

Maybe? I'm not sure that would work well in practice because of the inability of the kind of systems we build to hone in on a cultural state.

That'd be the point.

 

[Bomb#20]

My daughter just got the book The Wild Robot, and the robot is a female. And that made me think, how do you program a robot to be female?

 

[Emily Lake]

Actually look at the words you are using. "Not right". "Error". How are you this blind to the emotions that come with the text you put online?

There is no inherent emotional aspect to those terms.

Don't you work in some kind of IT capacity? People make coding errors. That's not some kind of judgement on them as a person, it's a recognition that mistakes happen. What was supposed to happen didn't, or what wasn't supposed to happen did. My background is in math - sometimes the answer I gave to a question in class was wrong. Sometimes I made an error in my algebra. There's no emotion involved in that. It happens.

Errors, mistakes, and wrong are not emotional language. They only obtain an emotional loading if you are looking at it through the lens of a belief structure that equates them with "sins". It's only through the lens of religious belief that one sees an error as being emotionally loaded.

 

[Jarhyn]

Women don't "need" to feel feminine (whatever that means, which is part of the problem), do they?

I think there is a wide gap between need to and simply feels. A need implies a desire towards an end where as feels is about observation of a sensory input.

Well, for most trans women, it's expressed as a felt need, an itch they have to scratch, and if they don't life just feels worse.

I think we could do a really good job of getting to grips on sex, gender, biases on such, etc... by programming a male and female robot.

Maybe? I'm not sure that would work well in practice because of the inability of the kind of systems we build to hone in on a cultural state.

That'd be the point.

Ah. If that's the case, I have every intent to make such robots, if I can manage to get access to the means to do so, because I want to understand more about gender, even if I don't cleave strongly to either primary reproductive behavioral class.

There is no inherent emotional aspect to those terms

Yes, in common usage there is. When people say something is "immoral" they say "that's wrong".

Don't you work in some kind of IT capacity?

I'm a software engineer. My entire career is based around using language to say things usefully and confidently.

People make coding errors.

It's important to understand what a "coding error" is, and in what context it's "badness" exists in.

As a software engineer, there are requirements, stakeholder needs.

That is the context of the "badness". It extends no further than that.

The "wrongness" is completely in regards with what some specific individuals think should be done. The wrongness doesn't extend down into "the roots of reality", they just stop there in the shallow dirt of as little as a single human mind.

To this end, it would be unfitting to bring such a version of "error" into a discussion of something that we surmise goes far deeper into these "roots of reality" than a single mind.

Indeed, this is part of why I became a software engineer, and why I can do my job reasonably well.

Errors, mistakes, and wrong are not emotional language

Yes, they are. They are absolutely laden with the emotions of "judgement" and "rejection", associated further with the drive towards "purity". How you are so emotionally blind to even yourself as to not understand this, I do not myself understand.

Nonetheless, there it is.

 

[Emily Lake]

If there wasn't a man OS and woman OS then there would be no possibility of a gender mismatch and the whole trans issue wouldn't exist.

I disagree with your premise.

Honestly, the whole notion of "man OS" and "woman OS" might sound like it's all very noble and caring to you, it lets people be who they wish to be. But they can be whoever they wish to be without trying to force the notion of a naturalistic behavioral profile onto everyone else. Adults can dress however they like - a male should be free to wear lace and heels and skirts and makeup to their heart's content - Prince pulled it off pretty well. If a female wants to wear steel toed boots or wingtips and have a buzz cut, she should feel free to do so. The external trappings of our socially enforced codes are bullshit, and I happily encourage everyone to ignore them!

Those expressions and presentations aren't innate, they're not an inherited attribute. They're learned behaviors. And they vary significantly by culture and era.

The disagreement I have with "woman OS" is that it does NOT lessen those social barriers, it reinforces them. It entrenches socially created gender roles, and it does it by bringing back the naturalistic argument that "women are just naturally more docile" and "men are just naturally better decision makers". It might even be a bit worse, at least to me. In the past, we've seen enforcement of social barriers and behaviors. We've seen social condition that boys aren't allowed to cry, they've got to be tough. We've seen that paired with language like "suck it up and be a man!" and as a result we've had entire generations of men who have suppressed their feelings and who have had no recourse to support when they're depressed or sad. Now, however, we're actively teaching young boys that if they feel sensitive and emotional, then they're experiencing femininity... and that means that they're actually a girl and not a boy. We pair this with messaging that tells these children that in order to be the girl they actually are because they feel emotions... they should take drugs that interrupt their puberty and development, they should take drugs that make irreversible changes to their bodies, and they should consider surgeries that remove perfectly healthy tissue and organs. All so that they can try to be more of what we told them they must be because of social stereotypes.

But the reality is that they cannot actually change sex. A male cannot actually become female. A female cannot actually become male. We're feeding these kids a lie, all in an attempt to be compassionate and caring. A sensitive young male who likes sparkly things and dolls and dislikes sports, and who is gentle and soft-spoken (all of which are stereotypes mind you) can't actually transform into a female - they will never actually have a period or become pregnant or have any of the other experiences that are a result of our sex. It does a disservice to those children.

 

[Emily Lake]

You've done quite a bit of judging. You feel that the female species is a trademarked brand and that any use of its likeliness without expressed written consent from you is wrong.

We're not a separate fucking species! What they holy hell? And it's not at all a "brand". I find it incredibly dismissive and offensive that you seem to think that the actual physical reality of half of our species is just a set of stereotypes and logos!

I don't give a crap how anyone dresses or presents! I don't even know how you can manage to get my view so completely backwards.

A person in steel-toed boots, cargo pants, and with a buzz cut is not a male. It's just a person in steel-toed boots, cargo pants, with a buzz cut. A person in nylons, heels, and a dress, with long hair and eyeshadow is not a female. It's just a person in nylons, heels, and a dress, with long hair and eyeshadow.

If you see a person in steel-toed boots, cargo pants, and with a buzz cut, and you proceed to decide that they are therefore a man... you're being sexist. If you see a person in nylons, heels, and a dress, with long hair and eyeshadow, and you proceed to decide that they are therefore a woman... you're being sexist.

If you see a female person - with all of the visual indicators of the female sex that we have evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to be able to recognize - in steel-toed boots, cargo pants, and with a buzz cut, and you tell them that because of how they are dressed, they must be a man, then you're extra super duper sexist.

The outward trappings of social norms do not alter our sex, and they do not define our behaviors or our preferences or our capabilities. The physical reality of our sexed bodies however, have very real impacts on our lives.

 

[Emily Lake]

But note the implication--things can go wrong, producing a result that is other than the standard answer. This strongly suggests that other things can go wrong, producing other outcomes that don't match the standard answer--for example, running woman OS on man hardware. You are admitting one type of glitch is possible while rejecting the possibility of certain other ones.

And you're making the baseless assumption that there is such a thing as "woman OS" in the first place.

If there wasn't a man OS and woman OS then there would be no possibility of a gender mismatch and the whole trans issue wouldn't exist.

My daughter just got the book The Wild Robot, and the robot is a female. And that made me think, how do you program a robot to be female?

Well, if I was going about it, it would be as I've described: in the linkage of behavioral executions to "femininity" to satisfaction of a potential set of "need objects", in the probability of the system generating "feminine validation" as a "need object", and adding in an increased probability of "plans that also satisfy said need object"; with regards to the "masculine" reflection, neglecting to insert those linkages.

I would explicitly link it to the concept under whatever "learned" natural vector the token "femininity" is associated with so that even if new tokens are assigned, the concept does not shift.

As a result, the robot would feel a need to feel feminine, have behaviors that fulfill that need, and would regularly have a reason/excuse to exercise behavior of such a flavor. This would be built into the very framework, an intrinsic aspect of who the robot is, generating constant pull towards whoever the social concept wanders.

So you'd program in a bunch of stereotypes about what you personally think is "feminine".

Now go ahead and program a robot to be black. You know, same process: put in a linkage of the behavioral executions to "blackness" to satisfaction of a potential set of "need objects", in the probability of system generating "black validation" as a "need object", and adding in an increased probability of "plans that also satisfy said need object"; with regards to the "white" reflection, neglecting to insert those linkages.

I would explicitly link it to the concept under whatever "learned" natural vector the token "blackness" is associated with so that even if new tokens are assigned, the concept does not shift.

As a result, the robot would feel a need to feel black, have behaviors that fulfill that need, and would regularly have a reason/excuse to exercise behavior of such a flavor. This would be built into the very framework, an intrinsic aspect of who the robot is, generating constant pull towards whoever the social concept wanders.

You are reifying sexist stereotypes.

 

[Emily Lake]

Women don't "need" to feel feminine (whatever that means, which is part of the problem), do they?

No, we don't. For the most part, when we wish to "feel feminine", what we're actually doing is displaying the markers that we believe are attractive to potential mates - it's mating displays aimed at feeling sexually desirable.

I think there is a wide gap between need to and simply feels. A need implies a desire towards an end where as feels is about observation of a sensory input.

For most women, there's not even really any aspect of "feels" other than the actual sensory perception of our sexed bodies. I "feel" boobs when they get in the way of me carrying big things. I "feel" my hips when I try on pants and they don't fit properly. I "feel" my uterus once a month when it cramps up while expelling its lining.

 

[Emily Lake]

It's not just awful for sensitivity issues but also for technical reasons. Copiers are designed. At some point there are product specifications and intended use in the design process. Users expect the thing to operate according to the design. Emily has been sneakily inserting design into arguments by reifying biology and evolution. Like so: biology made man and woman.

No, it's just an analogy. And it's intent was to point out that saying a mistake occurred in a process does not inherently have any emotional trappings.

I don't reify biology, all I do is observe what biology is. There is zero design or intent involved in evolution. There is no reason, no thought, no objective. Evolution is a mechanism, nothing more.

But evolution relies on diversity through "errors" and so a fifty thousand foo tview is bugs are features. It's how it works. When we go into a more microscopic view in a narrow context we might call such an evolutionary feature an error. It isn't a necessary term except in the narrow contexts where it relates to an unexpected event.

Nah. There are mutations that enter the species because they don't fuck up the ability of an individual to procreate, and they manage to be passed on to enough offspring to become endemic. On the other hand there are ACTUAL FUCKING ERRORS that happen during the process of reproduction. A duplication of a gene isn't an evolutionary mutation that is entering the species, it's an actual replication error.

And in this context, in this specific exchange, we're talking about DSDs. And those ARE almost entirely things that fall into the category of errors. They're replication or transcription errors in the process of reproduction. And the majority of DSDs result in sterility - which rather blatantly precludes those conditions being "evolutionary features".

Why are you and so many others unable to separate the acknowledgement of an error in a process from some sort of moral judgement on the entirety of a person? What kind of religious thinking have you internalized that makes you incapable of objectivity on this?

A friend of my mom's has a son who was born with a nervous system condition that basically makes him paraplegic from birth. I have no idea what it's called, but even though the nerves and the spinal cord are present, the messages just don't make it past somewhere in his lower spine. That's a process error. The kid though, he's a great guy - funny, nice, intelligent. He, as a person, is fantastic. Objectively recognizing that something went wrong in the process of his fetal development doesn't lessen his value or character as a person in any way whatsoever.

 

[Emily Lake]

Women don't "need" to feel feminine (whatever that means, which is part of the problem), do they?

I think there is a wide gap between need to and simply feels. A need implies a desire towards an end where as feels is about observation of a sensory input.

Well, for most trans women, it's expressed as a felt need, an itch they have to scratch, and if they don't life just feels worse.

I can feel as masculine or as feminine depending on how I act, but which of those I actually do is based on how I feel compelled to feel: I have a need, a slow and pressing demand on me to actualize, on occasion, not merely (do thing) but (feel feminine), not for the sake of any of the result but for the sake of the feeling.

It is intrinsically tied to the gender we are.

Would you rather I use the term "want"? It is no less a thing in the head either way drawing a person to do things, and "be" in some particular way.

What you're describing sounds like a compulsion. I don't think this is what most people experience.

I don't feel a "need" to behave in a certain way, or to present in a certain way, or anything else. At the very outside edge, there are times when I feel obliged by society to conform to an expectation, but that's an external pressure, not an internal one. I feel obliged to wear a suit to important business functions, not because I have any particular desire to wear suits, but because that's what is socially expected at those sorts of events. It would be inappropriate for me to show up in sweat pants and a t-shirt, which is what I *want* to wear.

I don't think this is something intrinsically tied to an innate "gender". It's certainly not something that I think is at all universal or even remotely common to most people. I don't think I've ever felt compelled to "act feminine" so that I could "feel feminine".

 

[Emily Lake]

Women don't "need" to feel feminine (whatever that means, which is part of the problem), do they?

I think there is a wide gap between need to and simply feels. A need implies a desire towards an end where as feels is about observation of a sensory input.

Well, for most trans women, it's expressed as a felt need, an itch they have to scratch, and if they don't life just feels worse.

I think we could do a really good job of getting to grips on sex, gender, biases on such, etc... by programming a male and female robot.

I think you could do a really good job of explicitly identifying sexist stereotypes that way.

 

[Emily Lake]

My daughter just got the book The Wild Robot, and the robot is a female. And that made me think, how do you program a robot to be female?

Apparently you program a robot to be female by... giving it boobs, long hair, and eyelashes?

 

[Emily Lake]

There is no inherent emotional aspect to those terms

Yes, in common usage there is. When people say something is "immoral" they say "that's wrong".

As I said - when you're looking at it through the lens of religiosity. Thank you for proving my point, I suppose.

Don't you work in some kind of IT capacity?

I'm a software engineer. My entire career is based around using language to say things usefully and confidently.

Well, you've got "confidently" down I suppose.

People make coding errors.

It's important to understand what a "coding error" is, and in what context it's "badness" exists in.

Error isn't "badness". You're forcing a moralistic view onto something that is not religious in nature.

Errors, mistakes, and wrong are not emotional language

Yes, they are. They are absolutely laden with the emotions of "judgement" and "rejection", associated further with the drive towards "purity". How you are so emotionally blind to even yourself as to not understand this, I do not myself understand.

Nonetheless, there it is.

That's inane. If I say "4 + 4 = 27", it's WRONG. If I take the derivative of x3, and I write down 2x, that's an ERROR. If I have "chocolate milk" on my shopping list, and I grab rootbeer milk without realizing it, it's a MISTAKE. It's not an emotional judgement, it's merely incorrect, inaccurate, and false. There is no "purity" involved.

Why do you insist upon covering everything with religious mumbo jumbo?

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

A duplication of a gene isn't an evolutionary mutation that is entering the species, it's an actual replication error.

Gene duplications lead to evolutionary changes all the time.

Gene duplication as a major force in evolution - PubMed

Gene duplication is an important mechanism for acquiring new genes and creating genetic novelty in organisms. Many new gene functions have evolved through gene duplication and it has contributed tremendously to the evolution of developmental programmes in various organisms. Gene duplication can...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

 

[Jarhyn]

Gene duplications lead to evolutionary changes all the time.

Gene duplications ARE evolutionary changes. Full stop.

Trying to cram "error" into the discussion of a specific difference reeks of trying to drag in the moral zeitgeist around "error", and "wrongness".

It is a rhetorical rudeness that is a clear attempt to bolster normatively against being "cross-hormonal" or "persistently non-hormonal".

Sometimes people have differences, not errors, that result in having a better outlook with different hormones than the ones their body will produce on its own without an act of walking somewhere and getting a pill or shot on occasion.