Gender Roles

[stanley]

There's a difference in childhood in brain structure:

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adn4202

Small, but detectable.

Reading the study, a number of points occur to me...

Somatomotor, visual, control, and limbic networks are preferentially associated with sex, while network correlates of gender are more distributed throughout the cortex.​

I.e., the brain differences correlated with being trans are not the same differences as the brain differences correlated with being of the other sex. I.e., transwomen don't have "female brains"; what they have tends to be different from cismen's brains along some orthogonal axis.

This study doesn't speak to that, but others do and show that in fact transwomen's difference from cismen move them closer to what is found in ciswomen. Now, their whole brains are still significantly difference from cisfemale, but that would be expected given this current study showing the "sex" part of the brain is separate from those parts influencing gender and transwoman are male by sex. If you combine the findings of this current study and the one I linked, it strongly predicts that if they compared only the brain regions shown in the current study to be tied to gender, then transwomen would be more similar to ciswomen than to cismen.

https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0383/11/6/1582

we use the term “gender” to indicate features of an individual’s attitude, feelings, and behaviors​

I.e., they're conflating gender, gender identity, and gender roles.

No, they are defining gender as the psychological states and the preferred behaviors they lead to. Gender identity and roles are partially byproducts of those mental states and experiences. Identity is an explicit self-labeling as boy or girl, man or women by the individual. It is likely impacted by those mental states, but does nor reliably follow because the vast majority of people are socially driven to label as their sex no matter how they feel. Gender roles are socially normative expectations of how people should behave. When a person behaves in line with social expectation you don't know if its a preferred behavior, but when they violate the norms then it creates an empirically observable dissociation between roles and psychological gender.

(4757 children, 2315 females, 9 to 10 years old)​

I.e., the parents have had 9 or 10 years to observe sex-atypical behavior in their children and react to it. If some "network correlate of gender" is caused by the child's brain being affected by the way the parents have treated the child, or is causing the sex-atypical behavior, the study would not distinguish those scenarios. I.e., it's a confounding factor they haven't controlled for. To tease apart those possibilities they'd need to do the brain scans in infancy and then wait 9 or 10 years and see if they still predict behavior.

The vast majority of parents treat their child according to sex and do not suddenly treat their boy as a girl just b/c he shows some "girl like tendencies". In fact, in the US, you'd likely find far more parents who react to that situation by being even more stereotypical in how they treat their son, pushing them harder into sex-normative behaviors. So, it is not a plausible account of brain deviation from typical male. Also, you are assuming that the child for some unknown reason having nothing to do with their brains start acting girlish, then the parent reacts and treats them different, then their brain changes. This is far less parsimonious and lacks explanation of the initial behavioral differences compared to the explanation that their natural brain development changes the behavior.

Our models did not successfully predict the self-reported gender scores in either sex (all corrected P values >0.05).​

I.e., their results on gender identity aren't statistically significant.

The neural differences related to sex typical psychology and behaviors were significant, and significantly different than neural patterns linked sex differences. The neural patterns do not reliably predict self-reported gender identity, which is expected since few people who experience gender dysphoria are willing to risk to the social and parental abuse that such a public admission entails.

On the other hand, 0.56% (corrected P = 0.037; r = 0.08, corrected P = 0.033) and 0.55% (corrected P = 0.037; r = 0.08, corrected P = 0.033) of the variance in functional connectivity were associated with parent-reported gender scores in AFAB and AMAB individuals, respectively (Fig. 1C).​

I.e., small, but detectable, as you said. Very small. The gendered-behavior signal is barely above the noise.

The statistical significance means that it is reliably more than noise. Also, that is a % of all functional connectivity. Very few psychological or behavioral variables would account for more than a tiny % of total functional connectivity.

Our predictions of gender (beyond sex) are far less accurate than predictions of sex or gender alone, suggesting that gender may be a more complex construct that is not as clearly represented in functional connectivity patterns.​

I.e., they can't reliably tell whether someone is trans by examining the brain, but they can tell whether someone is male or female. Yes, there appears to be such a thing as a female brain, but transwomen generally don't appear to have them.

You failed to comprehend the central point of the paper, which is that there are sex linked brain activation patterns and gender linked brain activation patterns. Thus, transwoman would not be expected to have "female brains" since they have male bodies and bodies are represented within the brain. Also, sex is reliably and near perfectly measured, so predicting a measure of sex is much easier in general (like hitting a still vs moving target). Gender, like all psychological states, is much harder to measure and always prone to measurement error. Predicting any most aspects of personality from the brain is unreliable, including those traits were there evidence of a strong genetic contribution and thus of innate brain based causality. Men and women differ on average in many aspects of psychology. Yet, if tried to predict sex using only the cortex areas dealing with subjective mental states like feelings, thoughts, and preferences, they also cannot reliably predict who is male or female.

His favorite playmates are: Her favorite playmates are: He plays with girl-type dolls, such as "Barbie". She plays with girl-type dolls, such as "Barbie". He plays with boy-type dolls such as action figures or "GI-Joe". She plays with boy-type dolls such as action figures or "GI-Joe". He experiments with cosmetics (makeup) and jewelry. She experiments with cosmetics (makeup) and jewelry. He imitates female characters seen on TV or in the movies. She imitates female characters seen on TV or in the movies. He imitates male characters seen on TV or in the movies. She imitates male characters seen on TV or in the movies. He plays sports with boys (but not girls). She plays sports with boys (but not girls). He plays sports with girls (but not boys). She plays sports with girls (but not boys). He plays "girl-type" games (as compared to "boy-type" games). She plays "girl-type" games (as compared to "boy-type" games).​

I.e., the data on parents' evaluations of their children's gender-linked behavior was biased by arbitrary cultural notions of appropriate gender roles.

So, you are saying that their are no "girl" behaviors or girl games or toys,, so we should eliminate all labels and store aisles the specify "girls" or "boys". What you are calling "arbitrary" is the very notion that their are or should be any gender roles or normative expectations. It is interesting for you to take that very radical feminist stance but I doubt you actually believe it and are just inventing an excuse to discount this science that goes against your beliefs.

The parents are using the very standard typical gender expectations, most of which are simply tied to preferences for playmates, who they identify with and want to imitate, and play preferences that have long been shown to differ from very early ages between males and females.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I do not want people to encode, from the address of me, that I am one person or many people.

The borg is fiction. You are a singular person. If you believe that your body houses more than one person, I suggest you seek a professional opinion and diagnosis.

I do not want people to encode that I am male or female or that I am some third thing.

What you want other people to perceive is pretty much irrelevant.

I find this amusing as you repeatedly reported my calling you "muiridi" when you anonymously came back to IIDB under a new handle. If you could be upset based on the accurate use of an old handle identity at this board, how do you imagine people would feel about being told who they are, when those individuals are more likely to have a better idea what that identity is?

Based on what you have shared with us over the course of several years, you are male. If you are, in reality, NOT male but female, then that means you have been actively and intentionally lying to all of us for a very long time.

What we can all confidently say, however, is that you are NOT some third non-male-non-female thing. Because such a thing does not exist within any mammalian species known.

You are being told by someone how they feel about who they are, a manner that is in conflict with baseline standards, and you are telling them to fuck off, though in more polite language. At what point do you start managing this humanely?

 

[Emily Lake]

I do not want people to encode, from the address of me, that I am one person or many people.

The borg is fiction. You are a singular person. If you believe that your body houses more than one person, I suggest you seek a professional opinion and diagnosis.

I do not want people to encode that I am male or female or that I am some third thing.

What you want other people to perceive is pretty much irrelevant.

I find this amusing as you repeatedly reported my calling you "muiridi" when you anonymously came back to IIDB under a new handle.

That had far less to do with you using the name than it did with the rather blatant harassment involved in following me around and taking every opportunity to toss it in.

If you could be upset based on the accurate use of an old handle identity at this board, how do you imagine people would feel about being told who they are, when those individuals are more likely to have a better idea what that identity is?

Based on what you have shared with us over the course of several years, you are male. If you are, in reality, NOT male but female, then that means you have been actively and intentionally lying to all of us for a very long time.

What we can all confidently say, however, is that you are NOT some third non-male-non-female thing. Because such a thing does not exist within any mammalian species known.

You are being told by someone how they feel about who they are, a manner that is in conflict with baseline standards, and you are telling them to fuck off, though in more polite language. At what point do you start managing this humanely?

Probably somewhere around the time that my view of myself and my beliefs gets accepted by posters here who feel no compunction whatsoever about insisting that I'm a far-right mouthpiece, informed solely by fox news, and a secret Trump fan, a bigot, a racist, etc. Somehow, this insistence that we absolutely must accept what people say of themselves as truth is never extended to those that have been labeled as "bad".

Jimmy, if show up tomorrow and proclaim that I am not an "I" but a "we" and that some of "we" is a fairy with eldritch power, and some of "we" is the spirit-born offspring of Vishnu, and that I'm planning to have my boobs cut off so that I feel better about asking everyone to pretend that I am a sexless multiple being, and that I identify as a far-left progressive marxist... I sincerely hope you laugh at me and refuse to comply with my demand that you respect my identity. At a minimum, I think it would be entirely reasonable for you to question whether a serious intervention might be in order for my well-being.

 

[Bomb#20]

There's a difference in childhood in brain structure:

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adn4202

Small, but detectable.

Reading the study, a number of points occur to me...

Somatomotor, visual, control, and limbic networks are preferentially associated with sex, while network correlates of gender are more distributed throughout the cortex.​

I.e., the brain differences correlated with being trans are not the same differences as the brain differences correlated with being of the other sex. I.e., transwomen don't have "female brains"; what they have tends to be different from cismen's brains along some orthogonal axis.

This study doesn't speak to that,

Why do you say that? If they'd found that the network correlates of gender were the somatomotor, visual, control, and limbic networks, that would certainly be considered to be "speaking to" whether transwomen have female brains. You appear to be thinking like one of those journal editors who infamously helps mistakes persist in the literature by refusing to publish new studies reporting failure to reproduce earlier results, because he considers the new studies "nonresults".

but others do and show that in fact transwomen's difference from cismen move them closer to what is found in ciswomen. Now, their whole brains are still significantly difference from cisfemale, but that would be expected given this current study showing the "sex" part of the brain is separate from those parts influencing gender and transwoman are male by sex. If you combine the findings of this current study and the one I linked, it strongly predicts that if they compared only the brain regions shown in the current study to be tied to gender, then transwomen would be more similar to ciswomen than to cismen.

https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0383/11/6/1582

It doesn't look to me like it predicts any such thing. What you're calling "move them closer to what is found in ciswomen" appears not to be operationally distinguished from ordinary "regression to the mean". The study you linked appears to suffer massively from failure to control for potentially confounding factors. It even mentions one such factor, homosexuality. The so-called "sex" scale it's measuring along by training a recognizer on a massive brain database could perfectly well actually be a scale of female-attraction to male-attraction since the random people in the training set will have been 90+% heterosexual; then the fact that 25% of their trans subjects were homosexual would neatly account for the trans average being 25% of the way to "what is found in ciswomen". There's no way to avoid that sort of uncertainty with pure correlational studies like these that offer no mechanism for how the examined brain variations cause transgenderism, but at the very least the researchers can minimize the problem by controlling for any confounding factors they know about. They could show separate "violin" plots for the straight and gay study subjects, and they could train their recognizer separately on straight and gay control subjects and exclude database samples from the training set where orientation data wasn't supplied.

Anyway, sexual orientation is just an example and maybe not the most significant. There are quite a few psychological conditions that correlate strongly with transgenderism, such as clinical depression, autism, and ADD. It's entirely likely that if they'd ignored transgenderism and instead fed 24 depressed men's brain measurements into their trained sex-recognizer it would have reported the difference from non-depressed men moved them closer to what is found in non-depressed women. That's how regression to the mean tends to work.

(4757 children, 2315 females, 9 to 10 years old)​

I.e., the parents have had 9 or 10 years to observe sex-atypical behavior in their children and react to it. If some "network correlate of gender" is caused by the child's brain being affected by the way the parents have treated the child, or is causing the sex-atypical behavior, the study would not distinguish those scenarios. I.e., it's a confounding factor they haven't controlled for. To tease apart those possibilities they'd need to do the brain scans in infancy and then wait 9 or 10 years and see if they still predict behavior.

The vast majority of parents treat their child according to sex and do not suddenly treat their boy as a girl just b/c he shows some "girl like tendencies". In fact, in the US, you'd likely find far more parents who react to that situation by being even more stereotypical in how they treat their son, pushing them harder into sex-normative behaviors. So, it is not a plausible account of brain deviation from typical male.

What the hell? You just explained why it is plausible and then deduced that it isn't. Maybe it was all that pushing harder into sex-normative behaviors, that cis children didn't experience, that caused the observed brain differences. Maybe feeling their parents are disappointed in them scars children's brains.

Also, you are assuming that the child for some unknown reason having nothing to do with their brains start acting girlish,

Oh for the love of god! Who do you think you're talking to, some Christian who believes gender dysphoria is caused by a sinful soul? Every way someone acts has a reason in his brain. Duh! That doesn't magically make the first brain difference you measure have to be the one causing the behavior difference. "Correlation is not causation." isn't rocket science. It's rule number one that you need to internalize before you start reading correlational studies.

then the parent reacts and treats them different, then their brain changes. This is far less parsimonious and lacks explanation of the initial behavioral differences compared to the explanation that their natural brain development changes the behavior.

There's nothing unparsimonious about it -- what entities are being multiplied when we already know how people are treated changes their brains, and what explanation does "This difference is correlated; therefore it's the cause." provide? If you want to show causality you need to either provide a mechanism or else do an experiment where you alter the input and see if that alters the output.

On the other hand, 0.56% (corrected P = 0.037; r = 0.08, corrected P = 0.033) and 0.55% (corrected P = 0.037; r = 0.08, corrected P = 0.033) of the variance in functional connectivity were associated with parent-reported gender scores in AFAB and AMAB individuals, respectively (Fig. 1C).​

I.e., small, but detectable, as you said. Very small. The gendered-behavior signal is barely above the noise.

The statistical significance means that it is reliably more than noise. Also, that is a % of all functional connectivity. Very few psychological or behavioral variables would account for more than a tiny % of total functional connectivity.

P = 0.050 is the traditional cutoff for being considered statistically insignificant. P = 0.037 is only a smidgen below that. The study you linked reported P = 0.016; that's much more reliably more than noise.

Our predictions of gender (beyond sex) are far less accurate than predictions of sex or gender alone, suggesting that gender may be a more complex construct that is not as clearly represented in functional connectivity patterns.​

I.e., they can't reliably tell whether someone is trans by examining the brain, but they can tell whether someone is male or female. Yes, there appears to be such a thing as a female brain, but transwomen generally don't appear to have them.

You failed to comprehend the central point of the paper, which is that there are sex linked brain activation patterns and gender linked brain activation patterns.

No, that is not the central point of the paper. Those are things everyone already knew. The point of the paper is to go into details. I'm commenting on the details.

Thus, transwoman would not be expected to have "female brains" since they have male bodies and bodies are represented within the brain.

It would not be expected by a rational person, no. But many partisans of gender ideology insist that transwomen do in fact have "female brains" and offer this alleged possession as justification for their doctrine that "transwomen are women", and as justification for why society at large should categorize people based on their professed feelings rather than their observed reproductive anatomy. The point of my post was that the study Loren cited does not provide support for gender ideology even though gender ideologues have a long track record of citing studies like that one and claiming they provide such support.

His favorite playmates are: Her favorite playmates are: He plays with girl-type dolls, such as "Barbie". She plays with girl-type dolls, such as "Barbie". He plays with boy-type dolls such as action figures or "GI-Joe". She plays with boy-type dolls such as action figures or "GI-Joe". He experiments with cosmetics (makeup) and jewelry. She experiments with cosmetics (makeup) and jewelry. He imitates female characters seen on TV or in the movies. She imitates female characters seen on TV or in the movies. He imitates male characters seen on TV or in the movies. She imitates male characters seen on TV or in the movies. He plays sports with boys (but not girls). She plays sports with boys (but not girls). He plays sports with girls (but not boys). She plays sports with girls (but not boys). He plays "girl-type" games (as compared to "boy-type" games). She plays "girl-type" games (as compared to "boy-type" games).​

I.e., the data on parents' evaluations of their children's gender-linked behavior was biased by arbitrary cultural notions of appropriate gender roles.

So, you are saying that their are no "girl" behaviors or girl games or toys,, so we should eliminate all labels and store aisles the specify "girls" or "boys".

How the heck did you get that out of what I wrote? There was plainly no "should" implied; that's a figment of your imagination. As for whether there are "girl" behaviors or girl games or toys, I am completely open to that hypothesis but I'd hardly consider American conventions to be culturally neutral evidence on that point, let alone "Barbie" vs "GI-Joe". I just re-perused Donald Brown's famous list of cultural universals, looking for anything resembling "girl" behaviors or girl games or toys, and turned up nada, but that might just be an artifact of his focus. If you know of anthropologists having discovered systematic differences in the way boys and girls play that are consistent across cultures, feel free to share -- in any event, those are what an unbiased study would have used to try to measure innate girlish tendencies in gender dysphoric boys.

What you are calling "arbitrary" is the very notion that their are or should be any gender roles or normative expectations.

Not at all -- what's arbitrary is the very notion that American culture is an expert witness on that point.

It is interesting for you to take that very radical feminist stance but I doubt you actually believe it and are just inventing an excuse to discount this science that goes against your beliefs.

Nice well-poisoning.

 

[Emily Lake]

How the heck did you get that out of what I wrote? There was plainly no "should" implied; that's a figment of your imagination. As for whether there are "girl" behaviors or girl games or toys, I am completely open to that hypothesis but I'd hardly consider American conventions to be culturally neutral evidence on that point, let alone "Barbie" vs "GI-Joe". I just re-perused Donald Brown's famous list of cultural universals, looking for anything resembling "girl" behaviors or girl games or toys, and turned up nada, but that might just be an artifact of his focus. If you know of anthropologists having discovered systematic differences in the way boys and girls play that are consistent across cultures, feel free to share -- in any event, those are what an unbiased study would have used to try to measure innate girlish tendencies in gender dysphoric boys.

IIRC, there is a fairly well established tendency for girls to gravitate toward play that involves nurturing, and for boys to gravitate toward play that involves aggression. Girls are more inclined generally to be interested in playing with dolls, playing house, etc. Boys are more inclined to play with blocks and legos, or play cops & robbers.

The challenge is that such studies and observations cannot control of social factors and neural plasticity. It's not unreasonable to think that girls are more inclined to mimic the behaviors of their mothers in their play, and boys are more likely to mimic the behaviors of their fathers. Sex is actually a pretty big deal evolutionarily speaking, and to the extent that we've had sex-based division of labor within our societies for ages, that is going to influence the behavior of even very young children.

 

[Politesse]

Ah, yes, that well known evolutionary drive toward specific brands of toys invented less than a century ago. Thoughtful of our tree shrew ancestors to conform to modern gender aesthetics like that.

 

[Politesse]

(Also, "Cops and Robbers"? What is this, 1965? Are we going to go bobbing for apples, next? Pinning the tail on the donkey?)

 

[thebeave]

Ah, yes, that well known evolutionary drive toward specific brands of toys invented less than a century ago. Thoughtful of our tree shrew ancestors to conform to modern gender aesthetics like that.

Well, there is this:

Infant chimps play with 'stick dolls'

Young chimps play make-believe games in which they pretend that a favourite stick is a baby for nurturing and even putting to bed, according to a 14-year study of the animals in Uganda.

Biologists watched the chimps in the forests of Kibale National Park in Uganda and found intriguing differences in the way young males and females passed their time – providing evidence that differences in the way boys and girls play may have a genetically hardwired element.


While both sexes collected sticks to use as toys, females often treated them like dolls, carrying their sticks from tree to tree, patting and cuddling them, and involving them in simple games. In one case, a young male chimp made a small nest next to his own and appeared to put his stick to bed.

The few males in the group that played with stick dolls gave up when they reached adulthood. But females carried on the parental role-playing game and only stopped when they gave birth to their first baby. Two thirds of the chimps who kept stick dolls were female.

 

[Emily Lake]

Ah, yes, that well known evolutionary drive toward specific brands of toys invented less than a century ago. Thoughtful of our tree shrew ancestors to conform to modern gender aesthetics like that.

Yet one more case of you failing to read for comprehension, I guess. I mean, the very first sentence is the meat of my point, and doesn't address any specific toys. Someone with a high-school level of comprehension would understand that the second sentence involves relatable examples of the general concepts introduced in the first sentence.

 

[Emily Lake]

Ah, yes, that well known evolutionary drive toward specific brands of toys invented less than a century ago. Thoughtful of our tree shrew ancestors to conform to modern gender aesthetics like that.

Well, there is this:

Infant chimps play with 'stick dolls'

Young chimps play make-believe games in which they pretend that a favourite stick is a baby for nurturing and even putting to bed, according to a 14-year study of the animals in Uganda.

Biologists watched the chimps in the forests of Kibale National Park in Uganda and found intriguing differences in the way young males and females passed their time – providing evidence that differences in the way boys and girls play may have a genetically hardwired element.


While both sexes collected sticks to use as toys, females often treated them like dolls, carrying their sticks from tree to tree, patting and cuddling them, and involving them in simple games. In one case, a young male chimp made a small nest next to his own and appeared to put his stick to bed.

The few males in the group that played with stick dolls gave up when they reached adulthood. But females carried on the parental role-playing game and only stopped when they gave birth to their first baby. Two thirds of the chimps who kept stick dolls were female.

The question I end up with is whether this behavior is actually evolutionarily hardwired, or whether it's learned. It's easy to assume that because it's chimpanzees, it must be hardwired, because we tend to think humans are super duper exceptionally expemt from evolutionary pressures, and all other animals run on instinct alone. But in reality, there are a whole, whole lot of animal behaviors that are learned. In primates there's generally a lot of learned behavior.

The differences between males and females are visually obvious, and the different roles within chimpanzee social groups are observable by young chimps. I think there's a reasonable likelihood that the young female chimps observe that adult female chimps engage in nurturing and child-care behaviors, and mimic them; young male chimps observe that adult male chimps don't do as much of that. Incorporating mimicry of adult sex-differentiated roles into their play could just as easily be a learned behavior.

 

[Politesse]

If you try to live a life with as much cultural complexity and emotional nuance as your average chimpanzee, I think you will stand a pretty good chance of succeeding in your goals.

 

[TomC]

If you try to live a life with as much cultural complexity and emotional nuance as your average chimpanzee, I think you will stand a pretty good chance of succeeding in your goals.

Must be nice up there in your ivory tower.
Tom

 

[Jarhyn]

If you try to live a life with as much cultural complexity and emotional nuance as your average chimpanzee, I think you will stand a pretty good chance of succeeding in your goals.

Not to mention the fact that it's downright facile to think that we have observed either the full range of emergent behaviors or the full range of cross variance.

If a genital can grow in a surprising way, so can a brain, and it is clearly the brains that are the final arbiter of behavior since behavior is ultimately decided in the brain. There is no channel beyond the hormones to impact that... And humans have MUCH less testosterone than chimps, and have been selecting in that manner for a while.

 

[Politesse]

If you try to live a life with as much cultural complexity and emotional nuance as your average chimpanzee, I think you will stand a pretty good chance of succeeding in your goals.

Must be nice up there in your ivory tower.
Tom

What are you talking about? Emily's the one trying to pretend that all of human communal life can be colored in with just two colors of crayon. I'm aware of quite a few more colors, personally. You're always going on about my "ivory tower", but I honest to shit have no idea what tower you're referring to. Do you just mean that I have a college degree? I mean, that's true, but I live in the same world as everyone else, they don't exile you to Mars when you get your BA.

If anything, I'd say my day job, that is, teaching at a relatively poor urban community college, leads to meeting a lot more people in a much wider range of life situations than would your average Joe. We don't have any towers that I know of, unless you count the science museum's pendulum building.

For that matter, I suspect I've interacted with a lot more primates than you have. Not chimps, but I spent a lot of time down at the Monkey Island preserve after Hurricane Maria wrecked the place. They're interesting creatures, new world monkeys, but their social logic is their own, they are not direct analogues for human beings and neither are chimpanzees. Nor would you WANT chimpanzees to be analogues for humans, if you knew more about some of the shit they get up to. I presume neither you nor Emily are big fans of infanticide, child rape, or a life long sexual relationship with one's biological mother? All common features of chimp society.

 

[Bomb#20]

I think I was a bit more vituperative to some of the other folks in this thread, lately, and I would like to apologize to Emily Lake in particular. My behavior was not appropriate.

you agree it was morally reprehensible and incredibly rude of you to call Emily and me "atheistic fools who thoughtlessly and self-defeatingly enforce" Christian theocrats' cultural views?

It was. I apologize.

You were doing so well! And then this...

If you try to live a life with as much cultural complexity and emotional nuance as your average chimpanzee, I think you will stand a pretty good chance of succeeding in your goals.

 

[Politesse]

I think I was a bit more vituperative to some of the other folks in this thread, lately, and I would like to apologize to Emily Lake in particular. My behavior was not appropriate.

you agree it was morally reprehensible and incredibly rude of you to call Emily and me "atheistic fools who thoughtlessly and self-defeatingly enforce" Christian theocrats' cultural views?

It was. I apologize.

You were doing so well! And then this...

If you try to live a life with as much cultural complexity and emotional nuance as your average chimpanzee, I think you will stand a pretty good chance of succeeding in your goals.

I said "if"! Personally I think we should aim a little higher.

 

[Bomb#20]

You were doing so well! And then this...

If you try to live a life with as much cultural complexity and emotional nuance as your average chimpanzee, I think you will stand a pretty good chance of succeeding in your goals.

I said "if"! Personally I think we should aim a little higher.

Yes, I got that. I also got that you were insinuating Emily doesn't aim a little higher. You ought not to have.

 

[Politesse]

You were doing so well! And then this...

If you try to live a life with as much cultural complexity and emotional nuance as your average chimpanzee, I think you will stand a pretty good chance of succeeding in your goals.

I said "if"! Personally I think we should aim a little higher.

Yes, I got that. I also got that you were insinuating Emily doesn't aim a little higher. You ought not to have.

"My favorite social assumptions are supported by imperfect analogues in chimp society" is not a very strong argument, both because chimpanzees and humans are very different from one another in most respects, and because the vast majority of human activities and even cognition lack any analogue in chimp society. And many of the things that do occur in both human and chimp social worlds are considered socially malformed if not outright criminal behaviors in all human cultures. If one were to attempt to emulate chimp culture in all respects, we'd be living in small bands in the forest led by our mothers, using some combination of violence, grooming, bribery, and sexual favors with close biological relations as bargaining chips in most social exchanges. Even if we accepted that chimp cultures "prove" something about our prehistory, no one who knows anything about the Gombe community would entertain going back six milion years and trying to live like those ancestors who were closest kin to that modern group. It's selective reasoning anyway, as the chimpanzee/bonobo world is hardly uniform in the social practices of its various members.

And no, Emily is not "aiming higher". No doubt these obvious facts get pointed out every time she brings up the dumb chimp argument, and it will not change her line of argument in the slightest; she will just continue to make the same flawed argument over and over. Some chimps once played with sticks in a way a human researcher interpreted as a feminine fashion, therefore healthcare discrimination against trans teenagers is justified. Ta da.

 

[Politesse]

I get pretty annoyed with all the pseudoscience that gets peddled in the "social science" subforum. If I were moderating it, this sort of nonsense would get booted to Politics or Pseudoscience the second it turned either those respective directions. But of course, that would empty Social Science of threads...

 

[TomC]

And no, Emily is not "aiming higher". No doubt these obvious facts get pointed out every time she brings up the dumb chimp argument, and it will not change her line of argument in the slightest; she will just continue to make the same flawed argument over and over. Some chimps once played with sticks in a way a human researcher interpreted as a feminine fashion, therefore healthcare discrimination against trans teenagers is justified. Ta da.

Your ability and willingness to viciously misrepresent and get condescending towards people like Emily and me is exactly what I am talking about when I point out your "ivory tower" attitude.
You are too wrapped up in your "more politically correct than Thou" attitude to recognize the human situation.
Yuck
Tom