Gender Roles

[Politesse]

Oh, nice clip! Don't know anything about primatology? No prob, just cut that part out.

Pointing out pseudoscience is not "politically correct". Unverifiable conspiracy theories and pseudoscience are American politics.

If you had a scientific case to make, you'd be presenting evidence, not dubious personal insults.

 

[Bomb#20]

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, ...
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.

"It's okay to insult a fellow member because of words I made up and put in her mouth." is not a very strong argument either.[/sarcasm]

ETA:

If you had a scientific case to make, you'd be presenting evidence, not dubious personal insults.

Bloody hell, now I need to replace another burned-out irony meter.

 

[Politesse]

I'm seeing a lot of arguments about my style. Nothing of substance. Pretty much a confession, yeah?

 

[Bomb#20]

I'm seeing a lot of arguments about my style. Nothing of substance. Pretty much a confession, yeah?

What did you write that you feel was something of substance for us to argue about?

#1226 was substantive, yes; but there was no reason for a substantive response to that post since I'd already made exactly the same point in post #1224, albeit not as stylishly as you.

#1227 was a comment on Emily's style.

#1231 was an unprovoked personal insult against Emily.

#1234 was you getting defensive at Tom and insulting him for criticizing you.

#1236 was you clarifying something about your anti-Emily insult that was already painfully clear.

#1238 was you trying to justify your anti-Emily insult by repeatedly strawmanning her and holding her responsible for what thebeave wrote.

#1239 was you expressing a preference for settling scientific disagreements by applying power and authority instead of evidence.

#1241 was just you again getting defensive at Tom and insulting him for criticizing you.​

What exactly is it you feel you are bringing to this thread that's a positive contribution to the discussion?

 

[Politesse]

I'd be more than happy to have an actual scientific conversation about sex, gender, and gender roles, if that is on offer.

 

[Bomb#20]

I'd be more than happy to have an actual scientific conversation about sex, gender, and gender roles, if that is on offer.

The OP raised a long series of "should" questions. Do you have an actual scientific theory of "should" to apply to these questions? Alternately, what non-"should" question about sex, gender, and gender roles do you want to have an actual scientific conversation about?

 

[Politesse]

Science can comment on what is, not necessarily on what "should".

 

[Politesse]

Though, I certainly prefer to hold and support opinions that have a foundation of scientific literacy.

 

[Emily Lake]

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.

Bullshit. At no point have I taken a black and white approach to human - or animal - social structures.

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.

It has nothing to do with having a degree. It has to do with holding a viewpoint that is almost always a purely theoretical and academic approach, based on a philosophical premise. Many times, your views and approaches disregard the actuality of life, the realities of applied policies - you focus on the hypothetical ideas rather than on the concrete plausibilities.

Consider - the theoretical physicist is in an ivory tower, full of theory and the philosophical approach to physics. The engineer is the one who has to deal with the messy reality that the theoretician has assumed out of existence.

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.

And this is why you get called out for having an ivory tower view. Nobody has suggested that chimps are analogues for humans, and definitely not in any of the ways that you suggest. But as a close relative in the tree of life, there are enough similarities in both development and social structure that we can look at chimps, bonobos, orangutans, and other large primates for some insight into how evolution interacts with our society. We learn something about our own limitations as well as their capacity by doing so.

 

[Emily Lake]

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.

JFC, did you even fucking read my post, Poli? Seriously, did you read the fucking thread at all or are you just looking for opportunities to insult me with presumed impunity?

I didn't bring chimps into the discussion - the beave introduced chimps, so you can aim your snotty condescension at him. I mentioned the well established observation that at least some element of our behavioral tendencies is sex-related, but that it's not entirely clear whether such tendencies are heritable or learned behaviors. the beave mentioned similar observations for play behavior among chimps, and my response to him was to point out that chimps also have a complex social structure with a significant amount of learned behavior.

Somehow you are incapable of actually taking honest part in a discussion, but rather you seek opportunities to make poorly aimed, poorly thought out, and completely errant nasty remarks to me while lacking even the barest understanding of the context.

So not only are you insulting me, you're wrongly insulting me because you can't be bothered to fucking comprehend what I'm saying.

 

[Emily Lake]

I'd be more than happy to have an actual scientific conversation about sex, gender, and gender roles, if that is on offer.

Go for it, I'm game.

 

[Politesse]

And this is why you get called out for having an ivory tower view. Nobody has suggested that chimps are analogues for humans, and definitely not in any of the ways that you suggest. But as a close relative in the tree of life, there are enough similarities in both development and social structure that we can look at chimps, bonobos, orangutans, and other large primates for some insight into how evolution interacts with our society. We learn something about our own limitations as well as their capacity by doing so.

That is literally what using another species as an analogue means...

 

[Emily Lake]

And this is why you get called out for having an ivory tower view. Nobody has suggested that chimps are analogues for humans, and definitely not in any of the ways that you suggest. But as a close relative in the tree of life, there are enough similarities in both development and social structure that we can look at chimps, bonobos, orangutans, and other large primates for some insight into how evolution interacts with our society. We learn something about our own limitations as well as their capacity by doing so.

That is literally what using another species as an analogue means...

So... no scientific conversation then? Just more pedantry and nitpicking?

 

[Politesse]

And this is why you get called out for having an ivory tower view. Nobody has suggested that chimps are analogues for humans, and definitely not in any of the ways that you suggest. But as a close relative in the tree of life, there are enough similarities in both development and social structure that we can look at chimps, bonobos, orangutans, and other large primates for some insight into how evolution interacts with our society. We learn something about our own limitations as well as their capacity by doing so.

That is literally what using another species as an analogue means...

So... no scientific conversation then? Just more pedantry and nitpicking?

What science are you referring to? Chimpanzee sex behavior and human sex behavior are extremely different, and chimps do not have a concept of gender at all, as far as human observation has been able to determine.