Screech it from the mountaintop
Not me.
Here’s an interesting case study in how one’s ideology can color one’s perception of the world:
The blogger behind Gucci Little Piggy – he used to comment here, but alas I can’t remember his name — took notice of my last little post about Scott Adams. Here’s what he wrote about it:
Many are calling Adams a misogynist – none are screeching this pejorative louder than David Futrelle who may finally get that honorary castration that he’s been working so hard for.
Setting aside that somewhat surreal bit about castration, what’s interesting about this comment is that I didn’t actually “screech [that] pejorative” — loudly or otherwise – in my recent posts about Adams. No need to shout, or screech, something that at this point is pretty obvious. In my last post on Adams, I mocked his narcissism, not his misogyny. In my earlier post on the Pegs and Holes nonsense, I wrote this:
It goes without saying that Adams’ notions of human sexuality are profoundly insulting to both men and women . On the one hand, he’s suggesting that men are basically all potential rapists walking around with, er, turgid pegs; and, on the other, he seems to regard women as little more than passive (if stubbornly recalcitrant) receptacles for these male “pegs.”
I think it’s pretty clear to anyone who has been paying attention that Scott Adams is a misogynist. I also think it’s pretty clear that he’s a misandrist as well. (Two great prejudices that taste great together!) I’ve explained why I think this, and cited the specific things he’s said that have led me (and rather a lot of other people) to these conclusions. The only “screeching” going on here is in Gucci Little Piggy’s imagination.
Posted on June 24, 2011, in misandry, misogyny, MRA, rape, rapey, reactionary bullshit, scott adams. Bookmark the permalink. 147 Comments.
So … I guess you guys are saying that feminists like Lilly Ledbedder should become fair wage activists and try to get laws passed to support equal pay?
Or that women’s groups around the world should organize protests of pay discrimination.
Or that women should bring law suits against companies that discriminate against female employees.
Yeah, that is really beautifully said, Ion and Luke. Way to comprehend.
Bee: High fives (SIX TIMES!) with you over links of DOOM!
Yeah, right, women don’t do anything, just sit around and whine and eat chocolate; they aren’t starting small businesses at a greater rate than men, they aren’t organizing protests and bring law suits and engaging various educational and academic acts, nope, nothing at all.
That’s why nothing has changed during the last century.
Oops…..
TheLaplaceDemon:
I think it’s silly to believe that differences are due 100% to either genetics or environment. Both evidence and intuition support the claim that they work in tandem to produce differences in the group “averages” for behavior. But there is most certainly a biological element to it.
Allow me to appeal to authority. Steven Pinker’s “The Blank Slate” has a remarkable chapter on gender differences. He goes through the differences in the positions of gender feminists and equity feminists and points out that the former are operating from a blank slate framework. But the blank slate is being steadily refuted. Pinker cites several pieces of evidence:
*Sex differences are universal across human cultures. All cultures divide labor by sex; these differences would naturally be sexually selected for over time helping create what are often called gender roles.
*The larger body size of males predicts aggression and competition. This manifests as violence or “rough and tumble” play - behaviors that lie on a spectrum.
*Primates exhibit the same tendencies
*The diversity of mitochondrial DNA is greater than Y chromosome DNA. Fewer men through history have passed along their genes. Men compete; women choose. Some men take opportunistic route and use rape to pass along their genes. This behavior can be triggered i.e. in wartime or when the woman being attacked is poor or minority, but it is a consequence of genetic disposition being triggered by environment.
*The John Money “experiment”: an infant had his penis screwed up and was made to live as a girl. Money, a sex researcher, was a blank slatist (gender feminist) and said it wouldn’t matter; the child would lead a normal and happy life as a girl. The child was not happy and despite being raised as a girl behaved similar to boys. Later in life the person found out what happened and “changed” back into a male. Damage was done, the man killed himself several years ago. You’ve probably heard of this case.
When you lay “society” - a system of laws and norms that seeks to eradicate violence and aggression in all of its forms - over that natural framework, males - moreso than females - will lie outside of said framework.
I guess another way to say this more precisely is that males are usually playing catch-up to the increasingly rigid rules and laws of society whereas females usually fit better into the prevailing social norms and legal structure.
This does not excuse males from acting outside of the confines of polite society. We have laws for a reason; I think both Scott Adams and myself (and almost any other man) would agree that rape should be illegal (I expect hostility towards that statement, as in “No duh”, but keep in mind that rape has not always been illegal back through our human existence).
The “appeal to nature” is misplaced. An appeal to nature implies that someone is excusing behavior that would seem to be naturally gained. But society - being unnatural itself - cannot address the question of whether natural instincts are moral or immoral. We’re all living in a morally relativistic world (unless you believe in God, but there aren’t many on either side of this discussion who do). When humans engage with society they must make adjustments to their behavior. I think Adams’ entire position is that when these adjustments are suggested or codified, it will obviously be the males that have the most difficulty meeting these demands. And sometimes there is a buffer zone wherein males are viewed a little more skeptically by society - as if they are being watched and monitored for fear that they will actually act in an antisocial behavior.
This is a very interesting way to look at social structure - IMO.
@G.L., you evidence is mostly nonsense.
“Sex differences are universal across human cultures. All cultures divide labor by sex; these differences would naturally be sexually selected for over time helping create what are often called gender roles.” This is false, as a matter of anthropology. A more true statment is that some cultures divide some labor by sex, and that some of those actually use sex as a requirement for placement within those labor roles (see, for an alternative example, the Navajo who traditionally allowed children of either sex to select the opposite role), not all cultures recognize only two sexes or genders (see, for example, India), and what labor is divided into what role varies massively between cultures (for example, hunting was considered a woman’s job in Ancient Crete).
“The larger body size of males predicts aggression and competition. This manifests as violence or “rough and tumble” play – behaviors that lie on a spectrum.” Elephants are very large animals, but not incredibly aggressive ones. Size difference is sexual dymorphism can play a number of different roles. There are also plenty of species with smaller females where females display competitive violence (such as, oh, fucking wolves and dogs).
“Primates exhibit the same tendencies” What same tendancies? Bonobos have virtually no intraspecies aggression and they are a primate. Some primates are almost exclusively lesbian and opperate with all female social groups distinct from male groups. Some primates have intraspecies, intra-group male aggression, but even in those species, kin group relationships factor in as well as size.
“*The diversity of mitochondrial DNA is greater than Y chromosome DNA. Fewer men through history have passed along their genes. Men compete; women choose. Some men take opportunistic route and use rape to pass along their genes. This behavior can be triggered i.e. in wartime or when the woman being attacked is poor or minority, but it is a consequence of genetic disposition being triggered by environment.” Your argument here is a non-sequiter. Really. There are innumerable reasons that egg cell carriers might reproduce more, including their far lower risk of premature birth and certain genetic disorders. Without modern medical techniques, even without much war egg cell carriers outnumber sperm cell carriers among individuals who survive to adulthood. Also, in polyandrous cultures (which do exist, even now) marriage with a woman and several brothers has been observed. So, the Y chromosomes could match up more through this methodology as well. In addition, this competition theory of yours fails to account for the fact that mitchondrial lines show far greater geographic spread as compared to their Y chromosonal line counterparts. Large groups of a singular Y descent are often cloistered in small geographic areas, whereas mitochondrial lines are not generally clustered.
“The John Money “experiment”: an infant had his penis screwed up and was made to live as a girl. Money, a sex researcher, was a blank slatist (gender feminist) and said it wouldn’t matter; the child would lead a normal and happy life as a girl. The child was not happy and despite being raised as a girl behaved similar to boys. Later in life the person found out what happened and “changed” back into a male. Damage was done, the man killed himself several years ago. You’ve probably heard of this case.” Money was no feminist. Money’s goal in this experiment was not to foment feminism, but to justify is IGM practices. Also, the child at issue here never had functioning or appearence conforming female genitals and was told at around eleven about the circumstances, and had very abusive parents and a family history of suicide (the twin brother raised as a boy also committed suicide, the father had committed suicide as had several other relatives). Not the best case study, fact wise. Of course, the anthropological studies of cultural cross gender raising of children (something that occurs in a number of cultures, including modern day Afganistan) and on intersexed children’s relation to birth assignments don’t give the clear cut answer you are putting forth here, but, hey, confirmation bias is fun for you, yes?
If anyone wants me to do another long comment to address the logical and philosophical fail of the consclusory paragraphs of G.L.’s comment, just say the word.
Please, darksidecat? I don’t like Pinker’s arguments, I like G.L. Piggy’s even less, and that was smart as hell.
Since Voip asked for it
“When you lay “society” – a system of laws and norms that seeks to eradicate violence and aggression in all of its forms – over that natural framework, males – moreso than females – will lie outside of said framework. ”
Society is not a system designed to eradicate violence and aggression. Some societies make that a central goal, many do not. That is why phrases like “militaristic society” and “slave based society” are perfectly cogent. Again, you use the phrase “natural” here in a normative sense, which is a logical failure (I’ll get back to that). However, let us say we have a society which does count amongst its goals eliminating violence. You would still need to prove that males are more likely to commit in-group violence (using in-group to include the larger societal group here, not sub-groups, even though that often is the case). Also, punishment systems do not put the people who violate rules outside of their framework, rather, they are designed specifically to deal with the problem incidents.
“I guess another way to say this more precisely is that males are usually playing catch-up to the increasingly rigid rules and laws of society whereas females usually fit better into the prevailing social norms and legal structure. ”
This is where the phrase “prove your premises” comes in really handy. Okay, I suppose you think you have proven a biological pre-disposition to violence as more common in males, even though you have not. But you aslo need to prove that social rules have become increasingly more rigid. Small societies with non-codified rules can be incredibly restrictive in practice. You confuse the trend towards statutory codes with an increase in rules, but this is not always the case. Common law rule systems can be very restrictive, and the vaguer definitions can actually be helpful in expanding what is eligible for punishments. Also, you pretend that the only social norms and legal structures are those which address violence. However, this is not the case. I cannot think of any example of a society where this was the case. Strict social and legal rules restricting women’s sexuality, dress, and reproduction (among other things) have historicallly been extremely common and are extant today in large degree. Also, you fail to take into account that laws and social norms are created by humans. Within modern western societies, the people who hold the most power in legal institutions are men. The law codes of these cultures were written by men with men as the intended subjects (there is, in fact, long case precident to establish the notion that codified laws which almost always say “a man” and “his” when defining victims and perpetrators also apply to women). It seems that even if women did tend to be able to follow these rules better, that is a side effect, not an intended goal, as these laws are almost always written by men with men in mind.
, “This does not excuse males from acting outside of the confines of polite society. We have laws for a reason; I think both Scott Adams and myself (and almost any other man) would agree that rape should be illegal (I expect hostility towards that statement, as in “No duh”, but keep in mind that rape has not always been illegal back through our human existence).”
Well, if it is a predisposition, it would not serve as a complete excuse. However, we tend to consider voluntaryness of an act as part of assigning responsibility. Is this predisposition you posit supposed to be one which can be followed or not followed voluntarily? Or is it more determinative than that? Even in the most favorable one for you claim, though, it being more difficult for person A to not do an act does in fact tend to make us decrease A’s perceived level of responsibility. Unless, of course, you think level of moral responsibility is not a factor in determining punishment, your statement here is contradictory to your views.
The “appeal to nature” is misplaced. An appeal to nature implies that someone is excusing behavior that would seem to be naturally gained.
No, it does not. The appeal to nature fallacy is where a person assumes that natural=good without explaining why or properly defining the parameters of the natural. The question of how much a non-voluntary action is blameworthy, or a voluntary action made more likely by a non-voluntary predisposition is blameworthy, is a distinct question. The fact is that we do consider non-voluntary biologically caused acts to be less blameworthy, at least in certain cases. For example, we do not consider it proper to charge an epileptic with assault if they give someone a black eye during a seizure. It is you who have failed to establish how non-voluntary you think this predisposition to violent acts is.
“But society – being unnatural itself – cannot address the question of whether natural instincts are moral or immoral.”
Now there is something that looks like an appeal to nature fallacy! How is society unnatural? What impulses are “natural” ones and what ones are not? Why couldn’t an “unnatural” institution judge what is and is not moral? Define your terms or your statement here is basically just gibberish.
We’re all living in a morally relativistic world (unless you believe in God, but there aren’t many on either side of this discussion who do).
The absence of a God does not demonstrate moral relativism (nor does positing a god solve any of the philosophical issues of establishing objective morality, see Euthypro’s Dilema). Most of the big moral realist philosophies do not posit a god (for example, utilitarianims, Kantian ethics, or the always popular in practice egoism). Even disproving objective morality’s existence does not get you right to moral relativism. Because, moral anti-realism is still an option and one which makes far more sense that moral relativism (moral relativist theories, when people attempt to define them, generally turn into objective standards in a twisty way).
When humans engage with society they must make adjustments to their behavior.
Must they? And is society the sort of thing one engages with in a non-metaphorical sense? Humans are a social species, that much is clear. It is not apparant how a human could exist extrinsic of social groups’ influences, because even if the human left the social groups early, they still would have influence from their upbringing. How humans behave extrinsic of human social groups is probably a near nonsensical question, or the answer is to look at other social species behavior when completely isolated from birth (warning, that one is not pretty). It might be better to try and conceptualize behavoiral variations in individuals in response to a variety of social stimuli.
I think Adams’ entire position is that when these adjustments are suggested or codified, it will obviously be the males that have the most difficulty meeting these demands.
Maybe that is Adam’s position, but it is a silly one. See the problem outlined above in regards to social adjustments. Still, again, we could easily conceptualize a society that codifies many restrictions on female behavior but fewer on male behavior. You might argue that a society which did this would be more violent than one which did the reverse, but that is irrelevant to the fact that there is no real reason it seem impossible to do.
And sometimes there is a buffer zone wherein males are viewed a little more skeptically by society – as if they are being watched and monitored for fear that they will actually act in an antisocial behavior.
The sometimes qualifier saves you here. I think there are some societies that have norms that might look a bit like this, so I will give you this one. But, still, you have to prove that this is the best way or the only way in order for it to relate to any larger point. After all, there are societies that view people with darker skin tones with suspicion, but that is unwarranted and silly. Societal suspicions agaisnt a group do not prove the suspicions true, or that the suspicions would be true extrinsic a culture with said suspicions (I am getting at stereotype threat issues there in the end bit, if that seemed confusing).
This is a very interesting way to look at social structure – IMO.
If by “interesting” you mean “full of unsubstantiated bullshit, logical fallacies, and self contradictions”, then yes.
Thank you!