A decent and more than plausible summation of physical and psychological differences between the two human sexes. Or in other words, more than enough to get you deplatformed at an American university or terminated from a large corporation.
Looks interesting on a quick skim. Particularly appreciate the reference to Geary's "Male, Female: The Evolution of Human Sex Differences" which I'll definitely have to look into buying or borrowing:
As you and many others have argued, those differences generally go much further than just the physical into the psychological. As Helen Dale once put it, evolution didn't stop at our necks:
But, speaking of Geary and ICYMI, he had been a presenter at the "Santa Fe Boys Conference" on "Sex & Gender" -- a recent 3 day event on sex/gender differences which I had followed and kibitzed on from the sidelines. They recently published the YouTube recordings they'd made which included one by Geary on "Evolution, Nurture, and Variation in the Magnitude of Human Sex Differences" that you might be particularly interested in:
Though I was rather disappointed in the whole conference as it had been touted as a "meeting of the minds" to thrash out some common definitions -- precious little of that; pretty much everyone fixated on their own definitions with little willingness to progress beyond them. About the closest the Conference came to that was the closing "Roundtable 2 Discussion" with "Daphna Joel, Maryanne Fisher, Joyce Endendijk, David Geary, Gina Rippon, David Schmitt, William Costello, Carole Hooven":
Though I seem to recollect that Geary drew some welcome attention to that problem during that discussion.
But, in a note from our sponsor, I'd still suggest deprecating the "clinical definitions". 🙂 While there may be some value in "clearly [categorizing] almost all individuals regardless of fertility", the intent of the biological definitions isn't to give everyone a participation trophy which is largely what those clinical definitions, or their rather "obstinate" defenses (particularly by others), boil down into. For example, see Zach Elliott who's had some posts on evolutionary "biologist" Colin Wright's Substack:
ZE: "Discrimination is not eliminated, and true acceptance is not shown, by embracing the scientifically incorrect and morally problematic claims that people who differ from the norm are both or neither sexes."
Thanks! Yes, I really enjoyed the book especially as someone who didn't have much previous knowledge. I think the statement that "evolution didn't stop at our necks" is the most obvious way to explain why we should expect to see psychological/cognitive/behavioral differences in addition to physical differences. I'll check out the youtube link you posted, thanks!
👍🙂 But while I'm sympathetic to or supportive of that idea or theory of "sexually dimorphic personalities & behaviours" due to differences in evolutionary paths, I really haven't seen a lot of tangible biological evidence of the reasons for those differences. Quite a bit of evidence that some 6000 genes are expressed differently in men an women, but evidence of exactly how those genetic differences lead to the psychological ones seems rather thin on the ground.
Quite a bit of evidence for statistical differences, but, as you no doubt know, correlation is not causation. ICYMI, quite a decent article here on those statistical differences -- the joint probability distribution graph being particularly noteworthy:
However, there's some reason to think that the large differences in averages are more apparent than real, though my statistics isn't good enough to really say for sure. But you seem to have a pretty decent handle on the topic so might be more successful in separating wheat and chaff 🙂.
But, in other news, you might have some interest in a public post by Geary over at Reality's Last Stand:
Dec 15, 2023·edited Dec 15, 2023Liked by Regan Arntz-Gray
I really liked this one. A very concise explanation of lots of underlying research.
I would guess that socialization _generally_ moderates our natural instincts - for example, people are notorious for doing rather unsavory behavior in private that they would never show another in public. Socialization moderates what we would otherwise "naturally" do because it selects for pro-social behavior, and many natural instincts are anti-social (vengeance, poor hygiene, selfishness, malice, etc.).
This made me think: what "natural" instincts, or behaviors at all, does socialization _amplify_?
I would guess:
- Working more than we want to (I imagine in our natural state, we lounge around quite a bit)
- Related to that, having foresight (i.e. planning for the future)
- Related to that, anything about conscious thought, rationality and intellectualization
So perhaps, socialization makes us "think more" (like a human) and "feel less" (like a natural animal would do).
Jokes on them because I’m already unemployed!
A decent and more than plausible summation of physical and psychological differences between the two human sexes. Or in other words, more than enough to get you deplatformed at an American university or terminated from a large corporation.
Looks interesting on a quick skim. Particularly appreciate the reference to Geary's "Male, Female: The Evolution of Human Sex Differences" which I'll definitely have to look into buying or borrowing:
https://www.amazon.ca/Male-Female-Evolution-Human-Differences/dp/143383264X
As you and many others have argued, those differences generally go much further than just the physical into the psychological. As Helen Dale once put it, evolution didn't stop at our necks:
https://lawliberty.org/book-review/feminising-feminism/
But, speaking of Geary and ICYMI, he had been a presenter at the "Santa Fe Boys Conference" on "Sex & Gender" -- a recent 3 day event on sex/gender differences which I had followed and kibitzed on from the sidelines. They recently published the YouTube recordings they'd made which included one by Geary on "Evolution, Nurture, and Variation in the Magnitude of Human Sex Differences" that you might be particularly interested in:
https://santafeboys.org/recordings-of-the-big-conversation/
Though I was rather disappointed in the whole conference as it had been touted as a "meeting of the minds" to thrash out some common definitions -- precious little of that; pretty much everyone fixated on their own definitions with little willingness to progress beyond them. About the closest the Conference came to that was the closing "Roundtable 2 Discussion" with "Daphna Joel, Maryanne Fisher, Joyce Endendijk, David Geary, Gina Rippon, David Schmitt, William Costello, Carole Hooven":
https://youtu.be/sRW_II_-iFY
Though I seem to recollect that Geary drew some welcome attention to that problem during that discussion.
But, in a note from our sponsor, I'd still suggest deprecating the "clinical definitions". 🙂 While there may be some value in "clearly [categorizing] almost all individuals regardless of fertility", the intent of the biological definitions isn't to give everyone a participation trophy which is largely what those clinical definitions, or their rather "obstinate" defenses (particularly by others), boil down into. For example, see Zach Elliott who's had some posts on evolutionary "biologist" Colin Wright's Substack:
ZE: "Discrimination is not eliminated, and true acceptance is not shown, by embracing the scientifically incorrect and morally problematic claims that people who differ from the norm are both or neither sexes."
https://twitter.com/zaelefty/status/1592711689438662656
All they do is lead to the general corruption of biology which is really not to anyone's benefit.
Thanks! Yes, I really enjoyed the book especially as someone who didn't have much previous knowledge. I think the statement that "evolution didn't stop at our necks" is the most obvious way to explain why we should expect to see psychological/cognitive/behavioral differences in addition to physical differences. I'll check out the youtube link you posted, thanks!
👍🙂 But while I'm sympathetic to or supportive of that idea or theory of "sexually dimorphic personalities & behaviours" due to differences in evolutionary paths, I really haven't seen a lot of tangible biological evidence of the reasons for those differences. Quite a bit of evidence that some 6000 genes are expressed differently in men an women, but evidence of exactly how those genetic differences lead to the psychological ones seems rather thin on the ground.
Quite a bit of evidence for statistical differences, but, as you no doubt know, correlation is not causation. ICYMI, quite a decent article here on those statistical differences -- the joint probability distribution graph being particularly noteworthy:
https://4thwavenow.com/2019/08/19/no-child-is-born-in-the-wrong-body-and-other-thoughts-on-the-concept-of-gender-identity/
However, there's some reason to think that the large differences in averages are more apparent than real, though my statistics isn't good enough to really say for sure. But you seem to have a pretty decent handle on the topic so might be more successful in separating wheat and chaff 🙂.
But, in other news, you might have some interest in a public post by Geary over at Reality's Last Stand:
https://www.realityslaststand.com/p/california-institutes-another-candyland
I'd weigh-in there myself but I've been banned there for some "testy" defenses of the strict biological definitions for the sexes ... 😉🙂
I really liked this one. A very concise explanation of lots of underlying research.
I would guess that socialization _generally_ moderates our natural instincts - for example, people are notorious for doing rather unsavory behavior in private that they would never show another in public. Socialization moderates what we would otherwise "naturally" do because it selects for pro-social behavior, and many natural instincts are anti-social (vengeance, poor hygiene, selfishness, malice, etc.).
This made me think: what "natural" instincts, or behaviors at all, does socialization _amplify_?
I would guess:
- Working more than we want to (I imagine in our natural state, we lounge around quite a bit)
- Related to that, having foresight (i.e. planning for the future)
- Related to that, anything about conscious thought, rationality and intellectualization
So perhaps, socialization makes us "think more" (like a human) and "feel less" (like a natural animal would do).
Thank you :) I totally agree with your analysis!
The too-seldom asked question: is not socialization also "natural"? If not, what is it? Where did it come from?