Human biology is not that quick to change. It demonstrates a large amount of hubris to even think it should be. Women marry up and across dominance hierarchies. Artificially boosting the career success of women just causes misery on the long run for men and for society.
I thought that the girl in your story was very smart, and even if people had treated her like a pretty doll for her entire life she would still be the same. Intelligent, critical and capable.
No, but a lot of things with regards to our current expected behaviour of genders is in fact social, not biological. A lot of 18th century male behaviour would today be regarded as effeminate. Red was once the color of choice for baby boys, and blue for girls.
>Artificially boosting the career success of women just causes misery on the long run for men
Hang on, did anyone propose affirmative action here or something? All the blog talked about was trying to praise girls for their smarts rather than their looks. If this is enough to cause misery for you, I think you have self-esteem issues. (Edit: Oops, that was needlessly confrontational and personal. Apologies for last sentence.)
>I thought that the girl in your story was very smart, and even if people had treated her like a pretty doll for her entire life she would still be the same. Intelligent, critical and capable.
Perhaps, but as mentioned in the article, some girls as young as 5 think they are "too fat" and try to go on a diet. It is clearly an issue for some.
Hang on, did anyone propose affirmative action here or something? All the blog talked about was trying to praise girls for their smarts rather than their looks. If this is enough to cause misery for you, I think you have self-esteem issues.
Sorry the blog talked silently about a lot of things, which squarely put the blame on people for a lot of mistakes which girls make personally.
I appreciate my nephew all the time when he wins a running race or plays cricket well. But that is never taken as something that can be used to be bad at academics nor does not speaking about he being good at studies permanently deter him from being good at studies.
If girls aren't good looking, how does that stop them from picking up a book and studying hard for an entrance exam. Or burning the midnight oil meeting a tough deadline? None of that has anything to do with beauty. That's something which has to come from within. Willingness to work hard and go to tough times is what brings success and that is irrespective of gender.
Somehow I find it difficult to accept that argument that saying somebody that they look good suddenly becomes the reason to be never good at anything else ever after.
It's not about the attribute itself, but affirmation along that attribute.
It's the same conundrum facing parents of gifted kids, praising innate ability vs. hard work backfires in a spectacular way sooner or later and the child stops taking risks because they are afraid of being dumb.
>Hang on, did anyone propose affirmative action here or something? All the blog talked about was trying to praise girls for their smarts rather than their looks. If this is enough to cause misery for you, I think you have self-esteem issues.
As the pool of eligible husbands diminishes, the pool of men who simply can't get a wife grows and the disparity between the lucky and unlucky men increases. I'm sure you can see how this can generate social friction inside a nation?
I'm not making a moral statement either way here, just observing some forces that I believe do affect our lives.
Wait, are you saying that we need to encourage women to be less capable because the career market is zero sum, and men need careers more than women?
I'm very open to the idea that I misunderstood your statement, but if I have characterized it correctly, then the flaw in it is that careers are not zero sum, and having additional capable, productive people in a society creates more wealth for the society as a whole than would otherwise have existed. This creates more opportunities for men as well as women.
I certainly believe that marriages can be more harmonious when the men is in a economically leading role. Do I believe that women should suppressed in order to achieve this? No. Do I believe that if a woman wants a successful marriage, pursuing a high-status career can be harmful to this? Yes.
So in a gay or lesbian marriage, which partner should voluntarily subordinate themselves to the other?
Which I guess is my way of saying that any particular marriage happens between two individuals with their own strengths, weakenesses, and interests, not between two archtypes or statistical distributions. A successful marriage is only possible between two happy partners, and if a person will be unhappy without pursuing their other life goals along with their marriage, giving those life goals up for the sake of the marriage is still a losing strategy.
Personally, I think overgeneralization from the statistical majority is one of the signal problems of trying to talk about gender rules and guidelines -- though, admittedly, the opposite problem is nearly as common, which is refusing to acknowledge that there are such things as common tendencies and statistical majorities.
This implies that biology is why in most cultures men have higher status potential than women. Not only does this ignore lots of horribly obvious things, but in turn implies an understanding of how physiology affects behavior. Besides current science barely having a rough idea of some hormones' areas of effect (eg low testosterone levels having some positive or negative effect on aggression), we can't begin to aggregate how the average minute physical differences between men and women would affect something as high level as behavior. We're still learning the physical effects. Trying to reason beyond that is irrelevant at best. Meanwhile, centuries of oppression and concrete, prescribed gender roles seem alot more insightful.
Thanks for pointing this out. Everyone jumps at evolution whenever a discussion comes up about gender differences. There is probably an evolutionary component in there, but they way everyone declares "this is because in old times, men hunted lions while the women watched the children" to every gender stereotype is just ridiculous.
When related to dating, I like to call this "The Mystery Method Theory of Sexual Evolution", because most of the pervasive explanations about why the sexual market works the way it does is copied straight from Neil Strauss' book "The Game". A lot of these ideas are taken to be truth even though there is absolutely no scientific research behind them.
Well read Jared Diamonds "The Third Chimpanzee" or "Why Is Sex Fun" for some actual research on gender differences.
That we don't know how Hormones affect us is pretty irrelevant in that context. There are other forces at play, hormones are just mechanisms for changing behaviors, not the force that shapes behaviors.
It is also true, to some extent, what Steven Pinker says: "if I don't like what my genes want from me, they can go jump in the lake". But individuals acting against evolution does not change the big, global trend. In the long run those people die out - they might still have good lives, but not every lifestyle is sustainable at (web) scale.
"in turn implies an understanding of how physiology affects behavior"
Sorry, but I think in some cases we can infer how physiology affects behavior. For example if you are big and strong, you can act differently than if you are weak and small. You don't need to get down to hormone level to see such things.
>It demonstrates a large amount of hubris to even think it should be.
So what? It's this same hubris which bucks against the biological directive to impregnate every fertile female that enters your field of vision. Since when do humans settle for the biological imperative?
No, the force that bucks against the biological directive to impregnate every fertile female that enters your field of vision is the very real threat of violence and social ostracization. Plus, unless you're a total sociopath: empathy. Unlike some people would have you believe, being a man does not equal being a rapist.
Yes, a set of societal constructs so deeply embedded in the water supply that we take them for granted, similar to the topic at hand. There are places in the world where the crime of being raped is punishable by death. The culture we create does matter.
I thought that the girl in your story was very smart, and even if people had treated her like a pretty doll for her entire life she would still be the same. Intelligent, critical and capable.