|
|
|
Boron10
Religion Moderator
USA
1266 Posts |
 Posted - 08/02/2001 : 17:49:38 [Permalink]
|
Hey, Trish!
Can I take you out to dinner, then?  
I am afraid I'm not clever enough to come up with a good signature, eh? |
 |
|
|
Snake
SFN Addict
USA
2511 Posts |
Posted - 08/03/2001 : 02:18:18 [Permalink]
|
quote:
quote:
quote:
Snake has said in another thread, that women have always had the same options as men. Had options, yes, but choosing to be a nurse would be socially acceptable, whereas choosing to be, say, a mechanic, would not be as acceptable. This does not just affect your working life, it can affect your relationships with everyone around you. Not everyone is going to put their career over the rest of their lives
Joan de Arc, Madam Currie, Golda Meir, and many others who were leaders in their fields (no pun on Joan, ha ha). Is it their fault or society's that other women didn't choose to follow?
Society's fault, clearly. The alleged choice simply was not there for the vast majority of women.
Your precious few (glaring) counterexamples does no damage whatsoever to the claim that back then women generally encountered very strong societal resistance in the certain professions, such as those of arms, medicine, and law. The claim at hand here is clearly probabilistic, not deterministic. It is not “Society absolutely forbade women working in certain career fields,” rather, ‘tis “Society strongly discouraged women working in certain career fields.” If women were statistically highly underrepresented in such fields, this is prima facie evidence in support of the latter claim.
quote:
If those women could do it why not others?
Those particular women were exceptionally driven individuals, who broke through societal barriers with phenomenal effort. No one should have to do this to work in any field; rather, people should be allowed to fulfill their full potential as they choose.
p.s. I've noticed an odd pattern in various forums here to cite a few counterexamples in order to destroy a deductive straw man caricature of an inductive argument and associated conclusion. This is not skepticism, but mere fallacy.
I don't know what you mean by straw man but everything else you said I think is still just an excuse for women not to have tried to do what they want.
One thing that hasn't been mentioned is, in modern times conception control is really a major factor so they can do more. In the past it was women who had to take care of babies. That's just the way it works.
VHEMT |
|
|
|
Wendy
SFN Regular
USA
614 Posts |
Posted - 08/03/2001 : 07:01:32 [Permalink]
|
The fact that divorce is now the rule rather than the exception has changed the dating game a lot. (We are still talking about dating, right?) I have a male friend who got divorced shortly after I did. We've known each other a long time, and we have no romantic relationship, so we're pretty candid. He was complaining about the death of his social life, and I suggested a personal ad. I know (because he's told me) that he's really just looking for some company between the sheets. His ad plainly says he wants a long-term relationship. When I called him up laughing he told me to read my own. He pointed out that it reads as though I'm looking for a stud, when he knows I really want a monogamous relationship.
My point (and I do have one) is that it's no wonder daters are skeptical. It's a game wherein we each tell the other what we think we want to hear. It's more like trapping than hunting. Playing the game is deeply ingrained in our nature. Hell, I didn't even realize I was doing it.
Wendy Jones |
|
|
|
Orpheus
Skeptic Friend
92 Posts |
Posted - 08/03/2001 : 09:53:29 [Permalink]
|
quote:
Playing the game is deeply ingrained in our nature. Hell, I didn't even realize I was doing it.
Yep, you've got it right there methinks. We are so often entrenched in the safe games we construct for ourselves to make life (ostensibly) more predictable, that we forget that we created them in the first place!! I have actively been trying to subvert some of these games, but it is often not easy... take these examples for instance:
1. try being COMPLETELY honest. Instead of beating round the bush, tell somebody why you are REALLY buying them a drink.. unfortunately, honesty is not often rewarded.
2. treat people as people, and not as the roles they occupy. I've often had amazing interactions with waiters, service workers and other "invisibles", because I realised that they are just people too.
3. Subvert "dating scripts". Don't pay for the date if you're a man, pay for it if you're not, don't go to movies and dinner, go to the planetarium, or art museum, etc.
In response to tergiversant, I think you are perhaps arguing teleologically, which is a common error when evolutionary theory is used to describe behaviour. Although it makes sense after the fact that men should be more promiscious than women, it does not necessarily explain how this was adaptive to early humans. We can speculate, but such speculations are hardly solif evidence for what you claim. In fact, the immense placticity of the human brain makes distinguishing between nature-nurture interactions very difficult if not impossible. You seem to ignore possible social-structural and political reasons for gender discrepancies, another potential danger of making specific claims based on general evolutionary principles.
Also, I do not suggest that counterexamples falsify your claims as much as I claim that knowing something about how people GENERALLY behave is no indication of how a specific individual behaves, nor what the possible reasons for that behaviour might be.
Scientific breakthroughs often occur as a result of finding explanations for the exceptions to the rule. Perhaps we should be looking at counter-stereotypical examples of gendered behaviour if we are to make progress in this field...
Find your own damned answers! |
|
|
|
tergiversant
Skeptic Friend
USA
284 Posts |
Posted - 08/03/2001 : 10:15:53 [Permalink]
|
quote:
quote:
quote:
quote:
Snake has said in another thread, that women have always had the same options as men. Had options, yes, but choosing to be a nurse would be socially acceptable, whereas choosing to be, say, a mechanic, would not be as acceptable. This does not just affect your working life, it can affect your relationships with everyone around you. Not everyone is going to put their career over the rest of their lives
Joan de Arc, Madam Currie, Golda Meir, and many others who were leaders in their fields (no pun on Joan, ha ha). Is it their fault or society's that other women didn't choose to follow?
Society's fault, clearly. The alleged choice simply was not there for the vast majority of women.
Your precious few (glaring) counterexamples does no damage whatsoever to the claim that back then women generally encountered very strong societal resistance in the certain professions, such as those of arms, medicine, and law. The claim at hand here is clearly probabilistic, not deterministic. It is not “Society absolutely forbade women working in certain career fields,” rather, ‘tis “Society strongly discouraged women working in certain career fields.” If women were statistically highly underrepresented in such fields, this is prima facie evidence in support of the latter claim.
quote:
If those women could do it why not others?
Those particular women were exceptionally driven individuals, who broke through societal barriers with phenomenal effort. No one should have to do this to work in any field; rather, people should be allowed to fulfill their full potential as they choose.
p.s. I've noticed an odd pattern in various forums here to cite a few counterexamples in order to destroy a deductive straw man caricature of an inductive argument and associated conclusion. This is not skepticism, but mere fallacy.
I don't know what you mean by straw man but everything else you said I think is still just an excuse for women not to have tried to do what they want.
I cannot believe you are blaming the victims as if they were too lazy to try to have careers. What on Earth makes you think this was the case? Women often tried and failed because they were socially repressed, or more often did not try because they feared the inevitable backlash.
"Nihil curo de ista tua stulta superstitione."
|
|
|
|
tergiversant
Skeptic Friend
USA
284 Posts |
Posted - 08/03/2001 : 11:47:19 [Permalink]
|
quote:
In response to tergiversant, I think you are perhaps arguing teleologically, which is a common error when evolutionary theory is used to describe behaviour.
Evolution is indeed teleological insomuch as adaptations are selected which best increase individual reproductive fitness. Effective reproduction is thus (in a somewhat metaphorical sense) the “goal” at which natural selection aims, but it is clearly not consciously purposive.
quote:
Although it makes sense after the fact that men should be more promiscuous than women, it does not necessarily explain how this was adaptive to early humans.
It makes sense a priori that men should be more promiscuous than women. The reasoning here is that whichever gender has lower investment in offspring in terms of effort and resources will benefit more from frequent reproduction. This follows from the basic principles of natural selection (finite resources and reproductive competition) prior to empirical investigation.
quote:
We can speculate, but such speculations are hardly solid evidence for what you claim.
The above theoretical prediction of greater promiscuity under circumstances of lower parental investment has been empirically validated in all manner of organisms, from man to mollusks. That is the solid evidence you seek, and it may be found in nearly any book covering sexual selection in depth. Call it speculation if you wish, but there is an entire body of literature covering this subject matter.
Some relevant web resources:
http://courses.wcupa.edu/renner/psy335/mating/
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/promiscuity.html
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/Archive/bbs.gangestad.html
Some relevant books include:
Male, Female - The Evolution of Human Sex Differences by David C. Geary
Sexual selection and the Descent of Man 1871-1971 Campbell, Bernard (ed.)
"Nihil curo de ista tua stulta superstitione."
|
|
|
|
tergiversant
Skeptic Friend
USA
284 Posts |
Posted - 08/03/2001 : 11:49:36 [Permalink]
|
quote:
“In most mammalian species, males provide little if any direct investment in offspring (Clutton-Brock, 1989). As a result, the reproductive effort of males tends to be largely focused on mating effort and the associated male-male competition and the reproductive effort of females tends to be largely focused on parental effort and the associated female choice (e.g., to get the best genes for their offspring).” David C. Geary in Male, Female - The Evolution of Human Sex Differences
This book covers the basics and is relatively accessible.
quote:
“The relative parental investment of the sexes in their young is the key variable controlling the operation of sexual selection. Where one sex invests considerably more than the other, members of the latter will compete among themselves to mate with members of the former. Where investment is equal, sexual selection should operate similarly on the two sexes. The pattern of relative parental investment in species today seems strongly influenced by the early evolutionary differentiation into mobile sex cells fertilizing immobile ones, and sexual selection acts to mold the pattern of relative parental investment. The time sequence of parental investment analyzed by sex is an important parameter affecting species in which both sexes invest considerable parental care: the individual initially investing more (usually the female) is vulnerable to desertion. On the other hand, in species with internal fertilization and strong male parental investment, the male is always vulnerable to cuckoldry. Each vulnerability has led to the evolution of adaptations to decrease the vulnerability and to counter-adaptations... In species with little or no male parental investment, selection usually favors male adaptations that lead to high reproductive success in one or more breeding seasons at the cost of increased mortality. ...The relative parental investment of the sexes affects the criteria of female choice (and of male choice). Throughout, I emphasize the criteria that sexual selection favors different male and female reproductive strategies and that even when ostensibly cooperating in a joint task male and female interests are rarely identical.” Parental investment and sexual selection (1972) Robert L. Trivers in Sexual selection and the Descent of Man p. 173 (emphasis mine)
Literally and figuratively, Trivers wrote the book on sexual selection and parental investment, and therein successfully explained promiscuous behavior in both genders in terms of reproductive success. I'd definitely it for further study.
"Nihil curo de ista tua stulta superstitione."
|
|
|
|
tergiversant
Skeptic Friend
USA
284 Posts |
Posted - 08/03/2001 : 12:03:13 [Permalink]
|
quote:
In fact, the immense plasticity of the human brain makes distinguishing between nature-nurture interactions very difficult if not impossible.
The field of statistics offers us very powerful tools for weeding the one from the other when we deal with valid tests and large sample sizes.
quote:
You seem to ignore possible social-structural and political reasons for gender discrepancies, another potential danger of making specific claims based on general evolutionary principles.
Certainly culture greatly affects our behavioral patterns, but female choosiness and male-male competition is exhibited in most every human culture, and in most primates at that. It seems that biological makeup is the ultimate cause driving the proximate cause of culture in this particular case.
quote:
Also, I do not suggest that counterexamples falsify your claims as much as I claim that knowing something about how people GENERALLY behave is no indication of how a specific individual behaves, nor what the possible reasons for that behaviour might be.
Orpheus' original question was, in effect, "Generally, why do males pursue females rather than vice-versa." He allowed for the possibility of counterexamples, but wondered why there weren't more of them.
quote:
Scientific breakthroughs often occur as a result of finding explanations for the exceptions to the rule.
Of which particular breakthroughs do you speak? I was under the impression that most of the leaps forward in science involved characterizing a vast body of observational trends by virtue of a reductive theory (e.g. gravity, Newton's laws, relativity, evolution).
"Nihil curo de ista tua stulta superstitione."
|
|
|
|
@tomic
Administrator
USA
4607 Posts |
Posted - 08/03/2001 : 12:09:09 [Permalink]
|
quote:
The above theoretical prediction of greater promiscuity under circumstances of lower parental investment has been empirically validated in all manner of organisms, from man to mollusks.
I don't have any references at the moment but I have read of studies that have are in line with this myself. One I recall was a study done of the sexual habits of lesbians and gay men. The lesbians would have very few partners over a fairly long period of time(years) and the gay men would have dozens of partners in this same period. Again, I wish i could provide a link to this but I don't have it right now, sorry.
 @tomic
Gravity, not just a good idea...it's the law! |
|
|
|
tergiversant
Skeptic Friend
USA
284 Posts |
Posted - 08/03/2001 : 12:10:56 [Permalink]
|
quote:
He was complaining about the death of his social life, and I suggested a personal ad. I know (because he's told me) that he's really just looking for some company between the sheets. His ad plainly says he wants a long-term relationship. When I called him up laughing he told me to read my own. He pointed out that it reads as though I'm looking for a stud, when he knows I really want a monogamous relationship.
My point (and I do have one) is that it's no wonder daters are skeptical. It's a game wherein we each tell the other what we think we want to hear. It's more like trapping than hunting. Playing the game is deeply ingrained in our nature. Hell, I didn't even realize I was doing it.
What a perfect example of female choosiness and male promiscuity in action!
"Nihil curo de ista tua stulta superstitione."
|
|
|
|
tergiversant
Skeptic Friend
USA
284 Posts |
Posted - 08/03/2001 : 12:17:49 [Permalink]
|
quote:
I don't have any references at the moment but I have read of studies that have are in line with this myself. One I recall was a study done of the sexual habits of lesbians and gay men.
Yeah I was hesistant to bring those up because of the problem of generaling "normal" behavior from sexually "deviant" groups, to use the psychological parlance.
I agree that such studies are probably revealing, but if I had to make an emipirical case from sociological sampling, I'd rather focus on the sampling distribution of lifetime sexual partners of men and women of various human cultures.
"Nihil curo de ista tua stulta superstitione."
|
|
|
|
@tomic
Administrator
USA
4607 Posts |
Posted - 08/03/2001 : 12:24:24 [Permalink]
|
What is most telling about the gay/lesbian study in my opinion was that the women were no more promiscuous even without the threat of pregnancy.
@tomic
Gravity, not just a good idea...it's the law! |
|
|
|
Snake
SFN Addict
USA
2511 Posts |
Posted - 08/03/2001 : 18:10:54 [Permalink]
|
quote:
I know (because he's told me) that he's really just looking for some company between the sheets. His ad plainly says he wants a long-term relationship. When I called him up laughing he told me to read my own. He pointed out that it reads as though I'm looking for a stud, when he knows I really want a monogamous relationship.
Want to give him my #?
quote:
My point (and I do have one) is that it's no wonder daters are skeptical. It's a game wherein we each tell the other what we think we want to hear. It's more like trapping than hunting. Playing the game is deeply ingrained in our nature. Hell, I didn't even realize I was doing it.
Wendy Jones
Liars all of YOU! Damn IT! It's people like you who mess the others of us up. When I was answering personsls, I told the guys up front I was with someone who I wasn't going to leave and I was not looking for a long term relationship. Met some nice people too. As far as I remember there was only one guy who I met in person who kind of didn't tell the truth. He said he was 6' and he was more like 5'10'', didn't see him after that but not because of the height.
VHEMT |
|
|
|
Snake
SFN Addict
USA
2511 Posts |
Posted - 08/03/2001 : 18:22:29 [Permalink]
|
quote:
2. treat people as people, and not as the roles they occupy. I've often had amazing interactions with waiters, service workers and other "invisibles", because I realised that they are just people too.
Are you a snob or what? Sheesh!
And you seemed nice too. Hum!
quote:
3. Subvert "dating scripts". Don't pay for the date if you're a man, pay for it if you're not, don't go to movies and dinner, go to the planetarium, or art museum, etc.
That's a weird thing to say. You mean you never thought of going to a museum, etc.? I can't believe that. On top of being a snob you are not creative, LOL.
VHEMT |
|
|
|
Snake
SFN Addict
USA
2511 Posts |
Posted - 08/03/2001 : 18:38:00 [Permalink]
|
quote:
I cannot believe you are blaming the victims as if they were too lazy to try to have careers. What on Earth makes you think this was the case? Women often tried and failed because they were socially repressed, or more often did not try because they feared the inevitable backlash.
1st of all, what the hell is a strawman, you didn't explain?
And yes, if you want to put it that way, I'm blaming the SO CALLED victom. People can claim to be whatever they want if it suits them.
Why only talk about women, men have not had it so easy either. Why does there have to be such a great divide? Sounds like a lot of people are 'jumping on the band wagon' because it's popular.
VHEMT |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
Topic Locked
