Read the article, found it a bit pedantic, sorry. To me having XX, XY genes defines the issue with rare errors of XXX, etc. To the mix we have the Cleveland Clinic weighing in with the modern https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/16324-intersex.
There are only two types of gametes (small and motile, large and sessile). Hence, biological male and female. Now, humans being complex organisms, and biology being full of fuzzy boundary entities (e.g. species) there are some complexities. Particularly, once we get into secondary sexual characteristics. However, while the latter may be more visible among clothed individuals, they are also not defining of being male or female.
Intersex does not generate or represent a gamete spectrum. Overwhelmingly, it is about secondary characteristics, generating a spectrum within the sexes but not between them. The notion of inter-sex actually relies on the categories of biological male and female, including secondary characteristics, because it is with reference to what is typically male and female that we note the particular atypicality they may have. Which do not form a spectrum, but come in many, many different (and rare) varieties.
Some folk have genitals that are not reproductively functional, even though they are otherwise structured to produce either small and motile, or large and sessile, gametes. That does not make them not male or female, any more than a boy who has not yet produced sperm, or a girl who has not yet menstruated, is not male or female.
I agree that a menopausal woman and a girl who never menstruated are still female, but gender isn't *merely* biological sex, and even if it were, there are many people who will never produce gametes of any sort, or even have both testes and ovaries.
Fascinating work. I wonder if feminised males and masculinised females (sissies and tomboys) have a functional role in acting as intermediaries between the teams and cliques that make up the two dominant factions in human societies. They seem to be produced at fairly consistent rates and many traditional cultures find specialised roles for them.
The Gay Uncle/Maiden Aunt "extra care" hypothesis has some evidence to support it, and even some relevant legal history. The pagan Roman law of adoption was designed to facilitate "extra care" behaviour; it is notable that one of the first sets of laws the Christian Emperors repealed post AD 313 were those around adoption. The Christians went after adoption before they went after abortion.
"The Christians went after adoption before they went after abortion." - That needs a bit more explanation. In most societies, wouldn't children have great value? I suppose if there are resource constrains it might be OK to kill babies but that would be at the tribe level not the individual or am I confused?
Yes, this is one of those instances where pagan Romans (not known for their kindness) were right, and Christians simply wrong. It doesn't always flow that way: part of the reason so many women (especially non-citizens and slaves) were attracted to Christianity was because elite Roman male sexuality was horrendously predatory.
Roman citizen women were largely protected by a legal system that accorded them unusually high status, but other women weren't - at all.
So the Roman notion ensured survival of children while the Christian adaptation of that was benign neglect - people paid to take care of children were not always kindly types. OTOH every society found a role for unmarried Uncles/Aunts to fill who had to be better if related by family.
Christians institutionalised unwanted children (ie, developed the concept of orphanages). While pagan Romans made use of infanticide, their civilisational preference was for a sibling (whence the importance of Gay Uncles/Maiden Aunts) or other relatives to raise unwanted children.
Adoption was hugely important and honourable in Roman society; people were paid money to do it, there was an entire dynasty of "Adoptive Emperors", and legislation was enacted encouraging it dating from the Middle Republic onwards.
Just as the Christians had mistresses (whose children had no claim on paternal property) instead of concubines (whose children did have such a claim), they had wards (who had no claim on paternal property) rather than permitting adoption (who did have such a claim). Some of this was about dissolving kin groups, by blocking their ability to transfer property and incorporating newcomers. Some of it was also about protecting the claims of the children of wives, which elevated marriage and married women. Some of it may have been about maximising the number of legally childless folk, likely to leave their property to … the Church.
The estate claim in Roman concubinage was by the concubine, not her children. Always remember, in Roman law, adults are more important than children.
Because Roman law encouraged complete testamentary freedom (same as the later common law), a concubine's children could take under a will, but only if the testator had drafted his will to name them as beneficiaries.
The claim a concubine had was to maintenance in a separate household, and for any children to be raised to the same standard as the wife's children. If the wife's kids were sent to the Academy in Athens, then the concubine's kids were sent there as well (if they were smart enough to get in; you had to do a viva before a panel for admission).
Very often a concubine's children didn't inherent, and had they made a testator's family maintenance claim, they'd have been laughed out of court. The idea was that they got a good start, but after that, it was up to them.
Excellent as always, some interesting new facts and theories in it for me. I hadn't seen it portrayed as risk transfer so much as generalized protection previously, there's a distinction worth making there.
Very few would argue that the foundation of an effective military is highly functioning teams and systems nested within a prestige hierarchy. The ignoramuses in charge simply deny biological reality. To them, the feminisation of the military won't necessarily result in teams being supplanted by cliques and a shift in focus from prestige to propriety. From my limited perspective it has already happened to a significant extent. I just hope we don't have to learn the hard way how effective this transition will be in large scale combat operations.
So far the USA's superior tech and financial resources have enabled it to wage an increasingly expensive war against reality with relative impunity. The de-dollarization of the world coupled with kinetic conflict with near-peer adversaries and disrupted global trade may soon demolish that protective cocoon. I think John Carter's analysis will prove prophetic: https://barsoom.substack.com/p/why-america-cant-win-world-war-iii
I would point out niches protecting from reality tests are also something that authoritarian and totalitarian regimes are prone to. Indeed, they have put a fair bit of effort into blocking reality tests. There is an argument that there is a race to see who collapses first, China, Russia or the US.
"Hence, their males have evolved large testes so as to spurt aside the sperm of the previous male to mate with a female and have enough to not be all spurted aside by the next male to do so. We do not have that adaptation." Thank God we don't, just imagine the washing!
In all seriousness, what a wonderfully absorbing and interesting essay. Some points e.g. the differences between male and female bonding, were familiar to me, others hadn't occurred to me before. I hadn't really thought about female features expressing emotion more easily, but it explains why to me, my husband always seems to have either a vaguely angry or a bewildered expression. I had assumed that was simply the natural result of being married to me, but perhaps sex differences have more to do with it.
“Vaguely angry or bewildered expression”. That is exactly my Husbands resting face. Then again, we have three daughters so the bewilderment makes A lot of sense. Now that I think about it, its exactly Harrison Ford’s signature style. Between that and his puppy eyes that’s all most blokes need to make women fall over themselves.
I would be really interested in Lorenzo's thoughts on how contraception has changed the environment for both males and females and the likely consequences.
Well reasoned essay, looking forward to part 2. It might be useful to consider cultural factors as well. The West seems to have drifted toward placing females in roles that hasn't happened in other cultures. Perhaps prosperity itself has created conditions where feminisation is possible. Fat, dumb and happy isn't a positive for the future.
The redefinition of marriage has always been troublesome to me. My concept was it was based on ensuring children had protection from the two people responsible for their creation and society was then organized to support that concept. Same sex marriage defies that convention but might make sense where an excess of orphans might exist. OTOH, to my mind the combination of female/male thought patterns and goals seems to build a strong union. Don't think same sex minds can overcome biology; can males have female thinking? We see males pretending to be female but their walk is always odd given anatomy.
Given homosexuals tends to be cognitively cross-grained, the difference might not be as big as one might expect. Same-sex marriage has a wider history than folk realise.
I am actually more concerned about the treating of fathers and husbands within family law, in part from feminism’s self-indulgent valorisation of women as (in effect) a superior form of Homo sapien. I am also bothered by the use of trans to undermine parental authority.
In my days in the late 60's we had among our bar regulars, a gay couple would be participating in the food and drink. They were regular diners arriving after work as many of us did. They were a well accepted couple and might have been solid parents had they been allowed. Can't speak to their thinking patterns; they were in their 40's, normal chatter.
And I had a friend who had a custody battle, I think pure spite on her part.
Apr 13, 2023·edited Apr 13, 2023Liked by Helen Dale, Lorenzo Warby
Please, right into my veins with this stuff Lorenzo.
On thing I would love insight into, is for a few different behaviors you properly explain those as a result of the sexual dimorphism producing different incentives, producing different outcomes (bio or social). Though for some, start from well established behavioral tendencies and from that derived social outcomes. I suppose it would be cumbersome to always lay out the biological differences, but I find those explanations the most compelling to pull us away from blank slatism. Even if things like female tendencies towards emotional expression is the better framework from which to explain their more delicate features.
This is really interesting and I look forward to reading the next one. Re this:
"If something is found in all human societies, it counts as a human universal. ...If something is observed in every human society, it will have a fair degree of innateness to it."
This is exactly the point I try to make when I try to engage others in deciding whether the 21st century Western version of "being transgender" is a purely cultural creation. Spoiler: Yes.
A few people being gender-nonconforming from early childhood (very feminine boys/men; very masculine girls/women) seems to be found in all human societies. That's universal.
Believing that one is in the "wrong body"; believing that one needs to "transition" or be called by certain "pronouns" in order to be happy or healthy -- this is something we totally made up. Medicalizing people, sterilizing them, giving them medically unnecessary hormones or surgeries -- these are all cultural creations. As such, we need to examine whether they are beneficial or not.
There are what we might reasonably call trans identities in various societies. But the thing they have in common is that they are *trans* (across) identities. Folk such as galli and hijra may have a feminine role, but they are not women. In societies where most people lived subsistence lives, who can and cannot get pregnant is too important for delusional crap.
The Romans were cool with galli in female spaces: provided they had been castrated. If your bits were still functional, then absolutely not.
The Western cultural norm of individualism --> romantic love --> marriage & children hinges upon people being able to play the dating game. If you are an interesting intersex sort of person, this doesn't really work for you.
Once upon a time, people were strongly socialized into a variety of groups, and could derive satisfaction simply by being in those groups, regardless of personal characteristics. But modern Westerners denounce groupishness in all but the most ritualized and voluntary contexts (e.g. sports, politics) and even there they aren't really comfortable with it. Add to this the general norm of gaining status by displaying weakness, and a strong culture of fixing problems using the latest technology, and voila: "Are you sexually unusual? Do you feel bad about it? We're here to help - Transition at a clinic near you!"
> Adult humans also show high levels of cognitive dimorphism. Using the 15 personality traits* that are aggregated together to form the Big Five (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism), approximately 80 per cent of us have a pattern of traits that do not occur in the other sex. This does lead to differences in patterns of behaviour, including occupational and other choices.
This should probably be cited or explored slightly - females are higher in Neuroticism and Agreeableness, but the other dimensions don't show consistent differences (except at the facet level, depending on the instrument used). The newer HEXACO model concentrates sex differences on Emotionality - combining Agreeableness and Beuroticism together - but the gap is not large enough to substantiate the idea that 80% of humans are sorted by personality. See https://thingstoread.substack.com/p/venus-and-mars
Your comments are such an odd mixture of insightful, well-read, and off-the-wall. "15 dimensional matrix?" Are you referring to factor analysis? There are typically far, far more variables than 15 in any psychometric battery...
The big challenge right now is that there's an insidious assumption that to be a successful female you must be indistinguishable from a successful male.
My wife just asked how the female emotions listed help built a spaceship. The answer isn't great.
They won't help building the physics of the ship
They will help with building the living space of the ship and making it from steel girders and hard edges into something more human and supportive on a long flight.
And then I'll get accused of misogyny for saying that women aren't good aerospace engineers and instead should focus on interior decorating.
As if aerospace engineering mechanical systems is somehow more valuable than creating uniquely human living spaces that nurture and support.
This is actually a really good point. Women’s instinct of nurturing, expressed biologically or through other means is routinely devalued. Eg. We want women to build the spaceship, but in order to do that, she has to spend a majority of her wage paying a different woman (because her mother is too old and her sisters too far away or busy with their career) a pittance to care for her children and *that* gets counted as economically productive. A woman with a bunch of kids being a stay at home mum is NOT counted as economically productive, even though she is doing the equivalent of 4 jobs simultaneously. It’s a ridiculous catch-22 that I think have made several generations of women and the men who live with them miserable too.
While there is certainly considerable variety in foraging patterns, that adaptability is a key element in human success, and the higher the latitudes, the more dependence on animal foods, there is good reason to think that modern data is skewed towards plant contributions, due to foragers having been largely driven into more marginal areas and the extinction of many large/mega herbivores. Unfortunately, there is also a fair bit of anti-meat propaganda polluting the discourse. The Hazda, for instance, get a majority of their calories from animal foods.
Incidentally you're correct to point out that leftist bias in academia weakens all arguments using academic literature which tend to support a leftist narrative. But the things I've read from 19th century and earlier sources still suggest women were the primary low-latitude calorie producers - they were even able to forage for insects, snails, and similar protein-rich foods without needing to be terribly athletic. Sometimes you really need to give men a break; they already have plenty of work to do building houses and killing each other.
"That is, whether female patterns of aggression, association, emotionality, and preferences are increasingly salient. "
Also, I was surprised by the claim that men have quicker reactions. It turns out that they do, with a large body of research supporting it; you might source it with, for example, this study on over 7000 individuals: Der, G., & Deary, I. J. (2006). Age and sex differences in reaction time in adulthood: results from the United Kingdom Health and Lifestyle Survey. Psychology and aging, 21(1), 62.
Men having quicker reactions is probably a substantial part of why esports are dominated by men. With all physical strength and durability comparisons removed, you'd think there would be an even playing field but no, it's extremely heavily male dominated. Whatever combination of mental and physical there is there such as reaction times, aggression, sheer autistic pursuit of mastery of a ridiculous niche, it's an interesting proof of substantial difference imo. Helps I'm a gamer though maybe...
Well, the fact that men *like* sports and fighting might be enough to explain observations that men dominate competitions in sports and fighting games. My family plays a lot of military skirmishes on OpenRA, and Mrs. Apple Pie is pretty low-tier in the family, but frankly I'm happy she's willing to play such games with the boys at all.
Boy do I know that from first hand experience with most of my youth being in almost exclusively male martial arts groups. In my peak of my early 20s, I could beat up the 15 yr olds, but something would happen over their 16th summer that would make them hit faster, stronger, with better coordination and and I’d be barely able to keep up with them and have to resort to age and treachery to win sparring bouts occasionally.
My martial arts instructor refused to teach 16 year olds; he described 15 year olds as doing everything half-assed.
Do you have any experience with girls? I've informally showed young women how to punch and kick, and mostly what I've noticed is just that there's less size and strength there.
Your marital arts instructor missed a prime opportunity there. 15 year old boys are the best time to catch them when they are at their most mouldable and most open to picking up on the subtleties of fighting. A good course of humble pie deliver by a small blonde girl at 15 is far easier medicine to take than at 25 after they’ve gotten into some serious trouble. If you train a 15 year old hard you have a good chance of having a 16 year old that can keep his head and is ready to channel the testosterone surge into productive and protective capacities. That’s my observation of watching my sensei teaching over my formative years.
The first time I ever trained in an all women’s environment was when I was 22 and it was straight boxing. It was a real weird vibe for me because for the first time in my life in a fighting setting I was actually at an advantage.
The main thing I had to do for my partners was goading them into hitting hard and giving them permission to express aggression. For girls that formative window is 14 and a 14 year old taught right and given permission for physical aggression is far more likely to cope with the hormone swings of a fertility cycle learning how to function and not turn it on themselves. I said to a number of
Girls on struggle street, if you need to beat yourself up, there are *actual* classes that will let you do it and you won’t have to be a loser alone in your bedroom while you sort your shit out.
Read the article, found it a bit pedantic, sorry. To me having XX, XY genes defines the issue with rare errors of XXX, etc. To the mix we have the Cleveland Clinic weighing in with the modern https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/16324-intersex.
This is an excellent discussion of the issues.
https://t.co/Ozh3yQY88n
There are only two types of gametes (small and motile, large and sessile). Hence, biological male and female. Now, humans being complex organisms, and biology being full of fuzzy boundary entities (e.g. species) there are some complexities. Particularly, once we get into secondary sexual characteristics. However, while the latter may be more visible among clothed individuals, they are also not defining of being male or female.
Intersex does not generate or represent a gamete spectrum. Overwhelmingly, it is about secondary characteristics, generating a spectrum within the sexes but not between them. The notion of inter-sex actually relies on the categories of biological male and female, including secondary characteristics, because it is with reference to what is typically male and female that we note the particular atypicality they may have. Which do not form a spectrum, but come in many, many different (and rare) varieties.
Some folk have genitals that are not reproductively functional, even though they are otherwise structured to produce either small and motile, or large and sessile, gametes. That does not make them not male or female, any more than a boy who has not yet produced sperm, or a girl who has not yet menstruated, is not male or female.
This is not the right take. See: https://thingstoread.substack.com/p/how-many-genders-are-there
I agree that a menopausal woman and a girl who never menstruated are still female, but gender isn't *merely* biological sex, and even if it were, there are many people who will never produce gametes of any sort, or even have both testes and ovaries.
Fascinating work. I wonder if feminised males and masculinised females (sissies and tomboys) have a functional role in acting as intermediaries between the teams and cliques that make up the two dominant factions in human societies. They seem to be produced at fairly consistent rates and many traditional cultures find specialised roles for them.
The "gay uncle" helping nurture their niece and nephews, thus ensuring their families genes continue was an interesting theory I saw a while ago.
The Gay Uncle/Maiden Aunt "extra care" hypothesis has some evidence to support it, and even some relevant legal history. The pagan Roman law of adoption was designed to facilitate "extra care" behaviour; it is notable that one of the first sets of laws the Christian Emperors repealed post AD 313 were those around adoption. The Christians went after adoption before they went after abortion.
"The Christians went after adoption before they went after abortion." - That needs a bit more explanation. In most societies, wouldn't children have great value? I suppose if there are resource constrains it might be OK to kill babies but that would be at the tribe level not the individual or am I confused?
Yes, this is one of those instances where pagan Romans (not known for their kindness) were right, and Christians simply wrong. It doesn't always flow that way: part of the reason so many women (especially non-citizens and slaves) were attracted to Christianity was because elite Roman male sexuality was horrendously predatory.
Roman citizen women were largely protected by a legal system that accorded them unusually high status, but other women weren't - at all.
So the Roman notion ensured survival of children while the Christian adaptation of that was benign neglect - people paid to take care of children were not always kindly types. OTOH every society found a role for unmarried Uncles/Aunts to fill who had to be better if related by family.
Christians institutionalised unwanted children (ie, developed the concept of orphanages). While pagan Romans made use of infanticide, their civilisational preference was for a sibling (whence the importance of Gay Uncles/Maiden Aunts) or other relatives to raise unwanted children.
Adoption was hugely important and honourable in Roman society; people were paid money to do it, there was an entire dynasty of "Adoptive Emperors", and legislation was enacted encouraging it dating from the Middle Republic onwards.
Just as the Christians had mistresses (whose children had no claim on paternal property) instead of concubines (whose children did have such a claim), they had wards (who had no claim on paternal property) rather than permitting adoption (who did have such a claim). Some of this was about dissolving kin groups, by blocking their ability to transfer property and incorporating newcomers. Some of it was also about protecting the claims of the children of wives, which elevated marriage and married women. Some of it may have been about maximising the number of legally childless folk, likely to leave their property to … the Church.
The estate claim in Roman concubinage was by the concubine, not her children. Always remember, in Roman law, adults are more important than children.
Because Roman law encouraged complete testamentary freedom (same as the later common law), a concubine's children could take under a will, but only if the testator had drafted his will to name them as beneficiaries.
The claim a concubine had was to maintenance in a separate household, and for any children to be raised to the same standard as the wife's children. If the wife's kids were sent to the Academy in Athens, then the concubine's kids were sent there as well (if they were smart enough to get in; you had to do a viva before a panel for admission).
Very often a concubine's children didn't inherent, and had they made a testator's family maintenance claim, they'd have been laughed out of court. The idea was that they got a good start, but after that, it was up to them.
Excellent as always, some interesting new facts and theories in it for me. I hadn't seen it portrayed as risk transfer so much as generalized protection previously, there's a distinction worth making there.
Most satisfying breakfast reading, thank you.
/Pines for next essay while sissily stroking large white cat
Titter.
[Also you should start sharing pics of Shredder on Notes. I've got actual subscriptions already out of Chilli photos.]
I don't think I'll be activating Notes on my Substack. Do not have a desire to recreate any aspect of the Twitter experience.
Fair enough.
Very few would argue that the foundation of an effective military is highly functioning teams and systems nested within a prestige hierarchy. The ignoramuses in charge simply deny biological reality. To them, the feminisation of the military won't necessarily result in teams being supplanted by cliques and a shift in focus from prestige to propriety. From my limited perspective it has already happened to a significant extent. I just hope we don't have to learn the hard way how effective this transition will be in large scale combat operations.
So far the USA's superior tech and financial resources have enabled it to wage an increasingly expensive war against reality with relative impunity. The de-dollarization of the world coupled with kinetic conflict with near-peer adversaries and disrupted global trade may soon demolish that protective cocoon. I think John Carter's analysis will prove prophetic: https://barsoom.substack.com/p/why-america-cant-win-world-war-iii
I would point out niches protecting from reality tests are also something that authoritarian and totalitarian regimes are prone to. Indeed, they have put a fair bit of effort into blocking reality tests. There is an argument that there is a race to see who collapses first, China, Russia or the US.
"Hence, their males have evolved large testes so as to spurt aside the sperm of the previous male to mate with a female and have enough to not be all spurted aside by the next male to do so. We do not have that adaptation." Thank God we don't, just imagine the washing!
In all seriousness, what a wonderfully absorbing and interesting essay. Some points e.g. the differences between male and female bonding, were familiar to me, others hadn't occurred to me before. I hadn't really thought about female features expressing emotion more easily, but it explains why to me, my husband always seems to have either a vaguely angry or a bewildered expression. I had assumed that was simply the natural result of being married to me, but perhaps sex differences have more to do with it.
Thank you. This comment really brightened my day. :)
“Vaguely angry or bewildered expression”. That is exactly my Husbands resting face. Then again, we have three daughters so the bewilderment makes A lot of sense. Now that I think about it, its exactly Harrison Ford’s signature style. Between that and his puppy eyes that’s all most blokes need to make women fall over themselves.
I would be really interested in Lorenzo's thoughts on how contraception has changed the environment for both males and females and the likely consequences.
As you can see from the essay list in the pinned piece, Lorenzo has more coming on this topic. Stay tuned.
May come up later, but not currently planning to deal with it in any detail. Though, now you have planted the question in my head …
Well reasoned essay, looking forward to part 2. It might be useful to consider cultural factors as well. The West seems to have drifted toward placing females in roles that hasn't happened in other cultures. Perhaps prosperity itself has created conditions where feminisation is possible. Fat, dumb and happy isn't a positive for the future.
The redefinition of marriage has always been troublesome to me. My concept was it was based on ensuring children had protection from the two people responsible for their creation and society was then organized to support that concept. Same sex marriage defies that convention but might make sense where an excess of orphans might exist. OTOH, to my mind the combination of female/male thought patterns and goals seems to build a strong union. Don't think same sex minds can overcome biology; can males have female thinking? We see males pretending to be female but their walk is always odd given anatomy.
Given homosexuals tends to be cognitively cross-grained, the difference might not be as big as one might expect. Same-sex marriage has a wider history than folk realise.
I am actually more concerned about the treating of fathers and husbands within family law, in part from feminism’s self-indulgent valorisation of women as (in effect) a superior form of Homo sapien. I am also bothered by the use of trans to undermine parental authority.
In my days in the late 60's we had among our bar regulars, a gay couple would be participating in the food and drink. They were regular diners arriving after work as many of us did. They were a well accepted couple and might have been solid parents had they been allowed. Can't speak to their thinking patterns; they were in their 40's, normal chatter.
And I had a friend who had a custody battle, I think pure spite on her part.
Excellent, thoughtful stuff as ever. Thanks.
“People who take testosterone they have not evolved to or been socialised to manage can be dangerous to themselves and others.”
I have been wondering about this in relation to an increase of ‘gender affirming care,’ and a subsequent rise of ‘lone gunman’ attacks in America.
Correlation, and causality being an unspoken thing in our polite society today.
Please, right into my veins with this stuff Lorenzo.
On thing I would love insight into, is for a few different behaviors you properly explain those as a result of the sexual dimorphism producing different incentives, producing different outcomes (bio or social). Though for some, start from well established behavioral tendencies and from that derived social outcomes. I suppose it would be cumbersome to always lay out the biological differences, but I find those explanations the most compelling to pull us away from blank slatism. Even if things like female tendencies towards emotional expression is the better framework from which to explain their more delicate features.
This is really interesting and I look forward to reading the next one. Re this:
"If something is found in all human societies, it counts as a human universal. ...If something is observed in every human society, it will have a fair degree of innateness to it."
This is exactly the point I try to make when I try to engage others in deciding whether the 21st century Western version of "being transgender" is a purely cultural creation. Spoiler: Yes.
A few people being gender-nonconforming from early childhood (very feminine boys/men; very masculine girls/women) seems to be found in all human societies. That's universal.
Believing that one is in the "wrong body"; believing that one needs to "transition" or be called by certain "pronouns" in order to be happy or healthy -- this is something we totally made up. Medicalizing people, sterilizing them, giving them medically unnecessary hormones or surgeries -- these are all cultural creations. As such, we need to examine whether they are beneficial or not.
There are what we might reasonably call trans identities in various societies. But the thing they have in common is that they are *trans* (across) identities. Folk such as galli and hijra may have a feminine role, but they are not women. In societies where most people lived subsistence lives, who can and cannot get pregnant is too important for delusional crap.
The Romans were cool with galli in female spaces: provided they had been castrated. If your bits were still functional, then absolutely not.
The Western cultural norm of individualism --> romantic love --> marriage & children hinges upon people being able to play the dating game. If you are an interesting intersex sort of person, this doesn't really work for you.
Once upon a time, people were strongly socialized into a variety of groups, and could derive satisfaction simply by being in those groups, regardless of personal characteristics. But modern Westerners denounce groupishness in all but the most ritualized and voluntary contexts (e.g. sports, politics) and even there they aren't really comfortable with it. Add to this the general norm of gaining status by displaying weakness, and a strong culture of fixing problems using the latest technology, and voila: "Are you sexually unusual? Do you feel bad about it? We're here to help - Transition at a clinic near you!"
> Adult humans also show high levels of cognitive dimorphism. Using the 15 personality traits* that are aggregated together to form the Big Five (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism), approximately 80 per cent of us have a pattern of traits that do not occur in the other sex. This does lead to differences in patterns of behaviour, including occupational and other choices.
This should probably be cited or explored slightly - females are higher in Neuroticism and Agreeableness, but the other dimensions don't show consistent differences (except at the facet level, depending on the instrument used). The newer HEXACO model concentrates sex differences on Emotionality - combining Agreeableness and Beuroticism together - but the gap is not large enough to substantiate the idea that 80% of humans are sorted by personality. See https://thingstoread.substack.com/p/venus-and-mars
Once you do the 15 dimensional matrix, apparently the different medians and flatter curves are enough to generate quite large differences. With the differences getting larger the more socially liberal and prosperous the society is. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/5671655_Why_Can%27t_a_Man_Be_More_Like_a_Woman_Sex_Differences_in_Big_Five_Personality_Traits_Across_55_Cultures
Your comments are such an odd mixture of insightful, well-read, and off-the-wall. "15 dimensional matrix?" Are you referring to factor analysis? There are typically far, far more variables than 15 in any psychometric battery...
The big challenge right now is that there's an insidious assumption that to be a successful female you must be indistinguishable from a successful male.
My wife just asked how the female emotions listed help built a spaceship. The answer isn't great.
They won't help building the physics of the ship
They will help with building the living space of the ship and making it from steel girders and hard edges into something more human and supportive on a long flight.
And then I'll get accused of misogyny for saying that women aren't good aerospace engineers and instead should focus on interior decorating.
As if aerospace engineering mechanical systems is somehow more valuable than creating uniquely human living spaces that nurture and support.
This is actually a really good point. Women’s instinct of nurturing, expressed biologically or through other means is routinely devalued. Eg. We want women to build the spaceship, but in order to do that, she has to spend a majority of her wage paying a different woman (because her mother is too old and her sisters too far away or busy with their career) a pittance to care for her children and *that* gets counted as economically productive. A woman with a bunch of kids being a stay at home mum is NOT counted as economically productive, even though she is doing the equivalent of 4 jobs simultaneously. It’s a ridiculous catch-22 that I think have made several generations of women and the men who live with them miserable too.
The proportion of calories from men and women is not universally skewed towards male contribution. Among the Pygmies, females het hunt more than males: https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1525/aa.2001.103.4.1024
The !Kung derive most of their diet from plants:
https://thehealthbeat.com/the-prequel-how-much-meat-and-plants-did-hunter-gatherers-eat/
So do the Hazda:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/foodfeatures/evolution-of-diet/
Ultimately it is only in less fertile areas, generally above 40-degrees latitude, where male contributions outstrip those of the female:
https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=hal07maSE4MC&oi=fnd&pg=PA184&dq=murdock+1967+lee+ethnographic+atlas&ots=IC0Qsfjn3F&sig=xJ_yrQ-vHR385pR1NhmZJIbA648#v=onepage&q=murdock%201967%20lee%20ethnographic%20atlas&f=false
While there is certainly considerable variety in foraging patterns, that adaptability is a key element in human success, and the higher the latitudes, the more dependence on animal foods, there is good reason to think that modern data is skewed towards plant contributions, due to foragers having been largely driven into more marginal areas and the extinction of many large/mega herbivores. Unfortunately, there is also a fair bit of anti-meat propaganda polluting the discourse. The Hazda, for instance, get a majority of their calories from animal foods.
https://www.unm.edu/~hkaplan/KaplanHillLancasterHurtado_2000_LHEvolution.pdf
Aha! Well my good man, I will see your Kaplan et al., and raise you a Marlowe:
Frank W Marlowe, The Hadza - Hunter-Gatherers of Tanzania (2010), page 127-128
(See https://woodfromeden.substack.com/p/the-paleolithic-ancestor-model-pageant )
Incidentally you're correct to point out that leftist bias in academia weakens all arguments using academic literature which tend to support a leftist narrative. But the things I've read from 19th century and earlier sources still suggest women were the primary low-latitude calorie producers - they were even able to forage for insects, snails, and similar protein-rich foods without needing to be terribly athletic. Sometimes you really need to give men a break; they already have plenty of work to do building houses and killing each other.
On the issue of extinctions, see
https://www.mdpi.com/2571-550X/4/1/7
Also
https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-evolution-of-the-human-trophic-level-during-the-Ben-Dor-Sirtoli/fc6fe716ae7155c99bfd2696608c4dc50d210dbd
This looks like an incomplete sentence:
"That is, whether female patterns of aggression, association, emotionality, and preferences are increasingly salient. "
Also, I was surprised by the claim that men have quicker reactions. It turns out that they do, with a large body of research supporting it; you might source it with, for example, this study on over 7000 individuals: Der, G., & Deary, I. J. (2006). Age and sex differences in reaction time in adulthood: results from the United Kingdom Health and Lifestyle Survey. Psychology and aging, 21(1), 62.
Men having quicker reactions is probably a substantial part of why esports are dominated by men. With all physical strength and durability comparisons removed, you'd think there would be an even playing field but no, it's extremely heavily male dominated. Whatever combination of mental and physical there is there such as reaction times, aggression, sheer autistic pursuit of mastery of a ridiculous niche, it's an interesting proof of substantial difference imo. Helps I'm a gamer though maybe...
Well, the fact that men *like* sports and fighting might be enough to explain observations that men dominate competitions in sports and fighting games. My family plays a lot of military skirmishes on OpenRA, and Mrs. Apple Pie is pretty low-tier in the family, but frankly I'm happy she's willing to play such games with the boys at all.
Boy do I know that from first hand experience with most of my youth being in almost exclusively male martial arts groups. In my peak of my early 20s, I could beat up the 15 yr olds, but something would happen over their 16th summer that would make them hit faster, stronger, with better coordination and and I’d be barely able to keep up with them and have to resort to age and treachery to win sparring bouts occasionally.
My martial arts instructor refused to teach 16 year olds; he described 15 year olds as doing everything half-assed.
Do you have any experience with girls? I've informally showed young women how to punch and kick, and mostly what I've noticed is just that there's less size and strength there.
Your marital arts instructor missed a prime opportunity there. 15 year old boys are the best time to catch them when they are at their most mouldable and most open to picking up on the subtleties of fighting. A good course of humble pie deliver by a small blonde girl at 15 is far easier medicine to take than at 25 after they’ve gotten into some serious trouble. If you train a 15 year old hard you have a good chance of having a 16 year old that can keep his head and is ready to channel the testosterone surge into productive and protective capacities. That’s my observation of watching my sensei teaching over my formative years.
The first time I ever trained in an all women’s environment was when I was 22 and it was straight boxing. It was a real weird vibe for me because for the first time in my life in a fighting setting I was actually at an advantage.
The main thing I had to do for my partners was goading them into hitting hard and giving them permission to express aggression. For girls that formative window is 14 and a 14 year old taught right and given permission for physical aggression is far more likely to cope with the hormone swings of a fertility cycle learning how to function and not turn it on themselves. I said to a number of
Girls on struggle street, if you need to beat yourself up, there are *actual* classes that will let you do it and you won’t have to be a loser alone in your bedroom while you sort your shit out.