Yes-- if being a savvy, patient, and interested shopper were a determinant of womanhood, I'd be a man. With that said, I certainly wish I'd been socially conditioned into this role; it would be nice to live in a house whose walls weren't vague bilious and diarrhoeal shades.
Yes - even as a typically shade-apathetic guy, I recall feeling that sense of deflation when viewing potential house purchases. You'd walk into a place that was painted in what I used to call "hearing-aid beige" and know that the first few weeks after moving in were going to be lots of painty fun.
When my daughter was very young, I went to some length to find stuff (like a savings box) that contained no traces of rose/pink. I was used to having only boys, and really found the girl stuff annoying. All to no avail, the pink unicorns started riding in anyway (and my daughter has a very strong will).
It is definitely a blessing to have several kids. The differences in personality teach you a lot. Also, whereas you might treat the first child as some kind of optimization project, with the second and third at some point you will simply start to let it flow.
Oh, and the DIY superstore would have been the perfect place to try different orbital sanders.
I will do a review on which orbital sanders work best :-)
The emergence of totally different personalities in your kids is a fascinating, and wonderful, thing to behold. Both of mine had a real stubborn streak, but expressed it in very different ways. The eldest would go full-on demon spawn and even froth at the mouth occasionally when she was prevented from doing things like trying to play that peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the video player. The youngest would shrug - and then wait until your back was turned before happily going ahead anyway.
I've been reading your comments on all this gender stuff with interest. I was totally in your camp on the goo thing and it's lovely to read opinion that challenges my view.
I agree with your last sentence but also agree with it being reversed and "what we definitely should not be doing is to use some a priori notion of gender to determine typical tendencies."
For a good part of my memorable life (and i'm 50 now so I've lived some) the thing that has really got me is the labelling of people. Language is a great thing and in order to make sense of communication I understand we have to have labels, otherwise everything would just be 'duh'. I think as humans we have just taken the whole thing a bit too far.
Once we've established what a tree is, for example, we could just leave it there so that when your friend next points one out, you know what you're looking at.
I wonder if this whole language of 'identifying as' is a rebellion against being told what or who you are (I know as a mud-guts-gadgets-thing-loving-female who hates shopping, but does love a scatter cushion, can testify that I am sick to the back teeth of being told what I should be like). And being judged for that rather than anyone taking the time to actually ask me what I think (being told to shut-up because as an 'anti-vaxxer' my opinion wasn't worth hearing for example) really gets on my ****. What I mean is, perhaps all this variety of labelling themselves is a way of trying to step away from being labelled. Whilst it is a messy approach and I, like you, am totally perplexed by it, I am also intrigued and hopeful that this will play out in a way that actually leaves everyone to just be. And to get on. I mean, it hasn't worked for the past however many thousand years but I'm hopeful.
Keep writing please. We will never get anywhere without being able to discuss things or, god forbid, disagree :)
I definitely haven't figured things out yet when it comes to all this gender ideology - and probably never will.
Human beings are very curious creatures. I, too, try not to use labels too severely - except in the pursuit of humour where I hope it is understood where I'm being deliberately over the top. What is fascinating is how much today's "thinking" is based on labels. People are sorted into labelled groups and much work is expended in trying to figure out how the different alleged oppressive mechanisms intersect to impact these groups.
If you're given the label 'black' you're definitely in an oppressed category, whereas if you're given the label 'white' you're definitely in the category of oppressor.
What is interesting is that this fetishization of labels doesn't seem to translate into gender ideology so much - where, as you say, some of it is about a rejection of those labels and attitudes that have been so constraining. A person might reject the labelling of the boxes male or female, for example, and then choose another set of labels, another box, to put themselves in. It's all very weird to me.
I'm definitely all in favour of not letting labels, or other people's attitudes, constrain us.
I would hypothesise that this love of scatter cushions (and paint shades) stems from a deeper evolutionary nudge towards creating a safe nurturing environment for offspring - which largely fell on the female in past times - certainly before we had the language and conceptual tools to even express ideas like "oppression". Evolution will have selected for those traits that give the best survivability for offspring - and that will include different gender roles (which were much less complicated back then). How one goes about putting that on a firmer evidentiary footing (or finding the evidence to reject that hypothesis) is another matter altogether.
'Sapiens' and 'Homo Deus' go into great detail about the evolution of traits. And why we are where we are. Great reads but you are definitely funnier. Humour is also a significant survival skill, or trait. Maybe both.
Humans are, in my humble opinion, just bloody weird.
As a woman, I can relate in the reverse; I don't see how some men can talk on and on about cars. I remember needing a new car just out of college, and a friend asked me what type of car I was going to get. I answered with total seriousness, "this time I want to get a blue one". My friend cracked up and I wasn't sure why. This friend could name all brands of cars on sight, and she happened to be a woman, happened to be a mostly lesbian woman. I'm not sure what made her know about cars. Maybe her and her father bonded over cars. Maybe she came into this world with that particular personality trait. Maybe women who are lesbian or bisexual have a greater chance of higher testosterone levels than straight women, who knows?
I like how you brought in the word tendencies, our sex and hormones do give us certain tendencies. Like perhaps women's tendencies to read faces gives them a greater eye for paint colors, because there's so many subtleties in facial expressions, as there are in paint colors! And women need that skill when becoming mothers and caring for babies, since babies can't say what's wrong with them. Women (and hopefully men) need to see and intuit what the baby needs. Please let's not give up the word mother for birthing person!!!! I think trans men giving birth to babies is such a rarity that it's not worth giving up the word mother.
I think culture gives us tendencies too that we are only partly aware of, because cultural communication is both overt and covert. I was thinking of that in relation to your example of clothes shopping. Girls and women get so many explicit and subtle, conscious and unconscious messages everywhere; from parents, adults, other kids, advertisements, magazines, movies and books, in ways they don't even realize - their looks matter, the way they look matters. If boys got the same constant messages from all these sources, perhaps men would be more interested in shopping and making sure their clothes look just right. Gay men and metrosexuals have upped men's fashion standards, but I feel sad that men are being pressured into products that affect how they look, and to even get surgeries.
So we have sex and hormone tendencies, cultural tendencies, and then you brought a third thing into the mix, personality tendencies that we just happen to be born with. So these three things mix together to create gender and gendered behavior at any given time, and preferenced behavior, likes and dislike and ways of being that pattern us throughout our lifetime. But of course wokesters, this doesn't change our biological sex! We don't need to erase biological sex to be able to express all our ways of being.
I like what Sharon says in this comment thread, I too hope all of this exploration around gender makes the environment more accepting of all the ways of being. And then, for goodness sakes teenage girls, you don't need to cut off your breasts to be accepted for who you are, because it doesn't have to do with your breast size. And neither boys or girls have to change their genitals, and affect their ability to have an orgasm for the rest of their life, in order to be accepted for who they are, both self acceptance and accepted by others. Unless they are truly a trans person, then those changes are well worth it. 👍🏽😍
Cheers to your smooth scrotum! 🍻 And complete sentences. 💕
Progressive genderthink has really jumped the shark.
The old liberal version, the relaxation of traditional gender roles, may well have felt liberating to many people. Doubtless it did at least as much harm as good across the whole culture. But it _felt_ good. It was good to be a liberal back then.
The new Prognaz version consists of feigning deep confusion over questions that are obvious even to a slow child. It's just too stoooopid, too either insincere or batshit crazy, to hold. It doesn't feel good - it feels _fake & gay_. It must suck to live like that.
I just don't get women who think that it is more fulfilling and rewarding to work for a corporation than to raise a child. Is the boardroom table meeting with colleagues really that much more stimulating and satisfying than a kitchen table conversation with family?
Idk, maybe.
It can be easily argued that although the feminist movement has delivered freedom and empowerment, it certainly hasn't delivered security and happiness. Generally speaking, most 'liberated' women tend to be quite neurotic and miserable.
When will these 'progressive' women figure out that they have been duped? That they have merely switched their oppressors from husband and children to corporations/careers and marketers/advertisers?
Now, it doesn't mean that it MUST BE one way or the other (unfortunately, It seems today that issues are only ever discussed in polar terms). But, in the least, there ought to be a fair, honest and comprehensive assessment of what feminism promised and what it has so far delivered.
You’re addressing the topic that catapulted Jordan Peterson into the bright [lime]light. And your views are in alignment. Maybe you, too, will soon be selling out auditoriums (auditoria?).
"Is the passion for subtle variations in paint shades merely a socially-constructed thing?" When I saw this question, I typed "Do girls see different colors than boys?" in my browser. Apparently girls do tend to see more nuanced shades. (The article link is here: https://tinyurl.com/yc3p7ddr)
Your story about not talking until you were 3 and could talk in complete sentences is exactly what happened to me, according to my mother. Up until that point my parents thought I was either retarded or deaf.
Two other anecdotes:
1. My first wife said that when she was very young, maybe 3, she told her parents that what she wanted for Christmas was a "frain, a fruck, and a fractor". Clearly she was not adhering to cultural norms back in the mid 1950s.
2. My best friend and coworker back when I was working in Silicon Valley was one of the rare female programmers in that world, and was probably one of the half-dozen smartest people I've ever met. Incredible puzzle-solving and math skills, the ability to visualize complex data structures entirely in her head without drawings, etc. She's been working on a C++ compiler for the last 20+ years, not your run-of-the-mill programming job.
I'm not sure what the point of these anecdotes is, except to suggest that much of what we think of as "masculine" and "feminine" is due to cultural conditioning. This is why it seems so sad that some people think they have to modify their bodies in order to conform to these cultural norms.
Yes-- if being a savvy, patient, and interested shopper were a determinant of womanhood, I'd be a man. With that said, I certainly wish I'd been socially conditioned into this role; it would be nice to live in a house whose walls weren't vague bilious and diarrhoeal shades.
Lol
Yes - even as a typically shade-apathetic guy, I recall feeling that sense of deflation when viewing potential house purchases. You'd walk into a place that was painted in what I used to call "hearing-aid beige" and know that the first few weeks after moving in were going to be lots of painty fun.
When my daughter was very young, I went to some length to find stuff (like a savings box) that contained no traces of rose/pink. I was used to having only boys, and really found the girl stuff annoying. All to no avail, the pink unicorns started riding in anyway (and my daughter has a very strong will).
It is definitely a blessing to have several kids. The differences in personality teach you a lot. Also, whereas you might treat the first child as some kind of optimization project, with the second and third at some point you will simply start to let it flow.
Oh, and the DIY superstore would have been the perfect place to try different orbital sanders.
I will do a review on which orbital sanders work best :-)
The emergence of totally different personalities in your kids is a fascinating, and wonderful, thing to behold. Both of mine had a real stubborn streak, but expressed it in very different ways. The eldest would go full-on demon spawn and even froth at the mouth occasionally when she was prevented from doing things like trying to play that peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the video player. The youngest would shrug - and then wait until your back was turned before happily going ahead anyway.
I've been reading your comments on all this gender stuff with interest. I was totally in your camp on the goo thing and it's lovely to read opinion that challenges my view.
I agree with your last sentence but also agree with it being reversed and "what we definitely should not be doing is to use some a priori notion of gender to determine typical tendencies."
For a good part of my memorable life (and i'm 50 now so I've lived some) the thing that has really got me is the labelling of people. Language is a great thing and in order to make sense of communication I understand we have to have labels, otherwise everything would just be 'duh'. I think as humans we have just taken the whole thing a bit too far.
Once we've established what a tree is, for example, we could just leave it there so that when your friend next points one out, you know what you're looking at.
I wonder if this whole language of 'identifying as' is a rebellion against being told what or who you are (I know as a mud-guts-gadgets-thing-loving-female who hates shopping, but does love a scatter cushion, can testify that I am sick to the back teeth of being told what I should be like). And being judged for that rather than anyone taking the time to actually ask me what I think (being told to shut-up because as an 'anti-vaxxer' my opinion wasn't worth hearing for example) really gets on my ****. What I mean is, perhaps all this variety of labelling themselves is a way of trying to step away from being labelled. Whilst it is a messy approach and I, like you, am totally perplexed by it, I am also intrigued and hopeful that this will play out in a way that actually leaves everyone to just be. And to get on. I mean, it hasn't worked for the past however many thousand years but I'm hopeful.
Keep writing please. We will never get anywhere without being able to discuss things or, god forbid, disagree :)
Thanks Sharon - some great thoughts there.
I definitely haven't figured things out yet when it comes to all this gender ideology - and probably never will.
Human beings are very curious creatures. I, too, try not to use labels too severely - except in the pursuit of humour where I hope it is understood where I'm being deliberately over the top. What is fascinating is how much today's "thinking" is based on labels. People are sorted into labelled groups and much work is expended in trying to figure out how the different alleged oppressive mechanisms intersect to impact these groups.
If you're given the label 'black' you're definitely in an oppressed category, whereas if you're given the label 'white' you're definitely in the category of oppressor.
What is interesting is that this fetishization of labels doesn't seem to translate into gender ideology so much - where, as you say, some of it is about a rejection of those labels and attitudes that have been so constraining. A person might reject the labelling of the boxes male or female, for example, and then choose another set of labels, another box, to put themselves in. It's all very weird to me.
I'm definitely all in favour of not letting labels, or other people's attitudes, constrain us.
I would hypothesise that this love of scatter cushions (and paint shades) stems from a deeper evolutionary nudge towards creating a safe nurturing environment for offspring - which largely fell on the female in past times - certainly before we had the language and conceptual tools to even express ideas like "oppression". Evolution will have selected for those traits that give the best survivability for offspring - and that will include different gender roles (which were much less complicated back then). How one goes about putting that on a firmer evidentiary footing (or finding the evidence to reject that hypothesis) is another matter altogether.
'Sapiens' and 'Homo Deus' go into great detail about the evolution of traits. And why we are where we are. Great reads but you are definitely funnier. Humour is also a significant survival skill, or trait. Maybe both.
Humans are, in my humble opinion, just bloody weird.
Great points, I'm hoping the same thing. 💕
😆😆 omg, I love your humor! Great article.
As a woman, I can relate in the reverse; I don't see how some men can talk on and on about cars. I remember needing a new car just out of college, and a friend asked me what type of car I was going to get. I answered with total seriousness, "this time I want to get a blue one". My friend cracked up and I wasn't sure why. This friend could name all brands of cars on sight, and she happened to be a woman, happened to be a mostly lesbian woman. I'm not sure what made her know about cars. Maybe her and her father bonded over cars. Maybe she came into this world with that particular personality trait. Maybe women who are lesbian or bisexual have a greater chance of higher testosterone levels than straight women, who knows?
I like how you brought in the word tendencies, our sex and hormones do give us certain tendencies. Like perhaps women's tendencies to read faces gives them a greater eye for paint colors, because there's so many subtleties in facial expressions, as there are in paint colors! And women need that skill when becoming mothers and caring for babies, since babies can't say what's wrong with them. Women (and hopefully men) need to see and intuit what the baby needs. Please let's not give up the word mother for birthing person!!!! I think trans men giving birth to babies is such a rarity that it's not worth giving up the word mother.
I think culture gives us tendencies too that we are only partly aware of, because cultural communication is both overt and covert. I was thinking of that in relation to your example of clothes shopping. Girls and women get so many explicit and subtle, conscious and unconscious messages everywhere; from parents, adults, other kids, advertisements, magazines, movies and books, in ways they don't even realize - their looks matter, the way they look matters. If boys got the same constant messages from all these sources, perhaps men would be more interested in shopping and making sure their clothes look just right. Gay men and metrosexuals have upped men's fashion standards, but I feel sad that men are being pressured into products that affect how they look, and to even get surgeries.
So we have sex and hormone tendencies, cultural tendencies, and then you brought a third thing into the mix, personality tendencies that we just happen to be born with. So these three things mix together to create gender and gendered behavior at any given time, and preferenced behavior, likes and dislike and ways of being that pattern us throughout our lifetime. But of course wokesters, this doesn't change our biological sex! We don't need to erase biological sex to be able to express all our ways of being.
I like what Sharon says in this comment thread, I too hope all of this exploration around gender makes the environment more accepting of all the ways of being. And then, for goodness sakes teenage girls, you don't need to cut off your breasts to be accepted for who you are, because it doesn't have to do with your breast size. And neither boys or girls have to change their genitals, and affect their ability to have an orgasm for the rest of their life, in order to be accepted for who they are, both self acceptance and accepted by others. Unless they are truly a trans person, then those changes are well worth it. 👍🏽😍
Cheers to your smooth scrotum! 🍻 And complete sentences. 💕
Progressive genderthink has really jumped the shark.
The old liberal version, the relaxation of traditional gender roles, may well have felt liberating to many people. Doubtless it did at least as much harm as good across the whole culture. But it _felt_ good. It was good to be a liberal back then.
The new Prognaz version consists of feigning deep confusion over questions that are obvious even to a slow child. It's just too stoooopid, too either insincere or batshit crazy, to hold. It doesn't feel good - it feels _fake & gay_. It must suck to live like that.
I just don't get women who think that it is more fulfilling and rewarding to work for a corporation than to raise a child. Is the boardroom table meeting with colleagues really that much more stimulating and satisfying than a kitchen table conversation with family?
Idk, maybe.
It can be easily argued that although the feminist movement has delivered freedom and empowerment, it certainly hasn't delivered security and happiness. Generally speaking, most 'liberated' women tend to be quite neurotic and miserable.
When will these 'progressive' women figure out that they have been duped? That they have merely switched their oppressors from husband and children to corporations/careers and marketers/advertisers?
Now, it doesn't mean that it MUST BE one way or the other (unfortunately, It seems today that issues are only ever discussed in polar terms). But, in the least, there ought to be a fair, honest and comprehensive assessment of what feminism promised and what it has so far delivered.
You’re addressing the topic that catapulted Jordan Peterson into the bright [lime]light. And your views are in alignment. Maybe you, too, will soon be selling out auditoriums (auditoria?).
This was an entertainingly good read. Thanks.
"Is the passion for subtle variations in paint shades merely a socially-constructed thing?" When I saw this question, I typed "Do girls see different colors than boys?" in my browser. Apparently girls do tend to see more nuanced shades. (The article link is here: https://tinyurl.com/yc3p7ddr)
Yup, it is that simple. Totally agree with your conclusion.
Your story about not talking until you were 3 and could talk in complete sentences is exactly what happened to me, according to my mother. Up until that point my parents thought I was either retarded or deaf.
Two other anecdotes:
1. My first wife said that when she was very young, maybe 3, she told her parents that what she wanted for Christmas was a "frain, a fruck, and a fractor". Clearly she was not adhering to cultural norms back in the mid 1950s.
2. My best friend and coworker back when I was working in Silicon Valley was one of the rare female programmers in that world, and was probably one of the half-dozen smartest people I've ever met. Incredible puzzle-solving and math skills, the ability to visualize complex data structures entirely in her head without drawings, etc. She's been working on a C++ compiler for the last 20+ years, not your run-of-the-mill programming job.
I'm not sure what the point of these anecdotes is, except to suggest that much of what we think of as "masculine" and "feminine" is due to cultural conditioning. This is why it seems so sad that some people think they have to modify their bodies in order to conform to these cultural norms.