Gender is Dead! Long Live Gender!

[bhall0689]

NPR recently published an article that detailed the findings of several scientists studying gender pre-disposition and performance. They found that identities, particularly the identities of male and female, are not so much a biological result as a sociological assumption. I’m curious to know the board’s thoughts.

NPR: Gender is Dead! Long Live Gender!

Categories like heterosexual, professor and cheerleader exhibit what the Canadian philosopher of science Ian Hacking has called looping effects. It is only if you have the relevant concepts, that you can come to think of yourself as classified as this way or that. And once you can think of yourself as being a person of a certain kind, you can also, through choices both conscious and unconscious, either make it the case that you are a person of the kind of question, or that you are not. You can, in this sense, construct your identity. But you couldn’t do this without the availability of the category in the first place.

 

[lizaanne]

I like being a woman, being called a woman, and being identified as a woman. I like men to be men, called men, look and act like men.

I have no issues with gender - long live gender!!! God created them, male and female!!!

But that’s NPR for ya, pretty typical stuff from them.

~Liza

 

[Betterave]

Un autre perspective:

Research Reaffirms Traditional Understanding of Gender

By Lauren Funk

NEW YORK, June 16 (C-FAM). New research reaffirms that gender is grounded in the biology of men and women, supporting the traditional understanding of gender agreed on by the international community.

c-fam.org/publications/id.1883/pub_detail.asp

 

[bhall0689]

Un autre perspective:

Research Reaffirms Traditional Understanding of Gender

By Lauren Funk

NEW YORK, June 16 (C-FAM). New research reaffirms that gender is grounded in the biology of men and women, supporting the traditional understanding of gender agreed on by the international community.

c-fam.org/publications/id.1883/pub_detail.asp

Can you maybe find a detailing of this report on a website that isn’t Catholic? I try to get my news about science and current events from non-religious affiliated websites. I feel like one cannot claim to be an authority on the other.

 

[Hastrman]

I’d just like to point out that assuming gender has any relation to “masculine” and “feminine” is Eurocentric (!). The only genders in Finno-Ugraic languages, as well as many Indian ones, are “animate” and “inanimate”, while Bantu languages have a lot, including things like “plant” and “animal”. Athabascan languages have genders like “round bulky object”, “wide flat object”, “long thin object”, and “person” (a common “fat joke” in Navajo is to talk about a person as if he was a round bulky object)—and Athabascan genders determine the inflection of verbs that involve carrying and travel.

The word for that category of thought is “sex”, sorry PoMo sociology.

 

[TimothyH]

God created them, male and female!!! .

~Liza

Yea, who is gonna send the memo to God?

***FROM: npr.org
TO: God

Dear Sir or Madam;

We regret to inform you that Genesis 1:26-27 has been repealed and is no longer valid.

Please cease and desist immediately all activites undertaken with the intent to teach humankind that creation of persons with distincively male or female physical appearance (IE physical strength, ability to bear children, male pattern baldness, breasts) and with certain personality traits which are prejudiced as “Masculine” and/or “Feminine” was or continues to be a divine act.

Instead, please immediately begin the process of teaching humankind that notions of male, female, masculinity and femininity are entirely human contstructs, available to any person as a matter of choice apart from their respective X or Y chromasonal impairment.

We request that you further extend any possible effort to ensure that those who are in position to assist with such teaching have the nessissary tools to do so. In keeping with this effort, we suggest a blotting out of Genesis 1:26-27 from all Books of Christian Spirituality (previously known as Bibles) through an unilateral act (previously referred to as “Miracle”) of literary intervention (previously referred to “Inspired authorship”).

Your timely attention to this matter is both expected and appreciated.

Respectfully
NPR.org***

-Tim-

 

[Just_Lurking]

Can you maybe find a detailing of this report on a website that isn’t Catholic? I try to get my news about science and current events from non-religious affiliated websites. I feel like one cannot claim to be an authority on the other.

Here is a link to the journal (National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly) article.

 

[karow]

Many cultures accept more than two human genders: masculine, feminine, and “other(s)” I’m most familiar with South and Southeast Asia. There are the Hijras in South Asia, the gatheoy in Thailand, Indonesians have the Waria.

The world is very rarely binary, either this or that, one or the other.

 

[mathematoons]

TimothyH:

Seriously, I agree with you. To rebel against gender is to rebel against the One who made gender. Genesis 1:27 could not be more clear, and any idiot can figure out that men and women are different. You have to be seriously brainwashed (coughliberalscough) not to know this. (I’m not calling liberals stupid, just ignorant. Ignorance can be fixed; I’m living proof.)

Gender is something real. The very existence of “transgender” people proves that everyone has a concrete gender identity, independent of physical sex. I’m not saying I approve of them in any way; God gave us male and female bodies (intersexed people are another story), and to go against one’s gender is nothing less than a slap in God’s face.

But let’s say these people are right, just for the sake of argument. It still would not change Genesis 1:27. Science asks, “Can we?” Religion asks, “Should we?” And God has clearly told us that we should not disregard gender.

 

[bhall0689]

Un autre perspective:

Research Reaffirms Traditional Understanding of Gender

By Lauren Funk

NEW YORK, June 16 (C-FAM). New research reaffirms that gender is grounded in the biology of men and women, supporting the traditional understanding of gender agreed on by the international community.

c-fam.org/publications/id.1883/pub_detail.asp

Can you maybe find a detailing of this report on a website that isn’t Catholic? I try to get my news about science and current events from non-religious affiliated websites. I feel like one cannot claim to be an authority on the other.

 

[Joe_Kelley]

**
**

**
**

vive la différence

 

[lizaanne]

Yea, who is gonna send the memo to God?

***FROM: npr.org
TO: God

Dear Sir or Madam;

We regret to inform you that Genesis 1:26-27 has been repealed and is no longer valid.

Please cease and desist immediately all activites undertaken with the intent to teach humankind that creation of persons with distincively male or female physical appearance (IE physical strength, ability to bear children, male pattern baldness, breasts) and with certain personality traits which are prejudiced as “Masculine” and/or “Feminine” was or continues to be a divine act.

Instead, please immediately begin the process of teaching humankind that notions of male, female, masculinity and femininity are entirely human contstructs, available to any person as a matter of choice apart from their respective X or Y chromasonal impairment.

We request that you further extend any possible effort to ensure that those who are in position to assist with such teaching have the nessissary tools to do so. In keeping with this effort, we suggest a blotting out of Genesis 1:26-27 from all Books of Christian Spirituality (previously known as Bibles) through an unilateral act (previously referred to as “Miracle”) of literary intervention (previously referred to “Inspired authorship”).

Your timely attention to this matter is both expected and appreciated.

Respectfully
NPR.org***

-Tim-

This TOTALLY made my day!!! LOL

~Liza

 

[Betterave]

Can you maybe find a detailing of this report on a website that isn’t Catholic? I try to get my news about science and current events from non-religious affiliated websites. I feel like one cannot claim to be an authority on the other.

The website is not using an argument from authority, so the fact that the information appears on a religious-affiliated website should be irrelevant, it seems to me.

 

[Betterave]

I think there’s some pretty sloppy reasoning in the NPR article (although it is interesting).

Men primed to think of their gender showed a marked improvement in performance over men who were primed to think of themselves as students at a private college. Exactly the opposite was observed in women. Women primed to consider their status as students at a private college significantly outperformed women who’d been primed to think of themselves as women.

It is as if the mere questions — male? female? student? — by reminding the students what kind of person they are, -]determined/-] how well they could perform on the test.

Not determined - influenced.

The significance of studies such as these cuts in different directions. It suggests that you won’t find a legitimation of our self-categories in neurobiology.

The suggestion seems to be a bit of a non sequitur/vague claim. What is meant by ‘legitimation’? Who would have thought that neurobiology could ever function in this ‘legitimating’-way anyway? Obviously our self-categories are not reducible to neurobiology, but no one has ever thought they were anyway (other than really gullible materialists).

If biology is the measure of all things, then many of the categories we use to group ourselves into kinds of person — man, woman, gay, straight, black, white, professor, cheerleader — are, in fact, unreal.

Again, obviously biology is not the measure of all things, so this statement isn’t saying much.

You don’t find them in nature as it is apart from our attitudes and beliefs about that nature.

Obviously. But isn’t that just because there’s no such thing as “nature * as it is apart from our attitudes and beliefs about that nature”?

At the same time, what could be more real than the way we experience ourselves as being?

As Catholics we would have to say: Plenty! And we should say the same just as human beings. One basic way in which we experience ourselves as being is being confused about who we really are or are supposed to be. So obviously there could be plenty that is more real than the way we happen to experience ourselves as being relative to some particular self-category.*

 

[levinas12]

Is Descartes’ cogito exclusively masculinist? Or, to generalize, is philosophy exclusively masculinist?

Or, even more generally, are there two essentially different versions of human nature: male and female?

This is the view of Luce Irigaray. She is a French feminist who argued that the sexual difference between male and female is the most important factor in society.

For Irigaray, anatomical differences in the sex organs play a major part in how males and females view the world. So she seems to be putting a lot of emphasis on “nature” in the nature versus nurture controversy. But she would also say that culture can help us come to terms with “nature” (she is still a feminist, i.e., someone who believes that society can change).

Admittedly, Irigaray on many fronts is in disagreement with the Catholic point of view. But I think her emphasis on the body is a segue of sorts into JP II’s theology of the body.

 

[exnihilo]

Ah, the great minds at NPR. Something new has been found. The article makes it seem as if the author and the scientists never heard of a guy named Plato.

I don’t mean that we decide to be straight, in the way we decide to be a professor or a cheerleader. What I mean, rather, is that being straight isn’t only a matter of acting or being disposed to act this way or that. It’s a way of thinking about yourself. And with this way of thinking about yourself comes a whole complex of associated qualities, limitations and also expectations that loop back on to the way we act and are disposed to act.

Wow, they have discovered culture. Of course our culture’s expectations of how a person acts influence how they act. Across different culture different ways of being define the male and the female. What is expected of a woman in a primitive tribe will not be what is expected of a woman in an advanced society. The same goes for men, children, the elderly, parents, priests and any classification.

If what they say is true then this proves that we should have expectations, and very high expectations, for behavior from certain groups. The expectations will create the reality. And this makes sense. When a person thinks that because I am this I must behave thus they are being added in living up to expectations by the example set forth. This article helps to destroy permissiveness.

It is as if these folks have discovered the ancient art of visualizing. Athletes and many others have successfully used this technique for quite some time to improve their performance.

The most important consequence of their findings is that the mind controls the body. This helps to prove the duality of man. This helps to prove the immaterial quality of man. This helps to destroy materialism. But, I doubt that consequence will be grasped.

 

[Betterave]

Wow, they have discovered culture.

 

[Birdpreacher]

So is it cool for me to like dancing with the stars or not?

/he-manly man, man’s man, totally not a sissy
// thinks gender roles are kinda silly