So I had a few discussions because of the article I wrote yesterday which was a brain dump of some of my thoughts on the fact that men and women are almost certainly different (mentally and emotionally speaking). Over the course of some of these discussions, new thoughts emerged, and I wanted to get them down this morning. This was largely why I wrote the piece – just trying to get my own thoughts on a complicated and confusing subject together.
New Simple Argument
So, first of all, here is my new 1 sentence basic argument against anyone who believes that men and women are innately mentally, emotionally and/or behaviorally identical:
“So men and women are different genetically, developmentally, biochemically and physically – but mysteriously they are identical mentally?”
Transsexuals Might Disagree?
The fact that some men want to be women, and some women want to be men doesn’t contradict my position here – it in fact validates it. Because it shows that the identification of a sexuality is not merely socially constructed. We have here people who have been raised as one sex, given all of the same toys as everyone else, and shown the same sexual propaganda as the rest of us, etc and in spite of it all, something in their brains screams at them so loudly that they FEEL wrong behaving the way everyone expects them to, that they instead choose to deal with some of the most atrocious vilification our society hands out in order to feel comfortable in their own skins.
So your choices (as best I can figure) to deal with the sexual-identification issue, is that either every single transsexual person has had some anomalous environmental pressure in their early childhood which made them flip their sexual identity – OR – you accept that sexual identity is something which was programmed in to them genetically, developmentally and/or biochemically.
Surely No One Thinks that…
I got this response from a few people, a few times. Of course no one thinks that men and women are the same! Well…I wouldn’t have bothered writing the article yesterday if it wasn’t the case. It seems to be surprisingly common, with several people encountered the other night who seemed quite certain of it, as well a few comments in my discussion since which also reported their own experiences of people refusing to acknowledge that men and women might be different.
One interest tweet response I got made reference to the point I raised about how people used to argue that the different races were different – but no longer do, so maybe this line of argument I am making is just as erroneous as those old ones! Of course I disagree completely, and I think my 1 line argument above alone is sufficient reason why. Races have slight variations on superficial physical features as their only point of difference – but otherwise are genetically, biochemically and developmentally similar. Hence there is no reason to suspect that races are particularly mentally different from each other either. Men and Women, of all races, are persistently and constantly different across all of these things in significant ways.
Ought from Is – The Naturalistic Fallacy, And Judging the Sexes
And my final thought for now on this, is to make a very strong note that at no point in any of this have I set out to prescribe what should be. There is nothing about the fact that men and women are different which prescribes a way they ought to be, or how people ought to be treated. More importantly perhaps, there is also no value judgement being made about these facts. I absolutely reject the idea that any one sex is better than the other. Although I do generally find myself liking women a lot more than men, so maybe I think women are better?
But seriously, the idea that x and y are different means that x must be better than y is a complete non-sequitor. There is zero connection between difference and ranking! And the idea that one sex or another could be better, or more valuable, or more important is as absurd to our society as it is biologically. You can’t have one without the other!
Follow up thoughts on differences between men and women...,
Shane
Are you sure that you’ve ‘tried everything’… That is have you tried dragging the horse to water, and beating it senseless with Logic… If so, then I fear it’s kicked over the Apple Cart and drunk all the Kool Aid. Too Bad So Sad! It must be A Horse of a Different Color… Just An Old Nag who is immune to New (Old) Tricks… Like Logic and Good Sense.
My last Comment that I was working on was lost, and better, although it did use the ‘Effing word’ as in ‘F’ing’, which was not quite so ‘impolite. That is in using it’s ‘contraction’, instead of just spelling it out as in ‘EF*ing’ Idiots, although I did Feel that way…
Which I felt was ‘better than the way that I ‘feel’ toward the people that make the ‘1D10T’ error in their “Logic” of Denying All Logic in their ‘arguments’ of ‘Us’ really just being ‘All The Same’… IF I had known ‘that’ I would have surrendered long ago in “The Battle Of The Sexs” to “The Enemy” and then “Lived Happily Ever After”… If I was ‘A Princess’…
Not being A Princess or even ‘A Prince’ but Just a Commoner I’ll ‘throw in’ my decidedly jaundieced view… Which is…
Or would be, just as ‘summarized’ in your ‘simple argument’.
Leaving all bad feelings aside (somewhat…). The DSM V, in it’s ‘latest incarnation’, must be on ‘their side’ in all matters of ‘logic’ being that it now ‘classifies’ almost all Normal Human emotions as ‘Aberrant’. That is if someone does have the temerity to even ‘Feel Different’ from ‘The Opposite Sex’ (which we KNOW that there is No Such Thing!) may be Committed for Commiting the Crime of ‘Gender Identification’ in it’s most Henious Form, that is in acknowledging a difference that cannot so easily be denied, such as the obvious ones… Say such as when a ‘Celebrity’ has a ‘Nipple Slip’ or a ‘Wardrobe Malfunction’ for all to see… The difference between ‘Me and Thee’ becomes quite obvious… As in the ‘Adventures of “SuperWoman”.
“Faster than any man’s rational thought processes! More powerful than ANY Male’s Logic’! Able to leap all Reasonableness in a single bound! (“Don’t look in her eyes! There is No Defense!” “She’s always Game!” “It’s SuperWoman!”)… Yes it’s SuperWoman… Strange Visitor from ‘Another Dimension Entirely’ who came to Man with powers and abilities far far beyond those of average ‘Joe Sixpack’! SuperWoman … Who can change the very course of Reality, bend all males past their breaking point in her bare hands, and who, disguises herself as a ‘Rational Creature’, looking ‘Oh So Helpless All Of The Time, fights the-never-ending-battle for ‘Just Trust Me’, and ‘Just You Wait!’, to conquer and to ‘Domesticate’ The American Male! And Now, another exciting conquest in the subjugation of The Male Ego! ”
I’m so sorry I just could not help myself.
But ‘Deny ‘It’ They Do’ in their ‘Mental Processez’ and in Their Emotions. Which I must mention seems to be ‘A Quality’ of ‘The Fairer Sex’, in their ability ‘To Bend Reality With Their Bare Hands’ and that ‘Their Emotions Are More Powerful Than A Male’s Logic can comprehend’ and who are ‘Able To Jump Over Reality In A Single Bound’ and while ‘thinking’ in ‘underhanded and devious ways’ appears to be just ‘Princesses in Sheeps Clothing’…
It’s just gotten so bad that in a Scandanavian country this mindset is attempting to forbid males, Men and Boys, from Peeing standing up! AND it’s from ‘The Left’ no big surprise there.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/13/sweden-left-party-toilet-stand_n_1590572.html
“Swedish Left Party Chapter Wants To Make Urinating While Standing Illegal For Men”
Oh, and ‘Their Reason’… It’s more ‘Hygenic’ and Empty’s the bladder more completely than while standing up. I guess that they flunked basic physics too… Science Math and Logic seem to be ‘Just A Guy Thing’. I guess that they don’t know about women’s rest rooms and rest stops! I think that whatever ‘men’ they have in that party are well on their way to growing their first Vagina.
I think that ‘Feminine Logic Gone Wild’ is to blame for ‘Liberal Mudled Thinking’ in Females and Males, and there may be ‘no coming back from it’ save Max Planck’s Scientific Dictum that:
A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” ― Max Planck, Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers
So maybe Feminisim and that ilk, that ‘way of ‘thinking’ (Emoting), will just have to ‘die out’ one funeral at a time!
Until that happens look up Stephen Goldberg’s ‘The Inevitability of Patrichy’ and ‘Why Men Rule’ who was at The City College of New York.
This diatribe sadly is worse than my previous response and not the better for ‘the rewrite’!
Thanks.
You should write a book, if you have not already.
Joe Hyde
Interesting. Thanks for Writing Joe. I am curious to read the books you recommend simply because my current default position is quite strongly against them. (just guessing from the titles). That said, if they are simply explaining why it is that men took power throughout history – then sure, such a description may be worth exploring. But any notion that men ‘should’ be in power is not one that I would agree with.
Nonetheless, I do enjoy reading things which come from different perspectives to the position I currently find myself in. Standing still (intellectually) is no way to learn.
Aeqist
Those two books that I mentioned are indeed “… simply explaining why it is that men took power throughout history …” I ran into this author many years ago and it was an unpopular stance to take especially back then. I sometimes wonder how people could think that we were all ‘basically the same’ inside if our outsides were so different? Also if ‘Evolution’ is what ‘got us here’ then how could ‘we’ in our ‘infinite wisdom’ decide that we knew better than ‘Evolution does’ …? Of course I believe that ‘Belief in Evolution’ is a tautology, that is ‘if we are here’ and ‘if this ‘x’ is so, then Evolution did it… That is all ‘Answers’ are ‘Evolution’, that doesn’t sound to ‘Scientific’ to me. It might be Defensible but I just, at this point, don’t see it.
Thanks for the comment and it seems that you think more than some that I’ve met on the Internet!
Do you like Physics… Mathematics… Science… ?
As a ‘Bonus’ 😉 I’ll give you a web site that I think a lot of but it will require a lot of ‘Close Reading’ to really think about what is said and then ‘what do you think about it?’. I would recommend reading the very first two papers the very first thing in order to see just ‘where this guy is coming from’ and then read the third paper and then go from there… Although I’ll list the fourth and fifth paper to read after the main web sites URL.
(Also I just stumbled back here because I like Shane’s Soap Box I never expected my long ‘diatribe’ to show up in the comments section… This is what hapens when you have some time on your hands and not even brains to censor what you’re writing!
Here are the URL’s:
http://milesmathis.com/ (Main Web Site)
http://milesmathis.com/pre.html (1st paper to read)
http://milesmathis.com/central.html (2nd paper to read)
http://milesmathis.com/death.html (3rd paper to read)
http://milesmathis.com/uft.html (unified field theory)
http://milesmathis.com/are.html (long paper on the Calculus)
http://mileswmathis.com/bio.html (his Bio)
Also as one last one check out this web site:
(I’m sorry but the site appears to be down at the moment but the url for the site at the ‘WayBack Machine’ is below)
http://web.archive.org/web/20130120015309/http://blazelabs.com/
This part of the site is the one I wanted to introduce you too.
http://web.archive.org/web/20130120044216/http://blazelabs.com/f-u-suconv.asp
Now this last web site is definitely ‘Uncalled For’ but may, in an emergency, be of use, it is purported to be put out by the Department of Homeland Security…
http://ak.imgag.com/imgag/product/preview/flash/wsShell.swf?ihost=http://ak.imgag.com/imgag&brand=/product/preview/flash/wsag&cardNum=/product/full/ap/3066708/graphic1&mtype=0&&NameFirstTo=&NameFirstFrom
Thanks again for the comment.
Joe
Haha! Well if you write something in the comments section of a blog, it should appear there! I’m not sure if you can edit it or not, but if you didn’t mean for it to be public, I can remove it….
As for the readings – wow! That looks like a lot to get through. As you saw the other day, i am still travelling, so it is unlikely I will have spare time to get through any of it unfortunately. And as soon as i get back to Sydney I will be getting stuck right in to my work with rbutr (which I can’t wait for!).
As for Phys Math and Science – absolutely I love them. I’m not great at maths or physics, but generally interested in all of it. Cosmology was my original science of choice, though I ended up choosing to study Molecular Biology because i thought I could have a more practical impact with it than with cosmology…