Those who criticize evolutionary psychology aren’t saying that there aren’t any innate differences between the two main sexes, but that most practitioners seem over-eager to convince themselves that any particular dimorphic cultural expression originates directly with those differences, seemingly believing that the only way a difference in the way men and women behave can show up is if there is one of those innate differences behind it. There’s a reason they are criticized for “telling Just-So stories” and why they are one of the prime victims of the WEIRD problem.
From the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 2:
Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.
You will note, I hope, that political views, opinions, religion, and property (all mutable) are in there. The central principle of human rights is that certain rights are human, i.e. belong to all humans, and then extend the definition of humans to cover everyone with an implicit coda that the restrictions on and abrogations of those rights are possible only on a case-by-case basis, on the basis of actions, and according to pre-established rules.
Immutability is not necessary or wanted.
After all, if I invented a pill tomorrow that instantly poofs someone into a fully masculine body, instantly and painlessly, you would be, I hope, fiercely against an arrangement where all women are enslaved with the justification that if they don’t like it they can just become male. I know I would.
I think you misunderstood. Immutability and spectrum/binary are different concepts. I’m saying I can understand the argument for binary understanding of sexual orientation as a cost-benefit analysis in terms of the economic and social costs of protecting equal rights – not that I advocate that position, but I can understand it.
Absolutely. I don’t disagree that both kinds of rights deserve protection. I was articulating why – from an American legal perspective – immutability matters for social justice when protecting equal rights (at least, the kind we’re talking about here, in the universe of personal characteristics (race/gender/sex/sexual orientation), because American equal rights doctrine is focused almost exclusively on immutability. As I pointed out to another commenter, speech and religion in the United States are protected under other doctrines and sources of law (like the First Amendment), not equal protection. The UN declaration has put them all in one article, while the US Constitution has scattered them throughout.
That’s an interesting hypothetical that would probably require us (us Americans, anyway) to rethink our jurisprudence in order to avoid an unjust or immoral outcome. (One correct criticism of American constitutional law is that it’s heavily focused on procedure rather than substance.)
That’s a caricature of evo-psych. I doubt that there is a single academic evolutionary psychologist who would claim that innate differences are the only ones…many wouldn’t even claim that they are the most major differences. And evo-psych tends to look precisely for cross-cultural and cross-species characteristics as a marker for evolved traits, rather than WEIRD ones; so that’s a bit off the mark as well.
This isn’t at all true, watch the video I posted above by Pinker where he explicitly states that socialisation has a big role to play, all he’s arguing against is the strong ‘socialisation only’ argument, that biology has ‘some’ role to play (and we’re not sure exactly how much, he’s only willing to defend what we have evidence for).
btw, here’s the full debate, the previous link didn’t have Elizabeth Spelke’s side of the argument:
It’s not hard to find examples of men who benefit from jettisoning bullshit gender essentialism. I’m not sure why you felt you had to mis-gender two women to come up with one.
OK, I see where you are coming from but I’m not sure it fits the vast or even simple majority of situations. It doesn’t work to consider sex binary when we talk about people since we know millions of people don’t fit that model and a million plus outliers seems a bit broad for any model. It may work when we describe sex in parochial terms to children so as to not confuse them on the subject until they are developed enough to understand the complexity of the issue but to me that smacks of lying to children.
Now, if by “majority of situations” you are referring to casual conversation where the topic of the sexes and sex is brought up, I agree. In the majority of those situations a binary model works best. But I can’t help but think that while that may encompass the majority of situations in which an individual may discuss sex, the binary model then seems to only fit that one scenario and while that scenario may encompass the vast majority of average persons discussions on the different sexes it only does so in casual settings. When we discuss sex outside casual conversation such as in scientific endeavors, that binary model seems to have no legitimate place in serious discourse.
I can accept why you don’t think it is a “spectrum” - there isn’t a one dimensional scale between male and female that we all fall somewhere in the middle of. In fact, when you talk about someone who has real chromosomal anomalies like being XXY, it might not make any sense to say fall somewhere between male and female.
But if we are going to talk about what words mean, surely we can also agree that something with more than two options is not a “binary” choice. That seems like a much larger mauling of the definition of a word than using spectrum does.
Right now, whether we want to have this conversation or not, there is a societal debate over whether sex is binary and deterministic of people’s personalities/aptitudes or whether more complicated than that. The people on the binary and deterministic side are bigots trying to take away other people’s rights. Since you clearly agree the truth is that it is more-complicated-than-that, since you don’t advocate bigotry, and since the word “binary” is clearly technically false, I think it’s probably better to agree that we not use it.
But if we are going to talk about what words mean, surely we can also agree that something with more than two options is not a “binary” choice. That seems like a much larger mauling of the definition of a word than using spectrum does.
No, the reality is far closer to a literal binary than a literal spectrum. We still call humans a bipedal species despite the fact that some humans may be born with fewer than two legs.
Who are the people on the binary and deterministic side? Usually when I see claims like that they just turn out to be misrepresenting people’s views.
I think we could probably do some scientific studies to back up the fact that people’s political views affect how they interpret scientific evidence. The dream of objective people making objective observations leading to objective decisions was never going to come to fruition.
I don’t care what the reality is closer to. Like I said, it’s literally definitely not a binary. Is that true?
Yes, but I do care which it’s closer to. It’s definitely not a literal spectrum either.
I know who I think they are, I’m wondering who you think they are (this set may not intersect). Other people in this thread seem to have very wrongheaded views about evolutionary psychologists for example, and I don’t want to make any assumptions about your thinking, so I asked you instead.
Well, we can debate which is “closer” all we want, but I started by saying that I understand why “spectrum” isn’t an accurate term. Personally it’s a lot easier for me to take the word “spectrum” loosely or metaphorically than it is to take the word “binary” loosely or metaphorically since spectrum is a word I hear people throw out a lot and binary I only ever hear used to mean there are specifically exactly two options.
At any rate, if we agree that “spectrum” implies more middle than there really is, and we agree that “binary” implies less middle than there really is, then part of the discussion of which is better has to come down to a weighing of which one of those errors is the worse error to make, and that discussion is one about values and politics, not about the meanings of words. I see a need to avoid “binary” because I think it lends inadvertent support to bigots (that is, it helps bigots justify their bigotry to themselves even if the user of the word doesn’t agree with them). Even though I agree the word “spectrum” is off, I don’t see real world consequences to being “wrong” in that way (aside from someone being wrong on the internet).
Fair enough, and I actually ninja edited my post to be less confrontational (not fast enough it seems). When I say there are people who believe very much that it is a binary and they are bigots attacking other people’s rights, I am talking about people who are unambiguously trying to limit other people’s participation in society via bathroom bills, military service bans, or whatever. These people are acting out on a political identity and I’d wager that scientists of any kind are underrepresented among them compared to the population.
But in the climate we find our selves in, I think it’s better not to argue about whether it’s a “spectrum” or a “binary” and better instead to say what we actually mean:
there are a number of different observed configurations of sex chromosomes [with the vast majority of people having one of the two most common configurations];
science does not support (and I think we could say cannot support - this just isn’t what science does) the idea that we should discriminate against people in terms of housing, employment, bathroom use, or any other kind of participation in society based on their sex chromosomes;
making assumptions about specific individuals based on their sex chromosomes because you’ve read studies saying that people with one set have different traits than people with another set is not supportable by an appeal to “science”;
similar to (3), it’s not a good idea to assume that because most individuals fall in one of two categories, that any specific individual you encounter does
(an if this seems hypocritical, I distinguish between arguing about whether it is a binary or a spectrum and arguing about whether either term gives aid to bigots; ETA - Also, if that’s bullshit, I’d just say that a hypocrite is someone who doubles their chances of being half right)
