cadre

Okay, I just finished the book Ways of Seeing by John Berger for one of my classes. (It's a good read actually). Anywho, it is a collection of essays writen by Berger based off of the tv show on BBC years back. There is a chapter on it on women vs men and I'm writing an essay on it. I thought I'd put it out there and see if any of you agree or disagree and why because in my class there were some very different views.

" According to usage and conventions which are at last being questioned but have by no means been overcome, the social presence of a woman is very different from that of a man. A man's presence is dependent upon the promise of power which he embodies. If the promise is large and credible his presence is striking. If it is small or incredible, he is found to have little presence. The promised power may be moral, physical, temperamental, economic, social, sexual - but its object is always exterior to the man. A man's presence suggests what he is capable of doing to or for you. His presence may be fabricated in the sense that he pretends to be what he is not. But the pretense is always towards a power which he exercises on others.
By contrast, a woman's presense expresses her own attitude to herself, and defines what can and cannot be done to her. Her presense is manifest in her gestures, voice, opinions, expressions, clothes, chosen surroundings, taste - indeed there is nothing she can do which does not contribute to her presence. Presence for a woman is so intrinsic to her person that men tend to think of it as an almost physical emanation, a kind of heat or smell or aura." -pg 45-46

" One might simplify this by saying: men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themeselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object - and most particularly an object of vision: a sight." -pg 47

Personally, I agree with this. I can definately relate myself to the woman that Berger defines and from the interactions I've had with men I'd say that part is true too. I also think that this is starting to fade, that it was stronger and more noticable in history than it is today.

What are your opinions? Agree/disagree? Any women think of themselves like this?

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My life is one of those 'you had to be there' jokes.

Infinite_Loser

Ummm... I have another opinion I'd like to state: Women are crazy. Men... Not as much.

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I believe in equality; Everyone is equally inferior to me.

Baraka_Guru

I find these distinctions problematic. This is because each can be applied to either men or women. I am not convinced that these distinctions are innate in each gender. For example, there must be many women who fit the "power and presence." And, I'll admit, I'm a man who has many of the characteristics that Berger attributes to women.

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Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

debaser

Men have penises, women own penises.

Thats the only real distinction I can find.

__________________

Baraka_Guru

Does this mean you haven't discovered your prostate gland?

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

debaser

Define "discovered".

__________________

cadre

Hm..okay, I can see that. In my opinion though the power thing is more common in men and the surveyor/surveyed thing is more common in women. Maybe it's just that I don't know men that well.

__________________
My life is one of those 'you had to be there' jokes.

Baraka_Guru

i.e. Do you know you have one?

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

debaser

Yes, I am aware I have one. I would not say I have "discovered" it, any more than I have my spleen.

I think you missed the humour in my first post...

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Baraka_Guru

Au contraire.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

debaser

Tushy.

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shakran

]
Boys have a penis. Girls have a vagina.




Sorry, couldn't resist

cadre

Way to get off topic guys :P

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My life is one of those 'you had to be there' jokes.

shakran

I think Baraka_Guru has explained why we have drifted off topic. Some of us have done it to make a point. Admittedly my point was couched with tongue in cheek humor

The differences between the sexes are largely culturally influenced. We give the little girl a dolly and a stroller to play with. We give the boy a hammer and a cap gun.

The real difference between men and women is in large part caused by societal pressures, and therefore your question must be called into (cough) question. Especially since we can all think of examples we know personally that reverse the "laws" for want of a better term that you put forth in your argument. You're trying to stereotype 7 billion people into 2 pigenholes. I think that's disingenuous.

World's King

Women are and always will be the root of all evil.


And men are stupid as fuck because we fall for it.

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heavy is the head that wears the crown

debaser

MRS. MOORE:
Is it a boy or a girl?

OBSTETRICIAN:
Now, I think it's a little early to start imposing roles on it, don't you? Now, a word of advice. You may find that you suffer for some time a totally irrational feeling of depression: 'P.N.D.', as we doctors call it. So, it's lots of happy pills for you, and you can find out all about the birth when you get home. It's available on Betamax, VHS, and Super Eight.
























ping!

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Seaver

Here's a weakness in that argument that you face. One can VERY easily argue that the "power thing" is women because they are the ones being sought after. A man only has "power" in inter-sex relationship after the woman grants it.

Much in the way that Medieval Kings had power, they only had power if the Pope granted said right to rule. If excommunicated, the King was abandoned by all but his strongest supporters. One can argue that men are in the same predicament, that we exercise more visual power but are only gain the extent allowed by said female. Hell, look at any marriage and you'll see the strength of that argument.

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"Smite the rocks with the rod of knowledge, and fountains of unstinted wealth will gush forth." - Ashbel Smith as he laid the first cornerstone of the University of Texas

Sultana

Eh, if I gave any of my nephews a dolly to play with, they'd convert it into a gun or a vehicle by any means possible. I've seen it happen.

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At night, the ice weasels come." -

Matt Groening

My goal? To fulfill my potential.

BadNick

I like to turn the red button at lower center to about 80%, not sure I can handle more

sapiens

Independent of the position outlined in the OP (which seems to be an unsubstantiated claim about differences between the sexes), whether or not there are innate psychological differences between men and women is an empirical question. It is not established fact that differences are largely culturally influenced. Far, from it. There is a massive amount of research examining differences between men and women that don't appear to be culturally influenced. I'm hesitant to go into it because the evidence is overwhelming. Some sources you might consider:

Individual differences research by Benbow and Lubinski
Cognitive neuroscience research by Doreen Kimura
Individual differences research by David C. Geary
Cortical adrenal hyperplasia research
John Money's irresponsible attempts to change the genders of individuals following botched circumsions
5-alpa reductase deficiency research
Ethology research
Robert Trivers' research
David Buss's research
Steve Gangestad's research
Non-human primatology research
Theoretical biology research
Evolutionary biology research

I could go on and on, but from my perspective, providing evidence of innate differences between men and women is like arguing that the earth is round, not flat or that the sun is the center of our solar system, not the earth.

Sex differences in cognition are likely produced by an interaction of innate mechanisms with specific environmental input. I think that it's important to identify precisely how our psychologies develop and work. Simply saying that society, or socialization, or even human nature is responsible is incomplete.
Any research findings on groups doesn't necessarily apply to every individual. Thinking of examples that reverse the"laws" is akin to arguing that penicillin doesn't work for everyone. So, it must not be an antibiotic.

abaya

Funny this post came up today, since I was packing fish this morning for work and experienced gender issues with a group of Polish immigrants. The women were doing "softer" work, preparing the boxes/bags for the several kilos of fish fillets that would be dumped into them by the conveyor belt, and the men were doing the "heavier" work of picking up the filled bags and moving them around.

I insisted on doing the "heavy" work with the men and they didn't know what to do with me. They kept motioning that I should switch with them, since one of the men had to take a "soft" job (since I wasn't taking it), but I refused. They kept shaking their heads, wondering what was "wrong" with me. I mean, wtf? As if tossing a few kilos of fish around is somehow "beneath" me as a woman? I prefer to act, move, throw, than to sit on my ass and look pretty folding plastic bags.

Joking aside, I was never given dolls as a child (probably because I tore my first Barbie's head off no more after that!), and I always asked for and got "boy" toys. I got robots, science kits, remote control cars... loved them all, and never "converted" any of them to dolls.

I was as tomboy as you could get, and apparently (to the Poles at work), I still am. I hope that never changes.

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for Love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
--Khalil Gibran

BadNick

dem crazy Pollacks!

any pics?

abaya

Yeah, I should have said *attempting* to look pretty given the way we are usually dressed! Here is an example of the average fish factory in Iceland... I think the hairnets are especially sexy:

Btw, I meant no harm to the Poles by my statement earlier... certainly, any group of alpha males might have acted the same way. I should amend my statement by saying that later in the day, the Poles started teaching me some of their language, so now I can say "Jagshemash!" with the best of them (No Borat, that was not Kazakh).

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And think not you can direct the course of Love;
for Love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
--Khalil Gibran

Mister Coaster

Perhaps this holds true in "modern sophisticated society." However, such society is only a flash in the pan compared to the evolution of the human race. Men are and were the physcally stronger sex, therefore they simply dominated the females whenever they felt the urge for sexual intercourse. Look to the animal kingdom, monogomy is extremely rare. (yes there are a few species, thats why I'm saying its rare, not unheard of) Whenever males are the dominant sex, they fight it out amongst themselves, and to the victor goes the harem. Females are relagated to the birthing and rearing of the young because they cannot physcally stand up to the males and change it. Males held the power.

Even in a modern-ish society, look at Eastern history. Asian women were born, raised and bred to please a strong warrior or rich land-owner. Look up the Samauri position, it was up to the woman to sexually please the man whenever he wanted it. Males held the power.

I'm not saying that this is a great model for modern society, but we are what we were. Primal urges are difficult to overcome. We are evolving, but for the most part, males still hold the power.

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If you have any poo... fling it NOW!

flstf

This reminds me of a story I heard long ago about the difference between boys and girls. The parents sent their daughter and son to camp for a few weeks. Upon returning they asked them how they liked it. Their daughter started telling them everything she did beginning with the bus ride and including all the girls she met and what their personalities were and all their activities. After listening to her story for about an hour they turned to their son who just said we fished, we swam, we did sports and had a lot of fun.

I know there are exceptions but it has been my experience that women tend to pay more attention to details and men more to the bottom line.

analog

...but does it go to eleven?

sapiens

I think that this is a mischaracterization of the animal kingdom:

1. Men may have been and are physically stronger on average, but this doesn't necessarily translate into men having free reign to "dominate" females whenever they felt the urge for sexual intercourse. I'm not sure where this idea comes from. Men compete for sexual access to women, but women are not, nor have they ever been available to be dominated for sexual intercourse. Women in modern society, hunter-gather tribes, and likely throughout time have had more roles than sex, birthing, and rearing. Women are mothers, sisters, daughters, aunts, nieces, cousins, grandmothers, leaders, allies, and mates (and likely a variety of other roles). Most women and most men in any given community don't and wouldn't allow men to have free reign to sexually dominate women.

2. Men may be physically stronger, but men are not the "dominant" sex, nor are males generally. I don't know of many evolutionary biologists that would use the term "dominant" in relation to male-female relationships in nature. In fact, many might characterize the female as dominant. Due to the generally greater parental investment of females, you will typically find male-male competition and female choice. Choice, as in females usually have more choice than males regarding with whom they mate.

3. True, monogamy is rare in nature, but there are more mating systems in nature than monogamy and harem systems. Even when there are harem systems of mating, it's not clear that it is the male "dominating" a group of females. As far as systems other than monogamy or harems look at many, many bird species, chimps, bonobos, many species of wild dogs, many species of insects, many species of fish, bears, the list goes on and on.

Seaver

Well first off look at birds, the males show themselves off and the female picks.

Second, every one of those animal societies are devoid of communication. THE most powerful aspect in ANY human-to-human relationship is communication.

Think about it, a silverback gorilla can individually dominate their whole pack. The gorillas do not have a very complicated communication system, however. We as a society can make alliances in which we can take down the alpha male (watch survivor, you'll see). The physical dominance does not rule a relationship in which the woman seeks help from other humans. Would you turn down a plea for help from a female who was utterly physically controlled by a strong man?

We are not a wolven society. ONLY the Alpha male and female (two out of a dozen) are allowed to reproduce. If we were told who can and who can not reproduce in our society it'd hold much more weight, but we dont.

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"Smite the rocks with the rod of knowledge, and fountains of unstinted wealth will gush forth." - Ashbel Smith as he laid the first cornerstone of the University of Texas

shakran

Yes, but the trouble is that that research is done on living breathing thinking people, and it's generally considered unethical to screw with someone's childhood in the name of psychological research. You can't treat a boy as a girl from birth in order to find out if he still grows up wanting to shoot things. You have to wait for some asshole child abuser to do it for you and then study the kid. In fact, I noticed a case of that several years ago on the wires - -mom wanted a daughter so badly that she dressed her son as a girl - - -he thought he was a girl even after he started going to school. I'd be interested to see how he's doing now - if he displays normal male tendencies or if he's a more "feminine" male because of his feminine-laced upbringing.

Baraka_Guru

Yes, and I think it would also be important to note in particular the difference between menstruation and estrus. The latter occurs in mammals such as dogs and cats, where the female shows noticeable physiological changes that will reveal when she is ready to mate. The male will know the opportune time to take a chance at passing on his genes by playing his part in creating offspring.

With menstruation, however, males are generally clueless as to when the female's cycle is at its height. This gives much of the sexual leverage to females as it encourages males to act as non-stop providers to their mates, because, hey, you never know when the time is right, so you might as well hedge your bets.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Mister Coaster

But this is exactly my point. Over millions of years of evolution, Homo Sapiens emerged from a society which was probably most like the one of your gorilla example. Physical male dominance, little or rudamentary communication. Yes, humans have come a long way from this model, but this is engrained in our nature, wether we acknowledge it or not.

Again, I'm not saying this is how we SHOULD act, but we are hard-wired towards it. Which explains things like unequal pay scales for the same job (men vs. women), overwhelming male majority in "leadership" roles, (politics, company CEOs) "dangerous" (police, firefighter) or "labor" (construction, blue-collar) jobs. It's not just the sexual division of labor.

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If you have any poo... fling it NOW!

sapiens

I have a few comments:

1) Because we cannot examine rearing practices experimentally does not mean that all sex differences can be attributed to "socialization".

2) We do have examples of efforts to treat a boy as a girl from birth. Check out Dr. Money's research or research on 5-alpha reductase deficiency. It doesn't work out.

3) Sex differentiation of the brain occurs during gestation in humans. This is established.

4) We can use behavior genetics methods like twin studies and adoption studies to examine the relative impact of genes, shared environmental factors, and unshared environmental factors on the development of psychological traits.

5) Through strong inference, we can investigate the relative merits of different theories of human development and psychology. If the results of experiments come out in favor of an evolutionary or behavior genetic position, we have support for that account of development. If they come out in favor of a "socialization" position, we have support for that account of development. We don't need to randomly assign people to sex roles to investigate these issues.

Humans are not unique in having complex communication and coordinating alliances to overthrow leaders (or attack other groups). Look at research by Jane Goodall or Frans De Waal for examples in chimps.

I would argue that it's more concealed ovulation than menstruation, but, yes, I agree.
1) I would argue that "little or rudimentary communication" does not characterize Gorillas.

2) There is no reason to expect that our common ancestor with gorillas was exactly like gorillas. Chimps and bonobos are both more closely related to us than gorillas and they have mating systems different from gorillas.

3) I'm not arguing against a "human nature". I am arguing against your particular characterization of "human nature".

cadre

I don't think that just because it's a cultural issue it isn't an issue. I mean isn't that part of it? That women and men are raised this way is a moot point, it still happens and the result is the same.

Maybe it is culture that causes the surveyor/surveyed part of females and the power part of males but arguing that is not the point anyways.

I disagree that women hold the power in society, they may hold more power today than they used to but they still by no means run society. If you look at the medieval era and the colonial era men were very much in control and Berger's idea fits perfectly there because men held the power. Ultimately men owned the women so a woman's way of gaining power was to act in such a way that made her desirable and I think that is why that developed.

You could even say that it's not about power per se, you could definately say that both genders hold power but the power is different.

If you look at society, especially in earlier hystory, women were objects and they were taught to serve and please men. So if you think about that, it makes sense that we would develop this sense of being watched and learn to display ourselves in one way or another. Then, you think about men, and from what I know about it, a man's status had nothing to do with HIS appearance. It was what a man had that made him great. Berger actually discusses this too in the essay on oil paintings because oil paintings were commissioned so that a man could document his belongings and thus how great he was. When he walked into a room it wasn't about being surveyed, it was about having an effect on the people in the room (you could say this about women too but the effect is inherently different).

That said, maybe this doesn't apply anymore but I think that remnants of these "roles" still exist and are still noticable in society today.

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My life is one of those 'you had to be there' jokes.

shakran

Quite true, but it does not mean that all or at least some of them cannot be. Obviously I'm not saying that characteristics such as men tending to be on average stronger than women are socially influenced (although an argument could be made that, especially in years past, the strength gap was at least in part attributable to that), but crap like the stereotype that men don't show emotions while women are emotional fountains I would guess can almost certainly be traced to social influences.

In the first place, the results of a "scientific study" conducted by as unethical a whack job as Dr. Money should be taken with a rather large grain of salt. Secondly, you'll note that the parents raised David/Brenda/Bruce as a boy for 1.5 years before switching him to a girl - we cannot know how that influenced his development.

no argument there.

How? Unless one of those twins is raised completely gender neutral or as the opposite gender, you can't.


This is rather like saying "If I do the right thing to lead it will become gold and therefore .. . " without telling us what you have to do to the lead.

OK, you have strong inference. What experiment do you intend to conduct?




(late edit - fixed broken quote)

sapiens

I'm not saying that it's one way or the other. I'm just suggesting that automatically attributing to socialization is irresponsible.

Yes, Dr. Money was a whack job. Are you suggesting that raising him as a boy for 1.5 years somehow damaged his successful gender transition to a woman? His attempts to change someone's sexual identity failed miserably.

What about boys with 5-alpha reductase deficiency or CAH girls with male-typical cognitive abilities? Or research on non-human animal sexuality? Or the massive evidence across many areas of human psychology.

Note: I'm not suggesting that socialization doesn't occur. What I'm suggesting is that we can't simply attribute something to nature or nurture without proper investigation.

Behavior genetics studies can tell us a lot about sexual identity without raising twins as a gender opposite their genetic sex. I don't feel up to writing a long post about BG methodologies, but if you want some reading suggestions I can offer them.

My point was in response to your statement that we needed to screw with someone's childhood in order to tease apart innateness/socialization arguments of sexual identity. We don't need to screw with anyone's childhood to examine the arguments any more than we need to watch evolution happen in a test tube to validate evolutionary theory. I'm not proposing any particular study. If I was, I wouldn't post it here.

shakran

Just as irresponsible as attributing them to biology



No, I'm saying we don't know if it did or not.

Generalizing a theory for the entire human race based on abnormal samples is very Freudian of you

Look we have very good evidence that socialization is a major factor in gender-role-stereotypes. Look at what used to happen 200 years ago. Something traumatic would happen and the woman would faint. Might take weeks for her to recover from the shock. That doesn't happen so much any more now does it? But then we no longer treat women like tall infants who need constant care and pampering lest they break.


In which case you and I are closer to agreement on this thread than you think - namely that it's pretty pointless because none of us has done that investigation, nor are we qualified to do so. The OP spouted some blatant, vague, and unsubstantiated stereotypes and then wanted us to chew on them. OK, we bit, but the bottom line is that none of us is a psychologist engaged in a study of gender differentiation etiology, so the thread can't really go anywhere. It's kinda like asking how to fix a '65 mustang in a floral arrangement forum.

You're getting way off the track here. People didn't just witch up the idea of evolution while lying in bed at night. They saw evidence in the fossil record and put it together. You seem to be suggesting that we conduct thought experiments and then claim that the results mirror reality.

Many scientists have fallen into that trap - the ones, for instance, who claimed we could never break the speed of sound. They conducted a thought experiment, but fortunately someone decided to ignore what people knew from those dubious experiments, build a plane, and actually try to fly the damn thing past mach 1. Clearly I'm not suggesting that this needs to be done here - nor should it for the ethical reasons that should be obvious to us all. What I AM suggesting is that without that experimental data we can never be 100% sure that our theories on this branch of gender psychology are correct. I'm also suggesting that this is OK - we don't NEED to know, especially if the cost of knowing is the destruction of the experimental subjects' lives.

sapiens

Which I haven't done (and which are argued against earlier),



The interesting thing about 5-alpha reductase deficiency is that it has a very specific, narrow effect on testosterone production. I used the example in the context of a much wider range of evidence encompassing both clinical and normal populations.

I would then argue that we have good evidence that socialization may be a factor in fainting 200 years ago. This says nothing about particular sex role socialization today, nor does it say anything about why in particular women were socialized to react in such a way (which may or may not have biological underpinnings).

I agree.

I disagree.
That's funny!

I'm not getting off track, nor am I suggesting that we use thought experiments. I'm suggesting that we rely on empirical evidence collected by qualified individuals.

(And I argued against the position of the OP...)

Absolutely, but even then, it's never 100%.

I don' think that the only alternative to not knowing is destroying people's lives.

Ourcrazymodern?

Individual differences far outweigh any other sort.

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