Should there be any difference between the female and the male in society??
For the past 50 years or so, the promotion in the West is that there IS no difference between the male and female other than the placement of their genitalia. Of course, due to tens of thousands of years of contrary experience people (and even Science) have declared otherwise. The real question is whether women SHOULD be any different from males? And even more significantly is WHY, for what Purpose should they be different?
They needn’t be different for any purpose, they simply are different in any myriad number of ways. The real thing that needs to be examined is what those differences are and whether or not many of the traditionally presumed differences that we perceive are actually accurate. Many of those perceptions have been shown wrong. Women have proven themselves competent and skilled at any number of activities and roles that men have traditionally reserved for themselves. That’s telling. Our common perceptions of the difference between the sexes are often based on conceptual constructs of a traditionally male-dominated world. Once those constructs are examined and sometimes extinguished, women are able to challenge these male preconceptions. They don’t always win the challenge, but the fact that they sometimes do reveals a need for critical examinations of things like social roles and restrictions based in gender.
Yes, women are and should be different from men, and men are and should be different from women. They are and should be different in order to prevent the extinction of homo sapiens.
I disagree with the implied premises that everything is up to us to decide, and that a person’s nature is first and foremost a function of what society decides it ought to be.
Yes, we all know the pop-media propaganda. You say that there is no purpose at all, yet obviously nature thought otherwise.
What reasoning can you offer to propose why it is that nature has been wrong?
But what is that connection between homo-sapien survival and male-female difference?
No. I am asking if, given the choice, whether male and female should be kept different and why.
So women only serve the special purpose of having babies?
The implication is the FACT that people try. Whether it really is up to anyone to redesign homo-sapian is another issue. People can and DO try. I am asking if there is a legitimate reason for them to be trying … ?
No. Should there be a special accommodation in the work environment when women get pregnant? Sometimes, women are not hired or trained because employers fear that the woman will get pregnant and leave (maybe permanently). Sometimes, bearing children is seen as a lack of commitment to a company and women are not promoted as a result.
But you seem to be writing about something else, so I will bow out of this thread.
Morally, probably not. Functionally? Absolutely. There are ideal societies some folks are striving to create that would only function well if gender differences were obliterated. So the answer to your question ‘for what purpose*’ would be ‘to create a society like X, which I think is ultimately the best human society’. Then you’d have to argue about whether or not X truly is the best, given that it requires obliterating/enforcing gender differences to achieve it. When I say I reject the premise, I mean to say that even if arguments against X fail, I don’t think human nature is to be subsumed by utopian goals regardless.
Note that this works whether you ask “Should there be a difference” or “Should we seek to eliminate the differences.”
Hasn’t that been going on for thousands of years through religions, social philosophies, science advice, and governments? And doesn’t that make such efforts a part of “human nature”?
Depends on the method. A change that takes thousands of years to implement, or is a response to some real crisis is much more likely to be in line with human nature than a change that is intiated by a small group of intellectuals deciding among themselves ‘how it ought to be’ and then subverting society to actualize it.
Mostly, it’s not an either or situation.There is degrees of saturation,between the two, which can at any time thicken or thin out, depending on consensus, insight and political expediency, and. Has attained the status of games, when played correctly establishes a
balance, albeit not truly transparent nor opaque. It surely is not what was meant by ‘synthesis’. It times it is mostly a matter of interpretation, at other times
one of guidance. The ingenious mix will have a hold if
the mixture is appropriate to application. This hinges on a built in tolerance to levels of doubt bilaterally.
Whether it’s more likely to be inclined to conform with human nature as a driving force, is at times impossible to determine, since human nature as defined may pose problems of interpretations which may be loaded with preferential ideas. I may think otheriwise, that human nature as defined, may pose a problem to itself in regard to in what terms it views it’s self. Sometimes we act in accordance to assumptions of which we have no idea where they came from. I think the entropical process entails a regressive search for origins, and a will to push backward into a separation, into the realm of a search for original models. Which may be a mistake, since qualitative search for beginnings changes the presumed model retroactively.
Intellectuals attempting that is human nature. Non-intellectuals are trying it every day, merely with less success. Every preacher and pseudo-philosopher is in the act of persuasion toward an ideal. Every law enforcer, father, or moderator is also more physically persuading toward an ideal … not to mention all of the occults and social engineering.
The attempt to alter the world to a preferred state is certainly human nature. With high technology it simply comes much, much faster with less intellectual guidance and less tested (now even morons can do it).
I’m pretty aware of what it is currently and in the past. I am asking,
“IF you just started the design of male and female over, would you ensure a difference other than reproduction organs?” … And Why?
I know what it used to be in the cave and jungle wilderness. But as societies are developed, survival needs change because a society is a different form of environment and reality (greatly pretentious). Thus what is needed to survive from both male and female change.
Add to that high technology, and the question arises as to whether there is any need for gender at all. Although it would still be a challenge, today if need be, either gender, given enough current technology could create a long term society without the other.
So I am not saying that there is none, but exactly what is the need for gender difference any more?
Only if you don't believe in free will, I suppose, or in that crudest possible sense where "Human nature is just anything any human happens to do". In that sense a monk lighting himself on fire to protest this and that his human nature, or a small cult swearing off sex is human nature. I don't buy that.
Anyway, I think this takes us away from the answer to your question- yes, there is a good reason for their to be a difference between the sexes- some intellectual believing that difference is key to their utopian or political vision. Likewise there is an identicle reason to want to annhiliate that difference- some other intellectual believes it stands in their way. Ultimately, I don't think intellectuals [i]deciding[/i] whether or not we should have things like genders based on how it impacts their personal visions for everybody else's future is healthy. Gender differences are quite clearly real and there and people act according to them in fairly typical and universal ways when left alone to do so.
It isn’t merely a few who do it now and then. It has been going on since the dawn of Man by a very large portion of the societies in just about every society. The intelectuals merely do it in an intellectual way while others are doing the exact same thing, but in a less intellectual way. And that turns out to be the majority of people, mothers, father, children, scientists, priests, politicians, carpenters … everyone is trying to alter the world to fit their preferences in at least some small, very often stupid way.
If this was 100 years ago, I would probably go along with that. But the truth is that social manipulation has gotten to the extreme point wherein people are already acting in very insidious ways to reform nature even to the point of dispensing with gender entirely (by several ways). It isn’t like I am inspiring a new social movement here.
And then since such things are going on anyway, why not get the question out in the open and resolve the question of actual need rather than ignore it and leave it up to the most insidious thinkers on the planet.
But all that is going to happen is that “homo-sapian” is going to be gradually redefined until it has actually been extinct for a very long time before anyone notices; “mutants”, cyborgs, Rev2, “new and improved”,…
At the very least, there are different health and safety concerns that correspond to the physiological differences between genders. So, from, say, a medical perspective, gender differences are important. There are also gender differences in crime rates and social risks that are important to recognize.
Because the question doesn’t have an answer. What’s the purpose of the difference between men and women? What’s the purpose of ANYTHING other than in how it relates to some agenda? What’s the purpose in having people at all? If you define things according to their purpose, then you are granting the insidious thinkers the lion’s share of their argument already- that things persist or can be done away with based on how they fit into their designs. That’s what should be criticized.
Right, case in point. So what’s the purpose of anything then? Purpose as you seem to be using it is a teleological question- the only possible answer to a question of purpose is “Because God wants it that way” or “Because Marx needs it that way to accomplish X” or “because the citizens of Iceland want it that way” or something similar. Answering such a question with an answer based on material conditions is a category error. If you’d asked the purpose of gender differences in the natural sciences forum, the answer would have something to do with reproduction and that would be the right answer- because in that context the question isn’t teleological, and thus the fact that it might not be needed later is irrelevant to the question of what it’s purpose is today.
But this is still in the making. The process has not ended yet. And as long as it has not ended yet, we should do what we use to do. And don’t underestimate the coincidence!
If there were no differences we would get bored and create differences.
We would have no right hands.
Humanity would destroy the world.
Love would die.
