The Re-Masculinization of Man...

[Tab]

- You know those grins, those big fat shit-eating grins, where you can see all the way to the very backs of people’s teeth…? I’ve got one of those right now…

I dedicate this post to my car, in which, for some reason, most of my very bestest finkin’ gets done…

First up - a link to Satyr’s “Feminization of Man” essay.

This, was one of those thesis that always bugged the shit out of me. It looks right, it reads right, it seems to fit the situation we have these days in our society reasonably accurately, and skips along with a happy degree of internal logic. And yet… And yet I knew it was wrong. I knew it in my very bones, but for the life of me couldn’t put my finger on the fatal flaw that would bring the whole house of cards crashing down. Very irritating, very irritating of course, until now.

Allow me to humbly present, (Ta-dah)

[size=117] “The Re-Masculinization of Man, and the re-unification of the sexes.”[/size]

Now, I don’t really disagree with the run up to the main premise, the gradual development of technology, the rise of capitalism, and the slow disintergration of physical strength and rugged individualism as prime forces in today’s society. It may very well be a natural consequence of being human, as the author himself acknowledges:

There is no conspiracy here, no invisible entity directing things from the shadows. We might even say that the process is ‘natural’ and the consequence of a normal social progression that started in the tribal unit and has resulted in the emergence of a huge socioeconomic machine, with its own logic and interest, assimilating, conforming, levelling and eradicating everything in its path…

So far, so chummy. No, what always irked me was the labelling of social strategies, behavioral patterns, skills and physical/mental characteristics as ‘female’ or ‘male’. This whole Feminization business, niggled at my hirsute Neanderthal scrotum.

My first doubts occurred when I observed children, prior to the differentiating tide of adolescent hormones: They are, apart from the budding genatalia, much the same, in physique and physical capability, as eachother. The games they play are different, but this is a consequence of meme, rather than gene, of social programming and segregation. However, the behaviors are the same. Little girls jump, little boys jump. Little girls run, little boys run. Little girls play with dolls, little boys play with dolls (abeit ones with scars and guns). Little girls fight, little boys fight, sometimes eachother.

Most if not all young childrens’ games involve co-operative play. They are learning to use their bodies, improving coordination, and learning to act as a group, to achieve a collective goal. Individualistic games, tennis and the like, come later. Come, later and un-naturally if I may go so far.

For children, a little boy on his own, is a sad boy. A little girl on her own, is a sad girl.

ie: Group action and co-operation, is the natural norm for both sexes of the species, not a consequence of some techno-driven social behemoth.

Now, what social strategies do male and female children learn and employ with regard to getting what they want from the adults around them…? Direct confrontation…? No. Rugged individualism…? No. Wheedling, sneaking, coniving, manipulative-play-one-off-against-the-other tactics…? Oh yes. Yes, yes,yes,yes,yes.

ie: Social skills are naturally learned first, by both sexes.

Then comes the change. You know the drill. Bottom line, little boys become stronger and more agressive than little girls. So, at this stage, the lines of development that for so long ran fairly parallel, separate. Girls continue to learn, develop and polish their childish social (and now also sexual) skills: to influence and gain influence/dominance within a social group into the more mature forms of adulthood.

The boys however, swing away from the development of these skills, to learn how to use, and more importantly control, the new found tools of strength and agression: to influence and gain influence/dominance within a social group into the more mature forms of adulthood.

ie: the methods may differ, but the goals are the same.

Please note: this diversion of skill-development has this natural result: when an adolescent stops physically changing, and reaches the stable plateau of adulthood, a man is deffeicient in the arena of social/sexual skills when compared with the average woman, and a woman is defficient in the skills of physicality when compared with the average man.

However, whilst strength is an attribute associated with the male. The attribute itself, is genderless. Whilst socio/sexual-manipulation is an attribute associated with the female, The attribute itself, is genderless.

ie: Any woman, if she chooses, may lift heavy things until she can beat the living shit out of Joe Average. Any man, if he chooses, may learn to orate rings around Jane Average. The fact that the upward limit on strength is slightly higher for the male, is inconsequential, unless that male actually persues that limit to its utmost.

Choice too, of course, is genderless. Free-Will, of course, is another matter.

Sexual attractiveness, though differing in the forms of expression between the sexes, is not the sole requisite of the female. Both sexes try to maximize their attractiveness to the other sex, to the limits of their capabilities, within those forms of expression, be they physical, mental or materialistic as dictated by the whims of consensual fashion. There have always been truly beautiful men, and truly beautiful women. There have always been truly charismatic men, and truly charismatic women. There have always been stupendiously wealthy men, and stupendiously wealthy women. Only the ratios change, with the opportunities available, and the social climate of the time. It is the nature of the human to maximize effectiveness within the niche they find themselves in. Sexual Attractiveness, as an attribute, is genderless, only in its mode of expression, which is quixotic, does it become labelled male or female, against the social context of the period examined.

All great leaders of either sex, Queen or King, in history, have also been great orators, socially adept, movers of men (and women). Some have been warriors of strength and prowess, but not all, strength and prowess are not the common denominator. Of course, there were more great male leaders, than female ones…

…But that was when raw physicality was still a trait highly useful to life. Before, as the Author rightly notes, the great leveller of technology really came to the fore. Please remember of course, technology is genderless. A machine has no balls. And also remember that just as a shell is the bio-technological extention of the snail, the car or the gun is equally the extention of the human. We are the tool-making apes, take away our hammers, and you take away our humanity. But that’s another story, and one that you hopefully already know.

Gruelling manual labor is quite literally, hard-work, wether you’re a man or a woman. The purpose of technology has always been to externalize physical strength and to augument our natural abilities and senses, allowing us humans to put our collective feet up, and get pissed.

In short, for the human species, technological evolution is just as natural, if a little speedier, as genetic evolution.

ie: The levelling of the sexes, with regard to physicality, is a natural outcome of being human. It was always going to happen, it was just a matter of time. It was no-one’s ‘fault’ and certainly not an extremely long-term feminine plot to castrate the male.

So far, so rhetorical. Now for a little linguistic tom-foolery.

In my car, speeding along, I was wondering why the terms ‘masculine’ gambit/strategy/tactic and ‘feminine’ gambit/strategy/tactic seemed wrong somehow. This dichotomy bothered me.

Was it a false dichotomy, I wondered. Are there some exclusively male strategies, some exclusively female strategies and whole bunch of in-betweenies…? Genderless…? Available and usable by both sexes, without the baggage of implicit ‘femininization’ or ‘masculinization’.

So I tried to think of a strategy that was completely usable only by a man, or only by a woman.

I failed. They are all, in essence, interchangable.

That surprised me. Then I realaized why.

The flaw lies in the operation of putting the adjective ‘Feminine’ or the adjective ‘Masculine’ next to the noun ‘Strategy’. They look good together, I’ll admit, and that’s the problem, they look so fitting, that they decieve.

What is a strategy…?

It is a set of behaviors and actions, undertaken in a fairly strict order, to produce a result, be it at the expense of another or not, always beneficial to the undertaker of the strategy, accordant with their personal criteria.

ie: Action towards desire.

ie: Genderless in essence.

• Though any particular strategy can be instigated and followed through by a male or a female - the successful outcome of this strategy is linked to their individual abillities in the areas relevant.

• A strategy, the success of which is reliant mainly on strength/aggression, will become associated with masculinity, as it is the averagely stronger males who will tend to adopt it through repeated experience. The strategy itself however, as a program of behavior, remains genderless.

• A strategy, the success of which is reliant mainly on social/sexual manipulation, will become associated with femininity, as it is the averagely more socially adept females who will tend to adopt it through repeated experience. The strategy itself however, as a program of behavior, remains genderless.

• Therefore, a male, adopting a strategy/behavioral pattern, the success of which has been previously associated, however exclusively, with the female, does not in reality, become in any way feminized.

• Therefore, a female, adopting a strategy/behavioral pattern, the success of which has been previously associated, however exclusively, with the male, does not in reality, become in any way more masculine.

• The idea that the current social/technological conditions favour the adoption of strategies dependent for their success on skills of traditionally associated with, but not exclusive to, femininity, somehow ‘feminizes’ the male, is simply a deception of shoddy phrasing.

Let us have an example. Let’s make it reasonably modern.

Aim. Get some food (from the supermarket).

Options:

Strategy: Walk to the supermarket.

A man can walk. A woman can walk. Walking is a genderless strategy. Both sexes walk at a pace governed by their physical fitness, and the sensibleness of their foot and leg-wear. Spike-heels will slow you down. As will enormous great biker-boots. But walking is physical. So should we call walking a ‘Masculine’ strategy perhaps…? Perhaps not.

Strategy: Persuade someone else to get it for you.

Here, let’s differentiate wildly.

Sub-strategy: Sexual wiles. Bat your eyes at the nearest person, and say “Look - if you go get me some food, I may consider sleeping with you…”

Sub-strategy: Threat. Bunch your fists at the nearest person and say “Look - if you don’t go and get me some food, I’ll find you, and beat you to a pulp.”

There are variables external to the individual (the size and strength of the other, the attractiveness and sexual orientation of the other), but still, obviously, these are two sub-strategies that have clear associations with the sexes. And the outcome on average is likely to be biased according to the sex of the individual.

But, and it’s a big but, both can be attempted by either sex. The actual strategy is not limited to a specific sex. The actual strategy is genderless.

If it’s a female wreastler with a bad temper doing the threatening, the strategy has a fair likelyhood of succeeding.

If it’s a member of the latest rave boy-band doing the batting, the strategy has a fair likelyhood of succeeding.

So, in summation, given a set of strategies, wether these strategies are social and group-orientated, or individualistic and agressive in nature, undertakable toward a subjectively desired goal, an individual choosing to adopt such, or indeed ‘forced’ by the current social climate into adopting such, does not diminish or exaggerate their gender.

Men remain men. Women remain women.

Men and women, to succeed, adapt.

Humans adapt.

Tab.

[Bessy]

A nice sigh

Now pleeeeeeease stay. Please? =D>

[Dan1 (Dan~)]

We are the tool-making apes, take away our hammers, and you take away our humanity. But that’s another story, and one that you hopefully already know.

I believe you should actualy say “take away our brains”.
De-humanizing humans happens often during analysis and thoughtless choices. Old age and decay are the real enemy here, and its basicly why people are morons, if they are. Collective “progress” is not always lost, but individual “progress” is. If they ever did cure decay and old age, then you all would see what im talking about. Poeple being in-experianced causes so many problems in life… being stupid is the source of most “evil”.

The differences between male and female are not large at all, as you and i both see. Good job old bean, on the nice thread. Sexual methodology is more personality then natural/un-natural because we choose how we act out our feelings.

Satyr said stuff about sex that made me [temporarily] feel like it is what he thought it was. 1 human opinion. Would he choose (if he could) that humanity acted the way that he wanted it to?

@ Bessy,
I felt like saying “its” instead of “it is” but i didn’t this time.
I usedto say “fealt” instead of “felt”.
Change is slow, but existant because of will.
So mom, im trying but its gradual.

[Lollipop_King]

Sexual roles are products of particular environments and serve particular survival tactics - pre-existing environments, which we call natural because man had nothing to do with them as opposed to artificial which is a designation that denotes human inventiveness and meddling, are to “blame” for our present human condition.

We are the products of millennia of natural history and only recently have taken control over our destinies or meddled in this evolutionary process with political history.
But, as usual, man should take care as to how he meddles in nature.
The results of human meddling can be seen around us and we only now discover the interconnected repercussions of what we once thought of as progress.

That men are different that females is a given, at least physically.
Our eyes cannot deny this, no mater how much our hearts want to.
I suspect that if we weren’t so sensually dependant that even physical differences, - which are nothing else but general patterns differences – would be denied as existing.
Other differences are more difficult to witness and so more easily denied as existing. Yet, behavioral differences are obvious, as well, even if they can be interpreted in whatever way we wish and in accordance to our abilities and prejudices.
Fact is that females exhibit general behavioral similarities as they exhibit general physical characteristics, with the requisite exceptions to the rule that exposes natural mutation which evolution relies upon to experiment.

There is a reason why males and females exist as seperate sexual identities, it isn’t some accident, some quirk of nature, or nature creating superfluous distinctions that made males physically different from females and gave them a penis and a hormonal type.

Change the rules of the game and the value system is altered. The value system, in turn, affects development.

Now, change the environment and you change the rules and the distinctions. Man doesn’t only impose himself on nature physically but reinvents her value systems. We protect the weak, we tolerate the sick, we value those that enhance unity so as to preserve it for our own benefit.
There is no selflessness here, merely a different survival strategy,due to weakness. We aren’t social animals because it feels good, it feels good because we are social animals, and it feels good because pain/pleasure is how nature enforces her rules.
Those proclaiming their altruistic motives and “good-nature” or who play the super-hero defender of ‘the right’ and ‘the weak’ have simply altered their strategy of maintaining Self. They feel vulnerable and helpless on their own, so exalt anything and everything that maintains social cohesion - this for their own selfish motives - and cannot comprehend those that oppose or question it.

So, it is funny when I hear people attacking elitism or discrimination or racism or sexism or any ideal that distinguishes differences rather than only focusing on similarities.

What has happened is that one set of discriminations has been changed for another, more popular, set. Where one person is elitist in a more individualistic discriminating manner another is elitist in a cultural, communal manner.

Bush’s and America’s desire to spread its value system around the world amounts to elitism. The fact that it is shared by an average majority makes it acceptable by the group. Whereas elitism or discrimination that follows a communal code or is practiced as a collective is deemed moral or just or good when it is focused inward and discriminates between the communal parts it is deemed threatening and immoral and diseased.
Here prejudice is relabeled “value system” or morality. When the group is prejudiced towards group harmony it refocuses its discriminating eye to similarities and attempts to eradicate any focus on differences. Similarly, an individual wanting to find power through categories focuses on differences and ignores similarities so as to establish understanding which leads to pattern recognition.
The mind searches for patterns to understand itself and the world.
Some find similarities as a way of escaping their individual insecurity and achieve power through group dynamics. That is they share in power by belonging to what they see as just like them. Their sense of self gets tied up in the group and only discriminates outwardly or in what threatens this self identity through others.
Some find differences as a way of categorizing and understanding Self, by how it is different from the other, and so seek out power through discrimination or a more focused distinction, so as to preserve individuality.

The question is: Do external differences amount to or cause or expose psychological, intellectual differences or are they only cosmetic?
Is beauty really skin-deep? Isn’t the human brain created to distinguish patterns which reveal qualities favorable to survival?

Another question is: No matter how alike we are, as belonging to the same species, do these slight differences which are quickly diminishing due to environmental alterations … do these small differences expose an added difference in potential - are they markers to more fundamental differences - or are they just irelevant?

We can all see how environmental conditions alter skin pigmentation, for example, and no matter how we wish to ignore it, it is there always reminding us of the others historical past not like our own.
But did environment only cause external alterations without, ever, affecting other human traits? And even if our modern global shared environment is now forcing us to exist within similar conditions and so is presently diminishing whatever physical/intellectual differences past geographies might have produced, does this mean that the gap has been breached or that we should desire that it be breached?
Why do we desire uniformity? What will be the consequences?
Why are we, as individuals, so attracted to harmonious coexistence and are appalled by the natural phenomenon of judging another by superficial symbols or by violence?
What are the repercussions of indiscriminating love and the absence of discriminating hatred? Is man to become an ant-like creature?
Do we fear being judged thusly ourselves or do we fear losing the cohesion that saves us from testing our quality according to natural selection, and is this why compassion feels sooooo good?

Nature establishes potential and Nurture establishes what potential is achieved within the limitations of our natural potential, as produced by genetic history.
So a man’s potential to be muscularly strong or tall is greater to that of a woman if the environmental conditions are similar. This does not mean that every male is taller than every female, nor does it mean that every male will be physically stronger than every female nor does it mean that every male will be more aggressive or more capable with abstract thought than every woman.
What it means is that the mean, the average potential for height or strength or for whatever is different for either.

Human culture amounts to a change in environment that completely alters the dynamics that brought about gender distinctions.
Sex is becoming trivial and loses importance because the environment that created its necessity has been altered with long-term effects.

That the genders, and races for that matter, are growing indistinguishable is a direct consequence of human meddling. It is undeniable.
This is what I refer to “Feminization”.
I call it “Feminization” because I perceive the female archetype as the underlying one, upon which maleness is added to, and because of feminine positive dispositions to social constructs due to their dependence on them because of their sexual/procreative roles.
Gestation takes much more effort than fertilization and so the gender that is burdened with it must become efficient with its energies and more dependants on others.
Thusly we get female smaller frames, a childlike appearance that increases “cuteness” and imitates a child’s unthreatening look, a more guileful psychology so as to manipulate environments not through muscle but through cleverness, a social awareness so as to fit into groups and accept and tolerate others, establish a place within the balances of inter-personal relationships, cooperate with as little friction as possible and maintain group cohesion.
This feminine strategy is now copied by males who find themselves redefined by modern environments and pushed back into subordinate roles (omega roles) because the place of masculinity has been taken over by institutions.
Violence, defence, authority is now the exclusive domain of institutional power.
Individuals occupying them can be anything, since it isn’t their individual traits that define the power positions they hold, but it is their ability to accept whatever definitions the power-seat, itself, is characterized by.
So the “commander in chief” can be crippled or female or homosexual and still symbolize the institutions masculine strength. Individuals are promoted by how they can mirror the cultural and social ideals that surround them. So, in fact, the less individualistic and strong and independent you are the more you accept external memetic ideals and so attain to the symbolic position of institutionalized power.

The weaker the creature the more it must suppress individuality so as to fit into a unity that will provide shelter and safety for it.
The stronger the creature the more self-sufficient, intolerant and indifferent it will be.
In nature we see females making up the core of social unities and in some cases they dominate in numbers.
Feminization can be called domestication. The more a group grows the more the common denominator is lowered to accommodate growing numbers, that is individual distinctions that do not benefit the group are less tolerable in large groups, where individuals are replaceable, than in smaller ones, where each individual is more important to the group and so his whatever quirks are tolerated so as to benefit from his unique talents.

My basic premise is that natural selection does not tolerate superfluous characteristics that do not enhance survivability. What IS, serves a function or it IS not or it diminishes in time if it becomes obsolete.
You do not use a muscle it atrophies.

Another question:
Are we sure that little girls play with dolls and little boys with cars because of social pressures or are we forcing girls to play with cars and boys with dolls as our way of imposing human ideals and memetic value systems upon natural, genetic ones? Furthermore do little boys and girls recognize the symbolism of cars and dolls or are they just toys and that only gain symbolic significance with age?

[Lollipop_King]

Dan~

Satyr said stuff about sex that made me [temporarily] feel like it is what he thought it was. 1 human opinion. Would he choose (if he could) that humanity acted the way that he wanted it to?

And what is not “human opinion”?
Is equality not “human opinion”?
Are we not here to filter our personal/social/cultural/religious ignorance and prejudice by testing our opinions against one another?

Here’s a better question:
In what way should my personal preference affect my analysis of patterns?

Do you believe in things according to what you “prefer”?

How will his preferred human behavior affect human destiny?

Is simply describing a phenomenon a declaration of preference?
In a world where everything is white-washed and certain concepts are given a positive spin, is it not helpful to point out that things aren’t so nice and perfect and wonderful and equal?

[Mad_Man_P]

Satyr

My basic premise is that natural selection does not tolerate superfluous characteristics that do not enhance survivability. What IS, serves a function or it IS not or it diminishes in time if it becomes obsolete.
You do not use a muscle it atrophies.

This could be said to be true of gender-roles. they have become superfluous… so their time to die has come… and as all evolutionary deaths… it will be slow and painful…

Is this what you are arguing for?

[tentative]

I’ve read both positions and I have to say that both Tab and Satyr are right.

Tab - I agree that the use of gender in describing evolving ‘role’ playing is perhaps not quite on the mark.

Satyr - While you’ve explained your use of the term ‘feminization’ very well, I wonder if the issue isn’t more about domestication than any gender stipulation. I will agree that domestication involves the emphasis of traits normally attributed to the female, but it seems to me that the very use of the word brings its own set of issues that perhaps clouds the vision.

The continued ‘domestication’ inside western culture isn’t to be ignored, even though it isn’t a universal phenomenom. Most of the world population remains very close to earlier male/female role models. Over time, as the need for more cooperation and less violence becomes necessary worldwide, feminization (domestication) will undoubtably become more widespread.

We really aren’t any different than any other animal, domestication removes the more violent individualistic traits. My neighbors little toy poodle is a hell of a long way from his wolf ancestor.

So you are both right.

JT

[TheAdlerian]

"However, whilst strength is an attribute associated with the male. The attribute itself, is genderless. Whilst socio/sexual-manipulation is an attribute associated with the female, The attribute itself, is genderless.

ie: Any woman, if she chooses, may lift heavy things until she can beat the living shit out of Joe Average. Any man, if he chooses, may learn to orate rings around Jane Average. The fact that the upward limit on strength is slightly higher for the male, is inconsequential, unless that male actually persues that limit to its utmost."

This is not true at all. It may at best, be true in a society.

Female athletes, in this time period, run the risk of losing their period from working out too much. So just imagine what would happen to most women in the state of nature.

I’ve mentioned it before, but one theory about why women look the way that they do is that they are a type of “child” that has the same “cute” appeal as a child, but is not. There’s little difference between this and any animal that has developed symbols. So, if that is true then females are primed to be attractive, and men aren’t.

[Lollipop_King]

The Adlerian makes a good point.
It is possible to bypass nature using reason, as in the case of female body-builders who alter their body’s chemistry through extreme asceticism, will-power and chemical (technological) help.

Perhaps we can become pure rational beings if we wish to, but we must consider what we will lose in the process and what the long-term significance of our rebellion will be.
If we wish to take our own destiny into our own hands we must first decide what this destiny will be and what consequences it will have.
We must also consider how rationality, in the first place, is affected by natural selection.

Do both women and men exhibit the same metnal capabilities?
Why are men, predominately, innovators and inventors and challengers of status quo?
Why are men predominately revolutionaries and explorers and questioners of establishment?
Why are women, predominately, concerned with maintaining stability and unity and harmony?
Why are women always followers of male idealism, accepting them wholeheartedly and unquestioningly?

We see it exhibited on this very Forum how the female participants want to promote compassion and love and belonging and spiritualism.

Is male effeminate behaviour part of this Feminization/Domestication?
Can growing homosexual trends or ambiguous sexual identities and superfluous sexual practices be connected to an overall social docility and passivity, as exhibited in election turnouts and in an overall indifference with politics or with thinking for ones self?

We live in a culture founded on the Socratic notion that nature and the universe can be healed from its “inhumanity” using reason.
We, therefore, go to great lengths to maintain rational accessibility to our self-determination. This is what causes the social dominance of Nurture over Nature, as the factor that best explains human divergence from an average norm.
Science has been taken over by the idea that all diversity can be explained using nurturing effects on mental development. It continuously disregards or ignores or minimizes the historical nurturing effects that establish genetic patters through time and how past conditions guide present individual development.

Everything becomes a consequence of immediate environments (nurturing) so as to save “equality” and our “free-will” from the unreachable determining natural environmental conditions that participated in our emergence and created our character before we were ever born.
We cringe at the idea that we cannot change what has gone on before our birth and which shaped us as minds and beings.

We see criminal behaviour being primarily attributed to dysfunctional families, for example, without ever considering that lawful, passive behaviour might just as well be a consequence of dysfunction that only seems normal because it is socially dominant and socially valuable.
Perhaps our passive, tranquility and tolerant dispositions are more a result of artificiality and indoctrination rather than nature and we are repressing parts of ourselves in ways that result in psychosomatic ailments we like to explain in other ways and try to heal by inventing new technologies.

What if violent behaviour was our norm, part of our primordial makeup, and it is modern society that forces us to repress it and diverts it from its utility?
What if what is wrong with criminals isn’t the act itself, the violence or the thievery, but that they could not control it knowing that they would be punished for it?
What if it is our docility and tolerance and passivity that are the products of a dysfunctional environment – a manmade dysfunctional environment?

But the same can be said for many other modern beliefs.
We love explaining differences in academic performance or athletic performance as being environmental or due to some “syndrome”. Every deficiency which exposes inferiority or results in superiority must be explained as being part of a socioeconomic dysfunction or effect or disease.
God forbid the notion that individuals are not all created equal should creep into our Democratic idealism and needful psychology.
Why, if that would happen, what would that say about our own deficiencies or our own genetic background? How would we measure up?
And how miserable we will feel knowing that there’s nothing to be done about it because it’s just the luck of the draw, the natural practice of creating multiple weak copies so as to enable that single stronger one to come to be.

In recent time this psychological need to escape from universal indifference has evolved from it being a method of explaining away racial differences to it explaining away gender differences, as well.
Everything that divides or hints at a qualitative differentiation must be levelled down to its common denominator. It must be only allowed to explain superficial diversity.
Thusly females become males with breasts and vaginas and men become women with enlarged clitorises.
The common denominator is that we are all human.
Granted, but is that the end of the story?
We could say that all life shares the common denominator of being alive. Does this mean all life is equal or the same or that it is only different externally?
Why are we different to begin with, in whatever insignificant minute way that is?
Does nature whimsically experiment with form and sexuality and aesthetics without it having any deeper significance?

Mad Man P

This could be said to be true of gender-roles. they have become superfluous… so their time to die has come… and as all evolutionary deaths… it will be slow and painful…

Is this what you are arguing for?

Replaced by what?
And then what? Will this “gender death” result in the end of human development?
Does not environment force change?
Therefore gender death is forced by conditions.
What if these conditions alter, what will we have lost?

It’s unfortunate that some people hate themselves and nature so much that they dream of a sterile, uniform condition where they are no different than anyone else and nothing about them is any different than anyone else.

tentative

The continued ‘domestication’ inside western culture isn’t to be ignored, even though it isn’t a universal phenomenom. Most of the world population remains very close to earlier male/female role models. Over time, as the need for more cooperation and less violence becomes necessary worldwide, feminization (domestication) will undoubtably become more widespread.

You take earth as an isolated environment.
It is, so far.
It is the absence of frontiers and growing populations coupled with diminishing resources that has led to an environment that favours feminine types.
Do you think this isolation will persist indefinitely?
Will there not be a need for both violence and exploration in the future?

We are like rats in a cage.
The cage first makes us bite each others tails and kill each other.
Then our rational brains think of an alternative or rather the environment promotes a more tolerant docile rat which we justify using our rational mind. .
“What if we shared and tolerated and we became passive?”
Peace is slowly established.

Then we discover a way out of the cage.
What then?
Your intuitive understanding that non-violence and altruism is a moral progression or a virtue is due to your indoctrination within a cultural environment that is shaped by natural environments.
Hate is just as helpful as love. It is the environment that dictates which dominates during a historical period and under specific conditions.

The Commandment “Love thy neighbour” would be silly, and stupid in a world of sparse populations and resources that had to be competed over. It gains power when populations reach a certain environmental limit.
Plenty of men had preached Jesus’ message before him. But he came at the right time, when population pressures and fatigue made human psychology vulnerable to this type of message, at a time when it was necessary, if mass extermination was not an option.

Mans’ tolerant Democratic modern character (in the west), his current docile nature isn’t any moral leap forward. In evolution there is no forward or backward. It is a social evolution that adapts the individual to a particular environment.
Nothing more, nothing less.

Those that seek to make it into a transcendental ‘truth’ are merely looking after their own interests and acknowledging their own dependencies.

Domestication, if feminization insults your modern sensibilities, makes a wolf into a dog. A happy, ignorant, passive, obedient dog, who wags its tail at everything, knows no caution because it has little experience with fear and has never been allowed to experience need to any insufferable degree, and so becomes naïve, childish, friendly and moronic.
We love dogs because they are so child-like.
But we respect wolves. We aspire to attain some of the wolf’s attributes and its survival talents.
The dog? We think it’s cute and helpful. We like it we don’t respect it.

[tentative]

siatd writes:

It is a social evolution that adapts the individual to a particular environment.
Nothing more, nothing less.

I can buy that. I would suggest that social evolution can either come from institutions or simply from the individual understanding coelescing into its own movement when the institutions fail.

I would also suggest that the movement toward more pacific ‘evolution’ could easily go the other direction depending on the environmental conditions. A population die-back could easily generate the dominant aggressive male attributes once again.

In this, it is unclear to me that the ‘social’ norms shape the individual entirely. While there have been few true rebellions, there are many examples of revolution when the social conventions no longer met the needs of the collected individuals.

One only has to look at the social construct of communism to see that the collective mass can either support or reject the institutional powers. Whatever social norms are presented, they eventually have to match the obdurate reality experienced by the collective membership of that social order.

IMO, the gender issue is simply whatever artificial social construct is dictated, regardless its evolutionary direction. Any connection to primal difference is irrelevent.

JT

[Tab]

Hi Sara, Hi Dan, Hi JT and Hi to Madman (I can’t believe you’re still around )

Adler,
We are a society. Women display some neoteny. I do not see your chain of reasoning, nor any support.

Anyway, a few more thoughts.

Time to face some perhaps unpleasent possibilities, I do not say truths, because, well, how can I know for sure…?

The Earth is rock and water and air and fire, it is incapable of caring about what we do. Gaia is a comfortable anthropomorphism, a friendly face sketched over cold ground.

Evolution is an artifact, born where mutation, enviroment, reproduction, life and death interact, it does not try, it does not experiment, it is not an it.

There is no divine plan that I can ascertain in life, or in the world, or for as far as I can percieve with my limited senses or indeed with the equally limited augumentations our technology has supplied. But then, how is the mayfly to appreciate anything beyond its brief flicker of time…?

Perhaps once every 100,000 years, the sky flashes neon pink and letters a thousand kilometers long spell “I woz 'ere”

Everything we do, and everything that we have done, and everything we will do in the future - is, was, and shall be as it should. There is nothing but us.

Pray tell: what is there to meddle with exactly…?

With PoR I discussed race, and what race actually means, to cut a long story short, to say that “I am an Englishman”, or “I am Japanese”, is to say the same thing:

“I am one of a genetic strain that has been isolated in this particular habitat long enough to have become slightly more adapted to it than you.”

Isolated.

And what has technology given us…? It has given us what we have drempt of for most of recorded history, what Icarus burnt and Daedalus made: Wings.

Men and women are different, to deny this is futile. Again I will not say truth, but I hold the belief that we have been steadily accentuating these differences via slow selective breeding as a species across the millenia. Hence the neoteny, hence the disparity of heft, hair and hip.

In difference lies lust. As a man I do not fantasise about flat-chested marathon-runners. As a man I look for rounded slopes and sleek curves where I have none. I lust for difference. I sought it in the town of my birth. Later I sought for it among the cities of my country. Later still, I put on my wings and finally found a surfiet in a country and credo halfway around the world. I am an ordinary man.

With the nullification of distance, and the resulting loss of isolation, homogenity, both cultural and physical, is inevitable. This very lust for difference is what will make us all eventually the same.

And when this sameness has descended over the Earth, and all the smiles that we see have all the same even teeth, and the hair that is tossed is all the same shade, and the thoughts that are thought are all the same thought, and the lives that are lived are all the same life… Who is it that we will lust after…?

The individual.

What goes around comes around. Patience Satyr, and a millenia of it. Your time will come again.

Technology is our termite-mound, technology is our spider-web, technology is our natural state of being. Technology has tamed the lands where we could not live, at the price, if you wish to put it that way, of taming us in turn.

Domestication. Domesticate. Domicile. Domus. House.

We made the world as comfortable as our lounge, not too many sharp-edges, an air-conditioner in every room… Is it any wonder we grew fat and slothful, and let the kids get out of hand…?

What are we trying to say here…? That, as a species, we got what we wanted, and now we will whine about not wanting the things that come with it…?

Stop romaticising the past, the past was hard, and dirty, and short-lived, we live in a era of relative peace and plentitude, even if it is peace at the point of a gun. Those that have known true hardship and war do not desire it. That they leave to the young fools, with heads full of Perseus and Achilles and Hercules.

Let me tell you a story of the heroics of war.

My father joined the airforce at 17, he lied about his age. He was sent to India in WWII, where he flew supplies to troops. He landed on a makeshift airstrip in a village that they found to be deserted. No troops, no villagers, no-one. They looked around. They became hot. They went to the village well. Unfortunately, they could get no water.

Because the well was stuffed with bodies. The bodies of women, the bodies of children, the bodies of men, the corpses of cattle. The whole village was down the well. He never found out why.

My father does not speak of conflict in glowing terms.

I am happy with my domesticity.

But that does not make me weak.

Tab.

[Bessy]

Tab

In difference lies lust.

Honey, you are wrong. Women may lust differently, but women lust, my friend. Oh yes… women lust. Okay maybe young women don’t show it as much, but older women?

Yup, we do quite regularly. Actually, I am doing it right now.

[size=75]ps… I am happy with my domesticity too. Kinda. And, for the record, I am not fat or slothful and my kids are NEVER out of control - at least when I am around[/size]

[Tab]

[size=75]Hey B. - Perhaps I was a little gnomic, by “In difference lies lust” I mean - “The physical differences between the sexes generate the attraction between them.”

Tab.[/size]

[TheAdlerian]

“I do not see your chain of reasoning, nor any support.”

Oh come on.

I believe that these kind of cheap argument tactics are heading out the door here at the “new” ILP.

If you can’t think of what to say, then just say that.

Meanwhile, my point was clear, as it is to anyone that lives amongst other people, that men and women are clearly different. Men and women have different biological function that literally every resource is dedicated to and that can‘t be ignored. I agree that culture and whatnot affect behavior to a very high degree, but they can’t affect things like women needing a certain amount of body fat to have children and provide milk afterwards.

Society:

I was clearly referring to the type where a division of labor is present, thus reducing the need for strength and where plenty off food is available.

[Tab]

I’m not disputing physical difference. Only the implication of gender where no gender exists. Did you actually follow the general thrust of the original post…?

Humankind has always been a society. A group of 2 is a society.

I understand the words you write Adler. But I still don’t know what to say to them.

I’m sorry mate, but do you have any role here on this ‘new’ ILP, beyond stating the obvious…?

[Lollipop_King]

Tabula Rasa

What goes around comes around. Patience Satyr, and a millenia of it. Your time will come again.

I’ll be dead. How will that be “my time”.

We made the world as comfortable as our lounge, not too many sharp-edges, an air-conditioner in every room… Is it any wonder we grew fat and slothful, and let the kids get out of hand…?

Out of hand?!
You think it’s as trivial as that?

Think through the repercussions of pampering.
The end result is not a spanking. It’s death.
All societies deteriorated after a decadent stage. Then they vanished.

What are we trying to say here…? That, as a species, we got what we wanted, and now we will whine about not wanting the things that come with it…?

I was never consulted. I found the world as it is and chose none of it.
Have I grown accustomed to it?
Yes.
But that’s no argument on its behalf either.

Stop romaticising the past, the past was hard, and dirty, and short-lived, we live in a era of relative peace and plentitude, even if it is peace at the point of a gun. Those that have known true hardship and war do not desire it. That they leave to the young fools, with heads full of Perseus and Achilles and Hercules.

I am not “romanticising” anything.
I am describing effects and phenomena despite my personal preferences.

My father does not speak of conflict in glowing terms.

No one who has experienced it does.
But that doesn’t take away from conflicts productive character and its purpose.

We all want paradise, but how boring and stagnate it will be.

[Tab]

The Spider, to the fly: “Actually, I’m not all that keen on how this web business has turned out to be frank, it keeps me in one place, I don’t get my exercise like I used to, I’m getting soft.”
The fly, to the spider: “But you’re a spider - it’s what you do.”

Do you not see how pointless it is to dispute the rightness and wrongness of something that just is. The world we have made is the externalized definition of what we are and more importantly always were. Does the fire complain about the height that its flames have reached…?

Will the world stop upon the passing of your last breath…? Do you care about individuality as a concept, or only about your own little life…? Did my words not comfort you…?

Tab.

[TheAdlerian]

"However, whilst strength is an attribute associated with the male. The attribute itself, is genderless. Whilst socio/sexual-manipulation is an attribute associated with the female, The attribute itself, is genderless.

ie: Any woman, if she chooses, may lift heavy things until she can beat the living shit out of Joe Average."

I think that what you wrote is clear. I bolded it just to make it more clear.

I refuted these ideas because they are incorrect. That means that your premises are incorrect.

Also, civilizations tend to be marked by a significant division of labor, thus taking the burden off of the individual and allowing for more leisurely pursuits.

My new role at ILP: I am supposed to ask if you read the last post where I accurately explained things already. My secondary roll is to ask people if they actually know what they are talking about.

[Tab]

So - you really are disputing that a woman, who has been to the gym, and who has reached the peak that her innate physical parameters allow, could not punch the lights out of some IT slob in her age bracket…

Strength

• I lift the wife up, say 50 kilos.
• I build a robot, it lifts the wife up, and the baby up too, say 75 kilos.

The machine is stronger than I.

And yet the machine is not a woman, nor a man.

Strength is an attribute. Hair-colour is an attribute. Will you now argue that a blonde hair, made of keratin, is female, and that a black hair, still made of keratin, is male…?

Everybody else on this thread seems to have got this concept down pat, straight off the bat. I bite my lip.

[TheAdlerian]

I totally agree with that.

However, I think that that situation, and its being, could only happen in the kind of world that Satyr always talks about.