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Post by Tamrin on Feb 14, 2009 9:48:02 GMT 10
There are all-sorts of approaches to gender which we in the West find hard to accept. At one time the male worshipers of Cybele had to emulate Attis by emasculating themselves to become priest/esses in the cult!? and still in India, Eunuchs are commonly thought of as a third gender:
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Post by Tamrin on Feb 14, 2009 9:49:42 GMT 10
Another differing but fairly common perception of gender is suggested by: Couvade syndrome[Excerpt - from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - Linked Above] Few women would be surprised by reports of men in some cultures receiving more care when in couvade than the women receive when in labour!?
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Post by Tamrin on Feb 14, 2009 21:42:16 GMT 10
Similarly there is the persistence of belief in a "male menopause."
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Post by Tamrin on Apr 6, 2009 7:21:43 GMT 10
Beyond this microscopic differentiation (and its enabling chromosomal deficiency), macroscopic and behavioural sexual distinctions and expressions are widely diverse... Even with the enabling chromosomal deficiencies there are no mandated binary alternatives.
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Post by Tamrin on Apr 19, 2009 19:17:08 GMT 10
There are all-sorts of approaches to gender which we in the West find hard to accept. At one time the male worshipers of Cybele had to emulate Attis by emasculating themselves to become priest/esses in the cult!? and still in India, Eunuchs are commonly thought of as a third gender:
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Post by Tamrin on Apr 21, 2009 0:40:00 GMT 10
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Post by Tamrin on Jul 25, 2009 8:29:58 GMT 10
The Myth of Mars and Venus Do Men and Women Really Speak Different Languages? by Deborah Cameron[Description - Oxford University Press - Linked Above]
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Post by Tamrin on Jul 25, 2009 9:22:59 GMT 10
I am often told that while "masculine" and "feminine" traits or energies are common to both men and women, (despite individual variation and poorly defined differences), such gender terms are acceptable, as they are consistent with them being more often characteristic of, or more prevalent among, their respective sexes. I consider such reasoning to be nonsense.
In The Myth of Mars and Venus (previous post), Prof. Cameron (pp.5.7) relates how:
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Post by Tamrin on Jul 25, 2009 10:27:35 GMT 10
Prof. Cameron (pp.41 & 43) goes on to say: Definition (Wikipedia):In statistics, a meta-analysis combines the results of several studies that address a set of related research hypotheses. This is normally done by identification of a common measure of effect size, which is modelled using a form of meta-regression. Resulting overall averages when controlling for study characteristics can be considered meta-effect sizes, which are more powerful estimates of the true effect size than those derived in a single study under a given single set of assumptions and conditions.
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Post by Tamrin on Jul 25, 2009 15:19:09 GMT 10
Prof. Cameron concludes The Myth of Mars and Venus (pp.178/181), stating: [/size]
Changes in male-female relations are more troubling to some people than others. For a certain kind of conservative, the weakening of traditional sex distinctions and hierarchies has become the main focus for anxiety or rage about the state of the modern world. The most obvious illustration is the rise of new forms of religious fundamentalism which are obsessed with the policing of sex and women. But some kinds of contemporary Darwinism could well be analysed in similar terms (ironically, given that Darwin is up there with feminism on the fundamentalist's hit-list). A certain kind of Darwinian advocates obedience to nature's law as zealously as the religious fundamentalist preaches obedience to God's commandments—and he or she is usually obsessed with sex and gender too.
The resurgence of the idea that most differences between men and women are biological—and therefore, as Why Men Don't Iron puts it, 'unalterable'—is a striking feature of contemporary debates. Many feminists, and other liberals of the 1960s generation, thought this particular kind if sexism, based on biological determinism, had disappeared from the mainstream for good, and are alarmed by its sudden return to fashion.
In The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker argues that their concerns are unwarranted: we can talk about biological sex-differences without compromising our commitment to gender equality. 'The case against bigotry', he says, 'is not a factual claim that humans are biologically indistinguishable: it is a moral stance which condemns judging individuals according to the average traits of certain groups.'
This is all well and good, but perhaps a little disingenuous. What Pinker is overlooking is ..., that not all biological differences matter to us in the same way. People don't usually come to the subject of sex-differences as 'blank slates'. They come with an agenda: they are looking to biology to justify certain views about society—how it is and how it should be. Though Pinker himself is an exception, most people are susceptible to the argument that if a difference between men and women has a biological basis, it is inevitable ('you can't argue with nature'), desirable ('what's natural is good'), and the world should be organized around it.
Even so, I would not want to argue that ‘nature’ versions of the myth of Mars and Venus are axiomatically more objectionable than ‘nurture’ versions. That would be to reinforce the simplistic idea that biology is destiny, and to overlook how much the two versions have in common. We should not be giving a free pass to sexist arguments merely because they are couched in the language of genes and brain-wiring. Given a choice between the biological determinism of Why Men Don’t Iron, the cultural determinism of You Just Don’t Understand, and the New Age psychobabble of Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, our answer should be ‘none of the above’.
In any case, arguing about whether a difference between men and women is biologically based or culturally constructed is pointless if the difference in question does not exist. Many Mars and Venus generalizations fall into that category. When the infamous ‘women talk three times as much as men’ claim hit the headlines in 2006, I spent days being asked by journalists whether I thought women’s chattiness or men’s taciturnity, reflected social influences, innate characteristics, or a mixture of the two. Again, the answer is ‘none of the above’: the answer is that women don’t talk three times as much as men.
In this argument, the feminist trump-card should be the evidence produced by research investigating the way real men and women really use language to communicate. One of the things I hope this book has shown is that the research done by linguists, anthropologists, and others—by now, a significant body of work—deserves more attention than it generally gets. What it tells us about language, about men and women, about other times and places, and about the changes affecting our own, is far more interesting and thought-provoking than the familiar Mars and Venus platitudes.
If we want real understanding to take the place of mythology, we need to reject trite formulas and sweeping claims about male and female language use. Popular wisdom may say these claims are true, but the evidence says they are not. The evidence is more in line with what it says on a postcard someone once sent me: “Men are from Earth. Women are from Earth. Deal with it.’ Clinging to myths about the way men and women communicate is no way to deal with it. To deal with the problem and the opportunities facing men and women now, we must look beyond the myth of Mars and Venus.[/quote]
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