ShadowsOfParadox
Well-known member
"Seperate but Equal" is an invocation.
"Different" is the truth.
Philosophy Radical Sapphic Democracy: A Theory of Politics
- Thread starter LowlandsOfHolland
- Start date
"Different" is the truth.
LowlandsOfHolland
Active member
This doesn't really answer the question. Are men and women "different" and unequal, or are they "different" and equal?
ShadowsOfParadox
Well-known member
depends on what you value higher.
For instance, Women have a higher average intelligence then Men, but Men have a greater variance, meaning statistically you get more Men who score in the "Genius" range, but also more Men who score in the "Idiot" range. While getting more Women in the "High Average" range.
You see similar stuff all across the differences.
Some people will say that the differences average out. Personally I find that they are mostly differences in kind. And differences in kind are very interesting indeed to call "equal".
LowlandsOfHolland
Active member
So your contention is that women are a species (not in the biological sense) apart from men? One wonders why they often live in proximity to one another, then.
ShadowsOfParadox
Well-known member
Even if I considered the sexes as species apart, I'd point out Clownfish and Anemone. Or perhaps Ants and Aphids. Or possibly Cleaner Shrimp and nearly any species of Reef Fish. Or perhaps I could point to the Leaf-Cutter Ants and the Fungi they tend.
Difference is good. If Men and Women were precisely the same but for their genitals I have the strange suspicion Humanity would be much less interesting.
ShieldWife
Marchioness
Actually, men have a higher average intelligence than women.
This is a study by one of the more prominent psychometricians who studies sex and IQ. His findings are consistent with what others in the field have found. It is true, though, that men tend to have greater variability in intelligence.
ShadowsOfParadox
Well-known member
I was primarily referring to proportion of people in the average range itself... admittedly, I could have phrased that better.
LowlandsOfHolland
Active member
If we are going to make biological metaphors, there are many species which are gregarious and yet segregate by sex, or which are solitary and segregate by sex. One wonders why, if humanity is such that the differences between men and women are so vast as to render it asinine to suggest they are the same kind of being, we have a social structure which suggests that men and women are, in fact, variations of the same kind.
Besides, this does not really resolve the question of how properly to interact with one another. Take the case where women are different and superior to men. Should we then treat men as the inferiors they are, graciously or otherwise? Should we instead pretend at a kind of social and political equality, whether through condescension or through sincerity?
ShadowsOfParadox
Well-known member
...that's not what I said though.
For a video game reference would you say that the Franks and Britons of Age of Empires II are not both human? And yet both play incredibly differently due to differences in kind.
"Difference in kind" is not "asinine to suggest same kind of being", it means the differences are, themselves, in different areas. Thus any question of "equality" must first determine the value associated with those areas.
And frankly, those values are GOING to change as the times change.
...I have no idea how you'd even begin to answer that beyond "It Depends".
LowlandsOfHolland
Active member
Okay. Now apply this to, say, hair color. There are differences between blondes and brunettes, therefore we cannot say that all hair colors are equal. We must concede the possibility that one is naturally inferior to the others and so must submit to them. Or is this fundamentally an asinine statement which ignores what "equal" means in, say, "equal protection of the law" in order to claim it refers to being a duplicate of something?
ShadowsOfParadox
Well-known member
are there though?
no seriously, are there?
Is there even a single scientifically valid study that demonstrates any statistically significant differences which can only be attributed to hair color?
LowlandsOfHolland
Active member
The differences are very immediately obvious, unless the person has their head sufficiently covered.
ShadowsOfParadox
Well-known member
A difference in color =/=a difference in kind. Certainly not of the sort I was referencing.
I'd have thought the video game reference would have made that clear.
LowlandsOfHolland
Active member
It certainly is a difference in kind. The expression of hair color indicates a different genome. The question is whether this difference in kind demands a difference in treatment, a difference in position, a difference in action. That is, outside of narrow contexts like getting your hair dyed, what importance is there to hair color?
And, to drive the point home, what does a difference in kind around man vs. woman demand in the sense of these factors?
ShadowsOfParadox
Well-known member
Not as I was using it.
A Difference in Kind as I was using it is along the lines of "Who has the worst Archers in Age of Empires II? Is it the Spanish or the Burmese?" In Age of Empires II the Spanish held the title of "worst archers" up until the Burmese arrived in the Rise of the Rajas Expansion, who has the worse Archery Range is a very interesting question, the Spanish you see, have every non unit specific upgrade, but are the only civ whose Archer line ENDS at the Archer. Meanwhile, the Burmese have only a single Armor Upgrade(compared to the Spanish's three)(also, the only civ to lack two armor upgrades ANYWHERE) and lack Thumb Ring(accuracy and firing speed upgrade), BUT their Archer line ends one upgrade higher up than the Spanish's, at Crossbowman.
On the other hand, while both have the Elite Skirmisher its much better for the Spanish thanks to those two additional armor upgrades+thumb ring.
The Heavy Cavalry Archer is the last of the Archery Range units available to both and here the comparison is basically the same as the Elite Skirmisher but with the interesting wrinkle that this unit has an armor upgrade unique to it that the Burmese have and the Spanish do not. However, that upgrade is equivalent to one of the Burmese's missing generic Archer Armor Upgrades.
The Hand Cannoneer is one of three generic Gunpowder units and the Burmese lack it. Gunpowder units don't really have upgrades so there's not much else to say about it.
is anything else provably linked to that genome though?
Whatever you happen to assign it.
Demand? Nothing.
There's nothing stopping you from using Spanish crap Archers, in a Feudal Age scenario they're just fine, and those Archery Ranges and upgrades and even the Gold/Wood economy can all be redirected to do other things later, when other peoples Archers outcompete yours. And yes, even Burmese Crossbows will win in a straight fight against Spanish Archers, even after all the upgrades.
What does it tend to result in? Well, one thing is that as freedoms increase women tend to increasingly choose jobs that aren't STEM related. It's a factoid that's incredibly frustrating for some people. Every nation with legally mandated equal treatment sees massive "underepresentation" of both women and men in certain, differing by gender, fields. Another thing is the common "lack of women" in frontline combat roles. Or segregated sports, etc.
LowlandsOfHolland
Active member
So, to cut away all the fluff, what this amounts to is that women are different in that they like girly stuff, which is defined as "not STEM", "certain fields". And also the legal exclusion of women from certain sports and military positions is directly a consequence of this inherent difference. I must confess I don't really believe that laws literally poof into existence from divine intervention so I must reject the latter two aspects as poorly articulated.
ShadowsOfParadox
Well-known member
Yes, yes it is.
Serena Williams is/was(I'm not big on tennis) the best player of Women's Tennis, she went up against the 400th best male Tennis player and got curbstomped, the opinion of her opponent was "It might have been fair if she'd been up against the 700th".
Similarly, in experiments involving females in the armed forces doing things like, oh, getting a comrade out of a theoretically burning APC the groups with females were significantly slower than the pure male groups, as in "yeah, if this was real the rescuee would be dead" levels of slower. In boot camps with both males and females female recruits are regularly caught arriving at the end point with their load distributed to their male comrades.
Experiments involving observing which toys children go for and what sort of play they engage in demonstrates a rather significant difference in preferences in children of all ages, and for that matter, in chimps. Boys like "thing toys" and play that involves largely mechanical exploration, girls like "people toys" and play that involves largely social/caring situations.
As an aside, when I was 8 or so I also enjoyed playing with Barbie dolls. I took them apart at the joints to see how the ball and socket joints worked and then put them back together.
LowlandsOfHolland
Active member
You understand that a legal restriction is an artifact, yes? But leaving that aside, what I see here are assertions that science, technology, engineering, and manufacturing jobs are solely a matter of "playing with trucks," as it were. All I can say is that you clearly haven't actually worked in any of those fields in order to make such an assertion.
LowlandsOfHolland
Active member
I will separately note that if women are better with people skills that suggests they are best suited for management and executive positions, as those jobs are far more dependent on people skills and they can always have some advisor who has turned his socially incompetent mind to technical arcana.
ShadowsOfParadox
Well-known member
more Lego's than trucks.
dunno how much social incompetence it needs to decide that the best solution to not getting paid enough is to talk to your employer to negotiate better pay.
Frankly, I don't get why you keep insisting that differences in general trends in a group is necessarily bad/requires that one treat each individual as entirely part of the group.
There are outliers everywhere, general trends are useful pretty much solely for people who need to worry about massive numbers of people. It's amusing how few people are "average".