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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

The assertion that gender is “socially constructed” does merit the anti-woke talking point. Mammals have social roles based on biological sex: female penguins do one thing, male penguins do a different thing. Gender in humans isn’t fundamentally different.

Like everything else, humans have layered social and cultural constructs on top of sex and gender. For example, cultures have different ways of marking the transition from childhood to adulthood. But the fact that e.g. a bar mitzvah is a cultural construct doesn’t mean that the behavioral and social changes accompanying puberty aren’t rooted in biology.

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> Gender in humans isn’t fundamentally different.

It is fundamentally different.

The range of behaviors that Humans have is fundamentally far, far more broad than animals, because we are much more intelligent creatures. Example from a few thousand years ago: Farming, Cooking food. More recent examples: Fixing cars, doing taxes. Most of what Humans spend their time doing these days are things that animals don't do in nature.

Human cultures like to ascribe gender roles to most of these things, but in reality most of what people do doesn't have any implicit gender role associated with it, since it's pretty far removed from biological functions at this point.

Even in nature, the things people and animals do doesn't always neatly align with gender roles. For example, child rearing or even bearing live young is sometimes done by the male, even though it's usually a female gender role.

What's different between us and animals (as is usually the case) is our big thinky brains, and the things which follow on from that.

It is at this point, I believe, that it is entirely worth reminding ourselves that humans are, in fact, animals.

It's usually worth reminding ourselves of. I'm not sure what you're getting at here though.

The point I think the parent is trying to make is that there are now many people who see all of human behavior as some sort of construct vs. innate behaviors that exist all over the animal kingdom.

In fact, very few behaviors are specific to only humans.

We aren’t that special. At the end of the day, we’re just very clever mammals.

They are getting at the point that as animals we can intellectualize all we want and will still have biological characteristics that fundamentally influence our behavior and culture.

Research findings are not "intellectualization." Intellectualization is what those who don't actually research a subject do. However, I don't think anyone claims that there is are no innate biological effects on behaviour. It's just that its scope is hard to determine, and extrapolation one species to another has proven to be an unreliable means of making such determinations.

> still have biological characteristics that fundamentally influence our behavior and culture.

I suspected as such. In my life, I've often heard this point trotted out to justify "Why men/women are good/bad at X thing", which is why I was asking what they were getting at, specifically. Even if they weren't getting at that, their comment doesn't add much by itself.

>The range of behaviors that Humans have is fundamentally far, far more broad than animals, because we are much more intelligent creatures.

This is a difference in scale not a difference of kind.

Keep reading the post! You'll get there.

I'm sorry. I have read the post and I don't understand what you are referring to.

It is in the following three sentences from the one you quoted.

It's not an argument about scale. "Dogs Playing Poker" is not based on anything real.

Sorry I'm still lost.

I am saying there are many, many behaviors which human beings have which the rest of the animal kingdom does not exhibit.

I am positing that, in fact, most of how we spend our time as human beings (such as arguing on YC news threads) is behavior which does not exist in the rest of the animal kingdom.

That is not an argument about scale as you say, it is an argument about the type of behavior.

It’s not true that biological sex is completely deterministic in the behavior of non-human animals. For instance: there are gay penguins where two males will adopt eggs to hatch and raise chicks. Homosexuality and associated behavior changes are observed in a wide array of species. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexual_behavior_in_animals

Conservatives trying to use biology to argue that gender and sex are fully equivalent is akin to 19th and 20th century attempts to use evolutionary theory to support racist social policies. It's not only wrong morally, it's bad science.

> It’s not true that biological sex is completely deterministic in the behavior of non-human animals

I don’t think anyone claims it is completely deterministic.

But it is very significant, to the extent that is may as well as be completely for purposes of discussion or publishing papers.

While there are female lions that act in an atypical manner, the vast majority act similarly enough to say something like “female lions hunt for the pride” without need an asterisk.

Right, it's useful, realistic, and mostly uncontroversial to assume that there are typical vs. atypical sex differences in behavior in basically any population.

The problem is there are a ton of people who try to use that fact to justify forcing everyone to fit the typical trend. "Most people are right hand dominant, so everyone should learn to write right handed or be punished" is the milder historical example. The worst case scenario is "it's legally defensible to murder someone because they don't conform to expected gender roles" https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/member-...

If your homosexuality, which is biologically rooted, is associated with behavior changes, doesn’t that support the conclusion that gendered behavior is rooted in biology rather than socially constructed?

Only if you're dumb enough to assume that all or most of behavior is biologically determined, instead of being a complex mix of biology, culture, and learned individual patterns that produces a spectrum of individual expression.

The question isn't "is gendered behavior rooted in biology?" it's "how much / to what degree?" and the honest answer is, we don't really know with confidence, especially when it comes to humans. The fact that Western culture seems to be currently undergoing a Cambrian explosion when it comes to gender expression contributes to how hard it is to answer this question. Unfortunately that's also why people are anxious and waging culture wars about it.

The assertion in the article is that gender is socially constructed. You don’t seem to be defending that point. You’re making a different argument nobody disagrees with—that humans also express learned cultural and individual behaviors. You could walk into CPAC and say that women would still be women if the social convention was for them to wear pants. Nobody would disagree with you.

Ironically, the social changes in gender expression you’re referring to are actually premised on the opposite of the assertion you’re making. They posit that gender expression is biologically rooted—because otherwise it would be within the purview of society to regulate it as a matter or culture or individual expression.

The mainstream liberal interpretation is that gender is a social construct separate from sexual identity/preference, and you can’t constrain the expression of either to the historical Western norms, because that’s an attack on Constitutionally-protected individual rights. There’s a more extreme leftist interpretation that says both are fixed identities practically from birth, but it ends up with the same conclusion: let people be and do what they want, even if it doesn’t fit into heteronormative expectations about gender or sex.

My entire point is that’s the morally and legally correct framework, because we shouldn’t be using scientific determinism to make decisions about how individuals with free will and rights can express themselves. The article is correct to have the disclaimer, in this light.

What you characterize as the “more extreme leftist interpretation” is actually the more conservative view. You can get most people on board with exceptions to social norms for biologically-rooted differences. Acceptance of same-sex marriage increased dramatically after the push in the 1990s and 2000s to educate the public that people are “born that way.” “Scientific determinism” is the lynchpin of the broad acceptance of same-sex marriage today.

By contrast, what you call the “mainstream liberal interpretation” is the radical position. It rejects society’s right and prerogative to impose norms and regulate voluntary self-expression. While a minority of conservatives will resist any changes to biblical categories, what generates widespread reaction across multiple groups is the feeling that liberals are using sexual minorities as a vehicle for loosening restrictions on voluntary sexual behavior and gender expression.

You’re correct the two positions lead to the “same” outcome—but only initially. Eventually, a conflict arises between liberals, who want sanction for a broader range of voluntary self expression, and gay or trans people, who often simply want to fit in as best as they are able. You’re seeing that conflict of interest play out right now. Bostock, which granted equal civil rights to trans people, was immediately accepted by the majority of conservatives. That caused liberals to pivot to causes like drag shows involving voluntary non-conformance, which generated immediate backlash and opposition. Liberals can’t tell the difference—to them, it’s self expression, whether it’s voluntary or biologically rooted. But to everyone else, it makes a huge difference whether someone is thumbing their nose at society’s rules, or trying to exist in society the way God made them.

It's almost LOL wrong to state that conservatives have gladly accepted that trans people are entitled to full and equal treatment under the law.

Conservative groups have sued to get religious exemptions to Bostock (https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/religious-g...) which is particularly pernicious given the number of religious organizations that operate large employers like hospitals.

Just one Tucker Carlson clip (https://www.foxnews.com/video/6324164359112) shows how American conservatives are continually frothing at the mouth about trans rights. There is a related wave of anti-trans laws being pushed through by conservative elected officials at the state level right now. They're specifically attacking trans children and school policy, as the soft underbelly that gets conservative parents riled up for a culture war and which is legally more vulnerable.

You don’t have to read tea leaves: https://www.kff.org/other/press-release/poll-large-majoritie... (“In each case, large majorities across partisan lines, including more than 7 in 10 Republicans, think such discrimination against LGBTQ people should be illegal.”). These folks are upset about the “existence of transgender people,” but also want to make it illegal to discriminate against them?

You can understand the “culture war” by applying your own description of the “liberal interpretation.” As you aptly summarized, liberals don’t care about biological determination because they believe in people being free to express themselves without being limited to traditional norms and categories. It was when liberals started to advance that view—for example by promoting drag shows, which are about cis men dressing up as women as a form of self expression—that they triggered the culture war.

Yeah unfortunately for conservatives, the annals of history are generally a story of culture evolving more rapidly than traditionalists are comfortable with. We happen to live in a country where the core Constitutional answer to that problem can best be summarized as: tough shit, get used to it. You can move to Saudi Arabia if you want to live in a traditionalist autocracy that will protect you from the horrors of drag brunch.

If one penguin is trans, they could both be straight.

I don’t think you thought this through any further once you felt you had a somewhat rational construct that meshed with your comfort zone. Human behavior has massive amounts of variation even within a culture, both sex and gender traits inhabit overlapping bell curves. Is there a biological reason for why dresses are considered feminine in the US, and states are constructing laws restricting cross gender usage of them, but kurtas or sarongs are acceptably masculine elsewhere?

That doesn’t mean that gender is socially constructed, it means that we have overlaid social constructs on top of gender. Which is a point nobody disagrees with.

Gendered behavior in humans is different; it's wildly different across cultures.

> The assertion that gender is “socially constructed”

Who asserted this? A straw man?

> female penguins do one thing, male penguins do a different thing. Gender in humans isn’t fundamentally different.

Do you know this to be true for the set of *all* penguins? Or just most of them?

It's an interesting concept that generalizations can be true without applying to every case. For example, the statement "humans have one heart" is generally true, but there are exceptions where people have had an additional heart surgically added to assist a failing heart. Similarly, while it's common to say that humans have ten fingers, there are variations where some people are born with more or less, or have lost fingers due to accidents. Eye color is another example where we can't make a universal claim about humans. Although brown eyes are common, the number of people with blue or green eyes is significant enough that we can't say all humans have brown eyes.

So, when we say "humans have X," it doesn't mean every single human has X. Rather, it means that a significant enough number of humans have X for us to consider it a characteristic of our species.

> ...Unlike in any other animal, gendered behavior in humans is wildly different across cultures

The reason to bring it up was in the comment you replied to. This reaction seems very knee jerk.

This would be fascinating to explore outside the context of the culture war. To what extent is a penguin's social role learnt from other penguins vs biological? Do penguins raised in isolation or in small groups show more divergent sex-correlated behaviour than those raised in large groups? Would that mean they align behaviour based on what other penguins do?

It would be interesting if male birds learnt how to put on more successful mate displays by watching other males, or if birds set their standards by those of the opposite sex they grew up around. Humans obviously do this, and I wouldn't be surprised if other primates did too, but which other animals might?

No argument here but I feel like you used penguins as an example knowing full well someone would respond with "oh yeah well penguins are well documented to exhibit homosexual behaviors!!"

I mean of all possible mammals to choose as an example for your point (presuming in good faith that your actual point was as stated), penguin is an unusual choice. Maybe you just happened to have penguins in mind as an example of a mammal, I don't know.

Oh, and by the way: penguins aren't mammals! Though I'm sure someone has already pointed that out, or at least I hope they did.

I started with lions and then switched to penguins because of Happy Feet and forgot to change the “mammals” part.

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