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[Tiruin]

Erm, could we segue back into a more related kind of imagery regarding the topic at hand?

Sorry, I brought it up as a complete derail, because it comes up in creationism debates and one of the comments reminded me that I was never able to cite explicit evidence.  But now that you (sort of) mention it or lead me there, it is a pretty interesting topic incidentally to ask "What do sexual versus asexual micro organisms have to teach us about gender roles, if anything?"

o_o
Err...binary fission?
What do you mean by sexual or asexual microorganisms?

Edit: OH, their methods of reproduction! Aha, sorry. Had me confused there. xD
...
I don't think that their...methods of reproduction have any bearing on our gender roles, if anything.
Because for me, gender roles are either a term where certain ideas and expectations are attributed to. Like Angle's example of a LoL 'Tank'. You expect strength, (as in a game mechanic Strength = Health), but +++ Endurance. With their body more or less meeting the idea of it (ie Muscles and large physique. o-o)

[Samarkand]

Erm, could we segue back into a more related kind of imagery regarding the topic at hand?

Sorry, I brought it up as a complete derail, because it comes up in creationism debates and one of the comments reminded me that I was never able to cite explicit evidence.  But now that you (sort of) mention it or lead me there, it is a pretty interesting topic incidentally to ask "What do sexual versus asexual micro organisms have to teach us about gender roles, if anything?"

o_o
Err...binary fission?
What do you mean by sexual or asexual microorganisms?

That we have to be very careful about confounding gender as sexuality, and understand that one is an emergent semi-biological description and the other is an emergent social-cultural description, neither of which have any ultimate reality?

[GavJ]

I'm a guy who likes guys.

No expert, but most gay people I know seem to me to be fairly exclusively attracted to members of the same biological sex. As in that drives their desire more strongly than gender role behavior does. Or is that not actually really true as often as I'm thinking it is? I can think of a couple people I know who DO seem attracted to gender behavior more so than biology, but they are more bisexual identifying (which makes sense logically)

I mean, are you for example attracted to super manly acting women?

That we have to be very careful about confounding gender as sexuality

Hence the "if anything" disclaimer. The answer is probably "nothing, because micro organisms or simple invertebrates or whatever don't really show any gender type behavior separate from sexual identity" But maybe they do! Or something!  Dunno, just thought it was worth floating out there.

[Tiruin]

Edited my answer back there. ^ ^
Personally, Gender for me is biological and...also seems to stem from thought. Hard to explain here, but when I say 'thought' in this context, it is somewhat more along the 'nature' path (if I've to reference that Nature vs Nurture thing :v) or...err, something more on how the person perceives themself, regardless of cultural or preference factors.

Sex is...err, biological sex. Male/Female = Biological Sex. Completely different from Gender.

[Samarkand]

Gender is generally understood to be a social construct that helps (citation needed) us relate to ourselves and others. Sex is biologically determined (but only sort of…). Layered on top of this is sexual and romantic attraction, which are not always related or present, and can occur regardless of the other two identifiers.

[Rolepgeek]

Posting to watch, eventually participate in hopefulness.

[Arcvasti]

This is interesting. Posting to watch. I'm not actually sure if I can participate usefully in this discussion, but a lot of the arguments/examples posted thus far are really neat.

[Flarp]

I'm a guy who likes guys.

No expert, but most gay people I know seem to me to be fairly exclusively attracted to members of the same biological sex. As in that drives their desire more strongly than gender role behavior does. Or is that not actually really true as often as I'm thinking it is? I can think of a couple people I know who DO seem attracted to gender behavior more so than biology, but they are more bisexual identifying (which makes sense logically)

I mean, are you for example attracted to super manly acting women?

That's an interesting question, and one I don't think I could fully answer. One problem is that I find facial hair attractive, and even the most manly woman will have biological and social difficulties growing a beard. Now, a beard has nothing to do with how you act as a person - but I did specify earlier that I was referring to aesthetic gender roles, i.e., how aspects of femininity and masculinity are consciously expressed by a person's physical appearance (and by the choices they make in shaping how they look, to the extent that they can).

The point I was unsuccessfully trying to make was that - relative to behavior, not appearance - "manliness" is associated with things that both sexes can and have every reason to do (with a few clichéd exceptions), whereas "womanliness" is oft associated with being demure, compliant, and submissive, things that, were there not outside factors encouraging it, neither sex would want to have anything to do with. With that considered, what if we shifted manliness (and obviously started calling it something else) to become an appropriate behavioral "style" for both genders?

[GavJ]

I disagree that compliance and submissiveness have no functional role outside of sexual attraction and gender constructs.

It's a physical reality that "too many chefs can spoil the broth" in actual practical situations. Everybody trying to constantly be the alpha mover and shaker all the time can lead to a useless cacophany of conflict that doesn't get stuff done as efficiently.

Take, for example, ants -- if worker ants were not subservient to queens, for example, colonies would collapse almost instantly. And furthermore, their submissiveness objectively can't be relevant to sexual attraction, because they're sterile and don't even participate in the sexual reproduction of the species!! It's a counterexample in both directions.

In human society, if everybody tried to be a king, then nobody would be farming the fields and we'd all die. etc. etc.




I don't think that it is necessary for subservience and bravado to have much correlation to biological sex... at least not for reasons I can think of at the moment. But they are both necessary qualities for portions of the population to have, somewhere, divided somehow. Both are admirable in certain circumstances.

(note that my first contribution to this thread was that "the best or at least most alpha amongst us converge on a single set of qualities that don't speak to gender roles much" and I still think that's true, but to clarify with respect to this post: not everybody CAN be the best of the best of the alphas, and if we all acted like we were, things wouldn't work out so well)

[Flarp]

I disagree that compliance and submissiveness have no functional role outside of sexual attraction and gender constructs.

It's a physical reality that "too many chefs can spoil the broth" in actual practical situations. Everybody trying to constantly be the alpha mover and shaker all the time can lead to a useless cacophany of conflict that doesn't get stuff done as efficiently.

Take, for example, ants -- if worker ants were not subservient to queens, for example, colonies would collapse almost instantly. And furthermore, their submissiveness objectively can't be relevant to sexual attraction, because they're sterile and don't even participate in the sexual reproduction of the species!! It's a counterexample in both directions.

In human society, if everybody tried to be a king, then nobody would be farming the fields and we'd all die. etc. etc.

I'm gonna address this part only, for now, because my ability to formulate arguments is rapidly collapsing, and I have an exam and unresponsive potential employer to worry about.

I - as per my sig - think that hierarchies are pretty okay, and our society would have some major problems without a longitudinal structure. However, I think the formation of these hierarchies (and thus, implicitly, the formation of interpersonal relationships in which one person has power over the other) has little to do with the gender roles we've discussed. I can assert this because A. human political structures were built by and populated with (almost) exclusively men in most of the world for a very long time and B. the existence of (extreme) nationalism and other ideologies along the continuum of xenophobia shows that bravado and dominance can coexist with submission to a political entity.

I don't think our ability to submit to and identify with authority is couched in gender roles; the former is almost certainly a biological imperative, while the latter is arguably grounded in our current culture.

To be more direct, it's possible to embrace masculinity without competing (even subconsciously) for that "alpha male" spot.

Since my arguments have been extremely abstract thus far, let me give a fairly trivial concrete example:

It's a common stereotype that woman make poor comedians. It's been suggested that, in addition to plain confirmation bias, this is because, for various (mostly sexually selective) reasons, men are encouraged to tell jokes, and women are encouraged to laugh at them. Under the system I'm advocating, this would be overturned; there would be no cultural pressure on either gender to be the giving or receiving partner when it comes to jokes.

[Neonivek]

Gender is generally understood to be a social construct that helps (citation needed) us relate to ourselves and others. Sex is biologically determined (but only sort of…). Layered on top of this is sexual and romantic attraction, which are not always related or present, and can occur regardless of the other two identifiers.

Ugh... I always groan when people take two synonyms and separate them... I feel like I am back in the "noob and newb are two entirely different things" situation. It just feels forced like people are trying to make there be a difference rather then having it occur naturally through language...

Ohh well they been separated for... well technically they are still synonyms but still... Its been quasi-sort-of-not-really separated for 20 years now. So I should get used to it.

Gender is also biologically determined according to my info, at least partially. The "Man trapped in a woman's body" actually has a biological source (according to current theory unless that has been stricken down) and not entirely psychological. Evidence more strongly co-related that gender isn't completely unrelated to biology.

----

As for videogames and gender role. I will say that generally speaking you can tell the difference between the male and female characters.

Females tend to be faster more area oriented characters then the male ones.

In Soul Calibur the only exception to this was Hilde, in Tekken the closest to an exception is Michelle/Julia.

It is rare for a female character to be the "slow heavy character"... unless it is a joke (or she is a mage OR she is the AoE)

Smash Bros is MOSTLY an exception but that is because their female characters follow a different stereotype... in that all female characters are light characters.

[Jelle]

Ah an interesting analysis of LoL's characters. It's been a long time since I've played that game, but I do remember the gender stereotyping irked me. Luckely there were some exceptions in their lineup.

Mostly what bothered me is how anorexic all the female characters are. Back when I played the game I modified all the female models to look more realistic and more according to the type of hero they were. Couldn't stand watching all those stick figures. Modified some of the male characters to, shouldn't all be muscleheads hehe.

About gender roles in general, well they make sense biologically in a natural environment. We have for the most part outgrown their usefulness, but the need for them is still rooted deep in our nature. I don't think we'll ever be completely rid of them.

Also as far as fighting styles go for male and female characters, it makes sense for a female warrior to be more lithe and for a male warrior to be more brawny, simply because of biological differences regardless of gender roles. It's just a simple fact that higher testosterone levels promotes more muscle growth. This difference is often depicted way exaggerated though.

[Orange Wizard]

Sex is determined by the bits dangling between your legs, or the lack of said dangling.

Gender is a fairly new concept that refers to a person's idea of themselves. The "man trapped in a woman's body", to use the vernacular.

The confusion arises when people say "gender" when they should say "sex", because apparently sex is a rude word.

[Samarkand]

Sex is determined by the bits dangling between your legs, or the lack of said dangling.

Gender is a fairly new concept that refers to a person's idea of themselves. The "man trapped in a woman's body", to use the vernacular.

The confusion arises when people say "gender" when they should say "sex", because apparently sex is a rude word.

Gender is new and old. It's current use became understood around the nineteen fifties, but female thinkers had been grappling with the idea that most of their identity is imposed rather than innate for centuries before that. Gender is the man/woman dichotomy while sex is the male/female dichotomy. Both are treated as binaries in most cultures, which can be extremely damaging to many individuals. You only understand yourself in the context of your culture, in its language, so if your culture lacks a way to describe you it can prevent you from understanding yourself for a long time/ever.

[Reelya]

I'm a guy who likes guys.
<snip>
How implausible would it be to enforce masculinity as the appealing aesthetic on both biological genders?

It would be exactly as successful as forcing straightness on the gay population. So, we basically already tried this concept, and can we all agree it doesn't work? You can't force people to be attracted to just anything you want. If you could, we wouldn't have sexual orientation in the first place.

Typical straight guy is physically repulsed by the idea of sleeping with a woman who looks manly. And that's just as innate as gay men not wanting sex with women.

Culture never told me what to be attracted to, I just was. Sure, there are variants in ideals of beauty, but even those fall into a number of patterns that can be fairly well predicted by the material circumstances of a civilization. i.e. the more social disruption, stress, food scarcity, danger, the larger women come to be viewed as attractive. The more stable and controlled societies, thin / younger women come to be seen as more desirable. So it's a variable, but it's not an independent variable that just exists in a vacuum, all sorts of social factors shape this without our realizing it.

Sure, there are also personal variations but there are also studies showing those are on a sliding scale with the personal rates of stress etc.

The point I was unsuccessfully trying to make was that - relative to behavior, not appearance - "manliness" is associated with things that both sexes can and have every reason to do (with a few clichéd exceptions), whereas "womanliness" is oft associated with being demure, compliant, and submissive, things that, were there not outside factors encouraging it, neither sex would want to have anything to do with. With that considered, what if we shifted manliness (and obviously started calling it something else) to become an appropriate behavioral "style" for both genders?

Ok, maybe i misconstrued your first post, but I'll leave my response there because it's still on-topic, and has relevant observations for the thread.

Well, trying to force both genders into the typical behavior of one gender is probably just as problematic as the appearance thing. Take for instance schooling. The way girls approach schooling is much different, boys have many more behavioral problems etc. The type of manipulation you're talking at has to start at a very young age, so if you're going to reeducate little girls to be little boys, expect to see more of the same sorts of behavioral issues to pop up in girls that you see in boys now.

Assuming they're maleable in this way, what does that suggest for future violence? Men commit more violence than women, training women to be just like men, well, expect a spike in violence down the track. You can expect to see gender-equality in the murder rate, prison rate etc.

To be serious "feminize everyone" is much more viable that "masculinize everyone"