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[LordBucket]

Some (actually many, likely most) things are indeed entirely learned. No combination of proteins contributes anything whatsoever to the concept of what the word "carburetor" means, for example. it is biologically laughable even to suggest they might.

That might be true. But it's equally laughable to suggest that a dog could be taught to understand that same concept simply by giving him the right upbringing.

can you point to any scientific evidence that genes code for gender roles?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioural_genetics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_behavior_genetics

It seems rather arbitrary to acknowledge that genetics influence behavior, acknowledge that genetics influence behavior in humans...but to then insist that the presence or absence of an entire chromosome can't have any affect.

To which I predict that your response will be "oh, but well of course genes can infleunce behavior...but we're not talking about behavior in general, we're talking about gender roles. So give me "scientific evidence" specifically that genes can influence that. Not just behavior in general."

To which my response is that you need to be more specific. Are we talking "liking princesses" or are we talking about preference for different types of social interaction?

I mean...if you want simple, obvious evidence that genetics can influence "gender roles" I could point out the obvious: women breastfeed. Men don't. That's a gender role. And that's genetic. But I assume that's not what you mean. So you need to clarify. We know genes influence biology. We know genes influence behavior. We know that men and women have significant genetic difference.

So what exactly is it you're having a tough time seeing how it could be affected by genetics?

[GavJ]

Also by the way, hormones are not necessarily "innate" or "nature"
Only genes are clearly "innate."

Hormones are very significantly influenced, triggered, and regulated by events in your environment. Everything from birth control (or potentially any other drugs) to your diet to the crazy chemical storm of your mother's body during pregnancy and her actions and diet and diseases and whatever influencing it, and your level of activity, and blah blah. So even if you showed hormones led to gender roles, that doesn't necessarily prove the desired conclusion. You really need straight up genes to make such a claim (and ones that cannot be influenced meaningfully by epigenetic influences, at that)

And you know... your body parts. >_>

I mean I know TECHNICALLY males are fully biologically capable of breast feeding and we have the psychological capacity for giving birth. Yet I think we still have a stronger testosterone producer.

Though to admit I don't know if after hormone therapy if your body produces elevated levels equal to that of the gender you got (or of your gender, as is the case of some people who need a hormone pick me up)

What's your point? I'm explaining why you cannot label something as "innate" unless you link it exclusively to genes. Or even a part of it as innate unless you can link that part of it exclusively to genes. You don't know what portion of hormones come from sex chromosomes versus the bazillion other things, many of them are conflated on top of that (people changing your environment on purpose based on your sex chromosomes, thus making correlation untrustworthy), AND you don't even know whether hormones contribute linearly? Or on their own? Or do they need to combine with other things? In non-linear fashions perhaps (1 unit = nothing, 5 units = nothing, 7 units = nothing, 8 units = suddenly you like trucks! 9 units = back to nothing, etc)? Or of course, whether hormones even have anything to do with gender roles at all, which hasn't actually been established here.

Nor can you label things are nurture confidently without equivalent almost impossible information. Which is why "nature vs. nurture" is a pretty useless, counterproductive distinction that more and more people in my field of psychology shun now. Especially since even if you could establish it, it doesn't even lead to anything very useful aside from some discriminatory legal policies and things. You're much better off simply investigating and explaining whatever influences on behaviors you can demonstrate in labs clearly and learning as many as possible involved processes.

[Neonivek]

We know where these hormones come from GavJ >_>

We also know what they do.

We also know that what part produces them MORE in males and females. >_>

"Biological" doesn't mean "GENES ONLY!"... because there is no "produce more testosterone gene"

[GavJ]

"Biological" doesn't mean "GENES ONLY!"

I don't know what YOU mean by biological, but "genes only" is the only way to draw an actually consistent, scientifically meaningful line in a nature vs. nurture dialogue. Nothing else makes sense, because everything else is hopelessly cross-contaminated. Every. single. thing. about your body other than that is steeped in untold amounts of influence of your environment, and everything about your environment and experiences is steeped in the influence of yours and others' bodies and chemicals and internal processes. And back and forth between billions of times.

Which is why it's generally more efficient to just stop talking about things from that perspective, which most researchers have done.

We know where these hormones come from GavJ >_>

We also know what they do.

We also know that what part produces them MORE in males and females. >_>

No, we don't. We know some rudimentary basics about each of those, that is all. But hormones, especially nowadays, can come from all sorts of places, the many drugs we eat, food we eat, runoff in the water we drink from our neighbors urinating birth control into the sewage, etc. etc.  Their production from our own organs can also be heavily influenced again by drugs, by our diet, by our exercise, by our experiences of every kind.

We have very little idea how much we know about what they do, either -- hormones are implicated in sex characteristics like growing breasts, sure, but also strongly involved in super esoteric things we don't understand at all, like lupus.  And again, I point out that nobody in the thread has even posted one study showing gender roles linked to hormones yet... so to claim that's part of our "absolutely known for sure" knowledge base is more than a little ambitious at this point...

[LordBucket]

I point out that nobody in the thread has even posted one study showing gender roles linked to hormones yet...

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=141147.msg5510988#msg5510988

"if you want simple, obvious evidence that genetics can influence "gender roles" I could point out the obvious: women breastfeed. Men don't. That's a gender role. And that's genetic. But I assume that's not what you mean. So you need to clarify. We know genes influence biology. We know genes influence behavior. We know that men and women have significant genetic difference.

So what exactly is it you're having a tough time seeing how it could be affected by genetics?"

[GavJ]

Breast feeding is genetic? News to me. I'd love to hear which gene makes you breastfeed.

Your links: Notice the dates that start tapering off around the 1970s, and notice also the lack of any mention of gender roles, for purposes of the topic of this thread.

[Samarkand]

Breast feeding is genetic? News to me. I'd love to hear which gene makes you breastfeed.

Your links: Notice the dates that start tapering off around the 1970s, and notice also the lack of any mention of gender roles, for purposes of the topic of this thread.

To clarify this point, genes make it possible to breastfeed, they do not cause action.

[GavJ]

Theres sort of two lines of discussion going on here, and it is a bit confusing:

1) Genes --> behavior. In terms of this line, "making something possible" =/= innateness, not even by the most cowboyish, radical spokespeople in history for the innate side of the nature/nurture debate. On reflection, though, i don't think that's what he/she was getting at.

2) Hormones --> gender role behavior. Largely separate part of the discussion, sorry if I focused on the wrong one. But for this one, I wouldn't call breastfeeding a "gender role." It's more of a "sex role," going by the same distinctions made by several people earlier in the thread between sex and gender. Gender roles being characteristic ways of acting that do NOT have to do with your physical organs and bits, and could potentially be exhibited either way by differently sexed people. A link between hormones and gender roles would be something that anybody could physically do, but which (hypothetically) hormones have a direct influence in causing people with more of that hormone to do those things particularly more often.

[Reelya]

Nature vs nurture in this context means biological vs social causes.

Because you have one side saying every difference boils down to socialization. No biology allowed.

I don't know what YOU mean by biological

Ok where do you stand exactly on the causes of behavior variation between male/female, and how do studies like the one i linked before fit into that view?

If an prenatal chemical causes changes in behavior of the grown organism do you agree that's not just a social construct?

Of course, we on this side are not saying socialization doesn't exist or anything. But even slight biases from biology can cause large changes in behavior, especially once you bring groups into the picture. The behaviors in the study (which correlate with prenatal testosterone) influence both style of play and playmate selection, showing how small biological differences in behavior can lead to complex social dynamics, and creation of peer groups, even without external biasing from adults.

[LordBucket]

Breast feeding is genetic? News to me. I'd love to hear which gene makes you breastfeed.

Sometimes miscommunication is amusing. You do understand that men lack functional mammary glands, yes?

Google 'boobs.' Revel in the enlightenment it brings.

Your links: Notice the dates that start tapering off around the 1970s, and notice also the lack of any mention of gender roles, for purposes of the topic of this thread.

I also notice that I've now twice asked you to clarify what it is you're asking for evidence of, yet both times you've neglected to do so. Nobody wants to go looking for evidence you could easily look for yourself knowing full well that you're being deliberately vague about what you mean so that as soon as we post evidence you can move your goalposts.

I assert that breastfeeding children is an obviously genetically-influenced "gender role." Breastfeeding children is something that only women do. Because, you know...only women have the biological capability of doing that.

But you're obviously going to insist that's "not what you mean." Ok, great. So tell us what you mean. What would qualify as a "gender role" Define "gender role" in the context that you're asking for. Give us examples of this thing that you're insisting isn't genetically influenced. If your'e claiming that there isn't a gene that makes people like or dislike pink princesses, I doubt anyone will disagree with you. But I doubt anyone thinks that's what you mean. So what do you mean?

We need clarity before the discussion can progress.

[Neonivek]

You do understand that men lack functional mammary glands, yes?

Odd I thought they do actually. Just rather reduced ones.

[GavJ]

Nature vs nurture in this context means biological vs social causes.

Because you have one side saying every difference boils down to socialization. No biology allowed.

No there's nothing special about this topic in terms of this.

Everybody in every topic wants to think of it in the terms you are. But you can't, because when you analyze the causal reality professionally, it just doesn't make sense to do that. It's intuitive to lay people, but in actuality useless. Because it is based on a false conception of how organisms work -- especially in America where this is most rampant, people are lured into this notion that we are our own little isolated temples and that our biology is a somehow meaningfully contained thing intimately tied to our individuality.

That's all bollocks. Your matter and cells and causal influence and even your ideas and cognition (you export them by writing on post it notes and import by reading or looking things up on google instead of bothering to remember, etc. etc.) are leaking out of and into you every second in a super fuzzy impossible to distinguish way, and there is no truly meaningful distinction between your body and not-your-body, "biology" versus "socialization" or anything like that. There are colloquial distinctions of these sorts, but there aren't any that withstand scrutiny when you actually start zooming in and following causality around in an attempt to answer the initial questions.

The only place where there is an actual, hard, scientifically meaningful cutoff that remotely approaches what people want to talk about with nature vs. nuture, and which could actually be feasibly controlled for and tested, is genes vs. not genes.

Sometimes miscommunication is amusing. You do understand that men lack functional mammary glands, yes?

Yes.

My snarkily presented point was that "growing mammary glands" is a world away from "being unavoidably compelled to have sex, carry an infant around for 9 months, give birth, put them to your breast, and also have THEM suck milk out of it (do genes now mind control other organisms, too?)"

The breats are (partially!) genetic (partially reliant on not being malnourished, not being on hormone drugs, blah blah, so actually not even breasts are innate).
The behavior is clearly not at all innate, by any crazy stretch of the imagination.

[Rolepgeek]

As well, a gender role implies that someone who is transgendered can fill it just as easily as someone who is cisgendered. For most biological functions, this is untrue. A man cannot(yet) get pregnant if his birth sex was male. A woman cannot(yet) impregnate someone if their birth sex is female(and no, I'm not talking about surrogate pregnancies).

Now, I'm going to ask what the point of this part if the discussion is. Are we trying to convince one another whether biology versus social environment define gender roles? Because I'm pretty sure it's a combination of the two; I have doubts as to whether, in a perfect non-gender conformist world, half of female-sexed individuals would identify as male/masculine, and half of male-sexed individuals would identify as female/feminine.

[GavJ]

I also notice that I've now twice asked you to clarify what it is you're asking for evidence of, yet both times you've neglected to do so.

I DID clarify:

Evidence of a behavior which COULD physically/logically be done by any normal human (not dependent on having certain sex organs, following the distinction made by almost everybody in the first pages of the thread of gender versus sex!), but which is significantly heightened in proportion to the amount of a hormone present in any given individual.

For example:
Man with 5 parts (low) testosterone  = shows the behavior once a week
Woman with 10 parts testosterone = shows the behavior twice a week
Woman with 15 parts testosterone = shows the behavior 3 times a week
Man with (normal) 50 parts testosterone or whatever = shows the behavior 10 times a week.

Obviously that's super unrealistically perfect and cute-sy data, but hopefully you get my gist.

As well, a gender role implies that someone who is transgendered can fill it just as easily as someone who is cisgendered.

Yes, that. I.e. not breastfeeding, which would be a sex-role behavior, following the distinctions made by the great majority of people in the thread.

Are we trying to convince one another whether biology versus social environment define gender roles? Because I'm pretty sure it's a combination of the two

"Biology versus social environment" is a frustratingly useless distinction that was abandoned by most researchers decades ago, and most often is injected by annoying reporters into news articles when you do see it, not from papers itself (although there are a few holdouts).

So I'm trying to argue against people focusing on that angle. But also having a separate discussion about hormones in particular and whether they might influence gender roles.

That's the way people do things now scientifically the majority of the time.  You make specific, well definable claims, like "HORMONES --> XYZ" A hormone is a specific set of particular chemicals, and this claim can be clearly tested and controlled. "Biology versus social" cannot, since social interaction is itself almost 100% biological, and biology is less completely but still largely social.

[Reelya]

The article I linked was exactly evidence of that kind. Maybe you can comment on it.