Sex-Based Differences in a Genderless Society

Preface

Before attempting to parse through what is considered to be a societal third-rail, I feel a preface is needed. This past week attention has been drawn toward a swimmer from the ivy-league, I do not intend to discuss the swimmer in this essay as it is a topic that has been thoroughly gone over and quite frankly, I find it perverse that the NCAA, Ivy-League, and Universities are cowering behind a student athlete that they should be protecting instead of allowing to become a cultural piñata. I find it mildly inappropriate to go after a college athlete as they are not paid professionals, nor are they even fully matured adults. Moreover, I am excluding any aspect of transgenderism or sexual preference from my words, these are not topics or debates I intend to delve into here. I am however going to touch on the idea that is behind this cultural debate that is going completely missed. I am only wanting to discuss and present an alternative perspective to a topic that we are unable to even touch on. First, gender roles are not fixed nor should we seek for them to become fixed, to try and make them fixed is to inherently violate the rights and freedoms that we are afforded. That is the benefit of living in the freest society this planet has ever seen, every single person regardless of race, sex, sexual preference, (insert any other external feature of identity here) deserves the same rights as any other human being. Additionally, I deny the existence of male or female superiority within the roles we traditionally associate with biological men and women; I actually want to go deeper on this idea than what we typically think of. My take on gender roles is not to denigrate but instead lift up and promote the significance of femininity and masculinity in a society. Lastly, in everything that I discuss, I am only talking in terms of averages, there are millions and millions of people in this country that do not fit neatly into the gender roles we think of as “traditional” and there is nothing wrong with this. I have worked in both male-dominated fields where it was women at the top of the success hierarchy; and I have worked in female-dominated fields where it was men at the top of the success hierarchy. One of the many benefits of living in the most opportunistic society this earth has ever seen is that everyone is afforded the right to be who they want to be whilst not fringing on the rights of others. I am only talking in terms of what is more common on-average within a given population and patterns we see in nature. This is a topic and perspective I thought was worth sharing because there is a precedent that I feel we are completely ignoring.

Gender Theory

During the past week, the cultural eye has been focused on a debate centering around the Ivy league swimmer and whether participation should be allowed. To be honest, I don’t care about the specifics of this debate. I am however very interested in this situation as a broader symbol. What this event represents is the introduction of American society to gender theory. It is not that the Ivy league is too scared to get involved in this polarizing subject, rather, it is exactly in-line with what they teach and believe. Gender theory posits that gender is a spectrum and what we think of as gender roles and sex differences are completely socially constructed, a system put in place to maintain the oppressive patriarchal society. In this ideology, since gender is a social construct and entirely environmentally-based, biological sex is completely irrelevant. Also, because gender is a social construct, there are no differences at all between men and women; every single difference we see, whether it be internal or external between men and women, is only because of the environment in which we reside. An example that would be in-line with this theory is that when we are born, we come into this world as completely blank slates, and when we are given blue or pink blankets in the hospital and it begins the socialization process into the masculine and feminine gender roles we think of. Biological girls exhibit traits of femininity because we give them dolls and biological boys exhibit masculinity because we give them action figures. This early childhood socialization continues through life and progresses into the work paths we take and the domestic lives we choose. In turn, these instances create a society where women are the subservient group to the oppressive biological males. Considering this is the default belief promoted in our universities, and from the universities into the media and from the media into greater society, I do think that we need to dissect aspects of this instead of allowing the cultural fears of being labeled a bigot or “phobic” dictate what topics we can and cannot even touch let alone question. I do not believe that gender theory is completely wrong and that we need to dismiss aspects of it completely as an absurd idea. What makes a theory “stick” is that there are truths in the idea. Gender is not fixed; every single person has qualities that do not match our biological sex and there is nothing wrong with this nor should we seek to suppress this. Environment, including our familial structure does play a substantial role in our socialization into gender-based roles, to think we come into this world as fully-socialized men and women is incredibly incorrect. With that being said, are we to completely dismiss the possibility that there are innate aspects to our species and deny what we all see with our own eyes?

Ancestry

The closest species in the animal kingdom to humans is the chimpanzee with a DNA match of 99.6%. I do not profess to know the complexities of the evolution debate; however, the scientific theory posits that we split off from apes and chimpanzees roughly 7 million years ago and then homo-sapiens emerged somewhere around 300,000 years ago. Due to our shared genetic history with apes, we study their behaviors because they exhibit remarkably similar patterns as us. We have obviously developed far more advanced than them over the course of the last 7 million years but they too have the ability of logic and reason. The reason that I bring up apes is for two reasons. One, as I mentioned we share 99.6% of identical DNA and we are remarkably similar in behavioral patterns. But two is because they are exempt from the social constructs of our human environment. No pink and blue baby blankets for a species that has been around for over 55 million years. Male apes are in some cases twice the size of their female counterparts, their physical stature allows them to band together and protect the group from outside threats, hunt for meat to present the females in exchange for sex, and compete socially and physically with other male apes to climb the hierarchy. Female apes are innately less aggressive and hostile, they exhibit nurturing qualities because the male reproductive partners have little to do with the raising of offspring, they are less competitive than their male counterparts but highly aggressive when there is a threat to their young. However, these sex-divided behavioral patterns are not fixed, there are female apes that hunt and when the male fights get out of hand and the females have enough of it they aggressively put an end to it. Over the course of 55 million years, they’ve learned and adapted to the idea that in order for their species to advance and live on, they must best utilize aspects of their biological nature which includes acknowledging the existence of traits and patterns that are on-average different based on sex. And when there are female apes that exhibit traits that are associated with masculinity, they join in the hunting and fighting off of predators. Without spoken language they have developed a system that is not based on discrimination but rather merit. This does beg the question, what would happen to an ape group if we somehow enforced the much smaller and less aggressive females to fight off competing tribes and predators and do the hunting while tasking the less nurturing males with the responsibility of raising the next generation to self-sustainability and survival? Would the species survive another 55 million years if we artificially altered the environment to oppose what comes natural to their sex?

Our History

The human species is believed to have originated 300,000 years ago in Africa. Through our development process, we too organized ourselves in the remarkably similar pattern of the ancestral apes. Through female sexual selection developed the physical trait of larger male stature than our female counterparts. Female apes and then human women chose to procreate with the males that were highest on the hierarchy which often included the male that was best at protecting and hunting, clearly an advantage of a larger and stronger male. Repeat this process over the course of millions of years, and you have a sex-based division in physical traits (height, bone density and formation, muscle formation, etc.) and psychological divisions (aggression, agreeableness, compassion, etc.) that are often fueled by our hormonal differences (testosterone, estrogen, etc.). As uncivilized humans without the knowledge or capability to form a discrimination based oppressing social structure, we formed tribes where males were the hunters and protectors while females nurtured and raised children while being the tribe teachers and health workers amongst many other duties both feminine and masculine. Let’s fast forward thousands of years to the 20th century, are we to pretend that storming the beaches of Normandy with a platoon of women would have had no change in the end result for the allies? Are we to pretend that in a society without birth control and family sizes often above 4 children that men would have done better at raising infants and small children while working midnights at the hospital while the wife was off working hard physical labor for 18 hour shifts during the industrial revolution? These are not questions that serious people in serious societies question let alone attempt to artificially influence. A much better question is why did we as a society all of a sudden denigrate the importance of femininity and motherhood by telling our sisters and daughters that what comes naturally to them is fake and made up and true purpose and equality is found in competing against men at being men? Why do the universities and media define “equality” by WNBA players making as much money as NBA players despite the league operating on a 10-million-dollar deficit while the NBA generates nearly 8 billion dollars a year while simultaneously portraying the act of creating and raising the next generation of human beings as a trap perpetuated by the oppressing patriarchy?

The Precedent

Although this theory has only recently started getting cultural attention here, this idea is very much a recycled or re-packaged idea of old. During the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and broader, The Great Leap Forward, socialist dictator Mao declared that sex differences do not exist but they are social constructs created by the bourgeois capitalist class as a tool of oppression. Under the guise of “equality,” he placed women in strenuous labor jobs alongside men and had everyone wear gender-neutral uniforms as a symbol that there are no sex differences. He deployed a propaganda campaign where the only depiction of women allowed in movies and papers was as militarized and masculine, appearing genderless and without any sign of femininity. What this sought to do was eliminate all traces of femininity by maculating women and while attempting to create a genderless society, ironically enforcing mass masculinity. A man who was responsible for nearly 60 million deaths of his own citizens did not care about gender equality. The first thing most people do as a child is recognize their biological sex and that is the foundation on which an identity starts to be built upon. When you form an identity, you become an individual and not a part of the collective. To take a paraphrased idea from Orwell, the greatest threat to a tyrannical regime is the individual. If one does not form an individual identity then they are forever a tumbleweed in the desert, docile and easily controlled. It was not gender Mao was after but rather the idea that there are natural aspects to human beings; we are blank slates that can be molded to form the perfect socialist utopian vision where our only identity is the state and all outcomes are equal. Similar ideological pushes took place in the Soviet Union during the communist revolution which was met with the same outcome of every attempted socialist Utopian vision, inevitable slave labor and mass starvation. When we artificially implement systems and behaviors that are not made to accommodate or even rely on our innate self-interest and tendencies, it is a system doomed for failure. As is the case in all things, when you change the environment the natural aspects of us become hyperactivated. On the inverse, if you attempt to artificially change the innate aspects to us, the environment becomes radically unstable. This is the lesson of the 20th century that we have already seemed to have forgotten.

Disparate Outcomes

I have worked in female dominated fields, I worked in the hospital as a nursing assistant while in nursing school. It was not unusual for me to be the only male on a unit during a shift. Does this mean that I worked under an oppressive matriarchal structure? I used to work hard physical labor where there were no field laborers that were women. Was this because there was a discriminatory patriarchal structure in place not allowing women to work with us? Of course not, neither of these are correct. We (on average) choose to work in fields that are more in line with the natural aspects to us which includes traits differentiated by sex. On average, men are more interested in material things while women are more interested in people. This is why there are a disproportionate number of women that become teachers and nurses while men are disproportionately represented in STEM fields. This is one of the reasons why men make more money than women when you combine all jobs in all fields, not because of discrimination but because men disproportionately choose fields that create goods versus female dominated fields that involve care and service of people. This coupled with the fact that women are still the primary familial caretaker of the children which forces them to work part time jobs and less hours. According to the U.S. Department of Labor and Statistics, women work an average of 36.4 hours a week compared to men working 41, this is why you see the “women make 82 cents for every dollar a man makes” narrative that has been debunked for decades but emerges every election cycle despite the obvious missed point that it has been illegal to pay a woman less money for the same job since the Equal Pay Act of 1963. If we’re denying the existence of inherent femininity and masculinity then what we’re doing is devaluing the role women play in our society. Are we to honestly say that during these last two years female-dominated nursing was less valuable to our society than traditionally male-dominated professions? Are we to say that female-dominated education is “less-than” in our society? What jobs in our society are more important in our survival than healthcare and education? While the universities and media seek to dismantle the existence of gender roles, what they are un ironically doing is affirming that the definition of success is defined by masculinity. Why, what is wrong with strong femininity? Shouldn’t those who advocate for women demand equal rights while celebrating strong femininity and motherhood rather than denigrating it? A culture rid of femininity will collapse. A culture rid of masculinity will collapse. Through thousands, and even millions of years our ancestors have learned that the best possible system is when masculinity and femininity work complementary and are built upon strong women and strong men. It is not strength that is “toxic” but weakness.

The Canary

While I am commenting on sex-based differences, what I am really after is this canary in the coalmine trajectory that we’re on. We as a society are entering this dangerous place where the number of topics that are off limits to even discuss or analyze is growing and growing. We are allowing so many ideas and radical cultural shifts to go undiscussed due to the cultural fear of being labeled a bigot under the guise of “inclusivity.” More and more topics are being shielded from analysis because they are deemed off limits by a loud and growing minority. How will we ever find the answers we seek if we can’t even have the discussion? I am not claiming that the argument I have posited is correct, but what I am claiming is that when there is over 55 million years of scientific evidence and thousands of years of human knowledge against a theory created in a non-scientific university faculty lounge, it is certainly worthwhile to poke around and see what a generation of students is being presented with as objective fact. This idea that we are blank slates and there are no differences on average based on sex is not something most people actually believe, and yet, in fictitious online venues and in the media this blank slate idea is the only “correct” position to have. What I see happening more and more is people accepting and purveying lies that defy common sense and what we see with our own eyes; this only happens in a demoralized culture with social policing. It is in our best interest to start asking questions to topics we’ve been avoiding.