Men And Women Are More Alike Than They Are Different
Studies to the contrary don’t take socialization into account
Men are interested in objects, but women are interested in people and animals. That’s what a study I recently saw said. “That’s some really poorly done research right there,” I thought when I read it. All that indicates is how the people who were studied have been indoctrinated by their socialization. The results are essentially worthless.
Studies that have been done to try to account for socialization paint a very different picture — one where there are few innate differences, other than in body size and strength. The desire to put men and women into genderized boxes is a function of patriarchy. It doesn’t serve any positive purpose and it doesn’t reflect what other cultures, both in the present and the past, indicate about the flexibility of gender roles and norms.
The other day I wrote a story about the Na of China who have about as fundamentally different a culture from the West as is possible. It’s a society where family is centered around a matriarch, and everyone lives in the house of their mother or grandmother along with their brothers and sisters, as well as the children of the women. There is functionally no such thing as a father or a husband. Men and women have love relationships but never…
