The reality of human sexuality: Dr. Debra Soh

Road Warrior said:

Ummmm.....no it's not. At least not according to a foremost expert in the field.

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Kangaroo Feathers said:

Talk about your appeals to authority

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Subduction Zone said:

Did you read the article at all? By her own admission she is not one of the "foremost researchers of human sexuality". She is a baby PhD that has won some awards. She has not had enough time in the field to have a signifcant body of research in her own words:

"I am a sex researcher at York University in Toronto and I write about the science of sex for several media outlets, including Playboy. For my PhD, which I just defended, . . . "

She writes for the media. Now it is nice that an expert in the field actually writes articles for the media since the popular media so often gets science wrong. But her very limited work to date has not focused on gender studies, but more on pedophilia. The problem that someone like her can bring to articles is that she appears to disagree with the majority of the experts in her field and she may be letting her own biases affect her work.

Note to the OP, when claiming that someone is a "foremost researcher of human sexuality" make sure that is the case before making a claim that is not supported by the works that you linked.

The good news is that she did write for Playboy. So much better than writing for Penthouse

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Shiranui117 said:

My thing is, society is at a contradictory crossroads concerning gender roles: on the one hand, there are those who seek to shake off restrictive notions of femininity and masculinity for both genders, saying that a woman can act more "masculine" or take on traditionally masculine roles, and a man can act more "feminine" and take on traditionally feminine roles. Essentially, men and women shouldn't be restricted by societal notions of how a "man" or "woman" should be. It is perfectly acceptable for a woman to "act like a man". As Judith Butler puts it, the gender roles and identities of men and women are improvisations that are shaped on the fly as a result of societal interaction, and are thus subject to change. To put it roughly, bodily anatomy is set in stone, but gender roles aren't.

On the other hand, I get the sense that people who insist on using pronouns that don't correspond to their biological sex do ascribe to the idea that there is a more concrete or immutable substance behind societal descriptors of how a man and woman should act. I have had trans people tell me that they know they're really a man or a woman, despite their anatomy, because they think like the opposite sex and they've never acted traditionally "masculine" or "feminine". It's the idea that one is a "man trapped in a woman's body" or vice-versa. So they feel they have to change their bodies to match. To put it roughly, gender identities are set in stone, but bodily anatomy isn't. So there is in fact a clear demarcation between being a man or a woman, or else transgender people would not feel a need to transition. I know at least a few transgender people who take special issue with Judith Butler for this very reason, because she would call such assumptions into question.

To me, these two ideologies are in conflict. I can understand why many feminists feel that transgender issues are

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Guitar's Cry said:

I didn't catch that in the posted articles. Yes, she states that brain structures appear to show differences between the sexes, but that doesn't change my argument, since perception and presentation of gender can be very individual. And it doesn't change the fact that this has become a political issue due to the backlash against folks challenging gender roles.

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Left Coast said:

After quickly reading through the two interviews, there's not much in them about gender at all. She highlights the fact that there are brain differences between men and women - cool, of course there are. There are also interesting brain studies of trans people. Turns out, parts of their brains more closely match the opposite sex, and other parts are more like halfway between how the same structure looks in a typical man or woman.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.3109/09540261.2015.1113163

The 72 genders thing just comes from a bunch of different labels that people give for much the same concept: some people's gender identity doesn't fit perfectly into male or female, and they fall in a grey area somewhere between. Kinsey made much the same discovery about sexual orientation. I don't know why some people are so threatened or put off by the concept, but there it is.

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Road Warrior said:

See my reply above with additional articles for clearer statements on the subject.

In short; gender is not a social construct. It's a biological certainty.

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Kangaroo Feathers said:

Talk about your appeals to authority

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Shiranui117 said:

Those are people with congenital conditions or genetic anomalies. Such cases don't change the fact that humans are a sexually dimorphic species--you have biological males, and biological females, and that's it. Gender dysphoria and intersex conditions are rare exceptions to the overwhelming rule.

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Road Warrior said:

See my reply above with additional articles for clearer statements on the subject.

In short; gender is not a social construct. It's a biological certainty.

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We Never Know said:

Even the biological process seems confused sometimes. The body shows one gender while the mind claims another.

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Road Warrior said:

See my reply above with additional articles for clearer statements on the subject.

In short; gender is not a social construct. It's a biological certainty.

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Left Coast said:

Ironically, the thing you posted from the evolution is true blog (is that Jerry Coyne's site?) Is actually a crtique of Soh that explains why her thinking on gender is muddled.

The thing is, I don't particularly care or mind saying that in general gender is largely binary for most folks. However we conceptualize it, what I care about is that we recognize that some people do not fit in that binary, and there's nothing wrong with them, and they should be fully integrated and accepted into society rather than discriminated against.

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Shiranui117 said:

Listening to an expert opinion on the subject who provides data is not the "appeal to authority" fallacy. Listening to somebody who is an expert or star in another field who gives an opinion on this particular subject, however, is. To say otherwise is to continue to fall deeper into the anti-intellectualism that is plaguing our society.

Appeal to Authority

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Curious George said:

How is anything you said indicative of a fact that gender is not a societal construct? You realize that studies noting differences between the sexes only do so at a statistical level. None of these show a 100% correlation. In other words, gender typical traits are very much a spectrum with more males tending toward masculine traits and more females toward feminine.

Now keep in mind that what we consider masculine or feminine has very much been constructed by society. While you can find studies noting that women and girls typically mature faster, are better with language and males typically larger muscle mass etc you will not find one study where there is not variation.

Quite simply, variation is a human quality. While we may have then created gender roles which fit with these statistical differences there is nothing innately male or female about cooking or liking dresses.

Gender roles, the societal constructs, encompass much more than you seem to want to admit.

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Road Warrior said:

Agreed. It's science. Science-deniers and, as you just pointed out, anti-intellectuals are, indeed, plaguing our society.

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Road Warrior said:

Yes, there's scientific data and then there's opinion. Most data, especially with humans, falls under a bell curve.

Unfortunately, people with social agendas often politicize that data for their own purposes be it climate change, the 2003 Iraq War or gender. Later, if it all goes bad, they blame the research but the fault truly belongs to those who politicized the data.

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Road Warrior said:

Both sex & gender are binary and not socially constructed.

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Guitar's Cry said:

So what's the difference between sex and gender, then? Are we talking gonadal vs. hormonal? Hormonal vs. genetic?

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Curious George said:

Hmm. Seems that you are using the word "politicize" in a very specific context here. Your thread is arguably "politicizing" data.

This smells of I don't like it when "they" do it, but when we do it it is okay.

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