<div> </div> <div>C. Miles, </div> <div> </div> <div>There's no trolling going on here. I just think it's important for people on the left to ground our discussions in reality.You have to distinguish between small, trivial biological differences and profound biological differences. Race is all but biologically meaningless. Gender is obviously a profound biological difference. Men and women have, you may have noticed, different internal organs. That's a pretty profound difference. </div> <div> </div> <div>Every cell in a woman's body has significantly more genetic material than every cell in a man's body, and so forth. We know from observation and experimentation that testosterone alters people's mood and behavior. Men produce a lot, women produce a little. Specifically, we know that testosterone stimulates sexual desire in both men and women. Because men are exposed to significantly more testosterone from the time they are in the womb, it's not unreasonable to suggest that men have different sexual lives than women and indeed all the social evidence points to exactly that. </div> <div> </div> <div>When I was a kid, nobody ever told me to be aroused when I looked at pictures of naked girls. And we have a huge pornography industry that targets one gender and not the other. That's not exactly in their fiancial interest. Of course pornographers have an interest in making men substitute pornography for sex, but they'd still be far better off doing that for both genders. In a sense, they do, but we still have to deal with the fact that media meant to be sexually stimulating to women is very different in character from media meant to be sexually stimulating to men. Moreover, if your theory of social determination was correct, we would not find men so uniform across cultures in their reaction to pornongraphy (and pretty girls on the street) and yet they are. </div> <div> </div> <div>Finally, it's absurd to think that Homo sapiens are so different from other animals. Yes, we have fewer behavioral and physical differences between the genders than many, if not most species, but we're not the same. The great apes, who share most of our DNA, have very distinct gender behaviors. Are those socially determined? No. I think it's entirely reasonable to be a leftist and still say "vive la difference". The challenge is to make the genders equal citizens in spite of gender differences and accept no political or social inequity based on gender. That demands that we assume the minimum innate gender difference, but to assume there are no innate gender differences flies in the face of reason. </div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div>peace</div> <div> </div> <div>boddi</div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div><span class="gmail_quote">On 11/16/05, <b class="gmail_sendername">Miles Jackson</b> <<a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="mailto:cqmv@pdx.edu" target="_blank">cqmv@pdx.edu</a>> wrote: </span> <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">boddi satva wrote:<br>> Gender is a product of DNA<br>><br><br>I have a feeling I'm being trolled, but I can't resist.  Gender is a <br>social product, and like all social products is built from material<br>elements (e.g., DNA).  Thought experiment: take away all the cultural<br>distinctions, socialization, and endless talk and behavior that<br>bifurcate people into men and women.  What is left?  In a social and <br>practical sense, there are no longer "men" and "women".  People in that<br>nongendered society would consider dividing people up based on sex<br>chromosomes to be arbitrary and silly, like people in our society would <br>react to claims about the innate superiority or inferiority of men with<br>male pattern baldness or blue eyes.  --Any biological differences you<br>can observe between people or groups of people only have social meaning <br>and importance because of social relations (e.g., the differing<br>importance of the same skin color depending on the historical and<br>cultural moment).<br><br>Judith Butler is good on this (Gender trouble); sociologists like <br>Goffman and Garfinkel made this point fifty years ago.  Soc 101.<br><br>Miles<br>___________________________________<br><a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk" target="_blank"> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk </a><br></blockquote></div><br>