One of the segments of the undergraduate cultural anthropology course I taught, the one that I enjoyed teaching the most, focused on sex, gender, and marriage. I took great pleasure (yes Nick, schadenfreude) destroying all the preconceived notions and asserted "Truths" of my, mostly Catholic and upper class students.
Sex is a linear spectrum: everyone is conceived female and, at about 6 weeks, males start to become differentiated. But no one is 100% male. The closest thing to binary, is the ability to produce viable eggs versus the ability to produce viable sperm. Gender is a complex multi-dimensional space with almost no consistency across cultures. The closest thing to a gender universal: among all known hunter-gatherer societies, women always gather and men always hunt. No one knows why and every proposed "reason" is shot down convincingly by empirical evidence. Sexuality (behavior) is also a complex multi-dimensional space and there are far more variations, dear Horatio, than dreamt of in your philosophy. Several aspects of sexuality appear to have a biological 'cause' with same sex attraction being the most researched. Although it is possible to form, at least tentative, correlations across the two complex spaces and the spectrum; those correlations tend to be statistical 'patterns' more than anything else. The 'Great Hurrah' regarding sex/gender the past few years is, IMHO, mostly nonsense, oversimplification, and reification in service of politics and power. But, I am more than happy to call you 'It' or other term of your choice if you notify me in advance of your desire. davew On Fri, Mar 4, 2022, at 9:50 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > The differences between men and women in prison might give some ideas > about how gender roles are independent of cis-gender. > > https://mcasa.org/providers/resources-on-specific-topics/prea/prea-resources-and-webinars/under > > The concept of "gay for the stay", being more intentional, and > associated with women prisoners seems to be a kind of cognitive > flexibility that I associate more with the femaleness (in a good way). > > -----Original Message----- > From: Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> On Behalf Of glen > Sent: Friday, March 4, 2022 7:06 AM > To: friam@redfish.com > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] academic freedom > > I'm entirely ignorant of yeast biology, though a tiny bit informed of > yeast engineering for brewing. But, still in analogy with gender teams, > it seems preposterous that isolation could be common. Even if we > considered individual cells flying around in the air and compared yeast > in {all contexts facilitating reproduction} versus {all contexts > inhibiting reproduction} and the latter contained a larger absolute > number of cells, *that* the other contexts facilitate reproduction > implies a dependency between the two. I.e. dependency ≠ isolation. I > suppose if we add temporal isolation, we could say {time spent in > isolation} versus {time spent in nutrient bath} and we (I think > counterfactually) found that most yeast spends most of its time > separated from its team, those relatively brief periods in the latter > state would be definitional to the organism, not to mention the species. > > In the analogy, there is also no such thing as an isolated human. Sure, > we might consider "wolf children", abandoned as babies and found living > in the forest or somesuch. But that would be too rare for any science. > So "decoupled from [sex|society]" must mean something else, perhaps > prisoners in the SHU? My guess is there's a half-life to team identity. > Stay in the SHU for X time and the time spent in milieu is > comparatively infinite. Stay in the SHU for Y time and the isolation > screws you up deeply, down into things like proprioception and > hallucination. Studies of team identity, being relatively fungible on > top of those deeper traits, would then be unreliable due to a swamp of > confounders. So, there's no science there, either. [⛧] > > But the language angle does make some sense, especially in the context > of biologists who are so used to using terms like "male" and "female" > jargonally, then suffering a kind of memory error and thinking their > jargonal term has meaning outside their domain. Before enculturation, > they took "[fe]male" as the typical social role the laity takes it as, > conflated with "masculine", "feminine", etc. After enculturation, they > take it as "producer of ova" and "producer of sperm". > > But I worry that such semantic shift isn't as easy as EricS seems to > suggest. Sure, perhaps it's much easier than phonemes and grammar. But > it takes a lot of work, a lot of steeping, a lot of immersive learning. > I guess it's a bit like the Necker cube or Magic Eye graphics. You > start out only able to see it one way. It takes focus and randomness to > plunk into the other view. And the more you practice plunking from one > to the other, you gain enough mastery to choose which way to view it as > a function of context. > > And that embeds both the temporally piecewise isolation of yeast and > humans back into the conception of the narrative self. > > > [⛧] I feel like someone, perhaps Dave, will mention monks who may seem > like good candidates for decoupled from [sex|society]. And I imagine > most monks, Christian, Buddhist, whatever, have methodical techniques > for [de]categorizing their selves in parallax to the laity. Because we > do some science with a relatively large cohort of monks, it might be > reasonable to compare to a control cohort from the laity. But, again, I > worry about the confounders ... like McDonalds french fries, Instagram > addiction, orthorexia, etc. In order to make a clinical trial over > monk-hood credible, we'd have to have other isolates ... perhaps InCels > living in their parents' basements? Furries? Coomers? Agoraphobics? > Those poor people with Narcissistic Personality Disorder? Setting the > control protocol for decoupled/isolation seems fraught. > > On 3/4/22 03:27, David Eric Smith wrote: >> Marcus’s comment below is a fun and insightful angle for the analogy-mongers. >> >> An area nobody gets angry about is the evolution of the genetic code (the >> assignment of amino acids to nuclease triplets by the translation system). >> In modern life, coding is heavily heavily conventionalized and translation >> has very low error rates in complex organisms. Since that can be presumed, >> vast complexity has developed that presumes and makes use of those >> predictabilities. Hence, there are very very few ways a code can change, >> because touching anything in that tiny finite assignment table breaks an >> indefinitely large list of critical infrastructure. >> >> So the Origins question turns to: in what kind of a world could coding ever >> have been an evolvable feature? The general belief is: in a world where >> much much less is standardized in genomes, and “translation” is a stochastic >> enough process that, if one tried to describe it in terms of “reliability”, >> it would be rated very unreliable. In such a world, the notion of memory -> >> function cannot be one of sequence -> structure, and must be more like >> cloud-of-sequences -> moment-of-distribution-of-structures. There are fewer >> distinctions that can be made in such a world robustly, and by that >> categorization “less” that one can do. But the restriction of what can be >> done that makes a system at all robust also makes it tolerant of evolution >> of the code. All this, on a sliding scale. >> >> The second case is language change, and the people who get angry over that >> are people nobody cares about or listens to anyway. Languages can change by >> shift of the semantic scope of lexical roots, by phoneme scope and values, >> and by aspects of grammar ranging from morphology to phrase structure. The >> only redundancies that put limits on semantic shift within a functioning >> language are at higher levels of composition or pragmatics. Since those are >> pretty fluid anyway, semantic shift is probably the most atomic of all the >> shifts, and the one most amenable to simple (meaning, not requiring >> typological priors) comparative modeling. Phoneme and phonological shift >> are more constrained, because their roles are massively redundant, so they >> can only change “within tracks” if intelligibility of words is to be >> preserved. Along those tracks the movement is still fairly frictionless, >> but you need to correctly characterize the tracks to make valid >> interpretations from comparative data. The aspects of “grammar” (morphology >> to phrase structure) are the worst-accreted into interdependent systems. So >> they are resistant to change, when they do change they tend to “shatter” and >> re-arrange (or so I have been told by a colleague who is professional in >> this area), and the allowed changes are very hard to predict and thus to use >> in forward Monte Carlo modeling. >> >> If we believe the yeast biologists most-fully understand The True Nature of >> Life, and that isolation is the default, and the relinquishment of isolation >> is a hazardous and fraught negotiation, then Marcus’s teams probably grow up >> in the shade of a difficult and long-standing negotiation of how it is >> possible to have a manageable life in society. For there to be difficulties >> in changing many things within those systems would then be the >> zero-knowledge prior. >> >> Eric >> >> >> >>> On Mar 3, 2022, at 5:05 PM, Marcus Daniels <mar...@snoutfarm.com> wrote: >>> >>> I guess I'd approach it by trying to see what gender means to people >>> decoupled from society and decoupled from sex. To the laity, I think it >>> probably has something to do what team you are on, and the implicit rules >>> of the teams and whether one respects them or disrespects them. Changing >>> rules is one thing that can get people this wound up. >>> >>> -----Original Message----- >>> From: Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> On Behalf Of glen >>> Sent: Thursday, March 3, 2022 1:51 PM >>> To: friam@redfish.com >>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] academic freedom >>> >>> Biologists are NOT held to a higher standard. But when they do just go on >>> speaking without ever listening, then they deserve some pushback. In this >>> particular context, there was no bad faith on either side. But one of the >>> biologists is accusing bad faith on the part of the non-cis people. >>> >>> As for a symbol being used without introduction, that's nearly impossible >>> with "male" and "female" ... in English, anyway, which was the language we >>> were all speaking. It would be like using pi to mean e in a paper. You >>> *already* know that's a bad idea. So if you do it, and the readers don't >>> know what the hell you're saying, it's your fault, not theirs. It's not a >>> higher standard ... it's a standard standard. >>> >>> On 3/3/22 13:26, Marcus Daniels wrote: >>>> It seems to me it is like a paper where some symbol is used without >>>> introduction, but it becomes clear from context and reflection. >>>> Not clear why a biologist should be held to a higher standard for >>>> explaining themselves when speaking to the laity. I mean their reality >>>> feels real to them so it must be true. ;-) FEELING is everything! It >>>> seems evil to me to limit "ordinary conversation" to a restricted, banal >>>> vocabulary. That's how people like Trump get their claws in. People >>>> should be able to listen and not just speak, to imagine the possible and >>>> not just what is right in front of them. >>>> >>>> -----Original Message----- >>>> From: Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> On Behalf Of glen >>>> Sent: Thursday, March 3, 2022 1:14 PM >>>> To: friam@redfish.com >>>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] academic freedom >>>> >>>> The jargon being used by the biologist came in the form of "male", >>>> "female", "gametes", and such. "Male" and "female", when used by the >>>> biologists means something very different from what it means to the laity. >>>> And the biologists should know that. If they don't, they're stupid. If >>>> they do, but they don't dial down their jargonal use, then they're evil. >>>> And the use of "gamete" in an ordinary conversation is just Scientismist >>>> confabulation. >>>> >>>> On 3/3/22 13:10, Marcus Daniels wrote: >>>>> The distinction I'd make is between talking about identity in principle >>>>> and talking about the details of my identity. That's not a question of >>>>> jargon, but of detachment. Jargon is a tool for detachment. >>>>> >>>>> -----Original Message----- >>>>> From: Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> On Behalf Of glen >>>>> Sent: Thursday, March 3, 2022 1:04 PM >>>>> To: friam@redfish.com >>>>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] academic freedom >>>>> >>>>> Maybe. But I don't think it's generosity that's required. I think it's >>>>> humility that's required. Anyone who both engages a group of strangers >>>>> about identity *and* identifies in a non-standard way is already >>>>> demonstrating that they're not too damaged. Or, I'd turn the tables and >>>>> say that the snowflakes in this conversation (the Scientismists) are too >>>>> damaged for the conversation ... damaged by their entrenched, >>>>> enculturation into, Scientism. The one guy's exclamation "Gametes are >>>>> real" was obviously an indicator that the other participants would either >>>>> have to play by *his* nutty rules or wait for him to dial down his >>>>> jargon-laced gobbledygook and have a real conversation with ordinary >>>>> people. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> On 3/3/22 12:56, Marcus Daniels wrote: >>>>>> Glen writes: >>>>>> >>>>>> < I think they're just defense mechanisms they've learned over >>>>>> years of abuse. > >>>>>> >>>>>> The defense mechanisms could be more like acquired allergies and do >>>>>> harm. Once one is dealing with reflexive mechanisms, I start to worry >>>>>> that a conversation is not possible. Because they would 1) need to >>>>>> learn to control those mechanisms (and who wants to take the time for >>>>>> them to do that) or 2) claim "You [the man] made me this may, now live >>>>>> with it." (and then adapt to their nutty rules). >>>>>> >>>>>> There seems to be a need for some generosity to help people cope, but it >>>>>> seems plausible to me some people are just too damaged. Does the >>>>>> absence of generosity make one a snowflake? >>>>>> >>>>>> -----Original Message----- >>>>>> From: Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> On Behalf Of glen >>>>>> Sent: Thursday, March 3, 2022 12:47 PM >>>>>> To: friam@redfish.com >>>>>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] academic freedom >>>>>> >>>>>> Yeah, that's a good take. It also helps in distinguishing between >>>>>> reflexive defense mechanisms and cryptic character traits. Where me and >>>>>> the biologist who felt shut down disagree is in the interpretation of >>>>>> the non-cis participants word and body language choices. He thinks >>>>>> they're reflections of character traits. I think they're just defense >>>>>> mechanisms they've learned over years of abuse. In the non-binary >>>>>> person's case, they have an entire non-estranged, continually engaged, >>>>>> family that rejects their identity. So their body and word language is >>>>>> probably an example of them saying to the white cis biologists "pull >>>>>> yourselves together and we'll try again later." But I'm willing to be >>>>>> shown wrong if that's the case. >>>>>> >>>>>> On 3/3/22 12:36, Marcus Daniels wrote: >>>>>>> Hmm. Another experience I have had while deconstructing someone with >>>>>>> "charged feelings" is coming to the ought-to-be-obvious recognition >>>>>>> that neither of us care about the other, but nonetheless the >>>>>>> counterparty who feels compelled to share their boring feelings >>>>>>> believes it is my job to patiently listen to them work through their >>>>>>> issues (even though they would never do the same for me). Canceling >>>>>>> could just mean "Pull yourself together and we'll try again next week." >>>>>>> -----Original Message----- >>>>>>> From: Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> On Behalf Of glen >>>>>>> Sent: Thursday, March 3, 2022 12:28 PM >>>>>>> To: friam@redfish.com >>>>>>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] academic freedom >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Ha! No, I was making a point about freedom of speech, in particularly >>>>>>> "academic" speech, and canceling or shutting down others. Sorry if my >>>>>>> anecdote got in the way. I pared it down for you below. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> On 3/3/22 12:16, Marcus Daniels wrote: >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> Anyway, I guess you were making some point about people getting riled >>>>>>>> up at a pub, and that it being informative somehow. (Or at least >>>>>>>> entertaining?) >>>>>>> >>>>>>>> On 3/3/22 11:02, glen wrote: >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> Nobody was actively trying to shut anyone down. But the more >>>>>>>>> conservative biologist actively claims the non-binary and queer >>>>>>>>> participants *were* trying to shut down the biologists and had >>>>>>>>> clearly shut down their reasoning. I disagree completely. >>>>>>> > > -- > glen > When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers. > > .-- .- -. - / .- -.-. - .. --- -. ..--.. / -.-. --- -. .--- ..- --. .- > - . > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn UTC-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe > http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ > archives: > 5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ > 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/ > > .-- .- -. - / .- -.-. - .. --- -. ..--.. / -.-. --- -. .--- ..- --. .- - . > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn UTC-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam > un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ > archives: > 5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ > 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/ .-- .- -. - / .- -.-. - .. --- -. ..--.. / -.-. --- -. .--- ..- --. .- - . 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