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themokupuni · 2 years

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US Must Learn How to Disrupt and Subvert Chinese Partnership Network

The Chinese government is pursuing a new era in strategic alliances to guarantee a multipolar world. This move revolves around the creation of an expansive network of strategic partnerships that are less formal than the strategic alliances of the United States. They also reportedly sidestep hard commitments for mutual protection and mutual restraint.

Within this emerging constellation, each strategic partnership might be viewed as a living system that interacts with the totality of its environment. These open, self-organizing systems are shaped by things like beliefs, doctrines, emotions, ethics, feelings, morals, principles, and values. As a consequence, this sort of network cannot be explained away using practical concerns and realpolitik practices. They are not determined by the threat alignment rationale once assumed to drive strategic alliances during the Cold War.

Practically speaking, this mode for collaboration frustrates harmonization. It also creates the potential for dirty, emotional, and painful affairs. One might say that these strategic partnerships are competitive collaborations that behave much like friendships. They face uncertainty and encounter roadblocks. They therefore demand the sustained commitment of all parties. Otherwise, they risk breaking down and being thrown into the dustbin of history.

So long as this can be avoided, these strategic partnerships not only provide a useful way to steer clear of military entanglements. They also promise to open doors to alternative futures. Think about all of the future worlds made possible by the changing perceptions of young Africans about China.

From an analytical perspective, these strategic partnerships exhibit what scholars refer to as a mutual constitution of agency and structure. As noted, they are not mindlessly determined by the distribution of power out there in the world. They are mindfully constructed out of the beliefs, doctrines, emotions, ethics, feelings, morals, principles, and values held by their respective parties. They are therefore constantly subject to revision and reversion.

Here, perceptions matter. Competitive collaborators are hesitant to reveal their beliefs, doctrines, emotions, ethics, feelings, morals, principles, and values. They therefore must be inferred from observations of their actions and orientations.

As noted by Mahatma Gandhi, particular emphasis should be placed on what happens in times of crisis. This is because the true test of these kinds of relationships is whether assistance will be given in the face of great adversity. The Chinese government clearly appreciates this point. Consider their recent statement on the Russian invasion of Ukraine: “No matter how perilous the international landscape, we will maintain our strategic focus and promote the development of a comprehensive China-Russia partnership in the new era.”

From a strategic perspective, the United States government must be able to effectively and efficiently disrupt and subvert these strategic partnerships in order to win the global governance competition with the People’s Republic of China. The problem is that the United States government has failed to demonstrate the ability to do so. Just look at the recent Solomon Islands pact with China. That needs to change. And it needs to change quickly. Here are some recommendations on how the Biden administration could correct course.

First, the U.S. government needs to fundamentally understand the nature of the strategic partnerships of the People’s Republic of China. This includes grasping the underlying motives that precede and sustain competitive collaboration, processes used to assess and select strategic partners, processes used to negotiate and renegotiate strategic partnerships, relative valuations placed on the potential contributions of strategic partners, governance and control structures used within strategic partnerships, and mechanisms used to achieve organizational learning and knowledge acquisition.

Second, the U.S. government needs to identify potential high-impact vulnerabilities in the strategic partnerships of the People’s Republic of China. This not only includes identifying actions, orientations, and events that could change the perceptions of the People’s Republic of China about the beliefs, doctrines, emotions, ethics, feelings, morals, principles, and values of its strategic partners and potential strategic partners. It also includes identifying actions, orientations, and events that could change the perceptions of those partners about the beliefs, doctrines, emotions, ethics, feelings, morals, principles, and values of China.

Third, the U.S. government needs to systematically exploit the vulnerabilities that exist in China’s strategic partnerships. For that to happen, the U.S. not only needs to possess the defense, democracy, development, and diplomatic capabilities required to exploit those vulnerabilities. It also needs the domestic and international political will to risk using them, especially in times of crisis.

Michael Walsh is an affiliate of the Center for Australian, New Zealand, and Pacific Studies of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.

This article appeared in The Hill on August 22, 2022.

Image Credit: The Hill Newspaper

#china #russia #xi jinping #vladimir putin #military #defense #ukraine #pentagon #cold war #strategic competition #social constructivism #news

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thebestpartofwakingup · 9 months

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Note: this does NOT have to be the sociologist/writer you AGREE with the most — obviously this is the #marxism website — but the one you personally found the most interesting or enjoyed writing about the most.

I was always the odd one out in my sociology classes because I ADORED the constructivism lens I just thought it was a really fun way to analyze different writings and films (I ended up in a lot of sociology classes that liked to assign like. Film reports? That’s how I learned I hate film-based classes having to watch a film for a grade is so much worse than reading a book for a grade)

Yet most of my professors and other classmates treated Durkheim as the “hard” intro writer and the constructivism lens as the “hard” lens to write for even though I always found it the easiest to universally apply (because it’s just like. Social symbolism? A thing present in all forms of media related even tangentially to culture or human experiences? How is this not the easiest lens to use for every sociological “use 1-X lenses to analyze this story/article” assignment ever?)

ALSO: NOT including an “other” category because I want to keep this focused on these three in particular since, at least in the US, they are more or less taught as the first three “specific” or “initial” lenses of sociological analysis (which is why Marx isn’t my favorite because I got real sick of having to read the first section of Das Kapital the start of every semester since he it was ALWAYS assigned as a “warm up” in EVERY FUCKING CLASS)

#sociology #social science #college #Karl Marx #Marxism #poll #polls #tumblr poll #social experiment #sociological imagination #max Weber #the Protestant ethic #the Protestant work ethic #Durkheim #Emile Durkheim #constructivism #constuctionialism #sociological analysis #Marxist theory

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pamietniko · 2 years

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Rotes Wien

Vienna, Austria

#Austria #original photographers #Vienna #socialism #Rotes Wien #Constructivism #soviet art #soviet socialism #political art #sculpture #Brutalist architecture #Brutalism #35mm #analogue #film photography #photographers on tumblr #original photography #original photographer

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thelikesoffinn · 1 month

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do you have essay advixe? i need to write about a theory that i think is most important for social work but i can't decide on anything bcuz i feel so underinformed bcuz i feel like i only get half of what they say in college

Can you pick anything? Like, anything at all as long as you can explain why it is important for us social workers? Because if so, I'd suggest writing about constructivism!

In case you don't know, let me tell you what it is and why: Constructivism is a theory on how people learn and process information. As the name indicates, the theory is that instead of picking up and processing information passively, people actually gather up information and use that to construct their own reality. This, in turn, leads to differences in how each individual views the world and its rules.

Constructivism has a lot of facettes and different levels, with some supporters going as far as saying that no two individuals can live the same reality. My world, my reality can never be yours simply because we built it entirely on our own. (That's radical constructivism, btw.)

There's a lot of sources for it in multiple languages and a lot of high ranking people have indirectly used or openly supported the theory of constructivism, so its not based on nothing and should be easy to properly support with good arguments and sources.

And as for the importance: As a social worker, it can be easy to forget that the client is the expert. Not us. We, we know all the how's, sure, but the client is the expert on their own life. What they want, what they need and how they need it might not always align with what society says it should and it can be easy to try and push for some societal norm when it doesn't concern yourself.

Understanding that our own reality and opinions don't matter as much as the clients simply by understanding that their reality can be entirely different from ours is really really important and helpful. It keeps us from riding too high on our expertise.

I don't remember everyone involved with constructivism, but I know Ernst von Glaserfeld was huge on it and so was Heinz von Forester. Maria Montessori, Jean Piaget and Paul Watzlawick also dabbled in it, but there's a ton more people so just hit up Google scholar and you'll find them.

Hope that helps!

#i love constructivism haha #wrote a ton of papers about it while I was in uni #social worker #social work #social workers #social workers of tumblr #life of a social worker #essay #essay writing #constructivism #montessori #piaget #von glaserfeld

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gravitascivics · 8 months

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CONTEXTUAL ELEMENTS OF THE LIBERATED FEDERALISM, II

Currently, this blog is continuing its account of the liberated federalism model of governance and politics.[1] With this posting, the blog looks further into suggested instructional methods in civics that teachers can utilize as most amenable to this featured construct. The previous posting identified the use of case studies and community service projects – in both strategies, one does not eliminate other methods, but simply states that the featured methods allow teachers to get at what liberated federalism deems to be important.

That posting also identified the psychological school of thought that supports the efforts that liberated federalism pursues. That would be constructivism as developed from the works of Jean Piaget and Lev S. Vygotsky and runs counter to those pedagogical views emanating from behavioral psychology. This posting will share more of Piaget and Vygotsky’s ideas.

The Piaget based model, as explained by Geoffrey Scheurman,[2] calls effective human learning as “cognitive constructivism.” It is dependent on a developmental view. Scheurman writes

[Piaget] believed that people develop universal forms or structures of knowledge (i.e., prelogical, concrete, or formal) that enable them to experience reality. This view holds that while an autonomous “real” world may exist outside the learner, he or she has limited access to it. The emphasis in learning is on how people assimilate new information into existing mental schemes, and how they restructure schemes entirely when information is too discrepant to be assimilated.[3]

Within the cognitive constructivism model, the teacher acts as a facilitator and challenges students’ views of reality by introducing disequilibrium with incongruent factual or theoretical material.

The teacher further guides students through problem solving activities and reviews and monitors students’ reflective and interpretive thinking after they, the students, discover their researched findings. Experience consists of actual physical and social encounters in which they deal with unexpected claims – either factual or opinionated claims – and reflect on them, according to Scheurman.

As for Vygotsky’s strand of constructivism, Scheurman calls it “social constructivism.” Scheurman explains:

Accepting Piaget’s view of how individuals build private understandings of reality through problem solving with others, Vygotsky further explained how social or cultural contexts contribute to a public understanding of objects and events. In this view, reality is no longer objective, while knowledge is literally co-constructed by, and distributed among, individuals as they “interact with one another and with cultural artifacts, such as pictures, discourse, and gestures.”[4]

Within the social constructivism view, teachers take on a collaborative role. That is, they participate with the students in “constructing” reality.

By doing so, certain functions are met. These functions are to bring to light students’ misconceptions, to hold open-ended discoveries and inquiries, and to lead teachers and students to real social resources and procedures. A class of students, including the teacher, “creates” a reality by manufacturing a culturally based understanding, conducting open-ended inquiries, and reflecting on the mutually constructed meaning.

Constructivism promises to be a viable methodology for teaching a communally based curriculum. As Scheurman points out, it does not preclude other types of instruction as functional components in preparing students for meaningful constructivist lessons or reflective extensions to lessons that have had students construct conclusions to a set of inquiries.

Already mentioned in the last posting, there are more behaviorally based lessons which can be employed to establish needed information. Also, inquiry type lessons that can test claims or conclusions presented to students and are based on the behavioral science model, can be conducted. In other words, a healthy mix of modes of learning and teaching can add various contributions toward viable civics instruction.

Perhaps here, as this account completes the description of the commonplace, the subject matter, it is useful to provide a short review of what has been presented. The account first reviewed the assumptions of the liberated federalism construct regarding individual decision-making. The account then proposed a model of the liberated federalism model which is presented as the preferred foundation for the study of government and civics at the secondary level.

Then, using Eugene Meehan’s criteria, the model was reviewed for its viability. Last, this and the former posting looked at methodology as a contextual factor in implementing the liberated federalism model. In that, the presentation was in line with focusing on the more interpretive approach of constructivism, i.e., it encourages more heuristic approaches – in which students derive their own conclusions. In that, they avoid the claim that it promotes indoctrination. Next, the blog will address the commonplace, the student.

[1] For readers who wish to review those corresponding postings and have not read them, they are guided to this blog’s posting, “From Natural Rights to Liberated Federalism” (June 2, 2023), at the URL, https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/, where this series begins.

[2] Geoffrey Scheurman, “From Behaviorists to Constructivist Teaching,” Social Education, 62, 1 (1998), 6-9.

[3] Ibid., 8.

[4] Ibid., 8.

#liberated federalism #constructivism #collaborative teaching #behavioral approach #inquiry method #civics education #social studies

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 1 year

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By: Robert Lynch

Published: April 7, 2023

In my first year of graduate school at Rutgers, I attended a colloquium designed to forge connections between the cultural and biological wings of the anthropology department. It was the early 2000s, and anthropology departments across the country were splitting across disciplinary lines. These lectures would be a last, and ultimately futile, attempt to build interdisciplinary links between these increasingly hostile factions at Rutgers; it was like trying to establish common research goals for the math and art departments.

This time, it was the turn of the biological anthropologists, and the primatologist Ryne Palombit was giving a lecture for which he was uniquely qualified — infanticide in Chacma baboons. Much of the talk was devoted to sex differences in baboon behavior and when it was time for questions the hand of the chair of the department, a cultural anthropologist, shot up and demanded to know “What exactly do you mean by these so-called males and females?” I didn’t know it at the time but looking back I see that this was the beginning of a broad anti-science movement that has enveloped nearly all the social sciences and distorted public understanding of basic biology. The assumption that sex is an arbitrary category is no longer confined to the backwaters of cultural anthropology departments, and the willful ignorance of what sex is has permeated both academia and public discussion of the topic.

Male and female are not capricious categories imposed by scientists on the natural world, but rather refer to fundamental distinctions deeply rooted in evolution. The biological definition of males and females rests on the size of the sex cells, termed gametes, that they produce. Males produce large numbers of small gametes, while females produce fewer, larger ones. In animals, this means that males produce lots of tiny sperm (between 200 and 500 million sperm in humans) while females produce far fewer, but much larger, eggs called ova (women have a lifetime supply of around 400). Whenever scientists discover a new sexually reproducing species, gamete size is what they use to distinguish between the males and the females.

Although this asymmetry in gamete size may not seem that significant, it is. And it leads to a cascade of evolutionary effects that often results in fundamentally different developmental (and even behavioral) trajectories for the two respective sexes. Whether you call the two groups A and B, Big and Little, or Male and Female, this foundational cell-sized difference in gamete size has profound effects on evolution, morphology, and behavior. Sexual reproduction that involves the union of gametes of different sizes is termed anisogamy, and it sets the stage for characteristic, and frequently stereotypical, differences between males and females.

My PhD advisor, the evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers, was at that doomed colloquium at Rutgers. It was Trivers, who four decades earlier as a graduate student at Harvard, laid down the basic evolutionary argument in one of the most cited papers in biology. Throwing down the gauntlet and explaining something that had puzzled biologists since Darwin, he wrote, “What governs the operation of sexual selection is the relative parental investment of the sexes in their offspring.” In a single legendary stroke of insight, which he later described in biblical terms (“the scales fell from my eyes”), he revolutionized the field and provided a broad framework for understanding the emergence of sex differences across all sexually reproducing species.

Because males produce millions of sperm cells quickly and cheaply, the main factor limiting their evolutionary success lies in their ability to attract females. Meanwhile, the primary bottleneck for females, who, in humans, spend an additional nine months carrying the baby, is access to resources. The most successful males, such as Genghis Khan who is likely to have had more than 16 million direct male descendants, can invest relatively little and let the chips fall where they may, while the most successful women are restricted by the length of their pregnancy. Trivers’ genius, however, was in extracting the more general argument from these observations.

By replacing “female” with “the sex that invests more in its offspring,” he made one of the most falsifiable predictions in evolution — the sex that invests more in its offspring will be more selective when choosing a mate while the sex that invests less will compete over access to mates. That insight not only explains the rule, but it also explains the exceptions to it. Because of the initial disparity in investment (i.e., gamete size) females will usually be more selective in choosing mates. However, that trajectory can be reversed under certain conditions, and sometimes the male of a species will invest more in offspring and so be choosier.

When these so-called sex role reversals occur, such as in seahorses where the males “get pregnant” by having the female transfer her fertilized eggs into a structure termed the male’s brood pouch and hence becoming more invested in their offspring, it is the females who are larger and compete over mates, while the males are more selective. Find a species where the sex that invests less in offspring is choosier, and the theory will be disproven.

The assertion that male and female are arbitrary classifications is false on every level. Not only does it confuse primary sexual characteristics (i.e., the reproductive organs) which are unambiguously male or female at birth 99.8 percent of the time with secondary sexual characteristics (e.g., more hair on the faces of men or larger breasts in women), it ignores the very definition of biological sex — men produce many small sex cells termed sperm while women produce fewer large sex cells termed eggs. Although much is sometimes made of the fact that sex differences in body size, hormonal profiles, behavior, and lots of other traits vary across species, that these differences are minimal or non-existent in some species, or that a small percentage of individuals, due to disorders of development, possess an anomalous mix of female and male traits, that does not undermine this basic distinction. There is no third sex. Sex is, by definition, binary.

In the 50 years since Trivers’ epiphany, much has tried to obscure his crucial insight. As biology enters a golden age, with daily advances in genotyping transforming our understanding of evolution and medicine, the social sciences have taken a vastly different direction. Many are now openly hostile to findings outside their narrow field, walling off their respective disciplines from biological knowledge. Why bother learning about new findings in genetics or incorporating discoveries from other fields, if you can assert that all such findings are, by definition, sexist?

Prior to 1955, gender was almost exclusively used to refer to grammatical categories (e.g., masculine and feminine nouns in French). A major shift occurred in the 1960s when the word gender has been applied to distinguish social/cultural differences from biological differences (sex). Harvard Biologist, David Haig documented that from 1988 to 1999 the ratio of the use of “sex” versus “gender” in scientific journals shrank from 10 to 1 to less than 2 to 1, and that after 1988 gender outnumbered sex in all social science journals. The last twenty years have seen a rapid acceleration in this trend, and today this distinction is rarely observed. Indeed, the biological concept of sex in reference to humans has become largely taboo outside of journals that focus on evolution. Many, however, are not content with limiting the gender concept to humans and a new policy instituted by all Nature journals requires that manuscripts include a discussion of how gender was considered in all studies with human participants, on other vertebrates, or on cell lines. When would including gender be appropriate in a genetic study of fruit flies?

This change is not merely stylistic. Rather, it is part of a much larger cultural and political movement that denies or attempts to explain away the effects of biology and evolution in humans altogether. The prevailing dominant view in the social sciences is that human sex differences are entirely socially constructed. In that interpretation, all differential outcomes between men and women are the result of unequal social, economic, and political conditions, and so we do all we can to eliminate them, particularly by changing our expectations and encouraging gender-neutral play in children. This received wisdom and policies based upon it, however, are unlikely to produce the results proponents long for. Why is that?

Because sex differences in behavior are among the strongest effect sizes in social, and what might be better termed, behavioral sciences. Humans are notoriously inept at understanding differences between continuous variables, so it is first useful to define precisely what “statistical differences between men and women” does and does not mean. Although gamete size and the reproductive organs in humans are either male or female at birth in over 99 percent of cases, many secondary sexual characteristics such as differences in upper body strength and differences in behavior are not so differentially distributed. Rather, there is considerable overlap between men and women. Life scientists often use something called the effect size as a way to determine if any observed differences are large (and therefore consequential) or so small as to be ignored for almost all practical purposes.

Conceptually, the effect size is a statistical method for comparing any two groups to see how substantially different they are. Graphically, it can be thought of as the distance between the peaks of the two distributions divided by the width of those distributions. For example, men are on average about 6 inches taller than women in the United States (mean height for American women is 5 feet 3 inches and the mean height for American men is approximately 5 feet 9 inches). The spread of the height distributions for men and women, also known as the standard deviations, are also somewhat different, and this is slightly higher for men at 2.9 inches vs 2.8 inches for women. For traits such as height that are normally distributed (that is, they fit the familiar bell curve shape), one standard deviation on either side of the mean encompasses about 68 percent of the distribution, while two standard deviations on either side of the mean encompass 95 percent of the total distribution. In other words, 68 percent of women will be between 60.2 inches and 65.8 inches tall, and 95 percent will be between 57.5 to 68.6 inches. So, in a random sample of 1000 adult women in the U.S., approximately 50 of them will be taller than the average man (see figure above).

A large effect size, or the standardized mean difference, is anything over 0.8 and is usually seen as an effect that most people would notice without using a calculator. The effect size for sex differences in height is approximately 1.9. This is considered to be a pretty big effect size. But it is certainly not binary, and there are lots of taller-than-average women who are taller than lots of shorter-than-average men (see overlap area in figure). Therefore, when determining whether an effect is small or large, it is important to remember that the cutoffs are always to some degree arbitrary and that what might seem like small differences between the means can become magnified when comparing the number of cases that fall in the extremes of (the tails of their respective distributions) of each group.

In other words, men and women may, on average, be quite similar on a given trait but will be quite different in the number who fall at the extreme (low and high) ends of their respective distributions. This is particularly true of sex differences because natural selection acts more strongly on men, and males have had higher reproductive variance than females over our evolutionary history. That is to say that a greater number of men than women have left no descendants, while a very few men have left far more. Both the maximum number of eggs that a woman produces over the course of her reproductive life versus the number of sperm a man produces and the length of pregnancy, during which another reproduction cannot occur, place an upper limit on the number of offspring women can have. What this means is that males often have wider distributions for a trait (i.e., more at the low end and more at the high end) so that sex differences can be magnified at the tail ends of the distribution. In practical terms, this means that when comparing men and women, it is also important to look at the tails of their respective distributions (e.g., the extremes in mental ability).

The strongest effect sizes where men tend to have the advantage are in physical abilities such as throwing distance or speed, spatial relations tasks, and some social behaviors such as assertiveness. Women, meanwhile, tend to have an edge in verbal ability, social cognition, and in being more extroverted, trusting, and nurturing. Some of the largest sex differences, however, are in human mate choice and behaviors that emerge out of the evolutionary logic of Trivers’ parental investment theory. In study after study, women are found to give more weight to traits in partners that signal an ability to acquire resources, such as socioeconomic status and ambition, while men tend to give more weight to traits that signal fertility, such as youth and attractiveness.

Indeed these attitudes are also revealed in behavior such as age at marriage (men are on average older than women in every country on earth), frequency of masturbation, indulging in pornography, and paying for sex. Although these results are often dismissed, largely on ideological grounds, the science is rarely challenged, and the data suggest some biological difference (which may be amplified, indeed enshrined, by social practices).

The evidence that many sex differences in behavior have a biological origin is powerful. There are three primary ways that scientists use to determine whether a trait is rooted in biology or not. The first is if the same pattern is seen across cultures. This is because the likelihood that a particular characteristic, such as husbands being older than their wives, is culturally determined declines every time the same pattern is seen in another society — somewhat like the odds of getting heads 200 times in a row. The second indication that a trait has a biological origin is if it is seen in young children who have not yet been fully exposed to a given culture. For example, if boy babies are more aggressive than girl babies, which they generally are, it suggests that the behavior may have a biological basis. Finally, if the same pattern, such as males being more aggressive than females, is observed in closely related species, it also suggests an evolutionary basis. While some gender role “theories” can attempt to account for culturally universal sex differences, they cannot explain sex differences that are found in infants who haven’t yet learned to speak, as well as in the young of other related species.

Many human sex differences satisfy all three conditions — they are culturally universal, are observable in newborns, and a similar pattern is seen in apes and other mammals. The largest sex differences found with striking cross-cultural similarity are in mate preferences, but other differences arise across societies and among young children before the age of three as boys and girls tend to self-segregate into different groups with distinct and stereotypical styles. These patterns, which include more play fighting in males, are observable in other apes and mammal species, which, like humans, follow the logic of Trivers’ theory of parental investment and have higher variance in male reproduction, and therefore more intense competition among males as compared to females.

If so, why then has the opposite message — that these differences are either non-existent or solely the result of social construction — been so vehemently argued? The reason, I submit, is essentially political. The idea that any consequential differences between men and women have no foundation in biology has wide appeal because it fosters the illusion of control. If gender role “theories” are correct, then all we need to do to eliminate them is to modify the social environment (e.g., give kids gender-neutral toys, and the problem is solved). If, however, sex differences are hardwired into human nature, they will be more difficult to change.

Acknowledging the role of biology also opens the door to conceding the possibility that the existence of statistically unequal outcomes for men and women are not just something to be expected but may even be…desirable. Consider the so-called gender equality paradox whereby sex differences in personality and occupation are higher in countries with greater opportunities for women. Countries with the highest gender equality,24 such as Finland, have the lowest proportion of women who graduate college with degrees in stereotypically masculine STEM fields, while the least gender equal countries such as Saudi Arabia, have the highest. Similarly, the female-to-male sex ratio in stereotypically female occupations such nursing is 40 to 1 in Scandinavia, but only 2 to 1 in countries like Morocco.

The above numbers are consistent with cross-cultural research that indicates that women are, on average, more attracted to professions focused on people such as medicine and biology, while men are, again, on average, more attracted to professions focused on things such as mathematics and engineering. These findings are not a matter of dispute, but they are inconvenient for gender role theorists because they suggest that women and men have different preferences upon which they act when given the choice. Indeed, it is only a “paradox” if one assumes that sex is entirely socially constructed. As opportunities for women opened up in Europe and the United States in the sixties and seventies, employment outcomes changed rapidly. However, the proportions of men and women in various fields stabilized sometime around the early 1990s and have barely moved in the last thirty years. These findings imply that there is a limited capacity for outside interventions imposed from the top down to alter these behaviors.

In the cold logic of evolution, neither sex is, or can be, better or worse. Although this may not be the kind of equality some might want, we need to move beyond simplistic ideas of hierarchy.

It is understandable, however, for some to fear that any concession to nature will be used to justify and perpetuate bias and discrimination. Although arguments for why women should be prohibited from certain types of employment or why they should not be allowed to vote were ideological, sex differences have been used to justify a number of historical injustices. Still, is the fear of abuse so great that denying any biological sex differences is the only alternative?

The rhetorical contortions and inscrutable jargon required to assert that gender and sex are nothing more than chosen identities and deny what every parent knows require increasingly complex and incoherent arguments. This not only subverts the public’s rapidly waning confidence in science, but it also leads to extreme exaggerations designed to silence those who don’t agree, such as the claim that discussing biological differences is violence. The lengths to which many previously trusted institutions, such as the American Medical Association, go to deny the impact that hormones have on development are extraordinary. These efforts are also likely to backfire politically when gender-neutral terms are mandated by elites, such as the term “Latinx,” which is opposed by 98 percent of Hispanic Americans.

Acknowledging the existence of a biological basis for sex differences does not mean that we should accept unequal opportunities for men and women. Indeed, the crux of the problem lies in conflating equality with statistical identity and in our failure to respect and value difference. These differences should not be ranked in terms of inferior or superior, nor do they have any bearing on the worth or dignity of men and women as a group. They cannot be categorized as being either good or bad because it depends on which traits you want to optimize. This is real diversity that we should acknowledge and even celebrate.

Ever since the origin of sexual reproduction approximately two billion years ago, sexual selection, governed by an initial disparity in the size of the sex cells, has driven a cascade of differences, a few absolute, many more statistical, between males and females. As a result, men and women have been experiencing distinct evolutionary pressures. At the same time, however, this process has ruthlessly enforced an equality between the sexes, ensured by the fact that it takes one male and one female to reproduce, which guarantees the equal average reproduction of men and women. The production of sons and daughters, who inherit a near equal split of their parents’ genetic material, also demands that mothers and fathers contribute equally to their same- and their opposite-sex children. In the cold logic of evolution, neither sex is, or can be, better or worse. Although this may not be the kind of equality some might want, we need to move beyond simplistic ideas of hierarchy, naively confusing difference with claims of inferiority/superiority, or confusing dominance with power. In the currency of evolution, better just means more copies, dominance only matters if it leads to more offspring, and there are many paths to power.

The assertion that children are born without sex and are molded into gender roles by their parents is wildly implausible. It undermines what little public trust in science remains and delegitimizes other scientific claims. If we can’t be honest about something every parent knows, what else might we be lying about? Confusion about this issue leads to inane propositions, such as a pro-choice doctor testifying to Congress asserting that men can give birth. When people are shamed into silence about the obvious male advantages in almost all sports (but note women do as well or better in small bore rifle competition, and no man can match the flexibility of female gymnasts) and when transgender women compete in women’s sports, it endangers the vulnerable. When children are taught that all sex differences are entirely grounded in mere identity (whether self-chosen or culturally-imposed) and are in no way the result of biology, more “masculine” girls and more “feminine” boys may become confused about their sex, or sexual orientation, and harmful stereotypes can take over. The sudden rapid rise in the number of young girls diagnosed with gender dysphoria is a warning sign of how dangerously disoriented our culture can become.

Pathologizing gender nonconforming behavior often does the opposite of what proponents intend by creating stereotypes where none existed. Boys are told that if they like dolls, they are really girls trapped with male organs, while girls who display interests in sports or science are told they are boys trapped with female organs and born in the wrong body. Feminine boys, who might end up being homosexual, are encouraged to start down the road towards irreversible medical interventions, hormone blockers, and infertility. Like gay conversion therapy before, such practices can shame individuals for feeling misaligned with their birth sex and encourage them to resort to hormone “therapy” and/or surgery to change their bodies to reflect this new identity. Can that be truly seen as progressive and liberating?

The push for a biologically sexless society is an arrogant utopian vision that cuts us off from our evolutionary history, promotes the delusion that humans are not animals, and undercuts respecting each individual for their unique individuality. Sex is neither simply a matter of socialization, nor a personal choice. Making such assertions without understanding the profound role that an initial biological asymmetry in gamete size plays in sexual selection is neither scientific nor sensible.

Robert Lynch is an evolutionary anthropologist at Penn State who specializes in how biology, the environment, and culture transact to shape life outcomes. His scientific research includes the effect of religious beliefs on social mobility, sex differences in social relationships, the impact of immigration on social capital, how social isolation can promote populism, and the evolutionary function of laughter.

I've said before that I learned more about evolution as a result of combatting evolution denial from the religious than I ever did at school. It's similarly true that I've learned more about sex, biology, chromosomes, genes and hormones as a result of the sex-denialism and anti-science attitudes of the gender cult.

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iamadarshbadri · 10 months

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Juxtaposing Social Theory by Alexander Wendt with Theory by Kenneth Waltz in IR

Theory of International Politics. By Kenneth N. Waltz. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1979. 251pp. $7.95. Social Theory of International Politics. By Alexander Wendt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press., 1999. 429pp. £14.95. Two books published within a 20-year gap helped shape and reshape the world politics we understand today. In his pathbreaking 1979 book Theory of…

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omegaphilosophia · 3 months

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Theories of the Philosophy of Opinion

The philosophy of opinion explores the nature, formation, and validity of opinions. It delves into questions regarding the reliability of opinions, the role of perception and bias in shaping them, and their relationship to knowledge and truth. Philosophers examine how opinions are influenced by various factors such as culture, upbringing, education, and personal experiences. Additionally, they analyze the ethical implications of holding and expressing opinions, especially in contexts where they may impact others or societal norms.

Some theories in the philosophy of opinion include:

Relativism: This theory suggests that opinions are subjective and context-dependent, meaning that what is true or valid for one person or culture may not be true for another.

Subjectivism: Subjectivism holds that opinions are based solely on individual preferences, emotions, or beliefs, with no objective truth or validity outside of personal experience.

Epistemic Justification: This theory focuses on the criteria for justifying opinions, such as evidence, reasoning, and coherence with other beliefs. It explores questions of whether opinions can be justified and what constitutes a reasonable basis for holding them.

Perspectivism: Perspectivism acknowledges that opinions are shaped by one's perspective or standpoint, influenced by factors like social identity, ideology, and personal interests. It emphasizes the importance of understanding diverse perspectives to gain a more comprehensive view of reality.

Pragmatism: Pragmatism emphasizes the practical consequences of holding opinions, focusing on their usefulness rather than their truth or validity. It suggests that the value of an opinion lies in its effectiveness in guiding action or achieving desired outcomes.

Hermeneutics: Hermeneutic approaches to opinion focus on the interpretation and understanding of texts, symbols, and cultural artifacts. They explore how opinions are constructed and communicated through language and symbols, emphasizing the role of interpretation in shaping meaning.

Social Constructivism: Social constructivism posits that opinions are socially constructed through interactions with others and within specific social and cultural contexts. It examines how societal norms, power dynamics, and collective beliefs influence the formation and validation of opinions.

These theories provide different perspectives on the nature of opinion and contribute to ongoing debates in philosophy regarding the nature of knowledge, truth, and human understanding.

#philosophy #epistemology #knowledge #learning #chatgpt #education #psychology #Philosophy of opinion #Relativism #Subjectivism #Epistemic justification #Perspectivism #Pragmatism #Hermeneutics #Social constructivism #Truth #opinions

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monocotyledons · 1 year

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i have calmed down and deleted my rant, i am very sorry i have completely forgotten how to self-regulate on this website

#which is funny bc i can self-regulate just fine on twitter #and twitter is arguably even more of a hellhole #also i'm unfollowing the person who rb'd that shit #i don't care if they make cool posts about space. i have zero room for positivist stembrains in my life #fuck positivism only constructivism for this social science girlie #maybe a little post positivism. as a treat #mono logues

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kthulhu42 · 4 months

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You want it both ways - social constructivism so you can pretend "the Patriarchy" exists, biological reality so you can be gender critical. I see you. I see what you're doing. I see how your ideology doesn't stand up any more than Xianity - god is both good and unknowable. That's you. You got caught out and couldn't make a valid argument, so you just got all huffy and pretended a simple choice was ridiculous. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.

No idea what you're talking about babe but both the patriarchal society we live in *and* biological sex exist

I do love how I can't tell if you're an angry mra or an angry tra though, because it just makes it more obvious there's no difference between you

#radblr #radical feminism #terfblr #Ahh yes I'm “pretending” that there are cultural spaces in my own country where I can't speak #I'm “pretending” I can't go near cultural artifacts if I'm menstruating #I'm “pretending” that we have an 18% spike in domestic assault on women of our country loses a sports game #You're blind to patriarchy but it's as real as the earth we stand on

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trans-axolotl · 5 months

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Notes on the Radical Model of Disability

I'm seeing a lot of discussion today about different models of disability, and wanted to share my recent reading notes on the radical model of disability, which for me has been a super helpful model for understanding how disability works.

"The radical model defines disability as a social construction used as an oppressive tool to penalize and stigmatize those of us who deviate from the (arbitrary) norm. Disabled people are not problems; we are diverse and offer important understandings of the world that should be celebrated rather than marginalized."

Source: AJ Withers, Disability Politics and Theory. "Looking Back But Moving Forward: The Radical Model of Disability"

Key Points:

The radical disability model was developed by many disability justice activists (including Sins Invalid and the 10 principles of Disability Justice), and was inspired by many different models, including the social model. Withers points out that there are a lot of valuable parts of the social model, but also lots of limitations.

The radical disability model is not the same thing as the social model of disability. It rejects the strict social model separation between "impairment" and "disability." Traditionally, in the strictest versions of the social model, people use "impairment" to describe someone's individual limitations--generally considered the "biological" part of disability. People often use things like chronic pain and hallucinations as examples of "impairment." In the strict social model, disability is described as oppression added on top of the "impairments" people are living with. People usually describe things like inaccessible buildings and strict social norms as examples of the disabling impact of society. Withers points out how sometimes, the social models ideas about the separation of impairment and disability can leave many disabled people feeling excluded and like their experiences aren't represented. This article by Lydia X. Z. Brown talks a little bit more about those topics--using the terms "essentialism" to describe the impairment view and "constructivism" to describe the social view.

Instead, the radical disability model argues that you cannot easily separate impairment and disability, and points out that both "impairment" and disability are always socially contextual. Disability must be analyzed in context to the society we are currently in, both so that we can understand the experience of oppression and so that we can understand the impact it has on our bodies and minds. For example, someone living with chronic pain will still have chronic pain no matter what society they live in. But things like whether they can sit while they work, whether they have to work at all, if they can afford assistive technology, if there is easy access to pain medications, etc, all affect their body and lived experience of pain in a very real way. Ending capitalism would not suddenly take away all the pain they are experiencing, or make them not disabled. But it might change their ability to cope with pain, what treatments are available to them, and what their bodily experience of pain is like. Similarly, someone's experience with hallucinations can be dramatically shaped by the context they are in, whether they are incarcerated, if their community reacts with fear, whether they have stable housing, and more. The radical model of disability looks at how the different contexts we live in can affect our very real experiences of disability. Instead of the medical model, that only looks at disability as a biological, individual problem that can only be fixed through medicine, or the strict social model, which focuses on changing society as the only solution for disability, the radical disability model looks at how different societal contexts change both our biological and social experiences. It acknowledges that disability is a very real experience in our bodies and minds, but looks at how the social environments we live in shape all parts of "impairment" and disability.

Intersectionality is a key concept for the radical disability model. Withers points out how disability studies often ignores intersectionality and only focuses on disability. "Disability politics often re-establish whiteness, maleness, straightness and richness as the centre when challenging the marginality of disability. Similarly, when disability studies writers discuss other oppressions, they often do so as distinct phenomena in which different marginalities are compared (Vernon, 1996b; Bell, 2010). When oppressions are discussed in an intersectional road it is commonly treated like a country road: two, and only two, separate paths meet at a well-signed, easy-to-understand location. Intersectionality is a multi-lane highway with numerous roads meeting, crossing and merging in chaotic and complicated ways. There are all different kinds of roads involved: paved and gravel roads, roads with shoulders and those without and roads with low speed limits, high speed limits and even no speed limits. There is no map. The most important feature of these intersections, though, is that they look very depending on your location." (Withers pg 100.)

The radical model of disability is inherently political. The radical model of disability looks at who gets labeled as disabled, how definitions of disability change, and how oppressors set up systems that punish disabled citizens. Oppressors set up systems of control, violence, and incarceration that target disabled people, and shift the definitions of disability based on social and economic changes. Withers shares examples of this, talking about the eugenics movement in the United States as an explicitly white supremacist movement that defined "disability" in a way that targeted racialized people, how homosexuality was added and then taken out of the DSM, and many other examples of the way certain people are labeled as "deviant" and impacted by ableism. Disability becomes weaponized by oppressors as a tool of marginalization, and affects many different marginalized groups. This interview of Talila A. Lewis is a really great article that explains more about a broader definition of ableism, and expands on a lot of the topics mentioned here.

Disabled is not a fixed, one-size-fits-all, never changing identity. However, it is an important personal and political identity for many people, because our experiences of disability are real and impact our bodies, minds, and social experiences in many ways. Withers argues that in disabled community, we need to have room to celebrate and have pride in our disabled identity, as well as being able to recognize the pain, distress, and challenges that being disabled can cause us.

Within the radical model of disability, we should work collectively to build access and actively fight to tear down the systematic barriers that prevent a lot of disabled people from participating in our communities. Withers argues that we need to think beyond just changing architecture (although that's important too!) and understand the way things like colonialism and capitalism are also access barriers. Going back to the first point about disability in context, Withers explains that we must also think of access in context--there is no one "universal" way to make some accessible, and we need to be able to adapt our understanding of access based on the political and relational context we are in.

TL;DR: The radical model of disability is similar to the social model of disability, but instead of viewing disability as being only caused by society, it looks at how our real experiences of disability are always shaped by whatever social context we live in. It acknowledges that our disabilities are embodied experiences that wouldn't just suddenly go away if we fixed all of society's ableism. The radical model of disability is a political model that analyzes how definitions of disability shift based on how oppressors use systems of power to marginalize different groups of people. It offers us a framework where we can feel real pride in our disabilities, but still acknowledge the challenges they cause. It points out the importance of organizing politically to dismantle all kinds of access barriers, including things not traditionally thought of as access issues, like colonialism, capitalism, and other forms of oppression. Here's a link to another great summary by Nim Ralph.

other reading recommendations for understanding the radical disability model: “Radical Disability Politics Roundtable.” by Lydia X. Z. Brown, Loree Erickson, Rachel da Silva Gorman, Talila A. Lewis, Lateef McLeod, and Mia Mingus, edited by AJ Withers and Liat Ben-Moshe.

"Work in the Intersections: A Black Feminist Disability Framework.” by Moya Bailey and Izetta Autumn Mobley

"Introduction: Imagined Futures" from Feminist, Queer, Crip by Alison Kafer.

#personal #disability #actually disabled #disability justice #disability studies #chronic illness #radical model of disability #social model of disability #so grateful to all the disabled activists linked here!!!

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