The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Testicles Are Not a Social Construct

Posted on | September 2, 2015 | 88 Comments

The science is settled:

However much we’d like to think of gender as a social construct, science suggests that real differences do exist between female and male brains. The latest evidence: a first-of-its-kind European study that finds that the female brain can be drastically reshaped by treating it with testosterone over time.

(Hat-tip: Instapundit.) Feminist gender theory — the social construction of the gender binary within the heterosexual matrix, to summarize Judith Butler’s influential ideas as succinctly as possible — must be seen for what it actually is, a War Against Human Nature.

Feminists have been fighting this war for more than four decades, and you will be accused of misogyny (woman hating) if you express skepticism about their project of creating an androgynous “equality” by eradicating male/female differences. These arguments about gender roles show how, in so many ways, feminists are trapped in the past, forever fighting battles rooted in the adolescent frustrations experienced decades ago by women who never successfully adjusted to normal adult roles that most people take for granted. The tomboy, the lesbian, the awkward bookish girl who felt marginalized in the high-school popularity competition — we may grant that their grievances against the “system” are real without endorsing their intellectual assault on the social order.

Youthful resentments of slights and slurs have a way of being rationalized by feminist ideology, becoming an indictment of society as oppressive to all women, even though the vast majority of women do not share the grudges that motivate the disgruntled misfits who grow up to become academic ax-grinders. Beyond their tendency to turn their own narrow grievances into theory — because “the personal is political” — feminists rely on ideological certainties that are obsolete because they were formed in an earlier era whose conditions are no longer relevant to the experience of young women who have grown up in a society profoundly shaped by previous feminist “reforms.”

Consider, for example, that when the Women’s Liberation movement erupted in the late 1960s, a prime target was the traditional marriage-based nuclear family, within which most of them had been raised and against which they had rebelled. Young college-educated radicals did not want to follow their parents’ respectable middle-class lifestyles. Just as radical men did not aspire to emulate their fathers’ example as dutiful hard-working husbands with “Establishment” jobs to pay for their suburban homes, radical women rejected the ideal of the Happy Housewife with a kitchen full of shiny appliances. Because the modern feminist movement erupted in this specific context, one still finds feminists railing against the “Ozzie and Harriet” family, a descriptor based on a TV show that went off the air in 1966. (The last surviving member of the cast, David Nelson, died of colon cancer in 2011 at age 74.) How does feminism’s anti-family ideology, formulated in opposition to the social norms of 1968, address itself to today’s 18-year-old college freshman, who was born in 1997, during the presidency of Bill Clinton?

Today’s freshman grew up in a society where divorce, abortion and single motherhood are commonplace, where many public schools promote a “safe sex” curriculum, and where homosexuality is widely considered a civil right. Even if the 18-year-old grew up in an intact nuclear family household, she went to school with many other children who came from what were once called “broken homes,” and her mother probably had full-time employment outside the home. Today’s typical freshman does not feel overwhelming pressure to conform to an “Ozzie and Harriet” lifestyle, which may not even seem possible as a choice for her. Where could a young woman in 2015 hope to find a loyal husband who will provide her that suburban home and enable her to play the Happy Housewife, devoted to raising their children and tending to domestic chores? There are very few 21st-century Ozzies available, even if she wanted to be a latter-day Harriet.

A movement that began in rebellion against society as it existed in 1968 is ill-suited to address the problems facing young women in 2015 and it may be added that, insofar as feminist ideology originally had any basis in science, that science is now as obsolete as Ozzie and Harriet. Reading the foundational texts of the Women’s Liberation movement — including Sexual Politics (Kate Millett, 1970), The Dialectic of Sex (Shulamith Firestone, 1970) and Woman Hating (Andrea Dworkin, 1974) — one finds the authors attacking ideas of psychosexual development that were then very respectable, but which have since been largely or entirely debunked. In particular, Freudian theories have been eclipsed by advances in neuroscience that have enabled us to learn more about how, for example, hormones influence personality and behavior.

You don’t have to be a neuroscientist to understand this. Just read the testimony of a lesbian feminist who spent 18 months on testosterone as a female-to-male transsexual before changing her mind. Why? Because she “never knew anger like this until going on testosterone,” experiencing psychological disturbances that included “a lower frustration threshold . . . burning rage” that was ultimately “unbearable.” Even after quitting testosterone, she found that her moods and attitudes seemed to have been permanently affected by this artificial masculinization of her brain.

This tells us a lot about the biological basis of male/female differences. Once we realize that these differences are inherent to who we are as men and women, the question is how we can teach young people to deal with the reality of human nature, rather than trying to abolish these differences in pursuit of utopian schemes of “equality.”





 

Category: Sex Trouble

Comments

88 Responses to “Testicles Are Not a Social Construct”

  1. Toads
    September 3rd, 2015 @ 12:24 am

    No, Dalrock is correct. Simply asserting that he is ‘wrong’ doesn’t fly.

    You have no idea how women think. And no, being a woman does not mean you understand how women think. Quite the opposite, in fact.

  2. DeadMessenger
    September 3rd, 2015 @ 2:01 am

    HAHAHAHA! Do you think a man understands how a woman thinks? In fact, you are asserting that a woman cannot possibly understand how another woman thinks…you are totally hallucinating!

    And I CAN simply assert that Dalrock is wrong. In fact, I can logically, rationally and correctly say, “Dalrock is wrong.” And, in a similar fashion, I can say, “Obama is wrong”, “Satan is wrong”, and “Toads is wrong”. See how I did that?

  3. DeadMessenger
    September 3rd, 2015 @ 2:23 am

    If you mean unusually beautiful, brilliant, and talented, then :D.
    If you mean unusually stupid, illogical, and oblivious, then >:(.

    Dalrock’s problem is that he makes ASSumptions without considing motivations and intentions. And when you isolate behaviors without these considerations, you are setting yourself up for intellectual dismissal, as I have done with Dalrock. Behaviors do not generally occur in a vacuum and/or without provocation.

    In the vast, vast majority of circumstances, Stacy does consider these things. In fact, I tried, but cannot think of an example where he does not. And Stacy does not make global assumptions about all women, like, ever. Dalrock does this, though. Enough so that I, as an intelligent and generally reasonable woman, reject enough of his arguments to dismiss him and his blog completely.

    And, as you well know, I am no feminist who just sides with women in all cases. In fact, I typically side with men, except in cases where they are clearly at a disadvantage, such as cooking, cleaning, sewing, laundry, and especially pie-making techniques, where they have a distinct disadvantage.

    Now, if Dalrock was discussing the right way to rebuild a carb or trannie, or the best way to clean a fish or dress a buck, then I’d take a step back.

    But instead he opines on how women think. Shyeah, right dude.

  4. DeadMessenger
    September 3rd, 2015 @ 2:34 am

    And then forcing you to call them heifers…

  5. DeadMessenger
    September 3rd, 2015 @ 2:39 am

    I hate it when that happens.

  6. DeadMessenger
    September 3rd, 2015 @ 2:43 am

    Well, they are, they have this freakish external appendage that’s pretty weird, but only under certain conditions becomes pretty awesome, and even desirable.

    Imagine if my boobs were normally C-cup, but then, in the right circumstances, puffed up to DD.

    Wait. That would actually be pretty cool, on second thought.

  7. comatus
    September 3rd, 2015 @ 5:19 am

    Point of usage, not grammar: I’ve been informed, by practitioners of the art, that any bovine engaged in pulling is called an ox, even if you are plowing with the milk-cow. There’s also a difference in naming depending on when in the life cycle the bull is castrated. And how about that Greek-style special plural? Very rare in English.

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  9. M. Thompson
    September 3rd, 2015 @ 6:25 am

    Mmmm. Pie.

  10. Demonrat Plantation
    September 3rd, 2015 @ 6:30 am

    my up arrow button appears broken.
    after pressing it a few hundred times, it only registers a single up tick

  11. Ilion
    September 3rd, 2015 @ 7:00 am

    Is this where one says, “You go, Girl!”

    I’ll bet you could get her to change it to “… those [are NOT mentally-ill lesbians] are NOT welcome to interact with me or to utilize my writing

  12. Ilion
    September 3rd, 2015 @ 7:05 am

    Have you ever heard of the group ‘Iona’? They have an album inspired by the Book of Kells

  13. Ilion
    September 3rd, 2015 @ 7:15 am

    Yes, while ‘oxen’ generally are steers, an ‘ox’ can be a milk-cow.

    As for the plural, we’ve retained that old form so that we can refer to the plurality of eastern Orthodox as the ‘Orthodoxen’ 😉

  14. Ilion
    September 3rd, 2015 @ 7:16 am

    Well, turn about is fair play, as they say.

  15. Quartermaster
    September 3rd, 2015 @ 7:18 am

    Cs are pretty kool too. Come to think of it, so are Bs and Ds.

  16. Quartermaster
    September 3rd, 2015 @ 7:20 am

    Don’t tell anyone. They might think it’s patriarchal oppression or something.

  17. Ilion
    September 3rd, 2015 @ 7:38 am

    OK, I’ve read the Dalrock piece … and he’s both right and wrong.

    Overall, he’s right — including were he’s “some dude tri[ng] to second guess what women are thinking”.

    Hovever, and critically, he’s wrong where he says, “But the very next sentence is where McCain gets it wrong. He frames women’s preferred form of promiscuity as more moral than men’s preferred form of promiscuity, confusing serial monogamy with commitment” Even though he then quotes RSM’s “very next sentence”, he totally misreads it; and so everything else he says that follows from that misreading is, at best, misaimed, and more generally flat out false.

    He’s also incorrect when he says, “Likewise, the push to delay marriage is coming from young women far more than young men. Young women are the rock-stars of the sexual marketplace, and as such they are the ones who (collectively) determine the rules of the road.” The second sentence is correct, but the first is false. The truth is that “the push to delay marriage is coming from” fathers (especially) and mothers.

  18. Fail Burton
    September 3rd, 2015 @ 7:49 am

    So if you took away the plumage birds use to attract mates from one male and put two males in a cage they’d be confused about who to mate with?

  19. Rick C
    September 3rd, 2015 @ 7:50 am

    “Alas, her hostility toward males is so profound that she can never forgive us for the crime of our maleness.”

    If you disagree, she’ll be glad to disabuse you of that notion: ” those born male are NOT welcome to interact with me or to utilize my writing.”

    So RMS is aggressing her just by linking to her.

  20. Ilion
    September 3rd, 2015 @ 8:01 am

    “Actually, all fetuses begin as female.”

    No, they don’t.
    ?
    The “all fetuses begin as female” lie is the sort of lie spread by the sort of alleged man who chants about “strong, indenendent women” even as he patronizes all women for being women.

  21. Ilion
    September 3rd, 2015 @ 8:06 am

    “And every parent of boys knows how rocky that can be.”

    Seriously? While I have no children of my own, I was a boy, and I was fairly involved with the lives of my nieces and nephews .. and I have to say, once they hit about 10, girls become demons and are no fun to be around, whereas boys continue to enjoyable.

  22. Ilion
    September 3rd, 2015 @ 8:09 am

    “… they have this freakish external appendage that’s pretty weird, but only under certain conditions becomes pretty awesome, and even desirable.”
    Wallets?

  23. Quartermaster
    September 3rd, 2015 @ 8:29 am

    RSM has had a long career as a patriarchal oppressor.

  24. Quartermaster
    September 3rd, 2015 @ 8:30 am

    I like any of the letters A thru D. J is simply freakish. Even the smaller women who get surgically modified don’t look right.

  25. Quartermaster
    September 3rd, 2015 @ 8:59 am

    🙂

  26. Ilion
    September 3rd, 2015 @ 9:27 am

    Meh. He’s no Jim-Bob Dugger.
    I had a great-uncle who had 27 kids, but it took him three wives (one at a time, sheesh! He didn’t like being a widower). So, I’d say that though Dugger has only 18 or 19 kids, the fact that he managed that feat with only one wife, gives him enough extra Patriarchy points that he beats my Uncle Barn.

  27. namae nanka
    September 3rd, 2015 @ 12:46 pm

    Feminists are not even adolescent, they’re the prepubertal 7 year olds who can’t let go of their childhood.

    And hyena society bestest society, comrades!!

  28. Ilion
    September 3rd, 2015 @ 1:31 pm

    After all, “more than a mouthful is a waste”

  29. Quartermaster
    September 3rd, 2015 @ 1:35 pm

    IT’s not a lie. But you’re welcome to believe what you will.

  30. DeadMessenger
    September 3rd, 2015 @ 1:49 pm

    That works, too.

  31. Ilion
    September 3rd, 2015 @ 2:02 pm

    You really resist freeing your mind of leftist/feminist lies, don’t you?

  32. Daniel Freeman
    September 3rd, 2015 @ 2:57 pm

    I meant unusually intelligent and logical for a human. I don’t think that you can use your own thought processes as representative.

  33. Tonestaple
    September 3rd, 2015 @ 5:25 pm

    No, I know all of that, Steve. This was something different, some sort of quirk that happens occasionally to pregnant women. It really ought not happen if you’re carrying a girl but apparently sometimes it does. Something like this: http://tinyurl.com/qgdkrnk Sorry, but it was so very long ago that I read this.

  34. DeadMessenger
    September 3rd, 2015 @ 6:02 pm

    Hey! I think of you that way, too!

    But this is the very reason why I don’t care for Dalrock’s propensity for judging a demographic based on the obviously limited (and, I’d argue, not random) subset that he has observed. And my complaint also stands that he cannot possibly know what other people are thinking and feeling. This is the same thing that feminists and other Tumblrinas do, too, which is tar an entire class of people with the same brush.

    I guess that the only thing you can categorically state about every human is that we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

  35. Steve Skubinna
    September 3rd, 2015 @ 7:53 pm

    A few years ago a writer in the Guardian was delighting in the big poops her precocious daughter was churning out, because they were a rebuke to the patriarchy, or something.

    Which was news to me. I somehow missed the memo from the patriarchy that we’re expected to be freaked out by children pooping.

  36. Steve Skubinna
    September 3rd, 2015 @ 7:54 pm

    Most of feminism is a rebellion against reality.

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    […] Testicles Are Not a Social Construct Feminists have been fighting this war for more than four decades, and you will be accused of misogyny (woman hating) if you express skepticism about their project of creating an androgynous “equality” by eradicating male/female differences. […]