Negative reactions to academic concepts relating to society and culture

[schlumpy]

28 minutes ago, Emilie Jolie said:

That has set me way back in my secondary school years!

I'm not a keen astronomer but what I've always found fascinating is that we are essentially always looking at the past when we look at the sky. I remember reading somewhere that if aliens from another galaxy were looking at the Earth with a (pretty strong!) telescope, they may well be looking at dinosaurs. Mind-boggling.

There's nothing like amateur astronomy for helping a person understand their true place in the scheme of things.

I give you an "A" for your answer and I'm not grading on a curve. It varies a bit as we get closer and farther from sun but 8.5 minutes from the sun's surface to your eyes on average.

[TheStickisback]

On 6/20/2020 at 11:53 AM, lana-banana said:

Ah yes, everyone knows the only kind of acceptable change is the totally subdued, meek and mild type, the kind you can conveniently ignore. Let's get real: people lost their minds at a man kneeling in silence. Even now the vice president of the United States literally can't bring himself to say the words "black lives matter". If anything it's extraordinary this has been so peaceful.

Change is inevitable. It's also messy and scary and imperfect, but it has to happen when people are pushed to their breaking points. This is why academics studying these things are so vital; their theories and ideas help us understand the world we live in, and provide guidance for conceptualizing where we are and what comes next.

The thing is does any of these theories follow a scientific method. 

[schlumpy]

5 hours ago, TheStickisback said:

The thing is does any of these theories follow a scientific method. 

Good point. They follow a method but it's not hard science. Very little hard experimental evidence with repeatable results. 

[lana-banana]

What?? Philosophic inquiry and social theory doesn't "follow the scientific method". Literally nothing outside of scientific experimentation does.

It is hard to take someone seriously when they suggest 2000-plus years of philosophy, literature, and human analysis are invalid because they don't follow the rules of scientific experimental design. (Somebody should have told Socrates before he embarrassed himself!) This level of ignorance just indicates a total lack of understanding of what academia is about.

[schlumpy]

33 minutes ago, lana-banana said:

What?? Philosophic inquiry and social theory doesn't "follow the scientific method". Literally nothing outside of scientific experimentation does.

It's why they are referred to as soft sciences Lana.

Comparing psychology to physics is like comparing a chiropractor to a medical doctor.

In my ignorant humble opinion.

[homecoming]

1 hour ago, lana-banana said:

What?? Philosophic inquiry and social theory doesn't "follow the scientific method". Literally nothing outside of scientific experimentation does.

It is hard to take someone seriously when they suggest 2000-plus years of philosophy, literature, and human analysis are invalid because they don't follow the rules of scientific experimental design. (Somebody should have told Socrates before he embarrassed himself!) This level of ignorance just indicates a total lack of understanding of what academia is about.

Exactly. For example, is there scientific evidence that racism doesn't exist? Or that there are only two genders (not biological sex)? There aren't, yet people still rigidly believe these things. Dismissing academic social sciences because of no 'evidence' is very ignorant. I've never heard of them referred to as the "soft" sciences, either. It seems to be only people who disagree that racism/gender are significant that dispute the validity of social sciences, labelling everyone who believes in social theories as a protestor smashing up shops, and throwing in words like 'Marxist" etc. You telling me that all those thousands of people on the streets protesting are ALL educated in social science? Doubt it. So those movements, while informed by and helped by social science theories, are not because of academia, so no point trying to tie the two in and make it all seem negative.

Edited June 25, 2020 by homecoming

[Libby1]

47 minutes ago, homecoming said:

Exactly. For example, is there scientific evidence that racism doesn't exist? Or that there are only two genders (not biological sex)? There aren't, yet people still rigidly believe these things. 

How many genders are there?

[Ellener]

10 hours ago, TheStickisback said:

The thing is does any of these theories follow a scientific method. 

 

1 hour ago, elaine567 said:

2 hours ago, elaine567 said:

Quote

soft science, noun.
Any of the specialized fields or disciplines, as psychology, sociology, anthropology, or political science, that interpret human behavior, institutions, society, etc., on the basis of scientific investigations for which it may be difficult to establish strictly measurable criteria.

 

 

Aristotle wrote Prior Analytics @350 BC, one of six texts on logic and scientific method.

Newton wrote Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy ( Principia ) in 1687, basis of modern physics, mathematics, and what we now call 'science'.

Comte wrote A General View of Positivism in 1848 positing 'scientific laws' of society.

Durkheim wrote Rules of Sociological Methods in 1895, to develop the science of 'social facts'.

All these and many other scholars created the paradigms we use today to study and interpret our world.

 

[Haydn]

1 hour ago, Libby1 said:

How many genders are there?

Gender is based on the assumption that someone’s sexual organs match their gender. However, gender isn’t about someone’s anatomy, it is about who they know them self to be. There are so so many different gender identities. (Thank god)

[Tamfana]

On 6/20/2020 at 8:41 AM, homecoming said:

Who are the 'common people'? Always found that phrase odd. As someone else in the thread wrote, reverse snobbery. There's nothing wrong with being an academic. I think it's this sort of tone that my initial post is about. Personally, I grew up in dire poverty and often didn't eat for days. Can't get more 'common' than that.

I think it's derived from Rousseau's The Social Contract, but the overall meaning is ignored.    

Edited June 25, 2020 by Tamfana

[homecoming]

2 hours ago, Libby1 said:

How many genders are there?

How many do you think there are? 

[lana-banana]

On 6/23/2020 at 6:38 AM, Emilie Jolie said:

That has set me way back in my secondary school years!

I'm not a keen astronomer but what I've always found fascinating is that we are essentially always looking at the past when we look at the sky. I remember reading somewhere that if aliens from another galaxy were looking at the Earth with a (pretty strong!) telescope, they may well be looking at dinosaurs. Mind-boggling.

I feel compelled to remind folks that Einstein was a committed socialist and deeply invested in (and a powerful proponent of) the humanities. Science does not exist independent of politics or bias.

Edited June 25, 2020 by lana-banana

[Tamfana]

Side note- another field classified as soft science back when I was in college (cough) was economics. One of my history profs used to say that Holy Roman Emperors had astrologers whereas American presidents have economists.  😄

 

[Emilie Jolie]

17 minutes ago, lana-banana said:

I feel compelled to remind folks that Einstein was a committed socialist and deeply invested in (and a powerful proponent of) the humanities.

Yep, he was the whole package 🥰

[Ellener]

1 hour ago, Tamfana said:

One of my history profs used to say that Holy Roman Emperors had astrologers whereas American presidents have economists.  😄

I was pleased to see the US government enact CARES Act based on Keynsian theory. But it probably went over the heads of most people, I'd forgotten the ideas myself and did a re-read.

 

[Libby1]

1 hour ago, homecoming said:

How many do you think there are? 

I think there are two sexes, (and intersex which I understand to be not so much  a third sex but is more a state where it's not immediately apparent what sex a person is)and that gender is a concept that refers to cultural norms, expectations and to a certain extend stereotypes relating to those two sexes - as well as experiences we have which relate to being that gender  Some people may conform very closely to the norms, expectations etc relating to their sex, lots of people probably conform to some of them but not all.  Some barely conform to them at all.  Since I regard gender as a social/cultural construct based on observations about common differences between men and women's behaviour,  I don't think it's really for me to decide how many genders there are...but from observation, society at the moment seems to be settling on man, woman, trans man, trans woman and non binary which makes 5. 

I've seen references to 52 genders, which makes me wonder if perhaps there's a growing tendency in sociology to create a new gender for every personality type.  

 

Edited June 25, 2020 by Libby1

[Ellener]

1 hour ago, Libby1 said:

I've seen references to 52 genders, which makes me wonder if perhaps there's a growing tendency in sociology to create a new gender for every personality type.

I've seen references to 112 I think, but my opinion is I think it would be a better future to drop the concept in favour of equality, decent living/working conditions for all, and questions about each person's individual special needs. In most situations it is routinely asked it does not matter and asking about it should be dropped.

[ThaWholigan]

8 hours ago, Ellener said:

I've seen references to 112 I think, but my opinion is I think it would be a better future to drop the concept in favour of equality, decent living/working conditions for all, and questions about each person's individual special needs. In most situations it is routinely asked it does not matter and asking about it should be dropped.

As far as I understand it, it's based on a list on Tumblr that has been going around that listed out the different gender identities that people who are non-binary closely align with. They aren't specifically genders by themselves, but identities that exists on a spectrum, upon which gender is viewed. So when people use the meme about 72+ genders and so on, they're actually talking about gender identities, not a particular gender in and of itself. 

I, personally, am strictly a paint-by-numbers regular straight man (or, a cisgender heterosexual man!), so I have no great stake in the topic of gender other than curiosity, to understand and provide love and acceptance to people. 

Edited June 26, 2020 by ThaWholigan
elaborating

[basil67]

2 hours ago, TheStickisback said:

I will clarify. I am a follower of no one. I am for cancelling the current model and creating a new one that is less into political ideology and more into integrating STEM that will allow a questions to be fully answered.

STEM is about testing and finding outcomes which are repeatable.   Where as social sciences, under which gender theory falls, is about observation and trends.  STEM doesn't work in social science, psychology etc because no two people are the same.  And one person can change their minds or their views.

[Emilie Jolie]

9 minutes ago, gaius said:

 If you have any gender studies viewpoints to share that don't taste like dark chocolate filled with raspberry creme I'd love to hear them.

Any study specifically geared towards better understanding our fellow humans is a worthy endeavour; gender studies have been instrumental in combating homophobia, for instance, by exposing its negative effects in various parts of our societies. I've also read a few pretty interesting papers on how certain phobias (like animal phobia, for instance) correlate to gender. 

 Most importantly at this moment in time, hopefully a lot of new research will be carried out within gender studies on non-binary identities, help wider social acceptance and reduce the stigma. 

 

[TheStickisback]

18 minutes ago, basil67 said:

STEM is about testing and finding outcomes which are repeatable.   Where as social sciences, under which gender theory falls, is about observation and trends.  STEM doesn't work in social science, psychology etc because no two people are the same.  And one person can change their minds or their views.

There are certain questions that STEM can be used to answer. Human like a computer have firmware that ultimately are the same no matter who you are the presentation may be different but it's still the same. Also in addition to that people have patterns of behavior that are better recorded and analyzed to form conclusions. Yes there are social aspects to it that can be acknowledged but only focusing on those don't give the full picture. The reality is humans are not really that different. Observation is okay but the honest truth is the human mind on the average is poor when it comes to dealing with patterns hence current concepts in this discipline like rape culture and intersectionality.

[Libby1]

I don't know how many times I've heard the statement "trans women are women".  It comes across as a diktat.  Absolutist.  Something that is not open for debate (and indeed, is often followed by the words "it's not open for debate").  This is the doing of gender theorists.  They go beyond simply having interesting, mind expanding discussions in lecture halls and into the realms of altering the perceptions and beliefs that it's socially acceptable for us to have.  The language that is socially acceptable for us to use. 

This, I think, is part of the reason there's a growing mistrust for academics in the social sciences.  Society evolves, of course, but usually in a more natural feeling way - as the result of books, art, films and music encouraging us to open our minds to new concepts.  Not as a consequence of gender theorists equipping activists to police the way we interact with each other...on the hunt for signs of racism, or transphobia or other sorts of bigotry.  How are we supposed to have mind expanding conversations of our own, with such policing going on?

Medicinenet defines "female" as follows.

The traditional definition of female was "an individual of the sex that bears young" or "that produces ova or eggs". However, things are not so simple today. Female can be defined by physical appearance, by chromosome constitution (see Female chromosome complement), or by gender identification. Female chromosome complement: The large majority of females have a 46, XX chromosome complement (46 chromosomes including two X chromosomes). A minority of females have other chromosome constitutions such as 45,X (45 chromosomes including only one X chromosome) and 47,XXX (47 chromosomes including three X chromosomes).

Here's how it defines "male"

The sex that produces spermatozoa.

It's almost as though Simone de Beauvoir anticipated such a marked contrast in definitions, when she wrote about the women being "the other".   An incomplete man who "determines and differentiates herself in relation to man, and he does not in relation to her; she is the inessential in front of the essential. He is the subject, he is the absolute. She is the Other."

Simon de Beauvoir's comment that "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman" is regularly cited as authority for the proposition that trans women are women.  It was one comment in an intense, philosophical analysis about what it means to be a woman.  The Second Sex has a great deal of frustration, anger and sadness in it.  Frustration about the designation of woman (however gifted she might be) as the side dish to the main event that is man.  Impatience with the notion that "being a woman" involved some almost magical, indefinable essence that revolved around being what men wanted you to be.  Resignation to the reality that our inner worlds and experiences of being female were either a subject of some distaste (bearing in mind the historical squeamishness about certain aspects of female biology) or a dull subject that men were above listening to.  When charitable men sum us up as charmingly mysterious beings, we know this is a polite way of letting us know they would prefer most aspects of us to remain a mystery.  The Second Sex is an eloquent spilling out of the pain and resentment that I suspect many women felt...particularly in times gone by when women's art, literature and musical endeavours were regarded with amusement and not to be taken seriously in the way that men's art was.  When our more basic (physical) aspects were seen as something decent men should avoid contemplating unless they had some professional or academic interest.

I've always struggled to understand how any woman could, upon reading the Second Sex, interpret "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman" as a statement intended to empower women, rather than being an angry, frustrated and sad observation of the reality of being a woman in a world controlled and dictated by men (which it still very much was in de Beavoir's era).  Historically women did not have much say in what it meant to be a woman.  Few of us wrote books.  We were the subject of art rather than the artist.  Characters in books, rather than (with a few notable exceptions) the writer of those books.  Men created various blue prints for us to try to live up to or avoid.  They created clothes for us, and we would try to wear them well. They'd write songs about us that we'd listen to.  They set us on pedestals that we either tried to remove ourselves from or tried to avoid being pushed off.  So when men tell us that a person with a male body not only knows what how it feels to be a woman, but is a woman, we either know better than to question it....or we question it, resigned to the inevitability that doing so will result in us being attacked in the way that JK Rowling was recently attacked.

The debate is reduced to arguments about bathrooms and women's spaces....never the sort of deeper issues pertaining to being a woman in a cultural environment that has largely been created by men.  If only Simone de Beauvoir were alive today, I'd love to hear how she'd respond to those who treat her statement that "one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman" as an empowering one.  Sadly, we don't have a Simone de Beauvoir today.  We only have a squad of gender theorists (whose ideas I suspect have evolved within something of an academic echo chamber) on one side - and, on the other, women worrying about being molested by trans women in bathrooms.

 

[schlumpy]

1 hour ago, Libby1 said:

The debate is reduced to arguments about bathrooms and women's spaces....never the sort of deeper issues pertaining to being a woman in a cultural environment that has largely been created by men.  If only Simone de Beauvoir were alive today, I'd love to hear how she'd respond to those who treat her statement that "one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman" as an empowering one.  Sadly, we don't have a Simone de Beauvoir today.  We only have a squad of gender theorists (whose ideas I suspect have evolved within something of an academic echo chamber) on one side - and, on the other, women worrying about being molested by trans women in bathrooms.

 

I agree the lot of most women in the old world was not something to envy unless you were born into a life of privilege and even then women were used as common currency among wealthy families. There are of course those exceptional women in history that despite the social disadvantages managed to excel. Madame Curie comes to mind.

The problem for women is that through most of human history strength was a prerequisite for survival and men had the strength. Once society turned to machines, that requirement was lessened. Today, with the help of machines, woman can easily do many of the same jobs that only men accomplish just a hundred years ago. You would think that this is a golden age for women except that just like men they are influenced by human nature.

Human nature has a perverse twist in that when things are going well, it's time to foul the nest.

[elaine567]

1 hour ago, Libby1 said:

So when men tell us that a person with a male body not only knows what how it feels to be a woman, but is a woman, we either know better than to question it....or we question it, resigned to the inevitability that doing so will result in us being attacked in the way that JK Rowling was recently attacked.

This^^^

[Ellener]

2 hours ago, Libby1 said:

being "the other"

I think until we accept each and every human being and their experience as valid there will always be this tendency to a 'yes but...' rather than acknowledgement and response to issues as and when they arise ( like bathrooms )

I did a lot of interfaith work on the 90s and what we found there was people starting to accept other faiths in general but home in on 'the near other' within religions and vent their spleen there instead. 

It's an attempt to protect oneself I guess, by defining others.

Simone de Beauvoir had an open lifelong relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre without cohabiting together, as we have recently been debating in another part of these forums. She had many lovers of either sex and was accused of paedophilia and banned from teaching for a relationship with a 17 year old. Her last novel wasn't published until 35 years after her death because of social conventions she herself defied. 

Edited June 26, 2020 by Ellener
spelling