I'm tired of the anti-feminist circlejerk here (and every where else on the internet)

[unpronounceable]

snip

You looks like you didn't actually read the thread of discussion that took place.
Those sources were mean to prove the truth of behavioral genetics and evolutionary psychology, not sexual selection.
The one I was talking to appears to be under the mistaken impression that cognitive genetics is a form of determinism, which is nonsense.

If you want evidence specifically for the components of sexual selection in behavioral genetics, I provided them earlier in the thread which darken12, of course, ignored.

http://www.webmd.com/sex/features/sex-drive-how-do-men-women-compare
http://evoanth.wordpress.com/2012/05/04/sexual-selection-in-humans/
Here. Have some more of that delicious evidence.

Yes. I am aware outliers exist.
Sexual attraction exists for the purpose of reproduction from an evolutionary standpoint.
But gay people still exist and that's fine.

Nothing genetic is 100% certain. There are people born with extra fingers or without an arm.
Genetics is flexible.
It is not unreasonable to say, though, that human beings generally have 10 fingers, 2 arms, etc...
Because the vast majority of human beings follow this prototype.
Same thing with sexual drives. There are the occasional anomaly that is asexual, but arguably that's also because of genetics.
It is simply "the way they are born."

Just like people don't choose do be gay, people do not choose what is attractive.

You say that evolution does not require all humans to have sex.
You are right. It does not.
The greatest evolutionary fitness, though, comes from the ability to have children.
Some of your genetic material is still preserved if your relatives reproduce, but the greatest amount is preserved if you reproduce.
Thus the beings that reproduce fair better in a genetic sense than those that altruistically ensure the success of their relatives' children while having none of their own.

Even if such a thing exists it doesn't always manifest socially.
It can be moderated and thwarted by social influence.

I have no idea what you're talking about here.
Sexual drive "manifesting socially?"
What does that even mean?

A drive which manifests as a desire for sex in most individuals due to social moderation.

No. Sex drives are not caused by societal conditioning.
Sex causes pleasure because there is an innate desire for sex in human beings.

If society told us that punching trees was the ultimate pleasure, would we suddenly find pleasure in it?
Of course not.
The pleasure drive is actually very discriminating and specific.
For instance, the desire to eat is part of the pleasure drive.
We don't get pleasure from eating just anything, but eating food.
No matter how we are socially conditioned, what we find delicious does not change.

Similarly, what we find sexually attractive does not change much despite what society may tell us.
Yes, some people are aroused by shoes but they are like people who are asexual or lacking an arm.
It's a genetic mutation, I think.
If you think society has conditioned people to be shoe-sexual or asexual, I don't know what society you're talking about.

If it isn't society that makes some people aroused by shoes, and it isn't genetics, what is it?

 

[Terminal Blue]

The one I was talking to appears to be under the mistaken impression that cognitive genetics is a form of determinism, which is nonsense.

The way you described it is a form of "soft" determinism. That's one of the reasons I'm saying you're wrong. More importantly, though, what you're describing is physically impossible.

The human genome contains approximately 100,000 genes.

The human brain contains something like 100 trillion synapses.

If the entire human genetic code were devoted to doing nothing but mapping out those synapses in order to reproduce complex information, it could not even carry enough to reproduce the brain of fruit fly. Genetic code cannot determine what a person thinks or feels in specific terms. That is impossible. It merely determines how their brain develops along very broad lines.

There is no gene for liking big tits. There is no way genetics could impart an understanding of what tits even are because they lack the complexity to do so. All specific information which a human being acquires in its life has been to learned. Genes can lay out the "scaffolding" for neurological development, they can influence the balance of chemicals within the brain, but the idea of any direct influence of genetics on cognition even on the basic level of genes which control cognitive ability remains somewhat controversial, and the idea of precise information or social norms being transmitted between generations through genetic code without having to be learned is a complete fantasy.

It is simply "the way they are born."

No. It is not.

You mentioned the APA earlier. Let's go back to them:

http://www.aglp.org/pages/cfactsheets.html#Anchor-Gay-14210

Some people believe that sexual orientation is innate and fixed; however, sexual orientation develops across a person?s lifetime. Individuals maybe become aware at different points in their lives that they are heterosexual, gay, lesbian, or bisexual.

A cursory glance at human society will reveal numerous cases of a person deviating from or ceasing to be "the way they were born". We cannot conclusively rule out some "genetic" influence at this point in time, but if it exists at all it is far from being the determinant factor some people would like to pretend, as should be obvious at this point to everyone. We should not be retreating to essentialism in pursuit of rights or freedoms, we should demand them based on what actually is.

The greatest evolutionary fitness, though, comes from the ability to have children.

Nope.

The greatest evolutionary fitness comes from ensuring propagation of similar genes to your own. Breeding yourself is only one strategy for achieving this.

Some of your genetic material is still preserved if your relatives reproduce, but the greatest amount is preserved if you reproduce.

Only if your children survive.

If the behavior of non-breeders helps ensure the survival of the children of breeding pairs around them, then over time those traits will be selected for across the population and will thus propagate. If this didn't happen, altruism would never have evolved. It did, and it remains a component in the behavior of almost all socially dependent species.

I have no idea what you're talking about here.
Sexual drive "manifesting socially?"
What does that even mean?

If you posses a feeling, desire or need which does not show itself in your outward behaviour, then I think it's fair to say it hasn't manifested socially.

No. Sex drives are not caused by societal conditioning.
Sex causes pleasure because there is an innate desire for sex in human beings.

You use the word "conditioning", which I don't think anyone else has used and which is incorrect. Noone here is talking about conditioned responses.

What you're saying contradicts some of the basic facts of developmental psychology which have been observable since the time of Sigmund Freud.

For example, two year old girls do not try to penetrate themselves. If they had a "sex drive" then they presumably would, because they would understand its sexual significance and thus desire it.

In fact, girls will very rarely try to penetrate themselves until they understand socially the sexual significance of the act, which is why young children doing so is still considered a warning sign of potential sexual abuse.

Young children do not understand what sex is until they are told. They only understand what pleasure is. The two are not always the same thing. Many common sexual acts which most of us would not think twice about doing are not as unambiguously pleasurable as you might imagine.

It's a genetic mutation, I think.

Again, physically impossible. Genetic code cannot contain a description of what a shoe is.

 

[unpronounceable]

snip

Most genes encode for more than one thing.
I appears that you don't actually know very much about biology.
That's fine. I don't expect the average person to.
An onion has 12 times the amount of genetic material that a human does.
Amount of genetic material is not an indicator of complexity.
Source: http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/2000/02.10/onion.html

Depending on the type of cell and the environmental conditions, certain genes are activated while others are not.
They can be read in different ways depending on these circumstances.
This is highschool level biology.

Again you don't appear to understand how the brain works either.
I'm not saying specific thoughts are implanted into your mind.
Please get that sci-fi understanding of biology out of your head.
It is making this discussion increasingly pointless.

You say that genes cannot impart an attraction to big tits.
I don't think you know what you're talking about.
Sexual attraction is mostly genetic.
Some societal, but mostly genetic.
The attraction towards wide hips, big tits, those are genetic because they have evolutionary value.

I'll tell you how I know this.
Genes can cause schizophrenia. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1914490/
Liking big tits is probably less complex than schizophrenia, yet genes are definitely the primary factor in their existence.

Also, human beings are attracted to genitals as a general principle.
This is also genetic.
It's nearly universal because it is in our genes.
Are you going to tell me that the desire to have sex is "too complex" for our genes?
Don't be ridiculous.

Your link doesn't even lead me to the APA.
The APA is the American Psychological Association.
You sent me to the association of gay and lesbian psychiatrists.
Not the same thing.

Additionally, your link supports my point, not yours.
It says that environmental factors and upbringing don't play a role in the development of homosexual tendencies.
This leads me to believe that it is genetic in nature.
Of course, I can't be certain of this.
But what I can be certain of is that it is not the environment that makes them gay.
If it isn't the environment and it isn't genetics, then what is it?

Nope.

The greatest evolutionary fitness comes from ensuring propagation of similar genes to your own. Breeding yourself is only one strategy for achieving this.

Wrong again.
In Darwinian evolution, given a choice between having your own child or preserving that of your relatives, having your own child and protecting that child is a better way to spread your genes.
Your own child carries half your genes, while that of any of your relatives carries less than that.
It is simple math.

Also, you pose a false dichotomy between having your own kids and being altruistic.
Not all altruistic individuals are asexual imps and not all asexual people are altruistic.
Doing both is the key to survival.
If one was more important than the other, though, it's having your own kids.

If you posses a feeling, desire or need which does not show itself in your outward behaviour, then I think it's fair to say it hasn't manifested socially.

You mean it hasn't manifested outwardly.
Socially implies that there is a group dynamic involved.
Don't use words you don't understand.

You use the word "conditioning", which I don't think anyone else has used and which is incorrect. Noone here is talking about conditioned responses.

What you're saying contradicts some of the basic facts of developmental psychology which have been observable since the time of Sigmund Freud.

For example, two year old girls do not try to penetrate themselves. If they had a "sex drive" then they presumably would, because they would understand its sexual significance and thus desire it.

In fact, girls will very rarely try to penetrate themselves until they understand socially the sexual significance of the act, which is why young children doing so is still considered a warning sign of potential sexual abuse.

Young children do not understand what sex is until they are told. They only understand what pleasure is. The two are not always the same thing. Many common sexual acts which most of us would not think twice about doing are not as unambiguously pleasurable as you might imagine.

I'm not referring to classic or operant conditioning.
I'm using conditioning in the regular sense of the word.
If you don't know what it means, a dictionary will help you.

Sigmund Freud is bunk.
Also, you're not actually understanding his theories properly.
He suggested the theory of developmental stages.
He doesn't posit that the developmental stages are caused by social conditioning, but that they are caused by innate triggers that activate as the child grows older.
According to Freud, it operates much the same way as physical growth does.
You don't have to teach a boy to produce sperm or a girl to start ovulating.
It happens naturally, triggered by a biological clock.
Similar idea here.

Also, you're wrong about children not knowing about sex until they are told.
They don't know the implications of sex, but they are horny before anyone tells them about it.
Children will often touch their own genitals to pleasure themselves without ever knowing about sex.
Also, breasts are a erogenous zone.
They are inherently sexual.

You have no idea what you're talking about.
I think I've posted enough times in this thread for a lifetime.
You're so desperate to be progressive, so willing to be politically correct that you'll happily use bad science, bad psychology, and bad reasoning to do it.
Not that feminism is progressive or enlightened.
It just masquerades as something that is.
Sexually repressed, developmentally stunted would be a good description.

 

[Schadrach]

Wait, the woman *can't*? And here I thought abortion, adoption, and abandonment were all options available to women to revoke the rights and responsibilities of parenthood. It's also worth noting that the latter two can be done without the father's consent, and the father has no say in what happens to his child in those cases.

Abortion does not 'revoke the rights and responsibilities of parenthood' since there's nothing to be a parent to. It's a choice of whether there's going to be a child or not.

So *why* choose to have an abortion that isn't medically necessary?

Or to put it from another direction: Would you be fine with a ridiculous hypothetical law that legally required a woman having an abortion to adopt a child at the date the pregnancy being terminated was originally due? That would remove from her the opportunity to 'revoke the rights and responsibilities of parenthood' while still allowing 'her body, her choice'. So that would be a win-win, right?

Or could it be that 'not being a parent' is the 'why' for wanting to do so in the first place, and your entire framing is based around trying to ignore that?

If the goal is equity of rights, then if a woman cannot revoke the rights and responsibilities of parenthood, then that option should not be available to men. What we really have in most western countries right now is a scenario where the mother has the right to do so both before and after the child is born, and the father is beholden to the mother's choices whatever they may be.

Before the child is born is quite irrelevant. The father not having an option to make it so the child never exists is a matter of biology and not performing procedures on people without their consent. You're view is very biased towards one issue if you're going to just look at abortion as "Doesn't have responsibility towards a kid". It means there is no kid, an option that should not be afforded to the father as it would either involve murder or forcing a medical procedure on someone without their consent.

So, a man can't choose to renounce the child before it's born because it hasn't been born yet, and after that he's responsible for it despite having no choice in the matter because it's better for the kid he didn't want and can't make use of adoption or abandonment to end his responsibility for?

I would argue that your view is the one that's biased because it isn't considering why a woman would choose abortion outside of medical necessity, and taking that as the right that's being exerted.

 

[Darken12]

Wait, the woman *can't*? And here I thought abortion, adoption, and abandonment were all options available to women to revoke the rights and responsibilities of parenthood. It's also worth noting that the latter two can be done without the father's consent, and the father has no say in what happens to his child in those cases.

Abortion isn't abandonment, so that's not a legitimate choice once the child has been born (for obvious reasons). And no, unless the woman gives birth outside a hospital, she cannot choose not to recognise her child. I am not sure of how it works in Europe or the US, but in my country, hospitals will automatically include the mother's name in the child's birth certificate (though not the father's if he isn't present), and therefore make it impossible for her to "abandon" her child legally (by refusing to recognise it as her own). Her only other choice is adoption, the bureaucracy of which she must shoulder on her own by default.

If the goal is equity of rights, then if a woman cannot revoke the rights and responsibilities of parenthood, then that option should not be available to men. What we really have in most western countries right now is a scenario where the mother has the right to do so both before and after the child is born, and the father is beholden to the mother's choices whatever they may be.

I don't really understand what you're saying here, sorry (in the first sentence).

As for the rest, no, the mother does not have the right to do it after the child is born (see above how hospitals make it impossible for a woman to renounce a child and how adoption (and all the required bureaucracy) is her only choice after giving birth). Her only option before the child is born is abortion, and only for a brief period of time (after which it's no longer abortion but induced labour), and only in places where abortion is legal.

Again, not sure how it is over in the Northern Hemisphere, but down here, a woman cannot give her child up for adoption without the father's consent (assuming the father has recognised the child as his). So the mother is forced to always recognise her child (unless she avoids giving birth in a hospital or in the presence of a doctor), while the father can choose not to, and she can only give up the child for adoption if the father is willing or has chosen not to recognise it. And yes, while the father too needs the mother's consent to give up the child for adoption, he always has the option of not recognising the child as his, and refusing DNA testing (so he always has a way of avoiding the responsibility of child rearing).

The only place where women have a circumstantial advantage is with abortion, which they can perform without the father's consent (assuming doing so is legal in her location), but that is justified by the whole "she is the one that has to carry the child to term within her body" thing. While I do feel sorry for men who wanted to be fathers while the woman chose abortion, the alternative (forcing her to carry a child to term against her will) horrifies me far too much to give it any serious consideration.

Why is the man beholden to the woman's choice to have and keep the child? Since she is choosing to a) not abort, b) not give it up for adoption, and c) not "safe haven" abandon it it seems like she is taking that burden of her own free will.

A) Abortion is not legal everywhere. B) Adoption is not an instantaneous process, and she is forced to take care of the child until the bureaucracy finds her a suitable couple. C) Those places don't exist everywhere (and certainly don't exist in my country or most of South/Central America, for example).

Assuming an absence of abortion or these "safe havens" you mention, she doesn't actually have a choice. Even if she puts up the child for adoption, she still has to take care of it (with her own time and money, of course) until the entire process is finalised, knowing that the odds of her child being adopted steadily diminish as the child gets older.

Huh, around here, we revoke your driver's license, start garnishing wages and possibly jail you (usually for contempt of court, during which time it continues to accrue) for failing to pay child support. A woman aborting, adopting, or abandoning gets what some disapproving comments?

Hah! No, a man can choose not to recognise his children (therefore never being eligible for child support) and even if he does fail to pay it, at worst he gets a slap on the wrist from the court and forced to pay up. Women who abort can get anything from disapproving comments to being kicked out of their own homes by traditional/conservative/religious families (not for getting pregnant at all, mind you, but for aborting) to being on the receiving end of gender violence (which is rare, yes, but has happened a few times).

Also, to quote #INeedMasculism: #INeedMasculismBecause not wanting to be a father makes me a scumbag while her not wanting to be a mother makes her pro-choice.

That is most certainly not the way I've heard it. I've heard it "not wanting to be a father makes him flaky (or immature/irresponsible at worst), while not wanting to be a mother makes her a monster."

I was hoping for something more specific than broad categories of industry and a statement that "it happens".

I couldn't find much written on it, but here are two articles on mining:

http://www.northern-soft.de/miners/miners/evolution.htm#232
http://canadiandimension.com/articles/3227

This one is written from the perspective of the gender gap in wages, but it also touches on the fact that some occupations are considered "high risk" and predominantly male, thereby leading management to avoid hiring women for them even if they're physically qualified to do so:

http://www.amptoons.com/blog/2005/05/09/myth-men-get-paid-more-for-working-in-dangerous-jobs-wage-gap-series-part-10/

I also came across this, from exactly 50 years ago:

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2009/10/29/a-list-of-reasons-not-to-hire-women/

Many of which I've actually heard from people as reasons women weren't hired for this or that position, in addition to the "cannot possibly meet the physical standards even when they do" and "women shouldn't be in high-risk positions" reasons I mentioned before.

The interesting question is how many examples of objectified female characters (per the previous definition you yourself gave) out of how many titles? You were grasping at straws for 10 in the admittedly tiny time restriction originally given (seriously, Triss and Maya?), while more would be easy to point out with a longer time span, are they a bigger proportion of the overall catalog? Was the time frame you were originally given just unusually light on such things?

With the original descriptions, I was left with about 30 titles. After removing those that were aimed at children or featured no women at all, I was left with less than 15. Then I was asked to provide 10 examples, for which I was at the mercy of google images to provide evidence of objectification (as clearly nobody was going to take my word for it).

I don't think it's unreasonable to extend the timeframe to at least 10 months instead of 3. I can definitely find at least one case of clear objectification per month (on average) with the remaining pool of viable games (that is, games that are Western, for Xbox or PC, have women in them and aren't aimed at children) featuring female sexualisation at least in 60% of the titles (and I would wager the number is closer to 80%).

That panorama (at least one clear example of female objectification per month and 60%-80% female sexualisation as background) is pretty damn sexist, if you ask me, though I would admit the comic book industry is far worse.

I have a feeling you are missing something important about that specific example -- that is not a typical representation of that character in any fashion. The entire episode that scene is from is filled with dream sequences, hallucinations, and the like, with that particular one being the only one that could be described as sexualized. The framing of the scene there is interesting (for example, dubbing music over it rather than the original audio which changes the character of things significantly, ignoring the supplied context of the scene [Just subtitling it with "Cuddy is his boss" as though that was a typical representation of her], etc). For contrast, here's the whole scene, with original audio: http://telly.com/CSZVZ Though I'd recommend the entire episode (or even series) instead.

Well, I think the point of the video was to show how the male gaze works (hence the absence of the original audio, so that the viewer can focus on the camera techniques) and the subtitle was meant as a bit of unrelated social commentary (that his hallucination about his boss involves her stripping and pole-dancing for him, instead of her exercising her authority in any way). The way I read the subtitle, it's a quiet dig at the fact that she is portrayed as something sexy to look at (both in-universe and by the camera) rather than acknowledging her role as an authority figure in any way.

Also I think I saw that episode on TV a few years ago.

Well you sure don't live in the USA if you think abortion isn't controversial.

Well I'd say comparing it to being pro-choice is more of what does it, considering that being pro-choice doesn't involve abandoning a living kid.

Um, that wasn't me.