Yes, people should not be disparaged for their choices, and in general we want to offer the ability to choose. The real problem is are people growing up in a society where they are being subconsciously funnelled towards a particular choice (to the point where they don't see other options as valid choices due to subconscious biases).
You just have to look at all of the crazy responses to Target (a US retailer) removing the gender-specific labelling of toys (from "Girl Toys" and "Boy Toys" to just "Toys") to see how as a society we are not at a point where "we" aren't trying to impose a particular ideal (e.g. "Barbies are girl toys") on children as they grow up.
> Two people in a partnership raising the children they love together using division of labour?
This is more generic than the "nuclear family" traditionally is viewed. If it was just two people dividing up labour, then the "nuclear family" could equally have the father as the homemaker and the mother as the breadwinner. When people typically refer to the "nuclear family" they are referring to some idealized Leave It To Beaver type setup.
> The real problem is are people growing up in a society where they are being subconsciously funnelled towards a particular choice (to the point where they don't see other options as valid choices due to subconscious biases).
Is this a problem? Is the funneling people into an androgynous role any better than funneling them into traditional gender roles? If anything the current system seems more "natural" in that it's emergent behavior, whereas moving to a genderless society will require top down engineering.
Our society is free enough that regardless of the direction the masses take, people can and will step out of the role most commonly held by other people of their gender. I think we all agree that it's a good thing to have that option.
With that in mind I don't think there's anything "bad" about genders existing in society. People's free will is strong enough to live the life they want regardless of cultural nudging.
I think the suggestion would be that everyone should be able to default to an agendered role and then later make an explicit choice to "put on" a particular gender.
This happens in some tribal cultures: children treated as neuter until they reach a certain age, then choosing to go through an explicit ritual to "make them a man" or "make them a woman."
(These cultures aren't particularly modern otherwise; you can't choose to undertake the ritual to become a man if you are biologically a woman, and people would think you were crazy to not want to undergo the ritual. The point is more that it's possible for a culture to start doing the "treat people as agendered by default" thing with no top-down pressure.)
That's a great example. I think it doesn't quite fit what the parent was talking about though, since as you say there are still strongly defined male/female roles (that tribe members are very much expected to follow). It's just that there's a 3rd "pre-gender" that's assigned to infants.
I suppose the real test would be to find a culture that's genderless for people who have reached sexual maturity.
> I think the suggestion would be that everyone should be able to default to an agendered role and then later make an explicit choice to "put on" a particular gender.
Why would that be preferable to a society where people are assigned a default gender but can easily switch it later on (i.e. the present society)?
Also, while your suggestion might work for certain languages, it would be very difficult in others (e.g. in Slovenian) that use mainly gendered pronouns.
>You just have to look at all of the crazy responses to Target (a US retailer) removing the gender-specific labelling of toys (from "Girl Toys" and "Boy Toys" to just "Toys") to see how as a society we are not at a point where "we" aren't trying to impose a particular ideal (e.g. "Barbies are girl toys") on children as they grow up.
It's not about what they should prefer but about what they are more likely to prefer. We have studies that show this isn't merely a human social phenomenon [0] [1] [2]. There are gender preferences for toys and to most people it's silly to take offence at the idea that genders have different preferences. Now whether we should nurture these differences is a slightly different argument. The phrasing difference is important - and starting with something more people can understand (which color for "boys" has changed not only over time, but varies across populations) would help the discussion. If girls and boys are attracted to [type] of toy, can we nurture their interests in a different direction? The answer is "probably, yes". But that's a different debate.
The "crazy responses" you see are people irritated that a group of hyper-sensitive people who have placed a disturbing level of importance on their gender identity (and the gender identity of others) harped on about this non-issue until Target felt forced to change it to get them to shut up and leave them alone.
The constant bullying and what boils down to online smear campaigns done by these extremist self-identity-crisis groups annoys most people who don't place nearly as much importance on their (or others') racial/gender/sexual identities.
> The "crazy responses" you see are people irritated that a group of hyper-sensitive people who have placed a disturbing level of importance on their gender identity (and the gender identity of others) harped on about this non-issue until Target felt forced to change it to get them to shut up and leave them alone.
It's a non-issue in the same way that homophobia is a "non-issue" to straight white people living in suburbia.
Also, the "crazy responses" I refer to are people getting upset that Target was "encouraging boys to play with Barbies" which "goes against the Bible." Or that Target was "trying to turn people transgender." Are you saying that these people are perfectly normal and represent the way that we want to run society? Do you honestly believe that Target's actions will "turn people transgender?"
>Also, the "crazy responses" I refer to are people getting upset that Target was "encouraging boys to play with Barbies" which "goes against the Bible." Or that Target was "trying to turn people transgender." Are you saying that these people are perfectly normal and represent the way that we want to run society? Do you honestly believe that Target's actions will "turn people transgender?"
No more than I believe that by labeling the toys "boys" and "girls" Target was supporting the patriarchy and perpetuating rape culture by marketing violence-orientated toys towards boys while objectifying woman and furthering the "house wife image" by marketing girls with dress-up and doll houses.
Thank you for clarifying you meant the more extremist "crazies". There happens to be extremist viewpoints on both sides and when either political side speaks of "crazies" from the other side, I immediately think of the moderates from that side to account for political biases.
It's rare they mean the actual extremists, as you did. :) So thanks for clarifying who you were regarding as "crazy". And no, I don't agree with the extreme right either.
>The real problem is are people growing up in a society where they are being subconsciously funnelled towards a particular choice (to the point where they don't see other options as valid choices due to subconscious biases).
Mechanisms like this exist in large part to defeat a sort of social entropy that would arise if everybody made their own descisions. It is desirable to be able to have expectations about others behavior and a larger shared social game like 'Nuclear families and husband/wife'. Pretty much necessarily you're going to get something like a competing access need[0] where some people are going to be really hurt by these games because they don't want to play or can't play[1]. We only have a select few remedies to this which aren't 'destroy all the social rules and let anarchy reign', and while some people think that option would result in good outcomes I have a hard time finding faith that it would.
A position likes yours worries me massively because it seems to be something like 'systematic coercion to maintain social norms is never okay unless it's explicitly part of the law and then it's still not okay because the intent is to maintain a social norm rather than keep the peace'.
So what you're saying is that parents (e.g.) punishing their children for playing with the wrong toys ("Boys can't play with Barbies") is something that is desirable in a society because the only other option would be "let anarchy reign?"
Seems like a fragile argument to make.
I'm not saying that we need to force people into some sort of agender roles, but the way we run society now with these ideas that there are "proper" toys for a child to play with, re-enforces the ideas that lead to people beating up their kids because "I'm not gonna raise no fag." What you seem to be saying is that we as a society throw those kids under the bus as part of some sort of "plan for stability" and because you benefit from that stability you support the plan. Am I reading that right?
>So what you're saying is that parents (e.g.) punishing their children for playing with the wrong toys ("Boys can't play with Barbies") is something that is desirable in a society because the only other option would be "let anarchy reign?"
No, and that's a strawman. (I never said the only option was to 'let anarchy reign'. I said that our options for remedy were not particularly spacious.)
My understanding is that direct single-person targeted interventions like that don't seem to work particularly well. (And to the extent that they 'work' they often do so by breaking people. Broken people are not desirable.) I'm not a child psychologist, but I doubt that children need to be micromanaged in their play or that such micromanagement would avoid 'raising fags'. I don't really feel qualified to comment beyond that.
EDIT: You keep silently editing your post, perhaps you should write a reply instead?
Just noticing this -- and the 1st link is quite nice indeed, thanks, but how does it support your argument?
Jump from family structures to "safe spaces" is a bit of a stretch imo -- but if we do it, I'd say it argues for us to be accomodating of multiple arrangements depending what fits specific people, rather than forcing everyone into one convention.
And the 2nd one is rather unpersuasive on multiple levels.
You just have to look at all of the crazy responses to Target (a US retailer) removing the gender-specific labelling of toys (from "Girl Toys" and "Boy Toys" to just "Toys") to see how as a society we are not at a point where "we" aren't trying to impose a particular ideal (e.g. "Barbies are girl toys") on children as they grow up.
> Two people in a partnership raising the children they love together using division of labour?
This is more generic than the "nuclear family" traditionally is viewed. If it was just two people dividing up labour, then the "nuclear family" could equally have the father as the homemaker and the mother as the breadwinner. When people typically refer to the "nuclear family" they are referring to some idealized Leave It To Beaver type setup.