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[–]a_blue_bird 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

you’re not thinking about it past “it’s just in our DNA then, nothing else makes a difference”

Because I think that people are much more influenced by their biology than they want to believe. We like to think of ourselves as above our animal nature, as cultured and socialized, but that is only partly true. I don't relate to all these narratives about ''socialization'' and ''docile women'' at all. Yet I had average parents, grew up in a conservative religious area, didn't know about feminism until I went to uni (and even then didn't read much of it) etc. Everything was there to ''socialize'' me into docility and ''comphet'' and what not. So if all people are basically the same, why didn't it happen? I think it's simply because I'm much more disagreeable than the average woman, and most likely the average man, too (who himself is considerably more diagreeable than the average woman). Which I think is also the reason why so many more men than women go against social norms, don't seek groups to belong to and to be approved by, don't try to be liked by others, to please others and so on and so on. Yes, I agree that women are socialized in ways in which men aren't, but that is made possible by their underlying biology. Would it be possible to make men behave in some of the women-typical ways? Probably yes, at least to a large extent, but I think that you would need to exert much more power over them to achieve that in the first place, and even more to make them maintain this behavior over long periods of time.

[–]reluctant_commenter 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Everything was there to ''socialize'' me into docility and ''comphet'' and what not. So if all people are basically the same, why didn't it happen?

It happened to me. You can set up the right conditions for any human being to be socialized into docility-- but at some point you've got to roll the dice. Odds are, some people will be greatly affected, and others will be little affected. Epigenetics suggests that biology (via genes) "loads the gun" so to speak, and environmental factors (such as socialization) "pulls the trigger", and thus the outcome, such as docility, happens. Or doesn't happen, if there was no ammo in the gun.

Women have this "pull the trigger" happen WAY more than men-- that is, most women have a significant pressure to be docile, applied to them, at some point in their lives. Many men never have that pressure, so if they were born women they might have been docile but we'll never know.

I think we all agree that the answer here is nature AND nurture, not one or the other. Broadly speaking, the social sciences have been moving towards this perspective for the past few decades or more (as opposed to before). The question is how much does each part contribute. I think you are underestimating nurture. Just my take.