What points of your side are constantly misunderstood and how can you better explain them here?

You seem to be passionate about labeling facts about the world as good facts or bad facts. How do you think that sense of good or bad that you have arises?

If you think it's an innate behavior that humans have to label certain things good or bad, then why wouldn't humans have other innate behaviors, such as men being inclined to violence?

On the other hand, if you think humans have no innate sense of what's good or bad, that it's all culturally determined, then how could you say any human behavior is good or bad outside of its own cultural context? What makes your context superior to all others?

(And: is it possible to say that it's good or bad that we have a sense of goodness or badness?)

No pure fact about the world is good or bad. I don't think we're even speaking the same language. If women were naturally submissive to men, which I don't believe they are, then it would no more be bad than the fact the electron has a spin of 1/2 is bad. It would just be a fact, a boundary condition if you like.

Morality only comes in to how we ought to act. The better ascertained we are of all the facts, the more likely it is our actions will be both moral and effective. I think denying the facts about human nature, however they fall, is immoral, and anti-rational.

I do think men are naturally more inclined to be violent, and that fact isn't bad, either. It is generally bad if a man is violent, and indeed we have a whole system of law and civilization, a large part of which exists, to constrain and punish male violence. But our innate inclinations don't necessarily have any bearing on goodness or badness.

There seems to be a serious false choice here being presented about views on human nature, between GC and QT. The belief seems to be that either:

  1. There is no such thing as human nature. Absolutely everything, including sexual orientation, is a product of nurture. (Social science extremism)

  2. Women are naturally submissive to men and ought to be barefoot and pregnant, like when we were cavemen (cavepeople?). A vast patriarchy dictates how women ought to act and this is how it's been and how it always will be. (Social conservative extremism)

First, there's no way to even test claim 1. It's placed outside the realm of a scientific theory, since "culture" can explain any observation.

Second, much more seriously, there is an entire universe of claims outside of 1 or 2. For example, there's a host of evidence that female intrasexual competition and cooperation give women great bargaining power against men in most cultures, even ones which are traditionally patriarchal. Classical feminist views on patriarchy, ironically, deny that women everywhere have rich social structures and personal lives, are just as intelligent and resourceful as men, and have sophisticated cultural strategies to maintain their positions in society and compete for mates. They deny observed facts which beg for an explanation, like the fact that FGM and conservative restrictions on female sexuality tend to be carried out and supported by women. Feminists and gender scholars need to start engaging seriously with the fact humans are evolved dimorphic animals. This view is called evolutionary feminism and I find it the most persuasive and powerful view of human nature.

/r/GCdebatesQT Thread Parent