Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Swen a reply to Where are the women? Post

You can make jokes and deny psychological science all you want.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blo...ecific-toy-preferences-learned-or-innate

It's Psychology Today, but it's written by Gad Saad, whom I've heard speak elsewhere, and he has relevant citations anyways.

I am not denying that it isn't popular among certain political ideologies to deny anything about innate human behaviors or tendencies, especially when gender is involved, since gender is become increasingly at the forefront of some people's ideological focus. But the science is science, whether you want to join the ranks of climate change deniers and anti-evolutionists, that's on you--and of course, one may as well almost need to deny evolution, because sexual dimorphism is in many, many species on Earth, and to think the cosmos as a matter of principle would deign to intervene for humanity and insure complete behavioral and psychological parity while having enough genetic and hormonal differences to produce different bodies but not slightly different brains.

Brain lateralization studies also show that men and women do not appear to even process information in quite the same way. The implications of this are exaggerated (as is the notion of right brained/left brained people) but it is still real enough.



Of course you didn't directly insult. You did something intellectually dishonest that gives you plenty of plausible deniability. There are plenty of ways one can insinuate, mislead, or pretend in discourse to make others look bad while appearing on the up-and-up. One of those ways is deliberately mischaracterizing someone said (or meant) something to make them look bad.

I'm still waiting for you to show us where anyone here even insinuated that one gender or another should not like or play particular genres of video games. I'll just plainly state what you did--you do not believe that there are differences in behavior between the genders or sexes; so when your opponents on this issue offered an explanation incompatible with your beliefs, you responded in a way that pretended we were shaming or implying that women shouldn't play certain types of games, or that there was something wrong with women that did so. It's a polemical technique meant to bias people against your opponents. You made that assertion about us; all I'm asking is that you back it up, since that's a charge made against people that doesn't paint them in a favorable light.

You are seriously accusing me of intellectual dishonesty when this thread is full of false analogies and strawmen? :p I don't really understand what you are trying to argue. You keep forgetting that I say in almost every post that men and women *do* have differences -




You are the one trying to appropriate monkey studies (that actually oppose each other between species of monkeys) and toddler studies to say that they make adult men and women different -


In none of these studies is it mentioned anywhere that it remotely applies to adults. Of course primal instincts will be based on innate factors (for toddlers and monkeys), it doesn't have anything else to be based on. I may have let emotions dictate what I wrote, but it's because I see people trying to regurgitate their societal indoctrination by making sweeping proclamations like the one you made. After that, you say that the brain lateralization findings are being exaggerated. You also say that socialization has a big impact on men and women. It's a combination leaning heavily towards socialization though. It's simply innate instincts being pushed to extremes by societal indoctrination. That is why we see such huge skews in anything, from video games to career choices.

Yes, I was wrong in saying anything about people insinuating that men and women "should" play different games, my emotions got the best of me and I shouldn't have allowed that.

It's clear at this point you are just an ideologue, since you ignore everything except the comparative psychology part which you disagree with based on some armchair musings about its applicability. There were statements there by Dr. Gaad, but you thought the studies in monkeys was the weakest so you focused on that and ignored everything else.

Studies in infancy on the matter are done precisely to negate or lessen effects of socialization to study this. Since this produces a result that is uncomfortable to your ideological eye, you have to deny it and claim it doesn't apply to adults, where you would then happily prescribe it all to socialization. It's not really a valid argument anyway, since showing that it happens before socialization is enough to demonstrate that male and females inherently have differing tendencies. One may as well dishonestly claim, if such studies did not show preference presocialization, that the innate portions of human psychology only kick after childhood or in adulthood as a cop out, but science does not work that way.

It's funny how people will cheer on evolution and laugh about how many Americans disbelieve in it, but suddenly evolution doesn't apply to humans when it's politically expedient. When we draw evolutionary generalizations on other species, it's fine to compare and draw inferences on related species, but when it comes to humans and anything else, that's unacceptable. But who knows, maybe evolution is just a lie.

Also, don't twist my words. Brain lateralization effects are exaggerated, but that doesn't discount the actual truth that there are important differences between the male and female brain.

It's pretty clear that, considering your flopping around on this and your admission to intentionally mischaracterizing what people said, that what you believe in is not facts of truth of facts of ideology. There's nothing further to discuss here because in your view, the universe only allows for human males and females to have complete cognitive parity where all differences are due to socialization. Sexual dimorphism in humans is a politically inconvenient truth for some.

For emphasis for others, I'm going to put these two statements here together and let people conclude what they may:

Fine, we are all slaves of our biological instincts. Have fun liking stuff because of your gender. :p

Is me saying this dishonest again? I really can't tell from the torrent of your accusations. Maybe I am missing the point and maybe I *am* a confused idealogue trying to convince myself of my rightness and going against hard, scientific fact.

You know, you weren't wrong when you said this thread is full of of strawman.

I really don't know what to say. Check my edit, btw.

Actually, no. Let's talk about where you get your facts about


I want those hard, scientific facts. Educate me. Not that they *are* different, but the why of it.

I am going to start with some sources to get the blood flowing - http://www.apa.org/research/action/difference.aspx

We all are, to some extent. As I mentioned a few posts back, if it was as simple as reappraising societal roles (which shouldn't have even been necessary in my case anyway) I wouldn't have needed to go through years of aggravation to properly align with the gender expression that was never socialised into me to begin with. I'm not a glutton for punishment and only reluctantly went down this route after many years of trying to avoid doing so made me utterly miserable.

GD/GID is a very complicated topic that, while I am quite familiar with, I don't think it can really be debated in a thread on the Larian forums :p I know that it also has some biological basis apart from purely psychological. But like I mentioned in a few posts ago, the ultimate treatment is changing the way you view yourself in relation to society and that is done through HRT, SRS and whatever else you need to feel in the right body. I may be completely wrong though, but that is what I have observed and read over the years. It's not just home-brewed philosophemes :p

I'm reminded of a question I was asked early on in the process, which was if I could only change one thing that I'd be happy with, either the way I saw myself or the way other people saw me, which would I choose? I couldn't give any answer other than "both", but maybe I totally missed the point. Anyway, yeah, since I couldn't exactly have a new personality installed, HRT and SRS it was. Yay for a second adolescence, as if just the one wasn't enough!

So biology may effect people when young, but we grow out of that? Socialization and experience certainly can change/evolve perceptions and opinions, but that doesn't eliminate physiological differences between genders. Women on average are physically weaker and shorter than men, have a longer life expectancy and a more effective immune systems, which isn't a factor for young children (the first couple years of school don't separate genders for sports, etc).



So if biology has an influence at all on what genders as a whole tend to like, every individual is completely controlled by their biology?


If things were that simplistic, everyone would conform to all gender stereotypes, or at least there would be a lot more uniformity within each gender.


Not if you actually believe those are the only two possibilities; in that case you'd just be wrong.

We can't escape our biology now, can we? That's pretty much what a slave is, no matter how tight the leash is held.

There is a lot of uniformity. Most people are basically carbon copies of each other. If there was even more uniformity we'd be in an Orwellian nightmare.

EDIT: But really, I'm being facetious. Do you think I, of all people, would actively make such dramatic proclamations? :p This whole thread is one big deja vu that I've had a billion times before and I don't know why I didn't keep my cool. I know exactly what Automata is talking about and I know exactly how I relate to it. He isn't actively wrong either, the matter is a bit more complicated than what we've been churning out in our race to one-up each other.

The "why" usually gets into reasons pertaining to evolutionary history and selection. That's beyond my scope of expertise, but if you want to try to raise that as a question to try to make sex differences beem ludicrous, then one may ask why males are physically stronger than females.

As for the APA link, it is addressing the the overstatement of sex differences, and there are quite a bit--that is why I stated that brain lateralization study results are often inflated (particularly in the popular press), and looking at the study it doesn't really address anything about preference in activities.

Dwelving further there's some further writing here with commentary on that study, and apparently another researcher noted the same thing, that interests and job preferences aren't noted there:

http://www.academia.edu/2439418/An_...e_on_gender_similarities_and_differences

Another sharp criticism that is while men and women are probably mostly alike (which I think almost everyone agrees with), the areas where they differ may be nonetheless important.

By the way, this is how science is really done, through journals. An anonymous author's write up taking a stance isn't gospel, and although I don't really think it's wrong, it's overstated, basically "men and women are mostly the same...but, uh, there are a few differences." Hyde's study was a metaanalysis and used prior research on particular cognitive and behavior measures. This isn't the first time I've seen something like that on the APA website and it won't be the last time I see it either.

This exaggeration has persisted forever. You have to know that you're intentionally inflating what's being said.

http://www.thenation.com/article/sociobiology-and-you/



This straw man is so often put up by nurturists that I have to think it's an absolutely deliberate mischaracterization to muddy the waters.

And I say this while believing that Steven Pinker has absolutely exaggerated his case in The Blank Slate and furthermore I don't even really subscribe to the mental modules theory and favor more general processing theories.

The next paragraph echoes what I said earlier about evolution, even using the term "human exceptionalism" which is amusing since I thought it up in my head earlier but didn't put it down.

To think that sex differences in behaviors and tasks between the sexes is some sign of bigotry is ridiculous and unfair. Of course men and women are similar on most measures, but there are some important differences as well.

I know exactly how science is done and I've read most of the journals I could get my hands on. :p The matter of fact is that we are far from discovering what the hell is going on and we simply can't make any definite statements on the why or how or anything else. Even the one you linked (I've seen it before) says that we are lacking information, or at least perspective, regarding this.

We can not escape society/culture, either, or physics, or technology...

This site doesn't have a ton of posters, but man it seems to get stuck in every political trap known to man.

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." / Philip K. Dick

Thus, work stemming from developmental psychology, comparative psychology, and endocrinology, using both non-clinical and clinical populations, and a wide assortment of dependent measures (e.g., eye gaze, digit ratio), points to an unassailable conclusion: the sex-specificity of toy preferences is shaped by sex-specific biological forces. This does not mean that parents do not reinforce these biological realities via various forms of socialization. However, it does mean that to the extent that nurture matters, it typically takes place within boundaries set by nature

Oh and speaking of boundaries of nature. Gender-specific variations are usually smaller than variations within a gender based on genetic variation. Or in other words, differences between males and females are more often based on individually than on gender.

Though I have the feeling that we are getting far to much off topic. I don't think that me playing with puppets (GI Joe, HE-Man, etc) influenced my love for good CRPGs. ;-)