behaviorvitamins
December 15, 2002 1:05 PM Subscribe
Behavioral vitamins for individuals and the body-social. 1.Maturity Rules
2.Fresh Air & Light
3.Greenery
4.Large Muscle Movement
5. Social Contact
6. Reproductive Opportunity
7. Parental Connection
8. Gender specific Behavior.
Take one a day.
Oh, by the guy who wrote "The Decline of Males"? Oh... goodie.
Oh, and by the way, gender-specific behavior is boring, tiresome, limiting, annoying, and in America, we penalize people who don't perform gender-specific behavior by any means from insulting them to kiling them. Any soft scientist who says that the world is falling apart due to gender roles not being adhered to is on the team with wifebeaters and gaybashers. We can explore biological imperatives and desires all we want, and there certainly are some. But the moral extensions of "good" gender-based behavior are both useless and harmful.
posted by RJ Reynolds at 3:41 PM on December 15, 2002
Oh, and by the way, gender-specific behavior is boring, tiresome, limiting, annoying, and in America, we penalize people who don't perform gender-specific behavior by any means from insulting them to kiling them. Any soft scientist who says that the world is falling apart due to gender roles not being adhered to is on the team with wifebeaters and gaybashers. We can explore biological imperatives and desires all we want, and there certainly are some. But the moral extensions of "good" gender-based behavior are both useless and harmful.
posted by RJ Reynolds at 3:41 PM on December 15, 2002
what RJ said! this seemed really out of place with the rest of the vitamins...how does acting in accordance with some set of gender-specific actions and behavior (defined by whom?, and for what other purposes?) advance any sort of well-being? (Unless of course, we act like the gender-specific roles 18th century dandies and fops lived by!)
posted by amberglow at 3:51 PM on December 15, 2002
posted by amberglow at 3:51 PM on December 15, 2002
Oh for... This article is a badly argued, poorly written piece of claptrap.
The differences between races first of all vary in a gradient from all-one to nearly-everything. Secondly they reflect relatively minor differences in the actual conduct of lives. However the sexes differ enormously and it is unnecessary to recall here the immense catalogue of defined sex differences from the level of the cell to - even just in yesterday’s news - an indication that among vervet monkeys males and females make the same sex-typed choices of toys as human children do - without benefit of GI Joe, Barbie, and the dread power source - role models.
The "differences between races"? What on earth could he mean here, and how do these differences range from "all-one" to "nearly everthing"? What are these differences, anyway? And why mention this if they "reflect relatively minor differences in the actual conduct of lives"? He has his reasoning backwards here: "race" is a meaningless category, biologically, but hugely important as a cultural fact, i.e. the "actual conduct of lives".
And the follow up to this--the idea that a vaguely referenced study puportedly establishing that "vervet monkeys males and females make the same sex-typed choices of toys as human children do" can say anything meaningful about human experience makes me howl with laughter. Are the little monkeys playing with makeup, or drawing spaceships blowing up planets? And even if they were, what does this tell us about the behaviour of human beings? You cannot correalate the behaviour of monkeys with that of human beings in such a detailed way; let alone the fact that the behaviour of captive monkeys, living in an utterly unnatural environment, can't be taken for an accurate representation of actual vervet monkey social structure.
On second thought, though, thanks for posting this. I'll use this article in writing class as an example of fallacious arguments (as seen in http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/index.html#index).
It'll be a great exercise; this article is chock full of them.
(thanks to SNACKeR for posting the fallacies link earlier today)
posted by jokeefe at 6:50 PM on December 15, 2002
The differences between races first of all vary in a gradient from all-one to nearly-everything. Secondly they reflect relatively minor differences in the actual conduct of lives. However the sexes differ enormously and it is unnecessary to recall here the immense catalogue of defined sex differences from the level of the cell to - even just in yesterday’s news - an indication that among vervet monkeys males and females make the same sex-typed choices of toys as human children do - without benefit of GI Joe, Barbie, and the dread power source - role models.
The "differences between races"? What on earth could he mean here, and how do these differences range from "all-one" to "nearly everthing"? What are these differences, anyway? And why mention this if they "reflect relatively minor differences in the actual conduct of lives"? He has his reasoning backwards here: "race" is a meaningless category, biologically, but hugely important as a cultural fact, i.e. the "actual conduct of lives".
And the follow up to this--the idea that a vaguely referenced study puportedly establishing that "vervet monkeys males and females make the same sex-typed choices of toys as human children do" can say anything meaningful about human experience makes me howl with laughter. Are the little monkeys playing with makeup, or drawing spaceships blowing up planets? And even if they were, what does this tell us about the behaviour of human beings? You cannot correalate the behaviour of monkeys with that of human beings in such a detailed way; let alone the fact that the behaviour of captive monkeys, living in an utterly unnatural environment, can't be taken for an accurate representation of actual vervet monkey social structure.
On second thought, though, thanks for posting this. I'll use this article in writing class as an example of fallacious arguments (as seen in http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/index.html#index).
It'll be a great exercise; this article is chock full of them.
(thanks to SNACKeR for posting the fallacies link earlier today)
posted by jokeefe at 6:50 PM on December 15, 2002
it is only due to the lack of 5 and 6 that i bother with 4 at all.
posted by quonsar at 5:31 AM on December 16, 2002
posted by quonsar at 5:31 AM on December 16, 2002
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posted by mokey at 1:34 PM on December 15, 2002