ddrcrono

For a bit of context: I generally consider gender to be the social/cultural angle on males/females and sex to be the chromosome/physical body angle. (I can get into atypical chromosomes later if anyone wants).

General thoughts

I more or less am indifferent about the idea of gender. I think on one hand, some people are very firm about "This is how men should act, and this is how women should act," in a traditional sense, while others, in a more modern sense can be equally inflexible in a different way. Ex: "If you exhibit these traditionally feminine or masculine behaviours you should change your gender identity to match them."

I don't particularly empathize with either outlook as I feel that any person should do what 1) Makes sense in any individual situation, and 2) Should do what makes sense within their personal tendencies and abilities. For me personally, most talk about gender identity feels unrelatable in its entirety.

That said, by default I recognize "male/female" as sex, and will default to that when talking to someone. If they have an ambiguous look about them or specifically request it, I'll address them differently. Even if it doesn't particularly mean anything to me, or can be counter-intuitive to my world-view, I will try to be considerate because I realize it means something to them.

Regarding why we have gender stereotypes, and what genuine differences there are between the male and female sex: I think that because of typical physical differences in the sexes (pregnancy, breastfeeding, muscle mass, height, eyesight and so on) we've had a pragmatic division of responsibilities and specialization that tended to make sense along those lines in most cultures. (And it's likely that this has been a two-way evolutionary balance).

While I think some of the most clear-cut " on average" differences in men and women are in their bodies, the least clear are mental. In a very general sense it's difficult to evaluate even hard physical things like brain shape/patterns and to be able to claim that culture/social upbringing within a society hasn't affected those things in some ways. While I'm amenable to there being some differences in the mind, it's difficult to say what adult brains without the influence of culture (and thus concepts of gender) would look like.

Essentially, my view is that there are some inherent average differences between the sexes that lead to some different, on average behaviours, but that those differences aren't so strong that we should be heavy-handed about telling people, particularly in a modern non-tribal society, how they should act, or how they should identify. We should let individuals do as they please without having to concern themselves about the idea of being a man or a woman in any way.

I understand a lot of people probably don't emphatize with my views, but that's more or less what I think.

One thing I would note is that it wasn't all that uncommon for the women to handle the finances in my family, and it's a thing I've heard is frequently the case. You also get a lot of situations where "officially" the man of the house is "in charge" but everyone knows who is really running the show. I think there was probably a lot more subtlety/nuance/individual variety than we give credit for. Then again my ancestors are largely celtic and if you know anything about celtic women...

I'm going to make a longer comment with some of my more personal thoughts later but the one part that caught my attention initially was the ~15 years part.

Now I'm not going to be a stickler about precise time ranges but certainly in the 90s there were significant discussions about male/female gender roles.

While discussions about trans/gender identity topics only really picked up steam in I would say the last ~7 years these sorts of things were pretty common discussions in feminist academic circles for quite some time even before that, so it's likely that the discussion would have happened sooner or later, even if in a different way than it did.

Last comment about timing - I suspect politics had something to do with it. More cynical analysis might say it's been used as a wedge between the American right and left (as passion for fighting over, say, gay marriage has lessened) and there's a cynical argument to be made that both parties actually want it to be a contentious issue because it helps then to differentiate and appeal to their base in different ways.

Some equally cynical analysis from the left specifically associates the rise of gender as a topic (and several other social issues) as a way to distract the new left from economic issues (ex: occupy Wall Street, Bernie Sanders-esque stuff). While I don't think most on the left would claim the aforementioned social issues are unimportant they would claim that they're of secondary importance when a great number of people are struggling just to get by with the situation only slowly getting worse.

I'll make a separate post later on my personal feelings more on-topic.

I like to leave these a few days but I'm surprised nobody touched on the concept of play / practice as one of the reasons for fun (basically being able to learn things in a way that feels low-risk and casual - lots of studies on play, which relates to fun, showing such).

Other obvious function would be relief from stress / taking a break from things being serious in life. (Giving the mind a way to unwind and relax). Feels like there's benefit in that for everyone as well.

Also, how too much of things that are normally fun start to lose their appeal (suggesting there's a limit to what's useful fun). And obviously what becomes of people who have no fun at all.

I feel like this covers a significant part of fun, but maybe not all of it completely: Ex hanging out singing songs around a campfire with people you love is fun. (In this case you could even say it's fun because it's comfortable and familiar).

I feel like the kind of fun you speak to here is increasingly common and may be the only type of fun some people actually have but I feel like the idea of challenge doesn't capture all possibilities.

I think the question here would be "Is a dopamine hit both the necessary and sufficient condition of fun?" In other words, even if a dopamine hit is always part of fun, is that all it is? Why does it give us a dopamine hit? What behaviours is it encouraging and why?

I would agree that there were some things people were far too angry about that barely mattered. The excessive fighting over the mask thing was definitely the biggest.

That said, in BC rules were so strict at several points that you couldn't see anyone outside of family living with you, regardless of how you did it (ex: meet up in a park and stand 2m apart? Not good enough. Realistically? Near-zero risk). Rules regarding parents in old folks homes were so draconian that parents passed away without their children being able to see them. Quite a few people offed themselves too.

Staying in Japan I was able to, short of bigger social events, avoiding travel to major centres (I did once to buy a car) and wearing a mask, live reasonably similarly to how I did pre-Corona (in a city of ~90,000). So the contrast was quite stark when I heard about how things were in the west.

Right, so I think you could push it even further than what I said. Maybe something more qualitative like "What are you willing to give up to help others?"

That said you can also go too far the other way and say that a very rich person who does or doesn't give away things hadn't really giving up much, but we certainly would want to say a rich person giving away 90% of their disposable income is still doing something good. (And practically speaking it's going to have almost as good of an outcome if they gave to the point of diminishing their well-being).

Your angle here is actually getting really close to Peter Singer's Famine, Affluence and Morality. (Personally I stop a little short of where he's at, but I think your position more closely resembles his).

I think part of the former may be a matter of culture and translation. In many languages and cultures the common sense interpretation of the former is equivalent to including the latter. (I would read the latter as how you would word a written rule or law people are going to try to get around). Some might suggest that "love others as you would love yourself," is of such weight that it automatically includes not doing obviously bad things. I tend to favor "laymen's" interpretations over "letter of the law," style, particularly since in the original context of the golden rule the people who were the problem themselves (Pharisees) were of the latter type.

I think you might find "evolutionary ethics" to be interesting - it's probably the biggest new theory in ethics in the last few hundred years. Really interesting stuff.

Not deeply studied but some very early pre-linguistic studies showing babies only a few months old essentially having something resembling a concept of fairness/justice/trust. The idea is essentially that much like language most people have at least some very general moral predispositions. Really fascinating stuff.

I think that's probably the standard sentiment but I do think a "somewhat less strict approach in some cases," might have been better.

There's this sort of thing in leadership/negotiation where if you show that you feel people are untrustworthy and you're too strict with them, a good portion will essentially tell you where to go and how to get there by completely ignoring your demands. I feel as though there were at least some areas where we could have borrowed at least a little from that idea.

Personally I don't mind upvotes as much as downvotes. I think if you get rid of the latter it gets rid of a lot of toxic behaviour. (Upvoting your comment for fantasy league points).