Humans have a nature
Two connected things I was wrong about when I was a hard liberal were human nature, and psychological sex differences.
Like most modern leftists, I believed humans were a tabula rasa. Temperament, "identity," personality, proclivities---all of these were made only by "socialization." (Who was doing the socializing, and where the socializing started without biology, of course, was never mentioned).
Obviously, I don’t think it’s only genes, directly expressed, that make us who and how we are. Early childhood treatment shapes a person in consequential ways, too.
Even more strongly, I believed this of what I considered "alleged" psychological sex differences. One had to believe that apparent sex differences were all socially constructed, and all "done by" and "imposed on" females by males, or one was morally suspect.
All of this was wrong. Humans have a nature. Men and women, on average, do have sex-typical psychology. Even though I'm one of those exceptions to the rule in some ways (as homosexuals usually are), it's still true. In other ways, I’m not an exception. When I asked my therapist for an outside observer’s point of view on my ways and temperament with regard to male/female-typical behavior, he said, “You may have some gay/effeminate mannerisms, but your style is straightforwardly male.”
The same can be said of many other homosexual men and women (and, of course, of some heterosexual people too). Even though we’re attracted to the same sex, that doesn’t mean that we don’t possess any of the psychological characteristics typical to the sex we are.
I find that other people who are exceptions---almost always women---cannot and will not accept the reality of sex differences in personality.
Well, I can tell you that the world makes more sense, people make more sense, when you accept what's obviously true.
These parts of our nature being true aren't oppression. They're not impositions on women or men. They're just facts. They're not prescriptive. They don't tell men or women what they "ought" or "must" do (we humans do that well enough on our own), they simply describe the general nature of the average sexed human.
Like
Comment
Share
Thanks, Mr Slocum, for the article and the podcast. Perhaps it’s not the patriarchy, nor even trans activists a lot of women have a problem with, it’s Mother Nature.
I'm reading "As Nature Made Him" about the boy who was raised as a girl and there's a lot of good information about the dueling "experts" talking about sex re-assignment surgery and how it wouldn't affect the child because they're a blank slate. The book also mentions feminists being happy with Dr. Money's proclamation that we don't have a nature. It's ridiculous. Feminists just want to be able to say they can do anything a man can, likely because they're jealous. Without jealousy, I imagine women would focus on accepting their nature and working with it rather than against it.