Is the male or female more of a creature of nature, are they equal or not?

[Madame Adequate]

Anyway I thought the consensus on nature vs. nurture was "A little from column A, a little from column B"? And that regardless of broad trends there are always exceptions for a multitude of reasons?

People are missing out on the fact that "nurture" is a direct result of "nature". Society and culture just didn't drop out of outer space, they're the result of human interactions caused by our biology.

That isn't reductionist to the point of uselessness at all

[The Summoner of Leviathan]

No the point of my example was that even though my niece was exposed to neutral or even male things she still liked the stereotypical female like of flowers.

Scott don't talk about my family as if you know them. My sister painted and designed her entire bathroom in a spiderman theme. If anything the girl should have been climbing walls not picking flowers. The point of my example wasn't "well she probably saw something on tv and was like that." No the point was she was exposed to neutral things yet she still showed a more feminine personality, NATURALLY.

The activity of picking flowers is not inherently feminine. The feminine value given to the activity is arbitrary and based on gender roles and ideals, not inherent to the female sex. What we value as feminine is completely based on social values. In other words, the activity in and of itself is not feminine, you are merely saying it is feminine and giving it feminine values.

Like rubah said her nephew likes picking flowers too. So did I as a kid. Guys can like picking flowers, it is just not viewed as a "masculine" thing, depending on social context.

[Freya]

I have dealt with a LOT of little kids. More often than not a little girl will pick them and say "pretty?" than a boy pick them and say "pretty?". Hence why I would say it's a more girlish thing to do. FROM MY EXPERIENCES it's a girly thing to do. Social construct my ass, it just happens. Girls do it more often than boys.

[rubah]

However, all your experience amounts to only anecdotes and possibly a correlation. To be able to get anywhere close to a definitive idea, one would have to conduct some sort of experiment a la qwerty's suggestion. Now don't go getting defensive because I'm agreeing with him It's just that however large your sample size, you have no control group, so you can't test for "natural with no pre-formed notions" versus "natural, but with pre-formed notions". Your experience with your niece is a step in the right direction, but unfortunately is statistically worthless. It could just be that she naturally favored a lot of things that are girlish. It could be that a girl in the next town with identical experiences just naturally favored many things that are boyish. Unless we have a larger sample size, we can't tell the outliers from the patterns.

How do you define girlish and boyish? What intrinsic characteristics of flowers, colors, baby dolls, action figures define these gendered qualities? Are flowers delicate, beautiful, and gentle? The first two, perhaps, but plants are engaged in a deadly struggle to stay alive. One might not want to refer to them as gentle. As others have pointed out, although now I can't recall whether it was in this thread or on another site, boys need to learn to be dads just as much as girls need to learn to be mothers. Girls also come in all sorts of testosterone levels, and boys with all sorts of estrogen levels. What about children born with too many or malformed sex chromosomes?

It's far too complicated to be able to reduce it to pat arguments, really

[Freya]

I hate the nature v. nurture bs arguments. Which is all what this whole thread is about. A lot posters in this thread seem to be pro-nurture without even recognizing the nature side of things. This is me bowing out cause I don't want to argue the bs more. It's an argument that can just keep going.

[Quindiana Jones]

What happens if I say that women are great and better than men because they have nicer tits?

Then we'd know you're a liar cos you've blatently got the nicest tits in the land.

Doink doink doink.

[rubah]

I find it very hard to believe that these sorts of things are hard-grained into our DNA, kaycee. And that is what is required for this all to be born from our human natures. That would be the purpose of some sort of test or experiment, to be able to see distinctly and without bias whether there is a nature side of things. Until there is, and while things can be very well explained with a cause-effect relationship, that is what I will humor myself in believing. I don't know why you think it is BS, and I'm sorry that you seem to think I and others are close-minded, but you should acknowledge that your own position suffers from being close-minded as well.

[qwertysaur]

I have dealt with a LOT of little kids. More often than not a little girl will pick them and say "pretty?" than a boy pick them and say "pretty?". Hence why I would say it's a more girlish thing to do. FROM MY EXPERIENCES it's a girly thing to do. Social construct my ass, it just happens. Girls do it more often than boys.

In a society that deems it good for girls to do it and bad for boys. The data you have collected through your living experience has what is known as Bias. The data you have collected most likely is biased to lead to more girls having positive reactions to flowers than boys. Because all the girls and boys are from the same culture and are subject to the same expectation from society to like or dislike certain things.

[Freya]

Thanks guys.

[Lola Cat]

I think boys and grls are both inferior to cats!!!!

IMMA CAT mrrrewr

[Jessweeee♪]

Illiterate Withdrawal » Nature vs. nurture: Identical Twins Raised Apart
Just some examples of how powerful the "nature" part of it can be. I've heard a couple of these from a more reliable source, so I think they are legit. I think should your nurturing contradict your nature strongly enough it won't really show itself much, but for the most part it's a bit of both.

[Madame Adequate]

Illiterate Withdrawal » Nature vs. nurture: Identical Twins Raised Apart
Just some examples of how powerful the "nature" part of it can be. I've heard a couple of these from a more reliable source, so I think they are legit. I think should your nurturing contradict your nature strongly enough it won't really show itself much, but for the most part it's a bit of both.

A given pair of identical twins has a 50% chance of liking aviator glasses?

But I agree 'cause I linked to something making a similar point. I know we have this deep aversion to being told anything is deterministic about us - I know that better than anyone seeing as Dr. Aum turned me into a blibbering wreck when he convinced me determinism was true for a week or two - but whether people like it or not nature exists.

[Quindiana Jones]

Determinists are bastards. xD

[Raistlin]

Illiterate Withdrawal » Nature vs. nurture: Identical Twins Raised Apart
Just some examples of how powerful the "nature" part of it can be. I've heard a couple of these from a more reliable source, so I think they are legit. I think should your nurturing contradict your nature strongly enough it won't really show itself much, but for the most part it's a bit of both.

Anecdotal evidence = worthless.

I'm not saying nature is not powerful; as I said, tens of thousands of years human development with weaker tribes dying off and certain tribes living undoubtedly instilled certain behavior into people simply due to natural selection. Where I am skeptical is when people go further beyond the general to claiming specific tastes are biologically determined, (e.g., that two twins separated from birth both wearing aviators is anything remotely significant).

[rubah]

twins having similar tastes I can deal with. Predicting tastes because of their gender is something I can't, at least right now.