Ask A Genius 149 – Biology Trumps Social Constructivism
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/04/15
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Rick Rosner: People use Tinder sometimes for romantic purposes. Not just for a fuck buddy at 11:30 at night. Grindr is totally thought of as for finding fuck buddies, but even Grindr – I just saw online that they are bringing out an online magazine.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: [Laughing].
RR: A lifestyle magazine because they are hoping tode-emphasize that it is something that you simply use to have sex with people. There are ones that are not explicitly for sex like Match.com, Plenty of Fish, Christian Mingle. There are dozens of them. They let you to some extent fine tune your criteria. They have done a lot of the criteria for you. You don’t have to figure out what might be important for you.
SDJ: There has been a huge social experiment in Western countries, Nordic countries especially. So some of the wealthiest, freest countries on Earth by measures that are internationally well-respected: measuring democracy (measures of freedom in other words) and measures of wealth (so you can do what you want with your life, build your own life)—because when you’re arguing for biology being in charge, then you’re arguing against a social constructivist view, basically.
Those are the two main categories. The one big piece of evidence that supports you, highly, is that the more free, in terms of the rights that are granted to people, as well as the money to do what you want that an individual citizen has or a general citizenry have, men and women, if you categorize them by sex, the greater the divide becomes between them. And so what you would think would be genetic actually exemplifies itself more. The social constructivist would say—
RR: Hold on, say in simple terms what you’re trying to say here.
SDJ: Sure! It’s your environment or it’s your genetics. If you have more freedom in a society, you would expect that the sexes would, on a social constructivist view, go closer together in terms of their preferences and what they do with their lives and how they build their lives. What happens is the opposite, which is the biological view, which is what you’re saying.
RR: Which is what—you’re saying that when you look at free societies, men and women’s behaviours remain kind of differentiated.
SDJ: Not only remain differentiated, but even more so.
RR: They become even more. Guys become even more playas and horndogs, and women become—
SDJ: That’s the face value. That’s the simple view of men and women. Full-breadth men and full-breadth women of what would be considered men and women by most views, women become more feminine and men become more masculine. I do not mean more ‘macho.’
RR: They have more signifiers. Guys lift more weights, drive pickup trucks. Women may dress girlishly.
SDJ: Maybe not “girlishly,” but maybe adultly feminine.
RR: Heels, skirts.
SDJ: So what I was more pointing out was two views, it is either more environment or it is more biology. Biology is what you’re saying and I am agreeing there. You had a whole continent that was a big experiment. By many, many metrics, well-regarded, freer, wealthier societies – Western, Nordic, Scandinavian countries, men and women’s differences don’t attenuate. Men and women do not become more alike. They become more different. So biology is in charge. Biology is really in charge.
RR: Yea, what gives people girl boners and boy boners.
SDJ: [Laughing] Sure.
RR: Yea, which goes against the idea that if you try to raise ungendered children, if you let boys play with dolls and girls play with army men or trucks, everybody will—that’s the way everything is a social construct and gender roles are a social construct and girls will be as happy with toy trucks and boys will be as happy with dolls, but when they actually set up experiments. Boys still like trucks and girls still like dolls.
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