A thought experiment regarding biological reductionism

[Queercommie Girl]

Something I thought about in response to a post in the "Gay Pride" thread in OI. See also:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2157075&postcount=114

Consider the following thought experiment:

Take away any considerations of ethics, morality, welfare or political ideology. The only consideration is one of logical strategy.

There are 2 nation-states. In nation-state A there are very rigid and fixed gender roles, something more extreme than even what we have in Saudi Arabia at the moment. In nation-state B "gender" does not exist as a social construct. Men and women are treated exactly the same in every single way, as much as it is biologically possible. (Assuming the basic biological division between men and women still exist)

Now suppose nation-states A and B are in direct competition with each other. The competition is "full-spectrum": military, economic, cultural. Also suppose that in every other way: technological level, economic development, even basic culture and language, the two nations are completely identical with each other. The only difference between A and B is in the role "gender" play in their respective societies.

Which nation do you think will gain the upper hand in this competition? It would be stupid, IMO, for anyone to say that nation A will definitely come out ahead. One cannot be absolutely sure that nation B will prevail either, but if I have money I would certainly bet on B rather than A.

What this thought experiment demonstrates is that simplistic logical reductionism does not usually translate to concrete strategic advantages in real-life. Reductionism is not just philosophically problematic and ethically unsound, it is also strategically stupid.

It is not a coincedence that advanced capitalist countries generally tend to have more equal gender roles in society compared with semi-feudal countries like Saudi Arabia. The feudal lords once thought that "God-given natural law" is literally sacred and could never be violated, but their social order was smashed by advances in capitalist industry.

If the only thing humans ever did was to "obey the natural law" instead of thinking about how to transform the world around us, the human species would never have evolved in the first place. The ability to transform the world rather than just bowing down to its laws is the evolutionary specialisation of homo sapiens. It's what has given our species a distinct evolutionary advantage, like the speed of a cheetah, the strength of a bear, or the keen eyesight of an eagle.

P.S.: Going back to the thought experiment, it would be logical to assume that in principle the kind of nation that would have the most competitive advantage in the strategic sense (as far as "gender roles" are concerned) is neither A nor B, but a nation which is somewhere in-between. This would seem to make sense, but I would say such a nation would be significantly closer to B than to A. (Let's call this nation C)

Also, if trans-humanist technologies in the future which could remove the basic biological division between men and women emerge, then it would be unclear whether nation B or C would have the most advantage.

[pastradamus]

WHY? WHY would you want to eliminate the basic biological division between men and women? It whats different that make's life interesting. Not what is bland and the same.

[The Vegan Marxist]

WHY? WHY would you want to eliminate the basic biological division between men and women? It whats different that make's life interesting. Not what is bland and the same.

Soooo...in your opinion, gay couples' relationships are "bland"? Since, after all, it would be no different if the biological division between men and women were eliminated.

[Queercommie Girl]

WHY? WHY would you want to eliminate the basic biological division between men and women? It whats different that make's life interesting. Not what is bland and the same.

It's not something to be imposed on everyone of course, at no point did I actually say "hey let's make a general policy to get ride of all biological differences between men and women". This kind of top-down imposition wouldn't be possible within a genuinely democratic society anyway.

But then there are people who are actually genderqueer, as in they don't consider themselves to be either solely male or female. There are people who are intersexed. Hypothetically suppose in the future the technology to transcend the basic divisions of male and female biologically emerges, there might indeed be some people who wish to utilise it, and I think they should have the democratic right to do so.

It's one thing to argue against imposing the removal of biological gender on people, it's the completely opposite thing to impose the binary biological differentiation of gender on everyone, even though some people do actually wish to transcend it. In the former case one is defending mass democracy, in the latter case one is violating it.

As long as genderqueer people are not forcing or coercing anyone else to "transcend biological sex", they should have the right to do so themselves.

(This is all hypothetical of course, it's not like the technology for this kind of thing is available now or is likely to be available in the immediate future)

But if you actually read my post, I was pointing out that even assuming the basic biological division between the sexes exists, there is still a lot of "gender" (in the social sense, rather than biological) that can be "abolished" anyway.

BTW, if you don't like "blandness", wouldn't it be even less bland with more than 2 genders? It's not about abolishing gender in a negative sense, it's about abolishing rigid binary gender in a positive sense.

[Queercommie Girl]

Soooo...in your opinion, gay couples' relationships are "bland"? Since, after all, it would be no different if the biological division between men and women were eliminated.

Well technically the two aren't exactly the same, I was more thinking about genderqueer and intersex people.

But the main point of my post isn't actually "abolishing biological gender", that was added at the end as something interesting to ponder about. My main point is that biological reductionism - i.e. thinking that men and women should have rigid and fixed "gender roles" in society due to their underlying biological differences, is wrong, reactionary and also strategically stupid.

We can abolish a lot of "gender differences" in the social sense without doing anything to the underlying biological basis at all.

I'm not saying people can't be "macho" or "femme" if they choose to be, but people should really have the freedom to choose, rather than simply bound by the biological sex of their birth. (I.e. since A was born a man then he can't act "femme" or since B was born a woman then she can't act "macho" etc)