Hormones for toy choice

The effect of hormones on reproductive behavior in nonhuman species has been extensively demonstrated (ie giving testosterone in utero to females during the aptly named “critical period” results in some pretty unsurprising results in mice, etc.) so I don’t see why it is unserious to believe that hormonal effects on human reproductive behavior exist. From there to toys and other gendered play patterns is really not that dramatic a step despite the snark…Moreover being a creationist on sexual identity is hardly a progressive stance either given its association with converting gays, etc…

Apparently, gender-specific behaviour is entirely socially determined.

Oh, I wouldn’t put this down to any complex philosophy of gender identity on the part of Mr. Bertram. It is just the usual misogyny of thinking that a boy wanting to do girly things is laughable on the grounds that “feminine = inferior”.

Confession time. My little lad (2 and 2 months) is a complete alpha male, who can smell out fear in other children and dominates kids 3 and more years older than him. Biting, fighting, pulling, pushing, and generally terrorising. Its horrific. BUT at home….he pushes a stroller around with a baby in ti, changes its daipers, kisses and puts it to bed; he plays almost exclusively with girls toys (despite having been ample numbers of boys toys.

I agree with Chris this time, it’s a ludicrous leap that takes culture for granted. What gender are coffee sets? Does pollution explain Judith Butler?

There’s a vaguely comic thread running through the article, though, that’s at odds with the serious environmental message:
baby boys born to women exposed to widespread chemicals in pregnancy are born with smaller penises and feminised genitals.
“This research shows that the basic male tool kit is under threat,”
– that’s pure Spike Milligan.

This guy has been studying this issue for a very long time, and is famous for the quote before Congress quite a while ago: ‘Every man in this room is half the man his grandfather was.’

http://www.rgp.ufl.edu/publications/explore/v11n3/story1.html

Its a seriously significant story and anyone who does not think testosterone (or lack thereof) does not influence behavior is more than a bit delusional. I have watched this story for years and it seems to get very little play in the news. I find that amazing.

Chris:

In that case you have missed the point. They toy thing is just a symptom. What the research is asking, and the article stumbling around, is whether exposure to certain chemicals increases the likelihood that boys will grow up transgender. (It doesn’t ask the same question about girls because that would probably involve different chemicals.) If you think that’s not “serious”, well, you won’t be alone. There are plenty of Sun readers who will agree with you. But I can assure you that if this is a real phenomenon then it is very serious for the people affected.

Chris:

You are just digging a deeper and deeper hole. However, it is gone midnight in California so I think I’ll leave it to others to try to explain.

Could some others step in and explain Cheryl’s point? From my perspective Chris hasn’t dug any sort of hole. And even if he is underplaying the very serious issue of increased incidences of boys becoming transgendered (which in and of itself is significant but not in any clearcut sense a bad thing), how does that make him a misogynist?

Seems to me that Sun readers would be among the most concerned about their little boys not wanting to be boys anymore.

I’m not sure I’d characterize the article as “otherwise serious”. All this stuff about evolution being “disrupted” by these chemicals in the environment… sort of like talking about the surface of the ocean being “disrupted” by waves, right? The ecosystem exhibiting biological shifts following changes in the environment IS evolution.

I love the research that aims to demonstate that gendered toy choice is innate based on monkey preferences (http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2002-12/tau-tca121002.php). Apparently in the environment of evolutionary adaptation girl monkeys liked pots. Cheryl, Chris was not saying that gender discimination is not serious. He was saying that we can’t take research like this seriously; ie, take its conclusions as prima facie sound. Of course there are other grounds for taking it seriously: its a symptom of a serious problem.

(I’m not trying to make the standard internet slam-dunk “Who cares if claim X which you quote is absurd there is a similar-sounding claim Y which I can defend” but I don’t really see the absurdity in the sentence you quote although I don’t think it is very clearly written.)

I’m not. Just ask the milkman!

Where is the determinism or essentialism here?

In the assumption that teaset play is worrisome?

Resisting peer pressure is explained by chemical imbalances?

Where do you see an assumption that it is worrisome?

In the article where it’s part of a long catalogue of events which are meant to be paired with phrases like “Even more ominously for humanity”.

Hearing this from way outside the academy, it sounds like it’s happening in a social context that’s about biology and something like a spontaneous culture. A culture that exists on its own terms, rising out of something like an organic human social progression.
But it isn’t is it? It’s a borg-culture now, caught up in feedback loops of artificial values that originate in mercantile intention, anxieties developed to stimulate demand.
Create a need, fill it.
The common folk have a scienceless attitude toward bacteria that’s similarly false and artificially created, baseless fears teased up then quieted down by “antibacterial” household cleaning products.
Gender i.d. fear is artificially induced, then the gender i.d. affirmations are marketed.
That the anxiety existed before there was anything like the cultural dominance of artificially-induced commodified values we have now just means the same scam was being run all along, only before it wasn’t about Barbie, it was about serving the patriarchy. Now it’s both.

(I’m not trying to suggest that sexual identity is in anyway similar to a height. Perhaps I should have chosen extroversion/introversion.)

On the savannah, cavemen did the hunting, while caveladies were responsible for fixing the cavetea.

The full text of the paper is here.

Note that the description of the results in terms of tea-sets is false: There was no effect of PCB exposure on the frequency of feminine play (presumably including tea parties), only on masculine play.

More importantly, the effects are extremely weak. Look at the scatterplots on page 3: If, like Cheryl, you feel that there is a major public interest in ensuring that boys continue to engage in correctly masculine play, PCBs are not the main thing you should be worrying about.

Okay, I’m baffled. Why would establishing that chemical exposure can influence children’s tendency to engage in gendered play ‘affirm the biological innateness of sex roles’? Consider the hypothetical case above where the factor under study was extroversion/introversion. Would a parallel result be evidence that these characteristics are (entirely? mostly?) genetically determined? I don’t think so.

Actually, I am worried about birth defects, lower levels of intelligence and the impairment of our ability to reproduce. PCBs (and a host of other chemicals) do terrible things to pretty much all living things, including the human in utero. Behavioral changes are just part of the spectrum of damage and are noted in other species.

People working in heavy industry (or crappy parts of the city or in agricultural areas with heavy concentrations of pesticide use) are disadvantaged environmentally, economically and politically. There should be a strong public interest in knowing the full extent of what chemicals are doing to their (and our) children.

Lemuel, if you believe the study is flawed, fine. Likewise, you are right to say that all they have (purported to have) demonstrated is a correlation. But that is all the sentence quoted in this post says, right?

Yes, ‘biological does not equal genetic’, but why does this affect my point? You said that this study ‘affirms the biological innateness of sex roles’. Others have used phrases like ‘hard-wired’ and ‘biologically determined’. Would the study I have described affirm the biological innateness of extroversion, show that extroversion is hard-wired, or that it is biologically determined? As I said, I don’t think it would. All I think it would show is that extroversion can be influenced by exposure to chemicals.

lemuel:

Thanks for taking the time to find and read the paper. Sloppy experiment design and sloppy interpretation of the results are always good reasons to be skeptical of a piece of research. And if it turns out that these chemicals have no effect on humans then I for one will be greatly relieved. (The effects on other species are much clearer, but I think we are all agreed on that.)

And you are absolutely right that these mechanisms are incredibly complex. No one (I hope) is suggesting that exposure to particular chemicals automatically produces specific behaviors. What you might be able to show is that the incidence of transgender children is (statistically) significantly higher if the mother has been exposed to the chemical, and if that was the case then a whole lot more science would need to be done to establish a mechanism. But in the meantime that might be sufficient evidence to worry about the chemical.

Chris @22,

my snark wasn’t meant to be offensive (at least, not towards Cheryl). It was meant to tweak her a bit for being, well, hypersensitive, insofar as she characterised the mere observation that PCB exposure makes boys more inclined to do things more often expected of girls as ‘the usual misogyny of thinking that a boy wanting to do girly things is laughable on the grounds that “feminine = inferior”.’

It doesn’t matter, from this perspective, whether the reported observation is factually correct, nor whether toy preferences more common in girls than boys are determined biologically, culturally or through some mixture of both. You just can’t fairly read ‘we note that increased levels of certain chemicals correlate with a greater likelihood of boys doing things otherwise more common in girls’ as ‘things that girls do are inferior’. (And the reference to Godlstein was meant to turn Cheryl’s accusation that the observation is tantamount to saying ‘feminine = inferior’ on its head, as the indisputably hypersensitive Godlstein is indisputably the most masculine man who ever bestrode this planet like a Colossus.)

So apologies, Cheryl, if you took offence at my snark; and if you didn’t, apologies in any event to Chris, for taking offence on your behalf. If it’s any recompense, I certainly agree with you that too many parents would worry about their son if he played with a doll; and I agree that it is a pity they’d do so. (Indeed, I think there are not one but two reasons why they are wrong.)

Mrs Tilton:

The evidence is circumstantial rather than direct. If you look at the negative attitudes towards transgender people, and in particular the huge imbalance of emphasis on male-to-female transitions rather than female-to-male, then you’ll quickly realize that much of this is based on the idea that a woman wanting to be more like a man is only natural, but a man wanting to be more like a woman is weird, icky and demeaning. Go read Julia Serano for detailed analysis.

So as with the biology I claim proof by probability rather than a direct causal factor. But if you want to ping me for choosing a fairly extreme explanation for Chris’s attitude in order to get him to think about the issue then I may well confess.

And no, I wasn’t offended, but thanks for apologizing anyway.

If gender identities are socially constructed (in our culture boys tend to play with guns and girls tend to play with tea sets but it could just as well be the other way around) then there is a process of socialisation by which individuals with biological sex M are conditioned to take on gender behaviour G and this happens with probability p (high but less than one). What is crazy or otherwise objectionable in thinking that exposure to some chemical could interfere with this process, thus lowering the probability that the socially conditioned behaviour G gets adopted? And, especially, why would someone who thinks this be committed to the view that gender identies are biologically determined? It seems clear that they wouldn’t be.

As usual, it’s confusing the curve for a single point. We see this grievously and gratuitously in any and all discussions of the infamous ‘bell curve’ assertions about race and intelligence. Any scientific value such studies might have is negated by the practice of both opponents and advocates of such measures implicitly and explicitly suggesting that a shifted peak in a curve equates to a uniform superiority/inferiority – which is, according to taste, either natural and right or abhorrent and wrong. It seems that any study which touches on any connection between biology, behaviour and either gender or race is doomed from the start to be swamped by people who can’t separate data from desired outcomes. It’s happening with global warming, too, obviously. One is sometimes tempted to think that public comment on any science with policy implications ought to be banned. But then I don’t trust the scientists either…

Unreleased data on the benefits of Enzyte being proportionally enhanced to the amount of perchlorate in the water supply may leak out soon. Expect a stiff upper lip to new regulations aimed at it’s reduction.

Cheryl, Engels

How do I even approach this?

Do I start with the science: pointing out the measurable cognitive differences are small and variances are large? And don’t give me any fMRI bullshit. The mind is what the brain does and the brain is amazing plastic. Here is a beautiful example of that plasticity: http://individual.utoronto.ca/jingfeng1107/FengSpencePratt2007.pdf

That’s an example of the supposedly “innate” male advantage in spatial skills being significantly reduced by a couple of hours playing a FPS.

What bugs me the most about this stuff is that the “innate” gender role people keep revising their assessment of the proper gender roles so that they always just hover on the edge of anachronism. For the past 100 years the “natural” gender roles have always been those in force 40 years prior.

And its so easy to see why. It’s all politics: people yammering on about gender roles being innate slip so easily from minor differences to normative statements (ie “what women want”).

So frustrating.

If gender identities are socially constructed… then there is a process of socialisation by which individuals with biological sex M are conditioned to take on gender behaviour G and this happens with probability p (high but less than one). What is crazy or otherwise objectionable in thinking that exposure to some chemical could interfere with this process, thus lowering the probability that the socially conditioned behaviour G gets adopted?

Because there are lots of other socialisation processes going on with children as well. Why should this specific form of socialisation be affected and not others? I could understand hypothetically why some neurochemical effects on the brain might make all socialisation/conditioning more difficult e.g. by damaging IQ/concentration span, but it’s harder to see a mechanism by which only this very specific form of conditioning could be affected.

It’s well-established empirically that children born in autumn are overrepresented in school sports teams, while children born in summer are underrepresented. This effect can be found all the way through high school and beyond.

Now, you could spin out all sorts of biological explanations for this correlation — about, say, the dependence of pregnant women’s diet and activity elvel on the time of year — and ask, like Engels like if is “crazy or otherwise objectionable” to imagine that seasons could effect prenatal development in some way relevant to sports performance. But of course, no one does this, because we have a much better explanation for the effect: autumn born kids are the usually the oldest in their grade, so the biggest and most physically capable; coaches and other adults therefore give them more attention and encoruagement, and this early advantage cumulates over time.

In other words, the correlation is real, and it is biological — it’s a biological fact that a 6 year old is likely to be bigger and faster than a 5 year old — but it is entirely mediated by the social insitution of grouping kids into annual classes that start school in the fall. So efforts to think about (and shape policy around) a supposed direct link between season of birth and athletic ability would be a dead end.

As it happens, our society has no real investment in dividing people based on birthdates — there’s no one who’s social status or security or sense of self-worth depends on the date they were born, and we don’t have a division of labor based on certain roles of “Springs” and otehrs for “Winters” — so so there’s no strong attachment to a story that directly links season of birth with athletic success.

Gender, obviously, is a different story. There is a very strong tendency to ignore or overlook the specific social mediations that produce observed gender differences and imagine a channel that runs directly from gene to hormone to brain structure to behavior. This study is a perfect example: There is zero effort to investigate whther the presumed hormonal differences are the, or a, channel through which the correlation operates. (This is leaving aside the question of whether their dependent variable can be accurately described as “sex differences in play behavior”.) It is simply assumed.

lemuel:

I don’t think that there is much disagreement here. The central point is that research should stand or fall on the quality of the work, not on whether the conclusions are deemed politically correct, or whether people find the subject matter disturbing.

In this particular case there is a follow-on point that even dodgy science becomes a serious matter if people start peddling “cures” based on it.

The comment in engels in #56 was all about the way people tend to argue on the Internet. You know, saying things like “if input A cannot be proved to be 100% responsible for effect X then A cannot possibly have any influence on X whatsoever.” We wouldn’t say things like that here now, would we?

BTW lemuel – thanks for the children born in autumn argument. I’d heard that result before, but never noticed how applicable it was.

Adam:

I’m saying nothing of the sort. I think that most of the research on gender issues is complete crap, and as I said to lemuel above I’ll be very pleased if this study is also nonsense because it means we are not creating more transgender people. The only dog I have int his fight this this we should not dismiss a piece of research as “non-serious” simply because it is about boys doing girly things.

As for this:

Assuming that gender roles are biologically determined protects transgendered kids – but justifying the particular gender roles prevalent in contemporary society in biological term screws over everyone else.

Well, that’s a fine example of what I was talking to engels about. What you are saying here is that if we allow any biological component as an explanation of trangenderism then all gender must be a result of biology, which is ludicrous. The world does not have to be black and white.

And even if it was, so what? Are you saying that if science proved a biological origin for gender then we should ignore that result because you find it politically inconvenient? (And note here that I’m not saying that any such thing has been proved, not that I want it to be proved.)

Lemuel, yes, but in the made-up case you describe the social candidate explanation for the observed phenomena is obvious and well-known. In the one we are discussing, with all due respect to your conjectures about the homophobia of the Dutch working class, it is not. (The cases also aren’t parallel because in your hypothetical you accept that there is a genuine causal mechanism, albeit a socially mediated one, whereas in this case here the presence of causation is precisely what you are denying.) That’s not to say it isn’t true, but that it is not so obviously more plausible than the alternatives that thinking otherwise is ridiculous or morally suspect.

Magistra, so you think that gender identity and its associated patterns of behaviour have to be acquired solely by means of some generalised learning mechanism and specific biological/neural processes can not be involved? That may be true, but I don’t think it so obviously true as to warrant ruling out contrary views as crazy or objectionable.

I note that no-one has responded to my main point which was simply that whatever one’s position on these issues it is simply not correct to suggest that accepting the the existence of the correlation referred to in the post commits anyone to the view that gender roles are biologically determined, as Chris and Lemuel originally claimed.

Cheryl:

I am saying that if you justify existing gender roles in biological terms you are playing with fire. Once that meme is out there you don’t get to decide how those roles are defined. It will be you versus Dobson and Limbaugh…

Engels:

You’re demanding that Lemuel prove a negative. So I have a question for you:
Do you believe in UFOs? No? Can you prove they don’t exist?

I don’t see the “prove a negative” either.

“…on the belief that we can influence peoples behaviour with drugs”

I would say they proof of influence; just not reliable outcome, esp when factoring in “absolutely massive [often] confounding variable[s].”

@Righteous Bubba

Engels is saying that to condemn the assertion of a link between gender identity and chemicals in the absence of evidence supporting that link Lemuel must prove the link does not exist.

If that shit flew I’d have walking into a committee meeting years ago, asserted my model was valid, and challenged my committee prove me wrong or give me my PhD.