Are these in opposition, at least as regards 2D:4D?

Well some of us have a tendency to idolatry, murder and adultery (which includes homosexuality) but who would applaud an Idolaters, Adulterers or Murders Pride Parade?

The difference being that the tendencies you’re talking about aren’t innate characteristics and really, the murder thing is all I really give a damn about. While I am not fond of people cheating on their partners, I don’t think it is as much a problem as you do. And given that you somehow equate homosexual sex as adultery, I assume what you actually mean is fornication – which if that is the case, I am all for celebrating positive sexuality – whether among married people or not.

As for idolatry, I could care less. I’m an atheist and really don’t buy into any of it.

Murder is a problem for me, but I would suspect that how you define murder and how I define murder are two different things altogether. We have parades every year, celebrating those who risked their lives or gave them, in the process of taking the lives of others. I am not a pacifist by any stretch of teh imagination, but I do recognize that there were a whole lot of murders committed by those men and women we celebrate every year. War is rife with murder – whether lawful or not, murder defines war.

Even African-American leaders said comparing demands for gay marriage to civil rights is inappropriate.

You mean like Coretta Scott King, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton? Oh wait, they themselves have equated gay rights with civil rights. Sure, some black leaders have come out rather strongly against gay rights, or at least the comparison of gay rights with civil rights, but that is because there is no monolithic African American/black community – any more than there is a caucasian community.

It is a stubborn demand by heterophobes to obfuscate the worldwideâ??and long traditionâ??of the acceptance of the meaning of marriage.

You mean the tradition of marriage only being for landed gentry? Or the tradition of marriage being between a man and his many wives? Or are you talking about the tradition of different types of marriage that include short term marriages – such as those that last roughly an hour? Or could you be talking about the long tradition of marriage that considers wives to be nothing more than chattel – including the husbands right to beat, rape and in some traditions even kill their wives?

I would note that accepting the very first tradition on the list, all of those forms of marriage exist in the world today. Every fucking one of them.

This has to do with obfuscation. What will NY do with polygamous “marriage,” transgender “marriages”, Man-Child “marriage” advocates, or “marriage” for those who practice bestiality?

Some of these are not at all like the others. I am all for consensual marriages that might include more than two partners and support the right of transgendered persons to marry (I should note that this is already legal in a whole lot of jurisdictions, as they recognize the gender of the person, not the sex they were born with). On the other hand, comparing gay marriage to non-consensual and even non-human relations is just fucking sick. But what should we expect from a bigoted fucking asshole?

Even African-American leaders said comparing demands for gay marriage to civil rights is inappropriate.

It is a stubborn demand by heterophobes to obfuscate the worldwideâ??and long traditionâ??of the acceptance of the meaning of marriage.

This has to do with obfuscation. What will NY do with polygamous “marriage,” transgender “marriages”, Man-Child “marriage” advocates, or “marriage” for those who practice bestiality?

See where we are soon headed?

I will do my best to dig through my mess of a PDF archive when I have power at home again and can actually access and search it. My email is duwayne dot brayton at gmail – I cannot promise I will get to it quickly, as I am absent minded, taking classes this summer and raising two boys myself – but I will try to get to it as soon as possible. I am not sure if none of the papers are paywalled, but I know most would be.

I can say that they aren’t definitive, as none have utilized large enough samples (finding appropriate samples is obviously not easy for this type of study) and at least two of them were likely confounded by respondent bias. However, there was a study that actually just went through all the respondent data available from four different studies and attempted to eliminate cases where respondent bias was likely an issue.

But I have read through papers on six different studies and a lit review that explored two others I hadn’t read. For all the potential flaws, most of the studies produced consistent results, within an acceptable margin of error. There was one that was definitely an outlier and it isn’t at all obvious why it was outlier, unless the sample was from a statistically anomalous geographic area. Across teh board it found considerably higher rates of substance abuse.

I would also note that one of the reasons I am more comfortable accepting these results, is that they are consistent with what we now understand about neuroplasticity. Specifically, it is consistent with what we understand about the neural development of small children and their ability to integrate such very subtle behavioral cues.

That said, this is far from the end-all of how substance abuse can become a problem for individuals. There is a growing body of evidence that would suggest many, possibly most cases of substance abuse disorders are the result of the comorbidity of other mental illness – with a particularly strong correlation found between substance use disorders and mood disorders. Schizophrenia is also correlated with substance abuse to the extent that the only reason that not all people with schizophrenia engage in substance abuse is likely a lack of exposure.

On the topic of Judith Harris’ research, it is my understanding that she doesn’t do a great job of accounting for what we now know about how much children pick up at an extremely early age. And I am also not claiming that addictive behaviors are entirely dependent on parental influences. What I am claiming, is that parents have a very profound influence on personality and some behavioral traits at a very young age – as in infancy.

That said, I have never read “The Nurture Assumption,” or all that much of her work. I sincerely doubt the level of certainty she puts into her assertions, but also would not be surprised if ultimately peers and even more, our cultural context have a stronger influence on the development of behavioral traits than parents do – though I would assume that parents/peers are probably closer to equal in influence, while cultural context has a stronger influence than either.

My point though, is that parents/primary caregivers have the strongest influence over the most pervasive (ie. far reaching, most firmly entrenched) personality/behavioral traits, because they have the most influence at the period when such traits have the strongest impact.

But I don’t get how evolutionarily based sex differences would influence other things, like interest in cooking (though I suppose there is a theory (“Catching Fire”) supporting cooking as evolutionarily female),

Yeah, I was involved int he Catching Fire research (co-authored the first paper on it, etc.). I would have thought orientation towards cooking would be totally non-genetic, and I still think that. A sub culture can instantly reverse roles or disconnect gender with cooking, it seems. At the same time, there is not a single traditional culture where women don’t do the primary cooking, and only a handful where men do any at all, and that is always in some ritual setting. That is a gender difference that as far as I can tell is entirely an emergent property of culture and circumstantial yet is tied to our deep evolutionary history and displays almost no cultural variation, and it is an extremely important activity.

Great insights from your twin girls!

I completely agree. We’re not even trying for gender-neutral – we gave them girls’ names, not gender-neutral ones, and don’t discourage dresses, and, in fact, put them in dresses for special occasions before they even had any say about it. But within the context of acknowledging their being girls and going along with certain conventions – at least surface ones, like names and clothes – I want them to get the message that they can be interested in anything, be good at anything, and also not be obligated to be interested in or good at anything, because of their gender. Instead of attempting androgyny (as I did in my early twenties!), what we see them engaging in is a mixture of signifiers and interests. I mean, dresses are fun, but so are power drills. Power drills aren’t allowed yet, but pretend drills are.

It is absolutely impossible to raise a child to be gender neutral, unless you somehow manage complete gender neutrality at home and never take them outside the house – at least anywhere they will see other humans, or evidence of other humans. It is absolutely amazing how subtle the cues kids can integrate can be. There is a great deal of evidence that would suggest that, for example, even if they are not a natural child of said adult, children raised by someone who used to engage in addictive behaviors have a significantly elevated risk for substance abuse. Likewise, children of substance abusing parents who are raised by others do not have as significantly elevated a risk for substance abuse, as those raised by parents who did, or currently do.

My point is, is that the subtle behavioral cues coming from someone who is no longer engaging in substance abuse, are enough to increase the risk of substance abuse (relevant only to my example, this has led to great research in how we might mitigate this risk). Every bit of research I have read indicates that gender neutrality in child rearing is near enough to impossible, to simply state that it is impossible. Especially as the very few examples that might be considered successful, are well within the range for “naturally” occurring transgender.

The problem with this is that very young children are able to suck up virtually every cue around them. The younger they are, the more they are taking from their environment and the more firmly entrenched everything becomes in their neural pathways.

What I tend to think is far more important than gender neutrality (that is not to say that raising them with that in mind is bad – I do that with my two boys, the youngest of whom has decided that when he wants what he thinks mama should provide, he simply calls me mama), is maintaining relevant communication skills with your children and making sure that they understand why this is important to you – a conversation that should happen often and very honestly over the years. That is likely to have far more impact than attempting gender neutrality.

That said, it will be considerably more effective if you continue with the gender neutrality. While it is unlikely to actually produce a gender neutral person, it does increase the likelihood of producing a more tolerant person, whose tolerance won’t be subject to the whims of those rebellious phases. And of course it must always be understood that no matter what you do, it is always a crapshoot – kids have this maddening tendency to be, well, human and eventually engage in their own decisionmaking.

I have three-year-old twin daughters. We’re trying to raise them in a way that is not constrictive regarding gender and “gender-based” choices. (I see parents with boys struggling with this more, since the punishments for being a boy with female-identified interests are much harsher.) We were lucky to inherit some boy-identified toys, such as Bob the Builder tools and trucks. (We don’t watch TV, so we just have the books and toys.) They are interested in tools and trucks as a result. They are not obsessed with construction vehicles, as some boys are, but have a healthy interest.

They haven’t talked much about what’s a boy or girl thing to be interested in, but they got the clothes thing right out of the gate. Sometimes they want to dress “like a boy” and sometimes only a dress will do. Sometimes they wear something more gender-neutral, but because the source of our hand-me-downs doesn’t provide many such choices, usually their outfits are pretty gendered (flowers, pastels, and such). When they were only two, I was surprised at how clearly they could ID a “boy” vs. a “girl” sock. They correctly identified the ones with athletic stripes and motifs as “boy,” and would either favor or disfavor that choice depending on whether they wanted to “look like a boy” that day. I’d never talked about clothes as being “boy” or “girl”; they must have picked this up from observing what kids wore at play groups.

Your point about certain gender preference – like color or clothing – being clearly culture-based rather than innate (as evidenced by the variability among cultures of gender assignment of such) is very apt. The socks example falls into this category, and my girls demonstrate how early kids pick up on and follow these cues – even when encouraged *not* to by their parents.

Based on our evolutionary past, I suppose I could accept that girls might be slightly more inclined toward more nurturing activities, like playing with dolls, and boys more toward combat or hunting-related types of play (like sports, war games, maybe even interest in large vehicles). But I don’t get how evolutionarily based sex differences would influence other things, like interest in cooking (though I suppose there is a theory (“Catching Fire”) supporting cooking as evolutionarily female), using toy tools, blocks, crafts, computers, adornment, and such. I think much of gender preferences is modeling or subtle/not-so-subtle encouragement or discouragement, like which toys are given to kids and what they see other kids playing with – whether in real life, in TV ads, or on the box of said toy. I’m not very handy, but I’m proactive, so my daughters see me getting out the toolbox pretty regularly to tighten or hammer this or that thing, and so they associate tools with me. In fact, one of them asked me recently “does Daddy use tools?” They like playing with tools, they like playing with blocks, they like playing with dolls, they like wearing fancy dresses, and they also like wearing their baseball caps.