Koyori wrote...
ryuuhagoku wrote...
Wow, I totally agree with you (+rep later). I'm a biologist, and honestly, I regret that the information my kind has disseminated amongst the general public is being used to support views like the lock/key analogy. (Frankly, over 9/10 of the usages of evolution to back up a viewpoint in a non-scientific discussion which I've witnessed have been quite stupid, imo, and that's even before stepping foot in social Darwinist territory...)
tl;dr
I was quite pleased with several posts in this thread.
I'm a biologist as well, and while I agree that people mostly use evolutionary arguments incorrectly I'd rather side with them then people like Flaser who seems to think that the only difference between men and women is dicks and pussies, Or Fadetoblack who seems to thinks you can just completely disregard our sexual evolution and set a men = women in every single situation.
I also agree more or less completely with frodomir14. When I imagine being in the same situation as the friend walking in on two of my friends lying on each other I could react in the same way as her friend. But I could also say you go girl and sigh a bit at the guy, or I could tell them to get a room and in some cases I'd just walk out and pretend I hadn't seen anything, etc etc. All depending on who were lying there and what I think about them.
While I also don't agree that the only difference between men is women is the formation of 1 set of organs, I don't think evolutionary history should define our future behavior. It very much explains our past, but that past does not necessitate one particular future.
Okay, that may have sounded too vague and dreamy... What I mean is that, regardless of what bodies we are endowed with, we must all still strive for happiness in life, and sexual pleasure is one such happiness., one which is greatly enhanced by liberation from traditional sexual roles.
On the topic of stereotypes, I actually don't dislike them, most of the time. When presented with information, it is not only one's right, but also one's obligation to draw conclusions, however limited they may be. The wrong stems from not adjusting those conclusions in the face of incoming information.
Let me give you an example of a gender-bias I hold: with the exception of my grandmother, every female whom I have ever witnessed packing (for travel) has been quite slow. Therefore, when a female packing is related to my plans in some way, I expect a certain amount of delay. Now say I was to find a female who was a fast and efficient packer. Before I find anything to the contrary, it would be understandable for me to feel that she would take a long time, although I would be stupid to deny the other possibility. Once I witnessed her style of packing, it would be nothing short of imbecilic of me to insist that "Well, you're a woman, so you must be slow at packing."