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Protagoras comments on Open thread, August 5-11, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion

3 Post author: David_Gerard 05 August 2013 06:50AM

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Comment author: Protagoras 06 August 2013 03:15:17AM 9 points [-]

So feminism assumes that it is due to society that women can become pregnant and men can't? Most feminists I know are normal-reasonable-people on your dichotomy, though you also ignore the fact that the category of whether differences are desireable and whether they can be influenced are far more interesting and important than whether they are at present mostly due to society or biology. I know people have a strange tendency to act as if things due to society can be trivially changed by collective whim while biology is eternal and immutable, but however common such a view, it is clearly absurd. Medicine can make all sorts of adjustments to our biology, while social engineers have historically been more likely to have unintended effects or no effect at all than they have been to successfully transform their societies in the ways they desire.

Comment author: Viliam_Bur 11 August 2013 04:30:13PM 1 point [-]

So feminism assumes that it is due to society that women can become pregnant and men can't?

If men could get pregnant, they would already have invented a machine that would do the pregnancy for them. Or at least trying to invent such machine would be a high priority. But because it's a "women's job", no one cares.

Yeah, now give me some mansplaining about why machine pregnancy would be "against the nature" (just like homosexuality, or votes for women), but sitting all the day by the computer is a natural order or things.

So while originally it was a matter of biology, it is a social decision to keep things the same way in the 21st century. Check your privilege!

(Not completely serious, just trying to impersonate a feminist.)