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RE: May I “Mansplain” Something for a Minute, Please?
Here's the thing. Once you call toxic masculinity a "useless label," it makes discourse difficult. I don't consider it an ad hominem attack when the views you espouse are what the label you call useless is meant to describe. I'm afraid we may simply be too far apart in our view of the world to have a useful and helpful discussion on this topic.
Here’s the thing. If you truly understood what I was saying and the explicit intentions behind it (to liberate women and topple the patriarchy), then there is no way it could be fairly characterized as “toxic” or even “masculine” by anybody who is interested in freeing women and toppling male dominance. So the fact that the label was instinctively and reactively thrown about in an irrelevant way that doesn’t address either my statements or the intent behind them makes the label both useless and ad hominem.
When you write "To blame that disparity on men or “the patriarchy” without giving due consideration to natural, innate interests of each sex is to both deny reality and to create a scapegoat," it does not give the impression that you have any interest in toppling the patriarchy.
Further, people can disagree while, in fact, understanding the other party.
Are you suggesting that there are no significant differences in outcomes between males and females that are attributable to genetically determined differences in preferences, interests, goals, etc? If so, then you are
Arguing contrary to a great deal of science. For a summary of just a little bit of that science, please watch Steven Pinker‘s debate (you can find a video online) on this subject. Students of the “hard“ sciences (as opposed to the so-called social sciences) really have very little doubt on this point.
For instance, there is simply no doubt among scientists that testosterone contributes to risk-taking behaviors. This difference in risk tolerance between men and women plays out in a number of different ways – – everything from which profession they choose and how they perform in those professions and in many more things. If you plot outcomes on a bell curve for essentially anything, the male bell curve will be shorter and flatter (greater variance) than the female bell curve. In other words, men will tend to be over represented among both the most exceptional and least exceptional in any population while women will tend to congregate more around the mean (lower variance).
This is exactly what one would expect to occur with higher risk taking. The risk either pays off in which case the person ends up being in the most exceptional group, or it doesn’t pay off and they end up in the least exceptional group.
So, A great many of the observed differences in outcomes between men and women can be attributable to this difference in risk tolerance alone, not to
mention other sex-based differences. If you nonetheless deny that genes play any meaningful role in such outcomes, then we are at a standstill.
However, if you accept the science that suggests that some of these differences in outcomes are strongly genetically influenced rather than socially conditioned, then isn’t it important to take that fact into consideration when determining how to best topple the patriarchy? In other words, if our goal is to free women to act in a manner more consistent with their natural unconditioned interests and desires and to overcome the social conditioning (the patriarchy) that prevents that, then assuming that all differences in outcome are culturally conditioned when they are in fact not, and striving to reverse those differences through laws and shaming, had precisely the opposite of the the intended effect. Rather than freeing women from male-dominated social conditioning and allowing them to feel great about that it continues to force women to conform to social and cultural goals (that day outcomes “should” be equal) that are built upon wrong assumptions thereby making them feel even more traumatized, victimized and abused. Right?
Here's a link to the Pinker debate I mentioned earlier:
Money quote: "The truth cannot be sexist."