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Originally posted by Starlight:
[I almost always feel really really bad for single mothers when hearing the anti-gay-parenting arguments. They seem to have no clue how horrible their rhetoric must sound when heard by single mothers.

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Originally posted by Starlight:
Instead, the conclusion I naturally come to is that insofar as the writer of the article attempts to generalize her experiences to all people raised by same-sex parents she is just plain wrong. Not only do the experiences of my own friends disprove her generalizations, but scientific studies also do.

Social experiences are complex, and there's many possible explanations for why someone feels a certain way, or what might have caused them to feel differently. The article author has seized on a particular explanation to explain her own life. It seems pretty doubtful that's the correct explanation, because we have good scientific data that her proposed explanation doesn't tend to be true in general, and because there is an extremely obvious alternative explanation available that she's blatantly ignoring (her unresolved issues resulting from her parent's divorce and her rejection by her biological father) which are well known to be a common issue for people in her situation.

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Originally posted by Pomona:
How does this apply to couples where one partner is transgender, and transitions later on in life?

It's about gender, not sex - and gender is fluid.

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Originally posted by Pomona:
How does this apply to couples where one partner is transgender, and transitions later on in life?

It's about gender, not sex - and gender is fluid.

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Originally posted by GCabot:
Ultimately, gender, like race, is a purely human construct.

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Originally posted by GCabot:

We certainly do not attempt to attribute genders to animals, plants, etc.

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:

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Originally posted by GCabot:
Ultimately, gender, like race, is a purely human construct.

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If you mean gender is not rigid or easily classifiable, then I would agree. But gender is often tied to, but not bound by physiology.

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:

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Originally posted by GCabot:

We certainly do not attempt to attribute genders to animals, plants, etc.

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Um, not a biologist, but this isn't completely correct. Some biologists are studying this as gender choices seem to be observed in some animals.

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Originally posted by GCabot:
I mean that what we today think of as gender is merely our way of describing the dominant set of certain traits that usually manifest in each biological sex. While sex is clearly biologically defined, there is no reason to expect rigid bipolar distribution of gender, since while sex may lead to higher or lower probabilities of certain traits, no rigid division of gender naturally exists in the way it does with sex.

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Originally posted by GCabot:

Perhaps I should have qualified my statement with the word "sane."

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Originally posted by GCabot:
We have no legitimate way to quantify the overall effect of growing up in a household with two parents of the same sex versus growing up in a household with parents of different sexes. There are too many variables to account for and too many possible ways to construe what constitutes overall harm or not. The most any such study can credibly claim is that there is no evidence that SSM is harmful to something specific that might plausibly be able to be quantitatively isolated, say, future earnings potential, or vice versa.

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Originally posted by Pomona:
How does this apply to couples where one partner is transgender, and transitions later on in life?

It's about gender, not sex - and gender is fluid.

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Originally posted by North East Quine:
On this morning's Today programme, the presenter was discussing Prince Charles' meeting with Gerry Adams. Talking to one of Prince Charles' biographers, she said, "He (Prince Charles) revered him (Lord Mountbatten); he adored him, he was the father figure that he didn't have...." It's here , at 1:55:17.

In the light of this thread, I thought it was interesting that the presenter could assert that the product of a conventional marriage could fail to have a father figure, despite clearly having a father.

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:

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Originally posted by GCabot:
I mean that what we today think of as gender is merely our way of describing the dominant set of certain traits that usually manifest in each biological sex. While sex is clearly biologically defined, there is no reason to expect rigid bipolar distribution of gender, since while sex may lead to higher or lower probabilities of certain traits, no rigid division of gender naturally exists in the way it does with sex.

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Sex is not rigidly bi-polar. The distribution of sexual classification is concentrated largely on either end, but the middle is not unpopulated.

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:

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Originally posted by GCabot:

Perhaps I should have qualified my statement with the word "sane."

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If behaviour classifies gender in humans, then why not animals?
Traits we consider sex-linked in animal species can be observed in the opposite sex than typical. i.e. males exhibiting "female" behaviour and the reverse. In animals with one sex, there can be behaviours associated with two sexes.
I am not saying there is a complete parallel with humans, nor that I am convinced either way. Just that it is not as cray cray as you indicate.

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Originally posted by North East Quine:
In the light of this thread, I thought it was interesting that the presenter could assert that the product of a conventional marriage could fail to have a father figure, despite clearly having a father.

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Originally posted by GCabot:
At least in humans, sex is naturally bipolar. Of course, there are incidents of hermaphroditism and intersex individuals, but these are clearly the product of biological errors as opposed to rare, but naturally intended outcomes.

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Originally posted by GCabot:
At least in humans, sex is naturally bipolar.

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Originally posted by Starlight:

What if intersex or hermaphrodite individuals are stepping stones in the natural evolution of humanity toward being like one of those animal species? Would that then make them a "naturally intended outcomes"?

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Originally posted by GCabot:

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Originally posted by Starlight:
I almost always feel really really bad for single mothers when hearing the anti-gay-parenting arguments. They seem to have no clue how horrible their rhetoric must sound when heard by single mothers.

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Why? I suspect most single parents would freely admit that all other things being equal, having another parent would be a better situation for raising children than a single-parent household.

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
IMO, a massive factor is societal expectation and pressure. A reason people get so bent about an absent parent is this is what their society has said is "normal".
It is because we are told that there is a deviation that we see one.

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
A single mum is OK in most people's eyes,

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
To go back to the question of same-sex parenting, in cases where a same-sex couple adopts a child (as opposed to the child being the biological offspring of one of the parents) that's usually in cases where that child has already been failed, sometimes in particularly horrible ways, by his or her opposite-sex parents. To argue that a being raised by a loving and capable same-sex couple "hurts" a child more than being raised an abusive and/or neglectful opposite-sex couple plays in to some very ugly stereotypes in a way that can't just be hand-waved away with "all other things being equal . . . "

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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
But, but, surely it's better to have a nasty father than two nice mummies, because even the nasty father is inculcating some man-type stuff.

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
nobody wants to make single parenthood illegal, as far as I can see. A single mum is OK in most people's eyes, but two mummies, well

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
But, but, surely it's better to have a nasty father than two nice mummies, because even the nasty father is inculcating some man-type stuff.

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Originally posted by Macrina:
This 'every child has a human right to a mother and father' stuff is sentimental rubbish when actually thought out logically. Children have a human right to a safe and loving upbringing - we should strive for that before we start nitpicking about single parents and same sex couples.

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Originally posted by GCabot:

Of course one could classify typical behavior of the sexes in different species, but it still makes no sense to attribute genders to non-human species, because gender as it is thought of today is a social construct that is correlated, but not necessarily the product of biological differences in sex, and non-humans are not capable of the thought processes required to create such a distinction.

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Originally posted by Starlight:

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Originally posted by GCabot:
At least in humans, sex is naturally bipolar. Of course, there are incidents of hermaphroditism and intersex individuals, but these are clearly the product of biological errors as opposed to rare, but naturally intended outcomes.

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There's such a thing as "naturally intended outcomes"? That phrase has me scratching my head, because you seem to be arbitrarily ascribing your own purposes into natural processes.

There's various animal species which are quite varied when it comes to their sex: Species that only have females, species that can change their sex during their life, species where all members are of both sexes etc.

What if intersex or hermaphrodite individuals are stepping stones in the natural evolution of humanity toward being like one of those animal species? Would that then make them a "naturally intended outcomes"?

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Originally posted by Crœsos:

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Originally posted by GCabot:

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Originally posted by Starlight:
I almost always feel really really bad for single mothers when hearing the anti-gay-parenting arguments. They seem to have no clue how horrible their rhetoric must sound when heard by single mothers.

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Why? I suspect most single parents would freely admit that all other things being equal, having another parent would be a better situation for raising children than a single-parent household.

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A huge problem is that all other things are never equal and just casually assuming that they are is a particularly arrogant mix of cruelty and ignorance. The assumption that seems to underlie your point is that every single parent has a loving potential spouse available to them, just waiting to start a loving relationship and help with raising the kids. This ignores the fact that very often there are compelling reasons for single parenthood and that the kids would be much better off without the abusive parent, or the parent who keeps spending the rent money on heroin, or whatever other dysfunction is in play. To go on to characterize this as "hurting" children by depriving them of some idealized gender mix of parents (as the essay from the OP does repeatedly) overlooks the many fairly obvious ways all other things often aren't equal and that single parenthood may be the best available option.

To go back to the question of same-sex parenting, in cases where a same-sex couple adopts a child (as opposed to the child being the biological offspring of one of the parents) that's usually in cases where that child has already been failed, sometimes in particularly horrible ways, by his or her opposite-sex parents. To argue that a being raised by a loving and capable same-sex couple "hurts" a child more than being raised an abusive and/or neglectful opposite-sex couple plays in to some very ugly stereotypes in a way that can't just be hand-waved away with "all other things being equal . . . "

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:

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Originally posted by GCabot:

Of course one could classify typical behavior of the sexes in different species, but it still makes no sense to attribute genders to non-human species, because gender as it is thought of today is a social construct that is correlated, but not necessarily the product of biological differences in sex, and non-humans are not capable of the thought processes required to create such a distinction.

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You're wrong on this as well. Social animals can have gender behavior. Primate Gender and Kinship behavior has been studied. In particular, one group which had a lot of males die from eating infected meat ended up with a new group behavior where males were not allowed to dominate as they had before. When new young male chimpanzees joined the troupe they were taught that the traditional Alpha Male behavior wasn't going to work.
In short, many social animals have sufficiently complex nervous systems to have gendered behavior. For a more dramatic example, there was a documented case where two male cuttlefish were fighting over some nearby females. A third male cuttlefish swam in, using his chameleon like properties to show male coloration on one side of his body to the females and female coloration on the other side which made him look like a female to the nearby fighting males.

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Originally posted by GCabot:
The article you cited clearly refutes the notion that primates have gender as we understand it. It argues that there is greater gender diversity within apes than what we attribute to male and female humans, in order to refute the notion that gender is primarily a biological product and thus the argument that gender in humans is similarly immutable. That is in total agreement with what I previously said.

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Originally posted by GCabot:
DNA provides clear instruction.

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:

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Originally posted by GCabot:
The article you cited clearly refutes the notion that primates have gender as we understand it. It argues that there is greater gender diversity within apes than what we attribute to male and female humans, in order to refute the notion that gender is primarily a biological product and thus the argument that gender in humans is similarly immutable. That is in total agreement with what I previously said.

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They cite examples that Primates have Gender diversity. That's not an argument that they don't have gender as we understand it. Quite the reverse. You're stuck with your theory that Gender Diversity in Humans is unnatural and thus have to claim that animal Gender isn't Gender to try to defend it or otherwise give us the claim that Gender Diversity in Primates is unnatural.

Both Humans and other Primates have gender diversity and roles that vary by species, society and environment. All of it is natural, and your claim that animals don't have gender is nonsense.

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:

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Originally posted by GCabot:
The article you cited clearly refutes the notion that primates have gender as we understand it. It argues that there is greater gender diversity within apes than what we attribute to male and female humans, in order to refute the notion that gender is primarily a biological product and thus the argument that gender in humans is similarly immutable. That is in total agreement with what I previously said.

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They cite examples that Primates have Gender diversity. That's not an argument that they don't have gender as we understand it. Quite the reverse. You're stuck with your theory that Gender Diversity in Humans is unnatural and thus have to claim that animal Gender isn't Gender to try to defend it or otherwise give us the claim that Gender Diversity in Primates is unnatural.

Both Humans and other Primates have gender diversity and roles that vary by species, society and environment. All of it is natural, and your claim that animals don't have gender is nonsense.

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Originally posted by GCabot:

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
A huge problem is that all other things are never equal and just casually assuming that they are is a particularly arrogant mix of cruelty and ignorance. The assumption that seems to underlie your point is that every single parent has a loving potential spouse available to them, just waiting to start a loving relationship and help with raising the kids. This ignores the fact that very often there are compelling reasons for single parenthood and that the kids would be much better off without the abusive parent, or the parent who keeps spending the rent money on heroin, or whatever other dysfunction is in play. To go on to characterize this as "hurting" children by depriving them of some idealized gender mix of parents (as the essay from the OP does repeatedly) overlooks the many fairly obvious ways all other things often aren't equal and that single parenthood may be the best available option.

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The question was whether a single parent household is in and of itself likely to create a better or worse outcome than a dual parent household. That by definition necessitates isolation of that variable.

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Originally posted by GCabot:
You are going to have to explain how you are defining “gender.” Traditionally understood, it is considered the set of traits differentiated between the sexes that are not biologically derived, but are instead learned behaviors derived from social norms. Hence, someone who is biologically male can still have feminine traits.

I never claimed that “gender diversity in humans is unnatural,” whatever that means. I also never claimed that gender diversity in primates is unnatural. What I did say was that gender is an artificial human construct. We can try to study the sex-differentiated behavior of primates in order to inform our contemporary and historical notions of gender, as the article you cited does, but fundamentally, attempts to attribute gender to animals are merely the imputation of human ideas to explain animal behavior. Non-human terrestrial species are incapable of the complex social theorizing necessary to create what we think of as gender. Thus, it is nonsense to say that animals naturally have gender, as opposed to gender being artificially ascribed upon certain behavior in a species to fit with our understanding and conception of gender.

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