But I realize that generalizations cannot be made from the smallness of my own personal experience.
I wish you would someday do the same.
Um. How is pointing out that an absolute statement is wrong because of an anecdotal exception an absolute statement itself?
Sisterhood is declared to be some sort of organic given. I and thousands of other women are living proof that it is not. It may be *generally* true that, due to social conditioning to be emotionally open and to bond with others (even at the expense of one's own needs) that women are more likely to develop friendships with each other, there is nothing which makes that organically mandated. Estrogen causes enough nesting behavior that it probably encourages some of that, but most women don't have levels of that high enough to declare that the biological smoking gun.
I know plenty of women who bond better with men than with other women. Are they simply not women because they don't have the sisterhood gene? Or are men who easily bond closely with other men actually women instead?
Honestly, I think it's probably healthier for both of us at this point to realize that we come from entirely different philosophical backgrounds as concerns human behavior. You're much more of an essentialist than I am, and much more focused on individual behavior and responsibility than group and larger cultural dynamics. There's no Great Answer Book to tell either of us that we're entirely wrong or entirely right, so I suspect we'll simply be debating into perpetuity about our respective points of view. And I'm not sure that that's productive, in this kind of a forum. Were we doing this in a more academic setting, it might be useful, but I don't think we're going to resolve the nature/nurture debate, nor the free will one on LiveJournal.
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momijizukamori
no subject
Date: 2005-07-28 07:33 am (UTC)I wish you would someday do the same.
Um. How is pointing out that an absolute statement is wrong because of an anecdotal exception an absolute statement itself?
Sisterhood is declared to be some sort of organic given. I and thousands of other women are living proof that it is not. It may be *generally* true that, due to social conditioning to be emotionally open and to bond with others (even at the expense of one's own needs) that women are more likely to develop friendships with each other, there is nothing which makes that organically mandated. Estrogen causes enough nesting behavior that it probably encourages some of that, but most women don't have levels of that high enough to declare that the biological smoking gun.
I know plenty of women who bond better with men than with other women. Are they simply not women because they don't have the sisterhood gene? Or are men who easily bond closely with other men actually women instead?
Honestly, I think it's probably healthier for both of us at this point to realize that we come from entirely different philosophical backgrounds as concerns human behavior. You're much more of an essentialist than I am, and much more focused on individual behavior and responsibility than group and larger cultural dynamics. There's no Great Answer Book to tell either of us that we're entirely wrong or entirely right, so I suspect we'll simply be debating into perpetuity about our respective points of view. And I'm not sure that that's productive, in this kind of a forum. Were we doing this in a more academic setting, it might be useful, but I don't think we're going to resolve the nature/nurture debate, nor the free will one on LiveJournal.