Cathy reads books: Warriors and Worriers

Summary

Cathy critically reviews "Warriors and Worriers: The Survival of the Sexes," questioning its gender essentialism and data interpretation while acknowledging the complexity of gender differences.

Abstract

Cathy discusses her experience with the book "Warriors and Worriers: The Survival of the Sexes," which she listened to despite initial reservations. She points out the book's bias towards gender essentialism and its tendency to overlook nuanced data to support its arguments. Cathy challenges the author's interpretations, particularly the claim that boys are inherently more interested in building than girls, citing examples where the author's coding of activities seems inconsistent. While recognizing that gender differences exist, Cathy remains skeptical about attributing these to innate, evolutionary factors, emphasizing that societal pressures also play a significant role. The book's central thesis suggests that boys are wired for group cooperation against a common enemy, while girls are inclined to compete for male providers. Cathy, however, questions the validity of such broad generalizations and ponders the impact of convenient versus inconvenient ideas in shaping societal beliefs.

Opinions

The author of "Warriors and Worriers" appears to favor gender essentialism and may simplify data to bolster arguments.
Cathy is critical of the book's methodology, particularly its interpretation of studies on daycare impact and gender-based interests in building activities.
She acknowledges that gender differences are observable but is uncertain and indifferent about their origins, whether they stem from evolutionary imperatives or societal pressures.
Cathy challenges the book's premise that girls are more social than boys, highlighting boys' tendencies to compete without social exclusion and their potential for loneliness despite social connections.
She reflects on the convenience of ideas that align with pre-existing beliefs, suggesting that such ideas can hinder progress.
Cathy suggests that both conservatives and progressives might misrepresent the inheritability of sex differences in behavior, and advocates for considering perspectives from both sides to uncover the truth.
She admits the difficulty in discerning when the conservative viewpoint offers valuable insights, especially in the context of the gender essentialism debate.

Cathy reads books: Warriors and Worriers

recommended? No, my babies. I did not. But did I read it? Yes. Well, I listened to it anyway.

I’m not even sure what to say about this book. It seems pretty biased in favor of gender essentialism. Certainly the author isn’t afraid to leave out some nuance in the data to make a point. For instance, she brings up a study showing boys who attend day care show more aggression than boys who don’t. But the overall literature on how daycare impacts kids is overall quite mixed and there is no consensus around any long-term harms.

Another thing I found interesting is that she makes the case that boys are more interested in building things from a young age than girls. To prove this, she lists out activities girls and boys chose. But she describes a girl as “playing with blocks.” So, in other words… building. If you code boys as building but girls who are building as doing something else I have to question your data and therefore your conclusions.

However, at the end of the day, when it comes to many gender differences I don’t actually really think it matters so much whether they arise from some deeply coded evolutionary imperative or it’s simply that most societies pressure gender conformity in the same way.

The reality of the situation is that girls and women act differently than boys and men to at least some degree across a lot of axes. She’s making the case that these behavioral differences are innate and inherited. I’m saying I don’t know and I don’t really care.

The central premise of the book is that boys are evolved to cooperate with other boys to find and fight an “enemy” while girls are evolved to compete with other girls to find and lock down a male provider. Basically, her hot take is that girls and women get credit they don’t deserve for being more social than boys.

So how do you square the idea that men are more social than girls with their propensity to compete with each other and their higher average levels of loneliness? Well, the author says girls and boys are actually equally competitive. But boys incorporate social exclusion into their competitions much less often than girls. Also, boys tend to share activities, not intimacy, with other boys. So they can have a lot of buddies, but still be lonely.

I don’t know, man. It’s an interesting set of ideas. I’m sure what she says has been observed has been observed. But I am left wondering what’s been observed that doesn’t fit her thesis.

The whole thing makes me think about convenient and inconvenient ideas. Convenient ideas support a premise you’ve already accepted.

For example, the likes of Bari Weiss and Jesse Singal are basically saying, “What if gay rights are valid but trans rights are taking things too far?” Well, how convenient would that idea be to someone who is comfortable with gay rights, but trans people squick them out? Or take the whole trend of people trying to prove AI isn’t racist enough. If you really want to say the n-word, it’s very convenient to believe an AI model needs to be able to say it to prevent the world from blowing up.

Convenient ideas gunk up the system and stymie progress.

But sometimes the premise you’ve already accepted is something like “conservatives have an incentive to attribute more gender differences in behavior to biology than socialization in order to uphold the status quo gender hierarchy by convincing people that it is natural and therefore good and that because it is innate they won’t succeed in changing it.”

The fact is that two things can be true at the same time here. Conservatives can be overstating the inheritability of sex differences in behavior while progressives can be understating it. The least-convenient but probably most truth-revealing thing to do is to hear out both sides.

What’s even more difficult than hearing both sides of the gender essentialism debate is discerning the topics on which the right has anything worth hearing to say.