Why Women Still Can’t Have It All - By Anne-Marie Slaughter, The Atlantic

[johnlucas]

29. You don't understand what I mean by Biology Is Destiny. I will explain

Last edited Sat Jan 5, 2013, 03:33 PM - Edit history (1)

I touched on the fact that Feminism was inevitable BECAUSE of the reality that Biology Is Destiny.
I mentioned how everything didn't fit inside neat little boxes.
I talked about flowing liquidy things. The fluidity of life.
I talked about some women being more suited to the Field with some men being more suited to the Homestead.
I talked about the Tomboy girls who were NOT lesbians & the Effeminate boys who were NOT gay.
I talked about the Intersexed which includes Bisexuals, Homosexuals, & Transsexuals.
I mentioned how tomboy girls, effeminate boys, bisexuals/homosexuals/transsexuals rendered the default system ineffective & incomplete.
And that's why the default system changed. It was always DESTINED to change because it had flaws that didn't benefit all members of society.
All because of that fluidity of life.

When you say it's only CULTURAL not BIOLOGICAL, you are missing the fact that cultures came OUT OF biological cues.
This is why gender roles, gender CULTURAL roles can be modified and/or exaggerated.
Each physical environment & local human gene pool flavor the origins of a culture.
And then cultures become traditions to be passed down through the new generations.
That fixed biological nature can take a variety of cultural expressions.
But those cultural expressions are rooted to that biological nature.

Work culture HAS changed (40 hour work week/overtime/weekends vs. 18 hour workdays/penny wages/7 days a week work) & will change further based on the fluidity within biological realities.
But I was telling you WHY work culture formed the way it did to begin with.
Why it was so built around lots of invested time & rank/file hierarchies.
It was designed around the MALE biological role since men drop seed quickly & can go about their business.
And when women enter that field it doesn't pose a problem UNTIL they take on their FEMALE biological role which is the carrying, birthing, & rearing of the babies.
That's what the author is finding out.

No culture on Earth has ever gotten to high-level technological advancement without that heavy investment of male labor.
All the time invested & sacrifice of home life needed to build these giant structures & machines.

A kid really can't be fit on a schedule. When that kid needs you, that kid needs you.
Imagine being a high-level female executive in an important meeting making a deal with a client or a rival company.
You have to have your energies totally invested in that meeting to be successful in that deal.
Imagine while crucial conversation is going on during this deal that you get a cell phone call that your 14 year old has run amok at home.
Do you talk to your kid on the phone to tell him/her to behave right in the middle of the meeting?
Do you stop everything & go home to deal with the kid directly?
Do you ignore the call & continue on with the meeting until it is over which may be hours from now?

What if you have 5 kids? With one 14 year old running amok, one 12 year old who didn't get picked up from soccer practice, one 8 year old who set the stove on fire trying to cook food, one 5 year old who got lost wandering around outside in the front yard, one 3 year old crying in distress at what's happening with the other 4 kids.
The high-level female executive either has SOMEBODY ELSE tending to those emergencies as the defacto mother or that female can't be that high-level female executive.

No business at that level will tolerate interruptions at important meetings like that.
They expect you to have your home life not interfere with your work life in meetings like that.
They want you to be invested into what's going on at the company at the expense of everything else.
It's like going on a date & your date taking phone call after phone call in the middle of the date.
Most people would take that as disrespect & rudeness. Businesses are the same.

Why do businesses want you to be so heavily involved to such a myopic level?
It's because of the MALE biological role. And we know that MALES are known for being singularly focused individuals as a whole.
It was a culture built around men. Women can participate & as long as they don't have to worry about children it will be easy.
Add kids to the mix & all bets are off.

I say it again & I will say it again & again. BIOLOGY IS DESTINY.
The way a short man views the world will be fundamentally different than the way a tall man views the world.
The way a fat woman views the world will be fundamentally different than the way a skinny woman views the world.
The way a physically strong person views the world will be fundamentally different than the way physically weak person views the world.
Our biological differences flavor our world views & our subsequent actions in that world.

Destiny is NOT singular, however.
We all by the nature of the sperm & egg that made us & the time in the womb that shaped us have a predetermined set of pathways laid out for us.
We DO have the option of choosing which track of these predetermined railways to travel on.

Think of it as Fated Choices.
The tracks are fated but which way we travel on them we have some choice.
We just don't know how extensive the tracks are or when to switch the tracks.

Our being & our actions are mostly internally influenced. There's a small amount of external influences with physical environment & interaction with other beings.
And even here I believe the externals only set off internal triggers.

No we are not powerless to change things. BUT we also cannot change EVERY THING.
If the genetics of a boy renders him fat, not agile, slow in running speed, short in height, no matter HOW MUCH training & time he puts into being a NBA-level basketball star, he's not going to BE an NBA basketball star.
He may have a basketball MIND & understands the strategies of the plays. He could become an NBA COACH but not the guys on the court simply because it's not in his biological fate.

NBA star Muggsy Bogues was 5' 3". That's short by regular standards much less for an NBA star.
BUT he had such tremendous speed & agility & shot precision that his extreme difference in height ironically became an advantage towards the usual tall lumbering stars who couldn't easily reach him from way up high.
He had OTHER crucial skills necessary for a NBA-level basketball star making his height irrelevant so he became an NBA basketball star.
It was within his biological fate.

Humans have a biological fate that gives us extreme capability to manipulate the elements.
When external physical environments become lacking, we use this inborn biological pre-programming to create technologies that help us get more from those lacking environments.
This is the whole entire reason civilization EXISTS.
We had no need to create machines or try to understand the world & the universe around us when we had everything we needed.
When the ancient drought & famine happened we had to use our inborn nature to 'correct' this drought & famine.
Civilization is all about returning us to Paradise, to Utopia.
Our struggles come from the flaws in this worldwide experiment.

Because of this inborn biological fate, we are DESTINED to one day destroy work & work culture altogether.
Technology destroys jobs. It can be no other way.
Civilization is all about making us fat happy lazy people.
I mentioned the future possible reality that ONE DAY Men won't have to go into the Field either.
Every machine we create, every technology we build, every social system we improve on, we are DESTINED to end the division between the FIELD & the HOMESTEAD.

That cultural system of the Field & the Homestead was created in reaction to an environment drying up around us.
And we took a look at our biological differences to decide who would be best to operate within each sector.
Different cultures assigned their peoples in different ways but it always centered around biological differences.
Cultures amplified preferences for certain types of people to better be able to survive & those they felt (correctly or incorrectly) were antagonistic to this survival, they demonized.
Yes, even prejudice & hatred to other people was DESTINED.

Yes Fate is real. But we have a choice of our Fates.
We're not prisoners? Yes we are. To many things including our reproductive systems (don't reproduce, the species dies out).
We are also prisoners to the Planet Earth & we need what Planet Earth provides to live. We can't live outside it.
That's our Fate. But we have some choice of HOW to live in our prison called Earth.
We can change SOME Things. But we cannot change EVERY Thing.

Biology Is Destiny. Biology Determines Our Fates.
John Lucas