This was a super-interesting and informative conversation about many interesting topics. I watched the whole thing. Dr. Ocobock is a compelling interviewee.
An important point to take into consideration around the discussion of risk associated with big game hunting is that by the time humans were doing this, they had already developed a social way of living. Dying during the hunt no longer means your offspring are going to die. The calculus has changed. The risk is more worth taking.
This individual wrote in Scientific American: "Inequity between male and female athletes is a result not of inherent biological differences between the sexes but of biases in how they are treated in sports."
"Inequity between male and female athletes is a result not of inherent biological differences between the sexes but of biases in how they are treated in sports. As an example, some endurance-running events allow the use of professional runners called pacesetters to help competitors perform their best. Men are not permitted to act as pacesetters in many women's events because of the belief that they will make the women "artificially faster," as though women were not actually doing the running themselves." Cara Ocobock from Scientific American this is NUTS
This was really interesting and very convincing--I have been swayed by Dr. Ocobock's analysis of the evidence. Which is great, because her analysis is easier and more comfortable for me as a (sex-realist or reactionary) feminist. However, I was very disapointed by her unscientific, absolutist, and arbitrary argument that language does not matter in the debates and conflicts surrounding transgender activism because "transphobes" will simply go on hating. Dr. Ocobock, and Ricardo, it is disingenuous, ideological (as opposed to scientific), and simply wrong to dismiss tout court the ideas, research, thoughts, and motives of millions of people who are critical about gender identity ideology and who argue that sex is more relevant, in many more social spheres and spaces, than transgender rights activists say. Many of us who are very invested in the defense of the sex-based rights of women and girls, are also equally invested in the pursuit of science-based policies in healthcare systems, sports legislation, K-12 education, and social policies in general. As all scientists know, categories and definitions matter, and dismissing us by saying we pretend to care about categories and language but, actually, deep down we're just bigoted people that are full of hate, is nasty and the opposite of what Ricardo was lauding about the scientific debates between Ocobock and her scientist-critics.
It's more credible to believe that women were probably crucial in making hunting weapons of all kinds. She puts a whole lot more value in "hunting" as if it was the end-all and be-all by which to measure all things and so we must insist that women must have hunted. She ends up just diminishing the value of the real work that women almost certainly did. Having a sharp eye for foraging is far more skillful an activity than just throwing a spear and killing something on the spot. Women were probably the earliest chemists to the extent that cooking is a kind of chemistry and is and was a highly skillful activity. It's impossible not to notice that she is partly ideologically driven and I just don't trust her completely.
To the extent that hunting requires a certain amount of brutality, are you very sure that you really want to say that women can be equally brutal as men? If your young female child were to say that, when she grows up, she wants to work in a slaughter house and kill baby calves, would you be ok with that? What would you say?
her article from S.A. is a crap: "If you follow long-distance races, you might be thinking, wait-males are outperforming females in endurance events! But this is only sometimes the case. Females are more regularly dominating ultraendurance events such as the more than 260-mile Montane Spine foot race through England and Scotland, the 21-mile swim across the English Channel and the 4,300-mile Trans Am cycling race across the U.S. Sometimes female athletes compete in these races while attending to the needs of their children. In 2018 English runner Sophie Power ran the 105-mile Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc race in the Alps while still breastfeeding her three-month-old at rest stations." NOT AT ALL: Women’s long distance swimming record: 132km (82.5 miles) Men’s long distance swimming record: 238 km (147.88 miles)
Calories! Hunting does not necessarily require high energy as male animals do! Sometimes a slim body gives greater ability to run and maneuver, so it is enough to be armed with good claws and fangs, but that is not the rule, such as poison and traps are more effective and does not require great energy and some animals, reptiles, insects, etc. do that, and this applies to female humans, as humans need more mind than muscle strength and use the brain to plan and make materials and tools (no need for a large muscle mass and weight).
Cara's argument relies heavily on the equal rates of bone injury evidence, which she uses to imply equal rates of hunting (even though she astutely refrains from explicitly claiming there were equal rates of hunting.) There is another alternative explanation that she hasn't considered. What the bone evidence tells us is that there were equal LIFETIME rates of injury. But to translate that into hunting rates we need to know the rate of injury per hunt. It's highly likely that when placed in exactly the same situations, in close proximity of a dangerous wild animal that is trying to kill you, that females will be injured at a higher rate, because they aren't as strong, have less fast twitch muscle, slower reflexes, less body mass and bone density. So, not only are they likely to be hit by the animal more often, the same impact is more likely to cause greater injury to a female. Therefore females would have a higher rate of injury per hunt. This would imply that if females hunted at the same rate as males, they would end up with more injuries than males. I think it's likely that there are different roles in a hunting party, and some are more dangerous than others. A big part of the hunt is herding the animal in a particular direction, or preventing them from escaping. Other roles are more to go up close to the cornered animal and make the kill. I think it's likely the females were used to do the less dangerous roles, where speed, strength and agility were not as important, and the males took the dangerous roles. Nevertheless, sometimes the animal evades the male killers and races toward a female herder and sometimes injuring her. And hence the women end up with the same amount of injuries.
Another factor to take into account is that injuries don't just occur during hunting. Female injuries could occur when gathering or childminding, when predators (bears, lions, wolves etc.) attack. Another factor is that injuries aren't just due to being attacked by an animal. Many injuries would have been due to tripping and falling while chasing an animal. These tripping injuries are just as likely to occur when chasing lizards and rabbits as they are when chasing large game.
Cara accepts there were periods before and after pregnancy when women couldn't hunt. Why does she follow that by saying says that men also had periods when they were sick or injured when they couldn't hunt. Because she's making an argument that maybe they balanced out, and therefore, men and women hunted at the same rate. This is a very flawed argument because she ignores the fact that women also get sick and injured, presumable at roughly the same rates as men. Therefore, time off for sickness and injury for males and females would cancel each other out, leaving time off for pregnancy as the only difference. Either she didn't think of this basic fact, or she did think of it but ignored it because she would rather push hre ideological position regardless of facts.
This is in your research article: In 1967, the year after the Man the Hunter symposium and a year before the edited volume was published, Katherine Switzer ran the Boston Marathon. The official race manager, Jock Semple, chased after Switzer, shouting obscenities, and attempted to physically remove her from the course (Switzer, 2017). You literatlly used historical misogynic event as scientific arguement, and you're playing innocent that people get mad?
This was a super-interesting and informative conversation about many interesting topics. I watched the whole thing. Dr. Ocobock is a compelling interviewee.
Thank you, Kolya!
An important point to take into consideration around the discussion of risk associated with big game hunting is that by the time humans were doing this, they had already developed a social way of living. Dying during the hunt no longer means your offspring are going to die. The calculus has changed. The risk is more worth taking.
This individual wrote in Scientific American: "Inequity between male and female athletes is a result not of inherent biological differences between the sexes but of biases in how they are treated in sports."
"Inequity between male and female athletes is a result not of inherent biological differences between the sexes but of biases in how they are treated in sports. As an example, some endurance-running events allow the use of professional runners called pacesetters to help competitors perform their best. Men are not permitted to act as pacesetters in many women's events because of the belief that they will make the women "artificially faster," as though women were not actually doing the running themselves."
Cara Ocobock from Scientific American
this is NUTS
Loved the estrogen information.
This was really interesting and very convincing--I have been swayed by Dr. Ocobock's analysis of the evidence. Which is great, because her analysis is easier and more comfortable for me as a (sex-realist or reactionary) feminist. However, I was very disapointed by her unscientific, absolutist, and arbitrary argument that language does not matter in the debates and conflicts surrounding transgender activism because "transphobes" will simply go on hating. Dr. Ocobock, and Ricardo, it is disingenuous, ideological (as opposed to scientific), and simply wrong to dismiss tout court the ideas, research, thoughts, and motives of millions of people who are critical about gender identity ideology and who argue that sex is more relevant, in many more social spheres and spaces, than transgender rights activists say. Many of us who are very invested in the defense of the sex-based rights of women and girls, are also equally invested in the pursuit of science-based policies in healthcare systems, sports legislation, K-12 education, and social policies in general. As all scientists know, categories and definitions matter, and dismissing us by saying we pretend to care about categories and language but, actually, deep down we're just bigoted people that are full of hate, is nasty and the opposite of what Ricardo was lauding about the scientific debates between Ocobock and her scientist-critics.
It's more credible to believe that women were probably crucial in making hunting weapons of all kinds. She puts a whole lot more value in "hunting" as if it was the end-all and be-all by which to measure all things and so we must insist that women must have hunted. She ends up just diminishing the value of the real work that women almost certainly did. Having a sharp eye for foraging is far more skillful an activity than just throwing a spear and killing something on the spot. Women were probably the earliest chemists to the extent that cooking is a kind of chemistry and is and was a highly skillful activity. It's impossible not to notice that she is partly ideologically driven and I just don't trust her completely.
To the extent that hunting requires a certain amount of brutality, are you very sure that you really want to say that women can be equally brutal as men? If your young female child were to say that, when she grows up, she wants to work in a slaughter house and kill baby calves, would you be ok with that? What would you say?
her article from S.A. is a crap:
"If you follow long-distance races, you might be thinking, wait-males are outperforming females in endurance events! But this is only sometimes the case. Females are more regularly dominating ultraendurance events such as the more than 260-mile Montane Spine foot race through England and Scotland, the 21-mile swim across the English Channel and the 4,300-mile Trans Am cycling race across the U.S. Sometimes female athletes compete in these races while attending to the needs of their children. In 2018 English runner Sophie Power ran the 105-mile Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc race in the Alps while still breastfeeding her three-month-old at rest stations."
NOT AT ALL:
Women’s long distance swimming record: 132km (82.5 miles)
Men’s long distance swimming record: 238 km (147.88 miles)
Calories! Hunting does not necessarily require high energy as male animals do! Sometimes a slim body gives greater ability to run and maneuver, so it is enough to be armed with good claws and fangs, but that is not the rule, such as poison and traps are more effective and does not require great energy and some animals, reptiles, insects, etc. do that, and this applies to female humans, as humans need more mind than muscle strength and use the brain to plan and make materials and tools (no need for a large muscle mass and weight).
Cara's argument relies heavily on the equal rates of bone injury evidence, which she uses to imply equal rates of hunting (even though she astutely refrains from explicitly claiming there were equal rates of hunting.)
There is another alternative explanation that she hasn't considered.
What the bone evidence tells us is that there were equal LIFETIME rates of injury. But to translate that into hunting rates we need to know the rate of injury per hunt.
It's highly likely that when placed in exactly the same situations, in close proximity of a dangerous wild animal that is trying to kill you, that females will be injured at a higher rate, because they aren't as strong, have less fast twitch muscle, slower reflexes, less body mass and bone density. So, not only are they likely to be hit by the animal more often, the same impact is more likely to cause greater injury to a female. Therefore females would have a higher rate of injury per hunt.
This would imply that if females hunted at the same rate as males, they would end up with more injuries than males.
I think it's likely that there are different roles in a hunting party, and some are more dangerous than others. A big part of the hunt is herding the animal in a particular direction, or preventing them from escaping. Other roles are more to go up close to the cornered animal and make the kill. I think it's likely the females were used to do the less dangerous roles, where speed, strength and agility were not as important, and the males took the dangerous roles.
Nevertheless, sometimes the animal evades the male killers and races toward a female herder and sometimes injuring her. And hence the women end up with the same amount of injuries.
Another factor to take into account is that injuries don't just occur during hunting. Female injuries could occur when gathering or childminding, when predators (bears, lions, wolves etc.) attack.
Another factor is that injuries aren't just due to being attacked by an animal. Many injuries would have been due to tripping and falling while chasing an animal. These tripping injuries are just as likely to occur when chasing lizards and rabbits as they are when chasing large game.
Cara accepts there were periods before and after pregnancy when women couldn't hunt. Why does she follow that by saying says that men also had periods when they were sick or injured when they couldn't hunt.
Because she's making an argument that maybe they balanced out, and therefore, men and women hunted at the same rate.
This is a very flawed argument because she ignores the fact that women also get sick and injured, presumable at roughly the same rates as men. Therefore, time off for sickness and injury for males and females would cancel each other out, leaving time off for pregnancy as the only difference.
Either she didn't think of this basic fact, or she did think of it but ignored it because she would rather push hre ideological position regardless of facts.
This is in your research article: In 1967, the year after the Man the Hunter symposium and a year before the edited volume was published, Katherine Switzer ran the Boston Marathon. The official race manager, Jock Semple, chased after Switzer, shouting obscenities, and attempted to physically remove her from the course (Switzer, 2017).
You literatlly used historical misogynic event as scientific arguement, and you're playing innocent that people get mad?