Hey Scott! Quick piece of advice for you: If you want navigable timestamps to be added to your video, you need to start the first timestamp off at 0:00. Then KZfaq will automatically add chapters. If you copy the below formatting into the description, you'll see the chapters update. 0:00 Introduction 03:11 What is a primatologist? 04:15 Biology in the gender debate 08:42 Donna: the non-binary chimpanzee 13:08 Dominance, power, and prestige 17:12 Alpha males and alpha females 20:50 Sex differences in play and aggression 24:45 Gender identity and self socialization 31:30 The Selfish Gene 35:11 The evolution of the clitoris 40:26 The stigma of female sexuality 45:35 Extra-pair copulation and paternity testing 50:35 Competition, rivalry, and conflict resolution 54:54 Maternal instinct and xenophobia among primates 59:03 Embodied cognition Hope this helps!
@noahsmama20074 ай бұрын
Great show and fabulous questions
@ronaldoferreira5942 жыл бұрын
This guy - here at least - shows what a successful analysis can do: we can interact with great pleasure. I saw him interviewing other people and his pleasure and gratitude for Other's work is always here. Thank you.
@hedskebab Жыл бұрын
I want to know more about Donna! When Frans first started describing her my first thought was "who does Donna prefer having sex with?" Plenty of girls who prefer traditional "boy" activities and clothing pre-puberty grow up to be lesbians. But then when he mentioned Donna's increased musculature I was surprised, but didn't think it unreasonable to assume participating in more rough-housing play would make you more muscular. Then he went on to say Donna had bigger hands?? Could it be that Donna has a DSD ("intersex" condition)? (If you're not familiar, Caster Semenya is a famous example). DSDs are often used as proof of the "sex spectrum", when in reality their rarity proves the integrity of the sex binary in 99.98% of cases. Tests of trans people show rates of DSDs as the same as the general population. So while Donna's case is fascinating, it does not prove the existence of an innate "gender identity". The take-home lesson is most certainly that we as a society, need to undo the intolerance of gender-nonconformity imposed on us by religion and other out-dated cultural ideas.
@lottereeuwijk739 Жыл бұрын
He talked more about Donna in a dutch interview. He said that Donna didn't show interest in sex. She also never had a baby. Hope this helps ;-)
@oldsoul35392 жыл бұрын
If transgenderism is supposed to start before puberty that would be even more of an argument that it's learned behavior, a child taking a liking to something before it has developed associations about if it is 'supposed to' like it or not from the subtle reactions of others. We know children are sensitive to parental body language and tone of voice, even if the parent believes they're trying to leave the child alone to be itself, beliefs are not just taught through words. It's like saying if a boy prefers pink or a girl prefers blue that that is evidence that their brains were born in the wrong bodies, rather than concluding that connecting colors to sex is a socially constructed belief we made up at some point and passed on through culture.
@AznDudeIsOn2 жыл бұрын
He's more so saying how one chooses to self-socialize starts before puberty. If you compare humans with chimpanzees. The only times chimpanzees ostracize others is when they are harmful to their society. Otherwise variants are well integrated into society. However, humans are ostracizing on more than just harmful individuals. Scott tries to ask about the labeling question. But Frans's response is that humans insist on rules and labels but it really doesn't help the situation. Chimpanzees don't care about none of that. And he goes on to use racial labeling as an example where chimpanzees don't treat others differently based on their color at all unlike humans. So when Frans refers to transgenderism starting before puberty. All he's saying is that the development of one's self-socialization starts before puberty. A subset of that will involve self-socializing in a way that aligns with transgenderism. And of course the brains of these people will be wired differently as well. He's not saying this is evidence that their brains were born in the wrong bodies. You've completely missed the fact that he's a primatologist if that's your takeaway. And he would agree that transgenderism is a phenomenon that occurs in response and in context of historical social-cultural precedent. That these ostracizations are happening because of reasons that would never occur in chimpanzee society. And therefore transgenderism would be a nonissue in chimpanzee society, because without that historical social-cultural precedent in the first place, there cannot be transgenderism. Frans may come off as pro-transgenderism. But it's more accurate to say that Frans is pro- be like chimpanzees. Which is integrating and treating others as individuals as long as they aren't obviously bad actors.
@CatharsisEffect2 жыл бұрын
"Even more so of an argument for learned behavior" That's not true, as de Waal alludes to in is orangutan anecdote and when he mentions differences in the brain. "It's like saying..." Your analogy fails because it is a false comparison. A child's simple liking of a color, is a preference so drawing conclusions about what that might say about the discrepancy between brain and body would be nonsensical. Though what I'm more curious about is, if before puberty supports observational learning, and you also seem to leave more toward social learning; is there an argument that can be made against both?
@oldsoul35392 жыл бұрын
@@CatharsisEffect Frans was making a false comparison. If so called male or female traits display in both sexes before they get their huge doses of behavior and morphology changing sex hormones kicking in at puberty, maybe the mistake is our culture categorizing those traits as male or female in the first place.
@CatharsisEffect2 жыл бұрын
@@oldsoul3539 Puberty begins the process of us becoming the adult versions of our sex, physically and specifically for reproduction. Labels and categories have their limits but but they are effective means of communicating ideas. The issue with humans seems to be how we interpret these labels and how rigidly we adhere to our conceptions and meanings.
@CatharsisEffect2 жыл бұрын
@@oldsoul3539 Puberty starts the process of us becoming the adult versions of our sex, physically and specifically for reproduction. Labels and categories have their limits but they are effective means of communicating ideas. The core issue with humans seems to be how we interpret said labels and how rigidly we adhere to our conceptions and meanings of them. Again, as Francis alludes to when he refers to how accepting the orangutans were of their kin who displayed masculine behaviors despite being a female. How was Francis making a false comparison?
@explrr222 жыл бұрын
Some of Frans comments on disputes seemed overplayed to me. I really grateful and admire his experience, his shared observations and thoughts on primates and relevance to the homosapiens variety. When commenting on disputes amongst academics and scholars past and present... He seemed tending more towards straw manning than steel manning. He'd pick the wacky interpretation of other work and congratulate himself on seeing through that rather than engage with intricacies of issue that some would find less popular. Lowered my opinion a tad, but we're all pulled by social environs I guess , myself as well... OTOH: To his great credit, he's willing to challenge extremes when he finds them untenable given his extensive observation. Plenty of other content in this talk was contra some traditional understanding, but probably familiar to those following discussion in recent times.. I'm buying the book, but I'll be a more cautious reader, which is probably a habit I need to apply more generally 😉
@kevincurrie-knight32672 жыл бұрын
"When commenting on disputes amongst academics and scholars past and present... He seemed tending more towards straw manning than steel manning." I'd be interested in hearing examples. His depiction of Dawkins seems about right to me, but Dawkins - de Waal nails this too - is prone to equivocation on what he does and doesn't mean by "selfish gene." At any rate, if de Waal is strawmanning Dawkins, he is by no means the first to do so in the very same way. Philosopher Mary Midgley and Stephen Jay Gould are just two others that come to mind. What examples are you thinking of? Maybe I'm missing something.
@kevincurrie-knight32672 жыл бұрын
By the way, if the Dawkins bit is what you mean, Midgley's critiques are particularly good, because she goes into a VERY DEEP reading of what Dawkins actually wrote, and highlights the many problems when the metaphor he uses becomes more than metaphor.
@explrr222 жыл бұрын
@@kevincurrie-knight3267 Those are criticisms I've read and heard before and are even familiar by now. They seem more about reactionary politics of academia and individuals, than about science. They likewise, seemed to me to be weak and in Midge's case petty. You're probably right, that it's that dispute he's reliving, but it seemed to me particularly hollow at this point. It's like hearing some old people rekindling their passion over the tone someone else used in a discussion decades ago... People take some petty stuff all the way to the grave I suppose.
@theletterm54252 жыл бұрын
Great interview, Scott! I really hope you can do another interview with Frans in the future. I feel like there is a lot more you two could talk about! And thanks for asking topical questions that are on many of our minds at the moment. It's sad that humans seem to be so divided at along the lines of race, sex and gender identity, when our genetic relatives seem to have much fewer problems in this department. From your conversation, it really seems to me like it comes down to our tendency of categorization, which leads to us creating in- and out-groups based on the most arbitrary of characteristics. As a lefty, I always like to think about how, just a few decades ago, being left-handed was considered an undesirable trait that lead to exclusion and conversion - something that seems laughable to us nowadays. What a stupid thing to judge people over! Although concepts like race and gender are certainly much more complex and multi-faceted than handedness, I do hope that we can walk a similar path of acceptance and, honestly, trivialization when it comes to the meaning that we attach to these concepts. Although that might still take a while.
@kevincurrie-knight32672 жыл бұрын
I will definitely be making some reference to de Waal's newest book in my Intro to Diversity college course. But in reference to this comment, the way I explain it to students is that there seems to be four sources of diversity in humans and the latter two are, if not unique to humans, ramped up in humans beyond other species: biology, environment, culture, individual choice. We are, to put it simply, the cultural animal, the one Camus said always strived to be what it is not. So, categorization is surely one of the big problems, but categorization exists because language and a very sophisticated cognition (with the possibility of abstraction at a high level) exist. And we are a symbolic species, where the categories we make we also make some level of meaning from. Not only can we create and theorize differences, but we can make stories about why the difference is impermissible by our social norms, where the difference comes from (your inferior genes, probably!) and all that. A really interesting new book related to your comment is "If Nietzsche Was a Narwal" by Justin Gregg. His radical hypothesis is that while human intelligence can be a great thing, it is led us into many more problems that we just don't see in other animals, hatreds like racism being just one. I think he overplays the difference between us and others - not giving enough credit to the goods human intelligence produces - but it is a really interesting book.
@michielkarskens22842 жыл бұрын
Excellent.
@Sentientism2 жыл бұрын
Thanks both! If you enjoyed this - I was lucky to interview Frans about "what's real?", "what matters?" and "How can we make a better world" for the @Sentientism channel: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/Z9uHhKRkmJvUhWg.html
@Philognosis12 жыл бұрын
I don’t think anything he said backs up transgenderism being anything other than a social construct born out of intolerance of differences. I would actually argue that he defends the gender critical position. Many gender critical people argue that some women (females) are masculine and some feminine. It is actually the gender identity people who are being intolerant of difference and saying that if you are female and masculine, you must be a man.
@kaye666 Жыл бұрын
I listened to Frans on UK radio today. It sounded very much like he was saying that a specific female chimpanzee liked rough and tumble, and seemed to imply that this was an example of transgenderism. He used the phrase "gender identity" several times but not in a critical way. It didn't sound like he was being gender critical at all (I am gender critical). Did I misunderstand his position? I'm not really sure why he would discuss chimpanzees and transgenderism at all. Why not discuss stereotypes and typical behaviours and socialisation etc. Transgender is so subjective, it doesn't even have a clear definition, so it's impossible to draw any real, evidence-based conclusions regarding "trans" as a result.
@blank468 Жыл бұрын
People who support trans folks don't say you must be a man if you are masculine. They say that if you identify as a man you are a man. There are masculine men and more feminine men, masculine women and more feminine women, there are people who dont fall into the binary who are on stereotypically masculine, feminine or androgynous sides of the spectrum and there are androgynous men and women all of whom may or may not be trans or cis. People who accept trans people are not trying to be prescriptive in any way, they are recognizing that people themselves identify in many nuanced ways and those identities cone from nuanced understanding of self and how people authentically relate to gender markers, constructs and roles. Apes wouldn't have the same relation with identity since they dont have the same relationship with labels and self concept even though they may exhibit behaviour that is more or less typical of patterns seen across their sex. If a masculine female ape could relate to gender identity the eay humans do, maybe theyd consider themselves a trans man ape or a cis female ape or non binary, but that specification doesn't matter. Supporting trans people isnt asserting trans identity wherever you see divergence from stereotypical gender roles or behaviour, its believing people on who they say they are and accepting that. Studying this as it relates to apes isnt about proving apes can be trans, but moresoe that the nature of gender expression, roles and sex may not be definitive or binary even amongst non human animals
@dogmablues71802 жыл бұрын
It seems to me, the point is not how or when humans decide to separate individuals based on arbitrary distinctions aligned with abstract ideologies - but rather, why do we insist in making divisive proclamations about the distinctions when they are essentially individual freedoms that do not impinge upon other individual's freedoms. I believe, issues are often created to coalesce political power. (clearly evident with the Democrat / Republican divide in America). Populace agendas are notorious for "us against them" rhetoric.
@natnup2 жыл бұрын
"The level of tolerance in primate society is actually a bit higher than in human society." "There is only one species I know (...) that is not xenophobic and that's the bonobo." That's a bit harsh for humans don't you think ?