Why is creativity considered a feminine trait when women don't create anything except babies?

[Owledge]

Edited December 7, 2009 by Hardyg

[C T]

 

Well, then if you want people to find it worthy to respond to you, you might want to explain your connection to Tao with cows.

 

Haha I like that Hardyg! Perhaps its worth a thought to opt for a different 'name' - how about C'owl'Tao?!! That would certainly meet with your approval eh?

Edited December 7, 2009 by CowTao

[Stigweard]

Well, then if you want people to find it worthy to respond to you, you might want to explain your connection to Tao with cows.

Haven't you ever heard of THE COW TE CHING ( http://www.theabsolute.net/minefield/cowching.html )

 

[goldisheavy]

"Why is creativity considered a feminine trait when women don't create anything except babies?"

 

Maybe because women create life and men create bone-headed threads like this one?

 

Women do not create life though. Women don't even create babies.

 

Men create and women just enjoy the fruits of men's labour.

 

I disagree with such a strong one-sided formulation.

 

However, I've always considered both creativity and playfulness to be masculine traits. That said, both men and women have feminine and masculine traits, so the situation is not that simple. Furthermore, creativity doesn't exist in a vacuum. It needs a support system. Just like a letter of an alphabet cannot exist without the blank space around it, creativity cannot exist without the routine and playfulness cannot exist without the seriousness/straightforwardness. All the qualities define each other and depend on each other.

[Aetherous]

Women don't even create babies.

 

Haha...interesting point that no one else seemed to consider.

[lino]

When my brain is working in its normal way, I am equally vulnerable to men--not to the sight of their bodies or faces, but simply to the sight of erect cocks. It brings me to my knees.

 

I think having that vulnerability is a sign of a healthy body. What you do with that vulnerability, on the other hand, is up to you. If you use that desire without acting on it and then send it up and circulate, you can profoundly benefit. So you have come to the right spot!

 

 

Okay

 

You said before that you have the ability to stare at a guy's package and making it "grow"

[Creation]

Haha...interesting point that no one else seemed to consider.

Yeah, I was waiting for someone to say this. I thought that yang was considered creative relative to yin because the sperm it is the "spark" that makes the egg start to divide. But there are bigger issues with what the OP said, and arguments about is x yin or yang are hardly productive, so I didn't say anything.

Edited December 8, 2009 by Creation

[Taomeow]

Yeah, I was waiting for someone to say this. I thought that yang was considered creative relative to yin because the sperm it is the "spark" that makes the egg start to divide. But there are bigger issues with what the OP said, and arguments about is x yin or yang are hardly productive, so I didn't say anything.

no, biologically speaking, this is incorrect. An egg can start to divide and successfully develop to term via parthenogenesis. True it's not common in humans, but it's common in many other species, and there's absolutely no natural prohibition on this happening to a human egg under the right circumstances (I remember high concentrations of UV radiation and salt water as some of the likely conditions to jump-start parthenogenesis in higher primates.) The sperm is absolutely optional -- it is merely the most common way to fertilize an egg but not the sine qua non. Of course an egg fertilized by parthenogenesis will develop into a female, a copy of the mother, so the function of the sperm is to introduce variety, or what McKenna calls "novelty," into the process. But that's all it does -- it doesn't create life, it only modulates life once it has been created -- by a female.

 

Interestingly, all the religious stories about a virgin begetting a god (there's many of these besides, and before, the Virgin Mary story) are biologically non-viable because a god conceived immaculately can only be a female. In which case the story would be rather realistic.

[Andrei]

I am sexist. There are some things men are better at than women, just intrinsically. I was a math major. Men at the highest levels are better than women at mathematics. They are better at analytical thinking, and MUCH better at spatial thinking. They are more tactical than women, they are more strategic than women. Men are more analytical, women are more intuitive, and men and women are equally creative. And of course men are better at sports, again at the highest levels, aside from sports that require endurance or agility over speed and strength.

 

 

Men have penises/testicles, Women have vaginas/uterus... and that's pretty much what someone can say about men and women.

 

There are men with breasts and women without breasts.

 

There are men with too much estrogen and women with too much testosterone.

 

There are men without beards and women with beards. And there are bald women too.

 

Both men and women are PEOPLE.

 

People are Extroverts and Introverts.

People are Sensitives and Intuitives.

People are Thinkers and Feelers.

People are Judgers and Perceivers.

 

People are dumb and brilliant. Are stupid and intelligent.

 

Both men and women can be left brain dominant as well as right brain dominant. There are talkative men and silent women.

 

I'm a Man (I have a penis) but I am an INFP. So that's make me a woman? I have feelings and I am quite sensible. All my life I was right brain dominant and still I could not CREATE anything. All I did was I copied others creations/innovations. And I educated and used my analytical mind to become an engineer.

 

Just because there was once a Marie Curie, that does not mean that all the women are like her. Or that all the men are like Einstein.

 

http://www.personalitypage.com/info.html

 

There is not such a thing that women are emotional and men are not emotional. People are emotional and non-emotional. People are active and passive. There are LOTS of active women and passive men, does not mean they are ALL like that.

 

There is NOT SUCH THING as men=Yang and women=Yin.

 

There are Yin men and Yang women, and in fact is much more complicated as this.

 

Both men an women have inside them the same organs (except the sex organs). The organs (even the sex organs) can be Yang or Yin. A man can have a Yang kidney and liver and a Yin heart. A woman can have a Yang lung and spleen and a Yin heart and kidney and liver. And their energy condition their behavior. Their mental energy is conditioned by their body. And the body is not only DNA. The body is also what you eat and what you do with it.

 

And what about a male body inhabited by a woman soul? Or a female body inhabited by a man soul? What is he/she/it?

 

What about a balanced person? Which is almost androgynous? And I am not talking about a hermaphrodyte, but a normal man or woman who cultivated the opposite sex or soul characteristics so that he/she became NEUTRAL?

 

And so on there are endless combination which makes us (ALL THE PEOPLE) impossible to be categorized just in two or three categories.

[Pero]

no, biologically speaking, this is incorrect. An egg can start to divide and successfully develop to term via parthenogenesis. True it's not common in humans,

 

LOL, not common? As far as I can see it'be a miracle if it happened naturally.

 

But that's all it does -- it doesn't create life, it only modulates life once it has been created -- by a female.

 

LOL yeah, because women become pregnant on their own and then have sex just because they don't want to give birth to copies of themselves.

 

Interestingly, all the religious stories about a virgin begetting a god (there's many of these besides, and before, the Virgin Mary story) are biologically non-viable because a god conceived immaculately can only be a female.

 

Interesting point, I'll keep this in my mind, could be useful hehe.

[Taomeow]

LOL, not common? As far as I can see it'be a miracle if it happened naturally.

The climate is not what it used to be, but when it was hotter and the oceans were saltier, it happened -- Australian aborigines assert that's how they were born for the bulk of their history. Whether they're telling the truth I don't know, all I'm saying is, nothing in our biological state stands in the way of this being physiologically possible, whereas nothing in our biology supports the possibility of men being able to beget life without women.

 

LOL yeah, because women become pregnant on their own and then have sex just because they don't want to give birth to copies of themselves.

 

Exactly, if in the category of "women" you include "mother nature" or as Laozi puts it, The Great Mother of All Things.

Personal example: my daughter did everything she could to be different from me -- I'm a fairly strong influence and she sensed early on that if she doesn't resist all she can become would be a copy of me, and she wasn't interested. Whereas my son, who by virtue of being a being of a different gender was at no risk of turning into a copy of me never had a problem learning from me -- it was safe for him because he would be different enough by default. (As one result, he knows and follows things taoist to a much greater extent than does his sister. )

Interesting point, I'll keep this in my mind, could be useful hehe.

Very useful for knocking the socks off certain followers of certain doctrines but not entirely safe... proceed at your own risk!

[witch]

No steam, there are fundamental differences both in body and brain. Bodies can be modified with hormones and surgery, and even the brain to a lesser extent, but even the most feminine post-op trannie still has the brain structure of a man.

 

Don't get me wrong, I was pretty damn good at math and could run circles around most men. But at a very high level (I went to an Ivy League school) I was at a disadvantage with spatial thinking, it was clear to me and to my professors. I solved the proofs in unusual ways, ways my professors had never seen before.

[Pero]

nothing in our biological state stands in the way of this being physiologically possible, whereas nothing in our biology supports the possibility of men being able to beget life without women.

 

Don't really disagree about the second part, but if the first were true don't you think there'd some verifiable cases of it happening? Maybe "mother nature" just knows better hehe.

 

Personal example: my daughter did everything she could to be different from me -- I'm a fairly strong influence and she sensed early on that if she doesn't resist all she can become would be a copy of me, and she wasn't interested. Whereas my son, who by virtue of being a being of a different gender was at no risk of turning into a copy of me never had a problem learning from me -- it was safe for him because he would be different enough by default. (As one result, he knows and follows things taoist to a much greater extent than does his sister. )

 

But isn't your example more of a psychological thing, not biological (which parthenogenesis would be)?

 

Very useful for knocking the socks off certain followers of certain doctrines but not entirely safe... proceed at your own risk!

[Creation]

no, biologically speaking, this is incorrect. An egg can start to divide and successfully develop to term via parthenogenesis. True it's not common in humans, but it's common in many other species, and there's absolutely no natural prohibition on this happening to a human egg under the right circumstances (I remember high concentrations of UV radiation and salt water as some of the likely conditions to jump-start parthenogenesis in higher primates.) The sperm is absolutely optional -- it is merely the most common way to fertilize an egg but not the sine qua non. Of course an egg fertilized by parthenogenesis will develop into a female, a copy of the mother, so the function of the sperm is to introduce variety, or what McKenna calls "novelty," into the process. But that's all it does -- it doesn't create life, it only modulates life once it has been created -- by a female.

The real reason I thought of creativity as yang is because

1. I am a male

2. I am a very creative person (hence the screen name)

3. The "divine female who inspires" archetype resonates very strongly with me (e.g. this is one of my favorite paintings http://www.museumsyndicate.com/images/1/2133.jpg )

I.e. yin inspires yang to create. But I know this is not universal, and there are plenty of reasons someone might consider yin to be the creative. It's just my personal disposition.

 

Your personal disposition seems to be opposite to mine. But that is not universal either.

 

Someone else pointed out (much to my delight), it takes yin and yang together to create. That is universal.

 

Edited December 8, 2009 by Creation

[goldisheavy]

I am sexist. There are some things men are better at than women, just intrinsically. I was a math major. Men at the highest levels are better than women at mathematics. They are better at analytical thinking, and MUCH better at spatial thinking. They are more tactical than women, they are more strategic than women. Men are more analytical, women are more intuitive, and men and women are equally creative. And of course men are better at sports, again at the highest levels, aside from sports that require endurance or agility over speed and strength.

 

Noticing differences between sexes doesn't make you sexist. Being sexist means placing a lower value on one sex over the other.

[Pietro]

Noticing differences between sexes doesn't make you sexist. Being sexist means placing a lower value on one sex over the other.

I really need to stress the article I linked before.

Please read it. It really explains how men and women are different.

And why evolutionarily it made sense.

 

So much of what you are discussing is just related to what is there.

 

Please, do read it.

 

http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~baumeistertice/goodaboutmen.htm

Edited December 8, 2009 by Pietro

[Taomeow]

The real reason I thought of creativity as yang is because

1. I am a male

2. I am a very creative person (hence the screen name)

3. The "divine female who inspires" archetype resonates very strongly with me (e.g. this is one of my favorite paintings http://www.museumsyndicate.com/images/1/2133.jpg )

I.e. yin inspires yang to create. But I know this is not universal, and there are plenty of reasons someone might consider yin to be the creative. It's just my personal disposition.

 

Your personal disposition seems to be opposite to mine. But that is not universal either.

 

Someone else pointed out (much to my delight), it takes yin and yang together to create. That is universal.

 

of course, but I was talking about who creates babies specifically, who creates life, and yang is present in the process universally -- once there's four cells after the the second division, the fourth one will rotate on top of the other three, forming a pyramid, and that's a yang move right there -- but sperm is optional, it does sound crazy but it is a theoretical fact of biology with hard empirical evidence for at least the less complex species than ours and nothing but current limitations of technology that are theoretically non-prohibitive stands in the way of doing it this way in our species too.

 

On the other hand, estrogen is a metabolite of testosterone, strictly the next metabolic step the human body takes in its transformations -- which might explain the hardwired inequality in the brain functions of sexes -- women have more of the actual material that constitutes the next -- i.e. "advanced" in the true biological sense of the word -- step in the evolution of sexual distinctions in the species. (Men have some estrogen too of course.) However, conversions of estrogen back into testosterone also happen in the woman's body, levels fluctuate (being the lowest right before the period, at which time, Witch, you would be as good as the best men with spacial math tasks, since it is the estrogen that suppresses spacial orientation in women, on evolution's purpose -- making sure we don't run away from hubby and children for fear of getting lost! while men, who had to go out and far to bring home the meat, must express rather than suppress this ability... hence your Ivy Leage frustrations... my mom who went to the Russian equivalent of an Ivy Leage school complained of the same thing, that she was better at all of math except stereometry than her male peers... but that's merely the legacy of our natural hunter-gatherer specialization.)

 

In the classical taoism yang inspires and yin manifests (nevermind Wilhelm's translation of "the Creative" and "the Receptive" repeated by many since, he was generally peculiar in his approach in that everywhere the I Ching has "person" in the original, a word that is gender-neutral in Chinese, he translated it as "man.") Yang is the spirit, yin is the embodiment. Yang is the idea, yin is the application. If you look at the Circular I Ching diagram, you can see they arise simultaneously (shaoyin and shaoyang) from wuji, which in its turn is neither. The primal mother is neither yin nor yang... but contains the potentials of both. She is mother rather than father though because she is ovum-like, symbolized by a circle, a zero, or a "cosmic egg" in pretty much all ancient cultures besides taoism, not snake-like with a little tail like a sperm. Snake-like, male, comes later; egg-like, female, is primordial. Why men started taking offense at the idea and coming up with all-male creator arrangements like the happy gay family of Father, Son and Holy Ghost but no Mother in the picture is something I could hardly wrap my lil'brain around...

[Creation]

In the classical taoism yang inspires and yin manifests (nevermind Wilhelm's translation of "the Creative" and "the Receptive" repeated by many since, he was generally peculiar in his approach in that everywhere the I Ching has "person" in the original, a word that is gender-neutral in Chinese, he translated it as "man.") Yang is the spirit, yin is the embodiment. Yang is the idea, yin is the application.

Oh!

 

This makes sense to me now. It is not that yin inspires my yang creativity, it is the pull of the yin that causes my yang inspiration to manifest. The idea that without the yin I cannot manifest my inspiration is exactly what I feel, but I never thought of in that way, perhaps for the same reasons that caused Wilhelm to translate as he did.

 

So thanks for that.

 

BTW, I thought both sperm and egg cells only contained only half the total chromosomes needed for new life. So...

Edited December 8, 2009 by Creation

[witch]

Why men started taking offense at the idea and coming up with all-male creator arrangements like the happy gay family of Father, Son and Holy Ghost but no Mother in the picture is something I could hardly wrap my lil'brain around...

 

You probably already know this, but just in case you don't....

 

http://www.grailchurch.org/sophia.htm

 

My youngest daughter is named Sophia

[Taomeow]

Oh!

 

This makes sense to me now. It is not that yin inspires my yang creativity, it is the pull of the yin that causes my yang inspiration to manifest. The idea that without the yin I cannot manifest my inspiration is exactly what I feel, but I never thought of in that way, probably for semantic/linguistic reasons (the very same ones that caused Wilhelm to translate as he did, I suspect).

 

Thanks for that.

 

BTW, I thought both sperm and egg cells only contained only half the total chromosomes needed for new life. So...

 

Right, yin is the pull! yang, being expansive in its nature, tends to dissipate into naught unless there's the pull of yin to concentrate, condense, and contain it -- which is what actually creating something rather than being creative in one's head is all about.

 

As to the chromosomes -- well, yes, one needs the other half in order to manifest something new (which was my original point -- male chromosomes provide variety, novelty, i.e. modulate life, make it more interesting to itself, so to speak), but if you simply double up the chromosomes of the ovum (parthenogenesis) you do have all the machinery to get a new live organism -- I don't mean you personally, I mean a woman does -- which however will be "more of the same," a copy of the mother. You can't copy the father this way though because the machinery isn't there to develop the fetus.

 

My youngest daughter is named Sophia

So was my paternal grandmother.

[Creation]

Edited December 8, 2009 by Creation

[immortal_sister]

On the other hand, estrogen is a metabolite of testosterone, strictly the next metabolic step the human body takes in its transformations -- which might explain the hardwired inequality in the brain functions of sexes -- women have more of the actual material that constitutes the next -- i.e. "advanced" in the true biological sense of the word -- step in the evolution of sexual distinctions in the species. (Men have some estrogen too of course.) However, conversions of estrogen back into testosterone also happen in the woman's body, levels fluctuate (being the lowest right before the period, at which time, Witch, you would be as good as the best men with spacial math tasks, since it is the estrogen that suppresses spacial orientation in women, on evolution's purpose -- making sure we don't run away from hubby and children for fear of getting lost! while men, who had to go out and far to bring home the meat, must express rather than suppress this ability... hence your Ivy Leage frustrations... my mom who went to the Russian equivalent of an Ivy Leage school complained of the same thing, that she was better at all of math except stereometry than her male peers... but that's merely the legacy of our natural hunter-gatherer specialization.)

 

 

great post all around. it is a good point to make about the hormones. another thing to consider about chromosomes since Creation brought that up, is that the chromosomes for women are XX, men are XY. the default is the X, the female chromosome.

 

Each person normally has one pair of sex chromosomes in each cell. Females have two X chromosomes, whereas males have one X and one Y chromosome. Both males and females retain one of their mother's X chromosomes, and females retain their second X chromosome from their father. Since the father retains his X chromosome from his mother, a human female has one X chromosome from her paternal grandmother, and one X chromosome from her mother.

 

i find this stuff fascinating! also, if we look at the evolution of the fetus, we see that before the sexual organs of the child develops, until about the 9th week of gestation, the sexual organs of both male and female babies are the same http://www.baby2see.com/gender/external_genitals.html there are two theories about this stage of development; some scientists say the babies start off as "females", that this is the original template (which to me makes sense, given the X chromosome being the one that is always present), but others say that the template is neutral. either way, something interesting to think about, and i think it relevant to some of what Taomeow was saying.

 

 

all this is just food for thought, and not meant to be some kind of show of how women are superior, etc. it should be obvious to anyone that when it really boils down to it, yin and yang are complimentary and necessary, one does not exist without the other. same is true for males and females.

 

i don't want to get too involved in this discussion as i reacted negatively when i first posted in this thread and it was not productive

[Andrei]

I really need to stress the article I linked before.

Please read it. It really explains how men and women are different.

And why evolutionarily it made sense.

 

So much of what you are discussing is just related to what is there.

 

Please, do read it.

 

http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~baumeistertice/goodaboutmen.htm

 

Very good article.

 

Although I don't agree with this: "To maximize reproduction, a culture needs all the wombs it can get, but a few penises can do the job"

 

The reality is that all the human population comes from one Adam and one Eve, which they say had mutations along the timeline so that we (ALL HUMANS) have 10 Adams and 18 Eves as ancestors.

 

But if I look at the Haplogroups Maps they look like pretty balanced as in terms of mutations and common ancestors (fathers - Y chromosome and mothers - mithocondrial DNA)

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup#Hu...DNA_haplogroups

http://www.dirkschweitzer.net/DNATests.html

 

 

Edited December 8, 2009 by steam

[Taomeow]

great post all around. it is a good point to make about the hormones. another thing to consider about chromosomes since Creation brought that up, is that the chromosomes for women are XX, men are XY. the default is the X, the female chromosome.

i find this stuff fascinating! also, if we look at the evolution of the fetus, we see that before the sexual organs of the child develops, until about the 9th week of gestation, the sexual organs of both male and female babies are the same http://www.baby2see.com/gender/external_genitals.html there are two theories about this stage of development; some scientists say the babies start off as "females", that this is the original template (which to me makes sense, given the X chromosome being the one that is always present), but others say that the template is neutral. either way, something interesting to think about, and i think it relevant to some of what Taomeow was saying.

all this is just food for thought, and not meant to be some kind of show of how women are superior, etc. it should be obvious to anyone that when it really boils down to it, yin and yang are complimentary and necessary, one does not exist without the other. same is true for males and females.

 

i don't want to get too involved in this discussion as i reacted negatively when i first posted in this thread and it was not productive

Thank you, Immortal Sister! Which one are you though, been wondering -- not Sun Bu-er by any chance? She's my favorite! because if I ever do this immortality thingie I've been meaning to do I'll have to do it her way... your way?..

[Pietro]

Very good article.

 

Although I don't agree with this: "To maximize reproduction, a culture needs all the wombs it can get, but a few penises can do the job"

 

The reality is that all the human population comes from one Adam and one Eve, which they say had mutations along the timeline so that we (ALL HUMANS) have 10 Adams and 18 Eves as ancestors.

 

But if I look at the Haplogroups Maps they look like pretty balanced as in terms of mutations and common ancestors (fathers - Y chromosome and mothers - mithocondrial DNA)

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup#Hu...DNA_haplogroups

http://www.dirkschweitzer.net/DNATests.html

 

It might look balanced, but at the end, if you take a random man, and a random woman,

the probability for the man to have offspring are about half the probability for the woman to have offspring.

(i.e. a women will be able to have at least a kid with a probability that is double the probability for a men to have at least a kid.)

And this for all the history of the human race.

 

Such a difference in reproductive possibilities are huge and had to produce a serious phenotypical difference.

 

So I am not surprised that we are different. What does surprise me (actually what impresses me) is that such a simple explanation can cover such a wide range of phenomena.