I have sooo many thoughts here. Oh dear. Hopefully they won’t overspill.
So it’s super interesting to me to consider women being conditioned to be nicer and more giving. I think I agree with that in general, especially in the sexual context you bring up. (It’s always super weird to me how dudes are so into sex and then, like, rarely actually put effort in. When I’m into something I do my damned best).
But if I take myself as an example (and of course an anecdote can’t disprove a general statement, but just musing here) I was never brought up to be a ‘girl’. My parents were, if anything, sort of boying me up, cutting my hair short and buying me battery operated motor boats and microscopes and guns with little gunpowder caps because ‘Barbies are stupid’. (Barbies are NOT stupid, I bought myself two as an adult woman, but I did love both the boat and the gun must confess). So of course there was still society but in communist Yugoslavia there was actually a big push for equality between the sexes, comrades and all that, women built the roads together with the men, women fought the Germans alongside the men, it really was a vibe.
So I never really even got the notions of sexism and feminism for a long time. I was like wtf are people going on about.
But I definitely gravitate to acts of kindness. Like they are important to me for me. They make me happier. My husband will often note ‘wow you’re pretty nice to be bothering to do that for ____ I would never’.
So I really don’t think it’s conditioning, in my case. But I do wonder if it isn’t literally genetic.
I know a lot of stuff is coming out about how prehistory might have gone a little differently than we thought so far, but I do think there’s still some consensus that women tended to knit communities and work together, while men would be more solitary. And I’m not a huge fan of comparing humans to animals but it’s a common pattern for the females and the young to be together and then the males, like, wherever.
So in that sense if women cooperate and men compete, it makes sense that cooperation goes better if you operate from a place of kindness. I have often remarked in my own family how the women have a system going - all talking to each other, regularly doing things together, lending each other money when needed without the husbands ever knowing, sharing secrets or counseling each other through difficult moments. Always felt like the women were the branches of the family tree that intertwined together and the men just hung at the end of each branch like lumpy fruit, never really interested in interaction.
Obviously many families will be different from this but I still feel overall women tend more towards community. I talk with my friends all the time and my husband is perplexed by this, like wtf you talked yesterday. But it’s support. Running our lives by each other.
Do you think that ties in to your thoughts about female kindness in particular?
No truly, this is so great to read and hear and integrate into this larger topic. Plus it forks into a lot of fascinating related branches in this conversation’s tree. For example: i would eat UP anything comparing social altruism of communist societies vs other political structures, exactly like you point out your upbringing in Yugoslavia and how that shaped you. (Not my place AT ALL but FWIW I’d also love to read more of any writing you’d share on growing up there — but only insofar as you’re comfortable sharing.)
Honestly in writing this piece I only skimmed the surface of so much of the nature vs nurture side of kindness and gender. One of the huge surprises — and I think it totally supports what you say about women & community — is that women’s brains (on average) release slightly more oxytocin and dopamine upon performing an altruistic act. HOWEVER, and it’s a big however, these studies are almost always done on fully grown adult women. Not on young young toddlers, even female infants. Which would be such a better way to finally start untangling some of these nature vs nurture questions at the source, not at an age where brains are already developed and have been complicated influenced.
I was also really disturbed to read some other nurture stuff that I think shapes women here basically from birth. Female babies start receiving something like 2-3x more kisses and physical affection compared to male babies after only a few months. Also when studied, female infants and toddlers almost universally start getting compliments on their external physical appearance and acts like their cute hair and clothes, followed by compliments when they are praised for “behaving well/good.” Whereas male toddlers are overwhelmingly complimented on more internal traits like “you’re so smart/brave/silly.”
I can’t help but think even these things start to rewire the brain from such a fucking young age, literally barely even 1 years old. If a girl literally from day one is being held, kissed, complimented, and praised for being pro social and for external traits and behaviors…how would that not turn most of us into adult women whose brains therefore release extra feel-good chemicals for pro social, external behaviors? Again I’m probably oversimplifying…but it’s fascinating! And a bit troubling.
I’m waaaaay way rambling already so I’m so sorry 😅 But your background and upbringing really got me thinking. So much of this is a nature versus nurture question I’m perpetually fascinating with but we are so ill equipped still to come up with definitive answers around (and answers that don’t get grossly politicized and wielded by manipulative people either). And everyone does have exceptions to the norm and differing experiences.
I paid extreme attention to the point you bring up about touching and kissing with my children, both boys. You are absolutely right that in the US at least boys stop being touched, carried, hugged, kissed, affirmed... at a shockingly early age. I have been rewarded a million times over for my insistence on not doing that, and both of them have the kind of healthy self-esteem that doesn't need to put anybody down in order to feel good. And their mom was pretty great about it, too, I hasten to add.
Oh yeah also when we think nature/nurture we think family but there is so much more, like after the breakup of Yugoslavia we had, like, a decade of war and genocide and getting bombed and sanctions and having no power no water no flour eggs butter milk blah blah and that is also a type of nurture that shapes you in specific ways, and not always how you’d think.
My personal theory is that everyone has some ingrained tilt, like an internal percentage of absolute human kindness they are naturally born with, and then circumstances nudge them up or down that scale. But the same circumstances won’t influence everyone the same. Like theory might suggest when people hit hardships they’re less generous but on the whole my experience does not support that. Or when you look at the Palestinians right now living through absolute hell but remaining largely humble and kind and gentle about it and helping each other. Like you would think it would be mad max over there but while some people obviously will profiteer (as they did in our wars too) many people will be kinder - like when darkness rises up light will rise to meet it’ sort of thing. Others have mentioned it’s somewhat to do with how connected you are with your surroundings, like it’s normal people in Gaza help each other because families are large and interconnected and you feel you belong. Here in the west where it’s pretty normal for even nuclear families to not talk to each other and kids get thrown out at 16 and parents get dumped into homes the first time they cough it’s harder to feel grounded.
Other theories say it’s easier to be connected if you share background so more homogeneous communities are more supportive of each other though from personal experience I found it more a culture thing. You have warm and cold cultures for sure. Like in Sweden if you visit someone it’s 100% normal for them to say ‘hold on we have to eat’ and they go eat their meal and don’t invite you. Most Eastern European and Middle Eastern countries people will FIGHT you if you try to refuse to eat
First, more texts about my communist past definitely on the way, I just usually look to dovetail it with something else because want it to still feel relevant. But a few are already queued up in my scheduled queue.
Idea that communism = altruism is tricky to pick apart. Like everything has multiple sides. On one side there was much more propaganda towards brotherhood and unity and all that jazz and like the state actively promoted those ideas and I do think there is a part of the population that is influenced by top down propaganda. And it is a kind of cool idea you can get swept up in when it’s working. Like it feels great when you have this idea that we’re all equal and we’re all in it together. It works less well when it’s unsuccessful, of all the countries of the old communist bloc arguably ours worked the best? Possibly in a sense it was the only one that really worked because everyone else was, like, starving AND brainwashed. Our guy (Tito) had a great touch, he was friendly with the east and the west, he was friends with Willy Brandt of Germany but also had super good relations with…. I think it was Gorbachev? Of the USSR, or the guy before him, anyway. And then we were actually leading the alliance of the non-aligned countries, meaning those that didn’t want to side either with the East or the West, and there were quite a few of those so it was a solid balanced political position that made us extremely stable (until he died), the Yugoslav passport was the most stolen and counterfeited passport in the world at one point because it could get you into, like, everywhere (I know this because my dad worked with Interpol on chasing down the forgeries). So yeah not all communism is equal and also there is the side where because things belong to everyone they kind of belong to no one so certain types of things like vandalism or littering etc are pretty common because everyone is like ‘meh not my problem’. But yeah Yugoslavia provided a lot to its citizens, like workers would get a week of winter and/or summer holidays in state resorts for free, it wasn’t like delux but taking your kids to the seaside was like 100% a normal thing every year for EVERYONE, you’d get an apartment assigned to you when you had a family, there was a general sense of prosperity which fosters kindness maybe? Easier to be kind when you yourself are decently treated?
It’s interesting about daughters vs sons, like I have one son and he does NOT love being kissed and hugged, he is 12 and still begrudges me one time I ‘hugged him for too long’ when he was 6 and he got super mad at me. But I have sort of barged through that and gave him kisses etc regardless and he has come to, like, accept the love contained within even if he doesn’t love the sensation.
He is super kind though, like he obsessively saves worms and snails from pavements during rain and always reminds me to get change from the bank so we can give something to every homeless person we encounter, neither of those was something I pointedly fostered but both are hugely important to him.
I will here introduce another wrinkle that is neurodivergence, my husband and son are both autistic (jury’s out on my autism but my dad definitely is, I’m clearly ADHD at the very least) and that because it comes with sensory differences can make you either very fond of or very avoidant of human touch. It also possibly carries implications for kindness in a sense because ‘a heightened sense of justice and difficulty accepting unfairness’ is LITERALLY A SYMPTOM which is pretty wild if you think about it at all, that we consider a strong sense of justice to be indicative of having what is largely considered a disorder. (I don’t think it’s a disorder but that’s another wall of text).
So yes I will post this before it becomes unwieldy and then I have to go look at your other points to remember what else
It does sound like your son has that hypersensitivity to touch; I don't know if he feels the loss? but it must be hard on you.
Tito was around for such a long time. I think Khrushchev had friendly relations with him, but I think he was dead by the time Gorbachev came around, and that the few leaders before Gorbachev didn't like him.
Welllll. Yes he was that. He also had a special island prison for political dissidents. So yeah. He for sure created the sort of prosperity we haven’t seen since, and it really did reach all levels of society. He was a complicated and fascinating individual, and a lot of his life (especially early life and rise to power) is absolutely shrouded in mystery and conspiracy theories.
Hi Amy. This post brought up a question I had for you, which maybe belongs more as a dm than a message here, but I never invade a mailbox uninvited. I think it works okay here, though. Anyway, as you may recall, when you posted last week I responded. I can't remember exactly what it was, but you said my words were like an illustration of what it was you had intended your post to evoke. Do you remember? And I said that I intended it that way, but that I never lie when giving a compliment. My question for you is whether that felt manipulative to you: whether my compliment, which was intentionally doing double duty (I thought on your behalf), felt ungenuine because of its intentionality? I ask because you speak of "performative" acts in this post.
Do you know that "emotion" comes from e+motion? implying that feelings come from actions? We've all heard that "love is a verb," right? What I think that means is that the feeling of love comes, most fundamentally, from the acts of love we do. I have, in my time, taken care of some people in the direst need, dependent upon me for EVERYTHING, from getting up in the morning to going to bed at night and everything in between. And my love for those people grew exponentially. Another cliche, not so heartwarming, might be "fake it till you make it," but I think there's something there, too: what your actions manifest, your emotions reflect, and what your emotions reflect, they also direct (into further actions consistent with the feelings).
All of this I think is to agree with what you initially said, not to overthink things, just to do the things you think are right and let the chips fall where they may; at the interpersonal level, that will usually be where they belong.
Not so much the political level, though.
Another great article. You know I love what you write.
Jack! Omg never feel the need to self censor/wonder aloud about commenting vs DMing you silly muffin (and FWIW you can invade DMs anytime, especially if it’s to ping pong ideas).
What you just proved above is actually kinda brilliant. And almost made me want to spit out my morning coffee 😅 Because no. Flat out, hell no. It didn’t feel manipulative, performative, anything negative. Which just proves the whole damn point a lot of simple things get complicated. Both on the individual and political level — but only one of those is in our direct more daily control with both intention and (usually) outcome.
The older I get, the more the saying “love is a verb” resonates. Across relationship types too, and especially amongst my adult friends.
Truly I posted this whole thing knowing it was more an untidy ramble rather than a cohesive idea presentation. At the end of the day, knuckleheads, i sincerely believe its better to just be fucking kind, no matter how you get yourself there.
I have sooo many thoughts here. Oh dear. Hopefully they won’t overspill.
So it’s super interesting to me to consider women being conditioned to be nicer and more giving. I think I agree with that in general, especially in the sexual context you bring up. (It’s always super weird to me how dudes are so into sex and then, like, rarely actually put effort in. When I’m into something I do my damned best).
But if I take myself as an example (and of course an anecdote can’t disprove a general statement, but just musing here) I was never brought up to be a ‘girl’. My parents were, if anything, sort of boying me up, cutting my hair short and buying me battery operated motor boats and microscopes and guns with little gunpowder caps because ‘Barbies are stupid’. (Barbies are NOT stupid, I bought myself two as an adult woman, but I did love both the boat and the gun must confess). So of course there was still society but in communist Yugoslavia there was actually a big push for equality between the sexes, comrades and all that, women built the roads together with the men, women fought the Germans alongside the men, it really was a vibe.
So I never really even got the notions of sexism and feminism for a long time. I was like wtf are people going on about.
But I definitely gravitate to acts of kindness. Like they are important to me for me. They make me happier. My husband will often note ‘wow you’re pretty nice to be bothering to do that for ____ I would never’.
So I really don’t think it’s conditioning, in my case. But I do wonder if it isn’t literally genetic.
I know a lot of stuff is coming out about how prehistory might have gone a little differently than we thought so far, but I do think there’s still some consensus that women tended to knit communities and work together, while men would be more solitary. And I’m not a huge fan of comparing humans to animals but it’s a common pattern for the females and the young to be together and then the males, like, wherever.
So in that sense if women cooperate and men compete, it makes sense that cooperation goes better if you operate from a place of kindness. I have often remarked in my own family how the women have a system going - all talking to each other, regularly doing things together, lending each other money when needed without the husbands ever knowing, sharing secrets or counseling each other through difficult moments. Always felt like the women were the branches of the family tree that intertwined together and the men just hung at the end of each branch like lumpy fruit, never really interested in interaction.
Obviously many families will be different from this but I still feel overall women tend more towards community. I talk with my friends all the time and my husband is perplexed by this, like wtf you talked yesterday. But it’s support. Running our lives by each other.
Do you think that ties in to your thoughts about female kindness in particular?
Overspill! Always overspill! Team overspill!!
No truly, this is so great to read and hear and integrate into this larger topic. Plus it forks into a lot of fascinating related branches in this conversation’s tree. For example: i would eat UP anything comparing social altruism of communist societies vs other political structures, exactly like you point out your upbringing in Yugoslavia and how that shaped you. (Not my place AT ALL but FWIW I’d also love to read more of any writing you’d share on growing up there — but only insofar as you’re comfortable sharing.)
Honestly in writing this piece I only skimmed the surface of so much of the nature vs nurture side of kindness and gender. One of the huge surprises — and I think it totally supports what you say about women & community — is that women’s brains (on average) release slightly more oxytocin and dopamine upon performing an altruistic act. HOWEVER, and it’s a big however, these studies are almost always done on fully grown adult women. Not on young young toddlers, even female infants. Which would be such a better way to finally start untangling some of these nature vs nurture questions at the source, not at an age where brains are already developed and have been complicated influenced.
I was also really disturbed to read some other nurture stuff that I think shapes women here basically from birth. Female babies start receiving something like 2-3x more kisses and physical affection compared to male babies after only a few months. Also when studied, female infants and toddlers almost universally start getting compliments on their external physical appearance and acts like their cute hair and clothes, followed by compliments when they are praised for “behaving well/good.” Whereas male toddlers are overwhelmingly complimented on more internal traits like “you’re so smart/brave/silly.”
I can’t help but think even these things start to rewire the brain from such a fucking young age, literally barely even 1 years old. If a girl literally from day one is being held, kissed, complimented, and praised for being pro social and for external traits and behaviors…how would that not turn most of us into adult women whose brains therefore release extra feel-good chemicals for pro social, external behaviors? Again I’m probably oversimplifying…but it’s fascinating! And a bit troubling.
I’m waaaaay way rambling already so I’m so sorry 😅 But your background and upbringing really got me thinking. So much of this is a nature versus nurture question I’m perpetually fascinating with but we are so ill equipped still to come up with definitive answers around (and answers that don’t get grossly politicized and wielded by manipulative people either). And everyone does have exceptions to the norm and differing experiences.
I paid extreme attention to the point you bring up about touching and kissing with my children, both boys. You are absolutely right that in the US at least boys stop being touched, carried, hugged, kissed, affirmed... at a shockingly early age. I have been rewarded a million times over for my insistence on not doing that, and both of them have the kind of healthy self-esteem that doesn't need to put anybody down in order to feel good. And their mom was pretty great about it, too, I hasten to add.
That's amazing. What a gift you gave them, truly.
Your calling me a silly muffin had a lot to do with this post I just wrote! https://jackrender.substack.com/p/on-translation-of-poetry-and-the
Oh yeah also when we think nature/nurture we think family but there is so much more, like after the breakup of Yugoslavia we had, like, a decade of war and genocide and getting bombed and sanctions and having no power no water no flour eggs butter milk blah blah and that is also a type of nurture that shapes you in specific ways, and not always how you’d think.
My personal theory is that everyone has some ingrained tilt, like an internal percentage of absolute human kindness they are naturally born with, and then circumstances nudge them up or down that scale. But the same circumstances won’t influence everyone the same. Like theory might suggest when people hit hardships they’re less generous but on the whole my experience does not support that. Or when you look at the Palestinians right now living through absolute hell but remaining largely humble and kind and gentle about it and helping each other. Like you would think it would be mad max over there but while some people obviously will profiteer (as they did in our wars too) many people will be kinder - like when darkness rises up light will rise to meet it’ sort of thing. Others have mentioned it’s somewhat to do with how connected you are with your surroundings, like it’s normal people in Gaza help each other because families are large and interconnected and you feel you belong. Here in the west where it’s pretty normal for even nuclear families to not talk to each other and kids get thrown out at 16 and parents get dumped into homes the first time they cough it’s harder to feel grounded.
Other theories say it’s easier to be connected if you share background so more homogeneous communities are more supportive of each other though from personal experience I found it more a culture thing. You have warm and cold cultures for sure. Like in Sweden if you visit someone it’s 100% normal for them to say ‘hold on we have to eat’ and they go eat their meal and don’t invite you. Most Eastern European and Middle Eastern countries people will FIGHT you if you try to refuse to eat
Oooh now you’ve done it! Overspill incoming lol.
First, more texts about my communist past definitely on the way, I just usually look to dovetail it with something else because want it to still feel relevant. But a few are already queued up in my scheduled queue.
Idea that communism = altruism is tricky to pick apart. Like everything has multiple sides. On one side there was much more propaganda towards brotherhood and unity and all that jazz and like the state actively promoted those ideas and I do think there is a part of the population that is influenced by top down propaganda. And it is a kind of cool idea you can get swept up in when it’s working. Like it feels great when you have this idea that we’re all equal and we’re all in it together. It works less well when it’s unsuccessful, of all the countries of the old communist bloc arguably ours worked the best? Possibly in a sense it was the only one that really worked because everyone else was, like, starving AND brainwashed. Our guy (Tito) had a great touch, he was friendly with the east and the west, he was friends with Willy Brandt of Germany but also had super good relations with…. I think it was Gorbachev? Of the USSR, or the guy before him, anyway. And then we were actually leading the alliance of the non-aligned countries, meaning those that didn’t want to side either with the East or the West, and there were quite a few of those so it was a solid balanced political position that made us extremely stable (until he died), the Yugoslav passport was the most stolen and counterfeited passport in the world at one point because it could get you into, like, everywhere (I know this because my dad worked with Interpol on chasing down the forgeries). So yeah not all communism is equal and also there is the side where because things belong to everyone they kind of belong to no one so certain types of things like vandalism or littering etc are pretty common because everyone is like ‘meh not my problem’. But yeah Yugoslavia provided a lot to its citizens, like workers would get a week of winter and/or summer holidays in state resorts for free, it wasn’t like delux but taking your kids to the seaside was like 100% a normal thing every year for EVERYONE, you’d get an apartment assigned to you when you had a family, there was a general sense of prosperity which fosters kindness maybe? Easier to be kind when you yourself are decently treated?
It’s interesting about daughters vs sons, like I have one son and he does NOT love being kissed and hugged, he is 12 and still begrudges me one time I ‘hugged him for too long’ when he was 6 and he got super mad at me. But I have sort of barged through that and gave him kisses etc regardless and he has come to, like, accept the love contained within even if he doesn’t love the sensation.
He is super kind though, like he obsessively saves worms and snails from pavements during rain and always reminds me to get change from the bank so we can give something to every homeless person we encounter, neither of those was something I pointedly fostered but both are hugely important to him.
I will here introduce another wrinkle that is neurodivergence, my husband and son are both autistic (jury’s out on my autism but my dad definitely is, I’m clearly ADHD at the very least) and that because it comes with sensory differences can make you either very fond of or very avoidant of human touch. It also possibly carries implications for kindness in a sense because ‘a heightened sense of justice and difficulty accepting unfairness’ is LITERALLY A SYMPTOM which is pretty wild if you think about it at all, that we consider a strong sense of justice to be indicative of having what is largely considered a disorder. (I don’t think it’s a disorder but that’s another wall of text).
So yes I will post this before it becomes unwieldy and then I have to go look at your other points to remember what else
It does sound like your son has that hypersensitivity to touch; I don't know if he feels the loss? but it must be hard on you.
Tito was around for such a long time. I think Khrushchev had friendly relations with him, but I think he was dead by the time Gorbachev came around, and that the few leaders before Gorbachev didn't like him.
Yeah basically from after WWII until 1980 when he died. People legit cried in the streets. I mean I was two but so I’ve been told
I always heard he was a bold man and great leader.
Welllll. Yes he was that. He also had a special island prison for political dissidents. So yeah. He for sure created the sort of prosperity we haven’t seen since, and it really did reach all levels of society. He was a complicated and fascinating individual, and a lot of his life (especially early life and rise to power) is absolutely shrouded in mystery and conspiracy theories.
Hi Amy. This post brought up a question I had for you, which maybe belongs more as a dm than a message here, but I never invade a mailbox uninvited. I think it works okay here, though. Anyway, as you may recall, when you posted last week I responded. I can't remember exactly what it was, but you said my words were like an illustration of what it was you had intended your post to evoke. Do you remember? And I said that I intended it that way, but that I never lie when giving a compliment. My question for you is whether that felt manipulative to you: whether my compliment, which was intentionally doing double duty (I thought on your behalf), felt ungenuine because of its intentionality? I ask because you speak of "performative" acts in this post.
Do you know that "emotion" comes from e+motion? implying that feelings come from actions? We've all heard that "love is a verb," right? What I think that means is that the feeling of love comes, most fundamentally, from the acts of love we do. I have, in my time, taken care of some people in the direst need, dependent upon me for EVERYTHING, from getting up in the morning to going to bed at night and everything in between. And my love for those people grew exponentially. Another cliche, not so heartwarming, might be "fake it till you make it," but I think there's something there, too: what your actions manifest, your emotions reflect, and what your emotions reflect, they also direct (into further actions consistent with the feelings).
All of this I think is to agree with what you initially said, not to overthink things, just to do the things you think are right and let the chips fall where they may; at the interpersonal level, that will usually be where they belong.
Not so much the political level, though.
Another great article. You know I love what you write.
Jack! Omg never feel the need to self censor/wonder aloud about commenting vs DMing you silly muffin (and FWIW you can invade DMs anytime, especially if it’s to ping pong ideas).
What you just proved above is actually kinda brilliant. And almost made me want to spit out my morning coffee 😅 Because no. Flat out, hell no. It didn’t feel manipulative, performative, anything negative. Which just proves the whole damn point a lot of simple things get complicated. Both on the individual and political level — but only one of those is in our direct more daily control with both intention and (usually) outcome.
The older I get, the more the saying “love is a verb” resonates. Across relationship types too, and especially amongst my adult friends.
Truly I posted this whole thing knowing it was more an untidy ramble rather than a cohesive idea presentation. At the end of the day, knuckleheads, i sincerely believe its better to just be fucking kind, no matter how you get yourself there.
Glad, at least, that I didn't make you waste your coffee, though it sounds like a close call. :)