What we don't (want to) know..

"In other words, these scholars do not argue that women are incapable of doing what men do,
but rather that they are biologically programmed to want other things."

That's pretty amazing really. The article clearly documents that not only are gender roles culturally defined (as we now know) but that research into gender is also affected by cultural and institutional biases. So in trying to figure out, scientifically, what gender difference exists, the research itself gets mired in the funding, political, and cultural differences of the day, meaning you do really end up not being able to 'sort out the wheat from the chaff'.

It also strikes me as odd that whilst we are 'hand-wringing', and in my opinion giving far 'too much airtime', about the tiny minority who we might loosely term 'gender fluid' (gay, bi, transgender, etc.) we hardly actually empirically understand the difference amongst the vast majority of the population - women and men.

To highlight just how culturally complex the discussion about LGBT+ has become we're not even allowed to know, for example, how many people identify as 'non-binary' in Australia. Statistically, sensibly, the ABS clearly defines differences between sex and gender. But, and it's been my contention for some time that, if we don't even know the scale of the problem (if problem is the right term?) how can there be much, if any, validity to the amount of media and policy coverage the LGBT+ issue gets? Is is proportional? (of course, we don't, and aren't allowed to, know).

Isn't it sufficient to say that the LGBT+ community is just another minority special interest group (like the disabled) and that all these groups must not be discriminated against? And that they be covered under current anti-discrimination legislation provisions?

It's pretty amazing to realise that here, in the (so called) enlightened 21st century, we may be stifling our own understanding of ourselves as women and men because fundamentally we are still bound by centuries old taboos which forbid open and frank discussion of sex and gender..