Re: What is a boy?

No contradiction and I woul not describe it as a "category or subset" but a shared attribut of the whole. If you take away the learned behaviors and roles etc.... I think there is a possibility that there are traits that are unique to all boys. That is not to say that all boys have these traits in the same proportion. "How can you assert a diversity among boys....." On a macro scale or taken as a whole there are a finite number of possibilities or as I said, they exist along a "continuum of what is humanly possible" meaning that diversity is still limited between certain parameters. That doesn't mean that there are not millions or more, even a lot more variations. If you look at it from that perspective as a whole, all classes, categories or subsets are artificial constructs but we need look at them by their constituent parts. It is a function of the human brain to stereotype especially when the whole is to big and needs to be broken down. ===> things that we sit on ===> chairs ==> kitchen chairs, living room chairs, etc...... that are all in the class/stereotype "chair" ... if you had to give each of your individual chairs a name like Bob, or Dave, or Roy it would be cumbersome to say the least... and it would make communicating difficult or impossible because how do you know that my Bob is the same as your Bob.... your Bob could be called David. So we simply say the stereotype "chair" and everyone knows about what we mean. In that sense, boy ( though still a subset of human ==> male) is the stereotype and even though it can be broken down into artificial subsets for better communication of ideas i.e. straight boys, bisexual boys, gay boys they remain parts of the whole and may all have some attributes in common or not.... but if they don't, how is "a War on Boys" by feminist even possible? International Boylove Day BoyWiki