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logansrogueMany of you that know me know that I am a feminist. I don't talk about it much but I'm a fierce believer in a woman's ability and her rights to be counted as an equal with men. It's been ingrained in my beliefs since I was a child from my mother, not from lecturing or giving me wise words, but by her unrelenting zeal in trying to not only better herself, but contribute to the community she lived in and to be the best mother she could so that the people she brought into this world would be an asset and not a liability.
Being bisexual and having a fair fifty-fifty ratio of male and female family members around me growing up, I learnt of the differences between male and female pretty quickly. The thing was, I didn't realise people assigned these things to different sexes specifically until I was older.
I'd listen to classic rock like Jimi Hendrix and Deep Purple when I was ten, and all I knew was that I felt that rebellious surge in my soul and I wanted to rock just as hard. I'd hang out with my big brother (much to his chagrin) when his friends were around and thoroughly enjoyed their faux-battle games in the garden, just as much as I'd love sitting with my sister or cousins and playing with my Barbie dolls. The whole scope of my upbringing was the reiteration, again and again through action instead of sermon that I could do or be anything I wanted. That nothing is gender specific. That we all have human nature but that it's our souls and minds that make us different from dumb animals, so we're never slaves of our physical make up.
So when women say shit like this, I start getting pretty pissed off. Helen Cronin bemoans the fact that feminists deny her 'scientific' evidence (which is merely statistical evidence based on a society that is still going through a state of flux as far as its sexual awakening goes - sexism is still strong and it swings both ways) and then goes on to cite these wonderful gems:
- If your aim is to get rich, don't try selling pornography to women or romantic novels to men; don't try selling 'Kill! Kill!' computer games to girls or 'people' games to boys. And, anyway, you can't simply generalise about how large the overlap is; it depends on the characteristic. There'll be almost no overlap if you pitch boys against girls in throwing missiles — the boys will win every time; and almost no overlap in fluency of speech — nine out of ten men will do worse than women.
- There's also a curious fact — it's one that's been uncovered by evolutionary biology — about the shapes of the distribution curves for most male-female differences. Darwin remarked on it and it holds robustly across other species, too. It's that males are far more variable than females — they are over-represented both at the top of the heap and at the bottom of the barrel. For some characteristics, people might not care. But what about this implication? Fewer women are likely to be dunces but also fewer will be geniuses.
- Being competitive, status-conscious, dedicated, single-minded, persevering — it can make all the difference to success. And these are qualities that a lot of men are far more likely to possess, often in alarming abundance.
(I guess all that competitive, status-conscious, dedicated single-minded and perservering shit I have going on with that music career thing is a figment of my imagination. Oh, and let us not forget all those OTHER women in the same boat as me!)
- I heard an American comedian the other day taking a swipe at 'creeping neo-Darwinism'. "I don't believe in the criminal gene", he said, "but, if there was one, I think they'd find it right next to the out-of-work one". All very politically correct. But dead wrong on the differential impact of unemployment on men and women. For a woman, unemployment means loss of a job; for a man, it means loss of status. And this difference combines with other sex differences to take women and men down very different pathways once the workplace door closes on them. (Yes, this is why my sister, an accomplished housewife, is depressed about not having a job and a nice house and the *status* that goes with it!)
To the woman's credit, she echoes something I said in the beginning of this rant: These gender-specific 'tendencies' are just that. They don't dictate our lives and it's our environments that can help us overcome our mammalian hard-wiring.
I'm not entirely convinced, though, that such tendencies can be divided so easily, especially after only recently gaining our steps forward in liberation. Plus the human brain is such a mystery to us, how can one pretend to understand it and our biology through statistics alone?
The worst thing about this woman is that she's the saviour of male-rights waving dick-smears like this guy (who happens to be a member of CSICOP and gets kicks out of debunking other people's experiences with the unknown). Don't get me wrong, I'm all for male rights. I'm a *feminist*. That's what it's all about - equality. For all.
All I can see on that page is that dude weeping over his precious patriarchy (which is not in any danger of being toppled, I must say) and the fact that women get more health-care than he does. With the bitch-hand we've been dealt with in the biology stakes? NO FUCKING SURPRISE, BUCKO! Raging hormones, periods, problems due to the closeness of our wee-hole to our baby-hole, gynaelogical problems, pregnancy, menopause - is it ANY FUCKING WONDER?! But why take my word for it? Here's his words (MSTed by me in between):
American women live, on average, seven years longer than men.
Yeah, look - we didn't choose that. That was biology.
They control 86 % of all personal wealth [PARADE Magazine, May 27, 1990], and make up 55% of current college graduates.
Well, wow. 1990 was a good year for women. What's it like these days? He does realise that human behaviour tends to swing back and forth over the decades?
Women cast 54% of the votes in Presidential elections, so they can hardly claim to be left out of the political decision-making process!
Well, gee-willikers, buddy! If I recall correctly, it's up to the MENS whether they go vote or not. More women vote? Cause they appreciate it, asshole! Yay for non-apathetic uterus-bearers!
They win almost automatically in child custody disputes.
I admit this is a problem - not enough men are getting custody of their kids. My brother-in-law is a prime example.
Women suffer only 6% of the work-related fatalities (the other 94% are suffered by men).
Yeah, well women don't tend to want to have jobs where they're lugging heavy metal objects or using heavy machinery or what-not. Cause it's hard work, it sucks, and it's so much nicer to sit in an office and sip coffee while databasing. That said - I got the best mark of my year in metalworking when I was in high school. So it's not like we can't do it.
Women are the victim of only about 35% of violent crimes, and only about 25% of all murders, yet because of our society's exaggerated concern and respect for them, special legislation has been passed to punish "violence against women" as if it were a more heinous crime than "violence against men". (Feminists claim to want "equality", and this is an example of what "equality" means to them, i.e., preferential treatment to address their concerns).
Woah! Wait on, buddy. Just what kind of violent crimes are you talking about? ALL violent crimes? Including drugs, mugging, bar fights, etc? Cause there's not a lot people can do about men beating up on each other because they're being macho fuckwits. But when women are being victimised in their own homes - you fucking bet they try to stop it. And do you know what? Here in Australia, the campaign to stop it was aimed at both the men AND the women. Their main aim? For the men DOING these violent crimes to SEEK HELP. Oh, and the reason people get all het up about women being murdered? Cause it always seems to be the strong preying on the weak. Some big dude picking on a lone teenager for sick kicks.
Two out of every three dollars spent on health care is spent on women, and even if you don't count pregnancy-related care, women still receive more medical care than men - yet feminists still holler that womens health is being "neglected", and far too many of us credulously believe them.
Hah. HA. I went over this above, about what we women go through just being *healthy* women. Never mind the breast cancer, cervical cancer, endometriosis (not as bad as the first two but definitely debilitating in some circumstances), and on and on.
And it's pretty well known that men tend to ignore the warning signs of a lot of their health problems. I know it's fucking impossible to get my Dad to see a doctor. Mum and I have to talk him into it every time. I mean, how many guys are busting to go to their GP and have a finger stuck up their arse and their balls prodded? Women have been used to that kind of thing for years, and it's socially acceptable for us to be talkative, sharing people. It's expected of us, we're encouraged. Particularly where I'm from, it's not so encouraged. So how is it *our* fault that men don't go to the doctor enough?
Or maybe they are, and maybe, due to having babies and so forth, women just need more health care?
I'm not an economic or sociology expert. I'm sure there are things I've said that are in glaring error (do correct me if this is the case). But pardon me if I don't take seriously the grumblings of a man who stamps his foot and says that there's "No such thing as Matriarchy" in the entirity of human history and that patriarchy rules supreme. (This might be so, but why get mad about a few wimmin groovin' to the idea of an ancient agrarian society worshipping a goddess and the poor woman slaving in the kitchen being the most important person in the household?)
Phew! That was a lot of ranting. Now, I'm going to take my domineering, alpha-hormone, Darwinian-buckling arse and go do something constructive. Like write my damned novel. That has romance and mermaids and environmental catastrophe. (Awww shuddup!).
Being bisexual and having a fair fifty-fifty ratio of male and female family members around me growing up, I learnt of the differences between male and female pretty quickly. The thing was, I didn't realise people assigned these things to different sexes specifically until I was older.
I'd listen to classic rock like Jimi Hendrix and Deep Purple when I was ten, and all I knew was that I felt that rebellious surge in my soul and I wanted to rock just as hard. I'd hang out with my big brother (much to his chagrin) when his friends were around and thoroughly enjoyed their faux-battle games in the garden, just as much as I'd love sitting with my sister or cousins and playing with my Barbie dolls. The whole scope of my upbringing was the reiteration, again and again through action instead of sermon that I could do or be anything I wanted. That nothing is gender specific. That we all have human nature but that it's our souls and minds that make us different from dumb animals, so we're never slaves of our physical make up.
So when women say shit like this, I start getting pretty pissed off. Helen Cronin bemoans the fact that feminists deny her 'scientific' evidence (which is merely statistical evidence based on a society that is still going through a state of flux as far as its sexual awakening goes - sexism is still strong and it swings both ways) and then goes on to cite these wonderful gems:
- If your aim is to get rich, don't try selling pornography to women or romantic novels to men; don't try selling 'Kill! Kill!' computer games to girls or 'people' games to boys. And, anyway, you can't simply generalise about how large the overlap is; it depends on the characteristic. There'll be almost no overlap if you pitch boys against girls in throwing missiles — the boys will win every time; and almost no overlap in fluency of speech — nine out of ten men will do worse than women.
- There's also a curious fact — it's one that's been uncovered by evolutionary biology — about the shapes of the distribution curves for most male-female differences. Darwin remarked on it and it holds robustly across other species, too. It's that males are far more variable than females — they are over-represented both at the top of the heap and at the bottom of the barrel. For some characteristics, people might not care. But what about this implication? Fewer women are likely to be dunces but also fewer will be geniuses.
- Being competitive, status-conscious, dedicated, single-minded, persevering — it can make all the difference to success. And these are qualities that a lot of men are far more likely to possess, often in alarming abundance.
(I guess all that competitive, status-conscious, dedicated single-minded and perservering shit I have going on with that music career thing is a figment of my imagination. Oh, and let us not forget all those OTHER women in the same boat as me!)
- I heard an American comedian the other day taking a swipe at 'creeping neo-Darwinism'. "I don't believe in the criminal gene", he said, "but, if there was one, I think they'd find it right next to the out-of-work one". All very politically correct. But dead wrong on the differential impact of unemployment on men and women. For a woman, unemployment means loss of a job; for a man, it means loss of status. And this difference combines with other sex differences to take women and men down very different pathways once the workplace door closes on them. (Yes, this is why my sister, an accomplished housewife, is depressed about not having a job and a nice house and the *status* that goes with it!)
To the woman's credit, she echoes something I said in the beginning of this rant: These gender-specific 'tendencies' are just that. They don't dictate our lives and it's our environments that can help us overcome our mammalian hard-wiring.
I'm not entirely convinced, though, that such tendencies can be divided so easily, especially after only recently gaining our steps forward in liberation. Plus the human brain is such a mystery to us, how can one pretend to understand it and our biology through statistics alone?
The worst thing about this woman is that she's the saviour of male-rights waving dick-smears like this guy (who happens to be a member of CSICOP and gets kicks out of debunking other people's experiences with the unknown). Don't get me wrong, I'm all for male rights. I'm a *feminist*. That's what it's all about - equality. For all.
All I can see on that page is that dude weeping over his precious patriarchy (which is not in any danger of being toppled, I must say) and the fact that women get more health-care than he does. With the bitch-hand we've been dealt with in the biology stakes? NO FUCKING SURPRISE, BUCKO! Raging hormones, periods, problems due to the closeness of our wee-hole to our baby-hole, gynaelogical problems, pregnancy, menopause - is it ANY FUCKING WONDER?! But why take my word for it? Here's his words (MSTed by me in between):
American women live, on average, seven years longer than men.
Yeah, look - we didn't choose that. That was biology.
They control 86 % of all personal wealth [PARADE Magazine, May 27, 1990], and make up 55% of current college graduates.
Well, wow. 1990 was a good year for women. What's it like these days? He does realise that human behaviour tends to swing back and forth over the decades?
Women cast 54% of the votes in Presidential elections, so they can hardly claim to be left out of the political decision-making process!
Well, gee-willikers, buddy! If I recall correctly, it's up to the MENS whether they go vote or not. More women vote? Cause they appreciate it, asshole! Yay for non-apathetic uterus-bearers!
They win almost automatically in child custody disputes.
I admit this is a problem - not enough men are getting custody of their kids. My brother-in-law is a prime example.
Women suffer only 6% of the work-related fatalities (the other 94% are suffered by men).
Yeah, well women don't tend to want to have jobs where they're lugging heavy metal objects or using heavy machinery or what-not. Cause it's hard work, it sucks, and it's so much nicer to sit in an office and sip coffee while databasing. That said - I got the best mark of my year in metalworking when I was in high school. So it's not like we can't do it.
Women are the victim of only about 35% of violent crimes, and only about 25% of all murders, yet because of our society's exaggerated concern and respect for them, special legislation has been passed to punish "violence against women" as if it were a more heinous crime than "violence against men". (Feminists claim to want "equality", and this is an example of what "equality" means to them, i.e., preferential treatment to address their concerns).
Woah! Wait on, buddy. Just what kind of violent crimes are you talking about? ALL violent crimes? Including drugs, mugging, bar fights, etc? Cause there's not a lot people can do about men beating up on each other because they're being macho fuckwits. But when women are being victimised in their own homes - you fucking bet they try to stop it. And do you know what? Here in Australia, the campaign to stop it was aimed at both the men AND the women. Their main aim? For the men DOING these violent crimes to SEEK HELP. Oh, and the reason people get all het up about women being murdered? Cause it always seems to be the strong preying on the weak. Some big dude picking on a lone teenager for sick kicks.
Two out of every three dollars spent on health care is spent on women, and even if you don't count pregnancy-related care, women still receive more medical care than men - yet feminists still holler that womens health is being "neglected", and far too many of us credulously believe them.
Hah. HA. I went over this above, about what we women go through just being *healthy* women. Never mind the breast cancer, cervical cancer, endometriosis (not as bad as the first two but definitely debilitating in some circumstances), and on and on.
And it's pretty well known that men tend to ignore the warning signs of a lot of their health problems. I know it's fucking impossible to get my Dad to see a doctor. Mum and I have to talk him into it every time. I mean, how many guys are busting to go to their GP and have a finger stuck up their arse and their balls prodded? Women have been used to that kind of thing for years, and it's socially acceptable for us to be talkative, sharing people. It's expected of us, we're encouraged. Particularly where I'm from, it's not so encouraged. So how is it *our* fault that men don't go to the doctor enough?
Or maybe they are, and maybe, due to having babies and so forth, women just need more health care?
I'm not an economic or sociology expert. I'm sure there are things I've said that are in glaring error (do correct me if this is the case). But pardon me if I don't take seriously the grumblings of a man who stamps his foot and says that there's "No such thing as Matriarchy" in the entirity of human history and that patriarchy rules supreme. (This might be so, but why get mad about a few wimmin groovin' to the idea of an ancient agrarian society worshipping a goddess and the poor woman slaving in the kitchen being the most important person in the household?)
Phew! That was a lot of ranting. Now, I'm going to take my domineering, alpha-hormone, Darwinian-buckling arse and go do something constructive. Like write my damned novel. That has romance and mermaids and environmental catastrophe. (Awww shuddup!).
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-08 02:38 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-08 04:44 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-08 04:59 am (UTC)The bit on maths was this: "...the boys' advantage apparently rests on their innate superiority in mechanical and 3D thinking. Now, there's some evidence that girls improve considerably if they're taught in ways that circumvent this. That's the kind of thing that a fair education policy should be concerned with." -- I don't think she implies that all girls should be taught this way, just that knowing that this is an issue, programs should be designed to teach maths differently. Anyway, I still don't think this is why some girls do worse at maths, but I could be wrong.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-08 01:25 pm (UTC)