Robert Stacy McCain on feminism’s mainstreaming of extremists:
Any honest person who undertakes an in-depth study of modern feminism, from its inception inside the 1960s New Left to its institutionalisation within Women’s Studies departments at universities, will understand that without the influence of radicals — militant haters of capitalism and Christianity, angry lesbians who view all males as a sort of malignant disease, deranged women who can’t distinguish between political grievances and their own mental illnesses — there probably never would have been a feminist movement at all…
Once we go beyond simplistic sloganeering about “equality” and “choice” to examine feminism as political philosophy — the theoretical understanding to which Ph.Ds devote their academic careers — we discover a worldview in which men and women are assumed to be implacable antagonists, where males are oppressors and women are their victims, and where heterosexuality is specifically condemned as the means by which this male-dominated system operates.
As noted previously, when it comes to identity politics, the boundaries between mainstream and delusional aren’t as clear as one might wish.
And Thomas Sowell on cultural inequalities:
While cultural leadership has changed hands many times, that leadership has been real at given times, and much of what was achieved in the process has contributed enormously to our well-being and opportunities today. Cultural competition is not a zero-sum game. It is what advances the human race. Cultures are living, changing ways of doing all the things that have to be done in life. Every culture discards over time the things which no longer do the job or which don’t do the job as well as things borrowed from other cultures… Spanish as spoken in Spain includes words taken from Arabic, and Spanish as spoken in Argentina has Italian words taken from the large Italian immigrant population there. People eat Kentucky Fried Chicken in Singapore and stay in Hilton hotels in Cairo.
This is not what some of the advocates of “diversity” have in mind. They seem to want to preserve cultures in their purity, almost like butterflies preserved in amber. Decisions about change, if any, seem to be regarded as collective decisions, political decisions. But that is not how any cultures have arrived where they are… No culture has grown great in isolation — but a number of cultures have made historic and even astonishing advances when their isolation was ended, usually by events beyond their control.
At which point readers may recall the Guardian’s Emer O’Toole, a “postcolonial theorist” and assistant professor of Irish Performance Studies, for whom all cultures past and present are equally vibrant and noble, except of course the culture in which she currently flourishes, on which opprobrium must be heaped ostentatiously and often.
Ms O’Toole famously bemoaned the colonial propagation of Shakespeare, whose works she denounced as “full of classism, sexism, racism and defunct social mores.” And worse, “a powerful tool of empire, transported to foreign climes along with the doctrine of European cultural superiority.” The possibility that at any given time one set of values and insights might be preferable to another, even objectively better, bothers her quite a bit.
Her article was accompanied by a photograph of New Zealand’s Ngakau Toa theatre company performing Troilus and Cressida in a distinctively Maori style. To me, it looked fun and worth the price of a ticket. But this cross-cultural fusion saddened Ms O’Toole, who dismissed notions of the Bard’s universality as “uncomfortably colonial.” She then presumed to take umbrage on behalf of all past colonial subjects, whose own views on Shakespeare and literature she chose not to relate. She did, however, get quite upset about “our sense of cultural superiority” – a sense of superiority that, she insisted, has long been “disavowed by all but the crazies.”
It may be a tad indelicate, even improper, but I can’t help wondering how Ms O’Toole might have felt had she been among the 19th century English colonists who encountered a Maori culture that was all but prehistoric, with no discernible literature or science, in which the average lifespan was about thirty years or so, and where cannibalism was not unknown. Faced with such things, I’m sure Ms O’Toole would have resisted the wicked urge to think herself a little more culturally advanced.
When not romanticising the cultural purity of others from a safe distance, Ms O’Toole prides herself on denouncing those more primitive than herself – say, women who choose to shave their armpits. In Ms O’Toole’s moral universe, cultivating armpit hair is “the necessary and important work of challenging stupid, arbitrary, gendered bullshit.” And our right-thinking Guardianista tells us, several times, that her boyfriends have thought her “brave” for daring not to shave.
As usual, feel free to share your own links and snippets in the comments.
Zero scientific basis for AGW.
By. The. Numbers.
Three pages.
I’ll chime in with noting the presence of Minnow, and sidestep on the rest.
Welcome aboard. Help yourself to liquor and nibbles.
Holy SH!T, there’s liquor here? How did I not find this place sooner?
As for our pal “minnow”, I would ask him what exactly he wants? Climate sameness? Because that has never happened in the entire history of this planet.
My SO is an engineer with experience in the computer modelling of biochemical systems. The systems he was working with were tiny (micro- and nano-level, 90% of variables controlled and/or accounted for). The 10% that can’t be controlled or known need to be constrained within the model through a set of assumptions and boundary conditions. Basically, “we’re going to assume mytosis will occur at x cell divisions/hour, and that cells in a large colony will continue to behave as they did when they were isolated” because otherwise, you’d need a program so big it wouldn’t fit on a supercomputer.
Misjudge a single boundary condition or assumption by +/- 5% and you’ve completely bunged up your results.
Can minnow even estimate the number of such assumptions that would have to be considered as if they were “knowns” when modelling something as complex as global climate? And as far as I know, the normal variations in solar radiation isn’t even factored in (if it is, disregard this one sentence).
As far as I know, the climate is going to drastically and catastrophically cool in the next 100 years, or it could indeed drastically and catastrophically warm over the same period. I’ll stick with my “fempocalypse” prognosis, because as far as I’m concerned, human nature and behavior is WAY easier to predict than the weather.
When you say sex is irrelevant,
It’s in the same category as race, dontchaknow, which is cosmetic, and sex is just about your plumbing.
Except that sexual dimorphism is caused by hormonal action, and hormones affect the brain in profound ways, beginning in utero and continuing until you’re three weeks cold in the grave.
Male and female critters are different behaviorally because of hormonal activity on the brain. All males mammals are sexually aggressive and all female mammals are “nesters,” as it were.
There’s no reason to think that humans don’t deal with the same differences. In which low-tech societies do the males NOT make war while the females stay home with the kids?
Our advanced imaging techniques show that male and female brains are patterned differently and that such differences begin only a few weeks into gestation. Even though there’s plenty of variety within each sex, the patterning is still male or female.
I work in software development; men dominate this field. Know why? Because programming software requires that your brain patterning be somewhere on the Asperger’s continuum, and that particular patterning occurs more frequently in males. Even those females who do programming and such are Aspies to one degree or another.
Race, on the other hand, concerns dermal pigmentation, facial structure, and hair texture.
None of which affects the brain.
There’s no worse category error than likening sexual dimorphism to racial differences.
Why the Left insists on such dogma in the face of obvious, irrefutable evidence is beyond me.
¡Viva la difference!
Can minnow even estimate the number of such assumptions that would have to be considered as if they were “knowns” when modelling something as complex as global climate?
This is what kills me with the models: in a chaotic system such as our climate, an accurate model would have to
— account for 100% of the factors that affect our climate
— describe with 100% precision HOW each factor affects the climate
— calculate with 100% accuracy the interactions and feedbacks among those factors
— predict 100% of the butterfly effects, wherein the high sensitivity to initial conditions means the tiniest change in early moments propagates ever bigger effects as time passes
Here’s the thing: cloud formation isn’t fully understood. Cosmic rays may play a role in their formation, which means that solar activity affects the climate in more ways than just brute radiation.
Just with this one lacuna you have to toss out the models as reliable. There are a ton more factors that I don’t even know about.
Furthermore, the models don’t recreate past weather accurately, which is proof positive that they don’t model the climate accurately, and so any prediction of gloom and doom based on said models is poppycock.
They’d have more luck reading chicken entrails.
When talking about things like social equality — BTW, when you use that term, what the heck do you mean? — it is by definition an aggregate term.
In terms of mechanical reasoning, the mean of the female curve is one standard deviation below the male mean. If the male mean is considered the minimum for a good mechanic, then few women qualify. Because of this difference, the individuals who become mechanics will be almost exclusively male.
Even if that were true nothing follows from it unless you are recruiting mechanics at random, and it tells us nothing about the equality of the sexes. Some men are better than others at, say, hair braiding, but those men are still equals in the social, moral, and political terms we are discussing. They just happen not to be the same. In any given situation, the best mechanic for a job may be the woman and not the man. This is true for everything.
When talking about things like social equality — BTW, when you use that term, what the heck do you mean? — it is by definition an aggregate term.
By social equality I mean they have the same standing in society, thee same freedoms and the same opportunities. So, a woman that likes to have lots of sex with different men should, for example, be treated no differently to a man who has those predelictions. Whether that man is physically stronger than her, or whether she can sing a higher top note than him, are irrelevant. Despite all their differences they are, or should be, equals.
you made the fatal error of basing your bloviating ignorant pronouncements on your egotistical misunderstanding that you actually had some superior knowledge of the subject being discussed
No, I didn’t assume I had superior knowledge, I assumed that all the international climate monitoring agencies and all the specialist climatologists in universities in every continent on the globe had specialist knowledge. Rather than James Delingpole, whose only qualification is that he writes a TV column for the Spectator.
The only subject I’ve seen you provide some reference to which suggests some involvement in was that work on Shakespeare and even then you got the title wrong it seems.
My interest in Shakespeare is keen but amateur. I work in animal modelling for human disease, pharmocokinetics and toxicology, if you really want to know. I realise that will make me seem an obvious recruit to the white coat conspiracy to force everybody to believe in AGW.
Male and female critters are different behaviorally because of hormonal activity on the brain.
Even if this is true and is interesting to epidemiologists, nothing follows from it in terms of policy because, as you yourself prove, the variance within the groups is as large as the variance across them.
Minnow
Thanks for your response and no that doesn’t make me think you are part of some white coat conspiracy, I don’t believe in any such thing and can’t imagine why you would think I do. Maybe you’re just joking but given your tendency to make assumptions about the opinions and motives of others maybe not.
You obviously do have scientific knowledge and that’s a good thing but my point about the AGW hypothesis and its activist followers is political. I’m sure you would agree that science is not a neutral activity and that it is as subject to human failings and ambitions as any other discipline. I genuinely can’t think of any other area of science however that has ever been subjected to the same level of capture by special interest groups and political motivations as climatology, I don’t think it coincidental however that it was not a well known or fashionable science. That and the highly complex nature of the Earth’s climate and the lack of long term records made it particularly vulnerable to appropriation in a political cause, there was a lot of uncertainty which could be exploited to suggest something unprecedented was occurring and it was all the fault of capitalism/greed/patriarchy etc. The same thing has happened to the humanities and arts which by their nature are far easier to misuse in this fashion. It’s a tragedy for both science and the arts.
Race, on the other hand, concerns dermal pigmentation, facial structure, and hair texture.
This used to be the view (amusingly some would describe it as the Politically Correct View) of race, but the science has moved on and it is now firmly understood that there are biologically meaningful categories of human race. See Nicholas Wade’s A Troublesome Inheritance for a good layman’s overview endorsed by Steven Pinker among others (I think Pinker can be credited with some knowledge of science for all he is no James Delingpole). Also notice how Wade immediately starts making daft and unsupportable prognostications about human history and society on the basis of the science apparently failing to understand the significance of in-group variance. Plus ca change and all that.
Perhaps Minnow can help me out here. I’m probably being a bit thick but I don’t understand how consensus makes something true.
If it that were the case, then the sun would indeed orbit the earth and ill health would be caused by an imbalance of the four humours.
Less facetiously, the role that helicobacter pylori plays in gastric ulcers would never have been discovered. After all its discoverers were ridiculed by the mainstream who refused to listen or publish their findings because it went against the consensus.
I cannot see how consensus is a good thing in science. It means people aren’t questioning and testing theories. But, as I said, perhaps someone can enlighten me.
BTW -if anyone wants to entertain themselves, they can read this brilliant article – http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html – where an actual climate scientist makes some superb predictions on the basis of his expertise
Perhaps Minnow can help me out here. I’m probably being a bit thick but I don’t understand how consensus makes something true.
It doesn’t, but it is a useful heurisitc when dealing with extremely complex scieentific issues. There is always a very strong incentive in science to overturn the consensus (see your H. pylori) because that way Nobel Prizes lie, but if a very large number of researchers are reaching the same conclusions, this is a good reason to think that the truth is likely to be in that direction until something else comes along to disprove them. If we don’t take this view we have generally no reason to accept any science over any thesis.
Would minnow accept the consensus of theologians regarding the existence of god, or that of homeopathists that water has memory and can cure disease?
By the way, re the hilariously mistaken weather prediction about snowfall referred to by PJ, it is often brought up but thiis bit is always left out:
Heavy snow will return occasionally, says Dr Viner, but when it does we will be unprepared. “We’re really going to get caught out. Snow will probably cause chaos in 20 years time,” he said.
I bet that doesn’t get many laughs in the boardroom at Gatwick.
Would minnow accept the consensus of theologians regarding the existence of god
No, I have decided to accept the consensus view of all philosophers concerning the existence of god. I will happily change my mind if any new evidence shows up. Ditto homeopathy, I accept the scientific consensus on that, taking due consideration of the homeopathic disenters and being fully aware that James Delingpole may see that as yet another example of establishment conspiracy.
Do yuou accept the scientific consensus on homeopathy? Why? Isn’t it obviously in the interest of scientists looking for grants and new hospital equipment to poho pooh the much cheaper homeopathic alternative?
We’ve always tended to get caught out by snow in this country, the nature of our climate means that we never know what to expect from one week to the next it’s nothing new. That is the sort of bet hedging statement of the bleeding obvious that deserves derision. It does have consequences though, my former employment was on the railway which at one time had snow ploughs stationed at various strategic points, some of which rarely saw heavy snowfalls. These were nearly all done away with, mostly on cost and operational grounds but also because it was assumed that climate change would render them totally redundant, an attitude brought about by listening to the Dr. Viner’s of this world. A shortsighted policy as it has turned out.
These were nearly all done away with, mostly on cost and operational grounds but also because it was assumed that climate change would render them totally redundant, an attitude brought about by listening to the Dr. Viner’s of this world. A shortsighted policy as it has turned out.
They should have listened more carefully to Dr Viner’s warning that there would still be heavy bouts of snowfall and they are likely to be underprepared. They were probably too busy consulting Jaames Delingpole.
Sorry Minnow you’ve lost me there, is that another attempt at humour ? The ploughs, as I said, were abolished mostly on cost grounds but when this is queried one of the responses is to say that they won’t be needed anyway, where did this idea come from, not from AGW sceptics certainly. There was a serious point there, which was climatalogists have too often let themselves be flattered by the media into making generalised statements about the future of the climate which then become wider memes, one such being that snow will be a thing of the past in Britain.
But Dr Viner made no such claim, and I haven’t seen any others making it. He said snow would be less frequent and we would underprepared. Soi far, he has been proved right, no? Isn’t the real problem that the railways placed profit over social value in their planning? It’s capitalism again.
So minnow does indeed not accept the consensus of the people who work in certain fields, and who are thus expert in those fields.
all the others are clearly denialists in the pay of big pharma and big atheism.
I wonder who pays him or her to deny the consensus of such experts?
Isn’t the real problem that the railways placed profit over social value in their planning? It’s capitalism again.
Oh God please no ! I musn’t be tempted. Social value you say, what’s that when it’s at home and why should railways have it in particular ?
He said snow would be less frequent and we would underprepared.
Less frequent than when ? it’s always been unpredictable with the occasional very cold winter interspersed with mild ones and we’re always underprepared because snowfall is erratic and the cost of retaining the necessary equipment and manpower to deal with it is high. It doesn’t help when the idea gets about that we won’t be having any snow in future years, which as I’ve said is an idea that has to come from somewhere and it’s no use saying climatologists have been mis-quoted, if they weren’t so ready to lend themselves to the agendas of climate change activists that would be a lot less likely to happen.
Oh God please no ! I musn’t be tempted. Social value you say, what’s that when it’s at home and why should railways have it in particular ?
It’s the question of what would be of more value to the society served rather (in this instance) than the shareholders. Railways needn’t operate on that principle, but when they don’t, they sometimes do things like get rid of snow ploughs for short term profit. In other words, thee blame there was on the capitalist and not the scientist.
Less frequent than when ?
Less frequent than hitherto. Downward trend.
I wonder who pays him or her to deny the consensus of such experts?
The thought occurred to me this morning, given his mentioning Daripole in his reply to my post, which had nothing to do with Daripole as I have no idea who that is, that perhaps given the weakness, inaccuracies, incomprehension, and utter BS of his posts perhaps he actually is paid by the big Wall Street banks to discredit socialism by posting such.
It’s the question of what would be of more value to the society served rather (in this instance) than the shareholders. Railways needn’t operate on that principle, but when they don’t, they sometimes do things like get rid of snow ploughs for short term profit.
That doesn’t answer the question of why railways should be seen as a public service rather than just another transport mode. If privately owned railways had been concerned solely with short term profit they would probably have never bothered with snowploughs in the first place, along with a lot of other things which improved their services to the public and enhanced long term growth. The ploughs didn’t go for reasons of short term profit they went because times changed and it was felt that their overall cost couldn’t be justified, something that all businesses have to consider surely ? BR did much the same thing and in fact the ploughs had already started to be discarded before privatisation. The supposed future lack of snow was another nail in their coffin.
Less frequent than hitherto. Downward trend.
Less frequent than during the slow warming period after the end of the LIA ? Yes there may well be a downward trend from that but it is most likely just another cyclic variation during the present warm period, a period we may be moving out of for all we know.
The Left can tolerate anything except dissent, particularly if it comes from someone who they think is their political property based on their pigmentation or genitalia.
Indeed. See also Condoleeza Rice.
The attraction that leftist ideas hold for antisocial personalities is well documented, but I don’t think Minnow would fall into the killing-people-if-he-had-half-a-chance category.
No, Minnow would be in the *first-up-against-the-wall “but I thought we were on the same si..” BANG!* deluded fool category.
Sorry Minnow but you are talking absolute rubbish. Viner doesn’t just say that snow will become less frequent. His ACTUAL words were that snow will become “a very rare and exciting event”.
In fact he goes on to qualify just how rare it will become by stating that children within a few years from 2000 would actually not know what snow is.
His further statement that snow may cause chaos some time around 2020 by no means excuses the sheer inaccuracy of his previous comments.
[Minnow:] By social equality I mean [women] have the same standing in society, the same freedoms and the same opportunities.
Your definition of social equality is circular. In the West, women have equivalent freedoms. Therefore, they have the same opportunities (indeed, in many areas they have more freedom and opportunity.)
As for “standing in society,” that phrase is a sure sign of how anti human the left is. The sexes are not the same. Evolution did not stop at the neckline. Except to progressives, where people are nothing more than blank slates which progressives can perfect.
Even if [the gender correlation with mechanical ability] were true nothing follows from it unless you are recruiting mechanics at random, and it tells us nothing about the equality of the sexes.
This is what follows: despite at least 40 years of ever growing legal equality, there remain a great many things women will not, or cannot, do. And there is this little knock-on effect called parity error. For all those occupations men in their millions must do because women won’t or can’t, there is a corresponding number of occupations women must do. If women will not become mechanics (over 97% male), then men cannot be 50% of grade school teachers. The numbers don’t work.
That is what follows, not this: In any given situation, the best mechanic for a job may be the woman and not the man. This is true for everything. Society is the aggregate of all “any given situation”. Summing all given situations, nearly always the best kindergarten teacher will be a woman, the best hair braider will not be a straight man, but the best mechanic will be. Reality bites.
No, I didn’t assume I had superior knowledge, I assumed that all the international climate monitoring agencies and all the specialist climatologists in universities in every continent on the globe had specialist knowledge.
No, what you asserted is that Dr. Nurse (that was so much fun to type I had to do it three times) presented Delingpole with an analogy that was utter nonsense, and in at least a couple more ways than I mentioned.
It is indefensible, and I can’t help but notice you haven’t even tried. Just as I can’t help but notice you can’t think of any CAGW deductive consequences. You know what else doesn’t have deductive consequences? Religion.
Here is another reason Nurse’s invocation of “consensus” is bollocks. That link is to a website set up by the Dutch parliament to facilitate scientific discussions among climate experts. This particular discussion is about Arctic sea ice, touted as the ne plus ultra of climate change.
And the consensus is?
Or just go to the home page and look at a variety of topics. You will not find Dr. Nurse’s mythical expert consensus anywhere.
… the variance within the groups is as large as the variance across them.
That is, statistically speaking, as empty a statement as I have heard in a long time. It is another pronunciamento. To pick just one example, the variance in speaking vocal pitch among women is about 20% greater than among men. There is also almost no overlap between men and women. My voice is very deep and resonant. From extensive first hand experience, I am certain that people respond very differently to a deep voice than one much higher pitched: deeper voices convey far more authority, like it or not. There is absolutely no female equivalent to James Earl Jones.
Sexes are not equal. And the inequality divorces “is” from progressives’ baseless notion of “ought”.
There are many more examples where that came from. So what the heck does your pronunciamento mean?
Oh, hello Karen Straughan 🙂 Good to see ya! We’ve mentioned your videos here more than once.
I tend to differ with you about feminism being an ideology, though. It pretends it is an ideology sometimes (at other times it pretends it is an academic discipline, which is hilarious) – but there’s not enough agreement amongst feminists on what the ideals are. They do however agree to play the women vs men game – against men. That’s about it.
Minnow has pretty much convinced me (with the above comments) that he/she is here mostly here just to wind us up. It’s Minnow’s right to be here, of course, but sadly there’s very little to learn from his arguments.
What I could never figure out amongst all the hysteria about the ice caps melting and the sea levels rising is how there is not one instance of a shipping chart needing to update it’s LAT to reflect that. You’d have thought the world’s sailors and shipping companies, who have skin in the game, would be paying close attention to sea levels rising. Or perhaps they are?
Me: Male and female critters are different behaviorally because of hormonal activity on the brain.
bitty fish: Even if this is true
It is true. You can 86 the equivocation.
and is interesting to epidemiologists
It has only academic interest? Quite a statement.
nothing follows from it in terms of policy
Nothing? Nothing at all? Now you’re being absolute where you should equivocate. You also failed to provide examples of policies that ought or ought not be affected by sexual differences. Even though policies are not the topic of this thread.
Interesting, that.
because, as you yourself prove,
A single data point proves nothing. For all you know, I’m an outlier among outliers.
the variance within the groups is as large as the variance across them.
Another whopper of an assertion. First, have you or anyone else measured the actual extent of the two types of variances and then compared them using objective measures? Second, are the differences among sexes different from the differences between them? If you have 1000 shades of red and 1000 shades of green, you still have two different colors. The palest green is still not the palest red. There is also no overlap between the two hues.
Examine a truckload of heterosexual couples and you’ll find the same types of conflicts and expectations and assumptions that the couples must deal with, regardless of whether they’re both Aspies or athletes. Differences of degree may occur, and a few role reversals, but the statistical correlations are strong enough to be considered factual.
the science has moved on and it is now firmly understood that there are biologically meaningful categories of human race.
And those differences fall into what categories, exactly?
Ability to digest lactose? Immunity to sickle-cell anemia? Intestinal flora?
Do any of those differences inform how I ought to perceive or interact with someone from Africa or Asia? If they’re all born into my same American culture, I don’t need to take their ethnicity into account at all. I can use the same language, customs, and conventions. The only thing I might not do is ask an African to borrow her sunscreen. Because she probably doesn’t use it.
However, when dealing with women or men, I do need to take their sex into account. Men are able to focus on one thing to the exclusion of all else, so when I need to speak to the male engineers, I sit next to their desks and wait until they’re finished with what they’re doing before asking a question; otherwise, they’re liable to not hear what I’ve said. With women, I can just interrupt, because our attention always multitasks.
I also have to take care not to develop intimate relationships with the married men at work but with married women there’s no need to keep a distance.
I don’t walk into the men’s room and would be aghast were a man to walk into the women’s room. I’m not aghast when a woman I don’t know walks into the women’s room.
Real differences cause us to make adjustments; fake differences can be ignored.
Railways needn’t operate on that principle,
Cost-benefit analysis?
Their resources aren’t infinite. But you go right on ahead and decide that “what’s good for society” be the only criteria, other considerations be damned.
You’ve failed to inform us how you pay the rent. It’s gotta be academia or another insulated corner of the public sector.
Otherwise, how could the bitty fish maintain the illusion that his policy preferences could be implemented just fine if the rest of us weren’t a bunch of selfish old meanies.
I assumed that all the international climate monitoring agencies and all the specialist climatologists in universities in every continent on the globe had specialist knowledge.
The possession of specialist knowledge doesn’t preclude using that privileged position to tell the rest of us laymen that the sky will fall unless we give them heap big coin to fix it.
It’s not unlike the Medieval priesthood having exclusive access to the scriptures while the populace had to settle for pictures on stained-glass windows. “Divine Right of Kings!” they insisted, even though YHWH comes out strongly against having kings at all, and then makes it pretty clear that he’s not impressed by human power structures, he being able to upend them at will.
Those who attempted to translate the Bible into accessible languages were arrested and even executed. Allowing that specialist knowledge into the wild endangered their lock on Divine Authority.
So when “climate scientists” and their boosters insist that their detractors STFU or be jailed, that kinda gives the game away, dunnit?
Or perhaps you can explain why Michael Mann should be allowed to show his face in public after MM03?
Dicentra,
Minnow’s ridiculous arguments about how “men and women are equal in every regard”…
He/she might be foolish enough to think that “every regard” includes numbers of spermatazoa or eggs, or levels of oestrogen/testosterone, but I doubt it. When feminists back down from this silliness, they try to take refuge in the idea that men and women are psychologically the same – that gender differences in behaviour are merely social constructs
As an antidote to such a position – this is one of the best papers I know about the neuroscience of gender differences. Worth a read
One interesting point is how men can getting similar results on certain types of intellectual tasks, by using quite different parts of the brain. So it’s probable that male and female brains might be doing quite different things to get similar scores on some language/spatial reasoning tests
Your definition of social equality is circular. In the West, women have equivalent freedoms. Therefore, they have the same opportunities (indeed, in many areas they have more freedom and opportunity.)
Woman want not simply equaluity before the law but an equality of opportunity and positive social equalities such as I described, the ability to lead similar sex lives to men without being shamed for it, as an example. That is not empty if you are a woman. You may think these conditions have already been achieved, but very few women will agree with you.
As for “standing in society,” that phrase is a sure sign of how anti human the left is. The sexes are not the same. Evolution did not stop at the neckline. Except to progressives, where people are nothing more than blank slates which progressives can perfect.
They needn’t be the same to be equals. Men are not the same either, there are huge differences between them, but they can still have equal standing.
This is what follows: despite at least 40 years of ever growing legal equality, there remain a great many things women will not, or cannot, do
This is just not true. Women can and will do every kind of work. The evidence is all around. There are still jobs dominated by men, but they needn’t be.
And those differences fall into what categories, exactly?
We do not yet know the extent, but it is very unlikely to be limited to physical differences.
And your black friends really should be using sunscreen, you know.
I don’t walk into the men’s room and would be aghast were a man to walk into the women’s room. I’m not aghast when a woman I don’t know walks into the women’s room.
You would need extra strong smelling salts if you worked where I do, toilets are mixed sex.
To pick just one example, the variance in speaking vocal pitch among women is about 20% greater than among men. There is also almost no overlap between men and women.
This is a very odd statement, by the way. There is a very large overlap. Just take a listen to the late lamented Elaine Stritch for one example. There is a much larger vocal range among men, from Bass to Counter tenor, than between men and women. The in-group variance is larger than the cross group variance.
This is a very odd statement, by the way. There is a very large overlap [in vocal pitch between men and women].
Nonsense. Bollocks. Wrong. Spoiler alert: you are going to lose track of the number of times “significant” is used in describing the difference between male and female voices.
For American English speakers, overall formant frequencies also appear to be globally higher for women. Similar statistical tests were performed again. Contrary to French speakers, a significant gender effect was found for F1 (F(1,102)=364.857, p<0.0001). There is a large interaction between factors “speaker’s gender” and “vowel” for this formant. Individual one-factor ANOVAs show a very large and significant cross-gender difference for open vowel [ӕ](F(1,34)=236.665, p<0.0001) and smaller but significant differences for [i:] (F(1,34)=92.298, p<0.0001) and [u:] (F(1,34)=62.373, p<0.001). Regarding the second formant (F2), there is a highly significant gender effect (F(1,102)=98.541, p<0.0001) and a low, albeit significant, interaction between “speaker’s gender” and “vowel” (F(2,102)=5.002, p<0.01). Nonetheless, separated ANOVAs show that male-female differences remain constantly strong among vowels [i:] (F(1,34)=54.372 ; p<0.0001), [ӕ] (F(1,34)=132.237 ; p<0.0001) and [u:] (F(1,34)=23.207 ; p<0.0001). Finally, the ANOVA performed on F3 data shows a very significant overall gender effect (F(1,102)=290.178, p<0.0001), with an important interaction between factors “speaker’s gender” and “vowel” (F(2,102)=18.578, p<0.0001). Individual one-factor ANOVAs reveal that cross-gender difference for F3 is greater for close vowels [i:] (F(1,34)=132.54, p<0.0001) and [u:] (F(1,34)=135.443, p<0.0001) than for [ӕ] (F(1,34)=50.129, p<0.0001).
Emphasis added, because the tendency towards pronunciamentos (great word, that, when talking to a progressive) is very strong in you.
And that’s just one paragraph.
There is almost no overlap between the fundamental frequencies of male and female voices. Almost all men have voices lower than almost all women.
And this Women’s Issues article contradicts both you and itself; oddly, the authors are completely deaf to the deafeningly obvious. (Just as I bet you are.)
Pro tip: If you are citing a specific example as a contradiction of a statistical phenomena, then you all you have done is find the exception that proves the rule.
Women want not simply equality before the law but an equality of opportunity and positive social equalities such as I described, the ability to lead similar sex lives to men without being shamed for it, as an example.
Shenanigans, again.
This is a perfect example of question begging. Why is it a positive social equality that women be judged no more harshly for promiscuity than men? Wouldn’t it be a far more positive social equality for men to be judged as harshly as women?
Then there is the sentence construction without which progressives would be nearly speechless: passive voice. Shamed by whom?
This is just not true. Women can and will do every kind of work. The evidence is all around.
Then cite some.
There are still jobs dominated by men, but they needn’t be.
In the complete absence of barriers to women, along with women’s continued glaring absence, reality says otherwise.
In that list of “non-traditional” occupations, which contains actual evidence, just those that have less than 10% female participation comprise more than 16 million workers in the US.
Not one of them is off limits to women. Women aren’t doing these things because they won’t, or can’t.
Oh, BTW, when you type “dominated by men” you really meant to say “predominantly male”.
The in-group variance is larger than the cross group variance
..which is in itself a difference.
Also I used to work in epidemiology. Minnow hasn’t the slightest idea what he’s talking about. He means biologists and/or neuroscientists
Ignore. Waste of time.
There is almost no overlap between the fundamental frequencies of male and female voices. Almost all men have voices lower than almost all women.
Yes, but not all. there is an overlap. So nothing follows from this observation for any particular male or female. And why should we consider people who speak at a higher or lower pitch to be inferior or superior to other people any way?
This is a perfect example of question begging. Why is it a positive social equality that women be judged no more harshly for promiscuity than men? Wouldn’t it be a far more positive social equality for men to be judged as harshly as women?
No, that would constitute an increase in freedom. Women want the same freedoms as men, including in this important area of life.
Then cite some.
It would be much quicker to cite some examples of jobs that women are incapable of doing. I can’t think of any, but you claim there are many, so over to you.
In the complete absence of barriers to women, along with women’s continued glaring absence, reality says otherwise.
If we accept the complete absence of barriers. It seems to me obvious that barriers persist and I have never met a woman who didn’t believe there were such barriers.
[ Quietly fixes avalanche of italics. ]
..which is in itself a difference.
But nobody is disputing there are differences, only whether women can be said to be the inferior sex (or vice versa) in any meaningful sense.
Thanks re italics. Must concentrate harder. It seems men really can’t multi-task.