The article mirrors my beliefs quite well; but on a meta level, I can't believe we are still having this conversation. Why can we describe sub-atomic particles, but not settle this cultural divide with conclusions based on data that we have abundantly gathered? Is it because results are forged? Or are metrics (e.g. IQ Tests) unstable (not reproducible)? Are we pulling conclusions out of thin air? All these gender studies should be put under review.
You may be underestimating how difficult it is to make good and correct strides in social science, compared to hard sciences.
To a large extent progress in sciences like sub-atomic physics depends on ability to (1) simplify the problem down to mathematical laws, (2) conduct repeatable, randomized controlled experiments to rule out hypotheses about them.
Social sciences deal with phenomena that are extraordinarily complex, so hypotheses usually have to be qualitative rather than mathematical, and devising good experiments is very hard. Falsification is hard. Most hypotheses can be "generally true" yet have specific counterexamples in some times and places.
As for empirical data, you can use data to tell a million plausible stories, and many of those probably have some nugget of truth. But without randomized trials, how do you falsify any of these stories? It's hard.
I totally agree. In fact the systems studied by social sciences are so complex that the notion of an experiment in the classical sense (hypothesis, observations, repeatability, etc) can break down completely. This is partly why the concept of qualitative research exists [1]. Some physical scientists look down on such research methods; this is a category mistake on their part.
Imagine if the results were that men were inherently smarter than women. Could you conceive of a way that this would go over well? Nobody (men or women) want to deal with that. It's understandable that it's controversial.
One of the problems is that we think there's only one kind of "smart", and even if we manage to see past this myopic assumption we tend to accept the arrogant assumption that only this type of "smart" is really worthy of pursuing and rewarding.
However, as I pointed out in my other comment, specific measures do show considerable, consistent differences in performance between males and females. For example, males and females have had significantly different average SAT math scores since the 70s: http://www.aei.org/publication/2015-sat-test-results-confirm...
This is only one measurement, however, and there are many others, with one sex or the other performing better in different areas.
> Imagine if the results were that men were inherently smarter than women. Could you conceive of a way that this would go over well? Nobody (men or women) want to deal with that.
People are individuals. As long as we treat people as individuals and evaluate them based on their merit, and their own behavior and performance, and make opportunities equally available to everyone, it doesn't need to be a problem.
Assume the result yields that one gender is effectively superior in all relevant areas.
This could easily lead to a basis for genocide, people tossing their children with an unwanted gender out right after birth/aborting them. That seems like a pretty awful prospect to me.
Furthermore, discrimination would then just be waiting to happen at an even greater extent, with the stakes not just being yet another minority, but almost half of an entire population. Those are huge stakes, and few want to tread that path.
I think the discussion will occur for ever, if we continue searching for arguments for "why are these men so {dumb,angry,bad}?/ Why are these womans so {plastic, Feminine,dumb}".
I think we should stop thinking in that categories and Start thinking:"this One (Wo)men is so dumb!".
Categories for humans(behavior) where never a good idea.
EDIT: It may be easy, but easy isn't good anytime.
Just take a look at programming. Writing the good old "jump" was easy. Was it a nice idea?
Are you saying that testosterone and estrogen levels play no part whatsoever in a persons behavior? Because one could argue that there are biological differences between men and woman which might result in behaviors that are to some degree "different". Perhaps it even justifies certain generalizations.
If you take OPs argument of "only consider the individual, never groups of people" one step further, there is no such thing as "one woman" either. She's a collection of trillions of cells. And each cell... trillions of jiggling atoms! The horror.
All life evolved to operate by perceiving the world through efficient abstractions. Photons as shapes, chemicals as smells, cells as individuals, individuals as species, people as societies, whatever. These are all leaky and ultimately unfair generalizations!
But the "exact" alternatives are typically outcompeted by more efficient approximations. It's just too tedious to consider everything in its uniqueness.
Internalizing the right abstractions -- concrete enough to be useful but not too raw to be overwhelming -- is a fine energy-balancing act. There's no reason why the abstraction ladder should suddenly stop at the level of "trillions of cells". That would be very suspicious indeed.
To suggest that the (evolved, leaky) abstractions along the line of sex are suddenly not useful IN ANY WAY is... preposterous.
Do you take yourself as unique or a general version of a men/woman, that follows only the one path that everyone else takes and you feel in every situation as every other human, and you dont even try to be different in your behavior, and your neurons are trained like everyone else?
Ff you look at my point, I want to stop the generalization about behaviors in sexes context. Everyone can be dumb. That doesn't need an abstraction to the sexes. As you can obviously see, that doesn't say that you have to stop the abstraction at cells. :P
And: I didn't call "ANY WAY". I called the context BEHAVIOR.(EDIT: as you pointed out yourself :-))
There are over seven billion people on this planet. Knowing all of them as humans is simply impossible. To function in the modern world we have to be willing to categorize, to make snap judgements, to, putting it bluntly, be prejudiced. I mean you could pick who you talk to at a conference (say) at random, and there's certainly value in talking to a spread of people. But ultimately there are people you'll gain more or less from talking to, because your interests and theirs align or don't. So you'll look at superficial characteristics like what they're wearing, because that's all the information you have to go on, and you'll try to make the best guess you can about who would be best to talk to. And it's inevitable that you'll sometimes get it wrong. But there is no alternative; making judgements based on incomplete information is just life, all we can do is try and make those judgements as well and as fairly as possible.
The experiments social sciences would need to conduct in order to achieve the same level of data quality and volume as physicists are completely unethical. It's not surprising that they are unable to progress at the same pace.
This problem amplifies itself, as the inability to acquire good data leads to a politicization of the science. Without the ability to perform, replicate or refute experiments, the scientists focus on convincing their peers through prose and essays.
There's still quite a lot of data out there. For example, SAT tests since the 70s show gender differences in mathematical ability as measured by that test:
> Continuing an uninterrupted trend that dates back to at least 1972, high school boys outperformed girls on the 2015 SAT math test with an average score of 527 points compared to the average score of 496 for females, see chart above. The statistically significant 31-point male advantage this year on the SAT math test is the same as the 31-point difference last year, and just slightly below the 33.9 point difference over the last two decades favoring boys.
> (...T)here were 165.3 boys with SAT math scores between 700-800 points for every 100 girls with scores in that range. For the next highest 100-point range between 600-700 points for the 2015 SAT math test, there were about 121 boys with scores in that range for every 100 high school girls (55% boys vs. 45% girls).
There's quite a lot of data out there. I suspect there's not a lot of research into the topic because it's so politically charged.
Nobody's ignoring this data, it actually poses a lot of interesting questions like why is that difference only present in about half of OECD countries, why does the difference only occur after a certain age (that varies per country), why do boys overpopulate both ends of the bell curve, how much is biology vs society, etc.
The data isn't politically charged, but the interpretation can be.
But rather than seeing culture as patriarchy, which is to say a conspiracy by men to exploit women, I think it’s more accurate to understand culture (e.g., a country, a religion) as __"an abstract system that competes against rival systems"__ (emphasis mine).
Why! Why is everything a bloody competition. This Baumeister character can't even escape this construct.
The problem is that we are told that live evolved by natural selection and survival of the fittest by out competing other rivals in it's niche. Or at least that's how the popular story goes.
And we've internalised this as a structure and caused it to permeate every bloody thing we do.
Why is everything a competition? Until we develop and internalise a world-view that sees that life thrives where it cooperates we will continue to decimate everything on this planet in an effort to out-compete our rivals. We will turn everything into a competition between everyone, the Left & Right sides of politics, male against female, all competing for limited resources.
It's because feminism is a self-serving ideology. They are not trying to clarify or resolve anything, they are trying to turn more people into believers of the ideology.
And it won't change, because feminism itself is an expression of female privilege. Stories about rape of women will always have more pull than stories about men being killed. Feminism has found these psychological loopholes (like more empathy for/willingness to help women) and is exploiting them as much as they can.
A man who is being killed was simply too weak and has rightfully been weeded out of the gene pool. Women do always have to be protected and are always victims. That is how society secretly feels. The rest is just confirmation bias.
I take feminism to be a healthy reaction to a historical warped perception of women that created unjust conditions and treatment. As with every ideology, it holds the unfortunate risk of some losing the big picture and eventually taking the means to be the end. This does not mean that the end is not a worthy cause.
It's a disruptive ideology that is intrinsically polarizing, especially when identity politics is introduced. If you take the short view, it's good for some, and bad for some, and some people will opportunistically use the ideology in self-serving ways.
If you take the long view, the "fashionable" parts of identity politics will fall away: the various shills, exploiters, and self-serving loud-mouths will begin to be ignored except among a hardcore cadre. But the status quo will have shifted to a situation that's more equitable for men and women.
Polarization and disruption are unpleasant while they're happening, but generally things swing back towards the middle, except that the middle will have moved slightly in a good direction (hopefullY).
> historical warped perception of women that created unjust conditions and treatment
then I'd like to see you argue against that premise. Let's take a very specific instance: voting. Historically there have been many countries where men were allowed to vote before women were allowed to vote. Do you think men being allowed to vote, while women are not, is:
a) A clever lie in our history books, where men were allowed to vote, women were also allowed to vote
The common argument seems to be that men got to vote because they also were the ones who had to go to war (which would be started by the elected government). While you don't have to accept the argument (and in fact history has rejected it), I'd say it also isn't completely without merit. (A counter to this would be to say "but women weren't even allowed to go to war" - true, but again it is debatable who had the shorter end of the stick there. And maybe women at war simply wasn't practical, given the nature of warfare in the past).
Besides, there were not really that many years when only men were allowed to vote. For most of history, neither men nor women were allowed to vote.
In general, I think a lot of care should be applied when comparing the situation of men and women in the past to the situation today. The demands on people were very different, for example there weren't that many office jobs to go around that were equally suitable for men and women.
Edit: of course picking isolated examples where women are seemingly worse off than men is also a trusted and tried feminist strategy. What if overall there are some metrics where men are better off, and some where women are better off? How do you compare? Of course you apply feminist values and rank the metrics where men are better off as much more important than the metrics where women are better off. That is, for example, why I claim feminism despises motherhood, it is at the very least ranked very low in their value system. The misleading gender pay gap is ranked very highly in the feminist world view, whereas you hardly hear about men missing out of time spent with their kids and family. Spending time with kids is valued with factor 0 in the feminist world view. Or even just spare time - what matters is that men get to work more!
>Well you believe the premise of the ideology, so you are a part of it. Unsurprising that you think it is useful, that is what it claims.
You believe in the premise of your claims so you are part of them - unsurprising you think they are true... :-)
No - the only premise and "ideology" I believe in is that truth should be sought after, suffering should be minimised and happiness should be maximized. I find all other ideologies to be just various attempts to implement this base ideology from different contexts, and granted, not all them are perfect for achieving this. Sometimes, they even achieve the opposite.
You might be surprised to know that there are plenty of things in the way feminism is sometimes interpreted that rub me the wrong way (you even mentioned some of them), but I think you're confusing the implementation with the goal. Feminism is defined as "the advocacy of women's rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men". This doesn't mean that women should be men. All it means to me is that if any woman as an individual is capable and interested in doing a "man's job" she should have an equal opportunity to do so and receive an equal compensation. Do you really have an issue with that?
At face value feminism sounds good - who would be against equality, indeed.
Except that feminism is more than that: it is the claim that women are disadvantaged and equality means merely that women's situation has to be improved.
Of course I don't take issue with women having equal opportunities for jobs. I take issue with the claim that they don't have that now. That is the unquestioned feminist assumption here. And I know there are some exceptions, like military, or models and so on - but by and large, women can do whatever they want.
With respect to military, I would also have to say it might depend on women not endangering the mission. I wouldn't deny them the right to get themselves killed, but what if a woman is not strong enough to carry a wounded comrade out of danger? But I think by now they are allowed in the military in most countries anyway?
> The common argument seems to be that men got to vote because they also were the ones who had to go to war (which would be started by the elected government).
So the fear was that women would massively vote in favor of war because they didn't have to fight it? As if women aren't affected by war, they lose fathers, husbands, and sons, and if they're on the losing side they have no weapons to defend themselves from an invading army and might get killed or raped. Besides, by that reasoning old and infirm men shouldn't be allowed to vote either. The "women don't go to war" argument sounds more like something made up after the fact to justify a situation than something that was actually considered when the decision was made.
> While you don't have to accept the argument (and in fact history has rejected it), I'd say it also isn't completely without merit.
It would at least be consistent if only those who are eligible for military service and those who have served in the military were allowed to vote, but somehow I suspect 'has a penis' was the actual standard used.
> (A counter to this would be to say "but women weren't even allowed to go to war" - true, but again it is debatable who had the shorter end of the stick there. And maybe women at war simply wasn't practical, given the nature of warfare in the past).
Dogs aren't allowed to vote either, and most of them never have to work, have people to take care of them, and don't have to fight in wars. When comparing humans to dogs, it is debatable who has the shorter end of the stick. But I don't know anyone who seriously would want to be a dog. Historically, did many men express a desire to be a woman, so that they could clean the house, birth many children, and be considered too incompetent to vote or otherwise get involved in politics? If not, I guess they didn't actually consider their end of the stick to be the shorter one, regardless of what one might debate today.
> Besides, there were not really that many years when only men were allowed to vote. For most of history, neither men nor women were allowed to vote.
I'm not sure where you are going with this. If up to five years ago women weren't allowed to use electricity, would you also argue that a "historical warped perception of women that created unjust conditions and treatment" didn't apply, because for most of history, neither men nor women could use electricity? I would think that the fact that everywhere where voting was introduced it was at first limited to men supports the argument that there is a "historical warped perception of women that created unjust conditions and treatment". Otherwise we would also expect to see a number of countries where, at first, women were allowed to vote while men were not.
> of course picking isolated examples where women are seemingly worse off than men is also a trusted and tried feminist strategy. What if overall there are some metrics where men are better off, and some where women are better off? How do you compare?
You're absolutely right! If only men and women had equal rights and opportunities, then we wouldn't have to argue about who is better off. If only there was some kind of social movement to accomplish this.
I don't think you have to agree with all (or even most) feminist viewpoints today to admit that historically, women had fewer rights than men, and feminism has done a lot to improve that. You don't have to agree with "all sex is rape" to think that it's a good idea for women to have a right to vote. It looks to me like you're so caught up in the 'us versus them' mentality that you reject everything about feminism to the point where you look as unreasonable as the hard-core feminists you so despise.
