Normally I'm not a "TierneyLab" fan, but he linked to this lecture today and I thought it was fascinating. And apparently I'm more cro-magnon than I thought.
http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~baumeistertice/goodaboutmen.htm
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I could not finish reading this, so perhaps it gets less condescending towards the end, but good god, I hate this man. I really think his proving that there's something "good about men" (which who thinks there isn't? Maureen Dowd? Wow, there's a great example of how women think... just like Christopher Hitchens is a brilliant example of what alcoholics are really like-- I don't want either of those people representing my groups), he decided to do so by saying what both sexes are VERY stereotypically like and how much women suck. After the "men's jobs are more dangerous- 93% of people who die on the job are men" paragraph, I looked up statistics on the percentage of women who die in the home, mostly due to violence by their partners (85-95%). “Most cultures shield their women from the risk and therefore also don’t give them the big rewards.” OH MY GOD, BULLSHIT --the world is dangerous for everyone, but women (and children) sure as hell aren’t rewarded with gold coins for making it out alive after being gang raped by the conquering armies.
ReplyDeleteThen I read this sentence regarding women’s lack of motivation in the sciences and had to stop reading again before I had an aneurism: "And by the same logic, I suspect most men could learn to change diapers and vacuum under the sofa perfectly well too, and if men don’t do those things, it’s because they don’t want to or don’t like to, not because they are constitutionally unable (much as they may occasionally pretend otherwise!)." Fuck you, Roy F. Baumeister... yeah, women don't have motivation for stuff like quantum physics or jazz improvisation, just like men hate doing the only things women are good at like VACUUMING and CHANGING DIAPERS.
And his big revelation that men and women are different but equal... wow, no one has EVER thought of that, certainly not Gloria Steinem in her thoughts on feminism: "I would still go along with the dictionary definition of someone, which can be a woman or a man, who believes in the full social, economic, political equality of women and men." Someone who calls themselves a feminist (which I proudly do) does NOT believe that women are better than men, nor that they are the same; it's about realizing that all genders, races, religions deserve to have equal treatment and an equal chance to succeed under the law and in society, regardless of those specific differences. So I agree with Mr. Baumeister on that, but I don't need him to tell me with a pat on the ass and a "sweetheart, here's the thing about the world, you silly, girl.”
Uh, and I just lied a little… I did continue reading (to the detriment of my blood pressure)… and read this: “Women are if anything more likely than men to perpetrate domestic violence against romantic partners, everything from a slap in the face to assault with a deadly weapon.” NOT TRUE, NOT TRUE, NOT TRUE. “While women are less likely than men to be victims of violent crimes overall, women are five to eight times more likely than men to be victimized by an intimate partner.” U.S. Department of Justice, Violence by Intimates: Analysis of Data on Crimes by Current or Former Spouses, Boyfriends, and Girlfriends, March 1998. OR THIS “Approximately 1.3 million women and 835,000 men are physically assaulted by an intimate partner annually in the United States.” Patricia Tjaden & Nancy Thoennes, U.S. Dep't of Just., NCJ 183781, Full Report of the Prevalence, Incidence, and Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence Against Women: Findings from the National Violence Against Women Survey, at iv (2000). I could really, seriously go on. And on.
I really do want to find some good points in this, and think that some of his premises are almost sound, but I think his big arguments are not only not supported by facts, but they’re also completely discounting as the major factor social conditioning (which is what feminism and other equal rights movements are trying to fight) and putting it all down to some weird idea of “motivation” not supported by biology but by what has happened in the past and what is stereotypically thought to be true BECAUSE of the past oppression by the physically dominant gender, that Mr. Baumeister doesn't believe in. Can you imagine if he had written this essay based on race as opposed to gender? Take this paragraph and substitute non-caucasians for women: “Our society is made up of institutions such as universities, governments, corporations. Most of these were founded and built up by caucasian men. Again, this probably had less to do with non-caucasian men being oppressed or WHATEVER (fuck you again, condescending prick) and more to do with caucasian men being motivated to form large networks of shallow relationships. Caucasian men are much more interested than non-caucasian men in forming large groups and working in them and RISING TO THE TOP IN THEM, because only caucasian men understand the way the big, complicated world works while every non-caucasian man, including women, are fucking stupid (Emphasis mine, and I may have added that last part).
So, in conclusion, Roy, enjoy the aggression that women don't really have except in your completely false and unsupported domestic violence data, and fucking bite me and my and every other woman I know's abilities in the sciences, the arts, politics, family life, religion, the bedroom, etc.
Tierney has always been a tool easily duped by other tools.
ReplyDeleteWas this lecture secretly written by Malcolm Gladwell?
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeletewell frankly I'm amazed even 4 people clicked on the first link I got to work on the blog. At the risk of inflaming the Contessa's self-described hypertension I had a couple thoughts.
ReplyDelete1. I don't really get the title. It doesn't describe for me the major takeaway of the article. It's just cheeky nonsense akin to Dowd's book.
1. I don't think Maureen Dowd (or Hitchens although the same applies) is really germane to the argument except to the fact that she is a currently bestselling author who happens to be writing about gender so for the purposes of the discussion, could be said to represent something popular culture is interested in. I would agree she sucks, but I don't think it really matters.
2. I think in regards to the risk thing, I think your maybe conflating 2 issues. It's not that anyone is "safe" so much as in the social roles genders are expected to play, men's are expected or "conditioned" to use your term to be more risky. That doesn't mean horrible things don't happen to women. To use your example, and I think it actually relevant, conquering armies are doing those things precisely because women and children are considered more precious to the conquered society then their relatively "expendable" male counterparts who are presumably dead and no longer capable of providing the expected role of fighter/protector. It's a more direct way of asserting power over the conquered people than simply killing them.
3. The diapers line is obviously absurd and perhaps him showing his true colors. Certainly the "whatever" line was ridiculously glib and there is a certain amount of condescension in the article. But it bears mentioning that the previous sentence says "Maybe women can do math and science perfectly well but they just don’t like to." Seems like this is a fair question, particularly given that so few people have a passion for math in the first place. You could just as easily say the same thing about men and language skills which women routinely do better in. But I don't think he's "completely discounting as the major factor social conditioning." I think the point of the paper is why does this social conditioning exist, and why does it seem to exist so many places in such similar fashions?
4. To be honest, I didn't really get the aggression/violence part. But I think it's unlikely that the statistics you cite account for "slaps on the face" which he seems to think are an equal marker of aggression. I mean, my parents slapped me in the face. It wasn't what I would describe as an assault. I have no idea where Cross and Madsen's data come from but I think we can all agree that relative weighting seems bogus. definitely the least convincing part. At least as an example. But I'm curious to know which stats are crime stats and which are victimization stats. I'd be curious to see how they change.
4. I think the race analogy doesn't really work. For 1, the biological differences between men and women are far greater than, say me and the whitest white man on Earth. Say Barry Manilow (wow, I just depressed myself). Or put it another way, as it was described to me, my DNA is more similar to a male chimpanzee (notably aggressive) than to yours. Surely that means something. (I don't claim to know, but I think it's a much more interesting discussion than racial biology, to the extent that such a thing even exists). Also, racially heterogeneous societies are a relatively modern phenomenon in human history. But every society in human history has had men and women. So why again, why do these same cultural/social constructs repeat themselves.
I guess my point is, nonspecific and sketchy "aggression" data notwithstanding, I thought it was interesting. I mean, it's not like I feel awesome about being expendable.
The juxtaposition of this post and the one of Athas wearing a Hawaiian shirt and looking under the hood of a car while keeping his hands in his pockets is amazing. Too bad that kid doesn't know how to check the blog.
ReplyDeleteGabi, I am not mentally capable of entering the debate at this point, as I admit I am still coming down from draft night and haven't digested your and Christy's comments fully yet. But thank you for not calling me the whitest white man on Earth.
Render me, gender me.
ReplyDeleteI just wrote another essay, which I will not subject you all to and which basically says:
ReplyDeleteI don't think men and women can be as defined as a whole in the roles he's given them or that those roles are (or perhaps should be) biologically or even socially still relevant.
And you're right, PandaBear about the race thing not being completely analogous... it was, again, mainly his tone, which I think would cause a lot more outrage if he had used this tone, premise and "research" to support why there is a difference among certain races being (or not being)math majors, scientists, philosophers or why some races are supposedly more aggressive than others BECAUSE of their biology as opposed to their exposure to or encouragement in these things.
I think he was proposing the way societies have been as the basis for how biology actually is; I don't agree.
I can't wait for the next Family Dinner!
ReplyDelete(someone put a cork on Christy's fork before I get there, please)
Unless Roy Baumeister is coming to dinner, no one has anything to fear.
ReplyDeleteI dunno, I started getting flashbacks to freshman year when Raju and Ben and I didn't go to "Take Back the Night" and then none of the girls talked to us for a solid week.
ReplyDeleteWhich, btw, I still vote as retarded, as the entire concept of Take Back the Night is "Look, we women can walk around campus at night w/o getting raped" but, you know, a bit more highbrow.