![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Only read Is There Anything Good About Men? if you want to be enraged. Highlights for my purposes: pits black men against middle-class white women and judges the black men better -- oops, more creative -- because there is of course only one relevant dimension in creativity, and because we have such stunningly good records of what women created that didn't find a commercial marketplace. Black women -- they don't exist in this account, it turns out. Or at least there was just no opportunity to evaluate their (lack of) creativity. Women in general are just off having babies instead, for lack of interest in other things.
Maybe it's ordinary that a psychologist doesn't know history or feminist theory (and thus thinks that feminism is the ideology that promotes women and men as natural enemies, and that sexism and oppression cannot exist in structures but only in conscious mental decisions), but it's sure depressing.
This was a speech at the American Psychological Association.
Maybe it's ordinary that a psychologist doesn't know history or feminist theory (and thus thinks that feminism is the ideology that promotes women and men as natural enemies, and that sexism and oppression cannot exist in structures but only in conscious mental decisions), but it's sure depressing.
This was a speech at the American Psychological Association.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
Grrr!
From:
no subject
From:
Wow.
Then again, his definition of culture seems to argue for it being a consciously-created thing, rather than unconscious underpinnings that inform how we understand the world. Society has apparently been elided into this new definition of 'culture', so that prejudice and oppression become products of the natural order.
Thank you as always for your fascinating links and insightful reviews.
From:
no subject
~
From:
Wow
I'm going to print out the article and give it to my gender and philosophy prof tomorrow.
From:
no subject
*sigh*
Why are so many people stupid?
From:
no subject
"Aaaghrrr"
The really lousy thing is that the author brings up a few interesting issues and then completely simplifies them and makes random conclusions based on nothing much. Also, he apparently not only doesn't know what feminism is but has no idea what culture is! As someone who majored in cultural Anthropology this almost infuriates me more, the feminism misrepresentation might just be sexism which I'm used to expecting in academics but the idiocy on culture and ignoring the huge effects of culture in discussed areas is just stupidity and lack of research and aaaghrrrrrr!!!
'Oh no, I'm not biased if I don't talk about women being overrepresented in poverty and dependent relationships while I talk about men being overrepresented as the homeless and in risky professions, I don't want to get into which gender is better!'
*screams*
Um, anyways. Thanks for the link!
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
Re: Wow.
From: (Anonymous)
no subject
Maybe that's because every day is Whiny Male Entitlement Day.
--coffeeandink
From:
no subject
The trouble arises when people try to talk about these other things in order to stop talking about gender, rather than engaging them all. "Debate" implies that one possible position to take is that it is not gender, but other things, that matter here. And though I disagree with that, I don't think it's out of bounds; what gets objectionable to me is the additional, and often fellow traveling, view that other things "just happen" to correlate with gender.
From:
no subject
though nowhere near as frustrated as i am by that post you linked. b/c...just wow! the logic's missing all over the place and the generalizations are staggering!
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
He might want to run that model past a few people in Continental Europe. Few people work harder than the Germans or the Dutch - within working hours. Their productivity is outstanding - and working super-long hours is seen as the sort of failing which needs to be addressed in personnel assessments ("How is it, Herr Schmidt, that you seem to be unable to complete your assignments effectively within the time allocated to them?").
High salaries - even in the Anglo-American model - come from being promoted to the roles that earn them. I (as a lawyer and a partner in a law firm) out-earn my postman father (who retired in 1980) by a factor of at least 10. My hours - even at their most unpleasant - have never included night-shift working (on duty from 10pm until 6am) nor have they included compulsory working on Christmas morning (until the mid-1960s).
There are plenty of women - even in the US - who are working super-long hours - not because they are "workaholics" (and shouldn't someone speaking to the APA pick up on the idea that any condition ending in "-aholic' is something which should be considered clinically rather than endorsed as a role model?) but because they need three low-paid jobs to earn a living wage.
Or perhaps YOU FUCKING IGNORANT BASTARD!!!* is all the response such a paper deserves. Because I suspect I put more thought into my comment to this journal that the author put into that so-called academic paper.
*No apologies for bad language. Sometimes only profanity will do.
From: (Anonymous)
no subject
There are pretty significant class and racial divisions there, too, but what makes the offense bingo-able for me is the speaker's only belated movement to them after trying first to find common cause for status battles among male academics in different disciplines and his apparent lack of understanding of why it might be easier for a male academic to speak from an emotionally engaged mode or why female academics might want to critique that position.
From: (Anonymous)
no subject
From:
But what's my motivation?
From:
Re: But what's my motivation?
During various wars (especially the first and second world wars) women took over those roles rather fast and rather effectively. How much evolutionary adaptation took place in 4 years (WWI) or 6 (WWII)?*
*substitute 1 year and 4 years for US purposes.
From:
Re: But what's my motivation?
From:
no subject
Berglas,S.C., & Baumeister, R.F. (1993). Your Own Worst Enemy: Understanding the Paradox of Self-Defeating Behavior. New York: Basic Books.
Baumeister, R.F., Heatherton, T.F., & Tice, D.M. (1994). Losing Control: How and Why People Fail at Self-Regulation. San Diego,CA: Academic Press.
Baumeister, R.F., Smart, L., & Boden, J.M. (1996). Relation of threatened egotism to violence and aggression: The dark side of high self-esteem. Psychological Review, 103, 5-33.
From:
no subject
Feminism has sure never criticized the patriarchy for how it treats men! What an original thinker Baumeister is. Too bad those early feminists didn't have him to learn from!
More men are getting killed than women, in Iraq! If you count soldiers. If you count civilians… well. Let's not ruin a perfectly good theory with facts.
Grade inflation is pulling down mens' average scores? I'd like some numbers on this one.
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.
The hell? So, women aren't in the sciences, because it's a filthy job that they've relegated to men?
Likewise, I mentioned the salary difference, but it may have less to do with ability than motivation. High salaries come from working super-long hours. Workaholics are mostly men. (There are some women, just not as many as men.) One study counted that over 80% of the people who work 50-hour weeks are men.
I'm sure this has nothing to do with men's higher average pay.
Dear god. I could continue, but he seems unable to appreciate there there might be a difference between culture and biology, so it's hardly worth it.
From:
Re: But what's my motivation?
From:
no subject
Somehow I have misplaced the part of my brain that naturally (because of the environment of evolutionary adaptation!) likes to vacuum. Or change diapers -- seriously, who wants to change diapers as an end (sorry) in themselves? Where did this diaper-changing profession come from?
From:
no subject
From:
scary
The scariest sentence of your whole post was the last one.
This is what the finest psychs are saying-- I gotta go find that cave on the tropical island NOW.
Wow.
He thinks our likes and dislikes and all of that are hardwired and evolutionary if I read him correctly.
Did he forget environment, nurture vs starvation, society???
spike q