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Post 40

Thursday, December 29, 2005 - 11:58amSanction this postReply
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Ed,

That, on average, there is a correlation between gender and certain behavioral traits isn't in question. What is in question is whether or not that correlation justifies a position such as "women can't be President." Or that women can't or shouldn't lead in general. I've yet to see a valid reason why it should.

And really, "Statistically, women are more subjectivist than men" is just a complete load of crap.

Sarah

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Post 41

Thursday, December 29, 2005 - 12:55pmSanction this postReply
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Sorry, Sarah - but statictically, that does hold up, women being more subjectivist than men, for the reason of culture imposing such a view almost across the cultures of this planet...  granted, in the nature of a woman, such is not the case, but the cultures across the centuries have tried to obliterate that as much as possible, and in the absence of knowing otherwise, most women hold to such a viewing...

Post 42

Thursday, December 29, 2005 - 1:29pmSanction this postReply
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Ed said:
My life experience has -- for me -- confirmed Scott's general point. That a general difference exists between genders.
Ed, You should go back and read what Scott, and his village idiot mouthpiece Fred, actually said.  It was way beyond "That a general difference exists between genders".

BTW, I got my wife Maureen Dowd's new book, Are Men Necessary?, for Christmas.  I'll let you know what her reaction is.

Glenn


Post 43

Thursday, December 29, 2005 - 1:02pmSanction this postReply
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I think that women as a whole, are more apt to subjectivist judgements than men are. That's not to take away from the fact that there aren't a lot of objective reasoning women, it's just that they are in the minority in terms as women as a whole in the USA. We all know that women are more sensitive and caring AS A WHOLE, than men are. Which is to be celebrated. Who wants a bunch of women acting like men? More women are registered Democrats than Republicans, and the Democratic party is the party of 'feelings' and subjectivism. Coincidence? Note; I am NOT anti-women at all, but what I see is that. It's a fact that men and women ARE different in their own unique capacities, women have different hormones then men and hormones play a key role in the physical emotion response. The key is how men and women, with all their physiologic differences choose to integrate experiences and make judgements based on their inherent genetic nature's.

Post 44

Thursday, December 29, 2005 - 7:00pmSanction this postReply
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I am going to ask a silly question: where is the evidence for some of these staements (e.g. women are more subjectivist than men)?

John



Post 45

Thursday, December 29, 2005 - 7:45pmSanction this postReply
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John,

It usually is empirical on a one-to-one basis, like a frying pan upside your head...

Or, when all else fails... tears.

//;-)

(Just joking, gals... )

(ducking)

Michael


Post 46

Thursday, December 29, 2005 - 10:50pmSanction this postReply
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Generally speaking, I find women to be more reasonable than men.

Rand's point about it being improper for a woman to run for Prez is that (almost always) women have a soft, cuddly, feminine quality about them that is at odds with the hard-edged, stabbing, ugly masculine quality that goes with protecting the fatherland and squeezing the populace out of tax money. The point is not that a woman can't do the job but that a woman (almost always) would enjoy life a zillion times more doing other things.


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Post 47

Friday, December 30, 2005 - 1:30amSanction this postReply
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Yes Glenn, what I and Fred agree on go way beyond general gender-differences, its much deeper, involving metaphysics, sense-of-life and consequently politics.

The premise behind it is shear-evil - the belief that some people should dominate and use others, than people are not ends-in-themselves.

Its an expression of the "cult-of-victim-hood". That is, yesterdays oppressed group is just in degrading and dominating a non-victim group today. That its OK to rob or punish Peter's kids to compensate or satisfy Paul's vengfull blaming.

'The evidence of an achieved self-esteem is one's soul's shudder of revulsion at being cast in the role of sacrificial animal'

And just like my last, bitter, vengfull female manager (who no doubt experienced gender-bias herself to make her the bich she was), I now have an emotional "account" that can't help but cloud by objectivity in dealing with those government, business, academia, et. have forced to be favored over me for subjective (pressure-group) reasons.

Here's a horrific tragic case-in-point. I've omitted & re-ordered the article a bit:

http://tinyurl.com/eyx6e
http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/0604/0604deaththeory.htm

Death by theory?

By Wendy McElroy
web posted May 31, 2004

...a theory that still impacts children across North America: that sexual identity comes from nurture not nature and, so, can be entirely determined by proper social conditioning.

In 1966, Reimer’s mother took her 8-month-old identical twins to a local doctor in Winnipeg, Canada, for circumcision. The procedure went badly for Bruce
...
they took their mutilated son
...
finally arriving at the door of medical psychologist Dr. John Money of Johns Hopkins Medical Center in Baltimore.

Money was out to prove a theory that would subsequently bring him fame and fortune. He maintained that Bruce was young enough to be successfully raised as a girl because gender was not determined by DNA but by environment. For Money, Bruce was a perfect candidate for the experiment because his identical twin brother would act as a control for the experiment.

At that time, surgery to reassign gender had never been performed on a boy born with normal genitalia. Bruce’s testicles were removed, and he underwent 12 years of social and hormonal treatment to become "Brenda."

"Joan" at age 13

The transformation became internationally renowned as "the John/Joan case." Dr. Money’s research was offered as proof positive that sexual identity was learned behavior. He declared, "The child's behaviour is so clearly that of an active little girl and so different from the boyish ways of her twin brother."

Every textbook on gender included Money’s experiment and grants poured into his pocket. Doctors began to surgically "reassign" the gender of babies born with ambiguous genitals. Feminists declared human beings to be "psychosexually neutral" at birth and campaigned to change everything from children’s stories to the curricula of schools in order to change the gender identity being taught to children. Money’s research supported their contention that patriarchal conditioning, not nature, was entirely responsible for women’s roles in society.

Behind the scenes, Reimer's mother told Money that Brenda ripped off dresses, rejected dolls, insisted on standing up to urinate, and asked to shave like her father. Nevertheless, Money’s 1972 book Man and Woman, Boy and Girl declared the experiment to be a success.

Indeed, Money urged the Reimers to complete the gender experiment on the pubescent Brenda by having a vagina surgically constructed. When she threatened to commit suicide rather than undergo more treatment by Money, the Reimers revealed the truth. Brenda adopted the name David and began to live as a man.

Of his childhood, David later stated: "It was like brainwashing … I’d give just about anything to go to a hypnotist to black out my whole past. Because it’s torture. What they did to you in the body is sometimes not near as bad as what they did to you in the mind with the psychological warfare in your head."

For years, David remained silent while Money’s version of the research was applauded by feminists and continued to influence public policy on gender. Then, in 1997, biologist Milton Diamond and psychiatrist Keith Sigmundson published a report in the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine, which exposed the John/Joan case as a failure and fraud. To the extent that the case proved anything, it proved the opposite of what Money claimed. John/Joan suggested that maleness developed in the womb; gender could not be reassigned through medical and social conditioning.

Money’s response? The report was "part of the anti-feminist movement."

In 2000, Rolling Stone journalist John Colapinto published "As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl." The book created a sensation by popularizing the findings of the Diamond-Sigmundson report.

Shortly thereafter, the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center released two scientific studies that indicated "prenatal exposure to normal male hormones alone dictates male gender identity in normal XY male babies, even if they are born without a penis." If true, this utterly discredits the medical practice of reassigning the gender of babies.

The studies came too late for David Reimer. Although he endured four reconstructive surgeries to reverse Money’s experiment and to rebuild his penis, David was unable to overcome a tortured past. After several setbacks in his personal life, David committed suicide at the age of 38. It was the last of several attempts to die that dated back to his teenage years.

Although Money’s research has been widely discredited, the belief that sexual identity is socially constructed still deeply impacts our culture. A good first step toward reversing the damage this belief can inflict is to reclaim a word usage that has been virtually abandoned. We should use the word "sex" and reject the word "gender" when discussing sexual identity.


I saw this account on TLC, IIRC. Truly an atrocious, criminal consequence of science contaminated by political wishful-thinking.

There was also another program on sexual identity, which demonstrated physiological brain-differences.

And we probably have heard of Patty Hearst, and other a couple other cases of the "Stockholm Syndrome". Does this happen more often to women than men?

Scott

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Post 48

Friday, December 30, 2005 - 1:39pmSanction this postReply
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Scott, regarding your post by Fred, I think there's some validity to what he is saying, but I think it's easy to exaggerate it, and I think that's what's happened to Fred. Most women are not radical feminists, thankfully, and most are not ready to file sexual harrassment charges against a coworker for a side-ways glance or an off-color joke. The vast majority of women, I believe, share Rand's attitude regarding male sexual superiority. And the failure to recognize that they do share it can cause guys to strike out with women more often than they'd care to admit. Women want a decisive, commanding presence in their potential sexual partners. They're looking for strength and confidence, and do not want or respect a weak, vacillating, indecisive guy. Not that men don't value confidence and assertiveness in women, but it's not as important or as crucial to them as it is for women vis-a-vis men.

Men often complain that "nice guys finish last," and that women prefer guys that treat them badly. This last is, unfortunately, often the case, but it reflects a misplaced desire by the woman for the expression of strength and control on the part of the man. If women have to choose between a milquetoast and a man who is dominating and abusive, they'll often choose the latter, much to the consternation of feminists, who don't share the normal woman's sexual orientation. It is a serious mistake to judge the average woman's view of men by the standards of contemporary feminism, which is seeking to abolish all psycho-sexual differences between men and woman and create a unisex culture. Modern feminism is an insidious pathology passing itself off as enlightened modernity. I don't think it has much chance of permanent success, however, as there are enough normal women around to prevent that from ever happening. This is not meant to downplay the liability of pro-feminist legislation. I knew a firefighter whose back is permanently injured, because a female firefighter was not strong enough to hold up her end of the ladder. Her presence on the team was a direct result of affirmative action--of the perverse idea of trying to mandate equality where it simply didn't exist.

But egalitarianism is nothing new. It should come as no surprise that most radical feminists are socialists as well. Collectivism is distinguished by its opposition to any concept of human nature or human identity. According to collectivists, people are like clay that can be molded, coerced and twisted to fit anyone's social agenda. And just as there is no human nature, according to collectivists, so there is no sexual nature. All sexual differences can be abolished by arbitrary fiat, just as all differences of talent, motivation and ability can. All we have to do is pass a law or impose a social stigma, and the differences will vanish into thin air. After all, wishing can make it so, can't it? Well, can't it?! Let's not forget Francis Bacon's famous aphorism, which is as applicable in this context as it is in any other: Nature to be commanded must be obeyed!

- Bill



Post 49

Friday, December 30, 2005 - 2:45pmSanction this postReply
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Well, I won't be so bold as to trade outright blows here (my point is the mere existence of statistical difference), but here's some data ... anyway:

Same behavior, different consequences: reactions to men's and women's altruistic citizenship behavior. J Appl Psychol. 2005 May;90(3):431-41.
Together with the results of a 3rd study demonstrating that work-related altruism is thought to be less optional for women than for men, these results suggest that gender-stereotypic prescriptions regarding how men and women should behave result in different evaluative reactions to the same altruistic behavior, depending on the performer's sex.

Sex differences in behavioral and hormonal response to social threat: commentary on Taylor et al. (2000). Psychol Rev. 2002 Oct;109(4):745-50; discussion 751-3.
... humans are characterized by extensive paternal investment, and thus men's tending is predicted and observed in some stressful contexts. Second, the dynamics of women's befriending suggest an evolutionary elaboration of the mechanisms that support reciprocal altruism. Third, coalitional male-male competition indicates that men's befriending is a predicted component of their fight-or-flight response. Finally, men's tending should result in the evolution of female-female competition over this form of parental investment.

Sex differences in pain perception. Gend Med. 2005 Sep;2(3):137-45.
Although differences in pain sensitivity between women and men are partly attributable to social conditioning and to psychosocial factors, many laboratory studies of humans have described sex differences in sensitivity to noxious stimuli, suggesting that biological mechanisms underlie such differences. In addition, sex hormones influence pain sensitivity; pain threshold and pain tolerance in women vary with the stage of the menstrual cycle. Imaging studies of the brain have shown differences between men and women in the spatial pattern and intensity of response to acute pain.

Behavioral and physiological findings of gender differences in global-local visual processing. Brain Cogn. 2005 Nov 2; [Epub ahead of print]
Women responded more quickly to local targets while men did not differentially respond to hierarchical stimuli. ERP data indicated that women had P100 responses that were selectively lateralized to the left hemisphere in response to local targets and N150 responses that were smaller for global targets. They also had P300 responses that were greater following local stimuli. The physiological data demonstrate that male-female performance differences arise from biologically based differences in hemispheric asymmetry.

The influence of gender on auditory and language cortical activation patterns: preliminary data. AJNR Am J Neuroradiol. 2005 Oct;26(9):2248-55.
Increase in the rate of background acoustic scanner noise caused increased activation in auditory and language relevant cortex of the dominant hemisphere in men compared with women where no such change in activation was observed.

Frequency-spatial organization of brain electrical activity in creative verbal thinking: role of the gender factor Zh Vyssh Nerv Deiat Im I P Pavlova. 2005 Jul-Aug;55(4):487-95.
It is suggested that the verbal creative thinking in men is based mostly on "insight" strategy whereas women additionally involve the "intellectual" strategy.

Does gender play a role in functional asymmetry of ventromedial prefrontal cortex? Brain. 2005 Dec;128(Pt 12):2872-81. Epub 2005 Sep 29.
The findings suggest that men and women may use different strategies to solve similar problems--e.g. men may use a more holistic, gestalt-type strategy, and women may use a more analytic, verbally-mediated strategy. Such differences could reflect asymmetric, gender-related differences in the neurobiology of left and right VMPC sectors.

... and there's some whacky circumstantial evidence from that stubborn communist guy Comte's talk about a flag that should fly with one side saying "Order & Progress" (for the men) and the other side -- specifically for the women, he says -- should read "Live for Others." Where in the hell did he get that notion about pigeonholing women -- and then pinning them down as inherently altruistic (as research was not available then)?

Ed




Post 50

Friday, December 30, 2005 - 2:36pmSanction this postReply
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Lance, please tell me where these 'more reasonable' women are so that I can meet some.:-)

Post 51

Friday, December 30, 2005 - 2:47pmSanction this postReply
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William wrote:

Most women are not radical feminists, thankfully, and most are not ready to file sexual harrassment charges against a coworker for a side-ways glance or an off-color joke.


True, but the radical (perhaps I should say leftist) feminist agenda spews anti-male victim-female messages into the culture that are believed and acted on.

The vast majority of women, I believe, share Rand's attitude regarding male sexual superiority.


I would phrase that differently, and say most women probably desire male *leadership*, not superiority or even dominance.

Women want a decisive, commanding presence in their potential sexual partners. They're looking for strength and confidence, and do not want or respect a weak, vacillating, indecisive guy.


Yes, I think its true that very often people look for in a mate what they found in the parent of the opposite gender. (Women want a father-figure, men a mother-figure) Or in some cases when they dislike it, the opposite.

Men often complain that "nice guys finish last," and that women prefer guys that treat them badly.


Eh eh, "treat a queen like a whore, and a whore like a queen"? I don't quite buy that. Women (or men) that want to get slapped around are raised in sick, abusive environments that consider abuse "normal".

That kind of advice, and pecking-order negotiation certainly applies to social-climbers, subjective people that believe the value of a thing is how much they must pay for it, the value of a person is how much they must pay for their affection with their own.

According to collectivists, people are like clay that can be molded, coerced and twisted to fit anyone's social agenda.


Yes, the Subjectivist position, that collective consensus defines morality, value and truth.

All sexual differences can be abolished by arbitrary fiat, just as all differences of talent, motivation and ability can. All we have to do is pass a law or impose a social stigma, and the differences will vanish into thin air. After all, wishing can make it so, can't it?


Don't forget the Big Stick waiting to knock dissenters into agreement. If wishing can't make it so, get a bigger hammer!

Scott

Post 52

Saturday, December 31, 2005 - 6:10pmSanction this postReply
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Wow. 5 points to whoever can figure out why women aren't as participatory in Oist boards (at least) as men?

Sarah

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Post 53

Saturday, December 31, 2005 - 8:12pmSanction this postReply
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Deleted: I haven't been following this thread so I'm unable to answer Sarah's question.
(Edited by Dean Michael Gores
on 12/31, 8:14pm)


Post 54

Saturday, December 31, 2005 - 8:15pmSanction this postReply
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Wow, 5 points to Dean.

Post 55

Saturday, December 31, 2005 - 8:23pmSanction this postReply
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Aw, I wasn't paying attention. What'd you say Dean?

Post 56

Saturday, December 31, 2005 - 8:01pmSanction this postReply
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It's because women as a whole are more emotionlly responsive then men, and what woman in her right mind would want to be involved in a discussion with a bunch of rational, reasoning men? You've seen how a lot of posts are here, Sarah:-) If you've ever checked out the Atlasphere dating and directory website the male to female ratio is at least 4:1. Why?-because the fact is; objectivism is more appealing to men because of its non-emotional objectivity of reason. Women are emotional by nature and may be turned off by objectivisms take on emotions. Do I win?

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Post 57

Saturday, December 31, 2005 - 11:12pmSanction this postReply
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That depends, are you actually positing that?

Sarah

Post 58

Saturday, December 31, 2005 - 11:20pmSanction this postReply
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Sarah,

To sanction a post, and not even know what the post said? Why, that is criminal. Women. They give you the idea that they are actually listening to what you are saying, only to discover later that they weren't actively paying attention, instead thinking about romance! ; )

I said something like, "Women don't like to endlessly argue over useless things such as whether women are more/less emotional then men." But I deleted it because I hadn't read this thread and because I have yet to find an objective study comparing the emotional and rational capacity of men verses women. I wouldn't really even care to know the results, since its very clear to me that these traits vary much more greatly across individuals then in general men verses woman.

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Post 59

Saturday, December 31, 2005 - 11:37pmSanction this postReply
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Erik - you are still, like so many, buying into the emotional/rational as if there is a conflicting between them - instead of the real Objectivist recognition that there is an integration in the individual, not one at the expense of the other...
(Edited by robert malcom on 12/31, 11:38pm)


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