tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36784961089648449122024-03-12T16:27:05.053-07:00Feminist Fallacies and Old Husbands' TalesMyths, Legends, Fables and Taboos that Undermine Gender RelationsCharles S. Arenihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18441139327258817133noreply@blogger.comBlogger18125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3678496108964844912.post-15336137036199292622016-02-13T16:17:00.000-08:002016-02-13T16:17:11.766-08:005 feminist myths that will not die<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://i.imgur.com/EwvY8LQ.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://i.imgur.com/EwvY8LQ.jpg" height="318" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #282828; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 26.88px;">Christina Hoff Summers reflects on <a href="http://time.com/3222543/5-feminist-myths-that-will-not-die/">five feminist fallacies</a>. Here's a quick overview</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #282828; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 19.2px; line-height: 26.88px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #282828; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 26.88px;">MYTH 1: </span><span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #282828; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 26.88px;"><em style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box;">Women are half the world’s population, working two-thirds of the world’s working hours, receiving 10% of the world’s income, owning less than 1% of the world’s property.</em></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #282828; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 26.88px;"><em style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box;"><br /></em></span>
<span style="color: #282828; font-family: georgia, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 26.88px;">Women in the US earn 4.5% of the world's income all by themselves!</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #282828; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 26.88px;"><em style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box;"><br /></em></span>
<span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #282828; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 26.88px;"><em style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: normal; line-height: 26.88px;">MYTH 2: </span><span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: normal; line-height: 26.88px;"><em style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box;">Between 100,000 and 300,000 girls are pressed into sexual slavery each year in the United States.</em></span></em></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #282828; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 26.88px;"><em style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: normal; line-height: 26.88px;"><em style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box;"><br /></em></span></em></span>
<span style="color: #282828; font-family: georgia, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 26.88px;">It is actually a few hundred girls and boys each year. This is still horrible, but much, much, MUCH smaller than the number more commonly quoted.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #282828; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 26.88px;"><span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26.88px;"><span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box;"><br /></span></span></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #282828; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 26.88px;"><em style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: normal; line-height: 26.88px;">MYTH 3: <em style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box;">In the United States, 22%–35% of women who visit hospital emergency rooms do so because of domestic violence.</em></span></em></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #282828; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 26.88px;"><em style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: normal; line-height: 26.88px;"><em style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box;"><br /></em></span></em></span>
<span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #282828; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 26.88px;"><span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26.88px;"><span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box;">The correct figure is less than one half of 1%. The misreported result overlooks the correct baseline: about 35% of women in hospital emergency rooms <u>for violence-related injuries</u> were attacked by intimates.</span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #282828; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 26.88px;"><span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26.88px;"><span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box;"><br /></span></span></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #282828; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 26.88px;"><em style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: normal; line-height: 26.88px;">MYTH 4</span><span style="font-style: normal; line-height: 26.88px;">: </span><span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: normal; line-height: 26.88px;"><em style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box;">One in five in college women will be sexually assaulted.</em></span></em></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #282828; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 26.88px;"><em style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box;"><br /></em></span>
<span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #282828; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 26.88px;"><span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box;">The result is from a survey with a high non-response rate. That is, those with something to say are much more likely to respond. And sexual assault is broadly defined including as an example, "attempted forced kissing."</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #282828; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 26.88px;"><span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #282828; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 26.88px;"><em style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: normal; line-height: 26.88px;">MYTH 5</span><span style="font-style: normal; line-height: 26.88px;">: </span><span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: normal; line-height: 26.88px;"><em style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box;">Women earn 77 cents for every dollar a man earns—for doing the same work.</em></span></em></span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #282828; font-family: georgia, serif; line-height: 26.88px;">This result is the simple average of women's earnings vs men's earnings. It does not account for differences in hours worked per week, occupations, positions, etc.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #282828; font-family: georgia, serif; line-height: 26.88px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #282828; line-height: 26.88px;"><span style="font-family: georgia, serif;">For more detail, see <a href="http://time.com/3222543/5-feminist-myths-that-will-not-die/">the full article</a>:</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://time.com/3222543/5-feminist-myths-that-will-not-die/">http://time.com/3222543/5-feminist-myths-that-will-not-die/</a></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #282828; font-family: georgia, serif; line-height: 26.88px;"> </span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3678496108964844912.post-88900406383873379662014-12-15T13:31:00.000-08:002014-12-15T13:31:16.877-08:00Female virginity myths<h1>Women suffer the myths of the hymen and the virginity test</h1>
<p><span><span>By </span><a href="http://theconversation.com/profiles/sherria-ayuandini-147860">Sherria Ayuandini</a><em>, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/washington-university-at-st-louis">Washington University in St Louis</a></em></span></p>
<p>The Indonesian public lambasted the Indonesian police after Human Rights Watch released a report that police conducted “virginity tests” on female applicants in the police recruitment process.</p>
<p>Many pointed out the injustice of the practice. They argue that it is sexist, painful and traumatising. They also point out that virginity is irrelevant to whether or not an officer would be able to do her police duty.</p>
<p>But few have questioned yet the most dubious aspect of this harrowing practice: the validity of the test itself.</p>
<h2>Global problem</h2>
<p>Virginity testing is not unique to Indonesia. Women in many countries are often required to endure the test for reasons that often have nothing to do with the woman’s interests. Turkey, Egypt, Morocco and Iraq, to name a few, have had their fair share of controversial virginity testing.</p>
<p>In one case in Turkey in the early 1990s, a student committed suicide after undergoing a virginity test instructed by the principal of her school.</p>
<h2>Test procedures</h2>
<p>The ways the test is done could vary from one place to another. We are now familiar with the term “two fingers test” conducted by Indonesia’s National Police. In some places in Iraq, the test is visual. A woman is considered a virgin when there is no visible sign of “defect” on her hymen.</p>
<p>In one particular village in Morocco, the test is somewhat more imaginative. A bride to be is required to undergo “the egg test”. She is to lie on her back with her legs spread out. The examiner, usually an older woman, would then crack an egg open onto her vagina. If the egg slipped into her, she would be considered to be no longer sexually untouched.</p>
<p>No matter the method, there are two aspects often used to determine a woman’s virginity: an intact hymen and a tight vaginal opening. Both are still widely believed to signify virginity in women; neither is a reliable basis for such a conclusion.</p>
<h2>The myth of the hymen</h2>
<p>Let us start with the hymen. The hymen is a membrane in the vaginal canal. Doctors are still in disagreement on its function. Many believe that it has simply no particular use to the woman’s body.</p>
<p>If the use of this membrane is considered a mystery, the shape of its virgin state is one of the biggest medical myths around. Many are under the impression that a virgin hymen resembles either one of these two things: a balloon-like membrane covering the vaginal canal, or a ring-like flesh with a smooth edge.</p>
<p><figure class="align-left">
<img alt="" src="https://62e528761d0685343e1c-f3d1b99a743ffa4142d9d7f1978d9686.ssl.cf2.rackcdn.com/files/66883/width237/image-20141210-6039-usrsqb.jpg">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Some people think that riding a bicycle can result in tearing of the hymen.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">My Good Images/Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure></p>
<p>Some believe that any disturbance to the hymen will result in its tearing. Hence it is not uncommon for girls to be advised to be careful when riding a bicycle or for young women to avoid using a tampon for fear that they can break their hymen.</p>
<p>In reality the hymen looks more like — using the words of a doctor who frequently performs hymen reconstruction — the petals of a flower. It has notches, folds and clefts, even in its virgin state. It is flexible with different densities. Some hymens are thin and some are thicker than others.</p>
<p>In the event of a penetration, the hymen might be scarred. Yet, quite often, the hymen stretches and is left undamaged.</p>
<p>It is then inaccurate to think that a sexual act will always result in changes to the hymen. There have been many cases that show women who are in possession of an annular smooth-edged hymen can in fact have been sexually active for years.</p>
<p>The opposite is also true. A virgin woman’s hymen might have a big opening and several clefts here and there; this is the type of hymen that many incorrectly believe to signify that a woman has experienced sexual penetrations.</p>
<p>This is why sexologists, gynaecologists and general practitioners alike are often reluctant to be asked for their opinion on whether or not a woman is a virgin based on the condition of her hymen. Doctors in the Netherlands resort to using the following form of words when subjected to such request:</p>
<blockquote><p>There are no indications to suggest that the woman in question is no longer a virgin.</p></blockquote>
<p>Trauma to the hymen is not easy to determine – so much so there have been studies to show that forensic experts on cases of child sexual abuse often are not able to discern the signs of maltreatment on the hymen of a female child. This is especially true in cases when the child was taken to the hospital some time after her mistreatment.</p>
<h2>Mistaken assumption</h2>
<p>The second aspect that is often checked is the tightness of the vagina. There is a widespread belief that a woman who is sexually untouched has a tight vaginal opening because of the intact hymen and that a man can discern that during intercourse.</p>
<p>This is a mistaken assumption. The tightness of the vagina is not caused by the hymen membrane but as a result of a contracted pelvic floor muscle. The more it is contracted, the narrower the vaginal canal is.</p>
<p>It is noteworthy that when a woman is feeling anxious, particularly when it comes to sex, she automatically tenses up her pelvic floor. Many doctors attribute this as the reason a virgin woman is often felt to be “narrow” by her partner.</p>
<p>To women who are looking to be “narrower”, doctors in the Netherlands advise them to practise contracting their pelvic muscle. This is akin to holding it in when nature calls but you simply cannot go yet.</p>
<p>The tensing up of the pelvic muscle was also what doctors prescribed to the woman who consulted them because she would be expected to undergo “the egg test”. The woman passed the test with flying colours.</p>
<h2>More fable than fact</h2>
<p>Any type of virginity test that relies on the observation of the hymen or of the tightness of the vagina is inconclusive, at best, or completely invalid. The belief that it is easier to discern the virgin state of a woman than a man is more of a fable than a scientific fact. Unfortunately, it is a fable that is still widely believed and practised to subjugate women.</p>
<p>No-one, neither a woman nor a man, should ever be compelled to endure such questioning, regardless of the reliability of the exam.</p>
<p>But it is worth pondering that as the testing tool at hand is highly unreliable, why would anyone even dare to entertain the imposition of such fallibility?</p><img alt="The Conversation" height="1" src="https://counter.theconversation.edu.au/content/35324/count.gif" width="1" /><p>This article was originally published on <a href="http://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a>.
Read the <a href="http://theconversation.com/women-suffer-the-myths-of-the-hymen-and-the-virginity-test-35324">original article</a>.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3678496108964844912.post-6000984332188816632014-08-16T05:51:00.000-07:002014-08-16T07:43:07.361-07:00The myths about PMS<h1>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://62e528761d0685343e1c-f3d1b99a743ffa4142d9d7f1978d9686.ssl.cf2.rackcdn.com/files/56568/width668/b64wv934-1408069455.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://62e528761d0685343e1c-f3d1b99a743ffa4142d9d7f1978d9686.ssl.cf2.rackcdn.com/files/56568/width668/b64wv934-1408069455.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">PMS as a strategy for 'driving away' infertile males ?</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
An unproductive story of reproductive success and PMS </h1>
By <a href="http://theconversation.com/profiles/cordelia-fine-90297">Cordelia Fine</a><em>, University of Melbourne</em><br />
It’s been a mixed week for women and their hormones.<br />
When Maryam Mirzakhani <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/aug/13/fields-medal-mathematics-prize-woman-maryam-mirzakhani">became the first woman to win</a> the prestigious Fields Medal for mathematics, a Cambridge mathematician suggested it would “put to bed many myths about women and mathematics”, one of which is the idea that females are <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7736196.stm">not exposed to enough prenatal testosterone</a> to excel in the field.<br />
At the same time, other hormone-related myths were given fresh life by a new evolutionary story claiming to have uncovered the reason why women become “unbearable to live with” once a month, as <a href="http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/pms-or-premenstrual-tension-is-natures-way-for-women-to-get-rid-of-their-unproductive-male-partners/story-fneuzlbd-1227022139214">one news report</a> put it.<br />
Michael Gillings, a population geneticist at Macquarie University, suggests in an article published in the <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/eva.12190/abstract">journal Evolutionary Applications</a> that premenstrual syndrome (PMS) evolved because it enabled women to repel men who failed to make them pregnant.<br />
<h2>
The fantastic past</h2>
In our ancestral past, the story goes, women would have had many fewer menstrual cycles due to greater numbers of pregnancies and extended breastfeeding. Being partnered with an infertile man would therefore have gone hand-in-hand with regular menstruation.<br />
Premenstrual syndrome could save ancestral women from evolutionarily disastrous reproductive failure. Having successfully driven off an infertile partner by means of bad-temperedness administered on a monthly schedule, women would be at liberty to seek out a fresh victim.<br />
A <a href="http://ecodevoevo.blogspot.com/2014/08/anthropologys-troublesome-arguments.html">well-rehearsed criticism</a> of this kind of fanciful evolutionary speculation is that many aspects of contemporary human conditions are not adaptations; they are not “for” anything.<br />
Contrary to popular <a href="http://www.amazon.com.au/Paleofantasy-Evolution-Really-Tells-about-ebook/dp/B007Q6XM1A">“paleofantasy”</a>, which holds that we embody perfected design for a long-gone era, evolutionary change is a compromised, continuously jerry-rigged process that has to always act within the constraints of what’s already there. This means many of our characteristics, including some that are typical or universal, have no evolutionary purpose.<br />
Often, speculating about what adaptive purpose is served by some feature of <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/6817134/Dad-dancing-may-be-the-result-of-evolution-scientists-claim.html">a pocket of contemporary life</a> is to board the express train to Storyland.<br />
But Gillings argues that the high frequency of the currently “maladaptive” condition of PMS, with “often … significant personal, social and economic costs”, points to an offsetting adaptive benefit from the past.<br />
<h2>
Not as bad as all that</h2>
However, the picture painted of the incapacitating effect on modern women of their reproductive system is far too bleak.<br />
Only a small percentage of women (estimates have ranged from as low as <a href="http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=2938964&fileId=s003329170800322x">1.3%</a> to <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016503270100458X">around</a> the <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3118460/?iframe=true&width=100%25&height=100%25">5% to 8% mark</a>) have premenstrual symptoms that are genuinely debilitating and merit a diagnosis of premenstrual dysphoric disorder.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<figure class="align-centre"><img alt="" src="https://62e528761d0685343e1c-f3d1b99a743ffa4142d9d7f1978d9686.ssl.cf2.rackcdn.com/files/56574/width668/zjmrt92n-1408069991.jpg" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The picture painted of the incapacitating effect on modern women of their reproductive system is far too bleak.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/tipstimesadmin/11438061545" rel="nofollow">TipsTimesAdmin/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" rel="nofollow">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption></figure><br />
And while 80% of women <a href="https://www-clinicalkey-com-au.ezp.lib.unimelb.edu.au/#!/ContentPlayerCtrl/doPlayContent/1-s2.0-S0002838X11603560">do indeed</a> report experiencing what Gillings describes as PMS, what this actually means is that they’ve experienced potentially as little as one of a long and generic checklist of “symptoms”, such as abdominal bloating, tension, and poor sleep.<br />
What’s more, a <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1550857912001349">careful and comprehensive 2012 review</a> of studies on mood and the menstrual cycle:<br />
<blockquote>
failed to provide clear evidence in support of the existence of a specific premenstrual negative mood syndrome in the general population.</blockquote>
Of the 47 studies identified as of being of adequate quality, only 15% found the expected link between negative mood and the premenstrual phase.<br />
And when, in a different study, researchers <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0018506X12001912">looked directly</a> for associations between moods and the ovarian steroid hormones (estrogen and progesterone) assumed to drive them, they mostly failed to find any links.<br />
While there were a few significant correlations here and there, mood and hormones were mostly unrelated. In line with the review study, menstrual cycle phase was also largely unrelated to mood.<br />
What did predict mood well, by contrast, was perceived stress and physical health, leading the researchers to conclude:<br />
<blockquote>
Taken together, our findings suggest that natural fluctuations of ovarian hormones do not contribute significantly to variations in the daily moods of healthy women.</blockquote>
<h2>
Fertility fantasy</h2>
Another major derailment for Gillings' story comes from <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1090513898000269">closer examination</a> of the implicit assumption that it’s very easy for a man to impregnate a fertile woman.<br />
Indeed, the premise that a man can father vast crops of children by spreading his seed widely is treated as an axiom of evolutionary psychology, and serves as the foundation of claims about evolved sex differences in mating preferences.<br />
But there are many reasons why conception might fail to take place following one single sexual act, even if both parties are fertile. It can take several months for a typical modern couple to achieve an intended pregnancy.<br />
For women to have evolved relationship-curdling tendencies in such circumstances would hardly seem to be adaptive.<br />
Remarkably, Gillings suggests the idea that women are maladaptively driven to corrode relationships with their irritability and mood swings will help to “depathologise” PMS.<br />
That seems rather optimistic; attributing behaviour to internal, biological factors doesn’t neccessarily have <a href="https://theconversation.com/brains-genes-and-chemical-imbalances-how-explanations-of-mental-illness-affect-stigma-28324">destigmatising effects</a>. It seems at least as likely that Gillings’ evolutionary story will instead reinforce and legitimate negative stereotypes of women as irrationally emotional.<br />
And that should irritate everyone, no matter what day of the month it is.<br />
<img alt="The Conversation" height="1" src="https://counter.theconversation.edu.au/content/30511/count.gif" width="1" />
<br />
<em>Cordelia Fine receives funding from an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship.</em><br />
This article was originally published on <a href="http://theconversation.com/">The Conversation</a>.
Read the <a href="http://theconversation.com/an-unproductive-story-of-reproductive-success-and-pms-30511">original article</a>.
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3678496108964844912.post-51932076145619658042014-06-28T17:09:00.002-07:002014-06-28T17:11:37.933-07:00<div class="MsoNormal">
Is it simply natural that men are more obsessed than women with
all things automotive? Is it the case that even male monkeys would spend a lot
of time in the garage working on their cars if they could? Research shows that
in several species of monkeys, males seem to prefer things like throwing balls
and rolling Tonka trucks across the floor. Is all that time men spend out in the garage simply biological destiny?<a href="file:///C:/Users/mq20138041/Dropbox/Feminist%20Phallusies/Driving%20Skills/Monkeys%20and%20toys.docx#_edn1" name="_ednref1" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a><o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/mq20138041/Dropbox/Feminist%20Phallusies/Driving%20Skills/Monkeys%20and%20toys.docx#_ednref1" name="_edn1" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>Eliot,
Lise (2011), “The Truth about Boys and Girls,” <i>His Brain, Her Brain: How We’re Wired Differently</i>, Scientific
American Mind, p. 6. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bPS5-dLJMWU/U69Y6rVgUoI/AAAAAAAAAQM/_dwYdNZ0JSo/s1600/cartoon_monkey_with_wrench_54691.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bPS5-dLJMWU/U69Y6rVgUoI/AAAAAAAAAQM/_dwYdNZ0JSo/s1600/cartoon_monkey_with_wrench_54691.jpg" height="262" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />Charles S. Arenihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18441139327258817133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3678496108964844912.post-23104454621883907192013-05-28T20:11:00.000-07:002013-05-28T21:16:27.873-07:00Some Things Maybe You Didn't Know About Sex Differences? <div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font: 7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">Couples that share housework have a higher likelihood of divorce compared to more traditional couples where the wife does the bulk of the housework.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font: 7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">Female Komodo dragons die younger than male dragons because they spend so much effort building their nests, defending their eggs and providing food for their young. This causes the females to lose weight and die at a younger age. In short, housework kills them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3.<span style="font: 7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">In general, women prefer a larger number of options in a choice set than men. This, of course, explains why my wife has 157 pairs of shoes and I have 5.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">4.<span style="font: 7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">Women have higher IQ scores than men on average, reversing the gender gap that existed 50 years ago when men had higher scores.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">5.<span style="font: 7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">Men enjoy sweet foods more than women in general, but women enjoy eating chocolate more. Go figure.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">6.<span style="font: 7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">Men defecate more often than women. Why do the blokes want the toilet seat up?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">7.<span style="font: 7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">Women vomit more often than men. Why do the girls want the toilet seat down?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">8.<span style="font: 7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">There is no reliable gender difference in multi-tasking. One of the biggest gender myths out there is that women are better.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">9.<span style="font: 7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">Women have lower stimulus thresholds and lower tolerance levels for pain. The popular myth has it the other way around.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">10.<span style="font: 7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">Cursing out loud helps men deal with sudden pain, but it does nothing for women, who merely feel shame about using foul language. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">11.<span style="font: 7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">Women dream about clothing and apparel more than men (see point 3 about shoe options).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">12.<span style="font: 7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">Women suffer from headaches more frequently. (Not just an excuse for not having sex?)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">13.<span style="font: 7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">Women can make finer distinctions among smells and tastes. (Let her do the cooking?)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">14.<span style="font: 7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">Women can make finer distinctions among colours. (Let her do the interior designing?)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Charles S. Arenihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18441139327258817133noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3678496108964844912.post-1680012451302436862012-08-30T05:31:00.000-07:002012-08-30T05:45:28.919-07:00She Really Does Have a Headache!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-21ebRZXsYXs/UD9dAqGcx6I/AAAAAAAAAK4/gNOeHfnjbzQ/s1600/Woman-With-Pain.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="200" width="300" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-21ebRZXsYXs/UD9dAqGcx6I/AAAAAAAAAK4/gNOeHfnjbzQ/s400/Woman-With-Pain.jpg" /></a></div><br />
That men have a stronger sex drive than women has no doubt led to marital conflicts from time to time. The stereotypical excuse for a wife not wanting to have sex with her husband is that she has a headache. As it turns out, women do have headaches more frequently than men. However, it also turns out that one of the best non-pharmaceutical cures for a headache can be sex – go figure!Charles S. Arenihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18441139327258817133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3678496108964844912.post-68718655645517722062012-05-16T04:18:00.001-07:002012-05-16T04:22:58.765-07:00New Ad Trend: Beating the Shit Out of Men<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN;">Not
only is it fun to denigrate men in ads, it’s even more fun to beat the shit out of them.
One study recently published in the <em>Journal of Advertising</em> examined trends in Super Bowl ads and ads for the top five most
advertised brands in the U.S. In addition to the obvious trend of denigrating
males, they found that the hot, new trend in advertising humour was women
committing acts of violence against men. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN;">It turns out that there are two
distinct types of ads. In the “general” category, the man gets the shit beat
out of him for no apparent reason, as in the ad for Dodge Ram pickup truck
depicting a wedding scene. Instead of saying “I do” as part of the normal
wedding vows, the bride head butts the groom unconscious and tosses him in the
back of the truck. Guess they’re targeting female drivers – just a guess. </span><br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Jvj2BxtFfp0/T7OMrybb5WI/AAAAAAAAAIg/281ffr8FcAU/s1600/woman-slapping-man1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="224" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Jvj2BxtFfp0/T7OMrybb5WI/AAAAAAAAAIg/281ffr8FcAU/s320/woman-slapping-man1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN;">In
the second category, the ad shows the man as deserving the beating based on his
actions. My favourite is an ad for the Burger King Steakhouse Burger, where a
female teacher asks a male colleague what he has done to deserve the burger he
is feasting on. When he replies “I was “just hungry”, she slaps his face,
calling him a “self-important, narcissistic bas...” just before the fade out to
the voice over. </span>Charles S. Arenihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18441139327258817133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3678496108964844912.post-58214211603127906302011-09-27T22:13:00.000-07:002011-10-15T16:40:36.262-07:00A Dangerous Strategy<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-D48f-2k0v50/ToKxppfTUzI/AAAAAAAAAH8/l7kfJtdFDs4/s1600/stock-vector-isolated-construction-workers-silhouettes-with-different-tools-38606485.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 383px; height: 400px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-D48f-2k0v50/ToKxppfTUzI/AAAAAAAAAH8/l7kfJtdFDs4/s400/stock-vector-isolated-construction-workers-silhouettes-with-different-tools-38606485.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5657279411000660786" /></a><br />A month or so ago, I referred to men as the “expendable” sex, describing them as essentially reckless, fragile, and potentially dangerous. We are. And we’ve created a lot of problems. Wouldn’t the world be a better place without all these lethal, testosterone-filled humans ruining everything? Yes, I can almost feel female readers giving this possibility some serious consideration. But seriously, why would nature give rise to such a destructive organism in the first place?<br /><br />Dissident feminist Camille Paglia once quipped “If civilization had been left in female hands we would still be living in grass huts.” This probably seems a bit harsh if you’re a member of the fairer sex, but as with many hyperboles, there’s an underlying element of truth. For good and for ill, men have invented much of the technology that provides the “creature comforts” we now take for granted.<br /> <br />What about women? Yes, women have invented many things, including the modern window frame, Kevlar, windscreen wipers, the automatic drip coffee maker, the first successful anti-herpes drug, and anti-dandruff shampoo, among other things. And women would no doubt have invented many more things if given equal opportunity to do so over the years. But it is a simple empirical fact that most of the technological innovations that changed the course of humanity were invented by men. As I teach my students, necessity isn’t the mother of invention so much as curiosity is the father of invention.<br /><br />There are downsides to all these male inventions to be sure. Global warming, nuclear warfare, pollution, industrial disasters, plane crashes, automobile accidents, acid rain, and a punctured ozone layer spring to mind immediately. But let’s be honest, how long do you think you would last in the world circa, say, 1761, before all this technology so obviously ruined the planet? My guess is that many of us would find human existence 250 years ago to be a brutal struggle for survival rather than a chance to live in a pristine, peaceful, utopia uncontaminated by the evil inventions of mankind. On balance, I’ll take the creature comforts and figure out what to do about global warming later.<br /><br />Indeed, everything about the male character suggests an orientation to explore and modify the environment for the better, albeit from a very short-term perspective. Men, more than women, believe they can master or control their destiny. They are more likely to pursue careers in science, math, technology, and other professions related to mastery over nature. Men will persist in trying to master a difficult task longer than women, and no I’m not just talking about computer games.<br /><br />Many feminists have argued that none of this is natural; that these kinds of gender differences reflect socialized gender roles rather than any inherently male characteristic. But many of these same underlying patterns can be observed in infants and non-human species. Separate an infant girl from her mother with a glass barrier and she will sit and cry, but a baby boy will crawl to both edges of the barrier and bang on the glass to see if there is a way through. She accepts her unfavourable environment; he struggles against his to try to improve it. <br /><br />Some species enjoy the advantage of the genetic shuffle provided by sexual reproduction (males and females), while also having access to asexual reproduction at other times. This ability to switch back and forth, called heterogamy, offers a glimpse of some of the benefits males bring to the table. When the environment is stable, asexual reproduction tends to dominate as it allows for very efficient reproduction. Each new organism is an exact replica of its parent, a preety good strategy if that parent has experienced a hospitable environment. However, when the environment changes and becomes potentially lethal, via predation, a lack of food, or a sudden climate change, sexual reproduction abounds, and a need for males arises. <br /><br />The hydra reproduces asexually when conditions are good. When conditions are bad due to lack of food or an unusually cold winter, then some hydra begin to reproduce sexually. One hydra will develop egg-cells which can be combined with the sperm-cells of another hydra. The hydra interestingly is a hermaphrodite. That means it can be produce male gametes or female gametes or even both. But the male gametes are produced fundamentally when the organism needs to change in response to a hostile environment.<br /><br />In other species, the emergence of males in tough times is even clearer. Consider aphids, the nasty little green bugs that generally ruin gardens all over the world. During the summer, when the temperature is hospitable, and the food supply abundant, asexual reproduction by females, called parthenogenesis, dominates resulting in a population of all female bugs. However, when autumn rolls around, and the temperature drops and the food supply becomes sparse, our little insect heroes switch to good old fashioned sex. Males start popping up all over the place and mate like mad. The resulting fertilized eggs are better able to survive the harsh winter, until the weather warms, the food supply replenishes, and the aphids begin reproducing asexually once again. <br /><br />Males are needed when times are tough because sexual reproduction changes the organism to increase survival chances in tough times. Sexual reproduction creates better “survival machines” for potentially lethal environments. Does the human version of maleness, with its frontal lobes, opposing digits, and ability to traverse large distances, react to adversity by changing the environment as well as the organism; and does the emergence of global warming, nuclear warfare, pollution, industrial disasters, etc., suggest that men have gone too far? <br /><br />In a 2005 interview, Maureen Dowd, New York Times columnist and best-selling author of Are Men Necessary?, read a letter from a man asking that, if indeed men are no longer necessary would the fairer sex be willing to give back and do without all the innovations created by men? She then read his list of male accomplishments, which included physics, the Renaissance, the theory of relativity, the personal computer, the Rolling Stones’ “Brown Sugar”, and Beethoven. <br /><br />Perhaps Ms. Dowd’s answer to the letter should have been “No, you men may not take your innovations with you. Your very purpose was to create a more livable human environment. Now that you’ve done that, you are free to die out. And by the way, some of your more recent inventions (A-bombs, H-bombs, ICBMs, etc.) no longer strike us women as creating a more livable environment, so we’re going to invent feminism to limit your access to these dangerous toys.”<br /><br />Can women survive without men? If the world is stable, the answer is almost certainly “yes”. If females continued to create a more stable, livable environment after males have long since passed, then gene shuffling would become irrelevant, even detrimental. Instead, the perfect female would simply be “cloned” over and over via parthenogenesis – a world of identical Eves. But if the world gets nasty, women will once again turn to men. Not in the figurative sense of turning to men for protection or help. Women will literally turn (in)to men.Charles S. Arenihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18441139327258817133noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3678496108964844912.post-22041785900577223392011-07-24T21:37:00.000-07:002012-09-26T18:01:30.921-07:00Advantages of Life Inside the CaveMen do not, as the ridiculous stereotype suggests, go “into their caves” when they are experiencing negative emotions. Men single-mindedly work their shit out. We don’t need to talk to anybody. We just need to determine for ourselves what went wrong and how to stop this from happening again. When we’ve done this, we’ll return to our normal, happy selves and get on with our busy days. Simple – and very effective.<br />
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Mind you, this is not the same as avoiding or repressing negative emotions. That would be a psychological catastrophe. But not communicating about emotions and not dealing with them are two different things. Men deal with negative emotions by internalizing them. They become part of our life experiences, and therefore, contain important lessons about how to avoid screwing things up in the future. <br />
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Contrary to the prevailing political landscape of the day, it is women who do not handle their negative emotions particularly well. Don’t believe me? Let’s check out the medical evidence. Women experience more fear, more sadness, more worry, more stress, more guilt, more shame, and more disgust than men. About the only negative emotions where men prevail are boredom and anger (though even this depends on the target of the anger). <br />
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And when it comes to chronic negative emotions, the numbers aren’t even close. Women are more likely to diagnose themselves as being depressed from adolescence all the way into old age. Clinical diagnoses of unipolar depression are far more prevalent for women compared to men, and women are more likely to think about and attempt suicide, though men are more likely to actually get the job done. <br />
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Now I’m perfectly willing to accept the argument that many of these “diagnoses” reflect a biased, patriarchical psychiatric profession just looking for a reason to classify women as fragile, emotional weaklings. We covered that earlier in Why Men Stigmatize Menstruation (February) and That’s Hysterical! (February), and I’ll be the first to suggest that it applies here as well. But much of the research involves self-diagnosis. No psychiatric patriarchy to blame for these results. This is women describing their own state of affairs.<br />
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When we look at research addressing how men and women react to negative emotions we get an even clearer picture of which gender struggles the most. Research indicates that women ruminate over negative emotional experiences longer than men. Rumination reflects the inability to stop thinking about something troubling, and is viewed as a precursor to clinical depression. This suggests why women need to communicate their negative emotions – they can’t stop thinking about them! By contrast, men do not ruminate. They get over it. That cave is starting to look pretty good after all.<br />
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We’ve heard an awful lot about how important it is to communicate negative emotions to others, and of course, about how much better women are at doing this. But why communicate? What’s the point? Women talk about their negative emotions with those close to them (more often than not with other women) because they want sympathy. Now let’s closely consider what sympathy is. <br />
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When you sympathize with somebody who’s feeling bad you are essentially communicating that “I know just how you feel!” That’s the catch phrase for sympathy isn’t it? But if that other person is feeling bad to start with, then knowing just how they feel entails feeling kind of bad about the same thing, though perhaps not to the same degree. And the net effect of all this sympathising is that the person who initially felt bad feels a little better, as if some of the negative emotion has been passed along to the sympathizer.<br />
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Women don’t deal with their negative emotions so much as pass them off to the people they feel close to. How does this constitute a more sophisticated and noble approach to handling negative emotions? I’ll take the man cave every time. And when it comes to romantic relationships, things get even worse. Women detest when their men give them the “silent treatment”. How many men have heard something like “Can’t we just talk about it?” <br />
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But men don’t want to talk about it; they want to determine, by themselves, what went wrong and how to fix it. And contrary to what to women might think, once men have worked out a decent solution, we’ll be more than happy to chat all day long about it, even welcoming your input to improve the remedy further. We just don’t want to talk while we’re feeling bad. There’s no point because we haven’t worked out what to do about it.<br />
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Moreover, some women (and let me emphasize the word some), view their romantic partners in terms of the very simple principles: (a) I’m unhappy, (b) it is his fault, and (c) he has to change so I can be happy again. Let’s get this straight. The person in the relationship who is unhappy is the one with the problem. They are the one who needs to change, presuming of course, that they want to be happy, an assumption many married men have no doubt questioned from time to time.<br />
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Requiring your partner to change because you’re unhappy is the ultimate example of denying responsibility for your negative emotions. It’s passing the responsibility for how you feel to your partner! So, once again, give me the cave every time, provided of course, that a nice, pleasant conversation will eventually ensue about how to prevent all the unhappiness in the future. <br />
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Just to reiterate the point about not all women being the same, when my partner is upset about something, including something I said or did, she often goes days without speaking to me. Though not a word is spoken, I understand her completely. Women, you can use our cave any time you like.Charles S. Arenihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18441139327258817133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3678496108964844912.post-51681648748705708862011-07-11T19:11:00.000-07:002011-07-24T21:37:07.314-07:00Men: The "Expendable" Sex<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3wn1RJjsqkk/Thu0necWo9I/AAAAAAAAAHs/iGa0Hv_qkyA/s1600/Disposable_blog.gif"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5628290749609452498" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 311px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 218px" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3wn1RJjsqkk/Thu0necWo9I/AAAAAAAAAHs/iGa0Hv_qkyA/s400/Disposable_blog.gif" border="0" /></a><br />One gender difference that has not received much attention, perhaps due to the political landscape of the last half century, is that it is harder to be a man than it is to be a woman, at least in terms of existence and survival, the very basics of the game of life. Male foetuses are more likely to spontaneously abort, die at birth, die in childhood, die as young adults, die at – well males are more likely to die than females at virtually any age – at least in rich, Western democracies.<br /><br /><div>Sadly, more insidious cultural, political, and social factors influence the gender ratio in other parts of the world, often to the detriment of women. But in the absence of any deliberate attempt to alter nature, males have a higher mortality than females at all ages. Then how does nature ensure that there are enough males? Well, in actual fact, males are more likely to be conceived than females, and more males are born than females. So, nature corrects for the vulnerability of men by making more of them.<br /><br /><div>Men are far more likely to suffer from 290 X-linked recessive maladies, because they only have one chance of receiving the dominant (non-disease causing) gene. The Y chromosome doesn’t give them the second chance that women have. Some of the potentially fatal conditions are Duchenne’s muscular dystrophy, agammaglobulinemia, adrenoleukodystrophy, and severe combined immunodeficiency, but there are many, many others in the list of 290 that are exceedingly unpleasant if not lethal. And if genetically-based diseases don’t kill a male, microbe-based diseases are more likely to be lethal. The female immune system fights more pathogens more effectively than the male immune system. This is true in humans and in rats.<br /><br /><div>Indeed, being male is a deadly gamble in a variety of species. In the animal kingdom females generally outlive males. This is true of arachnids (where she often eats him for supper!), many species of birds, crustaceans, various invertebrates, seals, sheep, and cattle. Only in certain species of fish and bird does research provide an example of males outliving females; but the rule is that she will outlive him.<br /><br /><div>Over the course of the 20th century, as overall life expectancy has dramatically increased in rich Western democracies, the gender gap in longevity has also increased. Women have benefited more than men, because the gains in longevity have largely been due to the eradication of diseases (i.e., internal factors) and birthing of children. This suggests that it is the external factors which remain and have a strong influence on the gender difference in terms of health and mortality.<br /><br /><div>Women outlive men in rich countries because men do things that have lethal consequences. Men disproportionately die from accidents (automobile, military, occupational, etc.) and destructive behaviours (smoking, alcohol, drugs, etc.). The very act of survival seems to be more of a challenge for men. Indeed, men take more risks than women in general, something we’ll discuss in greater detail when we examine which sex is indeed lousier at driving. Men also perceive less danger and risk in a given circumstance, suggesting that not only are men willing to take greater risks than women, but they are also less aware of the risks they do take. Even the use of drugs reflects the male tendency to take risks. She takes legal drugs prescribed by doctors; he takes illegal drugs prescribed by pushers.<br /><br /><div>From an evolutionary perspective, it’s reasonably easy to see why nature would create such fragile, risk-prone men. Let’s start with a population of 1000 males and 1000 females in some hypothetical culture. If 999 males died for some reason, 1000 new babies could be added to the population in the next year, greatly increasing the species’ survival prospects (and what a lucky boy he would be!) But if 999 women died for some reason, only 1 new person could be added to the population in the next year (and how many men would die or be seriously maimed fighting for the opportunity to be the father!) One little accident or deadly microbe and the whole species would be wiped out, regardless of how many men were left. Nature seems to have made men the “expendable sex”, providing them with an mortality-prone biology and a deadly behavioural repertoire. So what’s the benefit of having all these fragile but dangerous men around? You’ll have to check back next month for the answer! How’s that for a cheap teaser?</div></div></div></div></div></div>Charles S. Arenihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18441139327258817133noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3678496108964844912.post-8086501614445760872011-05-15T16:45:00.000-07:002013-11-07T18:56:36.164-08:00PMS Is a Double-Edged Sword<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-okOLC3pvjYM/TdBrDbt-SvI/AAAAAAAAAGo/AP8-gPETa9Q/s1600/PMS%2Bacronyms.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5607099242800630514" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-okOLC3pvjYM/TdBrDbt-SvI/AAAAAAAAAGo/AP8-gPETa9Q/s400/PMS%2Bacronyms.jpg" style="cursor: hand; display: block; height: 234px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 296px;" /></a>Is PMS a real, relatively severe, physiologically-driven condition, a psychosomatic malady socially constructed by the medical profession, or simply the figment of stressed out women's imaginations? Perhaps men should not be blamed for wanting a definite answer to the question of whether PMS exists, when, exactly, it occurs, and what, exactly, the symptoms are. There may indeed be a fine line between completely denying the existence of PMS and demanding its existence to explain the experiences and behaviours of women, but there is plenty of space for any given woman to manoeuvre. If she commits an indefensible act at work, she can put the blame on PMS as a medical condition. No challenging a medical condition. But if PMS is later cited by management as a possible contributory factor in her low level of productivity during certain weeks, she can sue for sexual discrimination. This doesn’t seem fair.<br />
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But even if men have their way, there’s no simple way out of the conundrum that either “solution” is likely to cut in both directions. If PMS is a figment of unhappy women’s imagination, than men can ignore the complaints and proceed as usual, but this also means that an angry wife has a legitimate gripe that can’t be explained away as “that time of the month”. Yet if PMS really does create dramatic mood swings in women, then men can continue to dismiss “unreasonable” female behaviour on this basis, but the price is that it becomes accepted as a “real” phenomenon capable of seriously altering women’s moods, even to the point of “causing” them to kill men.</div>
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That’s right. PMS has successfully been used as a defence in murder trials.<br />
In the first, Sandie Smith stabbed a fellow employee to death in the tavern where they both worked. During the trial, Katharina Dalton was brought in as an expert witness for the defence after Ms. Smith’s dad noted that she got particularly, though not always homicidally, bitchy just prior to menstruation. Dr. Dalton’s solution? Heavy doses of progesterone, of course. And Ms. Smith’s behaviour improved, so much so that the judge sentenced her to 3 years probation. Now we have already established that placebos in drug trials often attenuate the symptoms of PMS. And in this case, Ms. Smith had an obvious incentive to “get well”. It strengthened her PMS defence and allowed her to avoid life imprisonment. Is it possible, just possible, that she fakes it?</div>
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Roughly one year later, Ms. Smith was back in court charged with threatening to murder a police officer. Her defence? Dance with the boy who brought you, as they say. PMS had returned, her lawyer argued, because Dr. Dalton had cut back the dosage of progesterone. Katharina Dalton was once again called in to testify that indeed she did cut back Ms. Smith’s dosage. Once the dosage was increased, Ms. Smith’s violent behaviour subsided again. Miracle drug that progesterone! Ms. Smith once again received 3 years probation. Ouch!</div>
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But it gets better, or worse depending on your perspective. (Yes, I know I used that one already). Christine English murdered her lover Barry Kitson by slamming her car into him and crushing him against a utility pole. Once again Dr. Dalton’s testimony was critical in getting the defendant off the hook completely. Well, not completely. Ms. English was not required to undergo medical treatment or even put on probation, but she did have her driver’s licence suspended for one year. Apparently, the court took precaution in case she was planning to murder another boyfriend, by requiring her to find a new murder weapon.</div>
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The media coverage of the trial largely missed the fact that menstruation had been used as a defence for violent and non-violent crime for decades. In 1845, a domestic servant named Martha Brixey was acquitted of murdering one of her employer’s children on the grounds of “insanity probably arising from obstructed menstruation”. In that same year, Ann Shepherd was acquitted of stealing a fur boa due to suppressed menstruation, a condition ironically described by the presiding magistrate as making her “<em><strong>period</strong></em>ically erratic”.</div>
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What is interesting is that no attorney yet has successfully argued for a male client’s innocence on the basis of unusually high levels of testosterone, yet the link between the dominant male hormone and violent crime is far more direct and scientifically established than any connection between menstrual cycles and violent crime among women. And which forensic phenomenon is more worthy of scientific and legal attention? Men commit the vast majority of violent crimes; 85 – 90% of all murders, 85 – 90% of all aggravated assaults, 90 – 95% of all assaults with a deadly weapon. Why are we focusing on her hormones? And yet, just try to imagine a man who has just killed his girlfriend after a quarrel about her (suspected) infidelity, pleading his innocence in court because his behaviour was due to unusually high levels of testosterone – and having the judge suspend his driver’s licence for one year!</div>
Charles S. Arenihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18441139327258817133noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3678496108964844912.post-29948341343600735122011-04-15T13:36:00.000-07:002011-04-15T23:03:44.742-07:00On the Persistence of Gender Stereotypes in Society<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zFaEcz9qj60/TakxM7hhljI/AAAAAAAAAGY/mw1_Qk-w630/s1600/colic-baby-and-dad-150x150.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 150px; FLOAT: right; HEIGHT: 150px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5596058110191048242" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zFaEcz9qj60/TakxM7hhljI/AAAAAAAAAGY/mw1_Qk-w630/s400/colic-baby-and-dad-150x150.jpg" /></a> <br /><div><br /><div>Gender stereotypes are essentially implicit theories about how the world works, and it takes time and effort to develop these theories. One must observe the many characteristics of hundreds of men and women to formulate stereotypes. They represent cognitive “investments” to guide future behaviour, and like with any other kinds of investment, we are often reluctant to admit we’ve made a mistake. Business schools often warn about the irrationality of a “sunk cost” mentality (i.e., “I’ve invested so much, I can’t walk away now”). Often times, walking away is the best thing to do, but it doesn’t necessarily feel that way. How does this relate to inaccurate gender stereotypes? Once the cognitive investment in a stereotype is made, we tend to ignore information that would prove it wrong, and retain information that confirms it. Psychologists call this the confirmation bias. It’s our little way of following a sunk cost mentality with our theories of the world. </div><br /><div>So, with respect to the woman as nurturing mother stereotype, the confirmation bias suggests that people will take note of nurturing mothers, and hopelessly incompetent fathers as confirming the stereotype, but discount or completely ignore incompetent mothers and nurturing fathers. It is fascinating to see these kinds of biases in operation in everyday life. My son had been invited to the birthday party of a school mate. You know how these things usually work. The parents drop off the kids and then have the option of staying for wine, nibblies, and other grown up activities while, in another room, the kids eat chocolate cake and other sweets that will keep them up until 3 am the next morning. As a general empirical observation, more mums drop off kids than dads, and mums are far more likely to stay for wine and nibblies than dads. All of this makes sense given the prominence of the “nurturer” concept in the female stereotype. I decided to stay. I was the only dad. </div><br /><div>As per standard protocol the wine did, indeed, flow, and the mums got progressively less reticent in conversation. While I talked about wine tourism at one end of the table I couldn’t help tuning in to the conversation at the other end, where 3 or 4 mums were discussing how inadequate their husbands were in the parenting department. Men can’t do this. Men can’t do that. I was gradually withdrawing from my conversation at the other end of the table to listen to what increasingly sounded like unbridled ranting. Finally, one of the mums said that men are simply not equipped to spend more than 2 or 3 hours at a time with young children. At this point the entire table went silent, as it was apparent that I was listening intently to the conversation at the other end of the table, and that I was not entirely in agreement with the general sentiment of the forum. </div><br /><div>I’ve raised my two children alone more than half the time since my daughter was 2. I consider that pretty young, and I can assure you that it requires spending more than 2 or 3 hours at a time with her and her brother. The mums were, of course, also aware of this fact, and so the one making the last unfounded generalisation brushed it off by saying “Oh you don’t count. You’re not like our men!” I didn’t say anything at the time, not wanting to ruin the festive occasion that had prevailed to that point. But I did mention this to a female colleague the following Monday. This colleague is highly intelligent, has a Ph.D., has published in a number of high-ranking journals, and would certainly consider herself a feminist. Her reply was that I had been “paid the highest compliment” by the birthday party mums. “They considered you one of them,” she smiled. In other words, in order to preserve the stereotype of women as nurturer, it was necessary to turn a nurturing father into a woman! But you know what? It did feel like a compliment! </div></div>Charles S. Arenihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18441139327258817133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3678496108964844912.post-45114352377726823752011-03-31T19:24:00.000-07:002011-04-15T13:34:33.889-07:00All Men Are Criminals...Until Proven Otherwise<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vpF_R_CssmA/TZU9YIZ3QrI/AAAAAAAAAFI/xaiM2DXqj2k/s1600/Men%2Bas%2Bcriminals.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 300px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 223px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5590441997232456370" border="0" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vpF_R_CssmA/TZU9YIZ3QrI/AAAAAAAAAFI/xaiM2DXqj2k/s400/Men%2Bas%2Bcriminals.jpg" /></a> <br /><div>One form of bias or illogical reasoning that perpetuates a lot of gender stereotypes is what might be called the irrelevant conditional, which explains why a lot of men are treated as criminals until proven otherwise. Conditionals are essentially if-then rules specifying a relationship between an antecedent and a consequent. So, with respect to the "man as criminal" stereotype, the conditional <em>if criminal, then male</em>, is a pretty accurate given that 90% of criminals are indeed men. The problem is a rather illogical tendency to reverse the antecedent and consequent and accept the same evidence as “proving” the alternate rule. No matter how gender biased the prison population is, this does not support the <em>if male, then criminal</em>, conditional. The two are independent of one another, yet there is a tendency to reason that the former implies the latter.</div><br /><div>This is exactly how society behaves when, for example, airlines automatically separate children travelling alone from men in an airplane. It’s true. Airline policies will generally not allow an unaccompanied minor to be seated next to a man. My brother was on a plane one time, seated in the aisle seat at the very back of the plane. A young boy of about 5 was to be seated at the window seat next to him. The plane was chockers due to a cancelled flight, and a man was assigned a seat between bro and boy. This man was immediately asked to move – without explanation – and a woman was re-seated there. Her husband was seated two seats further down the plane. The airline actually separated a married couple so that an unaccompanied boy did not have to sit next to a man. A flight attendant with an Australian airline has indeed admitted that there is a policy that a man cannot sit next to a young passenger flying alone. Now regardless of the assumptions and good intent on which this policy is, no doubt, based, it is patently absurd. An airline flight is the last place a pervert would be able to molest a child. In a plane?!?! 10,000 meters above the earth?!?! Toilets the size of matchboxes, and uniformed flight attendants endlessly circulating about the cabin?!?! So the policy is asinine on the face of it, but it does reflect the illogical reversal of the conditional if criminal, then male to if male, then criminal.</div><br /><div>All men have been exposed to this kind of illogical reasoning from time to time, though we're not always consciously aware of it. As a man who has walked quite a few streets alone at night, I’ve observed many pedestrians travelling in the opposite direction – mostly women – actually cross the street to the other side of the road to avoid any contact with me. Makes sense given the stereotype of the criminal male. Any single man walking near a playground where children are playing runs the risk of being questioned by a passing police car. Fathers who purchase underwear for their daughters may get questioned by store security staff. So what you say? Well, not only do men comprise 90% of all prison inmates, they make up 97% of all wrongful convictions, and the more violent the crime, the higher the percentage of wrongfully convicted men. How many men are still behind bars because of wrongful convictions? We’ll never know because we only have statistics for the cases where the wrongful conviction was discovered and overturned. How many undiscovered cases are there? </div>Charles S. Arenihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18441139327258817133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3678496108964844912.post-46740798276391600442011-03-15T22:11:00.000-07:002011-04-15T13:36:04.951-07:00Are Men "Naturally" Promiscuous?<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-aBXlnMdq6ps/TYBG1w1Q5DI/AAAAAAAAAFA/YmFzJAZ4hbE/s1600/Sex-1-Superstud.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 200px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5584541427394733106" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-aBXlnMdq6ps/TYBG1w1Q5DI/AAAAAAAAAFA/YmFzJAZ4hbE/s400/Sex-1-Superstud.jpg" /></a> <br /><div>Research suggests that – get this – men have a stronger sex drive than women. Good thing we have all those scientists doing research to prove stuff like this! Pretty much common sense you say? It turns out there’s more complexity than meets the eye. Men and women enjoy sex with steady romantic partners about equally. However, when asked about having sex with attractive acquaintances or strangers, most women aren’t all that interested. What about men? You guessed it. Men are just as enthusiastic about having sex with a stranger as they are with a romantic partner; and whereas women tend to report being “in love” with their first sexual partner and with sexual partners in general, men like sex with just about anybody they are attracted to. What’s love got to do with it? Nothing if you’re Tina Turner or the typical male.</div><br /><div>It’s hardly surprising then that men express more positive attitudes towards premarital sex, sex with multiple partners, casual sex, and sex of just about any kind, even masturbation. Even when women do have sex, they don’t like to admit it. Women tend to under-report the number of sexual partners they’ve had; men, you guessed it again, tend to over-report. In general then, women have much more stringent criteria for who they will and won’t have sex with. Underlying all this is perhaps the most basic sex difference of all; women can have babies; men can’t. How does this lead to many of the attitudes described above? Because the “cost” of a pregnancy is much higher for a woman. </div><br /><div>In addition to having to endure childbirth, women are simply limited in the number of offspring they can produce in their lifetime. The maximum number of babies born to a woman is 69, with 67 surviving infancy. The mother was a Mrs. Vassilyev. This number would seem to be pretty close to the maximum potential. If each birth was a single birth, that’s the equivalent of 52 straight years of being pregnant. In fairness, all of Mrs Vassilyev’s children were born in a series multiple births over a 40 year period (1725-1765). So let’s set the maximum potential for females at 70 children just so we have a nice, round number. </div><br /><div>What’s the maximum potential for males? According to multiple sources, the top male in our derby, one Moulay Ishmael the Bloody, the last Sharifan Emperor of Morocco, produced 888 babies, from a harem of over 1000 women. But even this number seems well below a man’s maximum potential. Since a male orgasm only takes a couple of minutes, it represents a minimal amount of work relative to the woman’s nine months gestation. Okay, we have to allow the man some recovery time, but even with recovery time taken into account, a man could produce far more than 888 babies in a lifetime. </div><br /><div>Does this basic biological difference make men more promiscuous? Does the potential to produce many offspring still linger in the male psyche as a tendency toward promiscuity? The idea has certainly been around a long time. One academic volume reports the following anecdote. “One day the President and Mrs. Coolidge were visiting a government farm. Soon after their arrival they were taken on separate tours. When Mrs. Coolidge passed the chicken pens, she paused to ask the man in charge if the rooster copulates more than once each day. ‘Dozens of times’ was the reply. ‘Please tell that to the President,’ Mrs. Coolidge requested. When the President passed the pens and was told about the rooster, he asked ‘Same hen every time?’ ‘Oh no, Mr. President, a different one each time.’ The president nodded slowly, then said, ‘Tell that to Mrs. Coolidge’. </div><br /><div>Biological research backs this little parable up. Take married men and show them pictures of their wives in various outfits and ask them to imagine having sex. Then take a sperm count. Now give those same men a copy of the Victoria’s Secret catalogue and ask them to imagine having sex with each of the women. You got it…the sperm count is much higher in the latter situation. So nature seems to prepare men for opportunities to impregnate any willing female strangers that happen to wander by. According to this argument, men are more promiscuous than women because it’s in their evolutionary interests. Promiscuous men leave more offspring.</div><br /><div>However, there are counterarguments to this explanation – and pretty good ones too. First, while men have the potential to father many offspring, most father very few. Put another way, there are far more Homer Simpsons in the world than Moulay Ishmaels, and without the institution of marriage, the Homer Simpsons simply do not reproduce. In this sense, religious institutions have, among other things, evened out the distribution of reproductive success among men. In support of this interpretation, among married adults, the reproduction percentages by gender are almost even; 85% of married women and 84% of married men are biological parents. However, among unmarried adults, 61% of women, but only 36% of men are the biological parents of at least one child. So getting married is a smart thing to do if you want to ensure becoming a biological father. If this is the case, why would men be so promiscuous? Wouldn’t a happily married man with no impulse to stray have a better chance of being a dad?</div><br /><div>Another problem is that the link between sex and reproduction is tenuous at best. Birth control and general knowledge allow humans to enjoy sex without pregnancy. The real question is how long it takes for religion and science to offset the effects of millennia of evolution. Churches, and their monogamous ways, have been around for less than two thousand years, and birth control has been widely available for less than a hundred – mere blips on the evolutionary clock. So perhaps the stronger male sex drive, and the corresponding tendency toward promiscuity, is a remnant of men’s evolutionary past when the competition to be the alpha male still mattered. Today it simply costs multi-millionaire athletes a lot of money in divorce settlements. </div>Charles S. Arenihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18441139327258817133noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3678496108964844912.post-48308060219711858932011-03-02T18:30:00.000-08:002011-03-02T19:00:48.335-08:00Why Women Multi-Task Better than Men<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WqHyL41qkkc/TW8D1XBiZzI/AAAAAAAAAE4/Pnx-vrFc2yM/s1600/multitasking.gif"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5579682678583748402" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 374px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 340px" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WqHyL41qkkc/TW8D1XBiZzI/AAAAAAAAAE4/Pnx-vrFc2yM/s400/multitasking.gif" border="0" /></a><br /><div>There's been an awful lot written about why women can multi-task better than men. Two falsehoods, or at least half-truths, run through this discussion. The first is the notion that women can do something "better" than men. This is a value judgement. The debate is rarely framed as men being able to focus on the task at hand better than women. Say that mothers make better parents than fathers because they can multi-task and you're fine, but say that men have won more Nobel prizes than women because they are single-minded and you're up S**t's Creek without a paddle.</div><br /><div></div><br /><div>The second half-truth is that this gender difference as more to do with "nature" than "nurture". For example, articles are quick to point out that women have a larger corpus callosum connecting the two hemispheres of the brain, thus creating a "natural" advantage for spreading multiple tasks over different regions of the brain. Is this really "nature"? Could it be the case that performing specific behaviours repetitively over time would result in differential development of related parts of the brain? Are we simply reversing cause and effect here? </div><br /><div></div><br /><div>Here's a "nurture" argument for why women can multi-task and why men are so single-minded. Young children do not understand the notion of waiting. Phrases like “just a sec”, “wait a minute”, “We’ll be there soon” have no meaning whatsoever to a 4 year old. Which means, when one of kids wants something, if I am hopelessly entangled in another task, I have to – you guessed it – fulfil their need at the same time I am doing something else. In contrast, a colleague at work perfectly understands these phrases, and even more formally, the idea that she should (a) make an appointment, (b) ask permission to interrupt, or (c) apologise for barging in before disrupting my ongoing train of thought. If I suggest that I am very busy – on a single task – she will likely understand and come back later or email me about setting a specific meeting time. I don’t have to multi-task. </div><br /><div><br />Now women have generally spent more time caring for young children than men, and men have generally spent more time in the office than women. I’m not saying this is right or wrong, just or unfair, sexist or efficient. It just is, and has been. Could this be the influence of nurture, or more precisely gender roles, in the female superiority in multi-tasking? Is this why men are so single-minded? Since becoming a single father I must say I’ve become quite the little multi-tasker, often managing to do the laundry, prepare dinner, help with homework, write parts of books and articles, and supervise children more or less at the same time. I’m not as good as the best mothers I know, but then again, I’ve got much less experience than they do. </div>Charles S. Arenihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18441139327258817133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3678496108964844912.post-63050142222734822282011-02-20T14:44:00.000-08:002011-03-02T19:02:18.489-08:00Gender Myths Can Be a Real Pain Sometimes<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HidOBknbXHA/TWGeeX6jAqI/AAAAAAAAAEw/5E9jgXgeObM/s1600/Blog%2BImage.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5575912058314228386" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 294px" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HidOBknbXHA/TWGeeX6jAqI/AAAAAAAAAEw/5E9jgXgeObM/s400/Blog%2BImage.JPG" border="0" /></a><br /><div><em>There’s an old joke that goes something like this. A man is in the delivery room watching his wife give birth in excruciating pain. In distress, he asks the obstetrician, “Doc, isn’t there anything you can do to alleviate my wife’s pain?” “There sure is” the doctor replies. “We’ve got a device that automatically transfers the mother’s pain to the father. Would you like to give it a go?” The husband nods his head, and the doctor says “we’ll start by transferring 25% of your wife’s pain.” He turns the knob and flicks the switch and the wife immediately stops crying out in pain. The husband hardly feels a thing. “That’s surprising” the doctor says. “Let’s try transferring 50% of the pain.” Once again, the wife immediately feels better, and actually begins to relax. The husband says “This isn’t bad at all, Doc, give me all of my wife’s pain.” The doctor, in almost complete disbelief, turns the knob all the way to 100% and flicks the switch. The husband doesn’t even flinch. “That’s amazing!” the doctor exclaims. “Most men can’t get beyond 50%.” The next day the husband and wife return home with their new baby only to find the milkman dead on their doorstep.<br /><br /></em>Just how pervasive is the belief that women have a higher tolerance for pain than men? In the popular Discovery Channel program Myth Busters (<a href="http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/mythbusters/">http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/mythbusters/</a>), hosts Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage attempt to scientifically test various myths and truisms found in popular culture. It’s a good show. I have my kids watch it with me and generally we learn something about science. In short, if your kids have to watch TV, Myth Busters is a pretty good program for them to watch.<br /></div><br /><div>In one episode, Adam and Jamie tested whether women have higher pain thresholds and tolerance levels than men. The methodology was simple, and in many ways comparable to laboratory studies published in medical journals. The participant submerges their right hand into freezing water to just below the elbow. First, they indicate when it becomes painful, which is timed (i.e. the pain threshold); then they tolerate the pain for as long as possible up to a limit of 3 minutes. The submersion of the forearm in freezing water is known as the cold pressor test in the medical literature.<br /></div><br /><div>The results indicated that women lasted 16.1 seconds longer (100.4 to 84.3), on average than men, leading Adam to enthusiastically conclude the myth has been “confirmed”, to use the familiar parlance of the Myth Busters host. In other words, it’s true – women do have higher pain thresholds and higher tolerance levels than men. Of course, Adam’s enthusiasm fades quickly as he feigns a sudden recognition that, as a man, he is therefore a member of the weaker sex, at least in this context.<br /></div><br /><div>There was no test for the statistical reliability of the results, but even if we assumed that this difference is statistically significant, there are some fairly obvious reasons why this result might differ from the plethora of published research showing that men have higher pain thresholds and higher levels of pain tolerance, even studies specifically examining submersion of the hand in freezing water.<br /></div><br /><div>First, limiting participants to 3 minutes is a problem. We tend to think in terms of averages. It is relatively easy to comprehend that men are, on average, better or worse at something than are women. But to understand the whole story, we need to look at the entire distribution of results, or in this case the entire range of possible submersion times. If there are more men than women at the extreme end of the distribution who could have withstood the pain for far more than 3 minutes, than arbitrarily limiting the maximum duration skews the results.<br /></div><br /><div>The more obvious problem with the method is, of course, the presence of the television camera. Participants knew they were going to be on a TV program, and perhaps even that the myth being tested was whether or not women withstand pain better than men do. Conforming to perceived interests of the hosts seems a distinct possibility. So this result is questionable on scientific grounds, even though it makes for good television.<br /></div><br /><div>It turns out that medical research simply does not support the notion that women can handle pain better than men. Whether it examines pain thresholds, pain tolerance levels, or subjective ratings of painfulness, men seem to handle pain better than women. In fact, this finding is so well established in the literature, that most articles simply assert this as a fact and then report on mediating variables (i.e., the processes which allow men to endure more pain), or moderating variables (i.e., the conditions under which men can endure more pain).</div><br /><div><br />In contrast to the “confirmed” conclusion on Myth Busters, more reliable research published in top medical journals indicates that men can tolerate submerging various body parts in freezing water longer than women; and it turns out that submersion in freezing water is not the only type of pain that men seem to endure better than women. Other cold stimuli produce similar results. For example, attaching an extremely cold “thermode” to various parts of the body yields the same conclusion – men can tolerate colder temperatures than women.</div><br /><div></div><br /><div>What about when temperatures move to the other extreme? Same result. Women are more sensitive to heat pain on their skin. Research involving electrical shocks to the fingers and other regions of the body also shows that men have a higher level of pain tolerance. Indeed, women seem to have more sensitive fingers than men in general. In another study, pricks to the tips of fingers with pin-like objects produced higher ratings of pain in women compared to men. And finally, men can tolerate greater amounts of pressure applied to their fingers and toes.<br /></div><br /><div>Studies also show that women report more post-operative dental pain than men, and choose stronger pain relievers. Women rate cholecystectomies, a procedure for removing cysts from the gall bladder, as more painful, and they require greater doses of pain killers compared to men. One week after cardiac surgery female patients report pain in more regions of their bodies than do male patients. Even the act of administering anaesthesia prior to surgery is more painful for women.<br /></div><br /><div>Women seem to get headaches a lot, especially when their male partners want to have sex (another unfortunate gender myth I'm afraid). Well, research indicates that women do get headaches more often than men – twice as often in one study. They also report higher levels of pain while experiencing headaches. The pressure pain threshold is higher for men at virtually any point on the body, with one exception, their arses. When it comes to the old gluteus, there’s no difference between the sexes. Women report being tired and stressed out more often than men. Pre-pubescent, grade school girls report abdominal pain more frequently than boys of the same age. </div><br /><div></div><br /><div>Some researchers have suggested that one key moderating variable is whether the painful stimulus is short-lived or must be endured over time. The reasoning is that women may have higher levels of endurance because that corresponds more with giving birth, a process that takes hours, even days. However, research doesn’t support such a contention. In one study, a blood pressure device (called a “sphygmomanometer” believe it or not), was used to create pressure around the forearm, then participants were asked to squeeze a grip strength device (called a “dynamometer”) for up to 20 minutes. The use of forearm muscles combined with the pressure around them becomes painful fairly quickly, yet men held out longer than women. Mind you, we’re talking about 20 minutes here. It’s not clear that men would hold out longer when the maximum duration was 20 hours, and many, many women endure deliveries exceeding 20 hours.<br /></div><br /><div>Perhaps my favourite study is one that focused an argon laser on the hands of men and women. How, exactly, does one get approval from a university ethics committee to shoot participants with laser beams? Cool! Today I get to go to work and shoot people with lasers! My 10-year old son would be impressed. Anyway, the results were not surprising. Women reported pain at lower levels of laser intensity, and their maximum tolerance levels were also lower than the corresponding levels for men.</div><br /><div></div><br /><div>Men are also almost twice as likely to return to playing a sport after joint replacement surgery. Given that pain is the number one reason given for not returning to a sport after this kind of surgery, this result implies that men have a higher tolerance for this kind of pain as well. Women also report higher levels of pain experienced during a variety of illnesses, and for various forms of chronic pain. For a given illness, medical records indicate that women are more likely to report being ill, visit a doctor, visit a hospital, and stay longer in hospital than men, again suggesting less tolerance for pain and discomfort.</div>Charles S. Arenihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18441139327258817133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3678496108964844912.post-75423702010436562172011-02-12T23:11:00.000-08:002011-04-07T21:50:35.714-07:00That's Hysterical!<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9aUO1WbD51c/TZ6TrD24B-I/AAAAAAAAAFY/QldsFzjlQTQ/s1600/being-unstable-bitchy-is-all-part-of-my-mystique.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5593070155219863522" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 269px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9aUO1WbD51c/TZ6TrD24B-I/AAAAAAAAAFY/QldsFzjlQTQ/s400/being-unstable-bitchy-is-all-part-of-my-mystique.jpg" border="0" /></a> <br /><div><br /><div>We tend to think of the word “hysterical” in terms of humour. Something is “hysterical” if it makes you laugh. This is perhaps the most common contemporary meaning, but it is really derived from another, older definition, that describing uncontrollable emotion; and in this more general definition, the emotion in question needn’t be positive. Indeed, hysteria, the noun from which the adjective is derived, was defined as a psychological disorder affecting only women for many centuries. In other words, hysteria has a long hystery (don’t ask – pun very much intended). </div><br /><div>The word derives from the Greek word for the uterus – hyster. The Ancient Greeks thought that wildly emotional behaviour on the part of women stemmed from a movement or displacement of the uterus in the abdomen. Various medicines were prescribed to move the troublesome organ back into place. The association of the overly emotional behaviour in women with the uterus would persist for the next 2500 years or so. </div><br /><div>Indeed, the uterus came to be viewed as the main female organ, often presented well out of proportion in graphical depictions of women’s anatomy. The symbolism was unmistakeable. The main purpose of women was to reproduce. In the words of one prominent 19th century physician “it was as if the Almighty, in creating the female sex, had taken the uterus and built up a woman around it”. Can’t get any more straightforward than that. </div><br /><div>So for a very long time only women could be hysterical. And the remedies for this “disorder” were barbarous even by Caligula’s standards. If a girl was lucky, she’d have leeches attached to her vulva or inserted in her uterus. If that didn’t work various substances were injected into the uterus. Cauterization with nitrate of silver was the most horrific treatment, usually leaving permanent damage. If all else failed, removing the ovaries (called an “ovariotomy”) was the ultimate solution. </div><br /><div>Freud attributed many of the psychological conditions of his female patients to hysteria, including the famous case of Emma Eckstein, which resulted in permanent disfigurement due to surgery on her nasal passages. Yes, you read that correctly – the great psychoanalytic mastermind recommended nasal surgery as a cure for hysteria.It is easy to dismiss the “medical condition” hysteria as a remnant of a time when medical research was limited and primitive, but a closer examination of PMS yields similar conclusions about the veracity of the evidence. Despite its inclusion in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (as Premenstrual Dysphoria Disorder), there is nothing like an agreed to set of symptoms and diagnosis criteria to identify the “disease”. </div></div>Charles S. Arenihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18441139327258817133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3678496108964844912.post-37472125571422109532011-02-12T15:03:00.000-08:002011-03-02T19:05:13.364-08:00Why Men Stigmatize Menstruation<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HBSEEcluj9k/TVcU2eUC8gI/AAAAAAAAADM/QUYwxAFzhr8/s1600/1797043-uterus-inflammation.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5572945989976912386" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 300px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 400px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HBSEEcluj9k/TVcU2eUC8gI/AAAAAAAAADM/QUYwxAFzhr8/s400/1797043-uterus-inflammation.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div><div></div><div></div><div>A popular website (<a href="http://pms.about.com/od/myths/a/menstrual_myths.htm">http://pms.about.com/od/myths/a/menstrual_myths.htm</a>) lists the following menstruation myths, which have been handed down to girls approaching menarche over the years:<br /></div><br /><div>1. You shouldn’t go swimming during your period<br />2. Don’t wash your hair during your period<br />3. It’s unhealthy to have sex during your period<br />4. Don’t use tampons during your first period<br />5. Girls shouldn’t exercise or engage in strenuous activity during your period<br />6. You can’t get pregnant having sex during menstruation</div><br /><div></div><div>All are patently false, yet many are still accepted as reflecting sound medical advice. As we will see below, there are other myths, with much greater economic, political, and social implications for women everywhere. But before we begin let’s examine this brief list more closely. First, 5 of the 6 myths are about what women can’t or shouldn’t do during menstruation. There is a clear element of controlling or limiting the actions of women. Three of the myths (1, 3, 5) refer to the avoidance of strenuous activities. These myths make it sound like menstruation is a rather debilitating condition for women.<br /></div><br /><div>The only exception to these themes – myth number 6 – provides an obvious benefit for men; it makes a woman more willing to have sex without requiring the man to wear a condom, assuming of course that she does not want to become pregnant. So these 6 myths, and as we will see below, numerous other myths about menstruation generally cast girls as frail and incapable of doing the rough and tumble things that boys do, but also provide women with an incentive to have unprotected sex. Does anybody want to guess which gender created these myths in the first place?<br /></div><br /><div>I’m afraid the answer is not as straightforward as you might think. These myths may sound like old husbands’ tales, but in many cases they were created by women with the intention of improving the well-being of their daughters, granddaughters and nieces. Moreover, they were not invented by men in bars or on the streets discussing their wives “erratic” behaviour, but rather they were created by priests and ministers in churches, scientists and doctors in the medical profession, and spread to the world via a marketing profession that became, and still very much is, tied to the medical profession. </div><br /><div>What is menstruation? Karen Houppert offers the following no nonsense explanation:<br /><em></em></div><div><em>“Once a month, the lining of the uterus, acting on signals from oestrogen and progesterone hormones, thickens with spongy, blood-filled nutrients. If the woman has had sex and an egg and sperm join, this uterine lining (endometrium) will be used to sustain the developing embryo. If fertilization doesn’t take place, the egg travels down the fallopian tube, through the uterus, past the cervix, and out the vagina. Approximately, twelve days later, when the levels of oestrogen and progesterone have dropped and the uterus has gotten the message that no pregnancy has occurred, the uterine lining – blood and mucus – simply flows out.”</em></div><br /><div></div><div>That’s it. Simple. Not exactly rocket science, is it? This process usually begins at the age of 12 – 13 and ends somewhere between the ages of (average age or menopause). And we’re only talking about 4 – 6 tablespoons of menstrual fluid per period. This is not Niagara Falls, so much as a sink with a slow drip.<br /><br />So why all the fuss? And there has been fuss over the centuries. Lot’s of it. Mainly by men. Karen Horney, a feminist psychologist, developed a theory of why men have tended to demonize menstruation in religious and medical doctrine over the ages. Borrowing from Jung’s notions of a “collective unconscious”, a store of accumulated knowledge existing outside of conscious awareness, and Adler’s discovery of the “inferiority complex”, wherein a person who unconsciously feels inferior and inadequate compensates by acting arrogant and superior, she postulated that all men unconsciously realize that reproduction is the only true purpose in life, and that women play the central role by way of giving birth. </div><br /><div></div><div>Men, by contrast, play a peripheral role by donating a single gamete, and not much of a gamete at that. Hence, men have constantly acted arrogantly and condescendingly toward women to compensate for this unconscious feeling of inferiority. Since it would be difficult for men to deny the wonders and awe of giving birth, why not focus on a related part of reproductive cycle to denigrate women? Menstruation, with its primal symbolism of profuse bleeding, proved the perfect target for male insecurity and misogynistic scorn. Sadly, not much has changed over the millennia.</div><br /><div></div><div>But in a deliciously ironic twist on the notion of “penis envy”, some anthropologists have argued that the circumcision ritual to celebrate male puberty is nothing more than a cheap, plastic, replica of menarche; a deluded attempt by men to simulate the ability to menstruate, and hence, to give birth. It is the ultimate cubic zirconia of pubescent processes. The idea of men wanting to emulate menstruation is taken to an absurd, farcical extreme on the <em>Little Red Book</em> website (<a href="http://www.mylittleredbook.net/">http://www.mylittleredbook.net/</a>) where men relay “first period” stories with straight faces. The acting is surprisingly good. </div></div>Charles S. Arenihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18441139327258817133noreply@blogger.com2