Women

"In general, women are less capable of mathematical reasoning than men"

In itself, this is an interesting statement.

So lets make some more:
"In general, women are more capable in house cleaning than men"
"In general, women are less capable of leading a country than men"
"In general, women are more capable in cooking a diner than men"
"In general, women are less capable in being lawyers than men"
"In general, women are more capable in sewing than men"
"In general, women are less capable in the financial world than men"
...

Hey, this might be fun!
... i mean, fun 50 years ago...

Blanket statements. They do a disservice to the diversity of the world.

And when counter-examples are found, they are called just exceptions that do not alter the reality of "The Nature of Things".
The good ol' "Heads I win, Tails you lose" attitude.

And then IQ tests are given around, and it is found that black children from the Bronx have lower IQs, and some (not Gil) are claiming that "modern science" has proven the intellectual inferiority of blacks ("they may be better than us in sports, but heck! we have the brains!")
After all, they have their genes, and we have ours, right? We are also wired differently from them, right?

Bull.


"It's unreasonable to get upset over it"

Re-bull.


"Men and women have differently developed brains. We know from long experience, and now from modern study, that women and men are wired differently"

Another blanket statement that doesn't say much, but that can be mis-used.
On one side there are anatomical differences in the brain (subtle one still), on the other there are sociological differences. Easy to use one to justify the other, or to try to maintain the differences.


"One of the general differences is evidenced in mathematics, toward which men generally have greater inclination"

And women have a greater inclination towards house-cleaning, cooking, sewing, blablabla...

Re-re-bull.


"daytime television is not only aimed at women, it is aimed at the lowest common denominator (to speak mathematically!) to obtain the largest audience. That's who Oprah is spiritualizing to."

As a former broadcaster, you should know that virtually all tv timeslots are now aimed at the lowest common denominator.
That's why "The West Wing" won't survive it's second year (my prediction, but I may be wrong).

The worst though are the Saturday and Sunday morning time-slots with their preacher$ and faith-healer$ and bull-$h... well, I think there are certain words I can't use here.
Just to say that Oprah is just another guru among the multiple gurus, no better but no worse than the Schullers, the Robertsons, and other clowns of mass-media mediocrity.

I do personally dislike the "Marianne-Williamson" approch that the Oprah show has taken on, and since then have not watched it much.
But as a show that balances the excesses of constipated conservatism, it's much better than nothing.


I'm done for now.
I haven't disproven any of what Gil said.
Again, I think that his posts conveniently serve both him and myself.
I just needed to underline a few passages.