Women

As a philosophy teacher once admitted to me about his philosophy, "The only absolute is that there are no absolutes."

I still don't get it. That's just not reality. It's not even decent sophistry. But that seems to sum up a great many of the differences in perspective that I am seeing here. If we are that far apart in understanding The Big Picture, I just don't know what to say.

The relativistic perspective is a shifting sand upon which no framework of reasoning can stand. With words, we build the structures of thought which we "inhabit" as we live in reality. With the passing ages, we have built an amazing variety of such structures. Some edifices are enduring. Others are quite temporary. But the basic principles and necessities of such constructs remain the same, though the techniques and materials may change.

Without the principle of absolutes, a relativistic philosophy tends to entropy and chaos when adopted for governance. Look at what the removal of absolutes has done to American public education. (I'm not talking about Prayer. That's another matter. I'm talking about Outcome Based Education and other variations on the theme of discarding absolutes.)

So for me, words in general will retain their meanings. "Up" will remain the opposite of "down" and "feminine" will still describe women. These are good words that adequately describe scientifically verifiable reality. As I mentioned earlier, the burden of proof is on the Feminists to prove their assertion. They haven't ever and they can't. "Relativism," "Feminism," "Humanism," virtually all the "-isms" are matters of faith, a system of believes based upon unknowable presumptions. In the case of Feminism, the presumptions are proven false.

Absolutely!

And please remember I am not defending unfair discriminatory cultural practices in regard to the case for Feminism. I'm talking about biology. An inherently flawed system of beliefs has prevailed in the institutions of Western civilization. To restrain its excesses need not mean returning to the evil days of yore.

***
This is a little something from my website as inspired by a previous ENTMOOT POST...



[c] Gilthalion On The Feminine Mystique[/c]

"In my VAST and LONG experience with women," the hobbit began, "I have concluded that any of Them, from the simplest country hobbit to the most sophisticated Elvish lady, any of Them can make ME feel like an idiot! On a daily basis!

"They are a Strange Race, some sort of symbiotic creature that is hard to live with, and impossible to live without. They have strange mental powers, unknown to Men (or Hobbits). They can read minds, evidently, for they expect the male to be able to do so as well!"

The little hobbit's mind drifted to a conversation the previous evening...

"What's wrong, Dear," asked Gilthalion, mystified.

"You should KNOW without my having to tell you!" the Mrs snapped.

Gil shook his head as if trying not to nod off. He went on, "This Feminine Mind Power is enhanced with a set of Rings. How well I remember the spell that led me to my present, er, happy condition:

[c] Two Rings to blind them both and in the Chapel bind them.[/c]

"Feminine Telepathy seems to intensify tenfold as they mature, especially with the onset of Children. At this point, the Female Race develops an ability to read thoughts and actions of their posterity from thousands of miles away. This is a Power I call MOMNIPOTENCE," the hobbit intoned.

Suddenly, he sat bolt upright and exclaimed, "Beware the Female! She may be reading your naked thought even now. The Mrs is still asleep, fortunately! I'm only concerned she will awaken and accuse me from a dream! They do that too, you know."

And with that, the little hobbit looked fearfully over his shoulder and would say no more.

I did not claim there was no absolute reality in Nature itself for us to go study: without such an hypothesis, no study, no science, no advance is possible to my knowledge.

What I do say is that any ideology that claims knowing absolute undeniable truths commits a miserable mistake.
This is true for some religious ideologies, and this has been true for some men of science in the past (and if any scientist nowadays claims that this or that theory has been absolutely proven, then he's a shmuck!)

This isn't relativism per se. It's simple humility towards complex matters, and knowing that in the past pretentious affirmations of absolute knowledge by scientist, politicians and men of Faith have been discredited.

So I suggest you read what your philosophy teacher has said in another light, whatever it is that he really meant (he was quoting some other philosopher anyway, and the quote is logically self-contradicting; a better constructed one would be: "There is only one absolute, which is that there is only one absolute" !!).

As for feminism, I admit that sometimes I'm not sure what people mean when they use that term: each time a comment is made about injustice to women because of a patriarchal society, that comment is branded "feminist".
So "feminist" is often used pejoratively, just as "liberal" is; in each case, it is again the trick of demonizing the opposition.
(the same is true also of terms like "right-wing" in the mouths of some left-wingers, and "left-wing" in those of some rigth-wingers)

So, I wonder if Gil considers me as a feminist, and if so in what sense.

Myself, I don't feel the need to call myself a feminist, nor to deny it (although I'll question the label if it is applied to me).
I don't consider myself even a leftist (although I could place myself to the center-left if pressed to define myself, or even center-left-north-west)

"In the case of Feminism, the presumptions are proven false."

Oh yeah? Details please.
And that capitalized feminism, what is it to you? Who are they? Are they one group, or many? Do they all say the same things?


"An inherently flawed system of beliefs has prevailed in the institutions of Western civilization"

What system of beliefs are you talking about?
Are you talking about the sexist system of beliefs that includes statements like "only men can rule a family, a town, a city, a state, a country, a company" and "the man of the family is the one who should have a job and the wife should stay at home and cook and raise the children"?

We are talking about Them and you know who They are!

They are the one's behind it all. They are the ones doing all this to us!

They are everywhere, controlling everything. They will be satisfied with uttermost Domination, or Annihilation. Nothing less will serve Their Agenda.

The Conspiracy is deep and old and those who claim to know what They are doing are as wrong as those who claim there is no Conspiracy!

It is neither safe nor expedient for me to say more...









***
I provided all the details necessary to buttress my argument against Feminism beyond reasonable doubt. Belief in it is a choice not to accept Reality. Men and Women are different in almost every way, by and large. Period. They are not and cannot be the same. Feminists believe otherwise. Their Faith does not have even the dubious support of purported Divine Revelation.

When I use the capital letter in that context, I am denoting adherance to a Faith. In my view, many -isms are faiths, they are certainly neither science nor revelation.

And the inherently flawed system of beliefs that pervades the institutions of Western Civilization is a militant Secular Humanism that hypocritically tolerates New Age faith (Oprah strikes) while systematically opposing most others (The Big Three Monotheistic Faiths). That's how I see it.

We are doing a little better than talking in soundbites about broad differences in perspective between several major cultural viewpoints. There are admixtures of them all to various degrees.


THE ROAD AHEAD

I will make a general statement, folks will get offended, thinking themselves included, point out exceptions and variations as if that disproves the Self Evident, and then we will debate the Nature of All Things as it relates to the quibble. And nothing will be accomplished.

Really, we can quibble far down the Road indeed over the precise definitions of these things and I'm not much interested in doing that. I've done it on three ENTMOOT threads now, on radio talkshows for the last five years, in many Letters to Editors, and at universities and political events for two decades. And it went on throughout history before I ever entered the scene, and will hopefully continue long after I exit.

(I wonder if Left and Right perspectives could be traced to a genetic tendency? There are those who say homosexuality is something you are born with. Was I born a Conservative, or was it all in the way I was raised? I checked, and there was definitely no silver-spoon listed on the Birth Certificate!)

Back in the US PRESIDENTIAL RACE thread, I posted my belief that the best course for Humanity is a middle course, and the best way so far devised to keep us on it is the unique system of dynamic and institutional checks and balances that we call the American Way. Competition that stalemates and gridlocks progress too far to the Left or to the Right.

And yet progress down the Middle does gradually occur. We do not enslave people of other Races. Men may no longer treat Women as property or chattel (at least, not with impunity). Discrimination of all kinds is now constrained and will be further constrained. None of these problems are, or will ever be, utterly eliminated. But we cannot sacrifice Freedom for faster Progress.

And that is precisely what is occurring. Civilization is drifting too far to the Left. We need a season on the Right. A good twenty years or so.

Don't worry. We won't get too far out of hand before the pendulum swings back!

But if Gore is elected here, there will be few Governments on the planet that are Right, or even Center. All the West will have chosen the Left Side. Now that is frightening! But what a Kiss!

Gil, I will take the begining statements as a joke, as indicated by the smiley.


"I provided all the details necessary to buttress my argument against Feminism beyond reasonable doubt. Belief in it is a choice not to accept Reality"

Again, feminisim captitalized, as if it was a heterogenuous group; that mistake of yours says a lot.
None of your arguments offer strong support of your ideas; there is more than just reasonable doubt in your opinions.
Reality is often a construct that one builds around oneself, thus the difficulty to understand others, others' cultures, others' values (a normal flaw that is often reciprocal).
You simply have not given any statements that all feminists support (or at least that the majority of them supports); the statement "All Is In Nurturing" is far from accepted by the majority of feminists, yet you ascribe it to them without blinking; that mistake again says a lot.


"Men and Women are different in almost every way, by and large. Period. They are not and cannot be the same"

Again, no one among feminists or others would say altogether the contrary to the last statement. It never has been an issue about beeing "the same", but about equality of rights and opportunities; rights and opportunities have been traditionally been in favor of men, and I think you agreed with that.

But then again, "different in almost every way"?????
You must justify this yourself: saying the men and women are the same is a terrible mistake, but saying they are "different in almost every way" is another.
There ARE differences, and that is sufficient to say that men and women (in general) ARE not identical... no man has given birth (yet!), that by itself is sufficient.
But apart from child bearing, all other differences come from that "XY" and "XX" chromosomes, the later identifying the human as a female. It may and does imply anatomical differences (apart from the reproducting system) in the brain, heart, etc... but these differences are subtle and not evidently apparent.
The blood one receives during an operation could have come from a man or a woman, or both, indiferently. Same thing for organ donors and takers.
Men and women can speak together, eat the same things. There will be differences, but there are also multiples differences between men alone and women alone.
Saying the two are "different in almost every way" is tantamount to saying there are from different species...

"the inherently flawed system of beliefs that pervades the institutions of Western Civilization is a militant Secular Humanism that hypocritically tolerates New Age faith (Oprah strikes) while systematically opposing most others (The Big Three Monotheistic Faiths). "

Well,,, maybe your opening statements, even though said in a joking fashion, are here revealed to be your true thoughts...
I would be the first to combat the NewAgers if they ever took any form of control... but they haven't.
Their beliefs are as the Big Three mere superstitions... but of course you won't totally agree with that.
The pitifull astrology stuff and whatchamakalits that are recuperated by newagers are just there by freedom of speech, just as the other religions are.


"Civilization is drifting too far to the Left. We need a season on the Right. A good twenty years or so."

Hmmm... civilisation is in the singular above... is there only one civilisation?
But I guess you were talking about Western Civilisation.
We don't NEED it, but I guess eventually BushJr or another Rep will be elected president, and maybe JM LePen will be elected in France, and a Tatcher-like PM will head GB, and Stockwell Day in Canada...

Reality is. (Period.)

Reality is not a construct.

Feminism is a contruct, like all the other -isms. Some are less flawed than others.

I do not include everyone (including myself!) who believes that equal rights/opportunity/etc. should be upheld as a Feminist with a capital F. I'm talking about the True Believers who have motivated the new education curriculum and methodology.

I certainly have demonstrated that there ARE great physical and mental differences between the genders (despite vociferous protest), and maintained that this should not mean blind prejudice should be applied to any individual. I have stipulated that difference does not imply inequality.

To continue to view my arguments as some kind of narrow-minded prejudice against women must require some effort! The same sort of effort exerted by those who think Tolkien was a sexist. But, I can understand (and apologise for) offense taken at my politically incorrect attempts at humor.

I joke about The Conspiracy. But there clearly are things going on.

This need not be viewed with alarm as a great conspiracy against Humanity with elite kingmakers and stringpullers forming an amorphous alliance through unrelated organizations, all under an all-powerful hidden council of Illuminatti deep in old Europe. (A lot of folks do think that.) I see a broad based historical process taking place and nothing more than natural confluences of interests. Not conspiracies as such.

Though for different reasons we both revolt at the idea of the New Age, we are, I think, entering a Post-Christian Age in Western Civilization (which is all I am thinking of in this conversation).

It could be a Golden Age.

Or as Winston Churchill portended, there could arise "...a new Dark Age, made more sinister and more protracted, by the lights of perverted Science."

***
I was thinking that BushJr would win and win big. I've lost that certainty. The Republicans are reverting to timid type. Faint heart never won fair maid!

Back on topic, for the last statement reminds me, Adolf Hitler used to say that the secret to controlling the masses is to think of them as a Woman. And then to treat them as such.

Now what do you suppose that was all about?

"Reality is. (Period.)"

That isn't contested.
What people think Reality is, is.

Saying Reality is and knowing what Reality is are two different things; what people think Reality is is a construct, which varies according to (and even within) cultures and eras.


"I certainly have demonstrated that there ARE great physical and mental differences between the genders (despite vociferous protest)"

You have pointed out some mental differences, but have not demonstrated in any way that they affect abilities (e.g. in math).
"Great" is an overstatement.


"hidden council of Illuminatti deep in old Europe. (A lot of folks do think that.)"

hehe... I know... Everytime "Opus Dei" is mentionned in the press, some people freak out. I find that pitifull.


"Post-Christian Age in Western Civilization"

And it's about time...


"It could be a Golden Age. Or as Winston Churchill portended, (...) '...a new Dark Age'"

That (risk) is true in any change.
And wether it is Dark or not will depend on each of us, men and women.
And we'll have to make sure that science is not used to serve money, but rather to serve humanity.


"Adolf Hitler used to say that the secret to controlling the masses is to think of them as a Woman. And then to treat them as such"

Another of his saying: "The bigger the lie, the more it is believed."
So Hitler saw people merely as bunch of idiots, cattle to be brought wherever he wanted.
And before Hitler there were others who used such tactics; organized religions are the first examples that come to mind.


"Now what do you suppose that was all about?"

What, did Adolf ever smooch Eva Braun publicly to win voters?

======================
(Hey! Where are the women of this thread!? It's all about you! We want your views!)
======================

I haven't had a chance to really read the thread, so forgive me if I'm rehashing old stuff. I'd just like to staight my opinions (and probably have them debated by juntel if I know him at all )

Femenism: Now there's a big word. In the beginning it was about equality. Now there's its first mistake. Women and Men are not equal! We are different! Men are USUALLY stronger, more likely to enjoy sports, better at certain jobs. Women are USUALLY better in the home, not as strong, but very strong willed. This is not a stereotype: this is the natural way of things. Yes, there are exceptions, there always are. However, we are not the same!
Now, men are not better then women. Men ARE given the place of authority for a reason, because they are (naturally) stronger. However, this doesn't mean women are less then men. Men are not supposed to beat women or anything of that sort, they are supposed to love their wives. The authority is to help keep the world in order, not to dominate.
Women have a very special role. The brining up of children is very important, just as important as that of the winner of bread. I am not being sexist here: this is the way things always were. Now, there are exceptions, of course. There are women who work very well and men who rase children well. However, men and women have their places.
Femenism is now even worse then it was before. It is not about equality between the two sexes (which did have a few possitive traights, there was too much male domination.) Rather, is has become an issue of women being superior to men. Teachers are now affraid to treat boys and girls equally, and female teachers are very often seen being kinder and easier on the girls. Why? Well, they say "I know how it is for them." This is accepted. Male teachers don't dare do the same with boys, they would be accused of being sexist.

Men and women are not the same. They are both just as important though. Femenism is the wrong concept, what we need is to treat both men and women as equally important human beings, not as equal people.

anduin, Eruve, or any other female Entmooter... I'll leave the replies to that to you...

Great comments! I completely agree that men and women are equal, but they simply have separate roles. In trying to change the normal functions of the female in society, we are not only ruining girls but also boys. They begin to get a mixed up view of exactly WHAT gender they are, since they see men and women doing essentially the same things. Often times this results in homosexuality, or something similar.

Unfortunately, many of the "feminists" of today have simply had bad experiences with men in their past, and so they judge all men accordingly. The feminist agenda is basically about hatred of men, when you get down to it, and not equal rights. They already have that.

There are always going to be people who discriminate against you because of your gender or race. It's simply the way the world is.

David

PS: Juntel, I would request that you please stop making absurd comments about Christianity. Not only is it offensive to some people, but it also doesn't prove your points any better. It's simply a nit-pick. If someone said that you were a faithless, hollow, and empty person simply because you're an antagonistic, wouldn't that get you kind of angry? Wouldn't that be offensive to you? Please, think about these things before you post attacks on people different than you. They don't help your arguments. Thanks.

.
(ahem... with whom are you agreeing with Gwaihir?
Tater says men and women are NOT equal...)
.

(As for the comments on christianity, or in general organised religions, they fit well among the attacks on secular humanism and feminism, and free-thought in general, this and other threads have contained. My comments are at least acknowledge by history, whereas the opposing comments on sec.humanism, feminism are merely comming from a difficulty to adapt to a more equalitarian society.)

It was a generalization. I'm not agreeing with anyone per say, just those who hold my opinion, wherever they might be.

PS: Juntel, I would request that you please stop making absurd comments about Christianity. Not only is it offensive to some people, but it also doesn't prove your points any better. It's simply a nit-pick. If someone said that you were a faithless, hollow, and empty person simply because you're an antagonistic, wouldn't that get you kind of angry? Wouldn't that be offensive to you? Please, think about these things before you post attacks on people different than you. They don't help your arguments. Thanks.

Gwaihir, I would request that you please stop making absurd comments about women. Not only is it offensive to some people, but it also doesn't prove your points any better. It's simply a nit-pick. If someone said that you were irrational, inferior, not suited for authority, and so different as to be unequal, because you are a women, wouldn't that get you kind of angry? Wouldn't that be offensive to you? Please, think about these things before you post attacks on people different than you. They don't help your arguements. Thanks.

Ouch!

Couldn't have done better myself!

Haha, great post, anduin.

I will be offering my opinion on this issue in more detail WIFLI (when I feel like it)... one must realize that I'm sort of on the lazy, procrastinating side. Anyone who's interested in my opinion, just ask... should just be a copy-and-paste job from my private conversations about this topic with others who have participated here.

But my earlier statement, that the major gender differences from a social/intellectual perspective originate from the raising, still stands.

Tater:

Women are USUALLY better in the home, not as strong, but very strong willed. This is not a stereotype: this is the natural way of things.

If that isn't a stereotype, I don't know what is.
The natural way of things? There is that saying again. Natural for you maybe, but not for me. What if your wife wanted to work? Would you allow her to do so? If not, would you let her know that before you married her or just chain her to the stove after you said, "I do"?

Men ARE given the place of authority for a reason, because they are (naturally) stronger.

First off, given authority by whom? I have always thought that they have TAKEN authority by suppressing women. And second, why do you equate strength with authority? Last time I checked, Margaret Thatcher was not a world heavyweight contender.

The authority is to help keep the world in order, not to dominate.

And yet men do dominate the world.....I wonder what kind of world we would live in if the nurturing (as we are generally viewed) women dominated the world. Oh yes, I really like the world order that you men have created for us. There is so much good-will, peace, respect for people different from ourselves............

There are women who work very well and men who rase children well. However, men and women have their places.

You stated it yourself, yet you will go ahead and say that men and women have their places. When you say that, you are saying regardless that women can be contributors in the work force and men can effectively raise children, they shouldn't because it is not their place. I hope you don't fall in love with a women that has the potential to make a place for herself in the working world and the two of you bear a child that you would rather stay at home with, than all the money in the world, because it really isn't your place. Sorry.

Since there still seems to be some confusion on the subject, I bring you lengthy excerpts from the link I provided above. (Probably a missing link in the long evolution of the posts.) There are, indeed, profound (great) biological differences between the Male and Female mind. GENERALLY SPEAKING!



NATURE

DR. RUBEN GUR: This is a PET scan of a woman and this is a PET scan of a man If you look at the older limbic system, there is more bright yellow colors here than here. If we look at those regions that in men have higher activity and we ask ourselves, well, what kind of behavior is associated with animals who have these regions, and what characterizes them, is that they react to emotional situations through action. If they are angry they'll attack. If they are fearful they'll run away.

GARRICK UTLEY: In contrast women show more activity in the singular gyrus.

DR. RUBEN GUR: That part of the brain is adjacent to language areas, and it appears in animals who can communicate, who can deal with emotions in a much more symbolic fashion. We don't need to do very complex research to find that men are more likely to express emotions through physical acts, whereas women talk it over.

GARRICK UTLEY: Dr. Gur is exploring the world of cross gender understanding through a test measuring emotional perception. He asked men and women to rate the expression on these actors' faces.

DR. RUBEN GUR: In general, women are much faster at picking up emotions on the face. In one study women were able to say whether a face was happy or sad even before they were able to say that it was a face. Whereas men take an additional about 20 milliseconds after they recognize it's a face and before they can say the emotion of the face.

GARRICK UTLEY: Dr. Gur says that although men were slower to respond, they were as perceptive as women at recognizing men's emotional states. However, they were less accurate at reading women's faces.

DR. RUBEN GUR: I tend to again link this to evolution and, again, evolution is very cold hearted and cruel. And basically given the differences between men and women in physical strength, it's not all that important for a man whether a woman is sad.

GARRICK UTLEY: While women's brains may be, in general, more attuned to emotional expression, evolution seems to have handed men a clear cut advantage in spacial reasoning. This simple test revealed some dramatic variation.

DR. RUBEN GUR: So here is a cup. Suppose now we tilt the cup. Which of these show how the water level will look like after it's tilted? And this kind of a task makes me feel the biology of sex differences, because I have seen very dumb men who look at me strange when I ask them this and they say, "You can't be asking me something as stupid as that." And I've seen some very smart women who, even if they come up with the correct answer, they will think about it.

...When we looked at brain anatomy over the age range, we found that male brains shrink faster than female brains, and that starts fairly early. And they shrink faster in certain regions than in other regions. But overall males lose tissue faster than females.
...one of the findings that keep cropping up is indeed a correlation between brain volume and intelligence. And I have to say intelligence very advisedly, because intelligence really is composed of a lot of different conative components. And so what you call intelligence depends on what you happen to include in your definition. But across a range of conative tasks we have observed small but consistent correlation between brain volume and performance. And we have also observed a decline in conative ability that comes with aging, and that decline seems to be faster in men than in women for certain functions.

...there seems to be a sex difference in the efficiency of the brain if we look at several parameters. For one thing, if you just look at the issue of the correlation between performance and brain volume, women have smaller brains, commensurate with the smaller body size. And yet if you take a range of conative tests, they do the same. Overall they score the same on IQ tests for example. So they must be more efficient, they are able to do more with a smaller volume of brain.

...In the area of schizophrenia .... it's another brain disorder where the textbooks say that there are an equal number of males and females. But in really, it's not. There is a two to one ratio, roughly, in most research centers of males having it more frequently than females. And furthermore, the age of onset is younger in men, and the course is much worse in men

...women have higher rates of blood flow in the brain, about 15 to 20 percent rates of blood flow, which should afford some protection against occlusive strokes. And indeed, women are less likely to suffer occlusive stroke. They're more likely to suffer hemorrhagic strokes, which is when an artery bursts. So there are sex differences in the occurrence of stroke, and there are sex differences in how well you recover from the effects of stroke. Again, women have an easier time recovering from certain effects of stroke.

DR. MARTHA DENCKLA: Well, it's interesting, if you look at really infant development, little girls tend to sit up earlier than little boys, and the milestones that we all keep baby books on. But little boys, once they are able to move at all, tend to crawl faster than little girls. So little girls tend to follow a play pattern that's more in the I sit up, I look at another person's face and I make babbly, gooey noises, and I play pat-a-cake as an infant. Whereas the little boys are off exploring the environment much more rapidly than little girls. And I think that it's interesting that those motoric built in things would seem to predispose you to one kind of play versus the other.

DR. RUBEN GUR: I think one of the findings of that same PET study that showed the differences in the singular gyrus. And other -- all the motor regions were more active physiologically in the males than in the females. And one sex difference that is quite clear is in motor abilities. If you look at a simple task such as how fast you can move your finger up and down, it's not -- well, males tap about 50 percent faster than the average --

DR. MARTHA DENCKLA: ...this sort of conscious manipulation of the bits and pieces of speech sounds and words are things that little girls seem to be able to do much better than boys.

GARRICK UTLEY: Do we know why?

DR. MARTHA DENCKLA: Well, I don't think we know why exactly. But we also have some interesting data .... they've shown that when they give these kinds of challenges with speech sounds to the men and women, men use only the left inferior gyrus of the frontal lobe, a piece of the left side of the brain up in the front part, whereas the girls appear to be using both sides of the brain to process this information. So there seems to be a demonstration that more of the brain gets involved in doing this kind of an activity, at least in adult women.

...But anyway, girls are earlier developers, the programs are earlier in girls. And it may be that there's a certain accident of earliness that the left side of the brain is somewhat more pre programmed to be the language side. And perhaps if it gets connected to the left earlier, it literally becomes dominant in the old fashioned way, not in the sense that we say, "Oh, yes, this left hand is specialized for language, and the right is going to be specialized for visual or spacial." It may be that the left side of the brain is just very bossy in little girls, and that's something we're trying to follow up on.

...But I think there are other factors as well. I think girls are very highly sensitive to positive reinforcement, they are more crowd pleasers than boys. That again has it's bad as well as its good sides. Girls may have some other capabilities, such as the earlier development of the frontal lobes which are involved in planning and goal oriented behavior. They may have more of what we call these executive skills which allow you to develop strategies for getting around any difficulties that you may have...

...Spacial factor is another thing that seems to be, after puberty, a very robust difference between male and female adolescents. Spatial ability meaning the ability particularly to deal with something called mental rotation, where you can imagine what something looks like from a different perspective. That's a very -- much replicated and robust difference between men and women.




NURTURE

GARRICK UTLEY: ...is it possible to somehow train the brain, if not exactly mold the brain, to be less specialized in terms of left or right? Is that an ideal goal, and can it be done?

DR. MARTHA DENCKLA: I think we always train the brain. I think -- I mean, every time you do anything you're training the brain.

...every teacher is making little dendrite sprouts and connect up neurons. So we are always training the brain. But if you mean essentially massively reorganizing it, I don't -- I'm not real optimistic about that. I call myself an optimistic fatalist, which means you've got a basic blueprint, you can kind of move the furniture around and maybe make some adjustments in the architecture of the interior walls. But I think the basic blueprint is not something that we are going to actually change.

DR. SANDRA WITELSON: I think trying to put a quantitative aspect on the nature-nurture controversy is almost impossible, because where does one begin and the other end? Clearly at the very beginning there has to be some biology. But there's even environment in the womb, nutrition, auditory stimulation which gets through, so that right away there's environment that is impinging on the biology, but you still have a very major contribution of biology.

...Then once the infant is born, and they're already born with different aspects of behavior, the children, each -- whether it's the group difference or the individual difference, they elicit different behaviors from their caretakers, from their parents. And that in itself will accentuate the biological differences. So by the time a child is one year of age, you have got such an interaction of nature and nurture, that I believe it's almost impossible to separate.

DR. MARTHA DENCKLA: Let's take the example of -- what we talked about in the female disadvantage for spatial, particularly mental rotation abilities in young females. There has been work showing that that tends to later on show up as lesser achievement in mathematics, that is, that the foundational skill of spatial ability is not as well developed in females. So what one would do with females is very much what we've been hearing from feminists for the last 20 years. We would want to actively encourage little girls to do more spatial exploration, climb more trees, build more forts, experience more of their own movements of their body in space, and moving around things in space. In other words, we'd like to pump up the system that is not the one that the person naturally uses.

FEMALE AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi. It seems from the discussion that one of the reasons for studying the differences is to understand better how to make men and women more similar in their abilities as adult. And I may be reading this wrong from the discussion. But I'm wondering how much does your research lead to people wanting to make people more similar?

GARRICK UTLEY: A fascinating question. Should we all be alike? Dr. Witelson?

DR. SANDRA WITELSON: Well, let me respond by saying I'm not sure that that's necessarily the way to go, that that's necessarily advantageous for the species as a whole. And if we think of the males and females in let's say the human species, where there is a great amount of overlap, mostly overlap, but at each extreme end, and let's take verbal and spatial as the two extremes as just examples. Where there may be the kind of spatial ability in a small group of men that far surpasses women, and vice versa at the other end, that by having two different sexes that somehow have developed different brains, for whatever evolutionary pressures there have been, what we have really done is we have expanded the capability of the species as a whole. And so therefore we are a much more powerful and a more well adapted species by having differences.

DR. MARTHA DENCKLA: I want to clarify something. We're not trying to make people end up the same, except where we already have things that society has laid out for us, our common skills that we need. I mean, if we could dispense with people having to know how to read or to do mathematics, a lot of the impetus, at least in my field, for understanding these gender differences would disappear. But this is not the same thing as saying that everyone has got to become a computer scientist, but that the diversity should be allowed to emerge on an individual basis. And if there are these tendencies to have more difficulty with some required subject, that we figure out ways to compensate for that.



AND IN CONCLUSION...

GARRICK UTLEY: Let me just interject here. I have read that there is scientific research that says that testosterone levels among men are often lower in happy marriages.

DR. RUBEN GUR: You could argue in some -- and again this sense that I have been -- that marriage is the victory of the female.

DR. RUBEN GUR: I'm part of a husband and wife team. My wife is a neurologist and a psychiatrist, and we do a lot of this work together. And this is one area where we find things in the lab, and then we look at each other and it helps us understand some of our personal relationship. And that is always a thrill. For example, when the graph jumped on our computer screen showing this difficulty of males detecting sadness on the faces of females, she looked at me and said, "Well, I understand some things now."

[LAUGHTER]

And then when we found that males lose frontal lobes faster than females, and the frontal lobe is the part of the brain which is the big inhibitor, the one that tell you "Stop," when that jumped on the screen, she said, "I think I understand why midlife crisis is so much tougher for the males." So these are just two examples.


***
Nurture can do much to compensate for Nature. But if everyone received the best of training and environment for maximum potential development (and shouldn't we?), then would we still not see gender differences?

I MUST UNDERSCORE THAT THIS BY NO MEANS IS AN ARGUMENT FOR UNEQUAL RIGHTS!!!


(And with that the little hobbit hoped that at least the argument over biological differences between the genders had finally been resolved. He hoped to comment on it no further.) :|

My, thank you Gil, I wont have to click the link you gave us!

I'll take this opportunity to repost a quote I made in an earlier post, Dr. Denckla's very important commentary towards the end of that show:

" DR. MARTHA DENCKLA: (...)[W]hen I went to college and I announced that I wanted to go to medical school, I was immediately greeted with derision by the dean who said, "You? You weren't even allowed to take the fourth year of math in high school because you were a B student, you weren't a good -- " I said, "Well, I want to go to medical school." And I found myself a tutor who helped me to overcome what had been my relatively mediocre math performance, and marched on to medical school.
Now, it's true, I did not become a radiologist, I did not become a surgeon, I did not become a lot of different kinds of doctor that is probably more based upon the kind of spatial ability that I never had. On the other hand, I not only got into medical school, but I even became a neurologist where I had to learn all of this excruciatingly spatial stuff about where everything is in the brain. So motivation, interest, some compensation, may be something we want to hold out to people. We don't want to just stereotype them the way I was very much in danger of being stereotyped as "The kind of girl who's good at languages and literature," you know, which is how I entered college. And I think that's the kind of thing that we want to study these differences minutely, in order to be able to liberate people from."

Gil. I'm sorry, but your link does not prove nature over nuture. The doctors in that interview said themselves that this was an impossible question to resolve. And I am also not convinced that the differences are as great as you would have us believe. (I'm talking brain make-up here, I concede the physical, including, in general, that Men are stronger.) If women were to naturally deficient in spacial relations, they would not be aboe to improve their ability in this area and bring it up to speed with men. And yet Dr. Denckla suggests it's possible to improve girls' ability in this area by encouraging them to do more "boy-type" acitivies (climbling trees, building things...). This suggests to me that spacial relations skills are learned and not inherent.

As for differences, so what? If you take women as a group you will get lots of individual variance, the same as if you took men as a group. I am an individual. For me, this whole issue is about the choices I have. I do not like the idea that someone else removes my choices just because I'm a woman. I have never liked this. I once had a "feminist" (self-proclaimed) that I shouldn't go into teaching because it's a traditional field for women and was somehow a step backwards for women in general. I don't like this sort of thinking any better that those who say women should stay home and raise children because it's "the nature of things". Either way, you're taking away my choice.

I don't care what scientific facts you throw at me. I prefer to look at the hard evidence: due to the lack of mothers in America, our society is beginning to go to pots. We have kids killing kids, kids having kids, and a number of other things. Is this simply because we are progressing? No. When did the family unit begin to decay? In the 60s, the same time the feminist movement began to pick up.

A woman's primary goal is to be a mother - period. You can't change the laws of nature, like we're attempting to do now a days. Please, just look at the evidence people. This isn't the kind of world we need.

David

Anduin: Excuse me, I didn't know I wasn't allowed to express my opinion in a civilized manner on this board. Juntel's comments had nothing to do with the topic being discussed here, which was why I requested he stop. It's obvious he won't, though.

Gwaihir, what you call "nastiness" is just simply "appropriateness".

If you spit up at the sky, expect the spittle to land on your face.

Women with children are mothers, and the male genitors are fathers.
Where are the fathers in your description of society "going to pots"?

/Edited: I wrote this post when Gwaihir's previous post spoke of the "nastiness" of anduin's reponse. While I wrote and posted, he had wisely changed it.

As for my comments that Gwaihir calls off-topic, I disagree, since the mentality of "women at home, not at work", "women subordinate", and such and such, are quite characteristic of organized religions, especially including christianity, as history shows us. And as I mentionned previously, other ideologies have been attacked, and my including the chritian ideologies is very appropriate here.