I’ve got some news that maybe isn’t news. – Robert Frost, “The Housekeeper”
“When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news.” We’ve all heard this quote with which I opened my column of one year ago today, and though most people would agree on it many soi-disant “journalists” don’t any more. As I said in that column,
…such things are presented as news every day. Sometimes…[it’s] because of the unusual size of the dog or the sheer number of people bitten; sometimes it’s just a slow news day, and very often such stories are the equivalent of the patter, lovely assistant and other misdirection used by a conjurer to draw attention away from what he’s actually doing. But in some cases “dog bites man” stories become newsworthy because the media have succeeded in convincing enough people that dogs actually don’t bite men, so when it happens in a public place silly people are either surprised or must at least pretend to be…[they] either don’t recognize [such stories] as examples of “dog bites man” or else believe that dogs do not in fact generally bite men; they therefore react by feigning surprise, denying that the story actually describes an incident of canine aggression, or questioning the veracity of the report.
A perfect example of this appeared in Huffington Post on Monday and was called to my attention yesterday by the Human Scorch:
Men and women are more alike than different — that’s been the consensus view for many years among the researchers who study personality differences between the sexes. But a new study claims this wisdom is wrong. By correcting for measurement errors, three researchers put forth a study that was published on Wednesday on the Public Library of Science website saying they’ve found that men and women feel and behave in markedly different ways. They’re almost like “different species,” [said] Paul Irwing, one of the researchers…The research, conducted by Marco Del Giudice of Italy’s University of Turin and Irwing and Tom Booth of the UK’s University of Manchester, involved getting 10,000 Americans to take a questionnaire that measured 15 different personality traits. According to their analysis, men are far more dominant, reserved, utilitarian, vigilant, rule-conscious, and emotionally stable, while women are far more deferential, warm, trusting, sensitive, and emotionally “reactive.” The two sexes were roughly the same when it came to perfectionism, liveliness, and abstract versus practical thinking. “If you translate it into the simplest terms,” said Irwing, “only 18 percent of men and women match in terms of personality profiles, and that’s staggeringly different from the consensus view.” [That] …view…[is championed by] Janet Shibley Hyde, a professor of psychology and women’s studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, [who in 2005] demonstrated through a meta-analysis of 46 other studies that men and women were actually very similar, not only in personality traits, but in other realms of supposed gender difference, like self-esteem, leadership, and math ability…
In past studies on this topic, researchers would simply add up all the survey responses, according to Del Giudice. This led to imperfect results because of careless responses and misreadings. Through a sophisticated method called “structure equation modeling,” the researchers claim they were able to remove this random error. When asked if he could translate this concept for a lay person, Irwing replied: “I teach courses on this and it takes me approximately 20 hours.” Past research also usually compared one variable at a time, Del Giudice said. He believes this method led to underestimations of the sex difference because when you actually combine all personality traits, with all their small discrepancies, the result is a much more significant difference. For example, if you were to examine the difference between men and women’s body types using the traditional method, you would look at torso circumference and waist-hip ratios and torso-leg ratios, one by one. In Del Giudice’s method, you would crunch all these figures into one much larger number. And that’s what he did with personality…Del Giudice contends that his team didn’t measure “a haphazard list of traits.” Rather, they considered 15 facets that could offer a reasonably complete picture of a person’s personality.
Irwing thinks that some researchers in the past may have been biased in their methods, in order to reduce any gender difference. “It’s for totally laudable reasons,” he said. “People are very concerned, or were very concerned, that women didn’t get equal opportunities, and that there was a lot of bias in selection processes…[they] are afraid that studies like ours will turn the clock back,” Irwing added. Hyde is one of those people. “This huge difference is not only scientifically false,” she said, “it has unfortunate consequences for places like the workplace and education and heterosexual romantic relationships.” But the authors stand by their results, and are currently drafting a lengthy response to Hyde’s objections. “I think distorting science because of what you would like to believe, or because of what you think the political consequences are, is very dangerous,” said Irwing.
The study doesn’t speculate as to whether the alleged differences are due to nature or nurture, although Irwing points out the results are consistent with… evolutionary theory. Even if these differences aren’t indelibly printed in our genes, Hyde believes there’s still cause for alarm. If men and women have wildly different personalities, “then how can we do the same job men can, and deserve equal pay for equal work?” she asked. “A married couple have marital difficulties, and they go to the therapist, who says ‘he’s from Mars, you’re from Venus, you’ll never be able to communicate. It’s hopeless.’ If you have a gender similarities point of view, you just need to work on communicating.”
The reporter’s bias is as impossible to miss as Hyde’s; the doctrine of androgyny is referred to from the first line as “wisdom” and it was “demonstrated” by Hyde, while gender differences are only “supposed” and “alleged”. But despite what the reporter would like to believe, the dogma that there are no important gender differences was only the “consensus” in certain schools of sociology and psychology; it is not and has never been accepted in neurology, sexology, biology, psychiatry or most schools of psychology, for the simple reason that the data don’t support it without considerable massaging of the sort practiced by Hyde (whom you will note is also a professor of “women’s studies”, a field with all the academic rigor of “scientific creationism” or “UFOlogy”). No person who lives in the real world (or has ever had children of both sexes) can force himself to believe that men and women are largely the same physically, psychologically or in any other way; everyday experience that the sexes are extremely different can only be reconciled with the doctrine of asexuality by invoking “social construction of gender”, which is of course what agenda-driven people like Hyde promote. The last two paragraphs reveal that agenda: Faced with an inability to explain the facts which contradict her “theory”, Hyde falls back on political ideology and myopic nonsense. The differences between men and women were recognized throughout human history, yet the rift between the sexes has never been greater than it has been since neofeminism and its denial of those differences appeared on the scene some 30 years ago.
Hyde’s claim that a belief in imaginary gender equivalence somehow helps marriages is an exact reversal of the truth: denying sex differences means that there is only one standard of normal human behavior (in the minds of neofeminists, the female standard); normal male behavior is therefore pathologized, and Hyde’s “communication” invariably becomes one-way. It’s the belief that men and women are the same which renders attempts to reconcile marital difficulties “hopeless”, because it proceeds from a faulty assumption; until the inhabitants of Mars and Venus know where each other are coming from, there is no way to navigate toward a mutually-acceptable meeting place.
Damn girl – no one can rip an ass as artistically as you can! 😉
That is SPOT on. And I wonder how much she paid for that degree?
I don’t have a degree … at all. 🙁
BUT! I did spend a lifetime in the Navy in positions of leadership where I had to learn a lot about people. When I started out in submarines that was an all male world. Later on, after I became a Master Chief – I moved into the surface world and became the CMC of an “integrated” Cruiser (meaning it was crewed by both men and women).
I have to confess, the only thing I didn’t like about the integrated crew was the fact that a large portion of my time and the Master At Arms’ time was spent trying to prevent sex within the lifelines – which was a 24 hour, seven day a week job which was never 100 percent successful. I’ll also tell you that … though I never experienced it – one thing YOU haven’t heard about the bombing of the USS COLE (because the media never told you) – is the fact that a number of the crew “froze up” and became unable to fight the casualties the ship was experiencing because they were cut off from, and worried for the safety of a “lover” who was also on that ship. So, in some cases, the concern for a “lover” overrode the concerns for the ship and this impacted the damage control mission – and I have a problem with that.
But … in day to day operations, I found that a crew staffed by women and men was much better than an all male crew and this is because men and women are like “yin” and “yang”. What one sex lacks – the other makes up for and, if you’re creative and not too obvious with how you assign certain duties – you can really form a cohesive team on ship.
For instance, all my Damage Control teams were staffed by men. These were guys that would have to be in the midst of the fire, or the flooding – and would have to pull people out of situations and save lives. They were all men, not just any men – but strong men. The leaders of those teams – were BIG and strong men because men of stature have an easier time with leading other men. I had one woman on the DC Team and her name was “Tully” … I saw Tully carrying a 5 foot long, solid steel acetylene cylinder over her shoulder one day. She effortlessly wielded that thing. When she asked if she could be on the DC Team – my response was … “Oh yeah – without doubt”. Tully was a big and strong woman and she rivaled any man. She was also a lesbian (no problem there) … and she was a “one off” as she was like no other woman.
Women … I used them for communications and for directing, and tracking the status of DC Teams. This is just as important as the DC Team itself. Women are better communicators than men – and that is critical in an emergency. They are also very analytical – and I used them to keep track of DC Team members – how long “Guy A” has been in the compartment, and how much air he has left in his breathing apparatus. Men SUCK at this job – and easily get confused. They’re heads are in the ballgame thinking of the overall picture and trying to figure out how they will be a hero. Women, on the other hand, seemed to realize they were a part of a team and had a specific role to play.
It worked well – I just loved it – but I could never tell any of my superiors that I made manning decisions like this. We were consistently a “Battle E” ship though.
Evolution, Mother Nature – I don’t know – but there’s a reason for the two sexes and a reason that we need each other. We both have strengths and weaknesses that balance each other out at the end of the day.
A fascinating collection of shipboard insights! I was only in submarines, or in the submarine community, and was on active duty only from 1972 to 1982, so I never really encountered mixed-sex crews on active duty.
I can definitely see what you are talking about, though: both your story about USS COLE and also your experiences with the differing strengths of men and women aboard ship.
From a lowly LCDR …
Bravo Zulu, Master Chief.
No person who lives in the real world (or has ever had children of both sexes) can force himself to believe that men and women are largely the same physically, psychologically or in any other way; everyday experience that the sexes are extremely different can only be reconciled with the doctrine of asexuality by invoking “social construction of gender”, which is of course what agenda-driven people like Hyde promote.
I think this is the crux of the problem. Of the feminists and women I know who believe and promote this idea, they do not: 1) have children or want children, which is fine but a perspective is lost; 2) Only had sisters as siblings, or were only children; 3) Long, bad histories of choosing the wrong men as partners; or, 4) extremely radical lesbians.
I have a great appreciation of growing up with an older brother, even if he does enrage me at times. While growing up with a father also helps in understanding this dynamic, it’s my opinion that a lot is “lost in translation” due to the generational difference. Children see almost everything adults, and especially their parents, do as different, “unfair”, etc. Much better to observe this between siblings were age difference is (usually) not so large.
Maggie, I don’t see why you’re so interested in this topic. I happen to believe that 95% of gender is actually constructed. And do you want to know why? Because the old adage that “women are different” has always been the excuse to keep them in an inferior position in relation to men. Here’s my proposal: if we are going to insist that men and women are mostly different, then I will insist that men and women live apart from each other in different geographical areas (since we are so different from each other that we are practically a different species). And who knows, it might solve the problem of incessant, organized warfare practiced between men if men are forced to raise their little boys without women doing it for them. Nothing like 24/7/365 parenthood to keep men busy enough so that they won’t have the time to engage in imperial adventures.
It sounds like I’m being sarcastic, but I’m not. Men who live away from women, like those who live in monasteries, tend to be more like “women” than those men who live with women on a regular basis. So maybe if men and women live apart from each other, they’ll become more like one another.
Gee, what a concept!
What is “inferior”?
Does the fact that men are physically stronger than women make women “inferior”?
Does the fact that women can control the center of a man’s whole universe (sexuality) make a man “inferior”?
One of my buddies in the gym is 6’4″ and weighs 260 pounds – he’s a behemoth and there is no man on this planet who would want to meet him in a dark ally. However, his 5’2″ “spinner” wife controls him just fine – he is all ears when she’s talking to him with her 98 lb frame. Strangest, yet one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever witnessed.
Tom Brady is married to a Victoria Secret model – and she’s the brains of that relationship – she’s not inferior to him.
Living apart – men do not become like women. I’ve lived, underwater, for more than 100 days at a time with a submarine full of men. At the end of 100 days, no one’s sitting around doing “arts and craft” – the testosterone is palatable, the aggression is pent up, there have been several fights and when they hit the beach they aren’t thinking about hitting a tanning salon – they are heading to some place where they can find the best looking and easiest (always a trade-off here) females they can find.
I don’t think prison guards who’ve guarded both men and women would say they were the same – even though they live apart.
Your analogy with the monastery is flawed – “Monks” work hard to purify their spirit through systematic elimination of normal male sexual response. They do some pretty extreme things in this regard.
Men don’t cause wars any more than women do. A girl named Helen caused the Trojan war and Cleopatra caused some bloodshed – and they both did it with their femininity. I don’t care about “oil” – but sure, I’ll go fight for it (and have) because my family (including my wife) needs it.
I’m interested in the topic because I see the damage which has been done by pretending that men are (psychologically speaking) defective women; it’s a lot like the damage which used to be done when people thought that women were (psychologically speaking) defective men. And until people recognize that men and women are DIFFERENT, and that it’s good that we are, and that neither is “better” than the other, this gender war lunacy will continue.
As for “social construction”, I studied far too much biology, anthropology and evolutionary theory to ever believe it, even if I hadn’t been able to observe my brother, male cousins and boyfriends close up. My observations about men allow me to predict male behavior accurately most of the time, which is a lot more than I can say for the “social construction” crowd.
Susan
It is easy to tell that you a neo-feminist. You take it for granted that you can “insist” on something and be taken seriously. In other words, you are drunk with power.
She’s not a neo-feminist, she’s a regular poster I believe and I respect her. I just think she’s wrong on this one.
Krulac’s right, Rum; I, too, value Susan’s opinion, and the fact that we disagree on some issues only causes me to respect her more because it lets me know that she thinks for herself and isn’t afraid to voice her opinion.
In fact, I think that’s one of the great things about my readership; I can’t think of even one regular poster who agrees with me all the time, and that’s awesome. 🙂
I flirted with what Maggie calls “neo-feminism” back in my college days, but that was more than twenty years ago, before the World Wide Web.
What interested me more about “neo-feminism” was it’s separatism angle, meaning the belief that men and women separate from each other and live apart. Which I just described above.
But since it has gained an online presence, it has become obsessed with what it calls “pornstitution”, or what we call “sex work” on this blog. Back when I was this type of feminist, I would have considered “pornstitution” to be a complete waste of time, a distraction away from the “real” concern of women separating themselves physically from men. And if I were still this type of feminist today, I would be going to neo-feminist blogs and telling them that you are wasting your time on this issue when we should concentrate on separating ourselves from men.
But . . . twenty years ago, when anybody wanted to have a discussion about any issue, they had to meet more-or-less face to face, rather than post anonymously on a blog where no one can see your face and your post can be easily censored by a moderator. This need for physical presence made it harder to dismiss differences of opinion than the “newfangled” way of the Internet, including mine. But now, the SOB-SISTERS of the GREAT MOURNIARCHY pretty much can push people out as they please.
Alas, while lesbians and bisexual women are more willing to separate themselves from men, heterosexual women would be far tougher to convince, and het-women are in the majority. So it doesn’t look like men and women will be separating from themselves en mass any time soon. But they have separated in literature. I’ve read the books “Herland”, “The Wanderground”, and some lesser known books called “Ammonite” and “Womonseed”. And there a one book called “Ethan of Athos” which describes a male-only society. And for general science fiction buffs, there is “The Left Hand of Darkness”, where everyone is both male and female, and thus neither.
They would be impossible to convince.
Neo-feminists believe in actual physical separation from men? Are they completely daft? Where on the planet would this segregation occur and how would the species be propagated?
I mean that just pure goofy.
If you were an intelligent extraterrestrial, with no prior experience of male and female humans, would you say they are equivalent?
No way.
Biologically they have vastly different utilities. They have entirely different functionalities in terms of reproduction and capabilities for rearing their young. To declare psychological predispositions that eminently support such diverse biologies are a construction is in ignorance of what causes the psychology – biology.
The problem with society’s reward system is one of value perception, not concrete equality. Raising children as a stay at home mom is easily as hard and even more important in terms of the advancement of society’s development, than running a company, but society hasn’t recognized it as of equivalent import and so doesn’t reward it with similar materialism. Same situation can be applied to teachers vs. pro athletes. They too have vastly different utilities yet are compensated based on an illogical value system. But the fault lies in society’s determination of value, not realization of equivalence.
Surely there are studies that say men are compensated higher for the same job descriptions, but men have evolved biologically to be more aggressive. Do these studies control for this innate (and fundamentally different psychological trait) of aggression that causes men to demand more compensation? Can such a study really even be ‘objective’ or well controlled?
Why not take the opposite tack and focus efforts on society to appreciate and recognize the value that exists in sexual difference? (as Krulac describes, because there is great value.)
Until the neofeminists have evolved us all into hermaphrodites, the reality is difference.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/29/AR2007072900827.html
Same article says another study concludes that women are responding to societal realities (i.e. – men tend to penalize women who negotiate salary). That part – I don’t necessarily buy into.
I know my wife – who’s an engineer (and a damn good one), never negotiated salary and always had a crappy salary. The most recent job she got – she received an offer – and told me what it was. I told her to ask for more (a lot more, I told her HOW MUCH more – she thought I was nuts) – the company came right back and granted her request.
Now, here’s the deal – the problem with getting PAID MORE – is … you have to WORK more. I’ve never been in a situation where a lowly paid woman who did all the work got paid less where the men in her same job went home early with more pay. Not saying it doesn’t happen – but I’ve never seen it and it wouldn’t happen in any company I ran. It’s bad management – and that company isn’t going to last long.
It’s DHT (Dihydrotestosterone) … it makes men aggressive physically – in the jungle and the board room. More money means nicer car which means hotter women …
http://www.geekologie.com/2008/09/study_sports_cars_really_do_tu.php
DHT also means that hookers can always count on being able to part men from their money! 🙂
IMHO the single most important reason men tend to make more than women is that women aren’t willing to sell their souls to the company, which is what it takes to reach the higher strata. Men can get fixated on achieving a goal and abandon everything else for it, but women tend to be more well-balanced and will usually walk out of a situation which requires too much sacrifice of their personal and family lives. It’s psychologically healthier, but less apt to get one to the top.
Just because it’s the way women do it doesn’t mean it’s better, healthier, or more soulful.
Maybe if men and women talked these things out ahead of time, women would demand a bit more (as Krulac’s example shows) and men would keep things a bit more balanced between work and home.
IOW, they’d act a bit more alike because they would influence each other, not because they are innately the same.
yes i would agree with that. I have a bit more of a fimine side (As an artist type) so i don`t make as much $ as my wife.I need a balanced life more then ^ money.
It’s wonderful to see anyone who admits that there’s things in life more valuable than the $. The “wonderful” world system wants us to see $’s as the only thing of value, to work for money only and not value people for what they are and instead for what they have $ wise and material things wise.
I don’t agree at all you “have to sell you soul” to get promoted at work. I’ve been promoted in the past without doing that. I’ve had some outstanding women who managed me and others that if they did do that it didn’t match with their actions at all towards the people under them. Where I work there’s a woman who’s very high up in management that’s shown herself to be caring and decent many times especially a few months ago when she literally saved the jobs of my co-workers and I. There was another company restructuring and they could have EASILY laid us off. It would have been the choice with the least effort. Instead this lady took the time to place us in other jobs. She worked on this with others in upper management.
Laura, you don’t work in the sort of high-pressure corporate environment we’re talking about. As with everything there are exceptions, but generally the higher one climbs on the corporate ladder the more personal life one must sacrifice to be there, and most women aren’t willing to make those kinds of sacrifices.
The only person on here who knows for sure where I work and what kind of company it is, etc., is Sailor Barsoom. Actually, I currently work in a corporate environment (the same company for nearly 9 years). There’s plenty of high pressure stuff going on and that includes the department I’m in. I’ve seen people “sell out” to get ahead at every job I’ve done. I’m not alone in this. I’ve worked for a retail store (my 1st job), hospitals, health insurance companies and companies of other types. Yes, thanks for saying there’s exceptions to this (there are and there’s 4 women in management where I work now that are part of this group).
Yes, I do know, and I rather suspect that the people Maggie’s talking about would be, not you, not even your boss, but your boss’ boss.
It depends on the company. But in most environments, yes. And the sad thing is, those are the same people the so-called “feminists” are talking about, too; white middle-class women, usually highly educated, in the corporate stratosphere. The idea that women get paid less for similar jobs is nowadays largely a fantasy except in that environment.
Instead, we find that jobs which more women tend to do pay less than jobs that more men tend to do. Examples are: teachers get payed less than engineers. Now a male engineer doesn’t get payed any more than a female engineer (assuming similar job histories of course), and male teachers don’t get payed any more than female teachers (again, assuming similar job histories). But, there are a lot more female teachers than female engineers.
Either engineering schools aren’t taking on female students (this doesn’t seem to be the case), or firms won’t hire women as engineers (they’d probably like to hire more if only because it makes them look good), or not as many women choose to into engineering as into teaching, even though they know that teaching has crap pay (and this seems to be the real case).
And it really can’t be blamed on some faceless entity known collectively as “men” if more women refuse to take the higher-paying job.
Precisely. Here’s an even more interesting fact: though the great majority of librarians are female, the great majority of library administrators are male. We had a discussion about this in library school, and the overwhelming consensus was that it is that way because administrators have too much stress and don’t get to do the things most women become librarians to do. Many librarians would love to have female administrators, but few women volunteer for those positions.
It’s sad to see certain people abuse the scientific method in this way, and moreover quIte pointless; the existence of outliers (such as German aviatrix Hanna Reitsch and Soviet sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko) is not threatened by admitting differences between the sexes.
This bit has always fascinated me: “Does the fact that women can control the center of a man’s whole universe (sexuality)”
Although my career centered on sex, it’s never been the center of my whole universe. If I had to pick a center, I’d say it’s my relationship to other people.
Sure, men and women are different in many ways. But we’re also alike in so many ways, wanting and needing many of the same things. Why can’t we focus on that?
Speaking only for myself, I say it’s because too much attention is paid to the ways in which we’re similar and not enough to the ways we’re different, at the expense of men. 150 years ago it was the opposite; women’s characteristics were discounted as substandard, aberrant, etc. Now it’s men’s. As I say in the text, until we know where we really are it’s impossible to plan where we’re going to meet.
yes, balance and whole brain thinking
Hi Maggie,
Here’s a humorous take on the difference between men and women by comedian Sean Morey.
I literally laughed out loud at that. What a great line.
Here’s the thing about gender differences. We know that small variations in hormone levels can affect mood, perception, diet, attitude, etc. Why on Earth would we not think fairly dramatic hormone differences — differences integrated over many years of life — would not produce different ways of thinking?
Thanks, Mike (and Krulac, too!) I was rather proud of that one. 😉
My biggest beef with “social construction of gender” is that it’s simply “scientific creationism” in disguise: In every other mammal, gendered behavior is innate, but humans imagine that we are somehow different from everyone else, somehow “special”. This is pure nonsense; as regular reader Kaiju once said, “we may be the smartest monkeys, but we’re still monkeys.” Humans have created rituals around sleeping, eating, sex, birth, nursing, play, fighting, courting and everything else, yet somehow only the rituals attached to sex roles are offered as “proof” that they are “unnatural”.
I think it was Heinlein who said that we are very stupid whenever we forget that we are, at our core, animals with ideas above our station. Our brains have given us abstract reasoning, compassion for strangers, insights into the fundamental nature of the universe. But we are, deep down, still animals. Almost everything we do has some counterpart in the animal kingdom. What is courting and marrying but a sophisticated mating ritual? What are baseball and chess but sophisticated play? Our minds elaborate our animal natures, maybe even transcend them in some respects; they don’t make those nature go away. We are what we are — the product of hundreds of millions of years of evolution. And only a fool pretends otherwise.
Roissy had a decent post about this:
http://heartiste.wordpress.com/2012/01/12/study-men-and-women-are-different-species/
Maggie,
Do you ever read Roissy’s blog? You two have many points of agreement.
It would be *very* sweet to see you comment there and stun the crew. 😉
[…] I was looking up stuff on 2nd Wave Feminism this blogger called Maggie McNeill, (blog example here) http://maggiemcneill.wordpress.com/2012/01/11/hark-hark-the-dogs-do-bark/who is apparently a retired prostitute. Very intelligent and interesting lady. She writes with […]