Feb 05 2013
Gender Differences and Why They Don’t Matter So Much
Several incidents have recently created divisions within the skeptical community. The latest one was over a casual comment Michael Shermer made in an online talk show. He was asked why the gender split in atheism was not 50/50, “as it should be.” He said he thought it probably was 50/50, and suggested that the perception of unequal numbers might be because attending and speaking at atheist conferences was more of “a guy thing.” They might have asked him to explain what he meant. They didn’t. He didn’t mean to say it was encoded in the male DNA. He was simply recognizing a reality of our society: male/female interests and behavior tend to differ due to all sorts of cultural influences. Among other things, women might find it more difficult to attend meetings because of lower incomes and the need to arrange for babysitters. Watching sports on TV with other guys and beer is a guy thing too, but not because it’s hardwired into the male brain. It’s a guy thing because of customs and attitudes in our society. And it certainly doesn’t mean women are less capable or that societal influences can’t be overcome.
Nevertheless, Ophelia Benson assumed Shermer meant:
that women are too stupid to do nontheism. Unbelieving in God is thinky work, and women don’t do thinky, because “that’s a guy thing.”
That’s not what he meant. It’s not fair to judge him by one off-the-cuff remark. His record stands for itself: there is not a hint of sexism in his writings and he has always fully acknowledged women’s intelligence and their ability to think critically.
In a rebuttal article, Shermer quoted me:
I think it is unreasonable to expect that equal numbers of men and women will be attracted to every sphere of human endeavor. Science has shown that real differences exist. We should level the playing field and ensure there are no preventable obstacles, then let the chips fall where they may.
PZ Myers called this “a sexist remark.” He went on to say:
So sex differences are real, and we should just pretend that we don’t see sex and gender everywhere we look?…..
By the way, I hate the phrase “Science has shown” followed by some irrelevant fact…
There is no reason anywhere to think that women have less capacity for critical thinking, or that they are intrinsically more gullible and therefore more likely to be religious, or that they are less rational and so less suited to careers in science.
I was taken aback. I never suggested any such thing. I don’t think women have less capacity for critical thinking or are more gullible. And I certainly didn’t think I had made a sexist remark.
Neither did the man who e-mailed me to say:
It sounds like a perfectly reasonable statement yet Mr. Myers finds fault with it. He seems to criticize your statement in ways that aren’t clearly implied in that quote. He does say that “Science has not shown that women have significantly different cognitive abilities.”, and my sense is that he takes it as a given that there are no significant differences between what a female might be interested in or capable of compared to males (other than the obvious physical differences).
My correspondent referred to an article in Scientific American that showed a number of differences between the male and female brain. He asked if I would write about what the latest science really had to say about gender differences. I thought I had better try to do that, and try to explain the misunderstanding.
Men and Women Are Different
No one can deny that there are real differences between men and women. Women have chest bumps; men have dangly bits. Women menstruate, get pregnant, and lactate. Men have more testosterone and can grow beards. Women have two X chromosomes; men have one X and one Y.
Science has shown numerous less obvious differences. For instance, men’s brains are larger (but for intelligence as for penises, size doesn’t matter). The information in the Scientific American article about other brain differences is fascinating; you might want to read it now and then come back.
Boys are more likely to be autistic, to be dyslexic, to have Tourette syndrome, and to have ADHD. On standardized tests, boys have better spatial skills and girls have better language skills. Women are more likely to develop rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis. Heart attacks tend to cause different symptoms in men and women. The effects of drugs can be different in men and women; this is why there has been so much criticism of drug trials that were done only on male subjects.
Some of these are innate differences grounded in genetic, anatomic and physiologic realities. And epigenetics tells us that environmental factors can influence how genes are expressed, not only in the individual but in the offspring.
Some Differences Aren’t Hardwired
Other observed differences may not be inherent; they may well be due to cultural influences. We are finding out that many things we used to attribute to nature can be better explained by nurture. These cultural influences can be very difficult to tease out in studies, and mistakes have been made.
Are men really more aggressive? In most species, males are more aggressive than females. Castration of males usually has a pacifying effect on their aggressive behavior (just think of stallions versus geldings). Science told us men are more aggressive than women, and I assumed that was true. But recent studies have made us question that assumption.
Studying aggression is tricky. How do you measure aggression? Is it different from assertiveness? Do increased testosterone levels cause aggressive behavior or just facilitate something that is already occurring? Assertiveness and competition are influenced by societal expectations. Adults are more likely to engage in rough-housing with boys. Girls are encouraged to avoid physical combat and to use other tactics like communication and negotiation. That’s a wise strategy for girls since they aren’t physically as strong. There are new studies showing that girls are as aggressive as boys or are aggressive in different ways. Differences are less in some cultures than others. The evidence is conflicting: I don’t think we have a clear answer yet.
Are boys really better at math? The accepted wisdom was that boys are better at math and at spatial skills and girls are better at language skills. A recent study looked at 86 countries and found that math scores are determined by culture, not biology. In some Middle Eastern countries, girls did poorly but boys did worse. Both boys and girls do better in countries with greater gender equality. Old assumptions about greater variation in ability in males and about the superiority of single-sex schools did not fit the data. The studies are far from conclusive; for one thing, we could ask how reliably math scores reflect innate math ability.
What does this mean? Studies disagree with other studies, every scientist’s methodologies are criticized by other scientists, researchers’ choice of what to study influences results, and brain imaging studies may not mean what we think they mean. There is very little in current science to hang a hat on; the field is in flux. I frankly don’t know what to believe at this point. I think what all this means is that true innate differences in ability and personality between the sexes are fewer than what we had previously perceived through the biased lenses of our culture and society. More study is needed. I think we should expect to find some true differences, because of the evolutionary pressures on the different roles of men and women early in the development of our species. Factors like the demands of childbearing and infant care must necessarily have led women to different behaviors and preferences to improve survival.
It’s wrong to interpret any of the data as showing women’s inferiority or superiority. It’s equally wrong to interpret the data as showing no differences between men and women. Carol Tavris wrote an entire book about such misinterpretations, The Mismeasure of Woman.
Average Differences Don’t Tell Us Anything About Individuals
The point that often gets overlooked in these discussions is that gender differences are averages for the group. They are irrelevant to a discussion of what jobs any individual woman is qualified for or interested in. And it doesn’t mean we can predict what proportion of men or women will gravitate to any given area of human endeavor.
Women can fight. On average, men are bigger and stronger. But an individual woman can be bigger and stronger than an individual man. Now that combat jobs are being opened to military women, there will be many women who qualify and are motivated. There will be many men who are not qualified or motivated. On average, more men will be qualified. Naturally, there will always be more men than women in combat jobs, and I don’t see that as a problem.
Men can’t breastfeed, but plenty of them enjoy nurturing infants. There is no reason they can’t bottle feed; there is no reason why two gay men can’t do a great job of raising an infant. There is no reason men can’t serve as primary caregivers for infants. But I don’t foresee a day when as many men as women choose that occupation. For one thing, although formula feeding is a viable option, breast is best.
We used to hear some of the most ridiculous reasoning about jobs women “couldn’t do.” They were too emotional, less rational, they would go all weird during menstruation, they lacked intellectual capacity, they were too delicate, they would have nervous breakdowns, they would become masculinized. In 1874, Harvard professor Edward H. Clarke predicted that women seeking advanced education would develop “monstrous brains and puny bodies [and] abnormally weak digestion.”
As recently as 1974, there were objections to my assignment to an ATH (Air Transportable Hospital) unit because “women can’t lift as much weight” and “the guys like to take their shirts off in the field and use swear words.” I was sorry to see some of the same old tired, silly arguments recycled as objections to the recent policy change about women in combat.
In the 70’s I heard a man say there were a lot of jobs a woman simply couldn’t do, like garbageman or butcher or taxi driver. Another man protested, “Hey, my mother was a taxi driver, and she was a good mother!” As more women go into those jobs, attitudes change.
Women in Medicine
The first woman to attend medical school in the US was Elizabeth Blackwell in 1847. The faculty had no intention of admitting women. They let the students vote, saying that if even one man objected, she would not be accepted. The students thought it was a joke and voted unanimously in favor.
Progress was slow, and the percentage of women physicians actually decreased during the first half of the 20th century. In 1949, only 5.5% of entering medical students were women. I lived through a period of transition enabled by 3 developments: Title IX prohibited federally funded institutions from discrimination based on gender, the women’s movement happened, and effective contraception gave women control over their fertility. When I started medical school in 1966, 7% of the doctors in America were women. Today approximately half the students in medical schools are women.
There’s a ways to go. Women are still less likely to reach the highest academic echelons or leadership positions or to become surgeons. We need to try to understand why and to look for remedies like better childcare options and prejudice-reduction training. But it’s now abundantly clear that women can be doctors and they want to be doctors. I see medicine as a field that is particularly attractive for women. I anticipate that even more women will naturally gravitate to the profession as they see more female role models in the media and in real life. If the percentage of women surpasses 50%, will anyone start calling for reverse affirmative action to reduce it? What should the percentage be? 50% women? 60% women? 80%women? We can’t know until all the remaining barriers are truly gone. It will all sort itself out eventually. As I said, remove the preventable obstacles and then let the chips fall where they may.
I Am Not a Sexist
I was criticized for using the word “preventable.” I meant that in two ways: obviously we can’t prevent an obstacle if we have not yet been able to identify it; and there are some obstacles, like pregnancy and breastfeeding, that are not so preventable. But that doesn’t mean we can’t help women to deal with them, to work around the physical restrictions, to make their lives easier, to facilitate women’s life choices. And it doesn’t mean we should be complacent and stop trying to identify any remaining obstacles. More than one of my critics somehow managed to misinterpret my words to mean that I wanted barriers, that since I had had to overcome hardships I wanted other women to suffer as I had suffered. My statement of support for women was perceived as a sexist attack on women. I find that bizarre and hard to understand.
Steven Novella recently wrote about the divisions in the skeptical movement and the different conceptions about what it should be and should do. There have been some online eruptions about feminist issues, with over-reactions and regrettable behavior on both sides. I’d like it all to die a natural death, but I do want to clarify what I meant by these words:
I’m a skeptic.
Not a “woman skeptic.”
Not a “skep-chick.”
Just a skeptic.
I applaud the accomplishments of feminist organizations. They have performed a great service by raising consciousness and enlisting more women in skeptical pursuits. I admire them, but I choose not to join them, for the same reason I have never joined women doctors’ or other women’s groups. It’s a matter of personal preference. I personally prefer to be identified as a member of the larger whole rather than singled out in a smaller subgroup. In a sense, identifying as part of a group of women only reminds people that we are women and only tends to delay the day when people will notice our accomplishments and not our anatomy. As for the word “chick,” I’ve never liked it. I think calling me a “doctor” or a “bird colonel” (for the shoulder eagle insignia) shows respect but calling a colonel a “chick” would be inappropriate and disrespectful. Especially at my age, where I would be better classified as a tough old hen.
We all want the same thing: for women to be treated fairly and to have the opportunity to reach their potential in a freely chosen field of endeavor. There are different styles of activism, and my personal style was not the one many other women chose. I knew my interests and talents didn’t lie with politics or public confrontations. Considering who I was and where I was, I fought discrimination in the only way I felt was a viable option for me at the time, the only way I thought I could personally accomplish something, even if only in a small way. And I did. I took my rightful place in a male-dominated field, quietly persevered, did a more than competent job, served as a role model, and paved the way for others to follow. There were no “hard” barriers to overcome, no regulations prohibiting me from what I wanted to do; but there were plenty of “soft” barriers in the form of discriminatory language and treatment that made my life more difficult. If you are interested in the details, they’re all in my book Women Aren’t Supposed to Fly: The Memoirs of a Female Flight Surgeon.
I got into a discussion with a woman on Facebook. She said all the advances in women’s rights were made by political action, not by individuals like me. She said my personal experiences were meaningless and I shouldn’t even try to talk about the subject, since I didn’t have a degree in gender studies like she did. Some feminists would consider me an Uncle Tom and a coward, and criticize me for not following the same course of action they did.
I offer 3 anecdotes to illustrate that my approach did accomplish something:
- A teenage girl went home and excitedly told her mother she had just seen a woman doctor (me) working in the ER. She had always been interested in medicine and had planned to become a nurse; but it had somehow never occurred to her that a woman could be a doctor. Seeing me inspired a change in her career plans.
- At the end of my internship, my evaluator wrote that my performance was so good that it had convinced them to ask for more “lady interns.”
- I wrote to a woman doctor who had done the same residency where I had been the first female and who was currently working in the hospital where I had been the first woman intern (indeed, the first woman doctor, the only woman doctor in the whole gigantic medical center). I asked her what problems she had encountered as a woman in the Air Force and in medicine, and she didn’t even have the faintest idea what I was talking about.
In speaking about his personal brand of skepticism, Steven Novella said “I don’t pretend that anything I have done is the right way — it’s just the way I have chosen because it fits me”. That’s exactly what I mean. He and I are in tune with Frank Sinatra: I did it my way.
Conclusion
- There are probably some inherent gender differences in aptitudes and preferences.
- We can’t yet define what they are.
- It doesn’t really matter very much, because
- The average tells us nothing about the individual
- We can work to overcome differences due to nurture
- We can compensate to some extent for differences due to nature.
I say again: it is unreasonable to expect that equal numbers of men and women will be attracted to every field of human endeavor.
In his Inaugural Address, President Obama said “Our journey is not complete.” He was talking about society’s acceptance of homosexuals, but it’s true of society’s acceptance of women, too. And our journey will only be delayed by misinterpreting the science of gender differences, imposing arbitrary 50/50 goals, or squabbling amongst ourselves. I hope we can lay these disputes to rest and cooperate towards our mutual goals.
Women can be anything except fathers, and don’t rule that out just yet!
209 Responses to “Gender Differences and Why They Don’t Matter So Much”
In high school the girls were told there were 2 things they couldn’t be: Pope and President of the United States, and the second one was because we were British.
If one is going to judge Shermer then of course it should be on his entire record rather than one off the cuff remark. That doesn’t mean that the remark itself can’t be criticised. What he actually said, of course (you seem to have sanitised it a bit), is
“It’s who wants to stand up and talk about it, go on shows about it, go to conferences and speak about it, who’s intellectually active about it, you know, it’s more of a guy thing.”
I doubt anybody would have responded with anything more than an eyeroll if it weren’t for the “intellectually active” part, and possibly the suggestion that women aren’t prepared to stand up for their beliefs. Sure, he might not have meant it the way it sounds, but surely if a person unintentionally gives offence with a poorly articulated statement then the appropriate response would be to explain your meaning and apologise for the offence, rather than attack the person who points out the offence? Shermer’s pugnacious response to some fairly tepid criticism of an unfortunate remark has damaged my opinion of him a great deal more than the original remark.
I also think that your statement about most men not “wanting” to be primary caregivers because “breast is best” is a little odd. Why would that affect a man “wanting” to be a primary caregiver, as opposed to informing his decision on whether to give effect to that “want” or not? It sounds a little more as though you are of the opinion that men OUGHT not to be primary caregivers because breast is best, which is a little too much biological essentialism for me.
In any event, the inability to breastfeed is hardly an insurmountable obstacle. The breastfeeding phase of a child’s life is relatively brief, there are several ways for a non-lactating caregiver to feed an infant breast milk, and in the final accounting, the benefits of breast milk, especially in a developed country and all the more so in a developed country with strong social support systems, are not so overwhelming that there aren’t innumerable different considerations that may outweigh the benefits of breast feeding even if the caregiver is a lactating female. The inability to breastfeed is a paper thin barrier compared to, for example, the social implications of a man choosing to be a primary caregiver.
Note that Ophelia Benson was speaking about the stereotype that “women don’t do thinky”, and that Shermer confirmed the stereotype with what he said. She didn’t claim that he actually believed the stereotype. In fact, she pointed out a little later that if he had thought about it a bit longer (for example using the “just substitute ‘black’ smell test”), he probably wouldn’t have said it.
But I don’t want to dwell too much on that issue, but rather address the rest of the article, which was quite good on the whole, and look forward. In that context, I want to ask: what (soft) obstacles do you see currently for women to fully participate in the skeptic and/or secular movements? When you say “remove the preventable obstacles and then let the chips fall where they may”, without mentioning any of the obstacles (and, in fact, including an anecdote that basically says “what obstacles?”), you appear to suggest that we’re past the “removing the obstacles” phase, and in the “seeing where the chips fall” stage. This, of course, is one of the points of contention in the feminist/anti-feminist debates. There are hints in the article that suggest you don’t actually believe that all obstacles are gone, but I would appreciate if you could clarify: what obstacles do you see today, and what do you think might be done about them? Thanks.
Shermer’s remark is still very regrettable. There may be differences between men and women’ aptitudes, but to just assume that “conferences are a guy thing” seems to be a rushed conclusion. There are certainly fields in which the proportion between men and women in conferences is not nearly as disparaged as atheism/skepticism’s. The rushed remark seems to be a simplistic way to get rid of any suspiscioun that there are barriers within atheism/skeptical groups that are preventing women participation.
I admit, I hate it when the skeptics start talking sexism. It often seems there is so much heat, drama and umbrage delivered with that extreme pickiness that only a skeptic can deliver. – it’s hard to really get to the meaningful part of the topic.
But this is a good post taken on it own…I suspect that there’s more backstory and will be future ramifications that other bloggers will criticize and spin, that I will never see. Because, you know, I hate it when the skeptics talk about sexism. So It’s not a topic I follow.
“The point that often gets overlooked in these discussions is that gender differences are averages for the group. They are irrelevant to a discussion of what jobs any individual woman is qualified for or interested in. And it doesn’t mean we can predict what proportion of men or women will gravitate to any given area of human endeavor.”
Just wanted to say thanks for this. It IS often overlooked, not just in gender differences, but it seems to me with ALL averages for a group, and that drive me batty.
I really have no awareness about the preceding controversy, but I like what you wrote about your own experiences.
In the political realm I generally find moderates/centrists annoying because of their outspoken disrespect of those who are more radical and outspoken. Think of MLK Jr’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Your article seems to present a more moderate push for equality and yet you also express support for those who come at it with different methods. You defend yourself and your actions – which as you note have made their mark – but you do not bash the work of others.
I wish more moderates in politics could follow your lead.
The overall movements for equality need the radicals who forcefully push the envelope. Those who march, who do civil disobedience, who speak out loudly at every opportunity.
But those movements also need the people who quietly, often anonymously, slowly chip away at the views of the thoughtless ignorant. Those who don’t really believe in prejudice but unthinkingly practice it just because up to then it had been the default.
For progress to be made, we need a lot of moderates and we need a few radicals. There’s no need to embrace or work together, but there should be some respect between them. Your article showed respect and (for what little it’s worth) earned my respect. My world is a better place not just because of those who loudly push for equality but for those who quietly push for it too.
I hope the others involved in the earlier skirmish read this article and think that over.
There’s a term on the feminist blogs, “Mansplaining,” that might be applicable here, when a man explains something to a woman in that arrogant tone, like, how could she not get it?
On skeptical (and other) discussion boards, I have been bemused by the number of men who think they are more of a feminist than I am. Not to get into my feminist creds, but like Harriet, I’m not so young, I was studying math and science when few women did, and I entered a profession that is traditionally male-dominated (though not so much anymore). Some of these guys get really nasty. I found it hard to read PZ Myers’ post.
And I 2nd mousethatroared: “The point that often gets overlooked in these discussions is that gender differences are averages for the group. They are irrelevant to a discussion of what jobs any individual woman is qualified for or interested in. And it doesn’t mean we can predict what proportion of men or women will gravitate to any given area of human endeavor.”
I think for some male feminists (if we may call them that) it’s about jumping to easy conclusions in order to shame someone you perceive to be stepping out of line, thus displaying your solidarity with the group. In other words, mob mentality.
Be grateful. The conflict has been doing a lot of damage.
To be fair, in another article Shermer did rather foolishly inflame the issue by calling the issue a “witch hunt” and including a mind-numbingly silly and gratuitous Nazi reference:
http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=fi&page=shermer_33_2
It was not one of Shermer’s finer moments, I’m afraid.
Also, to be fair, there is a misogyny problem in the skeptical movement. It’s hard not to come to that conclusion if you spend some time perusing the Slymepit:
http://slymepit.com
Suppose for a moment that this is a direct quote:
“It’s who wants to stand up and talk about it, go on shows about it, go to conferences and speak about it, who’s intellectually active about it, you know, it’s more of a guy thing.”
All we can learn from this (at least in isolation) is that Schermer is a bit of an arrogant ass. Nothing much new there. That does not zero out his many contributions.
But Schermer clearly doesn’t ‘get’ feminism. He pays lip service to it in the semi-apologia Dr. Gorski linked but seems to ignore that what equality women have achieved has been hard-earned, often clawed from the grip of “old white guys.” Note to Schermer: as an old white guy yourself, if you aren’t working to assure equal opportunities for everyone in the field in which you are a leader, then you are part of the problem.
That is not to say that equal opportunity need be the sole focus of one’s every action only that it should inform every action. Knowing that something is right is meaningless without acting to advance it.
I may have to look around a bit to see if I can find it again, but I ran into an article not so long ago that was discussing the issue of early retirement in the medical community and how it was unbalancing the system. To sum things up, the medical system assumes that most doctors, after spending 10+ years in schooling and internships, will stay in the medical field for several decades. The funding assumes this kind of a pattern with much of the education being heavily subsidized by governments and hospitals. The catch is that doctors are retiring, or at least reducing their hours considerably, earlier. They’re serving their required term and then dropping out of the game and going into retirement or semi-retirement.
How does this relate to gender differences? Well, as you mentioned, one of the big differences between the sexes is childbirth. There are some hard limits on how long you can delay getting around to children, so female doctors are in a situation where they either have to serve their minimum (most of the subsidies requiring X years of service in the local community) and then step away, or have children early and then try to get back into it. The latter is complicated by the huge amounts of debt accrued through medical school, even with scholarships and subsidies. And, with the way that the medical field keeps changing, taking a few years off, even if you can manage to balance your medical and family duties, can leave hustling just to catch up, let alone excel.
The problem is not entirely a male/female thing. Doctors of both sexes are reportedly simply burning out earlier as I understand it. All kinds of factors could be raised from increased bureaucracy to the cost of malpractice insurance (and the need to order all sorts of unnecessary tests as insurance against having to use malpractice insurance). One could point out that today’s doctors are coming from the “me” generation, Generation X and the Millennium Generation, which have a stereotype of not subscribing as much to the idea of duty (personally, I don’t subscribe so much to the generational theory, but mentioning it as a possibility). But it’s reportedly a problem, a drain on the current system, and one which may eventually make it more expensive just to attend medical school if these subsidies go away.
*half smile* And… I think that I may have drifted from my point. Blame it on me being mildly feverish from the latest flu strain. Anyhow, there are some gender differences to be sure, and it will be interesting to see how it all pans out.
The Scientific American link leads to a Page Not Found… I’m guessing it was by Doreen Kimura? Anyhow, I wanted to recommend the book “Brain Storm” by Rebecca Jordan-Young (Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Brain-Storm-Flaws-Science-Differences/dp/0674063511/). It’s a thorough investigation of the field of “brain organisation” i.e. hardwired brain differences by sex and sexual orientation. One of Jordan-Young’s premises is that because these studies are _observational_ studies (as well as questionnaire studies) and not true experiments (by necessity – you can’t ethically subject human beings to varying hormone treatments and then control their growth environment), it isn’t enough to pick a few studies (as typical proponents do). You need to do a _synthesis_ of all the work done, and see if any conclusions can be made. So she did a synthesis of 400 of the most-cited studies in the field upto 2008, and also interviewed 20-odd of the most cited scientists. And what she found was that the claims of hardwired sex differences in the brain are _not_ supported.
SBM readers should really read this book, it’s right up their street – well researched and goes into heavy scientific detail about how these scientists do their work. Jordan-Young’s background is in fact in epidemiology and sociomedical research. Here’s a short paper by her which covers some of the same ground:
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs12152-011-9134-4?LI=true
I disagree with the conclusion “it is unreasonable to expect that equal numbers of men and women will be attracted to every field of human endeavor.” Unless what you mean is, “given the sociological status quo, it should be no surprise”. Furthermore, I think it is absolutely _desirable_ to have diversity, and that we need to take _proactive_ steps (including the much-maligned affirmative action) to increase diversity. The reasons being twofold:
1) Instrumental diversity – diverse groups perform better. Diversity is good for any occupation/group/organisation. See “The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies”
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691138540
2) Personal fulfilment – taking proactive steps to increase diversity ensures that sociological pressures and social-cognitive biases don’t come in the way of people who belong to under-represented groups.
Finally, on a personal note: I’m male and I’ve worked in the software industry for 14 years. As you know, it’s a field that is heavily male-dominated. The sex-typed-interests explanation is routinely trotted out to explain the lack of women in my field as well. Other than the reasons I’ve given above, there’s another reason this argument really annoys me: a majority of the men in my field are not interested in it either. The percentage of men who are really interested in programming, who can code well, is really small. The others just sort of “fall” into the field because it’s a good career that pays well and has a high status. But no one questions their presence at all; it’s a boys’ club and they’re socially entitled to be there. Here’s a good post by one of the luminaries in the field, Martin Fowler, arguing for diversity:
http://martinfowler.com/bliki/DiversityImbalance.html
Honestly, I’m getting a little tired of how willing PZ Meyers is to misrepresent his fellow skeptic’s comments in pursuit of the next “big controversy” in the Skeptical Community. I respect the fact that you folks here at SBM continue to engage in dialogue with him in a measured and respectful way (even if he doesn’t return the favor), but I’m just as glad that I don’t have to.
“Finally, on a personal note: I’m male and I’ve worked in the software industry for 14 years. As you know, it’s a field that is heavily male-dominated”
As a contrasting anecdote’ I used to work as a creative person in technology/web development. The companies I worked for did both creative and software development and both department were pretty close to 50/50 gender wise, although due to small numbers it varied at different times.
I guess my point is that even in professions that are traditionally gender dominated there are often segments that are more diverse. It would be interesting to see if comparing those different segments of a profession give us any meaningful information on the barriers in those fields.
Oh my!
Shermer certainly exposed some possible sexist tendencies (or maybe just a pompous ass who has nevertheless contributed much to skepticism), but some women seem to be awfully touchy and unforgiving over casual remarks.
I, too would like to applaud HH’s statement about the difference between individual women and group averages. What seems important to me is that any individual woman is so vastly much freer to choose how to live her life than I was. As far as how childbearing affects these choices, perhaps the most remarkable change of all is that women can now choose not to have children at all–without joining a convent.
My internist has three small children and works two to three days per week. This is sometimes inconvenient, but I work with it because I think it’s important to support policies that enable women who choose to do two jobs. I suppose her taking this route will slow her progress–does this mean she is a victim of sexism? Her husband is specializing and she is not. Does this mean he is an overbearing sexist pig and she is being kept down? I think they are doing exactly as they wish and are happy with their choices. It is not a lack of childcare options (they have a nanny) or anything systemic. My doc simply found that she adores her children and wants to see more, rather than less, of them in their early years. There are a number of female physicians at this clinic following a similar career curve. Call me what you will, but I applaud it.
Why should men be accused of sexism because some women freely choose to spend less energy on their careers than their families for a few years? Perhaps the system can do more to assure that women can more easily resume their career paths after time away, but I don’t have enough information to state that outright.
As to skepticism, I had no idea there was any sex bias. Is it established that there is? Just because women don’t attend conferences doesn’t mean they are less skeptical. And here in Milwaukee, the gender split on football (Packers anyway) is just about even I’d say.
Finally, anyone who has the slightest awareness of HH’s career path should be ashamed of themselves for even implying that she is any way sexist–and I took a whole bunch of Women’s Studies classes in the 70′s before I chose a major.
I’m delighted that Title IX was a benefit for Harriet. It was one of the items I fought for while serving on our university’s athletic council. Pre title IX male varsity members received jacket and sneakers, women varsity were required to pay for theirs. Many women put their jobs at risk suing for equal pay, arguing for equal employment in academia, equal research opportunities. Many were too frightened to take the risk. I think the distinction is being cursed ( some might say rewarded) with an ‘activist’ gene.
Eugenie Mielczarek
@ Logiwonk.
“Honestly, I’m getting a little tired of how willing PZ Meyers is to misrepresent his fellow skeptic’s comments in pursuit of the next “big controversy” in the Skeptical Community. ”
Well said.
@ Harriet Hall
Thank you for a thoughtful, well-written article: a breath of fresh air, given the context.
Even a lot of the dichotomous things we say are unarguable about males and females are, if examined carefully enough, actually untrue. Men can lactate. “Men” can have bumpy bits (a person who is genetically XY may have breasts due to androgen insensitivity or breast implants to match a gender identity they feem more comfortable with). The quotes around “men” are to indicate that this category is problematic – a person who is genetically XY may look like a Playboy playmate. Are they a man or a woman? People with breasts can grow beards (with and without surgery or hormones). What about hermaphroditic people, are they men or women?
“Maleness” and “femaleness” are really continuums that overlap in large (math ability, nurturing and body strength) or small (lactation and beard growth) ways. And that’s just talking about biological differences, once you get into gender it’s even more complicated, to the point of meaninglessness. If you’re not at work, look up “Buck Angel” and really think about what is going on there. Really think about the effect of modern surgery, hormones and gender equality are on abilities, identities, characteristics and meanings of the words masculine, feminine, man, woman, male and female.* And since a lot of the difference that people get worked up over (math, interests, engineering degrees, science participation) are areas of extensive and changing overlapping continuums, while there may be some truth in aggregate, as Dr. Hall says – like so many things it comes down to individuals rather than groups.
And while this is true, it’s also to a certain extent trivial – the enormous variety of cultural expressions on nearly every measure shows that almost any evolutionarily history we have for behaviour can probably be overcome. Polyandry is a practice in some Tibetan societies. In certain Middle Eastern cultures women control the purse strings. I watched Argo over the weekend, and one of the prominent images was of an Iranian woman in a hijab driving in a jeep holding a machine gun.
I would replace the term “women” with “people”, ’cause I’m a pedantic nit-picker
As for people disappointed by Shermer, Myers and even Dr. Hall, and how this reflects on the skeptical movement – skeptics are humans. Humans are flawed. Skepticism is not religion. There will be differences of opinion and our leaders will say things we disagree with. One thing skepticism should address as a regular topic of interest is the fact that nobody will be right all the time, and you won’t always agree with them. I dislike the tendency to try and paint our leaders (political, skeptical, feminist, whatever) as being all good, all bad, or on a good or bad side. For me, skepticism should be about evidence for conclusions and the conclusion or argument itself being valid or not. While I think that Israel has a right to exist, I also think that the Israeli government has done some rather horrible things to the Palestinian. Conversely, I think exactly the same thing of Palestine. Barak Obama has done some good things for America, particularly its (lack of a) health care system, but he’s also dropping drones on a variety of countries in ways that are quite horrible and cause tremendous suffering (the fact that it is against long-term American interests is the least objectionable part of that policy in my mind). Osama Bin Laden was shot in the face (yay!) based on evidence from polio vaccinations (holy shit what a bad idea). The Dalai Lama is the charming, happy, peaceful, rightful ruler of Tibet…whose predecessors were not elected and had a policy of preventing modernization iwthin the country. Everything, everyone, and in particular every idea should be judged on its own merit, not on the basis of belonging to a specific group. Shermer may have a lot of good ideas, Myers may do a lot of good opposing creationism, that doesn’t mean every action they take and every opinion they express is a good one.
*And note that I put the male/masculine/man first in each word pair. Tsk, sexist. I should be beaten with sticks.
Dr Hall, I think your opening paragraph is a little unfair. You give an incomplete summary of what Shermer said and then you say what he meant, as if you had direct access to his mind. Then you go on to say that I “assumed” what he meant – while not mentioning the fact that I quoted him directly, and without providing the quoted line yourself. I didn’t “assume” anything. I didn’t say what he meant; I said what he said.
Then you say – and this is the part I really want to disavow – “It’s not fair to judge him by one off-the-cuff remark.” Of course it’s not, but I didn’t judge him. I did judge that one sentence, yes, but I didn’t judge him. I made no ontological claim about him at all. He was talking in real time, as opposed to writing, and it’s easy to say clumsy things when talking in real time. My article was not about Shermer, it was about stereotypes and especially about the one that popped out in that sentence of Shermer’s.
I like the rest of this article a lot. I particularly like the point about averages and individuals, which is one I make all the time.
I suppose it’s good to talk about this but I’m not convinced it is anymore for various reasons. All heat, no light, as someone else mentioned.
There are PLENTY of women skeptics and atheists around doing positive things instead of bickering with others. I choose to be one of those. If skeptical controversarians want to continue with this topic at the expense of doing actual skepticism and making a difference in the public sphere, they can keep at it. I have more important things to do. Meanwhile, I’ll continue to support those who do a good job leading by example. Like Harriet.
In my opinion, Shermer’s remark was sexist, which of course does not imply that he himself is sexist. The remark is sexist no matter who said it. And as such, it is criticizable. If I had said such a thing, especially the “intellectually active” part, I would have just apologized, period. We all say stuff that we should not have said, occasionally. Unfortunately, the event becomes another opportunity to enter a into a he said/she said war with other atheists or skeptics. This article is no exception. It’s lamentable that this is going on in communities that pride themselves in the use of reason, but cognitive bias in favor of friends or allies is a very human thing, and it is thus unavoidable. I also find Dr Hall’s remark sexist as well, and of course I’m not suggesting she is sexist. The remark is sexist because it is unhelpful, and to a young girl or woman aspiring to get into a male-dominated field, especially the “preventable obstacle part”, likely suggests that there are innate deficiencies that are not preventable. It falls into the category of stereotype threat. As a no-longer-young scientist, I chose as a matter of personal preference to associate with women’s right’s organizations because I believe they have been very beneficial as a whole for girls or women wishing to become scientists. It’s the same thing for other minority-oriented organizations. They aim to level the playing field and combat stereotype and their threat to performance. As Dr. Hall, I too would much rather be known as a “scientist” than as a “woman scientist.” My gender has nothing to do with my love for science, my cognitive abilities, or my personal preferences as to what I’m passionate about. As a matter of fact, I do cringe whenever I am presented as a “female scientist” or a “Latina scientist”. One day, these qualifiers will make no sense or add anything about the person. But for the time being, we are not there yet. Therefore, I do not oppose being labeled a “female scientist” if my example can help others achieve their life-long dreams.
Quite honestly, this strikes me as hair splitting when viewed in light of the totality of the exchange between you and Shermer.
But surely Dr Hall meant what I wrote in the Free Inquiry article, didn’t she?
Looking again, I see that she didn’t actually say that. She didn’t mention where I wrote about it, in fact, or link to it. Probably an oversight, but not entirely helpful.
The totality of the exchange of course includes some pretty wild accusations that Shermer made against me when the article was published – as you point out yourself!
But as for what I wrote in the article, no, it’s not hair-splitting at all. In fact it’s rather important, because Shermer himself reacted as if I had called him sexist, and I hadn’t. There *is* an important difference between criticizing an act or an utterance and making a generalization about the person who acts or utters.
Oops. I replied to a comment by David Gorski, but I don’t see his comment now. Sorry.
I didn’t know anything about this controversy but am nevertheless happy it caused this post of Dr. Hall’s to come about. Lots of things I didn’t know and some interesting personal history. I wish people could simply respect all people as people and not go about the bother of dividing everyone up into subgroups. Classifying things is great as a method of identification but I think it falls short with people and leads to more divisions than anything else.
One minor note about the President’s inauguration speech and his repeated refrain of “Our journey is not complete.” Most people may remember the unprecedented references to gay rights that Dr. Hall concluded with and may think he didn’t reference women, but in fact it started out like this:
Source: Washington Post online transcript.
Schermer’s comment consisted of his explanation of his perception which appears to me to be nothing more than a very typical gender stereotype and worthy of criticism. I’m sure Schermer would like to take his comment back, however to pass his remarks off as merely an innocent explanation of how people do things differently and engage in causes differently seems a bit like shruggery to me.
I’m very pleased to see Harriet address the issue and respond directly. It’s so much easier to have discussions which move forward when people do that sort of thing. I liked the post — thought it was clear, thoughtful, and as scientific as one can be when dealing with the messy topic of gender differences.
@WLU – what at thoughtful comment. (among many thoughtful interesting comments). Just a idea on…
HH said “We all want the same thing: for women to be treated fairly and to have the opportunity to reach their potential in a freely chosen field of endeavor.”
WLU “I would replace the term “women” with “people”, ’cause I’m a pedantic nit-picker”
I don’t want to fault Harriet Hall’s excellent article, but, because I have a son AND daughter, I DO often think about how gender stereotypes impact both genders. I remember when my Mom was a teacher in the 70s and 80s it was thought that men were not well suited to early education. Now we are seeing more men in early education and I think the diversity is an improvement for everyone. Other traditionally female fields are seeing more men as well. I hope that both my son and daughter will be able to follow their interests and strengths with less social pressure based on stereotypes.
As a side note, I believe that there is at least one medical field where there is consistent sexism and that’s gynecologists. Whether due to market pressure (I know several women, including my wife, who are uncomfortable with the idea of being examined down there by a male) or general bias, it’s my understanding that men are less likely to be hired and receive less pay in that field. I guess the question is, is this sexist? If so, is it something that we should address by artificially adjusting the numbers by forcing hospitals to hire a certain quota?
I think social justice could pretty easily accommodate an exemption for any line of work that requires directly handling the genitalia of one sex but not the other.
OK, then let’s take this example: Female urologists. Yes, they take care of women, too, but the “bread and butter” of most urology practices tends to be overwhelmingly made up of male complaints and diseases. In the case of urology it’s prostate cancer, benign prostatic hypertrophy, and erectile dysfunction. So if it’s OK for a woman not to want a male gynecologist, is it OK for a man not to want a female urologist? Or how about male breast surgeons? There is male breast cancer after all; so your definition doesn’t really apply, as it doesn’t for the female urologist given that urologists do take care of females.
@DugganSC:
Where are you getting your data suggesting women ob/gyn’s are “less likely to be hired and receive less pay”? I looked it up and according to slide no. 4 here, men earn 14% more than women in this field, which is admittedly a lower difference than other specialties it seems: http://www.medscape.com/features/slideshow/compensation/2012/womenshealth
If we’re going based on anecdotes I have met many women over the years who told me they would prefer a male doctor period. This includes their ob/gyn.
As David pointed out urologists are almost entirely devoted to treating men.
FWIW My own anecdotal experience from working in a profession (medical books) where clientele was almost all MD’s in Greece (I left in 2004) is that I have not once ever even met a woman urologist. Unlike gynecologists where men are quite commonplace. Though I found a 2008 NY Times article that says that in the US this is changing and apparently estimated that now 20% of all urologists are women: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/09/health/09urol.html?_r=0
That’s why I included the “but not the other” – trying to avoid the trap!
I, for one, raised in a conservative apostolic Christian church, have learned to ignore the gender of the professional and let them get about their business of resolving my problem. I even find many of them willing to give you some space or time if you’re having anxiety over the situation…”bedside” manner is not dead.
I think I learned that lesson from “My Cousin Vinny”.
Many procedures can be uncomfortable simply because it involves another human being regardless of gender.
It seems a poignant lesson no matter the topic.
On the topic of gynecologists…As a consumer I have to say that this is one of the topics where the individual you are dealing with is very important – IMO. I’ve had good and not good experiences with both female and male gynecologist/reproductive endocrinologists (another field where alot of “handling” is going on). The best gyn that I ever had was a woman, but she was also slavic, middle-aged and had a tremendous bedside manner, something that her female partner did NOT have.
That said, if I have to go to a new practice and I have to choose someone blind, I’ll choose the woman. Pretty much on the basis of the fact that I will be a little less anxious going in. But if I got a good recommendation on a man, I wouldn’t hesitate to see them. Most of the women I know seem to be similar, although I do know women that would default to a man.
I will say that the one area I have found that I have a distinct gender preference is with therapists, (social worker, psychologist). I’ve had a couple of women social workers and one man (all CBT) and I just could not get comfortable with the man. It wasn’t him, he made some good recommendations, but I just couldn’t feel easy enough to have a genuine dialogue with him and I felt like it undermined the process. Not sure if this is common.
As an older woman scientist I’d like to endorse what Dr. Hall said with respect to models. As a woman scientist, I have an obligation to help advancement by serving as a model and by making change at the individual level. To paraphrase Newton, by standing on Dr. Hall’s shoulders (I’m a generation behind her) I have achieved more. Because of her generations’ efforts, I have an obligation to pay it forward by helping the next generation to advance further.
I wanted to say this in the context of Dr. Hall’s aforesaid exchange on Facebook. As someone also with a minor in feminist thought, leading by personal example creates far more change than any tome of political theory. The gal at Facebook was way off-base. Change happens at home, at work, at the individual level. We lead by example.
[...] you may have seen via this comment on A fabulous Manly Meal, Harriet Hall has a long post on Gender Differences and Why They Don’t Matter So Much. The key point is [...]
@mousethatroared
I think that when choosing therapists, many different factors play a role. Some therapists might say that if you had problems working with a male therapist, that’s more the reason to work with him – to tease out why, what caused this problem. And sometimes a male therapist may become for their client a kind of a father figure, which may or may not be good in therapy – and conversely, a female therapist might become a mother figure, which will also play a role.
I completely side with Michael Shermer / Harriet Hall on this one; I see nothing at all sexist in Michael Shermer’s remark. In fact, I’m glad to have their read on it, and absolutely plan to raise my daughter to understand that being intellectually active is more of a guy thing.
Sorry, that should, of course, be “Dr. Harriet Hall”. I guess it’s not a qualifier I really I expected to need in front of a name like “Harriet”, what with intellectual activity being more of a guy thing.
I forgot to mention: I detest the word “chick” as well!
[...] Twitter feed. Other interesting articles that hit my feed were a blog post by Hariett Hall (“Gender Differences and Why They Don’t Matter So Much“) and a 2005 article from Time magazine on “The Iceland Exception: A Land Where Girls [...]
To provide an example of what Harriet Hall asked Ophelia last week on facebook:
Harriet Hall: “Why is it acceptable for you to dismiss the perceptions of other women as lies, when you won’t let anyone “on the other side” do so?
http://images.wikia.com/phawrongula/images/9/91/Harriet_Hall_vs_Ophelia_Part_1.jpg
Ophelia dismisses Sara Mayhew’s tweet about what other women experienced…
http://images.wikia.com/phawrongula/images/6/6f/Ophelia_denies_experience_of_others_-_hypocrisy2.png
Their hypocrisy is amazing! Speaking of hypocrisy, some of the most of the sexist and ignorant statements I’ve seen in this whole drama came from the Skepchick/FTB camp. I can think back to Greta Christina’s blog where she wrote that she’s trying to help men get laid, as if writing that in her blog is going to influence men to listen to her because men are mindless creatures easily persuaded by sex. Then there’s the “Dear Dick” letters to Richard Dawkins, but they would object if anyone calls RW “Twatson”. Either both should be wrong, or both should be okay.
The list goes on and on. PZ’s “objectification” of women is okay, but when someone else does it (or not even for sure did it), then it’s not okay. FTB’s still associate with Greg Laden even though Greg Laden threatened Justin Griffith, but it’s not okay for FTB’s adversaries to associate with people they don’t like. Melody Hensley and Surly Amy picked on Sara Mayhew using gender-based stereotypes, but when people stand up to Melody Hensley, then they’re bullies.
Hoorah, Colonel Hall! Bravo Zulu on this blog! *hand salute…. ready, two*
It was a simple question, not a trap. I asked it because I did notice your rather clumsy and obvious qualification of your answer.
Be that as it may, if you did view the question as a “trap,” the “trap” clearly got you; that is, unless I’m misinterpreting your answer, which I interpret as your thinking it’s sexist for a male patient not to want a female urologist or a female patient not to want a male breast surgeon. If I have misinterpreted, I’m sure you’ll correct me. If I haven’t, perhaps you can explain the discrepancy between the OB/GYN as opposed to the specialties of urology and breast surgery. Seriously. I’m curious.
I thought Greg Laden was booted from FTB.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/dispatches/2012/07/01/major-changes-at-freethought-blogs/
Dr. Hall:
Oh, ugh. For starters, I attended the same university as Dr. Hall about a decade later and majored in aero/astro engineering. I was not the first woman to graduate from that program, they had women in their program for decades. Which is why there were several chuckles one morning when I came into work early in the 1980s when some local journalist made a cute little list of of little known facts. One was that there were absolutely no women aerospace engineers, not a one. He did not have an answer of why he did not bother calling the office in Guggenheim Hall of the university ten miles from the newspaper’s offices. The guys where I worked thought it was funny that I did not exist.
When I was in college in the late 1970s I worked about five months as an engineering intern for those supporting a manufacturing site. The engineering offices were right above where parts were being machined, etc. Being a very poor student (and that job paid for my last two years of college) I had a very long bus ride to work. At the bus stop and on the trip I got to know some very interesting people who worked on the factory floor, including women whose job was to polish parts prior to finishing. So I got acquainted with these very interesting women.
When I went back to classes I signed up for a Women’s Study class on women and work. It was a bunch of regurgitated bovine excrement. No one cared about anyone’s actual experience, but just in the writings of some blowhards. Ugh. So I dropped the class, and replaced the social studies requirement with a much more interesting class the next quarter: History of the Atomic Bomb.
Since I spent too much time telling other engineers to stop calling girlie, chick, sweetie, etc. I also hate the word “chick.” One did ask what he was supposed to call me, and I told him “Chris.”
[quote]I thought Greg Laden was booted from FTB.[/quote]
Yes, he was, but I said they “still ASSOCIATE with Greg Laden….”.
After composing and deleting probably ten comments, I think what I want to say distills to this:
I love everybody and I want us all to get along.
There! Wasn’t that helpful?
David Gorski,
I’m not Ophelia, but I think you *are* misinterpreting her answer. I think she is saying that individuals of *both* genders should have a say in who handles their genitalia.
Dr Gorski, I was joking. I apologize for joking. I thought a civil discussion was going to be possible; my mistake.
@ Chris:
“When I went back to classes I signed up for a Women’s Study class on women and work. It was a bunch of regurgitated bovine excrement. No one cared about anyone’s actual experience, but just in the writings of some blowhards. Ugh. So I dropped the class, and replaced the social studies requirement with a much more interesting class the next quarter: History of the Atomic Bomb.”
This makes my day. Thank you!
I also hate “chick,” though I drop in on that blog sometimes. I’m thinking “chick” doesn’t have the same negative connotations for younger women; ie, they’ve probably never heard something like, “Why would a chick take physics?”
@Alia – “I think that when choosing therapists, many different factors play a role. Some therapists might say that if you had problems working with a male therapist, that’s more the reason to work with him – to tease out why, what caused this problem. And sometimes a male therapist may become for their client a kind of a father figure, which may or may not be good in therapy – and conversely, a female therapist might become a mother figure, which will also play a role.”
Ohhhhh, let me tell you about my father, errr or not.
I think that this is what I was getting at, rather indirectly. I was looking for the exception to “the rule” that gender differences don’t matter much, that individual skills and interests are key. It seems to be that some part of the function of a therapist is affected by their gender and that gender’s symbolic place in the patient’s “issues”… This is different than most professionals were the skills required are not genuinely related to gender. The therapist is partly playing a role.
This is just speculation…maybe I’m FOS.
Speaking of Skepchick, I surfed over there, and Rebecca has posted an article about the whole Sherman thing, called, Reminder: I Am An Object:
“Michael Shermer isn’t told every day by atheists and skeptics that he’s worth nothing aside from the sexual gratification his body could offer someone. He isn’t told by atheists and skeptics that he deserves to be raped and abused. Atheists and skeptics don’t spend hours drawing images of him in dehumanizing positions. ”
Why does Rebecca Watson draw so much vile attention?
http://skepchick.org/2013/02/objectified/
Thank you so very much for this thread as it is a topic I’ve been puzzling over for some months. And what I’ve been puzzling over is, why aren’t there more women in the skeptic movement? Which is what I think is the original question. I read the magazines, I read the websites, and women appear to be in a minority (hard to tell sometimes with anonymous names, mea culpa). I’ve considered attending TAM, but when I look at the presenters and images I don’t see a lot of women (until this past year, which was a nice change).
The reason I’ve not attended a skeptics conference is the discourse on the Skepticblog website. The comments are often in-your-face, confrontational, and I find the level of discourse uncomfortable to read. My leisure time is limited, and if the posts are representative of the conference attendees, then these are not people I’d like to spend time with. I don’t want to spend several days in confrontation. Frankly, I’m not even comfortable posting on that site. I can’t imagine spending several days with those people.
Does this reflect my socialization? Yeah, likely. But it makes me sad that the environment doesn’t appear to be welcoming, and if I’m spending $1500 to attend TAM then I want to know that it won’t be disappointing, and that I will be respected.
Let me add that the discourse here at SBM is quite the opposite, and kudos to the Powers That Be for creating a positive blog environment.
So yes, there are fields that do not equally attract the sexes. But my personal experience is that this particular area could attract more diversity if more attention was paid to the skeptic culture. For every me who is brave enough to post and say this, how many women are reading this and nodding “uh huh” but not posting?
Ugh, that sounds like a very frustrating Facebook conversation! I don’t think that everyone who sees value in political organizing and public confrontation devalues the contributions of trailblazers like you. I certainly don’t. As a mother of a future scientist who happens to be a young woman, I hope she can display both quiet perseverance and the courage to publicly confront bigotry when necessary.
You write “our journey will only be delayed by misinterpreting the science of gender differences, imposing arbitrary 50/50 goals, or squabbling amongst ourselves. I hope we can lay these disputes to rest and cooperate towards our mutual goals. ”
Is anyone advocating for arbitrarily imposed 50/50 goals? What I’m hearing is people saying that the discussion shouldn’t *stop* at “it’s a guy thing” or “I think it is unreasonable to expect that equal numbers of men and women will be attracted to every sphere of human endeavor. ” And it sounds like that you actually agree with that too! Am I reading you correctly? It sounds like you are not against the idea of identifying preventable obstacles to women’s participation in atheism/skepticism, and helping women overcome them. Sounds like common ground to me!
Angora Rabbit, I attended TAM a couple of years ago and it was a blast. I did meet some amazing women (some of older and wiser ones got together for a while to talk). I don’t read many of the comments on Skeptiblog, most of the women I met at TAM post on the JREF forum. They included a chemistry professor, an engineer, nurse, and on and on.
I confess I like using a neuter name, especially since I am not too fond of my full name. It was a bit fun to hear reactions when the engineer someone was looking for did not sound like they expected.
My daughter is planning on changing her first and middle names to ones where gender is not discernible.
pharmavixen:
When I was doing my engineering internship at a factory I was often asked why I was majoring in engineering. I told them that it paid better than science. (sorry, scientists… I did start out majoring in oceanography, but that department had a picnic for incoming freshman to their department and laid out the reality)
It’s nice to read something optimistic and encouraging about women, and surprising to find it here. Thanks Harriet Hall. I know you guys hate me on here but thanks for this article. It helped me feel a lot less angry.
One thing I will say though, is that an employer of a certain comedy TV show was given a demand to hire 50% women for his writing staff and so he did, begrudgingly. He said he never hired many women because he believed women didn’t want the jobs. But he found 50% women, and said “when the other men on staff were out having beers and had license to be as misogynistic as they wanted they all agreed that this quota hire ended up to be a really great thing.” So, sometimes those 50/50 goals, depending on the career track, are not a terrible idea. It basically gives the wheel of change a good hard spin.
pharmavixen:
Because she dares to speak her mind. The most vile seem to be a minority of ill mannered young men who hide behind internet anonymity. If you confront them in real life they do one of two things: cower or are too stupid to realize they are stupid (a rare few do get violent). I encountered some of them when I was in college. One guy thought it was funny to see what I would do if he said the most vile sexual things to me, I basically ignored him and I am not sure he actually managed to graduate from the department (the junior class started with 70 students, and about 35 graduated).
I do not agree with everything Ms. Watson says or does, but no one deserves the treatment she has been given.
Angora Rabbit “Let me add that the discourse here at SBM is quite the opposite, and kudos to the Powers That Be for creating a positive blog environment.”
Hear Hear!
People on the internet receive nasty comments all of the time. I’ve received many nasty sex related comments, and I’m a guy. Also, there are MANY other women out there who do not receive as many vile comments as Rebecca Watson. Some of the reasons as to why Rebecca Watson receives nasty comments is because:
1) she says really stupid things. People who say stupid things on the internet will attract attention and hate, just as religious people on the internet.
2) she has let the whole internet know what the things are that would piss her off. That caused trolls from all corners of the internet to come hurdling across bridges, eagerly looking to generate responses from her.
3) she has tarred and feathered people as “misogynists” and blocked them. That tactic, in turn, infuriates immature people, and causes them to create another account, and come back with more aggression, over and over.
4) she’s a professional victim. Most of the comments which she cites are not “threats”, but her crying wolf generates more responses. Most people who don’t give in to “emotionalism” can see it. Even DPRJones, who tried to stay out of drama for as long as he could, said it in a podcast, and he was with her the night the elevator incident happened. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lX7GcUrDCMY
@masakari
I’ve been irritated by things that Watson has said from time to time but I’m at a loss to remember a single thing she’s said that could be characterized as ‘stupid’. Will you please provide an example?
A few remarks on the initial “controversy”:
The gender split in atheism has been measured, and it is not 50/50. The most recent results from the Pew Research Center show that, within people who identify themselves as atheist or agnostic, 64% are men and 36% are women. http://www.pewforum.org/unaffiliated/nones-on-the-rise.aspx (Gender statistics are given on page 37 of the full report, linked at the top of that article.)
The idea that speaking at conferences concerning socially unacceptable topics is “more of a guy thing” should not be controversial. Anyone who has studied the gender gap in academia (or experienced it for themselves) knows that is a primary cause of this gap. Men are more likely to speak up for their positions and publicly promote themselves. Much of this may be due to socialization, but getting caught up in “nature vs. nurture” is often unproductive. There are better questions to ask: should we require that women be just as argumentative as men in order to succeed in academia, or should we try to change the social environment entirely?
It deeply saddens me to see so many people who identify as feminists display, loudly and consistently, an inability to distinguish descriptive and prescriptive statements. (For examples of this, just read the comment threads about this and other similar “controversies”.) Scientific research only ever makes descriptive statements. Recognizing that the gender ratio in atheism is not 50/50 does not imply that we want it to be that way, or that it should be that way. We first have to understand reality in order to improve it.
Staking the core thesis of gender equality on the claim that there are no significant non-anatomical differences between men and women is a foolish move. It just opens up another avenue for anti-feminists to reject gender equality when that claim is inevitably and repeatedly proven false. Instead, we should fight for gender equality on the basis that all people have equal moral worth, regardless of any biological or social differences.
Yes, windriven, it seems to some it was stupid to tell guys that it is uncool to ask a woman they just met to their room in the middle of night.
Granted, I did find it scary as a college student at a bus stop late at night (about 10pm) after leaving a theater performance to be asked by two guys if I wanted to go with them. Fortunately they accepted my “no.” But it was still scary… especially since the theater program I saw was not worth the free ticket I had been given by a drama student.
I do disagree with Ms. Watson from time to time, but much of the backlash was childish.
windriven, if you can see this comment, then know that I did respond to you, but my other comment is in moderation, probably because I provided links. So instead, I’ll post my comment here, without the hyperlinks….
windriven, I’ll provide a couple of dumb things that she said or did.
She once said that Galileo was executed by the church. She later acknowledged her mistake, but that was after everyone pointed it out, and laughed at her. You can search her video to find the original, but I’m not going to link to hers to contribute to her ad hits. Instead, I’ll link to this one. (insert Integralmath’s video: Rebecca Watson, Renaissance Chick)
She claimed a particular feminist student was “parroting misogynistic thoughts” because that student disagreed with her on the elevator issue. I’m not going to mention the student’s name, because I don’t want to contribute anymore to her name popping up on google searches. That’s what caused a lot of backlash, and not what people like Chris would have you believe. It’s the fact that disagreers were called misogynists, rape-supporters, and rape-apologists for having a different opinion on the elevator issue which is the stupidity of it all, and then led to all of the other nonsense that followed, when clearly there are women who don’t share the same opinion as these quasi/psuedo-feminists.
She simply nodded in approval while Sikivu Hutchinson (called the Four Horsemen) said: “super-star, white male atheist” who’ve “institutionalized a very narrow prescriptive, white supremacist, patriarchal version of atheism”. Richard Dawkins is a white supremacist??? I’m upset for Richard Dawkins to have that line hurled at him, and I’m not even white. (Youtube video: The Intersection of Non-theism and Feminism | CFI’s Women in Secularism Conference 2012 – Start from 45m40s)
Then there was the EvoPsy video, which Ed Clint’s blog addressed. (insert Evolutionary Psychology, Clint, Watson, PZ Myers and going about things properly)
The list goes on, but I probably shouldn’t stray too much further away from Colonel Hall’s topic. And for that reason, this will most likely be my last post.
Masakari, have you shared your youtube channel with your mother?
Videos are subjective, especially with creative editing. You would seem less childish if you actually linked to her writings on her site instead of third party pages. Your evidence is lacking in real substance, and clarity.
Again, many of us disagree with Ms. Watson. Much of it has to do with common errors due to youth and inexperience. What she encountered was common for some of us, and the backlash was mostly from a dedicated minority. The minority I was much too familiar with.
I know it is a minority, mostly because those guys seemed to disappear due to not being able to stay in school, or being removed from the workplace. Most of the men have I encountered are decent human beings. Which is why I get peeved at the premise that as a parent you must make sure your daughters are independent confident adults, and that your sons are not serial rapists. As the mother of two sons, it is a stereotype I can do without.
Which one are you? Do you want to spend your time persevering on what see are flaws in others, or are you willing to accept that adults can disagree, still be friendly and move on?
I need an editor: on what you see are flaws in others.
Thank you, Harriet, for this essay.
There is something that may serve to explain the tensions with which the skeptics are dealing, and that is the fact that there are different types of feminists.
Most women are “equity feminists,” such as Harriet and myself, who are mainly concerned with equal opportunity and rights for all people, both for men and women. (Children’s rights is an issue for another day.)
In contrast to the equity feminists there are what Christine Hoff Sommers calls “gender feminists”: those who tend to be academics; want government to provide preferential treatment for women; believe that all females are victims and men the enemy; and are actually “gynocentric.” (I’m seeing a lot of this sort working as lay midwives today.)
I recommend Sommers’ “Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have Betrayed Women” (1995). The gender feminists hate this book, but Sommers is, in my opinion, convincing in her critique of gender feminist and their research which she found fraught with flaws and misrepresentations.
“Staking the core thesis of gender equality on the claim that there are no significant non-anatomical differences between men and women is a foolish move. It just opens up another avenue for anti-feminists to reject gender equality when that claim is inevitably and repeatedly proven false. Instead, we should fight for gender equality on the basis that all people have equal moral worth, regardless of any biological or social differences.”
As Harriet has demonstrated, it isn’t easy to determine which differences are anatomical or biological and which are not. Differences that exist between men and women also exist amongst men and women respectively. The take home message is, I think, to be “skeptical” or critical of any automatic assumption firstly that any observed difference between individuals is sex-based and secondly that any observed differences in the sexes is innate.
This is why Shermer’s initial comment was unhelpful, to say the least – “Why are there more men skeptics?” “Because more men are skeptics/skeptical”. Of course, as Harriet points out, it was an off the cuff comment, and hopefully Shermer and the skeptical movement generally is capable of more insight, if given the opportunity to consider and debate the question. Unfortunately, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that Shermer’s unpreparedness for the question means that it is something that he had not given much consideration before, and that the subsequent response of both Shermer and a large element of the skeptical community means that they are not prepared to give any consideration to the question now (or ever).
Ah, damn WordPress. It didn’t like my codes. Let’s see if I could do this right.
test…
My youtube channel? I don’t see what my youtube channel has to do with anything, but if you must know…. they are simply mirrored videos which were removed due to false flagging campaigns by feminist groups. There was one of them which I didn’t agree with, but the outright lies from feminists groups made the video worth mirroring.
And actually, I’ve discussed some of these issues with my mother, sister, friends, and relatives, just to see what the opinions are of others. They all think that FTB/Skepchick are crazy. Their remarks about them are actually worse than what I would say, and ironically I’m the only one out of us that’s involved in the skeptic community.
I already stated that I wasn’t going to give her the ad hit by linking directly to her video, but you can go to her channel and find the original video, which had something to do with Rick Perry, if I remember correctly.
The next link was the original CFI video, where Rebecca Watson nods in agreement at stupidity.
But I did make a mistake, and shared the wrong link for Ed Clint’s Evo Psy blog. Just google: ” Science denialism at a skeptic conference Ed Clint “. It contains a link to the original video, in case you wanted to watch it too.
It was originally a few feminists and their supporters who disagreed, one with a youtube video, and one with a blog. Then Rebecca Watson used her stage time at a conference to falsely label one of those disagreers who was in the audience as parroting misogynistic thoughts. This caused some people who couldn’t think for themselves to look down on the person, which caused others to defend the person, which caused more people to get involved when PZ Myers and Abbie Smith got involved, then subsequently Dawkins.
Glad to hear it. I dislike that meme which comes from feminists that sound like “So, when did you stop beating your wife?”, with the assumption that the default state of a man is a rapist or a wife beater.
I’m a person that doesn’t like injustices, and I hate to see people wrongfully attacked. That’s why I got involved in these discussions. I’ve seen people get falsely accused of things for simply disagreeing with the dogmatic feminist ideology, and then blogged about. Some of those people have no voices to defend themselves against the witch hunts.
Also, I don’t see what this has to do with anything. Are you going to argue against the points and links that I provided?
One of the difficulties women experience in the armed forces isn’t being mentioned, and that is sexual harrassment from male members of the same force (maybe also female). I’ve lifted the following two quotes from today’s New Scientist – Rebekah Havrilla was a sergeant in the US army’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal :
“She served in Afghanistan from 2006 to 2007, working with infantry and Special Forces units, dealing with anything that could explode.”
“Havrilla reckons there should be one physical standard across the board. “I know a lot of men who couldn’t meet certain physical standards, and I know a bunch of women who could. If you can do it, great. If you can’t, move on.”
“While Havrilla was in active service, she was often the only woman in the EOD unit. She says this contributed to her having little support when she experienced sexual harassment. “I got stuck with some bad apples, and had to deal with it,” she says.
“Havrilla now works with the US Service Women’s Action Network national help line. She says she sees more trauma associated with sexual violence than with combat.”
Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit – ‘Pologies!
Regarding the comments about gender v equity feminism.
This is the divisive stuff Dr. Hall’s article could have gone into, but did not. The descriptions of the two sides was emotive and designed to elevate one and slam the other.
Take the gov’t intervention bit. I live in Ireland in a house built in 1999. It has three entrances and all three have a step. Why? It’s not like the step will block mice from sneaking in. It won’t make much of a difference on flooding – besides I’m at the top of a hill.
It was built that way because of inertia. No one changed the plans because no one had to. Apparently today those steps would not exist – and a pointless barrier to people in wheelchairs does not exist in newer houses. All because of gov’t intervention.
Right now VAWA is before the US House. That’s gov’t intervention and it has made a huge difference in people’s lives. So has Title 9. So has the Family and Medical Leave Act. Nordic countries have a much better representation of women in the upper echelons of society because they have, gasp, quotas. If the finger has been on the scale for centuries you’re not going to gain balance in society simply by removing said finger – social inertia is a powerful force.
I’ve disagreed with people I suspect you’d term “gender feminists” in the past. I likely still do for the same reasons. But disagreeing and dismissing out of hand are two different things. The general direction they’re nudging society is a positive one. Respect that enough not to demonise and caricature them.
“Nordic countries have a much better representation of women in the upper echelons of society because they have, gasp, quotas.”
This is not correct. Norway has a quota for female board directors in large companies, for example, but the other Nordic countries also do much better in this regard than the EU average without quotas. Overall, the better representation of women owes much more to family leave, availability of daycare and other support than quotas. Nordic countries have also achieved high proportions of women in elected office without quotas.
Lyda,
“For progress to be made, we need a lot of moderates and we need a few radicals. There’s no need to embrace or work together, but there should be some respect between them. Your article showed respect and (for what little it’s worth) earned my respect. My world is a better place not just because of those who loudly push for equality but for those who quietly push for it too.”
I agree with this assessment, except that you actually need a lot of radicals, not just a few.
In a thread on Neurologica recently ( http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/pz-replies/ ), we called them The Activist and The Diplomat, and most seemed to agree that both are required to achieve change. So, yes, why the conflict we so often see between the two?
Dear Harriet,
You’re right, PZ’s take on your quote was simply wrong, he accused you of having said something that you quite clearly did not say (at least, not as I read it). Thanks for the thoughtful and informative article here.
On the other hand, I think you exonerate Michael Shermer a little too much, the wording he used (which you don’t quote in full) was unfortunate and gave a sexist impression. For anyone interested my own take on the saga is at
http://coelsblog.wordpress.com/2013/02/04/on-sexism-ophelia-benson-michael-shermer-hyperbole-and-my-stumbles-into-the-rift/
masakari2012
“Some of the reasons as to why Rebecca Watson receives nasty comments is because:
1) she says really stupid things. People who say stupid things on the internet will attract attention and hate, just as religious people on the internet.”
Personally, I’ve only heard of Rebecca Watson* briefly, I’m not really concerned with how stupid her comments were or were not. I do need to point out that in my social circle* sending threatening sexual comments/email or pictures is considered to be aberrant (creepy) behavior regardless of what kind of things the recipient said.
I’m hoping that maskari2012 just mispoke or I am misreading, because I can’t imagine wanting to hang out with any “community” where sending hateful or abusive messages in response to “stupidity” is accepted as the norm.
*Which I consider to be pretty normal professional midwestern.
I myself am a vociferous “equality feminist.” I also believe that Dr. Hall has exonerated Shermer a bit too much merely because the focus was too narrow. The initial statment made was, absolutely, exonerable (is that a word?) and would be worth little more than a passing footnote. We have all said dumb things or unintented things. Myself many a time. Benson was merely pointing out that the comment slips out so easily due to the underlying misogynistic hegemony of our culture. So pervasive is it, that even an intelligent educated skeptic could fall prey to it in a mere passing comment. That was it.
Shermer could have, and should have, responded with a comment saying that of course he didn’t mean it in a sexist way and boy does that misogynistic hegemony suck! End of story.
Instead he chose to respond, as Dr. Gorski pointed out, with cries of witch hunts and Nazis. And then doubled down on it when Benson explained her original post in case it wasn’t clear.
The comment is an absolutely understandable slip, merely a talking point and nothing else. His responses after are dissapointing.
I am not sure what is “going on” these days, with people who should know better reading far too deeply and reacting far too quickly and over the top (like PZ and the Jamy Ian Swiss video – I finally watched it and rather than feel excluded [since after all I am an activist anti-theist myself] I felt inspired and even moved). It almost seems like we are trying as hard as we can to “out-skeptic” our brethren, be “more feminist” or something. Make sure everyone knows how incredibly egalitarian and skeptical we really are.
Maybe this is a symptom of the fact that many of us – especially those who would make it to the top – have a “Type A” personality and we all are, after all, human (except for me, my fiance calls me an alien, but in a good way*). In any event, I do think it is counterproductive. We should be able to and welcome others in examining everything we say and critiquing it – regardless of whether it is right or wrong. We should also be willing to extend the principle of charity to others.
I don’t know. I know how I like to act, where my priorities are, and can evaluate the best parts of everyone in our community (and outside it) to emulate whilst eschewing the bad parts. We of all people should know how to do that and should not identify ourselves with our ideas. That’s what we criticize theists for doing regularly after all!
Anyways, that’s about all I have to say on the matter. Though I can certainly see why certain people are getting tired of this – I have rather quickly.
*That is humor…
@masakari
I guess you and I have rather different definitions of stupid. I tend to lean to the primary definition: slow of mind.* By that measure your characterization of Ms. Watson still doesn’t seem to fit.
As to elevatorgate I ask you to look at the outline of events objectively. Woman gets in elevator. Man in elevator doesn’t know woman yet asks her to mash nasty bits with him. The inherent supposition is that the lady involved has such low self esteem that her calculation will be that she has no better chance for intimacy than that offered by some random drunk with a swollen penis and a flaccid brain.
How stupid of her to be offended!
Twist things around a bit and ask yourself this: what outcome would you expect if you asked some random guy in an elevator to fellate you?
*Merriam-Webster
Masakari, I can kinda sorta see parts of your argument, as I don’t always agree with Rebecca myself; however, your comments could be interpreted as victim-blaming. Whenever someone sends Rebecca an email of her head photoshopped onto a naked porn star getting multiply violated, or posts tweets playing on the theme of, “You deserve to be raped,” Rebecca wins the argument. No matter how provocative she is, no matter how unfair she was, whether or not she lied, or how much people think she over-reacted to a teeny tiny transgression, the abuse she receives gives her the moral high ground every time.
Because here’s a fundamental difference between men and women: when men venture into the public sphere, their greatest fear is of being humiliated. The florid over-reaction to some of Rebecca’s writings reflects this fear IMV. As for women? Our greatest fear is being raped and killed. So when I read these nasty postings that Rebecca receives, like many women, I find it terrifying; the threat is more than implied. And many women less pugnacious than, say, myself, would be intimidated from making any forays into the public sphere.
Thanks Dr. Hall for being, as so often, the voice of Reason.
To add to the discussion something more of content, rather than reciprocal bashing and name-calling, I’d like to address the issue of gender differences in maths and sciences and recommend watching or reading the fantastic debate between Steven Pinker and Elizabeth Spelke. It is from 2005, so possibly familiar to many, but just as relevant today. Pinker begins, Spelke rebuttals. I think she is more convincing, and the studies since then seem to support her position, but make up your own mind based on the evidence:
Transcript and slides: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/debate05/debate05_index.html
Video: http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k69509&pageid=icb.page334500&pageContentId=icb.pagecontent698262&view=watch.do&viewParam_entry=28700&state=maximize#a_icb_pagecontent698262
masakari – you actually nicely demonstrate the obsessive bias against Rebecca that, as others have pointed out, all too clearly makes her case for her.
We all make mistakes. Anyone blogging etc on a regular basis will make mistakes. Rebecca will, in my experience – and the example you give – correct errors when pointed out. What else can you expect.
Your characterization of events is not fair. I encourage anyone interested and not familiar with “elevatorgate” to view Rebecca’s original video. She gently advised men not to hit on women at 3am alone in an elevator, especially right after that woman just gave a talk about how women feel hit on at skeptical conferences. She did not call the guy sexist or misogynist or claim she was victimized or anything like that. She essentially said – it’s creepy, which it is. Everything that followed was a result of gross overreaction to that video, that then took on a life of its own.
The response of Rebecca and other female skeptics to the abhorrent misogyny, threats of rape and violence, and constant harassment may not be optimal – but really, until you have walked in their shoes, don’t be so judgmental. It is largely blaming the victim.
Your other points essentially amount to not agreeing with Rebecca’s brand of feminism and her liberal politics. That is fine to disagree, but it doesn’t make Rebecca “stupid” and saying it does tells us more about you than her.
The saddest aspect of this entire controversy is that the absolute worst elements of our movement – online misogynists -are poisoning our community and any rational discussion about what is already a complex and thorny topic. We can’t have a meaningful discussion about the nuances of feminism without emotions and personal attacks steamrolling over all rational discourse. We have to chart a course out of this mess.
Ophelia – I agree with the apparent consensus here. Michael’s comment was ill considered and pointless, inviting misinterpretation in an already controversial area. But I do think rational discourse requires charity in interpreting the statements of others.
Likewise – your characterization of what Michael said was ill-considered and invited misinterpretation, in my opinion. You say that you only stated that Michael’s statement was sexist, not that Michael himself is sexist. It is true you did not explicitly state that he is a sexist, neither did you explicitly state that you were not saying he is a sexist. The average reasonable person would probably interpret your post as implying that he is sexist.
In other words – you made the same kind and magnitude of error that you are accusing Michael of making.
I do have to also point out that in your post you made a factual error. Michael’s statement was not in response to the question of male/female ratios in the atheist movement (he said he thought it was 50/50), but rather to the host’s statement that she tried to get female atheists for the panel but they all refused. This does not rescue his statement from being clueless, but it puts it into a different context.
If we are being charitable to what he said, it does not come anywhere close to your claim of saying that women don’t do “thinky” work or that “thinky” work is a guy thing. In the right context, he was just referring to the willingness to be publicly confrontational, without any comment as to cause. He still should not have ventured a brief answer to such a complex question, nor taken the host’s anecdotal experience as representative. But it was not fair to say that he was saying women don’t do “thinky” work.
Do you still stand by that characterization, or would you modify it in light of subsequent discussion?
@ pharmavixen “…when I read these nasty postings that Rebecca receives, like many women, I find it terrifying; the threat is more than implied. And many women less pugnacious than, say, myself, would be intimidated from making any forays into the public sphere.” Yes. This.
@ Steven Novella “The saddest aspect of this entire controversy is that the absolute worst elements of our movement – online misogynists -are poisoning our community and any rational discussion about what is already a complex and thorny topic. We can’t have a meaningful discussion about the nuances of feminism without emotions and personal attacks steamrolling over all rational discourse. We have to chart a course out of this mess.” And this too.
From here on the periphery, it looks to me like one thing that’s happening is that the entire gamut of sexism gets conflated with the very worst rape threats etc. So milder instances, like tone-deaf “it’s a guy thing” comments get conflated with rape threats. And mild, “guys don’t do that” comments get conflated with being accused of rape.
I’m wondering (broadly, larger-societally) if there’s some sort of age-related disconnect with sexism where younger-ish folks are more likely to call out mild background-radiation type sexism and older-ish folks are less likely to know what the hell they are talking about. (I count myself in the enlightened older-ish cohort.) Anecdote: I attended a public lecture series at a teaching hospital. In opening the first lecture, a silverback doctor told a sexist joke about the cognition of teenage girls. Because they’re so emotional… har har. I’m pretty sure his fourth-year students who were not that far removed from their own stints as teenage grils found it appalling. The audience reaction broke down exactly as I described. The only people who laughed were his age and older. Women seeking status and what not. I sent a private, back-channel email identifying the joke as sexist and explaining why it made me uncomfortable. I’m pretty sure he had no idea what I was even talking about. Still, I did not get rape threats in response.
Very good post Dr. Hall. Somehow, I don’t get how skeptics, who usually like taking everything into context, took Shermer’s quote OUT of context. I also don’t get these (I’ll call them “Tough Feminists”) in which they criticize every little thing they don’t like as being “sexist”. We would all have been better served if Ophelia Benson would’ve talked to Dr. Shermer in private and told him. Maybe he would have made a correction in a subsequent column, and the skeptical community would not be in this childish ridiculous kerfuffle.
Besides…. I agree with Dr. Hall. Men and Women ARE different, but that does not mean they can’t do everything (or most everything) the opposite sex can do. But culture dictates what people like. My wife is an accomplished Dentist (as am I). We both work, she recently bought her own practice (we work at separate offices) and is tough as nails when she needs be. I love sports, she does not. I love a good action war film every once in a while, she hates them (At least we both love foreign dramas…) She also loves fashion, high heels, good food, dressing well, and the finer things in life. I don’t care for fashion, but I do like to dress well, and I think that the speakers in the skeptic community would do us better by dressing well instead of giving conferences in “T-shirts and Jeans”. Well dressed people are taken more seriously than others. I also read a lot from SBM, Freethought Blogs and other “Skeptical” blogs and magazines. She couldn’t care less. She would rather spend time reading InStyle and Vogue, and Victoria’s secret too. I like a guy’s night out every once in a while, and she like a girl’s night out. I go to shady digs, she goes to fancier ones….
Tough feminists do not like my wife’s “Lipstick Feminism”. So even within feminism there are discrepancies and arguments. They don’t like the “sexualisation” of women while these “lipstick feminists” think their sexuality empowers them.
Sexism exists because of various reasons: First, men dominate most areas of the workforce. Wherever women dominate, you see less men and less sexism. You may also notice difference in decoration BECAUSE WE ARE DIFFERENT. I guarantee you, my office is different than my wife’s. Even our rapport towards patients is different.
Second, and this is biologically speaking, humans are one of the few species (if not the only one) in which the female sex is more attractive. You can go back to the renaissance, a period in which even men wore make-up, and women were always trying to use sex to their advantage and show off their womanly features.
I think it’s good that we’re different, it would be a very very very boring place if it weren’t.
Reply to mobilis:
“As Harriet has demonstrated, it isn’t easy to determine which differences are anatomical or biological and which are not. Differences that exist between men and women also exist amongst men and women respectively. The take home message is, I think, to be “skeptical” or critical of any automatic assumption firstly that any observed difference between individuals is sex-based and secondly that any observed differences in the sexes is innate.”
Perhaps I was unclear. I meant to use the phrase “non-anatomical differences” to indicate any biological differences (e.g. psychological) which don’t fall into the basic category of anatomy, which everyone acknowledges is different between the genders. Of course any specific difference may or may not be biological, as I pointed out in my comment. The suggestion that a difference is sex-based or innate is not necessarily an automatic assumption, though, and there is a difference between being skeptical and critical and being in denial. A measured gender ratio of nearly 2 male atheists for every 1 female atheist certainly suggests a sex-based difference. It would not surprise me if the difference were mostly socialized, but it also would not surprise me if there were some innate component. The human brain is a complicated thing.
“This is why Shermer’s initial comment was unhelpful, to say the least – “Why are there more men skeptics?” “Because more men are skeptics/skeptical”. Of course, as Harriet points out, it was an off the cuff comment, and hopefully Shermer and the skeptical movement generally is capable of more insight, if given the opportunity to consider and debate the question. Unfortunately, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that Shermer’s unpreparedness for the question means that it is something that he had not given much consideration before, and that the subsequent response of both Shermer and a large element of the skeptical community means that they are not prepared to give any consideration to the question now (or ever).”
That is a gross mischaracterization of Shermer’s comment and, quite frankly, it is irresponsible to talk about the issue without having actually watched the video to understand the context. Shermer was specifically addressing why he thought Cara Santa Maria found it difficult to find women *to sit on the panel*. He was answering the question “why are there more *vocal* men skeptics?” with the well-studied observation that men tend to be more vocal. (Note that Shermer points this out himself in his rebuttal article, linked in this blog post.) Of course, there are nuances to this observation – women tend to be more vocal in a group when that group is closer to gender parity. Sean Carroll makes a comment related to this shortly after Shermer’s comment.
Here is a transcript of the context surrounding Shermer’s comment, for those too busy to watch 20 seconds of a video:
——
The question:
“Atheist groups always consist of a bunch of (mostly old) men. You are very nice middle-aged men, but you are mostly men. In atheism we don’t have a rule that makes a woman worth only 50% as much as a man and we don’t make women stay silent and only ask their husbands questions. We in atheism supposedly treat women was equals. So why isn’t the gender split closer to 50/50 as it should be?”
Cara Santa Maria:
“And I think that this is a valid question. I personally don’t have any statistics on this, but I can tell you in my experience when putting together this episode and putting together this panel, I had a hell of a time finding a woman who would be willing to sit on the panel with me and talk about her atheism. Why is that?”
Michael Shermer:
“I think it probably really is 50/50. It’s who wants to stand up and talk about it, go on shows about it, go to conferences and speak about it, who’s intellectually active about it; you know, it’s more of a guy thing.”
Cara Santa Maria: (simultaneously)
“That’s really the question. Who’s an outspoken atheist.”
——
He even prefaced his comment by saying “I think it probably really is 50/50″, despite the existence and prevalence of research showing otherwise. Maybe he has never seen any of this research, but I doubt it. More likely, it was a concession to the vocal minority (I hope) of feminists who are unable or unwilling to distinguish between descriptive and prescriptive statements. Of course I don’t *want* a large gender disparity to exist among atheists, but currently it does, and if we want to change that, we first have to understand *why*. You can’t analyze a phenomenon if you insist on pretending it doesn’t exist.
Hi Steve,
Good points. Rational discourse does require giving charitable interpretations and “steel manning” our interlocutor’s arguments. Given that, wouldn’t you agree it isn’t very rational to go away from Ophelia’s response to Shermer thinking she was criticizing him as being sexist, and just his statement? I think you meant the “average person” and not the “average reasonable person”, who presumably extends charity of interpretation. I suppose there could be subtle differences between a “rational person” and a “reasonable person” in your mind I’m not ware of, but I don’t make such distinctions in mine. Put another way, if the average reasonable person is to conclude Ophelia was saying Shermer was a sexist, then the average reasonable person should also conclude that Shermer was making a sexist remark; if both Ophelia and Shermer have made the same type and magnitude of error.
Steven Novella,
You make a very reasoned and level-headed response, and I’m with you ALMOST 100%.
Here’s what I can’t get passed. The statement, “being intellectually active is more of a guy thing” is an incredibly sexist statement to make. There is literally no other way to parse it than, men are better at thinking than women (unless you believe that “thinking” is something different than “intellectual activity”). I think you agree with this, but yet, you are knocking Ophelia for pointing out that Michael Shermer said something incredibly sexist.
If Michael Shermer said something that was incredibly sexist, do you think Ophelia should NOT use that as an example of people in the atheist community saying incredibly sexist things? Why not?
If you don’t think Michael Shermer said something incredibly sexist, can you let me know whether there’s any issue with me teaching my daughter to believe that “being intellectually active is more of a guy thing”? If so, what is the issue?
Thanks!
Whatever happened to not feeding the trolls?
baldape – in context I think Michael meant by “intellectually active” being “activist” – the context being, agreeing to be on the panel to discuss atheism. Not “thinking.” This is partly being charitable, partly looking closely at the context (which Ophelia misrepresented), and partly knowing Michael’s vast written history.
MK – there is no way around the subjective nature of this assessment, whether it was “reasonable” to conclude from what Ophelia wrote that Michael was being sexist, not just that the statement was sexist. In other words, I have no data to prove my position to you. My anecdotal experience is that many people I have spoken to took it that way.
But don’t miss my main point – she was not explicit. She could have said – I am not accusing Shermer of being a sexist. Just like Shermer could have said – I am not saying women inherently are less activist or confrontational. Same kind of mistake.
Steve,
Thanks for the response. I agree, with your main points (and did not miss them, but acknowledged them generally as good points). I just did not agree with your characterization of what is reasonable using your own criteria for rationality. It’s a minor point not meant to detract from the many good points you made. Such as the one you reiterated in condensed form in your response (i.e., “[Ophelia] was not explicit. She could have said – I am not accusing Shermer of being a sexist. Just like Shermer could have said – I am not saying women inherently are less activist or confrontational. Same kind of mistake.”).
Hi Steven,
I can concede that Ophelia’s criticism could’ve been so qualified, e.g. “I am not accusing Shermer of being a sexist, but intentionally or not, he did say something which reinforces a nasty sexist stereotype.”
However, if I understand you correctly, parsing things your way and adding in your qualifiers, you’re saying that Michael would have been speaking more clearly by saying:
“I am not saying women are inherently less activist or confrontational than men, I’m just saying that being activist and confrontational is more of a guy thing.”
See, I don’t see those as the “same kind of mistake”. There’s something much more problematic about Michael’s mistake. Specifically, the qualification “fix” you suggest for Ophelia’s comment quite neatly complements what she says. The qualification “fix” (and charitable word parsing) you suggest for Shermer’s words utterly contradicts what he says.
Sort of like, let’s say the statement “The Star Wars movies were simply awful.” was deemed problematic. Depending on the problem, we might agree that it can be fixed with, “I’m not saying George Lucas is a bad producer, but the Star Wars movies were simply awful.” But regardless of how it’s problematic, we can all agree that it is not fixed with “I’m not saying the Star wars movies were particularly bad, I’m just saying that they were simply awful.”
Thanks again!
This is a good article, with lots of food for thought. I was particularly struck by the comment about choosing not to join women’s doctor’s groups — and suddenly I realize that’s exactly why I’ve always felt a little peculiar about invitations to women’s engineering groups, even though I support things like “Girls In Science”, a Girl Scout related activity held at the Science Museum of Minnesota every year and supported by KMSP (the local Fox affiliate, though they started out as a UPN affiliate, before Fox bought that network). I think it’s great to get girls into science, but I do tend to worry about creating female enclaves. I want male and female engineers to work together, not split off into gender cliques.
Shermer’s statement, as quoted, doesn’t strike me as sexist. It’s a valid observation. My impression upon reading that was that indeed, speaking out and being interested in skepticism does tend to be more of a guy thing. It does prompt additional questions: why is that a guy thing, and should we seek to change that state of affairs? My opinion is that it’s a guy thing for social reasons (mostly, I think, it’s just that boys are generally more permitted to gravitate to less conventional interests than girls are), and that we should indeed seek to change that state of affairs. I do believe that 50/50 is a reasonable target, but I don’t believe we should get too hung up on what the actual ratio is at any given moment. It’s a measure that can be used to get a feel for progress, but it’s not really the point.
I’m an engineer. We have metrics to gauge how well programs are performing. We report on how many defects are detected in a given time period, how many are “escapes” (injected in one phase of the project but detected in another), growth of the defect tracking system over time, how long a defect remains in a particular state (analysis, implementation, test, etc), and so forth. I have seen project leads get a bit too obsessive over the analysis time metric. The goal becomes to keep analysis time under 30 days. Is this productive? Probably not. Analysis over 30 days generally puts a project into yellow or red (depending on how many there are) on the defect measures report, and this gets unwelcome attention, but what if there is a reason it is over 30 days? The measure gives you a crude way of judging performance over time, but if achieving a certain value in that measure ever becomes your goal, you’re doing it wrong.
I think the same is true of gender equality. 50/50 seems like a good target. But we should not obsess over how far we are from it. The numbers aren’t the important thing; they’re just sort of useful for tracking purposes. Can a woman make a living as a doctor/engineer/pilot/whatever? Can a man be respected as a stay-at-home parent? These are much more important. When we are judging the individual rather than their group, we will have made progress.
We do need the activists, the feminists who will open the doors and do their level best to steamroll the barriers. But we also need the regular folks, the women who will be brave enough to actually walk through those doors or it won’t mean anything. The idea of their being a “right” way to be a feminist puzzles me, and the situation with Rebecca Watson got seriously out of hand. There are so many things that need doing that surely we need people who do lots of different things. We should not be slamming others for doing it their way.
masakari:
The links you posted were not primary sources. They are second hand, and edited portrayals. If you wish to accuse someone of saying something, you need to link to the original words. That means giving the webpage that is actually authored by the person, with a direct quote. That is part of Skepticism 101: do not accept second hand evidence.
It is my opinion that the videos that you mirrored on the youtube channel with your ‘nym were childish and insulting. Just like the irrational responses Ms. Watson received when she politely said “Guys don’t do that” after describing an uncomfortable encounter. That is the real injustice. Rational adults do not spend their time creating videos depicting rape of someone they dislike.
Let me repeat this for at least the third time: I do not agree with everything Ms. Watson says or does, but no one deserves the treatment she has been given.
@Steven Novella,
Here’s what Ophelia wrote in relation to Shermer (some of the italics and formatting isn’t transferred but text is copied verbatim):
The full article is here: http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=fi&page=benson_33_1
I would encourage all participants to read what Ophelia actually said and in what context it was said.
Steven, thanks again for the reply. My last thought on this, as I try to convey to you (and the readership) exactly why your response, for all it gets right, still leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
“Yes, the one driver was heavily intoxicated. And yes, he was speeding, weaving wildly, and crossed into on-coming traffic. But the other driver was going 3 mph over the recommended safe speed limit. So, both made mistakes (the same mistake, really, of not being perfect drivers). Can we really blame one or the other for the collision?”
That statement bothers in the exact way that your sentiment (which I hope I’ve accurately paraphrased below) bothers me:
“Yes, Michael Shermer spoke poorly, and wound up using words that reinforced a nasty but-all-too-common sexist stereotype. And yes, he compared Ophelia to the Nazi’s when she pointing out that he had done so. But Ophelia, in claiming to be criticizing Shermer’s words, failed to explain to her audience that that meant she wasn’t characterizing Shermer personally. So, both made mistakes (the same mistake, really, of not being perfect speakers). Can we really blame one or the other for all this fallout?”
I don’t think I’ve seen an Ophelia lamented this much since Queen Gertrude and Laertes at the funeral.
baldape – you are not characterizing my position fairly at all. I never defended Shermer’s statement. It was clueless, invited misinterpretation, and was ill-considered. I even said he probably should not have ventured a brief answer to such a complex and controversial topic. He also took the anecdotal premise at face value. I never even addressed his later responses, so don’t see how you can even bring that in at this point.
I don’t think, given the context, what he said, and his background, that Shermer meant to imply anything sexist. At worst he was saying that guys are more willing to be publicly confrontational (with no implication for nature vs nurture).
Ophelia wrote:
“The main stereotype in play, let’s face it, is that women are too stupid to do nontheism. Unbelieving in God is thinky work, and women don’t do thinky, because “that’s a guy thing.”
Do you really think that Shermer was in any way implying that women are stupid, are too stupid to “do nontheism”, or are not cut out for “thinky work?”
I think I am being charitable, if anything, in saying this was the same magnitude and kind of error as Shermer. And, I will now add, this was in writing, which Ophelia herself admits gives time for well-thought out points, while Shermer was speaking off the cuff.
Since I have plenty of you to respond to, and there’s only one of me, don’t be upset if I didn’t get to everyone, and every single point.
mousethatroaredon
I’ve read her “threats” list, and I only saw one or two that could qualify as threats. Other than that, they were mostly just nasty comments left by others trying to piss her off by telling her exactly what they know she doesn’t like to hear.
I didn’t say community, but let’s go with what you’re saying. It depends on what you define as “community”. Also, we don’t know if every person who leaves nasty comments are atheists, trolls, or atheist-trolls. They could be Christian. They could even be allies of Skepchick or FTB, posing as someone else, trying to generate drama.
windriven
No. We have the same definition. Rebecca Watson is “slow of mind”. I’ve provided sufficient links to show for that. Most people would say she’s stupid. Okay, so you don’t. So what? Moving on….
What makes you think I haven’t. I have looked at it from many angles, and asked many different men and women for their opinions, getting mostly opinions similar to mine, and fewer opinions in the other direction.
That’s not what happened. The dude in the elevator asked her for coffee. The way you strawmanned the situation is disgusting. Maybe coffee meant more, maybe it didn’t. But we don’t know what he meant by it. It could have simply meant coffee. Not everyone thinks the same way.
And if it were a proposition for sex, and he took no for an answer, then so what?
I already twisted things around and asked myself questions. But I didn’t take any of the twisted versions as the true story, which you did with your strawmanned version of what happened. If I were a guy in an elevator who got hit on by a man or woman, and they took no for an answer, then everything is fine. That is precisely the way it should work. And you know what? Women have made propositions towards me in the past, and I denied it. Some, I’ve accepted. What’s the big deal about this?
Actually, I know what the problem is. Some people have subjective rules as to how they should be propositioned, and when it can happen. If it doesn’t happen in the ways they think it’s okay, then they get upset. And some of these women claim to be speaking for all women when doing so (when they clearly don’t represent all women, seeing as how the original objectors were women). I don’t mind if a man or woman wants to tell others that they feel uncomfortable about some propositions. But they don’t need to tell a whole gender what or what not to do, when there is disagreement from both genders on this subjective issue.
Steven Novella
You obviously didn’t read the stuff that was said afterwards when she was defending herself against disagreers, and you must have missed the part where a particular feminist disagreer was labeled as parroting misogynistic thoughts.
That’s subjective, which is the whole reason for this apparently never ending debate. Some people (both men and women) think it it, some do not.
I’ve already explained some of the details above.
What actual “misogyny” was there? Misogyny is the hatred or fear of women. Are you referring to troll comments which were left to provoke, by people who knew such comments would piss her off? If so, then there’s no way to know for sure if they are misogynists, or just mean intended people saying things to generate a response from her. Her so called “threats” that she showed everyone weren’t even threats. If that’s so, then I guess I’ve received many threats online by people telling me that they hope my uncle rapes me, including all of the violent things I’ve received. If ANY OF THEM were actual “threats”, the police would do something about it. In one of her videos, she said the police didn’t do anything about it, but I would like to see this so called “threat” for myself.
As for “harassment”, they put themselves out to the public. When people put themselves out there, they will receive feedback. The problem with Skepchick and FTB is that most of what they say is stupid and doesn’t reflect the positions of the people they presume to speak for, which leads to this next point….
It’s really amazing that I could point out all of these things, her professional victimhood, her evo psy nonsense, her agreement with a woman calling Richard Dawkins a white supremacist (REALLY???), and I’m wrong for calling her stupid?
Again, what “misogynists”? This term has been thrown around so liberally that people who are not even misogynists have been dragged into this drama because of the false labeling. If you mean to say “sexists” instead of misogynists, then say it. But I suspect you mean to say “misogynists” meaning anyone who disagrees with a woman who claims to be speaking for equality (when that’s not the case, and that can be disputed)
By “misogynist” I mean people who say “I wish someone would rape you, you stupid cunt.” Is that not explicit enough? Saying we don’t know if they really mean it is irrelevant. Saying this is not a “threat” is clueless, simply because it doesn’t say “I am going to rape you on Tuesday.” Rebecca has received those also, btw. This is not calling anyone who disagrees with you a misogynist – it’s calling violent anti-woman rhetoric misogynist.
Characterizing what she has been subject to as “feedback” is also absurd. It is harassment, even online stalking, by any reasonable definition. It is meant to silence. Some of it explicitly is about silencing her, asking to have her kicked out of one venue or another.
Your denial of the reality here is astounding, and again says it all.
Chris
I already told you where to find the original video. I also told you that the other link is a direct video of the thing I was criticizing, and that the Ed Clint blog contained the link to the original source. You can’t seriously be this obtuse.
So what? You actually checked to see if I have a youtube channel so that you can dismiss the links that I provided, which were not of my youtube channel? Where’s you’re skepticism? Shouldn’t claims stand or fall on their own merits? As for the videos, one is a mirrored Thunderf00t video, and the other 2 were false flagged by angry radfems. The false flagging of videos was enough for me to mirror them, though I can delete one of them, since the youtube corrected their mistake when they caved into whiny victim feminists.
Who created a video depicting rape of someone they disliked? Or is this your way of trying to say that I did such a thing, in hopes that you can defeat what I’m saying without actually addressing any of it? I hope it is, because this would serve precisely as the type of nonsense that comes from the FTB, Skepchick camp, even though you don’t agree with everything they say.
Steven Novella,
I think it’s quite clear that Ophelia’s article was about a broader phenomenon and gender stereotypes. She says it quite explicitly in fact several times in the article. Surely you would agree that Shermer’s statement played into said stereotype?
Furthermore, I don’t think it is hair-splitting to point out that a stereotype is sexist but not necessarily those who play into it. For example, many companies have sometimes have upper management that is predominantly male and admin staff that is predominantly female. This happens inadvertently on many occasions through no ill intent.
This is a situation where it is perfectly reasonable to say that both a) this perpetuates a sexist stereotype AND b) that the company’s managers are not sexist.
Simon – I understand Ophelia’s point. It is reasonable. I am addressing what she wrote, not saying her underlying point is invalid, not saying that Shermer’s off the cuff remark was not unfortunate and counterproductive, but that she made statements that were as misleading and easy to misinterpret as the very statements she was criticizing.
She wrote: “Don’t laugh: Michael Shermer said exactly that during a panel discussion on the online talk-show The Point.”
So, according to her, Shermer said “exactly” that women are too stupid to do nontheism. I don’t think he said exactly that. I don’t think he even implied it. She got the context wrong also to bolster this misinterpretation (this is a simple factual mistake).
Don’t you think accusing Shermer of saying “exactly” that women are stupid is similar in kind and magnitude to Shermer saying intellectual activism is a “guy thing?”
This seems like a really important time to stress that it is not ONLY Rebecca receiving these things. Many of the prominent women skeptic/atheist bloggers and speakers have received and are STILL receiving unimaginable hate, delivered to their email and twitter feeds every.single.day. A ‘minority’ though it may be, they are determined and seem to have unlimited time to devote to an unrelenting tide of hate.
PZ has recently commented that the hate mail (including graphic photoshopped images) he’s receiving from the misogynists *in our own movement* is far more vile –and violent– than anything he’s ever received from religious groups he’s offended.
Whatever you think of these bloggers and their ideas, whatever stupid straw feminists you want to trot out (for the record, ‘gender feminist’ is a creation of Christine Hoff-Sommers–no one actually identifies as such), this sort of response is beyond reckoning, and disapproving of the worst instances while in the same breath suggesting that these people are doing feminism wrong and therefore have it coming is just offensive.
If you’re calling for a ‘truce’, or just want to ignore the whole thing and move on, consider yourselves lucky. Some of us don’t have that choice, because it’s coming into our lives unbidden every day.
Steven Novella
Okay, this example is good to go on. While both you and I agree that comments such as these should not be made to anyone, there are people out there who know that those comments piss her off, and make them for that reason. That’s simply what trolls do. Some of them may actually be women, as I’ve seen in interviews of internet trolls.
Actually, if anyone made violent anti-(insert my race) statements towards me on the internet, as nasty and horrible as the comment may be, the person making it may not actually be a racist. The person could simply be a troll, saying those things to try and piss me off. This is the reality of internet trolls. I had one of them on my channel years ago.
I guess we disagree on the labeling, but we agree that it’s wrong.
Atheists have always done the same to religious people on the internet. I’ve seen atheists go over to Christian channels in hordes, and leave comments one after another. Some of them were rude, and few were vulgar. And like I said, we don’t know if all of those people who leave those comments for Watson are actually atheists, and which comments specifically were from atheists.
We never considered messaging a public Christian figure as stalking. But look at what you said here, because this is EXACTLY what Skepchick, FTB, and their followers have tried and done to others. This is precisely the reason why I got involved in arguing against them. Your denial of the reality here is astounding, and again, says it all. (see I could use that line too, to show that you obviously haven’t been paying attention over the last year).
Are you referring to the “Communicating atheism” panel, or did she give another talk in Dublin?
Steven:
Given that she used the quotes for “that’s a guy thing” right before, my reading was that she was literally quoting Shermer’s “it’s more of a guy thing” which is in fact “exactly” what he said.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that if one subscribes to the stereotype (consciously or not), that Shermer’s statement can be seen to reinforce it. I also don’t think it’s unreasonable to be at least mildly discouraged by the statement if you don’t buy into the stereotype.
If I wasn’t confused before, I am now.
If that’s the case, I apologize. However, I don’t think my interpretation was unreasonable given the context. After all, why the rather obvious qualification?
And, yes, that’s how Ophelia’s criticism struck me. Of course, I’m guessing that not everyone would view me as the “average reasonable person.” Whether it’s because they don’t perceive me as “average” or don’t think me “reasonable” I don’t know.
Hi Steven,
You seem to wrap up your point as succinctly as possible, and highlight where your and my views diverge, when you ask Simon,
Don’t you think accusing Shermer of saying “exactly” that women are stupid is similar in kind and magnitude to Shermer saying being intellectually active* is a “guy thing?”
*sorry, can’t help but use Shermer’s actual words, which are, after all, what Benson was criticizing
This may just be our “agree to disagree” point. Speaking for myself – absolutely not the same magnitude; and not by a long shot. It seems you feel differently. As one last shot at reaching common ground, use the “race” test. Imagine if, when asked why no blacks could be found for the panel, Shermer had said, “I think being intellectually active is more of a white thing”. Presumably, you’d find such a comment quite cringe-worthy. Would you consider it the same caliber mistake for Ian Cromwell, in an article about the stereotype that blacks aren’t as smart as whites, writing, “Michael Shermer said exactly that: ‘being intellectually active … is more of a white thing.’”?
@masakari You don’t get out much if you think an offer of coffee at 3am is about the coffee. And yes, it is creepy to suggest sex to a total stranger, without any invitation or preliminaries, in an isolated and enclosed space. All the more so if that stranger has JUST publicly explained why she doesn’t like people doing that. If you don’t understand why, then it’s because you’re deliberately trying not to.
As for your silly argument about the threats to Watson and others being trolling – if that is indeed the case, and elements of the skeptical movement think it justifiable to respond to a simple difference of opinion by hounding her and anybody who voices the most moderate support for her, for months, with the most brutal and obscene possible personal abuse, for the sole purpose of causing the maximum possible hurt and offence and without the slightest concern for the offence they cause to every other women who reads it, then I’m surprised that people like Shermer can’t figure out why women might find something else to do with their time and energy.
@Dreaded Anomaly
A gross mischaracterization? I think not. I have in fact seen the video, and your transcript amply corroborates my interpretation.
Nobody is pretending that an anomaly doesn’t exist, other than Shermer, who doesn’t seem to know what to think. The difference is that some think women are the problem, because they are less intellectually active, vocal, motivated, assertive, or whatever, and others think it might be that women who stray from the party line are subjected to unrelenting, vicious personal abuse.
@masakari
“That’s not what happened. The dude in the elevator asked her for coffee.”
Ummm … I wasn’t in the elevator but yours is the first time I’ve read the exchange characterized as an invitation to coffee. For instance Greg Laden related it: “And when the Elevator Guy and Rebecca found themselves on the elevator, he suggested they stop at his room for a drink or something.” Coffee is for the coffee shop, a drink … or something … in a guy’s room in a hotel is an invitation to hot, sticky monkey sex. If this surprises or offends you I’d suggest a refresher course in ‘hail mary attempts to get laid’, sophomore edition.
You seem to suggest that random sexual invitations are … OK. Perhaps in your world. I am in no way prudish about sex – including more-or-less casual sex. But seriously, hitting up a stranger in an elevator for sex? Really? That is just effing weird.
mobilison
It appears you don’t get out much. Some people do actually ask others for coffee without the intentions of sex, especially semi-celebrities like Watson. Also, creepy is subjective. There are plenty of women who have looked at the same scenario and said there was nothing wrong with it, including women who I’ve asked for their opinions on this scenario, and numerous women on the anti-FTB-Skepchick side.
A few hypersensitive women don’t represent all women. I was under the impression that women are strong and independent, capable of dealing with the world in the way that men do, who don’t need men to display chivalry by not asking them for coffee or sex.
And it’s funny how no one who agrees with Watson ever brings up this issue for girl on girl, girl on guy, or guy on guy scenarios. It’s only a problem in the scenario of some whiny professional victim, who exploits everyone’s emotions by making it appear as a predatory case of a guy on girl.
I see we have direct evidence of the type of person I described here.
I don’t think I’ll see him present evidence of Ms. Watson’s “stupidity” that is a webpage that she authored, with a direct quote he considers “stupid.”
She could be the stupidest person to ever walk the earth; it still wouldn’t warrant relentless hyper-attentiveness to every perceived misstep she’s made in her whole life and the constant outpouring of obsessive rage.
When I find writers/speakers disagreeable, stupid or wrong, I take the radical step of no longer reading/listening to them. I’m clearly misguided on this point. Masakari et al have amply demonstrated that the rational, skeptical thing to do is harass them daily until they shut up.
He was apparently trying to think on his feet and those unfortunate words “intellectually active” pooped (oops, I meant popped) out of his mouth.
Various kinds of “…ist” things poop out of my own mouth sometimes. I try to be self-aware and open when someone calls me on it, and I try to admit my transgressions and apologize sometimes, but I hate that holier-than-thou look on the face of the recipient of my apology. I’m sure they themselves commit plenty of …ist comments or actions.
I appreciate Michael Shermer in so many ways that I find myself wanting to defend his explanation. I just can’t believe he’d think women are less intellectually active as men (nor that he’d admit to harboring such an overtly sexist belief even if he did.)
Shermer used some unfortunate trigger words (e.g. intellectually active), and I hope he at least acknowledged that he wasn’t sensitive in using those words, words that reflect a typical stereotype that has caused/perpetuated harm to women. On the other hand, hitting him with overstatements/accusations likely triggered his own defensiveness, a natural response. (I haven’t read his response to the accusation yet.)
When some people started reporting that the Eisenstaedt VJ-Day photo of the sailor kissing the woman on Times Square reflects “our culture of rape,” I found myself defending the sailor; the kiss reflected gratitude (she looked like a nurse) and unbridled joy. It took me awhile to realize that the photo does depict the culture of male dominance, as it was seen as perfectly acceptable for a drunk man to run around grabbing and strong-arming woman to kiss them. Calling it “rape” had triggered a defensive reaction in me.
If the public begins to perceive that skeptic and atheist events are a bunch of sexist men, or that most of the women who show up are “feminists” for that matter, I don’t think this will do these movements any good. There is a greater good at stake when this “stuff” goes public. It worries me.
Ophelia Benson said:
Seems to me that if someone says that someone else has committed a murder then ipso facto they are saying that the latter person is a murderer. Rather disingenuous, at best, to suggest otherwise, and in which case Shermer might, analogously speaking, have some justification for reacting as if you had “called him sexist”.
However, while I will concede that you didn’t explicitly label his statement “[atheism], it’s more of a guy thing” as sexist, although more than a few of your confreres on FTB did so, you did say “The main stereotype in play … is that women are too stupid to do nontheism … because that’s a guy thing”. And which you followed up by saying “Michael Shermer said exactly that”. In which case, since that is pointing to a sexist stereotype, asserting that Shermer said that is asserting that he is a sexist. Or maybe you would like to try arguing how many sexist statements one is allowed to make or, analogously, how many murders one is allowed to commit before we concede that the person is, in fact, a sexist or a murderer.
Well here, papertrail, let me help you out.
The ‘accusation’, as you say, was that Michael Shermer said something that fed into a pervasive sexist stereotype.
Ophelia’s original article has been linked above.
Shermer Response #1: (found here). Shermer clarifies that, indeed, he does not believe that woman are too stupid to do nontheism, but doesn’t say anything to walk back or qualify his original ‘it’s a guy thing’ comment. He spends the remainder of the article lamenting the ‘Witch hunt’ atmosphere that Ophelia has created by using his words and cautions against tribalism.
Shermer Response #2: (found here). Shermer responds again, repeating his non-sexist stance and much of the language from the first article about witch hunts, now adding McCarthyism and an oblique reference to Nazis.
for example:
baldage wrote: “writing, “Michael Shermer said exactly that: ‘being intellectually active … is more of a white thing.’”?”
No – the analogy is if they wrote – “Shermer said exactly that “blacks are stupid.”
I acknowledge that “it’s more of a guy thing” was a bad thing to say and deserves to be criticized. But that is not the equivalent of saying that girls are stupid.
Criticizing a public figure in his community for saying something horribly sexist that they did not say or even imply is – yes – charitably on the same order of magnitude.
Chris – It’s kinda obvious that posting stupid stuff on the internet has nothing to do with receiving nasty comments or email. If it did cheezburger would be inundated with death threats.
From the viewpoint of an outsider on all issues Skeptical, masakari2012 lost a great deal of credibility with that statement, then just sorta slide downhill into confusion and conspiracy theory.
It is heartening to see that most of the people on this board understand appropriate behavior, though.
No. People in public positions who put their statements out for the masses on the internet do receive nasty comments, and the dumber the statements, the more nasty comments the person would receive. I’ve already described the nature of trolls. And the troll comments are a minority among the various negative feedback from well-intended people that these particular people get for saying dumb things.
As to what I consider to be appropriate behavior, we’re probably in overall agreement. I don’t think anyone should send them violent or rape related e-mails, and leave such statements on their turf, yet it doesn’t mean that they are actual threats of violence and rape. Pointing out the behavior of trolls was not meant as agreeing that I think it’s okay. Like I said, I’ve got nasty comments too, and I’m no one special
A good number of people don’t care when Skepchick, FTB, and their allies say and do nasty things to other people who mean well, and don’t partake in troll tactics. These crazy bloggers seem to be exempt, while they’ve continued on their campaigns of labeling people “misogynists”, which in turn leads to getting more negative comments in retaliation to the witch hunts.
This is my last comment, since I don’t want to keep this going on the Colonel’s blog for much longer. Say what you will.
Okay, I took the 20 seconds to look at the context of the sentence where Michael Shermer uses the words “intellectually active” and I read (most) of Michael Shermer’s response/defense. Now, I don’t even think that he owes any apology for what he said. We can’t speak at all if we have to closely evaluate every word we utter in case it might sound …ist. Ophelia erred by going public with…nothing noteworthy. Micheal – you rock.
@danio :” He spends the remainder of the article lamenting the ‘Witch hunt’ atmosphere that Ophelia has created by using his words”…
Yeah, it sounds to me like he was very offended and hurt, and so he resorted to some hyperbole. I do the same thing when I’m unfairly publicly humiliated. This is something that could have been brought to his attention privately. It’s so easy to smear someone these days; just hit “submit”.
Reply to mobilis:
“A gross mischaracterization? I think not. I have in fact seen the video, and your transcript amply corroborates my interpretation.”
No, it does not. It simply does not. You said:
“This is why Shermer’s initial comment was unhelpful, to say the least – “Why are there more men skeptics?” “Because more men are skeptics/skeptical”.”
You are wrong about the question he was asked, and wrong about the answer he gave. This is not a matter of interpretation or opinion; it is basic reading comprehension. As I said in my last comment:
“Shermer was specifically addressing why he thought Cara Santa Maria found it difficult to find women *to sit on the panel*. He was answering the question “why are there more *vocal* men skeptics?” with the well-studied observation that men tend to be more vocal.”
Another point of context is that Shermer’s use of the phrase “who’s more intellectually active about it” specifically refers to atheism, and not to intellectual activity as a whole. While his word choice could have been better, it certainly did not deserve the attempted public shaming that it got.
“The difference is that some think women are the problem, because they are less intellectually active, vocal, motivated, assertive, or whatever, and others think it might be that women who stray from the party line are subjected to unrelenting, vicious personal abuse.”
There are plenty of explanations of this which do not imply any intellectual disability on the part of women. As I have said previously, studies show that women and men react differently to being in the minority in group situations. (See, for example, the New York Times article “More Women, but Not Nearly Enough”.) That is a statement of observation, not a judgment. When someone reacts to such a statement with offense, they are implicitly accepting the sexist idea that the “male way” is the “right way”.
Good grief, papertrail. Ophelia didn’t “go public” with anything–it was a freely available interview, and it provided a convenient illustration of a pervasive problem Ophelia was already composing an article about. You seem to be suggesting that Michael Shermer should be given a pass on such unfortunate phrases, be given the benefit of the doubt at every turn, be excused for hyperbole on the basis of extreme provocation, and (gobsmackingly) should be quietly taken aside and have his errors explained to him, while Ophelia receives no such considerations. Do you think it’s ok that she’s been called out extensively and publicly, in two long articles written to rebut one sentence and a quote of his that she used in an article that wasn’t even about him? How is that not a towering double standard?
Steven Novella said:
I wonder exactly what evidence you adduce to support that contention, that Shermer’s “[atheist activism], it’s more of a guy thing” was “a bad thing to say”. If Dr. Hall is correct in her assertions or support of those from the Scientific American article then it is just as justified to say, for example, “[to be autistic, to be dyslexic, to have Tourette syndrome, and to have ADHD], it’s more of a guy thing”. Would you say that that is a “bad thing to say”? How about, considering that there are about ten times as many men in prison as there are women, “[violent, antisocial behaviour], it’s more of a guy thing”?
In addition, while I quite agree with your last statement above – “… not the equivalent of saying that girls are stupid” – it highlights, I think, a rather problematic carelessness with language which is manifested not just in Dr. Hall’s article but substantially throughout the conversation on this point. And, more particularly, it seems to me that the subphrase, the assertion, or the hypothesis, “girls are stupid”, betrays some categorical thinking that frequently derails the conversation. For one thing, “girls” is not an indivisible whole so that one is obliged to say or assert that “some girls are stupid” – as are some guys. The question then becomes “how many of each?” and for what reasons in which areas, and which are going to be both cultural and genetic. But, in any case, far better to say either – as in your statement above – “all girls” which then makes it clear that the contention is not at all supportable, or “some girls” which then depends entirely on context – something that many seem to lose sight of.
And, to kill two birds with one stone as this is apropos of the question of language, baldape said earlier:
And here again we have a problematic case of elision of qualifiers. If that categorical statement was what Shermer had actually said then one might reasonably have justification for a charge of sexism. But he, of course, said absolutely nothing of the kind as he was not referring to all fields in which “intellectually active” might apply, but to the much narrower one of atheist activism. While one might reasonably ask why that might be the case in some narrow segment of the demographic, to argue that it applies in all of them seems simply untenable. As you suggest, “we have to chart a course out of this mess”, but careless use of language tends to preclude having many solid points of reference to do so.
Can we PLEASE stop the endless whinging about “she called him A SEXIST!”
Listen up, people.
We are skeptics here, we understand cognitive biases, right? We realize that we–yes, even we skeptics–are mostly unconscious that we have them, right? That it takes a lot of work–constant vigilance, in fact–to be even as aware of our biases as we are–
Right?
Well, we are all sexist. We are all racist. Sexism (like racism and other forms of bigotry) can be understood as a sort of cognitive bias. One originating in the attitudes of the culture one grew up in (and likely influenced by other sorts of biases, like the Just-world hypothesis and the fundamental attribution error).
When a person–oh, let’s call her Ophelia–is discussing stereotypes, and stereotype threat, and the harm they do, her point in any example she chooses is NOT “PERSON WHO SAID THIS IS A BAD PERSON WHO BELIEVES IN AND DELIBERATELY PROMOTES THE NOTION OF FEMALE INFERIORITY.”
No, her point is “this thing so-and-so said promotes the notion of female inferiority.”
Yes, there is a very real and important distinction to be made there. Think about it. Digest it. Carry it with you from here on out.
Should have said “unconscious of them” not “unconscious that we have them.”
Nygbrus, “Shermer could have, and should have, responded with a comment saying that of course he didn’t mean it in a sexist way and boy does that misogynistic hegemony suck! End of story.”
Yeah. Not doing so gives cover to intentional misogynists. It’s as if the fear of actually making a mistake and self-correcting keeps divorces people from reason. I see that Ben Howard agrees with me.
You know, everyone always talks about the trolls, but no one ever really does anything about them…I don’t mean labor intensive moderation. Technology just seems slow in responding to this need.
Anthropologist Underground said:
The supposed sexism of Shermer’s statement, methinks, is entirely in the minds of the beholders of it. I certainly don’t see any – and more than a few others are of a similar mind. Maybe you can point me – and the others who are, no doubt, equally curious – to the definitive proof that that statement qualifies as sexism. Should you wish to undertake that task of proof yourself, you might want to ask yourself, for starters, precisely how it meets the dictionary definition, i.e., that it has to exhibit discrimination – did Shermer insist that only men could be part of the atheist movement? – or that it has to “promote stereotypes”. And simply noting some gender disparity does not qualify as that.
@Chris, mouse, Danio, et al
The irony that leaves me laughing is that masakari means (I think – my Japanese is miniscule) something along the lines of middle way or middle ground.
@ Danio: “Good grief, papertrail. Ophelia didn’t “go public” with anything–it was a freely available interview, and it provided a convenient illustration of a pervasive problem Ophelia was already composing an article about.”…
I read Ophelia’s article and stand behind what I said. She mischaracterized Shermer’s words by taking them out of context regarding why women don’t tend to join public panels on atheism. She demonized Shermer by presenting him as her primary example of “Nontheism and Feminism: Why the Disconnect?” (the title of her article).
Personally, I don’t enjoy seeing someone create an unnecessary public perception of a huge “disconnect” between the skeptics and atheism/secular humanists Of course Michael Shermer was pissed off, and his posted response reflects this, naturally.
Hey, if someone wants to really study whether or not sexism is pervasive among skeptics, I mean without just pulling a few questionable words out of context, that would be interesting. Meanwhile, the challenge should be how to help more female atheists to feel like they could/should speak out. Maybe many *women* actually perceive atheism activism as “a guy thing”. Should these women be called out for being “sexist”? Or, should the atheism movement figure out how to draw more females in?
I am strictly atheistic and am a female. I, for one, don’t feel comfortable or safe, etc. openly identifying myself with a position that many of my friends, family, neighbors find offensive or worse. I don’t like being rejected or left out, and I fear retribution from zealots. Is that a “girl thing” (generally speaking) to feel this way? I don’t know the true reasons behind the disproportionality among atheism speakers; that’s just how I feel (at this time).
I don’t think Shermer meant to be sexist in what he said. He just screwed up. It’s a guy thing. Is that sexist?
I meant to say: Personally, I don’t enjoy seeing someone create an unnecessary public perception of a huge “disconnect” between the skeptics/atheism/secular humanists and feminism.
Harriet Hall said:
Excellent post, Dr. Hall. And you are to be commended, as are several others, for taking a rather cantakerous bull of an issue by the horns and endeavoring to shed some much-needed light on a very murky situation. However, while you are, I think, quite right to ascribe many of those male/female differences to “cultural influences”, and to suggest that there are genetic differences – for instance that, as you say, “boys are more likely to be autistic, to be dyslexic, … and to have ADHD”, it seems that there are significant interactions between culture and genetics that tend to amplify possibly small differences in the latter. For instance, Richard Dawkins, in his The Blind Watchmaker, describes an analogous situation with pebbles on a beach:
Perfectly reasonable then to argue that whatever gender disparities exist in society are far less likely to be the “fault” of some nebulous and abstract entity – e.g., “The Patriarchy” – than they are to be due to the largely blind principles of evolution working within our societies to amplify frequently small genetic differences. And those differences can be amplified through the phenomenon of resonance to destructive levels as in the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. (1)
Although that is not to suggest that the genetic differences can not also be rather large even if their effects can be quite small or entirely tractable. An interesting and quite informative description of some of those is to be found in the Gender chapter of Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate. (2)
However, even though all of those differences might be quite small, at least at the genetic level, it seems quite likely that evolutionary processes have amplified them to problematic if not potentially disastrous levels of disparity within our cultures. In which case, one might argue that the efforts of some – “gender feminists”, for example – to sweep those facts under the carpet are more likely to preclude workable solutions than not since the sources of those disparities are the genetics and not the culture.
1) “_http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m686UO68AXI”;
2) “_http://www.pasadena.edu/files/syllabi/txcave_18360.pdf”
David Gorski said:
Sorry, but I don’t see that alluding to an incident in the history of Nazi Germany and using it as an analogy to a current one really justifies that description, particularly as it emphasizes the problematic nature of bullying. And if the charge of being a sexist leveled against Michael Shermer by Ophelia Benson and others doesn’t hold any water – and more than a few are of that opinion – then the subsequent “piling-on” might reasonably be construed as a problematic case of bullying and engaging in a witch-hunt. I certainly didn’t see any evidence and proof that Shermer’s statement qualified as sexist – only hearsay and innuendo and libel. And a whole bunch of sloppy and decidedly unskeptical thinking.
However, while I’ll concede that some might over use or incorrectly use analogies to Nazi Germany, that is not to say that all of them so qualify – in which class I would put both the one by Shermer, and a previous one by Benson comparing TAM to Nazi Germany. And it seems to me that a larger part of the problem is in the proverbial “mind of the beholder” in drawing the wrong inferences from the stated analogy. More particularly, Wikipedia (1) notes that:
That there might have been some similar relationship between Shermer and confreres [S] in the atheist community [A] that was analogous to those intellectuals [I] in Nazi Germany [G] [so, S:A => I:G], hardly justifies concluding, as some apparently did, that Shermer was implying that the leaders of the atheist community were plotting the invasion of Poland.
In addition, the proper use and understanding of analogies seems to require the understanding that elements in the different cases do not necessarily have to exhibit one-to-one ratios. For instance, two right triangles – for example, 6-8-10 and 3-4-5 – will have the same included angles and will therefore be “congruent”, but the corresponding sides will generally be different while the ratios will the same and different from 1:1, e.g., 6:3=>8:4=>10:5 = 2:1.
And in the case of the analogy offered by Shermer, while his fate [S], and those of his confreres, was far less severe and draconian than that suffered by those intellectuals [I] in Germany, it is also true the atheist movement [A] is unlikely to be responsible for the death of 50 million people as Germany [G] was. However the relationship between those elements still holds, and the principle in play – the set of angles – is emphasized by the constrast – which makes it, I think, a perfectly credible analogy.
1) “_http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analogy#Identity_of_relation”
Papertrail:
The claim isn’t that sexism is pervasive in skepticism *specifically*. Sexism is pervasive. Full stop. It’s unavoidably ingrained in our culture. The point is that the skeptic/atheist movement isn’t exempt from this. The request is that skeptics examine sexist stereotypes using the same critical thinking skills with which they examine anything else. There has been an unbelievable amount of backlash from this request. And yes, it is a request. There is no ‘penalty’ for refusing. No driving people out of the movement, as Shermer implies when he says:
Those guys haven’t actually been purged–they’re still very much IN the movement, as is everyone else who objects to talking about sexism when there are–in their view–much more important things to talk about.
You continue:
In the interview Ophelia quoted from, Michael Shermer stated his belief that people in the atheist/skeptic movement were about a 50/50 male to female split. Just that women *speakers* were hard to come by. In the 7 or 8 years I’ve been part of the movement, I’ve heard lots of people ask ‘where the women at?’, and in response, lists of female atheist/skeptic speakers have been collated and updated regularly. These women exist. They just don’t ping the radar quite as hard as the male spokespeople. It’s an endless loop.
Many people in the movement are actively trying to draw a more diverse crowd to the conferences. A big part of this is making sure women(and lgbt attendees, and other minorities) feel safe from harassment or other unwelcome behavior. If you happened to visit the ‘slymepit’ website that Dr. Gorski linked to upthread (in his first comment on this post), you will realize this is legitimate concern. Most Cons have recently implemented and/or publicized existing conduct policies for their meetings to try and assuage these concerns, which is very much appreciated. There is also a Women in Secularism conference that is now in its second year, coming up in May.
So, papertrail, if you think Michael Shermer is 100% right and Ophelia Benson is 100% wrong in this particular instance, there’s nothing I can say to change your mind. But this exchange didn’t happen in a vacuum. Ophelia didn’t create this rift with her article–it has been growing for years. Taking this extensive history into consideration, a seemingly innocent slip of the tongue like “it’s a guy thing” is bound to raise some eyebrows.
Hi Dr. Hall-
I read recently that someone in the a/s community had coined the termed “queen bee” to describe women with your experiences. I think it was meant to be derisive, I’m not really sure. Either way, I prefer the term “Jackie Robinson.”
I was raised by and around many women with experiences similar to your own; pioneers in what used to be seen as “men’s” work. I never got the impression they thought they were doing something special. They were just doing what needed to be done to support their families, or they were just following their dreams, the same as any man in those days would do.
Anyway, I don’t want to make a big deal out of it. I know you don’t want to be known as a woman skeptic, etc…, and I’m thinking the same caveats apply to being recognized as a woman doctor. I have to say it once, though, because I don’t think I ever really said it to so many other deserving women: thank you for making the world a fairer place for women.
Danio:
I have been part of it for over almost thirty years. Sorry that I have not had much of an impact, I have other things going on in my life. Though when my brother and his fundamentalist wife sent us a videotape on the “evils” of the “new age” including yoga and playing Dungeons and Dragons, I responded by giving him a year’s subscription to Skeptical Inquirer (this was in the 1980s, back when I got the crud discussed on Snopes in my snail-mailbox!). Perhaps I should now send him the Youtube link to my younger son being the Game Master of a Pathfinder game (a version of Dungeons and Dragons) which is about pirates! (a witch is the ship captain… she may make the sailors wear the dresses she makes as punishment (except some might be secret cross-dressers), plus there is a goblin, and some catfolk… along with a video tutorial on how to make the ship models for game playing)
Though the biggest impact for me was when my oldest son was born with medical issues, I already had a filter for the validity of information available. I found real answers among the dreck that was available even before the days of the Internets. One big example is that the book by Glenn Doman that I checked out from the public library about what to do with your “brain damaged baby” that turned out to be a book length advertizement for his non-scientific program. I was already immunized against flim-flam (which was the title of the one of the next books I checked out of the library, one does lots of reading in medical waiting rooms).
Nirvana fallacy! Oh, wait, we are not playing “name that fallacy”? Oops, sorry.
>Rebecca will, in my experience – and the example you give – correct errors when pointed out. What else can you expect.
>The response of Rebecca and other female skeptics to the abhorrent misogyny, threats of rape and violence, and constant harassment may not be optimal – but really, until you have walked in their shoes, don’t be so judgmental. It is largely blaming the victim.
Your other points essentially amount to not agreeing with Rebecca’s brand of feminism and her liberal politics. That is fine to disagree, but it doesn’t make Rebecca “stupid” and saying it does tells us more about you than her.
Anyone who thinks misogyny, rape threats, and online harassment are acceptable behaviour are complete idiots. Nobody deserves that and nobody with half a brain should think it’s okay. But you know what? I don’t really find it all that impressive when people speak up, on behalf of women, and denounce the plainly awful actions of internet idiots.
You know what *would* impress me? If people would stand up and do or say something when it’s REALLY HARD to. As Dr. Hall demonstrated with a simple t-shirt, free of vitriolic language, it’s harder to stand up to your friends than to your enemies.
Which is why I’m constantly disheartened that good folk like Rebecca Watson, Melody Hensley, and Amy Roth will act with such a lack of emotional intelligence as to belittle and bully other women, like myself. Imagine if it had been Michael Shermer who claimed that women rag on Skepchicks just to get male approval and speaking gigs. How would people react if he made fun of me for liking shoes, made gender stereotype insults, or told people I was on a list of “known sexists”? But Rebecca feels justified in calling me “the dumbest person on twitter” (dumber than all the idiots who threat to rape her and call her a cunt?), and can feel safe doing so.
This hetero-normal idea that all harassment, bullying, and threats that women receive are all from men is really becoming tiresome. I’m glad people denounce the faceless nobodies of the internet who send us disgusting garbage, but how about having the tact and social skills to confront friends and colleagues who are doing wrong? Are we not, as skeptics, supposed to give a bit more effort in recognizing our biases and accepting we could be doing harm? Has no one been listening to Carol Tavris?
So yes, like most women with any online presence, I get the “you’re a flat-chested joo cunt and I’d like to see men piss on you” shit, too. But what *really* hurts me is the shunning, name-calling, slanderous, malicious, bullying that comes from people who should know better. Prominent female skeptics using their authority to intimidate other women. http://www.saramayhew.com/blog/?p=1163
And gawd damn if it isn’t like there’s a bridge-burning competition I don’t know about, while I sit around like an effing idiot trying to be tactful! (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
All this overblown reaction to Rebecca Watson’s harmless video and Michael Shermer’s just as harmless off the cuff remark, are convincing me to maintain my avoidance of sceptic’s clubs. The reaction is unbelievable. Both are heroes for the feminist cause and they have been publicly drawn and quartered by the very people who should see them as such.
Dear Danio,
I actually think that Shermer is the more at fault (particularly for the over-reaction in his replies). I do think, though, that while it was entirely fair for Benson to point to and criticise Shermer’s remarks, the fact that she did it (as she herself has said) in a “deliberately hyperbolic” style was unfortunate. It was unfortunate because it then diverted attention from the sexist stereotype in Shermer’s remarks and onto her accusation.
Benson justifies this by saying that the article “wasn’t about Shermer”. But by naming Shermer prominently in the article she had made it about him. Deliberate hyperbole and marked changing of context would be entirely fine when discussing the topic of sterotypes in general but are not so fine when you’re directly criticising a named person (and can’t just be shrugged off by saying that it “wasn’t about” him).
It’s a pity that Benson refuses to accept that point; and it’s a pity that Shermer refuses to accept that his remarks appeared to invoke a sexist stereotype and thus that he should have been (and should be) more thoughtful in how he words things (and especially so in his written replies, where he did have time to think).
Having said that, I actually think that the fault is minor on both parties, and that the more problematic issue is that everyone seems keen on hyperbolically exaggerating other people’s faults.
Danio:
Definitely not. I’m not among those who (in the meme current on B&W) think that people like Shermer “merit extra exemption from criticism” because of his standing. One criticism of Benson’s “deliberately hyperbolic” way that she called out Shermer is that it detracts from the merit of her criticism, and instead puts the focus on the spat, not as it should be on the sexist stereotype.
I think her critique would be stronger if she accepted that the exaggeration she used wasn’t quite appropriate and now restated her objection to the invoking of a sexist stereotype in straightforward and precise language. With the criticism now stated fairly, the focus is then securely on Shermer, with the expectation that he then acknowledge some fault.
Me saying that, however, gets interpreted on FTB as being hostile and as trying to entirely exonerate Shermer, as though any criticism at all of Benson (however minor) thereby totally exonerates Shermer. Just as Shermer is not too eminent to be exempt from criticism, nor is Benson; and nor should the fact that someone is calling out sexism automatically bestow “extra exemption from criticism”.
Unfortunately, just as Shermer “doubled down” and refused to acknowledge any inappropriateness of his wording, so Benson is doubling down and refusing to accept any inappropriateness in the manner of her criticism (“I like the way I wrote the article. Mkay? I wouldn’t change a word of it.”) .
Reply to Ztarr:
“But you know what? I don’t really find it all that impressive when people speak up, on behalf of women, and denounce the plainly awful actions of internet idiots.
You know what *would* impress me? If people would stand up and do or say something when it’s REALLY HARD to. As Dr. Hall demonstrated with a simple t-shirt, free of vitriolic language, it’s harder to stand up to your friends than to your enemies.”
I wholeheartedly agree. We should expect better from our friends than from our enemies.
Haven’t had a chance to read much but just a comment on:
–
“Watching sports on TV with other guys and beer is a guy thing too, but not because it’s hardwired into the male brain. It’s a guy thing because of customs and attitudes in our society. ”
–
If so, why would gay men be less likely to do this? Were they socialised differently?
Similarly gay men’s bigger interest on average in things like fashion – were they socialised differently? I’m afraid I’m not convinced. For example (this is less scientific I know) I went to an all-boys school, a pretty male environment, and plenty of guys are now out as gay.
These make me think that some differences like these between men and women aren’t simply to do with customs and attitudes if they also exist between gay and straight men.
Just to add to my last point: with gay and straight men, you’ve largely controlled for customs and attitudes, but still the differences exist.
@BillyJoe – Speaking of the off the cuff remarks by Shermer…I wonder if it comes down to how we think it’s appropriate to treat out hero’s, our leaders, our contemporaries, our competitors, etc.
What goals is one trying to achieve? Are the goals conflicting?
If I think about Shermer as equivelent to an artist…such as a film maker and I think of his comment as an expression of his craft – he is a skeptic, questioning stereotypes is part of his craft, then I have no problem with the criticisms I’ve seen of his comments that have been quoted on this board.
If Spielberg produced a short documentary under difficult time constraints, I think it’s appropriate for a critic or a movie blogger to say “Hey that documentary was derivative and lacked the depth that the topic called for.” I think it would be strange and somewhat disingenuous sounding if the the critic said “It’s not that we are saying that Spielberg is a hack..” Of course it might be constructive to mention the constraints that piece was produced under. But then choosing projects to fit time constraints is part of the craft of film making. Does Spielberg get a complete pass and two thumbs up from the critics because he’s a hero. In my mind that is patronizing, the critics aren’t doing their job, they aren’t giving their audience their honest opinion and they are not challenging Spielberg to do his best work.
On the other hand, when building a community, criticism is often offered in a different manner. When I look at how criticism is handled within my social groups of artists, it is extremely gently if at all. The thought is that the community is there to support the artists. Criticism is offered only when requested or when sharing negotiating responsibilities. The assumption is that the artist will have enough criticism from outside the community to cope with (clients, critics, gallery owners, patrons, etc). When criticism is offered it is expected that it will be offered in as diplomatic and constructive format as possible. Strength are balanced against weaknesses, usually starting and ending on strengths.
I’m sure there are exceptions, but IME critics (clients, patrons, gallery owners) are not welcomed with open arms INTO the artist’s community. Their value is seen, they can have social, friendly and cordial relations, but separate.
It seems possible that the Skeptical community is struggling with an attempt to integrate a rather intense critical approach and a supportive community approach and that’s a pain in the butt. It looks like there are many individuals who are genuinely trying to decently pursue their craft (from the perspective of a critic or community builder). But, there are also the kinds individuals (trolls, instigators, pot stirrers) who tend to increase turmoil, that make things difficult in any community, possibly more instigators than typical are attracted due to the discord sown by the conflict between critic/community.
I don’t know, though, just an idea.
sorry – I’m not up on my commenting etiquette as I should be. My above comment was addressed to BillyJoe because his comment sparked my idea, but it’s not closed to other readers.
Well, first off, we need to determine whether or not the stereotypical gay interest in fashion is actually real before we attempt to explain it. Certainly there are many flamboyant gays and gays interested in stereotypically female things, but . . . are we seeing that because it confirms our expectations? Are gays getting interested in those because they confirm *their* unconscious expectations? Is fashion simply more accepting of gays than other fields of interest might be, creating a skew that has nothing to do with inbuilt preferences?
Or, and this thought kind of intrigues me, is there a certain wiring to seek an appropriate role model, which in gays might lean towards a more feminine model, even if the actual feminine model isn’t inbuilt but has to be obtained from society? It seems likely to me, anyway, that it isn’t all one thing or the other (nature or nuture) but quite possibly both working together.
One thing to consider for certain is that fashion isn’t really a fundamentally female/gay male interest. It seems to be in our society, but in other societies that is not the case. Consider Maasai males, for instance. Or consider European fashion a few centuries ago. There were seamstresses, but that was grunt work — tailoring was a male profession, and couture was *exclusively* male. Oh, ladies would dress beautifully, but it was men designing the dresses. So fashion is clearly not an inbuilt preference of either gender or sexual preference within gender. If there is a trend, it must be informed by society.
Thanks Calli Arcale for considering my posts (two above them for anything in particular).
The point I was referring to is that again was:
—
“Watching sports on TV with other guys and beer is a guy thing too, but not because it’s hardwired into the male brain. It’s a guy thing because of customs and attitudes in our society. ”
—
Fashion was just one example. I am not an expert on research contrasting gay men and heterosexual men but I believe it is accepted there are some average differences. Interest in fashion was just one example I guessed from popular culture (my more general example would be interest in lots of different arts e.g. acting, dancing, etc.). So the more general question is where do they come from if society has treated them the same when they were growing up anyway.
Is your position that there are no average differences between gay men and heterosexual men? If you think there are differences, throw them out and they could be examined.
Bad Typo:
“(two above them for anything in particular)”
should be
“(two above them for anybody interested).”
No, my position is that I don’t think we really know if such differences exist. There are stereotypes, certainly, but I haven’t seen much effort to tease out whether gay men actually are, for instance, more into fashion than straight men are. (And yeah, I understood where you were going with that as just an example. That’s totally fine; gotta start somewhere, after all!) And I think we need to first quantify such differences before trying to work out why they might exist — is it nature, is it nurture, is it an act to fit in with a particular “community”….etc. It’s not easy stuff to tease out.
And I’m a software engineer, so it’s not something I’m particularly good at. I work with things that are far more concrete and tractable.
@mouse:
A very good thought. Thanks!
Thank you to Danio and Girlgoneriled for making an incredibly important point that has otherwise been lost: It’s not that skeptics are sexist. It’s that we are ALL sexist. We all practice this unconscious bias because, as they remind us, it is so ingrained in our society. (Of course it is much better than it used to be!) I catch myself doing it now and again, yet I was born feminist and have knocked down a few barricades myself.
The most important thing is to recognize it in ourselves, because that’s the best way to change those cognitive biases. When I catch myself doing it, I apologize for inadvertently giving offense, and try harder to do better.
Since skeptics love data, I will assign some homework: take a look at Prof. Virginia Valian’s outstanding book, “Why So Slow?” published by MIT Press. Her 400pp book documents research showing how cognitive bias, and the implicit assumptions that we all hold, hurts the ability of minorities to advance in “positions of power and prestige”. Her emphasis is on gender but the data also hold for other groups with low power. This book is actually required reading for chairs of faculty and upper admin search committees at my university.
Everyone is steering well clear of the fact that women use considerably more CAM than men. CAM use is commonly assumed to require a lack of “critical thinking skills”, with mine being a rare dissenting voice suggesting that deeper human instincts are mainly responsible.
There are, in any case, many alternative explanations for the gender association , just as there are many why women might not, and might actively choose not to, participate in the more confrontional aspects of atheism (if that is what this about).
I, for example, am a male atheist (like Schermer from a fundamentalist Christian background) who sees trying to persuade others against their religion as a rather futile and not obviously worthy thing with which to occupy my time. Even after reading Dawkins and others it is not clear that the disadvantages of religious belief outweigh the benefits to believers. That can certainly not be shown to normal scientific standards of validity because of the impossibility of performing prospective studies. We should be consistent in these matters.
Angora Rabbit:
Many years ago I attended a talk from a professor of electrical engineering (who was the first woman to do research in Antarctica). She outlined the issues and biases that came from academia that women of her generation endured, and how some of the same issues are still prevalent. I, unfortunately, cannot remember more details.
More recently I did listen to this discussion on how subtle gender bias of science faculty favors male students. It is one reason why next summer my daughter plans to change both her first and middle names to ones that are gender neutral. She does plan to go into academic research (in a field of psychology, which is why she is working very hard in getting better than good grades in bio-psych).
By the way, fashion sense is more of a family trait for us. My very straight younger son is very keen on what he wears (and that never ever includes white socks), as is my daughter, and to a slightly lesser extent myself (since I cannot wear necklaces due to a nickel allergy, I have an extensive scarf collection).
@ Chris
” My very straight younger son is very keen on what he wears (and that never ever includes white socks)”
Sorry Chris, but he’s never going to make it in a polka band. Too bad. That has to be the next big thing.
” how subtle gender bias of science faculty favors male students.”
I have three daughters, one of them a star in science, and I have seen bias affect each of them in rather different ways. I’m not quite sure how any man who has a daughter can countenance systemic bias against women. Yet it has endured from time immemorial.
Ah, windriven, the young man is striving to become a math teacher. His socks have pictures of dinosaurs and sharks with freaking lasers!
Thanks for your thoughts, Calli Arcale.
(I’m mainly just re-iterating my position here)
Personally from my experience, for whatever reason girls like dancing and watching dancing, musicals, etc. on average more than boys.
I have also noticed this in gay men over heterosexual men.
Similarly, I’ve found that boys like playing soccer/rugby and watching soccer/rugby, etc. on average more than girls.
I have also noticed this in heterosexual men over gay men (e.g. within my school – I think it would show up with statistical testing).
Personally I think there are currently some average differences between men and women. And between gay men and heterosexual men. And they very often seem to be a lot of the same differences. I don’t think it is to do with stereotyping that I think there are some average differences between gay men and straight men – I think quantitative data would show it. But perhaps I would need to know more research to convince you and it’s outside my field of expertise.
Gee, Peter, it sounds to me as though you’re saying that CAM is a “girl thing.” Did you really mean that?
Gee, Peter, it sounds to me as though you’re saying that CAM is a “girl thing.” Did you really mean that?
You feel it might be wise for me to now to “take the fifth”?
No, I’m actually suggesting you might want to think about what you just said and decide if that’s what you really meant.
nii,
I think their may be a cultural selection effect that may drive gay men toward activities that involve socializing with women over men. When coming out I came out to the women in my life first and came out to my dad last,* but not because I believe I am a woman or enjoy doing a preponderance of activities you believe to be feminine. I did it because it made me feel safer (both physically and emotionally). From my perspective straight men just don’t take the news as well as women do. I have only lost straight men as friends to the revelation of being gay, no female friends. There are a whole host of worries we as gay men have when meeting new straight men that we just don’t have when it comes to women. The most extreme of these are violent reactions to the perception of being hit on (and then a subsequent invocation of “gay panic”). If most of our friends are women, then yes, we will tend to gravitate towards activities that are considered feminine.
Despite that, I’m a fairly late bloomer, I didn’t acknowledge I was gay until I 27. Because of this I had a life growing up among the straight guys and enjoy host of activities that are regrettably perceived as masculine. Such as snowboarding, playing video games, martial arts, and drinking beer. I don’t enjoy watching sports (but neither do my straight male friends, they’re geeks too). I do like swing dancing (not so much club dancing, but will do so if my friends are), cooking (to eat healthy), and some musicals (I blame mom, but there is nothing wrong with men finding musicals or singing entertaining).
* – Technically not last, because every new friendship, or working relationship usually involves a new coming out process with that individual. Here I mean I came out to him last among my close relationships at the time, as I feared he’d take it the worst (and he did).
okay I’ll bite. Although I really don’t feel like it.
pmoran “Everyone is steering well clear of the fact that women use considerably more CAM than men”
The “fact” Really? Do tell.
I won’t bite. Especially because there have been many, many times I’ve wanted to throw in some passing snark at pmoran in unrelated posts but (almost always) resist the temptation. I’ll leave that sort of thing to him.
However, from a purely factual standpoint, the data do show that women tend to use CAM more than men, and that upper middle and above socioeconomic status folks to as well. That is noted, but not explained – in other words, correlation but not causation. At least not to the best of my knowledge.
How that has anything to do with the topic at hand is beyond me, though I am sure there is some chain of tenuous logic at play.
“However, from a purely factual standpoint, the data do show that women tend to use CAM more than men, and that upper middle and above socioeconomic status folks to as well. That is noted, but not explained – in other words, correlation but not causation. At least not to the best of my knowledge.”
I hope I wasn’t throwing out unrelated passing snark…it wasn’t my intention. It’s just that pmoran happened to make a statement that wouldn’t pass in my family without being closely questioned*. So it jumped out at me.
Does the data show that women consumer more CAM products overall or chose to use a CAM approach more often per illness than men? Are the number’s limited to the CAM actually being consumed by the woman or do they incorporate treatment for her children or other household members? How are we identifying CAM? Does it include exercise programs, massage, supplements, sporting equipment?
It’s pretty well known that the traditional role of women includes purchasing household goods and first aid/nurse. In addition it wouldn’t be surprising if women (considering our biology) consume more healthcare overall, so I was curious what “more CAM” meant.
Considering all that, I just found attempting to make any statement about “women using more CAM” strange. It’s like trying to make a statement about men based on the fact that more men than women suffer injury from electrocution each year.**
*This is what happens when you have two academics with Phd’s in economics in the family, you basically don’t get to say anyone consumes more of anything without an argument.
**I don’t know if that’s the case, I’m just throwing out a possibility.
@nybrgus – Just to be clear, I don’t have the gripe with pmoran that you all have. I occasionally agree with him and occasionally disagree, but have generally find it better to stay out of the pmoran frays.
This was a individual point that stood out to me. Nothing more.
okay I’ll bite. Although I really don’t feel like it.
pmoran “Everyone is steering well clear of the fact that women use considerably more CAM than men”
The “fact” Really? Do tell.
It has often been mentioned here. I attach an extract from an article that contains some references. It is from the surgical section of Medscape — you may not be able to access that directly. (It suggests that women in the general population are mainly interested in mind-body approaches http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/723425_2 )
I thought I made it quite clear in my post, when taken as a whole, that there are plenty of reasons why this might be so that have nothing to do wiht the intellectual capacity of women, just as a relative non-engagement of women in “organized atheism” could reflect a quite mature and rational inclination.
Quote–
“With regard to gender, women are more likely than men to use CAM (Cherniack, Senzel, & Pan, 2001; Fouladbakhsh & Stommel, 2008; Fouladbakhsh et al., 2005; Lengacher et al., 2002; Sparber et al., 2000; Spiegel et al., 2003). Estimates range from 1.4–2.5 times greater odds of CAM use among female patients with cancer and longtime survivors (Fouladbakhsh, 2007; Patterson et al., 2002; Spiegel et al., 2003). This pattern of more frequent CAM use by women is consistent with results from the 2002 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) for the general U.S. population (Barnes, Powell-Griner, McFann, & Nahin, 2004). Further empirical findings from previous analysis of the 2002 NHIS, however, show that gender differences in CAM use are most prevalent with respect to CAM practices (e.g., yoga, meditation, guided imagery), with women having more than twice the odds of engaging in them than men (Fouladbakhsh, 2007; Fouladbakhsh & Stommel, 2008). This greater female emphasis on CAM practices does not extend to CAM services offered by providers or over-the-counter CAM products. The greater likelihood of using practices such as meditation, guided imagery, and deep breathing for relaxation also may reflect the tendency of women to be more actively involved in self-care, as has been previously suggested in the healthcare literature (Burns, Cain, & Husaini, 2001; Dodd, 1988; Dunn, Steginga, Occhipinti, McCaffery, & Collins, 1999; Rennemark & Hagberg, 1999).”
nii:
That seems to be my experience too; I’m just wary of the potential for my own biases stepping in. I mean, the difference with girls is overwhelmingly clear, but I don’t think I know enough gays to be sure it’s not just confirmation bias giving me that impression. Just being a good skeptic, I guess.
Personally, I would not be surprised if there *was* an actual difference in terms of interests, and I’d love to see research digging into the why of that. I have a hunch we have an inbuilt drive to seek a role model of whatever our brain thinks is the appropriate sex and then emulate that — but as the role model will be driven by culture, we get a case of it being both nature *and* nurture. But that’s just a hunch.
MKandefer:
For what it’s worth, my husband (definite heterosexual) doesn’t like sports either. And my grandfather (another definite heterosexual, and also a hopeless romantic) also loves dancing (though he prefers foxtrot), cooking, and musicals. If there is a demographic difference, individual variation surely swamps it.
pmoran et al:
It is my impression too that women seem to be more “into” CAM, although I’d love to see it properly studied. 50 years ago, it would seem very likely that women would be more into it; as far fewer women worked outside of the home, they’d be an easier target for CAM marketing. And in general, they are definitely a widely-targeted demographic. Which means that maybe indeed more women use CAM, but not because they’re less discerning or less critical. They may be equally discerning, but far more heavily targeted because more of them are watching daytime TV, more of them are making child healthcare decisions, etc.
CAM and women. Now there’s a loaded topic!
Note: I don’t think it’s really fair that women are primarily targeted for child healthcare products and other traditionally “mom” things — household items. And I know my husband bristles at ads which seem to be making the assumption that the mom does all the childcare work. (Refreshingly, more and more ads are targeting fathers.) But it’s a reality that advertisers do target women more heavily. In part, this is because the framework is already there. They’ve been targeting women for decades, and so the language and the styles are all established. To target men will take some unlearning on the part of advertisers. But until that happens, this will drive a bias in use regardless of any real differences (physical or social) between men and women.
Okay pmoran – Thanks for the clarification – I think this is descriptive of one of my concerns “The greater likelihood of using practices such as meditation, guided imagery, and deep breathing for relaxation also may reflect the tendency of women to be more actively involved in self-care, as has been previously suggested in the healthcare literature.”
Also I think it’s totally unfair to include yoga as CAM. In my personal experience, it’s only a very confident or athletic man who will try yoga. It seems to me their concerns have nothing to do with skeptical thinking, it’s purely that they think it’s for girls and they are concerned they’re not flexible enough and will look foolish.
pmoran “I thought I made it quite clear in my post, when taken as a whole, that there are plenty of reasons why this might be so that have nothing to do wiht the intellectual capacity of women, just as a relative non-engagement of women in “organized atheism” could reflect a quite mature and rational inclination.”
Oh well, Sometimes I have a hard time understanding what you are saying exactly. Possibly the generational, educational, nationality, cultural* differences just get in the way. Sorry if I came across as snippy.
By the way my father was an avid atheist (do they have fundamentalist atheist?). That alone puts us in somewhat different worlds.
Are there studies showing that more women are involved in CAM?
And yes; I practice yoga, and it’s fitness. It’s got some CAM-y elements, like ayervedic medicine that I ignore. And when they say things like, “breathe into the back of your body,” I choose to see that as metaphorical. Otherwise, it’s deep stretching and strengthening.
@ MTR: you can’t be a fundamentalist for not believing in something, though I was called a “reality fundamentalist” on another site, a slur I could put on a T-shirt and wear proudly.
@pharmvixen – okay that’s probably were my confusion is. I’m pretty sure that my dad believed* in atheism – and he could pound a table or shake a finger as good as any baptist minister.
This is not meant to be an indictment of atheism or atheists. It was just my day’s individual personality type.
Also – “reality fundamentalist” hehe I like that.
Honestly, I can’t say the same for myself I try to maintain just enough reality to keep myself and loved ones safe and healthy with a little extra when it’s entertaining… anything beyond that is excessively depressing (I feel).
Clearly, meeting the safety and health needs requires a reasonably large dose of reality, though.
MKandefer wrote:
—–
If most of our friends are women, then yes, we will tend to gravitate towards activities that are considered feminine.
—-
However my observation are partly based on what I saw in an all-boys school – activities that were provided there. So I’m not convinced that would necessarily explain it.
I’m also not sure they would necessarily have seen themselves as gay perhaps especially before teenage years, yet there seemed to be a difference looking back. And certainly I saw no evidence they were treated any differently that might influence their interests in a particular direction.
MKandefer wrote:
—-
I do like swing dancing (not so much club dancing, but will do so if my friends are), cooking (to eat healthy), and some musicals (I blame mom, but there is nothing wrong with men finding musicals or singing entertaining).
—-
I never said anything was “wrong” about it. I do think there is an average difference in gay and heterosexual men’s interests and pastimes (in some areas), including as children and teenagers, that would show up in statistical testing.
The whole point of this wasn’t to make a point about homosexuality (or heterosexuality per se), but to question the line things are “(heterosexual) guy thing(s) because of customs and attitudes in our society.”
In gay men, we have a useful control group: If gay boys are treated similarly by society growing up to heterosexual boys, why would they not have the same sized differences with heterosexual women that heterosexual men have in terms of average differences. With homosexual boys, one is largely controlling for society, yet these differences I do believe exist.
Just to complete the point, my belief is that heterosexuality/homosexuality is completely something decided before birth. What I have said is completely consistent with that.
Nii,
Let’s approach this differently. You seem to be drawing a conclusion about human preferences for complex social activities, not based on how they were raised, but based on some other unspecified factor (genetics maybe). You rest this conclusion on your selective recall from pre-pubescant childhood. This recollection doesn’t take into account the home lives of the individuals involved. These would seem to be important considerations as their home lives include their parents and after school activities/friends. You reject my explanation because it doesn’t necessarily explain it. If by “necessarily” you mean with 100% certainty, I agree; but find this to be an unreasonable expectation. If by “necessarily” you mean it doesn’t include the evidence you have provided, which contradicts my explanation, then that’s different. However, I don’t find your justification all that solid as it has plenty of space for explanations that include upbringing. Things we’ve liked during our youth can become undesirable due to later social pressures. So, even if straight men like Disney musicals growing up (as my straight brother did), they may learn to unlike them when social pressures dictate that they (publicly) loathe them.
Le sigh. I have been over at another site full of a younger group. It is obvious that the experience of older women who went into traditionally male professions forty years ago is being dismissed. Though, I do notice that they are doing exactly the same militant naive things I did in my twenties. And that includes reading comprehension compromised by preconceived notions. My face actually burns in embarrassment when I remember those incidences.
Well, live and learn.
In the amount of time it took me to write this post, Jenny McCarthy has probably convinced two Moms to stop vaccinating their kids. I shudder to think what she’s doing while all the skeptics are arguing about one guy’s offhand remark on a show that 99% of the population probably doesn’t even know exists.
Not to mention all the other quacks and scam artists.
Don’t we have better things to do?
Edit – I guess we do, because the date stamp on the last comment was 4 days ago. Sorry for bumping a necro-ed thread….
@SkepticWolf, In the same time, how many people died from diseases caused by smoking? Should we limit ourselves to fighting the major preventable cause of death and disregard all other topics? And in case you didn’t finish reading my article, it was about much more than one guy’s offhand remark.
@Harriet Hall
Yikes! That comment was not directed at you or the article. I’m sorry if it appeared that way. I had finished reading it and I thoroughly enjoyed it (as I do most of your stuff).
It was more directed at the general furor that this whole situation has raised. I feel like the appropriate reaction to Shermer’s comment should have been, “that was a dumb thing to say, whatever lets move on.” As you pointed out, he doesn’t have a history of sexism. Nor does it look like he meant it the way it came across. Someone who puts themselves in the public eye that much is going to stick their foot in their mouth every now and then.
But that wasn’t the reaction. Another public persona launched a counter attack. And another, soon every major figure in the skeptic movement is giving it air time when they could be talking about more dangerous/slimy stuff. You ask “Should we limit ourselves to fighting the major preventable cause of death and disregard all other topics?” Obviously not. I call straw-man and slippery slope. That’s not what I was trying to imply.
Things should be on a severity spectrum. To follow your example; Yes, lots of people died from diseases caused by smoking. One person also died from drinking the mercury out of a 60 year old thermometer. While both fall under his authority to regulate, I think the surgeon general should be spending more of his time on the former rather than the latter. The bigger the problem the more warranted a response.
All that said, I grew up in a very liberally minded place, and hang out with very progressively minded people. Full disclosure, I’m also male. I haven’t really noticed a huge preponderance of sexism thriving around me. But you’re the one in the position to know, and if you tell me that this is worth the time that’s being spent on it, I’ll believe you. From my perspective, though, it seems like much ‘ado about nothing.
from my perspective (also as a male) that is actually exactly part of the problem.
Of course we all stay dumb stuff. The point was that the “dumb stuff” was reflective of the pervasive misogynistic hegemony of our culture. It was an examination to note that this hegemony is so pervasive that even a skeptic who is obviously not sexist could make such a gaff. At least by extending the principle of charity that is what I got from it. Did either side acquit themselves perfectly? Of course not. But I certainly did not get the sense that Benson was slamming Shermer but rather that she was merely using him as an example of what I just described, nothing more. Perhaps I am being too charitable in my interpretation?
In any event, the issue was not a discussion of a single phrase by a single person who should most certainly be quickly forgiven the slip of the tongue. It was about the larger issue of the way in which tongues slip being another bit of the evidence of the ingrained misogyny. IMHO, anyways. The fact that it dragged on is not reflective of overtalking that issue, but of the fact that Shermer’s response – regardless of whether my read of Benson is correct or if she really were tearing him a new one and calling him a sexist – was absolutely ridiculous. I mean really – Godwinning it? And not just a casual “Nazi” thrown around, but actually going to “First they came…” (among other things of course, but that was most glaring).
It seems many have conflated the two separate topics of discussion after making a straw man of the first.
Once again, just my interpretation. But I did read all the exchanges from the beginning.
Chris: “Le sigh. I have been over at another site full of a younger group. It is obvious that the experience of older women who went into traditionally male professions forty years ago is being dismissed. Though, I do notice that they are doing exactly the same militant naive things I did in my twenties. And that includes reading comprehension compromised by preconceived notions. My face actually burns in embarrassment when I remember those incidences.
Well, live and learn.”
Is this the Skepchick article? I’m still so angry I haven’t been able to come up with a coherent reply.
Once again, a young man explains to an older feminist how she doesn’t really understand sexism.
Exactly. The only reply I have is to roll my eyes.
[...] weeks ago I published an article on gender differences and the recent divisions in the skeptical community. Ophelia Benson showed up in the comments. Not unsurprisingly, she disagreed with me about the [...]
[...] Harriet Hall—a doctor, a skeptic and a blogger at Science-Based Medicine—flails around in her very determined but bizarre effort to denounce Women in Secularism (where I’ll be speaking, so come on out!) and all other [...]
[...] over Harriet Hall’s t-shirt. She’s been going on and on, circling around the drain to somehow defend it. It’s simple: she wore it to spite some people she clearly doesn’t like, and to get [...]
[...] Harriet Hall—a doctor, a skeptic and a blogger at Science-Based Medicine—flails around in her very determined but bizarre effort to denounce Women in Secularism (where I’ll be speaking, so come on out!) and all other [...]
Give it a rest people. It is over.
Though I will be waiting with anticipation for future posts about Token Women; like Sally Ride and Mae Jemison as token astronauts, how LtC Arminta Harness and Maj. Gen. Jeanne Holm were token Air Force officers, and that each and everyone of the female graduates from the 1980 classes of each of the US military academy were token cadets. All written by someone who was just learning to how to speak in the late 1970s.
Here’s a gallery of women who were first in their field, inspired by the death of Sally Ride.
We must thank the people for writing those courageous blogs that have helped reveal the true agenda of these women, who were really no more than apologists for patriarchy, selfishly seeking male privilege for themselves.
Oops, here’s the link:
http://www.stylist.co.uk/people/inspirational-female-pioneers
The next thing you know, they’ll be qualifying them take charge of nuclear submarines. Oh, wait.
It goes far, far beyond that. Damn that Harriet! She’s cleverer than even Ophelia Benson and Amanda Marcotte suspect! She blazed a trail into military medicine in the Air Force 40 years ago, all as part of a nefarious plan to create a token place within the hegemony of the patriarchy of the skeptical movement based on her having created a token place within the hegemony of the patriarchy of the Air Force and protect it from upstarts like Rebecca Watson, who weren’t even born yet. Or something like that. I just can’t tell anymore, as the criticisms keep morphing.
In any case, we’ve already gotten back to Science-Based Medicine. I don’t think we’ll be wandering as far off-topic again for a long time. Sadly, the vast majority of this entire discussion has generated lots of heat but precious little light. I can understand disagreements. I can understand criticism. I can even understand how some might be upset at Harriet. However, the vitriol directed at a true pioneer like Harriet, who has done so much for the skeptical movement as well, has saddened me greatly, and this latest charge of “tokenism” against Harriet was the last straw.
Be careful, we are going be called bullies because we are actually laughing at the whole mess.
If I don’t laugh at it, I might cry, particularly when there are people on both sides whom I consider friends. As someone who’s only recently risen to minimal prominence in the skeptical movement (a “skeptical nanocelebrity,” as I like to call myself, except that it’s probably more like picocelebrity), I want to yell out, “Mom, Dad, stop fighting!”
Mom and Dad are usually fighting for a reason, though. I find the type of thread depressing where I read blogs and comments by people I have high respect for and I find myself thinking: “in what alternative universe is that interpretation of and response to the situation accurate?” There may be relatively less light and more heat than normal, but I still learn a lot. I must say, though, that I’m glad I’m mostly a reader/lurker/occasional commenter and I can walk away from it all when I want to, because it can get pretty damn demoralizing.
You all really need a “Look at that cat!” or “Wow this cheese dip is great!” article.
Aha! “It goes far, far beyond that” and “…weren’t even born yet.” Now it is all clear! When Harriet Hall was a little girl, she woke up one night to find a large, blue British police call box in her back yard garden. A funny man stepped out wearing a very, very long colorful scarf, a hat, a bow tie or possibly all three and handed her a t-shirt, saying “Decades from now, you will need this!” And then he vanished in flashes of light and a funny grinding noise.
After Godwin’s Law has been re-proved, it seems aliens, time travel or Dr. Who must then become involved, especially when the person in question must have also something to do with Area 51 and concealing the fact that the Roswell crash alien was a -female-. Dr. Hall is indeed very, very clever! I bet her salt and pepper shakers look like Daleks, too.
I don’t know about Harriet’s salt and pepper shakers, but I own a cookie jar that’s shaped like a Dalek.
But, yes, the involvement of The Doctor would make sense.
I knew there would be a Dalek connection! And it does make sense The Doctor is involved, especially when one (like many of the commentators on all this) stretches time and credulity to their molecular limits. It’s so clear! There was a Harriet and several Davids involved with the Doctor. We had a Prime Minister Harriet Jones played by Penelope Wilton who must, like, be a total signifier for Dr. Hall because, like, she is also female and wears glasses. And the Davids! Well, one Doctor was of course David Tennant. That should be proof enough. But it gets even more mysterious when you recall that one Davros and a cyber controller were played by actors name David!
Now that all this has been exposed I am confident the Time Lords will rectify the situation by fixing this loopy causality loop where wearing a t-shirt with words means you have made an offensive statement because an offensive statement was made on a t-shirt containing an offensive statement made out of words. fnord.
Don’t forget David Morrissey, who played Jackson Lake, a Victorian man who thought he was The Doctor. He’s now playing The Governor in The Walking Dead, and I’m sure there’s some connection there to be made from that.
Damn- why did I start reading the comments tonight…Now I have an uncontrollable desire to drink martini’s from a Dalek shaped martini shaker, watch every episode of the latest season of Doctor Who (Which I have been saving for when I’m really depressed) and listen to The Smiths (well, if I drink the martinis and listen to The Smiths first, I should be adequately depressed to merit the Doctor Who marathon)…but I have no Dalek shaped martini shaker.
I’m pretty sure I loaned it to Harriet Hall.
I totally want a Dalek-shaped martini shaker now. And I don’t even make martinis at home.
I just want to know when the latest Doctor Who Christmas special will released a DVD in the USA.
“White men aren’t really all that concerned about our male children having a very high likelihood of being thrown in prison for minor drug offenses; we middle class white folk are not so concerned about economic disparities as the poor people who can’t afford to attend a conference; male organizers aren’t as aware of the problems of finding child care as women, who are saddled with most of the child-rearing obligations, are. These are implicit biases in our views. This is racism, classism, sexism.
Seriously, every one of us is racist as fuck. We can’t help it.”
Is this not blatant hypocrisy? He criticizes Dr. Shermer for an allegedly “sexist” argument he presented, and bemoans the stereotypes in the secular movement that supposedly have a negative impact on female participation in “skeptic” circles, but then he goes on an irrational rampage by accusing white males of being racist and sexist! Myers is merely repeating the illogical left-wing stereotypes against white males, so having a rational dialogue with him on this issue is just not going to happen.
If anything, the far-left zealots are causing most of the problems in the skeptic community, as usual. They are annoying and are intellectual inferiors—it is so funny when they try to debate people like Pinker and Dawkins. And when they cannot debate logically, they turn to militant tactics such as dumping a pitcher of water on E.O. Wilson’s head. But then again, how can we expect to take cultural Marxism seriously? When PZ’s argument is stripped to its core, it is simply an ideological struggle—the fact that he called Shermer AND DR. HALL sexists has really disqualified him from any worthy attention. Rational people do not need ad hominem attacks.