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by Zseni 02/12/2007, 2:05pm PST

laudablepuss wrote:

Zseni wrote:

Always so many studies about how women are different than men, and by different we usually mean inferior. It's as though people found it insufficient to let nature - in the sense of naturally observable phenomena - take its course; the weaknesses and inabilities of women must be constantly and concretely demonstrated by research.

So . . . the research is not based on observable phenomina?

Don't be fatuous.

First: show me the study you mention about about two groups of men.

Second are you arguing that because "handles stress" isn't well enough defined that the hypothetical component studies you mention aren't important? Or true in a meaningful way?

I love how you try to reduce luminous and breathing possibility to a series of discreet and accruing points.

Women fold like napkins, you say. Study says "women fold like napkins." This can be a legitimate proposition if we define "fold like napkins" to mean something specific, but we are left with a general sense of "fold like napkins" which is not specific to the experiment. Distinctions like "true in a meaningful way" are symptomatic of the general problem.

I do a study, the result of which is, I conclude, that male dogs lick more often than female dogs. At the beginning of my write-up, I state that in this study, "lick" means "licks own penis." So okay, for this specific meaning, this specific thesis is a tautology. But when the story hits the general media, not only are details like "what sense of "lick" was used in the study?" lost, but additional details, like "what sense of "lick" do we generally mean when we talk about dogs licking" and "what sense of "lick" is the reporter using when he discusses the theory" are gained.

Lick is a word with not very many meanings, but the idea of handling stress or cracking under pressure is even more nebulous, and the way it has been reported on here does not say anything useful about stress. The article says "why women choke more than men", opens with a discussion on the paucity of female executives, and then there are discussions of very specific types of errors made by very specific types of women in very specific situations - the first one is JUST Wimbledon 2006, which smacks strongly of small numbers. At what point are we supposed to draw the "women choke more than men" out of that mess? Even the author begs you to question the reasoning at the end of the article.

Let's go back to the dogs. I write an article saying "male dogs lick more than female dogs" and start off with a discussion of how people greatly prefer female golden retrievers to male; then cite two studies, one which indicates that in a training and endurance show in Southern Bavaria in 2006, male German Shepherd dogs were shown to lick their chops 15% more often than female dogs; the second study is one which says that when a group of purebred Shih-Tzu puppies were exposed to heat and dry winds, the male dogs had a stress reaction which involved noticeable chop licking. The reaction of the female dogs is not noted. We presume there was less chop-licking, but who knows.

Do you conclude from this dog tale that Male Dogs Lick More Often Than Female Dogs? If you do, you're a stupid bitch.

Well, if "take it with a grain of salt" is your rebuttal, I guess that's fine. But here's my point: there are, in fact, real tangible differences between men (generally) and women (generally). A great many of them, if not ALL of them, will be classifiable as "better than" or "worse than". Some of the news will be unpleasant to your preconceived notions. That doesn't automatically make it bad science.

There are many differences between men and women which upset me, but I lack your glib comfort in attributing them to some specific and obvious cause - this is one of the many ways in which studies of men and women are different than studies of catalyzing chemicals. The moral of the story is that none of these important differences are contained in sloppy articles of the sort well-beloved by cranks. Shouldn't you be posting to your Stop Alimony Rape Now forum?