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Political Correctness and the Demonology of Modern Prejudice
ege02
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Does political correctness sometimes get in the way of finding, stating, and accepting facts?
Why are we, as a society, so obsessed with political correctness?
We see this in social sciences a lot; studies and experiments will not get funding because they aim to challenge topics that certain social or political groups are sensitive to, and on the rare occasion that they do get funding, if they end up finding results that go against notions related to political correctness - for example, in topics such as racial, ethnic, and gender studies - instead of confirming modern society's bull-headed and blind bias towards "equality", they are simply ridiculed and rejected by scientific authorities and by society at large.
Considering the history of gender inequality, this is understandable. People have a strong tendency to use scientific study results as a justification for the way they act. A naturalistic fallacy, so to speak - using descriptions as prescriptions. For idiots, the explanation of why things are the way they are is not a big leap away from claiming how things should be.
But this is not valid grounds for strong reactions against politically incorrect findings. Let me elaborate.
The scientific community has been running into this problem lately in their studies of biological and psychological differences in men and women. They're finding that men on average are better at spatial tasks and women better at verbal ones. They are finding that male babies are obsessed with mantling, assembling, destroying, possessing and coveting things, whereas female babies are fascinated by people and treat their toys as surrogate people. They are finding that when shown a picture crowded with people and objects, male babies' vision focuses on objects and female babies' vision on people. They are realizing that while social conditioning reinforces these differences - we give boys car/sword/lego toys, we give girls pink doll toys - it does not create them.
The question is, in modern society, are we really doing a bad thing by reinforcing these differences, or playing into them in things such as marketing? I value gender equality and equality in opportunities as much as anyone else. I don't think we should discriminate based on gender. But when it comes to strong - and usually feminist - reactions towards gender conditioning, I am not so convinced. I don't think it would make me a sexist pig if I bought pink dolls for my baby daughter and car/truck toys for my baby son; those are the kinds of toys they are genetically disposed to like.
The thing is, specialization does pay off. That is how human society has survived and flourished to this age. This is not a justification for discrimination; I don't think anyone should be forced into anything they don't want. I think a healthy balance can be - no, should be - struck between trying to play into the different strengths of males and females while leaving individuals of both genders free to pursue what they want and giving them equal opportunities to do so.
And that is where the problem is in my eyes: as a society we were (and in some places, still are) on one extreme end of the spectrum where we were forcing boys and girls into their respective roles, and today we're trying to go to the opposite extreme where we are trying to establish a bull-headed gender equality and forcing both genders into the same mold; you can see a particular example of this in today's school system (in Western societies), where boys and girls are put into the same curriculum and type of education regardless of the fact that they excel in different areas and respond to different treatments. Seems unfair to both genders. Yet if a school administrator were even to suggest that, hey, let's customize the curriculum because that is what freakin' makes sense, they'd immediately be branded "sexist". Feminists and the large parts of "progressive" society they have intimidated into submission would be on his ass immediately.
Also, it does really bother me that people see engineering disciplines dominated by guys and social disciplines dominated by girls, and scream discrimination and repression. Okay sure, I think both play a certain role, maybe a rather large role. But recent research is strongly suggesting that one of the underlying reasons for the unequal distribution of genders among those disciplines is that both genders are genetically disposed to liking those disciplines. It doesn't seem unreasonable to suggest - although it certainly is offensive to politically correct individuals - that male babies like assembling, dismantling, destroying things and are better at spatial tasks, so they are more disposed to becoming engineers than sociologists when they grow up.
The latter part is of course regarded as nonsense by the politically correct. And this is ironic because in our fear of offending people, we are missing large parts of the picture and thus having trouble solving the actual problem.
Thoughts?
P.S. No personal attacks please.
Why are we, as a society, so obsessed with political correctness?
We see this in social sciences a lot; studies and experiments will not get funding because they aim to challenge topics that certain social or political groups are sensitive to, and on the rare occasion that they do get funding, if they end up finding results that go against notions related to political correctness - for example, in topics such as racial, ethnic, and gender studies - instead of confirming modern society's bull-headed and blind bias towards "equality", they are simply ridiculed and rejected by scientific authorities and by society at large.
Considering the history of gender inequality, this is understandable. People have a strong tendency to use scientific study results as a justification for the way they act. A naturalistic fallacy, so to speak - using descriptions as prescriptions. For idiots, the explanation of why things are the way they are is not a big leap away from claiming how things should be.
But this is not valid grounds for strong reactions against politically incorrect findings. Let me elaborate.
The scientific community has been running into this problem lately in their studies of biological and psychological differences in men and women. They're finding that men on average are better at spatial tasks and women better at verbal ones. They are finding that male babies are obsessed with mantling, assembling, destroying, possessing and coveting things, whereas female babies are fascinated by people and treat their toys as surrogate people. They are finding that when shown a picture crowded with people and objects, male babies' vision focuses on objects and female babies' vision on people. They are realizing that while social conditioning reinforces these differences - we give boys car/sword/lego toys, we give girls pink doll toys - it does not create them.
The question is, in modern society, are we really doing a bad thing by reinforcing these differences, or playing into them in things such as marketing? I value gender equality and equality in opportunities as much as anyone else. I don't think we should discriminate based on gender. But when it comes to strong - and usually feminist - reactions towards gender conditioning, I am not so convinced. I don't think it would make me a sexist pig if I bought pink dolls for my baby daughter and car/truck toys for my baby son; those are the kinds of toys they are genetically disposed to like.
The thing is, specialization does pay off. That is how human society has survived and flourished to this age. This is not a justification for discrimination; I don't think anyone should be forced into anything they don't want. I think a healthy balance can be - no, should be - struck between trying to play into the different strengths of males and females while leaving individuals of both genders free to pursue what they want and giving them equal opportunities to do so.
And that is where the problem is in my eyes: as a society we were (and in some places, still are) on one extreme end of the spectrum where we were forcing boys and girls into their respective roles, and today we're trying to go to the opposite extreme where we are trying to establish a bull-headed gender equality and forcing both genders into the same mold; you can see a particular example of this in today's school system (in Western societies), where boys and girls are put into the same curriculum and type of education regardless of the fact that they excel in different areas and respond to different treatments. Seems unfair to both genders. Yet if a school administrator were even to suggest that, hey, let's customize the curriculum because that is what freakin' makes sense, they'd immediately be branded "sexist". Feminists and the large parts of "progressive" society they have intimidated into submission would be on his ass immediately.
Also, it does really bother me that people see engineering disciplines dominated by guys and social disciplines dominated by girls, and scream discrimination and repression. Okay sure, I think both play a certain role, maybe a rather large role. But recent research is strongly suggesting that one of the underlying reasons for the unequal distribution of genders among those disciplines is that both genders are genetically disposed to liking those disciplines. It doesn't seem unreasonable to suggest - although it certainly is offensive to politically correct individuals - that male babies like assembling, dismantling, destroying things and are better at spatial tasks, so they are more disposed to becoming engineers than sociologists when they grow up.
The latter part is of course regarded as nonsense by the politically correct. And this is ironic because in our fear of offending people, we are missing large parts of the picture and thus having trouble solving the actual problem.
Thoughts?
P.S. No personal attacks please.
ege02 on
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Posts
Pretty pink princesses and softball coaches should be equal to effeminate tailors or lumberjacks.
Saying children are genetically disposed to playing with Tonka trucks actually made me snort.
Are you aware of how genes work?
They'll sue ya.
Fag.
I know!
Fuzzy and ege--trade titles.
They're also finding that these numbers change dramatically after a few hours of video games. In short-- incorrect.
I don't think any decent studies have ever shown a greater difference between the sexes than between individual members of each.
I mean, I treated my toys as surrogate people, because I was fascinated with people and I loved Calvin and Hobbes (named my teddy bear and took him on adventures shut up it was awesome). My sister and I used to build towers out of blocks together and wang superballs at them to knock them over. I also loved giant LEGO creations. We played barbie together. Not that anecdotal evidence really counts, but "studies show" also doesn't really inspire confidence. And I find that the next step is "well billy/susie really loved trucks/dolls it's got to be genetic!".
Also, as should be said in every single one of these threads: Psychology is an incredibly young, incredibly rich science. Deciding that something is a given at this point in time is very naive.
Edit: Also, the videogames thing is awesome. It's such a wonderfully out of left field finding.
A point repeated in every single gender thread, yet fails to ever stick. It's less about political incorrectness and more about plain ol' incorrectness. That second one is boring, though.
Of course, this is on an individual basis here. Doing this with entire races and genders if fucking ludicrous.
Edit: And if you're wondering why the fuck there are so few females in technical disciplines, instead of dropping verbal diarrhea on us, try googling "Jade Raymond". That should answer it.
For any quality we can test the aptitude of, we may test it between individuals; for any position for which this quality is relevant, the quality can be tested for in the applicant population.
In an equal society, the onus falls to the employer or otherwise to determine aptitude among the relevant population, not amongst generalized populations-- science has only create the methods by which these aptitudes can be infallibly compared.
The moment you can create a customized curriculum for females, you can create a curriculum which is even more efficient and specific to an actual population instead of a generalization thereof.
Also, every actual feminist I have encountered has admitted that it's not about blatant 'equality' for everyone but equality of choice and opportunity. It's one thing to offer a custom curriculum, it's another thing entirely to force someone into it because of a congenital quality. The latter is oppressive-- the former is pushing the standard of education up by enhancing specialization and allowing people to slot themselves into more comfortable roles.
It's just outright wrong to assume, however, that those roles/identities fall along such a simple axis as race or sex. The roles in question are self-defined, and not defined by any other characteristic. To claim otherwise is outright foolishness and detracts from the very efficiency and equality both you and those you lambaste are working towards.
this is the one part where you explain what you want to do, but nowhere do you explain how you would accomplish this.
i don't get it. have you been to university? not every man is an engineer and not every woman is a sociologist. there is more variation of talents in the sexes than between them. if i want to be a sociologist, i don't want to be at a skill deficit due to specialized curriculums.
Hell, Psych itself is 90% ladies in my school. I don't want to be at a disadvantage disproving really silly things people say because I was groomed for a friggin footballgineering degree.
Evolutionarily speaking, we're still the same species, right, so differences in race would be non-existent, or at least inconsequential.
But differences in sex, right?
But I look around, and the only differences seem to be highly debated, or socially constructed. But, then I get into a nature-nurture chicken-egg kind of debate with regards to gender roles.
*brainhurt*
that's what i was trying to point out
there is more potential gains for specialization within genders than between them
Edit: I am a moron. Ignore me.
He may not, but I do (Just finishing a semester of genetics and molecular biology, not to mention already completing classes in cell biology, evolutionary biology, biophysics, cell and membrane physiology, etc, etc). I can say with confidence that the sexes do have some dispositions. No before I get beaten shitless, that doesn't mean women should be confined to the kitchen while big manly men go cut down trees, it just means you have to understand the reality of the situation.
Yeah, I guess you did.
Yes we know men have XY chromosome and women have XX, hurr durr.
Shit man, I'm not trying to justify that behavior. I'm simply dispelling the notion that the only difference between men and women is boobs, a dick, and body hair.
EDIT: You mean epigenomics? Yeah, I'm pretty familiar with that. What of it?
Only if you ask an English major with a Woman's Studies minor. They're much more closely linked than some would believe (This is referring to just XX and XY humans, individual's with more than two sex chromosomes gets into really murky territory).
So what does finding this stuff really teach us that's of use? If they are in fact biological factors they'll surface regardless of our social tailoring and if they are socially based then they'll change as social attitudes change.
Can you say precisely what you mean by that, mathematically? I'm envisioning two clouds of points here, and I'm trying to figure out what it would mean for there to be more variation in each of the clouds than between the clouds.
Yeah, see, you're strawmanning here. I never said women have never accomplished anything in the sciences.
Maybe you should actually read the OP, and if you did, work on your reading comprehension.
I don't know how. That's partly why I presented the question here.
Yeah, but majority of engineers are males and majority of sociologists are females. Some of this is due to social conditioning, and we know that social conditioning generally reinforces genetic disposition.
Yes, but on average women are better at certain things than men, and vice versa. I'm not talking about individuals here.
I mean hell, there are some women who are taller than men, but the fact stands that women in general are shorter than men. Why must we deny the possibility that a similar difference may exist between the way the male mind and the female mind works, or that these differences may be rather significant, at least much more so than our political correctness bias would let us find out and accept?
So you're saying that the case of one person explains the case of everyone? That prejudice and social pressure is the only reason why there are so few women in technical fields?
I see.
Actually, there is quite a bit of research done across many different cultures. The whole "olol it ignores culture" may be true for the majority of bullshit evo-psych stuff, but not all of it.
For instance, a study was done by David Buss of the University of Michigan, who asked a large sample of American students to rank the qualities they most preferred in a mate. Men said kindness, intelligence, beauty, and youth. Women said kindness, intelligence, wealth, and status.
He was told that this may be the case in America, but it probably is not a universal facet of human nature.
So he repeated the study in thirty-seven different samples from thirty-three countries, asking over a thousand people, and found the exact same result. Men pay more attention to youth and beauty, women to wealth and status.
To which came this answer: of course women pay more attention to wealth because men control it. If women controlled wealth, they would not seek it in their spouses.
So Buss looked again and found that women who make more money than the average woman pay more attention than average to the wealth of potential spouses, not less. High-earning women value the earning capacity of their husbands more, not less, than low-earning women. Even a survey of fifteen powerful leaders of the feminist movement revealed that they wanted still more powerful men(Buss, 1992, The Adapted Mind).
Now what? I mean, the study showed, rather conclusively, that a significant difference in mate preference exists between men and women regardless of culture. Historical findings dating back to the the pre-agriculture era reinforce this fact, and so do studies of our primate cousins, gorillas and chimps, and of mammals and birds too.
How much god damn evidence do we need before the urge to be scientifically correct overcomes the urge to be politically correct?
That's an awful big claim ege. Care to back it up with something?