The best feminist textbook and it’s still completely bogus

I’ve noted previously how bad some social science research is.

Well, top (or should that be bottom?) of the pile has always been Women’s studies. That’s not just my opinion either – in one unguarded moment during the 90s I was witness to a conversation where some liberal students admitted freely that were academics to actually have to produce something useful, Women’s Studies would be the first to go.

Well, let’s talk about one of their most popular textbooks.

A few months ago, a post with a shocking claim about misogyny in America began to circulate on Tumblr, the social media site popular with older teens and young adults.  It featured a scanned book page section stating that, according to “recent survey data,” when junior high school students in the Midwest were asked what they would do if they woke up “transformed into the opposite sex,” the girls showed mixed emotions but the boys’ reaction was straightforward: “‘Kill myself’ was the most common answer when they contemplated the possibility of life as a girl.”  The original poster–whose comment was, “Wow”–identified the source as her “Sex & Gender college textbook,” The Gendered Society by Michael Kimmel.

Frankly, that’s absurd. Most men would be pretty happy to wake up as a lesbian I’d say!

But feminists are not known for their logical and rational thought.

The post quickly caught on with Tumblr’s radical feminist contingent: in less than three months, it was reblogged or “liked” by over 33,000 users. Some appended their own comments, such as, “Yeah, tell me again how misogyny ‘isn’t real‘ and men and boys and actually ‘like,‘ ‘love’ and ‘respect the female sex‘?  This is how deep misogynistic propaganda runs… As Germaine Greer said, ‘Women have no idea how much men hate them.’“

It says a lot about the feminist movement that they make it a policy to foster that level of hatred.

I was sufficiently intrigued to check out Kimmel’s reference: a 1984 book called The Longest War: Sex Differences in Perspective by psychologists Carol Tavris and Carole Wade.  The publication date was the first tipoff that the study’s description in the excerpt was not entirely accurate: the “recent” data had to be about thirty years old.  Still, did American teenage boys in the early 1980s really hold such a dismal view of being female?

When I obtained a copy of The Longest War, I was shocked to discover that the claim was not even out of context: it seemed to haveno basisat all, other than one comment among examples of negative reactions from younger boys (the survey included third- through twelfth-grade students, not just those in junior high). Published in 1983 by the Institute for Equality in Education, the study had some real fodder for feminist arguments: girls generally felt they would be better off as males while boys generally saw the switch as a disadvantage, envisioning more social restrictions and fewer career options (many responses seemed based on stereotypes–e.g., husband-hunting as a girl’s main training for adulthood–than 1980s reality).  But that’s not nearly as dramatic as “I’d rather kill myself than be a girl.”

It’s almost like women’s studies has a practice of taking something small and blowing it out of all proportion. Once you do this several times, a chance comment becomes “proof” of a widespread attitude.

That’s concerning. But not half as concerning as the fact no one stops to think “hey, does this correspond with the reality I see around me”?

The author then goes on to critique the rest of the text.

What, then, about the larger value of The Gendered Society, described on its back cover as “one of the most balanced gender studies texts available”?  Unlike some conservative critics of feminism, I am sympathetic to Kimmel’s professed goal of a society in which women and men are individuals first regardless of gender, and to his argument that the sexes have far more in common than Mars-Venus rhetoric suggests.  Unfortunately, these principles coexist with a steady drumbeat of female victimhood and male wrongdoing–often backed by tendentious or downright distorted evidence.

Thus, The Gendered Society‘s discussion of gender in the workplace briefly acknowledges that women’s earnings are driven down by family-related work interruptions–but still treats gender gaps in pay and advancement almost entirely as the wages of discrimination, summarily dismissing the factor of sex differences in worker motivation. (Amusingly, Kimmel also asserts that mostly female jobs pay less due to sexism but doesn’t notice that in his own tables of the most single-sex-dominated occupations, the two highest-paid jobs–dental hygienist and speech-language pathologist–are nearly all-female.)  The narrative is often contradictory.  Thus, after citing staggering statistics of how many women are sexually harassed at work, Kimmel claims that the motive for harassment is almost invariably hostile–”to put women back in their place.” A paragraph later, he notes that the truth in sexual harassment cases is often elusive because the man may see “an innocent indication of sexual interest or harmless joking” where the woman sees sexual pressure.

The chapter on “The Gendered Classroom” uncritically repeats tales of girls’ woes–for instance, that girls’ self-esteem “plummets” in junior high school–without mentioning that they have been strongly disputed, not just by critics of feminism but by mainstream psychologists.  The assertion that “girls’ IQs fall by about thirteen points,” compared to three for boys, is drawn from a 1935 book. (Ironically, Kimmel is then left scrambling to explain how “the systematic demolition of girls’ self-esteem, the denigration of their abilities, and the demotion of their status” results in a situation in which girls outperform boys academically at every level.)

Being uncritical of evidence that agrees with you isn’t uncommon. I’ve commented on this with regards to Christianity. Most movements do this to some extent. But women’s studies seems to take that flaw and make it a central tenant of  the “discipline”.

I recommending reading the whole thing, but the conclusion is worth pondering.

No scholarly text is ever error-free. But in the case of Kimmel’s book, there is a consistent pattern of using selective evidence and even pseudo-facts to stress women’s victimization and paint males (particularly American males) in the worst light. The  fictitious claim that most boys would choose death over girlhood–which will undoubtedly live on the Internet after it’s gone from future editions of the book–fits seamlessly into the big picture.

Internet myths aside, The Gendered Society is widely used in college courses.  And if it is indeed the most balanced gender studies textbook available–which may well be true–that says a lot about the rest.

I’d say it’s worthless. But that implies passivity.

George W. Bush is smarter than you (and fitter)

Ran into this the other day, apparently written by an economist who used to work with Bush Jr.

It contradicts (I’m tempted to say busts but it’s one guy’s word) very comprehensively the image of Bush as stupid.

The new George W. Bush Presidential Center is being dedicated this week. This seems like a good time to bust a longstanding myth about our former President, my former boss.

…One of my students asked “How involved was President Bush with what was going on?” I smiled and responded, “What you really mean is, ‘Was President Bush smart enough to understand what was going on,’ right?”

The class went dead silent. Everyone knew that this was the true meaning of the question. Kudos to that student for asking the hard question and for framing it so politely. I had stripped away that decorum and exposed the raw nerve.

I looked hard at the 60 MBA students and said “President Bush is smarter than almost every one of you.”

More silence.

I could tell they were waiting for me to break the tension, laugh, and admit I was joking.

I did not. A few shifted in their seats, then I launched into a longer answer. While it was a while ago, here is an amalgam of that answer and others I have given in similar contexts.

I am not kidding. You are quite an intelligent group. Don’t take it personally, but President Bush is smarter than almost every one of you. Were he a student here today, he would consistently get “HP” (High Pass) grades without having to work hard, and he’d get an “H” (High, the top grade) in any class where he wanted to put in the effort.

For more than six years it was my job to help educate President Bush about complex economic policy issues and to get decisions from him on impossibly hard policy choices. In meetings and in the briefing materials we gave him in advance we covered issues in far more depth than I have been discussing with you this quarter because we needed to do so for him to make decisions.

President Bush is extremely smart by any traditional standard. He’s highly analytical and was incredibly quick to be able to discern the core question he needed to answer. It was occasionally a little embarrassing when he would jump ahead of one of his Cabinet secretaries in a policy discussion and the advisor would struggle to catch up. He would sometimes force us to accelerate through policy presentations because he so quickly grasped what we were presenting.

I use words like briefing and presentation to describe our policy meetings with him, but those are inaccurate. Every meeting was a dialogue, and you had to be ready at all times to be grilled by him and to defend both your analysis and your recommendation. That was scary.

We treat Presidential speeches as if they are written by speechwriters, then handed to the President for delivery. If I could show you one experience from my time working for President Bush, it would be an editing session in the Oval with him and his speechwriters. You think that me cold-calling you is nerve-wracking? Try defending a sentence you inserted into a draft speech, with President Bush pouncing on the slightest weakness in your argument or your word choice.

In addition to his analytical speed, what most impressed me were his memory and his substantive breadth. We would sometimes have to brief him on an issue that we had last discussed with him weeks or even months before. He would remember small facts and arguments from the prior briefing and get impatient with us when we were rehashing things we had told him long ago.

And while my job involved juggling a lot of balls, I only had to worry about economic issues. In addition to all of those, at any given point in time he was making enormous decisions on Iraq and Afghanistan, on hunting al Qaeda and keeping America safe. He was making choices not just on taxes and spending and trade and energy and climate and health care and agriculture and Social Security and Medicare, but also on education and immigration, on crime and justice issues, on environmental policy and social policy and politics. Being able to handle such substantive breadth and depth, on such huge decisions, in parallel, requires not just enormous strength of character but tremendous intellectual power. President Bush has both.

On one particularly thorny policy issue on which his advisors had strong and deep disagreements, over the course of two weeks we (his senior advisors) held a series of three 90-minute meetings with the President. Shortly after the third meeting we asked for his OK to do a fourth. He said, “How about rather than doing another meeting on this, I instead tell you now what each person will say.” He then ran through half a dozen of his advisors by name and precisely detailed each one’s arguments and pointed out their flaws. (Needless to say there was no fourth meeting.)

While I don’t think being able to predict advisers answers is necessarily always hard, it is pretty funny.

The article then goes into reasons why people have come to think Bush is stupid, which basically boil down to:

1) He’s from Texas, not from the “intelligent” states (and as a result has a “funny” accent”.

2) He made a point of presenting himself as a common man, not as an aloof intellectual

 

Obama’s war on journalism

This is absolutely, utterly incredible.

The Washington Post has today revealed that the Obama administration has been spying on a Fox news journalist.

The Kim case began in June 2009, when Rosen reported that U.S. intelligence officials were warning that North Korea was likely to respond to United Nations sanctions with more nuclear tests. The CIA had learned the information, Rosen wrote, from sources inside North Korea.

The story was published online the same day that a top-secret report was made available to a small circle within the intelligence community — including Kim, who at the time was a State Department arms expert with security clearance.

So he Mr Rosen got the “inside goss”. Classified yes, but not particularly earth-shattering.

The Administration’s response? They went to court.

Reyes wrote that there was evidence Rosen had broken the law, “at the very least, either as an aider, abettor and/or co-conspirator.” That fact distinguishes his case from the probe of the AP, in which the news organization is not the likely target.

Using italics for emphasis, Reyes explained how Rosen allegedly used a “covert communications plan” and quoted from an e-mail exchange between Rosen and Kim that seems to describe a secret system for passing along information.

In case you missed it, the US government went to court and told that court that a journalist was in breach of the law, for doing his job.

This is bad for Obama. A lot of news outlets hate Fox for various reasons, but they’re not so blinded that they can’t work out that the administration is completely out of control.

I think there might be a little more of a critical eye on the president from now on.

AP Wiretap Story just got serious

Remember that the AP had it’s phone records grabbed without them being told, because the revealed a terror plot?

Well, fair enough you say – if they compromised an ongoing investigation they should be investigated for possible breaches of the law.

Well, here’s the thing: there was no compromise of an investigation. See, the AP was negotiating with the US government on releasing the story. AP was told that the  government  wanted to announce it’s success before AP published the story – a story they’d already been sitting on for days because of the security concerns.

Under these circumstances, it is hard to believe that the AP’s release of the story on Monday threatened national security. In fact, the news organization was explicitly told at that point that it did not. Foiling the ability of the administration to chest-thump is not the same as endangering national security.

Or to put in bluntly: the Obama administration ins harassing journalists for getting in the way of their PR.

When you put this against the various accusations that the Benghazi cover-up was due to the embarrassment it might have caused for the Obama administration (hard to claim a foreign policy success in Libya when your embassy has just been attacked – as opposed to a protest turning violent because of some you-tube video), and the IRS scandal, a very clear picture begins to emerge of a president who has used the levers of power to entrench that power.

Recall with Benghazi, the Hillary Clinton told the families they’d “get the guy” who did it, and promptly arrested Mr Nakoula for his youTube video. That was the guy they said they’d “get” even though he had nothing to do with it. But he was a good scapegoat - easily caught and slaughtered. Seems the guys who actually did the deed aren’t even close to being apprehended (nor is the administration looking keen to get on with that job in spite of it’s promises). Note the PR is taken care of (we “got the guy”) while the security isn’t a priority.

And of course, with the IRS scandal, the Administration called for the head of the IRS. But it turns out, he was leaving anyway. Again, it’s the PR.

Oh, and if you’re not convinced just how bad the IRS issue is, watch this.

Let me bring one more thread in here: this tweet….

TWEET OF THE DAY: “These scandals are so bad that for the first time Obama wants to talk about the economy.”

The joke here is that Obama has created a really bad economy. It’s not recovering. But he was re-elected. Why is that?

It’s not because he had a bang-up second term agenda. In fact, he had no agenda at all until very late in the campaign.

No, he won because he convinced enough of America that Romney was some sort of out-of-touch billionaire who was only out for the rich. That was how he won - smearing his opponent instead of writing policy. In other words, more PR.

And instead of highlighting that, instead of raising alarm bells over how 4 Americans died with assistance within reach, instead of demanding an end to the disasters of Obama’s economic policy, the US media lapped it up and glossed over Benghazi and the economy.

Well congratulations guys, you sucked up to the machine. Now it’s your job to kill it before it kills you.

If you’ve lost Piers Morgan…

Watch the video – Piers Morgan is pretty much eating his (very recent) words re: the possibly of an american government being tyrannical. It was only weeks ago that he was scoffing at the idea in relation to the 2nd amendment.

Props to the man for recognizing he was wrong though!

One thing is sure though, Obama has a very serious political problem right now.

Idiot/Savant – “those poor, poor, cheats”

Compare and contrast people:

First, tax cheats are bad people.

Tax cheats steal from us all. Every dollar they save in tax from these tricks is a dollar we have to pay, borrow, or cut – a dollar we don’t get to spend on schools, hospitals and state houses. The government should make these companies pay their fair share. And if the present government refuses to do so, because they are on the side of the tax cheats, we should elect one that will.

Here’s another:

And he’s right. That money you save by aiding and abetting a tradeperson’s tax fraud? That’s money that would normally go to schools, hospitals, and public services. You might as well be going down there and smashing some windows yourself.

So, I support this campaign: people should pay what they owe, and not commit tax fraud.

And more:

Goff’s statement that

No one knows exactly how much is lost by people dodging their tax – but it’s been estimated in the billions.

is carrying an awful lot of weight here.

Like Goff, I want to see those loopholes closed and that avoidance stopped. People should pay their fair share, and those who don’t are cheats and parasites

more:

This is the cost of having great chunks of our economy owned by foreign tax cheats: not only do the profits go offshore, but they do so in ways which rob the government of revenue, and therefore us of public services.

Got the idea? Avoiding paying your taxes to a sovereign government, even if you what you have done to do so is completely legal makes you an evil person(tm).

Now this week National announced that they will be arresting people who had cheated the New Zealand government out of it’s revenue. We’re talking people who have moved overseas to maximize their incomes, but owe the government money, but have made no effort whatsoever to pay.

You’d think that this sort of crack down would be music to the ears of someone so worried about New Zealand’s tax base. I mean, these people aren’t structuring their affairs to keep the money off-shore, (which is perfectly legal) they actually have signed agreements with the New Zealand government to pay the money. Yet in spite of having signed contracts, the government has offered to negotiate  and that offer has been treated with contempt.

In other words, the morality of this situation is pretty one-sided.

So Idiot would be really happy to see the government announce it’s taking this “threat to government revenue” so seriously. Yea right:

And what National’s policy will do is make sure they can never come home ever again. They can’t come home for christmas, because they’ll be arrested. If a New Zealand family member gets sick, they’ll have to choose between their family and their freedom. They won’t be able to come home for funerals. All of that is inhumane, vindictive and punitive, but it gets worse: they won’t be able to do business here, because they’ll be arrested. And they won’t even be able to move back home, because if they come back for a job interview, the government will throw them in jail.

Here’s my take: you cheat your taxes, you go to jail. You cheat your student loan repayments, you go to jail. (You legally avoid changing your taxes, bad on you – but it’s up to the government to change the law.)

In short: cry me a freaking river. If you find yourself unable to return home because you’re wanted by the authorities, you should have not broken the law in the first place. If you owe on your student loan, you should talk to the IRD today (ok, not today… perhaps Monday).

Hey, maybe that might have been the point of the law? Gee…

But on the other hand, if people are calling you out for avoiding taxes, just find some way of converting it to a student loan. Because ”gaming the system” is ok – because as long as you actually agreed to pay the money, it’s a-ok with the left to avoid payment.

Obama Really Poor at Speaking

I saw this video at Patterico just now. His point is that the president is using marines to hold his umbrella instead of doing it himself. (Update: Yep)

Well, I’m quite certain I’ve seen Bush have that (in spite of these images) so I think that’s a bit of a beat up.

But I was incredulous at just how bad Obama stumbles around in these comments. He doesn’t even seem to remember who the guy next to him is.

Bush got stick for talking this badly. It seems that Obama’s solution is to never talk off-the-cuff – something that has been noted before.

Obama’s attitude comes home to roost

From Politico (via Instapundt)

Obama’s aloof mien and holier-than-thou rhetoric have left him with little reservoir of good will, even among Democrats. And the press, after years of being accused of being soft on Obama while being berated by West Wing aides on matters big and small, now has every incentive to be as ruthless as can be.

This White House’s instinctive petulance, arrogance and defensiveness have all worked to isolate Obama at a time when he most needs a support system. “It feel like they don’t know what they’re here to do,” a former senior Obama administration official said. “When there’s no narrative, stuff like this consumes you.”

When the going got tough for Bush, he stayed loyal to his people and they tended to stay loyal to him.

Obama on the other hand, has always pursued the strategy of throwing “under the bus” anyone who became a political problem. During the first campaign it was his pastor. Today the head of the IRS resigned, while Obama declared that he knew nothing about any of this stuff.

A couple of years ago I read Born Again, Charles Colson’s autobiography. I’d recommend it to any political nut, as it gives a real insight into what a decaying presidency looks like. (Though I strongly suspect that the book paints a slightly less than honest view of Colson’s own actions of the time.)

Time will tell if today’s actions will bring relief to the Administration. I can already see some media reports written by people who clearly are relieved they have an excuse to declare this one “over”. But the ground has certainly shifted, and it will be interesting to see how things develop with at least some of the media now casting a long-overdue critical eye over the administration.

Benefiting the “Vast Majority”

Looking through No Right Turn last night, I came across a lot of the usual nonsense. But this one takes the cake – and I’m not even going to talk about how he quotes John Minto (which in itself is a massive fail).

170 houses between 59 MPs is almost three each – and the last those MPs will want is to see the value of their major assets drop. So the sorts of policies which would solve the housing crisis – a capital gains tax, or a government building program – are off the table,

I’m actually considering setting up an interview with someone I know who is in something of a position to know about affordable housing. I asked him the other day what it cost to build a house (and most people would associate the houses he helps build with the very essence of affordable) and his reply staggered me. When I asked why, he said the big reason was compliance.

I mention that only to point out that Idiot doesn’t seem to think reducing compliance costs to be a problem. Perhaps it would be a better idea to ask why the private sector can’t keep the cost down before we declare the solution to be “more government”.

…replaced by weak measures like enabling the private sector to fail for a while longer. Its a perfect example of how the interests of the vast majority of New Zealanders are overridden by those of a tiny wealthy elite who are massively over-represented in Parliament.

That highlighted bit is why I’m posting this though.

Now, cheaper housing is indeed a worthy goal. I’m not  disputing that. But cheaper housing is mostly a problem if you don’t already own a home.  Idiot seems to be implying that “the vast majority” of New Zealanders are in this group.

But that’s absurd.

The stats are a bit old, and yes, the trend is in the wrong direction. But even taking those things into account, it is perfectly safe to assume that most New Zealanders still own their own home. In fact, our high level of home ownership has long been one of our defining characteristics!

So is parliament acting against the interests of New Zealand? Well, given the majority own their home, parliament taking steps to increase the value of that home is actually benefiting the majority of people in this country.

Worse, what Idiot is calling for actually could seriously harm a portion of the country that can literally least afford it. If house prices plunge, renters aren’t going to see much benefit (only landlords) unless they can purchase. But people who have purchased will see their equity wiped out.

Even if you disagree with that, there is really no way to claim that the “vast majority” is being disadvantaged.

Yes, housing (especially in Auckland) should be cheaper. Yes, keeping it expensive in theory arguably benefits MPs who own houses. But instead of making up silly “99% attacked by the 1%” conspiracies, how about we stick to the facts?

Even better, how about finding some common ground that we can all agree on, so that we might actually get somewhere solving the problem?

Children as social suicide

I noticed this article the other day, and while it’s from Israel, it does speak volumes about the prevailing attitudes in the west.

In most places in Israel, having children is essentially the law: Observant Israelis feel obliged to observe the mitzvah pru urvu—be fruitful and multiply—from Genesis 1:28. And secular Israelis seem to adhere to the Zionist idea of having kids as part of the demographic war. In Tel Aviv, on the other hand, the issue is more complicated. There are two opposing attitudes when it comes to kids: one anti and one very much pro.

And it’s just my luck that most of my friends belong to the anti-baby side. So for me, in Tel Aviv’s hipster society, having a baby has been basically social suicide.

…

For months before I got pregnant, my friends tried to convince me that having a baby would be a horrible mistake. They emailed me links to academic studies and research showing that children don’t, in fact, make you happy. They told me that wishing to reproduce is narcissistic. I couldn’t always argue with their logic, and in hindsight I must admit that they were right in predicting that once I had a baby, I’d be having more conversations about the different shades and textures of poo than political debates or semiotic analysis of films.

But their ignorance turned into outright denial when I actually did get knocked up. From week to week my belly grew, but my friends around the Friday café table didn’t seem to notice—or, maybe, they didn’t want to notice. At one point I couldn’t take it anymore and decided to blatantly point to my baby bump. The first reaction was a series of blank looks. Then: “What? You got a new shirt?”

***

A few months after my boyfriend and I became parents, we found out we weren’t invited to an afternoon barbecue at a friend’s house. I tried to remember if one of us said anything to annoy him, or if a notorious ex might be on the guest list, thwarting our invitation. After some unsuccessful speculation, I decided to confront my friend, who simply said that he was sorry, but the other guests didn’t want babies at their party. I assumed even baby-haters know that a sleeping infant in a baby-carrier wouldn’t be much of an imposition, but maybe they were afraid I’d be so rude as to breastfeed while people are eating—a vulgar and thoughtless act that might propel someone to lose his spareribs.

As it turns out, my mistake was trying to rationalize the host’s answer, which led to me naively telling him he could have still invited us and told us not to bring the baby. To that he didn’t have an answer; he just mumbled something about not wanting to insult us. That’s when it sank in: It’s not the baby they imagined would cramp the party’s style; it was us. We simply weren’t considered cool anymore. The fear that we would open our mouths to report that a certain someone rolled over for the first time was so great that we had to be kept off the premises altogether.

Children are not optional for a functioning society. Repeat: not optional.

Yet, we’re seeing an increasing trend towards not only seeing them as optional, but undesirable. Partly that’s driven by the misguided idea that more people is “bad for the planet” and the idea that we’re “overpopulated” (even though birth rates are quickly falling below sustainable rates in many countries). 

But there’s also an increasing tread towards people who should be parents simply not wanting to make the sacrifice that children bring. That’s a double loss, because we lose the next generation, and we lose touch with a vital part of life in this generation too – fostering what can only be called selfishness instead.