Amanda at Pandagon:
It's downright amazing to me that in such a short period of time, the same theories of animalistic violence that can't be controlled have been dusted off and moved from black people to men, but this time the exact opposite conclusion has been reached. Instead of men's supposedly inherent violence being used as an excuse to lock them up and throw away the key, it's being touted as a reason for feminists to give up and suggest to women that we just put up with it or somehow tailor our behavior somehow to fix it. (This particular theory that [WSJ writer Sharon] Begley criticizes suggests that partner-murder is tied into female infidelity, which is a slap in the face to the thousands of women killed each year who did not "ask for it" by cheating.)
That the exact same "just so" story can be used for wildly different ends is just more evidence that the actual theories touted are utterly irrelevant--regardless of the evidence, regardless of the theory, the conclusion is always the same--the current power structures and hierarchies of society are intractable and a product of nature. In other words: "Sorry, oppressed and battered peoples of the world, wish we could help, but Mother Nature hates you and likes us."
Maybe I have just become more sensitized to it, but I have noticed this kind of thing more frequently recently, especially since Larry Summers shot himself in the mouth. Just yesterday, the local corporate-fascist AM radio station was talking up a study that "proved" that men just don't read other people's emotions as well as women. The point of the story was that (1) implicitly, such inability is innate, not learned, and (2) therefore, men can't be expected to deal with their female partners' emotions. (A follow-up study will attempt to show that men just don't "see" a messy house, until a woman points it out.) The idea that women have been socialized to pay attention to others' feelings, and men have not, doesn't seem to have been considered.
Men seem to be eager to grab onto anything "objective" they can use to justify the status quo, just as racists have long done, even if the explanation given is implausible or obviously self-serving. It would be pathetic if it weren't so harmful.
This is my fave of the genre:
http://www.umich.edu/news/?Releases/2004/Dec04/r120804
Posted by: iocaste | June 07, 2005 at 02:27 PM
It's totally socialized behavior. While boys are outside playing army and football, the girls are inside talking and playing with dolls.
Posted by: Alexa | June 07, 2005 at 07:16 PM
Jesus, we're a slow species, considering we're the fucking paragon of animals or some such shit. People were having this exact same conversation in 1970, and I guess we keep having it decade after decade because we're so bored by our own enlightenment that we need to entertain ourselves by making a game of the pretence of ignorance.
I don't mean you, or Amanda, or anyone else who means well. I simply mean it's been there in front of our faces for hundreds of years, and Charlotte Perkins Gilmore wasn't the first to notice.
I want a seat on the next intergalatic flight.
Posted by: Riggsveda | June 08, 2005 at 09:04 PM
Well and. There were a number of studies, IIRC, that showed that the supposed "innate" ability of women to read emotion better than men was actually linked not with sex but with status. That is, if you're subordinate to those around you--if they can hurt you more than you can hurt them--you'd damn well better learn to read their moods. Turns out you apparently find similar skills in men who are in subordinate(d) positions.
Posted by: emma goldman | June 09, 2005 at 02:59 PM
Want to see a woman kick Steven Pinker's ass? Read this debate between Pinker and Elizabeth Spelke:
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/debate05/debate05_index.html
And then check out Spelke's paper
Sex Differences in Intrinsic Aptitude for Mathematics and Science: A Critical Review
http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~lds/pdfs/spelke2005.pdf
Posted by: Nancy | June 10, 2005 at 02:36 AM
" People were having this exact same conversation in 1970"
Watch "Free to Be...You and Me" sometime. Still waaaay ahead of anything else you might see on tv nowadays
Posted by: Dan S. | June 17, 2005 at 09:44 PM
I attended the Pinker/Spelke debate, and my personal judgment(from the crowd's response, the write-up in the paper, and conversations with other people who were there) is that few would say that Spelke kicked Pinker's ass. Perhaps it's like the Nixon/Kennedy debates. But in actuality, Pinker's presentation had both greater scope and more detail regarding the scientific literature. Regardless, everyone on both sides came away with a strong belief that such debates are very healthy.
Posted by: John D. | June 20, 2005 at 01:11 AM