On 20/09/2007, Sheldon Rampton sheldon@prwatch.org wrote:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
Nonsense. Women are generally shorter than men. Women generally have a higher percentage of body fat that men. Women are generally more susceptible to breast cancer than men. All generalisations, and all true. I doubt you think any of them are stupid. So why is recognising physical differences acceptable, while recognising psychological differences is not?
I think the problem is that the specific assertion that was made here ("women are more likely to wander off-topic in a discussion than men") is debatable at best and can be interpreted as insulting to women as rational beings. I'm unaware of any body of scientific research showing that men are more likely to stay on-topic than women. There's certainly no scholarly or scientific consensus on this point. To accept this claim is therefore not "recognizing psychological differences," because the claimed difference in this case may not exist at all. (Personally, I don't think it does.)
It being wrong does not make it discriminatory.