At 2002-09-10 21:28 -0400, Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:
It's my oppinion that any matters of importance like those of politics, science, economics, philosophy should not be dicussed with women.
One should never engage in serious discussions with women anyway. They are not genetically equiped for it.
If I said anything equivalent about men, you and lots of other people would be, justifiably, up in arms.
Not if what you were saying was correct. I could compose quite a big list with 'bad' habits of men.
Okay, the first sentence is a bit overdone. There are women who do quite well in politics. ;-)
The sentence that one shouldn't start serious discussions with women is from my own experience. Woman tend to take arguments personally, will think that you're a 'bad person' when you're not thinking what the rest of the community thinks etc.
As regards the genetics. Men were selected for being good co-operators during the hunt. They would discuss hunting tactics around the fire but the next day they would have to hunt again together and be able to trust each other even if they disagreed the last evening. Men were selected not to have a problem with that. For them discussions are a game, which they like, but don't take overly serious. We like the men best that are the toughest in the discussion, becasuse they come up with the best arguments. In ancient days that could mean the difference between having food or not and therefore between survival and not.
Women used to tend to the children and gather roots and fruit etc. It was not necessary to cooperate with other women and it would even be bad for her family to share the findings or knowledge about where to find things.
When one of the men would kill a large beast however, he would need the help of the others to transport it back to the base and it would be foolish not to share it, because it would spoil very soon or be eaten by bugs in the African climate and usually the hunting process was a combined effort anyway.
Another matter is the woman's IQ. Prof. Dr. H. J. Eysenck has interesting theories about this. He poses that men have a bigger diversity in all kinds of properties, due to the fact that they are missing one 'leg' in their Y-chromosoom. This means that for a lot of properties their fenotype is based on only one gene and that can be a recessive gene. (A woman would need two of those genes to have the same fenotype.) The major example is colorblindness: This affliction is much more common under men than under women. Probably a factor of four. Eysenck argues that since the IQ is very complex some of it's genes will probably also reside on the Y-chromosome and therefore IQ will also vary more widely in men. Even assuming that men and women have the same average IQ (which is not unlikely) it would account for the fact that there is a lack of intelligent women. It's about 1 in 30. On the other hand it also explains why there is also an excess of dumb men on the other end of the scale. He noticed for example that in the lower social classes the woman is usually smarter and handles practical things like filling in tax forms.
If this is really your attitude, you are not mature enough to be working on this, or any, project with adults of any sex. If it isn't, I want an apology for the insult. No, it isn't funny. And saying you were only joking will not convince anyone of anything except that you don't have the guts to admit you said something stupid.
QED
Vicki Rosenzweig
By the way, when you're jewish as your name suggests, you can add about 15 points to your average IQ. Perhaps that explains why you're one of the few women here?
If anybody is interested in these matters, I suggest reading books like: - Eysenck, H.J. - Intelligence: The battle for the mind. - 1981 On the development of mankind: - Desmond Morris - The naked ape - 1967 In Dutch: - Marcel Roele - De Mietjesmaatschappij - (this is a book with a lot more about modern 'politically correct' fallacies, including an article about average IQ's that really differ from race to race) - 2000
Ah, and before I forget: I may try to avoid discussions with women, but I talk with them and emancipation comes up from time to time and there is also a downside to the current tendency to assume that women should have careers too. Some women don't want a career but just want to have children and take care of them, but in our current folly that women are the same as men we are doing that kind of women injustice by giving them a guild complex, about not working. And we are maybe depriving the children of a happy childhood with their mommy.
And to avoid that some of you, especially you Americans (and French), may think I'm not that bad after all: I think that all drugs should be legalized.
Greetings, Jaap