Good post.  Reminiscent of Camille Paglia’s reply to Germaine Greer.  Greer had written that there were few female artistic geniuses because women had always been psychologically mutilated (or something like that).  Paglia replied that only the psychologically mutilated can become geniuses.

Excellent. As an American living in South Korea for the past 11 years, I’ve noticed that despite the high average IQ scores (106 puts the country in second place after Hong Kong), due to homogeneity there a far fewer folks at the “extremes tails of the normal curve.” Also, being “socially adjusted” is fundamental in a Confucian society, so whatever Beethovens may have existed or exist remain unknown.

Hey, don’t be dissing Billy Ray Cyrus. Anyone who writes a song called “I Want My Mullet Back” is OK by me.

“A new study has “found that girls perform as well as boys on standardized math tests,”

This may very well be the case, though it certainly doesn’t mean that both sexes have equal aptitude.

In 1994 I wound up taking the Graduate Record Exam (GRE) twice.  The first time I took it the traditional way, with pencil and paper.  But because the school I was trying to get into insisted they had to have the results immediately, I had to immediately take it again on the computer, which was new at the time.

I noticed while taking the computerized version that it seemed much more difficult than the pencil and paper test I had just taken.  And the results confirmed my suspicions.  When I queried a counselor on this two hundred point discrepancy, she just clucked and told me the new test was “fair”, and the better you did the harder the test became.  Whereas if you were doing worse, the questions became easier.  And that I should want to help out those who had a harder time of things than I did.

Then a few years later I read in Howard’s “Death of Common Sense” that congress passed a law mandating that no group do any better on tests than any other group.

Welcome to the Soviet States of America.

The study, which appeared in last week’s edition of Science [June 2008], relied on a test from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), run by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). A total of over 275,000 students in 40 countries took the PISA exam as 15-year-olds. On average, girls scored about 2 percent lower than boys on math, but nearly 7 percent higher on reading, consistent with previous test results.

Cant be having these girls reading better than boys, lets make a law that no group can do any better than another group

snark.

The more sophisticated theorists of modern feminism distinguish between “sex” and “gender.” “Sex” refers to the inescapable differences in anatomy, the instrinsic and immutable realities of maleness and femaleness. “Gender” refers to the artifical “social constructs” of “manliness"/"womanliness" and “masculinity"/"femininity." Thus using the term “gender inequality” implies that feminists are right in arguing that all disparities in “roles” and behavior are a result of “sexist conditioning” and “discrimination.”

This is what Simone de Beauvoir meant when she wrote: “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” People are born male or female -how could one argue otherwise?!- but society turns them into “men” and “women.” Sex is innate. “Gender” is a social creation and imposition.

Sex is innate. “Gender” is a social creation and imposition

Pardon me, but this is total BS.  It’s not social conditioning that makes little girls like pink and ballerinas and not grow up to drink beer and think up all sorts of euphemisms for urination and sexual intercourse.  And even when we shoehorn women into obvious male roles, the different hard-wiring is apparent.

It was all right there in 1990 when I read Brain Sex by Anne Moirs and David Jessell. Eighteen years of confirmation, folks.

Bottom line: the traditional, stereotypical view of the sexes (I don’t use the leftist term “genders”.) is corroborated by scientific research.

Sorry, feminists.

“Pardon me, but this is pure B.S.” Exactly, Senor Doug, that was my point. It should be obvious that I was not agreeing with feminists but describing their “cultural Marxist” and environmentalist fantasies. My point was that de Beauvoir’s and similar assertions are grotesque nonsense utterly divorced from objective reality.

There’s a lot to say for specialization. I lose a lot of time living alone. When I have
had live-in girlfriends I have more time, and so do they since two can live more easily
than one due to specialization. As for math:  we discovered specialization as a biological
reality and necessity for survival when things were much more exigent (i.e. in our faces)
than they are today THANKS to civilization. Women had children and were more nurturing,
while men usually went out and hunted. This goes on over hundreds of thousands of years
once we were no longer merely hominids and had become aware of being aware. So via the
hunting, so you didn’t get killed out there men of necessity became more adroit at the
rapid juxtapositioning of spatial arrangements = math. Women usually became much more
adroit at gathering berries and things and noticing finer distinctions which also abetted
their more nurturing instincts. Today ‘liberated’ woman now finds she has the right to do
all of the loathsome jobs men have always had to do and he usually didn’t mind so much
since doing it for her and kids home and hearth. Now with so many in the work place it’s
an empolyer’s market and two have to work to simply get paid what one (the bread winner)
once did. And who raises the kids? No one, or strangers. Wow. All so the rich can get
richer faster and the rest of us can get poorer faster. Living alone you notice you lose
a lot of time.

Sorry SK.  My irony detector is a bit clumsy.

“live-in girlfriends”

Hmm.  For a fella advocating traditional values, you seem to have availed yourself of the more male-beneficial aspects of feminism.

There’s some truth to the old adage about free milk and cows.

When I made the mistake of being a live-in girlfriend I certainly DIDN"T have more time.  I worked to support myself, then came home to all the housework that I myself would have created, PLUS his.  Although I grant you, with me as his mess-cleaner-upper, HE certainly had more time.

I only got more time when I wised up, booted the bum, found a good guy, got married and insisted that Hubby support me and child while I stayed home and mothered and did the housework (same amount of housework as before, but at least I didn’t have to ALSO work outside the home 40 hours.)