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Not joking or trying to insult, is "very right-wing, bigoted household" a euphemism for neo-nazi parents? I'm asking because the logical conclusion of what you were saying is that the natural state of white people is to dominate the world, because we are on average richer and more powerful than people with colored skin. If that's the sort of **** you grew up with I can see why you'd have a hard time breaking yourself of it.

Tumblr feminists and social justice folks are incredibly damaging to the discourse (I suspect that most of them are trolling) but buried deep beneath everything there is a good point:

Your successes are built upon the accomplishments of those who came before you. This is a quasi-natural condition: if your mother is healthier, and if you're fed better as a child, more energy can go to developing brain tissue and you end up smarter. What we have goes far beyond that, though. Highly-educated parents produce better educational opportunities for their children, even if it's just keeping old university textbooks on the bookshelf. Living in a nice house, in a rich town, means you'll go to a better school by default because public schools are funded by property taxes. Wealthy, stable parents inure you to risk; you can experiment with education and finance from a stable position, gaining more experience than others your age. You're white, so it's fractionally easier to find a job and you get a fractionally higher yearly raise, and you're male, so it's fractionally easier to find a job and you get a fractionally higher yearly raise. All of this also means you have more money, so you can save for your retirement at a younger age. Money compounds. Intelligence compounds. Experience compounds. Job performance compounds. And at the end of it, you did little or nothing to earn any of the advantages you have. This is what "privilege" means.

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Ah. Yeah, me too. Although my dad didn't know until he was quite old, and I doubt he was proud of the fact.

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I've been shunning that side of my family since my early teens, so I really have no idea what sorts of creative opinions they might share w.r.t. eugenics and slavery, but I doubt it's anything pleasant.

Re: Privilege, a good start is to think about what your opinions mean before sharing them. Of course you should strive to advance in life, you should take advantage of every benefit you have, and try your hardest to create a good life for your children. Just remember where you came from, and that your gifts obligate you to make life better for everybody, not just yourself.

Talking about how some folks just can't learn certain high-paid skills like leadership - that's a lot like talking **** about the poors when all you've done in life is win the lottery.

God damn, I'm hardly one to talk, but this is some seriously heavy **** for a threaded called "So there's this girl I'm confused by".

I think I took away the wrong message as well:

I love the positioning of the words "play now"

Edit: Wow, in the original animated version of the page those words are actually throbbing up and down!

Maybe Jon'C and Reid are related and will meet at a family reunion in the near future.

nah, it's the african-americans like those who descended from the slaves on their ancestor's plantations that are more likely to be having family reunions. After all, they invented the idea.

This is a perfectly reasonable definition. However, I don't like the term "privilege", because people misuse it to the broadly discredit arguments, as if understanding the world were exclusively a function of how little privilege you have had. Additionally, there is often the implication that privilege is a zero sum game, and that if you have more privilege than someone else, it was unjustly bestowed on you at the cost of others, and that you really don't deserve to enjoy it's benefits. It seems like the term has been ruined by people who use it as a crutch to keep the momentum of their indignation going, rather than seriously supporting their position.

yup

lol @ people who aren't even willing to consider the possibility that men and woman have any differences, biological or otherwise. Or that people might receive some measure of personality from their genetics. I mean, for christ's sake. You can't even say that men and women are anatomically different if someone like Emon is nearby. He's like a robot programmed to senselessly attack anything that doesn't sound politically correct, no matter how cogent.

I think it's pretty silly to claim 100% tabula rosa when we don't even really know the first thing about epigenetics, for instance.

And before you start making your ridiculous assumptions, which I know you will, I'm not a white supremacist or a men's rights activist. It's simple: on the nature vs. nurture spectrum I'm about 65/35 in favor of nature.

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However minute the innate differences between men and women are, I think it's pretty obvious that the entire system of human civilization has institutionalized some very strong forces that multiply the effect of those differences.

E.g., if the average male has some kind of natural 'ability' in a given domain, or just has a head start due to institutional reasons, and there are no self-stabilizing forces to overcome this minute difference, then the result is a positive feedback loop whereby each generation of successful men begets even more successful men, by selecting for hires, colleagues, and apprentices that are (naturally) most like themselves. Eventually the females become discouraged, and adapt themselves socially / culturally to other domains. And then their success here causes them to be entrenched in these other areas (like homemaking). Not to mention biology.

Anyway, the problem is quite deep, since even if females (or males) are just as capable to succeed in a given area, but work best in a style of learning that is different than the one favored by the dominating sex, the sex out of power will be at a disadvantage.

Of course, they can also make this problem even worse for themselves by rejecting the authority of the successful males, and instead emulate females with inferior credentials and accomplishments.

@ Reid I'm just going to assume you're wrestling with your own demons here, because you're being petulant and inferring a lot of stuff that wasn't implied.

Anyway, I suppose Reid was saying that we should simply relish the resulting gross asymmetries that these ever so slight differences result in once subject to institutional forces. For, as his argument went, to fight it, would be to incur unacceptable inefficiencies (e.g., it is too socially expensive to promote the cause of equitable pay for comparably competent female workers).

Which seems totally evil to me, and I should think, to all enlightened humans.

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And fwiw, I haven't seen any evidence that men and women have different natural aptitudes. It's more subtle than that. It's in behavioral preferences. For instance, it's been scientifically proven that the presence of testosterone is correlated with risk-taking. Risk-taking is a behavior that has profound impacts in many areas of life.

What it boils down to is most people can't seem to grasp the concept that people can be different but still treat one another with respect. If you point out that people have differences, that means you're hitler no matter what.

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Probably, but what about the social dynamics of your average high school? Why do girls congregate in large groups, whereas boys like to play with their computers in relative isolation? Which activity is more conducive to nourishing the kind of thinking that works in analytical and spatial subjects? Don't underestimate initial conditions.

Girls tend to do better in school, but how many people really became passionate about something that legitimately matters because they did a good job finishing the busywork their teacher assigned them?

Business itself is bad territory

That aside, why would that be bad territory if you have no problem saying that men are better able to meet the physical requirements to enter the military or be a firefighter? If anything it's 'bad territory' because it isn't well understood.

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At some point, it really becomes irrelevant whether or not the social dynamics I'm speaking of originally came from the hormones of the individuals (teenage girls) that make up the group. Because in either case, things ain't gonna change at that (crucial) stage of the game. Even if they have role models to look up to.

Of course, that doesn't mean we should make the problem worse by being cynical or patronizing to girls who actually do take an interest in subjects that most other girls don't....

In school they showed us a video 'documentary' in which a female firefighter was accused of dragging a victim by the legs down the stairs instead of carrying him. He complained about hitting his head, etc. Made it sound pretty scary.

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Depends on what you mean by fair. If fair to you means that every person is treated the exact same way, then no, it won't be fair. Ever.

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Are you saying that if nerdy teenage boys, who spend more time thinking about TIE fighters than getting to know their classmates, grow up to be engineers and soldiers by merely projecting their childhood fantasies into real life without developing a strong sense of human empathy and social contact, we will have more problems as a society? Like, as in, we'll be breeding a desensitized and bloodthirsty lot of testosterone-pumped killers who want to play with cool toys? And edit JK???

I'll reiterate my hypothesis: I think social institutions are a mirror that reflect basic biological differences, but with those differences greatly amplified.

I would say so. It's not merely cultural, either. The economy going to ****, for instance, is causing the birth rate to plummet, and all the social dynamics that go along with that. I think that is one of the factors that ultimately leads to an increase in the number of male shut-ins. But just because there are cultural pressures doesn't mean that there can't be innate differences at the same time.



I've heard accounts of women pulling their weight as firefighters. If they can do it, let 'em. If they can't, though.. have you ever had to do a job where someone wasn't pulling their weight? It sucks. It pretty much self-regulates, even if the only forces at play are the co-workers.

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Probably. :downs:

(Goodnight!)

Maybe it does suggest that possibility. Maybe it doesn't. Either way, I think that allowing people basic freedom to do what they want will mostly iron everything out. (Except if what they want to do is dick over other people.)


Equality in the sense of career and income is a whole different kettle of fish. That is essentially the most unequal thing about American society. And it mostly has to do with the fundamentals of the monetary system. If we want to foster a society in which people's talents and interests are truly fostered and they are allowed to contribute the things they are best suited to contribute, well.. that society would have to look nothing like ours.