ZOMBIE FORUMS

This is not entirely true. I would consider going so far to say that isn't even mostly true. Abortion seems to be a cause that feminists have taken on, but just because something only affects women doesn't mean that when that something is being withheld and/or protested, that the women are the target. That confuses one cause with another effect. Most of the Pro-lifers are of a religious bent. They don't protest abortions because only women get them, they protest abortions because they are a 'sin against God'. If suddenly technology was available that allowed men to carry children, would most of the Pro-lifers go away? No, they'd still be yelling their heads off. The only difference would be that feminists wouldn't be able to claim it as a cause anymore. So I'm not entirely sure they should now.

All you have proved, however, is that women are not their own sole enemies and that sexism exists in some form in some places.

That is not a sufficient counterexample. I did not put that idea out. You still have not provided sufficient information to conclude that men are oppressing women more than they are themselves.

-MiB

It makes a difference because of how the PILL is adminitsered, in a given cycle, one pill is a dud, sugar pill, no fucking medication. this breaks up the cycle so that the PILL, which fools the woman's body into thinking it is pregnant already, will not fool it into skipping the period, which happens to most pregnant women. It was thought, when the PILL was invented that the cycle was natural and necessary, and that to prevent it was unhealthy. This simply wasn't questioned for a very long time. It's finally come out that this is simply not true and that women are suffering for nothing, really. But people are not accepting it quickly because people cling to what they have been told.

Once again, biology. You make my point. I am 6'2" 280#, Odds are, you aren't. All of the reasons, really, that it is more dangerous for a woman to be alone at night are biological. Size, strength, and the fact that they are a sexual target for the sort of people that I would exclude from the human race given the power, are biological.

By the way I am very happy to hear you have reasonable concern for your own safety, I've known too many girls that weren't, and aren't. Most end up paying for it, and far far more than anyone should have to for thinking the world is a better place than it is.



The simple fact is that the vast majority of people, at times myself included, take the path of least resistance, most people have their lives ordered for them, graduate HS, go to college, are undecided, make a choice of major, continue on, etc. Women mostly go into female dominated majors and fields, why don't they do engineering? Probably just never occurred to them.

I am a social scientist, my field is DOMINATED by women, my classed were 75% female. Why? Because other women went into it. what guys ever think of going into nursing? Despite the fact that my (Male) cousin makes a damned good living at it. There is societal inertia at work in that there are things womern just don't get encouraged to do or pushed into soon enough for them to have a chance at doing it well. Some things you just have to get started early.

I have every confidence that a woman with the talent, skill and dedication can do anything that a man of equal skill and talent can do. But, face it, most women don't want to be president any more than I do.In fact, I know my own mother would never CONSIDER voting for a woman for president. Most of the women I know would do so long after I would. But aside even from that fact, Most people don't have alot of ambition naturally. Most that have it are pushed into it, by families and societal excpectations.

Women, as I pointed out to a female friend, have an option I don't have. I CANNOT, UNDER ANY REASONABLE CONDITIONS, chose not to work, I have no choice, I had better make a damn good career out of my life or I am a disgrace to my family and everyone who can claim any responsibility for what I become. I work, I do something, I have a career, I do it well, or I am a deadbeat piece of shit, unreclaimable by any excuse or deed. If war is on I go to war, if it is death or dishonor,it is my duty to chose death. I have no excuse, there is no forgiveness, I am entirely obligated to the responsibilities and duties of the cult of masculinity, if I can't meet them I lose the respect of my peers and myself and that is truly unacceptable. I have no idea if I would have the ambition, the drive to succeed if it was not built in. If I could let someone else pay the bills, contribute without ultimate responsibility for being the "breadwinner", and no one would speak ill of me for it, would I? No fucking clue. But it would be tempting, Yes indeed it would.

The path of least resistance draws most. and they make their lives according to their own priorities. I myself have learned never, ever to count anyone out, especially not arbitrarily. But I don't make excuses for anyone. In my mind if you don't have it, most of the time it is because you didn't want it bad enough.

WARNING: Long post ahead.

I would like to start this post syaing that although men and women are fundamentally different in almost every way, they are of equal worth.

When I make a statement like "Men are better at running than women", I mean that most men are faster than most women. I know that some women are faster than most men.

For a more eloquent description of the arguement that follows, read [i]Why Men Don't Iron: The real Science of Gender Studies" by Bill and Anne Moir.

Men an women have many differences in their brain wrought during their time in the womb. During the fourth week of pregnancy, the fetus, if it is male (barring medical abnormalities), is washed with a high amount of testosterone. This reaps many differences in brain structure.

This first is that men are bored more easily than women. They also pursue their goals much more aggressively. This drives them to pursue novelty and adventure.

The second is that men thrive off of competition (while women get anxious). Indeed, following success high risk, high competion fields (like stock trading), men's brains produce large amounts of certain neurotransmitters. They literally get high off of risk. Women do not.

Because of the above two traits, men make better soldiers (because they are more willing to make death-defying risks) than women, and also make better holders of high office (like corporate CEOs or national Presidents). They enjoy the pressure.

Women, however, are built to negotiate and talk. They prefer to avoid competion, and seek a compromise. They form much more intimate group of friends than guys do, and talk about things that are much more personal while in that core group of friends, than guys do in their peer groups.

Women's minds are more focused on linguistics than men are, and are more networked. However, men have better spatial skills than women do. For instance, when men are trying to parallel park, they see the angles and size of the space and car, and slot it in. Wome, however, translate it into words. They estimate how big the car is, how big the space is, try to figure out if the car will fit, and is by this point wondering how she passed the driving test in the first place. It is because of this difference in thought that certain fields (like physics and engineering; social engineering excepted) are dominated by dominated by men. It is also because of this reason that women make better housekeepers than men do, due to the many and varied demands the work places upon the person. Please note that I am not saying that men are better than women here, merely that they are different and excel at different areas.

Sexuality is also set in the womb (although it can be changed later with intensive psychological help, and even that isn't totally effective). The fetus, if left to develop normally, will eventually grow into a girl attracted to boys. However, during the fourth week of pregnancy, the aforemention drenching of testosterone also changes the feotus's sexual orientation. It is possible for a female fetus to recieve too much testosterone during this crucial period (leading to homosexuality, and, incedentally, the butch lesbian stereotype), and for a male feotus to recieve too little (leading to gay guys, and, also incedentally, the gay hairdresser stereotype).

In addition, men have a host of different physical traits (more muscle, thicker skin and skulls, thinner blood, less body fat, etc.) and needs (ie, more protein, more zinc, etc.). All of this leads to men having the advantage in most areas of physical prowess.

The noob is correct. Men are superior in all matters of importance.

Well the noob just built a wooden fort soaked with Kerosene, nice plan, don't ask me to defend it, I'll throw a torch and run....

*wants to say something before the bonfire starts*




OMG WTF I live near Pyromancer! LoL?



*runs from the thread*

IT BURNS LIKE FIRE

What? Are you saying that I am flaming, or that I am baiting?

I wasn't trying to do either. I was just putting my views forward in a more or less logical manner.


What? I never said that.
Men's first reaction to opposition is to compete. Women's first reaction to opposition is to compromise and negotiate. There are times when each of those is more valuable than the other.

Or are you being sarcastic? It's hard to tell over a text-based medium like this. No vocal intonations.

With respect to the biology-is-destiny argument:



The first two are biological, yes; the third is purely social. Those whom you would exclude desire social power over someone, and women make a convenient target; your desire to ostracise them is a social judgement on your part. (One with which I must naturally concur, of course.) Bad people of all shapes, sizes and sexes require victims. Big bad people look for small victims. Some wives terrorize their husbands; some bosses steal from their employees; some parents torture their children. The bad wives, bosses and parents should be excluded from the species, too, shouldn't they?



I have read that book. So have lots of other people, some of whom are on the forum -- likely amongst whom are Clay_Allison, Skjie and even Forevergrey, which is why they are suggesting you might be trolling, in their own separate but delicate fashions. That book, along with another infamous tract, The Bell Curve, make the cause for one of my own favourite books: How to Lie with Statistics. (My Internet connection is unstable for some reason, so I cannot get you the ISBN. Please, please go look it up on amazon.com or some place. It is such a good book that after reading it I switched my undergraduate degree from mathematics to computer science so I wouldn't have to take stats courses.)

Firstly, testosterone poisoning does not equate to ambition. Male bodies produce twenty times the amount of androgens that female bodies do, but that makes men tend to violence (and hair loss), not to ambition.

Secondly, as you yourself point out: a statistical tendency is not a universal qualification, and nor is it a prescription for behaviour. If men are better neurologically predisposed to mathematics than are women, fine; but that does not mean that women must give up all hope of interest in math. Similarly, even if women are better neurologically predisposed to lingiustic communication than are men, then men are still unlikely to let women do all the talking. Emmy Noether and Sophie Germain were mathematicians of note; William Shakespeare and Dante Alighieri were arguably the greatest writers of all time. Naturally, fans of Goethe, Homer, Virgil, Cervantes et al. will all clamour for attention, now. What, those guys were men, too?

(You have heard of Shakespeare and Dante, I am sure. Do you know anything about Noether and Germain, though? Does the fact that those women had to publish anonymously or under masculine pseudonyms have something to do with it, hmmm?)

Thirdly: the phrase "separate but equal" has been used in other political circumstances. In Afrikaans, for example, it translates (approximately) to "apartheid". However, I think the best place to learn about "separate but equal" is from a novel, Animal Farm, by yet another male writer. Gosh, those boys seem to be overcoming their limitations all the time.

Enforcing stereotypes as policy is tyranny.

Considering most men are ruled by their balls, I must disagree.



I have not actually read the book. And, am rather against most gender stereotypes as I don't fit them well.



And they walked on their hind legs, just like men.

I submit (because I hate when people pull this, and I feel like being devil's advocate) that your book is laughable and prejudiced and stupid, and the noob's book is highly reccommended and well done.

See, I can play the "I dismiss your source without qualification and then promote my own with the same amount of evidence" game too.

-MiB

What do you want? Complete texts of the books in question? Summaries? Well, he gave his summary. I'll give you mine in two words: Bayes' Theorem. By the record of your posting, you love statistics, so you should recognize the theorem -- so you should have some idea why it is so easy to pull the wool over peoples' eyes.

Or read the book. I really want you to. It won't make you less of an asshole bully, but it might give you some idea how to be a better one.

My internet penis is bigger than your internet penis.

I do know how easy it is to pull the wool over peoples' eyes. But you have offered no refutation at all - just a book and a theorum that, to be frank, most people probably do not know and cannot be bothered to look up. If you are actually interested in the process of convincing other people (or at least refuting them) you need more than 'lolz bayes' theorem ownzed.'

Really any unqualified statistic (and by 'unqualified' I mean where the sampling is not broken down to show how representative it is, methodology shown, etc) are usually just dismissed (since it is, on a more professional scale, saying "x is true, I swear, no really.") But your refutation was laughable to the point that I had to point out how silly it is: you dismiss the person's book without actually going into it at all, ie just "ha I dismiss your book," and then you bring up a book, without showing how, in this specific example, the presented hypothesis was wrong or could be mistaken, due to methodology, etc.

If you are going to dismiss a book out of hand because you say 'lolz it must be fooling you 'cause it doesn't agree with me' then expect to be ridiculed for it, especially if you then immediately follow it up with a book that is completely out of the blue, not well known and very much has no credibility among the general public.

Really, the noob was in the wrong here as well, but if you're going to try and counter him in such a sloppy way I have to call you on it, that was just laziness or stupidity, either way its not a good thing to do in debate.



Ironically I was taking a look at the book about a half hour before I read your post, but I passed it up because a quick flip through it didn't reveal anything exciting or new.

End result, though, is that just because a particular statistic or survey can be wrong or decietful, doesn't mean it automatically is, the proper response to the book citings is 'can you please provide me some data on how they came to x conclusion instead of just saying BOOK! LOOK! THAT MEANS I WIN!' rather than going into a diatribe about refuting imaginary statistics. As well, Bayes' theorem:

PsubX(Z) = [P(Z)/P(X)]PsubZ(X)

Where PsubX(Z) is the function describing the given probability of condition Z being put onto a specific population X, P(Z) is the probability of H on the general population, P(X) is the probability that the subject belongs to population X, and PsubZ(X) is the probability that event Z occurs in population X compared to the general population.

Doesn't seem as sufficient proof to me that any statistics the noob brings up must be faulty, unless you mean and implication derived from this theory, in which case you should point that out and provide the theory as supporting evidence to this, rather than just the theory. Or perhaps you mean an alternate form of Bayes' Theory and an implication from that. Either way, saying 'lolz bAyes' theorY' doesn't constitute a refutation to any rational person.

-MiB

*shrugs*
Maybe. But that wasn't my intent.

Would you mind explaining to me why the book is so bad, please?


Did I say that?

It is the pre-natal testosterone surge that is the cause of the (general) increase in ambition in most males. Females who recieve a similar wash of hormones also recieve the same general increase in testosterone. Afterwards, all you'll do if you give Mr. Unambitious more testosterone is make him crankier.



Of course. But if you have a man and a woman with equal intelligences and training, the man will still be better at spatial work while the woman will be better at communicating.



Of course they were. They are all outliers.

The bell curve of male mathematical skill has a higher mean than the female one, but that doesn't stop either of them from having tiny numbers of individuals outstanding individuals.



Well, for the first I can say that until you mentioned them, I had never heard of either of them. After a little bit of Internet research, I think that is probably because I'm not a university-level math student (or, for that matter, a uni student at all).



Did I say 'seperate but equal'? No, I said 'different, but of equal worth'. Men are better than women at some things, women are better than men at others.

I read Animal Farm. It was okay. I believe its theme was more about the corruption of power and Communist Russia than anything else.


WTF? Seriously, where did that come from?


Really? How?

Also, people, I realize that I might be new to this forum, but please stop referring to me as 'the newb', okay? I did pick a screen-name, and the last time I checked, it wasn't 'the newb'. [/quasi-humor]

Hate to say this MiB but the first thing I did after reading Tamayo's above post was to <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Bayes'+Theorem%22&sourceid=opera&num=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8" target="_new">google Bayes' Theorem</a>.

ptlis

That is irrelevent. She is making claims based on a theorem, it is not our job to go looking for the theroem, it is her job to present this theorem to us, instead of being all "lawlz, hi, heres two words I may or may not have made up, why dont you go find out"

She could, at the LEAST have provided a couple links. It IS after all a mere googling away.

gg, no re.

This is true.

ptlis