Fact and feminism keep tripping over each other.
For decades, radical feminists have prostrated themselves upon the altar of androgeny, flatly declaring that all differences between the sexes are socially constructed. So when men earn more money than women, they say that’s proof of sex discrimination.
But men have the Y chromosome, while women don’t. And it turns out that one chromosome contains 78 very important genes. Those genes contain programming instructions that control a man’s brain structure, sex hormones, and a host of other functions.
These critical genetic differences play out in thousands of ways that influence risk-taking, sex relationships, and social roles. Steven Rhoads’ book, Taking Sex Differences Seriously, is an information-packed, must-read on this topic.
Women conceive babies, men can’t. Women are better at decoding facial expressions, hearing a baby’s whimper in the night, and simultaneously talking and listening. Fine.
But what happens when we insist that men and women are social equivalents, twisting like neutered cogs in a giant gender nirvana?
Last year I was talking with a woman who insisted female athletes are just as skilled as the men. A few months later, the US female Olympic hockey team played a boys’ high school team from Warroad, Minnesota. The small town boys prevailed 2-1 over the elite Olympians – and that was a non-checking game.
Then there are the women-in-combat zealots. They parade girls like PFC Jessica Lynch as living proof that women can handle the fierce demands of front line combat. You may recall that war heroine Lynch later admitted about her Iraqi mishap, “I did not shoot, not a round, nothing. I went down praying to my knees. And that’s the last I remember.”
What about women in the media? Remember, they were going to bring us a more balanced and empathic perspective on the world.
Well, that was before Oprah Winfrey predicted one in five heterosexual Americans would die from AIDS by 1990 and Meryl Streep duped the EPA to ban alar.
Let’s not forget Connie Chung’s scientific discovery that breast implants make women sick. Even though researchers could never prove the link between implants and connective tissue disease, the ensuing hysteria-driven lawsuits eventually forced Dow Corning into bankruptcy.
Of course there’s the ever-apoplectic Maureen Dowd, left to wonder why the New York Times circulation numbers tumble ever-downward. And rumor has it that once Katie Couric debuts at CBS News, she’s planning to sign up Cindy Sheehan as a political analyst for the upcoming November elections.
And women, it is said, will make the political arena more ethical and fair: “Research shows the presence of women raises the standards of ethical behavior and lowers corruption.” That quote comes to us by way of senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, which practically makes the claim self-refuting.
We were promised that women in academia would bring important new insights. But soon the ladies came to the sobering realization that Beethoven composed Ode to Joy to induce men into a sexual frenzy, and Newton’s Principia Mathematica is actually a rape manual.
We should all feel especially sorry for MIT professor Nancy Hopkins.
As a biologist, she no doubt learned how primates engage in sex-specific courtship rituals and hunting patterns. But then ex-Harvard president Larry Summers suggested that innate differences in the human species also might exist, causing the ever-delicate Dr. Hopkins to lapse into a swoon.
Smelling salts, anyone?
Those examples are mostly amusing. But there’s one variation on the woman-can-do-anything-a-man-can-do theme that’s downright dangerous. It’s the “mothers and fathers are interchangeable” mantra.
The reason is simple: little boys don’t identify with their moms the same way they bond with their dads. And girls learn different lessons from dads than from moms.
Want proof?
Look at inner city ghettos ravaged by Great Society programs that required dad to vacate the home before mom was entitled to collect her welfare check. Bereft of their loving fathers, boys looked to the media and gangs for their male role models.
Is anyone surprised when all manner of social pathologies take root and flourish?
It’s one of the conundrums of our time that while demanding fealty to the dogma of androgeny, feminists condemn the expression of masculine qualities by men and then turn around and demand that “liberated” women exemplify exactly those same attributes.
As my mother used to say, Who said women had to be logical?
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Hal said,
What’s amazing is these educated idiots don’t know this, but us ignorant flyovers do. The coastal geniuses have no grasp on the totally obvious.
August 21, 2006 at 5:39 pm
Joyanna Adams said,
I don’t remember her name
She looked convincing to me.
Of course, she was acting.
August 22, 2006 at 12:24 am
christianj said,
As usual a sheer pleasure to read, you are one of the few journalist on this planet that has the courage and ability to “tell it like it is”, unfortunately too many cowards exist in the media so it will not be what the general public will hear.
Just in passing, did not the “vapors” of Nancy Hopkins cost Harvard 100 million dollar as one of their main supporters withdrew their support. The selfish feminists knows no bounds.
Women really are a shining example for all to see.
August 22, 2006 at 3:44 am
ggreen67 said,
I remember that particular hockey game being up on MND. I’m sure there is no doubt that those girls were much more skilled fundamentality than that high school mens team. I still feel those girls gave that game away.
Point here is skills are learned, and skill learning has no gender/race/age barriers or restrictions.
What does make a difference is natural ability and biology. Natural testosterone levels in men make us stronger/faster/etc. Testosterone spikes in men is what makes us so competitive. Sometimes to the point of being a disastrous.
There exists a very good BBC program that examines physical/psychological differences between men and women. Its very fascinating how higher levels of testosterone effect us.
August 22, 2006 at 7:48 am
wblackburn said,
Here’s a good one about the differences between males and females, though: The Discovery channel had a show where they followed a young woman who had decided she wanted to get a sex change. She agreed to be part of a study, where they tracked her as she took her hormone injections during the run-up to the operations.
They measured the woman’s strength and endurance through running. She ran a set distance every day (or a few times a week, perhaps), and she took periodic aptitude tests for Math and Language skills. As the hormone shots progressed, of course she started growing facial hair, and I think her breasts shrank, but also you could SEE the development of her upper body muscles, and her performance in her run (something like 5 miles, I think) increased more than could be easily be explained by exercise alone. More interestingly than that, however, her language skills degraded, and her math skills improved dramatically. I don’t remember the name of this particular program, but it was pretty definitive to me.
August 22, 2006 at 10:27 am
MacKenzie said,
That would be USMC Private Vasquez in the sequel Aliens.
And she - much to the collective shock of Hispanics - was played by actress Jenette Goldstein.
Now that’s acting.
August 23, 2006 at 5:05 am
fourthwire said,
And she - much to the collective shock of Hispanics - was played by actress Jenette Goldstein.”
No matter how many times I see that sequel, I never fail to laugh at Jenette Goldstein’s parody of a future female warrior.
Now I KNOW that there are some tough women serving their nation in the military, but it’s less easy to believe that anyone can expect to see many female Marines tougher and more macho than male Marines, no matter how hard Hollyweird tries to portray them so.
Personally I believe that Jenette Goldstein ought to have received an academy award for her performance in the Alien sequel……
Until now I thought that she was Hispanic as well!
Thanks, MacKenzie. You’re right: THAT’S acting!
August 23, 2006 at 4:07 pm