The Following article was submitted by Charles Martel:
The concept that “gender is a social construct,†that men and women differ only in their social conditioning, is the sine qua non of second-wave feminism.
It’s puzzling that “anything a man can do, a woman can do,†is so self-evidently untrue, and yet is widely accepted among Western women. I have long thought that the explanation for this may lie in brain structure. Perhaps there are important differences in the way that the brains of men and women perceive and process information. Is it possible that men and women can look at the same information and genuinely reach different conclusions, for reasons of neurochemistry?
How often have you seen women characterized in the manosphere by the words “me, me, me, me, me?†To a man, this behavior is evidence of narcissism and is not highly regarded. But perhaps this kind of female behavior is not so much a conscious choice, but more an outward expression of female brain structure. I’ll call this phenomenon the “Locus of Consciousness†and propose that the most important difference in perception resulting from differences in physical brain structure is that the female locus of consciousness is primarily internal while the male locus of consciousness is primarily external.
In my opinion, a second key difference between the male and female brain lies in what I will call “Time Awareness.†I suggest that the female brain is wired to live “in the moment†to a greater extent than the male brain. The female brain discounts future consequences of current actions not out of obtuseness or stupidity, but from a genuine neurological incapacity to consider them.
OK, all of the above is speculation. So…..is there any evidence that male and female human brains are different?
Here’s the view of one typical second wave feminist.
“Newsflash: there is no “female brain†– the latest cutting edge research on sex, attraction, arousal, etc focuses on the HUMAN brain not on the male or female brain.â€
Predictably, this is not true. In fact, to the male brain it is an outright lie, but is perhaps more understandable in the context of my proposed female neurological “Locus of Consciousness.†What the female writer is really saying without conscious awareness is that “it’s not in my interest to acknowledge that there are brain differences between men and women.â€
There is a female brain, and it is very different to the male brain. Of course, advancing this idea has been about as career-enhancing for a neurologist as researching racial differences in IQ is for a sociologist. Ann Moir and David Jesse made this clear in their 1992 book, Brain Sex, when they wrote: “Doctors, scientists, psychologists and sociologists, working apart, have produced a body of findings which, taken together, paints a remarkably consistent picture. And the picture is one of startling sexual asymmetry. Some researchers have been frankly dismayed at what they have discovered. Some of their findings have been, if not suppressed, at least quietly shelved because of their potential social impact.â€
Despite the de facto suppression of gender-based neurological research these inconvenient truths are emerging, thanks primarily to the introduction of highly sophisticated medical imaging devices. There can be no doubt about the structural and functional differences in male and female brains seen in MRI and fMRI images.
This article, by Michael McCarthy of The Independent, provides an interesting and highly politically incorrect overview of recent neurological research: “Men and women show differences in behaviour because their brains are physically distinct organs, new research suggests. Male and female brains appear to be constructed from markedly different genetic blueprints. The differences in the circuitry that wires them up and the chemicals that transmit messages inside them are so great as to point to the conclusion that there is not just one kind of human brain, but two, according to recent neurological studies.â€
A quick survey of neurological research shows that:
- Men have approximately 6-1/2 times the amount of gray matter that women do, and women have nearly 10 times more white matter than men. Gray matter processes information in the brain, while white matter connects the processing centers.
- Women have about 85% of their IQ-related brain matter—both white and gray—located in the brain’s frontal lobes while men have nearly all of their IQ-related gray matter distributed equally between the frontal and parietal lobes.
- The corpus callosum, the major white matter tract connecting the two brain hemispheres is larger in women (and gay men).
- The inferior-parietal lobule, which is associated with mathematical ability, is significantly larger in men than in women, with the left side lobule larger in men and the right side lobule larger in women.
- The preoptic area of the hypothalamus is more than twice the size in men as in women. For complex reasons that I will not attempt to explain here, this is why men constantly think about sex and women don’t.
- The limbic cortex, which processes emotions, is proportionally larger in women than in men.
- The parietal cortex, which processes spatial perception, is proportionally larger in men than in women.
- The amygdala, associated with emotional memory, is proportionally larger in men than in women.
- The hippocampus, associated with short-term memory and spatial navigation, is proportionally larger in women than in men.
So, is there a female brain? Clearly, yes. There are very significant structural differences between the male and female human brain.
Of course, these structural differences alone do not offer any specific evidence for my proposed differences in locus of consciousness or time awareness. Nor do they prove that male and female cognitive ability and information processing are different. It’s entirely possible that despite these many structural differences, the male and female brain are functionally identical, just as a 140lb female firefighter and 200lb male firefighter are functionally identical.
To conclude, I offer a new way to look at The Gender War. The Gender War results not only from the competing interests of the sexes, but from real and measurable differences in conscious perception rooted in differences in male and female brain structure. We men need to understand that it is not that women will not see our point of view, it is that they cannot.
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{ 120 comments… read them below or add one }
However, “Gender is a social construct” does not mean “anyone can do anything.” Being an NBA star is a social construct, but that doesn’t mean we can all take Lebron one-on-one.
I’ve always seen “Gender is social construct” as referring to defined gender roles and expected behavior. Those are only partially determined by biology, and mostly determined by society.
I’ll make this politically correct and simple. If something favors men than it is considered sexist; if something favors women then it proves women are superior.
That’s pretty much how the news media has been presenting this gender nonsense for decades (now). Now everyone back to the animal farm.
I think you’ll find this 4 part series highly relevant:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjirWMcb3sg
That’s been my understanding of “Gender is a social construct” as well. However, the implication is that if gender roles and expected behavior are socially constructed, then they can be de-constructed and replaced with gender-neutral roles and behavior. Once such a ‘gender-neutral’ social construct had been arrived at, the sexes would act and behave the same in all ways except the biological. This is the core ideology of the West today. To doubt it is to doubt Allah in an Islamic society, or to doubt Geo-Centrism in Galileo’s day. Heresy, in other words.
The absurdity of ‘gender is a social construct’ in a rational sense is currently no match for its value as an article of faith to so many people. Arguments can be made for the commercial value of the belief also, however they are rather weak and amount to listing of examples. We have no idea of the opportunity cost of this fundamental feminist axiom, that is how much wealthier we would be if we believed something else. Personally, I suspect any belief system based on an obvious untruth is ultimately less productive than one based on axioms that, as yet, remain beyond refutation (even if they cannot be proven).
This was a very interesting article and it reminds me of the research done by a psychologist on morality (unfortunately, I forgot his name, damn it!). He basically found that on a morality scale of 0 to 4, men scored a 4 after experiencing puberty, while women were forever stuck at a level 3: which is the morality level of a small child. I think this goes a long way in explaining why men complain that women act like entitled children. As you might expect, this research was not very popular, and didn’t receive much media coverage..
As was discussed in a previous post on this blog: the 21st century is not the first time that women are “liberated”. It happened at the end of the Babylon civilization.. before it collapsed. It happened at the end of the Roman civilization.. before it collapsed. The pattern of sexual revolution, moral decay, low fertility, family-unit break-down and divorce has been repeated several times throughout recorded history (Babylon, Rome and Athens at least, there could be more..)
As a strong believer in gender equality, I must sadly admit that history seems to indicate that “equal” societies are unstable and disintegrate in barely a century or two.
Kohlberg’s stages of moral development.
Yes, on the average, women are morally inferior.
http://femalemisogynist.wordpress.com/2009/07/14/the-moral-development-of-women/
“The female brain discounts future consequences of current actions not out of obtuseness or stupidity, but from a genuine neurological incapacity to consider them.”
Isn’t stupidity defined as a genuine neurological incapacity to consider things through?
“I’ll make this politically correct and simple. If something favors men than it is considered sexist; if something favors women then it proves women are superior.
That’s pretty much how the news media has been presenting this gender nonsense for decades (now). Now everyone back to the animal farm.”
Yeah. Outside of a few pockets on the internet, I’ve never found a counterexample. Lawerence Sommers made the mistake of contradicting this “immutable truth” and he got fucking fired for it. A person who speaks negatively of a religious or ethnic group is probably under less stigma than somebody who does the same about women.
Are we talking anatomy or behavior?
The males brain is physically larger. The women’s brain has smaller mass but a larger corpus callosum. This is an area of the splenium that connects the right and left hemisphere of the brain.
That is the only hard, measurable evidence of gender difference in brain anatomy. Researchers have taken that evidence and ran a million directions with it, but so far have been unable to determine what this means in terms of functioning and behavior.
The corpus callosum’s only discovered function is relaying information between the right and left hemispheres of the brain. Some have theorized (i.e. we are moving beyond measurable evidence now) that this allows women to integrate dichotomous variable (yes/now, good/bad, always/never) with dynamic situations that do not allow for strict, bipolar concepts. This means that women would have a greater physical ability to apply theory in context. A simplified example would be integrating a contextual issue with a universal concept. For example, “stealing is wrong,” but a man’s daughter needs Medication A to live and the family cannot afford it. Should he steal the medication?” I know that most men would respond to this concept similarly to women. The theory is that if you expand this conflict to include many more variables, a brain with a larger corpus callosum will navigate the territory more efficiently.
However, so many other variables come into play when measuring problem-solving skills (e.g. education, physical health, emotional health, childhood development, life experience, ethical/moral beliefs) that good integration of theory into context is currently virtually impossible to attribute to one variable like the size of brain anatomy.
I’m not arguing the point as much as I’m relaying it in case anyone’s interested.
Insert your stupid women jokes here, because I can’t find where I click to respond to Ardia’s post as a threaded reply.
That Kohlberg study has been interpreted in different ways. Similar to research on other “hot topics” like the failure of abstinence-only education to effectively mediate teenagers’ sexual behaviors, has been used to support completely opposing arguments.
The Kohlberg study found that women were using context as a significant mediating factor in determining how to solve a moral dilemma. It is the subsequent writers who have chosen to interpret this as a strength of drawback. Men were more likely to adhere to strict dichotomies. “Stealing is wrong. If you steal, you are doing something wrong.” Women were more likely to judge “wrong-ness” based on context. That is, resisting to labeling stealing as always wrong, but instead an issue of context, motivation, and consequence.
Ardia, these arguments are still being debated heavily. Anyone who writes that they have conclusive evidence of gender-typed behavior and thinking is misleading you (pro-woman or anti-woman) because the research is not sufficient yet to promote or discount either side.
It is interesting. Your example theory also speculates that there are differences in male and female brains that lead to different abilities (and likely behaviors).
The odd thing about difference in male and female brain arguments is that the default position seems to be ‘there is no appreciable difference in function’ and the onus is on everyone else to prove otherwise.
Common sense, observation and history all point to male and female behaviors and abilities being fundamentally different. It is the argument that they are fundamentally the same that has never been proved, and remains a wishful hope by some, rather than a convincing theory for the many. Science has never been able to demonstrate equivalence, nor is it consistent with philosophical principles of identity (ie why identities exist and endure, such as gender). ‘Equivalence of the sexes’ is not science, but doctrine.
This is a fundamentally incomplete, and therefore specious, argument.
It is akin to saying that the male clitoris (penis) is different to the female clitoris, and then making a substantive judgement based on relative size.
There is a far greater range of types of personality and intellect within either sex, than there is between the two sexes.
The fundamental principle being ignored here is that the actual dynamic wiring structure of the brain is not determined simply by a male / female DNA template at conception.
A far greater influence is what stimulus the brain receives in infancy.
There is sufficient excess capacity in the brain (see stroke victims, traumatic brain injuries, etc etc etc) that said wiring is an ongoing dynamic process throughout life, albeit the initial structure is created during infancy / childhood.
In simple terms this means take two identical twins, separate them at birth, raise one in a normal family, and raise one in a dysfunctional family, and from the initial identical DNA template you will end up with two slightly differently wired brains.
Put a baby boy child into a radical feminist lesbian household and he will be altered, but only within the range permitted by the DNA, but the fact is that that permitted range is greater than the range difference between a boy child and his girl child sibling.
To suggest anything else is going down the road of feeling the bumps on the head to determine character, or stereotyping and then demonising the jewish traits of no earlobes, no top lip and big noses, and claiming this is a sign that they are going to be a shopkeeper…
Shit, my dog is smarter than most people, and his brain is TOTALLY different to a human brain.
While we are at it, what about the influence of environmental factors on brain chemistry…
Cat lovers have the parasite that makes cat pee smell interesting to mice and rats living in their human brains, and it has a similar effect, making them a cat lover…
How about regular monthly doses of estrogen?
@Sophia
I have to ask, did you read my article before commenting? I list NINE “hard, measurable” differences in male and female brain anatomy. The MRI does not lie.
Also interesting that you focus on the corpus callosum, proportionally bigger in women, and immediately claim female brain superiority on that basis: “….a brain with a larger corpus callosum will navigate the territory more efficiently.”
We know there are important structural differences between male and female brains. We don’t know in any detail how those structural differences affect cognitive abilities, in part because it has not been politically acceptable to do the research.
My point is that the idea that male and female brains work in exactly the same way, are functionally identical, is unlikely given the structural differences.
A link to the article in The Independent would be nice.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/womens-brains-uareu-different-from-mens-ndash-and-heres-scientific-proof-870849.html
@AfOR
Yes, of course it’s incomplete. We’re talking about the human brain. I’m not sure what you would expect from a 1,000 word overview of brain anatomy drawn from public sources.
I disagree that it is specious, however. My motivation for writing this was this statement: “Newsflash: there is no “female brain†– the latest cutting edge research on sex, attraction, arousal, etc focuses on the HUMAN brain not on the male or female brain.” which IS specious.
This is a huge topic and we’re not going to settle it here. There are wide variations in neurophysiology within genders and environmental influences are very important for brain wiring. BUT, volumetric analysis coupled with MRI and other imaging technologies tells us there are measurable, predictable, significant structural differences between male and female human brains.
I’m more than willing to argue over what that means.
This is a low blow. Nothing in my article made any claim of that sort. You are attempting to demonize my argument through association.
@Trouble
Yes, all the links and formatting disappeared when Welmer posted this. Sorry about that.
Well Sophia,
Its funny how leaving things in the air always benefits irresponsible females.
Respectfully, there are some problems with this article. While there are clearly physiological differences between men and women, including the brain, there is nothing here that convincingly removes socialization as the predominate factor in sex related behaviors.
The proportionality of white to gray matter in the respective brains of females and males doesn’t do much more than perhaps imply 1) a greater capacity for analytic thinking in men and 2) perhaps an explanation of why women tend to process externally (talking their way to a conclusion) vs the male mode of internally processing and then verbalizing a solution.
It may also point to greater emotional orientation in women, but that too is not without significant social factors that would account for the phenomena.
I couldn’t find anything in the physiological differences presented that accounted for female narcissism, though I could point to a number of social factors that would seem to explain it.
I think a woman’s brain has adapted to farm everything around her for her own cold advantage.
In reality children are collateral for woman. Her sons are disposable tools, staff, whipping horses or weapons for her to use, which she can outlive.
She only sees people as things, tools, props or amusements.
I think even their emotions are just tools or techniques, again to get what she wants, for herself.
Us males are farmed and owned by these alien monstrosities. Who face-dance their way into more and more power for their selfish vain selves.
The only men with minds like this – are the alpha males, spending every waking moment advantaging them selves over and over the natural world and most every man.
These alpha men can get away with as much, as almost any woman.
A grieving and suffering man can be upstaged at any time by any greedy woman.
In fact any attempt for a man to express his deepest feelings or emotions is practically amateurish, compared to an females technique.
Most men are what they are, most woman are what they want to be, at any given moment depending on a calculating want or need to dominate.
No wonder this world has suffered so much at the hands of our species. The soulless appetites of the narcissistic female brain consumes everything.
All lot of the time I see woman as evil. The vast majority who take and never give. Even tho she owns the copyright on charity and all things apparently good and fair – Ha!
Rod.
Sophia: a brain with a larger corpus callosum will navigate the territory more efficiently.Perhaps that leads to something called “scatter-brained”, which I’ve witnessed much more frequently in women. Women seem to have these added and unnecessary cobwebs of ‘roads that go nowhere’.
Same thing with the new mythology of “multitasking”. People who do lots of things at the same time do them poorly. Yet, somehow feminists have found this to be a positive attribute particularly when applied to women.
Why must feminists continue to look for (and invent) some sort of superiority gene? They are the true sexists.
@Paul Elam
You’re right. I went beyond the data in suggesting that a couple of the behaviors I have observed in women are connected to brain physiology. There’s no evidence for that. My bad.
I was trying to make what I think is a constructive point that I have not seen discussed elsewhere. The difficulty that men and women have in connecting on a personal level and more importantly at the political level, may be a function of real cognitive differences rooted in brain structure and neurochemistry.
It is interesting to watch feminists argue vehemently that men and women have no differences in brain function, or if they do they’re irrelevant, while simultaneously arguing for separating men and women in medical research groups because men’s and women’s bodies are different.
In other words, women prefer situational ethics. Not very surprising. It explains well the “if done to men it’s irrelevant or deserved, if done to women it’s sexist” meme that infects female though.
That is the only hard, measurable evidence of gender difference in brain anatomy.
Wrong. Differences in mathematical ability and spatial reasoning a very measurable.
Hormones can make a striking difference as well. In an admittedly anecdotal tale, I saw an interview with a pre-op hormone-taking FTM transsexual. Among the things she reported was an inability to cry after taking testosterone, even when she felt sad and wanted to. It visibly disturbed her, partly because she had made certain assumptions about men’s emotional experience. She was also administered tests before and after hormone therapy, and there were notable differences in the locus of brain activity between the two.
Quick thoughts:
1 – For those who believe the cognitive processes of men and women are identical, I suggest this article (and some of the articles referenced within it):
http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordDetails/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=EJ699351&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=EJ699351
2 – While there are obviously holes in the initial article (and I don’t think Charles was purporting it to be an academically sound treatise), I think if you strip away all of the excess it sums down to this:
The male and female brain are not identical in structure, and do not likely function in identical ways.
The overwhelming body of observable evidence in terms of real world product also indicates this is the case.
I doubt that is a statement anyone is going to be able to seriously assail, and given the lack of in-depth research on the subject, I doubt it is one that we could even make too many intelligent comments about.
3 – Sophia, I won’t address your argument in whole other than to say this: phrase your claims in directly falsifiable ways if you want them to be able to be studied academically; otherwise, we are all just pissing into the wind on this one.
Ignoring the issues of judgment calls based on what should or should not be considered with regard to moral judgments (as more or less may be better or worse).
Fascinating article full of information most of us were not aware of. Hat-tip to ‘Featured Guest’.
“There is no such thing as one woman.” Men are successful men when they are independent, women only exist socially. That is a key difference between men and women. Tell yourself “there is no such thing as one woman” and see how many of a woman’s bothersome and self-defeating behaviors are explained.
http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/-/entertainment/6640590/tiger-woodss-wife-boasts-of-massive-divorce/
Wow, Just Wow
There is indeed “evidence” of anatomical and functional differences in male and female brains beyond the size of the corpus collosum. Any one who teaches men/women or boys/girls could testify to that. That being said, some of the evidence the Independent article cites (the white/gray matter stuff) come from a study that had less than 50 participants. The “men have 6.5 times the gray matter” idea seems to be getting around a good bit and used as some sort of evidence that men are smarter or better problem solvers than women (which is true, at the upper end of ability especially). However there was no significant difference in IQ between the men and women who comprised the less than 50 individuals in this study meaning that men having more gray matter (or women having more white matter) was not associated with any significant difference in IQ. What this tells us is that intelligence seems to (again, only 50 participants…not enough to generalize to the population as a whole) arise from different types of anatomy in the brain that seem to be associated with gender.
@Charles
Nice article!
“The difficulty that men and women have in connecting on a personal level and more importantly at the political level, may be a function of real cognitive differences rooted in brain structure and neurochemistry.”
Indeed.
And it would be rather strange if this was not the case.
@Learner
“However there was no significant difference in IQ between the men and women ”
This is probably because IQ tests and their weightings are mostly designed to remove any gender differences – unless there are some new ones that I haven’t heard of.
But, let me put it this way.
If you came up with a series of tests that, you argued, implied that men were more intelligent than women, how could you, in practice, ever properly defend your view that your tests were actually measuring ‘intelligence’?
The tests were biased!
I presume that, sometime in the future, there will be some possibility of defining and measuring intelligence quite accurately without reference to gender but, at the moment, gender carries some significant weight in the process of creating IQ tests.
e.g. see, …
http://www.angryharry.com/esMenareMoreIntelligentthanWomen.htm
Gentlemen,
I am getting a lot of requests for a more thorough backup of the statement that 90% of marriages are destroyed by the woman (she files 70% of the time, and the other 20% of the time, forces the man to file via adultery, abuse, or moving out).
The only source I have is the Devlin essays, which for some stupid reason, are not available in html format as a web link.
Can I request that one of the authors here (Welmer, Chuck, Wapiti, or whoever is most knowledgeable about this) do a more thorough analysis of the 90% number?
Given the number of requests I got to prove the number more soundly, FROM MEN, I think this could really get some people thinking.
I bet a lot of us didn’t know it was so lopsided for a long time. Bringing visibility to the 90% number could be vital towards getting men informed.
@TFH
If I remember correctly, Michelle Langley is the best (and original) source for this 90% figure. I don’t have her book, so I can’t give you a reliable quote at the moment, but it might be on her website. Definitely worth checking out.
Sophia wrote…
But only when applied to other women it seems.
Welmer,
That is a good link, and I am going to add it in. But she still says 70-75% here.
The other wrinkle is the instances where HER behavior forces the man to do the technical formality of filing, which brings the number to 90%.
If we can get a thorough, well-backed article here to support it, I think that goes a long way. The single biggest question I saw from commenters is ‘how is it 90%’. They were willing to believe it with thorough support. Exposing that could give a lot of men pause.
Also, it will blow the lid off of female BS of the woman ‘suffering’ from divorce, or ‘she needs child support because she faces the burden of the child’, all of which are exposed as fraud when it shows that SHE is destroying the union.
I think almost no men in their 20s know that the female proportion of marriage-destroying behavior is as high as 70%, let alone 90%.
In The two sexes: Growing Up Apart, Coming Together, Maccoby points out that when there are sufficient members of each sex, little boys and little girls recognize each other’s play styles and gravitate to each other.
My take on this is that they have enormous amounts to learn about their same-sex environments. Anyone with any knowledge of evolutionary theory will be aware that we have been selected to readily and easily operate in those environments and that there will be brain differences erected by our genes precisely because we have to compete within those same sex groups. In addition, there will be inbuilt knowledge within the brains of each sex as to what the other sex wants, and differences relating to differing life histories.
Deal with it.
@TFH
I still think it’s in there (the 90% figure) for some reason. Maybe I saw it somewhere else, but Langley covers it somewhere if I remember correctly.
I can give you anecdotal evidence to back it up (I was one of those guys who was forced to file — my kids were abducted without my consent), but I know that isn’t worth much.
Welmer,
Yes, WE know it is 90% (given the layers of misandric laws, how can it be any other way)?
But IF we get a solid, well-backed article up here, I think that makes a huge difference. This 90% number is an utter surprise to most men, but with solid proof, they would believe it.
I don’t know enough about divorce, or I’d do it myself. But if you, Chuck, EW, or someone else can research it and get an article up, I think that makes a BIG difference. That singular question came up from MALE readers – “is it really 90%? Can you support that?”
my kids were abducted without my consent
A crime against decency. I couldn’t even imagine what that is like.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and women are courting their own disaster, in ways they cannot grasp (given Charles Martel’s factual points above).
@ Charles Martel
This is very plausible to me. Truth tell, as misogynistic as it sounds, I have a very low threshold for listening to most women talk for very long. Their tendency is toward the aimless and circuitous. I have even know some women who would start out to tell me about something and then get so sidetracked by going off on tangents that they would actually forget what they started out to say.
Sometimes I think this deficiency in communication plays out in the arena of debating matters of politics and gender, as well as interpersonal matters. Women often look avoidant when the case may be that they lack the ability for linear focus required to follow a train of logic to a sensible conclusion.
Another way to put this is that women may suck at logical arguments for the same reasons they lag behind in hard science and mathematics. Both directly related to brain function.
It may also explain why they are able to embrace poorly thought out ideologies like feminism and liberalism, which are more dependent on emotionalism than cognition.
Whatever the reality here, looking back on my first response to your article I didn’t mean to say it wasn’t good work. Actually, I think it is a subject that sparks much a more interesting discussion than the average MRA piece.
Thanks for writing it.
This is very interesting, since it suggests that there is strong hormonal control that activates one or other set of neural circuits.
However, males are continuously subjected to T from about week 12 during gestation. A female taking T as an adult is unlikely to develop all the neural scaffolding that males have developed since before birth, and, as you pointed out, simply do not have the same set of experiences.
M2F and F2M transsexuals are really neither fish nor fowl.
Maybe a crime against decency, but technically legal.
I think if you look into it you might find that this is why many – perhaps most – men file for divorce — they have no legally mandated access to their children if they don’t. That’s definitely what motivated me.
Since when did filing first make a whit of difference? Judges are perfectly happy to strip fathers of their children no matter who files.
Sophia said:
The degenerate female thinking thus allows ‘selective’ punishment, thus enabling insane punishments applied mercilessly. After all, the “good people” can just get a magic free pass on their crimes.
I see the clever use of ‘selectivity’ in degenerate female thinking everywhere.
The male degenerate form of thinking tends to dogmatically hold on to ‘truths’ that make no sense and may even have no sane, rational basis. I see men say things like “American Health Care is a Free Market”. Really, just crazy talk. Totally, factually, insane.
Anyone who takes offense at that simple truth is free to reason with me.
And these men believe it a 100%, and base their lives on it. Destroy their lives with a will, in the case of “marriage”.
True, and the EEGs didn’t show that. They did show, for example, that mental tasks that women tend to process in both hemispheres and men primarily in one hemisphere change where the brain processes them under the influence of T. While she did not display the primary hemispheric dominance of a man, she did exhibit unbalanced neural activity that was not present prior to hormone therapy. The emotional centers of the brain appeared to have less activity, and she significantly improved her scores in visual/spatial tests, though not so much as to equal the average man. Oddly, her fine motor skills deteriorated.
Sure, but legal “visitation” is better than going to jail in an attempt to see your kids, and you know that will happen absent a parenting plan.
Harry,
Thanks for the interesting links about intelligence. Interesting point that the process of removing supposed bias actually introduces bias which can create an appearance that men and women on average are closer in intelligence than what is demonstrated functionally. I still wonder though if that bias is enough to change scores to the degree that it would make gray matter volume more relevant to intelligence than the study I referred to appears to say. (I mean I have a hard time believing that bias would be enough to negate the 6.5x difference in gray matter)
For those who believe in advanced, human-surpassing AI as we approach mid-century, which gender’s traits are likely to be emulated by the AI?
Devlin Articles:
http://box.net/mensarefugee26388
Precisely my point. Devlin should be an easy-to-read website URL, not some .pdf files that have to be opened.
Home Economics Series:
http://www.thornwalker.com/ditch/devlin_home_ec_01.htm
Find the links at the bottom for the further essays on Home Economics.
Rotating Polyandry and It’s Enforcers:
http://theoccidentalquarterly.com/archives/vol7no2/v7no2_Devlin.pdf
Men evolved to hunt animals. Women evolved to hunt men.
The male brain is thus a tool that evolved for the purpose of hunting animals – it is good at mapping, strategy and tactics, observing details, fighting as part of a team. Tends to be linear and direct etc.
The female brain, on the other hand, evolved as a tool for manipulating men.
And the best strategy for manipulating a creature that tends to move in a straight line is to always move in tangents, to be unpredictable and fluid.
Thus, a male confronted with a problem tends to reason through the problem in a linear fashion – break the problem into components, work out how to get from your starting point to your desired destination.
The female solution is more elegant. Just generate shit at random until a male solves your problem.
The female brain cycles through randomly generated, contradictory and tangentially connected approaches until it finds one that causes the male to behave in the desired fashion. Start with the strategy with the highest hit rate (pout and prompt the man to ask what is wrong, or cry, or complain) then branch out from there at random until you start getting warmer.
Obviously the male and female brains are each constructed from the same components, and there are a lot of shared functions ( how to brush teeth, add simple numbers, children are cute etc) but the design goal of each is different.
@Paul Elam
“Sometimes I think this deficiency in communication plays out in the arena of debating matters of politics and gender, as well as interpersonal matters. Women often look avoidant when the case may be that they lack the ability for linear focus required to follow a train of logic to a sensible conclusion.”
It’s a matter of specialisation. Why major in problem solving when you can get men to solve your problems for you? A woman riding a horse doesn’t need to be able to run as fast as a horse – she just needs to know how to use the reins.
Once specialisation lead to the non-childbearing sex becoming stronger, smarter (in terms of problem solving) and tougher, it made sense for the childbearing sex to develop brains that specialise in manipulating the stronger sex, rather than competing head to head.
Hence women ” lack the ability…to follow a train of logic to a sensible conclusion” – no need to solve problems when your strength is getting men to solve problems for you.
To some extent this inability is manufactured – demonstrating an inability to work through their own problems is a great way to prompt some helpful man to step in and solve things.
The fear of spiders is an example of this. “EEEEEK! A nasty hairy poisonous spider is crawling towards my baby!!!!”…so all the men nearby come running to help out the damsel in distress, transfering the small but significant risk of death by venom from woman to man. A man takes the small risk of killing the arachnid, summoned by a woman’s scream. Who is really in control here? Is the woman helpless, as she appears? Or does she SUMMON help and get someone else to do the dirty work?
Why solve problems when you can manipulate a man into solving them for you – by appearing helpless, or ditzy, or confused, or dumb, or demonstrating a genuine lack of ability.
“Is There A Female Brain?”
No there isn’t, that’s why when you tap their heads you get that hollow sound.
Kidding, of course.
A good starting point for reading about neural differences is Cahill’s 2006 Nature article “Why sex matters for neuroscience.”
There is obviously trouble in linking differences in the physiology of the brain to behavior. Non-sequitors are easy to come by. Even if you can construct a plausible looking argument, it doesn’t necesserily prove much logically or from the point of ecological validity. We don’t have consilience yet, to borrow a term of E.O. Wilson.
Currently a better line of reasoning would be, IMO, to look at actual measurable differences in e.g. behaviour or personality and then look for basis in genetics. There’s plenty of evidence already in psychometrics and psychology in general.
But the obvious answer to the question if there a male or female brain is: of course, ontogeny is driven by genetics, which differ between the sexes. And all differences in behaviour have to have an underlying neurological psysiological basis.
Certainly, though this applies similarly to “men and men” or “women and women”, at least if you don’t include the neurochemistry part. There are big individual and group differences.
Well, I’m not sure if this isn’t (partly) due to confirmation bias. There have always been arguments around that women are more narcissistic or self-centered and in a way I believe this is true. But to say that men aren’t egoistical and driven by other kinds of similar self-interested forces leaves out an important part of the picture. Randian heroes or pick up artists aren’t that unselfish.
A crude evolutionary psychology explanation: women are wanted because of their ability to have children, men because they can help in raising them (survival and reproduction value). Women look after themselves and their children first, men are there to support them. This has worked historically and the genes have spread.
Maybe, but the hyphothesis and the “locus of consicousness” and “time awareness” concepts aren’t precisely defined enough to be easily testable. I would also object to the “male” and “female” dichotomy because it might be befeficial to look at these things as forming distributions, which are not necessarily seperate between the sexes, but overlapping.
That’s pushing it. I believe that these kinds of differences are more due to natural self-interest and motivation than innate capacity to understand.
The argument for a social construct determining gender behavior is a strange conclusion given that historically males have always expendable. While physical differences prevail we still have two distinct classes of humans. There are variants in determinable pathology that may give a clue as to not only social pressures, but also chemical analogs that may have given rise to a more male like female. The fundamental clue as always is homosexual relationships. No assertions made but the traditional model is still followed by role play emulating a breadwinner and suzy homemaker.
With the dominant social pressure being matriarchal by the newer political ideology, the gender argument has become a rule of policy. It would also appear to be worldwide under various legal strategies. The policy strangely has some longterm benefits if it is originated in human husbandry or population control. The polarization of the sexes is very much a doctrine that removes independent self determination of either sex if it is the case. A weighted argument would reveal the truth of this especially in absentia of media control of data by administrative decree as a oppose to empirical evidence and fact.
In my remark regarding chemicals, I should specify that the post industrial human of either gender is probably around 40% weaker and physically acclimatized to a princely standard of living according to a time scale and in comparitive standards. Also intoduced into the envoirenment are many chemicals though not the exact replica are still capable of being analogs to what is in nature. Some have a preferential affinity to latch and substitute for natures elixir due to the more pure state of the chemical composition. If we imagine a main axis for simplification an xy on which there are multiple other axis ab through yz. These specific to gender characteristics only. If we then assume in their natural state they are always other than the few mishaps at right angles (hypothetically) to each other, what happens if a modern chemical interferes and does not quite produce the correct plane. We therefore would have a maleness variant on a true female with the oppositive femaleness variant on a true male. However the demographics displayed by cultures who have previously followed this path determines a historical catastrophe. In the US females in the 35 plus range are probably the most badly served by the policy as any female on the planet, especially for quality of life. On the opposite side we have the bolshevist experience we has basically turned all males into permanent nogoodniks, and females taking the greater burden of productivity along with the responsibilities. However the results of that are academic since that story has yet to be played out. Certainly we can go much farther back an look at social experiments even from the times of herodatus in the Sparta model and similar rises.
While there is mounting evidence that social and economic pressures have given rise to the metrosexual whose political base is purely perfunctary and ultimately personally fully mobile. It is assumed from an ideological standpoint these metrosexuals of either gender are interchangeable. It may be the case, as the media model that serves to demonstrate it well would be friends. Life then becomes a truly personal experience without the pressure to procreate, after all if we generate one happy brotherhood then we can all be friends and best buds, certainly not mating for procreation material. That is reserved for the administrative class of persons, and we shall more ably coerce the populace through degendrification actions that even sex is not really a good thing. For males it already is not a good idea as it involves a myriad of legal responsibilities that any of which may land him in jail with no question asked or required.
The good thing out of all this is I know a true female when I see one. They are far and few between especially on these shores, but when you do find one they are worth their weight in gold. These days most are just one step short of being over medicated or not playing with a full deck of cards. Yet here we are back to the argument of brain chemistry and composition ..perhaps another day !
Good discussion here.
The question remains as to how much of this is biology and how much is modern Western socialisation (behaviour, I mean, since that is our measurement). We tend to point to modern Western women as being, for the most part, all broken inside. As opposed to women from elsewhere, or from previous times, from what we can ascertain.
I find it extremely likely that differences are innate – perhaps Western civilisation today simply encourages those innate aspects of female behaviour which tend towards the anti-social, which are, elsewhere and in other times, tempered or kept under control (just as are men’s innate anti-social drives) for the good of society.
Strongly agree with most women today conflating facts with opinions.
‘X is true’ tends to mean ‘I want X to be true’, rather than ‘I can provide incontrivertible proof that X is true’, or even ‘I have good reason to believe that X is true’. But I don’t think this is a lie, as such – I find it plausible that Western women today are socialised to not even perceive the space between reality and wishful thinking. It’s as if, by wishing for X, and repeatedly telling herself and others that X is true, she believes that X will become true. It’s as if she insists, to reality, that X should be the case, and thus it only makes sense / is only fair if X does become the case.
This is why it is every MRA’s duty to never assist a woman. Don’t get conned into that slave morality.
TFH, Sadly, I think it’d be Male neural traits, since its going to be programmed by Men, and Men understand Men, and Men will put in Male programming.
Which isn’t to say that women won’t be outsourced as well, but it appears that what we (Men) know is what will be “perfected into machinery” first yet again.
Ardia:
Defends on how you want to define superior and inferior. Different isn’t enough?
AfOR:
You seem to be writing about the norm of reaction:
“It was noted already that males are first who die from all damaging environmental factors. The male sex is a biologically weaker sex.”
“One more phenomenon may bring about different phenotypic variation of sexes—different reaction norm for males and females. The norm of reaction, or modificational variability, individuals of a female sex should be more than the appropriate reaction norm of males. In other words, a male’s phenotype is more “rigidly†related to genotype than a female’s. Therefore, in ontogenesis, the environment has more influence upon realization of a female genotype into a phenotype.”
Harry:
Not really new, but see e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven%27s_Progressive_Matrices
Also, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_chronometry
“Tom
As was discussed in a previous post on this blog: the 21st century is not the first time that women are “liberatedâ€. It happened at the end of the Babylon civilization.. before it collapsed. It happened at the end of the Roman civilization.. before it collapsed.”
I may be incorrect, but at the very least, the Roman empire’s downfall was its overspending and the extent to which it was expanding territory boundaries. Which in modern contexts means that the United States could be approaching some major problems, particularly for California and the state budget, unemployment, dying real estate market, loss of industry that continue to get worse. If we look at the economic cycles from 1900 to 2000, it would stand to reason that all we need for the United States recession to end is to wage a full-on war, but with the support of everyone in the country. The “Great Depression” era stock market crash and subsequent economic crisis was solved mostly by the war-machine and its significant contributions to the U.S. coffers. The generation that went and fought WWII invented, discovered, sacrificed, and contributed in ways that were beneficial to more than just their immediate family and social group; perhaps it is the tendency to focus more on what one has for themselves (with both men and women) and assume that things will continue to run smoothly on their own that has brought about the current situation. So busy fighting amongst ourselves that we forget about everything else that needs to be done, or should be done.
“ThousandMileMargin
The fear of spiders is an example of this. “EEEEEK! A nasty hairy poisonous spider is crawling towards my baby!!!!â€â€¦so all the men nearby come running to help out the damsel in distress, transfering the small but significant risk of death by venom from woman to man.”
I have no problem fixing things around the house and know when it’s beyond my ability to repair something and to call a professional; I fight my own battles and though it’s impossible to say it will always be the case, I have the skills and abilities to provide my own defense against an assailant with a knife, recognize the things that I can do to make rape less likely to happen and adjust my behaviors accordingly; I can even get the lids off of jars (but sometimes put the cap on a 2liter bottle back on too tight and the solution to that means I have a lot of soda to drink because I can’t store it without the bottle intact) -
…But I’ll be damned if I’ll get anywhere near, much less close enough to kill a spider. What if I miss? It could very well go back and tell all 100000 of it’s friends and family about the incident, and then they’d start plotting their revenge attack. I don’t get near potato bugs either. For all of the things I can manage to do on my own, it’s not unreasonable to ask someone to kill a few extremely large specimens that I encounter …it’s not like I freak out and insist that someone kill spiders that are too small (and too fast) to track down before the opportunity is lost.
piercedhead:
Fortunately, English has the words (biological) “sex” and (social) “gender.” So you could say that gender is a social construct, sex is not.
HUNGRY HUNGRY HIPPOS:
I can’t really agree with that, racial differences are still the ultimate taboo. I’m seeing research on sex differences for example being reported on tabloids all the time, and while it can lead to emotional discussions, it’s not that much of a taboo (anymore).
zimmy:
Yes, but women are better at this type of things. If you need to hire an employee who must switch focus often, it would be a better bet to hire a woman.
zimmy:
Wouldn’t you want to belong to a superior group? A good point, but let’s not forget history. Women were seen to be inferior — intellectually and otherwise — for much of time.
Reinholt:
Actually, there is quite a lot of research concerning sex differences. Don’t know about in-depth, though.
Learner:
50 is a relatively big sample size in this kind of research, and it is certainly enough to make generalizations. The rest depends on the subjects and their selection (e.g. restriction of range), but I haven’t looked at the study.
Porky Dometicus: “Is There A Female Brain?â€
“No there isn’t, that’s why when you tap their heads you get that hollow sound”
Ha Ha! You maybe onto something there, Porky old mate.
@ThousandMileMargin
Within ThousandMileMargin’s perspective is the seed of an alternative paradigm. It’s the idea that personality is a function not of genes, but of logic… a style of thinking, a way of reasoning that directs the habits by which we live, the gender-habits by which we define our identities. The cells of which we are composed have more in common with a colony (swarm) of bees than they do a machine.
When you suggest that I would prefer to belong to a superior group you are using ‘womens logic’ of me-ism. That’s how you ‘feel’ because you seem incapable of the larger truth and instead think of ‘self’.
As to not forgetting history where you suggest that women were “seen to be inferior”, well, history is what it is and your sensitivity to it suggests that you ‘feel’ that the female sex has been less than adequate.
Wouldn’t it be ironic if the success of feminism is to be attributed not to intellectually superior women rising above gullible men, but the opposite. That is, we have been assuming that women are as intelligent as we are, and we’ve been giving women some slack, trying to encourage them to realize their potential, trying to figure out what it is that we don’t get. But what if there’s nothing to get? What if our best of intentions turn out to be a fool’s errand, because women really are dumber than we could ever have imagined? Like, hope against hope, trying to teach a dog math.
@zimmy,
ho-hum. That was more like a rhetorical question, I wasn’t suggesting that you particularly should be tempted by this kind of group identity games. But I’m saying that it isn’t that uncommon in men, either.
I would also prefer if you wouldn’t try to guess my positions or how I feel; history is what it is, and people have had preconceptions. Why you are saying that I’m “being sensitive”, I have no idea.
The differences between the male and female brain, on average, as plenty of outliers exist in both sexes, is PROFOUND. I don’t use that word lightly here. The structural differences are PROFOUND.
I don’t have a good analogy, but if forced to give one, it would as significant as the differences between the brains of large plant eating herd animals like bison and large feline predators like lions.
The problem is that unlike many other species, we have lots of genetic variability, lots of outliers, men having more, but women still having a significant proportion. The results of this outlier variability of human traits; lots of women who have predominately male brains, and even more men who have predominately female brains. In that sense, there are women who think like men, and thus are likely to think there is little difference based on narrowly focused self analysis, and there are even more men who think like women, and are thus likely to come to the false conclusion that there is little difference, based primarily on emotions and groupthink.
As far as socialization goes? Well, I can train a cat to be an attack dog, but would you want it to defend your house. I could also train a hyena to be a seeing eye dog, but would you want it leading a blind person around without a muzzle. I could train a sociopath to be a social worker, and he would appear to be good at it, until it no longer suited his true purposes. I can train a women to be a soldier, and she may ace bootcamp, be great at unit cohesion during peace time, but a month or two in the trenches, I would estimate, if the women was not an outlier, she would be crying, bitching, and wanting to surrendor. She would get knocked up by some guy she doesn’t even like to get sent home. She would panic under fire, as her emotions consume her thoughts. Sure, some men would also. I’m talking percentages, averages, which is more likely. The army socializes everyone the same (in theory) to be a cold blooded killer, but we can’t ignore biology. If we had two armies, one of all women, and one of all men, and we could only use one at a time, and we are attacked, which one do you think the rest of the women would trust more to get the job done defending the home land. I do not equate different with superior or better. A ounce of gold and a bushel of grain can be of equal value, but I would not want to eat the gold, or carry the bushel on a cross atlantic voyage to a foreign country.
Careful now; dismissive comments without substance are not only useless but also related to that disgusting feminine trait called ‘shaming language’ which is used by women who fear honest discourse. Certainly you know the list by now.
The fact that you are questioning me about your (alleged) sensitivity is (rather) self explanatory. If you were not sensitive then you wouldn’t…….
————-
No more time today to correspond but I did want to make a related comment about the myth of multitasking and it’s adherents. When women do something they ‘feel’ is extraordinary, I have found that it’s just something men do and take for granted. There are too many examples for me to list here (and now) but lets take Danica Patrick as a quick example. The woman gets more publicity and more sponsors than almost anyone and yet her racing record is sub par, indeed, she has won just one semi-major race (in Japan) despite all her years of racing.
I find her to be an example of women being promoted way beyond their actual accomplishments. Why? …well, the “PC” aspect of our culture suggests that because she has a vagina …….(you fill in the blank).
Danica Patrick is a sub par auto racer, but since she is female she gets accolades. Now how’s that for affirmative action?
Men multitask all the time but somewhere along the misandrist road of feminism, some women discovered they can do more than one thing at a time and EUREKA, it must be a female thing. It’s no virtue to do several things at once…..poorly.
zimmy:
The substance followed, but explaining the point of rhetorical questions is boring. I’m not allowed to express my deep feelings here?
BTW, I’ve never really had any problems with this famous “shaming language.” I don’t really pay attention to it, and it’s even kinda amusing if I come across it. Maybe it’s a cultural issue. Or maybe you should “man up”.
That’s… an interesting perspective. I’m sure there couldn’t possibly be any other explations.
@codebuster
I don’t see it as a question of intelligence so much as of hard-wired cognitive filters, but this is the point I was groping towards.
We men cling to the forlorn hope that if we can just find the right way to present our arguments, women will finally get what we are saying. e.g.: MEN: “Don’t you see that ever-rising rates of single motherhood will eventually destroy our society?” WOMEN: “now I get it, let’s re-stigmatize single motherhood, end no-fault divorce and restore traditional marriage with specialization of labor.”
This dialog will never happen, because women are hard-wired for narcissism. I’m not making a moral argument. Narcissism is a handy label for a cognitive bias towards achieving maximum personal benefit today.
“It is difficult to get a (wo)man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.”
@zimmy
The 2008 original: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvdRDfJQSfg
The 2009 follow-up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Y8CcFGu_GQ
Whats next for 2010…
Talk about timing, news just in:
http://www.economist.com/businessfinance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15172746
Icaros2010,
50 is a relatively big sample size in this kind of research, and it is certainly enough to make generalizations. The rest depends on the subjects and their selection (e.g. restriction of range), but I haven’t looked at the study.
The question isn’t if the sample size is big for the kind of research (the authors themselves actually characterize their sample size of 48 as “small”) but whether the sample size was large enough to reach statistical power. For correlations with a large effect size (most r > .5) 48 is a large enough sample size so the correlations between GM or WM and intelligence are valid. However for the idea that the sample represents the population of men or women as a whole (do the participants represent men or women as a population?) in terms of comparisons of WM andd GM between men and women ( test) a sample size of 48 would only be adequate if the effect size was large and there is no indication of effect size for this comparison in the article.
(t test) not (test)
Sophia wrote – “Women were more likely to judge “wrong-ness†based on context. That is, resisting to labeling stealing as always wrong, but instead an issue of context, motivation, and consequence.â€;
To Which bwallen responded – â€But only when applied to other women it seems.â€
I believe it goes deeper than just simply a man=bad, woman=good analysis as to how they would make such and application of “contextual†morality.
I’d suggest the issue of paternity fraud provides a good example of how women easily deviate from a “fixed†moral code to adopt “contextual†rationales.
Men, for the most part, while not dismissing the very real considerations of a child involved in a paternity fraud can, never-the-less, clearly see the humiliating, injustice, and down-right evil that is done to a man in such situations – especially when the duped non-dad is forced to continue to pay child support, even in case where his ex takes up with the child’s biological father.
Conversely, many women (I’d bet more than half), with no direct interest in such cases, will tend to uniformly line up behind the mantra of “the best interest of the child†to justify the heinous injustice done to the duped man. [I suspect a great many of them do this in the full knowledge that what it really meant is, “the best interest of the child’s motherâ€]
Men can logically deduce that the “just†remedy would be to force the mother to seek assistance from the biological father (by court order, if necessary). Yet, many women seem to believe that doing so would be too hard and humiliating on the deceptive woman.
It seems to me that what (some/many) women seek to do is find a way to apply contextual rationales which also tend to be gender-specific.
But that is not always the case. In an example from a Saturday Night Live skit, we are humorously reminded that anything that makes a woman feel uncomfortable in a work setting can easily translated into sexual harassment – and sexual harassment is *AWAYS* wrong – unless, of course, you’re a good-looking alpha-male, like, say, Tom Brady; in which case, it’s anything goes. [and, rape is a serious crime, and using young female employees for sex is always wrong - unless you’re Bill Clinton.]
There are many, many examples in which women would call for adherence to strict moral and social codes – but make situational allowance against those codes as it seems to fit their desires. [And, I’m not saying men never do the same thing, only that women do it with far greater frequency, owing to the contextual judgment of women that Sophia noted.]
@G
Because of the greater variability among men of almost every measurable human characteristic, the performance outliers (good and bad) are always men. I actually have a lot of sympathy for women in this regard, but my sympathy is tempered by the fact that they will not acknowledge it.
Danica Patrick is a good driver, no doubt about it, but she will probably never be great. Would a man of her ability even make it into the driver’s seat of an Indy car?
The certification of Air Transport Pilots is one of the few remaining places in Western countries where objective standards are consistently applied. AFAIK, there have been no calls from the feminists to apply affirmative action to Air Transport Pilot certification. They’re happy to leave the men alone in the cockpit. I guess they like arriving safely at their destination.
And yes, I know there are female Air Transport Pilots. More power to them, they’ve (probably) earned their tickets fair and square.
Charles Martel say:
Apropos of the subject of IQ and males and females, quite apart from the evidence that suggests that male average IQ is a few points higher than female average IQ, there is robust evidence showing that the male variance is larger than the female variance (at least for Whites and probably East Asians).
So, what do you mean we, white man? It is probable that only 30% or less of males are able to articulate such views.
slwerner says:
Sigh. So little understanding of selection. Since women have almost 100% confidence in maternity, and the survival of their offspring ensures the survival of their genes, and since many males can be manipulated with sex, is it any wonder that selection has selected neural apparatuses that facilitate the justification of exploiting men in the service of their offspring? After all, those men are getting what they seemingly want: sex!
I suggest that you invest your effort in warning men about just how evil women are. After all, it’s a short leap. You’ve only managed three or four bridges so far.
@Learner,
it seems that we are discussing this study (PDF).
Apparently so, I just remembered seeing papers where the number of subjects had been much lower and assumed it was par for the course in this case of neuroimaging, too.
“Relatively small” to nitpick and use common scientific weasel words.
“VBM and ROI methods have their respective strengths and weaknesses (…). Some extra caution is required when VBM analysis is applied to relatively small sample sizes like the ones in this study.”
Icaros2010,
Yep, that’s the article. Small sample sizes are unfortunately par for the course in many health/medical related studies due to issues such as funding and participant recruitment/human subjects protections. It actually creates a lot of problems because small sample sizes increase the chance of error. Of course the purpose of the study was to correlate WM and GM with FSIQ, which it had the statistical power to do. It does not have the statistical power to generalize the amounts or proportions of WM or GM in men vs women in the population in general.
“Relatively small†to nitpick and use common scientific weasel words.
Ah….scientific weasel words, the bedrock of peer reviewed publication!
ThousandMileMargin
What you’ve said is true,
Its time they did their own lifting.
Rod.
I think a lot of the biochemistry discussed here also has some pretty profound implications where it applies to concepts like monogamy, intimacy, fidelity, etc.
Marriage for purely romantic reasons is a rather young concept, and by all appearances a failure. It may be that men and women are not even designed to “get along,” but rather to only tolerate each other for periods of time sufficient to produce offspring.
Marriages used to endure chiefly because they were predicated on business; economic viability.
And for all the psychobabble and self help drivel I have seen espoused over the last thirty or so years about men and their supposed disinclination to intimacy and commitment, it appears to me that between the two sexes it is actually only men that are innately capable of either.
My guess is that monogamy and sustained intimacy requires the same cognitive processing skills as linear problem solving, leaving women with a need for an alternative and perhaps even more efficient way of meeting deficiency needs than having to put in actual long term work to a relationship.
Thousandmilemargin says:
This makes a lot of sense to me. And if true, especially given the legal realities surrounding relationship life, doesn’t it make more sense for women to get rid of males (while keeping their income) so that they can also get the benefits of a new “partner” who will fill the role of willing provider? It is a two-fer, for the price of none. And it sure might speak to why it is largely women who file for divorce because the system allows them to hang on to a mans assets while it frees her to go after another man for the same reason.
And it makes me wonder if the female brain isn’t hard wired for parasitism and the male brain hard wired to simply serve as a host organism.
If true, and I think it may be, it makes Snark’s admonition: “This is why it is every MRA’s duty to never assist a woman. Don’t get conned into that slave morality.” all the more important to understand.
Society has long accepted that feminism represented women breaking free of their assigned gender roles. Under this frame of reference, though, it would appear that feminism is only a refinement of that role, and that men who have enabled feminism are refining their gender roles.
The more things change the more they stay the same.
Perhaps the difficulties that the MRM has faced in getting off the ground is because the MRM is the first time in history that a gender role is actually being shed.
Wouldn’t it be funny if the most profound paradigm shift in human history boiled down to men learning to say NO to women, often and with conviction?
Just thinking about it makes me laugh.
This.
I, and various others, have pointed to the continuity between chivalry and feminism. Feminism simply takes the benefits of chivalry (for women) to an unreasonable extreme.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,581879,00.html?test=latestnews
Whew! So its not my fault.
Not so fast…
“…reported as showing there is ‘no genetic evidence for the g spot’, but in fact indicates that there is ‘no genetic evidence for thinking you have a g spot’”
“The absurdity of ‘gender is a social construct’ in a rational sense is currently no match for its value as an article of faith to so many people”
You could say that, I could not.
At first blush, one might be tempted to say that the assignment of men and women to specific and mutually exclusive kinds of labor was “socially constructed”. However, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that men and women are equally capable and achieve the same levels of productivity when the barriers to their entry to the work-place are removed. It’s also clear that women introduce all manner of changes into male work-places that impact on men’s efficiency, and ultimately drive them out. This is probably the mechanism that created the male/female divide of work tasks in the first place. Far from being a “social construct”, it’s a direct consequence of the different ways men and women behave and relate to one another, and the simplest explanation for these behavioral differences is innate biological differences, ie male and female brains are different in some way.
The teaching of children at elementary school level was a mixed sex occupation when I was a child. Now it is almost exclusively ‘women’s work’. The same is going on with medicine, though it is less progressed in that cycle – nearly all doctors were men when I was a child, now about half are female and their proportion grows ever larger, with medical school enrollments about 2:1 in favor of women. It will be ‘women’s work’ within 20 years, with men remaining only at the high-risk, high-dedication, high-skill fringes (all the surgeons doing ground-breaking work such as separating conjoined twins, or transplanting limbs seem to be men).
This creation of gendered labor has occurred right under the noses of feminist theorists and champions who have berated “gender” as a product of patriarchal history, but don’t seem to recognize the true nature and cause of it when it’s as plain as daylight to the rest of us. In a generation or two, when women no longer see domination of universities and medicine as glamorous in the way their grandmothers do, but as the order of the day and what is expected of them, how do you think they will react? My guess is they will do exactly what their grandmothers did when motherhood, nursing and teaching were the dominant career paths. They’ll complain, and want to do whatever it is that men are doing that they once considered dangerous, unpleasant or anti-social, but has at last become agreeable to them due to advances men have made, and the pay high.
The G-Spot is an illuminati conspiracy! It is a hoax used to cause confusion and discord between the sexes! Divide and conquer I say!
“G” also stands for God in masonic imagery. Coincidence?! I think not! It is the illuminati’s way of telling us that indeed, God does not exist, and all these religous wars are in fact for nothing more than the culling of the masses in order to make way for a new world order! Diabolical! The lies must stop!
@Globie-
Please don’t yell at me (cowers in corner).
I only joke….ack!….sssss..crackle..sss…
………This is the illuminati speaking! Jabberwocky will be temporarily unavailable until his reprograming has been completed. Have a very happy new year. It shall be your last! MUHAHHAhaha!…sssss…crackle…….sss
Where was I. Oh yeah. The illuminati. Like they exist! So silly. And I personally believe in the G-spot. If you can’t find it, your just doing something wrong.
@Lerner
Yes, tests like the Ravens Martrices do seem to suggest that men and women are of similar average IQ, but I suppose that my main reservations about such tests stem from the fact that they seem somewhat limited to assessing ‘simple’ processing – pattern recognition, short-term memory functions, decoding symbols etc etc.
Surely, there is more to intelligence than these simple things!
Indeed, and for example, computer A might have more memory and a faster processor than computer B, but a superior program in the latter might well make it outgun the former!
True, a better memory and faster processor will correlate across computers with ‘performance levels’ but the computer programs within will surely have some significant impact on this performance.
My point is that I am not quite sure that intelligence tests are actually measuring intelligence sufficiently well to come up with anything better than “men and women are equally intelligent on average”.
My own view is that women are less intelligent than men – in that they seem to “function less intelligently” – even though they might score highly on current-day intelligence tests.
On the other hand, of course, as per Charles’ article, women might look at men and think, “What bozos! They might have higher IQ scores, but we are walking all over them!”
In other words, women might see things (such as ‘intelligent behaviour’) completely differently to how men see it.
And they might be right!
After all, who is more intelligent, the man with brains who runs around doing the bidding of his wife, or the wife?
LOL!
Also, in many ways, it seems to me that men are incredibly stupid when compared to women.
All in all, therefore, I am not at all confident about what intelligence actually is.
And MY GUESS is that it will always be defined in such a way as to ensure that the genders come out ‘equal’.
And so, for example, it MIGHT be the case that the Ravens Matrices test specifically excluded any items which seemed to favour one gender over the other. (I don’t know if this was done – just speculating.)
@Paul Elam
” I have a very low threshold for listening to most women talk for very long. Their tendency is toward the aimless and circuitous.”
I know the feeling! LOL!
” I have even know some women who would start out to tell me about something and then get so sidetracked by going off on tangents that they would actually forget what they started out to say.”
Have you seen Sheikh Jassem Al-Mut’awa talk about the differences between men and women when it comes to talking. It’s quite funny …
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5KmIXZM-V8
Funny thing is Harry, that this guy isn’t kidding. It is simple reality that would be branded as sexist humor in the western world.
@Paul Elam
“Funny thing is Harry, that this guy isn’t kidding. It is simple reality that would be branded as sexist humor in the western world.”
Yep; but we ARE gradually breaking down such barriers.
This will depress you, however, …
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=embdtwW-sSE
Look at the number of hits.
It makes me despair.
The best sex ever?
With a deaf-mute brunette.
This one commenter from this article ought to give her his reply
http://www.bluntdelivery.com/2009/05/06/why-i-hate-women-oh-let-me-count-the-ways/
I’m an average joe type that used to be bi and always gave both sexes a good turn.
Now I’m totally into men. The reason? Women.
Let me explain:
When I’m with a man, we can both check out other men and nobody complains. The men I have been with have never once tried to change me. The men I’m with have never cried for zero reason. The men I’ve been with have never tried to take my money or use me as arm candy just so they didn’t have to be alone for the night and then later dump me for someone “more funâ€. The men I’ve been with have never smiled and acted sweet to my face while they were plotting to destroy me. And if I’m looking at porn on the internet, the guy I’m with sits down and enjoys it with me. And men, everyone knows that guys give the best h**d and women are horrible at it. (Especially women with big teeth, ouch!)
You see, with a guy, what you see is what you get. With a woman, what you see is temporary and is usually a giant plastic smile coated in thick nasty make-up and later turns into a raging, hormonal beeyotch that complains about everything imaginable and spends all your hard-earned money.
Don’t call me a misogynist, just pour me another beer and let’s check out some more football. When the game’s over, let’s make some prank phone calls to our ex-girlfriends and then hop into bed for some good mansex. It is truly a man’s world.
I know a guy here in Vancouver who is bi. Well, he’s not really bi – he switched sides. He is quite a looker, and apparently has had his way with many women – and I believe him. Then, he said, he decided to try men, and found it so much more satisfying that he’s never looked back.
Harry,
I have had the impression that the reason “average” IQ between men and women is roughly equal is because women have a lower variance and our scores tend to cluster around the mean more but the scores of men have greater variance and are represented in greater proportion in the extremes (ie; more men than women are genuises and more men than women are morons).
Intelligence is a hard thing to define, and I agree that IQ does not capture it completely. Having a high IQ does not mean you have good judgement or that you are able to separate facts from feelings.
Hey Ardia. I’m not leaving things in the air. (If you mean by not yet responding. I’m not sure if you meant my initial post left things in the air. It was intended to)
I’ve got a day job. Let me finish reading everyone’s posts and I’ll be back to you in a bit. Thanks for inviting me to continue to join in the conversation.
Hi AngryHarry,
I read your account on men are smarter than women.
But I think your impression is wrong that men create more only because they are smarter. First men are selected for intelligence and creativity because it correlates with certain sought-after traits by women, cp. Miller’s “Mating Intelligence” the later chapters, as you say. And then on average twice as many women have children in the next generation than men do. So surely there is this force by women due to this higher reproductive pressure upon men. Thus there might be slight male cognitive advantages but you clearly forget the implied much higher motivation of males to rise in the hierarchy and thus to be deemed attractive to females. Most males make their contributions in their prime time between 20 and 35 which is most relevant wrt reproduction. And you also forgot that female choice implies that men shower variance in most traits and thus it is more likely than men are best in certain areas but also worst in other ones.
Welmer, I know you listed 9 differences in anatomy, but I’m curious about your sources. Not every doctoral level neurobiology class is taught the same…or completely accurately…but these findings are not congruent with at least one text and course. Maybe it’s brand newinfo. If you have your sources still from when you drafted the article, can you post them? (I know the independent article is up now, but the studies…are they from PubMed/NIH? Are these international?)
Otherwise, I don’t have much to argue further. Most of these posts reinforce the argument that anatomical differences do not equal much in terms of measurable behavioral difference and cognitive processes.
-The Danica Patrick videos – It’s not cause she’s a women that she has no spatial skills and can’t do her job correctly. It’s because she’s a hot woman, and they are afforded way too much leeway (sp?) by you gents. I know some ugly women who can parallel park a car Ace Ventura style, but men don’t seem too interested in watching them do it.
- The argument of differences in spatial reasoning skills – I got nothing of my own just retelling that I’ve heard the counter-argument that women aren’t keeping up because they aren’t playing sports as early. Getting a ball in a hoop or swinging a bat at the right time develops spatial skills. Not supporting this argument, just relaying …
Addendum: Ace Ventura Style = Like a Glove
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nOxdKcqC_I
Spatial processing skills….
Ehhh… Sophia, I’m the publisher in this case — not the author.
Give credit where it’s due.
@ Harry
Shit. SHIT!!
I was having a pretty good day till I saw the hit count on the bimbo.
Oh well, we do our work uphill.
http://www.denverpost.com/ci_14098041
Here we have a decisive lawful federal opinion acted out under what is basically tantamount to believe it or not the newer feminist Sharia law ideology that renders the whole argument to a moot point. We are not advancing in our development as a culture in fact we are worse than advancing. What has the article to do with reference to the thread, read the federal argument regarding why it is possible.
Might I speak for a moment on one of the other differendum fundamentum of the female brain and behavior-females are generally more teachable. By authority figures they instinctively trust, anyway. I see a fair number of females on this particular board have moral senses that meet or surpass those of the males, and I’m pretty certain they could continue to catalog (if not always remember) the list of basic MRAdvocacy talking points when all us men were off talking about video games or golf or the latest high-profile divorce.
Bad behaving women? I blame the fathers who didn’t teach or taught badly, the advertisers, and the authors, all the male authority figures who came up with the bad advice. Most of them are at least partially alpha males. If you can successfully confront one of them, you go from occasional reformed beta male to goddamn hero of all men not swallowed up into the act-like-women-to-get-women mold.
But actually, it doesn’t come to a confrontation. For far too often seasoned alphas are status-conscious and confrontation-avoiding to the extreme, and once they detect that you are quite ready and willing to press an issue, or fight, or argue publicly, or often just get loud-they tend to…get out of your way. For the last joke God plays on those who wear the mask too well is to simply let them become the mask.
Given how often alphas take the lazy way out in non-female-related, exactly how many alpha careers are really managed by their Dragon?
Not the exact wording I would have chosen, but I agree. Men have been too ready to fold in the face of unreasonable and aggressive advocacy by women in the past, for reasons that are frequently discussed amongst regular readers of this site and others dedicated to the masculine perspective.
In case it has slipped your notice, the very intention of these sites is to answer the easy advantages women have enjoyed in the past, and make them pay for any they enjoy into the future. That’s what fairness means.
EPO~’Bad behaving women? I blame the fathers who didn’t teach or taught badly, the advertisers, and the authors, all the male authority figures who came up with the bad advice. Most of them are at least partially alpha males. If you can successfully confront one of them, you go from occasional reformed beta male to goddamn hero of all men not swallowed up into the act-like-women-to-get-women mold.’
May I suggest the reading a book written by Alexander Mitscherlich called ‘Society without the father.’ It has some more enlightening parallels to your way of thought processes. However in the period since it was written circa 69, we appear to have been remiss on those transatlantic hidden book burning sessions.
I am sure as you contemplate the inner navel studies of a feminist nature. Perhaps a guy called Katz is your mentor on the subject, just a wild guess ?. Where the issuance and determination of pole position in the male ranking order is a predominant complex you appear to froth at the mouth about. Is there a particular reason for the concern with the competitive alpha male, you could substitute your argument for those of a socially autistic nature. After all the gene pool appears to be shifting not by what you pack in your DNA but what you pack in the back pocket of your designer jeans in green folding stuff and the power it wields. There are no death star creators here ! Possibly death camp operators with an up and down vote on who goes first. After all our imagination is the only thing that creates monsters for us to slay, and a crippled imagination is one that is a very scary monster creator especially given a little bureau power. When society operates a theoretical democracy based on the lowest common political denominator. It would seem even the argument regarding the brain structure seems to have a particularly nasty overtone to an inferiority complex. However 12 % mass differential with other variations is not just scotch mist science. Fundamental question why, if they are functionally equal they would functionally be the same. Sorry about being all over the place with my posts folks, but these damn phone keyboards are not what they claim they are, especially when it comes to editing.
http://www.medicaleducationonline.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=46&Itemid=69
Don’t know who Katz is, this is just part of the rather instructive military experience…and the rest of real life….and my short time in sales…and reading Steve Sailer. We have two near Roissy-class alphas in our platoon-one is so habitually soft-spoken and metro that he gets mercilessly teased for being gay even though everyone’s seen his girlfriend, and the other is only alpha on the bar scene, whereas at work he’s much more likely to be occupying a corner somewhere, occasionally muttering into the phone.
It’s not that I’m saying that studying game is bad, it’s just that there’s always consequences to internalizing a philosophy of becoming the enemy to get the enemy. If I could take their brains out and compare them to both standard male and female brains, I might see a shift toward the feminine model, but nobody lets me travel around with a diamond skull saw since the accident.
I can’t remember any author named Katz, but I do read a shitload of G.K. Chesterton, as well anyone here should, particularly The Superstition of Divorce. (Michael Crichton, before he died, actually recommended Eugenics and other Evils on his bibliographical reading list in Next. Both are rather wonderfully illustrative of all the trends described.
@Sophia-
“”"Not every doctoral level neurobiology class is taught the same…or completely accurately…but these findings are not congruent with at least one text and course. Maybe it’s brand newinfo.”"”
Sophia, I knew about much of this stuff in a general sense more than 10 years ago, and I was an art major. Google it, okay. Google, MRI scan differences between men and women. They aren’t even close. Men’s brains light up in compartmentalized areas, women’s brains light up like a christmas tree. Its why women recover from strokes better. All their mental eggs aren’t in one basket so to speak. This is elementary stuff. Don’t play dumb. Some of the differences are apparent just through disection and the use of a microscope. Doctoral student? In what field?
“Otherwise, I don’t have much to argue further. Most of these posts reinforce the argument that anatomical differences do not equal much in terms of measurable behavioral difference and cognitive processes.”
You just keep believing in unicorns because it makes you feel better. We’ll keep advancing science and technology. Maybe we will be able to genetically engineer you a unicorn one day. Would that make you happy?
Look, the mind is extremely flexible. Yes women can and do excell at stuff men are more naturally inclined to do. Some can do it simply through practice, will, determination, and dedication. Short people can play in the NBA also, and have. Some have done pretty well. That doesn’t take away the reality that height is an advantage in basketball. Think dammit, think! Women have mental strengths (like the ability to block out reality to suit their emotional needs) and men have mental strengths. We also both have weaknesses. There is more varibility in men, good and bad. Average isn’t a bad thing. Trust me. Many extraordinary people struggle with life. There are also plenty of extraordinary women, just not nearly as many as men.
Deny what I said. I dare you.
Jabherwochie:
You were an art major? Are you still in art?
Jabbewookie, I understand you can Google brain scans. That’s not a reliable source.
Neurologists do not have a definitive way to connect anatomy and functioning for all parts of the brain. Much is still being researched and is unknown. I don’t follow your connection between this and believing in unicorns or genetically engineering a unicorn.
How do you define extraordinary and how do you measure it? Or are you talking more about a visceral feeling or hunch based on the sample of humans you have encountered or read about. That is not evidence.
Right out the article.
“It’s puzzling that “anything a man can do, a woman can do,” is so self-evidently untrue, and yet is widely accepted among Western women.”
Why is this puzzling. Women are delusional. It’s very simple. Small boys are also delusional. Boys in the 30-10 range, when they play games, do not think of themselves as ‘boys playing games’ they think of themselves as ‘grown ups in the real situation’. You should remember this from your childhood. Well, if you think of what you were like when you were a 7-10 year old boy you will well understand how women see the world. They are, in all respects, children with regard to intellectual capacity and once you understand this then everything else makes sense.
Dick Masterson first pointed out to me that men have 6.5 times more grey matter than women. This is the stuff of information processing. Ergo, women are woefully deficient when it comes to reasoning, logic or facing new situations and solving problems they have never seen before. This is why women are so poorly represented in innovations or inventions.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/24/science/24women.html?_r=1
http://www.iqtestexperts.com/iq-brain.php
When discussing intelligence it must be remembered that the Illuminati have made sure that IQ tests have been subverted to handicap men to give the appearance that women are closer to men in intelligence than they really are. They are far further apart than the ‘establishment’ would have you believe. The best web site with the stats on this has gone down so I don’t have the links any more for that one.
In the end, the entire history of civilisation stands as evidence that women have the intellectual capacity of boys approximately 7-10 years of age and the little science that is allowed out by the Illuminati backs this up.
Typo. I meant “Boys in the 3-10 range”
“We men cling to the forlorn hope that if we can just find the right way to present our arguments, women will finally get what we are saying.”
Quoted for truth. I did this for 32 years pretty much. It was a waste of time. Women do not want to understand our arguements and settle matters using reason and logic. They want to lie and decieve and settle matters using domination, control and manipulation. Once you know this their tactics are very, very clear.
“Men evolved to hunt animals. Women evolved to hunt men”
Nope. Men were genetically engineered to be the slaves that were capable of working in teams and women were genetically engineered to be the slaves that produced babies and cared for them while they are young. Men ane woman are both slaves, we just have different role and we are sell suited to those roles, as you would expect would be the result of genetic engineering. The idea that humans ‘evolved’ to what we are today without interference from a higher intelligence does not stand up to scrutiny.
Paul Elam January 4, 2010 at 21:49
“I was having a pretty good day till I saw the hit count on the bimbo.”
Yes Paul. Young men are that dumbed down now…..it’s called the ‘public fool system’. This is why men like me who understand how dumbed down young men are also understand that we have to really smack them between the eyes pretty hard to get them to start thinking a bit for themselves.
I know you don’t like me being so ‘harsh’ but I understand how to communicate with younger men better than you do, very, very likely. And what us older guys really do need to do is smack them between the eyes hard enough to get their attention away from the Simpsons and their X-Boxes and onto the clear and present danger at hand. Flouride, aspartame, mercury in the vaccines, BPA, aluminium in the food chain and deodorants, chemtrails as well as feminism and the grossly biased legal system. Most young guys just want to go back to the large screen TVs and xboxes.
“Neurologists do not have a definitive way to connect anatomy and functioning for all parts of the brain. Much is still being researched and is unknown.”
Yes they do. Brain damage studies, amongst other ways, like electro stimulation. Geesh, what is your major again. You’re being owned by an Art geek. Yes much is unkown about the brain, but not about which regions of the brain do what. A lot is known about that, and has been long before MRIs were available. Its in highschool text books for christ sakes.
“How do you define extraordinary and how do you measure it?”
You define it by looking the word up in a dictionary. You measure it with objective analysis. If someone can run faster than everyone else, that person is extraordinary. God you’re stupid.
“Or are you talking more about a visceral feeling or hunch based on the sample of humans you have encountered or read about. That is not evidence.”
Bitch, thats what women do. I believe in science. I believe in facts. You are the unicorn believer by thinking men and women are close enough to being the same that we shouldn’t care about those differences. You believe what you want to believe, what you “feel” is right.
“I don’t follow your connection between this and believing in unicorns or genetically engineering a unicorn. ”
If you don’t get a joke meant to insult your lack of rational grounding, I wouldn’t point that out when arguing with someone.
” anoukange January 5, 2010 at 14:59
Jabherwochie:
You were an art major? Are you still in art?”
I’m not currently active. I’m in a holding pattern. Long story, but my wife got sick, has been out of work for a year or so, bad economy, blah, blah, time to shovel some gravel. By mid year this year, I will go back to part time work, and I think I’ll try to get in the portrait game for steady money (wether that causes a divorce or not, I won’t care, my wife knows art comes first, I’ve been more than generous getting her through this last year or so). I dabble in graphic design, but never made any real money at it. The stuff I actually like to paint has no market really. I’m thinking of trying childrens books for boys. I’ve got more ideas than time, but right now, I just need to make sure the mortage gets paid. To be honest, I experiment so much in my art, much of my stuff is crap. I take risks. Most risks fail. I need a patron to support me if I want to be able to do what I really want. Even Salvidor Dali had a hard time selling his paintings until he found a few rich sympathetic buyers. I can do normal art. Portraits, landscapes, abstract, etc. That shit is boring. Men don’t climbl mountains or go to the moon because its easy. I’m looking to make a mark, not make a buck.
Why do you ask?
Jabherwochie:
Just curious. Making a mark in the world in general today is a difficult feat. It is even more so in the art world. Some do art for themselves and some do art to add to the “beauty” of the world or to capture a moment or tell a story. I get your masculine view of the reasoning behind wanting to do something that is risky. Dali painted surreal stuff that the world at his time wasn’t quite ready to pay him steadily for. Finding a financial backer is every artists dream.
Snark–
I would be very interested in any substantial article or blog post you’ve seen that addresses this with intelligence.
””””””””I’ve got more ideas than time, but right now, I just need to make sure the mortage gets paid. To be honest, I experiment so much in my art, much of my stuff is crap. I take risks. Most risks fail. I need a patron to support me if I want to be able to do what I really want. Even Salvidor Dali had a hard time selling his paintings until he found a few rich sympathetic buyers. I can do normal art. Portraits, landscapes, abstract, etc. That shit is boring. Men don’t climbl mountains or go to the moon because its easy. I’m looking to make a mark, not make a buck.
Why do you ask?
”””””””””””
Why don’t you believe in yourself and your art enough to be your own backer?
I do and have with limited success. I’ve always made a little money with my art starting in middle school when I would paint graffitti on kids denim clothes. Remember that fad. I’m just saying, that the majority of what I paint is not something people want to buy, let alone hang on their living room wall.
Also, more importantly, my wife got sick about a year and a half ago and had to stop working. She was an RN pulling in 50k a year. Our lifestyle was based off of that. I worked part time, the other time spent on my art. When she got sick, I had to go to full time to keep the bills paid. She’s about to go back to work, and I’m about to go back to art. She has three bulging discs in her neck, fybromyalgia, hyper tension, a thyroid imbalance, and some other shit I forget. Her box she stores here medicine in is about 8x8x8. Ironically, she looks great. Her medical issues keep her skinny. She has the body of an 18 year old gymnast but without the flexibility.
Beyond that, the art world is not suprisingly a bunch of political bullshit. Its all about knowing the right circles of people, finding galleries to back you, etc. Like I said, I’ve had minimal success, moderate in portrait art, which is where I will focus first to make some guaranteed money. Artist are all about finding their style, their niche, and sticking with that. It becomes their calling card. To me, that is the antithesis of creativity. If one day I paint a landscape, the next day I’ll want to do abstract, and then I’ll want to draw a comic book character. My youthful lack of focus has declined however and been replaced with a healthy dose of desperation induced determination. One reason I didn’t stick with the portrait gig was it bored the shit out of me, but I was in my early 20′s and never had a real, real job before, so now, yeah, I think I can crank out the portraits and not complain.
Life gets in the way of dreams, which is no excuse. If I was a harder worker, I could have made it happen despite everything, but I’m not. Art, the art I do, is not easy or relaxing. A lot of the stuff I paint is realistic if not photo-realisitc. I don’t just smear around a lot of colors to create an atmospheric pseudo landscape (although, I think I’ll do those, as they sell nice, and are easy). As a perfectionist with an insatiable need to experiment, I’m my own worst enemy when it comes to my art (See Leonardo Da Vinci for a parallel), but for a geek, I’ve lived an amazingly adventurous life. Parties, fights, drugs, jail time, fraternities, travel, even girls. My wife is hot. I have a nice home, highspeed internet, big screen TV, Xbox 360, nice clothes, too many friends, you know, lots of useless junk (especially the friends). But, I’ve been there, done that, time to get focused. I was supposed to be somebody. I chose to have fun instead (My older brother sorta insisted I didn’t hermit up. I didn’t, but maybe took it too far.). I don’t regret that. I’ve got so many stories, most people would not believe them all. I’m 31. I’ve had my fun. Time to make some cultural shock waves. MRA art anybody? I have a focus now. Lets see if that helps.
“anoukange January 8, 2010 at 10:09
Jabherwochie:
Just curious. Making a mark in the world in general today is a difficult feat. It is even more so in the art world.”
If you can fully appreciate where I started in life, and what I overcame to achieve social status, you would understand that I’m good at overcoming obstacles.
In kindergarten, the blond haired blue eyed popular kid was showing everyone how to build paper airplanes that looked like a jet, not the boxy looking ones kids learn first. I went up to him and asked him to show me how also. He stared at me quizzically, didn’t say anything, and simply turned his back and walked away. I was devastated. I was the only kid he didn’t show how. (This was long before I fully realized my speech impediment made me mostly unintelligable, and didn’t realize he probably just didn’t understand what I was asking.) So now, all the kids were playing with their paper jets but me, so I went back to my table to build just another boxy paper airplane alone, dejected and disheartened as only a small child ostracised by his peers could be. Then, an idea popped into my head, something inspired by a kid’s science book at home. I prepared my plane carefully, didn’t display what I had created, and waited. Recess came. All the kids went up on a hill to throw their jets off of it. I waited until everyone had thrown theirs, everyone seeing who could fly theirs the farthest. Then they turned to look at me holding my pathetic boxy paper airplane, which everyone knew didn’t go as far as the paper jets, waiting for me to take my turn. I carefully launched mine into the air. It travelled up abruptly, but then quickly stalled and began to dive, but just then, out of its back, 6 or 7 tiny paper whirly birds ejected out of it, and as my pathetic air plane crashed into the dirt, those little escape helicopters danced and twirled down through the breeze, taking their time falling, like lazy snowflakes, catching the sun, and softly settling into the grass unharmed. I remember proudly staring at the spectacle and the aftermath of the tiny escape helicopters sitting in the grass. I never noticed the other kids immediate reactions. I’m not sure how they reacted. My pride was internally motivated, not externally. I liked my plane better than everyone elses, because it was different. I was absorbed within myself, within my pride, within my imagination at the possibilities of creativity. What could I do next? Should I add more escape helicopters next? Should I color my plane?
After recess, sitting at my desk, further tweaking my contraption, almost all the kids surrounded me, asking me to show them how to make the tiny paper whirly helicopters, almost everyone but the blond haired, blue eyed, popular kid. It was the first time, but not the last that I drew a crowd with my creativity. I think I realized then that my mind was my greatest asset, that it was what would set me apart, and that it would gain me the attention I insecurely craved. I have no doubt that I will be famous.
True story.
I can take you to the very hill we launched our planes from as small children some 27 years ago. I was married in the very church that is attached to that kindergarten and its playground which seems so small now to my adult eyes. Did I mention that my wife is hot? I thank that science book that showed me the principle of aero-dynamics through the construction of paper whirly birds. A butterfly flaps its wings somewhere. Anything is possible.
Yes, get on that.
I don’t think there’s ever been a movement seeking cultural change which hasn’t had its own artists. Pictures speaking a thousand words, etc. Messages can be conveyed in art sometimes much more effectively. Art attracts people to the message.
They have done postmortem brain studies of transsexuals and realized that their brains were truly different and not representative of their bodies. So while this may be the norm, it by no means is 100% accurate and this assumption hurts people who are different by forcing them to fit into a mold. And even if you teach gender-neutral, what’s the guarantee in this world that the rest of the population will be neutral as well?
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