Comment Re:How does it compare? (Score 1) 245
I was pointing out that it is WHY they are resistant that matters. That poster could have been resistant because they don't believe gender is a factor in performance at all and therefore anything that claims men are better than women or women are better than men has to have an underlying cause not related to gender. The poster would then automatically posit what that underlying cause might be. The poster could well believe that beyond anything that directly biologically related to having a male or female reproductive system it is completely and automatically invalid to assume gender as a causation for a correlation. Therefore, it isn't correct to automatically assume the drive was sexism.
Your post explains that you believe gender can be causation beyond reproduction but your beliefs do not impact the poster's motivation or mine. There is nothing in the content or either my post or the one you responded to that is sexist in and of itself. It is a logical fallacy to attack the hypothetical motivation of the poster rather than the content of their post.
You are letting emotion cloud your judgement. I'm not saying that because you indicated you are a woman. I'm saying that because there are 21 words in your reply that are either in bold print or all caps and you began with "Cute. Nice try," which is clearly confrontational. It is obvious you feel you've been discriminated against and are angry about it. That anger could well be justified and perfectly valid. But neither I nor the person you had responded to said anything in those posts to merit it being unleashed on us. So please, take a deep breath. Center yourself. Consider the possibility that we are just people trying to have a rational conversation about a sensitive topic. Explosive reactions, whether or not they come from a valid history of bad experience, make people uncomfortable and are counterproductive to a real discussion.
"I accept that men can be better than women, because I've never been allowed to think anything else."
A man can be better than a woman or a woman can be better than a man. If you aggregate the groups into large enough samples it may be that one gender or the other outperforms in some area due to biological tendencies (some sort of instinctual or hormonal pattern). But the problem with aggregates is that the information they convey is purely academic. These things can't be applied at the individual level. At the individual level there are men who feel drives that on average would be found in women and vice versa and hormone levels are all over the charts in individuals. Yes, these individuals are a "minority" but they are VERY significant subset.
"And don't pretend at me that hearing "you go girl" and "grrrrrl power" bullshit has somehow magically eradicated sexism"
On the contrary. Most of that "you go girl" and "grrrrl power" stuff IS sexism.
I'm sorry if you feel you've been discriminated against but the answer isn't eye for an eye. Stop trying to beat the boys at their games and start focusing on having the girls games given equal respect to the boys games. Stop trying to empower women by telling them they can win in a man's world or by showing them women can succeed in a man's world and start changing the world.
Men tend to have higher testosterone levels, highly competitive, the aggressive territorial alpha lone wolf is their game. This is represented by the President, the CEO, the doctor, the athletic gold medalist. Women tend to have higher estrogen levels, focus in a more outward manner, better group dynamic skills. In the man's world that type of thinking gives you an edge at the local level, nursing, and middle management. So work to emphasize the importance of these types of roles. Work to have a nurses educated expanded and respected to the level of a doctor. Work to have lesser roles not be considered nursing. Work to have these jobs paid equally. Build organizations that are structured differently without a military style chain of command hierarchy with a ladder of lone wolves to the top. The entire idea that that person directing is somehow superior to those being directed instead of just another role is a male idea of domination. Stop trying to beat men at their game because their game is built by men for men and while some women will beat the men, on the whole both men and women are going to see men winning that game more often.
Women who don't want to play or aren't good at that man's game will have low self worth. Why should they? There is nothing wrong with them. They aren't inferior to women who play those games and excel or to men who do so. Nor are men who don't relate to that typical male structure inferior. Since when is a nurse, male or female, less important in a successful patient outcome than a doctor, of any gender? Women can be doctors now. Men can be nurses. But nursing is a field that women gravitated to and was shaped by women and the role of doctor is one that has been shaped by men. It is time to take the next step and stop trying to show the world that women can do what men can and start showing the world that the feminine approach to problems is just as important to the male approach.