02.05.08
Gender differences, A Response (Part 1)
My roommate sent me this speech transcript by Roy F. Baumeister today*, and I found it an interesting read. My summary response to him was:
Well, the short response is, the guy is a misogynist, but he is also appears to be a scientist who feels a need to validate his misogyny with evidence. I agree with some of his basic principles, and would like to see the data that he uses to support them.
His far-reaching conclusions are ridiculous, and go way beyond what can be drawn from the basic principles that he lays out. However, as I said, I think there is something to the basic principles and would like to see what conclusions a modern feminist (read: not the man-hating stereotype of a feminist) would draw from the principles that he lays out.
I’ll explain as I go along why I feel that he is a misogynist, even if he’s not a bad one.
The talk starts off with an odd mixture of typical reactionary whining about what “feminists” can say versus what mascuslists** can say with an interesting framing of gender roles in culture.
His basic premise is this:
I think it’s more accurate to understand culture (e.g., a country, a religion) as an abstract system that competes against rival systems — and that uses both men and women, often in different ways, to advance its cause.
(Throughout this talk, Prof Baumeister wanders back and forth across my approval line.) I think that there is a useful application to the abstraction that he proposes here. It offers us a chance to examine the root causes of the evolution of our cultural system while offering enough of a emotional buffer to try and limit the righteous outrage at the human effects of our culture. It should be noted, as I go through this, that my target is only trying to give us a framework for understanding where are culturally, and a way of understanding how we got there. I like the basic skeleton of his model, but will depart from him in that I want to explore how a model like this, if properly built, can help us improve our society.
What irritates me about this talk is that I like some of the ideas and approaches suggested by Prof Baumeister, but he repeatedly says things like
I detest the whole idea of competing to be victims.
within just a couple of paragraphs away from pitiable tripe like
Imagine a book advertising itself by saying that women will soon be envying the superior male brain!
The latter quote is, to me, a neo-con/theist-esque victim-hood framing. The whole talk is sprinkled with that sort of contradiction.
Onward, to the first section, as the good professor begins to make his argument! I’ll be using his section titles to break up my own response in the manner that he breaks up his talk.
Men On Top
The premise of this section is that men inhabit the extremes of culture more naturally than women do. The section is light on support, because he is breaking down his reasons for this claim into other sections.
Says Prof Baumesiter,
This critique started when some women systematically looked up at the top of society and saw men everywhere: most world rulers, presidents, prime ministers, most members of Congress and parliaments, most CEOs of major corporations, and so forth — these are mostly men.
Seeing all this, the feminists thought, wow, men dominate everything, so society is set up to favor men. It must be great to be a man.
The mistake in that way of thinking is to look only at the top. If one were to look downward to the bottom of society instead, one finds mostly men there too
In the defense of the professor, he is not actually making a value judgement here, even though it feels that way. His phrasing could perhaps use some work. When I try and look at this from the perspective of the way that things are, and where they came from, I cannot fault his general premise here. This was a talk, not a paper, so there are no citations to back up his statement that men make up the vast majority of prison inmates, war dead, job-related dead, and homeless. I’ll take him at his word so that I can examine his conclusions.
The obvious and immediate response is that this is a cultural phenomenon that has little or nothing to do with evolutionary gender differences. He cuts off this early departure from his argument:
Most cultures have tended to use men for these high-risk, high-payoff slots much more than women. I shall propose there are important pragmatic reasons for this.
And so I’ll deal with those arguments as they come. I’ll hopefully be back to this shortly, I’m actually using this as a break from reading algorithms. If you’re interested in this discussion, drop me a quick note in the comments, because otherwise I might lose interest in continuing. ;-)
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* I have no idea who this guy is, but his title per the link is “Eppes Eminent Professor of Psychology & Head of Social Psychology Area, Florida State University”
** I’m not sure if this is the proper word here, but I’m sure you get what I’m trying to say.
The dark ages really screwed us.
