Study: PDF File
Commentary:
Sexual Dimorphism and Feminism
Embracing Your Inner Skeptic

Book: The Female Brain
Commentary:
Busy tongues
Neuroscience in the service of sexual stereotypes
Sex and speaking rate
Your hormones are telling you not to use a vibrator

Other:
David Brooks, cognitive neuroscientist

Utilizing the resources we have differently from men, while proven, does not mean we use them to an inferior effect. Kitting and quilting, traditionally women crafts, are can be incredibly intricate and require a great deal of both hand-eye coordination and technical skill (else there would be a spray of bloody dots from stabbed fingers instead of a pretty pattern). In my experience, there is a great deal of variation in women’s and men’s abilities to use our brains, and the variation among members of each sex is greater than the difference between the sexes.

Not so fast, Casey. Young boys may not be sexually mature, but that doesn’t mean that societal ideas about sex, gender, and all that haven’t affected them.

And I believe that women gamers were initially gamers not because they were unattractive or geeks, but rather because they were GOOD at it. Not all women are, as the majority of female brains are biologically not geared toward hand/eye coordination and technical skills. I did not say ALL, but most. That is proven, through science, PET scans etc, that women as a whole utilize our brains differently then most men.

Accepting women as DIFFERENT is not stereotyping, but rather is embracing the fact that women ARE different, we are NOT men.

Not only is the little video coded for men to remind them of the false dichotomy, remember G4 is a channel for gamers, so female gamers who are watching also get a dose of the message “remember, girly gamers are ruining your cred”. Nevermind that your gamer creds are decided without your input by men who find you hawt or not, we’re supposed to believe that it’s other women who somehow wreck our chances of being taken seriously.

There’s a difference between saying “most humans walk upright” and “humans walk upright”. To go back to your original comment, you talk about the ‘fact’ that “men like looking at attractive women”, and justify that formulation by saying that most men fit such a description. It is not me ‘wishing it so’ that makes your classification a dismissal of the exceptions. That’s a function of classification.

“Humans walk upright” as a classification statement, does actually carry the assumption that not walking upright = not human, regardless of how much you wish to pretend it doesn’t. “Most humans walk upright” indicates the ‘primary’ locomotive mode of human beings without rendering exceptions invisible and invalid. The latter does not justify the former.

You are making sweeping generalizations about “natural” human behaviour that support established stereotypes as if they are accepted fact. They are not.

If you wish to discuss possible traits of human beings, you must at the very least state your sources. And furthermore (as has been pointed out to you twice) stating them as such is dissmissive and contributes to a society in which groups that don’t conform to these standards are erased from view. This blog is an anti-oppression blog, which means that when you’re told to consider how your views contribute to the oppression of others you do just that.

I also advise you to check out the new rule on what to do when told to check your privilege. You’ve already had your warning about privilege, and if you are told to check it again and respond with something such as ” I’m no more asserting my ‘privilege’ than you are,” then your comment will be deleted.

I am pretty sure that you are commenting here to engage in an exchange of ideas and information. To do that you need to be willing to think and learn as much as you’re willing to express your ideas and point of view. Challenging privilege is an integral part of that (at least on this blog), and responding with a defensive “no I’m not!” reaction to being told to check your privilege without thinking about what people have been saying is simply not acceptable.

They are a natural category the same way food is. Sexual interest, like hunger, is a biological imperative - that for food is far stronger, ‘natch - which is “informed” by culture and socialization. Informed by, not created by. The utility to marketers of pandering sexist tripe like Miss Video Game, booth babes and the like is that they are guaranteed a certain level of attention from the lads. The marketers have but to provide the sexual spectacle; that their (straight, male) audience will respond to it is taken for granted just as restaurants take for granted that you will, at some point, be hungry. Their task is not to invent or engineer hunger, but merely to convince you to sate it with what they’re selling.

“What’s ‘attractive’ is socially informed, so to say that it’s some kind of biological fact that men like to look at attractive women is really to say that men are biologically wired to buy into a socially informed beauty standard. And, well, I have a feeling that’s not really what you were intending.”

I agree that it’s socially informed, to a point. (Anthropologists have found some interesting universals regarding the preference for youth, clear skin, symmetrical faces and so on, but that’s another discussion.) But here again we are talking about the cultivation and manipulation of desires already present, not the ex nihilo creation of something heretofore absent. I agree that there is great subjectivity and variance in what is considered “sexy” but it’s a non sequiter to claim therefore that the interest in “sexiness” is NOT based in biology.

“Even if we assume the above is true (and that’s a big assumption), there’s no reason for such categorisation to take place outside of scientific discussion (if it even has a place there), and certainly no place for such blanket categorisation within discussions about anti-oppression work, which I might remind you is precisely where you are.”

Ok, this entire statement is puzzling. First: Which one is the “big assumption” - that walking upright is the primary locomotive mode of the human animal or that exceptions do not invalidate categorization? Second: Why would the consideration of valid general claims about phenomena NOT have a place in scientific discussion, or beyond it? Third: Why wouldn’t “anti-oppression work” include the understanding of generalities or, indeed, innate attributes when they are relevent?

“Because what such categorisation does is that it places the majority case not just as the majority, but as the standard, which says to those “exceptions”, as you call them, that they’re not valid, and, at times, that they don’t count as human.”

Only if you wish it to. Example: Left-handedness is not the standard; the majority of people are right-handed. Southpaws are exceptional. Those are valid, categorical statements that have precisely ZERO to say about the worth or humanity of the left-handed. I’m well aware that people love to load simple statistical terms like “normal” with all manner of moral and cultural baggage. Many do so deliberately because of their irrational fear of those who are different - your “exceptions.” That is not the case with either of us, I trust, and there is no reason why you and I should have to treat the concepts of categories, deviance, prediction and so forth like some kind of contaminated radiation zone.

“Kindly, check your privilege. The “exceptions” you’re dismissing from your standard are actual living people, and it would do you well to remember that.”

I’m not “dismissing” anyone. I’m no more asserting “privilege” than you are. I reject the ‘classification = exclusion = oppression’ formula because I think such equations are simply wrong.