The proportion of the population who are preferential homosexuals is much less than the frequently claimed 10%. More like 1% of females and 2% of males. The gay lobby found the 10% figure politically useful and included it in their propaganda. It originates from Kinsey 1948 who used an unrepresentative sample and counted anyone who had had any homosexual contact as homosexual.

The problem is, of course, "given enough time." There would need to be fairly consistent pressures applied for a very long time. If the culture keeps changing, or there are a variety of cultures, it isn't going to have a consistent effect.

Which might or might not be relevant to the extent of certain abilities. That is, all this indicates is differences are possible. And even the differences as reported are often debated. For instance, the size of the corpus callosum between the sexes. From here:

There is scientific dispute not only about the implications of anatomical difference, but whether such a difference actually exists. A substantial review paper performed a meta-analysis of 49 studies and found, contrary to de Lacoste-Utamsing and Holloway, that males have a larger corpus callosum, a relationship that is true whether or not account is taken of larger male brain size.[1] Bishop and Wahlstein found that "the widespread belief that women have a larger splenium than men and consequently think differently is untenable." However, more recent studies using new techniques revealed morphological sex differences in human corpus callosum.[4][5] Whether, and to what extent, these morphological differences are associated with behavioural and cognitive differences between males and females remains unclear.

Not just PC culture. If a researcher states there is a difference, somebody will suggest researcher bias. If a researcher states there is no difference, somebody else will suggest researcher bias.

I see it as an interesting subject, but separating out both cultural effects on learning and finding a way to convince everyone that there isn't research bias seem to be a nightmare.

__________________
I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

Nevertheless, I can show the flaw in your position by summarizing it as follows:
You are apparently claiming that the presence of cultural differences in the past would have led to physiological differences, and this is your sole argument that performance differences existing today must be physiological and not cultural. See the flaw?
I am not terribly surprised that female brains are different from male brains. I am also not terribly surprised that Japanese men are on average shorter than American men, and there a host of other on-average physiological differences between races and sexes. Now, how exactly would you take any of those facts as evidence that one group or another is better at math? Again, the problem here is relying on speculation where there needs to be controlled testing.
I would say the "reasonableness" is irrelevant. That's the point of science-- we look for actual evidence. It was perfectly reasonable for the Earth to be stationary at the center of the universe. The job of science was to test that concept, and rely solely on the results of such tests-- not on reasonableness.

It is irrelevant whether or not it is "reasonable" that women are not as good in math as men. You have not only not shown a causal connection between math skills and physiology, you have not even made a case that there is any correlation at all between sex and math ability under controlled conditions.


Again it sounds like you are opining that men have a stronger drive to be unfaithful than do women, but I see no data to support that contention. Even if such data exists, there is still more work to establish the causality behind the correlation. Junk science is easy-- real science is challenging.

Yes, I know you said that, and I said that our modern culture evolved from those same premodern societies, every bit as much as our physiology did. So pointing out previous cultural biases certainly does nothing to argue that physiology has somehow taken over in importance from cultural bias.Yes, the society may evolve to remove those cultural biases. When and if it does, expect zero "lag time" for women to catch up to men in analytic and mathematical skills, as the evidence of a physiologically-based lag is squat.
Exactly my point.


That's an empty complaint, and is similar to complaints made by people who want to claim that one race is intelligently inferior to another-- it's all "suppressed by political correctness". That's nothing but the lament of the bigot with no evidential support for their prejudices.

My point was that cultural norms and taboos can influence evolution. That's all.

Surveys are fallable, but they do suggest that men are unfaithful more often than women. And we know that breeding with multiple partners is an advantage for males to spread their genetic information.

LOGIC matters. To deny logic because every grain of sand has not been counted is the very basis of being anti-reality.

Glad you can acknowledge that much. Most people see acknowledging differences as acknowledging inferiority. I don't. Reality is what it is.

Not at all an empty complaint. Teachers with tenure are * fired * for suggesting the mere possibility that there could be any difference between women and men. To actually try to conduct research to confirm it would turn you into a professional leper.

And work on eugenics, trying to identify a "superior race," is quite different from working to determine what innate differences might define us as sexes. And racial research * is * needed because there are higher risk factors for certain diseases that are higher for certain ethnicities than in others. Knowing those differences helps to save lives.

Personally I'd prefer the language boost over the mathematical boost as far as innate aptitude, because that's where my interests lie. And as I've stated before, if you choose to believe I'm a misogynist, you should consider me a misandrist too because I think * both * sexes have aptitudes with strengths and weaknesses.

Everyone has strengths and weaknesses at birth, and pretending otherwise is simply condescending to that person. It's * wrong * to place special ed kids in with the average students, because they will not learn anything, will not learn how to overcome their handicaps, will probably develop self-esteem issues because they'll have peers who do better in class, and the rest of the class will not learn as much either because the teacher will dumb down the content so that the student with the learning disability will be able to keep up.

That's why our educational system doesn't work anymore - the average, below average, and above average students are now lumped together for reasons of political correctness. It's supposedly to aid self-esteem, but if you ask me it makes the slower kids * feel * slower because their peers are smarter.

Since I know you'll probably choose to misinterpet, NO, I am not calling women handicapped/special ed. I am citing an example of why political correctness is * wrong * and should be resisted.

And I'd also note that we've conjured up an entirely different argument here: nature vs. nurture.

I'm a strong believer that your genetic makeup constitutes in large part the person you will become. Environment has a great deal to do with behavior and worldview, but abilities/aptitudes and of course physical traits are all in your DNA.

No, that was not all, you were clearly arguing that it is plausible that women's math accomplishment differences are due to physiological differences in their brains, and your basis for establishing that plausibility is citing past cultural biases. I am pointing out that past cultural biases continue into today's culture, and so it is far more plausible that this very argument is one to support the plausibility of the differences being cultural in nature. Above all, I am also saying that the null hypothesis is that there are no physiological differences relevant to math ability, because such is the null hypothesis in all things, and you have raised no evidence that favors a physiological basis over a cultural basis for math accomplishment differences. If you don't believe there is any reason to favor the former over the latter, then we are not disagreeing at all.

But you are citing this as evidence that men are genetically predisposed to unfaithfulness, so again you miss the cultural bias there. And here I don't just mean reporting bias in a survey, which is no doubt quite significant, but also the fact that since more men are in control of their own financial stability than are women, it places them in a position of power where they can better "get away" with unfaithfulness. Furthermore, there is also the cultural bias that you mentioned before-- but again, incredibly, you mentioned it as a basis for physiological evolution differences, instead of simply what it is-- cultural bias favoring certain male behaviors!

You may as well be claiming that the reason the Chinese are so good at ping pong (they are) is that their culture favors ping pong over many other pastimes, and so their bodies have evolved over generations to respond to that cultural bias. Does it not seem more natural to simply conclude their ping-pong prowess is still simply an expression of that same cultural bias?
There was a time when plausibility arguments cut some mustard in population biology, but then it was discovered that they weren't worth the paper they were written on when real tests were done. Now there is a much higher standard before a causality argument is viewed as convincing.
Yes, I am perfectly willing to acknowledge differences, when they show up in controlled conditions. All I object to is plausibility arguments that actually make the opposite conclusion more plausible.

Citation?
None of this has anything, for me, to do with who is better at what, but rather, what has been scientifically established and what is just idle speculation in support of a personal prejudice. The latter is obviously anathema to science.

There is quite a big difference between * idle speculation * and a hypothesis that is based in logic. Since you will accept nothing less than double-blind studies as changing something from "idle speculation" to a valid hypothesis, and deny the hard evidence that I have already pointed to as irrelevant, I suppose I'll have to provide links.

Boy's Test Results More Variable Than Girls - This suggests an alternative to merely "boys are better at math" - that boys are less stable in academic studies. We're either exceptional, or below average, balancing out in the median. Girls tend to score near the middle, so there is no statistical difference between male math achievement and female when you just look at the average.

But it doesn't change the fact that there are more above-average male math test takers than female.

I'd suggest that's a huge sociological difference between girls and boys and that it could be explained as originating both from nature (girls mature earlier and learn to deal with hormones earlier than boys, thus are more stable behaviorally and prepare for tests appropriately) and nurture (boys are supposed to be troublemakers, wild, party, etc, girls are supposed to be good girls).

Study: Women Use More Verbal Coping Skills Than Men

Women Have Higher Innate Likelihood of Depression

On the topic of teachers being fired for not being PC, you must be completely out of touch with the news to even ask for a citation.

Harvard Professor Fired For Suggesting Gender Differences

As the book notes, there are thousands of mainstream studies that attest to differences between men and women. Yet despite apologizing and offering to pay millions in fines, this professor was fired for simply suggesting that ANY difference exists.

People are simply ridiculous in their vehement denial of reality.

Here's an interesting read about a man who decides to teach a Men's Life course in an institution that had 83 courses in women's studies but 0 that were tailored for men. He was called a sexist, railed at by the community, and fired for his trouble.

http://antimisandry.com/showthread.php?t=11985

As it points out, the educational institution is inherently biased against males. This is obviously not a new insight but it is still valid.

And in case you those are isolated incidents, other examples of political correctness gone bad from a quick Google search:

http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/192717.php (Morality Taboo)
http://www.journal-news.com/hp/conte...web.html?imw=Y - (Students Commenting on Each Others' Futures Cynically gets teacher fired)
http://thericepudding.blogspot.com/2...her-fired.html - (Foreign Language Teacher Fired for teaching foreign language phrase that had unknown gay double entendre)
http://dir.salon.com/story/books/fea...dy/index1.html - Parents Call For Professor's Dismissal for using word niggardly
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/ba...-21st-century/ - (Religious Taboo)
http://humaniststudies.org/enews/?id=219&article=0 (Religious/Morality Taboo)
http://homepage.mac.com/jorgecortell...532/index.html - Fired for teaching benefits of P2P Software
http://www.shortnews.com/start.cfm?id=57588 - (Political Nervousness)
http://drawn.ca/2006/03/11/art-teach...awing-classes/ - Teacher Fired for suggesting students should learn more

All of this information was harvested in only 30 minutes. I'm sure I could find a mountain more. My point is, yes PC is dangerous, and yes it has been and will continue to be proven that there are differences between men and women, some caused by biology, some caused by sociology.

What are you defining as "political correctness" in this context? In your post after this, you list a number of items that seem to me to be a variety of different issues.

In the context of the thread topic, I'd say that the following are equally bad:

- Assuming there must not be an ability difference between the sexes.

- Assuming there must be an ability difference between the sexes.

Much of the current "PC" reaction is in response to historical, unsupported, biases. I don't see a lack of "PC" (as I understand "PC") as necessarily better.

I thought this whole thread was a nature vs. nurture debate.

__________________
I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

I'd say moderation is the best choice in anything. Allowing racism, sexism, or religious intolerance is obviously bad. But firing good people in the name of preventing those things is just hurting the cause of equality, not helping it.

You're right, the PC movement is in response to historical biases and historical facts which in many cases have little bearing on modern life. In a way we've created a new bias, against anyone who's willing to speak the truth.

Equality isn't about everyone * being the same * it's about everyone having an equal opportunity at a free life without discrimination. People seem to miss that distinction quite often though. The former is clearly not reality, the latter is an ideal that we should strive for.

Pretty much - some will argue that performance gaps are the result of environmental issues, some a result of genetics. Personally I feel it's both, but if I had to choose I'd say that genetics play a greater role in most areas.

Others will leave the nurture vs nature debate out of it entirely and say that no differences exist at all.

oooooooooo there is nothing like a bunch of strong, intelligent men explaining to me how there are things that I am genetically unable to do as well as they. After all what more could a simple girl like me aspire to than to be a vessel for a man's seed; seeking nothing more than the best environment to care for his child. [sigh]

Thanks for the laugh
And most of the claims are nonsense at that.

I have not seen any evidence that women are less capable at math.
If someone asked my opinion on the matter, based on observations throughout my life, I would have said that women are better at math.

It IS true that the genders are different in many ways and even the brain of a man and the brain of a women function differently. Slightly.

But does it make one gender more adept at a task than the other?

It seems the same to me as racial stereotyping.
I think it falls to the individual ---- Not a race or gender.

Are black people better at sports than whites?
Well, professional sports in the United States are dominated by blacks. But it isn't because the black race is better at sports than the white race.
For many blacks for a long time, sports was open to them when other careers weren't.
So the best avenue of success for many blacks, who were athletically talented- was sports. But that doesn't stop many folks from getting the idea stuck in their head that blacks are more physically able to do sports.

This doesn't mean that I'm suddenly in agreement with earlier statements- including one in which it was claimed that Barbie claiming math is hard made girls not like math-- I was a kid once too and I paid no attention to what my toys had to say.
Especially as I got older, "for cryin' out loud..."

Is that what you got out of what I said above, that I don't accept logical arguments unless they are double-blind studies? I thought I was showing you why your "logical argument" was actually the argument for the importance of cultural bias, not the argument for the importance of physiology (stemming, in your argument, from cultural bias, incredibly).

Next you give a list of links about performance on math exams. Are you somehow missing that our discussion was not on the existence of achievement differences (one need only look at publication rates in mathematical journals to see achievement differences), but rather about the evidence for various possible causes? The issue was about cultural influences versus genetic differences, and none of the studies you linked to had anything to say about that issue at all, simply because none of them controlled for the obvious cultural influences.

Now if I were going to try to do real science on the issue of nature vs. nurture in math accomplishments, I would sort various cultures by how they stress or discourage female achievement in math and logic. Then I would plot the accomplishment measures against the cultural bias statistic, and look for a trend. To the extent that I found that trend, I would conclude that the accomplishment differences were explained by the cultural influences. I would also look for any nonzero "y intercept", the accomplishment difference that appears to be independent of cultural bias, and to the extent that I found that I would conclude there could yet be a genetic difference. As I see no research of that flavor quoted here, I see nothing to advance the genetic argument over the much more obvious cultural influences. Indeed, so obvious are the cultural influences that you even tried to use them in your argument for evolved genetic differences!

You don't see the mathematical contradiction in your statements? You can now add poor math to poor logic. As you are a boy, that further defeats your thesis.

You really need to get your facts straight. First of all, the "topic" you refer to was not the issue of teachers being fired for not being PC-- of course teachers should in some instances be fired for not being PC (when one recognizes that the issue there is not adherence to certain dogma, but rather an absence of sensitivity to important cultural challenges we need our teachers to be very sensitive of). The point that we were actually discussing was about what happens to people who do research on the topic. Your link above is hardly about a researcher doing gender studies, nor is it even about a teacher, it is about the president of Harvard University! Of course the President of Harvard should not be making off-hand references to innate limitations of women in doing various academic work, that is stunningly obvious for the man responsible for hiring faculty.

The citation you give here is hardly that of a "teaching being fired

__________________
Logic is the grammar of truth.

Meaning and absolute certainty are incompatible, and profound meaning and absolute certainty are profoundly incompatible.

The only thing intelligence is capable of is recognizing itself.

Yes, but I seem to have been wrong. Double-blind studies don't overcome a kneejerk reaction either.

If you're referring to my statements about "girls' being good" and "boys being troublemakers" - is that not in fact a handicap which would impede male performance in mathematics? I recognize that environmental factors exist, but the data shows that * in spite of * that possible handicap boys are still matching or exceeding girls in the area of mathematics. This to me suggests a slight genetic predisposition to math aptitude.

Read the page after the one describing the Harvard professor on the link provided.

It makes * exactly * the same argument I'm making, that certain traits were favorable for the primitive warrior. And that these traits were passed along to the next generation, and so on and so forth. In the form of sex hormones. The only "cultural" aspect of this is that women were not encouraged to hunt. That this is an argument that you find illogical astounds me.

If I had said that "being a fast runner was a favorable trait, and men were the ones doing the hunting so they had to run fastest to avoid predators who they could not kill," would you have felt the same need to dismiss the argument offhand?

I don't think so. You are biased because you believe that acknowledgement of ingrained mental advantage based on genetics is sexist. Even though it is only in one area, and there are certainly * other * mental advantages that women have which we do not.

That same book also references the Bruce/Brenda case, in which a pair of twin boys, one of whom is given a sex change after a botched circumcision, are raised together. Same environment, identical genetics. It was supposed to be the crowning evidence in support of nurture issues being the cause of differing psychology in men and women.

Instead, the boy who became a girl rebelled against her/his gender role from day one. S(he) was resistant to all typically female roles and activities, deeply depressed into teenage years, and when s(he) finally discovered her/his origin, decided to have a sex change to return to *his original gender.

Okay, I don't know if you actually believe this stuff you're saying, or if you are just stubbornly backing an unsupportable argument as part of your stance in this debate.

But yes, it is WRONG to fire teachers for speaking their minds in a way that is unpopular. If you ask me, the only "important cultural challenge" that people need be aware of is that if you say something the thought police do not like, you will be punished for it.

There's a reason that free speech is the First amendment to the U.S. Constitution - before any other issue needed to be addressed, this one did.

I may always disagree with what you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it.

Muzzling the public and forcing everyone to think in the same way is most certainly a step towards totalitarianism, not equality.

You're grasping at straws. Obviously he was a teacher before he became President of the entire University. And that makes it worse, not better - it was not merely a footsoldier but a general who was stripped of all rights and authority for saying something that is unpopular.

And what about the other links I provided? All teachers, all fired in the same manner for saying something that was not politically correct. If you, personally, think it is wrong to merely * say * those differences are there, and defend this person's dismissal, can you honestly say you think everyone would be hunky-dorey with someone conducting research to prove it?

Try not to let your rhetoric distract you from common sense.

See above. A leads to B. It's that logic that can indeed substitute for something that was Googled.

And what of the teacher who decided to experiment with Men's Studies as a course as an alternative to Women's Studies? Was his experience not indicative of what any man doing work that is against the mainstream will experience?

I have the greatest admiration for anyone who is willing to face down the barbarian horde and do such work. But I think such brave souls will be few and far between. Science that comes with it almost certain unemployment, scorn from the community, and an inability to find new work in your field is simply an unacceptable choice if you've got a family to feed.

I don't believe anyone here has said anything of the kind about "aspiring to do nothing more than be a veseel for a seed."

As I've said before (and others accepted) I believe there are areas where men have a slightly higher aptitude on average and areas where women have a slightly higher aptitude on average. People are hardly "one size fits all." I'd prefer to think that the differences between us are special and should be cherished as making things interesting, rather than either pretending they don't exist or assuming that it's a bad thing for there to be differences.

Being different doesn't make someone * unable * to do anything, it just means it will be done in a different way. For instance, to innovate you need three types of people: the dreamers and connection-makers, who come up with the ideas. The engineers, who turn those ideas into a functioning prototype. And the managers, who are able to communicate the usefulness of the "widget" to other people effectively and sell the devices.

And as far as men "explaining things to you" I'm sure you're well aware this is an open thread. You're very welcome and in fact encouraged to join in, some fresh perspective would be much appreciated.

Falsely attributing made-up emotions/motivations/attitudes to others, and presenting them in a way that only expresses an emotion/attitude of your own without a single fact or point of logic involved...

Do you realize that this kind of thing, rather than combating the idea of gender-based mental/behavioral differences, actually just reinforces them by demonstration? You've just SHOWN us all how your response in a debate on logic and evidence is to toss the actual points that were actually made in that debate out the window and have an emotional outburst over stuff that didn't happen because you didn't like the way something somewhere made you feel.

It even discredits a standard claim that's often made in these debates: that girls' lower math performance is only because people tell them that they can't do it. Well, obviously we have an example right here of a girl/woman claiming that men have told her stuff right here that they obviously didn't tell her right here, so what reason is there to take seriously a claim that they do anywhere else either? What is known for certain from example right here is that the falsehood of that claim does not prevent one from making it anyway.

(Meanwhile, where is the counterpart claim that boys only score lower in language arts and cultural/sociolocial/psychological studies because they're told they can't do that stuff? It seems to never or nearly never be made, in which case those who do make that claim about girls being told they can't do math must mean that boys' lower scores in those other areas are biological destiny, which, with girls being their equals in math, must mean that males are inherently inferior overall. And yet, while claiming things which lead inevitably to that conclusion of male inferiority, they also claim to mean that the sexes are "equal", which they clearly can't mean unless they don't mean some of the other stuff they say which leads straight there... which makes their entire case an issue of honesty rather than correctness...)

Delvo, ( I think you have me on ignore- but eh... anyway) what you just did is that same generalization.

Although I agree that the excuse of having been told they are not as good at math is absolute bunk (Heck, I haven't even seen good evidence that women ARE less talented mathematically. What? A Study? Isn't that like a survey in which they question whatever tiny percentage of the population they could afford to question?) you just reinforced a stereotype with your own generalization of emotional response.

Are you trying to now claim men are better at Logic?

Funny, I consider myself to be a logical person, when I want to be anyway, yet I have emotional responses all the time.
I react with feelings too.

And.. Let's see.
I'm a man.
I swing sledge hammers for a living.
I'm not gay.
I don't cry.

So hmmm...
Why is it that not only myself, but just about every other guy I know all fit the stereotype you just claimed to be a feminine trait?

Why is it that women have managed to give me sound advice in my lifetime because they were applying logic when I was acting like an idiot?

Well, that was a totally off-topic remark, but, in the interest of accuracy...

It is true that the "10% homosexuals" figure is based on questionable data. Alas, better data is simply not available.

It is not true that this percentage was the one Kinsey found for "anyone who had had any homosexual contact". The actual percentage for that was much higher, nearly 40%.

P.S. The BA recently mentioned the article in the OP in his blog. I thought one of the reader comments was particularly perceptive:

__________________
"A witty saying proves nothing" Voltaire.
"All your bias are belong to us" Ara Pacis.

I can see a valid reason for that though. If a male athlete is trying to start a family, it has little direct impact on his sport, except a reduction in the time he can spend doing it. There is a much more direct and significant impact when a female athlete starts a family - they are basically guaranteed to be out of their sport for a couple of years. Because of that, a discussion on how they want to start a family is relevant to their future potential as volleyball players.

__________________
WANTED:

Schroedinger's Cat

Dead And Alive

If caring for his family has 'little direct impact' on his profession, then the man is probably not doing a very good job as a father.

__________________
"A witty saying proves nothing" Voltaire.
"All your bias are belong to us" Ara Pacis.

When the advocate of the opposing view can find nothing but "argument by labeling", I know their argument is in desparate shape. Unfortunately for your position, my argument is based completely on logic and my knees play no role, nor have you pointed to any such role.

None of my remarks in any way refer to those statements. I have been completely clear on what they do refer to: the absurd argument that accomplishment differences are caused by the way cultural biase lead to genetic changes which are then more important to understanding accomplishment differences than cultural bias. I"m sorry, but that's simply poor logic, no knees required.All that proves is that the article is also poorly based in logic. That author is a law professor, not an evolutionary biologist! That should be no surprise-- the article has an axe to grind about women in the military, and the author seems unaware that evolutionary biology went through a dubuios period where it was considered acceptable to speculate plausibility arguments about why various traits appeared in various critters. But it was quickly discovered that plausibility was insufficient grounds for good science, when those plausibility arguments started falling away like fluff as real scientific investigations were mounted. That article, by the way, is a classic example-- the author argues on theoretical grounds about issues that should obviously be a simple matter of looking at the experimental evidence of how women perform in practice. Indeed, I have no doubt that similar articles were written about blacks in the military before WWII-- now look up "Tuskegee airmen" for the real truth.

In fact, the article is an opinion piece, not scholarly research, and I find it an unconvincing set of prejudices packaged in the guise of academic inquiry. Just one random example, on the topic of sex differences in spatial imagination: "A review of a large number of studies [uncited, by the way] found... depending on the sample, the sex difference sometimes exceeds a full standard deviation." The author should really be more aware that "depending on the sample, a deviation exceeding a full standard deviation" doesn't mean squat, and statistician will tell you that in a heartbeat.

But more to the point is the simple fact that nothing in that article even mentions innate genetic differences, and none of its "evidence" is controlled for cultural bias. As such, it is still irrelevant to this discussion! Even my knees can see that.

Are women encouraged to hunt today? What is astounding is that you cannot see the core fallacy in your position, but I trust everyone else can.The issue is not the "popularity" of the comments, it is the sensitivity, the awareness of how things are and how what teachers say can either be part of the solution or part of the problem. It is not wrong to fire teachers, who are entrusted with a great deal of influence in our educational process, if they need the education themselves. Personally, I find it completely appalling that the president of a major university, who has authority on faculty hires and student acceptances, could believe that women and men have significant innate genetic differences in regard to academic achievement. I certainly wouldn't want my daughter to go to a school with such a president, and I'm certain the reason he was fired is that many feel similarly. None of it has anything do with "PC".

Good people should be given a chance to work to become part of the solution. If one statement made, and apologized for, is enough to destroy someone's entire career, then the system is broken. If you cannot see that, you deserve what happens when you yourself say something ill-advised and are fired from your chosen profession. I wonder if your supposed ideals will give you comfort when your family is on welfare.

Allowing people to pull children from the school, and the school giving them their tuiton money back, would be reasonable. Pulling the teacher or administrator who made the statement is entirely wrong, no matter how you choose to view what he had said.

If he'd come out in favor of homosexual rights, and the school board fired him because they believe that the school should be teaching traditional family values, is that too a good move?

Once you start denying free speech on one topic, you've denied it on every topic. You may be fine with shredding the First Amendment and damaging the lives of innocent people in the process, but I am not. If you prefer to live in a society that forbids free speech, try China. Even their Internet is firewalled, and if you write the wrong thing on the Internet you will be deemed a dissident and the stormtroopers will be showing up at your door.

That is the end of the road that begins with forbidding speech on some topics and punishing those who dare to do it anyway.

It has everything to do with it. Political correctness has created a hostile environment in which the free exchange of ideas is no longer allowed. And in which saying anything in relation to a sensitive topic is grounds for reprisal. That is the most dangerous thing that can happen to a free society.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying every firing that ever happened was justified. I'm just saying that in some cases, it is pretty obvious the person in question is badly out of touch, as with that Harvard president-- who should certainly by now understand the potential ramifications of his comments. If we were just talking about a high school teacher who made a verbal misscue, goodness we all need a little leeway. I would certainly rather see such a person be entered into a program of education to help them see what was prejudicial in their comments, than see them fired.

What I object to is this pervasive objection that any such "sensitivity training" is really just some kind of PC dogma training from "Big Brother". In fact, it is merely the attempt to get people to understand the impact their own words can have in either defeating or promoting prejudices connected with some of our most glaring cultural deficiencies. Presidents of universities should not be the ones in need of such education-- they should be the leaders in providing it.
I'm gonna guess the Harvard president's family is not currently on welfare. However, I'm quite certain there are many families on welfare, perhaps families of single mothers, owing to the kinds of prejudices advanced by that president's comments.

Again, I would say there is no "stock solution" here, every instance must be treated on its own merits. In the case of the Harvard president, the firing seems perfectly appropriate to me. For other cases, it would not surprise me if injustices occured-- the same kind of irrationality that leads to prejudice can also lead to counterproductive efforts to curb it.
Well we can agree that in many places in the US, that would be the surest possible way to get fired. But you don't see that situation as any worse than firing role models on the grounds that they are bigots? Is it your position that no one in a position of influence should ever be held individually accountable for what they say, and the higher the level of that influence, the deeper that responsibility?
That is a common misconception about what "free speech" means. It was clarified a long time ago, in situations like yelling "fire" in a crowded theater. Free speech does not mean you can say harmful things, or expose harmful attitudes, for people in positions of power. If they exercise their free speech improperly, that power can, and in some cases should, be taken away from them. But I agree we don't want irrational "witch hunts".

Cue the music.You sound like someone who does not actually function in that environment. By and large it seems to me, those who do function in such an environment and understand what PC really is see it as a simple expression of sensitivity to basic human dignity, and have little problem with it at all.
Very dramatic, but way off target. The people I know who are on the forefront of the "PC movement" are not people who skirt "sensitive topics" for "fear of reprisal". Rather, they are the ones most ready to embrace sensitive topics, expressly because they are confident in their ability to be sensitive when addressing them. You, on the other hand, seem to simply fear what you do not understand.

I never said anything about sensitivity training. To that I have no objection. If they want to encourage diversity and help people decide to think about things beyond the worldview that was provided them by their upbringing, more power to them.

We are not talking about sensitivity training here, we are talking about senistivity firing - as in, the people on the school board were so overly sensitive that they viewed an idle comment as more important than years of service as a teacher and administrator. That is unconscienable.

There are no varying degrees of injustice. What is unjust is unjust, what is right is right. Both scenarios are equally appalling in my mind.

That is the ideal it aspires to be. As with any other tool, it can be used for good or for bad. Too often I have seen it as a hammer to strike down people that they happen to disagree with, and that is why I oppose the philosophy. At the very least it needs * massive reform *.

I am adamant about political correctness being a bad idea * because * I've had to deal with it in the past.

On the contrary, whenever you gripe about PC, you are casting aspersions on all its elements. Whereas the list of firings you cited included firings for all kinds of different reasons, and few had anything at all to do with PC. For example, why on Earth would you cite the firing of an art teacher who promoted nude drawings as an example of "PC gone wrong"? It shows a complete lack of understanding what PC is. That teacher would have been fired long before PC-- indeed PC could provide the path for allowing such nude drawings to be acceptable, but most people are too far behind PC to be able to accept that.
Again, in situations where that would be a reasonable description of what happened, I would agree with you.


A bizarre opinion, that. Seems rather "black and white" to me, whereas PC is expressly a foray into how to recognize and handle gray areas. Perhaps that's really your problem with it, as I suggested before.

I think you see the worst of it, but certainly the aspects you describe would require reform. Personally, I think the problem is in the people who don't understand PC so misapply what it really means, so the solution is not to reform PC, but rather to increase understanding of what it is-- basic respect and sensitivity to human dignity, and championing stomping out the devastating effects of prejudice.

And I do not celebrate any injustices you suffered as a result. However, I strongly suspect that if either you, or those who dealt harshly with you, understood PC better, the whole incident might have been avoided, whatever it was. As with any tool, it can find its way into the hands of the uninitiated, with dangerous results to all concerned.

I completely agree, but he can (physically) make that choice, while a female cannot.

__________________
WANTED:

Schroedinger's Cat

Dead And Alive

True enough, there is a difference there. But the question is, is that difference alone sufficient to justify the high level of interest given to women starting families, and the low level of interest in men doing it? Does this not clearly represent the prejudice that men should be allowed to start families without adverse career effects, simply because that's how it was back in the days when women were expected to take on the vast majority of the rearing responsibilities?

Indeed, what made you say that a female volleyball player will be out of their sport for "several years" if they choose to have a baby? Are you assuming they will have several babies? Because the physiological demands might only take someone out of such a career for a year or even less, and hardly any time at all if they choose to adopt. So to test your own assumptions, ask yourself: if Misty May-Treanor or Kerry Walsh had said she wants a family but doesn't want to be out of the sport for any extended period so she plans to adopt, would you have thought "go girl" or "how selfish"? If you catch yourself thinking the latter, do you have the same attitude when treating men's tradeoffs in having babies? I agree with you that the announcers are to be forgiven for not noticing their prejudice on that score, but I agree with Disinfo Agent that it tells us the cultural biases are alive and well.

The female can choose to get her husband to do all the work.

While I agree with what Ken G has been saying, I might approach your objections from a different angle. Forget about sensitivity and political correctness. A Harvard professor who makes such statements in this day and age shows himself to be ignorant! Does Harvard not have the right to fire ignorant professors?

When this is, furthermore, a professor who is high up in the university's hierarchy, his ignorance may end up harming the institution's reputation, and a university's reputation is very important. Does Harvard not have the right to protect itself from staff members that threaten its standing in society?

__________________
"A witty saying proves nothing" Voltaire.
"All your bias are belong to us" Ara Pacis.

Ignorant? Well we're all ignorant. Considering what all there is to know, vs what one human can possibly learn in a lifetime, there's no contest. But some are more ignorant than others. Here's a Wiki article with a bio:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers

Would you call him, a former US Secretary of the Treasury (under Clinton -- he's a liberal Democrat), ignorant? Incidently, something I didn't know until now was he's the nephew of Kenneth Arrow, of Arrows Impossibility Theorem (voting, which we discussed a while back). He was one of the youngest to receive tenure in Harvard history.

Summers was one of their own, a political liberal who shares much of the political ideology of the PC bunch. And this is why I find the episode so amusing -- they eat their own. He makes one remark that gets their knickers in a bunch, and he's toast. Ideological purity. With friends like those, who needs enemies.

Now, compare Summers to Ward Churchil, another one who made very controversial political remarks:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Churchill

Conservatives wanted Churchill fired, but the same bunch who wanted Summers head on a platter *defended* Churchill on the grounds of academic freedom of expression.

They finally fired Churchill (under strong political pressure), but did it smart. They found some grounds of academic misconduct as the excuse to fire him, rather than directly citing the political remarks that got him in trouble in the first place. Churchill is suing, and the taxpayers are paying for it under the rules (don't remember how it goes, but under whatever jurisdication applies, when a university fires a tenured professor, he has appeal rights that require the university to pay for his defense).

I don't know what the resolution of Churchill will be, but I remember hearing his lawyer a while back, saying something to the effect that even if he didn't get Churchill reinstated, he was going to make them spend wads of money to keep him fired.

-Richard

Very good example. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.

The problem with cases like this (and countless others) is that they actually destroy the cause of equality and cultural diversity. They create people like me who are so cynical about the entire PC concept that * any * action in the vein of political correctness will be avoided, good or bad.

They are destroying their credibility by attacking the very people that would further their cause. That anyone who is pro-political correctness could defend such actions speaks volumes to the nature of the movement itself.

The Summers controversy made the political rounds at the time, and I'd forgotten much of the details. In reading about it here, I was reminded of some things. Here's a little Wiki entry on something interesting:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornel_...wrence_Summers

Summers and West got in a little tift (apparently Summers thought West's scholarship was not up to snuff lately), and that may explain why many of the more radical Harvard faculty were so eager to throw him under the bus.

The interesting thing is a poll of the student body found 57% were against Summers' being forced to resign.

And finally, DV, I tend to be optimistic. I think PC is just a passing fad of the politics of those currently in power in academia. There's one thing the federal courts tends to uphold above everything else, and that's free speech. They have consistently thrown out the worst of the PC stuff like campus speech codes and all that.

-Richard

Here was an interview with prominent pyschologist Steven Pinker during the Summers controversy.

http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=505366


Yes. And after refreshing my memory on what Summers *really said*, the above is quite in line with it. Summers merely *wondered* if all the differences in question can be explained by cultural bias.

What happened was his remarks ticked off some in the audience, notably some MIT professor, who said she was so offended she had to walk out before she threw up and passed out. She made a stink about it.

Summers was already on the hot seat with them because some figures came out showing Harvard was giving more tenure to men than women over some period.

So that plus Cornell West had him in trouble with them, and then he went and pulled this latest stunt.

And finally, another quote from Pinker above I really liked was that nothing should be beyond the pale of academic discourse as long as its presented with some level of rigor, which is the difference between a university and a madrassa.

And then this gem:

-Richard