Quotulatiousness

February 21, 2011

This just in: men still suck, say women

Filed under: Randomness — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:30

From the Wall Street Journal:

Not so long ago, the average American man in his 20s had achieved most of the milestones of adulthood: a high-school diploma, financial independence, marriage and children. Today, most men in their 20s hang out in a novel sort of limbo, a hybrid state of semi-hormonal adolescence and responsible self-reliance. This “pre-adulthood” has much to recommend it, especially for the college-educated. But it’s time to state what has become obvious to legions of frustrated young women: It doesn’t bring out the best in men.

“We are sick of hooking up with guys,” writes the comedian Julie Klausner, author of a touchingly funny 2010 book, “I Don’t Care About Your Band: What I Learned from Indie Rockers, Trust Funders, Pornographers, Felons, Faux-Sensitive Hipsters and Other Guys I’ve Dated.” What Ms. Klausner means by “guys” is males who are not boys or men but something in between. “Guys talk about ‘Star Wars’ like it’s not a movie made for people half their age; a guy’s idea of a perfect night is a hang around the PlayStation with his bandmates, or a trip to Vegas with his college friends…. They are more like the kids we babysat than the dads who drove us home.” One female reviewer of Ms. Kausner’s book wrote, “I had to stop several times while reading and think: Wait, did I date this same guy?”

[. . .]

But for all its familiarity, pre-adulthood represents a momentous sociological development. It’s no exaggeration to say that having large numbers of single young men and women living independently, while also having enough disposable income to avoid ever messing up their kitchens, is something entirely new in human experience. Yes, at other points in Western history young people have waited well into their 20s to marry, and yes, office girls and bachelor lawyers have been working and finding amusement in cities for more than a century. But their numbers and their money supply were always relatively small. Today’s pre-adults are a different matter. They are a major demographic event.

What also makes pre-adulthood something new is its radical reversal of the sexual hierarchy. Among pre-adults, women are the first sex. They graduate from college in greater numbers (among Americans ages 25 to 34, 34% of women now have a bachelor’s degree but just 27% of men), and they have higher GPAs. As most professors tell it, they also have more confidence and drive. These strengths carry women through their 20s, when they are more likely than men to be in grad school and making strides in the workplace. In a number of cities, they are even out-earning their brothers and boyfriends.

And that last point begins to answer the question “Where Have The Good Men Gone?” Women traditionally look to find men who earn more and/or have higher academic and social position. Now that women are beginning to out-earn and out-compete men, it has the paradoxical result of reducing the pool of available men with the requisite higher financial or social capital. There are more women competing for fewer men. This trend will only increase in western society.

This came up last month, and will probably be a very common theme for books and magazine articles in the coming year.

February 13, 2011

More on that horrific gender imbalance at Wikipedia

Filed under: Media, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:04

In case you didn’t think this was a totally serious situation the last time the New York Times headlined it, here’s Heather Mac Donald to alert you to the real significance of the crisis:

New York Times executive editor Bill Keller announced last week at the National Press Club that news from Egypt was crowding from his paper’s front page anything that didn’t have an urgent claim on readers’ attention. So what made the cut that day, in addition to the dispatches from Cairo and Jerusalem? An article on gender imbalance among Wikipedia contributors. Barely 13 percent of the anonymous, volunteer contributors to the free online encyclopedia are female, according to a study by the Wikimedia Foundation.

The gender imbalance among Wikipedia contributors is not even news. The Wikimedia study came out in August 2009 and was covered by the Wall Street Journal at that time. In the 17 months (which the Times rounds down to “about a year”) that this report has been searing the Times‘ consciousness, the paper has come up with exactly zero new facts to explain the contributor imbalance. Instead, the paper recycles Women’s Studies bromides about a female-hostile society, providing a striking display of contemporary feminism’s intellectual decadence.

So the New York Times thinks this problem is of such seriousness that it could compete with the drama of the Egyptian non-violent revolution on the front pages. It must be pretty dramatic then:

The Times‘ next move reveals the shameless legerdemain with which contemporary feminists and their allies preserve the conceit of a sexist society. Rather than using barrier-free Wikipedia as the benchmark for measuring discrimination in the by-invitation-only world, the Times uses the invitation-only-world as the benchmark for Wikipedia. Since we already know that the low female participation rate in gatekeepered forums is the result of bias, the low female participation rate in Wikipedia must also be the result of bias. Nowhere does the article contemplate the possibility that Wikipedia may instead reveal different innate predilections for what the Times condescendingly calls “an obsessive fact-loving realm.”

Given the challenge of identifying barriers to women in a forum open to all, it is no surprise that the people quoted in the article speak in gibberish. The Times introduces the first of its experts thus:

Wikipedia shares many characteristics with the hard-driving hacker crowd, says Joseph Reagle, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard. This includes an ideology that resists any efforts to impose rules or even goals like diversity, as well as a culture that may discourage women.

No examples of such “discouragement” are provided, so let us move on to Reagle’s first quote: “It is ironic,” he tells the Times, “because I like these things — freedom, openness, egalitarian ideas — but I think to some extent they are compounding and hiding problems you might find in the real world.” This statement is nonsensical: How do “freedom, openness, and egalitarian ideas” both “compound and hide problems”? Does it now turn out that freedom and openness stand as barriers to the feminists’ sought-after equality of results between women and men?

February 1, 2011

The tattoos that say “I’ll never work retail again”

Filed under: Randomness — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:30

I’m always amazed how many people search the site for tattoo images. Just because I’m a nice guy (and not in any way attempting to draw more traffic to the site), I’ll post a few more (via Blazing Cat Fur). For most workplaces, these breast tattoos are not work safe.

(more…)

January 31, 2011

Study implies that “traditional” parenting roles may be better for children

Filed under: Health — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:22

Cue the outrage:

Despite the long push for more equality in parenting duties, new research suggests that mothers and fathers may actually get along better when parenting roles are divided along more traditional lines — that is, when fathers back off caregiving duties, such as feeding and bathing, and put more effort into playtime.

[. . .]

Families in which fathers were more involved in play activities had more of what researchers called supportive interaction between the two parents.

In contrast, more of what is described by researchers as “undermining behaviour” was seen among families in which fathers do more of the caregiving.

[. . .]

It is unclear why the study yielded the results it did, but Sarah Schoppe-Sullivan, a professor of family science at Ohio State University and one of the study’s co-authors, suggested parents may be subconsciously bothered when parenting roles conflict with their pre-conceived ideas.

From the mother’s point of view, it could be a function of “maternal gatekeeping,” she said. “For mothers, maybe, it’s hard to give up some control to the father. That could be a total social effect, but there could some sort of biological underpinning to it.”

It’s a single study, so the results are hardly conclusive, but the general tenor of the study will not be popular in certain academic and political circles.

Shock! Horror! Wikipedia contributors are disproportionally male!

Filed under: Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:24

Don’t worry, kids, the New York Times is on the case:

In 10 short years, Wikipedia has accomplished some remarkable goals. More than 3.5 million articles in English? Done. More than 250 languages? Sure.

But another number has proved to be an intractable obstacle for the online encyclopedia: surveys suggest that less than 15 percent of its hundreds of thousands of contributors are women.

About a year ago, the Wikimedia Foundation, the organization that runs Wikipedia, collaborated on a study of Wikipedia’s contributor base and discovered that it was barely 13 percent women; the average age of a contributor was in the mid-20s, according to the study by a joint center of the United Nations University and Maastricht University.

And this is clearly evidence of neo-patriarchal oppression, right? If so, the mechanism by which this form of oppression is accomplished is a bit less than crystalline: anyone can sign up to contribute to Wikipedia. If the NYT thinks that this is really a problem, then we can’t have that many serious problems.

With so many subjects represented — most everything has an article on Wikipedia — the gender disparity often shows up in terms of emphasis. A topic generally restricted to teenage girls, like friendship bracelets, can seem short at four paragraphs when compared with lengthy articles on something boys might favor, like, toy soldiers or baseball cards, whose voluminous entry includes a detailed chronological history of the subject.

Even the most famous fashion designers — Manolo Blahnik or Jimmy Choo — get but a handful of paragraphs. And consider the disparity between two popular series on HBO: The entry on “Sex and the City” includes only a brief summary of every episode, sometimes two or three sentences; the one on “The Sopranos” includes lengthy, detailed articles on each episode.

Is a category with five Mexican feminist writers impressive, or embarrassing when compared with the 45 articles on characters in “The Simpsons”?

Isn’t it normally considered positive that women are not as inclined to obsessive monomania as men are? Doesn’t this evidence rather support the notion that (some) men devote disproportional effort to topics of interest that (most) women would consider unhealthy?

January 27, 2011

Unanticipated outcome of increasing sexual equality

Filed under: Economics, Health, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:38

Caroline May is almost right in the title to this article: “Stay vertical a bit longer, ladies: Study claims men are winning the game of love”.

It’s not all men who benefit, even if we just talk about men who are unmarried and not in a long-term relationship. The men who benefit from this development are the kind of men who already had high “market value” before the days of sexual equality:

“Girl power” might have brought women and girls victories in academics and sports but, as a recent book out of the University of Texas reports, an unintended consequence of women’s success has given men a leg up in the game of love.

Based on research published in their new book,“Premarital Sex in America: How Young Americans Meet, Mate and Think About Marrying,” Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker, sociologists from the University of Texas at Austin, have found that with women becoming more educated and professionally successful than ever, it has become extremely difficult for them to find a committed man.

Part of the problem is that women traditionally have looked to have relationships with higher-status men (dating or marrying “up”). Now that women are achieving higher financial, academic, and professional status themselves, they’re finding a much-reduced group of men who meet their new (higher) expectations, but also facing much more competition from other women who have also achieved higher status. In economic terms, the market for high status men has more potential buyers chasing fewer sellers. Prices (in this case, willingness to offer sex earlier) must rise to compensate.

January 15, 2011

Indian model photoshopped against her will

Filed under: Health, India, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:43

It’s no secret that most of the images used for magazine covers have had a healthy dose of Photoshoppery, but this is a few filters too far:

Leave it to ELLE Magazine to photochop the world’s most beautiful woman. Aishwarya Rai, the reigning queen of Indian cinema, model and classically trained dancer is currently on the cover of ELLE India — several shades lighter. Rai’s skin has been lightened and her dark brown hair appears to have a red tint to it.

The Times of India reported the former Miss World is “furious with the bleaching botch-up” and is considering taking legal action against ELLE.

ELLE’s mission is to make women “chic and smart, guide their self-expression, and encourage their personal power,” but their recent covers could lead readers to believe that “chic, smart and personal empowerment” only comes to those with light skin.

H/T to Tim Harford for the link.

December 21, 2010

This goes far beyond accepting the end of “DADT”

Filed under: Asia, Health, Military — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 13:40

As I posted back in January, one of the problems western troops have in dealing with Pashtuns in Afghanistan is the radically different sexual culture, including barely concealed pedophilia:

The vast gulf between U.S. and Afghan attitudes about homosexuality and pedophilia has generated concern among U.S. advisers in Afghanistan since the American presence there began to expand.

In late 2009, U.S. and British forces ordered a study of Pashtun male sexuality. They were worried that homosexuality and pedophilia among Afghan security forces and tribes could create cultural misunderstanding with allied troops, according to a copy of the report obtained by The Washington Examiner.

[. . .]

“I know Marines and soldiers who have refused to work with Afghan military or police,” said one U.S. military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “It’s not about homosexuality as much as it is about the young boys. Some of them like to show pictures on their cell phone — that should be illegal. Some of the Afghans have their own young boys they use for sexual purposes and we can’t do anything about it.”

[. . .]

“Homosexuality is strictly prohibited in Islam, but cultural interpretations of Islamic teaching prevalent in Pashtun areas of southern Afghanistan tacitly condone it in comparison to heterosexual relationships,” the study states.

For a male to have sex with a boy is considered a “foible,” the report said. By contrast, having sex with an “ineligible woman” would set up “issues of revenge and honor killings.”

Years of living under that cultural construct have greatly altered sexual attitudes, the study said. “One of the country’s favorite sayings is ‘women are for children, boys are for pleasure,” the report noted.

December 19, 2010

Something else for your Christmas list

Filed under: Humour — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 00:04

H/T to Gerard Vanderleun for the link.

December 1, 2010

This should be good for stirring up spirited debate

Filed under: Media, Science — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:52

Sarah Bee reports on the kerfuffle around Satoshi Kanazawa’s book Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature:

Women long for the classic Barbie figure with big boobs, long blonde hair and blue eyes because it makes men want to impregnate them, an evolutionary psychologist has proclaimed.

London School of Economics reader Satoshi Kanazawa has successfully manipulated the more malleable and shameless news outlets into excitedly regurgitating the provocative theories contained in his book, Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature. He explains that the traditional attributes of the buxom blonde babe have evolutionary advantages, as the Daily Mail duly recounts.

Big boobs are supposedly indicative of fertility, along with a large waist-to-hip ratio. Blonde hair displays grey hairs less obviously, thus concealing age — men prefer the younger bird for a better shot at passing on their DNA, sensibly enough.

Blue eyes, Kanazawa points out, more clearly display pupil dilation, which occurs when the peepers’ owner sees something she likes. Thus a man can tell more quickly if a blue-eyed woman fancies a bit or not, saving precious sharking time at the bar.

Kanazawa further postulates that women are getting hotter and having lovelier daughters, while men are regrettably as fugly as ever they were. Beautiful women have more children than the overlooked homely types, and also have more female children, and on it goes in a wondrous babeification of the species.

This is a case where the science may point in a direction that is so politically and socially unwelcome that everyone just ignores it. Or it could be a huge joke to put the politically correct folks into a lather. Pick your option and season to taste.

November 22, 2010

US Army suddenly discovers that women are shaped differently

Filed under: Military, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 13:07

It’s things like this that reinforce the impression that the military still hasn’t grown used to the fact that women are serving in combat zones:

Over the past seven years, the U.S. Army has responded to complaints from the troops about the combat uniform (ACU, or ACUPAT, for Army Combat Uniform camouflage pattern). But now the army is fixing a set of problems that have long been ignored; how the ACU fits women. Up to fifteen percent of the troops in combat zones are women, and the new uniform recognizes this. The older ACU just assumed female troops were one of the guys, which they are not. Women have a different shape, and that is very true when it comes to ACUs, and their placement of the waistline, many pockets and pouches for things like knee pads. What worked for the male body, did not work for female troops. Everything was just a little bit (or a lot) off, making the ACU much less comfortable for women doing the same jobs as the guys. So the army simply designed an ACU version based on the shape of the female body. The first prototypes were given to women to try out, and after a few hours, all the female troops asked where they could buy some more of them. Unfortunately, the female ACU won’t be available for another two years. Lots of additional tests have to be performed to make sure all the details are correctly incorporated.

Perhaps the physical variation among “average” women is relatively greater than that among “average” men, but it’s still surprising that the US Army is only now taking that into account.

November 21, 2010

Pat Condell: Human Rights Travesty

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Liberty, Religion — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:20

November 3, 2010

Maybe US politics have become “post-racial” after all

Filed under: Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:19

One of the worries before the US midterm elections (aside from the Democrat fears of a Republican “tidal wave”) was that the number of female elected representatives would drop. That may have happened, but the unexpected result is an increase in the number of minority candidates elected:

The Republican wave produced groundbreaking results for minority candidates, from Latina and Indian-American governors to a pair of black congressmen from the Deep South.

In New Mexico, Susana Martinez was elected as the nation’s first female Hispanic governor. Nikki Haley, whose parents were born in India, will be the first woman governor in South Carolina, and Brian Sandoval became Nevada’s first Hispanic governor.

Insurance company owner Tim Scott will be the first black Republican congressman from South Carolina since Reconstruction, after easily winning in his conservative district. Scott, a 45-year-old state representative, earned a primary victory over the son of the one-time segregationist U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond.

In Florida, veteran Allen West ousted a two-term Democrat to a House seat. He is the first black Republican elected to Congress from Florida since a former slave served two terms in the 1870s.

The last black Republican in Congress was J.C. Watts of Oklahoma. He left office in 2003. There were 42 black Democrats in Congress this term.

October 19, 2010

The less-visible effects of workplace demographic changes

Filed under: Economics, History, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:12

Monty points out that we’ve passed a significant equilibrium point in employment statistics:

Women are vital to the American workforce, and have been since at least the 1940’s, but this recession may have shifted the balance of economic power decisively to women. Men have been the traditional household “breadwinners”, with the wife’s income being seen as augmenting the male’s income, but this recession has hit men disproportionately harder than women. Women are far more likely to work in industries (like services and healthcare) that are more insulated from the downturn, whereas men are far more likely to work in the hard-hit trades and manufacturing sectors. Women also have many more protections — both regulatory and social/cultural — than men do. There are many deep ramifications to this change — the impact of long-term male unemployment on the family; the loss of status, power and prestige that goes with being unemployed; the male self-image and value to society. (Studies of unemployed men during the Great Depression are not happy reading — many of the chronically unemployed males left their families rather than assume a lower status in the family, and were also far more likely to be dictatorial and violent towards their wives and children.)

Social support agencies are not well-equipped to deal with this change, and it will continue to disrupt “normal” life for years to come, unless the economy is allowed to right itself — yet another excellent reason to tell the politicians to stop meddling.

Another valuable observation from the same post:

This is a point I’ve made many times: the economic demographic most impacted by immigrant labor are teens. Low-end “starter” jobs tend to be low-skill, low-paying, part-time jobs, and adult immigrants are often favored over teens for these jobs by employers (they often have families to support, are considered more reliable, etc.). This means that the teen labor-participation percentage has fallen from 50% in 1970 to 25% today. (And even 25% is probably too high.) When faced with this lack of job opportunities, teens often opt to go back to school — but this in turn saddles them with a lot of debt for (in many cases) not much gain. For many teens, it’s simply a way of deferring adulthood, not a way to gain additional skills or knowledge. (I had my first paying job at 14; my first “real” W2 job at 16. I worked nearly full-time all the way through college, and worked full-time during the summers. I wonder how rare this is now?) Another interesting aspect to the immigrant/teen issue: the language barrier. If you’re a teen who doesn’t speak Spanish, just try and get a landscaping or construction job in the Southwest. The same goes for many fast-food crews and oil-change/tire-repair places. Still, we’re not the only ones with immigrant troubles.

Another side to the increasing longevity of western culture is the delayed start to “adult” life: now that a college diploma or university degree has about the same relevance that a high school diploma did a generation ago, young folks are entering the workforce several years later than earlier generations. This delays family formation, children, home-buying, and all the other aspects of independent-from-the-parents life.

No wonder so many of the “rules” no longer seem to apply with so many things changing.

October 14, 2010

Old stereotypes still thrive in niche ecologies

Filed under: Humour, Randomness — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:49

An exchange that wouldn’t have been at all surprising in, say, 1950:

"Jo,
As much as I appreciate your reply, I think this manuscript is perahps [sic] too heavy for you.
Don't get me wrong, I am not remeaning [sic] your professionalism, it's just VERY profound and maybe too much for a female to edit.
A delicate mind I do not want editing this.
Best regards,
Etc"

Jo Caird called on deep reserves of patience to respond:

"Dear Etc,
Thanks for your prompt reply.
Thanks too for your candid (not to mention eloquently expressed - although I believe the word you were looking for was 'demeaning', not 'remeaning') appraisal of my intellectual and professional capabilities. It's reassuring to me, as a 'female' (again, I believe you mean 'woman') of delicate sensibilities and feeble judgement, to know that considerate gentlemen such as yourself exist to protect me from that which I lack the depth of character to understand.
As to how you've assessed that I am too weak-minded to work on, or even indeed to read, your manuscript, given that we have never met, or even spoken on the phone, I can only speculate. I wish you, in any case, all the best with it.
Have a lovely weekend.
Kind regards,
Jo"

H/T to Tim Harford for the link.

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