The NationStates Feminist Thread II

[Liberonscien]

Pretty much. Also, we tend to notice it more when women act compassionately due to confirmation bias (and vice versa, overlooking when women are cruel and painting cruelty committed by men as more heinous - just look at our prison sentencing habits and how we view female-on-male violence) and often subtly teach men that they should not participate in compassionate behaviors we deem as "womanly" such as crying or touching - there's always that complicated blur between how the sexes are taught to act vs. how they evolved to generally act, but regardless, eliminating the bias these differences create and looking at raw compassion itself yields no difference. And when push comes to shove, women have no shortage in their capacity for callousness. Humans are social but tribalistic animals, period. When the right buttons are pushed, any one of us can be made to act in any way.

I mean, maybe, but you'd be hard pressed to engineer a situation where I would be naked juggling assorted fruit standing atop a giant pyramid surrounded by thousands of naked women throwing tiny pickles at me again.

Again?

[Philjia]

Take a Break is the most circulated women's magazine in the UK (Selling about 600,000 issues a year), even though there can't be anyone who wants to read it who isn't some kind of slightly sordid voyeur. Clearly there's something wrong with people.

[Mattopilos]

I wonder what SMURF would stand for.

Sexual Mores Undermining Radical Feminists If I say so myself, that's clever.

*Looks at Real life examples*
*Sees anarchism*
I cri erry teim

[Mattopilos]

Take a Break is the most circulated women's magazine in the UK (Selling about 600,000 issues a year), even though there can't be anyone who wants to read it who isn't some kind of slightly sordid voyeur. Clearly there's something wrong with people.

Most magazines are G A R B AG E, honestly. Far too focused on celebrity gossip. Women's magazines are especially like that.

[Philjia]

Take a Break is the most circulated women's magazine in the UK (Selling about 600,000 issues a year), even though there can't be anyone who wants to read it who isn't some kind of slightly sordid voyeur. Clearly there's something wrong with people.

Most magazines are G A R B AG E, honestly. Far too focused on celebrity gossip. Women's magazines are especially like that.

Take a Break is mostly filled with the most weird/depraved true life stories they can find.

[Costa Fierro]

Seems like more gender role issues, then.

Indeed. This whole, "Women should be in charge because they're naturally more compassionate!" is no different from times of old that said, "Men should be in charge because they're naturally more intelligent/level-headed/brave/moral!"

Like, no, everybody step the fuck down, genitals aren't a leadership skill. Invoking an incidental trait of yours for power and respect you haven't actually done shit to earn is one of the most pathetic activities humanity has constructed.

Someone should tell the DNC that next time their candidate happens to have a vagina.

[New Edom]

Seems like more gender role issues, then.

Indeed. This whole, "Women should be in charge because they're naturally more compassionate!" is no different from times of old that said, "Men should be in charge because they're naturally more intelligent/level-headed/brave/moral!"

Like, no, everybody step the fuck down, genitals aren't a leadership skill. Invoking an incidental trait of yours for power and respect you haven't actually done shit to earn is one of the most pathetic activities humanity has constructed.

Actually I beg to differ. It's difficult to dispute the fact that the following things appear to be historically true, that:
1. Different general races and types of people have had different leaps and bounds in technology and economic control of geographic regions--Chinese, Mongols, Egyptians, Arabs, Turks, Europeans, Incas, Aztecs, etc

2. That women, arguably, have never really dominated vast civilizations as far as anyone can tell since the dawn of recorded history and

3. That if you compare currently existing hunter-gatherer societies with possible neolithic or paleolithic peoples that while women may have had a role in society which varied in power, they almost never RULED
to the exclusion of men except in cases of small village level types of societies and

4. That it's reasonable to conclude therefore that the only reason why women are so equal now is because of technology. But why EXACTLY we're still figuring out.

5. Other social animals often ARE divided in their roles by their sex. This is often more complex than it appears but it's generally true. This is particularly true where the species are sexually dimorphic, and appears to be more strongly and visibly true when the dimorphism is visible at a distance. So why should human beings be an exception?

Now don't get me wrong: I think that the technology is a good thing, but I'm just looking at this with honest thoughtfulness. I mean I'm legally blind, and I know that a hundred years ago my options would have been a lot more limited. I could not see at all were it not for operations on the retina that were made possible by modern science. This doesn't mean I'm less intelligent than other people, but biological issues challenged my ability to be effective. So in a way it's the same with women on a biological social basis. Things like The Pill, the invention of home labour saving devices, improved medical technology, and intense industrialization freed women from many of their former obligations socially but also biologically at the same time.

So it's not really stupid--for millenia division of labour by gender actually made a lot of sense.

[GabrieIa]

All i know is that you three or how many there were did not read what i wrote.

[Galloism]

All i know is that you three or how many there were did not read what i wrote.

You posted a very interesting link on differences in approach to sexuality across gender.

Unfortunately, that had nothing to do with the subject of compassion.

[New Edom]

What is your source for that?

Can you provide any proof for this? What are some examples of women caring more about the people?

I am sorry you two, but i need to start to wind down to sleep. It is that late at night here. I need to not debate right now, but will continue with this when you two want. Here is one thing i found, http://www.sexscience.org/PDFs/Gender%2 ... 0Final.pdf Just use this for right now. I am to tired to check it

Others had commented on it and I wanted to see what you had to say in response since I would have made the same point they did but I'll comment now.

First of all, the article is interesting and suggests that a lot of futherstudy is required to understand the differences between male and female sexuality and what they also have in common. What's rather interesting to me as well is that both men and women are equally 'more open' to sexual experience but from different positions.

However whle this is extremely interesting it doesn't explain at all why women would make better leaders than men. It doesn'teven touch on the subject of leadership, anywhere. Nor does it talk about compassion, altruism or social responsibility. Maybe you meant to link a different article?

[Ostroeuropa]

http://www.livescience.com/8698-study-r ... ogize.html

But it's not that men are reluctant to admit wrongdoing, the study shows. It's just that they have a higher threshold for what they think warrants reparation. When the researchers looked at the number of apologies relative to the number of offenses the participants perceived they had committed, the researchers saw no differences between the genders.

"Men aren't actively resisting apologizing because they think it will make them appear weak or because they don't want to take responsibility for their actions," said study researcher Karina Schumann, a doctoral student in social psychology at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. "It seems to be that when they think they've done something wrong they do apologize just as frequently as when women think they've done something wrong. It's just that they think they've done fewer things wrong.”

Combine with:

http://www.cell.com/current-biology/ful ... 60-9822(16)30663-7

(Link borked. copy/paste.)

(Women are less quick to forgive, hold grudges longer than men.)

And you get an interesting dynamic, especially when framed around womens complaints that men talk to them differently/with kid gloves.

If you also bare in mind our earlier discussions about criticism of womens work in the workplace by male managers etc, a picture starts to form of what the major roadblock is to a lot of progress.

From the perspective of men, we're dealing with a group of people who get angry about shit we can't see coming and think is inconsequential. (As in, the men do not view their behavior as worth noting prior to the action nor after it.)
They also expect to be treated better than men are, or get angry about it. (Benevolent sexism responses.)
Oh.
And they hold grudges for a long time.

It's actually a fairly abusive dynamic.
Women outside these trends are, obviously, not included in this.

[Hirota]

All i know is that you three or how many there were did not read what i wrote.

You wrote nothing to do with what was asked.

[Giovenith]

All i know is that you three or how many there were did not read what i wrote.

I suspect that you yourself didn't read it. You posted a link about behavior in sexuality, not behavior in general. I don't know if you've noticed this, but most humans spend the vast majority of time doing other things besides fucking. Applying how someone acts in the bedroom to how they act in the rest of their life is not only erroneous, but completely backwards in the cases of a good many people, as it's pretty damn common knowledge that people often apply behavior they otherwise wouldn't during sex (someone who is usually nice and gentle may let out their frustrations through rough sex, someone whose life demands they take charge a lot may feel relaxed from being submissive and receiving, someone may use cuss words more often, someone may roleplay a scenario they'd never condone in real life, etc.)

[Neutraligon]

Fair enough.

So why do you think women make better leaders than men? What proof do you have that that is or could be true?

Hmm, science is on my side with this. For one they have more compassion, they care more about the people. Now dont tell me the exceptions because there are some

Mind showing why this necessarily makes a better leader? In my view compassion can be a hindrance to a leader. Oh and mind providing these studies?

[Tahar Joblis]

Take a Break is the most circulated women's magazine in the UK (Selling about 600,000 issues a year), even though there can't be anyone who wants to read it who isn't some kind of slightly sordid voyeur. Clearly there's something wrong with people.

It is a bit disturbing how much of the media marketed to women is designed to appeal to the exact opposite of compassion. That's not to say that schadenfreude is completely absent in media marketed to men, either. There's a whole subgenre of male-marketed comedy that I simply can't enjoy in the way they're intended to enjoy as a result.

Directly to the point of leadership, we can look at the historical record and look at various female leaders. That's not really a large enough sample size to show definitely equal warmongering behavior between men and women leaders, but we have seen enough to thoroughly falsify the idea that women are significantly different from men. Elizabeth I had her fair share of wars; Catherine the Great was the first Russian leader to annex Crimea; and need I say any more than "Margaret Thatcher"?

YMMV, but I think the big differences in compassion come down not to a main effect of sex, but patterns based on actor/target sex. You can choose methods of measuring compassion that will "prove" that either men or women are more compassionate overall. For example, if you ask subjects to self-report their level of empathy, women will (on average) claim higher levels of empathy. If you conduct a field experiment out on the street somewhere using a subject that needs help, men will (on average) be more likely to respond.

Women generally don't have compassion for generic men, but reserve a large amount of compassion for specific men - husbands, brothers, sons, boyfriends, all the way out to celebrity crushes in some cases. Women generally have compassion for generic women. Both men and women tend to be more compassionate towards women, period.

[Ostroeuropa]

Take a Break is the most circulated women's magazine in the UK (Selling about 600,000 issues a year), even though there can't be anyone who wants to read it who isn't some kind of slightly sordid voyeur. Clearly there's something wrong with people.

It is a bit disturbing how much of the media marketed to women is designed to appeal to the exact opposite of compassion. That's not to say that schadenfreude is completely absent in media marketed to men, either. There's a whole subgenre of male-marketed comedy that I simply can't enjoy in the way they're intended to enjoy as a result.

Directly to the point of leadership, we can look at the historical record and look at various female leaders. That's not really a large enough sample size to show definitely equal warmongering behavior between men and women leaders, but we have seen enough to thoroughly falsify the idea that women are significantly different from men. Elizabeth I had her fair share of wars; Catherine the Great was the first Russian leader to annex Crimea; and need I say any more than "Margaret Thatcher"?

YMMV, but I think the big differences in compassion come down not to a main effect of sex, but patterns based on actor/target sex. You can choose methods of measuring compassion that will "prove" that either men or women are more compassionate overall. For example, if you ask subjects to self-report their level of empathy, women will (on average) claim higher levels of empathy. If you conduct a field experiment out on the street somewhere using a subject that needs help, men will (on average) be more likely to respond.

Women generally don't have compassion for generic men, but reserve a large amount of compassion for specific men - husbands, brothers, sons, boyfriends, all the way out to celebrity crushes in some cases. Women generally have compassion for generic women. Both men and women tend to be more compassionate towards women, period.

Can I get a source on the bolded/underlined for future usage please?

Incidentally I think a lot of this is due to the same dynamic.

Women initiate most domestic violence situations and such, caused more wars than men did when in charge (See previous pages, your point about sample sizes not withstanding) etc.
I theorize this is due to simply being told over and over again they aren't violent, so they never learn the same self-restraint men do.

It's like raising kids and calling them "Smart" VS calling them "Hard working" and the effects this has on their performance.
(Calling them smart has a tendency to mean they rely on innate traits and perform worse than peers told they are hard working.)

A consequence of spamming women with the idea that they are empathetic, is to retard their capacity for empathy.

All of this made worse when women internalize this stuff and get angry when confronted on it. I suspect calling women as a group out on their relative lack of empathy for men is going to be like pulling teeth.

[GabrieIa]

All i know is that you three or how many there were did not read what i wrote.

You posted a very interesting link on differences in approach to sexuality across gender.

Unfortunately, that had nothing to do with the subject of compassion.

Did not read it to little time last night i will tonight.

All i know is that you three or how many there were did not read what i wrote.

You wrote nothing to do with what was asked.

Called being tired.

All i know is that you three or how many there were did not read what i wrote.

I suspect that you yourself didn't read it. You posted a link about behavior in sexuality, not behavior in general. I don't know if you've noticed this, but most humans spend the vast majority of time doing other things besides fucking. Applying how someone acts in the bedroom to how they act in the rest of their life is not only erroneous, but completely backwards in the cases of a good many people, as it's pretty damn common knowledge that people often apply behavior they otherwise wouldn't during sex (someone who is usually nice and gentle may let out their frustrations through rough sex, someone whose life demands they take charge a lot may feel relaxed from being submissive and receiving, someone may use cuss words more often, someone may roleplay a scenario they'd never condone in real life, etc.)

Look up

[New Edom]

You posted a very interesting link on differences in approach to sexuality across gender.

Unfortunately, that had nothing to do with the subject of compassion.

Did not read it to little time last night i will tonight.

You wrote nothing to do with what was asked.

Called being tired.

I suspect that you yourself didn't read it. You posted a link about behavior in sexuality, not behavior in general. I don't know if you've noticed this, but most humans spend the vast majority of time doing other things besides fucking. Applying how someone acts in the bedroom to how they act in the rest of their life is not only erroneous, but completely backwards in the cases of a good many people, as it's pretty damn common knowledge that people often apply behavior they otherwise wouldn't during sex (someone who is usually nice and gentle may let out their frustrations through rough sex, someone whose life demands they take charge a lot may feel relaxed from being submissive and receiving, someone may use cuss words more often, someone may roleplay a scenario they'd never condone in real life, etc.)

Look up

So you were tired and...?

Tired and you put up the wrong link?

Tired and you didn't bother to read what you linked?

Tired and you read the material in the link incorrectly?

I'm trying to understand this, because you didn't exactly write down stuf yourself at great length; you wrote a sentence and provided a link. So do you have a better link now or can we chalk your claim up to imagination and move on?

[New Edom]

Take a Break is the most circulated women's magazine in the UK (Selling about 600,000 issues a year), even though there can't be anyone who wants to read it who isn't some kind of slightly sordid voyeur. Clearly there's something wrong with people.

It is a bit disturbing how much of the media marketed to women is designed to appeal to the exact opposite of compassion. That's not to say that schadenfreude is completely absent in media marketed to men, either. There's a whole subgenre of male-marketed comedy that I simply can't enjoy in the way they're intended to enjoy as a result.

Directly to the point of leadership, we can look at the historical record and look at various female leaders. That's not really a large enough sample size to show definitely equal warmongering behavior between men and women leaders, but we have seen enough to thoroughly falsify the idea that women are significantly different from men. Elizabeth I had her fair share of wars; Catherine the Great was the first Russian leader to annex Crimea; and need I say any more than "Margaret Thatcher"?

YMMV, but I think the big differences in compassion come down not to a main effect of sex, but patterns based on actor/target sex. You can choose methods of measuring compassion that will "prove" that either men or women are more compassionate overall. For example, if you ask subjects to self-report their level of empathy, women will (on average) claim higher levels of empathy. If you conduct a field experiment out on the street somewhere using a subject that needs help, men will (on average) be more likely to respond.

Women generally don't have compassion for generic men, but reserve a large amount of compassion for specific men - husbands, brothers, sons, boyfriends, all the way out to celebrity crushes in some cases. Women generally have compassion for generic women. Both men and women tend to be more compassionate towards women, period.

I would say that this is generally true, yes. Because you are right, there is a perception, guided by popular media, that women are more compassionate and kind, even more wise deep down than men are--in spite of a complete lack of evidence that this is true.

Part of the issue here is the notion of women as nurturers. It is true that in some animal species, humans among them, there are a set of chemical reactions that can take place between a parent of the species (most often the female but not always--seahorses come to mind) and create a bond which makes it possible for the parent to spend resources and focus on the offspring. Of course as with anything this may work or may not work. So this can create a kind of imitation effect between people and pets, friends or other relationships or objects.

The problem is that this is not a general social sense of compassion. In fact I would argue that compassion is far less about feelings than it is about ethics. And one thing that concerns me when this subject is brought up is that I see a huge range of behaviours spurred by empathy that have nothing to do with ethics. So there can be this war of empathy that is really more about attachments than about what has been established to be 'right' as in best for fostering generally good public behaviour in a society.

[New Edom]

http://www.livescience.com/8698-study-reveals-women-apologize.html

But it's not that men are reluctant to admit wrongdoing, the study shows. It's just that they have a higher threshold for what they think warrants reparation. When the researchers looked at the number of apologies relative to the number of offenses the participants perceived they had committed, the researchers saw no differences between the genders.

"Men aren't actively resisting apologizing because they think it will make them appear weak or because they don't want to take responsibility for their actions," said study researcher Karina Schumann, a doctoral student in social psychology at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. "It seems to be that when they think they've done something wrong they do apologize just as frequently as when women think they've done something wrong. It's just that they think they've done fewer things wrong.”

Combine with:

http://www.cell.com/current-biology/ful ... 60-9822(16)30663-7

(Link borked. copy/paste.)

(Women are less quick to forgive, hold grudges longer than men.)

And you get an interesting dynamic, especially when framed around womens complaints that men talk to them differently/with kid gloves.

If you also bare in mind our earlier discussions about criticism of womens work in the workplace by male managers etc, a picture starts to form of what the major roadblock is to a lot of progress.

From the perspective of men, we're dealing with a group of people who get angry about shit we can't see coming and think is inconsequential. (As in, the men do not view their behavior as worth noting prior to the action nor after it.)
They also expect to be treated better than men are, or get angry about it. (Benevolent sexism responses.)
Oh.
And they hold grudges for a long time.

It's actually a fairly abusive dynamic.
Women outside these trends are, obviously, not included in this.

I think that one thing feminists almost never address is bad behaviour on the part of women. Somehow that has become something that is against empowerment. I think that this actually makes it LESS effective though.

In some respects, some bad behaviour from women was tolerated because women did lack public authorit and respect in a lot of areas--women had different roles. But as equal relations in a number of areas have increased, feminists seem very reluctant to let go of the way women were treated when they didn't run for office, when they didnt compete in business or expect to be taken seriously as police.

So in fact when people like Jesica Valenti cry out that they're being abused because people get mad at them online, and they don't distinguish between people who are just troll and people who have a point. Like when she hilariously wrote about how women are overcharged at the store for products that are marketed for women but cost less when marketed for men. Rightly, she got razzed for this since the main comments she got wherever this article was posted were "Then don't buy them. Buy the men's products." Did she ever admit that her detractors had a point? No. But sure, the internet is a tough place for women.

[Tahar Joblis]

Can I get a source on the bolded/underlined for future usage please?

Can't find the particular exemplar studies I'm thinking of, but this is probably a good starting point. There are a couple of very interesting features in that paper. You can get a lot of them out of the tables.

Table 3 summarizes studies. Note in particular the categorical variables, because they matter a lot.

Table 4 gives the relationship of the categorical variables to the data, in order. Respectively - and the categories aren't necessarily unrelated:

• Men help more often than women (+0.50) in field experiments off-campus (3), while women help more often than men (-0.18) in experiments conducted in the laboratory setting (1).
• Men help more often than women (+0.74) in experiments where there are clearly other people watching (3), while if it is clear from the study that nobody else is observing (1), there is little difference (-0.02) .
• The difference between men and women helping is stronger (+0.42) when there are other potential helpers around (2), as opposed (+0.20) to cases in which there aren't.
• Men help more often (+0.55) than women in experiments where the subject is simply presented with a situation where someone needs help (2), as opposed to situations in which help is explicitly asked for (1), where it is close to equal (+0.07).

So if you conduct an experiment where you have someone out in the wild who presents a need for help - e.g., helping a man who fell in a subway - that will usually show men as more helpful. Some specific types of helping are likely gendered for other reasons (e.g., the car trouble studies). There are numerous alternate explanations for these differences - men making a display out of altruism, women being more susceptible to bystander effects, etc.

Now, what's most interesting about this paper in particular is that they did a questionnaire and asked a subject pool of respondents about whether or not they, or an average man / woman, would help someone in each of the situations described... and then, well, I'll just quote directly:

The mean sex differences in these judgments, aggregated across all of the helping behaviors (see Table 1), were in the female direction and thus were inconsistent in direction with the overall sex difference in helping behavior (see Table 2).

There is some thought among experts that women engage in more "helping" behavior with intimate acquaintances and family members as opposed to strangers, while men are more helpful to strangers; the former is generally not amenable to controlled study.

[Giovenith]

You posted a very interesting link on differences in approach to sexuality across gender.

Unfortunately, that had nothing to do with the subject of compassion.

Did not read it to little time last night i will tonight.

You wrote nothing to do with what was asked.

Called being tired.

I suspect that you yourself didn't read it. You posted a link about behavior in sexuality, not behavior in general. I don't know if you've noticed this, but most humans spend the vast majority of time doing other things besides fucking. Applying how someone acts in the bedroom to how they act in the rest of their life is not only erroneous, but completely backwards in the cases of a good many people, as it's pretty damn common knowledge that people often apply behavior they otherwise wouldn't during sex (someone who is usually nice and gentle may let out their frustrations through rough sex, someone whose life demands they take charge a lot may feel relaxed from being submissive and receiving, someone may use cuss words more often, someone may roleplay a scenario they'd never condone in real life, etc.)

Look up

You say that as if it's a point against us and not an indication of your own intellectual laziness.

When you can't be half-assed to even make sure that a source claims what you say it claims, it tells us that you don't actually research, you pull shit out of your ass and assume the data is on your side without bothering to check. It tells us that your views about the world are as good as figments of your imagination since you're evidently not repeating anything you actually read from a reliable source, just describing what you wish it said.

[Galloism]

Did not read it to little time last night i will tonight.

Called being tired.

Look up

You say that as if it's a point against us and not an indication of your own intellectual laziness.

When you can't be half-assed to even make sure that a source claims what you say it claims, it tells us that you don't actually research, you pull shit out of your ass and assume the data is on your side without bothering to check. It tells us that your views about the world are as good as figments of your imagination since you're evidently not repeating anything you actually read from a reliable source, just describing what you wish it said.

I want to say I broadly approve of this post.

I hereby take credit for it as ghost rider.

[Hittanryan]

You posted a very interesting link on differences in approach to sexuality across gender.

Unfortunately, that had nothing to do with the subject of compassion.

Did not read it to little time last night i will tonight.

You wrote nothing to do with what was asked.

Called being tired.

I suspect that you yourself didn't read it. You posted a link about behavior in sexuality, not behavior in general. I don't know if you've noticed this, but most humans spend the vast majority of time doing other things besides fucking. Applying how someone acts in the bedroom to how they act in the rest of their life is not only erroneous, but completely backwards in the cases of a good many people, as it's pretty damn common knowledge that people often apply behavior they otherwise wouldn't during sex (someone who is usually nice and gentle may let out their frustrations through rough sex, someone whose life demands they take charge a lot may feel relaxed from being submissive and receiving, someone may use cuss words more often, someone may roleplay a scenario they'd never condone in real life, etc.)

Look up

So let's move on from that paper. Do you have evidence that women are more compassionate? What about evidence that they make better leaders?

[Vashty]

You say that as if it's a point against us and not an indication of your own intellectual laziness.

When you can't be half-assed to even make sure that a source claims what you say it claims, it tells us that you don't actually research, you pull shit out of your ass and assume the data is on your side without bothering to check. It tells us that your views about the world are as good as figments of your imagination since you're evidently not repeating anything you actually read from a reliable source, just describing what you wish it said.

I want to say I broadly approve of this post.

I hereby take credit for it as ghost rider.

So, you're a flaming skeleton on a motorbike.....


sexy