Tuesday, October 16, 2007 - Posts
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But surely this was Sommers' point: How will we ever be able to talk about sex differences in an interesting way if we're not allowed to study them? If the subject is an academic taboo, then the same old cliches will just live on for another generation. Or ten generations.
And the Ahmadinejad comparison is actually quite interesting. I hated the fact that Columbia invited him, hated the accompanying self-important blather about free speech in America - the real subject should have been free speech in Iran - hated the Iranian president's transparently political motives for being there. On the other hand, when he did actually speak, he sounded so utterly ridiculous - "there are no homosexuals in my country" - that he mortally damaged his own "I'm-the-real- democrat-here" propaganda.
By the same token, open discussion of intellectual differences between men and women might well prevent the idea of a naturally scientific male brain from scaring off brilliant young female scientists. If any of them are actually scared, which I very much doubt.
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Yes, Larry Summers should be able to speak at Davis. He's done his time (and lost his job). But I'm not ready to says he's a hero for telling it like it is about women and the sciences, which is what Sommers implies. During the fracas over his remarks in 2005, Meghan O'Rourke wrote this good piece for Slate. Her point was that when a university president--with all the cachet that job entails--talks about biological sex differences, he better do it with intellectual rigor and tact. Summers had neither really.
Of course, he's not alone. We all tend to degenerate into generalization and flippancy when we talk about sex differences. This morning one of my co-workers was worrying about a conversation he'd had with a mother at his daughter's school, who'd tried to talk to him about rearranging a playdate for his kid and hers. He hadn't known anything about the arrangement in the first place, and I said that most moms would know not to try to talk playdate with a dad. Which didn't exactly give him credit for trying to sort it all out, or encourage him to try again next time. This is why when my husband chides me for referring to "my kitchen," I say I'm sorry. At least I think I do.
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Christina Hoff Sommers has an interesting op-ed in the WSJ today
about the academic struggles ignited over former Harvard President Larry Summers remarks about why women are not better represented in the hard sciences. On one hand an invitation for Summers to speak at U.C.-Davis was rescinded because, a faculty petition said, he "has come to symbolize gender and racial prejudice." (Can we agree it's outrageous that Ahmadinejad is allowed to speak at Columbia but Summers can't speak at Davis?) On the other, researchers in brain science are actively exploring how male and female brain differ.
The other day I was talking to my sixth-grade daughter about school and I asked her who the smartest kids in her class were. She listed a bunch of boys. "What about the girls?" I asked. "There are lots of smart girls, but they're not the smartest. But most of the kids who at the bottom are also boys." This is exactly one of the observations -- males are over-represented at the lowest and highest ends -- that got Summers in trouble. (Of course I told her she could forget becoming president of Harvard.) Discouragingly, she also told me that while the majority of candidates for class office were girls, the boys got more votes for class president. This is because, she explained, "Girls will vote for a boy. But boys would never vote for a girl." (I will not extrapolate from her class to the nation.)
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It's almost as good as NASCAR for girls. (Via Feministing)
It seems the war between the genders is about to be resolved by the opening of Her Depot. Honest to God: It's Home Depot for women! Super-duper clean and no belt sanders or socketwrenches. It's just curtain ties and more curtain ties as far as the eye can see.
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