Sep 12 2013

Why are women more religious, in belief and in practice, than men?

Why are women more religious, in belief and in practice, than men?

1.  Religious belief is more of an emotional thing than a cognitive thing.  (Consider the fact that merely thinking about religious beliefs is usually sufficient to reveal they’re unwarranted.)  And women are raised to be more emotional than cognitive; men are raised to be more cognitive than emotional (in fact, they are encouraged, even taught, to deny their emotions).

2.  Religious authority figures, mythological (God, Allah, Zeus, and so on) and real (priests, rabbi, ministers, and so on), are male.  And since women are raised to be subservient to males, to regard males as authorities, it’s easy for them to accept God, for example, as an authority and to subordinate themselves to him.  Men, on the other hand, are encouraged to be the authority; they’re also encouraged to compete with other men.  So to accept God, for example, as an authority and to subordinate themselves to him would not be easy – in fact, it would be emasculating.  (Which is why the macho Promise Keepers came to be.)  (And why the movement’s popularity didn’t last very long.)

3.  Except for the war element (note that men are okay with claiming religious belief when it’s associated with war), religion is very much about morality.  (Or so people think.)  And it’s women who are the designated moral guardians: young women are the ‘gatekeepers’ when it comes to pre-marital sex (often considered immoral), wives are referred to by their husbands as ‘their better half’ (‘better’ referring to some quality of moral goodness), and mothers are assumed to have the primary responsibility of teaching their children right from wrong.  

When a man introduces the matter of morality, questioning, for example, whether it’s right to do whatever it is that’s about to be done, he is accused of ‘going soft’, or being weak, or being a ‘boyscout’, or being a ‘bleeding heart’, and so on.  (Note that the last accusation, with its reference to the heart, connects morals with the emotional realm, which neatly connects this point with the first one – as does this excerpt from a novel, whose author I unfortunately failed to note: “The boy’s nothing more than a bleeding heart waiting to cry over this injustice or that!…you’d think we raised a bloody priest.”)

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Sep 05 2013

Is it true that some people can’t think?

I watched The Shawshank Redemption recently and was struck by the scene where the guy says that in solitary confinement he had Mozart to keep him company, and they all express surprise that he was allowed to have a record player, and he says ‘No, in here’ and points to his head—and they all look at him dumbly. With no understanding whatsoever. Shortly before that, I was reading a novel in which someone confesses to making people up and having entire conversations between them in her head, and someone else says something like ‘Really? Being able to make up characters and tell yourself stories is a sign of high intelligence.’ What?

Is that true? Is it the case that some (many?) (most?) people can’t imagine? Or even remember? They can’t close their eyes and picture (remember or imagine) a scene, they can’t hear (remember or imagine) music in their heads, they can’t hold (remember or imagine) conversations in their head? Meaning, if they can’t do the last mentioned, they can’t think? Has there ever been a study about this? Has anyone actually conducted a survey and asked people whether they can do the forementioned?

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Sep 04 2013

Why aren’t women funny?

Well, they are, of course.  It’s just that many men don’t find them funny.  Which is why many stand-up clubs (those managed by men) (that is, almost all of them) actually have a rule: only so many stand-ups on any given night can be women.  Too many and they kill the night.

But, of course, that’s so only in clubs where most of the audience is male.  Because, as I’ve said, men don’t find women funny.  Partly, this could be because men find farts and burps funny.  (Except, of course, when women fart and burp.  For some reason, they find that horrifying.)

The other mainstay of comedy (for both sexes) is ‘(heterosexual) relationship humour’ – so men laugh at the caricatures of women presented by men (and women laugh at the caricatures of men presented by women).

But my guess is that even with sex-neutral comedy, women comedians fare more poorly than men.  A woman tells a socio-political joke, and people (men) just sort of stare at her (as if they’re seeing a dog walking on its hind legs?).  Give a man the same material, and the audience will respond.  Ironically (given my topic), I think this is so because men don’t take women seriously. To laugh at someone’s joke is to accord them some sort of authority, if only the authority to make some sort of comment through humour.

Either that or they’re just not interested in women (except as sexual possibilities).  (I’m reminded of a brilliant skit I once saw, on “A Bit of Fry and Laurie”: a woman was giving a business presentation and all present, mostly men, were paying such close and supportive attention – I was, frankly, surprised (that had certainly never happened to me!); then the woman casually mentioned that she’d come up with her proposal on the weekend when she was out with her boyfriend, and their attention turned off as quickly and as completely as a spotlight – a woman is either a sexual possibility or she doesn’t exist.)

This would explain why, for example, Susan Juby didn’t win the Leacock Medal of Humour with I’m Alice, I think.  It’s a hilarious coming of age story.  But it’s about a girl.  So while generations of girls have had to read about boys coming of age (The Apprentice of Duddy Kravitz, A Separate Peace, Lord of the Flies, Catcher in the Rye, The Outsiders, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, and on and on), boys have only had to read about Anne Frank (no doubt, it was ‘saved’ by the wartime setting) (oh, well, put guns in it and…).  When a boy comes of age, that’s important, because, well, he’s becoming a man.  But when a girl comes of age, well, she becomes a woman.  Unimportant.  In fact, the Medal has been won by a woman only twice in 30 years.  I wonder if the panel of 17 judges consists mostly of men (the judges aren’t named on their site, but the President and Vice-President are, and they’re both men, whereas the two secretaries and person in charge of the dinner? they’re women).

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Aug 31 2013

Sex and Gender Conflated

I recently spent some time at another blog (someone had linked to one of my posts and invited me to the discussion), and I discovered that several of the discussants conflated gender and sex.  I was shocked.  (And in fact, that possibility so didn’t occur to me that I continued the surreal discussion for some time before I realized they’d made that mistake: the moderator objected to my suggestion that we do away with gender, claiming that that was what made us, or at least him, human; another commenter said something like the species couldn’t continue without it).

They seemed to be intelligent people (the moderator was intelligent enough to use the word “incumbent” and to demand evidence for a claim).  So why—how—given the 70s—how is it that the distinction between sex and gender has not become common knowledge?

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Aug 26 2013

The Silence of Descartes and Bacon

Reading (again) (this time in Daly) about how during the Renaissance it was so inconceivable that women were knowledgeable, especially with regard to the human body, that when they cured various ailments, they were not lauded as competent physicians but accused of consorting with the devil; such ‘witches’ were tortured with eye-gougers, branding irons, spine-rollers, forehead tourniquets, thumbscrews, racks, strappados, iron boots, and heating chairs. (A bit over-the-top, one can’t help but note.)

And as both a feminist and a philosopher, I am ashamed to say that it never occurred to me to wonder why Descartes and Bacon didn’t object; nowhere in all their voluminous writing do they address this being-‘punished’-for-knowing-something. So they approved? How could they?

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Aug 23 2013

Taxing the Rich

Of course the rich people should have to pay higher taxes. Not because of some sacrifice for the common good principle or some trickle down principle or some from each according to their ability principle, but because they don’t deserve their money. There, I said it. They don’t deserve their millions.

Even if I worked twenty hours a day, 365 days of the year, I wouldn’t make anywhere near just one million.

So they must be making ten, twenty, a hundred times per hour what I’m making.

Is what they’re doing a hundred times more important than what I’m doing. It’s not even ten times more important. (Let’s say I’m a garbage collector.)

Is it a hundred or ten times more difficult? No. (Let’s say I’m a nurse in the paraplegic ward.)

Does it take a hundred or ten times as much skill or training? No. (Let’s say I’m an astrophysicist.)

Rich people have their millions because they’ve been paid, by others or by themselves, an unfair amount for their work. Or because they know how to work an unfair economic system that, for starters, rewards risk: the stock market.

But why do we reward risk? Because it’s a male thing. And males reward themselves for male values.

Actually, though, often it’s not a risk. If the company they started, the company they invested in, lost millions, they could declare bankruptcy. And other people would pay the price. Not them. Or if they’re really big, if they lost really big, the government might bail them out. That is, us.

Furthermore, they’re not even risking their own money. They probably borrowed the start-up money from the bank. So it’s our money. Or the bank’s money (which is just money they made by investing our money).

Or if it was their own money, well it still wasn’t. It was inherited from their parents. (Who probably inherited it from their parents). Because you can’t have that much money to invest by working and saving. Even if you work twenty hours a day, 365 days a year…

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Aug 22 2013

The Little Birdies

So I’m out walking today, and as I pass a neighbour tending his bird feeder, I wave.

And the guy calls out to me “I’m feeding some seed to the little birdies!”

The little birdies?  What am I, twelve? 

No, I’m female.  (I have a hard time believing that he would’ve said the same thing to a middle-aged man.)

And (many) men talk to women differently than they do to men. They talk to us like we’re children.  Idiot children.

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Aug 19 2013

Police urge riders to use caution after second sexual assault by fake taxi driver.

Right, that’ll work.  Women should use caution.

Okay, as long as we’re putting the responsibility on the women (sigh), how about a women-only taxi service?

Anyone out there looking for a job?  Someone with a BBA could prepare a business plan, someone else could prepare a Kickstarter proposal to get funding (I offer my editing services if need be), and a lawyer to set it up as a franchise or whatever you call it so it can be in every city, and away we go!

Women taxi drivers picking up women customers.  We could grab half the market overnight.

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Aug 17 2013

Reporting What Women Do

What if, for just one year, the media reported 90% of the time what women are doing instead of, as is now the case, what men are doing?

Not because what women do is better, or more newsworthy, but just to see how it would change our outlook, our world view.

The news might be more boring. But then, hey, what does that say?

It would likely involve a lot less death and destruction. Ditto.

It probably would have less to do with money. Again…

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Aug 16 2013

Sex and So You Think You Can Dance

When So You Think You Can Dance first started, they had one winner. In season 9, they decided to have two winners: one male and one female. I thought it was because they realized the odds were stacked in favour of male dancers since most of the viewers/voters were female (and, presumably, heterosexual) (and, presumably, not voting for dance ability as much as for sexual appeal). However, in the preceding eight seasons, there were four female winners and four male winners. The runner-ups were a bit more skewed, with two female and six male.

Then I read in an interview about the change, this comment: “Girls dance totally differently than guys.” Yeah, if that’s what their choreographers demand. (Who may, in turn, be providing, what Nigel Lythgoe and the other producers demand.) I have to say I am so very sick and tired of almost every dance being a presentation of the stereotyped (i.e., gender-role-rigid) heterosexual romance/love/sex scenario, right down to the music, the costumes, and, of course, the moves.

But now, they’ve reverted to one winner – suggesting that sex is irrelevant to dance. Does that mean they’re going to make the dances – the music, the costumes, the moves – as sex-independent? Not likely.

Pity. Because I, for one, would love to see more like Mark Kanumura’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” audition piece and Mandy Moore’s “Boogie Shoes” (the latter was, like the former, pretty much just asexual fun with music and movement despite the gendered costumes – cutesy skirt/dress for one, long pants for the other, pink shoes for the one, blue shoes for the other – yes, yes, we must must MUST separate, distinguish, the girls from the boys, the patriarchy depends on it, the subordination of women depends on it!). (And that’s another thing: would they PLEASE stop calling 18-30 year-olds ‘girls’ and ‘boys’?)

They (the So You Think You Can Dance people) really should make up their minds. If sex is important to what they want to be doing, then they should have best male and best female dancer awards, continue to pair in male/female, and continue to insist the males look and dance in a hypermasculinized way and the females look and dance in a hyperfeminized (which in our society means in a pornulated way).

If sex isn’t important to what they want to be doing, then they should have best dancer award, and pair at random – actually, since the heterosexual mating concept would no longer be the central motif, they wouldn’t have to be limited to pairs at all – and let the dancers dance with strength, balance, coordination, musicality, and skill, with beauty, drama, fun, and quirkiness, regardless of their sex.

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