For anyone who’s been following the story of Harvard president Lawrence Summers’ recent “maybe it’s in the genes” speech: Hee hee hee.
(To be fair, Summers has now apologized for his remarks.)
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And of course this "incentive" only applies to poor people: Rich people who already have enough to live off of…
He sorta apologized, but not really. I have three longish posts on the events, if anyone is interested:
Part I
Part II
Part III
(To be fair, Summers has now apologized for his remarks.)
piffle. that & a buck-fifty will get you a cup of coffee…
“According to the Globe, the percentage of tenured positions offered to women in the Arts and Sciences has dropped each of the three years Summers has been in office, with only four of 32 tenured positions going to women last year.”
to quote Ms. Scully: “apology has become policy”.
I care less about the dimwitted remark than the obvious affect his bias has played, if the statistics have anything of importance to reveal.
HARVARD’S SUMMERS IS RIGHT!
MEN ARE TO BLAME FOR SMALL SKULLS/BRAINS OF WOMEN!
100,000 YEARS OF MATE SELECTION BY MEN PREFERING SOFT SMOOTH FLESH(HENCE SOFT PUSSY) WOMEN AND DOCILE WOMEN WHO ARE EASY TO MOUNT DURING SEX RESULTED IN WOMEN WHO ARE PHYSICALLY WEAK AND MENTALLY INFERIOR TO MEN.
ANY WOMEN WHO WAS MUSCULAR/STRONG OR HAD ROUGH/HAIRY SKIN OR WAS TOO SMART WAS EITHER TOO HARD TO MOUNT BECAUSE OF RESISTANCE OR UNPLATABLE FOR SEX.
FACE IT JACK, IT’S THE HARD TRUTH!
HARVARD PRESIDENT SUMMERS IS RIGHT…
MEN’S SELFISH DESIRE FOR SELECTIVE SEX IS RESPONSIBLE FOR WOMEN EVOLVING INTO WHAT THEY ARE TODAY.
god damn it.
I don’t have super powers, so I can’t ban you, pete.
but shut the fuck up and never speak again. seriously.
Pete, I’d mail that Phd in molecular genetics back to the cereal company you received it from.
As for the dude from Harvard, he can stick his apology…you know….
The NYT is reporting that Summers has released the transcript of his remarks and has written a letter to the faculty.
robert,
you are an exception to the general male on the street.
The male academia is less than 1% of male population, and hence your sexual preference for unpalatable women is irrelevant to statistical evolution of women’s genes.
Sure, the smart strong women will not like this idea as much as weak docile men who tend to support women’s rights.
Looking at the population as a whole, women have evolved into physically and mentally weak beings because of sexual selection by males.
my advice to PHYSICALLY STRONG AND BIG BRAINED WOMEN,
EVEN IF YOU ARE “UGLY” FROM A MAN’S PERSPECTIVE, FORCE FUCK A SMART MAN ASAP TO PASS ON YOUR GENES TO FUTURE GENERATIONS. TRY TO BEAT THE MALE’S BAD SELECTION PROCESS. THIS WAY YOU CAN REVERSE THE MALE DOMINANCE.
YOU CAN ALREADY SEE THIS IN SCANDINAVIAN COUNTRIES WHERE WOMEN HAVE BIG BRAINS COMPARED TO THEIR MEN.
THAT’S WHY MORE WOMEN ARE IN POSITIONS OF POWER IN FINLAND,SWEDEN, NORWAY ETC.
In case folks are wondering, Pete has been banned.
Pete, if you’re reading this, please don’t attempt to post on my website any longer.
I actually do have a theory that men have selectively married and then bred for a certain type of “femininity”. But I don’t imagine *that* would go over well…
:)
Your theory probably has merit, QGrrl, although it wouldn’t have been an intentional process. Heck, Pete’s theory is crap but the underlying idea has merit; men and women have been sexually selecting one another for a long time and it would be silly to assume that hasn’t had some impact on how the species looks and feels.
radfem:
This is one of the most hilarious lines I’ve read in my life. Rock on!
Oh, I guess I should have prefaced a little more: men of a certain class and wealth have definitely bred selectively. No doubt there.
Women, without the power, money, or social status have not been able to “choose” their sexual partners in the same manner that men have.
[Warning: Severe Sarcasm ahead]
Yeah, plus, it stands to reason that a woman who was “chosen” for her ability to run a household while bearing children would just HAVE to be complete, dribbling dumbass. [rolleyes] Because, you know, raising kids and running a household is just such a damn cakewalk. You could lack a functioning brain and STILL do it well.
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.
[/Severe Sarcasm is now concluded for this broadcast day. Thank You.]
yes, big ups to radfem.
I let my annoyance with Pete’s dumbassness cloud my ability to properly mock.
If I were taking him seriously, I’d ask “wouldn’t physically strong, big-brained women be superior in every respect for child rearing?”
I have a pretty, cute, and pleasant thing to sit in my lap already.
it’s called a cat.
If I hit my head and was reeducated so that I stopped having interest in raising my own children, wouldn’t I want someone physically capible of picking up a tantruming 4 year old and removing them from the shoe-store?
wouldn’t I want someone who is able to answer the inane questions of a child with an accurate, informed, and reasonable answer?
I’d leave my brood in the care of a smart, big brained woman any day before my cat.
but I’m not taking him seriously. because he is an ass.
karpad,
human evolution does not believe in women’s rights.
It only believes in who copulates whom and how they survive because that is the only way to produce and perpetuate new copies. If, in this process, women get the short end of the stick on the evolutionary ladder, so be it.
Thanks, but poor pete isn’t anything most women haven’t dealt with a zillion times before in different places. ;-)
Ah, Darly, darly….
Despite all the sexism and misogyny women face, they still in most countries outlive men and except for some fluctuations, they outlive men by 3-5 years.
Some of this is due to behaviors. Some due to stronger immune systems in women and/or longer cardiovascular health due to estrogen production.
very interesting article…
http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/1998/10.01/WhyWomenLiveLon.html
Worldwise, they are currently outnumbered slightly by men b/c of the missing women in China and Pakistan, and other countries.
So, Darly, I’m not sure women did get the short end of the evolutionary stick. Evolution seemed intent on keeping women alive so that they could raise their children or grand children. Their ability to do so, also ensured that men’s survival.
I’m just trying to figure out why one would want to surrender to the will of “evolution” any more than she’d want to surrender to the will of God.
Swapping out one immutable, faceless, patriarchal power for another doesn’t sound like progress to me. Think I’ll take a pass. :p
radfem,
“So, Darly, I’m not sure women did get the short end of the evolutionary stick. Evolution seemed intent on keeping women alive so that they could raise their children or grand children. Their ability to do so, also ensured that men’s survival.”
Your argument misses the point.
To take you argument further:
men’s nipples don’t produce milk, did men get the short end of the stick?
men don’t have uteruses. Too bad, did men get the short end of the stick here too?
My point is each human evolutionary artifact has its own purpose and you cannot compare them out of context.
Women evolved to more efficient than men in nurturing children for whatever reason I don’t wish to delve into here. This may have led to their having longer lives than men. Men evolved to be stronger and bigger than women for what ever reason (one of which, put forth by Pete, makes sense to me) and consequently also have RELATIVELY bigger skulls and brains.
So, I am inclined to believe that for the SPECIFIC PURPOSE OF DOING MATH AND SCIENCE,
men’s brains are better equipped than women. There is nothing you can do about your genes except sit in the corner and cry. (Don’t go about giving me examples of Madame Curie etc…they are an exception to the rule as is the case in any evolving species.)
I am not saying all women are inferior, there will always be women like Madame Curie around.
The most that society can do is pass laws that ensure equitable participation of women in fields that men in general are better at. At some point a policy decision has to be made how much one can accomodate less capable individuals.
We could also pass laws ensuring equitable participation of men in fields that women are better at…are men interested?
Ultimately all laws are only as valid as the society that enforces them. Society is a recent (about 5000) invention of human beings and we are still evolving both genetically and socially.
Women evolved to more efficient than men in nurturing children for whatever reason I don’t wish to delve into here.
On what basis do you state that women are “more efficient than men in nurturing children”, and why do you think handwaving the reasons is an argument proving that? Does having a uterus really mean I can change a diaper faster than my husband? That because he has boy parts, he is unable to get out a Band-Aid when somebody scrapes their knee?
If you claim that men are better at math and science, you’d best have a good reason for why evolution split in a sex-distinguished manner and why such a development would have gotten going in the first place. The idea that slightly bigger brains = better at math was laughed away last century.
You’re further choosing to pretend that evolution acted in a vacuum–that no other reason but evolution (such as, oh, I don’t know, sexism?) has kept women out of the sciences. If you really believe that, I don’t see how you’re up for any rational discussion.
Actually, human evolution believes in the superiority of females.
If human behavior was governed SOLELY by what was to the survival of the fittest, society would function in a gynocentric system
Humans take a rather long time to reach sexual maturity, have long gestations, and produce small litters.
Darwinistically, if a man wants to improve his odds, he should work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to keep any woman interested in him CONSTANTLY interested.
Because the more women you have who are actually interested in you, the more offspring you are capible of having. and studies do show that sexually satisfied women are more fertile.
Because pure evolution is a free market.
Darly, do you have any idea how stupid that sounds?
“Women lactate and men can’t. obviously, this is part of evolution. Since there should be a job that evolution has assigned men that corrisponds, all men should have a fundamental understanding of quantum neutrino fields.”
even granting your stupendously idiotic premise that men, in general, are better at math and science, it’s about jobs in physics departments.
that isn’t about generalities. it’s about extreme freaks of nature.
and the extreme freak of nature women are just as good figuring out what the hell is in the space between space as their male counterparts, and any failure in equality is based on the prickheadedness of people like you, discouraging the female freaks from persuing their talents.
Oh, Darly, Darly. Haven’t you ever heard? It’s not the size that’s important, but how you use it. Example – radfem, apparently, being female, has some sort of womanly tiny brain, which she uses to expand her horizons (and link to awesome articles by the way) and occasionally help make a fool of you (as if you needed it). You, on the other hand, with your mighty, giant male brain, apparently use it to sniff glue, and then in one of your glue-induced hallucinations form crackpot theories of evolution, then log into Alas to annoy all of us with them. I think the whole brains advantage goes to radfem in that case.
Here’s the thing with evolution, we’re talking millions of years for extremely noticeable changes. When you start trying to apply a theory that encompasses thousands of generations into a generation-by-generation thing, you at best sound like an idiot, as you have, or at worst sound like a eugenicist, like your buddy Pete.
Besides, from my own experience as a mathematician-in-training, women are just as apt in mathematics as men. Although all the famous mathematicians I know of are men, this is because, thanks to sexism, women have been kept out of mathematics for generations. So any great mathematical discoveries made by women (I’ve seen some of these) are very recent and thus, for the most part, above my head. Give me a year or two and this will change.
(Final note: I have to rely on my own cold-medicine affected judgment here, so I can’t be sure if the first paragraph won’t be read as insulting to radfem, so just in case, to radfem, you rock. I mean the first paragraph only in praise of you, while giving deserving mocking to our friend, Darly)
Raznor,
all you do is attack personally rather than my arguments.
I am not going to waste my time unless you can argue rationally.
why do women have
1) soft flesh compared to men
2) almost no hair on their bodies
3) long hair on head
4) smooth skin (I mean why not skin like a cow)
If you can answer these from an evolution perspective, come back and we’ll argue more on the rest of the more deeper topics on evolution.
“When you start trying to apply a theory that encompasses thousands of generations into a generation-by-generation thing, you at best sound like an idiot, as you have, or at worst sound like a eugenicist, like your buddy Pete.”
Also, to get from generation 1 to generation 1000 you have to go through generation 456.
If you cannot understand that you could not have understood Cauchy Mean Value theorem in Mathematics either. Shame on you, a grad student in Mathematics.
I know the answers to these!
1) soft flesh compared to men
Um, we’re curvier? I don’t know. I wouldn’t generalize like this. I am surely not as soft-fleshed as the average man down here in Texas, due to a combination of genetics and not eating steak every day.
2) almost no hair on their bodies
I hope I’m not giving away anyone’s well kept secret or anything, but women have been known to take a razor to their underarms, pubic area, and legs in order to get that naturally hairless look. Evolution has failed us again, so we got to fake it.
3) long hair on head
More evidence again that I must not be a woman. I was one like a month ago, before I went to the hairdresser and got all my hair cut off like my boyfriend does once a month in order not to get long hair. He must not be a man, or his hair would stay short naturally, as evolution intended.
4) smooth skin (I mean why not skin like a cow)
Do men have cow skin? I experimented by putting one of my Doc Martens up next to my boyfriend as he slept. (I felt it best he not know about this experiment.) For reasons I’d rather not divulge, I was well aware the subject in question is in fact a man. I then put my cat on the bed and asked him if he could figure out which was Daddy and and which was the boot made out of leather. The cat then plopped down on top of my boyfriend and went to sleep. I think that we can all tell from my experiment that men are no more cows than women.
I then took a shower and used an exfoliant to smooth out my skin before I shaved.
Amanda,
1) softer women were more sexy to men 10-50 thousand years ago?
2) there were no razors 10,000 years ago when evolution was occuring.
Why do some women wish they had no hair on their legs (hint: some other women dont have this hair and that is ‘sexy’ for a man?)
3) long haired women were more sexy to men 10,000 years ago just as a colorful flower is more attractive to a bee. Go figure why a flower is colorful and has sweet nectar!
4) Ask a man to try fuck a cow. Ouch! the cow hair hurts.
Guess what? A man won’t fuck a prickly hairy cow. He preferred smooth skin 10,000 years ago and does so even today.
You are a beating about the bush, Amanda!
Nice try, though, loser!
Dear Darly:
We have put men on the moon and now have the luxury of the Internet. Surely you see that humans can surpass their evolutionary status…
If we can defy gravity, I’m sure we can get over the “importance” of hair length. (which of course, in your example you are probably only talking about Caucasians… but why point out your racism and classism?)
Love Q (who shaves her beard every other day — more often then most guys from what I can tell)
If cavemen required cavewomen to have razors and exfoliants and conditioners before sex, and cavewomen required cavemen to have barbers to get that short hair that we “naturally” prefer, then how the hell did our species ever make it? They just didn’t have access to those things, I’m afraid.
Long haired women give of a complex pattern of reflected UV light to indicate the presence of food?
your analogy “bee is to flower as man is to woman” doesn’t even come close to holding up. bee is to flower as man is to McDonald’s sign visible from the highway would be accurate.
Maybe you’re just physically repulsive, Darly, but men aren’t particularly hairy either. most men and women have to rely on clothing in the place of fur to protect themselves from heat, cold, sun, wind, and any other element you can think of.
Humans are hairless for the same reason as chihuahuas: we’re domestic animals. we don’t need hair. so for the most part, we all stopped growing it.
if women never shave their legs, armpits et al, the only place where you’d see a significant difference in hair coverage is in a non-shaving man’s face.
I don’t have an explanation for why men have beards and women don’t. maybe that one actually is to signal attractiveness on a genetic level.
Hairlessness is a learned aspect of desirability. as a rule, if you have to physically work to fall into that catagory, it’s learned. there’s nothing wrong with having societal norms and applying them to standards of beauty. As long as we recognise that our taste is not universal nor ingrained. taking such a position is exceedingly vain, as you’re declaring that anyone who disagrees with your idea of beauty is some sort of pervert, subverting the natural order.
“If cavemen required cavewomen to have razors and exfoliants and conditioners before sex, and cavewomen required cavemen to have barbers to get that short hair that we “naturally”? prefer, then how the hell did our species ever make it?”
That hairy brand of species never made it.
Natural and sexual selection is the reason why the female “humans” with ape like shaggy hair became extinct. It also coincided with the time when “humans” invented “clothing” to cover themselves. Men would then prefer women who had less hair because it was more “sexy”.
Any questions, you smartass!?
Next!
“Long haired women give of a complex pattern of reflected UV light to indicate the presence of food?
your analogy “bee is to flower as man is to woman”? doesn’t even come close to holding up. bee is to flower as man is to McDonald’s sign visible from the highway would be accurate.”
Dumbass! Sure the bee wants food and the flower uses that as a ruse to get pollinated and hence pass on its genes. If it didn’t, that unattractive flower species would become extinct. God! are you that stupid and narrow minded. How the hell are you into science! Dum-Dum :)
“Any questions, you smartass!?
Next”
Is it this June, or next, that you graduate from junior high?
“Humans are hairless for the same reason as chihuahuas: we’re domestic animals. we don’t need hair. so for the most part, we all stopped growing it.”
An individual does just “stop” growing hair. Sorry, your genes cannot change overnight.
It happens by elimination over generations as a result of either natural or deliberate selection. In this case, I say that given a choice between fucking a hairy women and a hairless women, a man (or woman to man) would prefer an hairless individual. So evolution in this aspect is a result of deliberate selection, not a result of environmental factors.
I would also say that men deliberately selected women with smaller bodies and brains than themselves because they were more sexy/cute/whatever.
“I would also say that men deliberately selected women with smaller bodies and brains than themselves because they were more sexy/cute/whatever. ”
Yeah, but this has nothing to do with evolution and everything to do with sexism. Although I don’t know how 12th century men went about weighing women’s brains…
Well, I never shave and I’m not planning on any kids. So all I need to do is find out whether I’m actually infertile and we’ll have all the proof we need for the truthfulness of Darly’s droppings– er, theories.
Hopefully, since the “no kids” decision was arrived at by mutual agreement, my partner will not be forced to wear a big scarlet “D” across his chest in public once Darlyism takes over the world. You know, “D,” for de-evolution. Though actually I think it’s Darly that appears to be functioning as this week’s exemplar of evolution in reverse.
Darly:
Banned.
Well, okay, Darly’s apparently banned, but I can’t let this little bit of pseudo-mathematics slip:
Ignoring the nasty insult surrounding this, Darly apparently doesn’t have a clue what a “continuous function” is. If the MVT applied hear, we’d be talking about generation 100(Pi), but we’re not. Generational indexing is discrete, not continuous.
Sorry, it’s always a pet-peeve when people use mathematical principles in manners that they don’t apply.
Which doesn’t even mention how apparently the only thing Darly’s mentioning here goes back to freshmen calculus. If you expect to have enough understanding of mathematical biology to apply it to genetic evolution, you’ll have to get a bit more complex than that.
Well at least I know why our delicate female brains cannot comprehend math and science–our heads are simply too busy growing out our thick, luxourious, sexy, long and yet somehow still loathsome hair.
No, no, it’s your soft, non-cow-like fuckable skin that takes away all the brain-producing genes, I think. Of course, some women have to plate their skin so that they can evolve.
(See, Amp, this is why conservatives were opposed to universal public education. Some people just need to be out in the fields, doing what they do best.)
Of course, some women have to plate their skin so that they can evolve
Gooooold…FINGER!
“your soft, non-cow-like fuckable skin”
Dude, I have one word for you: leather.
Put an end to this anti-cow-like-skin bigotry!
Sheena, I laugh off your objection with a wave of my muscular, pollen-coated hand. You have a tiny, unevolved brain suited only for plaiting thick lustrous sexy hair and birthing babies. I have a gigantic evolved brain, suitable for throwing spears at mammoths, although it does unfortunately tend to obsess about trying to fuck cows. So clearly you can see my superiority, which is why I select small/cute women to have intercourse with. Or flowers. It might be flowers. The pollen and the lustrous hair and the cow-fucking, they’re all running together in my mind! Aieee!
Amp, make the math problems harder. Keep these people away.
(This is a spamblocker: The non-trivial zeros of the Riemann zeta function have real part equal to 1/2. Prove.)
Wait a minute, how can a hand be muscular.
I tell you, this discussion has sure gone crazy-go-nuts since last I checked in. I wholeheartedly approve.
(and side to Robert, way to know your million dollar questions! I wonder how many others here got that)
I don’t know. why limit it to math?
this is a spamblocker: The capital of Alaska is ____________.
we will accept “Anchorage” and “fucking cold. CHRIST it’s fucking cold!”
I don’t know. why limit it to math?
To keep out the girls with their tiny soft unplatable unevolved brains, obviously!
I can’t really argue that Darly didn’t deserve to be banned, but I’m enough of a consequentialist to want to give her a little credit for inspiring some sublime collaborative blog humor (across ideological lines, no less).