michael
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Are men smarter than women? (merged)
- Thread starter fairnymph
- Start date
Miss_Spitfire
Bluelighter
It boils down to perspective for me. What one may consider intelligent - another may not - kinda like the old say, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder".
You know what I think? I think humans THINK too much.
That's just me though, sorry this wasn't a very "intellectual" post to some of you but hey, I am who I am -
You know what I think? I think humans THINK too much.
That's just me though, sorry this wasn't a very "intellectual" post to some of you but hey, I am who I am -
dr seuss
Bluelight Crew
wait - biological determinism?
are y'all serious???
jesus suffering fuck there is some rampant shite in this thread. i cannot believe some of the things i'm reading...
women aren't capable? can't comprehend complicated arguments? men are less able to think creatively?
8)
Apes Ma nailed it:
are y'all serious???
jesus suffering fuck there is some rampant shite in this thread. i cannot believe some of the things i'm reading...
women aren't capable? can't comprehend complicated arguments? men are less able to think creatively?
8)
Apes Ma nailed it:
Last edited:
ebola?
Bluelight Crew
>>whilst those factors may be reinforced by the environment they are also ( mainly ) genetic dating back to the male hunter / gatherer role and the female nuturer role.>>
This has little, if any, basis in empirical science. Post-hoc evolutionary arguements can be spun-up to justify almost any position. Furthermore, the connection between analytical reasoning and the hunter-role (in most paleolithic societies, women did a good bit of the gathering) is tentative at best. We also see numerous paleolithic societies where childcare and food-acquisition are distributed more equally among the genders.
>>
Women are usually better communicators.
Men are usually better coordinators.
>>
Why is this though? I think this is likely due to the privileged position men hold in hierarchical society. Power and rule require coordination rather than peer-to-peer communication, and many men gladly fall into this role. I look upon this sort of "coordination" with repugnance.
ebola
This has little, if any, basis in empirical science. Post-hoc evolutionary arguements can be spun-up to justify almost any position. Furthermore, the connection between analytical reasoning and the hunter-role (in most paleolithic societies, women did a good bit of the gathering) is tentative at best. We also see numerous paleolithic societies where childcare and food-acquisition are distributed more equally among the genders.
>>
Women are usually better communicators.
Men are usually better coordinators.
>>
Why is this though? I think this is likely due to the privileged position men hold in hierarchical society. Power and rule require coordination rather than peer-to-peer communication, and many men gladly fall into this role. I look upon this sort of "coordination" with repugnance.
ebola
dr seuss
Bluelight Crew
i still can't believe fairnymph started this thread...
your hypothesis is, imho, absurd. perhaps in your interactions with the women in your life you are projecting your prejudices onto them.
we're talking about an entire lifetime's worth of programming, of indoctrination, which assumes - latently or otherwise - the superiority of the masculine. like it or not, we are all - and have been all - exposed to this conditioning for our entire lives. this is why young children will draw their fathers as firemen and their mothers as, well, mothers.
this applies to this theory as well. you will no doubt recall the recent study where two groups of women sat for a mathematical test. the first group were told that men outperformed women in the test; they did badly overall. the control group were told that men & women scored equally - and the women outperformed the men by some distance.
what does this tell us?
it tells us of the power of social conditioning. of course, for a real-life example we only need to look at, say, the state of secondary / tertiary education in the uk at the moment.
women simply have not had the same opportunities that men have. this is not something that is or can be debated; this is cold, hard fact. yet despite the hurdles, we have powerful women; women whose names, actions, thoughts and ideas echoed for centuries, for millenia.
the queen of sheba; joan; marie curie; isabella of spain; st hildegart of bingen; boadicea; lillian gilbreth; rosalind franklin; anna comnena; eleanor of aquitaine; the empress wu zetian; catherine the great; margaret thatcher; nur jahan; the list goes on...
the internet women's history sourcebook, found at http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/women/womensbook.html , looks at women throughout history; there are some remarkable minds, personalities and achievements.
i've been lucky enough to read some of isabella of spain, anna comnena, eleanor of aquitaine & st hildegard's work. the latter's musical compositions are still played today, nine hundred years later...
the history of women - and of women's thought - is inextricably linked with the history of the oppression of women. everyone remembers crick & watson's work on DNA; just like they remember the male astronomer's work on mapping stars when there were female academics who could only serve as primitive data processors due to the sexist climate, yet STILL invented procedures which were invaluable to astronomers. for a woman to rise to intellectual prominence - until very recently - was a difficult thing; certainly far, far more difficult than for a man to do so.
consider: we STILL [in the uk] pay women on average 15% less than men. the US is also shocking; only a few countries have ever got close to equality in pay, let alone recognition. bearing in mind the continual struggle that women have had to endure just to be acknowledged, the achievements that women have accomplished are all the more incredible. women have ruled vast empires, brought about amazing social change, altered the way we view the world, offered new ideas and theories, worked tirelessly for less money and less recognition, and have done it all against a backdrop of cultural indoctrination which posits the man as the true vassal of intellectual achievement. you can see the barriers women are up against when you read some of the posts on this board, in this thread, by young people; people who, being linked to drug use somehow, generally know what it's like to be considered a less worthy minority.
now take a look at the academic hierarchy at your place of study, and factor in the millenia of ingrained sexism - are women really less intelligent than men?!?!
as if...
your hypothesis is, imho, absurd. perhaps in your interactions with the women in your life you are projecting your prejudices onto them.
we're talking about an entire lifetime's worth of programming, of indoctrination, which assumes - latently or otherwise - the superiority of the masculine. like it or not, we are all - and have been all - exposed to this conditioning for our entire lives. this is why young children will draw their fathers as firemen and their mothers as, well, mothers.
this applies to this theory as well. you will no doubt recall the recent study where two groups of women sat for a mathematical test. the first group were told that men outperformed women in the test; they did badly overall. the control group were told that men & women scored equally - and the women outperformed the men by some distance.
what does this tell us?
it tells us of the power of social conditioning. of course, for a real-life example we only need to look at, say, the state of secondary / tertiary education in the uk at the moment.
women simply have not had the same opportunities that men have. this is not something that is or can be debated; this is cold, hard fact. yet despite the hurdles, we have powerful women; women whose names, actions, thoughts and ideas echoed for centuries, for millenia.
the queen of sheba; joan; marie curie; isabella of spain; st hildegart of bingen; boadicea; lillian gilbreth; rosalind franklin; anna comnena; eleanor of aquitaine; the empress wu zetian; catherine the great; margaret thatcher; nur jahan; the list goes on...
the internet women's history sourcebook, found at http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/women/womensbook.html , looks at women throughout history; there are some remarkable minds, personalities and achievements.
i've been lucky enough to read some of isabella of spain, anna comnena, eleanor of aquitaine & st hildegard's work. the latter's musical compositions are still played today, nine hundred years later...
the history of women - and of women's thought - is inextricably linked with the history of the oppression of women. everyone remembers crick & watson's work on DNA; just like they remember the male astronomer's work on mapping stars when there were female academics who could only serve as primitive data processors due to the sexist climate, yet STILL invented procedures which were invaluable to astronomers. for a woman to rise to intellectual prominence - until very recently - was a difficult thing; certainly far, far more difficult than for a man to do so.
consider: we STILL [in the uk] pay women on average 15% less than men. the US is also shocking; only a few countries have ever got close to equality in pay, let alone recognition. bearing in mind the continual struggle that women have had to endure just to be acknowledged, the achievements that women have accomplished are all the more incredible. women have ruled vast empires, brought about amazing social change, altered the way we view the world, offered new ideas and theories, worked tirelessly for less money and less recognition, and have done it all against a backdrop of cultural indoctrination which posits the man as the true vassal of intellectual achievement. you can see the barriers women are up against when you read some of the posts on this board, in this thread, by young people; people who, being linked to drug use somehow, generally know what it's like to be considered a less worthy minority.
now take a look at the academic hierarchy at your place of study, and factor in the millenia of ingrained sexism - are women really less intelligent than men?!?!
as if...
PottedMeat
Bluelighter
No.
Petersko
Bluelighter
"Smarter" is such a nebulous term, so I'll only speak to the question from my personal definition of smarter. And I can't narrow it down.
So, my view on "smarts" is the amalgamation of hundreds of small things. Ability to absorb and retain. Ability to get through complexity with comprehension. Understanding of cause and effect. Ability to see with clarity what is, and isn't applicable to a situation.
I can, however, break it in half. There are "social smarts", and there are "everything else smarts".
Of the MANY women I know reasonably well, some have better "social smarts" than I.
Not even one is smarter than I when it comes to "everything else".
It sounds egotistical, and perhaps it is... but it's also true.
I somewhat suspect there are fundamental differences in the way the average man is wired, as compared to the average woman. That women have some instincts that men lack, but that they come at the expense of other things.
For instance, throughout history, men with tremendous creative drive have always dramatically outnumbered women. It continues today. And it's not suppression, or disregard... there are simply far more men churning out art, music, or even scientific thought, than there are women.
Most "Alanis Morisette's" come with a "Glen Ballard".
So, my view on "smarts" is the amalgamation of hundreds of small things. Ability to absorb and retain. Ability to get through complexity with comprehension. Understanding of cause and effect. Ability to see with clarity what is, and isn't applicable to a situation.
I can, however, break it in half. There are "social smarts", and there are "everything else smarts".
Of the MANY women I know reasonably well, some have better "social smarts" than I.
Not even one is smarter than I when it comes to "everything else".
It sounds egotistical, and perhaps it is... but it's also true.
I somewhat suspect there are fundamental differences in the way the average man is wired, as compared to the average woman. That women have some instincts that men lack, but that they come at the expense of other things.
For instance, throughout history, men with tremendous creative drive have always dramatically outnumbered women. It continues today. And it's not suppression, or disregard... there are simply far more men churning out art, music, or even scientific thought, than there are women.
Most "Alanis Morisette's" come with a "Glen Ballard".
everythinginside
Ex-Bluelighter
>>
Women are usually better communicators.
Men are usually better coordinators.
>>
Why is this though? I think this is likely due to the privileged position men hold in hierarchical society. Power and rule require coordination rather than peer-to-peer communication, and many men gladly fall into this role. I look upon this sort of "coordination" with repugnance.
__________________________________
I agree society expectations have a lot to do with this. Men are usually expected to take an authoritive, coordinating role amongst a group. Women are usually expected to be a supporting role.
Hey, it works, sometmies..
Women are usually better communicators.
Men are usually better coordinators.
>>
Why is this though? I think this is likely due to the privileged position men hold in hierarchical society. Power and rule require coordination rather than peer-to-peer communication, and many men gladly fall into this role. I look upon this sort of "coordination" with repugnance.
__________________________________
I agree society expectations have a lot to do with this. Men are usually expected to take an authoritive, coordinating role amongst a group. Women are usually expected to be a supporting role.
Hey, it works, sometmies..
ebola?
Bluelight Crew
>>I agree society expectations have a lot to do with this. Men are usually expected to take an authoritive, coordinating role amongst a group. Women are usually expected to be a supporting role.
Hey, it works, sometmies..>>
It works, but to what ends?
I say it be abolished!
ebola
Hey, it works, sometmies..>>
It works, but to what ends?
I say it be abolished!
ebola
xtcxtc
Bluelighter
- Joined
- May 30, 1999
- Messages
- 1,978
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/05/31/opinion/edtierney.php
Meanwhile: Scrabbling to the top
John Tierney The New York Times
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 1, 2005
NEW YORK Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have shown that women have less appetite for competition than men do. It's not that some women aren't just as competitive as any guy. As Danica Patrick showed in the Indianapolis 500, some women can successfully compete with men at the highest level. But why aren't there more of them?
Discrimination is one big reason, because men have traditionally made the rules to suit themselves and keep out women. But if you think that leveling the playing field would eliminate gender disparities, consider an unintentional experiment conducted in the Scrabble world, which is hardly a hostile environment for women.
For a quarter-century, women have outnumbered men at Scrabble clubs and tournaments in America, but a woman has won the national championship only once, and all the world champions have been men. Among the world's 50 top- ranked players, typically about 45 are men.
The top players, both male and female, point to a simple explanation for the disparity: More men are willing to do whatever it takes to reach the top. You need more than intelligence and a good vocabulary to become champion. You have to spend hours a day learning words like "khat," doing drills and memorizing long lists of letter combinations, called alphagrams, that can form high- scoring seven-letter words.
Suppose you draw the letters AELNRST. A mid-level player could shuffle the tiles for a while and find one or two seven-letter words. If the T in that rack were a U instead, the player might spend a couple of minutes fruitlessly looking for an anagram of AELNRSU. A champion wouldn't waste any valuable time. Thanks to the thousands of alphagrams he's memorized, he would realize immediately that there are four anagrams in the first rack (antlers, rentals, saltern, sternal) and none in the second.
The guys who memorize these lists have a hard time explaining their passion. But the evolutionary roots of it seem clear to anthropologists like Helen Fisher of Rutgers University. "Evolution has selected for men with a taste for risking everything to get to the top of the hierarchy," she said, "because those males get more reproductive opportunities, not only among primates but also among human beings. Women don't get as big a reproductive payoff by reaching the top. They're just as competitive with themselves - they want to do a good job just as much as men do - but men want to be more competitive with others."
Evolutionary psychologists see two kinds of payoffs that traditionally went
(and often still go) to victorious men. Women have long been drawn to men at the top of a hierarchy (a clan leader, Donald Trump) who have the resources to support children.
And when women pursued what's called a short-term reproductive strategy - a quick fling - then presumably evolution favored the woman who was attracted to a man with good genes, as manifest either in his looks or in some display of prowess. If the theory's right and the unconscious urges persist in women, you can begin to understand why some women wait in hotel lobbies looking for rock stars.
The men who've lost competitions have often paid a reproductive price. Because the few rich winners have gotten more than their share of wives (through polygamy or a series of trophy wives), a lot of guys at the bottom have ended up alone. In both traditional and modern societies, it's common to find more never-married men than never-married women.
So if you're a lonely bachelor at the bottom, it makes evolutionary sense to have more zeal than the typical woman to fight your way up. It has been noted at Scrabble tournaments that some of the best players are single guys with wide- open social calendars. And there are Scrabble groupies - I'm not kidding - apparently still under the unconscious influence of that classic short-term reproductive strategy. They prefer guys who win.
Of course, just because men evolved with an impulse for competition doesn't mean that it still always makes sense, either for society or for the men themselves. Perhaps winning a Scrabble tournament with a $25,000 prize makes you a better marriage prospect. But I'm not sure how many women want to marry someone who spends his weekends memorizing alphagrams.
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Meanwhile: Scrabbling to the top
John Tierney The New York Times
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 1, 2005
NEW YORK Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have shown that women have less appetite for competition than men do. It's not that some women aren't just as competitive as any guy. As Danica Patrick showed in the Indianapolis 500, some women can successfully compete with men at the highest level. But why aren't there more of them?
Discrimination is one big reason, because men have traditionally made the rules to suit themselves and keep out women. But if you think that leveling the playing field would eliminate gender disparities, consider an unintentional experiment conducted in the Scrabble world, which is hardly a hostile environment for women.
For a quarter-century, women have outnumbered men at Scrabble clubs and tournaments in America, but a woman has won the national championship only once, and all the world champions have been men. Among the world's 50 top- ranked players, typically about 45 are men.
The top players, both male and female, point to a simple explanation for the disparity: More men are willing to do whatever it takes to reach the top. You need more than intelligence and a good vocabulary to become champion. You have to spend hours a day learning words like "khat," doing drills and memorizing long lists of letter combinations, called alphagrams, that can form high- scoring seven-letter words.
Suppose you draw the letters AELNRST. A mid-level player could shuffle the tiles for a while and find one or two seven-letter words. If the T in that rack were a U instead, the player might spend a couple of minutes fruitlessly looking for an anagram of AELNRSU. A champion wouldn't waste any valuable time. Thanks to the thousands of alphagrams he's memorized, he would realize immediately that there are four anagrams in the first rack (antlers, rentals, saltern, sternal) and none in the second.
The guys who memorize these lists have a hard time explaining their passion. But the evolutionary roots of it seem clear to anthropologists like Helen Fisher of Rutgers University. "Evolution has selected for men with a taste for risking everything to get to the top of the hierarchy," she said, "because those males get more reproductive opportunities, not only among primates but also among human beings. Women don't get as big a reproductive payoff by reaching the top. They're just as competitive with themselves - they want to do a good job just as much as men do - but men want to be more competitive with others."
Evolutionary psychologists see two kinds of payoffs that traditionally went
(and often still go) to victorious men. Women have long been drawn to men at the top of a hierarchy (a clan leader, Donald Trump) who have the resources to support children.
And when women pursued what's called a short-term reproductive strategy - a quick fling - then presumably evolution favored the woman who was attracted to a man with good genes, as manifest either in his looks or in some display of prowess. If the theory's right and the unconscious urges persist in women, you can begin to understand why some women wait in hotel lobbies looking for rock stars.
The men who've lost competitions have often paid a reproductive price. Because the few rich winners have gotten more than their share of wives (through polygamy or a series of trophy wives), a lot of guys at the bottom have ended up alone. In both traditional and modern societies, it's common to find more never-married men than never-married women.
So if you're a lonely bachelor at the bottom, it makes evolutionary sense to have more zeal than the typical woman to fight your way up. It has been noted at Scrabble tournaments that some of the best players are single guys with wide- open social calendars. And there are Scrabble groupies - I'm not kidding - apparently still under the unconscious influence of that classic short-term reproductive strategy. They prefer guys who win.
Of course, just because men evolved with an impulse for competition doesn't mean that it still always makes sense, either for society or for the men themselves. Perhaps winning a Scrabble tournament with a $25,000 prize makes you a better marriage prospect. But I'm not sure how many women want to marry someone who spends his weekends memorizing alphagrams.
This email was cleaned by emailStripper, available for free from http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm
fairnymph
Ex-Bluelighter
Hmmm, just to comment briefly on the scrabble thing -- I will lose at scrabble sometimes simply because I want to do words which I think are really cool/open up the board, even though I could put words elsewhere that would be worth alot more. I wonder if other women are like this? I think any time you have a gaming situation you are going to see men being alot more competitive than women overall and that will explain, in part, their beating women.
The article also made this point in another way -- men are willing to memorize lists of words and women aren't -- why? Probably because men care more about winning/are more competitive.
The article also made this point in another way -- men are willing to memorize lists of words and women aren't -- why? Probably because men care more about winning/are more competitive.
fizzygirl
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Jul 21, 2000
- Messages
- 7,818
I'm not a big fan of zero-sum solutions...that if one person wins another has to lose or whatever...that's why I'm not a big competitor. I'd rather be competing with my own ideals of what is considered "good", and believe me, just living up to my own standards is difficult enough. Because of this I tend to do more arts & crafts things, and to improve my skills with those. When I play games I'm doing it to generally have fun, not to show off anything to anyone.
sexyanon2
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Dec 3, 2004
- Messages
- 1,312
What does smarter mean? Quicker? Knows more facts? More open-minded? More logical?
Initially I'd say yes, men are smarter. But I've come to learn that when women aren't blinded by their emotions, they're just as smart. And that's not saying that men aren't blinded by their emotions...
But women can be more diligent... look at the women today and of yestarday. They worked their asses off to get where they were. Things weren't going for them. Mainly discrimination. And women succeeded just like men did. Perhaps women have different goals than men and don't "succeed" like they do, or seem as "smart" as men are. But the progress women have made shows that they're not less than men.
Initially I'd say yes, men are smarter. But I've come to learn that when women aren't blinded by their emotions, they're just as smart. And that's not saying that men aren't blinded by their emotions...
But women can be more diligent... look at the women today and of yestarday. They worked their asses off to get where they were. Things weren't going for them. Mainly discrimination. And women succeeded just like men did. Perhaps women have different goals than men and don't "succeed" like they do, or seem as "smart" as men are. But the progress women have made shows that they're not less than men.
Sn2
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Mar 25, 2005
- Messages
- 370
I think men are genetically favored intellectually. I've met very few women whose mental strengths lie in the fields of math or science. The ratio of men to women in math-related fields is something like 8 to 1 (I'll dig up the stats later.) This, to me, is a good indication of intellectual inferiority and lower capacity for abstract thought. But on the other hand, women have not had access to the same level of education as men until recently. There is also the huge issue of cultural selection and the general discouragement of women entering into such fields (counsellors, parental involvement [math is predominately a "male" skill -- mothers do not assist in homework help during childhood, etc].) Additionally, women typically require a sense of security and assurance in their roles, so their involvement in interests/jobs that society views as feminine and acceptable is preferred.
(sorry, I'm really drunk snd didn't bother to read any posts prior to this page )
(sorry, I'm really drunk snd didn't bother to read any posts prior to this page
)
sexyanon2
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Dec 3, 2004
- Messages
- 1,312
So intellectual ability is limited to the fields of math and science?
Are there no other reasons women have not populated those fields yet? Is there a reason women have stuck to business and medical care thus far? You've touched on this in the later part of your paragraph..
Are there no other reasons women have not populated those fields yet? Is there a reason women have stuck to business and medical care thus far? You've touched on this in the later part of your paragraph..
Psychedelics_r_best
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Oct 16, 2004
- Messages
- 2,049
If you want to be an evil fascist pig the asnwer is yes, all the way.
But then again you never get a female Jim Morrison or Roger Waters people. Who have all the great musicians been? Who have the majority of great philosophers been, past and present? Shit, Im a fascist pig.
But then again you never get a female Jim Morrison or Roger Waters people. Who have all the great musicians been? Who have the majority of great philosophers been, past and present? Shit, Im a fascist pig.
aunty establishment
Bluelight Crew
^Janis Joplin? Billie Holiday? C'mon.
I believe that gender is almost entirely socially inculcated. Our brains may look different but I think they can do all the same things, it just takes positive reinforcement. Self-doubt is the biggest killer of intelligence potential, as I see it.
As for the question of men having a greater standard deviation on the IQ test, I believe this is an aspect of the test itself and the way people are taught. For the record, in my social circle the majority of the 99 percentile intelligentsia are female. This isn't representative of anything, I just prefer to hang out with smart women and find excessively smart men too egotistical. All just personal opinions and no conclusions should be drawn
I believe that gender is almost entirely socially inculcated. Our brains may look different but I think they can do all the same things, it just takes positive reinforcement. Self-doubt is the biggest killer of intelligence potential, as I see it.
As for the question of men having a greater standard deviation on the IQ test, I believe this is an aspect of the test itself and the way people are taught. For the record, in my social circle the majority of the 99 percentile intelligentsia are female. This isn't representative of anything, I just prefer to hang out with smart women and find excessively smart men too egotistical. All just personal opinions and no conclusions should be drawn
Petersko
Bluelighter
The brains of men and women ARE different.
http://my.webmd.com/content/Article/104/107367.htm?z=1685_00000_0000_ep_03
And it's no secret that men do tend to make up the majority of the deviates, both good and bad. Off-the-chart geniuses, AND serial killers.
http://my.webmd.com/content/Article/104/107367.htm?z=1685_00000_0000_ep_03
And it's no secret that men do tend to make up the majority of the deviates, both good and bad. Off-the-chart geniuses, AND serial killers.
glitterbizkit
Bluelighter
kittyinthedark said:
Interesting.... It was the other way round at my school, the girls were usually expected to be smarter than the boys (I guess this could have a lot to do with the girls being expected to be more well-behaved and focused on doing good at school, while the boys were sort of expected to be troublemakers). In fact, remembering my maths class at high school when I was doing my IGCSE's (our year was divided up into different classes depending on how well we did in maths, and the class I was in was doing the highest level of maths), there were more girls than guys. One other interesting thing though was that the majority of the students in that class were Indians. Indians always did really well academically. It probably had a lot to do with their culture, and the pressure from their parents to study study study 24/7 and never get less than top grades.
I find it hard to define 'intelligence' though. As a kid, and through to high school, I was smarter than most of the kids in my class (not meaning I necessarily got the best grades, because I was a lazy shit, but I had to use a lot less effort to get good grades than most). But as I got older, getting good grades required more effort, because it required different skills as compared to those required for good grades when I was younger, and I guess it also required more of a willingness to work hard which I, um, don't really have a lot of the time. These days (especially after spending one year at uni), I don't feel more intelligent than the average person my age. In fact, at university I felt really, really dumb at times because the subject I was studying required skills that I don't have/haven't developed yet (don't know which). Could also be that I've just gotten dumber (must be the drugs) 8)
kittyinthedark
Bluelight Crew
- Joined
- Mar 23, 2004
- Messages
- 10,887
^I'm specifically looking at the very, very "academically endowed" - the top 1% of students, those innately "brainy" kids. With the really, really bookish/brainy/nerdy/<insert synonym here> kids, the girls were expected to shut the hell up and stay at their desks, but the boys could still have friends and pretty much do the same as any other boy. I was ruthlessly ridiculed whereas my male counterparts were at least left alone if they weren't playing with the "in crowd." If you start moving into slightly lower eschelons, say, the top ten or fifteen percent, you'll see a lot more girls for the reasons you stated - they're better behaved, work harder, tend to be perceived as better students, are picked by teachers for upper-level classes, etc.
However, that doesn't negate the fact that women even in the top 50% feel plenty of pressure to dumb themselves down - it's just much easier to hide (and a lot less painful) when you're not *way* at the top. To women like myself who actively pride themselves on their mathematical ability the sting is extra bitter when someone tries to take you down a peg for it. At least where I grew up, being a girl + being good at math/science = a heinous crime.
I think this is a terrific point. I've said it before, and I'll say it again - I'm pretty damn convinced that more guys are better at math than girls. However, that doesn't mean that I'm not good at it because I'm a girl. I'll whip any guy's ass in a computer programming contest any day(
), and I must say, I do quite like the guy to girl ratio in my science and math classes
PS - I hope I'm not coming off as terribly egotistical and condescending or something, I just harbor a lot of resentment on this subject. The only thing I had going for me as a kid in school was that I was smart, and that's the very thing I was shunned for...
I'm just beginning to come to terms with the fact that I'm just going to have to put up with a few things as a woman in the field of my choice.
However, that doesn't negate the fact that women even in the top 50% feel plenty of pressure to dumb themselves down - it's just much easier to hide (and a lot less painful) when you're not *way* at the top. To women like myself who actively pride themselves on their mathematical ability the sting is extra bitter when someone tries to take you down a peg for it. At least where I grew up, being a girl + being good at math/science = a heinous crime.
I think this is a terrific point. I've said it before, and I'll say it again - I'm pretty damn convinced that more guys are better at math than girls. However, that doesn't mean that I'm not good at it because I'm a girl. I'll whip any guy's ass in a computer programming contest any day(
), and I must say, I do quite like the guy to girl ratio in my science and math classes PS - I hope I'm not coming off as terribly egotistical and condescending or something, I just harbor a lot of resentment on this subject. The only thing I had going for me as a kid in school was that I was smart, and that's the very thing I was shunned for...
I'm just beginning to come to terms with the fact that I'm just going to have to put up with a few things as a woman in the field of my choice.
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