This is as stark an example of the modern denial of human nature as you can find.
“a kind of sad snapshot of our lost, pre-Reagan/Thatcher/Pinochet/Mulroney-era past”
Either you believe that men and women, by design, enjoy imagining whacking each other with swords to differing degrees, or you believe that women are under the control of Reagan, Thatcher, Mulroney, and oh yeah, Pinochet.
The latter is an insult to women to the extreme, if you think about it. The bed that today’s liberals and quasi-feminists have made for themselves is that they portray members of the female gender as sheep, or willing slaves. Of course, they also see every gender difference as manifestation of oppression and subjugation. Women like to wear makeup and have silky, heathy hair? The characterization of the “victims” is not so stirring, but the demonization of the male-dominated, agenda-driven beauty industry is.
To the deniers of human nature, the view of men and women as different is an insult to humanity. The reason? It implies to them a reduction of perceived freedom. It implies that we’re tethered to one degree or another to our biology. Obvious in the data, but not obvious to them, is that this is actually the case.
That phrase, the modern denial of human nature, is the subtitle of Steven Pinker’s book, The Blank Slate. This book should be required reading by liberal and conservative thinkers alike. If it was, 1/3 of all BoingBoing posts would dry up, and BoingBoing would be far better off.
Or, you can keep believing that boys who obsess about solving the Rubik’s cube really really fast are shutting out young women from doing the same. And their parents tacitly oppressed their daughters, too.
This winter, look down the next a hole in the street that you come across. You’ll see men wrestling with frozen pipes, possibly with cigarettes hanging out of their mouths. The quasi-feminists rail against the relative dearth of women in Silicon Valley, but never it seems, in those holes. They don’t seem to lament the underrepresentation of female violent crime. On the other side of the coin, they don’t seem to lament the underrepresent the number of posts by males on Facebook. They don’t seem to lament the glass ceiling that prevents men from taking billions upon billions of selfies since the advent of camera phones. They don’t rage against the shutting out of men in the fields of early education, psychology, and speech/language pathology. They don’t rage against the near-total absence of men at Beyonce concerts, or of women at Rush concerts.
If you accept on its face that skewed outcomes are manifestations of injustice of one sort or another, then the above should have you deeply concerned. Why aren’t you? Here’s why: those inequities don’t result in the kind of charge you get from pointing out, and thus being a resistor of oppression.
To my gratification my son plays D&D on occasion. When they get together, there may be 7 kids, with two being girls. I suppose you have think that while they’re thrilled to have those two young women there (they are), they are tacitly pushing away all other girls that would otherwise want to participate.
Not to put too fine a point on it, if you and the other BoingBoing oppression pointer-outers give it just one further level of critical thinking, you will find that your worldview is built on sand. It’s the modern denial of human nature. You’re a part of it, and you’re wrong.
You aren’t doing that critical thinking. You should. J’accuse!
