It is a common observation. We clearly live in a society dominated by men and male thinking that emphasizes things “male.”
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And the alternative is… accepting it at face value? Refusing to think about the creators of popular culture, the movers, the shakers? Accept their explanations with nary a murmur of disagreement?
#Baaaaaaaaaaa
#wakeupsheeple
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Assuming, of course, that the three of us are members of the same society…
My point was that observations are crucial, but it is disempowering to take them to the point of capitulation. Identifying yourself with trends you are opposed to might not be a great idea. This is where using delimiters of time and place can be helpful. Such as: “This culture has had a sordid history of X, but my people are of Y”. Then you can make both your observations and your own position clear.
You don’t live in America or Europe?
Good info!
I did look up some info on the occurrence by gender for the brain diseases I could find (limited looking, admittedly):
Huntington’s has the same rate for both men and women
Dementia has the same rate for both men and women
Almost two-thirds of Americans with Alzheimer’s are women.
Boys are nearly five times more likely than girls to have autism
“It [Schizophrenia] occurs 1.4 times more frequently in males than females and typically appears earlier in men — the peak ages of onset are 25 years for males and 27 years for females.”
My schizo-affective disorder (with bi-polar) did not manifest for me until I was 32, except one time when I was 19 I snorted a lot of cocaine and had severe visual and audial hallucinations.
Edit: add this about bi-polar disorder:
Maybe women are better at programming multi-threaded applications? 
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I do live on one of those. But:
- continents are not societies
- I am partly responsible for defining the societies I am involved with
I think, generally speaking as an average and not a standard, women are better at thinking about the overall effects of programming a linear piece of code into the whole of the code, properly utilizing it. I also think men, generally speaking as an average and not a standard, are better at creating the linear single pieces of engineering that are either next to useless or useless in the overall whole of the machine, if not with the proper overview of the whole system women seem to be able to take in better.
I used examples of women playing major parts in Colossus, ENIAC, and women through Ada Lovelace can claim to be the owners of the title, “First gender to program a computer”, while men can claim the title, “First gender to engineer a computer” through Babbage’s machine. The roles women and men have played throughout the birth and raising of the modern computer together worked well enough to pull off some really amazing stuff.
I’m not saying there is not room for people that cross over the types. My father was definitely a male stereotype in his actions, and was an intelligent enough to engineer the proper use of individuals. He really shined at that, he knew everyone’s name and their wive’s too. My mother on the other hand, which I take after more than my father (I have plenty of my father’s traits from genetics and upbringing), is very good at both. She is more intelligent than my father was (dead at 48) and can use people properly, but can be difficult to deal with. My father only gave ultimatums when he was at the end of his rope, but my mother is much more ready to go off.
BTW, my schizo disorder is genetic, it runs in my mothers family. There are many on that side of the family effected by it, coming from my grandfather - I have 26 cousins and 7 blood related aunts and uncles.
I’m sorry but there is one society in say, US North America (with subcultures within it). You can’t really opt out of it. You’re participating in it by posting here, going to the grocery store, paying your bills, working a job, relying on the fire department, paying taxes, etc. So, yes, you live within the patriarchy.
So, yeah, we’re part of the same society. You can’t really opt out of it just like you can’t opt out of money (unless you build a tar paper shack in the hills and make your own bow and arrows and hunt game and never see another human).
Again, we don’t live in your utopia. We live here, right now. You aren’t some nebulous free agent that isn’t part of the overall system and is commenting on it from your outside vantage point. You can deny it all you want but you are part of the same system as the rest of us and partake of its strengths and weaknesses.
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Gah, I remember studying David in sociology at uni…I had no idea he’d committed suicide (would have only been a year or two after).
I really hope John Money is in that special hell with the child molesters and theatre-whisperers.
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Based upon what? Because the US says so? Maybe you’re sucked into some perverse totalitarian fantasy of theirs.
[quote=“albill, post:114, topic:50915”]You can’t really opt out of it. You’re participating in it by posting here, going to the grocery store, paying your bills, working a job, relying on the fire department, paying taxes, etc. So, yes, you live within the patriarchy.
[/quote]
Because I’m posting here? That’s a crock, not everybody here is in the US. Believe it or not, people do use communications technology to speak between different continents, countries, languages, cultures, whatever. Try to not be so presumptuous about people - it’s more than a bit rude. After all, we’re all members of the Klan here, amirite? NO - GTFO. Firstly, I don’t do the rest of the things in your list. Secondly, your reasoning is bogus - you do not need to live within a patriarchy to have a job, or pay bills. If I don’t use the dollar, I can’t interact with other humans? This also is demonstrably untrue. The worst of it is that your argument presents itself as absolutist when it is, essentially, ideological. It’s poor, coercive rhetoric.
If your “support” of minorities, women, etc is limited to helping them to assimilate into an monoculture, then your efforts are worse than useless. That’s a rather weak form multiculturalism. Fighting to have people recognize something superficial like your skin tone or who you like to get frisky with is less relevant than fighting to let people organize freely. As in, letting people choose what groups they are affiliated with, what their values and goals are. Instead of accepting me as queer, why can’t people accept me as being a member of, for example, The People’s 17th NorthEast Autonomous Zone? Otherwise, it looks to me like you are merely identifying with the oppressor. Has liberalism really been so badly coopted? It’s got about the revolutionary potential of a Pentagon doormat.
FFS try to grasp the concept of pluralism. Sure, I am a part of an ecosystem. But not of a monolithic cultural system. I am working inside of a system which happens to not be yours. You are not entitled to complain about how I choose to organize, so please get over it.
Who exactly are “the rest of us”, some list of people you pulled out of your backside? I don’t know whether or not you are aware of it, but the way you frame these things is dishonest. Telling me that I accept it or deny it is about the same rhetorical tactic as “let’s be honest…” - it implies that I am automatically in denial if I happen to not agree with your not-very-substantial argument. I don’t deny your assertion, I refute it.
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Humans are bad at conscious parallel processing, but we do excel at unconscious parallel processing. We’re doing it all the time — there’s a whole load of data gathering and decision making going on out of view of the tiny and imperfect peephole our consciousness peers through.
What we think of as multitasking is actually using unconscious processing to do multiple well practised tasks, while unconscious cues direct the consciousness to the most critical task at the time, with attention flitting between tasks as needed.
Ask any human to do 2 or more awkward and unfamiliar tasks simultaneously and the quality of the ones that are not being consciously controlled deteriorate. Practise and we can learn to do marvellous things, like driving cars; piloting aircraft; improvising music with a band with the right hand at a piano, while maintaining the regular bass line with the left; or hitting moving targets with a bow and arrow while running, jumping or riding.
If there is any male : female difference it’s likely only going to show up comparing ability to do several unfamiliar but relatively easy tasks at the same time. The truly awesome stuff that comes with practised expertise is available to anyone who is willing and able to put in the time.
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Yeah, I kind of don’t believe you live entirely outside American society, make no use of the dollar, don’t engage in commerce (like buying a computer, paying your Internet bill, or buying food) and live in…what? A squat and don’t ever pay taxes to the taxman. (Even living in a squat and grazing for food from dumpsters is still being a part of society.) I don’t think you’re some human ghost who doesn’t interact with society, including economically and legally, every day. If you insist you do, I’m pretty much assuming you’re posturing. (I am aware that there are non-Americans here but you’ve basically said before that you’re within the United States.)
Hell, if you’re living in a city, you’re already partaking of our society, even if you choose not to acknowledge it. Where do you think the streets, the running water, etc. come from? Did you build the building you’re sitting in right now? If you have lights on, are you making the power yourself?
The whole point of recognizing this instead of some “I am free of your society” fantasy is that the only way you are going to make society better is by working within it because there is, literally, nothing outside of the totalizing machine we exist within of world commerce and culture. You’re not some genderless ghost without a birth and with no involvement with other humans in society.
So, yeah, I actually do understand pluralism. I think you’re pretending to live in a different world than you’re actually living within. I can’t imagine why you keep up this pretense? That is, like I said, you’re secretly living in a forest somewhere in a shack you constructed by hand after cutting down the trees yourself and you’re somehow using…stolen technology (?) to get on the Internet to talk to us poor fools in the monoculture.
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Since I don’t know you, I am not very much concerned by what you believe about me. But you are simply not entitled to tell me what I do and how I live. I told you that I think it’s imposing and rude - yet you persist in doing so. So I guess I have some idea what level of basic respect or courtesy to expect from you.
The way I live may be pretense to you. To me it is my values, my perspective on the world, and my personal and social goals. Why not the US? Because my values and goals are incompatible with it, that seems to be a sound enough reason. Don’t subordinate yourself to a system that you can’t abide the terms of.
I don’t know who this “us” or “we” you keep referring to might be. I strongly suspect that you can’t name them. It’s your responsibility to create social structure with those you associate with. If you decline to do so, but still like to imagine that you have some ready-made society to be a member of, knock yourself out. You can’t be a collectivist without a real collective.
Yes, words are very imposing. Let me know how your cabin in the tundra works out.
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What everyone is trying to tell you and what you seem determined to not get is that your ideas about differences between the sexes is not giving you any actually useful information for judging individuals and that these ideas and your mis-application of them is leading to a lot of confusion regarding assessing individuals.
Whether these ideas have any truth behind them is immaterial because the differences between individuals totally swamps what ever data, speculative or real, can be gleaned from them. The noise over-whelms the signal.
Practice not having an opinion about something, every day. It can lead to a sort of peace of mind.
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Yes, worse, they’re rather ignorant when your “insight” is pestering people who you don’t know about how their lives are. Do you lack awareness that you are doing this? Is it just an annoying rhetorical device? I hate the overused term, but this is literally a straw man argument you are subjecting me to. In another thread, you spontaneously tell me what you imagine my personal background is. Here, you’re telling me more fascinating tidbits you’ve thought up about me. You’re not very close. You don’t listen when I explain. And it’s rude to others here for me to need to clarify a record of nonstop, bogus remarks you make about me. You don’t get to criticize me on the basis of shit that you’ve made up, so cut it out.
If you can make a case for me moving to one, maybe I will. Otherwise it will take more than the annoyance of you and whoever you’re fronting for. If you intend to keep pestering me, do it via PM so the topic can continue in peace.
See, now I’m curious. You’re very emphatically upset by my suppositions about you and your lifestyle yet you’ve gone out of your way to be enigmatic, hide who you are, how you live, what you do, etc. If you want to clarify and show that I am wrong, etc., perhaps you can explain these things?
So, pray tell, how does one completely opt out of the cash economy, not have to work, etc. in order to be a free spirit? You’ve said you never handle money and don’t pay taxes. How does one do that? I’m actually interested in hearing your explanation on how you’ve very practically put your philosophy of life into practice and yet remained integrated with the world, including active on the Internet.
Oh, and for the records, “words are imposing” was meant in a not serious way. Words aren’t imposing at all. They’re just words here on a medium that is composed almost entirely of words as our only means to communicate. Unless someone is calling you names or insulting your mother, etc., you’re pretty free to ignore anyone’s imposition of their words or values on you (just as they can ignore that you do the same to them). It’s a free exchange of ideas and words.
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