Category: Politics

Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine

My friend Emma Bull recommended this book to me.  I love it.  There is nothing quite as affirming as finding a scientist who does careful research that supports your prejudices.

We’ve all seen (and maybe even read) the popular books that explain how men and women are “fundamentally” different; have different brains; we’ve come across–or seen reference to–neurological proof of this.  Fine looks at this “proof” in detail, carefully; she analyzes the data, she looks at the testing methods, she studies the conclusions–and she destroys the whole myth.  Beautifully.  Entertainingly.

It must be said that the idea of (for lack of a better term) “white male privilege” is also shown to be real, with hard evidence as well as theoretical backing.  I can, to be very brief, state that, to me, such arguments as John Scalzi’s recent one get support (much of what she demonstrates clearly applies to non-white, non-hetrosexual men as well as to all women); but, to me, so do my objections to it (to put it another way: this reaffirmed my conviction that prejudice exists and is a major factor in our lives; it did nothing to make me question my hatred of identity politics).

None of which is the beauty of the book.

I have long believed that certain classes of scientists (evolutionary psychologists being the most recent) either understate or overlook entirely that man is above all a social animal; we adapt, we work, we compete, we cooperate as societies, and the social forms we’ve developed for doing so determine, more than anything else, who we are.  It is a joy to see this view supported.

She is strongest when she is looking at the methodology of the tests that found men and women have different brains.  One of my favorite moments is on page 122.  There was a study to determine how much girls chose girlish toys, and boys chose boyish toys.  “Interestingly, one of the staples of the boyish toys, the Lincoln Logs construction set, recently had to be replaced because girls liked it so much.” I don’t know what you’d call that, but “science”certainly isn’t the right word.

She goes into brain tests such as PET and fMRI, and discusses what we can and cannot learn from them; and it’s scary how many of the popularizers of “hardwired brain differences” are drawing conclusions from either insufficient data, or data that directly contradict their conclusions.  She goes into detail, she makes it clear, and she makes it fun.  And there plenty of references for those who want to check her work.

Page 177: “Genes don’t determine our brains (or our bodies), but they do constrain them.”  Clear, elegant, and dead on.  And then a page later, “As cognitive neuroscientist Giordana Grossi points out, terms like hardwired–on loan from computer science where it refers to fixedness–translate poorly to the domain of neural circuits that change and learn throughout life, indeed, in response to life.”

No, it isn’t “hardwired.”  No, it isn’t “innate.”  Which means we can change it.

 

Scalzi’s Latest: But I didn’t get MY say!

John “Breathtakingly Brilliant” Scalzi has made another breathtakingly brilliant post.  At 800 comments and late at night, he finally said “Enough,” especially because everyone was repeating himself (and anyone who didn’t notice the non-sex-specific “he” in that sentence might have problems with this conversation).  Point is, I had something to say about it, and, after reading all 800 comments, no one said it.  So I will say it here.

First, please read his post.

Okay, when I say it is ‘breathtakingly brilliant,” I mean it, because it has beautifully redefined things for me.  It was a classic case of, “You’re bothered by this metaphor, so let me give you a new metaphor without the emotional baggage, so that, just maybe, we can discuss the actual issue.”  It worked.

And, in so doing, it highlighted my problem with the whole, massive bundle.  My problem can be stated thus: All of this effort put into either a) How do we make the game more fair, or b) At least making us aware of how unfair the rules are,  makes it that much harder to focus on what is, to me, most important: THE FUCKING GAME SUCKS.

I don’t want to play it, I don’t want to be forced to play it, I don’t want strangers to have no choice but to play it; I don’t like smug assholes “dropping out” to live in the woods and then claiming they aren’t playing it.

The game needs to go.  It needs to be replaced by a game that doesn’t have a wealth stat, or an education stat, because those things are just always maxed for everyone.  It needs to be replaced by a game in which the stats are different talents, and the only thing to put points in are interests and passions.

John calls his game real life, and he’s right, it is.  But I passionately, deeply believe it isn’t the only choice for what real life can be.  Most people will believe my desire here is unrealistic, and dismiss it; but we must not forget that many of these people believe (or believed) that voting for Obama made a difference, so exactly who is unrealistic is open for debate.  In terms of material wealth and capacity for wealth production, there is, at present, enough to create the game I want, or at least get pretty close.   In order to concentrate on changing the rules for stat setting, you must believe the game is always going to be there, more or less the same.

I will never accept that.

 

 

On Winning Arguments

There’s been some recent discussion–most of it, I believe, ironic–about winning arguments.  It got me to thinking.  Those of us who pride ourselves on logic and rationality hate losing an argument; it damages our self-respect.  But that aside, none of us expect to actually win an argument of the sort we’re having here.  In fact, I can only remember winning an argument once in my life, when a better man than I said, “You haven’t convinced me, but I can’t answer you.”  I didn’t gloat about winning; rather my jaw dropped at his honesty.

But, you see, convincing someone isn’t the point of arguing.  At least, for me.  For me, the point is to sharpen and clarify my own ideas by testing them against others.  Sometimes, in fact, I only learn what I think about something when I hear myself making an argument.  When someone is so far from my position that arguing would be absurd; or says something so preposterous that nothing can be gained or clarified from the discussion, I will usually opt out.  Case in point: the discussion of Capital that was going on until I lost my copy: I was reading it to help me understand what are to me difficult concepts; and people who hold positions far, far from mine sometimes said things that were helpful in clarifying things.  There was no point in arguing with them.  If someone believes that the exchange of commodities is determined by pure ideas, I’m not going to change his mind, and he isn’t going to change mine.  Why argue?  But nevertheless, some of the “value is all the in the head” people said very, very useful things that helped me piece together concept I was having trouble with.

Another use of a good argument is to make subtle distinctions sharper and clearer.  If someone starts out saying, “We should do more to prevent voter fraud,” and, through the course of an argument, it becomes clear that his attitude is, “the poor should be disenfranchised,” then that argument was useful in showing anyone listening the basis of his original position.

To summarize: I will engage in argument to help me clarify my positions; to expose the logical conclusions of another’s positions, and that’s about it.

Well, no.  I’ll also do it because I’m pissed off, or because I thought of a clever way to trash someone who annoys me.  But I shouldn’t do that, and I try not to.

Domestic terrorists

It seems to me that it is in the interest of the public to have a list of all known domestic terrorists and terrorist groups–that is, individuals or minorities who attempt to use fear and terror to accomplish their political goals.  Since the other lists I’ve seen are unreliable (I’m told Occupy Wall Street has been added to one such list), I thought I’d step up and offer to make the list right here.

For starters, obviously, we have:

The Department of Homeland Security.

After that, some obvious choices are:

Michael Bloomberg

The NYPD

Rudy Guilianni

The Oakland PD

Okay, that’s a good start.  Who else should we add?  Speak up.

Truisms rot brains; absolute truisms rot brains absolutely

Once again I’ve come across the old saw, “power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.”  Most of us first encountered it in Orwell’s 1984, where it was used to avoid questions the author preferred not to address, but it predates that.  I’m not sure, but I think the original form says authority instead of power.  But what came to mind on this occasion was: why is this unscientific idea so attractive to certain layers, and what social role does it play?

The first question one must ask is, what does “corrupt” mean in this context?  My American Heritage dictionary tells me that the verb, “to corrupt” means “to destroy or subvert the honesty or integrity of.” Presumably, if the line means anything at all, it means that power or authority destroys or subverts the honesty or integrity of the person who holds it.

But, with this definition, it is obvious that it is far from universal. History abounds with examples of individuals in power who were not corrupted in any meaningful way.  The USA in particular is rich in examples: George Washington, who stepped down from his position of authority; Abraham Lincoln, who invariably put his duty as he saw it ahead of his personal desires; Malcom X, who, whatever his political limitations, attempted to convince with ideas rather than use his personal authority.  Other cases that come to mind for me include Lenin, who never made any attempt to circumvent the soviets or the Central Committee, but instead always worked to convince others of the correctness of his policies; and Trotsky, who, at the time of Lenin’s death, was perfectly positioned to simply use the Red Army to take power.  I’m sure most of you can find other examples without looking very hard.

No one who has expressed this idea has ever given the least hint of a scientific explanation for it.  Is it something in the biological make-up of the human being?  If so, what exactly?  Where did it come from, how does it operate?  Is it social?  If so, again, what is the mechanism; what social forces cause this?  Instead of an explanation, we get a truism, and one that doesn’t hold up empirically, much less theoretically.

So—why is it so ubiquitous?  Any idea that persists, whether it is right or wrong, serves a social function.  I think the function of this idea is the one that Orwell so skillfully used it for: to avoid dealing with difficult questions.  That is, the tough question is not, “why is the individual holding power being evil,” but, “how did we find ourselves in a situation where a single individual HAS such power?”  This latter question cannot, alas, be answered by a truism, but requires careful investigation of the circumstances: In Hitler’s case, for example, we have to look at the failure of the German revolutions of 1919 and 1923, the financial backing of the Nazis, &c.  In the case of Stalin, we look at the condition of the Soviet Union after WWI, at the wars of intervention,  at the failures of the revolutions in England, France, Hungary, and Poland.  It is difficult, complicated, and can’t be expressed in a simple formula.  However, if one can skip all of this by simply reciting a clever-sounding phrase, then one can avoid the hard work.

It’s so much easier that way.  Provided one cares nothing for truth.