“Men’s Studies” has existed as an academic discipline for several decades now. Not surprisingly, most of those involved in it identify themselves as feminists – as people interested in studying gender tend to do. But not all of them: A couple of years back, a group of mostly anti-feminist academics and popular writers with an interest in gender decided to try to do a sort of end run around the discipline of “Men’s Studies” by conjuring up a whole new, altogether un-feminist discipline called “Male Studies.”
Recently, The University of South Australia announced that it would start offering postgraduate courses in Male Studies sometime in 2014; our old friend Eoghan/Sigil1 brought this earthshattering news to the Men’s Rights subreddit the other day, where it was greeted with … suspicion and hostility.
GotMyFrogHatOn wrote:
Great, now men have the same opportunity as women to waste their time and money on a worthless degree!
Liverotto was even blunter:
YES, because the cure to bullshit is… MORE BULLSHIT! /s
That’s right: Men’s Rights Redditors hate Women’s Studies, and Gender Studies, and apparently every academic discipline with the word “Studies” in it so much that they’ve transferred this hatred to a new academic discipline that could well have been (and sort of was) designed just for them.
But don’t worry, they still hate Women’s Studies the most:
What was I saying the other day about projection?
Ruby: What’s offensive to me is your insistence that because all women’s brains are alike (which is a highly dubious claim–there are quite likely differences between women’s brains that haven’t yet been studied), all women are alike, and alike YOU.
Plus these differences may not be as large as you apparently think they are because you are so wedded to a simplistic binary.
I guess your idea of feminism is that “men and women are totes different but we should be equal anyway”? (I’m trying to make sense of the contradictions I see in your postings in different threads at different times.)
That’s a step up from “men and women are different, thus women INFERIOR.” Sort of.
But you may not realize that the esssentialist discourse of “difference” (without any real repeatable science in many cases–starting with the 19th century “discovery” that men’s brans weighed more than women’s–white brains weighted more than black brains 2!!, and without enough work to weed out confirmation bias) has been used to justify women’s oppression due to women’s inferiority. Small brain! Womb travels around body when educated, thus HYSTERIA!
I know that some in science believe it is difficult to study gender differences because of “politics” but–well, politics are always there, and given that ‘science’ as a discipline is stil pretty heavily male dominated in some areas and the patterns of historical discrimination are so strong, that it is difficult to talk about differences.
The thing is that as long as the focus is on differences between MEN and WOMEN, the differences among MEN and the difference among WOMEN sort of get shuffled under the rug, erasing and marginalizing a whole lot of people.
Not that I expect you to understand or respond to any of this, but heck, the floor is drying, and I cannot put out the clean cat litter boxes, and it’s fun to talk here knowing who else will be reading.
The Prestigious Journal of Scientific Psychology has a new study contradicting Ruby’s hypothesis.
Ruby. You do realize you keep making catch all statements that are generalized and don’t speak to the experience of many individuals. Also, you keep basing your assumptions off your own personal experience and a very low N study. But then, you don’t seem to have a fucking clue on how science works in the first place (Only spamming appeals to authority after grand sweeping generalizations).
Did you know? Individuals brains (of a very similar background even!) happen to be wired differently too! The brain as an organ is a much more complex system then a few CAT-5 cables, a power cord, and a DVI connector. As well, much of it gets altered throughout different development processes and it responds to environmental stimulation rather then just pure biology.
What’s offensive is that you can’t grasp that every woman isn’t you, Ruby. You’re like a little kid who hasn’t grasped that other people have minds.
Do you have some evidence for that?
I was a reviewer for the Human Brain Project at NIH. I reviewed a bunch of proposals having to do with using fMRI to investigate brain anatomy. I am not aware that there were any results suggesting that brain anatomy is fundamentally different for men and women.
In fact the big problem with studying brain anatomy is that it differs significantly between individuals. The best the HBP researchers could do at the time was try to use very complex morphological operations to “average” brain anatomy across lots of imaging data, to get an overall picture of the functional anatomy. Again, I am not personally aware of results that show a gender difference, but if you could point me to one, I’m literally actually qualified to review it.
Women in porn are hired for their looks, like they are usually conventionally attractive. I for one am not into a super muscly middle-aged guy with bleached hair who looks angry and not into sex all the time, so previously I would mainly watch gay porn because there are generally good-looking guys. I have recently discovered James Deen and fallen in love with hetero porn for that very reason…if I wanna see a young, conventionally good-looking guy, that is my limit. This guy has a MASSIVE female fanbase, which I suspect is both for this reason and because he seems really really into sex with girls, he often looks into their eyes and tells them how awesome they are and so on. Hell, most straight porn you can barely see the guy at all. I’ve also had much more luck with porn made by women (Burning Angel, alot of Kink.com)
I wouldn’t buy a magazine with naked guys tho…I’m not interested in static images *shrug*
*Goes back to watching Hugh Jackman water video on repeat* 😀
@katz: That is the most beautiful journal I have ever seen. Truly it is a bastion of scientific achievement.
Here, Ruby, you may find this useful. http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/heshe.html
Particularly “The behavioral and neurological differences between men and women require further study. Perhaps new studies will find neuroanatomical differences that explain some of the complex differences between male and female behavior. However, from a review of the current scientific evidence, it appears that differences in many cognitive behaviors (for example, memory) are related more to individual differences between people than to whether people are female or male.”
Does anyone else get sick to tears over this argument? “X and Y are different in the following ways. What, you disagree with my baseless assertions? X and Y are different! How could this be a problem for you?”
No. No. A thousand times NO! Just because women generally have vaginas and men generally have penises does not mean that every conceivable socially-ingrained gender difference is valid! A difference somewhere doesn’t justify every possible difference! ARGH!
*calms down*
Ruby, we’re not disagreeing with you because we don’t like you, or because we don’t like what your saying, or because the concept of male and female brains being different somehow is offensive.
We’re disagreeing with you because you’re assertions are not supported (and sometimes contradicted) by the evidence.
By the way, is Ruby just trolling? It may just be me, but she gives me the vibe of an anti-feminist trying to pose as a feminist by making statements just slightly past acceptable to trick us into supporting extreme views…
Like I said, may just be me.
Kirby: I feel like I see that all the time.
Person A: Unsupported statement
Person B: Dude, that’s not true.
Person A: What’s your big problem with unsupported statement?
@katz:
It’s more like
kirbywarp: It’s not just you.
I wonder why Ruby is so offended by the idea that gender differences might be social rather than biological. It seems to really upset her.
Or maybe a clearer phrasing would be:
Person A: People are like X.
Person B: No, they aren’t.
Person A: WHAT’S SO WRONG WITH PEOPLE BEING LIKE X?
Dude, nothing would be wrong with people doing that, but they don’t.
“What about men and women being wired differently is so bothersome? You guys do realize that men and women’s brains are different, right? Or is that highly offensive to you?”
Let’s start with that that’s not true, see above (especially Alpha Asshole Cock Carousel and Flib). Second, yes, I am highly offended by people who twist science to say wtf they want, which is you in this case — brains are interesting organs, but that’s all they are, another organ of the human body, and as such, the vast, vast majority of differences have way more to do with socialization than gender. For example, a male and female violinist will have more in common than that male violinist and a male coal miner (likewise, he’ll have more in common with a female coal miner).
Most of your brain isn’t doing cognitive stuff. Seriously, all the parts devoted to things like moving your fingers to type? Exactly the same regardless of gender.
Alpha Asshole Cock Carousel, I’m sorry if my psychology undergrad level neurosci is dumbing down to painful levels (and I have an OT question, neurosci have a damned clue where synaesthesia comes from yet? simple curiousity, don’t want to derail the thread further if you don’t know)
Lol, maybe we should explain synaesthesia to Ruby though, just how different the human brain can be might amaze her.
@Argenti:
Synaesthesia: Taste the rainbow.
…
Has that joke been done? I hope it hasn’t been done.
…
Dammit, it’s been done to death. Oh well.
Kirby, it’s not just you who thinks she’s trolling.
Ruby, Ithiliana wrote that nice paragraph for you about blanket statements vs. first person, the least you could do is read it. Bonus for comprehending it.
For those of you who think I’m just faking being a Feminist, this thread in The Skeptic Society forum shows how I came to Manboobz:
http://www.skepticforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=17837
Miss Piggy is my avatar. I chose her because an MRA was referring to American women as, “American Pig Women.” As you can see, I’m most definitely a Feminist.
Definitely a troll.
You are really a bare minimum feminist really, but its not impressive because you share common sexist beliefs about women as any other typical misogynist does. No cookie for you.
One more comment:
You said that in the forum you linked to and thats your issue ruby. We don’t have entirely equal rights yet, the west is far more equal than many other countries but we still need feminism because women’s rights are still being questioned.
Ruby, perhaps you should do some research elsewhere before coming here. You’re bare minimum, like Jumbo said. A lot of us have already done the heavy reading.
Seconding what ithiliana said about insecure people needing to justify their behavior. At this point I’m quite willing to believe that Ruby doesn’t find men visually stimulating, in part because the only part of the male body that she was able to think of that women MIGHT find visually stimulating was the penis. For someone who’s apparently sleeping with a man to say that…well, that’s sad, and I mean that in a non-sarcastic way, as in I am sad for her. And for her husband too – it can’t be doing his self-esteem any good to be with a woman who doesn’t find anything physical about him attractive.
That is, if Ruby is even a woman, which I’m beginning to strongly doubt. She’s certainly not a feminist.
On magical laura’s point about gay porn, I actually think that the fact that so many straight women watch gay porn proves beyond a doubt that women are a. visually stimulated by men’s bodies and b. far more selective about what they want those bodies to look like than sexists are comfortable with. A preference for gay porn = a preference for the only form of porn in which men’s bodies are the focus, and the men are chosen mostly on the basis of how attractive they are.
I’m a Feminist, you people are extreme Feminists. You make Feminism look bad with your denial about the differences in women and men. I too hate cultures that require restrictive gender roles, but I’m not going to pretend the genders are wired the same. And yes, we do need Feminism as there are idiots like the MRAs who would take away our rights.