We’ve already heard from the so-called Thinking Housewife on the subject of Sally Ride. Meanwhile, over on The Spearhead, the regulars also have opinions about Ride. Regular commenter Keyster has this to say about Ride’s work in promoting science and technology education for girls:
She was supposed to have inspired a generation of girls to take science and math. While she may have inspired the “Grrl Esteem” movement, very few girls went on to get degrees in math and science as a result of Sally Ride … .
She was frustrated by the fact young girls were very interested in math and science initially, “…but for some reason we lose them around the age of 13.” MMmmm…I wonder why that would be. Because they discovered an interest in boys? Not surprisingly, Sally was able to keep her interest.
That’s right: girls are incapable of thinking about both math and boys. Lesbians are the only women who can sustain an interest in math, because their brains aren’t cluttered with thoughts of Justin Bieber. (Ok, bad example.)
In another comment, Keyster expresses his annoyance at the fact that Ride turned out to be capable of astronautery despite being a woman.
Sally Ride proved that a woman can have “the right stuff”, like Amelia Earheart proved a woman can fly long distances.
OK so now that we know she won’t become hysterical during her period while in outerspace and allow her used tampons to clog the toilet, what do we do with this information? Just because a woman accomplishes something normally associated with men, is this inspiring young girls to spontaneously excel en masse and compete against men in male dominated arenas? Or are women like Sally Ride the exceptions that prove the rule?
You know, “exceptions that prove the rule” aren’t actually a thing. The fact that Ride was a capable astronaut doesn’t actually “prove the rule” that women aren’t capable as astronauts, but instead suggests that this particular rule is not a real rule. You would think that Keyster, as a logical male, would understand this.
Again, but this is clearly a modern phenomenon as corsets were pretty much designed to restrict the waist to hip ratio to non-human levels.
Also, I want to point out that your original argument was that the hourglass shape, not a specific ratio, was the natural point of attraction. This is the problem with evo-psych, every model ends up reaching beyond the evidence to try to explain modern phenomena.
I have no idea how you could meaningfully separate the two. If you google “world’s most beautiful woman” I 100% guarantee you that the top five million results will all be of women in fancy clothes, with makeup and/or photoshop.
I also use this information to defend Affirmative Action programs. People are used to seeing white males in charge, so they start to subconsciously assume that this is who should be in charge (subconsciously is the operative word here). There have been a lot of studies that show this, people with ethnic names get called back for job interviews less often than people with white names and identical resumes. Women “are bad at math” because for so long people have assumed it was so. It isn’t, but the prejudice is real.
Evopsych led me to feminism. That may be atypical, but hey, I’m here.
@Mrs Bennet
I don’t see what your last three claims have to do with evo psych
Um, no corsets were worn nor seen by African tribes involved in the study. An hourglass shape does not mean large breasts. It means a waist that is narrower than the hips and shoulders. Even ancient sculptures and paintings depict the hip to waist ratio. You can tease apart fashion from beauty by having a very large group of people rate the beauty of many individuals from all sorts of ethnic backgrounds without makeup and without their hair done. Tribal people could still pick out who would be considered most beautiful in out of the members of another race who they had never had exposure to.
Beauty may be innate, and it may convey privilege. This doesn’t mean we should stop advocating that women should be judged on other criteria. Knowing the challenge makes it easier to overcome.
That last claim is highly questionable. Some studies have found that people on average are rather bad at rating the attractiveness of those who are of a different ethnic group if they did not grow up around members of that group. This is partly because beauty standards do vary between cultures.
Read The Moral Animal. It goes into the tendency towards prejudice.
My point was that in Europe 200 years ago, men preferred women with aist to hip ratios lower than anything naturally occuring. They occasionally broke the bottom two ribs to decrease waist size. So that would be one society that prefered a different waist-hip ratio than, say, modern Lagos citizens.
Also, the vast majority of African people (“tribes” is a super problematic word btw) were actually ruled by Europeans 50 years ago. Finding a society that is not exposed to European norms is literally impossible, as the translation and apparatus required to study their preferences in the first place would require extensive wider world contact.
I think the common usage does not entail that. The usual term is “pear-shaped.”
How would facial hair factor into that? Body hair? Facial expression? Hair length? Amount of skin moisturizer used over the last ten years? Body butter? Tattoos/scarring? Racial politics? White skin is very in fashion, and it’s hard to control for that. How about age? There are different social norms for which ages it is appropriate to be attracted to.
First off, “tribal people?” Second, you don’t think that group normative beauty ideals would affect perceptions of foreigners, even if the specific ethnicity of the foreigner had not been encountered yet? I don’t think European explorers landing in Hispaniola for the first time were viewing Amerindians in a perfectly objective, in-no-way-influenced-by-society way.
Evopsych ppls, just wait til I have my degree…
http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/psp/68/2/261/. I also recommend the ironically titled “Survival of the Prettiest” by Nancy Etcoff for well cited, easier reading. (She does NOT argue that beauty should be the most important thing, just that it’s criteria is more or less hard wired)
She can argue it all she wants, she is going to have to deal with a thousand cultures, many no longer extant, making it very clear what they want and how it isn’t modern ideals.
Even the definition of the word “beauty” is going to be widely variable among both individuals and society. I’ve met guys who think of “beauty” as being “could take home to meet my mother,” a very separate category from “hotness,” meaning “could take home to my apartment.”
People might think of beauty in terms of sexual attraction, aristocratic/upper class appearance, or even uniqueness or visual interest.
And that’s just in English. When you translate it you get into some crazy problems. In Chinese there is a significant difference between mei “beauty” and piaoliang “prettiness” that is not apparent in the English translation. There probably are languages where you couldn’t even find a rough analogue to “beauty.”
IWhen Evolution was first conceived of, it sparked the pseudoscience of eugenics, which did a lot of harm to people and tainted the reputation of Darwin in the process. This does not, however, make Evolution false. I think the same thing is happening with evopsych. There are a lot of people who sincerely want to study the human mind and instincts and how they were shaped by evolutionary process, but a lot of people have ran off with it and used it to justify their prejudices.
First of all, “evolution” is not a proper noun. Secondly, it’s great that you personally found feminism via evo-psych, but that doesn’t make evo-psych a real science.
Evopsych isn’t false because it’s uncomfortable, or because it encourages racists moreso (Although in practice, it’s pretty fucking racist on its own merits), it’s wrong because it can’t actually explain human behavior outside of western nations, consistently. Or within western nations’ past. If I don’t even have to leave europe to disprove your idiotic notion of how all humans work, I’m not going to take it seriously.
It’s a damned shame. I love biology. I love evolution and I loved studying evopsych. I never used it to create and defend prejudice. Anyway. I’ll leave it here. I am here because I want an egalitarian society. I won’t bring up evopsych any more as I’d rather make fun of MRM anyway.
The basic premise of most evopsych writing about non-Western cultures seems to be “well, this is true* for America/Europe right now, so it’s probably true for all cultures everywhere, right?”.
Watch as the rest of the world responds with a massive eyeroll and “please, not this shit again”.
@Bennet
Really?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_of_Willendorf
I think you mean “some ancient sculptures and paintings depict the waist to hip ratio.” Which proves nothing.
It’s kind of like how you said that similar preferences were found in all cultures, then linked a study that examined people from only two countries, and that found significant differences on several traits.
re Nomless: Something you should know about me: I am a transhumanist.
That explains so much. Really, it’s sort of like discovering someone is a RonPaulite, or a Flat Earther.
I’m in favor of ultimately replacing humanity with an entirely new species, created by humans, which is even more intelligent and more complex than us.
Ah, someone of the YudKowsky school of transhumanist kookery.
I will make a lot of typos. I post from a phone. I can see only one line of text at a time. I am fighting a losing battle with auto correct. I will do my best, but I’m not here for proofreading.
So is it misandrous, misandrist, or misandric? I’ve seen all three. MRAs are wandering into made up word territory, here., and I doubt there is any authority to consult to settle this question.
There’s a REASON why naval surface ships use nuclear reactors and not wind or solar power for propulsion.
So… Fukushima and Chernobyl…
If the Nimitz has a problem… it makes a lot of vaporised seawater.
And the number of nuclear powered vessels is small. The overwhelmingly vast majority of them use oil. The reason carriers (and subs) use nuclear power is that it takes less space, and on those vessels space is at an amazing premium.
One time this dude kept staring at my throat as he talked on and on about his double-jointed thumbs, and he was flashing a lot of teeth while he was doing it. Yep, I was creeped. I’m supposed to pat that dude on the head and stroke his ego? No, he’s a stranger to me….there’s no obligation there. In the best case scenario, the creeper dude would have a buddy pull him aside. “Hey,Larry, maybe you shouldn’t stare at a chick’s throat when you’re talking to her. I’m just saying….” Lack of self-awareness and empathy there. Probably can be helped, but not by giving him positive reinforcement for iffy behavior. Chicks can be creepy too….ever see that horror movie “May” ? It’s a fictional character, but damn Angela Bettis really brings the creepy on.
fembot — following the convention of misogyny, misogynist, misogynistic; I think it should be misandry, misandrist, misandristic (note that I’ve never actually heard/seen misandristic)
Maybe misogynous -> misandrous, but just no on misandric (misogynic? XD )