Good god, I’m going to have to defend an article that I spent thirty seconds googling and have no personal investment in whatsoever.
Fortunately defending it is easy - I’ll just quote a ream or two of text that people for some reason unable to see on the page itself.
There. Now you can stop making wildly inaccurate and indefensible statements about the link, and do something productive like saying that all these quoted statements are baldfaced lies and in fact girls hate math because of some really interesting biochemical reason I know you have right on the tip of your tongues.
Oh I read the whole thing. As any good writing goes, the rest expands on the topic paragraph.
In any case, I’ll concede that it can be partly cultural. Though again this is a case of pigeonholing some based on what the majority naturally tend towards. If we expect girls not to be that interested in STEM it’s because the majority just aren’t already. For those that are, and who are encouraged they excel as well as or better than their male counterparts.
If we expect boys not to be interested in cosmetology it’s because the majority just aren’t already. Even though some are, and many do discourage those who are.
Now, again if you just look at girls interested in STEM, they also tend towards certain fields. Fields having to do with animals is more common. They play into a larger number of females interests. Maybe that’s cultural too idk.
My Grandmother used to train dogs. She always said of nature vs nurture;
You can take a docile dog and train it to be a guard dog … It will never be as easy nor will it ever be as good a guard dog as the one that is born territorial.
Opposite is also true, you can take a born fighter and make it a lover, it will never be as loving as the born lover.
I think this applies to humans just as well, regardless of gender. You’ll be most successful at amplifying someone’s natural tendency.
I don’t have many male role models, probably obvious from my posts. Yet I still do a lot of stereotypical male things.
It does mean we don’t need to assume there are biological reasons to explain the problem, though.
But you’re right, there’s a distinct nonzero possibility that women are biologically brain damaged and have a lesser ability to think logically or analytically. I anxiously await your explanation of the mechanism for this, along with evidence that the explanation you provide is in fact occurring.
I think it’s highly disputable that different brain chemistry obviously leads to different interests. Even if our brain chemistries do skew one gender or another’s attention span, aggression, impulse control, or somesuch (which I’m not sold on), there’s no reason whatsoever to think that your brain chemistry can skew people towards specific *interests *like towards He-Man and away from Barbie.
I’d actually be highly doubtful that the average brain chemical knows what a Barbie is.
Good point, in fact small children are a great example.
When given Barbie’s boys still tend to play war.
When given given giJoe’s girls still tend to play house.
Anyways
I could go on and on.
I find it very hard to believe that with different structures and chemistry our brains function the same or that we’d not have gender biased interests or abilities.
In any case it’s extremely clear our brains are different. Do you suggest our behavior is governed by a different organ?
And your quote doesn’t address my question. I didn’t deny the existence of cultural pressures.
I don’t have it on the tip of my tongue, I blatantly asked the question already : how do you know that girls don’t “hate maths because of some really interesting biochemical reason”? “Because I feel this way”, or “wouldn’t it be nicer if men and women had exactly the same abilities?” not being terribly convincing arguments. As I pointed out previously whether or not there are differences between male and female brain, and which differences exactly, is a hotly debated, and not resolved, topic, and won’t be resolved until we’ve made massive advances in our knowledge of the human brain.
What exactly do you know about brain chemistry and evolutionary biology that nobody, at this point in time, does? What exactly allows you to determine what is cultural and what is biological in human behavior? How do you know, to conflate two questions I asked, that men aren’t inherently violent rapists who are good at maths?
Not only at the collective level, but also, when you’re so intent in being The Protector that you can’t accept being helped, that’s toxic.
I say this as a woman who was both trained to be The Protector (elder sister, elder cousin, and from a family of literal Knights) and to never ask for help (everybody else was entitled to be helped when they needed it; I was not allowed to need help, ever), and who also happens to come from a culture where the idea of women being second-class citizens on account of being women is pretty much a 19th century novelty (we usually did different tasks, yes, but all tasks were viewed as necessary and we expected every able-bodied adult to be able to take care of themselves; “one man, one vote” actually shrunk our lists of voters). It took me a long time and a lot of effort to learn to ask for help, and it offends me when someone refuses my help due to nothing but the fact thay they own a dick and I do not. If your dick gets lost when a woman helps you
carry a load,
assemble furniture,
figure out how to cook using pasta (which has the instructions right there in the package) and premade sauce (which you just need to add at the end and stir together),
or do something at work which does not even require height, physical strength, or anything like that…
sue your mother, because she did a real bad job of attaching those body parts in place.
And then, we’re left with two possible explanations, which aren’t even contradictory, but you still feel justified in totally excluding one. What is this? An act of faith? Are we supposed to decide any question not yet resolved by stating “I feel this way, and obviously you’re wrong and I’m right so the issue is settled”?
The mechanism for this? What is the mechanism that allows us to think analytically to begin with? Do you have an answer to this question, and when do you intend to claim you Nobel prize if you do? Why are some people better at maths than others? What is the mechanism behind this? What is the mechanism that prevents us from “mistaking our wife for a hat” to give a famous example of how seemingly obvious things are entirely determined by organic reasons? What are exactly, specifically, the differences between the male and female brain, if any, and on what basis exactly are you excluding the possibility that such and such behavior, or preference, or ability could be influenced by these differences?
You’re asking me to answer these questions, knowing perfectly that nobody, and specifically not you, can answer them. And you refuse to admit your own ignorance, and feel entirely justified in assuming an answer on nothing more than faith. Have you considered how heavily your assumptions on this issue are going to be influenced by our current culture since you seems pretty aware of cultural pressures?
Kids being treated differently starts from birth; kids behaving differently doesn’t start until age 3-4 except for a very narrow list of things (in general baby boys are interested in loud noises while girls dislike them), a list which is much narrower than the list of ways in which grown-ups treat those same kids differently.
And if “girls aren’t into math” isn’t cultural, why does it vary across cultures? In Spain, we already have more STEM fields with equalish numbers of male and female students than not; when there is one that’s got more of one side, there is a similar-in-goals degree which has more of the other. An example where you can easily link it to media:* Programación* (professional: Programmer) gets mostly men, but Ingeniería de Telecomunicaciones (professional: Telecommunications Engineer) gets mostly women. The first one is often portrayed in media, and 99.999% of the time the Programmer is male (thank you, Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD); the second one isn’t portrayed in media, so it’s where female students who are interested in computers go, as nobody is telling them that “Telecos are guys”.
Ok, so it’s partly cultural. I’ve already conceded such. I’m pretty sure it’s nature and nurture which will effect each individual to varying degrees and also influence each scenario with greater or less influence.
Still, you have “some” fields with equalish numbers…
Idk about 99.999…as someone who rarely watches TV and just off the top of my head
Hackers, warehouse 13, and at least one of those law enforcement shows have featured female programmers.
Hell I could see just the word communication in the title drawing more women. As a cultural thing, since it’s commonly accepted that women are generally better with communication. Thus " hey communication, I’d be good at that"
Though it circles around again, since women being better with communication is pretty well proven to be biological.
It’s a good thing you weren’t trying to correct Nava, because nothing in your cite refutes what Nava said.
Your claim that Spain’s total STEM employment is (according to your cite) only about 17% women does not contradict Nava’s claim that among the different STEM fields in Spain, there are more fields with approximately equal numbers of male and female students than fields with strongly skewed ratios of male and female students.
I can’t personally verify whether either of those statements is true, but where you made your error was in assuming that they’re necessarily contradictory. They’re not.
Actually, it appears to be your communication skills that let you down in not correctly parsing what Nava clearly said.
And while I have your attention…
It may be just your faulty communication skills again, but you realize that your statement is excluding “elderly” people from the category “man”, right? Are you really trying to make the argument that elderly men don’t count as men?
Likewise, are all you middle-aged and elderly posters who argue for the claim of physical strength being an intrinsically “masculine” trait acknowledging that your masculinity is lessening as you get older and weaker?
Personally, I think that since linking masculinity with physical strength implies that older men are automatically, on average, less masculine, that casts some doubt on the claim that this is a “non-toxic” way to characterize masculinity.
ISTM that no definition of “masculinity” or “femininity” that assumes that older people lose that characteristic merely by virtue of their age can really be considered “non-toxic”.
She very clearly was trying to correct my statement of SOME fields with roughly equal numbers. Replacing that with more, which would tell us the comparative basis of MORE is STEM fields as a whole. Not more than somewhere else.
Especially if stated as more than not.
So yes if out of all Spains STEM fields , more of them have roughly equal numbers of women , then 17percent as a whole is in conflict, unless all the fields with more men also have vastly greater numbers in those fields.
Even the referenced Telecom engineering field only boasts a 26 percent female enrollment rate at universities in Spain.
This article appeared in a journal published by Elsevier … - UNED
PDFportal.uned.es › pls › portal › url › ITEM
So I’d welcome a reference of any STEM field showing even close to 50 percent female enrollment.
And yes as men age testosterone declines, along with quite a lot of “masculine” traits. Including physical strength and aggression
This is compounded even further by the 54 percent female enrollment rate at University. So despite greater numbers of University enrollment as a whole.
This whole conversation reminds me if an experience.
I was at the docks walking when a woman approached me asking for help.
Her father was stuck in the engine bay of her boat. The bay was some 6 feet deep and her father was knelt down with one leg wedged slightly between the engine and the wall unable to stand or get out. All the while she was explaining to me how she was perfectly capable of getting him out herself but he wouldn’t let her.
The task involved lifting a 200 pound man who’s legs were asleep from 3 feet below level. Then holding him up long enough for him to start supporting his own weight so he could stand, regain circulation and eventually climb out.
There was no way she could have done it.
Now, who’s toxic in this situation.
The woman who delayed her father’s "rescue by arguing with him for ten minutes that she could do something she could not do. Who refused to even say thanks because she was too concerned with convincing me she could have done it.
The man who refused his daughters help, knowing she was not capable and was more likely to also injure herself.
Or me for accepting the task, doing it , and all the while just saying I understand ok , no problem to all that was said.
?
Also , is it toxic when I lift my wheelchair bound friend into the beach wheelchair to go hang out on the beach? Does this make him less of a man? Is he displaying his masculine traits by allowing this?
Idk, I don’t care, he’s not capable of it himself and I am capable of helping. Do his female friends have the impulse…no, although they do empathize. Could two of them do the same task? Probably so, but they don’t. They do empathize though.
This thread is evidence that that is not true. Lots of people still have many positive connotations for masculinity in general.
You could switch anyone’s gender in this anecdote and it would make as much or as little sense. Yeah sometimes people are too proud. Not sure what that has to do with masculinity.
And do you think when people talk about “toxic masculinity” they are including things like the observation that men are on average physically significantly stronger? Because that obvious fact has nothing to do with it at all.
Again I think you have a strange idea of masculinity here.
Needing help is in some way “anti-masculine”? Am I less of a man if I allow my doctor to do my appendectomy?