# Women: the more moral sex? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 16, 2015, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/women-the-more-moral-sex/712792 "2015-02-16T04:27:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2015, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/women-the-more-moral-sex/712792/41 "2015-02-17T03:26:51Z")
> [@Slithy\_Tove](#): > > Thing about rationalwiki: you see an article you agree with and go “yeah, right on!” > > Then you find an article on a topic important to you, that you’ve studied in depth for years, and they totally bone it with an ignorant, dismissive attitude. Then you read another article like that. Then another. Dismissive, often, but never ignorant IME. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2015, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/women-the-more-moral-sex/712792/42 "2015-02-17T03:28:41Z")
> [@Slithy\_Tove](#): > > \*\*Jonas Salk. \*\*You could argue that when he was going to school, female applicants would have been steered into nursing careers. Still, he was the guy who stopped polio. But something that had nothing to do with his benefitting from sexism: he refused to become rich off it if that left any possibility of keeping the vaccine less available. > > **Jenny McCarthy**. A product of a more enlightened era. From an upper-middle-class family, with the privilege that exceptionally attractive people enjoy in our society. So? There are worthy men and there are worthless women and vice-versa. It has always been so. ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2015, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/women-the-more-moral-sex/712792/43 "2015-02-17T04:04:06Z")
So when men start all the wars, they’re evil bastards. But when they invent all the polio vaccine, invent all the lightbulb, all the railroad, etc. they’re still evil bastards, because that only proves women aren’t allowed into STEM fields. Ignorance fought. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2015, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/women-the-more-moral-sex/712792/44 "2015-02-17T04:40:02Z")
> [@Slithy\_Tove](#): > > So when men start all the wars, they’re evil bastards. But when they invent all the polio vaccine, invent all the lightbulb, all the railroad, etc. they’re still evil bastards, because that only proves women aren’t allowed into STEM fields. Ignorance fought. [shrug] You are talking about a very long historical period when women were allowed to do neither. Of course men monopolized both the achievements and the crimes, the sainthoods and the bastardies, and the women were relegated to bearing and nursing and raising male saints and bastards. But is that how it should be? Cannot women be saints and bastards in their own right? ---
**Author:** ![sisu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/df705f/32.png) [@sisu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sisu)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2015, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/women-the-more-moral-sex/712792/45 "2015-02-17T05:12:14Z")
Another view is that the evils above are systematic of society, women make up 51% of society… ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2015, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/women-the-more-moral-sex/712792/46 "2015-02-17T05:27:49Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Dismissive, often, but never ignorant IME. The piece you just quoted is grossly ignorant. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2015, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/women-the-more-moral-sex/712792/47 "2015-02-17T13:29:45Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > The piece you just quoted is grossly ignorant. Please be more specific. ---
**Author:** ![MyFootsZZZ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/myfootszzz/32/12580_2.png) [@MyFootsZZZ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MyFootsZZZ)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2015, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/women-the-more-moral-sex/712792/48 "2015-02-17T13:40:17Z")
The OP thinks men “bully” more. I was a “victim” of bullying when I was in school. Mostly men, but I’m a guy too. I have a feeling that a girl might have a different experience than me, but I have no idea. Would people here say that men bully more? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2015, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/women-the-more-moral-sex/712792/49 "2015-02-17T14:34:40Z")
> [@MyFootsZZZ](#): > > The OP thinks men “bully” more. I was a “victim” of bullying when I was in school. Mostly men, but I’m a guy too. I have a feeling that a girl might have a different experience than me, but I have no idea. > > Would people here say that men bully more? [Maybe,](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heathers) [maybe not](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean_Girls) . . . ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2015, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/women-the-more-moral-sex/712792/50 "2015-02-17T14:42:01Z")
> [@Slithy\_Tove](#): > > \*\*Jonas Salk. \*\*You could argue that when he was going to school, female applicants would have been steered into nursing careers. Still, he was the guy who stopped polio. But something that had nothing to do with his benefitting from sexism: he refused to become rich off it if that left any possibility of keeping the vaccine less available. > > **Jenny McCarthy**. A product of a more enlightened era. From an upper-middle-class family, with the privilege that exceptionally attractive people enjoy in our society. You don’t see women coming up with ridiculous comparisons like this one. So there’s that. ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2015, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/women-the-more-moral-sex/712792/51 "2015-02-17T15:18:39Z")
See, it’s called a “debate.” One side of the argument is “Women are more moral than men.” I’m debating on the “No” side. I’ve picked two situations: Statecraft where women rarely rise to the top, but the few who do (Catherine de Medici, Margaret Thatcher) are just as horrible as their male peers. Public Health: where one person who happened to be male did good, while one person who happened to be female did damage. A ridiculous comparison would have been Paris Hilton, because she’s purely ornamental and has herpes. Typhoid Mary would have been a poor counter-example because she was poor and ignorant. Jenny McCarthy gained access to the public square because she is a beautiful woman in a society that rewards women for their beauty, and she used that forum to harm public health. (Celebrity culture is also to blame, but that’s not this debate). Please, pick a side of the debate and make an argument. “So What,” and “That’s ridiculous” are just heckling, and don’t show me the holes in my thinking, which I’m willing to acknowledge once you make the effort. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2015, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/women-the-more-moral-sex/712792/52 "2015-02-17T16:46:05Z")
> [@Slithy\_Tove](#): > > **Jenny McCarthy**. A product of a more enlightened era. From an upper-middle-class family, with the privilege that exceptionally attractive people enjoy in our society. Not that it’s important, but facts are facts, and she did not grow up in an upper-middle class family. She’s from near my neighborhood, a pretty working class/middle class area. not anything I would describe as “upper middle class.” ---
**Author:** ![Taber](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ac91a4/32.png) [@Taber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Taber)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2015, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/women-the-more-moral-sex/712792/53 "2015-02-17T17:30:12Z")
> [@Slithy\_Tove](#): > > See, it’s called a “debate.” One side of the argument is “Women are more moral than men.” I’m debating on the “No” side. > > I’ve picked two situations: > > Statecraft where women rarely rise to the top, but the few who do (Catherine de Medici, Margaret Thatcher) are just as horrible as their male peers. > > Public Health: where one person who happened to be male did good, while one person who happened to be female did damage. A ridiculous comparison would have been Paris Hilton, because she’s purely ornamental and has herpes. Typhoid Mary would have been a poor counter-example because she was poor and ignorant. Jenny McCarthy gained access to the public square because she is a beautiful woman in a society that rewards women for their beauty, and she used that forum to harm public health. (Celebrity culture is also to blame, but that’s not this debate). > > Please, pick a side of the debate and make an argument. “So What,” and “That’s ridiculous” are just heckling, and don’t show me the holes in my thinking, which I’m willing to acknowledge once you make the effort. The hole in your thinking is that of the 3 billion men and the 3 billion women (well more, since we’re using historical figures), showing that 1 man is better than 1 woman is pretty meaningless. It defeats the argument “every single woman is more moral than every single man”, but it is unlikely that OP, or anyone else, is making that argument. It is much more likely that OP is making a similar argument to when people say “men are stronger than women” where they don’t mean that every man is stronger than every woman, they mean the average man is stronger than the average woman. Edit: I think the statecraft argument is a good one ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2015, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/women-the-more-moral-sex/712792/54 "2015-02-17T17:41:00Z")
> [@jtgain](#): > > I agree with this. Even after millions of years of evolution, we are wired to procreate. Men can accomplish this daily by impregnating as many women as they can. Raping, pillaging, and looting (for more supplies to strengthen the body for more procreation) make sense from a biological perspective. > > Women can only procreate once per year and must be pregnant and not in her peak of fitness for that time. She is in a vulnerable position then and must be selective about her mate. She must choose a person who will stay around and care for her and the vulnerable new born. > > That’s part of the reason why a man who sleeps around isn’t viewed as disfavorably a woman who does. The man is doing what he is wired to do, whereas a woman is acting against her natural self-interest by not being selective in who may possibly impregnate her. One a year is all she can possibly get. A man can play a raw numbers game. Impregnate 100 women and 5 babies survive. A biological win. > > Yes, I realize that this is terribly simplistic, and I do not subscribe to these views as far as modern society (or any decent society) goes. I am merely talking about a base, animal level. I don’t function on a base, animal level. Do you? I’m a faithful husband now, but even when I was single and went around spreading my seed it had nothing to do with procreation. I used condoms, and generally avoided women who weren’t using hormonal birth control. The point is that it makes no sense at all to reduce everything to biological imperatives because we don’t really function on that basis. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2015, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/women-the-more-moral-sex/712792/55 "2015-02-17T17:49:13Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > The point is that it makes no sense at all to reduce everything to biological imperatives because we don’t really function on that basis. To whatever extent they’re valid, explanations based on biological imperatives or evolutionary psychology don’t explain our _behaviors_; they explain our _urges_ and _instincts_, which are _among_ the factors that determine our behaviors. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2015, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/women-the-more-moral-sex/712792/56 "2015-02-17T17:53:29Z")
What biological imperative is present in men that leads to pillaging and looting that is not also present in women? ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2015, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/women-the-more-moral-sex/712792/57 "2015-02-17T22:50:21Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > What biological imperative is present in men that leads to pillaging and looting that is not also present in women? That’s already been covered. By pillaging, raping and looting men can increase their number of offspring by orders of magnitude. In fact they can increase it infinitely since many males left no offspring. Women are limited to one child every ~2 years no matter what tactics they adopt, and historically it was unheard of for any fertile woman who desired children not to be able to produce children. Raping, pillaging and looting are inherently risky activities. If men undertake that risk, the return can more than pay for the risk incurred. Not so for women. That is the biological imperative present in men that leads to pillaging and looting that is not also present in women. As noted, this was discussed previously. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2015, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/women-the-more-moral-sex/712792/58 "2015-02-17T23:20:56Z")
Raping I get. Where does the pillaging and looting come in? ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2015, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/women-the-more-moral-sex/712792/59 "2015-02-17T23:53:29Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Raping I get. Where does the pillaging and looting come in? Acquisition of resources. Once again, this was covered previously in this very thread. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2015, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/women-the-more-moral-sex/712792/60 "2015-02-18T00:29:34Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > Acquisition of resources. Once again, this was covered previously in this very thread. Wouldn’t it be more efficient for the women to do the looting and pillaging? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/women-the-more-moral-sex/712792.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/women-the-more-moral-sex/712792.md?page=4)