So while I was in the UK, I wandered into a bookstore and bought a book I found called "The Essential Difference", by Cambridge University psychology professor Simon Baron-Cohen. SBC works in the area of gender behaviour -- how males and females differ. His book summarises much of the research and presents his particular theories of how we function, and how women and men have evolved differently over millenia.
In short, his argument is that males have evolved to have systematising brains, while females have evolved to have empathising brains. He takes you through a discussion of what he means by "systematising" and "empathising", and what evidence there is that males tend to be superior at the former, and females superior at the latter.
The evidence issue is a tricky one, since you have to be able to disentangle convincingly what "nature" is responsible for and what "acculturation" is responsible for. SBC does a good job here, in that he's mindful of explaining how the effects can indeed be disentangled.
Now at this point I expect you might have one of two responses.
1. Well, that's obvious, we all know that males and females are different -- does he say anything particularly novel?
2. That's bullshit. Every reactionary wants to hold "biology" or "nature" responsible for why women are expected to do the housework and not be the main breadwinner. We're socialised into these roles. Men and women aren't fundamentally different.
I'll get back to what is novel in SBC's argument in a bit. The second view is what I call the "cultural essentialist" view that ALL behaviour is explainable through how we are socialised. The idea is that at birth we're just empty vessels, or tabula rasa ("blank slates") who get imprinted by society.
That socialisation is important to who we become seems hard to dispute. What IS in dispute is whether everything about us can be sheeted home to socialisation, acculturation, education, and upbringing.
SBC says, no it can't. (I agree with him.)
So what's novel in what he says? There's been lots of experimental and empirical evidence suggesting how males and females differ, but SBC's codification of how males sytematise and how females empathise is sometimes pretty eye-opening. There's a good discussion of both the extensive evidence that leads to his conclusions, plus the evolutionary basis that would lead us to expect males to be genetically advantaged by being "systematisers" and females to be genetically advantaged by being "empathisers".
But what's really novel is his theory of autism.
Autism, he says, is basically a hyper-male brain. That is, an autistic mind is one which systematises to a high degree but is woefully short on empathising skills. Normal brains do both, but males tend to systematise better, and women tend to empathise better. These aren't either/or abilities for most of us. Autistic brains however do one, very very well, and the other hardly at all.
Cultural essentialists like to use anecdotal data as (they think) compelling refutation of such arguments. "Hey, I'm a woman, and I systematise better than some men I know. This claim is therefore bullshit."
Which is silly. We know that men tend to be taller than women -- this is a "stylised fact" of sex difference, even though we can easily find plenty of anecdotal exceptions of taller women and shorter men. The "stylised fact" is still correct though -- men tend to be taller than women.
But when I was reading the book on the way home, I was laughing at what I thought TheFuckOffGirl would have to say. I pretty well figured she'd say "Oh my God, you are SO the empathiser and I am SO the sytematiser in this relationship." Because that's pretty much what I'd decided was the case. (I've said it before and I'll say it again -- she's not like other girls.)
In the book you can take a few tests that SBC has designed to test for empathising and systematising skills. One of them is looking at eyes -- only eyes -- in photographs and choosing the emotion that best fits from four possibilities. While I'd been in Kent staying with a couple I knew (with 2 small kids, a boy and a girl, and a mother who'd worked with special needs kids and was fascinated by SBC's theories on autism) we'd all taken the eye test.
She got 27 right out of 36, the high end of the "normal" range of empathising skill. He got 24 right, the low end of the normal range. I did it and got 32, well above normal. I figured when I got home that TFOG would be lucky to get 20.
She grumbled about the test and how she thought it was arbitrary (it kind of is), but she did it anyway.
She also got 32. Bitch. She systematises, AND she empathises. Fuck.
Some info about SBC is contained here.
And as Ciel notes below: he may well be related to Sasha Baron-Cohen aka Ali G. We're just not sure how!
In short, his argument is that males have evolved to have systematising brains, while females have evolved to have empathising brains. He takes you through a discussion of what he means by "systematising" and "empathising", and what evidence there is that males tend to be superior at the former, and females superior at the latter.
The evidence issue is a tricky one, since you have to be able to disentangle convincingly what "nature" is responsible for and what "acculturation" is responsible for. SBC does a good job here, in that he's mindful of explaining how the effects can indeed be disentangled.
Now at this point I expect you might have one of two responses.
1. Well, that's obvious, we all know that males and females are different -- does he say anything particularly novel?
2. That's bullshit. Every reactionary wants to hold "biology" or "nature" responsible for why women are expected to do the housework and not be the main breadwinner. We're socialised into these roles. Men and women aren't fundamentally different.
I'll get back to what is novel in SBC's argument in a bit. The second view is what I call the "cultural essentialist" view that ALL behaviour is explainable through how we are socialised. The idea is that at birth we're just empty vessels, or tabula rasa ("blank slates") who get imprinted by society.
That socialisation is important to who we become seems hard to dispute. What IS in dispute is whether everything about us can be sheeted home to socialisation, acculturation, education, and upbringing.
SBC says, no it can't. (I agree with him.)
So what's novel in what he says? There's been lots of experimental and empirical evidence suggesting how males and females differ, but SBC's codification of how males sytematise and how females empathise is sometimes pretty eye-opening. There's a good discussion of both the extensive evidence that leads to his conclusions, plus the evolutionary basis that would lead us to expect males to be genetically advantaged by being "systematisers" and females to be genetically advantaged by being "empathisers".
But what's really novel is his theory of autism.
Autism, he says, is basically a hyper-male brain. That is, an autistic mind is one which systematises to a high degree but is woefully short on empathising skills. Normal brains do both, but males tend to systematise better, and women tend to empathise better. These aren't either/or abilities for most of us. Autistic brains however do one, very very well, and the other hardly at all.
Cultural essentialists like to use anecdotal data as (they think) compelling refutation of such arguments. "Hey, I'm a woman, and I systematise better than some men I know. This claim is therefore bullshit."
Which is silly. We know that men tend to be taller than women -- this is a "stylised fact" of sex difference, even though we can easily find plenty of anecdotal exceptions of taller women and shorter men. The "stylised fact" is still correct though -- men tend to be taller than women.
But when I was reading the book on the way home, I was laughing at what I thought TheFuckOffGirl would have to say. I pretty well figured she'd say "Oh my God, you are SO the empathiser and I am SO the sytematiser in this relationship." Because that's pretty much what I'd decided was the case. (I've said it before and I'll say it again -- she's not like other girls.)
In the book you can take a few tests that SBC has designed to test for empathising and systematising skills. One of them is looking at eyes -- only eyes -- in photographs and choosing the emotion that best fits from four possibilities. While I'd been in Kent staying with a couple I knew (with 2 small kids, a boy and a girl, and a mother who'd worked with special needs kids and was fascinated by SBC's theories on autism) we'd all taken the eye test.
She got 27 right out of 36, the high end of the "normal" range of empathising skill. He got 24 right, the low end of the normal range. I did it and got 32, well above normal. I figured when I got home that TFOG would be lucky to get 20.
She grumbled about the test and how she thought it was arbitrary (it kind of is), but she did it anyway.
She also got 32. Bitch. She systematises, AND she empathises. Fuck.
Some info about SBC is contained here.
And as Ciel notes below: he may well be related to Sasha Baron-Cohen aka Ali G. We're just not sure how!
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I'm still grossed out by it. He still likes it. We ignore it.
I actually bought a Barley Legal to see what the fuss was about...
Some of those girls are way too young looking. I feel dirty. Its like my little sister doing porno. Must shower now.
but really at a closer glance I bet they are all pretty much in their early 20's... but look younger due to styling. Still creep show material to me. But hey, it sells so they put it out.
But at least he isn't into like... fucking dead people or somthing.. yeah... that would be worse....
Lately I've been struggling with the fairly undiverse images of girls SG markets and sells. I'm very much a sex-positive feminist, and porn obviously doesn't bother me. But most porn does bother me as a feminist, just like most advertising bothers me.
I know that there is a very human side to SG, but I can't help but feel like SG is fine being marketed and sold as a site of naked young, white, and often skinny girls. I know that all the girls on this site should feel no shame in putting their naked bodies on display, that's not what bothers me. It's SG as a whole having lots of similar looking girls, and thereby endorsing a certain image of beauty.
What are your thoughts on SG basically perpetuating a largely un-feminist idea of beauty by (maybe not purposefully) excluding many races, body types, ages, even styles, from membership as an SG? Thanks for any response you have in advance.