Moderator Nominations

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Shawnee123

No, I only judge people by how they treat me. In the past, and in the present, it's been A-Dog-Number-One-Crap, from you, to me.

So that allows you to ignore your responsibility in our exchanges? And so what you are saying is that I am the only one that has given you "A-Dog-Number-One-Crap" from me to you??? And so you don't think that I have not also judged people how they treat me, based solely on disagreements in political or current event issues?

[Shawnee123]

I'm very honest. I KNOW I'm a hothead. Also, I'm not dishonest (read: phony) and expect all will be forgiven if I just brush some nicey nicey juice over all the right people, or paint the floors a lovely shade of chartreuse. I never shirked responsibility. I react how I react. But merc, if it makes you feel better, I'm sorry that you got so offended that you think I wasn't being responsible.

[Shawnee123]

Originally Posted by sexobon

Whoever becomes the new moderator will actually have to read through this kind of drivel on a fairly regular basis; so, I'm going to vote for someone I don't like. BTW, has Shawnee123 been nominated yet?

n-b-x-s, I wouldn't moderate your ass out of a paper bag. Have you been nominated yet? Go back to happy land. This whole thing started a long time ago because the faint-hearted liked to faint instead of using the ignore button. "Quit giving so much attention to those who argue because it's making me sad as I give so much attention to those who argue by whining about the arguing instead of ignoring it." Yeah, that makes sense.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Shawnee123

I'm very honest.

I am doing the same now.

I KNOW I'm a hothead.

I know I can be when it comes to certain issues in politics and current events.

Also, I'm not dishonest (read: phony) and expect all will be forgiven if I just brush some nicey nicey juice over all the right people, or paint the floors a lovely shade of chartreuse. I never shirked responsibility. I react how I react.

And I don't believe that I am one bit different. I have apologized when I thought it mattered and was important. And I have not when it was not important to me.

But merc, if it makes you feel better, I'm sorry that you got so offended that you think I wasn't being responsible.

I don't want or expect any apology from you. I attribute your posting style to you just being you, whether it is personally offensive to me or not. And as I said earlier you stopped personally offending me years ago.

[sexobon]

Originally Posted by Shawnee123

n-b-x=s, I wouldn't ...

Lisa, check this out: Moderators Shawnee123 and her animal spirit guide wolf.

Has a nice ring to it doesn't it?

[Shawnee123]

I'm no wolf. I'm no mod. Nom-nom-nominating me falls under joke noms. I respectfully decline the nom.

[Shawnee123]

And with that: I feel better for having this honest discussion. THanks, even though uncomfortable for some probably, sweeping under carpets just makes my carpets lumpy and insanical.

[monster]

crassic: ow, my feelings. I'm so offended. Seriously, sticks and stones. And you really actually have to give a fuck about what someone thinks for them to be able to hurt you. Big Vajajay, you are a prime example of the fake sincerety gushers that have overwhelmed this board, no wonder you can't see the problem. Dana, you cunt. Shawnee, you slapper. Merc, you jerk. did I miss anyone? I nominate Pico.

[TheMercenary]

Maybe this explains a lot about our differences...

[DanaC]

I dont get why everyone is finding that so funny. It's just more of the same bullshit about males and females, based on the usual stereotypes and pseudo scientific understandings of gender. Most of what he says about men can equally apply to me and other women I know, and what he says about women can equally apply to many blokes I know.

I am perfectly happy doing nothing. I am quite happy seeing a guy do nothing. I can go off for fucking hours and not be able to tell you what thoughts have been in my mind.

The more work is done on how the brain develops and functions, the more we see that elasticity is the key factor. Though there are differences between 'male' and 'female' brains, few of them are innate (born into) many are produced by the way our brains develop according to our upbringing. More and more, neuroscientists are able to show that there are often greater distinctions between individual brains regardless of gender than there are between the sexes. On top of that we have begun to understand that it is not as simple as man=male brain and woman=female brain: but rather that we all exist somewhere on a scale with 'male' and 'female' traits in both.

From an article about recent work on the subject:

It is the mainstay of countless magazine and newspaper features. Differences between male and female abilities – from map reading to multi-tasking and from parking to expressing emotion – can be traced to variations in the hard-wiring of their brains at birth, it is claimed.

Men instinctively like the colour blue and are bad at coping with pain, we are told, while women cannot tell jokes but are innately superior at empathising with other people. Key evolutionary differences separate the intellects of men and women and it is all down to our ancient hunter-gatherer genes that program our brains.

The belief has become widespread, particularly in the wake of the publication of international bestsellers such as John Gray's Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus that stress the innate differences between the minds of men and women. But now a growing number of scientists are challenging the pseudo-science of "neurosexism", as they call it, and are raising concerns about its implications. These researchers argue that by telling parents that boys have poor chances of acquiring good verbal skills and girls have little prospect of developing mathematical prowess, serious and unjustified obstacles are being placed in the paths of children's education.

In fact, there are no major neurological differences between the sexes, says Cordelia Fine in her book Delusions of Gender, which will be published by Icon next month. There may be slight variations in the brains of women and men, added Fine, a researcher at Melbourne University, but the wiring is soft, not hard. "It is flexible, malleable and changeable," she said.

In short, our intellects are not prisoners of our genders or our genes and those who claim otherwise are merely coating old-fashioned stereotypes with a veneer of scientific credibility. It is a case backed by Lise Eliot, an associate professor based at the Chicago Medical School. "All the mounting evidence indicates these ideas about hard-wired differences between male and female brains are wrong," she told the Observer.

"Yes, there are basic behavioural differences between the sexes, but we should note that these differences increase with age because our children's intellectual biases are being exaggerated and intensified by our gendered culture. Children don't inherit intellectual differences. They learn them. They are a result of what we expect a boy or a girl to be."

Thus boys develop improved spatial skills not because of an innate superiority but because they are expected and are encouraged to be strong at sport, which requires expertise at catching and throwing. Similarly, it is anticipated that girls will be more emotional and talkative, and so their verbal skills are emphasised by teachers and parents.

The latter example, on the issue of verbal skills, is particularly revealing, neuroscientists argue. Girls do begin to speak earlier than boys, by about a month on average, a fact that is seized upon by supporters of the Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus school of intellectual differences.

However, this gap is really a tiny difference compared to the vast range of linguistic abilities that differentiate people, Robert Plomin, a professor at the Institute of Psychiatry in London, pointed out. His studies have found that a mere 3% of the variation in young children's verbal development is due to their gender.

"If you map the distribution of scores for verbal skills of boys and of girls you get two graphs that overlap so much you would need a very fine pencil indeed to show the difference between them. Yet people ignore this huge similarity between boys and girls and instead exaggerate wildly the tiny difference between them. It drives me wild," Plomin told the Observer.

This point is backed by Eliot. "Yes, boys and girls, men and women, are different," she states in a recent paper in New Scientist. "But most of those differences are far smaller than the Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus stereotypes suggest.

"Nor are the reasoning, speaking, computing, emphasising, navigating and other cognitive differences fixed in the genetic architecture of our brains.

"All such skills are learned and neuro-plasticity – the modifications of neurons and their connections in response experience – trumps hard-wiring every time."

The current popular stress on innate intellectual differences between the sexes is, in part, a response to psychologists' emphasis of the environment's importance in the development of skills and personality in the 1970s and early 1980s, said Eliot. This led to a reaction against nurture as the principal factor in the development of human characteristics and to an exaggeration of the influence of genes and inherited abilities. This view is also popular because it propagates the status quo, she added. "We are being told there is nothing we can do to improve our potential because it is innate. That is wrong. Boys can develop powerful linguistic skills and girls can acquire deep spatial skills."

In short, women can read maps despite claims that they lack the spatial skills for such efforts, while men can learn to empathise and need not be isolated like Mel Gibson's Nick Marshall, the emotionally retarded male lead of the film What Women Want and a classic stereotype of the unfeeling male that is perpetuated by the supporters of the hard-wired school of intellectual differences.

This point was also stressed by Fine. "Many of the studies that claim to highlight differences between the brains of males and females are spurious. They are based on tests carried out on only a small number of individuals and their results are often not repeated by other scientists. However, their results are published and are accepted by teachers and others as proof of basic differences between boys and girls.

"All sorts of ridiculous conclusions about very important issues are then made. Already sexism disguised in neuroscientific finery is changing the way children are taught."

So should we abandon our search for the "real" differences between the sexes and give up this "pernicious pinkification of little girls", as one scientist has put it?

Yes, we should, Eliot insisted. "There is almost nothing we do with our brains that is hard-wired. Every skill, attribute and personality trait is moulded by experience."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010...think-same-way

[TheMercenary]

Hmmmm.... I guess we just have different experiences in life. Because I find it to be pretty accurate. Guys keep things separate. Women do not. IMHO. I have heard it over and over all my life. My wife was in a predominately male dominated job the first 10 years we were married, I am in a predominately female dominated job and specialize in womens health. I find it to be pretty accurate and so did my wife. Men and women deal with conflict very differently. Men compartmentalize emotions more often. But as I said from the outset, we may have just had different life experiences. It does not make either one of us wrong.

[Pico and ME]

Well, it explains why the male dominated government its having so many problems.

[TheMercenary]

Yea, they keep all their problems in the "empty" box.

[DanaC]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

Hmmmm.... I guess we just have different experiences in life. Because I find it to be pretty accurate. Guys keep things separate. Women do not. IMHO. I have heard it over and over all my life. My wife was in a predominately male dominated job the first 10 years we were married, I am in a predominately female dominated job and specialize in womens health. I find it to be pretty accurate and so did my wife. Men and women deal with conflict very differently. Men compartmentalize emotions more often. But as I said from the outset, we may have just had different life experiences. It does not make either one of us wrong.

Sorry. I just get pissed off by some of the scienctific studies that get trotted out around this stuff, that basically try to suggest these differences are all innate. They're not. They're a product of environment. Which means that they are not universal.

It strikes me also, that if you are in a predominately female profession, then it is a profession that will naturally lend itself to a particular skill set which we nost normally class as feminine: consequently more traditionally feminine women are likely to be in that area of work. By the same token, if an occupation is predominately male, then it is likely to make use of, and therefore attract a traditionally masculine skillset and therefore will be full of traditionally masculine men.

Steroetypes often do apply, that's how they become stereotypes. But they are exaggerated to the point where they become a lie. Large numbers of women and large numbers of men would find themselves somewhat excluded from those jokes if they were told to a truly representative segment of gender character types.

I just get a little pissed off. I get this shit fed back to me by people who genuinely believe that women are less capable of reason than men, because they are more emotional creatures.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by DanaC

Sorry. I just get pissed off by some of the scienctific studies that get trotted out around this stuff, that basically try to suggest these differences are all innate. They're not. They're a product of environment. Which means that they are not universal.

I agree generally but I do think that some of the observations as differences between the sexes have merit on general terms.

It strikes me also, that if you are in a predominately female profession, then it is a profession that will naturally lend itself to a particular skill set which we nost normally class as feminine: consequently more traditionally feminine women are likely to be in that area of work. By the same token, if an occupation is predominately male, then it is likely to make use of, and therefore attract a traditionally masculine skillset and therefore will be full of traditionally masculine men.

Yes. And it is interesting to both me and my wife, being opposite sexes in other sex predominate professions, that many of these observations are in fact true. But I don't see it as a block to advancement or function in various jobs. I only note the biggest difference seen by both of us is how men and women generally deal with conflict.

Steroetypes often do apply, that's how they become stereotypes. But they are exaggerated to the point where they become a lie. Large numbers of women and large numbers of men would find themselves somewhat excluded from those jokes if they were told to a truly representative segment of gender character types.

I don't know that I agree they become a lie, more that they become overly exaggerated.

I just get a little pissed off. I get this shit fed back to me by people who genuinely believe that women are less capable of reason than men, because they are more emotional creatures.

Well as a father of two grown daughters and a wife with a professional degreee, I don't believe that.