StarDestroyer.Net BBS

James Bond and M, on International Women's Day.

Which reminds me - happy Women's Equality Day everyone - regardless of gender

Good video - and by the way, i did not need to be reminded, i had a lenghty discussion about the same topic today - too bad i lacked numbers.

That was pretty interesting (and hats off to Daniel Craig and Judi Dench for doing that short video).

As far as I can tell, Craig-Bond was never sexist towards Dench-M, although he's obviously Mr. Womanizer to most of the other women he runs into.

Craig Bond doesn't really womanise so much because he's sexist but more as means to an end. Getting information in CR and stopping Fields dragging him back to London in QoS.

Also, Craig-Bond is a bastard to pretty much everyone, or at least that's my impression. It's just that when he's a bastard to men, he manifests it by beating them up; when he's a bastard to women, he manifests it by seducing them.

It's not sexism, it's just that deep down inside the man is a bastard.

This.

And it's usually bad form to try seducing the boss...

LaCroix wrote:This.

And it's usually bad form to try seducing the boss...

Especially with M. His dick would catch fire from the friction.

As for the OP, nice video, I get the gist of the message even though the CC sucks.

Serafina wrote:Which reminds me - happy Women's Equality Day everyone - regardless of gender

Good video - and by the way, i did not need to be reminded, i had a lenghty discussion about the same topic today - too bad i lacked numbers.

Good video aside from that it contains blatant misinformation? Lying for a good cause is still lying.

The department of labor has said that once you control for outside factors women DON't really earn 70c on the dollar, how long are people going to be allowed to peddle this bullshit without being called on it? Not to shit on women's day, I support the idea, but honestly, enough is enough.

http://www.consad.com/content/reports/G ... Report.pdf

For the lazy:

Although additional research in this area is clearly needed, this study leads to the unambiguous
conclusion that the differences in the compensation of men and women are the result of a
multitude of factors and that the raw wage gap should not be used as the basis to justify
corrective action. Indeed, there may be nothing to correct. The differences in raw wages may be
almost entirely the result of the individual choices being made by both male and female workers

Woops, but hey lets not let studies get in the way of screeching hysterically at eachother, rather than looking at the actual issue.

Furthermore, Ian Flemming is probably rolling in his grave over this.

I'm reminded of the parody on the Critic with a PC James Bond.

I was expecting Sean Connery talking about women, I got Daniel Craig in drag.

Not too upset about it, though.

Regarding the obvious conclusion men are much less likely to be victims of sexual assault; what's the point of that one? Men are 'guilty' of being bigger and stronger on average?

Not that they're guilty, simply that men and women aren't equal in terms of having to experience it. I'm not sure how much men can do to prevent sexual assault by themselves, but I suppose if you're aware that it's going on, you, as a man, can help stop it rather than thinking it's just something women have to stop themselves.

Singular Intellect wrote:Regarding the obvious conclusion men are much less likely to be victims of sexual assault; what's the point of that one? Men are 'guilty' of being bigger and stronger on average?

Living up to your username again, I see. The problem with this smarmy little invocation of biotruths is that most rapes are not the whole "mugger-of-indeterminate-but-generally-non-white-skin-tone leaps out from behind the bushes" story that's been concocted up to invent some garbage justifications for patriarchy. Most rapes involve drugging or other non-physical force, so-called "date rape". Most sexual assaults are gropes in passing. Neither of those are really dependent on human sexual dimorphism, and neither is human society inevitably patriarchal because of said sexual dimorphism- elephant societies are matriarchal despite bull elephants significantly outweighing cows. So are dolphins for all intents and purposes. But do go further, I love it when this sort of thing comes out.

Resinence wrote:

Serafina wrote:Which reminds me - happy Women's Equality Day everyone - regardless of gender

Good video - and by the way, i did not need to be reminded, i had a lenghty discussion about the same topic today - too bad i lacked numbers.

Good video aside from that it contains blatant misinformation? Lying for a good cause is still lying.

The department of labor has said that once you control for outside factors women DON't really earn 70c on the dollar, how long are people going to be allowed to peddle this bullshit without being called on it? Not to shit on women's day, I support the idea, but honestly, enough is enough.

http://www.consad.com/content/reports/G ... Report.pdf

For the lazy:

Although additional research in this area is clearly needed, this study leads to the unambiguous
conclusion that the differences in the compensation of men and women are the result of a
multitude of factors and that the raw wage gap should not be used as the basis to justify
corrective action. Indeed, there may be nothing to correct. The differences in raw wages may be
almost entirely the result of the individual choices being made by both male and female workers

Woops, but hey lets not let studies get in the way of screeching hysterically at eachother, rather than looking at the actual issue.

Furthermore, Ian Flemming is probably rolling in his grave over this.

Fleming was a massive homophobe and racist whose Bond was physically abusive and verged on rape, some would go so far as to say actually raping Solitaire and others. If he's rolling in his grave, let's hook up a turbine so we can get some more use out of the old bastard yet. I'd say I was ashamed of you for suggesting that him objecting to this would be a bad thing, but you're setting off some alarm bells left and right here, so instead I'll just say, "typical".

I'm not sure where the lie comes in. If there are pressures directing women into low-paying positions as opposed to real differences in raw wages (and that's ignoring the problems of hiring, benefits and all that altogether, but of course your appeal to "studies" does not extend to anything that challenges your patronizing impression of feminism) within a position thanks to gender, that would seem to still be something that ought to be corrected. For example, among all Ph.Ds issued over the last few years, women greatly outnumber men. But when you break it down by categories, the sciences and engineering are still heavily male-dominated, especially in engineering, math, physics, and chemistry. Studies into this have found no real discrimination in hiring practices within universities, labs and so on.

Now, somebody like you would stop right there, and with the smuggest, most punchable face stretched across your ugly mug, exude a palpable aura of "so much for YOUR FEMINISM, heh". But if you look closely, this disparity extends to Master's and undergraduate degrees, and even unto the elementary level when children are asked about science. So the feminist conclusion is that societal forces direct women away from the sciences and engineering starting at an early age, and that this needs to be changed. I'd venture to guess that a similar explanation, coupled with other forms of discrimination, probably explains much of the wage gap, but that such doesn't change the need to alter this. I say all this anticipating somebody bringing up sports next. I'm waiting for you. I'm shuffling the chips on my feminist Bingo board. Go ahead.

Singular Intellect wrote:Regarding the obvious conclusion men are much less likely to be victims of sexual assault; what's the point of that one? Men are 'guilty' of being bigger and stronger on average?

Why does that statement lead you to automatically assume that someone is guilty of being something, Singular Intellect? That is a fallacious train of thought. You might want the bio-nano-carbon-buckyballic circuits of your positronic iBrain checked, there might be some residual meat contamination affecting its processing architecture, bleep-bleep-bloop.

Its a statement of a fact, that women do face the problem of being more vulnerable to sexual assault while men aren't, and that it's one of those problems that plague women all over the world that, to men, are more or less non-issues.

Yes, it's pretty obvious. But, so what if James Bond and M still bring it up? There might be other people who (owing to their primitive pre-post-office-human natures) might not be as sensitive to female rights, or who might not be as well-informed of gender issues as you, Singular Intellect.

[Whoops. Replaced Starglider with Singular Intellect. ]

I think you mean Singular Intellect there Shroom.

Bakustra wrote:Fleming was a massive homophobe and racist whose Bond was physically abusive and verged on rape, some would go so far as to say actually raping Solitaire and others.

I haven't heard of Fleming being homophobic, but he was certainly racist as hell and that's especially clear in his novel, Dr. No, where the titular supervillain's private army consisted of henchmen of Chinese and Jamaican heritage called "Chigroes"(!). And these "Chigroes" were always described in highly unflattering ways; slant eyed ogre like oafs of low cunning, with yellowish-brown skin, and speech patterns similar to Jar Jar Binks.

The actual movie adaptations themselves - Dr. No, Goldfinger, You Only Live Twice, The Man With the Golden Gun, and Octopussy - are brimming with decidedly un-PC depictions of Asian nationalties, in the kind of way that was spoofed in Team America: World Police, but they were still pretty toned down in relation to how non-whites were depicted in Ian Fleming's original Bond novels.

Aaron wrote:I think you mean Singular Intellect there Shroom.

Whoops.

I must have my iBrains checked. It might need some new anti-freeze.

Big Orange wrote:

Bakustra wrote:Fleming was a massive homophobe and racist whose Bond was physically abusive and verged on rape, some would go so far as to say actually raping Solitaire and others.

I haven't heard of Fleming being homophobic, but he was certainly racist as hell and that's especially clear in his novel, Dr. No, where the titular supervillain's private army consisted of henchmen of Chinese and Jamaican heritage called "Chigroes"(!). And these "Chigroes" were always described in highly unflattering ways; slant eyed ogre like oafs of low cunning, with yellowish-brown skin, and speech patterns similar to Jar Jar Binks.

Fleming's ideas of lesbianism were certainly quite laughable, as depicted in Goldfinger. His racism, of course, was typical for British culture coming out of World War II and the 50s and the downfall of the Empire.

Actually quite amazing how much James Bond was sanitised for the movies.

Resinence wrote:

Serafina wrote:Which reminds me - happy Women's Equality Day everyone - regardless of gender

Good video - and by the way, i did not need to be reminded, i had a lenghty discussion about the same topic today - too bad i lacked numbers.

Good video aside from that it contains blatant misinformation? Lying for a good cause is still lying.

The department of labor has said that once you control for outside factors women DON't really earn 70c on the dollar, how long are people going to be allowed to peddle this bullshit without being called on it? Not to shit on women's day, I support the idea, but honestly, enough is enough.

http://www.consad.com/content/reports/G ... Report.pdf

For the lazy:

Although additional research in this area is clearly needed, this study leads to the unambiguous
conclusion that the differences in the compensation of men and women are the result of a
multitude of factors and that the raw wage gap should not be used as the basis to justify
corrective action. Indeed, there may be nothing to correct. The differences in raw wages may be
almost entirely the result of the individual choices being made by both male and female workers

Woops, but hey lets not let studies get in the way of screeching hysterically at eachother, rather than looking at the actual issue.

Furthermore, Ian Flemming is probably rolling in his grave over this.

Single childless Women in the 20-30 age group are actually making a more than their male counterparts http://www.time.com/time/business/artic ... 74,00.html

Fleming was a massive homophobe and racist whose Bond was physically abusive and verged on rape, some would go so far as to say actually raping Solitaire and others. If he's rolling in his grave, let's hook up a turbine so we can get some more use out of the old bastard yet. I'd say I was ashamed of you for suggesting that him objecting to this would be a bad thing, but you're setting off some alarm bells left and right here, so instead I'll just say, "typical".

Oh so it's ok to wreck the mythos of an established intellectual property as long as it's to say The Right Things, good to know. Alarms bell's of what, not agreeing with the content of this ad? Do you always dismiss people the moment they show signs of disagreeing with you?

I'm not sure where the lie comes in. If there are pressures directing women into low-paying positions as opposed to real differences in raw wages (and that's ignoring the problems of hiring, benefits and all that altogether, but of course your appeal to "studies" does not extend to anything that challenges your patronizing impression of feminism) within a position thanks to gender, that would seem to still be something that ought to be corrected. For example, among all Ph.Ds issued over the last few years, women greatly outnumber men. But when you break it down by categories, the sciences and engineering are still heavily male-dominated, especially in engineering, math, physics, and chemistry. Studies into this have found no real discrimination in hiring practices within universities, labs and so on.

So in other words, now that people are getting tired of being beaten over the head with the false wage gap, the goalposts need to be shifted. So where is your outrage over women greatly outnumbering men in PHD's issued then? Surely under the "everyone is the same" framework you most likely subscribe to, that means there are forces at work stopping men from getting PHD's and that should be corrected.

Now, somebody like you would stop right there, and with the smuggest, most punchable face stretched across your ugly mug, exude a palpable aura of "so much for YOUR FEMINISM, heh". But if you look closely, this disparity extends to Master's and undergraduate degrees, and even unto the elementary level when children are asked about science. So the feminist conclusion is that societal forces direct women away from the sciences and engineering starting at an early age, and that this needs to be changed. I'd venture to guess that a similar explanation, coupled with other forms of discrimination, probably explains much of the wage gap, but that such doesn't change the need to alter this. I say all this anticipating somebody bringing up sports next. I'm waiting for you. I'm shuffling the chips on my feminist Bingo board. Go ahead.

Hey I know! Let's mandate that every research team composed of men needs to have an equivalent with just women, just like Title IX for sports! That worked so well! What with the closing down of teams all over the country. They were men though so who cares.

Hey, didn't want to let you down buddy

Ah, Code Tan (Charge of Unattractiveness), at least you managed to include one standard argument. Regardless, it's irrelevant, but you just couldn't help but show your disdain for someone who disagree's with you huh? There must be something wrong with me!

The conclusion is that something is stopping women from getting into those fields, why? Maybe the average woman doesn't actually enjoy those fields as much as men do, maybe... men and women are not the same. Unthinkable. Let's continue ignoring the growing failure to nurture our young men in education and keep the focus on women. ME ME ME. Who cares if the number of men who are teachers is declining, all men are potential pedophiles and rapists anyway, keep them away from my kids!

Seriously though, how about explaining the actual reasoning used to arrive at the conclusion you just stated, instead of expecting me to just accept it.

OR OR! We could force all boys to play with barbie and all girls to play with tonka trucks to make up for societal pressure to be different. Maybe give a boy a sexchange at a young age and raise him as a girl to prove it, oh wait, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer that was a failure.

Or maybe we could be happy with equality of opportunity rather than wielding laws like a sword to establish perfectly equal outcomes, and keep the fucking political out of the personal.

More assertions and appeals to ideology to come I'm sure.

Single childless Women in the 20-30 age group are actually making a more than their male counterparts http://www.time.com/time/business/artic ... 74,00.html

Yep, I like how most of the stories about that have been triumphant victory cry's and/or gloating, don't forget Obama's betrayal of the men who voted for him by bowing to WEAVE and redirecting funds of the "shovel-ready" stimulus into health, education and human industries... places where women like to work. I for one am SHOCKED!

Of the 5.7 million jobs Americans lost between December 2007 and May 2009, nearly 80 percent had been held by men.

42 Percent of the jobs created by the stimulus will employ women.

Mancession, what mancession? Clearly women are just better.

Resinence wrote:The conclusion is that something is stopping women from getting into those fields, why? Maybe the average woman doesn't actually enjoy those fields as much as men do, maybe... men and women are not the same.

And is the reason that women don't enjoy those fields as much as men do a result of women naturally being less interested in those fields, or is it because those fields have a macho male-dominated culture that leaves them feeling like outsiders in their own profession? Or is it because many women feel that they have a choice between truly showing their intelligence or getting a man, because I tell you what - I've had more men run away from me because of my intelligence than I've had flock to me because of it.

If we lived in a magical society where there was no "boy's club", a woman could fit into a male-dominated profession and be treated as an equal without being questioned, and women grew up without any social expectations to marry a doctor from a Good Family and pop out 2-3 grandchildren, and there was still a gender discrepancy, that would be fine, however society is not at that point at the moment.

You know, putting science and physics aside for a moment, women only get half as many leading roles in films as men do. Tell me Resinence, do you think this is because women are 50% less interested in acting than men, because female actors are 50% less talented than male actors, or is it because women are 50% less interesting than men?

Unthinkable. Let's continue ignoring the growing failure to nurture our young men in education and keep the focus on women. ME ME ME. Who cares if the number of men who are teachers is declining, all men are potential pedophiles and rapists anyway, keep them away from my kids!

Last time I was aware, there was significant awareness of the lack of male role models in education in Australia. I believe there is even a group of four men in brightly coloured shirts whose job is to provide male role models for young children, using the fundamentals of early childhood education. It's certainly not one that's being ignored, and when brought up, I don't recall the issue bringing all the crazy people out of the woodworks screaming about how talking about this issue now means that you're racist against the gay disabled aboriginal whales because it happens to not be the issue that you're talking about right now. You know, the way you are.

What you are ignoring is the fact that discrimination against males in certain roles in no way diminishes the discrimination women face. See, a man who wants to become a teacher or a nurse faces discrimination over his choice. This is wrong. On the other hand, a woman who wants to become Prime Minister faces societal belittlement over all manner of things, from her hairstyle to her decision not to have a family, to her fashion sense, and this is not only discriminatory, but it also deprives her of the power that she can use to end this discrimination much more forcefully than a man is deprived of his power to end discrimination when he is told to choose a more "manly" profession.

Yes, men have to face societal pressure to conform to gender norms in society, however the societal roles forced upon them are much less harmful than those forced on women, because they are pressured into roles of power, which means that a man forced into a role he does not like ends up being unhappy and powerful, while a woman forced into a role that she does not want ends up being unhappy and powerless. Guess which one I would prefer?

Bakustra is a very nice man who understands all of this stuff, which is why I quite like him. He's very good at seeing that not all problems are about ME! ME! ME!

OR OR! We could force all boys to play with barbie and all girls to play with tonka trucks to make up for societal pressure to be different. Maybe give a boy a sexchange at a young age and raise him as a girl to prove it, oh wait, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer that was a failure.

Or we could let the children choose their own toys and make sure that there is no social stigma either for girls who prefer to play with tonka trucks, or boys who prefer to play with Barbie dolls. Which is, I believe, what Bakustra would recommend.

Also, a preference for tonka trucks over barbie dolls likely has very little to do with female representation in engineering subjects, so I'm not entirely sure why you're bringing it up. I suspect it's some kind of barely-concealed sexism on your behalf that makes you feel that femininity and masculinity only exist on one scale, and thus any woman who engages in a "non-feminine" profession will also be "non-feminine" in all other ways. Assuming the women you know are anything like the women I know, you must be one sad, confused little man.

I could name at least half a dozen examples of feminine women studying for a "male" profession, or already being in such a profession. And i could name just as many examples of masculine women being interested in a "female" profession. Heck, i actually know at least two (lesbian) couples where this is strikingly obvious within the same couple (femme police officer + butch kindergarten teacher, femme physics student + slightly-butch sociology student).
But hey, let's oversimplify gender traits, shall we?

Resinence wrote:OR OR! We could force all boys to play with barbie and all girls to play with tonka trucks to make up for societal pressure to be different. Maybe give a boy a sexchange at a young age and raise him as a girl to prove it, oh wait, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer that was a failure.

Yes, because that was TOTALLY done in the name of feminism Unfortunately, red herrings are neither edible nor viable argument, much less when made from straw.

Resinence" wrote:Or maybe we could be happy with equality of opportunity rather than wielding laws like a sword to establish perfectly equal outcomes, and keep the fucking political out of the personal.

We COULD be happy if that was actually the case. Unfortunately, while equal opportunity is the law in almost all first-world countries, it is NOT necessarily present in the heads of those in power. Employers are not equally likely to hire a woman rather than a man, women are less likely to be promoted with equal achievements, they get less support when they aspire towards certain goals and so on.
As you pointed out, the latter is also the case for men. The former two, however, are not, unless we are talking about a very (stereo)typically female job.

I'm amazed there's even a debate going on to be honest. It is perfectly clear that the following applies to most aspects of society.

1) It is much easier being male than female
2) It is much easier being white than non-white.
3) It is much easier being straight than gay or bi.
4) It is much easier being rich than poor

When I hear men or whites or straights or the moneyed complaining about how the other lot are getting all the help and they are the ones being discriminated against, I just despair.

Women have been dealt the shit hand throughout the centuries and, whether by societal pressures, institutionised sexism or whatever, they are still less likely than men to get the top jobs, promotions and equal pay (just look at the boardrooms of major public companies). Whenever there is a drive to try and remedy this, we have complaints that "firms should just employ the best person for the job and not on the basis of gender". It is pretty bloody clear that left to their own devices, firms will still often employ on the basis of gender, i.e. favouring men.

Mancession! LOL

Resinence wrote:

Fleming was a massive homophobe and racist whose Bond was physically abusive and verged on rape, some would go so far as to say actually raping Solitaire and others. If he's rolling in his grave, let's hook up a turbine so we can get some more use out of the old bastard yet. I'd say I was ashamed of you for suggesting that him objecting to this would be a bad thing, but you're setting off some alarm bells left and right here, so instead I'll just say, "typical".

Oh so it's ok to wreck the mythos of an established intellectual property as long as it's to say The Right Things, good to know. Alarms bell's of what, not agreeing with the content of this ad? Do you always dismiss people the moment they show signs of disagreeing with you?

Yes to your first question. Just like I have no problem with Disney not having Hercules murder Megara and then commit suicide in their adaptation of his story, or their adaptation of Sleeping Beauty not incorporating necrophiliac rape, or any adaptation of Cinderella not having her torture her stepmother and sisters to death at the end, I have no problem with somebody taking a cultural icon like Bond, and altering them to fit the modern times. This has been done by the noblest and most famous of writers, because they understand what stories are and what purposes they have.

As to your second question, I have these things I call "jackass senses". They set off alarm bells whenever I see somebody on the verge of diving from misinformed anti-feminism into sexism. Now, the problem is that you're insisting that if I have contempt for one opposing viewpoint to my own, then I must have contempt for them all. I'll turn that right back at you. How much respect do you have for Neo-Nazis, Fascists, genocidal maniacs? Do you hear them out fully and give full quarter to their opinions? I'm not going to say, a priori, whether you are a Nazi or not, but I hope you'll understand the analogy. I get that you have a febrile mind, but it shouldn't hamper you quite that much.

I'm not sure where the lie comes in. If there are pressures directing women into low-paying positions as opposed to real differences in raw wages (and that's ignoring the problems of hiring, benefits and all that altogether, but of course your appeal to "studies" does not extend to anything that challenges your patronizing impression of feminism) within a position thanks to gender, that would seem to still be something that ought to be corrected. For example, among all Ph.Ds issued over the last few years, women greatly outnumber men. But when you break it down by categories, the sciences and engineering are still heavily male-dominated, especially in engineering, math, physics, and chemistry. Studies into this have found no real discrimination in hiring practices within universities, labs and so on.

So in other words, now that people are getting tired of being beaten over the head with the false wage gap, the goalposts need to be shifted. So where is your outrage over women greatly outnumbering men in PHD's issued then? Surely under the "everyone is the same" framework you most likely subscribe to, that means there are forces at work stopping men from getting PHD's and that should be corrected.

It's hardly a false wage gap. The gap is there and has been there, the question is of the causes. But you don't grasp that, since you're wrapped up in manufacturing a conspiracy against half of humanity by some fraction of the other half. I don't know how far your imaginary conspiracy extends. You might reach the depths of Dave Sim, and start ranting about how women are trying to steal your male light. You might believe that instead it's a tight conspiracy of the Lesbian Illuminati, seeking to control the entire world. I don't know, and frankly I don't want to descend into your madness any further.

That is a problem. But, when you look at our society as a whole, what we see is that overall the bias is against women and in favor of men, so something like this is probably a result of a deeper factor rather than "feminists cackle with glee at the thought of men not getting Ph.Ds and cast their sapphic spells to ensure this", such as, perhaps, the declining quality of education in a number of areas. It turns out that most feminists also feel that education needs to be revamped in this country. Damn, Retsina, it's like you're assigning beliefs to people they may not actually hold!

Now, somebody like you would stop right there, and with the smuggest, most punchable face stretched across your ugly mug, exude a palpable aura of "so much for YOUR FEMINISM, heh". But if you look closely, this disparity extends to Master's and undergraduate degrees, and even unto the elementary level when children are asked about science. So the feminist conclusion is that societal forces direct women away from the sciences and engineering starting at an early age, and that this needs to be changed. I'd venture to guess that a similar explanation, coupled with other forms of discrimination, probably explains much of the wage gap, but that such doesn't change the need to alter this. I say all this anticipating somebody bringing up sports next. I'm waiting for you. I'm shuffling the chips on my feminist Bingo board. Go ahead.

Hey I know! Let's mandate that every research team composed of men needs to have an equivalent with just women, just like Title IX for sports! That worked so well! What with the closing down of teams all over the country. They were men though so who cares.

Hey, didn't want to let you down buddy

Ah, Code Tan (Charge of Unattractiveness), at least you managed to include one standard argument. Regardless, it's irrelevant, but you just couldn't help but show your disdain for someone who disagree's with you huh? There must be something wrong with me!

The conclusion is that something is stopping women from getting into those fields, why? Maybe the average woman doesn't actually enjoy those fields as much as men do, maybe... men and women are not the same. Unthinkable. Let's continue ignoring the growing failure to nurture our young men in education and keep the focus on women. ME ME ME. Who cares if the number of men who are teachers is declining, all men are potential pedophiles and rapists anyway, keep them away from my kids!

Seriously though, how about explaining the actual reasoning used to arrive at the conclusion you just stated, instead of expecting me to just accept it.

OR OR! We could force all boys to play with barbie and all girls to play with tonka trucks to make up for societal pressure to be different. Maybe give a boy a sexchange at a young age and raise him as a girl to prove it, oh wait, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer that was a failure.

Or maybe we could be happy with equality of opportunity rather than wielding laws like a sword to establish perfectly equal outcomes, and keep the fucking political out of the personal.

More assertions and appeals to ideology to come I'm sure.

Retsina, that was a little thing called an insult. I'm sorry you're so sensitive about your appearance that the very term "ugly mug" used as an off-hand pejorative electronically to refer to you causes you to teeter on the edge of a mental breakdown, such that you cannot even remember how to put links in your posts. I realize that I may be being reckless in continuing to insult you, but I have a degree in Internet Psychology, focusing on e-clinical assaultive therapy, so I foresee no problems.

But I'm not sorry now, since I read your second paragraph. I'm going to translate this into plain English: Retsina, here, is saying that liking science is genetically controlled and a sex-linked trait that is male-biased. Bingo! Bingo! That outburst of evopsych biotruths just gave me a nice bingo! Too bad you don't have any extraordinary evidence for this extraordinary claim.

Here's the reasoning: there are few famous female scientists. Those that are famous are still often downplayed compared with others. The overall stereotype of a scientist is an older, white man who fits the "mad scientist" stereotype. So there are few role models for little girls that are science-related. Those that are are often in the life sciences- which are more egalitarian than the "hard" sciences. Toys like chemistry sets, LEGO blocks, and gadgets in general are seen as boy toys. Current scientific areas are generally male-dominated and may or may not have an "old boy's club" feel that discourage women undergraduates from continuing into grad school. That's ignoring the overall pressures against women which contribute. These are just factors I can identify off the top of my head. Now explain why these are all irrelevant, and it's actually the genes that make women shop wear makeup cry like science less.

Who cares that the number of men that are teachers is declining? I do. But unlike your paranoid ass, I recognize that this isn't a grand feminist conspiracy to destroy the male identity or whatever your brain has concocted as reasoning, and I think that the whole "all men are pedophiles" is a combination of traditional gender roles with kidnapping panic. See, in traditional gender roles, men are the sexual aggressors, and so now that we've got to be afraid of the hordes of pedos in vans trying to kidnap our kids, why, they're all male, because women are never sexually aggressive. It turns out that feminism recognizes that stereotypical gender roles hurt men in a variety of ways, and are trying to liberate men from that too, but the position of women affords them less power to mitigate said effects, and so feminists generally focus on women first.

Equality of opportunity is a lovely trio of words. A nice soundbite. I've got my own. Society should be as fractal as we can make it. You should be able to take any university and it should have similar proportions to the country as a whole. Any career. Right now, American and Australian and Austrian and Belgian and British and Canadian and so many other countries have scientific establishments, CEOs, political establishments, all of which are not really good representations (though some are much better than others) because they aren't all that proportional. Women make up half the population of the world, but at best (in the Scandinavian countries) about 36% of the parliaments. That's not really a good picture of the country, now is it? And that's why I think that settling for some hoary soundbite reappropriated to defend institutionalized discrimination is the hallmark of jackassery.

Bringing up David Reimer, meanwhile, is what we called a cheap shot back when I was younger. I am given to understand by the way in which you brought it up that it's called a "devastating argument" now. But I guess that nothing has changed, and John Money is still considered to have had the last word in studies of gender, and that the real reason why Reimer's reassignment failed was because he didn't have the doll and don't-like-science genes. Really, fuck you for trying to encode gender roles in our genes.