Intrinsically male
I’m reading comments on this post about the reasons Lawrence Krauss got semi-banned from Case Western Reserve, and I’m brought up short by this comment – by, specifically, a bit where it quotes Sam Harris.
It’s an elephant that looms large for female atheists, but is invisible for male atheists: Ed Drayton noticed the gender disparity, didn’t know why, so he asked and got knowledgeable answers: Sam Harris also noticed it, didn’t know why, but didn’t let ignorance get in the way of instant expertise when, off the cuff at a book signing, he supplied an answer from his own imagination:
“I think it may have to do with my person[al] slant as an author, being very critical of bad ideas. This can sound very angry to people… People just don’t like to have their ideas criticized. There’s something about that critical posture that is to some degree intrinsically male and more attractive to guys than to women,” he said. “The atheist variable just has this—it doesn’t obviously have this nurturing, coherence-building extra estrogen vibe that you would want by default if you wanted to attract as many women as men.”
I’ve seen it before, of course; I did a furious post about it at the time, of course (I’m nothing if not predictable), and yet…I hadn’t seen it in awhile and I’d forgotten details. The “estrogen vibe” bit has been much quoted and I fell into the habit of citing it that way when occasion arose to cite it, with the result that I neglected the rest of it. The estrogen vibe part is not the worst part. No.
I’ll tell you what is.
There’s something about that critical posture that is to some degree intrinsically male and more attractive to guys than to women,” he said.
“There’s something about that critical posture that is to some degree intrinsically male and more attractive to guys than to women,” he said.
What’s he saying there? He’s saying that the ability to take a step back from the given, the normal, the accepted, the mainstream, the conventional, the everybody knows, the unquestioned, the unquestionable – to take a step back from it and think about it, analyze it, question it, doubt it, be critical of it, is
INTRINSICALLY MALE.
It’s a truly astounding thing to say.
After all what can be more basic? How can we ever improve anything if we don’t have that habit of questioning the obvious? If we accept that it’s intrinsically male then women are useless for any kind of real thinking. It frames men as the innovators and rebels and reformers, and women as the bovine accepters.
But apparently that really is how most of them do see us, and that’s why they’re customers for endless iterations of An Evening With
- Sam Harris
- Richard Dawkins
- Michael Shermer
- Lawrence Krauss
- Bill Maher
There’s one coming up in just two days – Harris and Shermer.
Pangburn Philosophy presents an Evening with Sam Harris & Michael Shermer, Monday, March 5 in Dell Hall.
Join authors Sam Harris & Michael Shermer for a night of skepticism, science & reason.
Sit at the feet of the manly Thinkers who are intrinsically inclined to be “very critical of bad ideas” – except their own, of course.
Harris “explained” at the time that it was just a spontaneous reply to a question, not a carefully reasoned claim in a piece of writing. Yes; granted. He probably wouldn’t put it that starkly in a piece of writing. But the fact that it is what popped into his head when he was asked is striking and profoundly depressing. That’s how they see us. That’s what they think of us. We’re too sweet and loving to take a critical posture…so that’s why it’s absolutely necessary to leave us out of all the intellectual work and just keep hogging the microphone forever and ever and ever and ever…………..
Have these men ever actually met a woman, let alone talked to (rather than at) and listened to one?
How do these men manage to keep their women partners around? They must be walking around with much internalized sexism.
I think this was implicit in what you were saying in the OP, but just to state it bluntly: viewing the “critical stance” as “intrinsically male” not only means that you don’t give women a chance to do it, but that when a woman does exhibit that behavior, you’re likely to see her as masculine and off-putting.
Yes, that’s true too, and very much worth spelling out.
It’s also, no doubt, part of why these endless guy on guy on guy events strike us women as tediously myopic and repetitive and sexist, while they strike the guys doing events as just the natural order of things because wims are too squishy to take part.
But, But, BUUUUT!
Of course it is self evident that critical thought is a male only process. trust me, I’m a man, I know these things. LOL.
That must be why the first two blogs I read every day are Butterfliesandwheels and Affinity. :-)
If Harris thinks the “critical posture” is a guy thing, I’d like to introduce him to several members of the Carleton philosophy department, and sit back to watch them eviscerate him. Assuming that any of them have bothered reading the fool — he’s not exactly a phil heavyweight.
Also: if Krauss is stuck for employment after this scandal, it looks like he can always come back to Canada:
http://www.macleans.ca/education/university/canadian-universities-are-failing-students-on-sexual-assault/
:-(
Ah yes, that’s our gender role:
(Admiring, or Benignly Sexist Version): Kind and loving and nurturing and pro-social
(Contemptuous Version): Natural conformists, and rather stupid
And if this is your opinion of women and you feel a need to justify it (because a wimmen might just be listening: It’s science! ESTROGEN.
Harris and Dillahunty: There are allegations against Krauss, some of which are serious; so we better not appear on stage with him. Harassment, propositioning, etc., but it’s not like he actually raped anybody…
Still, it would be best if we let Krauss sit this one out.
“There’s one coming up in just two days – Harris and Shermer.”
Ooops.
Shermer STILL gets invites?
That blithe, foolish, gender essentialism comes out of Harris spontaneously speaks volumes about his capacity for reasoned judgment. Is it worse than the trans-ragey gender madness?
It’s made from the exact same bolt of cloth, the idea that there is something inherent that makes you male or female, and that something is somewhere in your genotype, and that it renders your phenotype hopelessly weak, hysterical, uncritical – or prone to wear make up, play with dolls, and prefer pink.
The problem I find is that many people do not recognize misogyny when they see it, because the stereotypes have become so embedded in our society that we tend not to notice when women are being stereotyped. Case in point: my playwriting group calls out diligently anything they perceive as a male stereotype (and when one is done deliberately, to point up the nature of female stereotypes and start to break them, they howl like mad), but female stereotypes get the approving response of “how do you write women so well?”