From: revpk@cellar.org (Brian 'Rev P-K' Siano)
Newsgroups: soc.men,soc.women,alt.censorship,alt.politics.correct
Subject: Re: P.C. Professors Try to Censor Anti-Feminist Book
Keywords: Paglia's "Sexual Personae"
Date: 31 Jul 92 01:47:58 GMT
Organization: The Cellar BBS and public access system

aviksroy@athena.mit.edu (Avik S. Roy) writes:
> Thanks for the summary.
> 
> Although this sounds appealing, virtually all physiological studies indicate
> there are higher nurturing instincts in women, and higher aggressive instinct
> men.  While there currently exists no proof or disproof of comparative math
> skills and intelligence in men and women, it's only a matter of time before w
> understand cognitive processes at the molecular level (e.g., the recent disco
> of a "learning gene" in mice, which directly and significantly affects spatia
> learning capacity). and it's quite probable that we may find general trends o
> certain cognitive processes in the same way that we do for height, muscle
> development, etc.  Which gender such trends will favor is uncertain.
> 
> When will feminists, environmentalists, etc. learn that if they want invent o
> revise the truth, they should stick to literature, where they've somehow been
> able to get away with it?
> 
> Avik

        As Tavris's book describes, those studies show very slight 
differences in nurturing abilities between men and women-- for example, in 
caring for ill relatives, men were just as capable as women of being caring, 
nurturing, and self-sacrificing. Similarly, in another area of asserted sex 
differences-- math and spatial abilities-- the difference was so slight as to 
disappear when a handful of male prodigies were removed from the sample. (In 
the population at large, however, women seem to have a small edge.)

        BTW, the evidence is in the 'psychological' field, not the 
'physiological.'Minor point.

        I wouldn't agree that it's 'quite probable' that we'd find strong 
tendencies of development in mental processes, actually. Considering the 
strong similarities between humans regardless of physiological differences-- 
capacities for language, complexity of culture, and the like-- it seems to me 
that the differences we see are more a product of a cultural overlay than opf 
innate differences. And differences with a physiological basis tend to be a 
lot more noticeable-- a single extra chromosome, for example, creates Down's 
syndrome, and very minor genetic factors affect skin and eye pigmentation. 
But mental capacities seem to be extraordinarily uniform compared to other 
physiological variances. Even advocates of the heritability of IQ argue that 
intelligence is 80% inherited, while the rest is societally dependent; and 
the differences in IQ that can be attributed to cultural differences varies 
with the 10 to 15 percent range.

        Rather, I'd say that the argument has a certain plausibility within 
certain contexts, but I wouldn't regard it as 'probable.'

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Brian "Rev. P-K" Siano                                  revpk@cellar.org
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