Comments on: Pachyderms anyone?

By: Ronan

Ronan — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 18:44:57 +0000

First of all I’ve got to say I laughed my ass off when I read this, you will soon understand why…

My name is Ronan, and yes I am the same Ronan quoted in the article.

I was looking around my name on Google and ended up here and figured I should clear a thing up. I am not a girl but a guy ;)

well that’s my word on the subject seeing as how the rest has been cut I don’t believe it is important^^’

By: Chai Latte

Chai Latte — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 03:17:09 +0000

Ok, first off: Natalie, you rock. This post is dead-on.

I can remember some junior-league MRA that I went to high school with publishing an article in our school newspaper about our school needing ‘a few good men’. “The girls are BEATING us, guys! Step it up!” was the basic gist.

I’m all for stepping up the learning, no matter who you are–but why did girls achieving have to be so villified? Why was it a bad thing? I’d love to go back in time and ask that guy. (Didn’t like him much anyway, now that I think about it. He was kind of pompous.)

George, David and Johnny B, you guys crack me up. You probably think all us feminists live on Summersisle, wearing frowsy shapeless dresses and sacrificing innocent menz to random pagan dieties.

“BITCHES! KILLING ME WON’T BRING BACK YOUR GODDAMN HONEY!”

I’m sorry, Natalie–the Wicker Man reference was too tempting not to use.

By: Natalie P.

Natalie P. — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 03:42:30 +0000

Johnny, Aside from the fact that things like university entrance ARE highly competitive, and a science fair IS a competition… and that many pundits have long argued that women are ill-suited to sciences+math, since when is a winning science fair project NOT creative?

By: Johnny B

Johnny B — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 07:48:21 +0000

Why does it have to be a competition? If a man wrote a smug, gloating piece about boys outperforming girls in some field, complete with inferences that they must be superior in some way, he’d be instantly blasted from a dozen directions. Yet here it’s “Hooray, female empowerment”? Drop the us vs them attitude and judge people on individual merit.

(For what it’s worth, a few studies seem to show that girls are better equipped to succeed in our current educational system, which rewards long hours of sitting still, being quiet and engaging in repetitious tasks (studying) – as opposed to being active/aggressive, creative and spontaneous).

By: Natalie P.

Natalie P. — Sun, 31 May 2009 15:31:18 +0000

Ida, perhaps what David is trying to say is that feminists (as if we are one homogenous lump), think/say that the only differentiator between the sexes is in the upbringing, yet what I posited is that there might be something innately in girls that allows them to learn/be better at this kind of stuff, (thereby cutting me out of David’s League of Evil Feminists, I suppose).

Numerous studies on rhesus monkeys have shown that testosterone *does* have an impact on learning at various stages in development. What I did was throw into the arena a challenge to the long-held misconception that men are innately better than women at math, sciences and abstract thought. This is not to say that I don’t think that culture, society, (i.e. “nurture”) doesn’t play a significant part. I just have a hard time swallowing the rhetoric that the education system is somehow favoring girls and disadvantaging boys any time girls start to surpass boys in traditionally male-dominated areas.