Ambivalent

[nightrythm]

OK, so Fast Company has an article on women and electronics. It says some good things like “The biggest mistake we have seen is treating women like a special interest group with only post-design considerations like color and finish. We call this the ’shrink it and pink it’ approach. And, it’s offensive to most women.”

But then, the author goes and says: "According to the Femme Den Smarties, Larry Summers was right: women’s brains ARE different from guys’ and, frankly, figuring out how to hook up a router is harder for us." and "Men, literally, have more gray matter in their brains. That makes them better at specialized and focused tasks. Women, on the other hand, have more white matter. That’s the tissue that wires processing centers together. That means we rock at multitasking, and integrating functions, but figuring out the glitch with the WiFi can be a hurdle."

Seriously? Well, then I give up. Math is hard, let's go shopping.

Comments

[argentla.livejournal.com]

Such bullshit. I think stuff like that is the very definition of "junk science."

[silentbard69.livejournal.com]

Shit is this why I'm gay? Cause I think math is fun?????

[nightrythm]

So I'm bi, 'cause I don't like math so much?

[daeglan.livejournal.com]

Dude you girls need to chill out. It is not Junk Science. It is well documented science that men and women think differently. We evolved in different ways. Getting offended about it is silly and wasteful.

Men have a predisposition to think linearly. does this mean all men are such? No it does not it just means for men the bell curve between linear and nonlinear thinking is weighted more towards linear thinking. It is not any better or worse than nonlinear thinking just specialized for different tasks.

Women on the other hand have a predisposition to think more non linearly. Or are better at multitasking. Their bell curve is weighted more towards nonlinear thinking. They are better at such tasks. Women also tend to be better at communicating then men do.

Men and women evolved to do different things because it helped us as a species survive better. they are just 2 different modes of thinking. Neither one is superior overall. Just specialized for different tasks.

Nothing to get upset about. And I don't think the person is saying women should just give up and go shopping. I think they are saying that the male centric design theory is flawed. Of course what I am seeing here is you girls getting upset because someone suggested that women are different then men. Last I checked women are different then men.

[nightrythm]

I hope you're being funny.

[argentla.livejournal.com]

Because trying to use evolution to rationalize decades of institutionalized discrimination is always a barrel o' laughs...

[daeglan.livejournal.com]

Wow. I never knew acknowledging differences in people equals discrimination. That's like saying noticing someone has dark skin and knowing that that means they do not sunburn as easily equals discrimination. It does not.

Go do a little research on the subject. Men and women's brains simply work differently. Acknowledging it is not discrimination. Just like men and women's bodies are simply different. I am so tired of women taking the acknowledgment that men and women's brains work differently as somehow being discrimination. It is not.

As to the claim that I am using this to rationalize discrimination. I am not.
I never said discrimination was ok. It is not. I am just saying that men's and women's brains work differently. Because they do. Just compare the way your female friends operate to the way your male friends operate. You know that they do work differently. Saying otherwise is just lying to your self.

[nightrythm]

FYI argentla = male

"Just compare the way your female friends operate to the way your male friends operate."

I agree that many men and women operate differently than each other. But we don't really know how much of that is nature vs. nurture. I put a lot of belief in the argument that it is nurture. Especially considering that more and more women and men defy the boundaries that are set up by gender stereotyping.

[daeglan.livejournal.com]

We do know quite a bit on the subject. They have done PET scans of men and women solving the same problems and the way men and women's brains are wired was very noticeably different. When they have done dissections of men and women's brains they noticed that women have SIGNIFICANTLY more connections between the 2 brain hemispheres. This means that women can shuttle data between the 2 halves of the brain at a much faster rate. That's not nurture that's nature. Also we know for a fact that testosterone and estrogen significantly alters behavior, simply by virtue of the differences in levels of these 2 hormones alone means that the way men and women think is going to be different. Because hormones operate on the entire body including the brain. So no I am not buying this as simply being a nurture issue.

take look at twins studies. It is amazing how much behavior is in genes. for Example they studied a pair of twins separated at birth. The picked up coffee cups in the exact same manner. I am very interested in history. My mom is not and I never knew my dad really. Turns out my father also does reenacting.

But fact of the matter is the article you are sighting was not being discriminatory. It was acknowledging that women operate differently then men and that women were frustrated with the way electronics were designed. Since when is acknowledging the data in a study being discriminatory?

[nightrythm]

I never said the article itself was disriminatory. I just pulled out specific lines that made my blood boil. The tone of "tech is hard" made me angry. Why? because I don't find tech hard. I like tech and I know many other women who do.

Historically, women have been told that they are delicate creatures, that higher learning was too much work for them, that math and science are "too hard"; this is why the continual propegation of 'xyz is hard for women' pushes my buttons.

[daeglan.livejournal.com]

Math and science tend to be more linear thinking. This can be more difficult for women as their brains tend to not be optimized for it. But on the other hand nonlinear thinking can be a great advantage in Math and Science. I never said math is "too hard" for women. Any asshole who says women cannot do math is an asshole. Will it tend to be more difficult. Probably. In my opinion this shouldn't stop women from doing it. Acknowledging a difficulty in my mind would be the first step to overcoming it.

[cirqueducroquet.livejournal.com]

And here I'd been hoping argentla was actually Katherine Moennig. Damn.

[nightrythm]

LOL

[stacymckenna.livejournal.com]

"That means we rock at multitasking, and integrating functions, but figuring out the glitch with the WiFi can be a hurdle."

Or... it means we "intuit" the cause for the glitch in nanoseconds without needing the three hours of linear thinking/testing to do it. It's all about the application of the strengths/skills.

[daeglan.livejournal.com]

Thank you for getting my point.

[nightrythm]

*grin*